Category: cult | Page 3 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

How to spot Pastor/Leader Worship

Intriguingly, not a single person in the Bible was named Pastor, yet it was named in the 5-fold ministry and appears to be a spiritual gift, something that was enacted for the perfecting of God’s people. A position of leadership, to point towards the Christ and to inspire others toward Christ.

Yet, history and experience have also taught that pastors can become idolized, creating movements that follow the man and not the Christ. When the man fails, the movement fails. And when a human reveres another human, they are ripe to be taken advantage of by that human.

My inspiration for this writing is two-fold. First is that I left (after 15 years) what is a bonafide cult – a split off church from the Oneness Pentecostal church (United Pentecostal Church) that went independent and fanatical. In this cult, the pastor was everything, overriding any leading of the Spirit an individual may have. Secondly, I recently finished watching the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

First Things First

This is not to bash and bang on pastors. Only God knows the burden and labor someone who takes that office is placed under. If you believe in spiritual warfare, I would argue 75% of that warfare is aimed at spiritual leaders. They must take seriously their position of leading people to Christ, and simultaneously remember they are simply followers themselves. I think the latter part is the hardest.

In the documentary about Baghwan Rajneesh, a Hindu guru that amassed a great following and eventually created a 70,000 acre compound in Antelope, OR, (191 miles from where I live) it becomes evident immediately that this man is being worshiped. Every person hangs on his every word and to simply be in his presence evoked great emotions.

I can recall three times in the 15 years of my time in my cult that I was able to sit next to the pastor, and I would have given my right arm for each experience. I felt special to be that close to the man. His admiration and approval meant everything to me in the years that I was really bought into the lies. At a group function (one time) I sat next to my pastor and I probably gushed with arrogant pride that it was me and not someone else.

Worshiping Leadership

The first way to spot Pastor Worship is seeing someone completely enamored and devoted to the person. They hang on their every word. If the pastor stands up, they stand up. If the pastor wears blue, they wear blue.

One way I spotted it in my cult was noticing people dressed and reflected the pastor. The way the young men in the church talked sounded like the pastor. Their facial expressions mimicked the pastor. The phrases and speech style of the pastor was mimicked in the young men. This was the same for the young women who would mimic the pastor’s wife.

There certainly is nothing wrong with admiring a person for their labor in the church, but when you begin cloning the person, you have idolized them and they have absolute control over you.

These people will often repeat phrases the pastor has shrouded in his messages like, ‘This man has given his life for me!’ or ‘He has given everything to this church, the least we can do is give him our everything…’ (Please note that one man giving his wealth, to having 100, 200, 1000 or more people return their wealth is a pretty good ROI!)

This also ends with followers becoming militant in their defense of the pastor or leader. In the Rajneesh cult, they literally took up weapons. In my cult, I heard men say, while pumping their fist in the air or punching one palm with the other fist, ‘Don’t you come against my man of God or you’ll get the five folded ministry.’

The Pastor Overrides God

One of the most striking examples of this came when I felt the Lord lead me into some type of ministry. At the time I felt God called me to take the Gospel to a third-world country. We always think of that as an evangelist or preacher.

After three or four days of turmoil, I went to the pastor and told him about it. His response was a little shocking to me now – but then I accepted it as right. The pastor said,

“If that was God leading you, he would have confirmed it in me, and he hasn’t.”

Another example of this is a man I know who felt it was right to take his family to another town and another church. Instead of the pastor asking, “Is this what you think the Lord wants you to do, and if so, then listen to Him.” the pastor said, “I don’t think this is the right move and if you move without my blessings, you’ll do it without God’s blessings too.”

That family is basically exiled from the church because they moved without the pastors blessing.

The Bible tells Christians to be led by the Spirit, not by a man. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Not the pastor’s commandments. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t seek counsel from our pastor, and listen, but if he (pastor) thinks he is wiser and overrides the Spirit, he is out of his place.

No Demand Seems Too High, No Crime is Too Much

Outsiders, often family, will say things like, “Why do you let them control you like that?” and the most common response is, “They don’t control me! I want to do this.”

People who idolize their pastor never feel like the demands are too high. No amount of time, money, energy or sacrifice is enough to pay back all that the pastor has put in to the church. And they normally remind you of this, roundabouts time to preach about tithing.

Furthermore, people who idolize their pastor look right over the top of controversy and criminal behavior and call it ‘persecution of the devil.’ A classic example is my old pastor, who was found guilty of violating child labor laws and was subsequently sued for defaming a former member and settled for nearly $1,000,000 to shut up the former member with a gag order. To the people still in the church, it was ‘made up charges’ and ‘worldly persecution.’

