How To Catch A Sickly Human In A Zombie-Trap

Dear Reader!

Did you ever have to set up traps in your house to catch flies or mice? Then you know what the key to a great trap is: 

1) The right bait that will have the prey keep "its eye on the prize". Of course flies won't fly into your mouse trap, nor will mice stick to fly attracting glue strips.
2) A confinement system that is easy to get in and hard to get out.  
3) Really mean traps have a function where the animal wounds itself in the attempt to get out, like a wolf in a wolf trap with teeth, getting even more stuck in the trap, eventually tiring out in pain and defeat.                                      
               
               (Paraphrased from "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse", Chapter 17)

We can note that there is a perfect trap for each little critter or bugger in the world. In the same way it works with spiritual abusive systems. 

Even though my focus in this blog is on religious groups, you could transfer these observations to people prone to finding themselves in abusive relationships or even addictions. 

Perfect set up

When I encountered the two men that ended up turning into the focal point of my life for about three years I was simply in need. Since I was raised in a Baptist church and spent most of my childhood and youth in a christian setting it was a natural choice for me to eventually- and hesitantly- show up in the Baptist church of the city that I had moved to to go to college. 

I want to honor the Baptists for their approach to educate their members, addressing the mind that can be filled with and influenced by Bible stories, encouraging fellowship, evangelism, and charity. I first came to know about Jesus in the Baptist church and I had considered the Baptist church in my home town a spiritual home of sorts. But being released into the great big world I wasn't equipped with much more but a head knowledge of God and no clue how to shape my life. From early childhood on I had aspirations of grandeur, I wanted to be famous and really important. I wanted to be loved and accepted, and thought that to find a husband would be the cure for it all, next to winning an Oscar. 

My dreamworld collided with reality when it was time to set sail to make my dreams come true and I found myself depressed and visionless in a service of the Baptist church in my new town. I sat in the back and could hardly make out the face of the short but charismatic preacher, and it was to me in that wasted August of 2006 as if God was speaking to me and telling me that I need to stick around this man. I decided that God had told me that I was going to marry this man. Hope entered my heart and life.

Perfect bait

I stuck around this man and was invited to a service of his and the aspiring new pastor's ecumenical project. I ended up in a two-on-one meeting with those two and was showered with love, open ears, and the promise they see potential in me. I was walking on sunshine. We met a lot, they were very interested in getting to know details of my life which I was willing to share, and I met other "members". They taught me how to control my thoughts, how to call upon the help of the Holy Spirit, transform my mind with sheer power of the will, and to hold Bible verses against thoughts of depression. By golly, it worked! 

The fact that they failed to stay in contact with me during a month of an out of town internship, where I was again confronted with my depression, I forgave willingly because the co-leader apologized and presented himself as one of my best friends. But yet I was hesitant to sign up for the international women's conference put on by them that would be unusually expensive to attend. The leader gave one of my first "announcements" - a rather harsh admonishing-  in front of the whole group that he was disappointed by my hesitation and that I needed to learn to invest my resources into valuable opportunities. He said I needed to attend expecting a pool rather than a puddle, and that I'd miss out big time if I wouldn't attend. 

One of the other guys that hung around them talked to me after the meeting and uttered concern that the tone the leader used was inappropriate and that he had put pressure on me. Even though I had sort of noticed that, it felt astoundingly familiar. Who would have thought that growing up with a rather harsh father, ready to give me a piece of his mind at any moment, would prepare me for learning how God brings correction to my life?! (I hope you picked up on the irony here...)

Needless to say I attended the conference in the spring of 2007. I met a wonderful woman and her family from Minnesota that I planned on visiting that summer. The leaders were confirmed by respected international guests as apostolic leaders with a calling to all of Germany (in case you didn't know this about me- it all took place in Germany). I was prophesied over that I would have a prophetic gifting and calling for leadership. There was the pool I had expected and also the game changer! 

Suddenly I was respected, my opinion started to matter, and the leaders asked me to partake in leadership related meetings. When God clearly spoke to me that the co-leader was never supposed to be my husband and that He actually wanted to address and heal my sad need for finding a husband, the promise that the leaders would help me find my place in the kingdom of God kept me with them. The bait was perfect. 

Where else was I supposed to go, now that I had encountered the Holy Spirit for the first time in my life, experienced the power of the Gospel that seemed to be such a theoretical matter in my Baptist upbringing, getting to know God as a personable, talking, opinionated force in my life? When the two leaders dramatically fell out with the Baptist church (more about the pattern of leaving a trail of broken relationships in a later post) the co-leader offered me to release me to a student church group, but I had no intention of leaving! This is where I thought I was filled with the Holy Spirit and became a powerful citizen of the kingdom of God. I was certain I belonged with them. My life had made a tangible turn to the better. They had genuinely earned my trust and powerfully displayed that they are very close to God, and that He is working through them.

What bait would work for you?

I have met some people that are certain when hearing my story that they could never end up in a situation like me. They would know better. They would have a better sense of protecting their boundaries. They wouldn't fall for someone promising them the stars in the sky. Intuitively I feel like everybody has a weak spot, something that would get them to believe that it really is a good idea to go after the bait. On the other hand there may very well be people that at the end of the day decide they don't need other people to get to where they want to be. They just may be a little safer off than the ones that do go out and make themselves vulnerable, daring to let their guard down, and believe. Anyway, the better we are aware of our hopes and needs the easier we recognize that someone will end up preying on them. 

I encourage you to think about relationships in your life. Predators put out bait, but the prey falls for it because it has a motive. 

What are your motives? 
What are you looking for? 
What kind of abuse would you be willing to endure because you believe that you really need to be in relationship with that person?

If you are a Christian I want to remind you that Jesus promised us abundant life (John 10,10). But we don't have to go striving to find it. HE has it for us. By being transparent and honest with what is really going on in our heart we can encounter this God who loves us and truly knows what we need. When He healed my heart from longing to fill the void with a husband, I was finally secure in the knowledge that God's love is what I am really looking for. So, when I met my actual husband I wasn't needy and desperate for love anymore. I was filled with the experience that God sees my heart and if I let Him, He fills it with His love. This can start really small, but my faith and trust in God has organically grown by experience. 

Of course you can interject that I had thought the same about my eventually bad leaders, but I need to point out that the fruit of my life back then when I put most of my trust into my leaders versus now, that I'm in the process of putting all my trust in God, is fundamentally different. It's a matter of fear vs. freedom. 

In the next post we will be addressing the second part of a great trap.


To discovering that the Good News is much better than we thought!