. "In what way were you encourage not to think or play dumb?"
We were told that we must take the advice or word of the Pastor as if it were from God. To disobey him or to talk of him in a negative tone( the Pastor I'm talking about here) would condemn us to " burn in Hell for all eternity". It became very difficult for me to think that way when the Pastor sold the church building and pocketed the majority of the money!! His family held the majority on the church board of directors so they all voted in favor of letting him have the $. We had not been aware that the building and the property had somehow been put in his name although it had been donated by a private party to a non profit organization with the church's name on it! The money was put into his retirement fund that was set up by his son who got a huge commission. Some people actually didn't protest this move. They thought they would go directly to Hell if they said one negative word about the Pastor!!! That is one example of " checking in your brain and picking up your box of crayons".
I don't have enough time this afternoon to post all the examples I witnessed that were money related. Materialism was alive,well and ugly in that church. There is a group of people from that church that are recruiting people for another church and actively looking for a new land donor among the rich and generous of Silicon Valley. They have a new Pastor of the same faith and the former Pastor( with the cash) has moved to Texas. Some of the individuals went to a different Pentecostal Church and they claim it is much better.I didn't like the hatred and bigotry against homosexuals so I moved on.
"Obviously way over the line for you. What do you consider reasonable? "
There are many religions world wide and most involve a movement of the so called soul to a state that is free of ego and pride. So, I feel that the teaching of compassion, forgiveness, love , and kindness is a process that brings us out of egocentricity which, I believe, is original sin. There are many Messiah's, but all seem to teach the same principles but in different cultures.
The use of fear as a means to perpetrate compliance with religious laws does not, in my opinion,, result in an elevated spiritual condition. It is my belief that we are all here on earth to purify our spiritual being by experiencing many of the emotions we encounter during our life in this body.
Also, we tend to describe the God from the Bible in accordance to man's emotional spectrum. If we were created in the image of God and Original sin altered our state of grace then I believe that sin came from our ego. A Fundamentalist thinks that God is exactly as the Bible defines him which is to define him as existing with man's emotional spectrum. In that case we are defining God in man's image which is wrong in my opinion.. |