Conclusion

This is the reality of pastor worship. If you are a pastor and reading this, please know that I am not coming against you – just those who abuse the position.

1 Peter 2:9 tells us that we are a peculiar people belonging to God. Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against HIS church. Jesus prayed to the father and called us HIS sheep.

We do not belong to a pastor – we follow a pastor if he is walking and leading us to Christ. Paul said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1. This leaves the door open that if Paul stops imitating Christ, they (disciples) were to stop imitating Paul.

If you see someone idolizing their pastor, share this article with them. We need a revolution of people willing to follow Christ and not the man with the shiniest suit, the finest car, the best programs, the trophy wife…Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Feed my sheep,’ not ‘Fleece my sheep.’

Please view my original content at https://www.dividetheword.blog

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Returning to Abuse? A Dog Returns to it’s Vomit

It’s 3:15am as I write this article. I woke in the night thinking about this topic as it’s been on my mind for some time, maybe months. To be honest with you though, I went to bed really early, like 7pm so I got plenty of sleep. I don’t want you thinking I’m sleep-typing!

I’m writing about this topic because I have to. Something in me is driven to expose the wrongdoings of manipulative people in places of spiritual authority and power. I could certainly write about cool places in the world and get more likes, but it’s about the information, not the popularity to me.

Between this blog, my YouTube channel and several social media support groups I participate in, plus hundreds of hours of reading books and watching videos, I’ve learned something very powerful by listening to hundreds of people: Spiritual abuse affects the mind in exactly the same way physical and sexual abuse does.

The victim is tricked into believing “I need this, even if it hurts, is uncomfortable and people are warning me otherwise!”

Like a dog that returns to his vomit Is a fool who repeats his foolishness. – Proverbs 26:11, AMP

The Cycle of Abuse

I don’t mention it often anymore, but I left what is considered by most of the world, both religious and academic, to be a cult. It is a modern Christian church that uses a parcel of truth, a pinch of authenticity and a sprinkle of love to create a system of dependency upon the leadership of the church rather than Christ – and it works, really well sad to say. Our loyalty was to the leader. We believed his pleasure was equal to God’s pleasure. If the leader said jump, it was as if Jesus said jump, and we jumped. Boy did we jump!

This system taught that you were unable to succeed in your Christian walk without this man. We went to church nearly 200x a year (three services every week plus special times through the year) and it was ingrained into us that if we missed one of those services, Satan was beginning to work in our lives.

We were taught that this one pastor was the umbrella of protection against God’s wrath and against Satan’s snares. His[Pastor] words were HIS[Jesus] words. His[Pastor] standards were HIS[Jesus] commands. There was no leading ‘of the spirit.’ That was the Pastor’s job. The pastor taught, “If God has something for you, he will confirm it in me.”

In other words, you need this. You need this man to be under God’s blessings. You need this one individual person to succeed in life. If you get out of this persons control and things start to happen in your life that are uncomfortable, you’ll begin to think it is your fault, if you would just have listened to that person this wouldn’t be happening…

The effect is like a “pendulum of pain,” said Steven Stosny, counselor and founder of the anger and violence management program CompassionPower, which treats people convicted of abuse in the home.

Abuse victims will “leave out of either fear, anger or resentment,” he said. “But then, after the fear, anger or resentment begins to subside, they feel guilt, shame, anxiety, and that takes them back.”

Just waiting for the curses to begin…

Vomiting is a natural reaction of the body and it is usually caused by ingesting something your body rejects, something poisonous or contaminated. We hear all the time about food poisoning, eating food that is expired and harmful for consumption. If your body didn’t naturally dispose of that poison it would spread into your other areas and cause more disruption and perhaps damage.

There is something about the spirit that God gave us that behaves in much the same way. It is that sixth sense we talk about. That ‘something’ you can’t quite put a finger on but you know it is there. An internal discontent, a small still voice.

Admittedly, this was me in the months after I left the cult. I was literally waiting, daily, for the curses to begin. I stopped paying the church the 15% of my income they demanded and I was sure any day I’d get fired, the car would blow up, something major was going to come crashing down as proof that I’d really screwed up. But it didn’t.

As tension builds up in a situation of abuse, we are preparing to vomit, and like all of us, we swallow and drink water, focus, and concentrate, do everything we can to make it NOT happen. It is so uncomfortable I would rather NOT vomit, even though vomiting will get the yuck out. And just like the Cycle of Abuse chart – that tension rises until finally, the incident happens.

