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Signs
May 18, 2010 7:02:53 GMT -5
Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on May 18, 2010 7:02:53 GMT -5
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May 18, 2010 8:20:50 GMT -5
Post by whitestone on May 18, 2010 8:20:50 GMT -5
Thankfully, I have never been involved in the Q movement, nor in an authoritarian "Christianity" if you can call it that. I had only one child, prayed for more, but settled with the fact that this child was the only one God would give me.
Even though I was raised in a traditional church and even though I still, today, appreciate and respect the wisdom of previous generations of believers, I recognize that I am answerable ultimately only to God.
All of that to mention that I have been reading NLQ, somewhat fascinated, and definitely heartbroken for those who lived under the thumb of some authoritarian figure who deemed himself "god" to his little group of followers.
But today's topic mentions the "Rapture" and nothing bugs me more than its false (in my estimation) eschatalogy (study of the end times). Those who read the Left Behind series (is it now 13 volumes?) for the most part do not realize that the "rapture theory" is of recent invention, the work of a man by the name of Darby in the early 1800s and whose theory was later popularized by the Scofield Bible. The "Rapture theory" is not even mentioned in Christian literature prior to 1830.
And yet it is harangued from many a pulpit. A huge portion of Christianity has read all 13 volumes of the Left Behind books (I wonder how many of those persons have read through the New Testament?). They get their theology and their doctrine from an encyclopedic work of fiction. I read through two chapters of the first book and threw it down, never to pick it up again.
I hope you are aware that on the other hand, there is a huge body of Christianity that does NOT subscribe to this theory. Eschatology presents various views of the end times. Darby's view is "new" in terms of Christian history and does not extend back to the time of the early Christians.
As for Quivering, this website has opened my eyes to the damage that authoritarianism does to a young child's heart. I pray peace and blessing upon all the women who come here. And I thank you for allowing me to comment on today's post.
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Signs
May 18, 2010 10:11:35 GMT -5
Post by jemand on May 18, 2010 10:11:35 GMT -5
Welcome whitestone! Great post on the history of rapture eschatology. This blog: slacktivist.typepad.com/ has an awesome take on the left behind books that I think you'd enjoy. The only thing I am uncomfortable with is the subtle implication that Sierra or the rest of us who have rejected Christianity have done so just because we're unaware of all it's different flavors... I'm sensitive to such language precisely because modern US culture is literally marinating in christianities, dozens of varieties of christianities... and it's irritating to me that people act as if I could have lived this long and what... completely never run across any of it? Or be aware of it's variety? I know you didn't mean it that way, but I just wanted to point out that you probably should be careful not to post things that make it look like you haven't considered what it would be like to live in the US (where Sierra is from) while having a non-christian perspective. Welcome to the forum And I hope you enjoy the link to Slactivist, it's probably a Christianity you'd like a lot
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em
Full Member
Posts: 176
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Signs
May 18, 2010 10:47:44 GMT -5
Post by em on May 18, 2010 10:47:44 GMT -5
Aw, Sierra. I'm prone to panic attacks, so I can feel for you. I can just picture me reacting the same way in your shoes. I can definitely feel the racing heart beat, trouble breathing, that horrible panicky feeling blotting out everything else. *hugs* How awful for you to have to grow up that way.
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May 18, 2010 11:31:08 GMT -5
Post by Sierra on May 18, 2010 11:31:08 GMT -5
Thank you all for the comments! Em, I didn't know what panic attacks were at the time, but I definitely had them - in fact, a sort of 'subplot' to all of this was that I was convinced there was something wrong with my heart and I was going to die young as a result of that if not the Rapture. Waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats and chest pains totally didn't help with the sense that my world, at least, was ending! I mentioned some of the chest pains to my mother, who told me not to wear underwire bras. The rest of the fear I kept well hidden. Showing fear meant you weren't in the Bride, because 'perfect love casts out fear'. Huh. Also: welcome, whitestone. I understand jemand's point of view, but I don't feel 'proselytized to' by your post. I actually find it really interesting that Christian traditions without the Rapture concept exist (I don't think I even knew this before graduating from college), and find it amazing that the belief itself is so young! The ideas are so inseparable to me that it seems like a totally different religion.
