Spiritual Abuse – Part 1

This post deals honestly with painful material in a polite and respectful way. Please read this only if you are in a safe emotional place.

I would like to speak directly and honestly about a matter that has troubled me so greatly. I will speak of things that some of you may prefer not to hear and that I wish I never had to mention.

My life as a child included dehumanization, degradation, isolation, mocking, mind games, lies, extreme lack of privacy, mischaracterization, beatings, sexual assault, and extreme humiliation far more potent than anything you could imagine. My adoptive mom was mentally unstable and I  received many threats death of death after I entered grade school. There were good times too but terrible storms were never far away.
 
Now the days of my physical abuse ended three days after I signed up to join the United States Marines. But for nearly forty years, I have struggled unnecessarily as a Christian. I have been misunderstood by pastors and teachers in one church after another and in place after place for as long as I can remember. In fact, this abuse that I have experienced has been nearly as destuctive as the physical and sexual abuse I suffered as a child.

 I have interviewed many people who have also experienced similar destructive counseling. For that reason, I will use my own experience as an example of what I'm talking about.
 
The pain of my past began to surface about ten years after I left home. The giddy freedom that I felt during my years as a Marine began to give way to an uneasy depression and, later on, to an inability to partake in the joy that Christians everywhere told me that I should have.

Over the years, pastors and elders of various churches and denominations told me that I needed to pray more, that I needed to worship more, that I needed to praise more, that I needed to learn how to believe more effectively, that I needed to repent more, that I needed to pray in tongues more, and that I needed to speak positively at all times. At one point, I was accused of despising God, told that I was a coward because I did not believe God, and that I needed to have a demon or demons driven out of me. Finally, I was told that I needed to tithe more so that God could begin to bless my life.

I never expected to be rejected at church. I never expected to be misunderstood, sidelined, dismissed, and dismissed by pastors, counselors, and church leaders.  Whether this was spiriual abuse or not, I felt rejected by God Himself.