Posted on 11/27/2012 8:56:25 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
Before Sheldon Bruck told his orthodox Jewish parents he was gay, the teenager looked for a way out of homosexuality.
His search led him to JONAH -- Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing -- which claimed on its website to help people "struggling with unwanted same-sex sexual attractions."
JONAH co-director Arthur Goldberg promised Bruck, then 17, that "JONAH could help him change his orientation from gay to straight," according to a consumer fraud lawsuit filed Tuesday against JONAH, Goldberg and a JONAH counselor.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
He just didn’t believe hard enough.
Or at all.
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the bulb has to want to be changed.
I wonder if the fellow was thinking it would necessarily be easy. If that’s what this Jonah outfit suggested, and I don’t know if they did, then they were wrong. So he’s sore at them now, why. Does he still want what they had promised or seemed to have promised and is upset that it did not come to pass?
There are other fish in the sea, to mix a metaphor. Salvation-based theology simply works better, and some religions can’t put you in touch with a God that makes an ironclad promise of salvation — “no one can pluck them from My hand.” It matters greatly at the times when one has failed and then come back to one’s senses, to be able to see the issue in an eternal light and to say, dear God I sinned, but thank You, no that failure did not spoil my eternal salvation and I’m keeping on keeping on.
So how many people will be suing Diet Cola because they didn’t lose weight.
That, and addictions are hard to break. The fundamental starting point is to believe that the addiction is wrong (sin). Be it alcoholism, drugs, pornography, homosexuality, philandering, etc. If the person does not believe the addiction is wrong, he will never leave it. Unfortunately today's culture and media provides nothing but positive feedback about the sin of homosexuality (turning a blind eye to the diseases, early death, and descent into further depravity where this sin eventually leads). It thus becomes very difficult for someone to break the chains while he has the world shouting at him that all is well as he marches towards the abyss.
The whole homosexual issue is about shaking a fist in the face of God.
There aren’t that many homos, but there are a boatload of God hating leftists that know that this is an affront to Him,
and that is exactly why they are “pro gay”.
It’s superficially similar, except possibly the Jonah outfit is coming at the issue as though it was selling a diet soda.
Knowledgeable preachers, both lay and clergy, understand that issues like this don’t stand alone or comprise the most important matter possible. Rather, they are warnings and signs in the midst of a larger, more important story, that of God and man.
It is a condition of having badly gone wrong in the sight of God. But God also told us that it is not fatal. Both testaments of the Bible speak to the matter. In the Old Testament there is the “let us reason together.” In the New Testament the reason is spelled out in the person of Jesus Christ. Our sins sent Jesus Christ to the cross, where He went willingly in order to carry them away. Our logical answer is a life of thanks and continual confession and repentance of sin, never despairing ever.
Did you read the treatments administered by JONAH? Pretty bizarre, to say the least!
I agree with what you say but would point out that if you are going to come to God for help you can’t just agree that the sin which is causing you the most problems is wrong. You must accept the WHOLE counsel of God and agree to change you life entirely to conform to God’s will. And it almost always takes time. Finally, one thing I’ve experienced in my Christian walk is the progressive nature of sanctification. Once I get on top of a certain sinful area of my life I’ve identified and decided to deal with, God opens my eyes to 10 other areas where I am falling short.I suspect he figures if he showed me all at once just how bad I am I’d just curl up in a ball and give up and die! LOL.
Just imagine the uproar if every shrink was subject to lawsuits for failed counseling.
I confess I haven’t made an inquiry into that, due to the fundamental difference between modern (Pharisaical) Judaism and Christianity. Why nose into how a works-based religion tries to solve a problem that needs grace to solve? Now if a person professing Judaism should come across this thread, I must agree to disagree with his or her theology. I do not curse the Jews as a people; that is a huge biblical no-no. But I preach the gospel to all kinds of people, Jewish or gentile, so that some may be saved.
Yes! Whatever sin seems to trip you up the most, is ultimately not a stand alone issue. It’s one manifestation of a larger problem. God perhaps saw that by letting it (whatever it is) become such a big problem, it was the only way you’d see that God matters, and it would be the beginning of a fuller reconciliation. Letting man fail is part of the gracious plan of God.
Amen
“The conversion therapy techniques included having them strip naked in group sessions, cuddling and intimate holding of others of the same-sex, violently beating an effigy of their mothers with a tennis racket, visiting bath houses “in order to be nude with father figures,” and being “subjected to ridicule as ‘faggots’ and ‘homos’ in mock locker room scenarios,” the suit said.
Of course this is a court case, so who knows, but if that is true then it isn’t what I pictured as going on when headshrinking away the gay.
Freegards
“I confess I haven’t made an inquiry into that”
You might want to check out the linked article. The treatments are well beyond “highly suspect,” and appear to be quite degenerate. Very strange!
Why does it get the stamp of approval only if a “sex change” takes place in the wrong direction?
Straight to gay, O.K.
Gay to straight—OH, HORRORS!
Well rinse my eyes.
Someone was bound to quote it. Sometimes, gradually learning how to approach difficult situations of normal life in a right frame of mind can be helpful, but phewee, even most secular psychiatrists know better than to get their patients to approach difficult situations too soon, and some of this stuff would never be seen in a normal life. It would be too easy to get into some of these “exercises” in a wrong or weak frame of mind at best, and have the problem made worse rather than better.
And whacking a mother effigy... I don’t care how clingy and stifling she was, and that’s a byword in popular Jewish culture, that’s wrong. That’s not saying no to the nonsense in the power of God. Man’s anger does not bring about the righteousness of God.
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