Category: performance based | Page 9

Inducing Fear in the Congregation

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Isaiah 41:10 KJV

Yet they continue to try to induce fear in the members by saying things like:

Don’t you love God? when you disagree on a topic or are hesitant to accept a position.

You need a burden for this! when you really don’t have one and don’t want to do what they ask.

If you don’t give a Bible study you will go to Hell!! when you have not given a Bible study yet. Then when you finally do, there is such a feeling of relief.

If you leave this church you will be walking away from God and he will chastise you beyond belief.

And then all the other things that are rules for salvation (but they won’t admit to it) like:

You must be baptized by a certain formula or you are not saved, you must tithe to be blessed or God will get that money out of you one way or another and it won’t be fun either!, Ladies, if you even pull out a tangle from your hair it is considered cutting just as much as if you went and had it all cut off!, and so on through all the dress standards.

After awhile you are scared not to come to church. Scared not to tithe even if it brings financial hardship to you. Scared to wear a dress or skirt too short so you wear them to your ankles just to be safe. Scared to pull out a knot of hair and spend time picking it out lest the wrath of God come upon you. Scared to show your elbows so you wear sleeves down to the wrist even in hot, humid summers – and everyone is saying “Oh you will get used to it.” Scared to say no to a request to teach Sunday school or something else in case that means you are being disobedient to the pastor or his wife.

The list is endless. Yet so many who have been in these churches nearly all their lives are just as adamant about the rules as the leadership is. So why do you want to question what must be right, especially when they keep saying “We are the only church that has All The Truth.”

There is hope. Read Isaiah 41:10 – FEAR THOU NOT!

Modern Day Witch Hunts

Salem was a small village, somewhat isolated from others and fairly autonomous. Churches and other groups today can be just as isolated when they distrust “outsiders.” They may also require attendance and conformity. Religion often plays a large role in every aspect of the lives of church members in such churches–the church may tell members how to dress, what to listen to and watch, what types of jobs to get, where to go to school, when to buy a home or where to rent. These are seen as decisions needing spiritual guidance. Those who do not seek their pastor’s advice may miss the will of God or even “lose out with God” and be condemned to hell.

People in these groups seek explanations for the dangers they perceive–for some, these dangers may include persecution, poverty, or the risk of being lost and sent to hell, while for others the perceived dangers may include popular culture’s influence on their children, the influx of secular thought in public school, or the introduction of thoughts that might be considered too liberal or godless. And just as in Salem, at least some of these are explained by some as acts of the devil.

When anyone in such a group does not conform to the group, there is a risk that one of two things will happen: either the nonconformist will be viewed as an outsider and meet resistance from the group, or the group may begin to seek out those within the group that might be friendly toward the nonconformist or share some of the ideas or questions the nonconformist has mentioned or is thought to have. These people are then brought in to question themselves… and a witch hunt of sorts begins.

The nonconformity doesn’t need to be pronounced to be considered dangerous; it just needs to be perceived to exist. In my case, my sin was that I hadn’t married younger and lived alone–I looked and acted as much like them as was possible; I dressed the same, spoke the same, but I wasn’t the same since I wasn’t married. Within the same church some of the others who were “tried” had other faults: one questioned the pastor’s directives on what to wear, another was less educated, another too educated. Two questioned what had happened to me, apparently, and one went to visit another church without permission. Another fell in love with someone the pastor had not approved. These are not things most people would consider dangerous, but in the minds of that pastor and that group, they were.

Perhaps because there is perceived danger everywhere, people start distrusting each other within the group, watching for anything that might be considered dangerous in those around them. In Salem, this distrust was actually encouraged by some of the leaders, and it is in some groups today, as well. As we often heard in my former church, “Be careful who you fellowship!”

Read Part One and Two.

Good News

I’m not sure when or how I got a copy of the Good News Bible. It was not allowed. There was only one approved version of the Bible and don’t you dare listen to those radio preachers. So I never heard the Good News, in fact most of it was bad news. If you don’t stop or start doing you will go to hell.

I was told the gospel was Acts 2:38, those three steps to salvation: repent, be baptized every one of you in Jesus name, and receive the Holy Ghost. You couldn’t say Holy Spirit, that was new-fangled and not in the approved version of the Bible. I can still see in my mind’s eye the huge wall size poster replica of stairs I painted for my Sunday school class depicting the three steps to heaven. Why kids, do these three steps and never make a mistake and you might, if you are “perfect” and never cut your hair, go to heaven. But you’ll never know for sure. God can be awful mean sometimes.

By the late 80’s to early 90’s, I rebelled. After years of crying, praying, and never understanding why I couldn’t be good. I started listening to the radio preachers, who gave me a glimpse into the Good News. Then in 1995, I began reading in earnest my Good News Bible and learned that the gospel is not Acts 2:38 but Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection for me. This gospel or good news is what I had missed all those years. It wasn’t my effort to save myself but His effort on the cross to save me that would get me to heaven.

