God has a people who are family in Christ meeting in love
The Church Search-Religious Lifestyle for the dysfunctional
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One day a man heard about God from other people, some of whom he knew and others he didn’t know. Something pierced his heart when he heard about God and he wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle. He studied his Bible day and night with Greek and Hebrew concordances and many biblical commentaries by his side. Then news got around about how he felt and some people came to him because of this—people who choose not to associate with him before they heard about how he wanted to learn more about God.
These people—and there were many different ones—all said the same thing: that they already knew God, and were a part of the family of God and could teach the man about God. They all urged the man to become part of their local family within the universal family of God. Most of them said the same things—that God lived in heaven but regularly stayed in a building they called their “church.” And that God talked with a person called “the pastor,” who was their leader, on a regular basis. This pastor person was a very Godly person, who was just like God, they said.
They urged the man to come to their church and learn from this pastor and to be part of the family of God and to feel and experience the presence of God. So the man did and showed up the next Sunday, dressed in clean blue jeans and a t-shirt, ready to be part of the family of God and to learn from the pastor and to feel and experience the presence of God. When he went through the front door someone gave him a printed program of events and he wondered that these people knew God so well that they could tell in advance exactly what God was going to do and say to them during the length of time they were meeting there.
When he was inside the building the people who had invited him came over to him and said how glad they were that the man had come. However, they then pulled him aside and admonished him not to wear blue jeans and a t-shirt in “God’s house” and to wear at least a dress shirt and a tie, preferably with a suit. The man then asked why a family meeting would be so formal. His question was ignored.
The man looked around for a sofa or a chair he could sit on and talk with the other members of the family there, but found none. Instead there were rows of seats that were fixed in place and all were positioned so the person sitting in them would have to face the front of the room. The man thought to himself that it would be impossible to talk to the other people in the family that way and wondered why they all faced the front.
As he anxiously waited, someone came out and spoke from the front and began to tell everybody about how small this building was and how everybody needed to give extra money to the pastor so they could build a bigger building. He then instructed the ushers to take up a “special” collection for a building fund. The man wondered why God needed more physical room as God is a spirit.
Then the man up front told everybody to get ready to give their regular amount of money to God, calling it a tithe, and said that if they didn’t give money to God that God would curse them. They were instructed to make their checks out to the local church’s name. The man wondered why God would need money for Himself and why God would curse His Own family. He could feel the fear in the people as it swept through the room.
Then a group of musicians began to play music and sing and the lights began to dim while an overhead projector put words up on a screen and everybody began to sing the words. The man thought that this was strange that everybody was supposed to feel the same way that the words described and all at the same time. He became aware of the rhythmic beat coming from the drummer. As the man looked around the room he could see by peoples’ eyes and their actions that they had instantly been induced into an altered state of consciousness from the drum beat and the lighting effects. He thought to himself that was very dangerous as people in this state are 20 to 25 times more open to anything suggested to them than while fully awake. He also knew that up to 25 per cent of the people, while in that Alpha state of eyes open altered state of consciousness would interpret any suggestions made to them as virtual commands. The man said to himself, ‘The use of the music, lighting and songs chosen to sing is more than coincidence. Someone has carefully planned this as a persuasion technique.’
After a little while, there was a pause in the music, as if everybody was waiting for something to happen, and suddenly somebody started saying something very loudly in a foreign sounding language. He recognized that as the tongues he had read about in the Bible and which he had spoken himself. Then somebody else started saying very loudly something about God speaking to all the people there. He realized this was an interpretation of those same tongues. Then a small percentage of the people—about 17 percent, according to statistics the man had read from a study done on the subject—also started speaking in the foreign sounding language while the rest of the people pretended to be doing the same thing.
Suddenly someone shouted that God loved everybody there and wanted to see them all healthy, and wealthy and full of self importance and self-esteem and ended his speech with the phrase “thus saith the Lord.” The man understood that was supposed to be the gift of prophecy in operation, but to him the message sounded more like a wish list, rather than a true message from God for the people there.
Everybody got all excited and some began to dance, some began to run around the perimeter of the inside of the building, some started visibly shaking, others shouted out their speeches also saying “thus saith the Lord.” There were great shouts of “Do you feel the presence of God!” Then there was general pandemonium and confusion, and those who could speak the foreign sounding language—tongues—got louder and louder until finally a person with a big Bible moved up to the microphone and stationed himself there waiting for the confusion to end.
When the people wound down from their hyper-activities and saw the person at the microphone then everybody, as if on cue, suddenly calmed down, and they all sat down and became quiet. The musicians quit playing and left the platform and the lights came back up. The man asked himself, ‘What happened to the presence of God? Did He leave?’
