Month: July 2016 | Page 2 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Get out of my head!

Individuals who suffer abuse sometimes escape, heal, and move on to live productive lives, but there is a part of them that can never forget and sometimes that causes problems. Growing up in a legalistic, spiritually abusive denomination also creates memories hard to forget and makes it difficult to trust ANY church group or leadership. Just as an abused child never really trusts ANY parent again without extensive therapy and perhaps just never, an abused Christian doesn’t trust ANY church and unfortunately therapy for this is not as widely understood, sought, or offered.

Some may not even trust God, believing he is either like the abusive doctrine taught or that He should have saved them from going through that. Many abused children do not trust God for the same reasons.

Good parents who try to help an abused child do the best they can, realizing they may not be successful and have little hope that the relationship will ever be totally without problems but also hope the child will grow to be a happy, productive adult. Many times these good parents pay the price for the bad parents they replace. The child targets the anger toward the parent that is available, proving if possible that they will also reject them or at the least become angry and not understand.

As the ultimate good parent, God must weep over these abused children and spiritually abused Christians, desiring for them to just trust Him to show them a path to peace and hope.

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More Visions

*WARNING: This contains material which may be triggering to some*

I want to share another random memory about visions.

My family on my Mom’s side is 90% Pentecostal/Apostolic. They are big believers in visions and prophetic dreams. I shared in an earlier post about my Mom and her best friend informing me of a vision that I was going to be raped as a consequence of my rebellion of wanting to wear pants. Another time when I was 17, my great-grandmother told me she’d had a vision about me.

She almost cried as she told me, she was so disturbed by the content of her vision. She said that she saw me at a river, and I got pushed underwater by a tall man with blond hair. I thought she was about to relate a vision about baptism, but I was wrong.

She said that he never let me back up, he held me under the water for a long time and eventually let go and walked away. She didn’t see me surface. She said that the scene then changed and she saw people that looked like police officers carrying a stretcher out into the water. They reached into the water and put something on the stretcher. When the carried the stretcher out of the water, she saw that it was me, dead, on the stretcher. She described in detail how my clothes and hair were covered with river mud, moss, and “seaweed” type plants. She said my skin looked greenish gray. The vision ended there.

There were several members of my family around and they were immediately distressed after she shared this and started praying for my safety. By this point in my life, I was 17 and had left home in order to leave the Pentecostal religion (my parents told me that as long as I was under their roof I would be Pentecostal) and I knew that the rest of my family was thinking that this was a warning from God that I was going to die if I didn’t come back to the “church”.

My Great-Grandmother was not like my Mom. She didn’t focus on demons and punishment, and she is not normally a ‘sensationalist’ Christian. This caused me to take her ‘vision’ a little more seriously than I now viewed my Mom’s claims of divine revelation. I didn’t agree with my family that it was a message from God that I needed to be Pentecostal again, but I didn’t have an explanation for it of my own either.

17 years later I still don’t really know what to make of this memory. I can’t write it off as easily as other claims of visions because of the deep respect I have for my Great-Grandma. So far though, I’m still alive.

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Bragging Rights

How true this passage rings out when thinking of how new converts are boasted of in the United Pentecostal Church.

Message Bible, Galatians 6:11-13

The people who are attempting to force the way of circumcision (ie: legalistic rules) on you have only one motive, they want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised (ie: keep the legalistic rules) so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible! (Words in parenthesis are mine.)

How true this passage rings out when thinking of how new converts are boasted of in the United Pentecostal Church. Whether at home or abroad, we hear this NUMBER saved or this NUMBER baptized. We have the great somebodies of Pentecost. I agree with Paul, this is contemptible.

[The picture is from the UPC website in 2007, of what turned out to be a false report of a Jewish revival given by the then Nebraska District Superintendent.]

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YOU Are The Problem!

There is no problem- you are the problem.

Have you ever been made to feel that way at a church or seen it happen to another? You bring to the attention of leadership a possible problem that you see, be it doctrine or something happening at church. You find that suddenly YOU have now become the problem.

