Category: fear | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Outside the Box: We are less fragile

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 2, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from I Wish I Didn’t Know

My friend Mary Nikkel, who I once knew by the online nickname Elraen, was the first blogger I started regularly reading while I was still trapped in the cult my family was in, the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. She blogs at Threads of Stars. Here is what she wrote about recovering from spiritual abuse.

I grew up believing that I could break other people, break myself, break the world, with the smallest of missteps.

There was a list of movies I couldn’t watch and music I couldn’t hear because they would break my mind.

There was a list of things I couldn’t wear because they would break the minds of others.

There was a list of words and opinions I couldn’t say because they would break someone else’s perception of the Christian faith.

There was a corresponding list of words and opinions I had to say because I would be sending someone to hell if I were to omit them.

The lists of the way I could break things seemed endless, and I lived by the letter of their law with an awful holy terror. But there are terrible consequences to believing you live in a world so breakable, with a soul so fragile. I began to feel like I was, at best, a weak excuse of a human for being so unable to meet the list of requirements, and at worst, a weapon designed only to damage the world. Better if I be removed for the sake of safety, my mind whispered on the dark nights. Better if I erase myself before I break anything or anyone else.

When grace opened the door to a wider world and I learned to walk in it (certainly with my fair share of bruises and skinned knees along the way), I would quickly be startled by a few truths. First was that the world was more elastic than I had imagined, that sometimes when I fell, rather than shattering beneath me like brittle glass, this wild life embraced me and bent around me and became a new kind of beautiful. Second was that sometimes even when something did break—my heart, a friendship, some corner of my innocence—my spirit had the ability to mend, like grace had planted this resilient life in me that outlasted even the death of dreams, the death of my strength, the death of all the porcelain pictures I once thought defined “good enough.” And really, perhaps these truths are no surprise in the end, for I believe in the truth of a Christ whose Spirit overcame death—who gifts that same Spirit to me.

On the other side of laws and fear-based protective prisons, I have certainly loved the freedom to enjoy things. I have the freedom to immerse myself in rock and roll, the freedom to dye my hair blue, the freedom to wear shorts and tank tops in the summer, the freedom to watch (and even laugh with) movies that currently matter in pop culture. But perhaps the freedom I have loved even more is the freedom to make mistakes along the way, knowing each small choice will not save or condemn me.

I have certainly found consequences and heartache out here. But I have outlasted them. And the steady hands of friends who have stayed with me, even when I say the wrong thing or say nothing at all, even when I’m feeling too small and dim inside to spark any kind of response to their lavish light, has taught me that maybe I can’t break others as easily as I once believed either. Maybe there is a staying power in our souls beyond anything we could possibly imagine. There is more grace out here than I ever knew.

I believed I was an ember, struggling to stay alive from my place embedded in the ash and dirt. Imagine my surprise to find a spirit like a star burning in me, relentless, impossibly bright, alive though it wander through the coldest walks of the night.

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Outside the Box: I wish I didn’t know

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 1, 2016 as part of a series.

Continued from Butterfly Support Group

Today’s post is from a friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

Content note: child abuse, domestic violence, marital rape

Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The memories of childhood often evoke feelings of longing for a time when happiness abounded.

For some, the wistful, longing feelings of youth give way to an all-consuming emptiness. The definition of a ‘lie’ is to tell something untruthful. The state of untruth, of chronic deceit, replaces any feelings of nostalgia from my past.

I had no uninhibited feelings of curiosity. I lived in constant fear of ‘rebellion.’ An older sibling was always on the verge of a ‘dangerous path’ for some indiscretion.

My youngest memories are of parents whose marriage was on the rocks. In an attempt to maintain the family unit, I was used as a human shield.

I have vivid flashbacks of my father trying to force himself on my mother. The innocence of youth was torn from me at an early age. Every sense was violated by the presence of inappropriate boundaries, or lack thereof, with my parents.

My mother would rarely sleep with my father and usually when she did, I was placed between them.

I was her safe haven. As far back as I can remember, I was her shield, both physically and emotionally. I was not allowed to interact with my other siblings, creating animosity between myself and my siblings.

I was rarely allowed out of my mother’s sight. I was 17 years old before I was allowed to stay at home even if she was only grocery shopping.

However, as with every child, I bonded with my mother. I remember the normal feelings of wanting to please her and gain her approval, which was always elusive. I never knew when she would praise me or attack my “rebelliousness.”

