Category: experiences in church | Page 5

Judicial Meetings – Public Humiliation & Shaming

I was shamed in public, in front of the entire congregation – multiple times – but wasn’t allowed to utter a word to defend myself because of my sex. What level of emotional abuse is that? Extreme.

The meetings were special judicial meetings. At each meeting I dissociated and felt like I was floating above my body. The entire meeting was an out of body experience because I was so traumatized that my body detached from my physical and emotional experience to cope. The man (my father-in-law at the time) who stood up to shame me about something very intimate, came up to me after the service and I shook hands with him because conflict, “rudeness,” and assertiveness is ungodly behavior for a woman.

I was the victim of years and years of relentless domestic abuse. And now I was being blamed in public. They victimized the victim. They attacked my character. What he said about me was a huge lie but I was never allowed to say my side of the story, or to put it right. Because women are not allowed to speak during the meetings or services.

I didn’t even defend myself in private because I felt I had no personal power because I had been spiritually, emotionally, verbally, and financially abused for so long. I felt powerless, hopeless, helpless, broken, silenced. I’m sure, based on my character, that most people in the congregation knew that what was said was lies, but he was not told to make it right, or to take back what he said.

Life went on. Some believed him. They ignored me. And gossiped. False accusations. A private investigator hired to watch me. He was promoted to more elevated duties. No apology. I was left horrified and traumatized (what he said was of a very personal and intimate nature). I had been humiliated in front of my entire social circle (we were not allowed to socialize with anyone outside of the congregation). Every time I went to a service (6 times per week) I felt like I was sitting on top of my car as I drove home – that’s how dissociated I was.

The one positive result from this experience is that I woke up to the fact that I was in a controlling and abusive church. If it wasn’t for this extremely painful experience I might never have woken up. I might never have realized that God was absent from their services. I still struggle with PTSD from this experience (6 years later) and don’t have a Christian community due to deep trust issues.

How can a group of so-called Christians be so ignorant that they don’t realize what public humiliation – with no ability to defend yourself or speak – does to a person psychologically? Even Wikipedia knows! 🙂 This is the sickness of a perverted and callous “Christianity” that follows rules and that is very far from the heart the God.

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Temperament’s Role in Spiritual Abuse

There is something interesting that I noted down thru the years. It has to do with the temperament of the constituents in a given church body.

I was born and grew up in the cult like atmosphere where spiritual abuse was rampant. My own father was the pastor/spiritual leader for the greater part of my life. I was not only affected during church services, but I lived with the knowledge that he was my “pastor,” which trumped the father relationship.

My own temperament was always extremely sensitive. I was one that responded very easily to any message of guilt or shame. From a very early age I was a perfectionist and a people-pleaser. However, given my early history as a nine-month-old baby being trained to sit alone on the front pew of the service, it’s hardly surprising that my nature was so sensitive and retiring. I would respond to a simple suggestion of what I should do without a direct command ever having to be given. That was because I was trained from a baby to respond to authorities in this way.

I’m sure that, genetically, I was also wired to be this type of temperament, because my mother was very similar. My sister, who was born after me, was not of the same temperament. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the constituents of these congregations did often have gentle natures from birth. We are all more submissive by nature.

If you are not by nature submissive, you will not last long in the cult. I noted, as a young adult, how my family was always saying we needed to pray for “strong men” to come into the church, so that they could help carry some of the leadership. Oddly enough, there were never any strong men in my dad’s church.

After I married and moved away, I began to think about this, and I began to realize why. Any time there was a strong man in the congregation, he had a tendency to butt heads with my dad and leave. I began to note that strong men could not survive the environment. If you were in this atmosphere, it was not OK to ever disagree with the pastor. If you disagreed with the pastor, or questioned the pastor, you had a “rebellious spirit,” and you would either leave, or learn to submit.

Obviously, a strong spirited man is not going to submit to that, so they would always leave. Oddly enough, there were a few strong spirited women in the church. They would either leave, or become very close to my dad and mother, to the point of becoming a leader in the church, under my dad’s leadership. It’s a very interesting phenomenon to me that strong men could not learn to do this.

I watched my dad at one point try to have an assistant, or a youth leader. It never worked out. He would literally crush the spirit of any male who came to work closely under him. Strangely, he was pretty good at mentoring men who would live in other cities, and just call him for advice. Allowing someone to work under him in his own church…that was a different story.

I began to understand that there is a very real sense of insecurity in the cult leaders. When people begin to wield so much power, they don’t want to share it with anyone else. They begin to be suspicious of others, in fear of ever losing that position of control.

