Category: unhealthy churches | Page 140

Exposing Spiritual Abuse Giveaway!

THESE ARE NOW TAKEN. Watch for future giveaway posts!

While we have given away books for years as part of the spiritualabuse.org ministry, this will be our first one via this new blog area. I will not be sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter or Google, though others might. This way, people who come directly to the blog area will have first chance to receive a copy of Exposing Spiritual Abuse by Mike Fehlauer. This is a book we do not usually have to give away as used copies are harder to find at a reasonable price.

Up for grabs are two used copies of this book. One has a fair amount of pencil markings, though still very readable, and the other appears to be without any. The first two people with a USA mailing address who respond will receive a copy 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 whose 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.)

Fears

I’ve been told so many times that “perfect love casts out all fear” and that fear actually enables bad things to happen in our lives since it is the opposite of faith. But not all fear is bad. For instance, I’m afraid if I touch a hot stove I will be burned, so I refrain from touching it.

There are some fears that I have relating to my former church, as well. It is a proverbial hot stove in my life, and I’ve been burned enough to know not to touch it again. I don’t think there is anything wrong with naming my fears, nor do I think there is anything wrong with being afraid. So it is time to name a few.

I am afraid people from my former church will cyberstalk me and will find and misunderstand my posts, afraid they will twist them and try to use them against me. I’m afraid that someone will vandalize my property because I left their church. I’m afraid that people will be hurt that I left and will cut me off without ever asking why. Mostly, I’m afraid I will discover by these types of actions that my former church is filled with the bitterness, strife, anger, malice, variance, gossip, racism, and hatred that I’ve sensed in some.

Fear isn’t always a negative thing. There is a negative, immobilizing fear. But there is also a type of fear by which we learn and are motivated to change. Maybe the original Greek, Hebrew, or whatever had two or three words to define fear. I don’t know. I’m no Bible scholar. But I do know that some fear is OK. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Obviously, that is a good fear, a healthy respect that motivates people to serve God. And if “perfect love casts out all fear” surely that doesn’t include a fear of the Lord. So there are at least two types of fear: immobilizing terror and the fear that promotes positive response and action.

The fear that I have is more the positive kind that motivates a person to learn and to respond. For years, I was immobilized by the negative type of fear in church. I was afraid to speak out against immorality and unethical behavior in the church. I was afraid not to worship a certain way or display a certain type of emotion, because someone might think something was wrong with me and I would be attacked. So I became a hypocrite, hiding behind the required fake smiles and amens in order to survive, when all the time the questions built in my mind. Had I been allowed to ask the questions, to grieve when bad things happened, to say amen when I agreed and remain quiet when I didn’t (without being rebuked for it) I would probably still be there.

Over time, I began to look for answers and meaning. Not being allowed to ask the questions or seek the answers in the church, I looked in the Bible. The answers I found surprised me and prompted me to action. I was still afraid, but it was a positive fear that prompted response. My response has included leaving a very negative situation.

Fear doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t need to be negative. Some fear is healthy. Some fear is from God. After all, God himself should be feared, in a positive, respectful way. So, yes, I’m afraid. But not so afraid, or terrified, that I can’t face my fears, my concerns and my doubts, and react positively to them.

Curse of the Cult

Being raised my entire life in the controlling atmosphere of this type of religion left permanent scars on me. Sometimes, when I think about it, I feel so angry and betrayed! The cult dynamic leaves you feeling helpless and unable to make it through life on your own.

It’s so powerful because it robs you of your individuality, your independence, and your trust in your own thoughts. It takes away who you are and changes you into a clone. You lose your identity and accept the ideology that you’re going to be some great soldier for Christ, all for the greater good, etc.

In reality what you’re doing is checking your brain at the door, and becoming just another robot marching to the tune of the leader. This pastor is just a man, who has developed his own interpretation of what the Bible says, often to fit his own needs and his own desires. And yet, he himself is deceived into thinking that he’s doing the “will of God.” They have all the power, but they have been trained to think and to truly believe that this is what God wants them to do.

My personal brainwashing began when I was just a baby. I’ve written about how I was trained from a child with spankings that began before I learned to walk or talk. I was under the power of the preacher/father before I had any memory of my existence.

Growing up in this atmosphere, whether by nature or by early early training, I was extremely sensitive, eager to please, and tenderhearted. That left me wide-open to become the biggest clone of all. The model robot I became, and I was very skilled at doing everything I was asked to do. I never went through the rebellion that teenagers go through, for the most part, because I had been trained to be so sensitive to the slightest misbehavior that might throw me out of favor, “with God.”

