God Asked Me to Buy…

We all heard the news recently of a prominent televangelist who told his followers God said to raise million of dollars to buy a personal jet airplane. Why in God’s name do people who live in Section 8 housing, collect food stamps, and are on Medicaid fall for the sales pitch?

I fell for a similar sales pitch in 2002. The church I attended was looking at gathering funds for a high end car supposedly for church use. I was approached because I was careful with my finances and somehow the church knew I had some cash on hand. Being the good brother and elder, I offered to give $1000 towards purchasing the vehicle. It was a sweet ride, but then I noticed it never was used by the church as much as it was used by the pastor.

For the generous donation I made, the least the church could have done was let me drive the car. I felt like a big horse’s rear end, realizing helping with the purchase did not mean I could even sit in the driver’s seat.

For those who feel the urge to donate for airplanes and other high end merchandise, ask yourselves this: will the pastor let you have any use of those items after you donate? If the pastor is living in a luxurious home and you live in the projects, wouldn’t it be possible he could take out a personal loan without trying to dig in YOUR wallet?

Do yourselves a favor and don’t give these charlatans one dime.

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Three Steps Part 5: The Second Step

Original post is here. This is continued from Three Steps Part 4: Feminism and Fellowship.

The second half of the 1970s was a time of growing tension in American society, and in my family.  We had had the first real economic crisis since the Great Depression, and people were jumpy.  Instead of blaming the changing economy, they blamed the scapegoat du jour, feminism.  Feminism took the hit for two trends that had been actually going on for most of the 20th Century.  One of them was the return of the largest number of women to the workforce since WWII.  While it was true that feminism encouraged women who wished to work to pursue their dreams, the majority were motivated by the economy.  For every woman who went to work to to fulfill her potential there were 20 who did it to put food on the table for their families.

The more serious issue in the opinion of our neighbors that feminism was blamed for was the rising divorce rates.  I can remember riding the bus to school and all the other kids were talking about how their parents were getting divorced or had gotten divorced.  They thought we had the only parents in the neighborhood who were still together.  I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that our parents were actually already on their second marriage.  They had divorced a decade earlier to beat the rush.

The real culprit was a bad model for marriage.  Marriages made in the early 20th Century were encouraged to follow an occupational model where marriage was viewed as a job with fixed rules that could not be deviated from.  This meant that nothing could be changed if the marriage wasn’t working by those fixed rules.  Worse, it encouraged cheating on a spouse by equating it with what was considered the relatively minor offense of cheating on your employer.  Consequently there was an epidemic of unhappy marriages, and the divorce rate had climbing steadily since the late 1950s before starting to climb steeply in the late 1960s.  The saying, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure” was painfully true for far too many people.

Feminists pushed a partnership model of marriage, where each spouse was an equal partner able to renegotiate when things weren’t working out so as to prevent getting a divorce.  It also equated cheating on a spouse with the more socially serious offense of cheating on a partner instead of cheating your boss.  Starting in the late 1960s more marriages have followed this model, and consequently the divorce rates would decline dramatically in the years to come.  But in the late 1970s things had never looked scarier to people who valued traditional marriage.

I don’t know which of these pressures was getting under my adoptive mother’s skin and turning her into a vindictive jerk, but something was.  She didn’t like it when the sour economy which forced her to go back to work, even though she had worked until we moved to Birmingham only a few years before.  She didn’t like it that her second marriage had deteriorated even further, judging from the fact that my adoptive father’s coworkers had pity-dumped a multi-year stash of Playboy back issues on him that he had to hide in the basement.  She didn’t like it that her hair had started to turn grey, which she was camouflaging with the new “frosted highlights” treatment.  She didn’t like it that I was getting positive attention from being in the gifted program; she let everyone know that even if I was smart I would never amount to anything.  She didn’t like it that I was starting to ask questions.  She took all her myriad dislikes for everything else and focused them on one target — me.

Honestly, I found life bewildering at that point.  I was old enough that my reason was starting to kick into gear.  I could figure out logic puzzles, but the real world didn’t make much sense.  And I dearly wanted it to make sense in such a way where everybody agreed with everybody else and people really loved me.  But in the real world the arguments only increased and my mother’s abuse only grew more overt.

Well gosh darn it, I was going to try anyway.  Both my gifted class and my church taught that reason could and should be used to make the world better, so I was going to use it.  But it was hard to reconcile reason and misogyny, especially the virulent misogyny of my adoptive mother, who made Southern men of the 1970s look like die-hard feminists in comparison.

