Does The Church Know What Love Really Is?

"If You are struggling with any area of [this] information it is your problem, not ours. If you feel a breakdown in trust and relationship it is your issue not ours. If you don't seem to be able to give a righteous response to what you believe was said and done then go and seek counsel. You have been ministered to, you have been included, you have been loved." [Emphasis added]

These were words sent to me by a board member of my ex-church after I had written to the board, letting them know that I was struggling with being told, amongst other things, that I should submit to the "godly authority" of the man who was bullying me. The email I received in response explained that the board had done nothing wrong, and were, in fact, at peace with God and themselves. If there was a problem, it was mine alone. I had "been loved" and so it was about time I got with the program and performed acceptably again.

The only trouble with this is that I hadn't been loved. I had been dismissed; I had been ignored; I had been silenced. I had been told, in effect, to sit down and shut up. Where I had previously been approved of for my compliance and performance, I was now being judged and rejected. It was not love. It was control.

If I behaved in the approved manner, I was praised and affirmed. But as soon as I lifted the rug and uncovered the dirt underneath, I was labelled a trouble-maker. When I resisted the demand to pretend it wasn’t there, I became the problem.

And the problem with me being viewed as the problem is that I wasn’t really the problem…

The real problem was that none of us seemed to know how to love like Jesus loved. Love was confused with control. The imperative was to control behaviour; control feelings; control the narrative itself.

As I have said many times before, my experience is far from unique. Hundreds of thousands have been, or are being controlled and abused by an institution which claims to be representing the One who is Love!

But do we know what love really is? 

We have made decisions about what it should look like to be worthy of our love. We have chosen to police people's behaviour - to reward the 'good' and punish the 'bad'. We have told people that we love them, when really we are just using positive re-inforcement to manipulate them into acting the manner we have approved. That is not love.

We who are called to love without cost, have confused love with control.

And although it will sometimes get us what we want, the trouble with using control is that we inadvertently make ourselves a slave to the response of the other person. If they won’t play the game, then we have to up the ante until they accede to our demand for compliance.

And when everything has been done to make others behave according to our rules, and they have still failed to comply, we are left with no alternative but to shun them.

They aren’t following the script, so they have to be written out of the show.

And so people who were once friends, or members of the same family, are no longer able to even talk to one other, and they find themselves miserably imprisoned by the refusal of the other to submit to their demands.

Now, you may have heard it said that if you really love someone you should set them free. Well I have discovered there is an incredible paradox in that – when we truly love someone, we actually set ourselves free!

Loving people the way Jesus did sets us free from the need to control their behaviour. In fact it sets us free from needing anything at all from them, because loving someone is simply wanting the best for them. And that is never dependent on their response. So we find ourselves at liberty to love... regardless.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely wonderful when love is reciprocated - and there’s nothing at all wrong in wanting that - it’s just that real love is not dependent on it. We can love someone regardless of their responsiveness to us. Just look at Jesus. He managed to love people who were out for his blood - literally!

So maybe it's time for the church to start following Jesus. Let's give up the control, and do away with the need to make others 'behave'. I promise you that truly loving others is an incredibly liberating thing to do!

When Controlling Behaviour Backfires

One of the first bloggers I started to follow after experiencing bullying and abuse in the institutional church was Julie Anne. She now writes a blog called Spiritual Sounding Board, but when she first started blogging, she could be be found here.

She wrote this about being sued by her ex-pastor:

"Days after the commencement of this blog, I received a legal summons suing me and three others for defamation to the tune of $500,000. The story of spiritual abuse needs to be told. People are being hurt emotionally and spiritually by pastors who use bully tactics and we need a place to learn, to talk freely, and to heal. I will not be silenced."

I was so grateful that she refused to be silenced, because it was people like Julie Anne who gave me hope after my world imploded around me. Blogs like hers reassured me that I was not evil, or insane, or "just bitter". And reading the stories of others helped me to understand that I was not to blame for the abuse I suffered at the hands of those who claimed to represent 'god'.

Now it's ironic, but many people would probably never have heard of Julie Anne's ex-pastor, Chuck O'Neal, if it were not for his actions in trying to shut down someone who was creating a safe place for victims of spiritual abuse. His attempts to dictate what could, and could not, be said or written - to control the narrative - backfired. People started reading and sharing Julie Anne's story as a direct result of Mr O'Neal's efforts to suppress it.

Whatever he thought he would achieve, Mr O'Neal's efforts to silence her, only called attention to Julie Anne's story.

Now, when someone tries so strenuously to suppress information that they end up achieving the exact opposite, its known as the "Streisand effect".

"The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it." - Wikipedia

Ironically, the photo was just one of 12,000 photographs taken to highlight the problem of erosion along the Californian coastline. In trying to suppress the photo, Ms Streisand only called attention to it, and her actions created the very problem she feared. The number of downloads of that particular photo jumped from 6 before her lawsuit, to an incredible 420,000 after it!

Attempts to maintain control over others rarely end well for anyone.

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I don't know what was going through the heart and mind of Mr O'Neal, when he decided to use the law against a fellow christian. I can't imagine why he thought his reputation was so precious and important that he chose to take such an adversarial approach to his 'problem'. But I just can't see Jesus using the threat of legal action to silence and intimidate his brothers and sisters. And if Jesus can't be seen in the actions of his people, then something is wrong.

So here's my thought for the New Year:

Let's stop worrying about 'looking good', and actually care about being 'good'.

Let's take seriously the example of Jesus. He couldn't have cared less about his own reputation. And couldn't have cared more for the people around him.

"... He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! ... He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death..." Phil 2:5-8

Instead of loving his power, he demonstrated the power of his love.

Let's commit ourselves to doing the same!

An Update on My Story

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A little while ago, I heard of a rather ironic turn of events at the church I 'left' - elder J had announced his resignation from leadership. Now this is a guy who was so determined to be THE leader that he was willing to bully and abuse his brothers and sisters to achieve it. Of course, the decision to resign was cloaked in the spiritual language of 'feeling led' etc, but it just sounded like spin doctoring from where I stood. At the end of the day people had been sacrificed on the altar of this man's ambition. 

But I was reasonably certain that elder R, who had been part of the founding of the church, would never let J take control of what (I conclude) he sees as 'his' church. When it's the same person who is left standing after each and every leadership spill, you can join the dots for yourself...

Why do we keep seeing churches being run like a business? Same cut-throat methods, same 'leadership' style. People damaged without compunction because they are seen as being expendable. Why do people see the church as a place to play politics and create a power base.

Didn't Jesus denounce the religious leaders of his day for acting this way?

There are far too many stories of heartbreak, betrayal and abuse in the one place where everyone should actually be safe! But what should be a place of sanctuary has become a place of danger. How can we keep behaving this way, or allowing this to happen without raising the slightest murmur of alarm?