Is it possible to fall when so far gone?
 

A family friend has a daughter that is a Christian pyscho. Now, before I get the nasty responses, I am not against religion. Everyone needs something to believe in. However, when it is taken to extremes, I see a problem and that is why I have named her: Christian psycho (CP).

Background: The mother raised CP alone because she divorced the father for safety reasons during her pregnancy. She began seeing a man 14 years ago, but will never get married again. She had 2 bad marriages and is done.

Well, CP is 20 I think. She begins telling her mom that going on vacation with her bf of 14 years is wrong because they aren't married. She also will turn off the radio if her mom is listening to anything not Christian. No TV either while she is in from college. The mom feels like a hostage in her home and constantly fights with CP. I guess CP was part of a purity jewelry party for mothers and daughter. Mother refused to go and CP implied that her mother was sinful and all the other people at the party felt sorry for her because she was not of pure heart.

The mother is the nicest lady I know. She cares very much for everyone.

I am very worried about CP because she is going so extreme with everything. My question is, do people this far into religion of their own choice ever change? I always hear about people turning super religious, but never about people getting out of it.

I know of a few muslims who grew up orthodox and covered. They now are more "assimiliated" into Western culture and wear normal clothes, but this was their "rebellious" move.

My house my rules aply here. CPs mother should put her foot down.

A shame but you reap what you sow.

Gotta wonder who's paying for CP's education? the sinful mother? Wonder how CP would like it when she's responsible for herself...

Sounds like CP has some serious issues. And she uses religion to help her with those. Better than drugs.
Ok, so mom can't watch tv for a weekend here and there. Big deal. Her daughter's an adult.
I think mom needs to thank her lucky stars her daughter isn't following in her footsteps and hooking up with total losers.

Every religion hs their fanatics.
Christianity obviously has her.

Shesus- I'm afraid that this is a tough situation. Most ultra-religious have a hard and fast interpretation of what is right and acceptable. The only way to influence them is through a religious means, usually entailing a religious authority figure that they would respect, advising them to temper their new found fanaticism with some wisdom and benevolence.
Unless you have her respect in a religious sense, talking to CP will be a waste of your time.
My advice to you, is to tell her mother that this is usually a phase of the zealot, and that the other aspects of religion, i.e. honor thy mother and father, universal love, and the sense of peace (which seems to be missing from this child) will show themselves.
Spiritualism of any ilk is usually a peaceful entity, which is why I have suh a hard time with angry religious types of any sort.
Luck,
mr sticky

There are very few (CP) people over the age of 40....that should tell you something.

Ilove that quote lol. But yea, i think its just a phase also, and i think the mom should do somethign. As someone stated the mom, if payin for college, should stop payin for her tuition and see how CP likes it when the mom stops doing stuff, lol

My cousin, who grew up in a way fucked-up household, turned CP when he was about 14. Got sucked into the Assemblies of God church by a friend, and was so desperate for acceptance and guidance that he just ate it up. Told us all how fags are going to hell, Harry Potter is devil worship, and we should kill people who have abortions. In his crazy little world where nothing made sense and he had no guidance from his mom, it felt good to have someone tell him exactly what to think, and to give him boundaries and black-and-white answers.

Then he went to college and got a girlfriend. If it was a choice between his religion and his dick, well....Dick won.

So yeah, CPs can go back again, but it really takes something to persuade them. It sounds like your friend's daughter has some issues with her mom and is using this as a hammer to beat her over the head. Maybe she'll grow out of it, but maybe the lure of righteous judgment is just too much for her.

Sounds like it's time for CP to get her own place where she can make her own rules if she feels like it.

Thank you all for the feedback. CP is actually going to college on a full-paid scholarship, so mommy can't pull any strings there. She is a really bright girl and I guess that is why I'm so surpirsed to see this side of her. She had a 4.0 all through school and was very involved in athletics. I hope that this is an exploration phase and she mellows out some. I guess CP is doing some helpful things to, she went and did missionary work in China for a month this summer and volunteers at camps and stuff. I think lindseylatch put it best in her post. Religion is her drug of choice. It has mental effects, but at least it won't kill you.

i would wonder what this young woman's pastors would say.

very few evangelics that i know would openly advocate such disrespect to a parent, even if that parent was a non-Christian. i've seen material from such sources as Focus on the Family that have addressed such situations, and they have very explicitly spoken of the responsbility of the child to respect the parent, even if they have to make different choices in faith. i would reccomend that this mother talk to the spiritual leaders that this young woman listens to, and try to set up some sort of reconciliation. it's at least worth a shot.

i hate to derail, but religion(s) has killed more people than everything put together. just look at the middle east.

I was wrong, wasn't even thinking that this morning. I guess what I mean is here in the US, people with strong religious believes usually don't die from believing and going to church. Unless, they get involved in a cult. That is a different story all together. Since she's in college, I am guessing that she won't be ODing on religion and being rushed to the hospital or worse let to die by scared intoxicated 'friends'.

