Did the COG push forsaking everything
and living by faith? with no other option or you are not following
the True Jesus?
When I first met the COG in 1973, that
is exactly what they preached - forsake all and follow Jesus. Be
a disciple like the early Christians who left all to follow Jesus.
I was given a little card with lists of
Bible verses to memorize, and they worked powerfully to form my
beliefs. "He that forsaketh not all that he hath, he
cannot be my disciple." "Follow me, and I will make
you fishers of men." "A man's foes shall be they of
his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is
not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and
followeth after me is not worthy of me." Who wouldn't want
to be "worthy of the Lord," right? Certainly, that is
what my 16 year old self thought.
Even more, "Ye have not chosen me,
but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring
forth fruit..." I was chosen of God! An elite class
of Christian! A member of a special club.
Those are just a few of the verses that
I repeated until they were rock solid truth in my brain. They
"strengthened my faith." "Faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."
Or, as Daniel Kahneman wrote, "A
reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent
repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from
truth." (That is from his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
Now I see, rather too late, that such
ideas leave much room for manipulation and abuse. Thinking
myself "special" and "called-out," led me to be
isolated from society at large, along with their mores and standards. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord."
But extreme was the way of the COG. "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I
will spue thee out of my mouth." Nope, can't be lukewarm. It's all the way, give 110%, as we used to say.
Now that I've experienced living in a
cult for 30 years, and also having lived abroad for 40 years where
I've seen how other cultures thrive, I cannot hold to such a rigid
belief that there is one select group of humanity that alone
possesses "the Truth." What I can see is how the
rigid belief system of the COG and even fundamentalist Christianity -
or any monotheistic religion - can be very harmful.
It is good to stay aware of our tendencies: we naturally see what we are looking
for, and believe what we hear oft repeated.
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