How and why does this happen? The pastor, who is insecure and feels threatened, decides that there really isn’t anything wrong, that it is simply YOU. You are rebellious, a trouble maker, trying to stir up strife or division, you are unteachable, backslid…. There are a number of possible reasons why YOU have become the problem. And he may bring these up in a sermon and preach hard against those that may question the pastor. Remember the she bears or when the earth opened up and all those people lost their lives? Or when some were hit with leprosy or the couple dropped dead before Peter? You don’t want to find yourself in a similar situation! Questioning or disagreeing with a pastor today is made to seem on par with those biblical events.

And what does this switch do? It pretty much silences anyone else who may have had similar thoughts. It creates division as you are now suspect and perhaps should be avoided until you come to your senses and ask for forgiveness. It also can cause you to wonder if what the pastor said is true. Are you messed up? Are you being influenced by the devil? Is there a spirit of rebellion in you? Could God be planning your demise right at this moment because you touched God’s anointed?

Healthy churches allow and even welcome questioning and differing opinions. But if you are in an unhealthy church, you will quickly learn that those who bring attention to a problem will themselves become the problem.

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Perfection

There is a concept in the church I’m from that we can live above sin. If we sin after we come to God, we are told we are, at best, living beneath our privileges. Sin doesn’t have control of our lives now, therefore we shouldn’t sin.

I have several issues with these thoughts, but there is one that really gets me. Perfection. The five fold ministry is for “the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry.” So we are to be brought to perfection or maturity. But what is perfect? What is mature? Simple (they say). Don’t cut your hair, don’t put on makeup, don’t wear pants, always wear long sleeves, don’t wear jewelry (including wedding bands or bracelet watches). Don’t go on a date without a chaperone, or hold hands or kiss until you’re married. Don’t lie. Respect the ministry, never talk bad about the man of God or his family, and never question what a leader says. Don’t wear hair bows, don’t wear anything in your hair that doesn’t match your hair color. Don’t wear red, don’t wear certain shoes, don’t wear denim to church, don’t wear denim jackets or caps ever. Sit like a lady. Stay submissive. Learn when to clap and shout and run, and always do these at the right times. Don’t be out after midnight, don’t fellowship non-Apostolics, don’t drink or chew or cuss or swear….

The list goes on and on. Is that perfection? Following a list of proscribed do’s and don’ts? Is that maturity? Or is perfection- is maturity- accepting ourselves and others as we are, while still becoming more like Jesus? What happened to love? Was it perfected right out of the church? Am I immature because I doubt these types of restraints in my 30s? Are others more mature because they watch to see when I make a mistake and immediately report it to the pastor (and gossip about it in the meantime)? Is the pastor in a place of spiritual perfection and maturity when he yells that I have a women’s lib spirit, because I supposedly broke one of these rules?

Perfection, maturity, is so far beyond any list of do’s and don’ts. I fear we’ve missed it. When I start to do something and stop to think, “if someone saw…”, rather than considering how Jesus would think or just being able to relax and enjoy myself in some small way, that is anything but maturity, spiritual or otherwise.

If lists of rules were perfection, the Pharisees and Jesus would have been great friends, I suppose. But they weren’t. It was Jesus who said “ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and forget the weightier matters of the law… these ought ye have done, and not to leave the other undone”. It was Jesus who said “he that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” Jesus stepped beyond the rules and touched the heart.

God calls us, as Christians, beyond a list of rules. We are called by Him into a place of trust and faith and love. We desire to do our best for Him, but our best isn’t any more dependent upon the man made rules than Jesus’ was. How often did Jesus heal on the Sabbath? Touch a leper?

Jesus stepped beyond rules, and he calls us to do the same. It is a step of faith. Rules are simple to follow, but real love isn’t always. After all, love healed, but it also allowed crucifixion. Can we reconcile that love in our hearts?

Ez 26:36 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Rules can be followed by a heart of stone. Love can only be followed by a heart made soft by the touch of Jesus. By his love. And it’s in His love that we can be, and are, made “perfect.”

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