The Bible: like Google maps with a side of Motrin

Posted on July 16, 2010 by elizabeth

A scary thing happened when I left the abusive fundamentalist church of my childhood: I couldn't open my Bible and read the words without hearing my grandfather's voice, his exact intonation and inflection. Certain passages were so fully saturated with his interpretation that I literally could not, as evangelicals often say, "read the Bible for myself."

This scared me because I was still convinced that the only way to be an active Christian was by reading my Bible every day. My grandfather was particularly fond of a catchy little phrase I inscribed in the cover of my Bible: This book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book.

Go a few days without reading the Bible and you were backsliding. I remember several occasions when I went to church leadership for help only to be asked: "Are you reading your Bible every day?" Everything from finding God's will for my class schedule to finding relief from PMS could be solved by reading my Bible every day. The Bible was like Google maps with a side of Motrin.

I'd seen entire families shipped off to plant new churches based on a few scraggly verses from I Chronicles or II Corinthians. One family I knew uprooted their entire life to move to Oregon because they'd been praying for the Lord's will and came across a verse in Psalms that mentioned "Salem."

Fundamentalists are radically opposed to horoscopes and witchcraft but sometimes they treat the Bible as their own personal crystal ball. I was always deeply uncomfortable with this. It freaked me out that good, honest, well-intentioned Christians could cherry-pick verses out of the Bible and make them mean whatever they wanted them to mean. As long as the person could present a compelling argument in favor of their interpretation, the rest of us were just supposed to agree that God had indeed spoken to them. Biblically.

I mean, taken to its logical end, this kind of practice led to the emergence of all sorts of random pet doctrines and "convictions." Or, you know, just garden-variety heresy.

And, of course, the only way to know God was through the Bible. If you didn't read your Bible, you didn't know God because the Bible was The Only Source of Our Revelation. We were often warned against "extra-Biblical" revelations of God. The idea was that "extra-Biblical" revelation was a non-stop ticket straight to apostasy. Also known as Catholicism.

(SIDEBAR: if there is one topic about which fundamentalists and The New York Times agree, it's that the Catholic Church is a corrupt, evil organization.)

So, since God could only be found within the pages of my Bible and since I couldn't read my Bible without hearing my grandfather's voice, I figured my faith was doomed.

Reading the Bible was driving me away from God. But staying away from the Bible meant I was sinning. 

I found myself at this weird crossroads. It was like: Go Crazy or Go To Hell.

I chose Hell.

Well, not really. I mean, it felt like that. By not reading my Bible everyday I felt like I was choosing The Way That Leadeth Unto Destruction. 

But I was actually choosing to have my brain deprogrammed. I stopped reading my Bible for a long time because, well, I needed to get my grandfather's voice out of my head.

We'd been attending Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and had spoken briefly with one of the pastors there. He was remarkably gracious and gentle. That was a new experience for me. Our time at Calvary Chapel was consistently refreshing and healing.

But even so, I was still unsure about whether God really loved me. Which is to say, would He come after me even if I wasn't actively seeking Him? Could I push it further? Would God look for me even if I ran away from Him?

I mean, when the Bible has been used as a weapon against you, it's very difficult to find a loving God there. And since I couldn't read my Bible without breaking down in tears, well, I figured I'd lost God, too.

The problem, though, wasn't that I'd lost God so much as radically underestimated Him. Growing up inside fundamentalism, my idea of Him was very small. I thought He was bound up inside the Bible. I didn't realize He was bigger and more wonderful than I'd ever imagined.

One of the new thoughts that broke open my concept of God was this: if God can only be known through the pages of Scripture, does that mean all illiterate peoples will never know God?

I slowly accepted that if God the Father could exercise mercy on the illiterate peoples of our world, then perhaps He'd also show mercy to a confused, intentionally illiterate woman like me.

I know it sounds weird, but I was basically telling God to treat me like someone who had never been exposed to the Christian God. 

If I was ever going to regain my faith, me and God were gonna have to start over from scratch.

This entry was posted in Faith, Politics, RecoveringEvangelicalsAnonymous, RecoveringFundamentalist, Religion, The Bible. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Brett

    Thanks for sharing your journey. Very motivating and affirming. I appreciate you blog.

  • http://www.bigmama247.com Alise

    Sometimes when all we have are our false perceptions of God, we NEED to lose him. I’ve had so many wrong ideas about God (and still do, no doubt!) that sometimes starting over is the best way to do it. Which seems so counter-intuitive to someone who has been raised in the church since infancy.

    I love the Gungor song “Cannot Keep You” particularly this lyric: we cannot keep you in a church
    we cannot keep you in a Bible
    or it’s just another idol to box you in

    What a powerful reminder!