The man at the microphone began to intone a speech, “This day the Lord God of heaven has visited you and has commanded His blessings on you ...” and he continued to speak like that for some time. Finally he too, ended his speech with the standard phrase “Thus saith the Lord ...” and everybody applauded him.
The man up front, who was finally identified as “the pastor” spoke of God’s great love for humanity and how God had called, gifted and anointed him to be their leader and how he was extraordinarily qualified to do so. He also intimated that he, the pastor, was a gift from God to the people there. In fact, he proclaimed himself to be “God’s anointed” and a prophet of God. In addition he said that his recent calling by God as an apostle gave him even more authority to be the leader and the only example for the people there. Then he quoted from the Old Testament and the Psalms an injunction from God to “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” He then affirmed that as being one of God’s anointed that anyone who even had ill feelings about him would be dealt with by God Himself.
The man who wanted to learn more about God so he could be like God in his lifestyle could feel the fear in the room from that statement, and thought to himself, ‘Who is so biblically illiterate as to believe this? The very fact that a person would say those things indicates he has absolutely no concept or understanding of scripture, much less the Father’s heart’. He knew that the phrase “God’s anointed” refers to the patriarchs of Israel and also to king David. He also knew that God considered them to be prophets and in the scripture quoted was admonishing those who would attempt to put the patriarchs and David into harm’s way. It was clear to the man that the pastor was intimidating the people there and creating a fear base in which he could operate unhampered as the ultimate authority in the artificial chain of command that had been created by the church organization.
The man who wanted to learn more about God so he could be like God in his lifestyle, put up his hand to ask the pastor some questions about these unbiblical statements. The pastor ignored him, but soon others around the man put up their hands, sometimes both hands and they were ignored also. Many of them could be heard muttering “Amen!” just loud enough to be heard. The man then realized that putting up your hands was supposed to be a sign of endorsement of what the pastor said instead of a signal that somebody had a question. The man began to realize that because of the altered states of consciousness he had observed earlier the people there didn’t question these things that the pastor taught. Being highly open to suggestibility and some even accepting his statements as virtual commands put them into a position of simply blindly accepting what they heard.
Finally the pastor finished his speech and asked if there was anybody there who wanted to make a decision for Christ and receive Him as Savior. As he was saying this the lights suddenly dimmed again and the musicians walked back up to their instruments and started playing and singing softly. The man who wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle observed this obviously carefully rehearsed scenario and thought to himself that it sounded like an impersonal business transaction, but accompanied by pre-planned mood shaping tactics designed to help persons to be persuaded to accept the offer.
The man who wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle was perplexed because there was no instruction that a person had to make Jesus Christ Lord of their life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and obey the laws, ordinances, statutes, commandments and precepts that God has stated in the Bible. Instead they were to just repeat the words of a prayer recited by the pastor, sign a card, become a member of the organization and promise to pay tithe money weekly and offerings when announced, to stay in a uni-lateral covenant relationship with all conditions and rights originating from and retained by the church organization in order to enjoy the protection of some kind of “spiritual covering” from that organization, to come to the building every time the doors were opened to the people there, and to obey explicitly, and without question, what the pastor said to do in all areas of life. This didn’t sound like Bible to the man, more like some kind of military oriented worldly formula for success that was necessary to have forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God. It did not sit well with the man’s spirit and conscience.
Then the pastor asked for everybody who had any kind of problems to come up to him at the front and he and his assistants would lay their hands upon them. Apparently, this was supposed to fix whatever their problem was. That evolved into a “healing line” and a “prophecy line” and the man wondered why this was so, as he wasn’t aware of any scriptural precedents for these things.
Those who were sick or injured came up and would dutifully fall down when the pastor prayed for them and touched them. One young man, with a painful and very badly sprained ankle, came up on crutches. He very carefully “fell down” with the help of some others there and then was helped up while proclaiming that he was healed by the power of God. Everyone applauded and shouted praises to God as he limped off on his crutches back to his seat. The man who wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle wondered just what kind of healing that was supposed to be. He knew that God can heal, but this didn’t appear to be a valid instance of it.
The man thought this was his opportunity to ask the pastor the questions he had and so he also went up front. He especially wondered what kind of “family” they were supposed to be which was another question he wanted to ask. So he went up to the front with many others who were standing in front of the pastor. As he watched he was puzzled as to why so many of the people pretended to fall down when the pastor touched him. When the pastor came to him and he started to ask the questions he had, the pastor shouted him down and began to command demons to come out of the man who wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle.