And now I want to remind you, my friends, of the Good News which I preached to you, which you received, and on which your faith stands firm. That is the gospel, the message that I preached to you. You are saved by the gospel if you hold firmly to it—unless it was for nothing that you believed. I passed on to you what I received, which is of the greatest importance: that Christ died for our sins, as written in the Scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life three days later… I Corinthians 15:1-4

God’s love

In my former church, the pastor emphasized that we can’t be “good enough” for God. I assume that what he meant was that we will never be able to “earn” salvation- it’s a gift. But his statement bothered me because of the way it was used.

Recently I went to a Christian comedian “concert” (Ken Davis). He told a story that his young granddaughter (under six) had gotten lost in the mountains while they were camping a few years ago. They searched for 3 1/2 hours, and couldn’t find her. Called in search and rescue. Nothing. A storm was coming in. He was in a panic, sure, after not finding her in all that time, that she would never be found alive. Then the call came- hikers found her over 2 miles from camp, sitting on a rock. When they brought her back to camp, someone snapped a picture of him talking to her. He was squatted down, holding both her hands, looking straight in her eyes. And he asked us what we thought he was telling her. “Don’t you ever do that again!” “How could you wander off like that!” “You know better!” No. All he could say, again and again, was “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And he asked how we could think God, who loves us so much more, could do any less.

On the way home, I kept thinking about that. There was very little ever said about the love of God in my former church. But His love is very real, and very near. We may not ever be “good enough” to earn salvation, but that’s because it’s free. And if that’s the case, none of us is “bad enough” to slip beyond God’s love and mercy either. We have more than a Savior. We have a Father who loves us more dearly than we can even understand. And I love Him, too.

Living for God should not be so hard

Why is it so hard to worship God or have any kind of walk with Him?

I ran across a statement similar to this not long ago, I forget where.

The church I was in, when I was first there, seemed to be fun and I had no idea that worship could be so much fun. But then…but then. We had to be there (in church) as it was a requirement. Didn’t we love God enough? We had to shout and dance and cavort. Didn’t we love God? We had to be there at social functions like a pot luck – 100% attendance for the whole church. Saturday morning visitation in the freezing cold and wind in winter and the hot (95 at 10 am) humid mornings in summer. It was another requirement. After all, didn’t we love God?

If we were not jumping around during song service we were not worshiping. Sometimes the altar calls went to 11 pm. Most of us had jobs we had to go to Monday morning (and Tuesday through Friday too). And get up at 5 am to go to the church to pray before going to work. And then the revivals. One year we were having so many revivals I was nearly exhausted but that didn’t matter. Didn’t we love God?

Then there were the standards of dress and hair. Don’t cut your hair. Don’t even trim off one split end. Don’t even pull out the hard knot, pick it out gently (obviously said by men who had short hair). Skirts down to the ankle. A lot of the young women liked the “pencil” skirts and shuffled along. I sometimes hoped there was not an emergency where they had to RUN out of the church to save their lives. Splits in skirts had to be sewn down to the hem line. (Then one day the Pastor said we could sew them down to 4 inches below the knee which helped some). Sleeves down to the wrist. In our hot Kansas summers we could wear sleeves to just below the elbow. It was still too hot.

If you cut your hair you lose power. If you wore your skirt and sleeves too short someone was bound to be lusting after your knees and elbows. Give a Bible study or go to the “Bad Place.” Speak in tongues every single day so you know you still have the Holy Ghost. Pray an hour a day, everyday. Invite someone to church – oh the contests, we had to see who’d bring the most visitors! Read the Bible through every year.

The list just went on and on. I had lost sight of my Jesus. I did not like what I was becoming – judgmental about those who did not come to our church, the one with the Truth. No other church had the truth like we did. I remember sitting on the pew for awhile, thinking, “Where is Jesus? Where have they put Him?”

At one time, I was told salvation is so easy (pre-Pentecost days): Just believe on the Lord, He is savior and He died on the cross. The cross had all but disappeared. Like Fudge’s book: Christianity Without the Cross. Where had the simplicity of salvation gone? Why was it so complicated?

It was man’s rules that dimmed the hope of salvation and grace. Man’s rules that tried to keep people in control and in a church building. We were told God only lives here in this place. And we believed all this.

I don’t read my Bible every day now. But sometimes I pick it up and read a bit and it seems to mean more than when I rushed to read x chapters every night and felt guilty if I missed a few days reading.

Why should we feel so guilty if we didn’t follow all the rules? Why should we feel ashamed? Jesus did not preach that. Paul did not preach that. The Bible does not teach us to be/feel that way. Jesus really got onto the Pharisees about all their rules and regulations. Why do we need all that?

We don’t. Building a relationship with anyone should not be contingent on rules and regulations And so it goes with God. He loves us unconditionally. No conditions except that we worship him only and know that Jesus is the one who paid the ultimate price. That is why He said “It is Finished” and died.

I only hope and pray that those who are still following so many rules will see the light in Jesus and stop all the nonsense.