  • http://thebookbeast.blogspot.com SaraJ

    I understand everything you wrote! It’s hard to explain my antipathy toward the Scriptures to someone who hasn’t been burned by “the Bible as Google Maps and Motrin.”

    I still don’t enjoy reading my Bible much. For years I found only condemnation there, or things I didn’t understand (I remember thinking, “I don’t understand the big difference between Law and Grace!” which spoke volumes about the theology I had been taught).

    I met with a counselor a year or so ago, and explained to her how much I dislike reading the Bible. I was waiting for her to tell me that I just needed to “get into the Psalms,” at which point I’d tune her out and never come back. Instead, she said, “It sounds as if you need to find a non-traditional way to approach God.”

    That was a very freeing thing to hear, and it sounds like the same “approach” you took also. Thanks for articulating these feelings and experiences.

    – SJ

  • http://jasondeuman.com jason

    Thanks for this post. I grew up in a fundamentalist church, went to a bible college majoring in Biblical Literature. The Bible became a text book for me and I took me a long time after graduation. Great post, great blog. Thanks for your honesty.

  • http://chocolateaftersupper.blogspot.com/ cindykay

    You’ve done it again. Even though my experience in my Grandpa’s fundamental, independent bible church was not as extreme as yours, I still recognize myself in many of your writings. It’s uncanny. This experience of yours reminds me of two things: 1) The entire year that I did not read my bible because the God I saw there frightened me, and 2) the day I was dumbstruck by the realization that God is bigger than the bible.

    I still love my bible, but now I know that it is my map to understanding how to live a life that pleases God. It’s not the destination or the crystal ball.

  • http://www.emilymacon.blogspot.com/ Emily M.

    I love it.

  • http://thefauxmartha.blogspot.com amber

    What an amazing post. I too have been surrounded with “superstitious Christians” and it has been driving me nuts! I honestly felt for a while that I wasn’t a good enough Christian because I wasn’t attributing EVERYTHING to evil or angelic forces… Sometimes stuff just happens!

    And Amen to the fact that God is bigger than our Bibles! Even the authors knew that!

    Thank you God for using Elizabeth to touch my heart today!

  • Alysa

    So good…again. :)

  • http://fromthepulpitofmylife.blogspot.com/ Ruth Ann

    Elizabeth, as always, I find what you write compelling and moving. Some people think being an observant Catholic is tough. They should read your story.

    Since I grew up Catholic, the Bible was not forced down my throat, so to speak. I learned some Bible stories as a child. I especially remember the parable of the sower, and so hoped I would be “the good ground” where God’s Word would take root and grow. But, it never occurred to me that I had to read the Bible for that to happen.

    In my home and in my Catholic school I was taught to pray, to converse with God, using both traditional prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary, and my own prayers, which originated with me in my own words. It is the path of prayer which has led me to a deep relationship with God.

    As an adult I have read the Bible, studied the Bible, and pray with the Bible (lectio divina). Holy Scripture is one of several ways I deepen my love for God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    I want to concur with Alise, who wrote a quote about the Bible being an idol. In my interactions with Biblical fundamentalists I have concluded that it is true that they make of the Bible an idol. Isn’t it ironic?

  • http://heart-and-home.net Ashleigh (Heart and Home)

    Okay, I must breathe.

    Because this is ME, for the past year and a half. And I’m just starting to slowly, cautiously, crawl out of this place. To realize that I’ve had an intensely tiny view of God–and that God, truly, is not even who I was told He was. I’m just barely able to read common scripture passages without having a panic attack. I’m starting to see Truth, and Jesus, through a clear lens.

    I’m so thankful He’s willing to take me back to the basics. I have a fresh understanding of the idea of child-like faith.

  • http://www.comewearymoms.blogspot.com Virginia Knowles

    Oh, you might like a poem I just wrote the other day, “It Became for Me a Dark Thing.”
    http://virginiaknowles.blogspot.com/2010/07/it-became-to-me-dark-thing-poem.html

    I was telling my counselor yesterday that I’m having to entirely rethink my concept of church.

  • Pamela

    Are you sure we didn’t go to the same church?!

    You recapped all the feelings I went thru. All of those things I felt but couldn’t express coherently. It had even gotten to the point where I felt that way about praying too: if all you know about God is condemnation, then when you try to pray you usually end up feeling worse, not better. What an ugly Catch-22 you end up in, when you’ve been in an abusive church. Or two abusive churches, for those of us who are slow learners.

    Tho I’ve felt for the last couple of months that I’m getting on top of it.

    Thank you!

  • Naomi’s mom

    The hubster says the secret is reading the Bible really fast so your brain doesn’t have time to hear JH or RZ or whoever’s voice. Hahahaha.

