Leaving Church

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again

I just finished Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church, a Memoir of Faith, and wanted to share some thoughts on this book.

The author was an Episcopalian Priest who walked away from a very strong identity to her church and it rattled her to the foundations of her faith. Anyone who has left a church, regardless of the religion, can relate to the universal truth about feeling betrayed and dislocated without something so pivotal as to how we connect with God.

Like so many of us who bring our idealistic notions into church with high expectations of both serving God and experiencing God, a popped church balloon can send us plummeting to the ground. The ground is very hard and for many of us we end up splattered everywhere and it takes a long time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again--and then we're not the same--what with those cracks all over!

When I left the guru church, I had no idea that others had left--I'm serious when I say that I thought leaving was impossible because I'd taken a pledge (and told I would suffer a thousand years of rebirth without the guru as punishment), but also, I had know idea that Christians had similar "exit" experiences of betrayal, hurt and grief when leaving their churches. The damages done when leaving a church does not seem to be about religion, but more about leaving a conviction in God. We feel betrayed by God. We question how it was even possible to be led down this path? Is it God's fault? Is it our fault?

For the author, she literally had to decide what to do the day "after" she left her clergy position with her church, whereas for some the realization they've left might take a long time.

In my own case, I didn't make a sudden decision to leave, rather I left because of the back-biting and un-devotee behaviors, and my inability to reconcile my mother's death with their comments that she didn't mind dying of cancer, the same as Christ did not mind dying on the cross!

While I was having my hiatus, it began to dawn on me that something was wrong with their beliefs and their hold on their devotees. The contrast really began to shout at me when I read the Bible for the first time. I kept saying, "This isn't what they told us!" It's interesting to note that guru churches make claims of harmony with Christ but they don't read the Bible.

Barbara Brown Taylor went through actual physical withdrawals, finding herself on the floor with horrible headaches. It seemed she started pulling herself together by remembering the Sabbath and making time for a personal relationship with God, rather than all the doing for everyone else. Her healing came through nature and by opening her mind to other religions, weighing them against her own, and finding peace somewhere in the middle.

The author found it hard to go to other churches, and her the transition from leader to follower was unsettling. For me, just attending a Christian church felt like betrayal on the highest order! I'd jumped off the jet and onto the bullcart! Oh what we can do to our spiritual lives.

Like the author, I couldn't find spiritual or emotional support. Local Christian Pastors had no experience to counsel me, and for Barbara she'd been the counselor!

Our differences part here, as Barbara went off looking for the meaning behind other religions and embraced them, while I had been down those "many roads," and had settled onto the Road to Damascus.

She wrote a moving story of her father's decline and death from cancer, another subject that I'm very familiar with, and she made this astute observation while watching him die and wondering about his relationship with God: "All I found out was how helpless love can be, with nothing left to do but suffer alongside with the beloved."

I highly recommend this book to affirm that the loss of a church can be devastating but the return to spiritual health entirely possible.

From False Teachings to Salvation

I was convicted in a Dharmic religion that was unbiblical and toxic. I often repeat that in each posting to set newer readers on the road to this blog.

Let’s set the record straight: Satan convicts, not God. The verb convict is to make aware of one's sinfulness or guilt. The noun conviction is a state of firm or fixed belief. A little etymology will help. A “con” is a swindle.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:1-2

When we first leave a toxic faith, false teaching, cultist or guru based churches that tell us there are many roads to God, we’re left with nothing but our old convictions. It’s devastating to realize (however it comes) that you were swindled into a bogus belief system—it’s so distressing some people stay put rather than face what they've done. There are all kinds of implications. You likely tried to convert people into the cult—and did, and now must leave them there, lost friends and family over it, and more serious, you turned your back on the Christian God for false idols and worship. Facing these transgressions of religious and moral laws, especially when deliberate wasn’t easy for me. My pride was squashed flat.

For years my God was a set of rules and regulations and a lot of work.

“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Romans 4:4-5

But like any recovery program, you first tell God, “I was wrong.” Then ask his forgiveness. Then, you tell the people you hurt, and you ask their forgiveness. Get it out into the light and out of darkness. Its shame and shame only has power in darkness, so bring it into the light. That is for starters. Confess your fear to someone. Also expect God to help you out of this conflict. I thought I had to do it myself (part of the false teaching package).

It was the conviction part that held me back (and pride). A real roadblock. You see, I wrongly thought conviction was something else—that it was my proof in the pudding that my cult was the true and only way to spiritual oneness with God, and if I’d been so convinced, how would I ever trust my judgment in God again?

I have since learned that Satan is the only one who convicts (and condemns) in such a manner. Satan leaves unbelievers alone, but those interested in God (any God), he'll get involved. He tells us God has a high price, that we are not worthy of Him and that the path is steep and narrow, that we're basically rotten and need the tar beat of us by some guru, too sinful to be saved, karma-challenged and must suffer rebirth for centuries, and then keeps us on these rat wheels of lies or addictions or both blinding us from the truth. It really gets sticky when you’ve been told by your false religion that there’s no Satan, no sin, no heaven and no hell, that there is only dark and light and Ying and Yang and it’s up to you to know the difference.

