Coming Clean Part I

I am pretty new to the blogging world. My husband found some blogs which were supportive and encouraging when church life as we knew it began to unravel last fall. I have debated whether I wanted to go into all of the details which led us to finally leave our church. Part of me feels that it is important to get it out there, to let others know that they are not alone, that they are not the ones who are crazy if they see a bunch of red flags going up. But another part of me just wants to forget it and not rehash it. The truth is that I still think about it and get angry every single day. Everyday I have the hypothetical conversations in my head where I would be able to eloquently and wisely and discerningly tell the unbelievably deceived leadership of our former church what we have seen that is just wrong, wrong, wrong. But as you know, conversations NEVER go the way that we had planned, and the conversations that I wanted to have never took place. Even if I could have those perfectly scripted conversations, all of my words would have fallen on deaf ears. If there are none so blind as those who will not see, then there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. And my conversations would not be the first, nor would they be the last, I am sure, of a long line of messengers who have been ignored, maligned, slandered, or shunned. That is not to say that my husband and I did not try. I have brought small issues up over the years and was lectured and looked down upon as rebellious, immature, easily offended. My husband most recently tried to have conversations with the pastor in which he ended up being accused of having a “critical spirit” (is that anywhere in the Bible?)

I have come to realize that in dealing with people who are so deceived, especially those who have set themselves up as unaccountable, arrogant spiritual leaders, no human words will ever get through. This realization does make it easier to give the whole thing to God, and, I hope, to someday forgive. When I can bring myself to do it, I pray for my enemies (which I never realized was so hard to do until I really had to do it.) And I try to pray for them sincerely and with pure motives. I must admit that when I do pray for them, often my underlying motivation is not so much to bring healing to the church, but that they will see the pain they have caused and be brought to their knees, and that if they would be publicly disgraced I really wouldn’t have a problem with that (and in fact, I hope that I could be around to see it.) So that IS really awful and immature and vengeful and not Christian, but it is very human, and I’m trying to be really honest with myself and with anyone who might read this. For if there is anything I have learned from dealing with these people, it is that I do not want to fall into the trap of arrogance that has snared them. I pray that God will help me to always be completely honest with myself, recognizing and repenting for the part that I played in the mess we have just escaped. And believe me, there have been things that I have had to repent for. I so identify with Former Leader, I have had to repent for many of the same things that she describes.

I hope that my account of what happened to us and our friends will encourage others to be truthful with themselves and to seek to find what Christ intended His church to be. In being truthful, we need to acknowledge that churches are made up of people, that people are not perfect and that every single one of us requires His grace and mercy. One of the most difficult things for my family and I, and what I see so many of our friends who are still at our former church struggling with, is finding the line between what is faulty behavior of broken human beings requiring our mercy and forgiveness, and what is spiritual abuse, control and manipulation, and where is the point at which we must stand up for ourselves and for others in the congregation and say “No more.” Sometimes the abuse is clear cut, but in our case (and I’m sure in many others) the line gets fuzzy because of the good fruit that is being produced. My hope is that in getting this all down, truth will become clearer not just to myself but also for others who are struggling with the same issues.