  • http://www.joyinthisjourney.com Joy – Joy in This Journey

    Starting over. Sometimes it’s the only way to meet the One True God. It’s also a great way to freak everyone out. I’ve started getting emails and having conversations with people who are “confronting me in love.” *sigh* Just trying to keep focused on Jesus. He shows a much less scary/angry/vengeful face of God.

  • http://lousview.blogspot.com Lou Godbold

    After being told that in order to hear God’s answers to your problems you have to read through Psalms until he speaks to you, that you have to pray in tongues for 3 hours straight and then inspiration will strike, fast and pray until your head hurts and your body is weak, and found that none of this is true I also have stopped all these religious practices. What separates that from incantations and spells? Not a lot. We are all so hungry for a supernatural experience, to feel God, that we become the prey of the next fad, the next ‘teaching, the next distortion. Recently it’s angels, I’ve noticed. Where is Jesus in all this?

    You write about the things that occupy so much of my thinking and so many of my emotions as I try to separate tradition, culture and just plain nonsense from a desire to know truth and love in it’s pure form – something I still call God. The fact we still believe despite all the disappointing and hurtful experiences in his so-called church is testimony to the fact that such a being exists. And if the devil exists, you can be sure his best strategy to obscure God’s true nature is the current Christian church.

    If you have time, I would love you to read a couple of pieces I wrote which I think will resonate with you:

    http://lousview.blogspot.com/2009/12/practice-of-knowing-nothing.html

    http://lousview.blogspot.com/2009/12/practice-of-knowing-nothing.html

    Thank you for your continued honesty and continuing to search. Reading your stuff makes me fell less alone.

  • Karen

    I love what you had to say Ruth Ann. I wish I could have written it myself because it describes me and my family…

    Thank you.

  • http://www.livinginagirlsworld.wordpress.com Kirsten

    Thank you for this. Because as a Catholic (who is not 100% in agreement with Rome), I find this attitude to be prevalent and it makes my blood boil. Because I *could* read the bible every day and find my own *truth* in it, like that family moving to Oregon.

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    It is hard for people who have not experienced abusive religion to believe that God loves them. They keep chirping, “Just read the Psalms,” or “Just believe that God loves you,” but they really don’t know what it is like.
    I have been in a place where I had to start all over again, after huge disappointment with God which came from bad teaching that “all you have to do is step out in faith and God will back your play.” God didn’t “back our play”…not in the way WE had thought He should (jumping to conclusions was a major form of exercise in that group), leaving us gasping and sputtering.

    I had to start over, re-connecting with my Roman Catholicism (I went to Catholic school with VERY abusive nuns), which at least got me thinking about God again and how I really did want to have a relationship with Him, because I still DID believe, eventually rejecting the Roman Catholicism all over again (sorry) and becoming once more a Bible-believing Christian.

    It has been a stormy trial, but I have come through stronger. Being on these blogs, though, and coming across legalism such as I have never known (you MUST home-school, eat health-food, wear dresses-only, have long-hair if you are female, live in patriarchy, vote for independents, not use birth control, and on and on….stuff I never heard of until I got on the blogs, has caused me to have a relapse (yes, at my age, because I was at a vulnerable time in my life), but I am better now.

    Sick of people who “think their poop doesn’t stink” and have easy pat answers for everybody.

    What frightens me is that many people who “come out” of abusive fundamentalist religions end up coming out all the way and becoming total unbelievers and giving in to truly ungodly lifestyles. An over-reaction, I guess.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Thanks, SJ. Three cheers for non-traditional approaches to God! :)

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Interesting! How did the Bible As Text Book affect your way of reading it/applying it to your life, etc.? Feel free to disregard answering this question if you’d rather not share. But this really intrigues me. Also: what does one do with a major in “Biblical Literature”?

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    It’s ironic–but oddly telling–that the Bible becomes an idol in spiritually abusive churches. They’ve taken a very good thing and raised it up to the exclusion of other good things.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Ruth Ann: I love that the “path of prayer” led you to a deep relationship with God. It was that way for me, too. I haven’t written too much about it yet. But I will.

    And yes, it is terribly–TRAGICALLY–ironic and also true that in these spiritually abusive fundamentalist churches the Bible becomes an idol.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Thanks for sharing, my friend! It’s a long, painful journey. It’s OK to go slow. Sometimes it feels like we’re going backwards. That’s OK. It’s all part of the process.

  • http://www.mysteryandmanners.net/ Rachel

    I identify with this description. I was a fundamentalist PK (pastor’s kid) for a decade, and by the time I was in my early 20s, couldn’t read the Bible without hearing my father’s intonation, etc.

