Category: unhealthy churches | Page 138

Books on Codependency Giveaway!

We are still celebrating hitting 100 blogs on August 6. 🙂

We have given away books for years as part of the spiritualabuse.org ministry and this will be our fifth one via this new blog area. This is your chance to receive one or more books on codependency. We have given away books on the subject through the years as it is often an issue in unhealthy churches. It was recently mentioned in one of our blogs.

Up for grabs are several used books:

~~Two hardback copies of Codependent No More & Beyond Codependency by Melody Beattie~~. TAKEN
One paperback copy of Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody. There is some underlining in the very beginning of the book.
Three paperback copies of Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. One copy has numerous pencil markings, but is still very readable. TWO TAKEN

The first people with a USA mailing address who respond will receive their choice of book(s) at no charge to them. To respond, just leave a comment for this post. Please understand that comments require approval unless you have previously commented. So while it may look like you are first or second, there may be someone ahead of you who comment is pending. Be sure to use your actual email address when setting up to comment as I will be contacting you. (Do not put the email or address in your actual comment.)

Be sure to mention in your comment which book(s) you would like and you may refer to them by number.

You still have the opportunity to receive one or more books on Boundaries by Henry Cloud & John Townsend here. You must comment separately on that blog to make a request.

Books on Grace Giveaway!

We are still celebrating hitting 100 blogs on August 6. 🙂

We have given away books for years as part of the spiritualabuse.org ministry and this will be our fourth one via this new blog area. This is your chance to receive one or more books on grace. We have given away many books on the subject through the years as people from unhealthy churches often have set aside God’s grace when they become caught up in the performance trap.

Up for grabs are several used books:

~~One hardback copy of The Grace Awakening by Charles Swindoll. The dust jacket isn’t in the best condition but the inside is good.~~ TAKEN
One hardback copy of Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace. TAKEN
~~Two paperback copies of Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace. One copy has some highlighting and markings, but is still very readable~~. TAKEN

Be sure to mention in your comment which book(s) you would like and you may refer to them by number.

You still have the opportunity to receive one or more books on Boundaries by Henry Cloud & John Townsend here. You must comment separately on that blog to make a request.

Video

I prayed through in a church where TV “in the home” was preached against. However, the pastor admitted to having gone to friends’ homes to watch TV as a kid. He also allowed the saints to have a VCR and monitor. He even eventually got one. I watched more PG movies in the six months after I got in church than I had in the world. Many of us would also go to places like Walmart and watch movies there.

Later, another pastor ended up teaching against TV, video, moving pictures, monitors- I wasn’t even sure it was acceptable to go to a play. So here is what’s funny to me: There could be no VCRs, movies, or TV. Sometimes YouTube was also preached against. But at least some would watch video clips online at work regularly. Several emailed me video clips, too. And video games that look exactly like cartoons were never taught against at all.

I’m a very visual person. To me, video is an art form, if done tastefully. But I didn’t watch a movie or TV for years because it was ‘wrong.’ Not biblically wrong, pastorally wrong.

I don’t have a pastor now. Yesterday I checked out three videos from the library. Last night was the first time in my life I’d ever watched a video in my own home. And I cried. I don’t even know why. It wasn’t that I felt guilty. Maybe I was so relieved to be able to chose to do something just for the enjoyment of it. It was a beautiful movie. And it felt so nice to be able to just do something for the fun of it!

I’ve heard video preached against because we remember so much of what we see. However, we must remember that not everything we see is bad.

Do we truly remember more of a video than we do of real life? It may seem that way at first, but in reality, we haven’t- it’s just that in real life we remember snapshots of scenes. The best movies are simply limited to a well-directed series of these types of snapshots. This creates an illusion of remembering more from the movie than real life, when in fact we are still just remembering snapshots of the best pieces of life.

I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. (Ps 101:3) Obviously no verse in the Bible speaks specifically against television or movies. However, this verse has been used in many circles to show people they should not watch movies or TV. We should, indeed, be careful not to engross ourselves in anything that is wicked- book, TV, movie, everyday life… but if we used this verse to say that TV or movies on the whole were wrong, then we would need to go through life with our eyes closed. Those who walk with their eyes closed are most likely to fall.

Stay in the boat?

Stay in the boat. Stay in the ark. Only those on the ark were saved, after all. I heard this preached for years as a way to tell people to stay in the church. For almost as many years I have had one question come to mind… didn’t Noah get off the ark at some point?

Of course Noah got off the ark. The ark was a place of safety and deliverance for a time. But when dry ground reappeared after the flood, I’m fairly certain that there had never been people more grateful to leave a ship than Noah and his family were. So why are so many people taught today to never leave the boat?

Another man left a boat one day- in a storm and still on the water. Peter often proved that he didn’t tend to think ahead, maybe especially where Jesus was concerned. So, sailing on a dark night, in the midst of a stormy sea, Peter saw Jesus walking on the water and said, “Lord if it’s you, bid me come.”

