nb93, that’s true. But don’t think that people in the past were less open-minded. In the 60’s and 70’s young people were extremely open-minded. It was the time of hippies and free love. Yet, at the same time it was also the time of youth cults in the US. How does this work? Cults, spiritual abusive churches and fundamentalist organizations don’t simply demand obedience, because, as you said, people don’t obey “just because”. These groups understand this point well enough. Therefore they subject their followers to a well-thought-out indoctrination process to make it happen. It starts with the phase of “love bombing”. Only when you start to get addicted to the attention, love and fellowship, they start to demand more, like attending conferences, regular meetings etc. Then they slowly separate you from your old circle of friends and family and replace their role in your life, e.g. by letting you join a common life appartment with other group members. Then they show you how your past life has been sinful and meaningless, and they offer you salvation and absolute meaning of your life. They let you share a testimony in which you confess how awful your former life was and how much the group helped to save you and is your new vision and calling. It is very important to have people confess this with their own mouth, because only then they start to believe it (normally you would think it should be the other way around, you confess what you believe, but it works also in reverse, and these groups know this effect very well). When you internalized this step, then they bind this salvation and meaning to your commitment in the group. I.e. they make you believe that if you don’t cowork in the group, you lost your calling, you are unthankful and unfaithful, you lost your meaning in life and your connection to God. They start guilt-tripping you for not being able to fully live by the spirit. That’s the stage where they can demand nearly anything of you, since you don’t want to lose what has become your only circle of friends and your only meaning in life at that time.

Today UBF need to understand that some people are not going to be a dog and is going to obey every command just because. If something don’t feel right to that person, they will most likely question or just leave.

The sad and painful reality is that there has been already a long-standing half century implicit expectation of “non-leaders” and “regular members” to NOT question what the leader says, including “YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO SAY ‘NO,'” or anything else that the leader might say or decide, no matter how outrageous, offensive, demeaning, racist, or humiliating it is. I know full well because I supported and participated in this for over two decades.

Until this is recognized, acknowledged, and addressed on a church wide basis, all the Bible studies with all the students in the world, is not going to bring health to an unhealthy and dysfunctional church.

“What I’m trying to say is that there is a culture of acceptance in the church today that allows for people to be treated terribly under the umbrella of it being what is “best for the church”. I would imagine that if a teacher was abusing children in the toddler department or if there were drunken parties going on at youth group there would be some type of outrage, as there should be. But somehow just plain being “mean” doesn’t garner any type of outrage. “It’s not ideal, but we are fallen people, after all, so you can’t expect anything better.” Church people have half jokingly admitted to “shooting their wounded” for years. What would it take for people to think there is actually a problem? It will never be any better if we keep justifying the way it is now.

Honestly, I have something akin to a PTSD (not to take away from anyone who actually has full-blown PTSD) when it comes to church. When I hear people talking in Christian catch phrases I want to run away. This is the language of the culture of (church) people who persecuted and bullied my family and me.”

I say no, it does not. What if your conscience bothers you about such things? Shouldn’t a Christ-like community discuss such theological statements? Shouldn’t we find out what the bible has to say about such statements?

In my third book, “Unexpected Christianity”, I describe how my conscience drove me to start pointing out and questioning such things. If we cannot live by our own conscience, how can we claim any place in the kingdom of God?

Unlike the man you mentioned, I didn’t really get “punished” or “trained”.