I did it because I really wanted to please God. I did it because I was scared of what God would do to me if I didn’t measure up. I also did it because I love God. How could I love something I feared so much? I guess because I loved and feared my dad in the same way.

I was taught from early on to be sensitive to my dad’s moods and get out of his way if he seemed like he was tired and grouchy. I was trained not to talk to him if he was busy, because I would be bothering him. I was trained in so many other ways.

I loved his hugs and his cuddles, when they were given, and the rare approval that I saw in his eyes. Yet I feared him so much that I was scared to ask for anything that I wanted. I knew that I could approach him any time to tell him that I loved him or to give him a hug, but I knew that if he looked at me sternly, I was in huge trouble.

That’s the same way I looked at God. For the better part of my life, even as a grown adult, I was scared to make a move without the approval of the pastor. I was scared to think a thought that would be contrary to what was taught by the pastor. I was scared to make a choice on my own without seeking his advice. Many people, grown men and women, we’re afraid to make purchases, or move, or get a new job without consulting the pastor first to get his approval on those choices. The pastor’s approval was equated with God’s approval.

When one lives in this environment, without using their own brain, getting out can be very difficult…even scary. For the first time in your life you have no one else to blame for your mistakes. If anything goes wrong, you have to take responsibility for your choices. You’ve not had much practice making choices, so it’s a pretty sure thing that you’re going to make some wrong choices along the way. That could be terrifying, especially when people from the cult point their fingers at you and say “well you should’ve stayed in the church.. you should’ve asked pastor for advice and followed his advice.”

The thing is, we don’t learn how to make choices without making them. Our brains are like muscles. If they haven’t been exercised, they will buckle under weight. When other people were making small choices like what kind of clothes to wear for school, or whether or not they wanted to try out for the football team, we were not allowed to make those choices.

We couldn’t choose our friends, we couldn’t choose what activities we wanted to do, we couldn’t choose what music that we wanted to listen to, or what entertainment we enjoyed. We never learned to choose what clothing we wanted to wear, what hairstyle we enjoyed the most, or whether not we wanted to wear make up. We were given instructions to follow about all these personal things. We didn’t learn how to make choices.

When we finally break free from the cult and we start trying to make decisions and choices, we don’t really have any background information to use to make the wise decisions. We are in terror trying to decide and often it is difficult to make any decision at all. However not making a decision is a decision, and that’s where we get into trouble. That’s where things get difficult for us, because life gets a little harried.

I’ve had my own list of ‘bad choices’ to try to live with, once I got out on my own and could actually make these decisions for myself. However, I’m learning to make decisions. I’m learning how to balance my budget. I’m learning to make career choices, life choices, and of course wardrobe choices, hairstyle choices and even ‘how to raise my kids’ choices. Do I always make the right decisions? No, absolutely not! However, I learn more and more.

Each failure is only a step in the right direction, because I can take that information and use it for future choices.

Yes, I grew up in a cult. You talk about a dysfunctional family! It was a dysfunctional world where we were not allowed to fellowship with anyone else. I was homeschooled, and my entire life revolved around the cult.

Getting out brought such freedom! But, getting out also brought a lot of terror and fear.

Every day I still deal with the brainwashing. Every day I am filled with self-doubt. Every day I battle those little voices from the past who tell me that I’m “nothing but a worm,” that I don’t have a right to make my own decisions, that I need to lean on the words of someone else to try to understand what God wants of me. It’s the perfect recipe for codependency.

We were taught that we could not make it on our own without leaning on the church and the pastor. We were trained to not make it on our own without the direction and control of the pastor. I sometimes feel completely helpless, trapped, and very dysfunctional. However, I have to cut myself some slack when I stop and think about the years and years and years where I was not allowed to make choices, to think for myself, and where I was taught that I had to have someone else to lean on.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be confident and independent from the past. I know those scars have affected me for life in many ways. However, every step I take to be more independent, and every choice that I make gets me just a little bit closer to being the individual that I really want to be.

Spies

Spies. On our support group board, we have sometimes heard from members who were concerned there may be someone from their church or former church there (like the pastor or someone appointed by him) who will spy on them and report what they post. The chances of that happening are often slim, however the fear is quite real for some.

Considering what happens in unhealthy churches, this fear is understandable. How many appoint themselves as ‘police’ in these places, running to the pastor or his wife/family with any hint of perceived wrong-doing? (Though rarer, sometimes the pastor himself appoints people to do this.)

My own former pastor would at times take the word of a ‘reporter’ and take action against the ‘transgressor’ without ever speaking to them first or looking into the veracity of the matter. The reports even sometimes became sermon material for him. I saw people lose positions, be sternly reprimanded, threatened with losing their salvation, and even asked to leave as the result of these ‘spies.’