Throughout my childhood I was not allowed to have friends, but I was very close to my sister Faith. We were never separated, which was by my mother’s design. Faith was the other half of the human shield. Combined, we formed a human triangle. We were a unit, it was as though Faith and I were appendages of my mother.

As a child, I was unaware of the cage I was living in.

I was not aware that I was being used as a shield to save a failing marriage. In many ways, I was like any other child.

I loved life, I was curious, I loved my family. I loved my parents. I was sure they really cared for me more than anything. I ran wild on our five-acre plot. I loved the creek near our house and my stuffed animals. I loved my mother’s cooking. I loved to bake cookies and play silly games with Faith.

The young child in me loved life, happiness and wanted only a safe haven, a place to explore the world without fear. But cages are a result of fear.

Paranoia resided in my parents, causing them to isolate their children, allowing us little contact with the outside world. We lived in a cage of patriarchy, guided by an “umbrella” theory of God. The gist of this theory was that our father was the portal through which God gave his will to children, especially girls.

It was my father’s duty to make sure his daughters were “pure” before marriage. It was my father’s duty to give his daughter to a worthy man, meaning he felt entitled to be heavily involved in any dating relationships. Young girls were not allowed to have opinions, much to the dismay of my spunky nature. I wanted opinions, I wanted respect. But I was rarely allowed opinions, and I was often mocked.

Becoming an adult in such a cage was confusing and stressful. Conflict burned within me. I loved my parents, why did I have to choose between them and the world? Was God as rigid as they claimed? Did God think women had a voice? Were women only meant to have babies? Does God hate me if I sin? If I lose my virginity will I go to hell?

Growing up in a cage also makes the bars of the prison cell harder to see. When talking with people ‘outside,’ it was strange when their responses to my circumstances were not in agreement with my parents.

You mean it isn’t normal to sleep on the floor of my parents’ bedroom until I was 14-years-old? You mean God made men and women equal? It isn’t normal for children to be told they are half-aborted? There is such a thing as marital rape, that isn’t only possible if you are unmarried? How can a husband rape his wife, aren’t they supposed to have sex?

Coming out of the cage, realizing my childhood was merely a chess game, in which I was nothing more than a shield, was more than painful. Adequate words are not available to explain how I can no longer look back on my youth, frolicking in my backyard without thinking about the cage I was in.

I cannot think of my long talks with Faith at night, memories I formerly cherished, without remembering how we were really drowning out the screaming of my parents. We were the shields, my life was a lie.

I can no longer see the remnants of my former life without feeling the stabbing pain of the lie of childhood. I cannot look back at my young self without feeling pity.

Sometimes I long for the home I thought I had as a child. I long to be a child again because I realize I never really experienced childhood. I was never in a safe environment. Sometimes I feel starved of love, ill-equipped to handle adulthood because I was not nourished. Just as bones break when they lack protein, the heart breaks when it lacks love.

The phrase, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” rings true for those who look back and see a dark past where once they saw a blooming meadow.

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The UnBoxing Project: Defecting from a cult

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on March 8, 2015 as part of a series.

Continued from Racquel’s story.

Liz was part of our network that helped Racquel and Ashley as they left the cult environment of the First United Pentecostal Church of Colorado Springs. Here is her perspective.

Photo: Wil C. Fry, creative commons license.

Nearly two years ago, I received text messages from Eleanor about a friendship between two girls that had been recently forbidden by their religious leader.

I was asked to attempt to sneak a cheap TracFone to one of the girls at her school because I would not be recognizable to her parents, who had confiscated all her means of communication. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in class that day.

Eventually, they acquired their freedom by leaving their church behind and living with friends.

Most people assume their own community has only good intentions in mind for members. Why would we believe otherwise if an overwhelming majority of us were taught that strangers are the ones who seek to hurt us?

In reality, data suggests that most cases of violent crime and sexual assault occur between people who are at least acquainted with each other or in regular physical proximity.

In spite of statistical and factual realities, we teach our children to fear strangers. We teach them to avoid the rare anomalies but fail to teach them to look for warning signs in the mundane. This contributes to the denial in identifying abusive communities when people are a part of one.

Instead, people taught to fear the outside world might think that to leave would be worse.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt says that evil is banal. It is predictable, common, and is generally perpetuated by unremarkable people motivated by their own, typically material needs.

An intense, outward adherence to a particular ideology or manifestation of a psychological condition might be present in the situation, but neither are enough to explain why communities as a whole behave a certain way.

