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The Introverted Duckling

How a Christian Cult Stole my Childhood (and so much more) - Part 2


The previous post I wrote about this generated a lot of discussion and interest, which I am very pleased about, as it makes me feel supported and less alone in what I've been through. Please keep sharing your own stories. Everyone's story matters. Everybody's pain matters.

Ironically, I first heard the phrase ‘no man is an island’ spoken in my childhood church. And it’s true: no man is an island. We are all interconnected and desperately in need of each other. There are thousands, perhaps millions of people with stories like mine and we live in an age when we are lucky enough to be able to connect through social media, blogging and the internet in all its other glorious forms.

I also write because it’s cathartic and it helps me along my healing process. Writing this series of posts isn’t something that’s pleasurable or necessarily enjoyable for me, but I feel that it’s necessary.

Mental health issues: 1 out of 4 of us will suffer from them at some point in any given year, according to mind.org.uk. Some of us are unfortunately prone to them because of our genetic makeup. Some people develop them as a result of trauma. For others it’s luck of the draw, or a mixture of all of the above.

I truly believe that growing up in an enivorment such as the one I grew up in does nothing to help people with mental illness. I actually think it fosters these problems; creates them, even. Take a child with a naturally sunny disposition and tell them constantly that if they ‘don’t ask Jesus into their heart’ that they will fall straight into a burning pit of lava where they will be tormented forever when they die, or when Jesus comes back (whichever happens first), then that child will begin to worry and agonise over that. I know I did. Even though I had ‘asked Jesus into my heart’ at a young age (also known as having 'said the sinner’s prayer’), I still confessed my sins at every given opportunity, just in case I died or Jesus came back and I still had some sin left unaccounted for.

I pretty much repented for everything, just in case it was a sin. I mean, from what the church taught us, almost anything was a sin anyway, unless it was church-stamped, God-approved and a past-time that the leaders themselves enjoyed. (I distinctly remember that Agatha Christie books, the Narnia series on TV and board games were more than just not-vetoed; they were actually encouraged!) But after that, there wasn’t much else you could do with your free-time that was sinless. So we went to church meetings. Most days, sometimes twice a day. The church made sure we had no time for sinning.

I’ve always been an extremely sensitive person, and I think sensitive people are more prone to anxiety. It got hold of me from a very young age. I used to suffer from really bad asthma, which seemed to be exacerbated during certain church meetings, particularly when the whole congregation would be yelling in ‘tongues’ (a supposed divine language that God gives you to communicate with him once you are particularly ‘holy’) or interpreting them at the top of their lungs, and singing loudly to the same choruses over and over again, as though their lives depended on it. It was during these meetings (what they called their church services) that I would feel my throat close over and my chest tighten up, and then I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Dad would have to carry me out and sit with me on the steps away from all the noise, give me my inhalers and hold me until I had calmed down.

They say that physical illnesses are often connected with your emotional, spiritual and mental well-being. I would go so far as to say that I was being emotionally abused.

I worried excessively about the ‘spiritual state’ of my friends and family who weren’t Christians, and who, more precisely, weren’t part of my church. I didn’t have many non-christian friends, but the ones I did have, I tried to bring along to church and prayed for with tears streaming down my face. I genuinely believed that after death we would be separated, I (hopefully) making my way to heaven to spend eternity whilst they would be plunged into a fiery pit where the devil would prod them intermittently with a giant fork, for eternity. I was especially worried about my granny, who was my oldest living relative at the time. I remember asking her if she believed in God, to which she had replied, ‘In my own way, dear.’ That hadn’t sat well with me. I remember praying often after that that God would bring her over to the right kind of religion, I.e. my-old-church-kind.

As I got older, I worried excessively about fitting in. I wanted to be seen as one of the in-crowd; one of the really ‘spiritual’ ones who were (in my old church’s lingo) 'on fire for God'.  Psychologists and therapists would say that a primitive instinct to not be excluded from my pack had kicked in. As a child, all my outward needs were being met there . My social life, my worldview, at one point even my education came from within the walls of that church.

I went to any length to prove that I was ‘on fire’. They were really big on ‘giving things up for God’ in the church. Video games, secular music, books (just not your Agatha Christie ones) and later on crushes on boys; anything that you could give away or give up because ‘God told you to’ and you wanted people to believe that you and God had a really close thing going. I remember once marching into the living-room where Dad had been watching something on TV and lecturing him about how TV was sinful and we needed to get rid of all our DVDs.

I somehow seemed to forget that since he was in a wheelchair, watching TV was all he could really do to pass the time! My desire to fit in and be seen as really really spiritual completely blinded me from what really mattered.

I started to agonise over whether I had actually started to hear God’s voice speaking to me or not. Were they just my thoughts, or God’s? That was the constant battle that went on in my mind. One time I actually wondered if I had heard God ask me to stop washing my face because they were very big on avoiding vanity in my old church, and I thought that maybe God wanted me to have a dirty, spotty face so that I wouldn’t be vain.

Worst of all was one time after hearing a sermon about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, I began to wonder if God was asking me to kill my guinea-pig. I’m horrified to say that you’ve read this correctly. I loved that guinea-pig with all my heart, as I have always loved my pets and animals in general. But I was concerned that I loved my guinea-pig more than God, and that the sermon had been a sign that I needed to do something about that. Thank god I saw sense and managed to overcome that troubling idea. But thus began a life of mental torment, OCD, anxiety and having difficulty separating anxious thoughts from sensible ones.

It’s sad that it took me moving to an entirely different country to begin my journey of healing and freedom. But thank god that I did. There are so many souls still in that place and I fear that the cycles of abuse and control continue and will always continue. The same goes for any sect or cult that believes itself to have The Answer to all of life’s questions. Only devastation to people’s lives and emotional well-being can ensue.

Now, if God is a person, I can say that I see him in the faces of all those who have held my hand and let me cry out all the pain of my past, those who have given me advice and wisdom and encouraged me on my path of freedom, those who let me have my crazy moments without judging and realise that it’s all to do with how I grew up and the scars that have been left as a result.

I find God in those who love me unconditionally and for who I am. Not those who loved me because I was a pawn in their game of control; someone to be shaped into what they thought was best without any regard for my well-being and true-self.

If God is energy, then I know him in my new-found freedom, the new lease of creativity that has been birthed from all the struggle, the warmth and joy and beauty around me, the fight inside that won’t let me slip back into despondency.

If God is all things good - which I believe he is - then he is a very far cry from the Christian cult that stole my childhood.

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