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The stage was set, the tones were hushed, – weeping and moaning could be heard – and the sweat was pouring amid the hot summer breeze blowing through the open windows.  We were reaching the climax of another “evangelistic” Sunday night service at my United Pentecostal Church.  The building was small and inadequate for the crowds, as was the air conditioning system.  Our pastor’s preaching style was starting slowly with a scripture, a title, and then launching into various Old Testament stories and ending with stories of car wrecks, God’s impending judgement on women who didn’t follow the rules, and those waiting too late to “pray back through.”

He was a very large, imposing man and he could be very dramatic in his sermons; visually displaying how the devil had his way with Job, as he scraped his sores.  He acted out the stories of Rizpah, shooing away the vultures from the seven slaughtered sons of Saul, staggering back as poor Naomi who would have to be called Mara (meaning bitter) because she went out full and came back empty; no husband, no children, and of course pitiful blind Samson, who didn’t even know when God’s spirit left him. (This thought would haunt me for the rest of my life.)

All of these sermons were meant to create a sense of urgency in the audience to come rushing to the altar benches in front of the pews at the end of the service to plead with God for mercy one more time.  This scene was repeated each Sunday night in my United Pentecostal Church.  The purpose this served in my life was to make me very fearful of God and not the kind of fear the Bible describes.  As a young girl, the first concepts taught to me about God were that of someone who would only love me if I was good enough.  If not, He would yank the Spirit right out of me or maybe like Samson it would drift out and I wouldn’t even know it.  The long term effect of living with this kind of fear in my life is that I have always taken on the guilt of everything.  Every circumstance that comes in to my life causes me to question “is it my fault?”  I even dream up circumstances to blame myself for.  And since our emotions can’t think, they tend to stick with you through life despite the facts that you know.

Fear and guilt are used as a means of gaining control over the members of these churches.  You see, these are not the meek and mild ministers you see in movies, they are in total control.  In fact, the churches in the area I am in are not even called by their name but by Brother So and So’s church; whoever the pastor is at the time.  You are not to question his authority.  These ministers make up strict behavioral rules for you to obey; how to dress and how to comb your hair.  If you are going to be allowed to participate you must be following the rules.

Those who don’t follow the rules are disapproved of and seen as the dreaded “worldly.”  We were told what we could listen to, where we could go, and what we could do.  Fear is used to keep people from leaving the church; you are told there is no alternative, if you leave here you will lose your salvation.  It was always stressed that your “church family” is really closer to you than your real family.  Why would you ever leave?

But, is this God’s approach to drawing people to Himself?  If God’s highest desire is for man’s love and obedience, is it won based on fear of punishment?  The answer is no.  God’s approach to win man’s love and obedience is love.

“…not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”   Romans 2:4b NKJV

“For God so loved the world…John 3:16a NKJV

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”   Ephesians 2:4-7 NKJV

^“For the love of Christ compels us…”   II Corinthians 5: 14a NKJV

My parents’ church, growing up, was very small and wouldn’t try anything new. They never encouraged anything for anyone under 50 to my memory. We kids couldn’t sit past the third pew on either side because a deacon’s mom sat in the third row and NO ONE sat in front of her. We had one egg hunt when I was around 8 or 10, and VBS I think about the same time. Once. Dad asked about videos during class due to reading and hearing difficulties of some. It was not considered.

They were told that mowing the church and parsonage lawn, doing a significant amount of the church maintenance, supplying all Sunday School materials from their personal budget and resources (Mom created a lot of the material herself for awhile, because the church wasn’t purchasing anything that worked for a class with an age range like they gave her.) for free was not considered in any way part of a tithe, and were not allowed to participate in decisions within the church because they weren’t giving a full 10% of Dad’s paycheck. If they’d considered how much they were giving of themselves, it would have been much more than 10% I suspect.

These were not healthy things, any more than anything I experienced as an adult. There are many various ways that churches place unhealthy and unreasonable expectations on members.

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on April 17, 2015.

I have problems with Easter.

My church attendance has been irregular since I left fundamentalism, which I’ve been told is normal for people who have suffered spiritual abuse.

This year, I tried to go to church on Easter Sunday. I drove to the parking lot. Panic rose in my stomach until I thought I might vomit. I left for Starbucks.

This is the beginning of realizing that my spiritual life never has to be an obligation, nor should it. I don’t have to try to show Jesus I love him through ritual, because now I believe Jesus would want us to love others and even Him by our own choice.

I’ve had a love / hate relationship with Easter since I was a small child, because of the intense guilt I had about the story.

Since leaving fundamentalism, I’ve wrestled with doubts and whether or not I’ll feel home inside a church again.

Last year, Cynthia Jeub wrote a blog post about why Christians should stop wearing crosses, and she wrote this about me:

One of my friends was obsessed with revisiting the death of Jesus. She watched films and plays depicting his torture and death over and over, and I asked her why the resurrection got so little time in such plays. The resurrection was short and the crucifixion was long in every story. She admitted to the problem, but didn’t have a solution for it.

