Give me liberty or give me death!
Life in the PCG had gotten so bad I no longer feared the lake of fire. In fact, I had come to see it as a welcome relief.
Furthermore, according to the bible, "perfect love casts out fear" (I John 4:18). That means that if we really have love for others, we forget about ourselves and we lose our fear of what will happen to us. We just don't worry about ourselves anymore because we are focused on what is good for others, rather than what will happen to ourselves. I tried to grow in love and to live by every word of God. I believed that God did not want me to feel fear. When a person gets to that stage, a fear-based group loses its grip. The PCG was a fear-based group that lost its grip on me.
It takes a lot before a person comes to the point where they don't care if they live or die. And it takes even more before a person does not care much if they lose their eternal life when they were once zealously convicted that eternal life is worth any sacrifice.
Nevertheless, there is only so much anyone can take, no matter how dedicated. So how did the PCG manage to get me to the point where I just didn't care anymore?
For years I had to endure life in a negative grumpy congregation. Some of the members were jerks. It was run by an ambitious, egotistical, deceitful, and manipulative deacon and a hyper-strict minister who thought his chum-chum deacon could do no wrong.
That minister was well-intended but way too strict. The next minister was an ignorant viscious lying thug who could barely stand me. He repeatedly threatened to put me out of the church although I had done no wrong. The guy was a blind, self-righteous thug who enjoyed intimidating people. Maybe that lying deacon set him against me. Or, as a friend of mine suggested, maybe he was insecure about his lack of intelligence and envied me. Whatever his problem, he was certainly out to get me, and he even told me so.
Eventually it became clear that this minister and the regional director were spiritual duds. Any sensible atheist in the world could have made more fair and better informed decisions than they did. Often, they did not even bother to get the facts concerning issues that they judged. They did not even attempt to justify some of their critical judgments with scriptures. They made baseless accusations and rejected information out of hand. There was no question that they had gone off the deep end. By their actions, they had exalted their office until they were gods unto themselves.
Sometimes I think they just wanted to get rid of people like me. People who knew too much about what HWA really taught and would not compromise. People who were demonstrably better qualified than many of their ministers. People who would not put Gerald Flurry before HWA or the Bible. At that time, that is the way I was.
I have some rights around here too
Despite his words to the contrary, Gerald Flurry's actions show that he believes in a perverse form of "tough love." (Apologies to James Dobson who has a much better handle on what tough love really is). His idea of tough love is getting his ministers to kick people in the arse to get them in shape without realizing they never did anything wrong in the first place. Flurry thinks everyone is a rebel. That mentality gets into his ministers and it affects the way they treat the members. The ministers talk such a good talk, saying all the right things, that they get people to believe in them. If I had not personally witnessed the things they did to me, I would never have believed it.
After years of abuse and walking on egg shells the strain was getting to me. I finally got to the point where I didn't really care that much anymore if I made it into the kingdom of God. It just wasn't worth it if I had to put up with all the crap from the self-supposed spiritual elites. If the PCG was so much better than the other churches (as they claimed), and if their clued-out leaders were God's spiritual elite, one had to ask: "is this as good as it gets?" It was depressing. Why would I want to live forever in the kingdom of God with those jackasses ruling over me? More and more, eternal death seemed like a better option. It takes a LOT to bring a zealous and diligent person to that point, but they managed to do it.
The upside to all this is that I was losing my fear. I was also waking up to see that the PCG was not what it was cracked-up to be. I felt that God expected me to put up with a certain amount of crap but I knew he didn't want me to be a doormat. I knew there was a limit to how much abuse God wanted me to take lying down. When they past that point, I knew I could safely stand up to them with God's support.
When I finally left I had other reasons too. It was clear by then that the ministry was corrupt—all the way up to the top "man" himself.
