Category: leaving | Page 17 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Just Couldn’t Stay Part 3

Continued from Part Two.

Now I am fifteen and am starting to be attentive to preaching. At this point in my life I didn’t fully understand or know what my theology was. I believed that Jesus was God’s son, people could get the Holy Ghost without speaking in tongues, baptism was something that Christians just did and you were saved at repentance. Oh, and living holy was like, live it or burn forever. So, we started at this new United Pentecostal church and like I said earlier they quickly let us know we were not in the truth. They constantly sang songs of the oneness of God, talked about speaking in tongues more than I had ever heard talked about in my life.

My mom and I were like okay great. But it wasn’t great. You see it was not this is what we believe and you can choose it, it was more like this is what we believe and you better jump on the wagon as well. My mother and I at the time were the only ones attending church. My dad had long stopped going and my only sibling was doing their own thing. So, my mom and I quickly got set up for a bible study. That’s when it all came out. The oneness of God. (insert disclaimer: I am not discrediting the belief of the oneness of God, I am still sorting out that belief, however I am saying that it was shoved down our throats and made a salvation issue.) After this bible study my mom and I went home and discussed it. I don’t remember us coming to a conclusion at that point. However, I do remember the pressure we received before we finally relented or just stop asking questions.

Fast forward to me being eighteen and I just couldn’t stay any longer in my parents’ home. The con-stringent rules were driving me over board. My mother and I constantly fought. If the church had UPC standards my mother had commands and demands, if one was going to live in her house you live by her rules. So, I left home and moved in with another family member.

It was during that time I meet my first real boyfriend. I was eighteen and free at last free at last… and well you know the rest of that. That boyfriend became what I come to know now as my husband. He describes those times when I first meet him as a rebel without a cause. I was trying to live out eighteen confined years in six months. He calmed me down and gave me balance when I didn’t know what that was.

We lived our first few years of marriage in bliss. No, really we did. After a while I noticed God dealing with me. I don’t think God ever left me, as much as it was me leaving him. I stopped having a relationship with HIM. My mom invited me back to church and I went. That second Sunday that I attended at the end of service she let me know she believed in the oneness of God. She gave me a story of how she came to believe that. Immediately I felt hot and angry. I remembering feeling like I had been lied to all my life. Keep in mind I didn’t search out scripture to see if this was true, I was just mad.

At that point I started praying and I remember a small voice in my head say “Why not repent you are already praying.” I remember thinking why not so I did. Now here is the deal after that….oh goodness it’s hard to explain. Let me try my best. I remember my mouth shaking, from me or some other force I don’t know. Then everyone was cheering and my mom was like “The Holy Ghost is all over you just speak it out.” So I guess that is what they call stammering lips, tongues, or the infilling. The pastor came and talked to me and I quickly said I got the Holy Ghost for fear of the church badgering me for months and years about getting it. I had seen people go through that and I was for one not going to. My whole niche about that was I truly believe I got “saved” at repentance when it was just me and the still small voice without the crowds and the cheering.

I started attending church regularly and started “living the part.” On the contrast, I couldn’t for the life of me when they started teaching that everybody was going burn in Hell but us believe that. I couldn’t for the life of me tolerate the hatred when they talked about Trinitarians. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why my husband didn’t jump on the band wagon with me. Eventually I let my brain die and picked up everybody else’s. I ceased to exist any longer. Their thoughts became my thoughts, their actions became my actions, their beliefs my beliefs. I was so caught up in it all I forgot to stop, think, read, and reason.

I might also add this was a time in my marriage I started to view my husband as an enemy. He didn’t believe the way I did, he didn’t attend church all the time like I did. Let’s just put it out there plain, he didn’t become indoctrinated like I did. That was the beginning of my own UPC experience. I was attending church for myself. I really did love the Lord and wanted to be a Christian. However, I was always confused on still what saved me, was I going to make to heaven? Was I doing enough? I had so much conviction it turned into heartburn. But there I was in church the first to run the aisles, pray, encourage the others, sign up for everything going on try and get in good with the pastor and his family. It was hard work and tiring. All while leaving my family at home. Day after day disconnecting myself from my husband because he wasn’t bandwagon man. He wasn’t a minister, pastor, evangelist, department head, musician or anybody important. He didn’t act like the men at church all holy and stuff. He was just, himself. Heartbreaking as it is I wasn’t myself at all…..

To be continued.

To my former church

Dear former church:

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

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

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

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

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

This is what the Bible says:

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

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

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

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

Just Couldn’t Stay Part 2

Continued from Part One.

It wasn’t just one thing that made me decide to leave as I mentioned yesterday, it was a compilation of many.

Alright back story time. I grew up in a ‘holiness’ church. Translation: any and everything will result in loss of salvation and send you to Hell. Things like fish net pantyhose, men with no ties on their shirts, crossing your legs in church for women, and popping your fingers because that is what the worldly people did to worldly music. Literally any and everything was a sin. Sin too many times and God would get tired of you and you would be “turned over to the devil.” All hope was lost at that point. You could have very well been bff’s with the Anti-Christ at that point. The list could go on and on.

Growing up my mother wouldn’t even participate in just everyday conversations at times because that would result in loss of salvation. I remember one time she yelled out in fear and anger “I’m not worried about those people I’m just trying to stay saved.” The reason for the outburst, my dad had just asked her if she remembered an old friend.

