Further Letters

The following letters are a continuation of my exchange with G. (previous letters in this conversation can be viewed here).

G’s Second Response to Mary :

Hi Mary,

The underlying reason is to my comment in the first place was very simple. I feel have read way too much into it. You have described it as an “attack”. This is completely wrong.
I don’t have emotions that want to attack you or anyone. You have met me several times but I would not say that you know me very well at all. Your last email illustrates this to me.
I challenge people’s actions as being fruitful for what they are trying to achieve. I do this because of empathy towards the person being the subject of the action. Nothing more. Yes, I questioned your judgement. So what! It’s not a big deal. I will do it again if I don’t agree with what you are doing. As with my own judgement, I do not regard your judgement as infallible. We all make mistakes.

You seem very put out about me questioning it. If I think any of my friends have made an error in judgement I suggest it to them.
Why? Because they are my friends and friends can have robust arguments and disagreements without any ill feeling.

After your first email I was satisfied that although I could not see how these people could be as you described them they must have deserved this treatment. Now after reading your subsequent emails to me and your overreaction to a challenge of your authority I am not so sure.

You talk about my treatment towards you.
What treatment? I disagreed with you Mary. If you have misconceived my treatment and thoughts towards you then you have possibly done the same with others.

You do not know me well enough to judge my “desire to love” or my current soul condition. That is why I just ignored those comments of yours.  When you do this with people it is a judgement whether you see it as one or not. Saying whether something is hot or cold is a judgement. If your device for measuring is inaccurate then you have now made a very big mistake. You say that you are telling people the truth about themselves and if they don’t accept it because they are resistive. They can’t handle the truth.

What if it’s not the truth and your perception is wrong?
I say you are being judgemental and unhelpful when you do this.
I have seen more negative consequences than positive.
They feel judged and are hurt if they trust you more than themselves.
Of course they do.

We disagree strongly here and I am not “attacking you”. I am disagreeing with you, questioning the benefits of your actions even though I believe your motives and intentions are good.
Am I not allowed to do this?

Although I would never try to asses someone’s soul condition I do have a pretty good idea on who has a good heart.
Do you honestly think for one minute I think that you and AJ do not have good hearts and every bodies welfare in mind.
You spend your entire life giving to people. On what grounds would I have to be unloving towards you? You are wonderful people. You know that I know you spend every minute of your day giving to others.

On what grounds would I possibly have to attack you or not love you?
Question you sometimes on your judgement? Yes.
Have I committed a crime against you? No
Do I love or respect you any less? No
Am I open to be convinced otherwise? Yes.

Love,
G____

Mary’s Third Response to G:

Hi G____,

There are just so many errors in logic in your email and also a wealth of innuendo and implications. I can’t respond to all of it because it would just take too much time.

You also demonstrate that you don’t understand what Jesus and I are trying to achieve in sharing Divine Truth. e.g. you say “I have seen more negative consequences than positive” demonstrating that you see some things as negative that we don’t see as negative.

You imply that your initial email was a question (not true) and that you emailed in response to your empathy for the people removed. This isn’t logical. Empathy for a person’s emotions alone doesn’t cause you to speak in defense of them or to attack of those who challenge their actions (which is what you have done). It is possible to have empathy and compassion but still stand firm for truth (which is what Jesus and I have done).

I started to respond to everything you have just raised with me and it is becoming an essay and to be honest given how you responded here I don’t think that my explanations will necessarily be read by you anyway. Contrary to what you think I’m not concerned about your disagreement with me. I’m OK to let you remain in disagreement with me and to misunderstand and misrepresent my motivations.

I do love robust discussion of any issues of love and truth which is why I engaged the email exchange with you in the first place. But since you are showing that you can’t actually respond to the points of logic in my email, continuing discussion with you seems pointless.

Robust disagreements and deep discussions about matters of Truth and about God’s Love and Laws are things that make me come alive. This are the kind of conversations I am on earth to have. A sign of healthy and secure people are those who can disagree and have discussions that seek for truth and don’t take personal offense. This is how I engaged with you.

However you didn’t start our discussion with this attitude. You displayed that you had taken personal offense and that you had made a judgement of us before any discussion of truth.

You send me an email that clearly imputed that Jesus and I were not “Supportive, encouraging, kind, sensitive, helpful, friendly, warm and open” and that my behavior made you sick. You didn’t seek clarification of the issue before you made these statements. I then responded in a clearly reasoned explanation of what we did, why we did it and included logical explanation of why your immediate response to defend the unloving person in the situation is problematic for your spiritual growth and the world at large. You now tell me that by doing this I am reading too much into things, “over reacting” and that I’ve responded out of some kind of defense of my “authority”. This is a way of trying to shut me down and ignore what I have said. You even said blatantly that you ignored some of my comments to you. On one hand you say that I should be able to have robust discussion and handle strong disagreement but then when I engage in that maturely with you, you dismiss what I say in the ways that I just listed.

