We live in a society that misunderstands boundaries and consent. Most people think the former is about just saying no, and the latter is about sex. And while that’s a part of it, they are about agency, autonomy, respect and interpersonal relationships.

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Unsolicited advice without consent is crossing a person’s boundaries. Even if the advice is good advice, even if the person giving the advice is a pastor or a parent, even if the advice is important. Most people aren’t talking about their life so that we may solve it.

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It is an honor to be trusted with someone’s life story*, with their thoughts and their challenges, with their struggles and their musings. But it is not an open invitation to try and solve their problems, control their behavior, tell them what to do.

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For a group of people that speak often of free will and claim to follow Jesus, Christians are some of the worst at boundaries and consent in general, and advice giving in particular. Think about how many sermons are not sharing spiritual truths, but just giving advice.

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Think about how much pastoral counseling is just advice giving. Think about the many books that tell you how to parent, how to be a good wife, how to be a good Christian, how to... and how much of it is general advice as though our lives were interchangeable?

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This too is tied to white supremacy culture. This is another reason deconstruction without dismantling/decolonizing doesn’t guarantee you stop causing harm. Because in some level giving advice we weren’t asked for, without consent,

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is done out of the belief that we know better for another person. Otherwise we could listen, ask questions, and ask if our advice is wanted/needed. White supremacy culture tells us we have the right answers, we can fix others, we are needed for others to be well.

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Unsolicited advice and proselytizing are similar to me in some aspects. Those offering them see the other as less than, as lacking, as needing something they have. This may not be explicit or even conscious. But they subconsciously don’t see the other as a full adult...

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able to make decisions on their own, find solutions themselves, or ask for help when they need it. It presupposes people are sharing not because they trust you, but because they need you to help them. It presupposes a lot about the other, and our biases are at play.

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How often are you more inclined to offer unsolicited advice to women than you are to offer it to men? Rich people over poor people? BIPOC over white people? Disabled people over abled bodied people? Fat people over skinny people? Non-religious people over religious people?

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Being conscious is part of healing, why do I feel the need to share unsolicited advice? Because let’s be honest, the initial response that it is to help the other person is just a shallow reason, the hidden motivation underneath the behavior is rarely care for the other.

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it is often discomfort with another person’s pain, feelings of superiority, feelings of inferiority, insecurities, or emotional immaturity.

Safe people/organizations respect people’s agency. They understand consent and boundaries and uphold them for themselves and others.

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*Sharing traumatic experiences, difficult situations, or problems you are having also requires consent. Asking people if they have the emotional bandwidth to listen to things we are going through or processing is important, it communicates loudly care/respect/love.

More from Jo Luehmann

TW: suicidal ideation.

At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
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I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...

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survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.

Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.

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She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.

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I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
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More from Society

We finally have the U.S. Citizenship Act Bill Text! I'm going to go through some portions of the bill right now and highlight some of the major changes and improvements that it would make to our immigration system.

Thread:


First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.

Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."

Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."


Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.

Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.


So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:

- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)


After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.

However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.

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