(aka The Silent Treatment)
What happens when you leave?
(1): The Silent Treatment (aka shunning) where disassociation takes place to ostracize or guilt the one who leaves into believing that survival outside the group is slim to none.
or
(2): The Silent Treatment (aka “You stay ‘silent‘ about what happened here and we will ‘treat‘ you semi-decently)
I would like to talk more about instance number 2 (still crappy) that exists in many circles today. When one leaves ‘the fold’, ‘the flock’, ‘the church’, etc., there is usually an unwritten ‘code’ that is expected to be followed.
“Don’t Talk”
That’s right, you are not supposed to not talk about what went on or what happened. You are supposed to hold it all in and go onward at the expense of your own mental health because talking about what happened is viewed as coming against leadership which is viewed as ‘touching God’s anointing’.
What happens when one starts talking about what happened and the church finds out?
Many things. Very few churches just ignore and go on their way while others start getting very defensive and start playing power games ranging to twisting scriptures and substituting the names of the people who left in place of Bad Bible characters relating them to a ’spiritual (fill in Bad bible characters name here)’ or a ‘(fill in Bad bible characters name here) in the Spirit’. At the same time, the congregation is told to ’stay away’ from the family who left and is encouraged to teach their children to further shun the children of the family who left at school.
Some keep track of the lives of the people who left and spoke out to the point of finding tragedies and equating the tragedies as a by-product of leaving the church made equivalent to leaving God.
Some even have volunteers (and in some megachurches ‘legal teams’) who scan and scour the Internet looking for web pages, forums, blogs, etc. that place the church in a bad light and instruct the legal team to begin proceedings to ’silence’ the one speaking.
I have to ask a question here…
Is this a church or a cult?
These tactics sound like tactics that cults used to use many years ago to keep people ‘in-line’. However, as much of modern Christianity is becoming more postmodern to the point of being unable to tell and distinguish itself from other world religions, these tactics are now becoming more commonplace in many churches today. What eventually happens is that the light shunning discussed in item number one now becomes more increased with fervor as public relations spin replaces the favor of God, as lawyers who win in the courts replace the judgment of God, and in many extreme cases the pastor replaces God as the one to be idolized and worshiped.
What does one do?
You tell the truth and keep talking no matter what happens…..
Is this a church or a cult?
“If I’m in it, it’s The Church. If YOU’RE in it, it’s a Cult.”
These tactics sound like tactics that cults used to use many years ago to keep people ‘in-line’.
Trouble was, Totem, 30 years or so ago, ALL Christian cult-watch groups defined “cult” ONLY in terms of doctrine taught, not repeat NOT in control-freak behavior inflicted on their congregations. The result was “aberrant Christian groups” whose doctrine was sound (usually Pentecostal/Evangelical/Pre-Trib Rapture) but who were totally “cultish” in their control-freak behavior towards their people. The problem was, this was NOT recognized as cultish behavior, so Christians trapped in them would be told by the cult watchers that they were in a Christian Fellowship, NOT a cult.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and scars to prove it.