Author: Grace

Born into family of third generation Oneness Pentecostal parents, to a father who was a second generation UPC preacher, and a mother who'd been raised by UPC preacher father as well. My parents' goal was to raise me up to be "preacher's wife material", which they considered the "highest calling" for a female. I am currently in a graduate program for psychological counseling. I work in the mental health field, with children and families. My goal is to educate and enlighten parents to raise children who are self confident and happy, free from anxiety and depression, as well as other pathological outcomes from abusive upbringing.

“Of Like Precious”…(Abuse?)

If I had a dime for all the times I heard it said “of like precious faith,” I’d likely be very rich today (but only if I didn’t give all those dimes away in the offering).

“Of like precious faith” was a code phrase, much like other code phrases that were common in the group I grew up in. Now, when I read anything from that group, I read things that others without that background do not get. I’ve often shown a friend or co-worker something to explain the subtle mental and spiritual abuse, only to have them look at me blankly and ask, “what does this and that mean?” We had our own language that only the special “chosen few” could understand.

The phrase “of like precious faith” did not refer to all other believers, as one might think. It referred only to those who had your own special brand of salvation, doctrine, and dress code. It meant you were in the “in” crowd, the one where people were somehow perceived to be closer to God.

“Of like precious faith” did not mean you were truly a person who had a lot of faith in God–you might perhaps have no faith in God whatsoever, but only believe in your own works to save you. It didn’t mean that you were a person who was precious to be around either. It was quite possible you would be a nasty spirited person who criticized and judged everyone. In fact, often “of like precious faith” meant you were one of the group who looked down on others as being lesser than you and your in crowd.

In reality, the term “of like precious faith” was more like a code name for quite the opposite than what it implied. Often, one could’ve just as easily said “of like minded abuse” and been more accurate. This “precious faith” simply meant that you were one of the elite few who had it made, as far as going to heaven went. You had figured out the formula for the “Kool-aid” that would mark you as one of the group. You had the right clothing on, the right hairstyle, and the judgmental attitude to boot.

All kinds of abusers flew under that flag! Sociopaths were welcome, especially in leadership. Bring your Narcissistic self right on up in your fancy clothing, big Bible in hand. You were already labeled as one of the superior race of Christian, God’s own apostle, regardless of how you treated your family or those in your congregation.

It was a phrase that marked you apart and let people know you were “safe”–they could believe every word that came out of your mouth and they’d better accept you with open arms, lest they prove to not be “of like precious faith” themselves.

Friday I shared with a female co-worker just a hint of something I’d been going through. She asked if I was a person who prayed. I said, “yes.” She asked if she could pray with me. I readily agreed. She began praying “Father, Daddy, …” and what followed was the most anointed prayer that really touched Heaven and instantly calmed my anxiety. Oh, wait! She wasn’t “of that precious faith”! She was Anglican…yet never a more fervent prayer has been prayed over me.

Where did the phrase “of like precious faith” originate? What “big wig” preacher started this? It ran like wild-fire through the ranks. It could never be said of a Baptist, Methodist, Assembly of God, or Presbyterian. In fact, behind the backs of such individuals, even the term “Christian” had to be said with air commas to show you truly believed the individual to be eternally lost and not Christian at all.

Recently a co-worker called me, confused. He is a therapist in a school district and was setting up an intake for a new client, when the clients mom began crying hysterically. He patiently began the job of calming her down. Her problem? She was Pentecostal and she couldn’t go to a counselor that wasn’t a “Christian counselor.” I reminded him that he is a Christian and he is a counselor, but I assured him that might not even be enough for her. I felt much pity and compassion, wondering if her pastor would be upset if she went to a counselor with real credentials, instead of just his own Bible with his man-made interpretation of it. My co-worker wasn’t “of like precious faith.”

Here we are, a lot of wounded souls, all affected by those “like minded abusers.” We once thought they were precious, once believed they were men and women of faith. But then the caressing words and the outpouring of “love” turned to criticism and shaming. Yet, again, here we are. We may be down, we may have been shoved out, shunned, belittled, and downtrodden, but we are alive.

We are learning a new word–FREEDOM. Step by slow step we are learning to find our way through the pain. We are doing it together…people of “like minded pain,” those of “like minded precious grace.” We are learning that there really are true Christians, and we find them in the halls of Anglican churches, on Episcopalian pews, and in many other places…people who do not express to us their religious beliefs per se–but they hold our hands, they hug us, they help us, and they show us true love.

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Temperament’s Role in Spiritual Abuse

There is something interesting that I noted down thru the years. It has to do with the temperament of the constituents in a given church body.

I was born and grew up in the cult like atmosphere where spiritual abuse was rampant. My own father was the pastor/spiritual leader for the greater part of my life. I was not only affected during church services, but I lived with the knowledge that he was my “pastor,” which trumped the father relationship.

My own temperament was always extremely sensitive. I was one that responded very easily to any message of guilt or shame. From a very early age I was a perfectionist and a people-pleaser. However, given my early history as a nine-month-old baby being trained to sit alone on the front pew of the service, it’s hardly surprising that my nature was so sensitive and retiring. I would respond to a simple suggestion of what I should do without a direct command ever having to be given. That was because I was trained from a baby to respond to authorities in this way.

I’m sure that, genetically, I was also wired to be this type of temperament, because my mother was very similar. My sister, who was born after me, was not of the same temperament. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the constituents of these congregations did often have gentle natures from birth. We are all more submissive by nature.

If you are not by nature submissive, you will not last long in the cult. I noted, as a young adult, how my family was always saying we needed to pray for “strong men” to come into the church, so that they could help carry some of the leadership. Oddly enough, there were never any strong men in my dad’s church.

After I married and moved away, I began to think about this, and I began to realize why. Any time there was a strong man in the congregation, he had a tendency to butt heads with my dad and leave. I began to note that strong men could not survive the environment. If you were in this atmosphere, it was not OK to ever disagree with the pastor. If you disagreed with the pastor, or questioned the pastor, you had a “rebellious spirit,” and you would either leave, or learn to submit.

Obviously, a strong spirited man is not going to submit to that, so they would always leave. Oddly enough, there were a few strong spirited women in the church. They would either leave, or become very close to my dad and mother, to the point of becoming a leader in the church, under my dad’s leadership. It’s a very interesting phenomenon to me that strong men could not learn to do this.

I watched my dad at one point try to have an assistant, or a youth leader. It never worked out. He would literally crush the spirit of any male who came to work closely under him. Strangely, he was pretty good at mentoring men who would live in other cities, and just call him for advice. Allowing someone to work under him in his own church…that was a different story.

I began to understand that there is a very real sense of insecurity in the cult leaders. When people begin to wield so much power, they don’t want to share it with anyone else. They begin to be suspicious of others, in fear of ever losing that position of control.

For many of the people who were constituents of these churches, there was a lot of past abuse, mental problems, or just gentle submissive temperaments involved. It is impossible to rule over and brow beat people who are mentally healthy and strong in their temperament. Therefore, these types of leaders by their very nature, attract congregants who are natural follower–submissive, and gentle by nature.

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Love Without Fear

This morning I woke up around 4:40 am as usual, because I’m getting older and I have to go use the restroom about that time. After I got back in bed, I dozed off, but the rest of my sleep was rather light and restless. Over and over in my sleep I kept hearing an old verse that I learned years ago, “perfect love casteth out all fear.”

Now, to be honest, I have been in a process of recovery lately. I’m in the stage where I have been detoxing from religion. I have still been talking to God (though irregularly—but, hey, at least I’m still on speaking terms). I haven’t read the Bible in months, and I haven’t been to church since October. I have altogether avoided any religious influence, other than chats with friends, and support groups that help with my recovery process.

So, needless to say, at first I was rather annoyed that this Bible verse kept tormenting me in the early morning hours. Yet it has nagged at my mind all day long as I wondered, what can that verse really mean? On the surface, it sounds comforting and I surely could use some comfort!

Well, this evening I decided to look it up. I got involved in it the way I used to do. My mind is still trying to wrap around the concepts. I will share them with you, knowing that tomorrow I may not read any more. Maybe this was enough for me to chew on for a long while.

My understanding of 1 John 4

^“7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.”

The cult taught that “sloppy agape” love was not true Christianity. It taught that one had to follow a three step formula to get saved: Repentance, Baptism in Jesus’ Name, and the “infilling of the Holy Ghost as evidenced by speaking in other tongues.” This verse says that ANYONE who LOVES is a child of God, and KNOWS God. That means that many who we were taught were lost are really God’s children and know Him intimately.

⁸“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

In the cult, there was a lack of true love. “Love” and acceptance came only with a price tag. You did as the leadership wanted you to do, and you were “loved.” You questioned the rules or the leadership’s decisions at all and you experienced shunning, punishment, hatred and vicious disdain. Yet that very “sloppy agape” that was made fun of from the pulpit—that very thing is what determines a person’s belonging to God, according to these verses! So, here it says plainly that if anyone does not love, he does not even KNOW God! God is love, so if you know God you show love. No love=no God.

^“9God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.”

God showed us what REAL LOVE is—by sending his only begotten son to sacrifice his life for our sins. THAT is real love—it wasn’t conditional based on our performance or righteousness. If we have real love, it has to be patterned after that—Unconditional.

^“10This is real love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

The real love is not us loving a God who sacrificed everything for us, because all of us can recognize that he DESERVES our love. Real love is that He sent his Son to be a sacrifice, giving his life, because he saw we were sinners. Sinners—we didn’t deserve anything but death. He gave us what we DIDN’T deserve—that is REAL LOVE!

^“11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹²No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

Since God loved us that much…Unconditionally…when we did not deserve it in the least…when we were unlovable…when we were filthy in his sight; because of that, we ought to surely be able to love one another. There has never been a gap any wider than that between God and the sinful human. If He could breach that gap with His love, then anything is possible!

IF we love each other, God lives in us and loves through us. This indicates that the opposite is also true. Does this mean that if we do NOT love each other that God does NOT live in us? If he cannot show his love through us, because we do not let His love into our lives, does that mean we are not His?

^“13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. ¹⁴Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. ¹⁶We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.”

The 13^th verse seems to back up cult teaching that being God’s and His living in us is based upon whether or not we have His Spirit. However, the verses before and after clearly state that ‘God’s love in us is the true proof of belonging to him,’ so, we have to take the verses in context. Because of this, it seems to me that His Spirit being in us or not is not a matter of whether or not we speak in tongues, but whether or not we have and show His love!

It goes on to say that everyone who declares Jesus as the son of God is infilled with God’s Spirit. There is that idea again—the one we were indoctrinated against because it is just too easy. To declare Jesus as the Son of God is not EARNING anything. Humanity cannot seem to grasp the concept of simple faith and getting something as valuable as salvation without effort. Yet, here it is again and again. We have him living in us and we live in him by our declaration that He is God’s Son.

This involves a rudimentary understanding of God’s love—the REAL love of God—the unconditional love. By trusting Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, we have put our trust and faith in that unconditional love. We have given up trying to earn our salvation and we have embraced the idea of His unconditional love that caused him to come and sacrifice His life for filthy sinners, loving us in spite of our condition. To wrap our hearts around that kind of love is a spiritual work of faith that really is quite a bit more challenging to the human mind than the idea of striving to DO in order to receive. Think about it! Isn’t it mind-boggling that the God of the Universe sent his son to die for people who were sinners and were not able to pull themselves out of the filth? He took the place of every sinner in order to show His love and to free us from our sin. He says we simply receive that gift and love Him and others in return.

“God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.¹⁷And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.”

We all know that God is love. It is a basic fact we learned as children. But, here we see that all who live in love really live in God. Think about that for a second. If God is love, then to live in God means to live in love. To have God in your life automatically means you have love in your life.

The more God we have and the more we live in Him, the more perfectly we are able to love others. That completely undoes the life many of us have lived within cults. “Godliness” and “Holiness” cannot mean a list of rules one follows. It cannot then relate to judgmental attitudes and haughty spirits who feel that they are more “godly” than others. In fact, it is completely the opposite! The more “godly” we are, the more we will LOVE others—all others, even those who least deserve it.

“To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, on earth I long to be like him”…remember hearing it during altar calls where you were guilt tripped into crying and repenting over everything imaginable, including your lack of following the rules?

That is not what being like Jesus means! Living like Jesus here in this world means loving like He loved, showing compassion like he did, mercifully befriending the outcasts. When we live like this, we don’t have to be afraid on the day of judgement. We can come to him with confidence because we lived like him here in this world—overflowing with love towards the unlovable and the lowly.

^“18Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

Speaking of the judgment day, when we live in His love and His love is shown through us, we don’t have to be afraid, because this love relationship gets rid of all fear. What a revelation!

Life in a cult is based on fear. Fear, shame, and guilt are running our lives when we are trying to live by the rules and earn our salvation…always trembling lest we somehow fail and fall into the hands of an angry God. No, no, no! That is not what God wants for us!

If we have fear, it is because we think God is just waiting to punish us. That thought pattern shows that we haven’t really had a full experience of his “perfect love.” Wow! Did you get that?

How is it that one like me can spend forty years of life living to the best of my ability to try to please God and thinking that I had to work harder and harder to measure up—only to realize I had no clue who God really is?

When we understand His perfect love, His unconditional love, there is no longer fear. He is going to love me when I am doing well, and he’s going to love me just the same when I’m covered in mud and filth. He is not searching for an opportunity to punish me. He loves me and he wants me to love him and others. There is no fear in that at all!

This is why a chorus I learned after leaving the cult meant so much to me: “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.”

^“19We love each other because he loved us first.”

How are we able to love each other? Because He loved us first and showed us what love looks like.

^“20If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? “

How many liars have you known down through your years in cult environments? I’ve known a lot. I doubt any of them would admit to actually “hating” anyone…but “actions speak louder than words” is an old adage that holds true in this case as well. Lack of love is the same as hatred.

I grew up in a conservative preacher’s home. I heard the verbal vomit about the “liberal” leadership and neighboring pastors who “don’t believe fat meat is greasy.” I heard preachers who claimed to be holy and godly spout out comments like “he’ll never amount to anything,” “he’s good for nothing,” “I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickel for him,” and “I won’t give him the time of day.” These comments were all in reference to other ministers or saints who were in the same organization with the same doctrine, but disagreed over rules and standards of living.

Where is the love in that? Can you say you love God when you talk about another believer in this fashion? When you can be in the same room with another believer and completely avoid talking to him or her because you can’t stand them, is that love? How can you say you love God and behave in this fashion towards his other children?

^“21And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.”

It is a command…the true and only command to indicate our salvation.

What a lot to take in! It really is all in the concept of love. Remember Jesus saying that all the Ten Commandments could be condensed into loving God and loving others? That really is all it is about. It isn’t difficult to measure up, and it isn’t supposed to be an anxiety trip. It is all in that one little word, LOVE.

Attachment

In a recent turn of events, I was discussing with a professional counselor various aspects of relationships with people who are members of the cult that I grew up in. Specifically, we were discussing relationships with family members who are still involved in the group. Although we had discussed this many times before, he brought up something that really got me to thinking. He mentioned attachment theory, saying that from his perspective, attachment theory had a lot to do with the reason it is so difficult to completely distance oneself from the pain of rejection when one leaves the group.

Being a researcher myself, and involved in mental health issues, I immediately saw what he was saying and started researching attachment theory. Attachment theory basically has the concept that there are several different ways that children attach to and with parents when they are infants and toddlers.

You can Google “attachment theory” and find all kinds of information about that yourself, but the point is that, based on this theory, emotional attachment is a necessity to human well-being. Children who do not develop secure attachment with their parents in infancy and toddler-hood later struggle to learn how to have healthy attachments to friends and romantic partners.

Interestingly enough, the way that a cult works is to prey on unhealthy emotional attachment. This explains why I have very rarely seen an emotionally healthy person stay in the cult in which I was raised. They might come in but they would very rarely stay in this environment. As the unhealthy environment begin to push and pull at them, they would leave, because this environment keeps a person dependent and involves a lot of anxiety.

Having been raised in this environment by parents who were raised in this environment, needless to say, it is clear that I did not have healthy or secure attachment. For me, it was definitely the anxiety type of attachment (not the professional title–used for explanation purposes). People pleasing was ingrained into me from what feels like conception. I don’t ever remember a time in my entire life when pleasing others was not a priority for me, until recently. Pleasing others was a way to gain that intimacy that I craved. I wanted to be loved and accepted, and the only way to get that need met was to work hard to please others.

The cult ideology is based on this concept, when you really stop to think about it. In most cases, you are striving to please the pastor, for without pleasing your pastor, you cannot please God. You work hard to please God, because in many ways you are made to feel that he won’t love you, or at least he cannot accept you, unless you fulfill the demands of a list of behaviors that please him.

This is anxiety inducing, and I would many times hear myself and others in the group praying to God, asking him if we were measuring up, repenting for anything we couldn’t remember having done, and excessively worrying about status with God. I lived in fear that at any moment the rapture might take place and I would be left behind because of some failure that I did not remember to repent of. I always felt that the question “are you ready for the rapture?” couldn’t really be answered. I hoped I was ready for the rapture, but who could know for sure? Sometimes I still struggle with that type of thinking. Does God love me? I was never really sure. He might love me, if I could only measure up!

Learning to think about grace has been a journey. I often revert back to wondering if he loves me, or if he can accept me, with all my faults and failures. In a recent conversation with a close friend, I was telling him that I did not know if I was saved or not, and I did not know any way to know for sure. He began to talk to me about the fact that I believe in God and I talk to God. He pointed out that God’s hand in my life is obvious. God continues to come through for me in miraculous ways in moments when I need it the most. He pointed out to me that, if God didn’t love me, and if I was no longer his child, his hand would not be on my life in this way. It was an interesting conversation, and I now recognize that the insecure attachment with parents and with God, as a result, are involved in anxieties and worries that I have always had. Trying to please others and measure up has been a blight on my life thus far.

I know better than to trust, and I cannot relax blindly in accepting “love” from them. I know all too well that a little financial involvement, with a little emotional involvement soon morphs into trying to control me. I hate that I had to ask for financial help, because I equate that with handing over my control. It had to be done, but the fear is real. This is what caused me to understand this as an attachment issue.

My parents solely used physical discipline when I was growing up. I was, by their own admission, a very compliant child. However, any small infraction incurred a spanking, usually with a switch or a paddle. I lived with anxiety and fear of upsetting them. I rarely committed an intentional infraction. However, the intent of the heart never mattered. An infraction was an infraction, and physical discipline would follow. I am not at all blaming my parents, because they were simply a product of their environment, and they loved me in the only way they knew how. In many ways they were very loving parents, providing for our needs to the maximum, but emotionally the attachment was not completely secure, largely due to their own ideology that God was a judge waiting to discipline every mistake we make as his children.

In the last few years I have begun to attempt to understand grace. Grace is a concept so beyond human understanding that it boggles my mind how God could love us in this way. A God who can not only accept us, but favor us as individuals…it is beyond all reason.

