Category: Independent Fundamental Baptist | Page 19

Harmed In The United Pentecostal Church Part 4

In two groups, I asked people to share how they were harmed during their time in the United Pentecostal Church. People were also able to respond who exited a different group. I received enough responses to make at least five blogs. These are used by permission and are anonymous. Some responses have been edited for spelling and punctuation. The ones included in this part were from the UPCI or other Oneness Pentecostal group as well as one from the IFB. Each person is separated between using and not using quotation marks. After reading this series of posts, perhaps many will better understand some of what can happen to people in abusive churches. See also Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Only a robot could come through what we’ve all been through unscathed and without a myriad of mixed emotions, regrets, issues and more to unpack and sort through.

For a very long time, I have been contemplating whether or not to share my story on here, but I feel like it’s time. My biological father joined the UPC when I was around 13 years old. We believe he has bipolar disorder and the structure and strict nature of the church catered to his mental processes. As I got older, I began to realize how warped everything was. He would comment on the size of my chest and say that I needed to “work extra hard to be modest.” He would financially manipulate members of the congregation and our pastor in order to get what he wanted, and since he was a big strong man, everyone feared him.

I specifically remember one night I made him especially angry. I was talking too much, and women are to be seen and not heard. Five years later I was diagnosed with ADHD so it was truly out of my control. He took me by the forearms and threw me against a wall, giving me a concussion. He took away my phone so I couldn’t call for help. But it was all okay because I was “disobeying the Lord so I needed to be punished.” I was so scared for my life that I contemplated climbing out my second story window to run and get help. The next day, I tried to tell my youth pastor about it and all he told me was that I didn’t have the marks to prove it. This wasn’t the only time. Many times I would go home to my mother’s house with bruises, fat lips, and other injuries. He spanked me until I turned sixteen and left. Quite soon after joining the church, my bio father became involved with my babysitter, a woman from the church who was eighteen years younger than him (whom I despised). He told me he was going to marry her. That was the tipping point.

Three years later and many blocked numbers, emails, and a name and address change, he will still occasionally show up at my work or find a way to contact me. I work at a Texas Roadhouse in Wisconsin, and I see a lot of people from my old church come in. Almost all of them have tried to get me to come back. I would tell them what my father had done and no one ever believed me- up until one day, when I was sweeping my section and Jennifer happened to be in the section over with her husband and recognized me. We ended up talking for at least an hour about escaping UPC. It was so great to have someone who not only believed me, but understood what I have gone through.

I guess my message here is that it does get better. I used to go into full blown mental breakdowns when he would show up at my work. Now, I have the ability to have him removed from the premises (I’m so thankful for my managers) without the bat of an eye. I have a stepdad who has agreed to legally adopt me as an adult and loves me more than anyone else has. I have a new family through him, and I have this group as a wonderful support system. Because of the UPC, I developed Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s now being treated, and I feel more in control of my future. The church no longer affects me, nor has any power over me. I am grateful to see members from my own former congregation in this group who knew him and the trauma he incurred. After I left I realized just how much the church enabled him, but they didn’t win- we did…..

The stories never end. I always cared for my mother, who lived on $780 in social security, I paid for her phone, medicines, often groceries, etc. And still, the pastor told her, she needed to find a way to pay tithes and offerings.

Sick men, who shopped at Sacks 5th, all family members drove BMW’s, and they made a little lady with $780 who couldn’t afford to live, support them.

My issues happened in an IFB church with a cult-like family. I am STILL IFB.

