Category: performance based | Page 11

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.

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.

Perfection

There is a concept in the church I’m from that we can live above sin. If we sin after we come to God, we are told we are, at best, living beneath our privileges. Sin doesn’t have control of our lives now, therefore we shouldn’t sin.

I have several issues with these thoughts, but there is one that really gets me. Perfection. The five fold ministry is for “the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry.” So we are to be brought to perfection or maturity. But what is perfect? What is mature? Simple (they say). Don’t cut your hair, don’t put on makeup, don’t wear pants, always wear long sleeves, don’t wear jewelry (including wedding bands or bracelet watches). Don’t go on a date without a chaperone, or hold hands or kiss until you’re married. Don’t lie. Respect the ministry, never talk bad about the man of God or his family, and never question what a leader says. Don’t wear hair bows, don’t wear anything in your hair that doesn’t match your hair color. Don’t wear red, don’t wear certain shoes, don’t wear denim to church, don’t wear denim jackets or caps ever. Sit like a lady. Stay submissive. Learn when to clap and shout and run, and always do these at the right times. Don’t be out after midnight, don’t fellowship non-Apostolics, don’t drink or chew or cuss or swear….

The list goes on and on. Is that perfection? Following a list of proscribed do’s and don’ts? Is that maturity? Or is perfection- is maturity- accepting ourselves and others as we are, while still becoming more like Jesus? What happened to love? Was it perfected right out of the church? Am I immature because I doubt these types of restraints in my 30s? Are others more mature because they watch to see when I make a mistake and immediately report it to the pastor (and gossip about it in the meantime)? Is the pastor in a place of spiritual perfection and maturity when he yells that I have a women’s lib spirit, because I supposedly broke one of these rules?

Perfection, maturity, is so far beyond any list of do’s and don’ts. I fear we’ve missed it. When I start to do something and stop to think, “if someone saw…”, rather than considering how Jesus would think or just being able to relax and enjoy myself in some small way, that is anything but maturity, spiritual or otherwise.

If lists of rules were perfection, the Pharisees and Jesus would have been great friends, I suppose. But they weren’t. It was Jesus who said “ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and forget the weightier matters of the law… these ought ye have done, and not to leave the other undone”. It was Jesus who said “he that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” Jesus stepped beyond the rules and touched the heart.

God calls us, as Christians, beyond a list of rules. We are called by Him into a place of trust and faith and love. We desire to do our best for Him, but our best isn’t any more dependent upon the man made rules than Jesus’ was. How often did Jesus heal on the Sabbath? Touch a leper?

Jesus stepped beyond rules, and he calls us to do the same. It is a step of faith. Rules are simple to follow, but real love isn’t always. After all, love healed, but it also allowed crucifixion. Can we reconcile that love in our hearts?

Ez 26:36 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Rules can be followed by a heart of stone. Love can only be followed by a heart made soft by the touch of Jesus. By his love. And it’s in His love that we can be, and are, made “perfect.”

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It Is Time To Rest

I read an interesting article that appeared in Essence by TD Jakes.

The article struck a chord. In it, Jakes talks about resting, that we need to go apart and get the rest we need sometimes. My mind attached what he was saying about (I’m sure) physical rest to taking that vacation from church some have been encouraging. Still don’t know if its a good idea to stop attending, but here are my thoughts anyway.

For the last year, I have been involved in some activity almost every day/night of the week. I had one night off every other Fri and one Sat a month unless I leave town. Several of those activities required over 3-4 hours of time commitment per week. And that was above the requisite hour of prayer, fast day each week, and bible reading/study. Talk about exhausting! I enjoyed some of the extra activities, but was required to still maintain previous commitments to be involved with the extra.

Having left the church, I don’t know what to do with my time. Church is the immediate response mode when I’m lonely or bored, because it’s all I could do for so long.

Although I need a good church to rest in sometimes, need good solid bible teaching and so forth, it really is time to rest. Whether that is going to church once a week or when I feel like it, to one church or a variety until one feels right, (and as much as I dislike TD Jakes normally) there was something to that article for me. Jesus said “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Maybe, after 19 years, that’s the most needful part of this experience. Its time to rest.

Rest is so much more than sleep. Its an ability to relax in God. Not to worry anymore about what anyone else is doing right or wrong. Not wondering what everyone will think about each decision made or action taken. Not rushing here and there trying to please everyone. Not trying to be perfect. Just sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet and learning for a while. And allowing myself to be me. So I’m thankful for this time. It’s time to rest.

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Taking A Break From The Timeline

I’m going to take a break from cataloguing memories in a specific timeline. Concentrating so hard on such unpleasant events and trying to remember accurate details is getting me down. Last night I had nightmares about the exorcism.

Yes, I’m a grown woman, wife, mother, professional, and I still have nightmares about things that happened in my UPC (United Pentecostal Church) upbringing. If my husband is not with me, I sleep with the light on. Even after years of therapy and feeling more peaceful with the world in general than I ever have, I still have a lot of residual fear that is not yet completely gone.

I cannot read the book of Revelations without seeing that horrible “End Times” video in my mind that was shown to me by Apostolics. I will not speak of it now, maybe sometime I’ll write about it. Sometimes I can almost put this stuff behind me and have peace, but *something* always happens and I find myself shaking inside again, while keeping my demeanor frozen in ‘normalcy’. Can’t let the masses see the fear, they’d think I was crazy. (Maybe I am.. after all, a Pentecostal preacher said I was a reprobate…)

So, while I’m taking this break, I will continue posting some random (less disturbing) memories about growing up UPC/Apostolic.

One such memory is this: I remember an unsaved couple coming to our church once, and of course, the lady was not dressed in compliance with the standards. She wore a dress, but had cut hair, makeup, earrings, etc. A boy of about 12 went up to her after service and said “Don’t come back as long as you’re wearing earrings, we don’t believe in that here”. She wasn’t sure how to take it, because looking around, none of the women were wearing earrings. But, this was just a child, so she wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.

Fortunately, someone heard him and went and told the Pastor. The Pastor immediately came to her and apologized and said that he was just a confused child, we very much wanted her to come back, in fact to come back forever would be our greatest wish. She said “But is it true? Do you consider earrings a sin?”

Since the lady had obviously just had her feelings hurt, the Pastor tried to stumble around the standards without saying outright, yes we consider them a sin. By this point he was pretty flustered and although I can’t remember his exact explanation, I know it wasn’t great (how could it be?) and they never came back. The boy was given a talking-to from the Pastor, and then was punished at home by his parents.

However, I don’t know that he really deserved punishment. He was repeating what he’d been taught. He thought he was standing up for his beliefs. The church didn’t do much teaching on grace, personal convictions, or ‘working out your own salvation’, but they did a WHOLE LOT of preaching on standards, not being ashamed of your beliefs, not letting the church get contaminated with worldliness, and the hell fire that was waiting for anyone who was ashamed to stand up for Pentecostal ‘truths’. So, who was really to blame for this boy’s behavior?

Personally, I would compare this to an army unit spending 12 years teaching a soldier to defend its territory against a well-defined enemy, and then punishing the soldier for acting on his training.

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