Since God allows us our own freewill including independent thoughts why do (some) pastors try and control us?

Questioning is not rebellion! Questioning is a healthy sign of real spiritual growth. Following blindly is not a sign of spiritual growth. Here is an excerpt from a book written by M Scott Peck “The Different Drum” as he describes in his view the second stage of spiritual growth.

Formal, Institutional, Fundamental. Beginning the work of submitting themselves to principle-the law, but they do not yet understand the spirit of the law, consequently they are legalistic, parochial, and dogmatic. They are threatened by anyone who thinks differently from them, as they have the “truth,” and so regard it as their responsibility to convert or save the other 90 or 99 percent of humanity who are not “true believers.” They are religious for clear cut answers, with the security of a big daddy God and organization, to escape their fear of living in the mystery of life, the mystery of uncertainty in the ever moving and expanding unknown. Instead they choose the formulations, the stagnation of prescribed methods and doctrines that spell out life and attempt to escape fear. Yet these theological reasonings simply cover over fear, hide fear and do not transcend it in spite of with acceptance in expanding movement. All those outside of Stage II are perceived to be as Stage I, as they do not understand Stage III and Stage IV. Those who do fall, reverting from Stage II to Stage I are called “backsliders.”
 
There is a Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, mentality (one-sided thinking – ignorance that produces hostility) in every religion, the one-sidedness, in every ideology. Christianity cannot be condemned as responsible for the fundamentalists who claim to represent such. One just has to look at Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. to see the opposite of such thinking. You can find the Falwell in Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Mohammedism and of course Christianity. That is the narrow one-sided exclusiveness that limits insight to one set of rules and one objective truth, under the literal logic or rationialism, that fails to apprehend the unseen intuitive essence of existence and ignorantly labels outsiders as misled sinners, while surrounding themselves with interior neurotic and finite walls of security and certainty. All is safe in this illusion, but all is not just, nor fair, and does not transcend prejudice that surpasses tribal identity, an identity that must be scrapped in order to bring higher consciousness of planetary cultural peace and love based on principle with intuitive insight.

I don’t believe church leaders are even aware of their own actions. This need for control has been passed down. Many use scripture to manipulate people to follow in blind obedience. But it is not of God. If the leader is truly ordained of God and is following God then he/she will have the courage and the wisdom to let people be themselves! If their leadership is of God then they should be secure enough to allow a difference of thought including questioning of everything. Not in a disrespectful way. But in an open and loving embrace of healthy communication

Rule out of love and not fear or manipulation.

Another thought is we create this. We want people to control us. Especially a pastor because then we can say we are following God through him. It takes all the responsibility of the challenges in life off from us and puts it on the leader. I know I fell into this trap. I was blind and I helped create my own reality. I was allowing a pastor to control every aspect of my life. Private, professional and personal! I literally sought approval for everything and looking back that is scary. Jim Jones scary!

Life is hard and making the choices in life that we all have to make in order to navigate from challenge to challenge is difficult. Many of us look for an escape by allowing another person to dominate us. To make the difficult choices for us. It could be your spouse, your roommate, a teacher, your boss and very often your pastor. Next time you complain about someone being a control freak realize the only way they control us is if we let them. Plus, maybe you played a conscious or unconscious role in creating that reality. The power of change is in everyone’s reach and the easiest way to start is by asking real questions. The ones you think but cannot say openly in a meeting. Those questions!

I guess I am going to have to start believing in the Tooth Fairy because I literally witnessed something today that was remarkable. In a prayer meeting a staff member openly voiced a few questions about the handling of an issue and the issue itself. My heart stopped because I am so used to working in a ministry environment of oppression and repression it scared me. To my shock and delight leadership encouraged the conversation. It was so refreshing to witness healthy and honest communication in ministry. It was gorgeous! I know I have said this recently but if you are a leader you cannot stop your people from thinking and they are thinking thoughts you probably don’t want to hear – but you need to hear them! Stop building a wall to insulate yourself and start being more like God. He allows us to be individuals with our own unique thoughts. You should too!

(please read this post about shunning. I feel so strongly about it I am bringing it up again. Shunning is wrong. It is a horrible employment practice and form of manipulation. Shunning is not of God!)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 9:52 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.