Any church leadership that needs or encourages tattling is unhealthy. It is a form of control. It is a sign of an insecure and controlling pastor. A healthy pastor would stop the talebearer and let them know that they were to no longer make any ‘reports.’

If you are afraid of your pastor or if ‘spying’ goes on in your church, then chances are likely that you are in an unhealthy group. It would be good to educate yourself on signs of spiritual abuse.

Prosperity Churches Vs. Poverty Churches

I don’t have experience with these two church types outside of Pentecostalism, so I don’t know how it is in other denominations, but I’ve noticed that in the United Pentecostal Church and in Apostolic churches there seems to be several that have a definite bias towards either ‘prosperity salvation’ or ‘poverty salvation.’ I don’t know if I’m using those terms correctly, that’s just what I called it in my head when I first started noticing it. I’m sure I heard it somewhere.

So from my experience, Prosperity Churches tend to insert implications (or come right out and say) that if you were in the will of God, doing what you were supposed to, (which means following all their rules) etc., that God would bless you financially. It was said or implied that if you were having difficulties financially, you were doing something wrong. Sin, lack of faith, lack of works, SOMETHING was wrong with your Christian performance and walk with God or else your needs would be met.

The Poverty Churches liked focusing on Jesus’ statement that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This passage was elevated the same way Acts 2:38 was. Any possession that wasn’t the bare minimum requirement for living was considered an “idol” and the person who owned it would be ‘preached at’ regularly and it would be implied over the pulpit that unless the item was sold, the bare necessity purchased, and the rest given to the poor (which usually translated to ‘donated to the church’) that the owner was lost and hell bound. They were the camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle.

In the Poverty Churches, people developed serious dysfunctions in regards to owning things. Something like a nice car bought for a good price could be labeled as an idol and the person who owned it would be made to feel like a heathen in the midst of saints. A nice dress (even if it was a hand me down) usually was viewed as evidence of a Jezebel spirit, because clothing that was nicer than necessary for decency and comfort couldn’t have any other purpose than self-glorification.

Members of a Poverty Church would be told constantly that if they put ANYTHING before their relationship with God, that either God would take it away by any means necessary, or they would be lost if they should happen to die before repenting and getting rid of whatever unnecessary person, place, or thing they were allowing to come between them and God.

I’ve seen pastors of Poverty Churches that used this slant on the doctrine in order to squeeze every last penny out of their congregation so that they could live like kings – in complete contradiction to the things they taught. I’ve also seen pastors of Poverty Churches that really believed their slant on the doctrine, and lived it. These that truly believed it were (in my experience) usually the ones most likely to call people out by name from the pulpit or give so many details about who they were preaching against at the moment that no names were necessary. They were the most hurtful with their words when explaining to someone why that person’s particular idol was going to send them straight to the lake of fire. I’ve also seen the children of these preachers leave home and become extremely materialistic due to being deprived of so many commonplace things growing up.

The Poverty Church doctrine sometimes affects marriages too. A married person might feel that if they love their spouse too much they’re putting them before God. This fear often takes one (or both) of these forms: fear that God will take their spouse away through death, or that they’ll go to hell if they don’t distance themselves from their spouse (while staying married of course). I’ve also seen mothers apply that line of thinking to their relationship with their children and proceed to intentionally distance themselves emotionally from their children. Especially small children.

I’m of the opinion that neither of these biases are correct. Yes, people can make possessions, hobbies, or relationships more important than God and that’s usually not good. But considering everything you enjoy an ‘idol’ deprives you of so many of the joys in life that were created by God (such as the husband/wife relationship, or the mother/child relationship). It also replaces that joy with fear and anxiety over the possibility that because you enjoy something, you’re not saved.

As far as the Prosperity Churches, anyone who has financial trouble immediately feels that they’re no longer pleasing God. They may also believe that they’ve lost their salvation, and will not believe that they’re saved again until their trouble is alleviated. Job comes to mind as a direct refute to this way of thinking. He lost all his assets and his family specifically because he was SO pleasing to God, that God bragged on him. There are other instances in the Bible that (IMO) easily refute both the Prosperity and the Poverty slant on salvation, but the example of Job is so clear to me that it seems unnecessary to reference more.

As you can probably tell by the fact that I had much more detail to give on the Poverty Churches, I was mostly raised in Poverty Churches growing up. Even with such clear examples in the Bible, this way of thinking was so ingrained in me that it was hard for me to get past. When I still believed what I had been told about missing my last chance for repentance, I became very materialistic. When I tried to become a believer again, I found myself going back to that sacrificial Poverty Salvation mindset. I’ve lived with an almost primal fear that having something nice, enjoying an activity, or loving someone would send me to hell.