What do you say to "moderate" Christians?

I got in an argument on Facebook the other day. I always tell myself to stay out of it, but sometimes my frustration gets the better of me. I was arguing with a guy who was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family. He left home at age 20 and rebelled against his parent’s religion. Since then he has “found his way back to Christ.” He claims to be totally different from his parents. He is constantly preaching “moderation” and uses words like “love” and “freedom” all the time. His unsolicited advice to me in this debate included:

“Don’t fall into the trap of hating your parents and blaming them for everything”

“Remember that we “free-spirited” kids often provoked our parents to hit us. It’s your fault too”

“Don’t be bitter and keep talking about it. You need to keep your chin up and move on”

“You will never be truly happy until you submit yourself fully to the Lord”

I won’t bore you with all the details; I’ll just show you the comment that stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn’t even finish reading it the first time. I had to come back later and read it with a clearer head. I am equally confused and angry, but I still don’t even know how to respond. Please read this and tell me what you think:

“As for female submission, yes I do agree that is a point that is always poorly interpreted amongst believers. You can dance with a girl, but if you control her every movements (which as a man, you are supposed to lead) she won't be fun to dance with. She'll be a robot, aka unattractive, however, if you (males) lead with a gentle touch and she submits to the direction, but you allow her to add in her own skills and gifts and ideas, she will twirl and do things that are amazingly beautiful. In a sense, dancing is life. We are constantly moving through motions (you can't stand still in life) and if I lead too strongly, I won't find a dance partner, and if I just let her lead it's just not the same. But, the idea of submission is supposed to be based off of trust and knowing that your dance partner wants you to express yourself and be free. At the same time, he, if he knows what he's doing, won't make submission an issue because he'll have genuine love for the steps that she's taking and who SHE IS as a human, and there is this great level of freedom that comes with trusting each other. I cannot say to a hand that I am an eye and therefore better...I cannot say to a woman that I am a man and therefore better...WOMEN are the icing on the cake...God made them to be one notch more special than everything else on this world. Also, Due to sin it is now imperative that a woman "check in with her husband before eating any new fruit...so to speak" aka "Submission." it's not supposed to be slavery and it never was”

This was a few weeks ago, but it’s still bothering me. I know SO many people who think this way. I dont even know what to say to refute them. No one's really getting hurt, and they seem to have the bible to back them up. I don't know what to say to these people, I just get angry and uncomfortable.

Can anyone help me out here? What would YOU have said?

Chasing Perfection

My Mother and Father were born into broken families. Both had alcoholic fathers and were raised in poverty. Both had troubled siblings and my father was physically abused. Christianity provided them with hope and purpose. They met and fell deeply in love. He was a soldier, she was a teaching student. They married and started a family right away. A beautiful baby girl, and then two, and then three. They loved their children and each other very much, but i imagine they were still afraid. Would love be enough to keep these precious little ones safe? What if the lies of the world drew them away from the love and hope of Jesus? What if they were brainwashed in school and there was nothing they could do to stop it? What if bad people drew them into drugs and alcohol, like Dad's sister? what if they made mistakes in raising them and they ended up bitter and wounded like Mom's sister?

One day my mother found an article in the newspaper about homeschooling. My dad, who had hated every moment of public school, loved the idea. They started looking into it. They soon discovered what they had been searching for all along. They discovered people who knew all the answers. Books that promised healthy happy children that feared God and loved their parents. This system taught them what God REALLY wanted for them. If they followed these steps, God would bless them. Their family would never suffer the way that THEY had suffered as children. It was calm in a world of chaos. It answered every question and calmed every fear. They implemented their new beliefs and soon began to reap the blessings of God.
It was may years before those babies grew up and rocked the boat. We are not the chaste, happy, selfless children they were promised we'd be. Between the oldest five there is depression, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, self mutilation, sexual abuse, eating disorders, and suicide attempts.  But still they will not renounce the system. They hush it up, brush it under the rug, and let everybody think that we're still perfect. They see the system as something good that they were never able to achieve.  Today i see my cousins falling into the same trap.

My father's sister struggled with alcoholism and bulimia her whole life. She and her husband made some terrible mistakes and eventually their family fell apart. leaving my cousin Wendy (not her real name) and her two siblings in a wake of destruction. Her brother got into drugs, she struggled with depression. Then she met Jesus at church, and then a boy at college. This boy has 11 siblings. He was home schooled in a family that looks just as perfect as mine. His sisters are submissive and his father is a strong leader. Wendy has fallen hard for this boy and everything he represents. She hopes to have his children, and teach them at home just as God intended. She wants to follow the system to a T. She has been promised that they will never suffer the way that she did. They wont get in to drugs like her little brother. they wont lose their virginity to a liar or lose their mother to the bottle. She thinks she has found the answer to all her fears and questions.

I have tried to pull her back from the edge, to save her like i saved myself. Maybe i still can. But right now, all she can see is perfection.The promise of certainty that just does not exist. I just hope that some day when her children tell her she was wrong, she'll have what it takes to admit it, and maybe stop this cycle once and for all...