Category: legalism | Page 17 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Videos on Women only Wearing Skirts/Dresses

Just under five minutes, this is a video from a woman who grew up in a Pentecostal church. She refutes the holiness standard of women only being allowed to wear skirts and dresses. She also lightly touches on other standards taught by performance based churches and shares a little of her background and experience.

EDIT: Unfortunately, the person has made all these videos private, so they are no longer available.

Part 2 is just under ten minutes.

And part 3 is just over 9.5 minutes. Here is where she starts sharing her background.

Part 3b is just over six minutes. The sound is low on this one.

The final installment is just over ten minutes. The sounds quality fluctuates on it.

Approaching A New Year

As we approach a new year, and knowing I have more behind me than ahead of me, it becomes ever more important to own who I am. I am a child of God saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ my Lord. Much of my life found me chained to a legalistic doctrine that sapped my faith, hope and love and encouraged doubt, discouragement, fear and judgment.

Once I escaped (and it was a true and traumatic escape) I found a God of love and peace that I left behind many years ago in my quest to perform my way into salvation. There is NOTHING I could ever do to earn a place with God. Jesus already did it all and proclaimed it finished! Like Paul, I do not see this as a license to sin (realizing also that what I wear, my hair style, and where I go are not sin unless they are sinful) rather a knowledge that we are saved by faith in Christ alone, not by works, lest any should boast. The bottom line is and has always been God is Love and to be His disciple is to have love for Him and for one another—that is a bottom line where we find REAL peace. May God richly bless each one as we walk by faith into a new year with Him.

Breaking Away

About a month ago I trimmed my hair, about 1/8″ off, a few split ends, one strand at a time. But still against what I had been taught. About a week ago I wore my hair in a braid, down, for the first time in public in years. In a church that allows no physical contact between unmarried men and women, I have begun to feel more comfortable with a nonsexual embrace or tap on the shoulder, and even went out to eat with a virtual stranger in a public restaurant this morning with few qualms, although he apparently recognized that I was a bit tense.

There is nothing wrong with these things. The hair trimming may have been done in the wrong spirit (I wanted to break with the traditional teaching, and that was a lot less obvious than pants) but still, there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself. I don’t think that God would send me to hell for what I did, anymore than I can imagine him not loving me simply because I might not go to that church.

Why is God so limited in so many people’s lives? God is infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent… and yet it’s as though we expect him to fit in a tiny jewelry box and sit in our pocket. A genie in a lamp rather than a loving Father.

When my chaplain friend prayed with me, I saw through that prayer a love, faith, and trust that was almost completely foreign to me, and I realized I had been robbed- robbed of my identity in Christ. When a statement was made on a support group board about being a “precious child of God” the thought was reinforced. Knowing this, am I breaking away from something or bridging to something better?

I’ve been told for so long that listening to ideas that are not Apostolic like “we” are is to let the ideas of the devil in. But the devil wouldn’t remind me of the grace and mercy of a loving Father, wouldn’t remind me that I’m a child of God. The devil wants us condemned… and condemnation is exactly what I now feel free of. I don’t have to look over my shoulder or consider what others might think about every word I say, how they might twist it or who they might repeat (or misrepeat) it to. I still wonder how I ever thought that I was right in living for people that way. I don’t want to live for people, I want to live for God. That, in the end, is really the only way to really live.

Tomorrow I go to chapel. A safe place, for me. Tomorrow night I go to a living nativity. For the first time in years, I am really getting the opportunity to celebrate the birth of the One that saved me. How odd it is that I was not allowed to really celebrate His birth. Shouldn’t Christians, of all people, be most apt to celebrate His birth, His death, and His resurrection? What better way to celebrate our life in Him?

Joy to the World!!!

Grace And Works

What can we ever do that will be considered good enough for an almighty, righteous, holy God? We’re human, He’s God. We’re born in sin and shapen in iniquity, He’s the creator of all things. Will skirts or long hair or a lack of jewelry ever be sufficient?

