Category: holiness standards | Page 18

Church Gimmicks

I had a dream this morning that I was attending church on Easter. It isn’t my church or one I’ve ever been in, but in the dream I’d been there before, because I knew the music was going to be different.

Before church I heard people talking about how they had come because the candy was better at this church. As the music started, people started crying and laying down on the floor. I wasn’t scared, but I was disgusted. The music was awful. The second song was supposed to be special. It was heavy rock. I moved so that I wasn’t in front of the speakers. The third song started, and was announced to also have a special instrument involved… a chain saw. At the same time, people were coming to the front, crying and praying and having hands laid on them, while altar workers stood with clickers, counting the number of people ‘saved’ or who spoke in tongues, I’m not sure which. One was from my first church, and the altar worker and a friend of hers were fighting over whether she should be counted.

The friend walked past me as she went back to her seat. She recognized me and saw my pants (not allowed in her religion). She told me she’d just had a sobbing moment, because she wouldn’t be able to spend Christmas with me because I was obviously lost, wearing pants. We hadn’t had plans; we hadn’t spoken for ten years!

And then I noticed what the congregation was singing: Your love like a river flows through me.

Gimmicks. Candy, special songs, special instruments, encouraging people to worship more ahead of time, counting responses… all are gimmicks. They can be used, within reason, to encourage people to come to a church (or to any other sales event) but they aren’t about God. They’re marketing techniques. But what disturbed me most was not the gimmicks in the dream (not even the chain saw music) or the rejection of my former friend, but the fact that in the middle of all the gimmicks, the fight, and the rejection, the song being sung repeated the words “Your love like a river flows through me.” That’s what haunted me as I woke up. The hypocrisy.

Parents

When I lived at home, my parents insisted on taking me to a church that my sister and I both strongly disliked. There was no youth group. There was one class for all the kids, combined. Mom taught it, and it was just basic Bible stories. There was no real doctrine taught, and no challenge at all for me, the oldest in the class (of 3-5 kids). But Mom thought the church was like the one she was raised in. One with THE Truth… as she knew it.

I wanted more than that. I wanted to go to a church where there were others my age, where I could learn, where there were activities and where others wanted to go, not just went because it was the thing to do on Sunday morning. Even my parents disliked going. Many Sundays we went to Sunday School and then went home rather than going to service. Dad skipped even Sunday School more times than I can count… and one Sunday while I was sick I discovered he preferred Tarzan to church. Or maybe he just thought his sick little girl would prefer that to cartoons.

When I got my license I was excited. I thought I might go somewhere else. Mom told me I would not be driving, that we would go to church as a family. To the church she chose. When I moved away to college, at the end of the day she handed me a phone book and told me they weren’t leaving until I chose a church to attend on Sunday. There was no discussion about trying out a few churches. Nothing about the possibility of going to chapel at the college. Just, “Here’s the phone book. We aren’t leaving till you choose a church.” And something about so many college kids quitting church entirely.

I had no intention of quitting, but I did want a better option than what I’d had growing up. A friend had told me about a visit to her grandmother’s Pentecostal church… and when I opened the phone book that day and saw that there was a Pentecostal church in town, I knew where I wanted to go.

Mom flipped. Suddenly I was informed that I needed to try several churches. It was clear they didn’t like my choice, but it was the end of the day and they had to go.

I visited one other church in town. None of the others appeared to be options for me at the time. And though I liked the other church, Pentecostal had my full attention from the first day I visited. There were others near my age. People wanted to be at church. They actually opened their Bibles at church. They could quote scripture rather than (as at my former church) taping the most familiar, like the Lord’s prayer, to the pulpit. There was an excitement there. So that’s where I chose to go.

My parents strongly disliked my decision. They came to visit. Dad brought me a copy of a book about why tongues were wrong. Mom argued. She told me she thought I had damned my soul by being re-baptized (a misinterpretation of “crucify the son of God afresh”). Dad tried to force me to wear pants to go to church when I was home (too cold for a skirt, looking out for my interests: “You will not leave this house!”). Dad threw fits about my new boyfriend, throwing some of the worst fits I had ever had directed at me. They argued and challenged… and everything they did only spurred me to continue going and solidified in my mind that I was right.