It comes out, the anger spills forth, we spit out what has been troubling us for so long and some of us take the leap and leave the abusive situation. The cult, the abuser. And then, fear kicks in.

What if he was right…what if God is going to curse me now that I left? What if my flat tire was God saying Hello! What are you doing? What if my bad financial choices were God pulling the strings and spanking me for not giving my money to the pastor? What if…I’ve got to go back!

And this is where the dog returns to his folly as Proverbs 26:11 says. In fact, the entire chapter is about folly. The ingestion of things unsettling and poisonous is ignored, swallowed down and chased with a good shot of coverup hugs and celebration.

This phase always feels good – while distrust sits in the back of everyone’s mind, the kiss and makeup phase is fun – ask any long-term couple. The euphoric makeup scene always comes after great conflict or a fight.

The final phase of abuse settles in – the calm before the storm. The one benefit any counselor has in watching people return to abuse is knowing that the cycle restarts, and as painful as it is to watch, the great hope is that somewhere between cycles it becomes too much and the victim makes their final escape.

It is in this phase where the returning victim claims there was never any abuse. It was a misunderstanding. Sadly, we’ll even hear them say, It was all me, I got confused, I made stuff up, I let other people blind me to the love that he really has for me.

This is where the abuser smiles, extends love, makes promises, opens up. They will say things like, “I just held out hope you would come back and look, God answered my prayers!” or “You felt it, you know this is right!” Pretty, enticing words that don’t actually cover up anything of what happened before – it just tickles the euphoric senses of the dog returning to its folly. The comfortable kennel that smells like it always did. The blanket is matted in just the same spots. It feels secure. The treats are just the same bacon flavored Kibbles and Bits as before. It feels like home…

Until one day…

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The Sin of Truth Speaking

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32, ESV).

The church I grew up in claims to be one of the few “with a revelation of the truth.” There were many comments continually about other churches “not having the truth,” and after I married, my husband and I taught our children that other groups “don’t have the whole truth.”

Never did I dream just how unwelcome the truth would be in such an environment. Speaking anything against a preacher was automatically wrong–no matter how truthful. Speaking a firm truth to a preacher was also damning. This was normal, as far as I knew…after all, I came in as a newborn baby and it was my father who was the preacher.

Then I grew up. Because preaching was such a lofty position–right up there next to God, if a preacher was “caught in sin” of a sexual nature, he would lose the right to be a preacher permanently. God would forgive, but he could no longer be used in that way.

This was a scary setup. Anyone who dared suggest any impropriety against a preacher was accused of “trying to ruin his ministry.” So, the culture bred silence. The few who did speak up were cast out of churches, accused of rebellion and lying, and treated as dangerous vipers. People became afraid to speak up.

Pastoral positions came with unquestioning authority, and corruption festered. People were taught to have a hero worship for pastors. It was not uncommon to see congregants kneeling before a pastor, shining his shoes. They pinched and scrimped to buy him lavish gifts–a crocodile Bible case or a $1,000 pair of shoes. I saw people share their food stamps and commodities with their pastor in an attempt to “tithe.” I saw them buy a sofa for one pastor’s Christmas, and present it in front of the congregation.

I dreaded Christmas when I was a little girl and my whole family were presented with gifts. We sat at the altar and opened them in front of everyone and I didn’t know why it made me feel so bad. I was just a kid trying to be a kid, but it’s hard to be “one of the kids” when you’re the only one getting a present you have to open in front of others who have none.

It was within this atmosphere that I began to notice that truth really wasn’t welcome.

The first case I remember was in Missouri somewhere. A preacher was arrested in a rest area for propositioning an undercover policeman. He claimed innocence. He said it was a set up. Then he said he didn’t realize what he said to the policeman was a proposition. It went to court with all of his preacher friends backing him and supporting his side of the story. He was found guilty. Still, he had the support of his preacher friends, who utterly defended his innocence, in spite of the court decision. Was he guilty? Who knows? The point is, he sure looked to be, and yet, even in the face of a court decision, he was not removed from preaching, and continued fully supported by his colleagues.

The truth was not welcome.

Another case occurred in New Mexico. It didn’t involve the courts. It involved a female in the church. This lady was historically upright and loyal, very dedicated to the church. The new pastor took advantage of that, making sexual advances to her. Confused and hurt, she contacted her former pastor for advice. He took the matter to the “board of elders” over the church–a group of three preachers chosen by the pastor to provide oversight and accountability. They performed an “investigation” where they listened to the pastor’s story but never interviewed the lady. They decided he’d been falsely accused. The former pastor was livid. He knew this lady, and she was not one to make things up. Again, truth was not welcome.