Ridiculous! Peter had fished that sea all his life. He knew the water. And he knew that getting out of a boat in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm was, well… less than intelligent. But Jesus said come, and he went. Right over the side of the boat. And he walked. Sure, he saw the wind and waves and sunk. But Jesus was there. He took Peter by the hand and got him back in the boat. How did he get there? He most probably walked.

The thing is, Peter left the boat at Jesus’ bidding. And in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the sea, Peter didn’t drown, and he didn’t lose Jesus. And the story was written down, and has been preached on a lot. But to walk out to Jesus, Peter left the boat!

There are times in some of our lives when its good to leave the boat. Noah and his family, with all those animals, would have been in a very unhealthy situation had they refused to leave their boat. After God had delivered them by the ark, they could have refused to leave, and their deliverance would have become their prison, and eventually their tomb. All because they were afraid to leave the boat.

Peter would have been saner had he stayed on the boat. But Peter stepped out by faith, and he walked with Jesus on the water. Not for long, but Jesus bid him come, he went, and he walked. I’ve always felt that Jesus loved that impetuousness in Peter. Peter was rough, he didn’t often plan ahead, but he trusted Jesus. He had a fascinating amount of raw faith that later made him a great witness and leader in the church. Peter didn’t have to leave the boat, but he stepped out by faith, and he didn’t suffer for leaving it that night.

Some people love the water. They spend their lives by the water, earn their living in the water… others get seasick. A ship is not a safe haven for everyone. Is church? What if it’s unhealthy to stay on the ship? What if Jesus bids you step out of the boat?

So why do we hear that we have to stay in the “boat,” the church, all our lives? Name one person in history that spent their entire life on a boat! It’s a good thought, and I know that the message involves faithfulness and dedication. But dedication and faithfulness to God, or the church? Can we be faithful to God without being dedicated to church? I think the answer is yes. Christians have done that through centuries of persecution. The Jews didn’t often go to Tabernacle in many times in history, due to distances, financial constraints… and even due to corrupt priests (Eli’s sons, for instance).

The first time my faith was severely shaken, I was permanently expelled from a church (by phone) because someone believed a lie. Someone who, it appeared, was possibly at fault themselves. I didn’t even know someone could be expelled from a church, and never dreamed that I would be. The following months were some of the lowest of my life, and sometime early into that time, as I prayed, I told God: God, I’m at the end of my rope. And I’m tying a knot in the end and hanging on with both hands, my feet, and my teeth. If I fall, catch me… and please stick my teeth back in my mouth, because they’ll still be stuck in that rope!

I’ve fallen off that rope several times through the years. God has always caught me, and I still have all my teeth! I’m not sure why I even insist on having a rope to be at the end of, or an ark for safety. God is my strength and my refuge. He’s an ever present help in times of trouble. Will I stay in the boat, or step out of the boat?

It’s time to step out.

Anger

I am struggling with anger, and with guilt for the anger that I feel. Oh, the anger is well founded. I don’t think my anger is off base, unchristian, or unfounded. I have been lied to, lied on, falsely accused, and misrepresented. I’ve been discredited, shamed and humiliated, falsely accused by saints and then the pastor, and informed that I cannot even speak in my own defense because doing so questions his authority. I have seen backbiting, bitterness, variance, envying, strife, contention, gossip, and lying promoted in the name of religion. And I have seen true religion negated due to these promotions. Pure religion and undefiled is this… to visit the fatherless and widows… and to keep himself unspotted from the world…

My anger is as justified as Jesus’ when he drove out the money changers in the temple. No, I’m not being haughty or proud. I am not justifying bitterness, nor am I thinking more highly of myself than I ought. I am simply stating the facts. Jesus got angry, he even made a whip and drove out the money changers, yet He was without sin. To lay sin at my feet for saying the attitudes directly spoken against in the Bible should not be ignored in the church is neither reasonable nor biblical.

I have been told multiple times that I should forgive and forget things that should not be forgotten and which the offender never repented of. According to the unspoken rules of the church, if I tell the pastor he has offended me, I will be “reproved and rebuked” and told that I have a bitter, unforgiving spirit. Further, if I call and ask to go back to church, I will be dealt with harshly for leaving. I will be expected to attend four services a week and will have little or no privacy. I will not be able to use the internet for anything but work purposes. And I will only be sitting on a pew waiting to be called out for some new false report or supposed infraction anyway.

So I’m angry. Not sinfully angry, but angry in a way that has prompted change and research on my part. Anger that has made me re-look and rethink several teachings of the conservative Oneness movement. Anger that has made me realize that I’d prefer to go to a church where the women wear pants and they sing the doxology than to sit in a church where brothers and sisters distrust each other, where people are judged more than they are loved and accepted, and where there are some big names and also many no names.

I’m angry. I have a right and a need to be angry. When my anger shows through in my writing, it is not because I’m a horrible backslid reprobate. It is because there are terrible wrongs taking place under God’s name, and good people are being hurt as a result. There is no greater hypocrisy, no worse way to take God’s name in vain than to do these things “in His name” and then attempt to silence those who have been so misused.