I know the standard answer in churches I’ve been to has been that we do those things because we love Him, not to be saved. Yet if a person doesn’t do those things, are they considered saved? The answer to that is generally “by their fruits you shall know them.” What fruits? The Bible nowhere mentions clothes or hair as fruits. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness. And thorns are definitely not cut hair, pants and makeup. Attitudes can get prickly, but the way we dress doesn’t hurt others any time we get near them. If your imagination immediately jumped to a hooker or stripper and the way she dresses, and you thought, yes, the way they dress can hurt us, I’ll remind you that the way that person dresses doesn’t hurt you unless you have a fault that keeps you from fleeing that situation or leads you to lust. But lying, backbiting and slander can hurt a person even if they haven’t done anything wrong.

Thinking about all of this last night I realized that when we do certain things to try to be saved or look down on others as unsaved if they don’t do them, we place ourselves in a very dangerous situation: we lift ourselves up on an equal with God. God is holy and righteous. Our righteousness, the very best we can do, is as filthy rags to Him. No matter how “good” we try to be, we still fall short, because He knows our hearts. He knows the greed or pride that motivates, even if it’s just a tiny bit of our motivation.

That doesn’t mean that we should stop doing the right things or stop being good. But being good is not a list of rules and dress codes, it’s a mindset. It’s a matter of a right heart and a clean conscience. And it doesn’t involve judging others for the ways we think they might not measure up to us.

What is good? Jesus himself asked a man why he called him good, since there’s none good but God. And what should we do, if Christianity isn’t about being good? Well, when we live in Jesus, and He lives in us, won’t His goodness shine through us? But what is His goodness? It’s not dress standards, it’s love. Compassion, mercy, gentleness… grace. Those are the things we should focus on, not externals. Anyone can dress a certain way, but true fruit- love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness- who can imitate those for any length of time? Who can even live like that most of the time?

If those Christian attitudes are more difficult to display than long sleeves, shouldn’t they be the focus? And if we know we can’t produce those fruits in our lives consistently on our own, then can we take pride in living that way? Absolutely not. Because living with love, joy, peace, patience… having those in our lives takes something more than a credit card and the right clothes in the closet. It takes Christ.

Just Couldn’t Stay Part 4

Continued from Part Three.

I stopped everything. Pants, cutting my hair, make up, movies, music, friends, sometimes sex with the DH, being best friends with my DH, happiness, peace of mind and you can insert just about anything else and I stopped it. I got baptized to satisfy my mother and stop listening to her go on and on about it. I was okay with it, I had no problems. I was so caught up with this organization I didn’t even notice. I want to say I was so caught up in Jesus that I didn’t notice. Honestly I don’t know.

When I reflect on it now it seems like such a whirlwind. I know I loved God and was wanting to do it all for him, however I can’t lie and say I didn’t want to be a part of what I thought was going to save me. Being Apostolic Pentecostal was everything. We were not Christians, we were Apostolic for the mere word Christian was not good enough for us. That would put us in the category as everybody else. And we alone where the bride of Christ no one else was. They were not our brothers and sisters, atheists were more tolerated than non-oneness Pentecostals.

I remember after my second child was born praying for a new set of tongues because I wanted to hear an actual language. I prayed and fasted a very long time for this. I couldn’t stand the thought of going to Hell. Tongues was the Holy Ghost and without it you were not saved. Did I ever get it? I don’t really want to answer that question. I am still sorting out tongues. I believe whatever I do in prayer is real because it comes from my heart. I also believe in tongues because the bible talks about it, however the beliefs I once had about them is what I am sorting out. That was vulnerable to write to say the least. It was a lot keeping up the separated from everybody in the whole wide world doctrine and make sure I pray in tongues every day or loss of salvation.

I had a powerful moment with God during this time. Once in prayer I remember Him telling me I came to HIM thinking he was mad at me all the time, because that is what I always knew. That had to be God for no one else knew what I went through in prayer. I constantly started out my prayers with repenting and not always getting anywhere because I thought he only tolerated me, not loved me. I got in on a package deal, this whole salvation thing. He died for everybody else and I was given the crumbs. I wasn’t important in church. I didn’t hold a position in church in my early years, so that meant God felt the same way about me as everybody else did, a second-class Christian.

Then something happened, that got me to start thinking about a lot of things. I went through a couple of pastoral changes. The thing is every one of them believed different things. They all held to the three step plan, but the last pastor added on a lot you had to do to be saved. He was WPF and oh brother that is when it all hit the fan for me.

To be continued… [Note: Unfortunately it never was finished.]