For instance, there was the whole question of women’s role in society.   My adoptive mother staunchly defended the natural inferiority of women, and more importantly the natural superiority of white women who believed in the natural inferiority of women over those women of any race who did not believe any such thing.  This gave her a moderately high position in the hierarchy from which to look down upon others without having the responsibility that went from being at the top of the heap.  It was important to her that I uphold the anti-feminist party line.  I could not.  Much as I wanted to please her, I could not believe in something so — dumb.  I mean, if God intended women to be less intelligent than men, why didn’t He make high IQ a sex-linked trait?  But He didn’t.  Therefore, He must have meant women to use the gifts He gave them.  Including the gifts He gave me.  Including my analytical mind.  Which, when I did use, people accused me of not being the kind of girl God wanted me to be.

I was only a kid, and the stress was wearing me down.  Finally, one Sunday morning after some especially vicious remarks on the way to church I could stand it no longer.  I did something I hadn’t done since I was very little.  I prayed to God.  Not only that, for the first time in my life I prayed to God for a sign.  I had always thought that was selfish, but I was desperate to clear up the confusion.

Imagine my surprise when I got one.

It was the Sunday before Easter, which is Palm Sunday.  Palm Sunday, for those who haven’t been to church in a while was when Jesus led a parade of his followers into Jerusalem in the hopes of making radical changes in the Establishment, hopes which were to be completely dashed by the Old Guard.  It was also the first sermon by our brand new preacher, and the first chance for most folks to meet him.

The church was packed with listeners curious to hear the new preacher.  He began by saying that he knew everyone expected to hear him speak of Big Things, but he wasn’t going to do that today.  There was a minor, not really important, matter that had somehow been allowed to get out of hand which had to be addressed first.  That matter was the status of women.

He said it seemed like the women of the church, and some of the men, weren’t reading their Bibles correctly.  They were focusing on the words of Jesus, but when it came to women the words of Jesus were less important than the words of Paul.  Paul had the final say on matters.

I wasn’t sure who this “Paul” fellow was.  I knew the Apostles and the Old Testament figures, but I hadn’t heard much of this guy.  And how could anybody’s words be more important than the words of Jesus?  I thought we were the followers in Jesus Christ, not somebody else.

Now, this Paul fellow was a Christian leader who came along after Jesus was dead and started organizing Jesus’ followers.  He wrote letters telling the other Christian leaders how they were supposed to interpret Jesus.  I wondered how those other Christian leaders who had actually met Jesus felt about that.

Paul had strong ideas about women’s place in the church.  Ideas like:

 Women should remain silent in the churches, They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

And:

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

We were told that this was obviously the way Jesus wanted things to be, even though it contradicted things Jesus himself had said.  We were told that this was the way the church was going to be run from now on.  We were told that women should show their assent to the new order by not dressing up for Easter next Sunday.

I sat there in shock.  It was…

It was…

It was the biggest load of malarkey I had ever heard in my life.  I felt astounded to hear such hogwash being spoken seriously and terribly embarrassed on behalf of this grown man that he was being heard saying something so foolish in public.

I thought somebody was going to stand up and call him out for having his first sermon say such crazy and divisive things, but while I could sense the consternation nobody said anything. Now, my adoptive mom didn’t sew, but I knew there were ladies who had been working on their dresses for weeks. It was a mean thing to publicly denigrate their work right before they even got to finish it. It was crass and bullying. I decided then and there the God I believed in was not mean, crass, or bullying, and anyone who said He was had just blown his credibility with me.

My adoptive mother was proudly, almost combatively, anti-crafty, so I didn’t have a dog in this fight.  But I knew there were ladies for whom new clothes on Easter were important, some for showing off, but others got into the whole “rebirth and renewal” aspect.  I had also figured out that the church ladies who sewed were proxies for the church ladies who did the other jobs the congregation needed to have done, the ladies who organized the Sunday School, organized the Fellowship Hall, dusted the sanctuary, and ran the office. These were the women whose work was the real draw to come to the church who were being belittled by proxy.

I wondered what would happen if those women stopped coming?

In my naiveté I expected that even if the women didn’t confront this new preacher directly, their menfolk would have some strong words with him after the service about insulting their womenfolk from the pulpit.  Dumb old me didn’t realize that the men’s desire to send this very message was what got the guy hired.  I would learn that lesson over time, but not that day.