Then it happened to my friend.

She was a pastor’s wife. She’d been dealing with the domestic abuse for years. She shared with me that she’d gone to preachers, who’d “counseled,” but little changed. In some respects, it grew worse as time went on. It wasn’t just my friend who was suffering, several kids were involved. Finally, some frightening things took place and she shared how she had finally felt “release” to leave. The local women’s shelter carefully helped her plan for safe departure.

Once she and her children were safe with family in another state, she called to let him know. She said she told him if he’d see a professional counselor, then she’d talk to him again. He refused.

She saw a professional counselor for the first time herself, who, upon hearing the details, called the child abuse hotline to report what he’d done to the kids. An investigation was opened. She showed me the order of protection from the courts.

The response was an email, forwarded to a list of preachers by one of his “board of elders.” In it, the verse “bring not an accusation against an elder except by two or three witnesses” was used. It was a request to keep the matter “in the church” and let the “board of elders” decide innocence or guilt.

Domestic abuse doesn’t have witnesses. That’s how it thrives–fear and silence. I couldn’t believe this was going down again!

Needless to say, the matter went on to the courts. In the end, he lost custody of his children and ended up with limited supervised contact. But did this mean anything in regards to his “ministry?” No.

His board of elders refused to see the documentation, only looking at what he chose to show them, and believing him without wavering. Today he is still preaching within that group, bragging about the financial support he gets and the places he preaches. She deals with this frustration even now, years later. No one ever contacted her to hear her side.

Truth was not welcome.

When I left the cult myself, my dad asked me what I could possibly be seeking. “You already have all the truth.”

Really?

What I saw was a lot of propaganda and precious little appreciation for the truth that was tangibly right in front of their faces. Their belief in a mystical “truth” but their blindness to real truth turned me away.

No, thank you! I’ll go where speaking the truth is not referred to as “sin”.

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Resilience: It Is All About Perspective

Yesterday I got the opportunity to hang out in one of my favorite stores, Barnes and Noble. I was slowly browsing through the bargain book section, when I saw a book that caught my eye. It was by Jacee Dugard, and the book jacket declared that it was her second book.

I didn’t even know she had a first book out. If I had, I would certainly have already attempted to read a copy. I’ve always loved stories about the resilience of the human spirit in situations of diversity and hardship. I loved the story of Corrie Ten Boom, reading her books over and over again. I read “A Child Called It,” horrified at his situation, but then read the sequels as well, as the story of his recovery was told. I read a historical fiction book titled “The Book Thief,” about a girl who stole books at book burnings during World War II; and another title called “The Architect,” from the same era, about a man who designed hidden rooms to help those hiding from the persecution.

For some reason, I’ve always been attracted to stories about how the human spirit refuses to be crushed by oppressors.

I think it is very likely that my interest in the topic was somehow subconsciously part of my own resilience in a world that did not make sense for much of my life. Not to over dramatize–for I certainly was never made to drink bleach, live behind the house in a tent, or hide in a crawlspace for fear of going to a concentration camp–but in a lesser sense, the world I lived in did not make logical sense, and I learned to cope with the dissonance.

Growing up, I was probably one of the most compliant children you could imagine. I cried easily, and I wanted to please. Mostly, I wanted to be at peace. So, I learned to do what was expected and to stay under the radar at all times, in order to remain somewhat invisible. Still, there are pros and cons to such existence. I remember once writing about myself and a friend, in a comparison of her more flamboyant rebellious nature and my mousy one. I had my peace, but I did not feel visible or unique. There was a cost to pay for compliance–and I paid it.

In a previous article, I wrote about human development and how it is the work of the teen years to figure out one’s identity. I pointed out then that the cult environment is hardly a place to be formulating an identity–where all are expected to conform, and uniformity is considered “submissive” and “holy.” Of course I would have felt mousy in such an environment, with a very compliant nature.

So the question remains, were we resilient? Was I resilient?

My identity was never fully formed until I was in my thirties and had stepped out of the cult. As a result, I have often felt depressed and hopeless as an adult. I often felt useless and completely emotionally malformed. Feeling like an emotional misfit was part of trying to find my way out. I did not rebel while I was in. I complied. I obeyed. I did my best to fit down in that jar. However, my brain continued to fight against that dissonance–and that, my friends, is where the resilience comes in.

