Tag Archive | legalism
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 […]
A Sensitive Topic: Personality Disorders in the Church (Part 1 of 5)
Author’s Disclaimer: This is a topic easy to abuse. “Let’s label people with a disorder so we can kick them out of church leadership!” No, that’s not the purpose of this series. But I have found the information I’m sharing here so personally liberating—and so helpful a framework in explaining various cult leaders I have […]
Lies that Bind
Behind my parents’ house in Southern Maine sprawls a large stand of blackberry bushes. You can go there in August and fill a pail with blackberries the size of your thumb. If you go, you’ll see last year’s brown, thorn-studded canes jutting like broken arms among today’s giraffes of greener growth. I used to spend […]
“Crock-Pot” Trauma: Spiritual Abuse and Recovery
Snow melted from my boots and formed a spreading stain on the carpet. Outside, a foot of fresh powder lay untroubled by tracks. The University had cancelled classes for the day but I had several time-sensitive matters to attend to. So I drove in on slush-greased roads to my basement office in southern Maine. A […]
Identifying Religious Brainwashing: Doctrine Over Person (Part 7 of 8)
This is the seventh 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.) […]
Redeeming the Years of the Locust
“I will make up to you for the years that the locust has eaten.” – Joel 2:25 Joplin, Missouri. I stand transfixed in the hot July parking lot watching a brown grasshopper chew grass. Trucks roar by on I-44 and puffy clouds stack overhead. But the real drama happens in front of me, on the brittle […]
Liberty for Captives 