That day, as I sat listening to this man stand at the pulpit and speak the most idiotic drivel I had ever heard, I had a more important lesson to learn.  He stood at the pulpit like he was some kind of authority, like he had a right to be there, but his words were not true message that Jesus had brought to Earth and died for.  Even though he looked the part, acted the part, and no one openly questioned his right to the part, I knew he was a false prophet.  That day I learned to never, EVER accept authority without question.  It didn’t matter what position he held, it mattered that his words and deeds were in keeping with that position.  And if they weren’t, he had no business being there.

My shock started to fade, to be replaced by an urge to giggle.  Not just giggle, but to guffaw with a transcendent sense of — joy.  I mean, yeah, it was awful that he was up there saying this nonsense, but, as a girl named Sarah would realize in a movie that was to come out ten years later, “You have no power over me.”

Never again would I accept without question anyone’s authority over me.  I was liberated!  I walked out of church that day feeling blessed and euphoric in my power to do what Southern Baptists were supposed to do and decide for myself what God’s words meant to me.

And that was good, because things were about to get very strange.

Coming: Three Steps Part 6: The New Guy [Edit: This was never completed.]

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Putting On A Facade

In looking for something else, I recently came across the experience of a woman who joined the United Pentecostal Church and had been married to one of their ministers. She shared how her husband regularly lied when he spoke at churches and how she never said anything when he did. Below are some partial quotes from the article.

My husband was super-popular on the evangelism circuit and often asked to testify, but he lied constantly on the pulpit about having been an ex-Satanist (uh, no), ex-Wiccan priest (NO), and drug addict/dealer (NO NO NO). No, he wasn’t Mike Warnke–just very similar! I was expected to smile and nod and go along with the lies, or else I was standing in the way of God’s work. I began to wonder if everybody else was lying about praying and fasting–I knew we never did either, but he was telling people we did…

I’d already been questioning, but my faith actually broke on the awful day I ran across my husband’s training manual for his “Crisis Pregnancy Center” counseling position. It was like finding a serial killer’s diary, in retrospect; I remember turning pages and barely breathing, I was so beyond furious and horrified at the outright lies the group was encouraging, the faulty science, the utter manipulation of hearts and minds, all in the name of doing God’s work…

…I’d have put up with all of it and stayed with my husband, though, until he began to threaten me physically to bring me back into line. I fled the country immediately and was viciously, violently stalked for the next year and a half, through our divorce and right up to his wedding day to another woman.

This caused me to think about things I knew during my time in the same organization and what I had heard from others through the years. I began to wonder just how much of this happens in unhealthy churches and groups and how long the list might be for each of the various denominations. How many ministers preach one thing and yet live another life? How many lie about their background? How many don’t give true reports of alleged revivals, conversions, healings, and the like? While there are many people in the UPC and other churches who would not think of doing what this woman’s ex-husband allegedly did, there are ones who have done similar.

As people commented on what she shared, she elaborated on her ex-husband’s ministry. Read on….

I’m glad to talk more about the manual, though. It was a nightmare to read. It advised telling women whatever had to be said to get them to the third trimester–tell them you’ll give them food or housing, tell them you’ll help with the medical bills, WHATEVER. However, it did not outline any strategy for aiding them once they’d hit the point of no return, and my Evil Ex talked often about his victories in convincing women to keep their pregnancies, but did not ever speak of helping them afterward or even visiting them in the hospital. I asked him once about what his group was doing to help babies once they were born, and he just seemed shocked anybody would even ask. The manual also outlined how to create a properly manipulative atmosphere for women–putting baby toys in the foyer, making sure the CCTV played baby videos, describing what sorts of books and pamphlets should be available to read, how long to make women wait to see a counselor, etc. It was unashamed in admitting that the whole free pregnancy test offer it made was a front to get women in the door to talk them into keeping their babies. From the moment a woman walked into a CPC for her “Free pregnancy test,” she was bombarded with psychological assault. It also made a huge deal out of post-abortion stress syndrome, which I knew had been debunked even then (in the early 90s). And I can’t forget that almost every page was plastered with Bible quotes and that my Evil Ex at least viewed every encounter as a “soul-winning” battle, a view his supervisors seemed to fully support.


Why should any minister feel the need to lie about their past and make up sensational sounding stories about themselves? Why aren’t such claims checked by fellow ministers? What causes a minister to lie about praying and fasting? Why does a minister teach certain standards but yet doesn’t follow all or some of them himself? How can a minister sign a bi-annual affirmation of faith and yet not truly believe or live what he is signing? Why do some turn a blind eye to such things and feel they are permissible?