    I stopped reading the Bible for a long time, because frankly, I was sick of it–sick of all the associations with legalism. But I began to appreciate it again after listening to it in the context of the liturgy (lectionaries/cycles of scripture readings are a beautiful thing, IMO). And by the time I was received into the Catholic Church over two years ago, I started to love the scriptures again.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Mary: wow, you really have been through a stormy trial. Thank you for sharing it with us, here. I can’t imagine the kind of personal devastation you must have experienced after God didn’t “back your play.” What a scary, devastating theology.

    I think my coming across a lot of the same legalistic blogs you talk about really spurred me to write my stories. I never realized how big all this New Fundamentalism is becoming and it worries me. Now I have to steer clear of most of those blogs because they make me sick–literally.

    Lastly, please don’t feel like you have to apologize for your reservations about Catholicism. I’m respectful of the fact that every Christian is on his/her own journey with God. Thank you for sharing yours with us.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    LOL! Speed reading! Thanks for the tip! :)

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Ahh, Joy! ((hugs)) Yep. Start over from scratch and watch everyone around you get very uncomfortable. I’ve discovered that whenever people are “confronting me in love” it’s usually more about their own fears, insecurities and ignorance than it is about my supposed “issues.” :) Keep strong, friend. You are an inspiration to me.

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    For me, touching base with the Catholic church and more liturgical or semi-liturgical religions, was “Christian life support.” All I could cope with was reciting the Our Father.

    I think if we had REALLY known our Bibles, REALLY read them without all the junky interpretations, we would have known that even though you are obedient to God and in the center of His will, you will have tribulation, you will not “sail right through” as we had been taught.

    To teach such things really opens people up for big disappointment and estrangement from God because you feel like He didn’t keep up His end of the bargain.

    Take the life of Joseph in Genesis, for example. He was godly. He suffered persecution and tribulation. He was not being punished because he was out of the will of God. BUT, we had actually been taught in church that he was a spoiled brat who brought these persecutions on himself by talking about his visions. Had he been “mature” and kept all these things to himself, he would not have had to undergo the severe trials that he did. In other words, it was ALL HIS FAULT. He could have avoided all the trouble, had he done everything right. (That was not ever meant to be the point of the story.) Never mind that what occurred was what brought the children of Israel down in to Egypt for their protection. Joseph even said that his brothers meant it for evil (yes, you CAN call evil evil), God meant it for good, and forgave his brothers WHEN THEY SHOWED REMORSE AND REPENTANCE.

    There is a lot of bad teaching out there that can result in mental illness. Although I still consider myself a Pentecostal, still have the basic beliefs, we do not go to Pentecostal churches any more, because they have lost their way. We didn’t change — they did, and they’ve been messed up for quite a while, with every wind of doctrine — real screwball stuff.

    I wish we had read our Bibles back then a lot more than we did, and come to conclusions for ourselves, but maybe we wanted to believe all that fantastic “God will back your play without trials” stuff. Who wouldn’t?

    Well, at least God didn’t leave us there.

  • http://burningones.com Jessie V.

    I can *so* related to this. A couple of years ago I collapsed under the weight of my own guilt and condemnation and so when I stopped reading my Bible I was SO shocked I didn’t get cancer, hit by a car, struck by lighting, etc. Thank GOD for His never ending love! (have picked up the Bible again, unfortunately the whole feel-guiltly-about-everything-that-goes-wrong-thing is still a daily battle).

  • http://www.JanetOber.com Janet Oberholtzer

    I was just editing and tweaking a chapter in my memoir called “Quitting God” this week, that mirrors some of what you said.
    Due to a strict religious upbringing and a conservative evangelical church I had many ‘filters, interpretations and answers’ in my mind about God and the Bible. After a life-changing trauma, when nothing made sense anymore, I was finally honest with myself about my screwed-up spirituality, so I ‘broke up’ with God. I couldn’t even call him God for a long time because that name carried too much baggage. I called him my creator. I only sporadically opened a Bible, instead I soaked up the beauty in nature and learned to know my creator in a whole new way.

  • http://mythought-filledjourney.blogspot.com MTJ

    Hi Elizabeth,

    I’ve never been a part of a fundamentalist church but I believe your depiction of some would be applicable to most Christian denominations: “Fundamentalists are radically opposed to horoscopes and witchcraft but sometimes they treat the Bible as their own personal crystal ball…good, honest, well-intentioned Christians could cherry-pick verses out of the Bible and make them mean whatever they wanted them to mean.”

    I could cite instances from my own experience that concurr with you but I’ll just say that truth taken to an extreme is error masking as truth.

    Blessings.

  • KatR

    Janet,

    I broke up with God about two weeks ago. I don’t love him, he’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t love me, and I got exhausted with the pretending.

    I went to a church where the Bible was like a good luck charm. If I for some reason didn’t have my “quiet time”, I knew I would have a bad day. It was like a worry stone.

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    I like that: truth taken to an extreme is error masking as truth.

