WHY ARE BAJANS SO JUDGEMENTAL?
Why do they always believe the worst about people and, though they don’t know the facts, talk about the particular individuals and the situations as if they were there when they occurred?
It sickens me that this happens. I can’t understand how supposedly educated people can behave this way.
What galls me is that these people who talk everybody’s name don’t seem to realise, or don’t care, how their words hurt others.
What I mean is that those hearing the talk would think less of the person, even shun them because of what they think is the truth about somebody. I feel passionate about this because I recently became a victim of this destructive gossip. And it hurts.
Though my life may seem to mirror that of a wutless woman, I was never that kind of person. I came up in the church and always had a strong belief in God. But I was treated unfairly. This is why I have four children from three different men.
That is why it is wrong for anyone to get up in a pulpit and chastise women who have children from different men without knowing the facts. But that was what happened a few weeks ago at my church. Since then, women like me are being gossiped about.
I can’t understand how people who profess to be Christians could be so malicious and wicked to talk other people’s names so without knowing the circumstances.
Since the pastor said that “women who forsake their morals and give in to the sinful lust of the flesh”, as can be seen from their several children from different partners, I tried to explain to him that he can’t paint all women with a broad brush. But he would not take me on.
This is why I went my story published. I need for him and church members to realise that every woman who have children from different men did not set out to do that. For some it was bad choices in men and for others, rape. For me it was both.
I had my first daughter when I was 19. Her father and I used to attend church together. We were like boyfriend and girlfriend, but only used to kiss – nothing else. That was until one night after choir practice.
That night, a group of us stayed to decorate the church for the upcoming harvest. When we were finished, the others left first as they were going a distance in the same direction. As he and I lived through a different track closer to the church, we stayed and shut it.
After we closed the windows and turned off the lights, he pulled me to him and kissed me. I responded. But when I stopped he grabbed me and wanted to do more. Though I resisted he pinned me against a pew. I lost my virginity that night in the church.
I never told anybody anything, but I stopped speaking to him. A couple of weeks later I missed my period.
Within weeks it was clear to me that I was pregnant as I had seen what my older sister, who was married, went through. So I mustered the courage to tell my mother. She took me to the pastor and he summoned the fellow. That man denied he ever touched me. He swore I was lying on him.
I was made to look like a liar and a slut. The pastor had no reason to doubt him as he was a “nice” fellow from a good Christian family.
My own mother did not believe me either. She saw me talking to a mason fellow who I went to school with and felt he was the father. She figured I blamed my church friend to force him to marry me to take the shame out of my face.
In disgrace, I had to leave the church and home.
She sent me to live with my sister in another parish.
It was only after my daughter was born that everyone realised he was a liar. The child was the spitting image of him. By then I was done with church and could not care less what my mother or anyone else thought.
My second child came nearly three years afterwards when me and the same mason married. We were living good, but he wanted to make a better life for us so he went to his family in England. He never came back until nine years later.
In all those years waiting I kept myself to myself. I always prayed that he would return and take me and the children to England. But that never happened. Instead, he came home for a divorce so he could marry some white woman.
Nearly five years after that I remarried. My last two children are from that husband. We stayed together until he died a few years back. We lived real good. It was he who encouraged me to start attending church again. So we went to the church I attend where all of this commotion now happening.
From what I revealed, you can see that I was not “wutless”. In my 60-plus years only three men know about me. I wonder how many of those who talking can say they only had three men.
That is why these supposed Christians have me so upset. They know nothing about how I kept my morals despite the bad hand life dealt me.
I urge those people to read James 4, verses 11 to 12 and stop gossiping.
That passage says: “Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.
There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbour?”