The fights have never stopped completely, sadly. I left two and a half years ago, but Dad still presses for where I go to church, what kind of church, and so forth. And if I ever told him it wasn’t Pentecostal? There would just be more that he would pressure me to do in that case, I’m fairly certain. Because if I’m not Pentecostal I should dress like he wants me to dress, marry who he wants me to marry, talk like he wants me to talk, do what he wants me to do. Sound familiar? Sure. Pastors insisted that I would do those things, and for years I didn’t question what they were doing, because Dad had always done the same thing. And Mom backed him, even on things that were wrong, harsh, and extremely disrespectful. “Honor thy father and mother” was quoted at me, but they never realized that ‘honor’ doesn’t mean ‘do everything they ask without question.’

We had another fight nearly a week ago. I haven’t called them since. We usually talk several times a week. But this time, with Dad blaming church and a request from the college for parents to stay away for awhile or rarely coming to visit, and then pressing and pressing- question after question: “Where do you go to church?” “What church?” “What’s the name of it?” “Where?” “What church?” “Where are you going to church at?!” I finally had enough. I really don’t know what I’m going to do now. I wish they would respect me for who I am (or who they know me to be) because I don’t feel any desire to let them know who I’ve become when they continually refuse to accept who I’ve been.

They don’t even go to church themselves. Not even for the major holidays usually. Dad just within the last two years figured out that the priests who are mentioned in the New Testament weren’t Catholic priests, and that the Catholics weren’t the ones who wanted to kill Jesus. And then there’s the number of times that Dad has said that Pentecostal preachers are wrong for telling people what to wear (and do and so forth) while doing the same thing himself.

I’m conflicted. I’d like to just be myself. But no matter who I am, they have never been satisfied. At least this battle is familiar. Or was until last week. Now I’m not so certain. If I choose to stay in a hotel when I go home and not call them as much, it will hurt them. I love them and I don’t want to hurt them. But sometimes people are hurt because their own choices drive others to make decisions they won’t like. My parents may very well have done that.

Howard Goss- The Winds of God

Howard A. Goss was part of the Pentecostal movement since the very early 1900s. He helped to organize the Assemblies of God. He became the General Superintendent of the Pentecostal Church Incorporated, which later merged with another organization to form the United Pentecostal Church. Goss became the first General Superintendent of the UPC in 1945.

In the late 1950s, his wife, Ethel E. Goss, wrote a book with his input on the early years of the Pentecostal movement from 1901 to 1914. It is called The Winds of God.

There are many people involved in Oneness Pentecostal churches who are yet unaware of how things were different in the earlier days of their movement. There wasn’t the same emphasis on outward standards and there were differences in beliefs concerning when a person was saved. Goss himself believed that both Trinitarians and Oneness believers were saved and believed that water baptism was performed after a person was saved.

In regard to outward standards, below is what Mrs. Goss wrote on page 69 (of the revised version) and page 38 (of the original version):

We did not wear uniforms. The lady workers dressed in the current fashions of the day…silks…satins…jewels or whatever they happened to possess. They were very smartly turned out, so that they made an impressive appearance on the streets where a large part of our work was conducted in the early years.

It was not until long after, when former Holiness preachers had become part of us, that strict plainness of dress began to be taught.

Although Entire Sanctification was preached at the beginning of the Movement, it was from a Wesleyan viewpoint, and had in it very little of the later Holiness Movement characteristics. Nothing was ever said about apparel, for everyone was so taken up with the Lord that mode of dress seemingly never occurred to any of us.

Galatians 2:4 came to mind as I posted this quote. While it may not fully fit, to me it does at least in part: “But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.” (NASB) Could it be that a reason why so many today are now overly concerned with the outward is because they may not be “so taken up with the Lord”?

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Love Without Fear

This morning I woke up around 4:40 am as usual, because I’m getting older and I have to go use the restroom about that time. After I got back in bed, I dozed off, but the rest of my sleep was rather light and restless. Over and over in my sleep I kept hearing an old verse that I learned years ago, “perfect love casteth out all fear.”

