14Sep

The Net

Part I

(Preface here)

I should start by acknowledging that this will not be easy, and not just because of the subject material. The net around my childhood was woven from spiritual, physical, intellectual, and psychological components, and I still can’t identify all the hands that helped to create it. A lot of my memories have been repressed or distorted, and I have no desire to unearth every detail. However, I know for certain that in the net’s efforts to guide me, it nearly strangled me… and that my parents were the ones caught in it first.

Early in their marriage, they became involved with a religious group that could accurately be termed a cult. The leader required members to donate all their money, cut off family ties, and accept his every word as divine revelation. I would find it amazing that one man could dupe so many people into mindlessly obeying him except that I know his tactics by heart. All he had to do was quote a few Bible verses out of context—“Lean not on your own understanding,” “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” and “Your ways are not [God’s] ways”—and top it with a few scoops of religious guilt, and sensitive souls were easily convinced that the warnings in their hearts and minds were just part of Satan’s ruse. If you’re not allowed to think for yourself or trust your own instincts, you have no option but blindly following someone who claims to have first dibs on the truth.

While my parents never officially joined the group, it made a deep impression on them. They saw large families of helpful and obedient children with a refreshing disregard for what the rest of the world thought about their uncut hair and homemade jumpers. Women taught their children at home and tended sickness with natural remedies. Men worked the communal farm or crafted artisan furniture. Instead of watching TV in the evenings, everyone would gather to sing and pray. To an impressionable young couple looking in, the group was clearly following the lifestyle that God wanted for his people.

When I was still young, our family moved away from the group and settled in a fairly large city where the cult leader’s absence was filled by teachings from Bill Gothard, Bob Jones Jr., Michael Farris, Mary Pride, Gary Bauer, Jonathan Lindvall, Michael & Debi Pearl, and other Christian fundamentalists. To my parents’ credit, they embraced these teachings because they wanted to do the right thing, and I don’t think they ever once realized the insidious spiritual manipulation happening to them. If God commanded them to throw away the birth control and homeschool their ever-growing brood, who were they to argue? If God wanted them isolated from the world, how could they disobey? If God dangled their children’s souls over open flames and said the only way to save them from hell was to beat them until their wills were broken, what else could they do?

I don’t believe for a second that God really wanted any of those things from them. I’ve struggled for a very long time with how to process God’s involvement in my childhood, and the only answer that brings me peace is knowing that he is not forceful. God did not force those fundamentalist authors to stop writing their propaganda any more than he forced my parents to stop reading it. I think God tried to communicate with my parents the way he does with me now, through intuition and thought-nudges, through the emotions that help us sort out good from bad. Had my parents listened to those, they would have seen our home life for what it truly was—terrifying, heartbreaking, and fraught. However, they had been taught to dismiss both mind and heart as misleading, so my childhood was left to the mercy of religious extremists.

Perhaps I should clarify: There was no mercy.

(To be continued)

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5 comments

  1. Sending you an immense amount of love – I know writing this, sharing this, is not an easy thing. I am proud of you.

    I am so thankful you came to the conclusion that God doesn’t force anyone to do anything. I know it’s hard to accept that God doesn’t always intervene, doesn’t wallop people on the heads with iron skillets. (My mom spent years mad at God because He didn’t make her father stop drinking, even though she prayed for it her whole life. Heartbreaking.) We all make our choices and sometimes we make bad choices with the best of intentions.

    It just breaks my heart when I read about situations like yours. I cannot understand how the radical love and compassion in the story of Jesus ends up into crazy legalism and people controlled by men who rule with fear. It brings to mind the verse warning about those who ‘masquerade as angels of light’.

  2. Brave one, share your story and shine the light so others might see, too.
    With love,
    EE

  3. Sending you love and strength and anything else you might need. XO.

  4. I can’t imagine or really relate to what you must have gone through, but I know you are a brave and honest person who has come out the other side of terror with a shining heart. You’re an inspiration to all of us who have come to love you. Breathe deep, Bethany and tell us. We’re not afraid to hear and you should never be afraid to tell. XOXO

  5. Hi Bethany,

    I recognized your description of the religious organization that influenced your family. My family belonged to the same group for 5 years. I sent you an email. Loving your blog! You have a gift with words!

    Grace

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