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.

Afraid to leave… afraid to stay

I’ve been reorganizing. As I did, I came across a good-bye letter from me to the pastor from March 2008. I didn’t actually leave until December 2009. I don’t remember what prompted me to write the letter; I’m fairly certain it had to do with two younger women falsely accusing me of some really weird things–so weird that when he started rebuking me I had no idea who even could have come up with such ludicrous statements. I’m pretty sure from the way the letter is worded that I figured I’d be kicked out, not that I was planning to just walk out. I also know that I should have left even before that.

Reading the note – a note that was mainly thanks and praise of them for all the “good things” like outreach and being used so much and being “allowed” to help – brought back a lot of memories. Memories of such fear and anxiety that I would physically start shaking so hard I could barely stand if I so much as got a text from the pastor or his wife. Memories of my stomach in knots and me afraid to run to the bathroom because he’d be angrier if he’d called me to stand in his two hour after service line of people he wanted to talk to or who wanted to talk to him and stuck his head out and saw that I wasn’t there, or saw me leave service for any reason, or… Afraid to go to the church for anything, never knowing when I’d get ‘called in’ or what I’d be in trouble for next, and afraid not to go because missing anything meant a step toward hell, no matter what the reason for missing.

People who left had things said. They were garbage, trash. They weren’t worth talking to and couldn’t be trusted. Listening to them or spending any time with them was risking your own soul, because as the pastor said, “be careful who you fellowship!” If you associated with them, you were probably one of them. And if you were one of them, you were backslid, too, and had left God and fallen away ‘like a dog returned to his vomit.’

And so I was afraid to leave, but I was afraid to stay. I realize now that the pastor was exerting a tremendous amount of control with his after service lines that you had to stay in until 1:00 am if he told you to be there, even on a work night, and his rebukes based on false accusations — rebukes without giving the accused an opportunity to explain, harsh rebukes that didn’t even have to do with the original accusations in many cases, rebukes in which the condemned weren’t to say anything or they’d be talking back to the man of God, which was simply not done. I realized even then that the amount of terror that I was feeling and the physical toll it was taking were harmful. I’d been warned by doctors that stress was elevating bad things and manifesting physically. I didn’t know at the time how close I may have been to an emotional breakdown.

Leaving was costly. Staying was costlier. I stayed because I believed in God. I stayed until I barely had any faith left. They taught that those who left also left God, but I would have struggled less with faith in God if I’d abandoned faith in them a little sooner, before they’d entwined ideas of God with their sickness quite so much. I was afraid to leave, and after I wrote the letter I found tonight, it would still be another 21 months before I left. People there at the time may have wondered why I left. I look back, eight years later, and wonder why I ever stayed as long as I did. If I’d know then what I know now, I’m not sure if I’d have been more or less afraid of leaving. But looking back now, my regret is that I ever went there to start with… and that I didn’t leave sooner.

*Fear and anxiety like I describe here, and the kind of control I experienced should never be a part of any ‘church’. If you are in an organization and you are afraid to leave but afraid to stay, seek outside help. And somehow, leave. God will be on the other side of that door, no matter what they say.

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Conversation with an Atheist

I have a coworker who is an atheist. I’ve known that or at least had a strong suspicion of it for awhile now. She’s looking for a new house and was asking today about different areas I was familiar with.

It’s sad how many of the things she deals with are similar to those I deal with:

she doesn’t want to live in certain areas because others won’t accept her or her family
her son just needed the signature of a religious leader for a certain recognition which of course she couldn’t get in a traditional sense
she is limited in where she can search for a home because certain areas will not welcome her family unless they are born there or are very close to the community…

And a couple are opposite of what I’m used to but so very similar as well:

she’s looked down on by her ‘highly educated’, atheistic extended family for associating with people with different views on religion and politics than she has, while I was told too many times not to associate with people who weren’t Christian (or weren’t a certain type of Christian) unless I was trying to convert them,
she is very cautious about admitting she’s an atheist… She said she and her husband were nondenominational and when I raised my eyebrows she ducked down and whispered, “sort of… more atheist — well, agnostic, no actually atheist but we don’t say that…” I’m cautious about discussing Christianity because I am concerned that most people I know in person would be resistant to my thoughts on some things.

It was interesting to hear her observations. It was also interesting that she was actually interested in knowing there are groups out there who consider themselves Christians but do not view the Bible as completely literal and see many of the Old Testament stories as stories, some taken from other cultures, many that should be studied today with the intent of seeing the Israelites’ development of their concept of God. Mostly it was just weird to see how much the person who’s never really been to church has in common with the one who spent hours upon hours there. I’m a believer, she is not. I don’t have a problem with faith, she resists it. It isn’t my belief in God that separates me from other Christians, but my lack of trust in those who call themselves Christians and my willingness to listen to and even accept a variety of ideas. We have those things in common.

