To my fellow contemporaries who were in the same youth group as I growing up in those teenage years…..

I deeply apologize, I humbly repent, and I genuinely ask for your forgiveness.

I will admit it.

I was the mole
I was the nark
I was the rat fink
I was the ‘divine double agent’

I was the one who was the mole from within that you spoke to but at the same time did not become close friends with. I was the one who ‘ratted you out’ when I told your parents about you getting out of the backseat of the car at lunchtime. I was the one who ‘narked you out’ when your father cornered me in the men’s restroom at church and wondered if you had started smoking and if that smoke was marlboros or “mexi-marlboros” .

But being a young ‘good-ole pentecostal’ with hyper-anxiety about losing my salvation and missing the rapture (based on a bad theology called Finney’s perfectionalism)….

I did not nark, rat, or mole you out because I cared about you. I ratted, narked, and moled you out because I cared about me….

…me losing my salvation if I lied (sinned) to your parents… (and learning the hard way almost 20 years later than I can never lose my salvation)

…me ‘missing the rapture’ if I did not fess up that lie told to your parents…

…me feeling like I needed to kiss the ‘holy-heiney’ of God because I was always ‘re-repenting’ for something and fearing that I would forget something that I need to confess…

…me having to survive the annual youth rally

And needing to build up my personal low self-esteem easily by dismantling and lowering your self-esteem (while preaching that self-esteem and confidence was ‘psychology and secular humanism’). I really thought that I was doing God a huge favor…

The more I have thought about this over time, it reminded me specifically of what I had always heard and read about communist Russia where everyone was considered the ‘enemy’.

Except that in pentecostalism:

Everyone was considered the sinner

And like communism where people ratted out their own families to the government in fear of ‘evil America taking over from within’ and fear of equal punishment because ‘you knew’, we ratted out sinners within our own fellowship not to lead you to forgiveness and repentance, but to make sure we would be pure and holy enough to not lose our salvation, not miss the rapture, or if God tarried… not miss the great last-days end-times mega-harvest revival.

I really thought by this ‘work’, I was really earning brownie points and jewels in my heavenly crown by doing this. I did it for ‘the cause’ out of the state of ‘pente-paranoia’ and ‘apostolic-anxiety’ I was going through. I really thought that I was really ‘super-spiritual’ by purging the Kingdom.

—

In many ways, it was like spy vs spy.

Everybody was the ‘spy’ against everyone else who was deep-down inside the ‘traitor’ that could destroy us

Counterintelligence, sedition, treason, and espionage that comes close to any story told by Tom Clancy. Needing friends from within to ‘survive’, we also knew that if we thought our friends were going to “sin” therefore holding back revival or lead to the breakdown of ‘the church’, we would have to expose them before they committed the sin, before they ‘defected to the other side’ and before they crossed the line of eternally losing their salvation….

In other words in the bottom line, I was a Pharisee…. Plain and simple. I really thought I was better (enforced by verbal affirmation) which fueled the ‘guilt’ of digging deeper to find more stuff while at the same time dealing with my own sins (in hiding) that further triggered the Gospel guilt always feeling I had to repent for something and if I did not repent or failed to repent…

I was going to be found out…

I was going to be exposed…

I was going to be narked, moled, ratted, betrayed, and double-agented…

Because someone else cared about themselves. Someone else needed their self-esteem raised. Because someone else needed brownie points. Because someone else needed a mega-revival to dance to. Because someone else needed to regain their lost salvation…

What a hideous and bizarre way to live out your Christianity! But we did it for ‘the cause’ (God). We did it to ensure our mansion in Heaven. We did it to keep wrath off of ourselves. We did it in fear of being called “Ladiocea”

I really don’t have an excuse, but just an apology and a plea for forgiveness.

Related Posts

1. An Apology to The Baptists
2. I Knew This Was Coming
3. An Apology to The Baptists Part II
4. An Apology To The Nations