1. The Bible is now filled with landmines and concepts I’m now terrified of. Prayer is the same way.
2. I was called a harlot for being interested in the man who is now my husband, and it still crosses my mind if I didn’t marry the wrong person because what if I didn’t wait on God and I just married the first person that liked me back, as I was accused of.
3. I would go into full-on panic attacks when a man walked into my place of work passing out tracks
4. I truly thought it would be better for everyone else around me if I was dead. I caused problems for the wife because her husband was always cutting things off because of things I did. And I couldn’t get him to stop. He wouldn’t stop, but for me to back out of the friendship (cult) would hurt her so deeply….it would have been better for me to die….but I couldn’t do it
5. I’m currently unable to handle the idea of the calling that God has called us to (missionaries) because of triggers….but then again, my (future) husband and I were told that with women that had emotional issues like I had, may never make it to the field……..
6. I’m afraid I will never be where I should be spiritually and that God has/will just put me on the shelf…and that that will affect my family

I was yelled at for hours by a man who we had deemed was an authority in my life since my parents weren’t Christians. He had me do chores in his house to keep me away from his wife because he thought I loved her in a sexual manner. He wanted to keep me away from his teen boys because he accused me of fantasizing about them throughout a church service (even forced me to “admit” it once), but he wanted me to spend as little time at my parent’s house because they weren’t saved, and thus a bad influence. He accused me of looking at the billboards and forced me to stare at the back of the seat with my head down when in their vehicle, yet insisted on inspecting every article of clothing that I wore. He told me to burn a skirt… I still remember it was black with little blue flowers and green leaves… because it was too short. It went to mid calf when sitting. He told me to get rid of my heels because they are prostitute shoes, and certain shirts (that his own wife bought me) because he decided they were too tight. What’s strange about it? Goodwill is still a trigger. His wife took me shopping before Bible college and I had several outfits that were fitting for a homeschooler going to Bible college…but those times were special. When I see Goodwill (etc), I think of those times and they hurt…. Then it triggers the anger of what her husband did. But it hurts deeply and I can hardly set foot in a Goodwill without panicking, 10 years ago this summer.

I remember the summer after freshman year… Six days before I was supposed to start courting the man who is now my husband… The man convinced my (now) husband to break things off. I was broken that summer…but I wasn’t supposed to contact any friends from college because they were a “bad influence.” There was to be no contact with my now-husband, though the wife (my friend/mentor) contacted him to find out how his dad was doing since he was supposed to have quadruple by-pass surgery. The man, Randy, assumed that I had made contact with my (future) husband. He berated me over and over again, hurling threats of things he would take away or things he would do that would make my life miserable. At one point…he called my future husband and started berating him. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door….lights off, I huddled up on the floor against the door and sobbed…. He was calling the man I loved, the one I wanted to marry but knew I had hurt so deeply… Now Randy is tearing him apart, causing him more hurt, and there is nothing I can do about it.

It was later that summer that they broke me enough to the point that I had decided I wasn’t ready for a relationship and maybe this wasn’t the man I’m supposed to marry. The only reason I was allowed to go back to Bible college was because I thought I wasn’t ready, the wife had contacted my future husband and he said he wasn’t ready, and that there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it back sophomore year right away due to finances.

My husband too went broke due to the UPCI and his ex wife’s beliefs that were drilled into his head from a young age. She was paying thousands of dollars a month into the church to “build” her and her parents status in the church, but the bills at home weren’t being paid on time and he was laid off from time to time due to work flow! We are free from that church now, nothing has struck us down, and almost five years later the bankruptcy that the “Church” put them in is finally paid off next month! We still tithe to our current church, but not for any other reason as we budget it and it’s not out of our reach!

Part Five.

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IFB: Courage To Be You

Are you a puzzle piece or a an original? Think on that for a moment.

Fit in. We all try to do it at one point in our lives or another. School, work, church, home, sports, social groups, you name it. We’re all trying to sort out some kind of way we blend in. Add in the pecking order in each of these places and things can get downright complicated. Sometimes we lose sight of our uniqueness as God created us, sometimes we allow others to take the reigns, to reshape us, to make us something God does not intend us to be.

