Principles in Character and Reflection on One's Self

Dictionary.com defines a principle as "An accepted or professed rule of action or conduct", "Guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct," and "A personal or specific basis of conduct or management."

Character is defined as "The aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing," "Moral or ethical quality," and "Qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity."

Part of introspection...basically observing yourself, your emotional and mental states...is to see if you can find who you truly are. There are many times in my life where I do this. We all change as time goes on, but you should find that you have certain principles that act as a foundation for who you are, the essence upon which you build your character.

When I stop to think about who I am, how I've changed...I wonder if other people do this as well. Not just because I wonder if I'm normal in doing this. Thanks to my Asperger self I've stopped hoping to fit any cookie-cutter definition of "normal". But I find that sometimes reminding yourself of who you really are is a wonderful way to help keep yourself in "check".

I don't think many people...or enough people...take the time to do this or realize the ramifications of what they do. My wife was in a situation where she attended a small rural church and had what she thought were many established friends there. She had been having a rocky marriage at the time. She and her ex were attending marriage counseling services recommended by the pastor which...as you can tell from the "ex" part...didn't turn out well for the marriage.

She ended up separating from him.

Not long after separating and filing for the divorce she met me. We started dating.

At the time she wanted to share her church experiences with me...I had misgivings (as you may be able to tell from previous posts). She insisted I try going because the people were friendly and welcoming, as is the Christian community.

The pastor of that church asked someone to relay to me that if we, my then-girlfriend and I, were to show up together at a service one or both of us would be asked to leave. We were not welcome to come to church functions together.

Many of her friends at the time drifted away, suddenly busy with other things and never bothering to even offer words of support during her divorce period. The couple that did bother offering to go out still continued going to the same church that excluded my wife's attendance.

She still places much of the blame on herself and the pastor only because the pastor had intimate knowledge of the issues in the marriage and still was biased in her ex-husband's favor while she didn't air her own dirty laundry of the things that were happening for the congregation's benefit. Her friends knew of many of the things that had been going on or at least had some idea, though.

I sort of filed it away under validation for what I saw as people claiming to be good Christians while in reality just using religion as a tool for justifying passing judgment on other people. I thought it contradictory to the whole What Would Jesus Do characterization, but hey, to each their own. I found the pastor to be contradictory to the ideal of what a good spiritual leader was supposed to be in several ways and was somewhat baffled by why these people continue to go listen to him.

So what does this say for the principles involved here?

As a friend, if you were in a social group that for one reason or another shunned your friend, do you privately tell your friend you support them while continuing to associate yourself with the group?

What does it say for your principles when you continue with a group whose figurehead acts in a manner that is contrary to the professed values of what the organization stands for?

Do you have a right to protest that you aren't like everyone else when you voluntarily continue to associate yourself with that group, that you can be friends with someone who is ostracized by this group while still being part of that group?

I related this story because it was a powerful illustration of the type of situation that had me questioning the power of doublethink and how people rationalize away the contradictions to their principles, assuming they have them. It's not the only time I've had something related to me as a story or experienced personally that had me thinking about how other people act and react to situations. I think it's difficult, for example, in this situation for some of the principle players (that's another definition of principle there...what a flexible word!) to fully come to grips with their behavior if they were to take time to sit and reflect inwardly on their feelings and reactions to the situation. Perhaps they were just too selfish to consider the effect their reaction had on my now-wife's emotional state or simply didn't consider this to be an issue.

In case you're wondering, today it's largely water under the bridge; it happened many years ago, and the ex-husband the pastor was courting to stay in his congregation quit going shortly after all the dust settled. We were banned from going so we obliged them in not returning to their weekly message of fellowship. I say largely under the bridge because clearly I still think about it once in awhile. I've simply come to terms with it to the point where I'm not obsessing about it nor do I really have feelings of anger at the collective reaction the congregation had. I can honestly say that it reached the point of "Acknowledge, and move on..."