Burden Up!



There are people who do not want us to be free. They don't want us to be free before God, accepted just as we are by his grace. They don't want us to be free to express our faith originally...They want to control us; they want to use us for their own purposes.

-Eugene Peterson, Travelling Light-


Vampire, pirate, and naked emperor are some of the metaphors I've likened to my abusive pastor. I've likened her brutal control tactics to hazing and the pied piper stealing away children.

The motivation for this is to understand for myself the abuse, how it was allowed to happen, and why it is continuing today.

There is a kind of dehumanizing spiritual abuse that is actually worse than the misuse of God's law. It is expressed in the ill-defined calls to "enter into the deeper life" to "surrender" to "yield"...The question sensitive hearts perpetually ask is "Have I yielded or surrendered enough?" This establishes permanent guilt feelings...The law is much less abusive, because at least it has definition.
-Ken Blue, Healing Spiritual Abuse-

A friend that left the church before I told her that he was leaving to find God for himself.

This angered her inordinately. She quoted it often, scornfully, in her three- hour sermons. She would ask the congregation why anyone would want to leave her congregation where and yes, I quote "God spoke straight over the pulpit".

I understand now why that angered her so. My friend had seen through her pretense of being a servant of God rightly dividing His Word to what she truly was: a chartlan, using fear and misdirection to keep people in bondage, serving her need for control and dominance.

There are religious leaders that turn God's word into a heavy load, demanding that their followers scrupulously follow rules they have imposed. These leaders act out of honest motives, longing to save people from themselves by their actions....a salvation that includes human achievement, hard work, personal effort, even religious deeds distorts the good news because man gets the glory, not God...Paul's twice-repeated reaction to the one who introduced the doctrinal heresy is, "Let him be accursed!" This is Paul's way of saying the person is doomed! The original word is anathema! It is the strongest single Greek term for condemnation.
-Charles Swindoll, The Grace Awakening-

Jesus had strong words to these such leaders, the Pharisees of His day:
"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds."

When believers accept performance-based standards preached by their leaders, they must keep the standards or suffer from guilt because they have failed...The genius of this system is that each religious group can custom-design its heavy loads to meet its own needs.
-Ken Blue, Healing Spiritual Abuse-

My abusive pastor went far and beyond setting up good works and rule-keeping as a means of salvation. Essentially, you were saved if she said so. Members of the church that disobeyed her orders were read the scripture in Hebrews: So don't turn a deaf ear to these gracious words. If those who ignored earthly warnings didn't get away with it, what will happen to us if we turn our backs on heavenly warnings? Members that continued to "rebel" after that were reminded of Jannes and Jambores who the earth opened up and swallowed because they stood against Moses. Her orders were not commands to stay out of adultery, or gossiping.
Her orders included:
spending as much of your free time as possible with her. She alluded more then once that spending time with her would ensure people's salvation.

not voicing disagreement with her decisions or actions.

accepting whatever life choice she decided for you. Members did not marry without her approval, chose life vocations, or even go to another member's house for dinner.

Members of toxic-faith systems reach a point in their addictive progression where they make claims about themselves to set themselves apart from others. They may attempt to support these claims with Scripture. Each time Scripture is used, some followers are more motivated to serve, feeling God's special hand on the ministry and the people involved with it. Some of the most clever deceivers in history have used Scripture to foster their toxic faith. Satan had no problem in quoting Scripture to strengthen his temptations of Christ.
-Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton, Toxic Faith-

When authority is well placed, it respects the individuals over whom it has authority. When it is not well placed, it is our responsibility to expose the abuse and be part of the solution. Christ challenged the religious authorities who turned away from God and toward rules developed by men. Christ stood up to those people and told them they were wrong...We must have the courage to follow Christ's example and overturn the system...if that system is wrong. Silent submission in the face of violence, dishonesty, and abuse will only allow that abuse to be passed to new generations.
-Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton, Toxic Faith-

Yes, the Bible was a heavy burden to me in a Dade City church. I walked around quaking, waiting for the ground to open up and swallow me because I chose not to spend all my free time kneeling at her feet. I couldn't satisfy her- and I spent hours every week cleaning her buildings, volunteering in her ministry, and listening to her endless ranting and raving in church.