For many of the people who were constituents of these churches, there was a lot of past abuse, mental problems, or just gentle submissive temperaments involved. It is impossible to rule over and brow beat people who are mentally healthy and strong in their temperament. Therefore, these types of leaders by their very nature, attract congregants who are natural follower–submissive, and gentle by nature.

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Rebuilding beliefs

One thing that’s common in leaving groups like my former one is that, in leaving, people have to rebuild everything they believe. They have to sort through what the group taught, what they agree with and what they don’t, what others teach and what they can accept as safe and true… it’s a lot to process, and many of us want to process it all fairly quickly. It leaves us in a state of not knowing what we believe… We disagree with the unhealthy group on a few points (ie that if we don’t attend their church we’re going to hell) but don’t know what we do believe on other points (certain staunch beliefs on things like baptism, worship styles, and communion were very much ingrained in me at my former church and were difficult to study out and accept others’ beliefs on).

Thankfully, there have been people I could safely pose questions to. “OK, my former church taught _____. Why do you teach _______?” has been a common theme. Another has been, “That word/phrase doesn’t mean to me what it does to you. Please explain what you mean without that term.” When I don’t have answers to these questions, I start getting depressed sometimes. I don’t want to pray and don’t want to go to church. I want to run far away from all of it. When someone takes the time to explain what they mean, and then change their wording slightly, the fear lessens dramatically. When I’m allowed the time to work through things and come to my own conclusions, when those conclusions are accepted, I am relieved. In those times I grow.

I’m guessing sometimes we know what we believe, but we haven’t realized it yet because we still see how much we have to sort out, how far we want to go, rather than how far we’ve come. And sometimes we just need a little definition and space to see things in a different way and to gain a healthier understanding.

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More on “I got to have your money” Financial Greed

A couple years ago I sat one evening around a camp fire reminiscing with a young man (we’ll call him Ryan, not his real name) that I knew from the United Pentecostal Church that I had left almost 30 years ago.

I had worked in a factory job with Ryan’s Dad and served with his Dad in our church in ushering duties. I believe his Dad might have been the head usher. We’ll call him Bill (not his real name).

Bill was what the pastor called one of them chronic seekers. Rarely missed an altar call. Bill would be the last to leave the altar, walking away with defeat in his eyes. No matter how hard Bill prayed or long he prayed, no matter his hours of service given and no matter how much Bill gave financially, he could never seem to please God enough for God to save him. Bill lived under the condemnation of the “never good enough gospel” that so many struggle with in sick churches like this one.

Something happened in time with Bill. I feel some of it was brought on by living in such a state of mind that you constantly feared you were lost. Heading for a burning eternal hell.

I’d guess Bill was in his 50’s, healthy in his physical body. But his mind began to slip. He’d from time to time be admitted to a mental health institution.

Bill and wife had always been one of our churches most generous givers. I think in part Bill may have been trying to earn that holy ghost tongue talking experience that had alluded him for years, with giving way beyond our required tithes.

Sitting around that campfire that evening with Bill’s youngest son, Ryan, he shared with that one time his Dad had gotten some better and came home from the mental health hospital.

Bill had been laid off from his factory job. No money coming in. Car payment and house payment going out. Groceries to feed his wife and two boys were getting more difficult to pay for. Bill goes to see the pastor of our growing UPC church. Bill tells the pastor he wants to donate some money to the building of our new million dollar church. (This is in the mid 1970’s.)

The next day Bill’s wife, after having been told by her husband, of what he done, goes to the pastor. She asks why, why did you let him do this? You know he’s sick. You know he’s out of work. You know we have nothing left to live on. The cupboards are bare. WHY? Please give it back.

Now who reading this, could believe that FINANCIAL GREED could be so strong in someone. Someone that was supposed to be watching for the good of your soul.

Could you believe that he told her he couldn’t just give it back. He’d have to ask the board.

I told Bill’s son, Ryan, I was on the board at that time and this is the first I have ever heard of this. To my knowledge, the pastor never asked or told the board of this.

The money was never given back. THIS IS SPIRITUAL ABUSE.

Ryan doesn’t attend church anywhere regularly. I could understand if he hated God, preachers, churches and the people who fill the pews. But he doesn’t. I think he loves God. I think he’s come to realize the God that we were taught to FEAR (for lives and soul) was a false misrepresentation of God.

In the New Testament, as I understand it today, God requires one thing of you to be saved. He does not require works. He does not require a certain percentage of your finances. If you think he does, please just google ‘tithe‘ and read something and learn for yourself.

God’s only requirement for your salvation does not and can not come from you. What God required came from his Son. Jesus paid it in full. It is finished.

Just as Abraham believed, that is all we need to do. Read of Abraham in Romans 3 and 4. Read it with your mind open. This was NOT Paul telling only tongue talking believers how to Stay Saved as the UPC teaches. This was Paul REMINDING Christians HOW they GOT SAVED.

