charliedog wrote:
So I took time to think, then more time, then more time. I looked up Borderline Personality Disorder and found that those who suffer from that, really do fit the bill as people in the Pente/charismatic movement. Especially when it comes to claiming the right to invade other people's personal boundaries. And what an invasion is the "I can see you have a Demon, but don't worry - we can sort that out..." idea. What a terrible invasion and yeah - I'm wondering if my time in the charismatics/pente did give me Borderline Personality Disorder - because none of that intrusive, invasive, nasty attitude was ME. So who was it? What was done to me to make me be like that. Rob's postings have been very helpful, many thanks Rob
Hi Charliedog - welcome to the community! We all have very difficult issues to sort out, and we come from a wide range of flavors of the Pentecostal/Charismatic experience, but one thing we all have in common is that we have all asked ourselves the same questions:
  • How could I have done and said those things?
  • How could I have been taken in like that?
  • How could I have let them do that to me?
You've found the right place to at least start the process of finding out the answers. Some of it takes years to sort out, and patience is required. The reason is that the path to true deliverance is uphill, and it's all about you. Unlike the false claims of the P/C salespeople, there is no such thing as an organized solution you can buy into. No group you can join. No book you can read that has all the answers. All of the solutions are inside you already. It just takes hard work and a little help from your friends (and maybe a good therapist, along the way!) to find them.

Let me use a positive analogy to explain what I mean by the work that needs to be done. Consider the sculptor who stands before a rough block of stone. She doesn't see the stone - she visualizes the form buried within it. She lifts her mallet and chisel, and begins to chip away. Bit by bit, she begins to release the form within from its dark prison. And even though it requires patience and care, as each chip flies away, she is encouraged by the form taking shape, and knows that she is on a path that will ultimately end in beauty and light.

You've probably heard similar analogies from what I call the pulpit masters - the religious puppeteers who made you dance while the choir hummed in the background. In their analogies, however, it's God doing the sculpting - not you. It was all about "letting go," and "letting God do His work" in you. In their twisted view, the path you need to be on is one where you surrender your own volition, and passively allow the process to happen on its own. Just get out of the way, and let the Holy Spirit do His (its?) thing. It can be very enticing: you, the believer, have only to do nothing, while "God" shapes you into what the church believes you ought to be. Unfortunately, life doesn't actually work that way, and the "God" the pulpit masters are talking about is them! Ultimately, it is the church leaders who decide what is God and what isn't, so you are left with either going along with their program, or being out of the will of God.

That is an incredibly powerful force for an individual to fight against, and it takes someone of rare strength and fortitude to walk away from it. And with every step, one voice says, "Keep going!" while another says, "You're walking away from God!" Family and friends who are still dancing to the pulpit masters' strings will try to hold you back, even while a very small voice within them says that quite the contrary to what they are telling you (and being told by the pulpit masters), you are walking away from the stone, on the first step to freedom. Freedom is scary, because it requires that the individual make decisions - the very antithesis of the Pentecostal/Charismatic teaching.

The real solution to your own issues is therefore one that you have to release yourself, and can't be given to you by someone else - neither a god, a therapist, a church, a drug, a book, nor a forum such as this one. All of those things could be tools that you may pick up and use to chip away at the stone, but the path to true deliverance is one that you have to first envision, and then follow. Anything less won't work. That's what makes it so hard to help others find their way out of the craziness that the P/C's foster and reward.

As you wind your way through the process, you can post questions and reflections here, and we'll do our best to help. Sometimes we might not hit the mark, and sometimes we will be right on the money, but we're all here to encourage one another to find the true and unique and wonderful person hiding within. After all, we already know where the ugliness is.

Rob

Last Edited By: RobWood Mar 28 09 9:13 AM. Edited 1 times.