I have finally realized the truth of the matter: she would have never been satisfied with all the good works and obedience I could have produced, even if I had gone to 24-hour work days.

Her demands on me and my fellow church members were designed by, I strongly believe, Satan, to turn me into another spiritual, verbal, and emotional abuser like her or to have me take my own life in despair.

You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-dammed.
-Jesus-

I daily pray to be free from the toxic religion of my abusive pastor. I read Scriptures such as the one in Galatians: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit.





I share my story with those around me and on this blog. Every time I share, I feel more of the shame of abuse dropping away.

Jon Acuff, in a blog about hope, had this to say about dealing with past emotional hurts and looking towards a hope:

...I guess I thought after that experience, when I had come clean and had full disclosure with people and laid it all down, that things would feel a certain way. I thought forgiveness and grace would feel round and full and complete and that freedom would feel incredible. But it didn’t.

Hope was not as instantaneous and complete as I would have preferred. Sanctification was not accomplished in the span of a long weekend. And that’s when I started to learn about the three stages of hope.

Hope is one of the first things that disappears when you get lost. Your ability to see beyond your current circumstances is chased south by the shadows. Your ability to dream and plan and hold visions close to your chest fades until hope feels foreign and far away.

And when you become a Christian, there’s the temptation to think you’re doing something wrong if you don’t feel hopeful 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But here’s the thing about hope, it takes time. And sometimes, I think our greatest frustrations are when we try to force hope into a stage it’s just not ready for...We had to learn to live with a past that refused to stay quiet. As I’ve often said before, unless you deal with it, the past turns into a collection of knives hidden around your house. If you haven’t forgiven each other, then all the sudden you’ll see a character on a television show do what you did and you’ll get stabbed. Someone will make an offhand joke at a dinner party and you’ll get stabbed by that memory. So for us, learning to live with the past was about removing knives.

I work on removing the hidden knives. I avoid situations that trigger the PTSD- even if it only going to church once every two months when I feel comfortable about it.

I still struggle with mountains of fear. I run from confrontations- it held severe recriminations in the abusive church. When I had an unhappy person on the phone at my job I had my usual violent reactions fearing I was, once again, "in trouble". I had floating sensations, burning cheeks and ears, icy chills so violent my body shook, aching sinuses and a sour taste in my mouth. These reactions are the result of years of public humiliation, private verbal and physical abuse. I don't know if the reactions will ever fully go away or just slightly subside.

So the scars and reactions to them are still present. But, I am out the cult! I no longer have the burden of pleasing a anti-social dictator of a pastor. And I sure as heck don't spend hours of my life cleaning someone else's buildings for free.

My brother once expressed to a counselor that he felt so sorry for me that I spent more years in the cult than he did. The counselor replied that yes I had, but I was out of the cult and I was still alive.

So very true. I am out of the cult, out from under the burden and I am still alive.

Further Reading:

Depression and Christianity

Vampire Pastors: When God Becomes An Impersonal Force Wielded by a Narcissist

Once again I am viewing my church experience through the conclusion that my ex-pastor was a narcissist.
As I stated in the previous post, I am not a professional health care provider and I am not diagnosing the ex-pastor. To my knowledge she has never been under the care of a mental health care provider who has professionally diagnosed her as a personality disorder.
My main objective in research, compiling and then writing my thoughts and conclusions is to convince myself by understanding of narcissism and by authority of Scripture that the judgments she passed on me (supposedly inspired by the Holy Spirit) and her interpretations of God’s Word are the products of a distressed mind and are no more validated than a hearing-impaired individual’s assumption that the world is silent.
Plainly stated: She is impaired in judgment and due to the nature of her disease, incapable of projecting sound judgment of God and His Word.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

~Abraham Lincoln-

sense of entitlement and hyper-reactivity to criticism

Many of her sermons were comprised of twisted Scriptures designed to reinforce her perverted authority.

She often quoted the scripture in Psalms of “Touch not my anointed” when a parishioner disagreed or questioned her authority. (Read a former post by Provender on Scripture twisting)

There was, however, no ceiling to her authority.