What makes things so difficult about sorting out where we belong is that we all have very unique personalities, likes, dislikes, styles, quirks that make us who we are. Thankfully God made us each very individual and that’s a good thing. We all know if we were all the same this world would be very, well, “vanilla.” But it’s those differences that can actually make finding a place we are comfortable a real challenge.

Too often, our unique qualities and personal quirks that set us apart actually end up being enough of a spark that set others in a group off in a negative fashion. Our colorful stripes can trigger jealousy, insecurities, and some of the ugliest behaviors from others. Unfortunately church groups and those claiming His Son’s name are not immune to exhibiting such behaviors. Some of the ugliest, most hurtful and egregious words and actions have been committed by church leaders devoid of God’s love for His sheep and by those who follow these wicked men.

For example, an experience I’d like to share on has been quite memorable in a particular church setting specifically with other women and the narcissistic leaders they manipulate. This was a very small, very controlling borderline cult in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist sect. We found this conservative group as we were searching for a conservative church home. It was the host church for our son’s school. At first we thought we had found our church home. Things began to unravel in just the first several months.

The veneer of this polished group, lead by a slick narcissist and backed by several handpicked yes-men began to crack and erode. Quickly we began to see and hear some very disconcerting behaviors from several female support staff. The gossip, the vicious backstabbing, the immature high school behaviors were astounding. But we so badly wanted to “fit in” that we ignored it. We also ignored warning signs God gave us of character assassination of others including past deacons and church founders, mind games, and countless problems and investigations around past students, staffers, and members during the 12-15 years this leader and his senior cohort and enabler had been in power. We ignored so much that, in the aftermath, many have asked how we could miss so much.

The truth is, when you so badly want to fit in where you are, you tend to be far too long suffering for your own good. You ignore warning signs God sends. Sometimes you put yourself and your family in such a compromised, spiritually unhealthy-perhaps even spiritually abusive situation that God has no choice but to rip you out of there before the group destroys you.

Sometimes when this happens the damage to you and possibly your family is so great it completely shatters your identity. It can drive you from the loving arms of God. The enemy uses groups and leaders like this to destroy sheep, and the flock as a whole. Satan counts on breaking you so far down that you have an extremely long road to being complete and whole again.

There is a very important lesson to be learned from these experiences. God has crafted us each as individuals, in His image. When we start sacrificing these special unique markings on our personalities in order to please Man and fit in, we are going against His plan for us.

Many nefarious leaders will use twisted, misapplied Scripture taken out of context to justify their actions and efforts to change and control people. These false preachers know they can manipulate people through fear, peer pressure, financial threat, emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse. We look at these abusive leaders and marvel at how anyone could get sucked into these groups. Some very successful, intelligent people have fallen prey to the tactics of these wolves and their Jezebels. Why? How can these leaders wield such power?

The answer is often very simple: People want to be loved. They want to give of themselves and their talents. They want to be part of something greater than themselves. They want friends. They want to…fit in, to be accepted. As they consciously or subconsciously search for where they fit, they will often sell off or compromise parts of their belief system and identity in order to meet that goal of acceptance. Bad leaders know this, as does the enemy, and they both use it to accomplish the goal of destroying the individual sheep, and ultimately the flock.

Church should be the last worldly bastion of safety for the Believer. There should be a safe haven where folks of like mind and heart can gather together to lift not only praises but also lift up one another. Church, as designed by God, is to be a cove to protect from the storms of the World There should be a barrier that comes from worshiping together, praying together, bearing one another’s burdens, serving one another, uplifting, loving one another and lovingly help each other grow to fullness in Him. There is to be a spirit of love, patience, kindness, forgiveness, long suffering, and healing toward our Brethren. This is precisely what Christ modeled to us with His disciples. Sadly, this has become far from the norm in many IFB churches today.

So, you may find yourself sitting there, asking how you can avoid a pit of vipers like this. You may even be one of the thousands each year whose hearts and lives-very identities-are shattered by spiritually abusive groups and leaders. How do you avoid becoming a wooly target for Satan and his troop of narcissists?

