Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Road to Apostasy (Or the Road to Being Gomer)

What would make a person commit apostasy?

Church/spiritual abuse. Via social isolation. Via cutting a "member" off from the fellowship by removing them from those activities that even non-members are allowed.

Abuse. Via not following exact Biblical outline for church discipline. The offended must go to the offender. If the offender does not listen, then the offended takes one or two others. Well, failure to do the first step and failure to do the second step EXACTLY as it is laid out constitutes abuse when they pursue discipline without having done the proper steps. The Bible says it in black-and-white and offers no exceptions.

Abuse leads the victim to apostasy as trust is rapidly deteriorated as a result. Trust in the church. Trust in "Christians." Trust in God.

As such, the victim has no where to turn and quits altogether. Because the abusive church often places the victim under the guise of discipline making it impossible for the victim to go elsewhere.

So that leads to apostasy. To being Gomer.

Oh well. Who cares?

Not the abusive church, that's for sure. All the abusive church cares about is protecting its image, often under the guise of "protecting the peace and purity of the church." What the abusive church fails to realize is that in this effort, they themselves are often the one that ends up actually hurting the "peace and purity" as the victim decides that they have had more abuse than they can take and is strong enough to speak up against the abuse.

The abusive church then gets uglier and tries to silence the victim threatening discipline and blaming the victim failing to realize that there was a trigger.

Does the trigger get punished? Not if the trigger is the head pastor. The head pastor is "perfect and can do no wrong." The head pastor is idolized. In abusive churches.

So this is one insight into why a person apostatizes and becomes Gomer.

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