FREEDOM from GCx Lordship

This description of the consequences of being under “spiritual” lords, rather than Jesus is so well put. I’m guessing many members can identify with this former GCx member:

… You make sacrifices that inside you don’t feel right with, they don’t come from your heart, but you do them anyway because you don’t want to risk looking immature, and everyone else is doing them, or it’s what the people over you have determined is best for your life. There is a ladder you are told you must climb, a level of spirituality you must obtain, and you are trying so hard to be like the people you look up to. And not only that, but there is a race to the top of the ladder. It’s you against your fellow brothers and sisters to see who can reach spiritual maturity first. But you begin to notice that the spiritual maturity ruler isn’t really about “maturity” as you thought you knew it. It’s about your “teachability”, how willing you are listen and agree with and “run with” what the people over you are telling you.

And one day you come to the realization that you’ve sacrificed too much of yourself for the cause that you so believe in. You ask yourself if certain things you did like cut off all your former friends, and put your biological family on the back burner of your life were necessary, or even wise. It begins to tear away at the foundation of your faith, because if this one idea that you believed in might not be true, then maybe this other idea isn’t true either. You begin to notice holes in what you thought was solid fabric and you cannot piece it together in your mind. You are getting this vague feeling that some how you have been duped in some way. In an attempt to be “open” you take your thoughts and feelings to the higher-ups, but you realize right away that you’re not getting the reception you thought you would get. …

You stick around because you said long ago that you would. “Some of you will leave,” they used to say to the group, and you thought, “Not me, I never will, I’m a lifer.” Then the thing that you thought would never happen does. You make the choice to leave your friends and your life, as you know it behind.

Now even though you don’t believe in it, you find yourself in a kind of spiritual purgatory, some halfway Christian misfit that can’t seem to fit in anywhere. You go to some different churches, but the people seem so “lukewarm” and lackadaisical about their faith, and you get so weary of trying to figure out the balance between “on fire” for God and “lukewarm” —nothing feels quite right. So eventually, even though you love the Lord with all your heart, you just give up trying to feel comfortable among any of his people. You stop going to church altogether.

You cannot figure out why it hurts to read your bible. You love the Word, you love the Lord! Why do you feel this way? What used to bring such joy now just turns your stomach.

… Well, perhaps this wasn't exactly YOUR journey, but it was mine. I am an ex-OH GCM'er from the 80's who stumbled across this website. I had no idea that so many others were also troubled by experiences in the [GCx] church.

-knit_in_no_more, 2008