Strengthen your identity. Delve into Scripture. Know your Bible inside and out so no wolf in a preacher suit can twist and misapply God’s Word to control you. Find your value, your worth in the pages of God’s Word, not in the opinion and approval of Man. Stand strong on God’s Word when you hear teachings that warp and shred His teachings and laws. Do not be afraid to stand as David did against Goliath when a leader is doing wrong, teaching wrong, and hurting His sheep. Have the Godly character to not allow yourself to be controlled and used to damage God’s people.

Perhaps the toughest challenge an IFB Believer has is in taking that Scripture-mandated stand against the wicked who have hijacked a local church. There is a tabu that is prolific throughout the IFB circles. Satan has tricked the IFB sect into compliance to protecting and enabling wolves in preacher suits.

How can Satan take otherwise intelligent, Godly men and tie their tongues from speaking out to hold accountable a false leader who is ravaging what was once an effective church in a community? Simple. He uses misapplication of the “…touch not My anointed…” verse.

Those who do not know their Bibles well don’t know that this was a directive specifically to Israel. It was never intended as a shelter for wicked, abusive leaders to cower beneath, yet that is precisely what they do. Far too many good leaders in small communities across this nation are chided into silence by means of this false application of I Chronicles 16:22-23 and Psalm 105:15. Sadly, they allow themselves to become complicit enablers of those who shatter His sheep and the demise of the flock at large.

To be a person of Godly integrity isn’t hard, but it takes tenacity and courage. To not be manipulated by fear of not fitting in and being accepted by Man. Learn to be ok with being kicked out of a group because you have more Godly character and integrity than the leader of the group and all his minions, Jezebels, and enablers combined. Be courageous and secure in who you are, your God-given talents and stand strong in the fact that you are the son or daughter of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Don’t let fear of sinful men and women compromise who you are….and Who’s you are.

Dear friend, take courage for being who God has made you. Take strength in standing for what is right. Your promise for doing so comes from I Peter 3:14

“But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;”

Selah.

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If The Truth Fits

Proverbs 10:32
“The lips of the righteous know what finds favor, but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse.”

The phenomenon of spiritual abuse is very complex. It often includes more than just the leader or leaders who are the spearhead of the attack. Many times, there are abusers who are simply on staff or in the congregation of a broken church group. This makes the impact of the abuse even more damaging because so many people are involved, usually people who are supposed to be trustworthy to the targeted individual.

Spiritual abusers and their enablers will do whatever they can to justify their wicked actions. Just as domestic and child abusers will always have their supporters, so do abusive church leaders. Very often the abusive leader or his minions will seek to destroy the credibility of their target by spreading gossip, lies, and other false information.

The enablers, or yes-men, of an abusive leader will do whatever they can to destroy an abused person or family. Sometimes they will put out just enough dubious information to lead others to make false conclusions. That fictitious info then gets passed on as fact by those folks, and more gossip and slander drivels on to those even less in the know. This can be particularly devastating in a small town where everyone is either related to, married to, or grew up with everyone else.

When a group is especially well-practiced at the spiritual abuse game it takes place in a very slick, almost second nature way. Before long the abusive situation takes on a life of its own and the targeted person or family ends up being relentlessly abused by simply residing in the town they are in. The target or family can end up facing a cascade of fallout from the abuse in the forms of financial, social, emotional, and verbal abuse in addition to the spiritual abuse that comes from twisted and misapplied Scripture.

The most important point to grasp on to as a spiritual abuse survivor is voiced here in Proverbs 10:32. The gossip and slander that the abusive leaders and their supporters employ is recognized by God for what it is: wicked. Just because someone says something evil about you does not make it true. Leaving those possessing an abusive, broken spirit to God to deal with is never an easy task. But it is the only thing that will set the abused soul free from the control of those who are verbally and emotionally abusive to God’s sheep.

