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sadkimmy
It got so oppressive I begged my husband for us to leave, but he didn't want to. He was afraid what "they" would think, and he had to come to a decision without my pressuring him. So I submitted and stayed for a few months until he saw it for himself. Then he chose for us to leave, so we did. So that's the long story, short. I think you can see for yourself WHY I feel there were some cult-like tendencies there. Other things don't fit, though. Money was absolutely never a part of it.
well sadkimmy, I am in no position to give you advice, I am not qualified to do so. I can redirect you to the threads that pertain to destructive churches and I can only tell you what my experience has been with religious abusers.
I'll try to make a nearly lifelong experience very short: I grew up in an extremely abusive environment. I was totally and thoroughly religiously abused from two extremely religious viewpoints. One was an extreme Catholic religous mindset, the other was an extreme traditional Native religious mindset. It didn't matter what I said, did or thought I was either going to hell one day or having some lifelong or multi-generational curses put on me the next day by the community medicine man (in some cultures 'witch'), if I did anything to piss him off. I won't even go into detail how twisted and sick was the environment, I'm just telling the basics. The medicine man too by the way was an abuser of a different kind, which I won't even get into.
Anyway, I grew up believing in a God that was this BIG angry guy in the sky who was going to get me no matter what I did and if He didn't get me, then the devil would. I was screwed no matter what I did or what I believed in. So, all I could do was just live each day and hope I'd do at least one thing that would make God forgive me and make the devil angry enough to leave me alone.
After I got out of the hell hole I grew up in , I began to live the most rebellious and destructive life you could possibly imagine. I was going to prove they hadn't seen anything yet when they told me what a bad/evil/bastard child I was where I grew up. I sure showed them, I nearly died a couple of times and I became a hard core alcoholic in the process.
One day when I was certain the next drunk I went on would be the last, I finally prayed to the same God I was so pissed off at and I believed was mad at me. I begged Him to forgive how I had taken my rage out on Him for so long and if He could forgive me, would He also help me to stop my addiction because I just couldn't do it alone. Tried AA, Christian friends, and one month recovery program. Nothing helped, and in the mean time my mom who was in her late 40's died of alcoholism too. She too had experienced exactly the same type of abuses I had, only hers were in a residential school.
Anyway, I got the miracle I asked for. When to not drink seemed impossible, for some unexplainable reason one day, I woke up and knew I wasn't going to drink that day. And I made it long enough to get into a recovery center far from home and stayed there for several months. I had a job I was willing to leave if I couldn't go, I was beyond desperate.
I don't mean to lay a sob story on you sadkimmy, I am trying to make a point here. The God that you might be thinking is legalistic, angry, and condemning is not that way at all. It is the religious and legalistic abusers of the word of God that pummel those beliefs into us, and it is really those people's misconceptions about God that we work so hard to recover from, not from the true God Himself.
My belief is; God is Love and if someone tells you about any other kind of God, read the bible yourself and read through the Psalms, and don't forget to read the 'Love' chapter, 1Corinthians 13 verse 4-7.
I hope I am not out of line in what I am writing to you on this board or on this thread, but something tells me you just can't afford to lose sight of God. I understand that position and I am thankful to the few people who told me their stories way back when I was standing in the same place.
I am, I know, a poor example of a Christian with my foul language, my often bad attitude, my attacks on others and bullheaded persistence in things that are really trivial, so don't judge God by my example, just learn of Him on your own. That's it, and I hope you won't let the bible study guy destroy your faith too much.