Now, to be honest, I have been in a process of recovery lately. I’m in the stage where I have been detoxing from religion. I have still been talking to God (though irregularly—but, hey, at least I’m still on speaking terms). I haven’t read the Bible in months, and I haven’t been to church since October. I have altogether avoided any religious influence, other than chats with friends, and support groups that help with my recovery process.

So, needless to say, at first I was rather annoyed that this Bible verse kept tormenting me in the early morning hours. Yet it has nagged at my mind all day long as I wondered, what can that verse really mean? On the surface, it sounds comforting and I surely could use some comfort!

Well, this evening I decided to look it up. I got involved in it the way I used to do. My mind is still trying to wrap around the concepts. I will share them with you, knowing that tomorrow I may not read any more. Maybe this was enough for me to chew on for a long while.

My understanding of 1 John 4

^“7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.”

The cult taught that “sloppy agape” love was not true Christianity. It taught that one had to follow a three step formula to get saved: Repentance, Baptism in Jesus’ Name, and the “infilling of the Holy Ghost as evidenced by speaking in other tongues.” This verse says that ANYONE who LOVES is a child of God, and KNOWS God. That means that many who we were taught were lost are really God’s children and know Him intimately.

⁸“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

In the cult, there was a lack of true love. “Love” and acceptance came only with a price tag. You did as the leadership wanted you to do, and you were “loved.” You questioned the rules or the leadership’s decisions at all and you experienced shunning, punishment, hatred and vicious disdain. Yet that very “sloppy agape” that was made fun of from the pulpit—that very thing is what determines a person’s belonging to God, according to these verses! So, here it says plainly that if anyone does not love, he does not even KNOW God! God is love, so if you know God you show love. No love=no God.

^“9God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.”

God showed us what REAL LOVE is—by sending his only begotten son to sacrifice his life for our sins. THAT is real love—it wasn’t conditional based on our performance or righteousness. If we have real love, it has to be patterned after that—Unconditional.

^“10This is real love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

The real love is not us loving a God who sacrificed everything for us, because all of us can recognize that he DESERVES our love. Real love is that He sent his Son to be a sacrifice, giving his life, because he saw we were sinners. Sinners—we didn’t deserve anything but death. He gave us what we DIDN’T deserve—that is REAL LOVE!

^“11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹²No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

Since God loved us that much…Unconditionally…when we did not deserve it in the least…when we were unlovable…when we were filthy in his sight; because of that, we ought to surely be able to love one another. There has never been a gap any wider than that between God and the sinful human. If He could breach that gap with His love, then anything is possible!

IF we love each other, God lives in us and loves through us. This indicates that the opposite is also true. Does this mean that if we do NOT love each other that God does NOT live in us? If he cannot show his love through us, because we do not let His love into our lives, does that mean we are not His?

^“13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. ¹⁴Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. ¹⁶We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.”

The 13^th verse seems to back up cult teaching that being God’s and His living in us is based upon whether or not we have His Spirit. However, the verses before and after clearly state that ‘God’s love in us is the true proof of belonging to him,’ so, we have to take the verses in context. Because of this, it seems to me that His Spirit being in us or not is not a matter of whether or not we speak in tongues, but whether or not we have and show His love!

It goes on to say that everyone who declares Jesus as the son of God is infilled with God’s Spirit. There is that idea again—the one we were indoctrinated against because it is just too easy. To declare Jesus as the Son of God is not EARNING anything. Humanity cannot seem to grasp the concept of simple faith and getting something as valuable as salvation without effort. Yet, here it is again and again. We have him living in us and we live in him by our declaration that He is God’s Son.

This involves a rudimentary understanding of God’s love—the REAL love of God—the unconditional love. By trusting Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, we have put our trust and faith in that unconditional love. We have given up trying to earn our salvation and we have embraced the idea of His unconditional love that caused him to come and sacrifice His life for filthy sinners, loving us in spite of our condition. To wrap our hearts around that kind of love is a spiritual work of faith that really is quite a bit more challenging to the human mind than the idea of striving to DO in order to receive. Think about it! Isn’t it mind-boggling that the God of the Universe sent his son to die for people who were sinners and were not able to pull themselves out of the filth? He took the place of every sinner in order to show His love and to free us from our sin. He says we simply receive that gift and love Him and others in return.

“God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.¹⁷And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.”

