Category: Churches | Page 114 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Things Kept Crumbling

After Mom started preaching, pretty soon she decided that I was too fragile and unstable for public school, and that all the problems I was having were due to the pressures of first and second grade. So, she decided that I would be homeschooled. I didn’t want this, I begged and pleaded with her to let me stay with my friends, but to no avail. School was the only ‘normal’ thing in my life, and I wanted it to continue even though our way of dressing made it difficult. But, second grade was as far as I got to go in public school, I began homeschooling in third grade.

The first few years of homeschooling were pretty uneventful. Then, something strange happened. One Sunday morning, my parents announced that Dad was going to church with us. I was so excited, if Dad would just ‘get in’, I figured we could be happy. ‘Normal’. Dad went to church with us regularly for a few months, even going up and praying a few times. All the church people were very welcoming to him, even ones that he’d met in the past and been rude to. Things were going great.

For some reason I didn’t understand, soon after Dad started going to church him and Mom told us that Dad was going to go live somewhere else for awhile. To me and my sister, this was completely unexpected. What was even more unexpected was the reaction of our church. I was around 7, but adults in the church felt free to ask me questions that they would never have asked my Mom. Every service, people would catch me without Mom around and start asking questions. “Where’s your Dad? Why isn’t he coming to church anymore? Does he still live with you? Do you get to see him? Are your parents divorcing?” These questions were coming from adults, not adolescents. Sunday School teachers, song leaders, youth pastors… no matter what their position in the church, they didn’t seem to care what kind of pain and embarrassment they brought on a little child whose home had been ripped apart, they were only concerned with their blood lust for juicy gossip.

This was my first experience with emotional pain from outside the church being made worse by those in it. It would not be the last.

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My First Attempt

I have not wrote about my UPC (United Pentecostal Church) upbringing anywhere other than on this site, so these blogs will be my first attempt to organize these memories. Here goes.

I remember the first time I went to a UPC church. I was 4, and my Mom and I went to visit the church we would eventually join and I would spend most of my childhood in. I loved it. It was beautiful, there were lots of people, fast music, and Sunday School was fun. I can’t remember much else about those early years, except we started spending a LOT of time there.

Soon, things were changing in our house. Over the next 3 years or so, Mom started trying to get us kids to stop watching TV, even though Dad still watched it. (Dad did not go to church.) She started insisting on praying out loud before meals, even though that meant that Dad wouldn’t come to the table till she stopped. Mom started spending all her time reading books that looked like encyclopedias and laying on her face ‘praying’ in a process that looked very painful. If me or my little sister interrupted her, she’d become enraged, sometimes hitting us. The hitting wouldn’t really be considered abuse if the harshness of it was compared to a ‘normal’ spanking, but if only the reason for it were examined, the result might be different. It seems abusive to me to hit a child who needs assistance simply because the child interrupted a prayer. This doesn’t seem Christlike.

Another change in our home was that we had to start wearing dresses all the time. When I started school, this became a big issue for me. The kids at school asked a lot of times why I wasn’t able to dress normal, and not being able to wear pants meant that I was excluded from many activities. I could have done the activities in the skirts, but the school wouldn’t allow me to try. My Dad hated all this, and it caused no end of conflict between my parents because my Mom never backed down on any of these rules. Things in my home got more and more tense.

At 5 and 6 years old, there would be occasions where I would cry for hours to be allowed to wear a pair of jeans. I wanted to be normal so bad, but I couldn’t seem to articulate my feelings in any other way than “I just want to wear jeans”. My Mom had no patience with these crying spells, she would get very angry and want my Dad to punish me for being so silly. Dad would reply that he’d just give me a pair of pants so I would shut up. Mom would then say something to the affect of “I’ll just deal with her myself” and I’d be punished. Grounded from seeing friends or going to Grandma’s house – inevitably, something that I enjoyed would be taken away for a time to teach me not to “lust after the world”.

Around this time, I noticed that my Mom started getting up behind the pulpit at our church and preaching. I remember hoping that this would make her happy and things would get better at home. It didn’t happen that way.

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Standard Struggles After Leaving

Sometimes I receive an inquiry like this, “I don’t think it’s wrong for a woman to wear pants, but I can’t even bring myself to consider going out in public with them. Why??”