The deal is this ‘holiness’ group was not Apostolic Pentecostal aka Oneness Pentecostals. They were/are Trinitarians and believed in Matthew 28:19 literally. However, they were saved and we believed we were too at that time. They spoke in tongues, prophesied, danced in the Spirit, dressed and looked the part of UPC standards and obeyed the pastors every word.

We left that church for a time and started attending an United Pentecostal church across town, you know those Jesus only people. They did all the exact same things we did at our old church except for the “3 step salvation part.” I was only six at the time but I adored that little church. We didn’t stay there long though and I never knew why. So off we marched back to the Trinitarian holiness church.

For the most part that was my religious upbringing. The upbringing of fire and brimstone, blink twice and burn in hell, “God ain’t playing with y’all,” once saved barely saved, doubt your salvation every second of the day upbringing. How did I cope with it at the tender age of two till I could escape, suffer through a lot of psychology damage? It wasn’t until later in life I realized how catastrophic my view of God was.

When I was fifteen we decided to leave that church and organization for good. We visited another little UPC church in our town. They quickly let us know we had not been in the “truth.”

To be continued.

I Just Couldn’t

I couldn’t stay once I read it in the bible for myself.
I couldn’t stay any longer when I found out that a lot of what I believed was added into scripture.
I couldn’t stay any longer once my eyes where open to the pride.
I couldn’t stay any longer when the inconsistencies in scripture were too big to ignore any longer.
I couldn’t stay any longer when after 13 years in, I still didn’t know if I was saved or not.
I couldn’t stay any longer when after 13 years I didn’t know who or what was going to save me in the end.
I couldn’t stay any longer when pastor after pastor, preacher after preacher constantly contradicted each other.
I couldn’t stay any longer when I found out other Christians loved Jesus and had a relationship with Him (I was lead to believe both of those where false) yet they didn’t hold to the same soteriology I did.
I couldn’t stay any longer when I found out about grace.
I couldn’t stay any longer and listen to the hatred, depression, fear induced, cliché, non-biblical preaching.

So, what did I do? I left Oneness Pentecostalism. It was by far the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It was the most traumatic experience in my life and it didn’t happen overnight. Did I ‘backslide?’ No, I did the exact opposite. I found Jesus.

To be continued.

God agrees with ME!

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on November 30, 2014.

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We’re just wasting time
Trying to prove who’s right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it’s just you and me
Trying to find the light.
– Mat Kearney, Ships in the Night

So much religious noise, all around me…

“No, Eleanor, you have to receive the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, and be baptized in my church, because it’s the only true Pentecostal church in Colorado Springs. I know you’re a Christian, but you aren’t Apostolic.”

“I’m a five point Calvinist. Human beings are utterly depraved and cannot be saved except by prompting of the Holy Spirit.”

“You don’t love Jesus, because you don’t obey his commandments.”

…I live in Colorado Springs, ok? Dubbed the Christian Mecca, due to Focus on the Family, Compassion International, the Navigators, and New Life Church.

And I have friends from nearly every denomination, and many friends of other beliefs.

Since I’m friendly and very extroverted, I often get well-meaning people trying to convince me of this or that doctrine. Or try to get me to go to their church when I’m not seeking another place to attend. My friend Cynthia B. calls this “church cannibalism.”

It all feels the same at the bottom – do you see me, do you value me as an individual? Do you care about me outside of earning brownie points for your church or god?

And if I don’t agree, then more convincing is in order.

It’s like the opening lyrics to Relient K’s song “Failure to Excommunicate.”

It’s the principle, it’s the issue / that your principle would dismiss you. / Because you don’t fit into that All-American Box, / that coffin created for creative thought.

I’m not denying that objective truth exists. But as imperfect humans, how do we know that we are properly interpreting that truth?

Academic research in 2009 indicates that humans have a strong tendency to make God agree with us, to anthropomorphize our deities.

Shouldn’t Christians be different, if we believe the verse we quote so much:

“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”

I think this is where fundamentalism for any belief becomes Pharisaical, looking for outward signs when no one knows anyone else’s heart.

One of Relevant magazine’s latest pieces, “Wrestling with Faith and Doubt,” addresses this:

“We never find Jesus calling someone a heretic because they interpreted an Old Testament story figuratively when it was supposed to be read literally or vice-versa.”

And the writer points out that in these details, we miss the endgame of Jesus’ message, loving God and our neighbor.

What if we were all just truth-seeking together, admitting sometimes we get it wrong? I admire people in the church who can say their well-meant methods didn’t work.

One of my pastor friends said at a conference last spring:

“I have a master’s in Christian education, and I thought discipleship was you get a bunch of people together and you do a Beth Moore Bible study, or a Henry Blackaby Bible study, and that’s what I did for years, but I was wrong.”

He discovered discipleship in community, bonding with others, not rote memorization.

Most of my spiritual journey has been finding where I got tangled, reaching for the light on the other side.

Rather than forcing change on everyone else, I’d rather seek out where I am wrong, to find spiritual healing for myself. The plank-in-the-eye metaphor is actually helpful here.

Because, like my pastor friend said about following Jesus:

“Some people make this complicated. It’s real simple. It’s so simple, it’s subversive.”

I crave more of this subversive simplicity.