In other words, abusers are regular people and not the monstrous caricatures we see on TV or evil stepmothers in children’s fairy tales. There might be a few narcissists and sociopaths at the upper echelons dictating the orders, but several people who are afraid of seeking out other dissenters within the group.

With hierarchy and scale, diffusion of guilt and responsibility is inevitable. Diffusion of guilt is generally paired with resistance to collective guilt that should logically follow the diffusion.

The lower end claim to be following orders, the higher ups claim they didn’t personally do it.

It’s the same garbage that makes none guilty for abuse that many participated in. It is as if people hope that with sufficient diffusion, the amount of culpability per person is rendered insignificant. Dilution of active ingredients in homeopathic “remedies” operates this way.

Abuse as a phenomena doesn’t become significant simply because the perception of responsibility among abusers is thinly spread out because there is always someone else to blame in the eyes of the guilty such that their victims somehow become responsible for their own abuse.

What I’ve gleaned from my studies in history and politics is that there is a tendency to conceal or otherwise diminish the significance of abuses as a means of trying to protect the legitimacy and reputation of an organization such as the Catholic church, many American universities, collegiate and professional sports teams, the entertainment industry, among many other examples.

When an organization cares more about protecting its own reputation than removing abusers or helping victims, there is a reason to question the validity and value of such an institution and the complicity of people within afflicted organizations.

Even if an individual abuser recognizes the harm they cause, to reject the cultural norms is to risk being socially ostracized and possibly, their standard of living. Obedience experiments by Milgram and replicated by others show that people are generally submissive to figures of authority up to a certain point.

It is likely that people from more isolated communities would escalate punishments further when commanded by members of their community than people from the general population being instructed by a stranger because of a greater sense of obligation and desire to belong in the former.

Defection is complicated. It comes with a high price tag in both an absolute and perceived sense.

People in deliberately isolated communities are generally taught that outsiders are evil, that its their own fault for being mistreated or that victims deserve it, and that the victims aren’t being treated badly in the first place. If maltreatment is believed to be normative and benevolent it tends to make victims attempt to justify what is going on as a means of internalizing conflicting messages.

The more isolated people are, the harder it is for them to recognize their own condition and the more complex the logistics of leaving becomes.

Liz received training at a local college in her hometown so that she could teach freshmen at her high school about how to avoid and recognize dating violence, local resources for victims, and statistics regarding the frequency of rape and lack of conviction. She was also a student teacher who assisted with evening adult education courses in sexual assault escape and self-defense offered by her school to the community.

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Wingless: Kindred Spirits

It stands to reason that parenting doesn’t come with a manual because every child is different. How easy it would be to know exactly when and how a child will react, or calculate the date at which they will begin to crawl, walk, and talk. Or what to do to turn off a public meltdown like a light switch. There are a plethora of parenting books out there, but at the end of the day, one can only glean general advice that may or may not apply.

Adults are the same way. We’re all uniquely created. Psalm 139:14 (NIV) says, “I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

My interpretation: “God doesn’t make junk!”

We aren’t junk. I know this now. It’s taken me a long, long time to know this. John 3:16 says that God LOVES us. We sang songs about this, even in the spiritually-abusive churches I attended. But why was this not displayed? One minute, we’re worms; filthy rags, destined for hellfire. We slip up even a little, then we’re separated from God and we can miss the rapture and go to hell. The next, we’re singing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’

This thinking kept me bound in fear constantly as the years passed in the church. Fear, depression, anxiety— all symptoms of underlying mental health conditions, exacerbated by my environment. I saw what I perceived to be strong, “perfect” Pentecostals around me, and it slowly killed me inside to know I wasn’t like them. My heart just didn’t feel as… in it. They prayed an hour a day and fasted regularly. I could barely focus enough to pray more than five minutes without falling asleep. Fasting was a no-go for me because of a medical condition.

When I read the Bible— the strongly-recommended King James Version, like a good Pentecostal— I had trouble interpreting the vague, flowery text (one reason I relied so heavily on the preached/taught interpretations). I wanted to read and write fantasy and sci-fi novels, but anything to do with magic and aliens was seen as evil. And so my imagination was chained unless I covertly sinned and wrote in secret (which, I confess, I ended up doing).

And why did I have such a hard time “witnessing” to people? We were constantly commissioned over the pulpit to bring people to church; to tell them our testimony. I could make friends (though it took me a long time to come out of my shell enough to do so), but, over time, I found that I didn’t want to change them. They were my friends because I liked them.