We all know that God is love. It is a basic fact we learned as children. But, here we see that all who live in love really live in God. Think about that for a second. If God is love, then to live in God means to live in love. To have God in your life automatically means you have love in your life.

The more God we have and the more we live in Him, the more perfectly we are able to love others. That completely undoes the life many of us have lived within cults. “Godliness” and “Holiness” cannot mean a list of rules one follows. It cannot then relate to judgmental attitudes and haughty spirits who feel that they are more “godly” than others. In fact, it is completely the opposite! The more “godly” we are, the more we will LOVE others—all others, even those who least deserve it.

“To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, on earth I long to be like him”…remember hearing it during altar calls where you were guilt tripped into crying and repenting over everything imaginable, including your lack of following the rules?

That is not what being like Jesus means! Living like Jesus here in this world means loving like He loved, showing compassion like he did, mercifully befriending the outcasts. When we live like this, we don’t have to be afraid on the day of judgement. We can come to him with confidence because we lived like him here in this world—overflowing with love towards the unlovable and the lowly.

^“18Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

Speaking of the judgment day, when we live in His love and His love is shown through us, we don’t have to be afraid, because this love relationship gets rid of all fear. What a revelation!

Life in a cult is based on fear. Fear, shame, and guilt are running our lives when we are trying to live by the rules and earn our salvation…always trembling lest we somehow fail and fall into the hands of an angry God. No, no, no! That is not what God wants for us!

If we have fear, it is because we think God is just waiting to punish us. That thought pattern shows that we haven’t really had a full experience of his “perfect love.” Wow! Did you get that?

How is it that one like me can spend forty years of life living to the best of my ability to try to please God and thinking that I had to work harder and harder to measure up—only to realize I had no clue who God really is?

When we understand His perfect love, His unconditional love, there is no longer fear. He is going to love me when I am doing well, and he’s going to love me just the same when I’m covered in mud and filth. He is not searching for an opportunity to punish me. He loves me and he wants me to love him and others. There is no fear in that at all!

This is why a chorus I learned after leaving the cult meant so much to me: “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.”

^“19We love each other because he loved us first.”

How are we able to love each other? Because He loved us first and showed us what love looks like.

^“20If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? “

How many liars have you known down through your years in cult environments? I’ve known a lot. I doubt any of them would admit to actually “hating” anyone…but “actions speak louder than words” is an old adage that holds true in this case as well. Lack of love is the same as hatred.

I grew up in a conservative preacher’s home. I heard the verbal vomit about the “liberal” leadership and neighboring pastors who “don’t believe fat meat is greasy.” I heard preachers who claimed to be holy and godly spout out comments like “he’ll never amount to anything,” “he’s good for nothing,” “I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickel for him,” and “I won’t give him the time of day.” These comments were all in reference to other ministers or saints who were in the same organization with the same doctrine, but disagreed over rules and standards of living.

Where is the love in that? Can you say you love God when you talk about another believer in this fashion? When you can be in the same room with another believer and completely avoid talking to him or her because you can’t stand them, is that love? How can you say you love God and behave in this fashion towards his other children?

^“21And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.”

It is a command…the true and only command to indicate our salvation.

What a lot to take in! It really is all in the concept of love. Remember Jesus saying that all the Ten Commandments could be condensed into loving God and loving others? That really is all it is about. It isn’t difficult to measure up, and it isn’t supposed to be an anxiety trip. It is all in that one little word, LOVE.

Leaving an Unhealthy Church #11: Confusion & Not Knowing Who or What to Believe

At first, what had led me to seriously consider leaving my United Pentecostal church was not doctrine or standards, but a mess of problems stemming from the church owned daycare where I was employed. My best friend at the time was the head teacher and we’d been experiencing difficulties in our relationship. She was hardly there and didn’t teach (we ran under her teaching credentials). One thing led to another so in 1993 I turned in my resignation, which was effective at the end of the summer session. During this time I started to feel that it was no longer my church as the daycare events seeped over into church- a terrible feeling after almost 13 years as an actively involved member. I still recall speaking to one of the daughters of the pastor, who was no longer a member of the church but worked at the daycare, and saying that if things didn’t change I’d have to think about leaving the church as well as the daycare.