Should someone be permitted to remain in the ministry who threatens another with physical harm, including their spouse? And how do some have affairs or sexually assault children or adults for months or years without being noticed or investigated by fellow ministers? Why do some pastors brag about having a board of ministers they are accountable to when those ministers will do nothing when any claims of improprieties are brought to their attention and where many or all of them don’t even regularly attend the church?

What about ministries which seem to be more about counting people and bringing fame to those in charge, while neglecting the care and welfare of those they are supposed to be helping? Why do some ministers feel the need to exaggerate the number of people who are baptized or speak in tongues?

These things are not Christ-like and they go against how believers are to live. Yet we see them in the lives of some who believe they are supposed to be our spiritual guides and leaders. This should not be so.

I am pretty certain that most reading this will recall their own memories of what they witnessed or heard about ministers or ministries that were wrong. These things cannot be excused because a minister, church or organization also does some good. How many people walk away because of the facade? How many people believe that if this is how Christians act, especially their ministers, they want nothing to do with Christianity?

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Marriage Trouble Part 2

Continued from part 1

Some positive things I gleaned from ‘Created to be His Help Meet’ was learning to be thankful and cheerful. I was probably stuck on living opposite most of the time. So this convicted me and I really appreciated it because I knew she had to have a real point there. Besides, I remembered my mother was often discontent and how that affected my parents marriage which ended in divorce.

I learned to be more organized with meals and keep things simple. I learned to ask my husband what are some simple things I can do to keep the house tidy enough. What were his main peeves? This really helped me a lot not to be overwhelmed and feel like a failure.

Positive to negative: I learned to be extremely flexible with my whimsical husband who was also a bit of a ‘Command Man.’ Well, he had some blind spots. He seemed to love the change in me. But I made a big mistake. I told him I wanted to submit better and almost perfectly. By this I meant that even for things I had qualms about. I would defer to him for concerns of conscience regarding some gray areas. I got the idea that I shouldn’t trust myself. Now my husband was to be the spiritual leader regardless of spiritual maturity and that God would ultimately be correcting and convicting him.

Debi Pearl used a lot of scripture and I didn’t look into the ways she used them. I started realizing later that some of the verses she cited were used in a highly questionable way. During Bible reading I would come across verses of scripture that seemed like it could clash with some things she was teaching women.

Another problem is I would be really bewildered about the way she treated the women in her letters. It was downright knife twisting mean! I felt sorry for these women. I wanted to write a letter to Debi Pearl but I was just too busy with raising the children and besides, I was afraid I might receive a verbally abusive letter. So I shrugged figuring she was just over passionate and she was wrong to be so mean but I’d just chew the meat and spit out the bones. I still had it in my mind that this book was an answer to prayer, so Debi’s zeal, while I felt it was wrong, I thought it might be there for a reason. Maybe she’d seen too many marriages die just like my mother’s.

To be continued.

Marriage Trouble Part 1
Marriage Trouble Part 2
Marriage Trouble Part 3
Marriage Trouble Part 4
Marriage Trouble Part 5

Answer these 25 questions to find out if you are in a cult or high control group

Answer these 25 questions to find out if you are in a cult or high control group:

1) Do your studies or training in the group seem to be endless?

2) Did you have to give up things that you liked doing in order to be accepted into the group? (e.g. music, places you used to go, clothes, family life, celebrations, etc.)

3) Have you been encouraged to cut off good friendships or close family ties with people from outside of the group?

4) If you’ve belonged to the group all your life, are there things that you would have liked to have done but you couldn’t, as they were incompatible with the rules of the group?

5) Does belonging to the group involve dressing in a certain way and using a particular terminology?

6) Have you noticed a double moral standard in the group, where individuals pretend to be an ideal person in order to be accepted?

7) Do you have to project or maintain an outward appearance of happiness within the group, although deep down you are sad or dissatisfied?

8) Do you have to make more and more of an effort to continue being an active member of the group or are you requested to give more and more money?

9) Is criticism within the group or listening to critics forbidden and punished harshly?

10) Can you reject any instruction or order from the group, although publicly it is phrased as a “suggestion”?

11)  Can you question any teaching or doctrine of the group, although the criticism may be well founded and expressed respectfully?

12) Are those who reject or criticize the group or its leaders said to be rejecting God himself?

13) Are the leaders enormously relevant to the group members, and does their influence affect every aspect of the group members’ lives?

14) Are the leaders seen to be superior the rest of the members?