Reminding them just as he scolded the Ephesian believers. Believers who thought what they did or what they gave impressed God.

He reminded them how THEY GOT SAVED: Eph. 2: 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

Even the very faith that saves us is a gift from God. It is not our own.

Shalom. I thank God I am free at last.

Stumbling block: a little about what happened to me

Some years ago, I was thrown out of a church because the pastor falsely accused me of things and wouldn’t allow me to even say I hadn’t done what he accused me of. He told me that if he said I did it, he was a Man of God, and God had obviously talked to him about me and revealed the wickedness in my heart. He also preached that I would walk out of church the night he kicked me out and immediately go and cut my hair and wear pants and makeup. I felt like I was betraying him by NOT doing those things, proving that he was a false prophet. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I believed THE Truth, so I didn’t cut my hair or put on pants. I simply found another Oneness church and tried to act like nothing had happened.

The new pastor told me to just forget about what had happened and move on. But I couldn’t. What happened had created a lot of questions and doubts in my mind, things that I needed to work through and discuss. I needed time to heal. They wanted to act like there was nothing to heal, and that hurt worse.

I always felt condemned for not doing crazy things in church. After being kicked out, something disconnected. I went to church, and would shake “under the power of God.” I’d never done that before. People would tell me how close I must be to God. I didn’t feel close to God. I’d been kicked out of a church, but they didn’t know that, so I felt like a hypocrite. I also knew the shaking wasn’t God, it was me wrestling hard to reconcile what I believed was The Truth with what I had seen, heard, and experienced that blared that it wasn’t. There was such a deep grief and so much condemnation associated with praying, fasting, and studying the Bible… and especially with worship. The new church was very pushy about how much I should worship and exactly how we should and shouldn’t worship. That didn’t help me at all, because so much of what he told us we needed to do seemed unnatural or just plain weird or wrong to me.

It took me years to untangle what had happened in the church I was kicked out of. I had been happy in a way, and spoke in tongues often and danced a lot. When I was kicked out, even though I went to a different Oneness Pentecostal church (where the pastor assured me I was fine), things just weren’t the same. I doubted pretty much everything I was feeling, because the pastor who kicked me out said I was backslid and terribly wrong. If that were true (and of course it must be- he was a Holy Ghost filled preacher) then what I had felt, and the speaking in tongues and the worship I was doing must be all wrong, too. How could sweet and bitter water come from the same source, after all? I almost ‘got past that’ but then with all the show and people really hurting people in the altar of the new church, I started re-looking some things.

At the same time, I went through a time when every time I tried to pray, I’d pretty much immediately fall into heart wrenching grief and start sobbing and speaking in tongues. I knew that wasn’t right. There is joy in the Holy Ghost, and what was happening couldn’t have been considered intercession. I’d focus on God and say “I love you” or think of a recent service or have a happy thought that I’d be able to stay in that church for the rest of my life… and suddenly start bawling, when I hadn’t been sad before that word of prayer or that thought of thankfulness! A week of that would have been one thing, but that went on for a month or more. And I couldn’t seem to pray at all at church. By the end of that time, I knew something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what (or wouldn’t admit it) for a few more years.

For the last few years, there have been many false accusations and labels placed on people in my former church. There was a lot of spying and gossip.

The pastor bragged about the spying from the platform, and encouraged people to tell him if they even thought something MIGHT be wrong with someone else. He said if they didn’t tell him, they’d have blood on their hands. So people, from the oldest to elementary school kids, would go in alone or in groups to say they thought they saw someone do this or that. The person they told on would then be called in and chewed out. They were not asked if they did it, or if they denied it they’d be told they were lying. There was no escaping the hurtful words.

I’ve sat in my former pastor’s office sobbing uncontrollably many times as he, my ‘shepherd,’ my ‘man of God,’ my ‘pastor’ would tell me that I didn’t deserve anything but hell, that I was worthless, that I could leave like the other “garbage” (‘backsliders’ were called “garbage” and the churches they went to were called “trash cans”).

In all of this, even when I was sobbing, even when I tried to say something to defend myself, he would continue to pound on me with his words. Where is the mercy or the compassion in that?

If any pastors or leaders read this, please consider. I didn’t leave a Oneness church because I didn’t believe the doctrine. I left because the church stopped believing in me. I got to a point where if I’d stayed I would have stopped believing in God, because the God they preached and showed through their own lives was an angry, hateful, distorted god, not a God of love and mercy.

Mt 18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2And Jesus called a little child unto him… 6But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

1 Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

I’m not bitter. But some things need to be heard. For too long in churches like the one I left, members didn’t have a voice. It’s time someone listened.