My initial haughtiness I had when I first got into the church had long since faded, and now I felt low beyond low. I thought it was a sin to love myself. How could I lie to people and tell them that church was a bed of roses and there was joy unspeakable when all I felt was unspeakable sorrow? Over and over, I brought it to the altar. I claimed victory. I’d feel great after an evening service, perhaps, but then that feeling would fade quickly. It was nothing but a band-aid on a wound that cut to the bone.

Between all of my own issues and dealing with Stella’s increasing behavioral issues and obvious developmental delays, I began to feel like an overall failure. And the only advice I could ever get from the church was “Pray about it. Give it to God,” or some other lovely platitude. Even at the altar, when I sobbed and begged God to send me a friend, some real support, I would look around to find no one. No hand laying on my shoulder to pray with me. And I assumed it meant I wasn’t worthy. In reality, that probably was not the case, but when you’re so deep in mire, your vision is clouded.

My panic attacks were coming on strong and constant. I became afraid to be around people more and more. I didn’t want to leave the house, or hardly get out of bed when I was home. Thoughts of leaving this world played through my mind on repeat. The house was going to heck in a hand basket, and things were reaching a breaking point. One night, during a particularly bad panic attack, my husband got frustrated and asked me what was wrong with me. I started crying and told him, “I just want to die! I want to die…”

At that point, I should’ve gone to a hospital. Paul should’ve taken me. Looking back, I know that now. But we were in an environment where mental health was still not talked about as openly, and not doing well was not okay. Paul didn’t know how to handle it. He felt as helpless as I did. Somehow, I survived in that moment. I clung to my husband, and we made it through.

After that awful night, I did something new: I sought help from a psychiatrist.

My nerves were riled with anxious energy, sitting in that waiting room. Would I have to lay on a couch? Tell her about my childhood? Was she going to hypnotize me? Would I still be a good witness to her even after she learned of all my issues? I’d heard all kinds of things about “shrinks,” and I wasn’t fully sure what to expect.

When it was finally my turn to go back to the office, I took a deep breath. I was greeted by a pretty, smiling woman with dark, curly hair in a light gray pantsuit. She introduced herself as Dr. Rolling and had me sit in a black, cushioned leather chair across from her at her L-shaped, cherrywood desk. The sunlight was pouring through the wall of windows at my back. It was a pleasant atmosphere.

“So, tell me about yourself?” she asked.

My story came out slowly at first, but was soon pouring out like the tipping of a bucket. Dr. Rolling listened intently, making lots of notes. She didn’t pass one iota of judgment when I told her about my storms, and my panic attacks— any of it. In fact, she showed more empathy than I’d experienced in a long time. And she offered something other than just well wishes.

I left with a diagnosis of ADHD and an anxiety disorder, but more importantly, I left with help. She started me on new medication to try and help alleviate some of the symptoms. It was explained how my brain chemistry works differently and taking medication for mental health was no different than taking it for high blood pressure or anything else. It relieved some of my fears, and from then on out, I felt completely comfortable going to see Dr. Rolling.

The medication did not completely cure my storms, but it took the edge off. As I would find out, sometimes life has a way of getting you down regardless. In 2010, at age three, Stella was kicked out of her Christian-run preschool because of her increasing behavior issues (she’d bit another child). She still wasn’t potty-trained, in spite of our best efforts. Her language skills were mostly echolalia, repeating words and phrases she’d picked up from us or her favorite tv shows. We had her evaluated by a pediatric neurologist, who came back with a diagnosis of autism. At the same time, she was also evaluated and enrolled in the local Title 1 preschool, where they were better equipped to teach kids who had differences like Stella. I left my job at the bank to work from home for my mother’s online-based business so I could focus on her.

The reaction from the church was mixed. Some people were supportive. Others thought she needed it prayed out of her. There were some who insisted she needed it spanked out of her. All the while, I was fed fear-mongering information from various popular sources at the time, and found myself falling into a deep pit of “what-ifs”, and wondering if I was somehow failing as a mother. This did little to aid my nearly non-existent sense of self-worth as a Christian.

In 2012, life began to shift yet again. I gave birth to our second child, Parker, in January. During my pregnancy that prior year, I had joined an online group of women who were all due to give birth at the same time, and formed some life-long friendships as a result. These women weren’t Pentecostal, but they were amazing, just as they were. None of them wore skirts, or had uncut hair. They wore makeup and jewelry, and even used four-letter words (gasp!). But I’d finally found people I could be honest with and talk about my storms to. I was supposed to witness to these women— be an example of the church and Jesus to them, but instead, I found that I loved them just as they were. I was taught that people like them were of the devil, and that they were bound for hell. But all I felt was unconditional love— the kind Jesus showed.

