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We Are Special

One of the distinguishing marks in unhealthy groups is that they have something special, that few others (or no one else) has. It could be a teaching, a revelation and even the pastor. In their minds, this sets them apart from others and makes them special.

Having something special that most others do not have is something that helps to keep members from leaving an unhealthy church. Outside of their doors is the mundane and God perhaps may not be found. Their church has special knowledge. Their church has a special pastor that teaches like no other or holds people in line like no other. Their church has a revelation that so far has just been given to them. They are special. They sit high on the hill and closer to God. They are the chosen. They are few. They are the ones called by God for this time.

There is excitement in such a setting. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something special that God was doing?

You would think in such a setting that there wouldn’t be spiritual abuse, but there is. And as time goes on, leadership may become more and more abusive. The members allow and put up with it, as they have been conditioned to do so over he years. They still have that special something that others do not. They may even stand out from among other churches in their own group! Maybe they stand out so much that they split away to start their own group of authentic Christians. Others just don’t have what they have. They hold to the old paths and old ways. They are not weak on the message. And they will see to it that none of the members are!

If you feel that you would be leaving God if you left your group, chances are good that you are not in a healthy church. If leadership has told you this, you are definitely not in a healthy group. There is no Christian group that has God to themselves. There is no Christian group that has truth from God that is hidden to others and causes them to be lost while sincerely following God. God doesn’t give one group a special revelation that he withholds from others seeking him.

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Your Unhealthy Church Experience Also Affects Others

Have you ever stopped to consider how your unhealthy church involvement affected more than just you? Stop and think about that. It doesn’t matter if you were single or married, an adult or child, born into it or you entered on your own later in life – your unhealthy church did more than affect you, but it also reached out to others you knew, be it family, friends or co-workers. We often talk about what it did to us who were members, but it did more than mess with us.

For some, it brought about a marriage that never would have happened if they were not members of the church & for others it brought about a divorce because one party felt unequally yoked. Others cut off family and friends because they would not join or were considered backslid, while some considered the church members more of a family than their natural family and therefore neglected family members. Church events were always more important.

Some members relentlessly witnessed to others, causing them to lose friends and even jobs. Others developed a holier-than-thou attitude, causing other divisions with family and friends, because they felt better and superior to outsiders. Even churches of a same group will play the holier-than-thou game, and dismiss similar churches and ministers simply because they differ in some beliefs.

For those with children, the unhealthy church may influence them to stifle their child’s interests if they happen to conflict with a church belief. The child who does not wish to be part of the church may be told they have to find another place to live. On the other hand, sometimes the parents are not members and kick the child out because they do not want them attending the church.

I could go on and on about the multitude of ways that being involved in an unhealthy church affects more than just you. It hits husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, siblings, other family members, friends, co-workers, employers, employees, neighbors, classmates, acquaintances and even strangers.

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Focusing on the Do’s and Don’ts

Let’s face it, in all of our lives there are things we may do that are not the healthiest for us. It doesn’t mean everything outside of attending church, reading the Bible, praying and listening to Christian music is a sin. Yet in unhealthy churches, the focus is taken off of God and is placed upon ourselves- what we do or do not do. The more unhealthy the church, the more the focus is placed on what we do. It creates what is termed the performance trap.

A person in this situation becomes so focused upon what they do or do not do that they slowly shut off God’s influence in their life. Instead of listening to the Holy Spirit, they become focused on a list of rules and being sure to be able to check off all the do’s and don’ts they believe are required of them. There is a great futility in this over-focus upon themselves as the person finds that, no matter how hard they try, they keep falling short of the goal.
This, in turn, causes them to doubt their walk with God, if God even cares for them and often causes them to loathe themselves. So they determine to try harder. As it is with human nature, they inevitably fall short again and each turn of the cycle pulls the person deeper and deeper into the clutches of the unhealthy church. Their view of God becomes more distorted and many times he is seen as a harsh taskmaster, sometimes anxiously awaiting their failures so he can inflict some form of punishment or leave them behind. The sermons they hear help to enforce all of these things and keep the person in its grips, because we all know that there is no hope outside the church doors (or so we thought).

An over-focus on anything is not good. I am readily reminded of a time in my life in the 90s when I underwent a battery of tests on my heart. I had an EKG, stress test with echo cardiogram, 24 hour holter monitor and then the month long monitoring. Outside of showering, I had to wear a monitor 24/7 and if I were to experience a change in my heartbeat, I had to press a button and also record times and what happened. I had to then regularly call and transmit what the monitor had recorded. It wasn’t difficult and the monitor wasn’t too bulky…..but the constant over-focus on what my heart was doing was stressful enough that it caused me to have my first panic attack. In all the other times my heart did “flip flops,” it never caused that, but an over-focus on my heart brought about an unwelcome and unpleasant panic attack.

The New Testament does not tell us to focus on ourselves and did not give us a checklist of things to do and not do in order to be right with or accepted by God. Yes, there are things in everyone’s life that may not be good or healthy. Yet an over-focus on ourselves is not the answer. Jesus didn’t die for us to have another list of rules or to think that by following rules we can live healthy and good lives.

He wants us to have a relationship with him. And in that relationship, in learning to walk with God’s Spirit, God is more than able to show us anything in our lives that is not healthy for us. As our walk with God develops and our love for him grows, change will be a natural result of this. This change does not just consist of letting go of things that are not good, but also includes instilling into us things such as love, gentleness, and long-suffering. It is a heart change- not an outward change brought upon by reading and checking off a list of things we have been told are needful or sinful.