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Of Red Doors and Bed Posts

I installed a new door this weekend. And after some debate I painted it red… and laughed because everyone would expect a nice, conservative white door at my house.

This morning, driving away from my house, enjoying the fall colors and my new red door, the memory of a statement popped in my head. “What are you doing, advertising?” A red door, a sure sign of a Jezebel. I’d been labeled for less. I rented a duplex on a dead end street. There was an office next door, and the administrative assistant was a church member. I kept my curtains drawn, but the curtain caught on the bedpost. The next time I saw Sister M, she stopped me. “What are you doing, advertising?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but after some flabbergasted questions, I discovered that for whatever odd reason, being able to see my bedpost meant I was advertising availability. On a dead end street, with my curtains drawn. What kind of response would a red door bring?

I’m not worried about my red door now. I like it. None of them will ever know. Their eyes and their judgments are six hours’ drive from where I am now. But I do remember the ludicrosity of the thinking there. It’s followed me through several decades and met me again at my new red door…

Slips were required. Full slips, summer and winter. No part of a skirt should be translucent…. guess who got rebuked because an eighth inch of slip showed one night when she got a drink at a water fountain?
One teen dangled a lacy high heeled shoe off her toes in the aisles, and no one said anything. Another was called out in service for wearing a scarf — a scarf was too flirty.
Animal prints were banned. The pastor got up one Saturday at outreach and said they were suddenly OK. There was more animal print the next day in service than there would have been at a small zoo… where did it all come from, and so quickly?
Christmas lights were OK, but not trees and not nativities. And barely the celebration of the day. Such a pagan event, with all it’s idolatry. But lights were fine.
A teen was reported for wearing clear polish on her toenails. She had on hose. How did the person see her toes, much less polish?
Makeup and jewelry were banned because we should be natural and like ourselves as God made us, but hairstyles could be very elaborate, with plenty of hairspray. Similarly, perms were banned, but hours of curlers and curling irons were perfectly acceptable.
We were supposed to win our lost loved ones, but didn’t always get permission to go home, even for major holidays. What a wonderful witness…
The pastor got a small pool and put it in his driveway. I got one and was warned to “be very careful with that.” The concern was not how I dressed in it, but that it was there at all. It was in my backyard, and not visible from the street.

A bed post showing through a closed curtain on a dead end street was advertisement. I’m sure a red door would be as well. The rules made no sense and they varied from person to person. Many were annoying and most made no sense. I definitely didn’t need a public rebuke for a bedpost, a hint of a slip… or a red door.

Tonight I’m thankful for the liberty to make my own decisions, not based on what other people might think. There isn’t any longer the constant worry of what someone might say or think. It’s there, but the voices are fading. It took me nearly 20 hours to realize what they’d have thought of my pretty, new, red door.

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Bible Reading and Prayer

I’ve asked and been asking myself for years why I struggle so much with Bible reading and prayer. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I can talk to God a little bit, but I wouldn’t say we were on close speaking terms. Bible reading is very difficult, and I rarely pick up a Bible or want anything to do with things that remind me of it.

This didn’t happen because I left the church. It happened because I was in it. It happened because the words that were supposed to comfort me were very often used against me instead. People who professed to be Christians did what they could to undermine my faith and that of others, in order to lift themselves or hide their own failures, and not just a few times, but repeatedly, until what I hear when I read, no matter what it is, brings a flood of bad memories rather than anything good.

I wasn’t raised in what most people who read this might consider a Christian home. We went to Sunday School, we read Jesus storybooks sometimes, but Bible reading was in preparation to teach, and prayer was mainly before extended family meals, not part of daily life. I struggled with some things in my own life, and at nine I went to a camp where we were ‘encouraged’ to have daily devotionals and to memorize scripture. I was a strict rule-follower and very much took these new rules to heart.

When I got home, though, I quickly learned that it was not to my advantage to follow them… I hid to memorize verses or to read my Bible, and most of my prayer time was done after lights out or high up in the top of a maple tree where no one would know. (When my sister found out I was reading my Bible, the next time we were in trouble for something she chimed in to Dad that I should know better because I was reading my Bible… and she got off the hook while I was punished, because he agreed with her.) Still, even touching the Bible brought me a kind of peace and calmed me in a way that nothing else had been able.

Throughout my childhood there was a feeling that I should be following the rule, the discipline, of quiet time. I wasn’t very faithful with it always, but the thought was there that I should be. Going to a Pentecostal church backed that thought. I jumped into that rule and others very eagerly–the concept of rules associated with church was familiar to me, and I liked having rules… they brought order to areas of my life that were very chaotic otherwise. One problem with this was that it led to legalism… the other was that not everyone followed the same rules.