Find peace today in the promise that God knows what wicked men and women do to His flock, and He will hold them accountable for their evil when His time is right. Remember too, just because someone says something slanderous about you does not make it true. In fact, the evil they spew about you says volumes more about them than it does to you, especially to those with true Biblical discernment. Don’t buy into what evil men and women say just because they are good at being evil. God knows the truth, as do those who know and love you. Let that be enough.

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Book Review: Spiritual Sobriety by Elizabeth Esther

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on June 2, 2017.

I love so much of Elizabeth Esther’s writing because what she says fits my experiences in unhealthy churches.

I preordered her book Spiritual Sobriety: Stumbling back to faith when good religion goes bad in spring of last year, around the same time that I interviewed her on my blog.

Recently I re-read my copy before sending it off to a couple of friends who are also unpacking unhealthy spiritual things they learned.

Elizabeth talks about how belief in God can become an addiction, and worship just another way to get a high–she calls this a “transactional use of God.”

She also doesn’t blame us, the religious addicts, for this.

“We didn’t make a conscious choice to treat religion this way. At whatever age we veered off track, we were just doing the best we could.” (p. 11)

“How were we supposed to know there were healthy ways of approaching God when the people we admired taught us that living intentionally with God looked like anything but freedom?” (p. 12)

She argues in the first few chapters that it’s basically a process addiction–an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance.

Elizabeth also says we should pay attention to that drained feeling, the letdown after religious services and events.

“This letdown is an important indicator that something is wrong. If we behaved in healthier ways, we wouldn’t feel the gnawing despair of having spent ourselves on a mirage.” (p. 8-9)

She says that a loving God will respect our boundaries (p. 61), and how she is learning to embrace a sense of mystery and be okay with not knowing everything. And she cautions us against buying into the American idea that our self-worth is tied to our productivity and how that leaks into our spiritual practices, too.

Religious addicts, according to her research, often have problems with excessive daydreaming and living in obsession, fantasy, and magical thinking.

This really resonated with me since I used to use fiction as my drug. Being a bookworm in an unhealthy household wasn’t just me being an adorable, academic kid, it was an escape when I felt like my home was a prison.

Elizabeth also writes about recovering from the shame of a legalistic upbringing, learning to acknowledge a mistake, and move on.

“When I feel myself saying ‘I am a bad person,’ that means I’m internalizing my mistakes,’ she says. ‘I have to remind myself to stop the Shame Brain.'” (p. 78)

“Shame tells us that we are lovable only when we are performing well. Admitting a mistake means admitting we aren’t worthy of love.” (p. 77)

Religious addicts also have the tendency to demand that others believe exactly the same way that they do and feel responsible for saving the world.

“Driven by fear, the religious addict feels responsible for the eternal salvation of every soul. Different beliefs must be confronted (and eradicated!) because they signal a hellish trajectory. In the pursuit of saving the world, the RA behaves as if the ends justify the means. Judgemental rhetoric is a small price to pay for snatching sinners from the fires of Hell, amen?” (p. 89)

We get drawn even further into religious extremism through this thinking.

“For Christians, being lukewarm is almost as bad as not believing at all. We’d rather burn out for Jesus than take the seemingly lazy road of moderation.” (p. 98)

She takes a similar approach to other addiction recovering programs, encouraging recovering religious addicts to avoid trying to fix everything all at once but and resist believing that we have to recover quickly to meet God’s approval.

She references Nadia Bolz Weber, who said, “the sacred rest that is yours never comes from being worthy.”

Once we learn to move away from relying on high intensity feelings and unstable extremes, we can learn healthier ways to cope. Sometimes too much structure is bad for us, too. Elizabeth says that she was raised with so much rigidity that her twelve step recovery program began to harm her (p. 106).