I just want to remind you that it was you that contacted me about this matter and accused me of conduct that made you sick. And also to state that I am allowed to respond to your email to me in my own voice and with my own thoughts and that in doing that, without taking personal offense, I am being a grown up. As someone who listens to Divine Truth a lot I thought that you may be open to a logical discussion about matters of truth but I haven’t found that in this exchange. I know that you listen to Divine Truth material almost daily and I didn’t think that my focus on the bigger picture of your soul condition would be so challenging to you. Often our smallest, routine actions (that we don’t think are problematic) demonstrate a lot about our sin and are the ones that cause us the most problems in our progression on earth and after we pass.

Finally, I have to genuinely laugh about even the idea that Jesus or I are in some attached to authority. Not because I am laughing at you but because the idea that I (or Jesus) have any attachment to authority or power over anyone is just so far from what is real. If anything, we both have issues with accepting the “role responsibility” that God desires for us (which is not about authority over others but leadership and responsibility).

We never “lord it over” people or demand their agreement, nor do we become offended or enraged when people disagree with us or ignore us. If we did these things or had the demand that people accept our so-called “authority” we would be vastly unhappy in our current lifestyle since 99.9999% of people in the world either think we are nuts, a joke, deluded, or evil. Even the people who attend our groups routinely resort to treating us with condescension, dismissal or simply voice disagreement with us (just as you have done). So we are pretty used to people not listening to us and voicing their attack and judgement of us. It doesn’t make their attack or judgement right but we have grown enough that it doesn’t cause us problems. And we certainly don’t feel that people must agree with us.

We really love and respect God’s Authority in all things.

The only authority I had in this situation is authority over the Assistance Group. And that is because, given the group was our creation, the atmosphere that facilitates learning, love and truth is our responsibility during the time that we run the groups. With that responsibility comes the “authority” to ask people to leave.

When you disagree with me, I am not leaping to defend myself or taking offense. I responded to you at length primarily because you first initiated contact with me and because the principles involved are important to what we teach. You are allowed to disagree with me and I am allowed to respond to you with my own explanation. I do use a lot of words to explain and I am direct in my language. These things are not a sign of my defensiveness but rather that I desire what I mean to be plain and understandable. I want to reduce the possibility for misunderstanding on your part. I am also passionate about the principles involved here.

I don’t seek out people who attack or disagree with me in private to try and correct them or explain myself. But when a person contacts me, in the guise of giving me “feedback” which is actually attack (as you did) I find it natural that I may choose to respond.

Absolutely everyone who I was close to before I met Jesus disagrees with me in one way or another and I have never felt that they must agree with me. I don’t seek them out to make them “see my point” or respect my “authority” (again – what authority?).

But this interaction is entirely different. You contacted me and I responded, not offended, but in clear language with reasoned explanation of the principles involved including why both Jesus and I took the actions we did and why we believe that those actions are an important part of upholding love and truth.

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you have personally attacked me (and Jesus) e.g. calling me an ‘over reactor’ and someone with ‘authority issues’, someone who ‘made you sick’ and you did so without having any clear evidence for those statements or logic in your arguments. Something in our asking people to leave the last groups brought up emotions for you which you didn’t take responsibility to feel for yourself and instead you chose to dump them on us.  You may wish to call what you feel for the people involved “empathy” or say that you are logically questioning our actions but you haven’t done that in the way that you are communicating with me. Empathy for one group of people doesn’t cause a loving person to attack another group of people.

I notice a lot of people do this, they want to avoid logical discussion of principles and facts that may cause them to change or to see things about themselves and instead respond in knee-jerk comments, poorly reasoned arguments and unloving behaviour. This is what happens when we don’t feel emotions for ourselves, we loose sight of logic and blame others. For example, in your emails to me you question my judgement in assessing who is behaving unlovingly in our groups, imply that we are “destroying” people by asking them to not be there and tell me we are hurting and judging people but then you state that we have good hearts. These sentiments contradict each other.

I understand that you feel that you are being a reasonable, nice guy but your statements and behaviour don’t support that belief or demonstrate that to me. There is clearly a dissonance between your various statements and what you say you feel.

Anyway G____, I feel that the way that you have responded to me in this last email (with further attack, dismissal and ignoring of the principles involved) demonstrates to me that any more correspondence with you on the matter wouldn’t be good use of my time. The only way discussion is fruitful is if we can engage with it logically and without dismissal or condescension towards the other. I have not dismissed any of your comments to me, and I have demonstrated that I have a clear and reasoned understanding of the issues involved. If you were to treat me as I treat you and to actually discuss the principles and ideas involved without imputing things about my motivations or character then I would enjoy the discussion but I don’t see any evidence of you wanting to do that so I’ll finish here.

Bye for now,

Mary