Satan does not want anyone to believe that salvation is easy, he doesn’t want you to know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). He's perfectly fine with you not believing in him.

False teachings will never tell you about Grace. Grace is salvation and Grace has no place in their teachings. It’s the first clue you’re involved in a phony philosophy. The number one thing a false teaching teaches is that you have to do the all the work yourself, but you can do it if you keep striving.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Eph 4:14

I certainly didn’t believe Jesus died for me. Hadn’t I been told for years that the Jesus story was—well, just a story and he was just a great prophet-guru? I had was told and believed I was God and could “realize it,” so when I left a church that supported that belief, I was desolate, depressed, anxious, fearful, confused, tired, lost and staring at a void that used to be my spirituality. I had no church. I had no community. I had no God. I had nothing. When you walk away from a false religion it does not walk with you. You go it alone.

The greatest tragedy for some.

I thought conviction was a big deal, necessary, a prerequisite. After I left, it held me back from God in a serious way, for a long, long time. For me, years were going by and I just wasn’t getting convicted into any kind of “other” religion, and Christianity just seemed too easy—that the road to God had to be involved and complicated as I had been convicted in believing. Eastern religion, cults and anything not rooted in God’s Word are full of conditions and works. Those conditions and works lead us to conviction, not the other way around. When we leave a false teaching without all those conditions and works, we take a free-fall off a cliff, and it’s scary not knowing what to do next.

If you’ve left a cult or a false teaching, there are some things you can do to help the transition period. Expect to be confused, angry and depressed. Expect to grieve. Pick up your cross and get right with God. While you’re trusting in Jesus now, you must throw everything you believed in into the trash, yes, tangible things, such as books and teachings, babbles, idols, etc., (forget about what you paid for those things, and don't donate them or sell them!) but most important, physical, mental and emotional rituals. Wear a rubber band around your wrist and every time you slip into a "chant" a mantra, or any lie you were told, snap it! Hard! My wrist bled, but I deprogrammed myself. If possible get counseling and deal with it like a death. It is death, and you'll experience all the same emotions.

Remember, it’s normal to try to hang on to some of what you were convicted into. Maybe you no longer believe the Guru you followed, but you still think his teachings have some merit. Maybe you hang onto meditation techniques. Most of us try to take something with us and try to fit it into Christianity. But Jesus, himself, said it can’t be done—you’ll be left with nothing.

"No one sews a patch of new cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." Mark 2:21

Jesus is the new wine. If we pour new wine into an old skin, it will ferment and will burst, leaving you with nothing. We can’t be caught up in the check list of our old belief system. It’s all new in Christ.

Before you think this was easy for me, let me set the record straight. First I boxed up everything I’d collected into an enormous plastic box, almost 30 years of stuff, and put it into the garage. It sat in there for five years! One day, God pressed upon me to “do it.” I immediately, without questioning his order and dumped it all into the trash. As I tossed it, I noticed how dog-eared and tired all the books looked, my finger oils stained into the pages as year after year I had poured over these teachings, convicting myself of their truth.

When I slammed down that trash lid, and watched the day the dumpster truck lifted and poured it all into it’s rotten gassy belly, it was like someone taking off a yoke. I don’t recommend you wait five years, but if you’re struggling with this issue, put everything into a box, out of site, and God will help you deal with it when the time is right.

Nor did I leave my cult and happily skip to the Christian church across the street. It just did not seem feasible that I could really get into Christianity. False teachings make sure Christianity is the very last place you’ll look for help—it’s ingrained on a subconscious level that Christianity is backward. I was going to sit in my pit and shake my saber at God for having allowed me to stumble into it to begin with, waiting until he convicted me again in something else… Oh, I threw blame all over the place! I was so angry at God.

Then one day I bought an NIV Bible. Cults and false teachings do not recommend reading the Word. Only their teachings, for you see, if you read the Bible, it will expose the lies you’ve been told, and you’ll ask questions, it will tell you the truth. I started asking Jesus for his help to sort it all out, but still hanging onto some old belief systems. I went to therapy. I grieved the loss of my false church just like I grieved the death of my mother. I grieved the lost friendships, the tainted memories; especially those that I believed were "spiritual experiences." I grieved to learn my "guru" was just a man, had secretly fathered children, had affairs, and died young of clogged arteries, that he wasn't a saint who commanded his own death as we were told that he couldn't help me anymore than he helped himself.

One of the scary things for people leaving false doctrines or teachers is trying to find a replacement God. Christianity isn't appealing, there's not enough to do, not enough rules and regulations, no one to confirm that you’re moving along nicely on the path, no gage, meter, guru, someone to affirm your spiritually. If there isn’t a list of things to do—something to strive for—like Samadhi (a state of oneness with God), then, what do you do? Just read the Bible and pray? Surely there has to be more? People in cults often need toxic structure.

Salvation is not conviction or structure, it’s about faith. Jesus said to his followers, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" (Mark 4:40). The Word tells how to have salvation. “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9.