“Whenever we find ourselves slipping into extremes, we need to realize we’re headed toward an unstable state that could compromise our spiritual sobriety.” (p. 107)

These extremes, she explains, might manifest in our lives as

black and white thinking
catastrophic forecasts of the future
attacking tasks with a vengeance
trying to change things that are entirely out of our control
staying up too late because we need to get more done, not exercising (or overexercising)
starving ourselves, overeating
not letting ourselves reach out for help, not talking about what we’re going through
paranoia

Religious addicts may be especially prone to relapse when hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

Here’s some little pieces that resonated with me.

If you are recovering from a legalistic, cult-like church, I’d say read Elizabeth’s book. She’s been there herself and she understands that recovery is a journey.

Significant Quotes:

“I was consuming God. I didn’t have access to chemical substances – we were intensely devout, conservative Christians – so I used what was available: religious beliefs. I habitually “used” God and all things church to numb pain and feel good.” (p. 3)

“Maybe we identify so closely with our sick selves that we don’t think we even deserve merciful loving kindness. Maybe we agree with those who say we need to be punished (especially if we’ve begun to seek spiritual sobriety). Maybe we’re so tired of trying to stop our addictive behaviors that we figure we might as well go full speed ahead.” (p. 28-29)

“Accepting help for my depression was also the first step toward accepting my religious addiction.” (p. 29)

“I saw that my relationship with God wasn’t a partnership, but one based on fear of punishment. No wonder I’d felt abandoned by God: I couldn’t trust Him enough to let Him love me. No wonder I sought relief in secretive behaviors: when I couldn’t find the love I needed from God, I tried to find it elsewhere.” (p. 50)

“This idea–that a human being represents God for you–is a dangerous lie, because if someone controls your concept of God, he controls everything. But all the control and scrupulosity didn’t take away my deep, real need for love. Once out of the cult, I turned my focus to relationships: seeking friendships and romantic love that would fulfill, heal, and make me whole. My emotional intensity enabled me to become deeply intimate with people very quickly. But when someone got too close, I pulled away–true intimacy was terrifying. I was afraid everyone was abusive. Over time, I transferred my abusers’ traits to my concept of God.” (p. 51)

“We feel safe in the presence of nonjudgmental compassion.” (p. 54)

“If we are to achieve spiritual sobriety and live successful, productive lives, we need to meet a God who tells us we’re unconditionally loved and infinitely valued, no matter what we do, accomplish, or feel in one particular moment.” (p. 55)

“Now I know very little about what there is to know about the true God, and I’m learning to accept that reality. I no longer believe there are simple answers to complex questions, but I’m still sure that God is somehow good.” (p. 73)

“But if our mistakes are strong enough to compromise God’s acceptance of us, isn’t that the same as saying our mistakes are stronger than God? This is similar to believing we are born inherently evil. If that were true, then it would mean God created depravity. But just as it is impossible for God to create evil, so it is impossible that our mistakes are stronger than God’s hold on us.” (p. 78)

“Religious addicts are especially prone to self-neglect because Scripture texts are frequently misinterpreted to equate self-hatred with godliness. Calvinistic doctrines like ‘total depravity’ reinforce self-loathing. God intended for us to need Him because the beautiful plans he has for us to find their fulfillment in communion with Him—not because we’re bad.” (p. 104)

“Frankly addicts expend a lot of energy on not feeling their needs. RAs feel guilty for being human. We believe others are worthy of having their needs met but we aren’t.” (p. 108)

“We learn to hold relationships loosely, lightly. We discover that other people are not ours to manipulate or control—even when we think we know what’s best for them. A spiritually sober person respects the personal boundaries and inherent dignity of others. By unclenching our hands, we actually enjoy our relationships more.” (p. 115)

“We may feel really uncomfortable with the terms self-forgiveness and self-love because people in many religious circles mock those terms as empty pop-psychology.” (p. 116)