It’s ironic that the church discourages people from becoming “close” with people who aren’t in the church, when Jesus himself chose to hang out with publicans and “sinners”. He went to those that society deemed as less desirable in some shape or form. He fed them, spoke with them, healed them. It’s my understanding that healing can be invisible. It’s not always the healing of a physical wound— sometimes it’s the building of a bridge across an ugly, ancient rift. Or an anchorless ship finding a safe harbor at last. Or… perhaps a lonely soul finding kindred spirits.

From these ladies, I gradually learned lessons of kindness, acceptance, and grace over the many years to come.

In 2013, I was evaluated and received my own autism diagnosis at last. The church people began to subtly pull away from me when I let the news be known. I remember the uncomfortable aversion of eyes. Even the pastor’s wife gave just about no response when I excitedly texted her, because I finally had answers I’d been searching all my life for. It was disheartening. After all, I wasn’t broken, just different! Why did I suddenly feel like a leper among the people I’d known for years?

My 2012 Mommies, however, held me up and embraced me wholeheartedly. It was this love that held me as life at home and church slowly descended into a new phase of turmoil… that would ultimately lead to my exit from the church and the start of a new journey.

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An Introduction To Elephants

The following was written by former United Pentecostal Church minister Jon Eckenrod, and used with his permission. Jon held license for about twenty years and left the organization in 2007.

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I also want to say a word to my peers and leaders still in the ministry in the United Pentecostal Church, International. For all our efforts to “preach Jesus,” and point people to the cross, in practice we accomplished the opposite. Every time we shamed someone for not measuring up, we turned them from Jesus—not to Him. We turned them to their own lack of ability to overcome, and then to our leadership to help them become better Christians—a subject about which we were ill-equipped to offer counsel. Too many of our congregants just gave up trying and decided to either “look the part,” thereby becoming hypocrites, or leave church altogether. Of course, we attributed this to a “lack of will power” or discipline. In truth, we all know that none of us was able to live as “holy” and “pure” as we preached. Consequently, in practice, we produced an atmosphere conducive to secret sin and hypocrisy. And much to our dismay, our congregants catch on quickly. They follow the leader.

The answer for all of us lies in the grace of God, not in our efforts to become more spiritual. Pastors, it is my prayer for you and your congregations that you discover and experience the grace that I have found. What a relief to find rest, not in my ability to “pray through,” but in the arms of Jesus. – Jon Eckenrod

The proverbial elephant in the room is the issue that is plain to everyone, but about which no one wants to talk. Why don’t we like to talk about the elephants? By their nature elephants are big. To acknowledge them is to begin to deal with a problem that is uncomfortable. Usually the issue is difficult and has no easy solution. So, we ignore it, or at least we try. But, because of their size, elephants are hard to ignore. The longer we turn a blind eye to them, the more difficult they are to address. Some ‘elephants’ may start out relatively small, but over time, if not dealt with, they become enormous. And the cost of dealing with them increases with each passing day.

Dr. Joseph Umidi, one of my professors at Regent University School of Divinity, told our class that when a leader does not address elephants in the room, followers begin to “collect injustices.” In other words, they begin to take note of every mistake the leader makes. They collect them, and soon, all they can see are these injustices when they look at the leader. Dr. Umidi likened it to looking at your environment through a clear pen (one of those old-fashioned Bic pens). When the first injustice occurs, the pen appears, and it is in your line of sight (perhaps at arm’s length), but you can see everything around it clearly. As more injustices are collected, the pen moves closer to your eyes, so that it fills more of your field of vision. Soon, the pen is right next to your eyes, and you can only see everything else through the pen. This is very dangerous and very toxic. That is why it is so important for leaders to be willing to address the elephants in the room—no matter how unpleasant they are.

You don’t need a room full of people in order for elephants to appear. You can create them in your private life, which is what I did. When I saw problems and chose to ignore them, or had doubts and questions, and deferred addressing them until a later date—voila! Elephants were created. When I stopped being afraid of the truth, I began to see the elephants clearly.

