We get questions sometimes as to what parents should do if their child has started attending a church they think is unhealthy. These parents mean well, but often their questions revolve around finding literature to prove their child is wrong or their child’s new church is wrong. They believe that by presenting their loved one with this information, they can stop them from attending or from joining. They think that giving them information will stop their child from doing what they disagree with. Unfortunately I have never heard of a single instance of this working.
If you are the parent or a family member or a friend of someone who has started attending an unhealthy church, consider this: At what point have you ever convinced anyone that you were right by handing them some articles or telling them what you think? Now, how many times have you read a friend’s posts on Facebook or heard them repeatedly vent on a topic that was sensitive to you that made you think “Oh, wow, they are absolutely right!” rather than thinking “How rude!?!” or simply walking away in frustration?
Presenting information, no mater how good, how qualified, how abundant, isn’t likely to change your child’s, your friend’s, or your loved one’s mind about the church they are considering or has started attending. That’s not to say there’s not hope, but sharing articles and other literature doesn’t do even the smallest fraction of what listening and inserting informed but semi-neutral questions in the right places will. This won’t be easy, but it is much more likely to either be well received immediately or at least leave communication open so that when they do start asking questions at some point, they can come to you.
Help! My child is joining a cult! Part 2
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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Good point. I don’t want to hear, “Help, my dad won’t let me seek peace & understanding on my own terms! I wish he would just accept me for who I am growing to be.”
Very good advice for “keeping the door open”.
Here is an article that some might want to consider regarding just presenting facts to people. For me, I wanted facts and it was through study of the scriptures that I saw what the United Pentecostal Church taught wasn’t true. https://heleo.com/facts-dont-change-peoples-minds-heres/16242/