I thought the only way to honor Jesus for his sacrifice, to love him, was to be a witness to his suffering.

After moving out, I watched movies like the Passion of the Christ and the Stoning of Soraya M., because the torture of my fellow humans troubled me and I didn’t know how else to show that I cared but to watch.

That’s how I demonstrate that my love and compassion is real, right?

I made a new friend this last fall. She’s had her own church trauma–she was at New Life Church when Ted Haggard left in 2006 and during the shooting in 2007 and later another pastor who turned out to be a con man.

We were discussing violence in media and how we deal with it one day. She said that she looks away during the scourging and crucifixion scenes in movies and reenactments.

I had an epiphany. I’ve never been able to look away, to choose not to watch.

I remembered what a high school pen pal once told me: “I think there’s a reason we weren’t there when Jesus died.”

At the time, I vehemently disagreed with her, believing extreme forms of remembrance to be a religious duty, something any lover of Jesus would desire. I understood, even identified with the flagellants of the medieval period.

I was in the Thorn cast again like last year, but that was my only church-related Easter activity. I’d thought, It’s Lent season, do you want to watch the Passion? No, not really. It hurts too much. And maybe it should. After all, I can feel my emotions now.

So I rested over spring break, hung out with friends.

I stopped reopening my old scars.

On Good Friday, a fellow blogger in the Homeschoolers Anonymous community, posted on Facebook:

And my heart said, Amen.

——————————————–

Sidenote: I did love one of John Pavlovitz’s posts during Lent season, Waiting for Easter: A Eulogy for Jesus.

What passes as Christianity here in America often bears no resemblance to the humble, gentle Nazarene rabbi…. When I look around at the faith so often proposing to be Christianity these days, that Jesus seems gone.

Jesus isn’t just dead, but he’s had his identity stolen posthumously, too…. So yes, for far too many of his people, this is a eulogy for Jesus within Christianity.

Yes, we grieve a religion that often seems dead, and yet still cling to the slimmest of hopes, that an Easter Sunday is still within reach.

I worry that I will get caught up in something negative again if I go to church. The fact that I get excited about church, that I want to be involved, that I can throw myself into it so easily and so quickly concerns me. But should I be afraid? Should I be concerned about this?

I’ve been attending a church that I have learned and grown in. I haven’t been there long, and I do disagree with several things on some pretty deep levels. But I’ve grown. For the first time in years, I’ve found myself praying. I’ve been interested in reading about theological issues again, sometimes even the Bible. These are good things, at least for someone who wants to believe. And yet I’m scared that I’ll get caught up in something there that is not good.

I’ve been focusing, with church and faith and such, on finding a healthy place. That has evolved into finding a place where things are presented in a way that I agree with. Yet this is actually in itself not healthy. I’ve looked at churches and tried to find one that was fool-proofed safe. Yet this type of place probably doesn’t exist on earth.

Sometimes maybe it’s better to stop looking for the perfect place and the perfect people. Maybe it would be better to identify ways to counteract any unhealthy impacts of various things in life than to try to insulate myself from them. Maybe.. yes, it makes sense, but it’s not easy to decide to do. Kind of like stepping out into thin air… or onto water. But I think it’s time to try.

I found an article about the impact of “time outs” on kids the other day. It reminded me of the way shunning is used in unhealthy churches… and about getting kicked out and such. I know nothing about kids and discipline. But as far as church discipline goes… this makes a whole lot more sense than what I’ve seen.

The article encourages that time outs be “brief… and previously explained.” That got my attention. My mind jumped to the time outs I’ve witnessed as part of church discipline–being told not to do things, not to interact… not to come for a certain amount of time. The norm in my former church was six months. These were not “brief,” and were not usually explained in advance. Actually most “discipline” in my former church was sudden and vengeful, without any warning… and completely unanticipated because they had no basis in reality, but in suspicion, rumor, and gossip. This type of punitive time out in the article is defined as punishing, hostile, and humiliating, done in anger and frustration but with no goal of growth or learning.

The article states that time outs were intended “to help children calm down so they can reflect on and change their behavior as part of a larger parenting strategy…”  What if church discipline were intended in the same way? What if, if someone did wrong, they were “sat down” or “put out” in order to give them the opportunity to consider their behavior and change it, not through fear and shunning, but through love, support, and careful counsel? What if church discipline left those who must be disciplined and become repentant feeling loved and cared for rather than condemned? What if, as the article recommends for time outs, church discipline became a time of “reflection and conversation,” a time to consider spiritual and emotional states and reconnect, completed with a time of comforting, connection, and further reflection?

Time outs… being sat down or sat out. There are definite parallels.

Can you imagine making a mistake and instead of being condemned, rejected, gossiped about, and shunned–being loved, directed toward right, and reconciled?

Wouldn’t that have been amazing?