After leaving my final Pentecostal church, I was a little surprised to learn how distrustful I was of others who’d left. When we left, most of us didn’t interact with others who’d left. We didn’t trust each other. Our pastor had preached that we had ‘left God,’ and though each of us knew that wasn’t true of us, we didn’t know if it was true of any of the others. He also preached that there were people who’d left who spied on us, even window peeping on people in their homes, and reported back to him. When we left, we were exhausted with the gossip and rumors. We didn’t tend to run to someone who might add to it. When we left, we left individually, divided, distrustful.
Even while I was in church, there was division. There were cliques. There were lies and gossip and rumors… and they spread very quickly. Unfortunately often much more quickly than the truth.
Gal 5:14 The entire Law is fulfilled in a single decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you will be consumed by each other.
My pastors had emphasized that we must leave family and friends for God. Now I see other passages.
Gal 5:19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: …discord, jealousy… rivalries, divisions, factions, 21 and envy; drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Even the verse that the pastor finally used against me in service was surrounded with warnings about the divisions I was witnessing, because
Prov 6:16 There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him:
Is followed by a list of those things (which our pastor rarely listed), three of which warn against lying and gossiping:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
That surprised me. He used Prov 6:16 to shame me in front of the congregation because I whispered a verse to the woman sitting next to me. He used it to show that he had a right to hate, a right to call things abominable… and he used it while doing things that GOD called abominable in the very next verses.
When the church divides, part 1
When the church divides, part 2
When the church divides, part 3
When the church divides, part 4
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