Needing to be able to think clearly, I took off and crashed at a friend’s home in West Virginia for about three weeks after I resigned and spoke to them about what had been happening. It was a couple I’d met in the late 80s who had spent time at the church and knew the people and how the pastor operated. They’d become like a second set of parents to me, arriving shortly after my mother had passed away and my father had moved out-of-state.

While I was in West Virginia, the pastor at my home church had taken an entire Thursday night service and played a tape of a Christian radio broadcast (read a transcript of it here) that a former couple from the church made on the topic of spiritual abuse. His reasoning was to show them what people were saying about us. The church members seemed very upset by this couple. One would not have known what church they were referring to unless they had known them since no names were mentioned. I didn’t like what I was seeing and was curious to hear this ‘horrid’ broadcast. I borrowed it from the pastor and listened to it in the privacy of my home.

My reaction was far from that of the many church members who heard it while I had been away. Though I disagreed in areas, I understood what they were saying. It caused me to start wondering about the validity of standards taught in the United Pentecostal Church.

From here I ventured to Pennsylvania for a couple days to stay with another couple who had previously left our church and whose present church had dropped out of the UPC. I took the tape with me, played it for them, and while they listened and agreed with all that was on the tape, I paced the floor. It was starting to really hit home about some actions made by the pastor and I was realizing he did some very wrong things. It was quite upsetting and hard to come to grips with it. Here I had been seeing first hand the other side of what had happened to others before me, due to my involvement with the daycare. None of it felt good.

Immediately upon returning home, I visited with the one pastor’s daughter and her husband and discussed some issues and spent a few hours at their home. Now I had even more to digest as PKs see and hear a lot.

I started seriously wondering about the standards taught by the UPC and ventured into the uncut women’s hair doctrine. I wanted to know the truth! Though there were some issues I had studied more in depth while a member, though I was seeing through UPC glasses, this is one that had only been looked at on the surface. Their explanation of 1 Corinthians 11 seemed to make sense and I had long ago stopped cutting my hair and followed the teaching. I wanted to please God.

The confusion hit big time as I started to delve into the matter. I had writings from the UPC to read as well as a few other things which gave differing viewpoints. One day I’d feel the UPC was correct and the next felt they were in error. Talk about wavering. I recall getting together with a friend who is a lawyer and we’d bat things back and forth, coming back at each other with responses that the UPC would give to different points we made. How was one to know for sure? Was the UPC correct in their teaching? Were they in error? I did not have the answers.

Upon further study, I decided to jump head first into the Bible, looking for any and all mentions of hair in both the Old and New Testaments. Surely if this were a principle important to God, it would have been taught in the Old Testament. Yet nothing was found there to support the doctrine. The confusion started to ease as I studied more and dissected 1 Corinthians 11. What had once been clear to me as a UPC member, now was not. My findings showed that the Bible did not teach that a woman could never cut her hair.

Having finally laid that matter to rest, an uneasiness came over me and a thought came: “Now just what else is wrong that you’ve been taught?” Oh, yuck! I didn’t enjoy that thought at all. Talk about feeling like the rug has just been pulled out from under your feet and you were wobbling, trying to catch your balance. Where did it end? How was I going to know? Was any of what I’d sworn was true really true?

These were some of my thoughts. I now had a leeriness toward pastors and would forever be changed in this area. No more would I simply accept what a minister told me without finding out for myself. No more would I blindly defend any Christian denomination as if they could not be wrong in doctrine.

Did all of the confusion magically disappear? Were all my questions and thoughts suddenly answered? No. It was a process…a process which varies from person to person. A lot depends on whether or not one is willing to tackle the areas with which they find themselves confronted. Confusion will diminish and go away as one comes to terms with any teachings/incidents they find themselves questioning. But I thoroughly believe, that as it was with me, that this confusion may not fully leave until one studies the Bible for themselves and rests their conclusions solely upon what it says.

This was part of my experience. Confusion, not knowing who or what to believe, is surely part of the exiting process of any abusive group. But there is hope and there are answers to your questions. Regardless of the turmoil one may feel as they go through this stage, trust that God will lead and guide you and open your understanding to what the Scriptures truly teach.