Resilience is a matter of perspective. Jaycee Dugard, you may remember, was the female who was kidnapped around ten years old, and found as an adult, living in a tent behind the kidnapper’s house. She lived there with her two daughters, which had been born to her in captivity, as products of the sexual abuse she endured for years. Her resilience was not in mounting any resistance. In fact, when they found her, she had an affection for her captor and was not fully aware that his behaviors were harmful. Her first book was about those years of her life. The second book, titled “Freedom,” was about her recovery once she was released from the situation.

Bob Pelzer was the “child called It.” He survived through the abuse. Once he was safely removed, years of dysfunctional behaviors and thinking continued. He finally became able to live somewhat normally as an adult, albeit with scars that are unlikely to ever be completely erased.

Resilience means that elasticity that allows a person to “spring back into shape” (Dictionary.com). It means that certain inner toughness that continues the recovery process even when things look bleak and hopeless.

Any kind of abuse can affect a person’s mental capacity. Certain damage is done inside the human brain when abuse is experienced as a child (or maybe even as an adult). There are certain brain paths that may never recover to the point of being the same as that of a child who never suffered abuse. However, resilience is the fact that the child keeps on going even through the pain. He or she keeps getting up each time they are knocked down. They don’t give up, but they keep making a way and developing new coping skills to survive the difficult circumstance.

There is always dissonance. There is always sorrow, pain, and a certain depression. Sometimes people form permanent mental illness, such as Reactive Attachment Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, or other diagnoses that may not be reversible. Yet, the fact that they keep trying is where the resilience comes in. They may not “spring back” to a perfect shape, but they slowly start recovering that design of a healthy human being.

When I left an abusive husband years ago, a woman’s advocate used an analogy that I will never forget. She described resilience as being like a coil (or spring). If you wrap a wire around a pencil, it forms a coil. Remove the pencil, and that shape is maintained. It keeps the shape it had from being tightly wound.

You can think of that pencil as the abusive situation. When the person (wire) no longer has the pressure of that pencil, it maintains the shape for awhile. However, over time, one can continue to straighten out that wire slowly, bit by bit. Although it is hardly likely it will ever be arrow straight without any curves at all, over time it begins to get straighter and straighter as you work with it, until someday it can look pretty darn straight to the naked eye.

The same is true for human resilience. You may not feel resilient in this moment. Maybe you still have a lot of twists and turns in your emotions and your life–a lot of curvature that came from being twisted up in an abusive environment. However, you are completely capable of slowly regaining a different form over time. The resilience comes in the form of not breaking in two, even though at times the pain may feel that breaking is eminent.

You are resilient. You are capable. You survived the abusive environment and you CAME OUT! That is the first step to recovery, and if you are strong enough to come this far, you will make it. So will I.

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One Degree of Error

Long ago a visiting pastor preached a message at our church entitled One Degree of Error. It was a very simple message using the analogy of sailing across the ocean with a faulty compass and arriving many thousands of miles off course because of an almost imperceptible flaw in the compass’s alignment with true north.

It wasn’t until many years later that I fully realized we were being warned about something terribly wrong going on behind the scenes. There were subtle hints along the way … things that didn’t seem or feel right. But how could a “healing ministry with signs and wonders” bent on “taking Jesus to the nations” be anything less than authentic? Didn’t signs and wonders follow believers?

How does a ministry that once seemed Biblically sound become corrupt? Does it happen over night? Did the “man of God” drift off course somewhere along the line? … or was there a subtle character flaw that put him on a trajectory of error from the beginning … that became more and more pronounced the farther out to sea we got?

My conclusion is the latter. Always quick to boast in his humility and letting us know God told him he had no ego, the “man of God” reveled in being “God’s mouthpiece.” The truly tragic flaw that inevitably surfaced was a faulty TRUTH compass that allowed him to misuse and manipulate the WORD to feed his craving for power and control. Lulled by the gentle current, almost imperceptible in the early days, we were finally confronted with irrefutable evidence that he was not who he claimed to be. Why didn’t we see it sooner? I think we did; however, the nature of cult-thinking is that of isolation and self-blame — whoever sees a problem IS the problem; whenever you sense dissonance, look inward. We were stuck looking in the mirror thinking it was us …

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?‘ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew [approved] of you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15,16,21-23) That is, not by the “Gifts of the Spirit” they may claim to possess or appear to demonstrate (i.e., word of wisdom, word of knowledge, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, different kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues), but by their behavior — what they do and how they live.

The missing piece of the puzzle that kept us in bondage for so long was finally understanding that signs and wonders are NOT a litmus test for authenticity … but rather living in, walking in and loving an upholding what we know to be TRUTH aligned to True North.

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

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