Faith is private

I had a conversation with a friend the other day, and the topic eventually migrated over to faith things. I won't go into details, mostly because I can't remember all that was said, but she seemed to come from the perspective that she knew better than me. It seemed that she was diagnosing my spiritual health, and that she could offer me solutions. The solutions, of course, were laced with Christianese terminology all over the place. I chose to let the Christianese slide rather than stopping her every half-sentence and saying, "But what does that actually mean?"

There were a few topics of conversation/belief/experiences that I just wouldn't tell her about. She would try to pry and find out what was in my head, but I refused to let her in. That is something that I learned to do through counseling. If I don't want to talk about something, I have a right to set up boundaries and not talk about it. That doesn't mean that I've walled myself in, as she put it.

I've come across two quotations which are very applicable to this encounter that I had:

"One’s relationship with God or religion is a deeply personal thing and it’s not something that we can or should pass judgment on."
(http://whatismattwalshwrongabouttoday.com/spiritual-struggles/)

"The best that a Christian can do to relate to me is to remember that my relationship with God is a highly personal, fragile, and private thing. Respect my process. Don’t push your agenda. Trust me in the hands of the God you follow."
(http://deeperstory.com/safe-churches-abuse-survivors/)

So I have a right to share what I want, and not to share what I want. Why does another person have to try to fully know what my faith is? They have not experienced things in the ways that I have, so they will never truly know what my faith is like anyway. And that's ok.

I feel like a lot of Christians feel that they have a right to pry into other Christians' business in the name of "keeping them accountable." But they don't. Accountability can only happen on a mutual level. You only have a right to know what others choose to tell you.

Please respect my boundaries and other Christians' boundaries as well.