We had a neighbor that one day "found" religion, before she was open-minded and wasn't afraid to have a couple of drinks or tell or listen to a dirty joke and an overall fun person. Then one day, she came over and tried to get us to come to her "church", we refused. She stopped being "fun" and the conversation always turned to her "church", so we distanced ourselves from her.

We both have daughters that we real close in age and played together quite often, and she convinced us to let our daughter go with them to church one night (she was 5 at the time). When our daughter got back she was upset, they had told her that we were going to hell because we wouldn't go to their church. So there goes the friendship, cut all ties and told her why. We moved a few months later, but our kids went to the same school we did see her often enough. A few years later she had moved on from her "church", and was back to her old self again, but the damage was done. The "church" was a non-denominational one, and after what she told us I'm wary of those (most are ok I guess, some scream..cult) this one screamed cult.

Ok where to start, my gut reaction is to fight fire with fire, Start with honor thy mother, then the verses teaching tolerance and acceptance of practices in which you dont agree, then move into the verses that support enjoying life. I see no indication from your posts that CP or the mom is stupid, and to be quite frank there are smart zealots, they are the ones that can be talked down. This is clearly a counterproductive attitude twords her mother and I know the mother is powerless cause even if she did retalliate then she would be distancing her own daughter. What can i say other than the mother has a long hard road ahead of her, one it sounds like she dosent deserve. Now before i take off on a tagent, what denomination is CP cause it tells alot about how we have to look at this, cause i have been assumign non-denominational, but for all i know she is catholic.

As for the references to non-denominational churches being cult like, well what can I say my experiance points in this direction 110%, I have heard tales of theese churches that wernt fanatics who didnt follow thier own religion very well but I have never met one. I should mention that I am a very liberal lutheran, so i tend to have an automatic negative reaction to theese churches. In my experiance the title of non-denominational means that the church is fundamentally unable to follow the practices of a perticular denomination but unable to justify its beliefs with the togetherness they claim to promote enough to become a formal denomination. The only thing stopping some of the larger groups (I am thinking of my friends vinyard church here he is CP with CP parents but I am currupting him with christianity) from being a formal denomination is that in doing so they acctually would be admitting to some sort of fellowship under a common cause.

Now if I have offended anyone they are plenty welcome to PM me with thier arguments or if they really feel the need threadjack (like i have), but I dont play softball i know christianity and am not going to accept you jsut because you claim to follow a religious icon you know little of.

And sorry again for the flaming and treadjacking, I know they are bad practices but I have tried to keep away from them as well as i could but I cannot stand being associated with the ND churches and thier CP's.

fatmanfor prez, I don't think that you thread-jacked at all. Honestly, I grew up Baptist, but am not an expert on other types of religion. When she was still living at home, I believe she was Methodist, but now that she is at college I am not sure. Since she is involved in missionary work in other countries, I am assuming she is not involved in an ND church, but I often assume wrong...

The feeling I am getting here from reading what everyone has to offer is that it is too late for her to turn 'normal' again even if she does turn her back on the religion. Hopefully, she can at least find a middle ground...wait and see I suppose.

I don't think it's too late for her. I think that'll run its course of action. Young people are interesting (being one myself...young that is). We are easily influenced into believing something we don't entirely believe in, or we lead ourselves to believe that this one thing is so important that we must ignore what our parents have taught us and accept this messagae as the only thing that matters.

I'm Lutheran, just like fatmanforprez. I'm proud of it, it's what i was raised. I've taken some interesting standpoints in my years of thinking for myself. As a child....well i thought like a child, i took everything at face value and that satisfied the religion portion of my life. As I went into my teens I went from very liberal, to very conservative and back again, and back again...very very odd. At one point I decided that all gay ppl didn't deserve the love of God, and a few years later, my ideals changed, and so on and so forth. I now ride the middle of the road very very carefully. It lets me believe what i want to believe and take political standpoints that are both very liberal and very conservative, and .....funny enough...lets me make fun of both sides :-)

Frankly, the mom needs to put her foot down, like Cyn said. It's her house, so she gets to do what she wants. If the daughter has a problem with it, she can go stay in a hotel room with her no tv policy and Christian music.

Amazing how some people will lie down in order to be doormats. No TV while she is in from college?

If that were my kid, I'd have packed her a bag and driven her to the nearest monastery, where she could be happy.

Depends on where you live. My personal observation is that there are MORE of them over 40.

Hrmmm,

I'm also in the "my house, my rules" camp.

If she doesn't like the house rules, she is free to go somewhere else. That includes moralizing.

I don't understand a parent that would let their child walk all over them like this.

Well, I haven't heard of any up-dates except that mom is extremely happy to get CP back in college and out of her house for the time being. Hopefully, she'll stay on campus and not be home until the first holiday. ;)
Thank you all for your insights and advice!

Or she could support her child in whatever she chooses to do, as long as she isn't harming herself or others. It's about being a parent, not making sure you catch all your favorite shows.

Do some of you people put tv over your children, or something?

Like I said earlier, it could be A LOT worse.

Not at all. My point wasn't that I wanted to watch TV. My point was that no semi-snotnose is going to come into my house, eat my food, ask me for money for clothes, car insurance, glasses, braces, makeup, medical insurance, or whatever, and then tell me I'm not allowed to watch my own TV.