  • http://thinkinggrounds.blogspot.com Christian H

    Did you think about trying a radically different translation? The Message, or something? It might be hard to hear your grandfather’s voice there.

    Also, mark this on your calendar. I just suggested that someone read The Message. This may never happen again?

  • Caryl

    I find your blog refreshing.

    Thank you for your candor, and for writing =)

    xo
    c

  • http://baptisttalibanmemoirs.blogspot.com Cindy Foster

    Hey Esther! Do I know you? Could we possibly have met? You just HAVE to be talking about MY church…those are EXACTLY the kind of things I have heard all my life or, well, at least for the twenty years we were in what we ‘affectionately’ call the ‘Baptist Taliban’. There are more of these kinds spun from the same mold than I thought.

    It would be quite interesting to know the names of the churches I keep reading about on these blogs. Either we have all crossed paths or these sentiments have multiplied exponentially.

    I just may have to follow up on this in a private email or something.

    I identify with your mix of emotions. Thank you for being so transparent.

    Cindy

  • http://www.havingleftthealtar.com/ Katherine

    I’m so sorry the Bible was used in such a way. I cannot imagine what you’ve been through. I admire you for not giving up or just becoming bitter but continuing to fight for yourself. God Bless!

  • http://livinglearningandlovingsimply.blogspot.com Aimee

    I don’t have time to read all the comments on this post, but I can’t wait to do that later today! I so *feel* the same way…and it actually comes and goes with me throughout the years. Right when I think I am “fine” with the Bible again, I go through a season where it totally freaks me out and all my panic symptoms rear their ugly heads. I have been in that season lately (and blogged about “The Voice” recently).
    Its funny that you think of the “illiterate” people of the world…I do a similar thing: I picture myself as a peasant woman raising kids in the Middle Ages and think how she just had to live her faith without the Scriptures in her home…she just had to live it out simply day after day in the chores of life, her small community, and with her family. She wasn’t going to go “change the world” or exegete…she just needed to live her life and talk to Jesus. Live by faith. That’s it.

  • http://lousview.blogspot.com Lou Godbold

    KatR,

    I’ve been there. I might even go back there. I can’t pretend to know how God feels about you but I’m pretty sure he loves you a whole lot better than any Christian who tells you that anything other than just being yourself is the way to his heart.

    I hope you guys get back together again. Wish I could do something to make you feel better,

    Lou

  • http://lousview.blogspot.com Lou Godbold

    Mary, I really respect you because you speak from hard-won wisdom, not happy-clappy hype. God didn’t back my play on three momentous occasions in my life. As a result, it seems everything has fallen apart. For a long time, so had my faith. When I tried to ‘get back together’ with God, I fell in with a bunch of Pentecostals who in my mind practice something closer to magic than true Christianity. I wish I could come over and have a coffee and a piece of your chocolate cake. In fact, we should organize a get-together for all the people on this page because it’s rare to meet someone who gets it – who isn’t willing to throw God out with the bathwater but is sick and tired of all the crummy stuff that gets laid on you by churches, fundamental or otherwise.

  • http://www.6inthecity.com michelle

    Your post hit home in a big way. But then again, every post you write about the church you grew up in does. I feel like I grew up in a similar way. And it’s only now, in my 40′s, that I feel like I am de-programming myself.

    I am curious to know what you think about tithing. This is the one subject that still trips me up b/c of the way I grew up. We used to tithe religiously. But now, b/c of a different job my husband has, money is much tighter. So we don’t tithe right now. And the guilt I feel is unbelievable. Plus I keep hearing a voice in my head that tells me God can’t change my financial situation UNTIL I start to tithe again.

    I’m assuming tithing was big part of the church you grew up in. How have you sifted through that particular subject?

  • http://www.6inthecity.com michelle

    Your post hit home in a big way. But then again, every post you write about the church you grew up in does. I feel like I grew up in a similar way. And it’s only now, in my 40′s, that I feel like I am de-programming myself.

    I am curious to know what you think about tithing. This is the one subject that still trips me up b/c of the way I grew up. We used to tithe religiously. But now, b/c of a different job my husband has, money is much tighter. So we don’t tithe right now. And the guilt I feel is unbelievable. Plus I keep hearing a voice in my head that tells me God can’t change my financial situation UNTIL I start to tithe again.

    I’m assuming tithing was big part of the church you grew up in. How have you sifted through that particular subject?

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    Tithing is an Old Testament rule, and a good rule of thumb. However, under the New Testament covenant, we are not obligated to tithe or give — “not under compulsion.” We are to give as we have been prospered. I think the believer has freedom in Christ about things like this. There is a lot of fear-pressure about things like this that leave people shaking. Pentecostals really push this and a lot of Pentecostals are what I can only call superstitious about it. We know people who never ever attend church any more and live a very heathen lifestyle, but still make sure they send their tithe somewhere, like it is paying into God’s protection racket or something, for good luck.