Please don’t push yourself in this direction. Part of having the freedom to wear what you feel is permissible, is to not wear it if you don’t want to. One doesn’t have to wear pants simply because they left a UPC (United Pentecostal Church) church. If you wish to continue wearing skirts and dresses, that is perfectly fine.

I cut my hair before anything else. That was less than a month after I’d officially left the church. I had been studying the Bible long enough before then to see their teaching of uncut hair was nowhere to be found. For some time I still pretty much wore the same clothing. I remember wearing sweat pants during a short time I was going to the gym and then eased into it from there. I wore culottes a lot before leaving the church as I was working at the church daycare and continued to use them afterward.

Here is a thought as to why you may be having more difficulty with pants.

With all the UPC standards, which is taught as being an abomination to God?

Is it hair?

Is it make-up?

Is it jewelry?

Is it sleeve or dress length?

No. It is pants on women as they use Deuteronomy 22:5 as a proof text.

This could be why you are encountering more difficulties with pants. While all the others are taught as wrong, this one links you to doing something which is an abomination to God (so they teach). There is more fear involved and you may not want them looking at you in this way.

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At times a person who leaves will develop an attitude concerning standards and feel they “don’t want to look anything like them anymore!”

I must give a word of caution as this isn’t about striving to not look like people from your former church.

One thing that is important when a person leaves an unhealthy church is that they don’t develop a reverse bad attitude. Some of us learned to judge those who didn’t dress as we’d been taught. We need to be cautious when leaving that we don’t turn and then judge anyone who still dresses that way. There is nothing wrong with someone only wearing skirts or dresses.

When changing our manner of dress or other standards, it should be because we see that the doctrine that was taught is not biblical and it should never be to ‘get back’ at anyone or to flaunt your freedom in their face. In other words, be careful to not replace one bad attitude with another.

One book on outward holiness standards that I have recommended for years is Linda Hopper’s False Holiness Standards. Linda Hopper was a former UPC member and her husband was a licensed by them. The Hoppers are now retired from ministry. The book covers topics such as pants on women, jewelry, make-up, and women’s hair. “This book is a thorough and exhaustive research project that was inspired from Linda’s desire to know the complete truth about what the Bible really says regarding Christian adornment, especially in connection with women’s dress.” You can try watching for a copy on Amazon.

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Trying to not throw the baby out with the bath water!

We have been out of the UPC (United Pentecostal Church) for several weeks (almost months) now. I have read an abundance of books, posts, other materials as well as the Bible. My son bought me a new Thompson Chain Reference Bible for my birthday in November. I am trying to figure out the best way to use it. 🙂

The more I read, the more error I see in the UPC organization/doctrine/ministry. . .

I am realizing finding the answers I need will not be an easy task.

This I know:

God loves me of this I am absolutely certain.
If I am saved as in salvation, it will only be by faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement on the cross, not by anything I have done or could possibly do.
Most of the UPC salvational works and especially ‘standards‘ cannot be supported by scripture.
There is a great deal of intentional and unintentional spiritual abuse and scamming in the UPC and other groups proclaiming to have the ‘truth’.
Giving to a church or pastor (especially a pastor) is most often not the same thing as giving to God.

Well, the past few weeks and months have not been wasted. I am on a journey. My understanding and relationship with God is growing stronger as I realize it should be built on love and trust rather than fear. I am immensely thankful for God, his Word, the wonderful people He has put in my life and the love I feel more strongly each day.

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Questions with crazy answers

When I was young, I asked my (pastor’s wife) mom:

“Why do the most sinful people in the church speak in tongues and dance the most?”
Answer: I guess God knows they need more strength so he blesses them more.

“Why do people in other churches seem so much happier and nicer than our church people?”
Answer: I guess the devil doesn’t bother them so much since he knows they are already lost.

Now that I am older than she was then, I am guessing my mom probably wondered the same things and was just trying to give me answers that would keep me in church and she probably did not know or didn’t want to know the true answers herself.

So why are people not in UPC happier and nicer?? Because they are not in bondage; they are free to enjoy the joy of the Lord without condemnation. As for the dancing, tongue talking sinners, we all can guess what that answer should have been . . . . . 🙂

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