“Verses like Proverbs 3:5—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”—were used to warn us that trusting ourselves would make us vulnerable prey to Satan. But usually, the people quoting these verses to us weren’t teaching us to put faith in the Lord, they were teaching us to trust our church leaders. Ironically, placing blind trust in other humans is exactly what made us vulnerable prey—not to Satan, but to addiction. These leaders didn’t have to earn our trust. We just had to believe in them because, well, they were the leaders.” (p. 117)

“If we are to recover trust in our gut instinct and our ability to sense truth, we must practice owning, honoring, and validating our experiences as true and real. We don’t have to wait for others to corroborate our experience before we trust what we experience.” (p. 118)

“And yes, learning to trust ourselves might mean making some mistakes in relationships but making mistakes is okay, too. It’s how we learn.” (p. 119)

“This is how we forgive abusers: we allow ourselves to see their humanity. I forgave my abusers because I realized that they weren’t evil; they were simply terribly sick people.” (p. 132)

“It seems that some Christians attend church meetings disproportionately to the amount of time that’s actually spent serving others—you know, being the church… Many have become keepers of the aquarium instead of fishers of men.” – Pastor Michael Helms (p. 138)

“This is because true religion and true spiritual sobriety, can never be bought or sold. Spiritual sobriety is the slow, difficult work of walking the narrow way.   Of course, the addict in us may want to make a grand, splashy gesture and commit everything to Jesus. But here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t want our big, showy, public surrenders. In fact, emotionally fraught, stadium-style altar calls and gospel meetings can do more harm than good because they make a grand, public performance of what should be a private, inner transformation.” (p. 139)

“They simply shouldn’t have so much power that they are free to shame, threaten, and manipulate the flock. The greatest danger to a church’s spiritual health is a pastor-centric church model.” (p. 141)

“If you want to know whether a church is healthy, look at how it treats people who have little or nothing to offer. Are the homeless welcomed? Are the disabled offered a front-row seat? Do children look forward to going to church? Does the socially awkward college student get invited to coffee? Would members of the LGBT community feel safe attending services? If you’re looking for a spiritually sober church, look for grace.” (p. 141)

“The christian church’s ongoing obsession with sex and sexuality, the centrality it has put on controlling and forbidding sexuality in its message of sinfulness, is a suspicious sign that religious addiction and sexual addiction have been regularly reinforcing each other.” (p. 159) – Richard Minor

“It might seem wise to punish ourselves into sobriety; but as we’ve learned, punishment isn’t love. Punishment can teach us an important lesson about real life consequences, but it can’t rehabilitate our souls; that’s what grace is for.” (p. 166)

“Sobriety is about gentle self-examination and, most of all, a desire to stop living in pain.” (p. 158)

You can order Spiritual Sobriety here on Amazon.

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How ‘The Village’ illustrates isolated, fear-based homeschooling

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on December 13, 2015.

I grew up in the Village.

The first time I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 film, my head hurt and one of my roommates asked me if I was okay. I didn’t have words. Sometimes I find those books, those films that resonate so strongly with my own experience, that the bittersweet rush of knowing takes my breath away.

The Village became the movie that I showed all of my friends who’d been affected by a cult environment. As they started to question their high control group, I’d find a way to sneak a movie night with them.

It became our movie, something that we refer to when discussing our past.

There’s a few reasons for this:

1.) The whole thing was manufactured like a utopia to protect innocence.

Many of our parents chose homeschooling to create a new generation, protected from negative influences and intellectually superior to the rest of the world. But our parents grew up attending public schools, something we never experienced.

The elders in the Village came from the Towns, but none of their children can remember the outside world. This is the only life they know. Ivy Walker’s father says in a moment of crisis, “What was the purpose of our leaving? Let us not forget it was out of hope, of something good and right.”

When I was young, my dad told me his middle school classmates used to throw small knifes at each other in the playground and my mom remembers hash being passed around in bags around her Houston high school in the 70s. They and others who grew up in the 60s counterculture movement wanted a better life for their children and believed that removing them from the public schools was the answer.