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May 18, 2010 11:35:04 GMT -5
Post by gardenkatz on May 18, 2010 11:35:04 GMT -5
Sierra:
I am so sorry for the emotional abuse you suffered at the hands of your church and mother.....
How did you finally extricate yourself from this very, very toxic belief system?
GK
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Signs
May 18, 2010 14:24:45 GMT -5
Post by dangermom on May 18, 2010 14:24:45 GMT -5
I actually find it really interesting that Christian traditions without the Rapture concept exist (I don't think I even knew this before graduating from college), and find it amazing that the belief itself is so young! The ideas are so inseparable to me that it seems like a totally different religion. Meanwhile, I was in grad school before I heard the word "Rapture" and had to ask someone what it meant. (I went on to do a thesis paper on teen Christian lit, right when Left Behind was getting started. I've read Peretti and Mandie and all those books, only I read them for library school...) That's a horrible way to grow up, dominated by fear of the Rapture and certainty that you won't be taken along. I'm curious--did you ever hear, at all, the more usual message that Jesus loves you?
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May 18, 2010 14:40:39 GMT -5
Post by Angelia Sparrow on May 18, 2010 14:40:39 GMT -5
Sierra, I SO feel you on this.
I grew up under the shadow of the Rapture as well, thanks to Salem Kirbin.
It was endemic in my thoughts and I knew, just KNEW, God would forget to take me along. Everyone else always did.
One Sunday in October during college, I got up at the usual time and went for breakfast at the cafeteria. Nobody was up in the dorms. The cafeteria was locked, well after it should be open. There were almost no cars on the streets. I walked to my church and it was locked, too.
I sat on the steps and cried, sure I had been forgotten--or left because Brother Bob was right and no matter what I believed God wdidn't love me because I was bi--until Pastor Ray showed up. His wife took me to the kitchen, fed me cocoa and told me the history of rapure theology.
I totally understand the fear.
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May 18, 2010 15:13:51 GMT -5
Post by krwordgazer on May 18, 2010 15:13:51 GMT -5
Sierra, I'm so angry right now I feel sick. Your mother told you, "I love you, but if Jesus comes, I'm outa here" !!! In other words, "Nine-year-old daughter, you can't count on me. I may say I love you, but I don't want to be with you. I can and will abandon you without a moment's warning. And God is the one who will orchestrate it." How, how, how, could anyone say that to their own child? I understand that she probably didn't really grasp herself what she was communicating to you; I understand that she was miserable and wanted to be taken away-- but it's still beyond belief. All I want is to take that little girl that you were, and mother her myself, teaching her that I would never leave her unless I were killed first . . . The god that is worshiped by The Message is evil. It bears no resemblance to anything I have ever understood as God-- even when I was in a cult myself.