Life is so very uncomfortable in a room full of elephants. In some respects, I feel like I know what an elephant stampede is like. It is overwhelming. You feel like there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And in truth, there isn’t. And it is very painful to endure. The elephants come straight at you, demanding to be acknowledged and dealt with. And when the stampede is over—when you have looked each elephant squarely in the eye and addressed the problems that they posed—you wonder what just happened. You try to get your bearings again. I am still in the process of doing that, but now Jesus Christ is at the center of it all. And that makes all the difference.

The journey has not been easy. It has been painful at times, and my family members have been the ‘beneficiaries’ of much of that pain. But, by God’s grace, I was forced to address my elephants. I wouldn’t want it any other way (unless I could go back and stop the elephants from being created in the first place). Why was I afraid to acknowledge the truth? Why did I refuse to look objectively at the group with which I had been associated for so many years? For any one of us, the main reason is fear. Quite frankly, I was afraid that what I believed might be wrong. I was afraid of what that would mean. What would it cost me if I discovered that I was in error—that my organization was in error? What would that mean for my future, and for the future of my family? If I found that we had been wrong about our interpretation of scripture, could I stay in the organization? We were on a promising career track, and I had no desire to jeopardize that. And I certainly didn’t want to experience the ostracism that I had witnessed so many others who had left the organization experience. I didn’t want that for my family. There were too many questions with too many very troubling and painful answers. It was easier to remain ‘willfully ignorant’ than to do anything to rock the boat.

It is a sad commentary on any organization when a person must weigh whether to leave or not based on a fear of ostracism, rather than on truth and what is best for the individual or family. When this is the case, it indicates a major problem with the system. If it is fear that keeps us from looking objectively at our groups, we need to ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” Would Jesus cause us to be afraid to leave and go somewhere else? Would he make us fear to ask difficult questions? When we did have questions, would he shame us for doubting? Would he make us feel like we were the ones with the problem just because we questioned him? Finally, if Jesus would not make us afraid to ask the tough questions, then we need to ask another question: just what kind of people are running our organizations? Are we afraid to answer that? What an awful thing fear is. Truly, “fear hath torment,” (1 John 4:18, KJV).

There were times when I would address some of these nagging doubts and questions, but it was always within the context of believing that what I was taught was true. So I had to figure out why my doubts were unfounded. Or I had to figure out a way to prove why another’s objections to my beliefs were invalid. I never addressed these things objectively. That is the way most ministers and congregants addressed these questions. We were right. We just had to figure out why others were wrong. This approach is wrong-headed, and it only serves to make our elephants grow.

My intent in writing this is to expose my own shortcomings—my own humanness, if you will. I want to demonstrate how I ignored signs that I was heading in the wrong direction. I suppressed feelings. I minimized and rationalized away warnings that should have made me stop and reconsider. We all have a propensity to ignore the obvious when it doesn’t fit the context within which we live. We turn a blind eye to information when it could cause our world to crumble down around us. This is really the basis of ‘group think.’ We slowly lose the ability to look at our own group objectively. To a degree, breeding elephants is a result of self-preservation. It helps us survive and even thrive within our groups.

I don’t want people to become critical about everything in life. Life is too short. But I also don’t want people to be afraid to think critically about those things that don’t add up. I want to encourage anyone in any circumstance to not ignore those gut feelings, those signs that cause inner-turmoil. We need to be free to think objectively about ourselves and the groups of which we are a part. It is OK to examine our belief systems, and those of our churches, our leaders, or our organizations.

In doing this, there is one thing that I cannot emphasize enough: we can not be afraid to allow objective observers to look at our lives and speak to us about what they see. It is difficult to do. We are prideful, and we know intuitively that they wouldn’t understand if we tried to explain everything about our groups. But we must make the effort to find someone who doesn’t have some ulterior motive of trying to get us to join their group, and who is good at just listening—someone who won’t judge us, but who will be brutally honest with us. Sadly, for many who are involved in groups like the one I was a part of, we don’t feel like we have someone on the outside that we can trust. We have been conditioned to believe that people on the outside have suspect motives or that they are deceived—so they can’t help. But, if at all possible, we all need to find someone who can look at us objectively, which disqualifies those within our groups. I guess what I am trying to say is, we need to ‘open our eyes!’ It is difficult for elephants to breed when our eyes are open and others are watching with us.

At this point, I must point out that I don’t have it all figured out. As a matter of fact, I still have a lot of questions about a lot of issues. But I am not ignoring them, and I’m not afraid to address them. Also, I do not in any way claim to be a scholar or an expert in theology. I just want to share what I do know, and what I have learned. I hope this helps you learn as well.