    Pray about this, Michelle, and see what God would have you and your husband do. My opinion.

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    BTW, I forgot to put Mary “R”. I am the same person. I have a couple of blogs and a couple of e-mails, Elizabeth. Sorry for the confusion. I’m starting to post on the newer one and not on the older one (phasing it out).

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    Mrs. Multiple Comments again: I don’t know if you or anybody else would be interested, Elizabeth, but I have noticed from my Stat Counter that several people have come over from your blog to mine, and if anybody wishes to read about “My Testimony” and sequel “My Spiritual Journey” on my blog, they may, by scrolling down to my labels list on my sidebar and clicking on those two labels. I’m not the writer that you are, Elizabeth, and most of the posts are rather lengthy so you’d probably just want to skim them, but you are welcome to read them.

    I have to work up the courage to continue and write posts on what has happened to us spiritually over the last 15 years. Rather painful to write about, but maybe I will.

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    I also fixed my blog so people can comment again. Don’t know what went wrong there. Sorry.

  • KatR

    :) Reading this blog and comments like yours make me feel better. I live in the Bible Belt, and that’s like living in a town where everyone praises your abusive boyfriend. Thank goodness for the internet, so I don’t have to feel so alone.

  • K

    It was refreshing to read your latest blog. After I left the aberrational church I was part of, I was so messed up, distraught, and FELT literally like I was going to hell. It took me a better part of a year to stop feeling that way. I felt like God had left me and the verse in Romans (don’t have my Bible with me right now) that talks about God hardening whoevers heart he wanted to scared me to death.
    I found a new church and kept going, but had no idea why I felt so bad and didn’t realize I was part of a cultic church. I just put my head down and kept going (I did know God before I started going to the abusive church). But, inside I started to hate God and was terrified of Him. I wasn’t in touch with my emotions and didn’t realize this was how I felt.

    I feel so guilty that I didn’t just walk away from God and leave everything behind. I kept “trying” to be a Christian. But, my motives and actions were not based on love or oftentimes were not even things I truly wanted to do. Finally, 5 years later, I did “walk away” from God. Now, that I understand what happened, I am trying to find healing and start a relationship with God again.

    I feel that if I was “normal”, I would have just gotten fed up with God and walked away because I felt so bad. But, I feel like I kept pushing things to try and make my Christian life work and I feel guilty about that.

    Whew, that was a long post. I would appreciate any thoughts you have.

  • Jen Wood

    Wow EE! What a blog post! Sometimes I feel like you are in my head, because you blog things I am going through! I didn’t grow up in a situation like you did, but I did grow up in a very legalistic Baptist church. I was basically taught that if you didn’t tow the line exactly, God would take you out, and would take pleasure in doing so. They would never come right out and say that, but it was seriously implied. I was taught about a God who was all punishment and no love. Yes, they did teach about salvation. But they also taught that when we got to Heaven, God would play a movie screen of all the bad things we did. When bad things happened, I was told it was God’s will, and that He wanted to “teach me something”. So needless to say, my view of God has been pretty warped. Since I left that kind of church, I have been going to a church that teaches about God being loving, and that He wants to bless His people. They do preach on sin and consequences, and teach salvation, but they really emphasize the love. The problem is, I can’t seem to get that old teaching out of my head. I sit down to read the Bible, and I can only seem to see the God of wrath, not the God of love. The verse that says that God is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love” is a verse that I am having a hard time comprehending. I have been sitting down with my Bible and crying out to God, asking Him to show me who He really is. Is He the loving God like the book “The Shack” talks in depth about, or is He the God I grew up hearing about. Sometimes I just want to do a lobotomy on my old thinking. I want to see God as a loving, kind God. I don’t want to pick up my Bible and see a God of wrath. I don’t want to look at God and wonder if He is constantly ticked off with me. I just don’t know how to get my brain to undo 30 years of teaching that God is an angry, unhappy, ticked off God.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    I don’t know if we’ve ever met. I don’t recognize your name. But I think many of these same dynamics are alive and well in thousands of fundie churches across America. Chances are you just experienced something very similar. I don’t mention the name of my church on purpose for certain privacy reasons. Thanks for understanding.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Hi Michelle. Thanks for the comment and question. Tithing is something that is still extremely difficult for me. I know firsthand how monies are often abused and mishandled. Perhaps one day I’ll write about it in depth. To be honest, I haven’t sifted through it very deeply because it’s so difficult. Maybe someday…. :)

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Hi K. I feel for you. I have no super awesome words of advice except: be gentle with yourself. I remember that one of the things that helped me was in realizing that if I’m feeling fear or guilt to do something for God, then it’s probably not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn’t pushy. It doesn’t drive us in fear. Or guilt. Or manipulation. God is patient and He’s a gentleman. He waits for you. Sometimes I think Christians get this false idea that NOW NOW is the moment! NOW and NOW we must respond. But it’s not true. GOd moves differently for different people. It’s OK to be where you are. For me, I found some healing in attending more orthodox, liturgical based Churches where Scripture is sung or read in gentle, non-bashing fashion. It helped give me a new appreciation for Scripture. This might help you?