Just like our parents often told us they’d done things they regretted growing up and we had a unique opportunity to be different, the elders in the Village keep a black box of memories, “so the evil of my past can be kept close and not forgotten.”

Mrs. Clark’s sister, Mrs. Hunt’s husband, and Mr. Walker’s father all died through violence and tragedy. Edward Walker tells his daughter Ivy, “It is a darkness I wished you would never know. There is not one person in this town who has not been so shaken that they questioned the value of living at all.” Ivy says, “I am sad for you, Papa, and for the other elders.”

2.) They sought protection from evil in the ways of the past.

In The Village, a history professor decides to take a group of people and recreate 1840s pioneer America. In the 90s conservative Christian homeschooling movement, our moms taught us to sew our own clothes and we all wore homemade skirts and dresses.

We watched movies like Sheffey about itinerant preachers in the last century produced by Bob Jones University Films and read reprints of Victorian literature like Elsie Dinsmore and A Basket of Flowers from Lamplighter Press and Vision Forum.

I wore one of my pioneer dresses nearly every day when I was 12-14 and pretended that I lived in the colonial era. I checked out and devoured every historical book on the colonial period and Civil War that my mom would allow from the local library.

A friend once said, “I get why they wanted this life for you guys, they meant well. But it turned out to be the Little House on the Prairie fan convention from hell.”

3.) They used euphemisms and emotional repression to ward off what they most feared.

Growing up homeschooled, we didn’t get sex education. Purity culture often adopted a “see no sexy things, hear no sexy things, speak no sexy things” approach. One of my friends never heard the words penis and vagina until college. I was told that dancing was basically “a vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” something to be avoided.

This kind of approach extended to anything considered “evil” or a “bad influence,” including peers, extended family members, and movies or TV shows with magic or profanities. Often, the avoidance became obsessive over time. The circle of safety was ever narrowing.

The settlers in The Village use phrases like “Those We Don’t Speak Of” to refer to the creatures in Covington Woods, or “The Old Shed That is Not To Be Used” for a shack on the edge of town. Red is the bad color, yellow is the safe color. In the opening scenes, two girls sweeping on a porch run out to the yard to uproot and bury a red flower.

Later, Ivy tells Noah, a young man with a mental disability, “This color attracts Those We Don’t Speak Of. You ought not to pick that color berry anymore.” When the villagers find skinned carcasses of livestock, the schoolchildren assume, “Those We Don’t Speak Of did it.”

The light as well as the darkness in humanity becomes repressed, and this affects romantic attraction. Ivy knows Lucius cares deeply for her but won’t act on it. She tells him, “Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do so that others won’t know we want to do them.”

There’s a parallel scene when Lucius tells his mother that Mr. Walker is in love with her.

“He hides, too. He hides his true feelings for you.”
“What makes you think he has feelings for me?”
“He never touches you.”

When Ivy chooses to travel through the woods in spite of the creatures, the other young men sent to protect her are too afraid to go against the rules. “Why have we not heard of these rocks before, why is it that you wear the cloak of the safe color? I cannot go with you, it is forbidden.”

We homeschoolers also had arbitrary rules and standards, always shifting according to the preferences of our authority figures. We were taught to “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thess 5:22) and that “it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Eph 5:12).

Just like in many homeschool communities, Noah’s mental illness is dealt with by only natural remedies. Noah dies a monster, which seems to enable stigmatization of mental illness.

Noah becomes the example of what not to be for the other villagers. He becomes the creature, one of Those We Don’t Speak Of. He embodies the darkness that they sought to eliminate from their little world.

“Your son has made our stories real. Noah has given us a chance to continue this place if that is something we still wish for.”

But the one line that echoes in my mind when I think of how I grew up is this:

“I tell you this so you will see some of the reasons for our actions. Forgive us for our silly lies, Ivy, they were not meant to harm.”

No, it was not meant to harm. But it did.