“I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I'm not sure now
What I was made for?”
In the wake of the nostalgia and feminist memes reflecting the Barbie movie, its theme song continues to run through my head. It’s more than a Barbie theme, it’s a life theme. Billie Eilish wrote this song to go with Barbie’s existential crisis, but it also hits to the heart for those of us raised with high control religion.
If someone had suggested that I was raised with high control religion a few years ago, I would’ve denied it. I honestly believed God required of me all the things my church taught. If I were to question those teachings, leaders would warn me that I was in danger of losing my salvation.
The first sign of high control religion is group-think. The expectation that everyone must comply and agree because “that’s the way things are done.”
Steve Hassan is a cult expert who has developed a way to determine if a group is high-control. It’s called the BITE model: Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotion control.
Behavior control covers a multitude of things from what you wear and drink and eat to how you worship. Such expectations of the denominational community I was raised in have had far reaching effects on the lives of my family and friends.
Behavior control is managed by information control. The word from church leaders has often been to read only books and literature put out by the denomination. This narrows options and keeps people from finding information. The fewer the resources, the harder it is to sort out the truth and makes it harder for people to think for themselves.
Which brings us to thought control. For most of my life, I knew that asking the wrong questions could make me look like someone who was not listening to God’s Spirit. I was told my grandparents and great grands before me had followed such rules, so who was I to come along and seek a new path?
Thought control can include controlling who is accepted in the group according to what they believe. In some denominations people are trained to be right-talkers and know-it-all’s, ready to spew out proof texts at anyone who thinks differently than they do. Their motto is if you want to be one of us, you better see it our way.
If those leaders of high control religion can’t control our behavior or the information we gather, and they can’t control our thoughts, they will try to control us through our emotions. Some call it FOG—fear, obligation, and guilt. They also do this by shunning and condemning.
If any of this sounds familiar, you might be in a group with high control religion, but the good news is Jesus. He doesn’t control people. The way God works is through love. The only motivation for anyone to change is love. Where the Spirit of God is there is freedom.
My best friend asked me to marry him because he didn’t want to live a lonely life without someone to share it with. And we shared a lot of things except for sexual chemistry. He couldn’t manufacture what felt unnatural to him. So for the sake of remaining in the denomination we grew up in, in order to keep our friends and family, he was forced to live a lie. And in some ways I was too. I always knew our marriage was different from the beginning. I agreed to less than I deserved because I loved my best friend.
And no matter how many people swear an LGBTQI+ person can change their orientation, I know for a fact that most cannot. Those know-it-alls and do-gooders who will say “anything is possible with God, just try harder and have more faith.” But when was the last time you knew of someone who changed their stature or eye color by trying harder and praying? It never happens.
My journey with high control religion ended when my spouse came out and left the church. He left because of the church’s teaching that being gay is a sin. We once believed this. Our marriage was based on this belief. But then we began to see that love would never shut out a person for something they can’t change. This teaching is an insult to his identity as a child of God.
In his moments of struggle and deepest pain, my ex told me that he used to lay awake at night wondering why God would make him gay and yet condemn him to the Lake of Fire in Revelation. It seems only a cruel god would create a person to kill them. And that was the moment I saw the contrast between true love and high control religion.
What were we made for? To jump through hoops and pray for the impossible to gain salvation? Or were we made for something more? We don’t have to be gay to ask this question—it’s the heart cry of every human being.
High control religion wants us to believe its demands are directly from the throne of God, while Jesus came from the throne of God to show us that we were not made for rules, but for relationship. Never is this more obvious when Jesus’s followers “broke” the rules by picking grain and eating it on the Sabbath day. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”
Jesus showed us by his life and example that we were made for relationships. Honest, authentic, natural relationships with both God and each other.
I found one of the best answers on a church bulletin a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten it. It was my final break from high control religion to finding freedom. I’ve traded in all the rules and expectations and settled for simply loving others. And that has made all the difference.
We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family.
-Desmond Tutu
Happy New Year, friends!
Remember what you were made for!
Peace and freedom,
Cherilyn
"...made not for rules, but for relationship."
That sounds an awful lot like Paul in Romans: "Sin won't rule over you, because you're not under law but under grace"!
Grace (as I see it) is the "givingness" of love, which happens in relationship. It enables the righteousness that I have called "Love in living color."
By contrast, a black-and-white rule keeping is often fear-based and self-centered, and doesn't lead to peace and joy in the Lord.
I choose grace and the righteousness He empowers through love!
Every time I read your thoughts I am awakened yet again! You are a masterful wordsmith. Thank you.