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May 18, 2010 15:56:46 GMT -5
Post by Sierra on May 18, 2010 15:56:46 GMT -5
I'm curious--did you ever hear, at all, the more usual message that Jesus loves you? Yes - you've actually given me an idea for a future blog post. Our church was supposedly founded on the belief in 'no law but love, no book but the Bible, no creed but Christ' and our pastor's personal calling was to 'tell the people that I [Jesus] love them, I died for them, and they are free.' Such a far cry from the way it was in practice, huh? Our pastor preached 'love' more than any other Message pastor, and my mom's personal relationship with God was founded on the love she felt when she nearly lost her life in miscarriage. She said that when she fell unconscious she went to a place that was pure love, and that was the God she worshiped. There were many times in church when the pastor would preach about Christ's forgiveness and acceptance of everyone, and these were the times I cried with gratitude. I wanted to believe in that kind of Jesus. But that love was quickly withdrawn when the following sermon was all about Jezebel women dragging America into the belching maw of hell. And it was impossible to reconcile the belief in a Christ who loved and died for everyone and yet was willing to save such a small number of people that most of the rest would never even notice when they left. This is how my relationship with the church mirrored domestic abuse. I lived for that one sermon every two or three months when I heard about Jesus' love. The rest of the time, it was rampant condemnation. But 'whom the Lord loves, he rebukes and chastens,' so I was supposed to open up to every criticism and search my own soul for evidence of whatever sin was on the table. (Did everyone else not do this? I found it so easy to apply every 'chastisement' to myself, only to be genuinely perplexed when I overheard the grown women talking about how that sermon was probably meant for so-and-so, and wasn't about them...) I understand that she probably didn't really grasp herself what she was communicating to you; I understand that she was miserable and wanted to be taken away-- but it's still beyond belief. All I want is to take that little girl that you were, and mother her myself, teaching her that I would never leave her unless I were killed first . . . Thank you, KR. The grown woman trying to mother her inner child appreciates this quite a bit. I've been puzzling over how to flesh out my posts more to make clear the effects of these doctrines on my family as well as me, but they keep getting so long that I neglect to do so. This is what I think of my mother's comment, though: It came when she was very much in her 'on fire,' honeymoon stage with The Message. She was so excited to have found the Truth and her greatest aspiration (to bring someone else into it) was being fulfilled, as she met her friend Rachel at a homeschooling event and promptly evangelized her. But I suspect there was a nagging fear in her about my father's rejection of Branham. She didn't know how to cope with this fear, so she nagged him, and then made 'jokes' and 'teased' him with lines like 'You'd better get right with God, the doors to the Ark are closing.' (As in, it's starting to rain and we're all in Noah's Ark waiting for you to get in and close the door.) Obviously, those aren't joking matters if you really believe the world is ending and your husband is on the wrong side of God. When she made that comment to me, I think she was really talking to my father. She continued saying such things to me throughout my adolescence, even though by all appearances I was totally towing the line. I went to church with her every Sunday, wore the skirts, read the Message sermons, prayed... but I was my father's child. She mentally associated me with him. I'm fairly sure that she also was anxious about the Serpent's Seed and my potential to be saved, though I can't remember specifically talking to her about it. It's more likely that it came up over tea with her lady friends and I just happened to be there. But that's my take on things now: she projected her fears about my father's lack of salvation onto me and expressed them in totally inappropriate and damaging ways. That doesn't mean I understood this at the time. I was utterly bewildered. I had no idea why she thought I wasn't saved, so I just kept trying harder. Then she would make one of those comments and I would be devastated, all over again. I was never able to escape being 'just like my father' to her, even though I thought (and think) I was never anything like him...
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May 18, 2010 16:05:14 GMT -5
Post by Sierra on May 18, 2010 16:05:14 GMT -5
How did you finally extricate yourself from this very, very toxic belief system? Gradually, and with much fear and trembling! I was fortunate enough to have both parents insist on a college education, and when I got a financial aid package to a four-year school that included room and board, we agreed that I would move onto campus. During exam periods, I occasionally told my mother that I didn't have time to go to church that week. She was displeased, but understood, and didn't pick me up. During my second semester I started making that excuse more and more often. They sent me recorded sermons that I stashed in a desk drawer. By the end of my first year at college, I'd finally experienced a community of supportive, kind people who valued and respected my opinions - and I realized I'd never had that before. There was no sudden crisis of faith, though I self-consciously stopped believing that God would destroy the best people I'd ever known for not being in The Message (where, incidentally, most of the worst people I'd ever known were!). The decisive moment was when I bought a pair of jeans at the start of summer and decided to work on campus. After that, I never went home, and I only went back to church once, for a wedding. For two years I never breathed a word against the Message or Branham, for fear of the repercussions of blaspheming the prophet if they turned out to be right. I was very careful to hedge comments about leaving with 'but I respect their faith'. I'm still in the throes of it, really, but I've finally shed most of the fear (obviously). I've been out for four years, which isn't really enough time to fully decompress from 12 years of 'training'. I've seen progress, though, and expect more.
