Archive | November 2012
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A Believer’s Assurance in Christ
I sometimes struggle with doubts about whether or not I am loved and saved. Are you shocked? I am, after all, a seminary student. Yet I doubt. “God may love others,” I occasionally say to myself, “but God doesn’t love me. I feel too sinful to be saved. I need to try much harder to […]
How to Identify Religious Brainwashing: The Dispensing of Existence (Part 8 of 8)
This is the final in an eight-part series on how to identify brainwashing in a destructive group or cult. It is based off of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s “Eight-Point Model of Thought Reform” and borrows from several other authorities on the topic of religious mind-control.* 1.) Part One: Milieu Control 2.) Part Two: Mystical Manipulation 3.) Part Three: […]
Who Writes Your Shattered Life?
“We will only love our story to the degree that we see the glory that seeps through our most significant shattering. To see that glory, we must enter into and read our tragedies with confidence that they will end better than we could ever imagine…. God writes our story not just for our own enlightenment […]
Spiritual Abuse: 10 Ways to Spot It
Sometimes less is more. Christian writer and blogger Mary DeMuth has a succinct post on ten signs of spiritual abuse. Having experienced spiritual abuse herself, Mary knows what she’s talking about. She notes the following: Spiritually abusive ministries have a distorted view of respect. Spiritually abusive ministries create a culture of fear and shame. Spiritually […]
Against All Reason: Why I Failed to Leave My Cult
The pale greens of spring in Maine ran like wet paint outside the window, blurring as my eyes welled with tears. Meanwhile, my pastor neatly summarized my choices: “Either I am God’s servant and everything I have taught you is true, or I am a fraud and everything you have committed to is false,” he […]
Liberty for Captives 