I have experience with people who decide they have found the ONLY right religion, and it isn't pretty. In fact, it's used as an excuse for a lot of downright awful things.

I would venture to say that a person who adopts such an attitude IS harming themself. They sure won't have many friends if they go into other people's houses and start telling them what to do, either.

Lots of people get out of religious fanaticism. They either realize that the motivating factors behind the zeal they possess are tied directly to their desire to feel like they belong, desire to feel like a part of something... or they die a CP.

Mormons are, by and large, just as fanatical with their beliefs, and it never goes away. I've also, in my experience, seen tons of CP's who live to ripe old ages. I think most of them lose it around that age, though, because they realize that nothing they've done as a CP has really made their life any beter.

That's all well and good, but "being a good parent" and being supportive have nothing to do with your child trying to take over and dictate a new life to you.

As for the religion as drug thing, it happened to me. Actually, I did it to myself. I was totally miserable in high school, a social outcast. In English class, the teacher for some reason assigned a "non-fiction" book, "The Cross and the Switchblade," which was about teens but had a heavy evangelical Christian bent. Let's just say that God took care of everything. Anyway, I was in pain and something just clicked. Jesus was my personal buddy for the next six months; nothing hurt, everything was all right, I was secure that He was looking after me in every little thing that happened. Fortunately, I kept my mouth shut about it because six months later there was another click, and I was back to normal. I figure that some part of my mind thought I needed a break from reality, and gave me one. And I snapped back when I was rested enough.

Anyway, whatever religious organization she's part of may be giving her a structure she doesn't have in the rest of her life. A structure, and a sense of being loved. But it's conditional, because she has to buy the whole package and _not doubt anything_ to continue to get that love and support from her group. A number of pretty conservative and dogmatic Christian groups prowl college campuses to find vulnerable minds to convert. I'm not saying that all Christians are predatory: but a lot of the more way-out groups control their converts with conditional love. They love-bomb them (as the Moonies used to say), then threaten to take away that love and acceptance if the convert starts to question. It keeps people in line.

But some people do snap out of it, especially young and intelligent people. Most Christian cults are inherently contradictory in many ways, and the intelligent mind may eventually find the contradictions too much to bear, no matter what the social pressure or price.

I'm not saying she should totally changer her lifestyle for her daughter. But she can give up tv for a weekend here and there. maybe spending time talking with her daughter will give both of them a better understanding of each other, and perhaps her daughter will realize that such an extreme point of view may not be the best. Or perhaps her mom will come to realize that her daughter isn't so psycho.

If I spend at least 18 years providing for my child and doing the best that I can do for them to become full functioning adults, the most respect that I can ask for is for them to respect my rules when they are in my home.

I could never for the life of me try to even fathom dictating policy to my parents. They respect my opinions on things, and we have good conversations, we don't always see eye to eye, but we RESPECT our differences. It's not my place to tell them to live their lives. They've made it for over 40 years without my "guidance" and I'm sure that they will make it another 40. Just as it's not their place to tell me what to do at 26 years old either. It's only fair.

This is precisely what happened to me. I was a nice, agnostic/pagan girl up until I was 14 years old. Then I started running with the goody-two-shoes crowd, and didn't stop until I was about 21 years old. I wasn't totally extreme, but I really honestly LOVED Christianity and what the church offered me, and I thought everyone should share that as well. I got both of my parents to convert, went to an evangelical Christian college, went on a mission trip, etc.

And, in the end, I'd like to think I was intelligent enough to see through the shit, once I analyzed away the need for structure and comfort in the form of a fundamentalist religion. My evangelical friends really respected me when I was explicit about my beliefs, but they have not been as close since I "drifted" away and started being more abstract about God. Believe it or not, I think even my parents "worried" about me, even though I was the one who converted them. Everyone thinks I'll eventually wander back to the fold. I doubt it. My sense of spirituality is too resilient now to be forced back to a rigid religiousity, but that's the devil's work to many evangelicals.

Anyway, some people change, and a whole lot MORE don't change. I only know a handful of people from my Christian university who let go of religion after graduation... the rest of them are still very folded into the fold. I think they are nice and good people, but they will never be my close friends again. I don't say anything about them, they don't say anything about me (though I assume they pray for me still). Hope it stays that way.

Could be just a phase. My whole life up untill I was 17 I was hardcore christian. Growing up in a christian household, I wasn't allowed to watch television, listen to rock music, or go out with non-christian friends. My father was a born again christian up untill his death in 2002. I was baptized when I was 14 and brainwashed all my life. I would preach the good word to anyone I knew. I was a CP.

At 17 I had a revelation. I questioned my own faith and rebelled agaisnt my father and the church. Its all bullshit. At 18, my father kicked me out of the house and I've been on my own ever since.

Long story short, I am no longer a CP, I'm just a P.(Psyco)
Even though my relationship with God is broken, I still believe and have faith in God. I just believe in God in my own way. I don't go to church and I don't pray, but I know he's there for me.