  • http://profile.typepad.com/elizabethesther Elizabeth Esther

    Thank you for your comment, Jen. I know what you mean. It’s so hard to believe a verse that says God is slow to anger when all we hear about is how God is ready to drop us straight into Hell.

    I don’t know if this would help you, but once I wrote down several verses about how loving God was, His patience, gentleness, kindness, etc. I taped them up all over my house. It helped get new thoughts into my head about God. Just an idea….take it or leave it if it’s not helpful to you. :)

  • http://tw-us.blogspot.com Mary

    Jen: “If you don’t toe the line exactly God would take you out and take pleasure in doing so.” I had this idea for years (still bothers me, when things go wrong, as they often do in peoples’ lives) — lots of churches teach it. That’s the great fear: You have messed up (or even truly sinned) and can’t believe God will forgive you, you can’t forgive yourself, and now, the devil has full access to you and God will let the devil have his way and not stop him because I brought this on myself by not doing everything right or falling into sin.

    I have to tell myself, “What, you are so special and your sin is so special that even God can’t forgive it? How prideful!” and that puts it into perspective.

    I agree with Elizabeth’s advice to K: be gentle with yourself.

    Also, if you are afraid that God is going to get you for some little insignificant thing that is not a sin, you have to run to your fears.

  • Jen Wood

    Thank you EE. That actually is a really great idea. Thank you for suggesting it :) .

  • Jen

    Thank you Mary. That really does put things into perspective! I know I am definitely not gentle with myself. I guess I need to remember to be more gentle :) . Thank you for the encouragement!

  • http://outofthesilverchair.blogspot.com/ Julie

    Elizabeth…LOVE THE POST!!!! I linked it on “The Cult Next Door”…Thanks for being honest :)

  • http://preparationmeetingopportunity.wordpress.com/ Christy

    AY-MEHN! I had the some of the same issues. With the same person’s voice. I’d hear certain phrases, you know, Bible speak, and be revolted by them. For years, I’d step in a church, and step back out again, shaky, almost feeling that if I stayed there, it would be forced. I wanted a relationship with God, but not under the conditions I was experiencing.
    Eventually I had this light bulb moment. I didn’t have to be anything other than what I was. God saved me … he was going to pursue me and come after me. So I started praying something like,
    “Lord, you are going to do what you want no matter what. I’m telling you what you already know. You’re going to have to come to me, cause I’m not capable of coming to you right now. If you want me to change, you’re going to have to figure it out.”
    I would pray similar prayers over and over. It gave me some measure of peace. Especially when people get judgmental, I just say, look, I’m stepping out. Doing what I can. If God wants something different, he’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I live and I grow at a very different pace.
    Some of the looks I have gotten I actually find laughable at this point.
    The best advice I was ever given as a teacher was one I had already been using in my spiritual life. Better to be tuned into your senses and trust that you are going in the right direction, than to constantly question yourself. God will figure it out and find a way to show you (it doesn’t have to be a “promise”).
    Dontcha just love common sense? I’m sure that God is just chalk full of it and we don’t have to worry quite so much as we do.
    ~Christy

  • http://whitewashedfeminist.wordpress.com Cally Tyrol

    Its the cherry-picking of fundamentalism that I witnessed on the internet (not experienced personally) that sent me straight into the arms of the Orthodox Church. It disgusted me, really… everyone is there own little pope and its the reason why Christianity is no longer a force to be reckoned with in the world.

  • http://lousview.blogspot.com Lou Godbold

    I realize I put in the same link twice! Sorry. I meant to paste this other one.

    http://lousview.blogspot.com/2010/02/rise-and-fall-of-radical-christian.html

  • Cheryl Ann Hannah

    Oh boy. I don’t read my Bible either because it did nothing but induce guilt and condemnation in me every time I opened it thanks to the paradigm I was living in. I totally get where you came from with this. And I totally get that God is capable of working outside of the Bible’s covers and our own expectations of who he is.

  • http://magicalrealist.blogspot.com Dana

    I can’t read Proverbs to this day… because they were supposed to be Spiritual Laws and I can’t make any sense of them.

    I really appreciate the comments here, too, about some protestants making the Bible into an idol. It’s so true. It also baffles me from a historical perspective… how do they think people had relationships with God in antiquity when there was only a 10% literacy rate?

