Prosperity Churches Vs. Poverty Churches

I don’t have experience with these two church types outside of Pentecostalism, so I don’t know how it is in other denominations, but I’ve noticed that in the United Pentecostal Church and in Apostolic churches there seems to be several that have a definite bias towards either ‘prosperity salvation’ or ‘poverty salvation.’ I don’t know if I’m using those terms correctly, that’s just what I called it in my head when I first started noticing it. I’m sure I heard it somewhere.

So from my experience, Prosperity Churches tend to insert implications (or come right out and say) that if you were in the will of God, doing what you were supposed to, (which means following all their rules) etc., that God would bless you financially. It was said or implied that if you were having difficulties financially, you were doing something wrong. Sin, lack of faith, lack of works, SOMETHING was wrong with your Christian performance and walk with God or else your needs would be met.

The Poverty Churches liked focusing on Jesus’ statement that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This passage was elevated the same way Acts 2:38 was. Any possession that wasn’t the bare minimum requirement for living was considered an “idol” and the person who owned it would be ‘preached at’ regularly and it would be implied over the pulpit that unless the item was sold, the bare necessity purchased, and the rest given to the poor (which usually translated to ‘donated to the church’) that the owner was lost and hell bound. They were the camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle.

In the Poverty Churches, people developed serious dysfunctions in regards to owning things. Something like a nice car bought for a good price could be labeled as an idol and the person who owned it would be made to feel like a heathen in the midst of saints. A nice dress (even if it was a hand me down) usually was viewed as evidence of a Jezebel spirit, because clothing that was nicer than necessary for decency and comfort couldn’t have any other purpose than self-glorification.

Members of a Poverty Church would be told constantly that if they put ANYTHING before their relationship with God, that either God would take it away by any means necessary, or they would be lost if they should happen to die before repenting and getting rid of whatever unnecessary person, place, or thing they were allowing to come between them and God.

I’ve seen pastors of Poverty Churches that used this slant on the doctrine in order to squeeze every last penny out of their congregation so that they could live like kings – in complete contradiction to the things they taught. I’ve also seen pastors of Poverty Churches that really believed their slant on the doctrine, and lived it. These that truly believed it were (in my experience) usually the ones most likely to call people out by name from the pulpit or give so many details about who they were preaching against at the moment that no names were necessary. They were the most hurtful with their words when explaining to someone why that person’s particular idol was going to send them straight to the lake of fire. I’ve also seen the children of these preachers leave home and become extremely materialistic due to being deprived of so many commonplace things growing up.

The Poverty Church doctrine sometimes affects marriages too. A married person might feel that if they love their spouse too much they’re putting them before God. This fear often takes one (or both) of these forms: fear that God will take their spouse away through death, or that they’ll go to hell if they don’t distance themselves from their spouse (while staying married of course). I’ve also seen mothers apply that line of thinking to their relationship with their children and proceed to intentionally distance themselves emotionally from their children. Especially small children.

I’m of the opinion that neither of these biases are correct. Yes, people can make possessions, hobbies, or relationships more important than God and that’s usually not good. But considering everything you enjoy an ‘idol’ deprives you of so many of the joys in life that were created by God (such as the husband/wife relationship, or the mother/child relationship). It also replaces that joy with fear and anxiety over the possibility that because you enjoy something, you’re not saved.

As far as the Prosperity Churches, anyone who has financial trouble immediately feels that they’re no longer pleasing God. They may also believe that they’ve lost their salvation, and will not believe that they’re saved again until their trouble is alleviated. Job comes to mind as a direct refute to this way of thinking. He lost all his assets and his family specifically because he was SO pleasing to God, that God bragged on him. There are other instances in the Bible that (IMO) easily refute both the Prosperity and the Poverty slant on salvation, but the example of Job is so clear to me that it seems unnecessary to reference more.

As you can probably tell by the fact that I had much more detail to give on the Poverty Churches, I was mostly raised in Poverty Churches growing up. Even with such clear examples in the Bible, this way of thinking was so ingrained in me that it was hard for me to get past. When I still believed what I had been told about missing my last chance for repentance, I became very materialistic. When I tried to become a believer again, I found myself going back to that sacrificial Poverty Salvation mindset. I’ve lived with an almost primal fear that having something nice, enjoying an activity, or loving someone would send me to hell.