He tried to explain that he had no demons but was continually shouted down until many in the building were all around him. When he realized that they didn’t understand why he had come up front, he shut up. At that point everybody was singing songs about the blood of Jesus, and when they saw he got quiet they began to shout, “It’s gone, he’s delivered! Praise God!” At that point everybody began to sing and shout and dance around and many touched him and prayed for him.
When the people had worn themselves out with their repeated rituals the man decided to leave and not come back. He definitely didn’t want to be part of what this group considered to be a “family.” On his way out some people stopped him and hugged him in a great display of false emotion, congratulating him on being “delivered” and one small clique even invited him to go to lunch with them.
Realizing that he was in a building full of dysfunctional persons, so dysfunctional that they even thought that they were a family, he graciously declined their invitation and got out of there as fast as he could.
As he drove away, he contemplated upon why God would ever leave heaven to stay regularly in that building the people called a church. He considered the man called “pastor” and realized that he was in fact, a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, commanding the people to obey him and to give him their money, their time and their talents in order to continue to build what was obviously a personal kingdom which met all of his financial needs, even to an excess. Obviously, the church “family” gave the pastor a tremendous amount of power to manipulate and intimidate them into doing his bidding. This pastor was, he thought, a power broker, what the world would call a “control freak” in the truest sense of the word. The man marveled at the pastor's ability to misuse scripture to create an atmosphere of fear for the people there. And how effective the pastor was in somehow bringing the people to a point of illogical reasoning that to do anything contrary to the will of the pastor was considered to be a punishable sin against God Himself.
He also wondered why the people in the building thought that they knew God and could teach others about God. He knew that God is a God of love, abundant life and liberty, not a God of fear and control, which are really offshoots of hatred. Instead of abundant life, he thought to himself, this fear and control brought with it variations of death itself. Instead of liberty he had witnessed the cruelest form of bondage, all in the name of God!
He was amazed that the people in the building thought that they could anticipate what God was going to do while they were all together in the building. Deep down in his heart he knew that some of the people there understood this was mostly sham and make believe and pretend, but that they didn’t know what to do about it. If only they would read their Bibles, and do a little biblical research, then they would find the truth, he thought to himself.
He considered the powerful appeals for money, with the threats of cursing by God if you failed to do so. He thought about the pastor’s speech where he said that his organization was some type of “spiritual covering” for the people in the building and that if they left his organization then they would be subject to repeated and painful harassing attacks by the devil. Didn’t the people there realize that this artificially contrived “covering” was, in fact, keeping them prisoner to hatred, death and bondage, he reasoned within himself.
He also wondered why the Bible text the preacher used was so badly mistranslated as to read “Obey them that have the rule over you ...” as that was not what the original text said. Rather it really said to observe the lifestyle of those who stand before you and if the outcome is good and desirable then imitate them, with the understanding that if their lifestyle didn’t measure up to biblical standards then don’t imitate them. He knew, however, that most versions of the Bible followed this erroneous translation. How sad, he thought, that these self-appointed leaders of the body of Christ refuse to do their biblical homework and teach the truth of the word of God! But he realized how convenient it was for them to not preach biblical truth in order to use it as another device to manipulate and intimidate the people of God.
The man thought about the pastor saying that failure to obey him and his duly appointed assistants in his authoritarian hierarchy was rebellion against God. He wondered why the people there couldn't see that this was an obviously manufactured falsehood to help the pastor and his assistants to maintain some type of power using the fear of God as positional leverage. He also didn’t understand the urgency placed upon going to the meeting in the building every week. Urgency so great that the pastor said that failure to do so constituted disobedience to God. He remembered the words in the Bible he had read the night before that explained the reasons for meeting together: “to provoke unto love and to good works” and “exhorting one another.” ‘I sure never saw anything like that,’ he said to himself. Then he thought to himself, ‘Who is really disobeying God in this matter?’
Other questions came to the man's mind: why would God curse His people over money when God had created and already owned everything that exists? And why would God give such power to an organization and people that meet in a building so as to allow the devil to harass a person who decided not to continue to meet with the people there? Why would it be rebellion against God if people quit imitating the lifestyle of those who displayed an ungodly lifestyle—and who also taught unbiblical things? Why would it be disobedience to God if a person quit meeting with the people there because they couldn’t interact with the people there in provoking unto love and to good works and to exhort one another as the Bible said—and who began to meet instead with those who understood what “family” meant? Why would God give power to a psychologically unbalanced and dysfunctional person by anointing them and calling them as a pastor and also as an apostle? Especially when those are not power, but servanthood, functions? ‘This is totally illogical,’ he thought to himself.