    Anyway I’m with SJ above about how confused one gets when there is no difference between Law and Grace, and one reads the OT more than the new, and how one just rebels against reading the Bible at all. There is no comfort in it — just more burdens. In fact, if you find comfort, you are probably misinterpreting it because of course you are always at fault in some way. (actually SJ and I have known each other since we were 14 so yeah.)

    Obviously this isn’t for anyone, but I find that what’s helped me the most is the fact that I’m a grad student in Early Christianity. I’m a social historian, not a theologian, but you can’t read the writings of the early fathers on any kind of regular basis without coming into contact with a whole different way of thinking about Scripture. I can’t even put my finger on how it works, and I certainly haven’t studied them intentionally on the “hot button” fundamentalist topics… but somehow, the years of rubbing shoulders so to speak with Irenaeus, Gregory of Nazianzus, and co. is that some of the extreme fundamentalist interpretations of scripture just don’t make sense any more. (converting to Orthodoxy doesn’t hurt either.) I used to get all angry and argumentative and rational about how they AREN’T RIGHT but now I almost just go, ‘Huh, that’s… weird.” And I can’t even say why on any rational level, but it’s maybe just the feeling that the Bible is not the end-all and be-all — God is, and He’s so much bigger.

    Sorry for the ramble… I hope it makes some sense.

  • http://magicalrealist.blogspot.com Dana

    I mean it isn’t for EVERYONE, not anyone. I previewed it and everything.

  • http://www.emahlou.blogspot.com Elizabeth Mahlou

    As a Catholic, converted from atheism, the one thing I do know (amongst many things that I do not know) is that God does come after people. He lets his little lambs wander and play for a while, but He has never lost track of them and at some point ushers them back into the flock. Are you familiar with the poem, “The Hound of Heaven?” It is one of my favorites, and the theme is that not of the lost lamb but the runaway lamb. If you don’t know it, I think you would like it. Just google it.

  • http://suburbancorrespondent.blogspot.com/2010/07/search-for-tetris.html suburbancorrespondent who is now considering the Hello Kitty IPod Touch shell

    Beautiful post, beautiful comments…remember, love casts out fear – if you are feeling fearful, that’s not God (IMHO). And God is bigger than any one religion (although they all serve their purpose); He loves us all fiercely and unequivocally. All he asks is that we do the same for each other.

  • http://www.threeinonemakesfive.blogspot.com Rachel

    *hugs*

    It’s ridiculous how the Bible is worshiped in some circles – it definitely is around here. :(

    Thank you for sharing!

  • Carla

    I just came across this blog for the first time and this post caught my eye right away. I’m dealing with all of these things, the inability to open a Bible, the panic attacks at just hearing a hymn, the inability to enter a church, what’s going on 4 years now. And most of the time I just feel pretty shut down, no ability to pray except the occasional ‘thanks for understanding what I’m going through’, that’s pretty much all I can muster.

    The old system would tell me it’s all Satan, I have given him a stronghold in my soul. It is always Satan and always something I have done to allow him this power over me. And I just don’t buy that anymore, that gives too many people an out, a reason to not own up to their own behavior and choices, let’s just blame it on Satan who is always looking for a way in, and not take responsibility.

    I am having to start over like many of you. But I have recently decided to leave it up to God as to how we do this. He knows the wounds, the damage done to my soul. Only He knows the way to repair it all. So I’ve decided to relax and let God be God, in whatever way He decides to reveal himself to me. The weapons used against me are not going to be the balm that heals, this I know.

    I’m thankful to have stumbled on this and felt strong enough to even articulate what is going on inside me with this, usually I run from the subject matter in some kind of anxiety attack. So, a baby step for me. :)

    Carla

  • Maybe Gray

    Thank You thank you THANK YOU for touching on the “crystal ball” Bible-As-Oracle issue in the IFB!!! It drives me crazy and seems SO WRONG. Magic verses popping out at you disguisd as God’s Will.
    I was a kid forced into the IFB, I never bought into it and escaped when I was 14. I experienced the panic attacks about the Rapture (used to see weird clouds in the sky while coming home on the school bus and if my Mom was late coming home from work, I would panic and start calling numbers out of the church directory. Only feeling relief when a few people would answer.)
    I do not read the Bible. Ever. I have yet to find value in it, it WAS used as a weapon and I don’t like the God depicted within it. But I do talk to God. This has been positive, I have experienced REAL answered prayer. It gives me hope.
    The Bible….maybe someday soon, not sure about it still. Thanks for your blog, your experiences are very similar to my own.

  • http://delesmuses.blogspot.com/ Jenny

    Thanks for sharing this great post. Question: Do you still attend Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa?