Author: Mary | Page 10 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Abominations

I’ve heard it preached repeatedly that we can’t give God anything but our best. Deuteronomy 17:1 is used as a reason for this. But that passage isn’t talking about giving less than the best for sacrifices. It says nothing about seeking out the very fattest and best lamb, it just says not to give one that is blemished or obviously disfigured. It appears to be talking more about deliberately giving an unworthy sacrifice. Going to the herd and finding an animal not worth keeping and killing it. At any rate, it isn’t talking about beating ourselves over the head, losing sleep over whether we could have done anything better that day or not.

Of all of these, all but Deuteronomy 22:5 obviously discuss things spoken against in the 10 Commandments and again in the New Testament by Jesus and by the writers of the Epistles.

Food laws were reversed in Peter’s vision “what I have made clean call thou not common.” Gentiles were also made clean in this vision and the activities in Acts 10 that followed. What else was considered ‘clean’ at that point? What does Deuteronomy 22:5 really mean? Does it stand alone as saying women shouldn’t wear pants? Hardly. It is part of the blended gender issue that is defined as sexual immorality. There is nothing sexually immoral, nothing about blending genders, determined by ladies wearing pants.

What things were abominable in the Bible?
In the Old Testament, certain foods (Lev 11), homosexual acts (Lev 18:22), idols (Deut 7:25, 12:31, 13:14), dishonorable sacrifices (Deut 17:1), mixing genders (Deut 22:5), cheating in business practices (or possibly favoring some people and cheating others) (Deut 25:16, Prov 11:1, Prov 20:10), frowardness (Prov 3:32), Prov 6:16 and 12:22 and 16:5, Justifying the wicked and condemning the just (Prov 17:15), Jer 6 and 8, Ez 18:12, sexual immorality Jer 22:11, were an abomination. Why pull out only Deuteronomy 22:5? Why are the others not preached often as abomination?

To my former church

Dear former church:

Why do you shun people? I could understand you not wanting to be best friends with me since I left your church, but why do you turn your faces away as I walk past? Why would you stand in the middle of the store aisle, blocking my way, and act like you don’t see me or hear me when I say “excuse me, please?” How could you turn up your nose and refuse anything I might give you… change and a receipt if I’m a cashier, your food if I work in a restaurant?

You don’t want anyone saying anything bad about your church. Your actions are speaking louder and more negatively than any words I could say. People notice your haughtiness and your self-righteousness. It makes them angry. Several have told me they don’t want to go to any church because they don’t want to go to a church that treats people like you do.

What a witness you are to your world! You aren’t testifying of God’s love and mercy and grace, but of your own pride, your lack of love, and your self-centeredness. Jesus didn’t shun publicans or even Pharisees. He loved them all. He warned them of their shortcomings, but He never turned them away. Not even when they came to Him under cover of darkness, in the middle of the night. Not even when they broke their Jewish laws and traditions to get near Him. Not once did He reject them. Not even as they mocked and spit on Him. Not even as they crucified Him. Real Christians are Christ-followers. They will do as Jesus would have done. And Jesus never once in the Bible behaved as you have behaved toward me.

In doing what you are doing, to prove yourselves right in your own eyes, you are only confirming what I knew in my heart. You are only right in your own eyes. Your eyes are not the eyes of God. Your hands are not His hands, your feet are not His feet. You aren’t doing what pleases Him, but what pleases your own pride.

Please open your eyes! The Bible doesn’t teach what you are doing at all. One time Paul wrote about putting someone out of the church. And that was for fornication that was fairly wide known, and that had not been repented of. It wasn’t for wearing certain clothes, and it certainly wasn’t for going to a different church!

This is what the Bible says:

Gal 6:1-5 Dear brothers and sisters, if another Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.
Share each other’s troubles and problems, and in this way obey the law of Christ.
If you think you are too important to help someone in need, you are only fooling yourself. You are really a nobody.
Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.
For we are each responsible for our own conduct.

You are responsible for how you act, and I’m responsible for how I act. Don’t be angry at me for not taking abuse. Be repentant for the abuse you gave, and change.

1 Jn 4:7-10 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God–for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other
…for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen?

Mar 12:33 And I know it is important to love him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbors as myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law.

1 Corinthians 5:5

1 Cor 5:5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

I’ve had this verse used against me quite a bit now. No, I haven’t fornicated or committed any other sin that shocked even people who are not in the church, like this passage discusses. I am not one, as verses 10-11 indicate, who is “…covetous, or extortioners, or …idolaters…” or “a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner.”

Above that, this verse is not discussing walking past the person as though they don’t exist, giving them a withering look as you pass them in public, refusing to accept change from them at the store or buying anything of theirs at a yard sale or even applying with their company… it isn’t talking about being RUDE in other words. The verse tells the church to deliver the person who does the things listed above (idolatry, fornication, drunkenness, extortion, covetousness, or railing (abuse)) to Satan (in other words to put them outside the safety and support of the church)… not to act like the devil themselves!

God never approves of rudeness and outright cruelty, self-righteousness or pride. Read what Paul wrote (NLT): “Then you must cast this man out of the church and into Satan’s hands, so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved when the Lord returns. How terrible that you should boast about your spirituality, and yet you let this sort of thing go on. Don’t you realize that if even one person is allowed to go on sinning, soon all will be affected? Remove this wicked person from among you so that you can stay pure.”

Think about the bolded and the list in v 11 for a minute. If we are not to fellowship people who claim to be Christians and do the things listed above, and if we could be affected by those things if we allow them to continue in our midst, is it wrong to leave a church where these things are allowed to continue, and even encouraged?

I don’t advocate throwing people out of churches if they have these problems. But after having had this verse used on me more than once, I have to believe that if it is ever used, it should only be used as it was in this passage. This was an extreme case, for a widely known sin. The action wasn’t recommended for something people guessed might have happened, but for something that was well known both in and out of that body of believers.

If a church believes in removing someone from fellowship based on this passage, they can remove the person from the support of the church without removing them from the pews, and without being rude. We can help the swindlers without putting them over the offering, the drunkards without putting money for their next bottle in their hands, the sexually immoral without allowing them to teach our Sunday School classes, and the railers and abusers without putting them behind our pulpits.

Paul isn’t talking about banning anyone from all Christian contact or treating a person rudely, he is simply saying not to give that person the full benefits of true Christian fellowship. Separating him or putting him out of the church at that time didn’t mean casting him off a pew or out of a building. There weren’t pews or churches to throw him off of or out of. It simply meant to stop counting him as a complete part of the church until he repented.

Dreams and memories

I woke up this morning after a vivid dream that I’d gone back to my former church. Apparently in the dream I was working a different job and two different people from other churches had come into my workplace and asked directions to the church. I gave it to them, amused that they didn’t realize I used to attend, even though I was dressed just like them.

For whatever reason, I knew they’d be serving a meal that night before church so I decided to sneak in just to eat. Most everyone had eaten by the time I arrived. They asked me to help serve dessert, not recognizing me. So I did. The entire building was different in the dream, but several things were the same. As people started to realize who I was, I could sense their fear. The unasked question was, “Did you ask the pastor if you could come?”

They’d shy away from me, afraid to acknowledge me or meet my eyes once they recognized me. And yet there was a little hesitant hope in their eyes that I’d “pray through.” Then the pastor came in. Things were tense- would he recognize me? If so, he’d be furious that I’d come. I left at that point, satisfied I’d gotten my answer, and that nothing had changed. I walked the long way back to the car, watching the parking lot fill and people rush in, hurried and focused on that building. I walked, enjoying a starless night, at peace.

I haven’t been looking for any answers. I know what would happen if I tried to go back or attend anything they led. But it was odd. The fear and tension were thick. I wasn’t afraid, but they were. And they weren’t afraid of God or afraid for me, they were afraid the pastor would find out. They were afraid of his anger and his temper on themselves for not saying anything if they knew I was there without permission. Afraid he’d think they had something to do with me being there.

And in the dream I knew the reason I wouldn’t go back even to visit- a totally unbiblical attitude toward the pastor and the pastor’s expectation that someone who’d left had to call and ask permission to return. (There is a rule at church that if you leave, you must ask special permission to even come to a wedding or funeral.) It had to do with his temper and the anger that he expressed so often, that tension in the air, the fear that he’d blame someone for wrongdoing when they’d simply been kind, gentle or compassionate.

It was strange. The dream didn’t make me sad or angry, it was just there. But it was strange because the fear, the tense caution, and the rules on returning were so clear and solid in an otherwise wispy dream. It’s the first time that I’ve dreamed about church in years that I felt a calm reassurance when I woke up.

Tougher than that

There was a common opinion in my former church that a person had to ‘tough it out’ and ‘endure’ to ‘make it’ to ‘finish their course’ or to ‘stay in the church.’ In other words, people felt that a person should endure any hardship or wrong to stay in that church because only by staying in that church could they please God.

When I would get upset about something, one man in particular would say, “Oh, Sis, you’re tougher than that.” I never responded, to my memory. Today I want to. Yes, I’m tougher than that. I’m tough enough not to stand by and watch people be deliberately hurt in the name of religion. I’m tougher than to stay in an abusive environment and ‘submit’ to injustices. I’m tough enough not to think I need to stay in a place that supports wrongdoing, whether it be immoral, unethical, unbiblical or illegal, and I’m tough enough not to support, either with my presence or my finance, those who do. I’m tough enough to stand up for right and to stand firm no matter the opposition.

Yes, sir, I’m “tougher than that.” But tough doesn’t mean gritting my teeth and enduring injustice or standing by and watching as others are wronged. Some of the biggest atrocities in history have come because people refused to take a stand. The people who instigated those were not tough. They were weak. The people who accepted and went along with them to protect themselves were not tough. They were weak. It is those through history who have stood for what is right that in the end are admired and respected. Some of these have been named as heroes, and others were soon forgotten, but they- those who faced opposition and persecution but still came to others’ defense, who refused to bow or bend to unethical or immoral practices or to go against their principles, those who refused to go along with the crowd simply because it was easier- they were the ones that made a difference, that changed the life of one person or many, they were the ones who were tough.

So yes, brother, I’m “tougher than that.” You just didn’t realize what “that” was.