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May 18, 2010 23:01:31 GMT -5
Post by eriktrips on May 18, 2010 23:01:31 GMT -5
Sierra, your descriptions of the panic and terror when your mother had seemingly vanished match up perfectly with what I went through for several years, as I, too, had been told by my parents and by my Sunday school teachers that the rapture was coming soon and that I had to follow a very precise, not-particularly-biblical (imagine that!) sequence of actions in order to be truly saved. I spent whole nights awake, trying to invite Jesus into my heart, but nothing ever happened!
The main difference between your story and mine is that I am a little older, and so my experiences were filtered through Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and some extremely frightening Jack Chick tracts that I picked up at school in about fourth grade.
I personally see what happened to me as child abuse. I know my parents thought they were doing what was best, but I spent most of the last half of my childhood--from about 8 or 9 years old until I finally was coerced into "walking the aisle" at 13--in a protracted, obsessive state of panic and dread, which eventually metamorphosed into the Complex PTSD and severe anxiety disorder that I am now literally disabled with. I take medication that helps alleviate some of the anxiety, but I still sometimes believe that the people I love are just going to disappear. I don't believe in the rapture anymore, but my sense of security in the world is pretty much shot, so I've become quite creative in what I will dream up for why someone might be missing. It is beyond annoying and can be quite distressing at times.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that you are not alone in what you experienced and I know how terrifying it is for children to be taught these sorts of things. That your mother would actually threaten you with the rapture makes my blood run cold. Although my mom confirmed that, yes, the rapture was likely to happen soon, she never seemed to be eager to leave me behind. But neither did she help me with my conundrum of being extremely introverted and at least as terrified of walking the aisle by myself as of being beheaded by one of Jack Chick's mobile guillotines, as seen in "The Beast." I was pretty much left alone with my terror.
But it's over now. Or that is, all that is left is the panic and anxiety, which will attach themselves to random events in my life, but I know where they come from and I know that my panic attacks will neither kill me nor prove that something awful is about to happen. Just knowing that can be helpful in guiding oneself through them.
I hope that you can find some peace from whatever fears may remain from your childhood. I've found that, contrary to what I was taught, there are some really beautiful and wonderful people out here in the world who are not fundamentalist Christians and in fact seem to know more about compassion than anyone I met while I was involved with my parents' church. It has helped me quite a bit to find this out and to have relationships that are not bounded by the narrow terms of fundamentalist religion.
Erik
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May 19, 2010 9:16:58 GMT -5
Post by km on May 19, 2010 9:16:58 GMT -5
Wow... What an awful thing to say to a child. I'm so so sorry that you had to endure that. I didn't hear about the Rapture and everything else until I was about twelve years old, and that was from family friends who tried to get me into the system. I remember being terrified and having nightmares even then. I can't imagine having been through it even as a very small child.
Incidentally... I ended up going with my mother to see The Passion of the Christ. I was in the process of losing my religion at the time, and my mother ended up with free tickets from her church. The church (a relatively "mainline" church that got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for ordaining a woman) bought out the whole theater for that showing, which meant that I got a free ticket. I wanted to be able to participate in all the pop culture conversations that were happening around that movie, so I decided to go along.
The pastor announced before the show that this was the most "accurate" film portrayal of the "life of Christ" in history. I was in my early twenties at the time, but I remember being horrified by the number of very young children I saw there with their parents. My impression was that the movie was the worst kind of spiritual manipulation: Convert to *this particular version of Christianity* or else! A friend who had grown up in QF/P had a much less measured impression of the film. She said, "It shows what a despicable motherf***er God is." I think I would have been even more disturbed by that film if I'd seen it *as a minor* though. Ugh...
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May 19, 2010 9:22:19 GMT -5
Post by km on May 19, 2010 9:22:19 GMT -5
By the way, I'm curious... Did this interpretation of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy come from your church, or did it belong to you (based on your entrenchment in the church)? Most QF/P people I knew at the time thought LOTR was evil incarnate (They saw it in the same way they saw Harry Potter.), but I'm curious whether or not this was an interpretation peculiar to your church?