When a person does things from their heart, they are real and these things show who a person really is. It isn’t just going through the motions. It isn’t about pleasing a pastor or church group. It isn’t about looking the part while our insides are torn up. It’s about our personal relationship with God and his writing upon our hearts.

All too often in an unhealthy church, people come to see God as having a list of demands due to the harmful teachings thrown at them. In these churches, do people get a real glimpse of God or his grace? Did their lives simply become about all the things they needed to change and were told were displeasing to him? This is certainly not the good news of Jesus Christ. It is not the gospel; it is not what Jesus came to do. It has nothing to do with a relationship with God.

Think about who in the New Testament writings was shown to have a list of rules to follow. So important were these rules that when a person was healed on the Sabbath, instead of rejoicing that someone was made whole, they became angry because a rule was broken. They were so blinded that they could not see the love that caused the healing and instead chose to hate and sought to kill Jesus because he broke their rules. Rule following like this causes people to be like the Pharisees. Blind. Self-important. Hypocrites. They may appear good from the outside, but the inside is not.

If anyone reading is still caught up in the performance trap, it is my hope and desire that you will break free from those chains and develop your one on one relationship with God. There is hope outside of those churches that lay heavy burdens upon people!

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When Ministers Put Church Above Their Own Families

In wanting to cover some ways men are particularly affected by spiritual abuse, let’s look at how the mindset often leads to ministers neglecting or mistreating their own wives and families.

Unfortunately in unhealthy churches, a minister often puts church above his own family. Members and church activities come before them. At the same time, the children feel extra pressure (possibly from both members and their father) to uphold the rules and appear spiritual and the wife may feel even more pressure in those areas.

There is also another side to this. While some ministers may be extra hard on family members, some let family get away with things that they would not let a regular member do. In other words, the rules for family are different from rules for members and you’d better not mention this. Some ministers may suddenly change a rule when their own children are older and want to do something that was previously forbidden.

At my former unhealthy church, the pastor’s wife once shared with me that she didn’t feel her opinion mattered. She felt pushed aside. Another minister who was friends with them, shared that the pastor promised him he would treat his wife better. This was when he was in his 60s and been married a long time. That is sad and I don’t know that he ever did. While some pastor’s wives can be very pushy and expect the red carpet to be thrown out for them, this pastor’s wife was certainly not that way.

It is very hard on a family when the minister husband and father treat church members better than them- when they have time for the needs of others and not family, when they can always work on things that need to be done at the church and not at home, when they are not there physically and/or emotionally for their own family yet are for others. This is certainly not what God intended. While ministers are called to be servants, they are not called to neglect their own familes in the process. But in unhealthy churches, their focus is wrong.

This has helped to cause some preacher’s kids to leave church and/or faith in Jesus. In some of their minds, they feel if God wants them to be neglected or mistreated, if God doesn’t care about their needs, why should they follow Him? Through the years I have operated my website and support group, I have encountered quite a few disillusioned and hurt PKs.

When men are taught, or learn from the example of others, that church is the most important thing in their lives, it harms many people. What is even more sad is that they are often blind to the fact that they are neglecting or abusing their own family.

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What ‘The Walking Dead’ taught me about healthy forgiveness without obligation

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on May 10, 2025.

I wrote this in my journal on December 10, 2021. Learning what forgiveness looks like outside of fundamentalist Christianity, what forgiveness can be like when it’s healthy and not harmful for the person doing the forgiving, has been so important to me in my journey to leave behind and heal from high-control religion.

So I had an epiphany while I was processing what healthy forgiveness looks like.

There’s a part in season 9 of The Walking Dead where Father Gabriel is trying to convince the scavenger garbage lady Anne not to kill him with a walker and he finally says, “I forgive you, Anne, for whatever you have to do.”

He apologizes for pushing her away and it’s definitely kinda like a Jesus moment for him.

Photo: The Walking Dead, AMC

You can tell Father Gabriel is about to accept death, but he forgives her in the moment because he loves her so much that he knows she is going to regret what she’s doing to him later and grieve and hate herself. He loves her so much he doesn’t want her to do that.

This scene basically broke me inside for reasons. All the religious trauma and spiritual abuse recovery reasons.

Because I was taught for so long in fundamentalist Christianity that sacrificial love was obligatory and enduring mistreatment from other people was just part of becoming more holy.

I didn’t realize it was possible to radically accept something so horrible and still hold so much love for the person who is about to harm you without basically enabling yourself to be abused.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a regular thing that people with healthy boundaries should do, obviously, but it’s deeply moving.

It feels different.

Sitting through abuse without defending yourself normally feels cold and awful and like I’m worthless.

This scene feels like the love you hold and your own faith in yourself and the love you feel from your own connection to what feels divine protects you and enables you to still be you in the middle of something horrible happening to you instead of breaking you.

It feels warm and beautiful and so radically undeserved, not because “we are bad” but because it normally feels humanly impossible. I think it just clicked for me like this morning why church hymns call this “amazing” and “wonderful” and why one of my friends said last summer that “none of us deserve it.”

Not because “we are scum,” but because it is unexpected and healing and sometimes we don’t expect a grace like that.

Because we have crossed a boundary and caused harm, so we naturally expect to lose something as a result, which would only make sense.

But instead, we don’t. We are held. And we are loved.

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