He realized that there had not been demonstrated to him any biblical teachings, activities or lifestyles that he would desire to be involved in or to imitate. Rather it was very unbiblical and something that he would purposefully avoid.
Since he had observed that many of the people in the building were obviously very poor he wondered why they were so foolish as to give away the money they needed for food, clothing, shelter, medical and dental care, transportation and niceties that normal people have. And to give even more money for a new building which God obviously didn’t need. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he thought to himself, ‘they fall into the biblical category of the fatherless, widows, strangers in the land and the poor, and they are among the very ones who should be receiving money from the organization!’
‘How could this group of people be so misguided as to think that everybody should sing the same song and express the same feelings they had about God on a cookie cutter basis,’ he thought to himself. He knew that if there was a smaller group each person could sing out their praise to God and it would be a real blessing for all the others. ‘We all have different emotions and ways to express ourselves,’ he said to himself, ‘and we are all creative since we are made in the image and likeness of our Creator.’
So many of these impromptu speeches by the people there that they claimed were from God, was obviously so false that he wondered why the people didn’t recognize that fact. Why did so many of the people try to pretend that they were speaking the same kinds of foreign sounding languages, the tongues, as the others? And pretending to fall down when the pastor touched them?
He mused over the fact that some of the prophetical utterances were from God, and some of the tongues had powerful meanings as they were explained by others. But why couldn’t they just accept that these people have a gift from God that some of the others don’t? Instead, they all wanted to be looked upon as special messengers from God, he thought. He attributed their hypocrisy to the tremendous power of peer pressure, which made everybody there want to be just like everybody else. The phrase ‘cookie cutter Christianity’ came to his mind. He thought about how the fear of not being conformed to the image of what the pastor wanted them to be kept them from being everything they already are in Christ. And how the emotional fear of loss of approval and acceptance and outright rejection by those same peers dominated their logic to the point of having nearly insane mindsets and behavior soaked through and through with fear.
As he pondered his mistreatment when he simply wanted to ask a few questions, he shook his head as he realized that the people there were the ones with the problem that they attributed to him. They needed to experience the true healing power of God, in their bodies, souls and spirits, instead of the fake rituals he had just observed.
The man thought about the the altered states of consciousness he had observed earlier. He understood this to be the reason people there didn’t question these unscriptural practices and teachings from the pastor. The clandestine persuasion techniques employed, together with an atmosphere charged with fear—fear of God Himself—made the people become highly open to suggestibility with some even accepting his statements as virtual commands.
But he had heard about God and he wanted to learn more about God so that he could be more like God in his lifestyle. He thought about the other people who had all said the same thing to him: that they already knew God, and were a part of the family of God, and could teach the man about God. He wondered if maybe their church really was a family and if they really knew God.
‘Well,’ the retired behavioral psychologist thought to himself, ‘this group of people are just chock full of candidates for cognitive-behavioral therapy, and all those negative thoughts and defensive behavior patterns can be dealt with very effectively, particularly since the source is so transparent. I would like to see them truly meeting as a family, and following God’s scriptural plans for His people meeting together. That would be a positive influence and would in itself eliminate the fear and negativity these people are coping with in their lives. With a change of their thinking process, then healthy emotions and behavior patterns would blossom out like a beautiful rose as they develop the mind of Christ. So I’ll look around for a home group meeting and see how they are doing things.’
‘Yes,’ he said to himself, ‘I’ll go to a home meeting next Sunday and see if they really know God and if there is a family of God there, and if God is in their home and if there are truly Godly people there. I’d like to be part of a biblical family of believers like that.’
“For every ungodly action, there is an equal and opposing Godly reaction.”
If you’re dissatisfied with today’s “church” scene, then invest your time in reading related articles:
•“God by the Spirit of Jesus Christ will build an assembly,” discusses the fake church of today.
•“A Sinking Submarine,” explains why today’s concept and practice of Christianity fails to measure up to scriptural standards.
•“The Spirit Of Antichrist,” explains how to remove yourself and your loved ones far from the antichrist influence.
•“God’s Will And Purpose,” will help you to understand that you are not in the family of Jesus when you hear the word of God and don’t do it.
•“Women Keep Silence, or Don’t Lose Your Head, Please!,” discusses biblical types and antitypes, examples and clear scriptural instructions for scriptural spiritual headship, why Paul the apostle insisted upon it, and the dangers of irresponsibility by the men of the ekklelsia.
•“Does Anybody Out There Hear Me?” states the case for the urgent need for biblical home ekklesias in God’s economy as compared with today’s standardized religious institutional mindset.
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