The closest I can ever come to understanding it, at this point in my life, is to look at how I love my children. They have individual differences, and each one has their own strengths and weaknesses. Yet, I would never disown any of them. My love for them is able to accept them fully, even with their flaws. That does not mean that I don’t try to teach them how to overcome weaknesses. It does, however, mean that I offer them empathy and understanding when they fall into familiar patterns. I talk to them and try to help them find ways to grow and mature in those areas, fully understanding that they will never be perfect. I am still very proud of each of them, and I love them passionately. I would do anything to help them any time they are in need. I want them to succeed and thrive. However, as a loving mother, I do not demand perfection from them. I have learned to “not sweat the small things.” I have learned to realize that they have limitations, and that all I need to expect from them is their best. Even when they do not do their best, I still love them and encourage them.

As a parent, I do not focus on the negative aspects, but rather I continuously praise the positive in my children. I believe that God uses this to teach me about grace. God is not a God of anxiety inducing perfectionism. There is no way that I believe God would want his children to go around wrapped in anxiety and fear all the time, because of their fear of failing him.

God wants us to be secure and rest in his love. There is no rest where there is fear. The Bible says that “perfect love cast out all fear.” God’s love is perfect, and as we learn more and more about that, the more secure our attachments with him and others will be. It may not be possible to ever have a secure relationship with my parents. It takes two to have a relationship. However, I believe that as I become more secure in God’s love, I can better recognize attachments that are secure and safe for me. I can then know when to open up to and when to stay closed to different people in order to protect myself.

Identity Theft

I got this cup for Christmas from my best friend. It says “Be You.” Only a very close friend could have known the impact of that phrase for me.

As I have written before, when one is raised in the cult environment, an identity is chosen for you and imposed upon you. You don’t get to choose to be an individual or to figure out for yourself what you like and dislike. You are told who you can be and what you must like and dislike.

A few years ago, I was involved in a teacher’s education program that included a class on child and adolescent development. We were required to write and illustrate a complicated paper on each developmental milestone, and how that related to our own upbringing and development at each stage of life. The illustrations had to be from either photos or copies of art or writings that we had saved from our childhood.

Of course, by this time I knew that I had been raised in a cult, so each stage was an interesting flashback for me, but nothing really stood out as horrific until I reached the adolescent stage. In adolescent development, ideally the adolescent is forming their own identity–they often play around with different thoughts, ideas, styles, and values while they are trying to figure out who they are and what they want out of life. By the end of adolescence, ideally, they will have figured this out and settled into a worldview and formed their identity.

When I got to the stage of adolescent identity formation, I hit a brick wall. It was a revelation to me that I had never matured in that area, because I was not allowed to formulate my identity at that stage in life. Everything about my identity was dictated to me. My parents told me that they had raised me to be a preacher’s wife. I was taught how to dress, what styles were appropriate, even how to style my hair, what to like and dislike, what music to listen to, and what books to read, as well as how to interpret what I read…among so many other dictated ideals.

As I begin to realize this, as an adult, I started questioning who I was and exploring what I would want. I found that I had long ago turned off that part of a person who asks questions about life and makes decisions. No wonder it was so hard for me to make choices! No wonder anxiety raged through me on a daily basis!

I started on a quest to begin figuring out what I like, what I believe, and what I want out of life. It has been an interesting journey so far. In my 40s I am finally “Finding myself,” and the journey has been so much fun! Although there has been some trial and error, it has not been as weird and chaotic as a teenager often finds it to be.

The times I struggle most with my new identity is when I am around my extended family members who are still in the cult. That is why my friend bought me this cup. It is a daily reminder to just be me. It is a constant encouragement to cut out the overthinking and to reduce the anxiety that comes with being raised to conform.

I have made it my motto for 2017 to just “be me.” My heart is full of hope that 2017 will bring much joy and freedom to myself as I continue to overcome anxiety and the past.