Actually, that's the sort of thing I used to hear a lot...stuff based on mixed messages....
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ah yes, the double bind. I forgot to mention that one but there was a good bit of that. In fact, that's what first led to my own critical thinking regarding things I was being told. I was only in high school, but I had already started to wonder about things like the following. The Pente elders told me we had free will. Yet they sought to remove all of my freedom. If you have free will, then why would God (or anyone from the church) put you into a double bind situation that effectively removes your freedom? What would be the point of giving you free will if the intention is for you not to have freedom. And - Is that really something God would do or want?

And I thought that if actually the intention was for there not to be free will (either on the part of the church group or on the part of God), then did I really want to be a part of that? Because it seemed so wrong to me. It led to a period of time where I not only was angry at the Pente church and at God, but I questioned many things, including, for a time, the actual existence of God.

It started looking to me as though the only possibilities were that I was a) not really being given the correct information by the church, or that b) I really was being given the correct information. If I was getting the correct information, then I didn't know if I could even be a Christian any longer. The further away from the Pente fellowship I got, the easier it was for me to see that their interpretation of God, scripture, God's will, etc, was distorted and was far different than mine.