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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Broken Bones & Whiplash In Church

This is another ‘random memory’ that something made me think about today.

It’s often preached in UPC (United Pentecostal Church) churches that when it comes to “shouting” or “dancing in the spirit”, no one will ever EVER get hurt unless the person doing the shouting is faking. From what I’ve seen, this is just not the case.

The main incident happened when I was around 10 or 11. My great Aunt was the one doing the ‘shouting’. She was being prayed for up front, speaking in tongues, and started shouting. She bumped into the altar and it turned over and landed on the foot of an elderly lady who was standing up front praying and it broke her foot.

The reaction of the entire church was pretty ugly. They told my Aunt that she was faking, and she was shunned and verbally abused for several months after that. My reaction was “WHAT JUST HAPPENED????” I was soooo confused. The thing is, I KNOW my Aunt, and I KNOW that she would never fake anything.

I don’t really know what my beliefs are on shouting and dancing, I don’t know if its of God, or if its a product of emotional frenzy, but either way, I know that my Aunt was not doing something fake just to appear ‘spiritual’. Whether what she was doing was of God or a product of something else, she truly believed it was of God and felt ‘something’ or she wouldn’t have been doing it.

Almost 20 years later, I still have no idea what to think about this particular instance. The lady with the broken foot never blamed my Aunt, said that she believed my Aunt was “in the spirit” and that its possible for something like this to happen due to ‘human imperfections’. I don’t know…

My other two memories involve (surprise surprise) my Mom. One thing that happened was in the same church. My Mom was “running the aisles” and she started grabbing people’s hands and pulling them out to run the aisles with her. One lady whose hand she grabbed got halfway around the church and then fell in the floor. People ignored her for quite awhile thinking she was “slain in the spirit”, and then someone noticed she was calling for help. I can’t remember exactly which bone it was, but a bone in her lower body had broke and she couldn’t stand up. Paramedics were called and she was taken to the hospital. The church was VERY angry with my Mom for pulling her out to run the aisles with her, even though this was a common practice.

It turned out that this lady had bone cancer, and she didn’t know it yet. After they patched this bone up, other bones kept breaking every time she walked and she died around a year later.

Another thing was several years later, at a different church, my Mom was again running the aisles and “dancing in the spirit”. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out to run and dance with her. I had no interest in this, but she had hold of my hand so tight I couldn’t easily let go. I tried to just move unobtrusively with her, but her dancing was so exuberant she was jerking me around all over the place. For about two weeks I had whiplash symptoms.

Most Pentecostal churches would censure anyone who tried to ‘force’ someone else to “dance in the spirit” or run the aisles, because they teach that this is a spontaneous reaction induced by the Holy Ghost alone. Being ‘forced’ to do it by someone else would basically be considered faking. But there are also some who not only condone this, but encourage it. I’ve seen this more among ultra-conservative Apostolics rather than UPC.

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Taking A Break From The Timeline

I’m going to take a break from cataloguing memories in a specific timeline. Concentrating so hard on such unpleasant events and trying to remember accurate details is getting me down. Last night I had nightmares about the exorcism.

Yes, I’m a grown woman, wife, mother, professional, and I still have nightmares about things that happened in my UPC (United Pentecostal Church) upbringing. If my husband is not with me, I sleep with the light on. Even after years of therapy and feeling more peaceful with the world in general than I ever have, I still have a lot of residual fear that is not yet completely gone.

I cannot read the book of Revelations without seeing that horrible “End Times” video in my mind that was shown to me by Apostolics. I will not speak of it now, maybe sometime I’ll write about it. Sometimes I can almost put this stuff behind me and have peace, but *something* always happens and I find myself shaking inside again, while keeping my demeanor frozen in ‘normalcy’. Can’t let the masses see the fear, they’d think I was crazy. (Maybe I am.. after all, a Pentecostal preacher said I was a reprobate…)

So, while I’m taking this break, I will continue posting some random (less disturbing) memories about growing up UPC/Apostolic.