A visiting minister once preached an eloquent message on what the fruit says about the tree, quoting Jesus’ parable of the fig tree.

She was livid and dedicated the next week of services on refuting his words and then announced that he had called her back in tears and repented for questioning her (I believe this was a lie).

She publicly and frequently challenged Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life” saying it misdirected readers into a life full of self.

After leaving the cult, I read the book and realized why it posed such a threat to her: it directs people to seek God, not her, for the direction and purpose of their life.

She warned that the Promise Keepers was a dangerous movement and would evolve into a pseudo-Nazi organization.

And the list goes on: If a prominent minister dared direct people to seek God for themselves -she would say that phrase with great derision, adding that God shared His word through His mouthpiece-her.

Imagine thinking that in the millions of churches and Christian fellowships on this planet, God only chose to spoke through you.

If that isn’t delusions of grandeur, I don’t know what is.

She was also a rabid racist. According to her, mixed marriages were prohibited by God, most African-American males would turn into rapists given half a chance, and Muslims, well, I don’t have time and space to write of her hatred of that ethnic group.

She gloated when Katrina ravaged New Orleans saying God had shown Himself as He did when he annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah. She was absolutely emotionless over the massive loss of innocent lives.

She felt enough of a sense of entitlement to prohibit a couple from marrying for over sixteen years.

In another instance, she took money donated by a parent for the betterment of school to buy a new stove for her house.

People had to choose their house furnishing and color schemes according to her preferences. If they ‘rebelled’ she would belittle them in private when she talked with her ‘family members’.

She had phone wires tapped, stole from the elderly, and told people what career or job God wanted them to have.

In essence, she believed the Scripture of “not touching” referred solely to the fact that no one was allowed to touch her. God had meant that in the centuries of church history only she could not be ‘touched’.

So, yes, I do believe her sense of entitlement was well-founded. She was, however, in direct defiance of the Scripture that instructs leaders to be humble.

She had an incredibly manipulative and exploitative nature. She would play the wounded warrior often, saying God had reveled certain parishioner’s hatred of her, and that those who were loyal to her had urged her to save her health by moving where she would be treated right. After returning from a visit to another church she pronounced that she felt God’s leading to a place where people had “ears to hear God’s Word”. Unfortunately for those of us stuck under her dictatorship, she never mad good on that “leading”.

Displaying her sense of entitlement, she declared that God had revealed to her that He had allowed an ex-parishioner into heaven because, as the parishioner was dying, she had apologized for defying the pastor.

She encouraged people that had aging or ailing parents that there place was in church, with her, not caring for or seeing to the needs of their parents. She stated that “the world will care for their own”.

As mentioned in an earlier account, parishioners earned her income by cleaning five to seven buildings bi-weekly.

This was all done on a voluntary basis- the parishioners used their own cars and paid gas for a sixty mile round trip.

I did some rough figuring for a ball park sum of wages she should have paid these “volunteers”.

I came up with:

Paying minimum wage x 14 hours a week = $91.70 a person

An average of 10 people cleaned every week = $917

The buildings had to be cleaned every week- no holidays- so:

917 x 52= $47, 684 for a year’s worth of salaries

Most people had cleaned for twenty years so:

20 x 52= 1,040 weeks x 10 people= 10,400 x $47,684=

$495,913,600-salaries she should have paid to her volunteers over a period of twenty years.

If I saw her today, I would quote what Bishop Desmond Tutu said:

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

There were times that she seemed to be a decent human being. She promoted sending cards to acquaintances and parishioners who were sick or going through difficult circumstances. The issue was that if you sent the cards without her knowledge.

I am not interested in her twisted sense of God. What she did to a churchful of people was use God as an impersonal force to fulfill her own perverted need for control.

I have hope that, recognizing the harm she inflicted on generations of parishioners, she could have an ‘Damascus road’ experience, as Paul did.

Eugene Peterson, in his preface for Galatians (Message, Re-Mix) states:

Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life

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Tuesday Quote

"When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them “in their place”. The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious…Paul of Tarsus was doing his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history when he was converted by Jesus to something radically and entirely different- a free life in God.

Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life.

God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within."

-Eugene Peterson-

Preface to Galatians [The Message Re-Mix]