15) Do they claim to have divine authority or to have been appointed directly by God?

16) Do the leaders affirm that only they can communicate with God directly and receive his instructions for the group?

17) In the meetings of the group, are certain phrases or concepts reinforced periodically and topics repeated frequently?

18) Do expressions of love/brotherly affection within the group often seem fake, superficial or insincere?

19) Is it forbidden to date or marry someone who does not belong to the group?

20) As well as the communal meetings, is it obligatory to attend large conferences or other special events, and are members constantly kept very busy in activities related with the group?

21) Do you have the feeling that you’re never doing enough to reach the prize or recompense that the group promotes?

22)  Out of loyalty to the group, are there things that you must not say or secrets that you must not reveal?

23) Are the members of the group the only ones who can please God?

24) In general, do the group members feel superior to those who don’t belong to it?

25) Does the group teach that they are the only ones who will be saved, and that God will destroy or punish all those who don’t belong to it?

If the majority of your answers to these questions are “yes” (except 10 and 11) you are definitely involved in a sect/cult.

Tell us more about your story, please share in the comments below, or if you’re not comfortable writing publicly, consider joining the Spiritual Abuse online support group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/813830865371192/.   You are not alone.

Versión Original en Español:

Test para saber si estás en una secta

1) ¿Tus estudios o entrenamiento con el grupo parecen no tener fin?

2) ¿Has debido dejar cosas que te gustan a fin de ser aceptado en el grupo (música, sitios donde ibas, manera de vestir, vida familiar, celebraciones, etc.)?

3) ¿Has tenido que dejar buenas amistades para pertenecer al grupo?

4) En el caso de haber pertenecido toda tu vida al grupo ¿hay cosas que hubieras querido hacer pero que no puedes por ser incompatibles con las reglas del grupo?

5) ¿Pertenecer al grupo supone seguir una manera de vestir particular y usar un vocabulario diferente?

6) ¿Se observa una doble moral en el grupo, donde los individuos fingen ser una persona ideal para ser aceptados?

7) ¿Debes proyectar y fomentar una imagen de felicidad dentro del grupo aunque internamente estés triste o disconforme?

8) ¿Tienes que dar cada vez más dinero o hacer cada vez más esfuerzo para seguir siendo miembro activo del grupo?

9) ¿La crítica dentro del grupo o el hecho de escuchar a personas con opiniones contrarias está prohibida y se castiga desproporcionadamente?

10) ¿Se puede rechazar alguna directriz u ordenanza del grupo aunque públicamente se plantee como “sugerencia”?

11) ¿Se puede cuestionar alguna enseñanza o doctrina del grupo, aunque la crítica esté fundada y se plantee en términos respetuosos?

12) ¿Se pinta a los que rechazan/critican al grupo o a su(s) líder(es) como personas que en realidad rechazan a Dios?

13) ¿El líder(es)  es (son)  enormemente relevante(s) para los miembros del grupo, su influencia abarca cada aspecto de la vida de los miembros?

14) ¿El líder(es) forma(n) parte de una clase especial, o superior al común de los miembros?

15) ¿El líder(es) ostenta(n) una autoridad o nombramiento otorgado por Dios directamente?

16) ¿El líder(es) afirma(n) que sólo él(ellos) puede(n) comunicarse con Dios directamente y recibir Sus directrices para el grupo?

17) ¿En las reuniones del grupo se repiten frases o se refuerzan conceptos periódicamente, percibes que los temas se van repitiendo?

18) ¿Las expresiones de afecto/amor fraternal al interior del grupo son a menudo fingidas?

19) ¿Están prohibidas las relaciones de pareja con personas que no pertenezcan al grupo?

20) ¿Además de las reuniones comunes, debes asistir a eventos especiales y largas conferencias, se procura mantener a los miembros muy ocupados en las actividades del grupo?

21) ¿Hay una sensación de que nunca estás haciendo lo suficiente para alcanzar el premio o recompensa que el grupo promueve?

22) Por lealtad al grupo, ¿hay cosas que no debes decir o secretos que no puedes revelar?

23) ¿Sólo los miembros del grupo pueden agradar a Dios?

24) En general, ¿los miembros del grupo se sienten superiores al resto de las personas?

25) ¿Sólo los miembros del grupo se salvarán, Dios destruirá o castigará eternamente a todo aquél que no pertenezca al grupo?

Si la mayoría de tus respuestas son “Sí” (excepto 10 y 11), sin duda estás envuelto en una secta. Cuéntanos tu historia; no estás solo.

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