Bible reading, particularly, went from being something positive to a chore within just a few years. I craved the recognition of getting my Bible reading certificate (for reading the Bible through in a year), but it was easy to fall behind and it was hard to catch up. There were other obligations, there was life… and more and more a piece of paper and a few minutes of applause for the hours and hours of ‘faithfulness’ in a year wasn’t enough. I started to recognize that the recognition was unfair when the youth were challenged with a point system — a point for every minute prayed or chapter read. Well, goodness, I could pray and drive but I sure couldn’t read and drive, and I could speed read but I wouldn’t get much from what I’d ‘read,’ but this was how to rack up points. And a chapter often took a whole lot longer than a minute of prayer. There would be no recognition for ‘slow and steady’ in the point system. I think that is the first year after joining that I didn’t get my certificate. It didn’t matter any more.

Within three years of that, I was thrown out of a church. I fasted for a week before I was thrown out, having been warned to somehow change whatever the pastor disliked, even though I wasn’t sure what that was. Fasting didn’t ‘fix’ me, and it didn’t prevent me being thrown out. I’d been the only one going to the church to pray, the only one going to the prayer room before church at least sometimes, definitely the only one ‘interceding’ in tongues for the services, but I was the one thrown out. I didn’t understand how this could happen. Being thrown out made me doubt myself and my routines of prayer and fasting. What difference had they made? Not only was I told not to go back there, but I’d actually had the pastor tell me he didn’t know if I COULD BE saved.

I experimented a little while with other options, but in the end I moved… to a place that ended up just as bad or worse. Within months I was no longer reading, praying other than before church as required, or fasting if I could avoid it without getting called out. I’d try. I was guilt ridden when I didn’t, and fearful that I’d be ‘caught,’ but even the fear and the guilt weren’t adequate motivators. Not that they should have been; by that point I had THAT unhealthy a perception of “Christian disciplines,” though.

It’s not easy to get out of that level of legalism or that degree of unhealthiness.

Tonight I found an article about the type of church I grew up in. It reminded me of that group’s “five steps to salvation” and the emphasis to a nine year old camper of the importance of daily Bible reading, memorization, and prayer. It reminded me of the beginnings of a legalism that would take me, finally, to a place where I wondered if there was a god, to a place where I’d sit stunned as someone told me they were a Christian but didn’t have devotionals and didn’t think they were even necessary… to a place where I would wish I could believe the same, to find again a place with God where the rules didn’t matter, but just the relationship.

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Struggles with faith and doubt

When I first left my former church, I thought I wouldn’t struggle with doubts or faith. I never thought I’d come to a point of wondering whether God was real or cared about me. I was wrong, and here are some reasons why:

When I left, I hid some of my feelings, my doubts and fears. I was busy proving to myself that I was still a Christian, and I was very good at it for awhile. The problem with that is that I could only maintain the facade for a time, not forever. Eventually the fears, doubts, and questions came out, and because I’d hidden them from myself for so long (well before I left), they kind of came out in a big jumbled mess, making them perhaps more difficult to deal with.
When I left, I kept thinking that I would get answers, find resolution, be healed, and see new success. None of that happened, and since people had promised God would do these for me or promised these to me, I blamed God when they didn’t happen. I became disillusioned… and that disillusionment hit around the same time as the facade fell.
After leaving, I was told too often by both myself and others to just get over it, to move on… to BE as though nothing had happened that changed my life, my thoughts, my beliefs. Walking out of that church had the effect on me that dropping a bomb on a small town might have to the survivors–I lost friends; family dynamics changed; the culture, beliefs, and perspectives that shaped a good deal of my life were suddenly in tatters; the place I’d considered safest was now seen as most dangerous–the world was turned on it’s head. “Get over it” and “move on” are absolutely ridiculous expectations in such cases, no matter how much we want to do just that.
I suffered from ‘shell shock’–I’d hear similar things to what I’d come to recognize as danger and ‘duck for cover’ so to speak. Most people did not recognize the signs of this and didn’t want to help or admit that this might be a problem… it was perhaps as difficult for them as it was for me to admit that someone could get PTSD from a church. And they and I both thought that exposure to a similar but more positive environment would ‘fix’ the problem. It didn’t.

Unreasonable expectations are behind all of these. It wasn’t until I stopped expecting things to go a certain way that I started regaining real hope. And yes, you read that right. I actually find myself having more hope since I stopped having these expectations. Not hope that everything will be OK, not hope that things will be ‘fixed’… this is a different kind of hope, or maybe more of a peace, than Christians I’ve known seem to talk about. Maybe more of an acceptance. This is what happened. This is what is. And though I have no idea what will be, I can be OK with that. And I think God is, too.

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