One Confused Zombie

Dear Reader!

We are still thinking about a spiritually abusive system as a trap one walks into willingly, expecting a great outcome, until it becomes clear that there is no way out. No way out does not mean that someone tells you in a deep voice, swinging a magic stick "You shall not pass!". We are talking about clever mind games and promises that fit the weaknesses and needs of the potential prey. These either lead to the prey running away quickly or, sadly to the prey shutting the emergency exit door from the inside. 

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)

A Chaotic Time

I have often wondered if there was a moment, way before spiritual abuse became our culture, that I could have easily decided to leave. For instance, right after I experienced that very empowering Women's Conference. If I had taken the out-of-the-blue suggestion of the co-leader to start hanging with a friendly Christian student group instead, I would have left for my first trip to the US sometime mid-July and probably kept fond memories of the leaders (assuming those leaders would be easy going like most group leaders I have experienced in the Christian realm). 

But since I didn't leave, for reasons I hope to express in this post, I had to plan my trip in the style the leader fancied: Chaos and confusion. 

I started to have a hard time scheduling my trip to Minnesota in the late spring of 2007 because the leader just wouldn't tell me how long he thought it would be okay for me to leave. I had envisioned to spend my whole school-free summer with my new found mentor friend (and let me spoil the surprise; she's now my mother-in-law Stephanie), to then do a month long internship at a High School. 
But the leader got tired of me nagging and then decided that late August would suffice for a trip. 

When I did book a 7 week stay he was very surprised and told me he was thinking of two weeks tops. Well, he had never said that to me, nor would that have worked with my internship plans. I had no clue how I was supposed to guess that. To my later astonishment he didn't force me to cancel my ticket. But this chaotic and confusing behavior was apparently not strange enough to me, as I just ran with it. Life with them was adventurous and exciting. I started to feel alive, part of a greater purpose, a secret mission to save the world one prayer meeting at a time. I felt fantastic! 

He certainly didn't want to hear me complain about not having anything to do until late August, especially when I pointed out that 
"I knew that my time would be better spend in Minnesota, than vegging day to day here in our city". 
But he had just the perfect reply: 
"Stop blaming me, it was God who said to go in late August". 
Well, that certainly ended all discussion. 

In the meantime the group had developed a very tight core of young adults as you can hardly avoid when you are asked to meet almost every day, pray together for hours, and listen to sermons and teachings. 
We, the main core of the movement, all had one thing in common; We were loyal to the leadership- all having our individual experiences to believe that the leaders had good intentions and would help us mature in mind and spirit.  

"I am shocked about your attitude"

The night before I finally left for my trip to Minnesota we had our usual group meeting and everybody was asked to choose a picture representing how they felt at that time. The leader's main occupation was being a police trainer with a strong interest in psychology and adult education, which he ended up getting a PhD in. So, a lot of the time he would use the methods, techniques, or teachings he came across in his studies. 

I only recall my friend's and my own picture. Our hearts, especially in the beginning with them, were always unguarded and childlike trusting. It had gotten us mostly positive attention and encouragement. Well, this time it should be very different.

My friend was choosing the picture of a bouquet of flowers. It represented her desire to mend her relationship with her parents. Today, as I write this 7 years later, she is one of the hardcore left-over members of the group, and her relationship to her family is as broken as it could be. 

I shared a picture of sitting on packed suitcases, as I felt like I should have left a month ago to seek out what God had in store for me in the US. 

Well, our honesty got both of us an "apostolic" fiery announcement that started with "I am shocked about your attitude" and ended with my friend thinking she could never be close to her family again (I guess she wasn't wrong!), and me feeling like it would have been better if I had to cancel my trip. Apparently God was only going to be at work in Germany that summer and how could I, being part of this powerful group, want to miss that. We both felt terrible. We felt we had to repent and ask for forgiveness for missing the heart of God so badly and being so humanly soul-ish. 

But I still went to Minnesota and within a few days it was obvious that I not only was supposed to come to visit, but to become a part of their lives. My now husband and I knew we wanted to get married within three weeks, thought about eloping, but then decided to come up with a plan of him meeting my leaders in Germany first and to go from there. I was actually quite afraid to tell them over the phone that we were seriously together. Fear... another great indicator that something is wrong!

The Nightmare Begins

When I returned to Germany after 7 weeks of sheer empowerment and joy the leader called me that night to tell me that he knows that I am planning on heading back to the US, but he must warn me as he had a prophetic dream. He basically told me that if I went back to the US I would be spiritually spoiled there and lose my strong anointing and calling. 

He went on to tell me that he had to dismiss my very good friend from college that I brought into the group because he was making bad choices and was disobedient. I knew that meant I had lost him as a friend forever.
On top of that they had a major falling out with the Christian student group we had started to mentor before I left, including one drug addict I and the co-leader had invested intense prophetic healing and deliverance prayer into. 

That night I had an anxiety attack. How could the world I returned to have fallen apart and the new world I thought God had introduced me to turn out to be a robber of my destiny? It didn't make any sense. What was God doing? 

I confided in my mom the next day and she was of course very concerned. But I did decide to have her drive me back to the college city and meet with the group, just to see what they had to say. I felt like a shadow of myself. Just a day ago I was walking on sunshine and now everything I had was confusion.  

During this meeting the leaders were unusually serene. They were so glad to see me again! The main leader, as if he knew what I needed to hear before I did, used words that turned out to be the magical key to my compliance; 
The leader said that I am free to go and lead the life that I think I should, but he would be very sad because we are friends.

Slavish Loyalty 

Looking back I heard him use this kind of language around me at a few pivotal times when something very extreme was asked of me. It worked like a charm. It was a new bait; the privilege that this authoritative, powerful, charismatic, and respectable man saw me as a friend. It implied that we saw eye-to-eye. It meant I was of value to him. It was the bait I needed to be presented with in order to be distracted from everything else that was going on. 

Why didn't I leave then? A part of me thought I was being loyal and consistent. I thought after leading a life of making emotional and unwise choices I had finally found mature people who taught me how to think, how to live close to God, how to be powerful in the kingdom of God, that to leave now would mean to go back to making emotional and unwise choices. 

I remembered how it hurt to be told to have to come to that expensive Women's conference. But it all turned out so wonderfully and it was because of them! I thought I needed to honor them as the leaders that helped me get free from depression and gave me a vision for my life, and introduced me to hearing the voice of God. They also were the reason why I met my husband-to be. It all seemed to point in their direction. They considered me a friend. And, to be really thorough, I was also afraid to fail as I would have to venture out on my own again. So, I stayed. 

The story goes that a monkey can be trapped by putting a banana on a table, making a wall with a hand-sized hole in it, so it can grab the banana, but cannot get it through the hole. If he is willing to let go of the banana he would be free. But the idea of that banana is just too good to give up, so he sacrifices his idea, gets caught and put in a cage, and as they carry him away he has his banana and momentarily forgets about the fact that he just lost his freedom forever.  
I now had the idea that the leader was my friend, that we saw eye-to-eye, and that he was my necessary spiritual guide without who I would not be able to arrive at God's destiny for my life.


In the next post we will look at the third part of a great trap. We will focus on how the desire for spiritual sanity in a spiritually abusive system will be answered with religious insanity.

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