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May 19, 2010 9:49:55 GMT -5
Post by margybargy on May 19, 2010 9:49:55 GMT -5
Sierra, I'm so angry right now I feel sick. Your mother told you, "I love you, but if Jesus comes, I'm outa here" !!! In other words, "Nine-year-old daughter, you can't count on me. I may say I love you, but I don't want to be with you. I can and will abandon you without a moment's warning. And God is the one who will orchestrate it." How, how, how, could anyone say that to their own child? I understand that she probably didn't really grasp herself what she was communicating to you; I understand that she was miserable and wanted to be taken away-- but it's still beyond belief. All I want is to take that little girl that you were, and mother her myself, teaching her that I would never leave her unless I were killed first . . . The god that is worshiped by The Message is evil. It bears no resemblance to anything I have ever understood as God-- even when I was in a cult myself. I almost didn't comment because this says it all for me. I can't imagine saying such a thing to my child.
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hrd
New Member
Posts: 46
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Signs
May 19, 2010 11:03:20 GMT -5
Post by hrd on May 19, 2010 11:03:20 GMT -5
Sierra, your descriptions of the panic and terror when your mother had seemingly vanished match up perfectly with what I went through for several years, as I, too, had been told by my parents and by my Sunday school teachers that the rapture was coming soon and that I had to follow a very precise, not-particularly-biblical (imagine that!) sequence of actions in order to be truly saved. I spent whole nights awake, trying to invite Jesus into my heart, but nothing ever happened! The main difference between your story and mine is that I am a little older, and so my experiences were filtered through Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and some extremely frightening Jack Chick tracts that I picked up at school in about fourth grade. I personally see what happened to me as child abuse. I know my parents thought they were doing what was best, but I spent most of the last half of my childhood--from about 8 or 9 years old until I finally was coerced into "walking the aisle" at 13--in a protracted, obsessive state of panic and dread, which eventually metamorphosed into the Complex PTSD and severe anxiety disorder that I am now literally disabled with. I take medication that helps alleviate some of the anxiety, but I still sometimes believe that the people I love are just going to disappear. I don't believe in the rapture anymore, but my sense of security in the world is pretty much shot, so I've become quite creative in what I will dream up for why someone might be missing. It is beyond annoying and can be quite distressing at times. Anyway, I just wanted to say that you are not alone in what you experienced and I know how terrifying it is for children to be taught these sorts of things. That your mother would actually threaten you with the rapture makes my blood run cold. Although my mom confirmed that, yes, the rapture was likely to happen soon, she never seemed to be eager to leave me behind. But neither did she help me with my conundrum of being extremely introverted and at least as terrified of walking the aisle by myself as of being beheaded by one of Jack Chick's mobile guillotines, as seen in "The Beast." I was pretty much left alone with my terror. But it's over now. Or that is, all that is left is the panic and anxiety, which will attach themselves to random events in my life, but I know where they come from and I know that my panic attacks will neither kill me nor prove that something awful is about to happen. Just knowing that can be helpful in guiding oneself through them. I hope that you can find some peace from whatever fears may remain from your childhood. I've found that, contrary to what I was taught, there are some really beautiful and wonderful people out here in the world who are not fundamentalist Christians and in fact seem to know more about compassion than anyone I met while I was involved with my parents' church. It has helped me quite a bit to find this out and to have relationships that are not bounded by the narrow terms of fundamentalist religion. Erik So close to my experience too! Except I am no longer really bothered about the rapture--but it caused lots and lots of sleepless nights in my childhood. I've mentioned it before, but that freakin movie, "Thief in the Night," just about ruined my childhood.
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Signs
May 19, 2010 20:40:38 GMT -5
Post by rosiegirl on May 19, 2010 20:40:38 GMT -5
Sierra, do your parents know of your current "religious state", and if so, what do they say?
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