Greetings to you my lovely people, friends and family... let's share a thought 🤔 together about things that has been bothering me all along please 🥺... If I didn’t know God for myself, I probably would have stayed away from church and cut off church people, in fact religious people from my life a long time ago.
Growing up, church was a place you carried your broken heart to and returned whole. There was love. The spirit was communal. There was holiness. There was genuine kindness and fellowship. It felt safe and reassuring.
But somewhere along the line, for many of us, that experience has shifted. Not modernization or technology but broad daylight wickedness and terrific energy brought into the church space by some people.
These days, you’ll leave your house in good spirit and return from church emotionally heavy. It’s not because of the sermon. But because of people, attitudes, subtle hostility, quiet intimidation, and unspoken hierarchies that shouldn’t exist in the body of Christ.
PS: This is not an attack on the church but a conversation or let’s call it my truth.
The church is one place where people go through stuff and can’t talk about it because we don’t want to offend the body of Christ. Speaking up is misconstrued as an attack.
Sometimes I wonder; why does speaking up about unhealthy behaviour in church automatically earns someone the label “troublesome’’?
Why are we so uncomfortable confronting subtle bullying when it happens inside the church walls?
Why is silence often mistaken for spirituality?
There are many questions on my mind but let’s leave it for another day.
But there’s another issue that bothers me a lot. The treatment of single women in church spaces by our supposedly elderly women.
Time and again, I try to understand why single ladies are harshly scrutinized than their married counterparts.
Why are they questioned more, corrected more, talked down more?
Why is independence of single ladies seen as pride? Why do elderly women see single ladies’ success as suspicious when there’s no man attached to it?
These are lived experiences and questions I battle with everyday. One time, somebody told me to reduce my standard so I can find a man. Another told me brothers were scared of the way I carried myself and cannot approach me for relationship. So I was advised to shrink for the brothers to approach me. Like wade hell? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
On a serious note, I’ve observed keenly the quiet culture where single women are expected to shrink themselves, smile through disrespect, endure condescension, accept unnecessary correction; all in the name of humility.
And I wonder why humility should mean tolerating intimidation. Single women have suffered sha. We didn’t k.ll anybody. We just have found our own person yet. Is that a crime? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
It gets even worse when your own friends rub it on your face. A childhood friend of mine, to make matters worse told me recently the husband fumes each time he sees me around her. I’ve never offended him or interfered in their marriage but he’s angry with me for no just cause. I can’t speak my truth because nobody will listen or believe me.
In spite of this, I still have to show up for her, support and love her kids but I’m still labeled the bad one. It’s an unfair world y’all.
Now back to the church, when a single woman refuses to do “eye service” or seek validation from certain circle of older women, she becomes a target.
Your confidence is misinterpreted.
Your boundaries are labeled rebellion. Your voice even in the face of intimidation becomes “too much.”
Why is this?
And I wonder why a single woman’s presence threatens people?
You go to the secular world, you’re treated with so much dignity and respect but inside the church; you’re constantly scrutinized and treated like you don’t belong ‘here.’
Before I’m being misconstrued. Like I said earlier, this is not an attack neither is it bitterness.
It’s a concern. A question about patterns. About what Christianity has become. About safety and dignity in the church.
What pains me the most is, when you muster the courage to speak your truth; you’re being asked “why always her?”
Nobody cares to ask “why does this keep happening?” The shift in questioning moves from the abuser to the abused while painting the abused as the problem.
This is not what the church should be.
The church should not be a place where people walk on eggshell. It should never be an emotionally heavy space or a place where women who are yet to be married are silenced or treated badly.
It should be a safe space for people of all kinds to come fellowship, experience God, find peace and genuine love not hate.
It should be a family where no one is ignored and a place where conversations are allowed.
It should be a place where people’s choices are respected. The fact that others got their answers early should not mean those yet to get theirs should be seen as half casts.
So here’s the question on the table. How do we correct unhealthy behaviour without labeling people who speak their truth as rebels?
How do we create church spaces where single women feel respected or safe and not managed?
How do we protect holiness without protecting hostility in church?
How do we make God’s house emotionally safe for God’s children?
This is a burden in my heart and I hope I’m not alone.
You're reading from your handsome friend John Petra!
