By Shirley Edwards
June 13, 2015
NewsWithViews.com
[These are my views as a woman living in England, on how the culture and spirit of my country has changed over 50 years. Why the country does not feel protected or strong any more, how it has lost, and is losing it values and decency, and how we are daily losing our free speech.]
Losing my Religion
Yesterday, I come across a small remembrance card that one of my son’s wrote to his father when he died. He was 8 years old at the time. The shaky, child like handwritten words never fail to remind me of some difficult years and how the death of a parent really affects children.
The note read:
In
Loving Memory of a Dear Dad.
Thank you for being a lovely Dad, Son and Uncle to everyone in the
family over the years. You have been cheerful and beautiful.
Years after the note was written, I came to fully understand and recognise how poignant those sentiments were, and how there was an intelligent force of evil at work. I didn’t know then that evil has patience, craftiness and cunning when it comes to destroying men, women, children and families. It uses many conduits and avenues. But the main objective is to get men out of the way. It had been watching us and it knew what to do, and how to take advantage.
It
was quite a shock. I had also falsely believed that working within
a church 
gave
some sort of protection. It was meant to be Gods house after all.
It was a naive and blind notion. But sitting there, and seeing no
genuine strength, in either myself, or some of the clergy who were
meant to lead us to it, was a frightening, yet revealing place to
be. Their words were empty. There was no love in their hearts.
Modern day lies had been weaving in and out of the church pews, speaking from a bible, and standing at a high altar, and seductively trying to use us all. It did this standing in front of a cross.
I knew that I heard it laughing.
To Dance with My Father Again
Time has passed and well it is almost here again, and we can no longer ignore it. Father’s Day in the UK is descending upon us.
The advertising and awareness has increased over recent years, and this year is no exception. I’ve driven past a hundred billboards and shop windows, and now it couldn’t be any clearer. The message is clear. There’s a pain in my heart and a family meal I’d love to go to.
Who would have thought it?
With a reported 2 million children now growing up in single parent homes, and the majority being without fathers, you’d think the gap in the market was too slim to honour such events. But no, advertisers seem to ‘get it’ and ‘know something’ long before we ever do. They know have to capitalize, and turn loss into profit as well, even if their motives are not always honourable.
Could the absence of fathers, and the absence of men, be stirring up a whole new appreciation of their role in the family, or is it emphasizing their vacancy, and possibly enforcing some deep seated anger in our own lives? I wonder.
Whichever way you look at it, there is an emphasis on days like these on the way things should really be.
Many children will mourn for the fathers they don’t have, the one’s who are absent, and the ones who have died; the one’s who are cruel, and the one’s who are kind.
Some fathers are missing the children who don’t contact them, the ones being kept from them, the children they abandoned, or the father they should have been.
Is it ever too late? Are we ready for change and a little transformation?
Some members of The Church of England think so.
Here Come the Girls
Calls to overhaul biblical texts in the UK to read Mother/Father God may be the final nail in the coffin lid for fathers, if plans go ahead to make scripture more neutral and more gender friendly.
Revd Emma Percy, the chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, and a member of Watch, (Women and the Church) has been quoted as saying that “using both male and female language would get rid of the notion that God is some kind of old man in the sky”.
And already in churches up and down the country, the word She has been quietly replacing the word He to get people more used to the idea for many years. Do they think no-one is watching?
It is reported that Hilary Cotton, (not Clinton), chair of Women and the Church who instigated and led the campaign for female bishops said the shift away from the traditional patriarchal language of the Book of Common Prayer is already at an advanced stage.
The “Transformations Steering Group” who meets in Lambeth Palace have issued a public call to the bishops to encourage more “expansive language and imagery about God”
You can read the full article here.
Heaven only knows what the women in the church have planned in regards to imagery. Will the transformation steering group be planning to also change the devils gender or will he be continually kept in the shadows observing his creation?
The whole plan sounds cunning.
In the name of equality, the drive for the ultimate gender neutral language to make church more inclusive for everyone, may draw in a crowd who are adverse to the word ‘Father’ and all it really means, but it will ultimately encourage the isolation, feminization and weakening of any re-connection through the Son to a Father who we also call Creator.
What some women really want is a recreation of God in their own image because they feel inferior. They should not feel so threatened.
God speaks in a family language for a reason, and his order is perfect. There is enormous respect for Mary the mother of Jesus, and many other women in the bible.
Mad World
Elsewhere, within the Church of England, a “transgender baptism service” is also asking to be considered, to bless the new identities of Christians who have undergone gender transition.
The idea first came about when Rev Chris Newlands of Lancaster Priory, was approached by a young girl seeking to transition to a boy, and wanted to be re-baptised.
He is reported as saying that the “motion for transgender baptism has captured people’s imagination” and already has gathered a large amount of support. Rev. Newlands has also accused the church of being homophobic.
The suggestions will obviously throw up more controversy and societal debate, and further divisions will be created on the churches views on sexuality.
Where is the Love
The desire for validation and recognition need never be so if we were to realize where our own inadequacies come from. The formative years of childhood are where a lot of pain, grief and unresolved anger are sometimes silently nurtured, until we reach adulthood and then rebellion or conformity appears.
The transformation God intends for all people who love him, is nothing like the transformation that we see all around us. Some of the men, and the women, despite any good works, within organized religion, just haven’t got it.
Years of either over compensating, or searching for substitutes for the love we really need has resulted in generations of broken people, suffering from all types of spiritual starvation. Religion is leading the way to a new world religion, using women as the instigators of change.
Fathers Day is almost here and elsewhere in the same space and time is another father, watching and waiting. His likeness is in his son. Still correcting, still forgiving, still kind and beautiful. Will we still love him? Or will he just become a memory?
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“The claim to equality, outside of the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.” —C.S. Lewis – The Screwtape Letters.
Psalm 68: 4. Sing to God, sing praises to His name; Lift up a song for Him who rides through the deserts, whose name is the LORD, and exult before Him. A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation.…
Sources:
1
- Calls
to refer to God as a woman as female bishops take up posts.
2 - Church
of England to consider 'transgender baptism' service.
3 - Church
of England 'homophobic', says Vicar of Lancaster.
4 - Let
God be a 'she', says Church of England women's group.
© 2015 Shirley Edwards - All Rights Reserve
Share This ArticleShirley Edwards was born and lives in Great Britain. She has always worked in administration, but has also taught and studied complimentary health. In administrative roles, she has worked within The Church of England. She also worked for some years as a volunteer within the hospice movement.
Shirley has an interest in all health issues, loves the British countryside, and enjoys writing. She is thankful for talk radio and loves listening.
Shirley has always been concerned about the loss of freedoms in her country, and also the demise of America, a country she loves for the original reasons on which it was founded. She believes in the Pursuit of Genuine Happiness.
E-Mail: eshirley02@gmail.com