One such memory is this: I remember an unsaved couple coming to our church once, and of course, the lady was not dressed in compliance with the standards. She wore a dress, but had cut hair, makeup, earrings, etc. A boy of about 12 went up to her after service and said “Don’t come back as long as you’re wearing earrings, we don’t believe in that here”. She wasn’t sure how to take it, because looking around, none of the women were wearing earrings. But, this was just a child, so she wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.

Fortunately, someone heard him and went and told the Pastor. The Pastor immediately came to her and apologized and said that he was just a confused child, we very much wanted her to come back, in fact to come back forever would be our greatest wish. She said “But is it true? Do you consider earrings a sin?”

Since the lady had obviously just had her feelings hurt, the Pastor tried to stumble around the standards without saying outright, yes we consider them a sin. By this point he was pretty flustered and although I can’t remember his exact explanation, I know it wasn’t great (how could it be?) and they never came back. The boy was given a talking-to from the Pastor, and then was punished at home by his parents.

However, I don’t know that he really deserved punishment. He was repeating what he’d been taught. He thought he was standing up for his beliefs. The church didn’t do much teaching on grace, personal convictions, or ‘working out your own salvation’, but they did a WHOLE LOT of preaching on standards, not being ashamed of your beliefs, not letting the church get contaminated with worldliness, and the hell fire that was waiting for anyone who was ashamed to stand up for Pentecostal ‘truths’. So, who was really to blame for this boy’s behavior?

Personally, I would compare this to an army unit spending 12 years teaching a soldier to defend its territory against a well-defined enemy, and then punishing the soldier for acting on his training.

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Exorcism

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

There was one side affect to being “possessed” that I liked. When my Mom was addressing me (and not the demon) she was more kind than she’d been in a long time. Also, she paid more attention to me than she had in a long time. Watching over me took priority over her best friend’s daughter for the first time since they came into our lives. Of course, she was watching me and spending time with me to “make sure the demon in me didn’t hurt anyone”, but it was still nice to have my Mother back. Because of this, I started lying. They would ask me if the demon was speaking to me or if I was feeling rage, confusion, etc. and I lied and said yes because I wanted to keep receiving attention from my Mom and preference over the her friend’s daughter. As I kept saying yes to everything they asked me about what was going on with me, they decided they were going to have to cast it out as soon as possible. I don’t remember what the reason was for ever waiting.

So one weekend we go to Mom’s best friend’s house for the specific purpose of getting the demon cast out of me. My parents, Mom’s best friend and her husband, and their teenage daughter all participated. Their son wasn’t considered “spiritually stable” enough to help since the demon in me had come from him. They took me into a back room of their house, the farthest away from neighbors. They said that we might get loud and they didn’t want anyone calling the cops thinking that someone was getting hurt.

When we got in the room, they put me in the middle of the floor and gathered around in a circle. I can’t remember a lot of what was said, but there was a lot more describing of what the demon looked like, what it was “saying” to them about me, etc. At one point, they made me lay down and they each took an arm and a leg and held it tight to the floor. They said that if the demon got mad, it might give me extra strength. Sometimes I pushed my arms and legs against them to see if I did have super-human strength, but I was never stronger than my 9 year old self. Ha.

This went on for hours, my Dad got disgusted pretty quick and left the room. He was still pretty emotionally disturbed over his brother dying recently (which I wrote about here) and didn’t like what he was seeing them do to me. They also had just asked me if I’d had thoughts of suicide, and like I had been doing lately, I answered yes even though it wasn’t true. There was a lot of screaming at the demon to come out, and sometimes all the people holding me down and yelling in my face these awful descriptions got so scary that I screamed. They then said that “it was close”, so I started screaming more to try and bring this awful episode to an end. I don’t remember what was the deciding factor, but eventually someone yelled “It’s out!!!” and then my Mom grabbed me and hugged me.

I was so happy, I thought that I wouldn’t be scared at night anymore in my bedroom. I thought the demon talk and visions would be over. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

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