You wrote “at the heart of it all is a choice.” In fact Kierkegaard tought that we need to live a life of conscious decisions. In UBF, they instead made all the decisions for us. There was only one decision – to obey not matter what. They sold it to us as “making a decision” and “becoming mature” – but it was in reality the opposite of that. Kierkegaard also wrote that we need to become what we truly are – in UBF they instead tried to make us something that we never have been, but a cookie cutter shepherd personality that they wanted us to be.

In Kierkegaard’s famous writing “Either/Or” he juxtaposed two ways of living: “an essentially hedonistic, aesthetic mode and one characterized by ethical imperatives arising from the maturing of human conscience” (Wikipedia). Superficially it sounds like we heard that in UBF, too, but UBF’s alternative to the hedonistic way is a perversion of the way Kierkegaard describes, they did not show us how to grow in ethical and mature behavior, but how to become careless, dependent and immature and numb, living our life based on nothing but slavish obedience. “In simple terms, one can choose either to remain oblivious to all that goes on in the world, or to become involved. More specifically, the ethic realm starts with a conscious effort to choose one’s life, with a choice to choose” (Wikipedia). In UBF, you are really not involved. You let others make the decisions. You don’t care when people in your own group are abused or hurt. Also, in UBF you don’t “make a conscious effort to choose your life,” but you are subtly manipulated to stop making decisions, to even stop thinking, and let others determine your life.

Some Kierkegaard quotes which sound truly relevant for any UBFer:

“Be that self which one truly is.”

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

“Once you label me you negate me.”

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”

“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;… In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”

Precisely! That may be the best summary of the spiritual abuse and undue religious influence we find at ubf. Most ubf people need to heed Jesus’ strong imperative: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’”

“I keep going to the river to pray, I need something that can wipe away the pain” “I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife Offer me that deathless death Good God, let me give you my life”

But in these instances they seem to get the message twisted a bit. Both of them feel that a significant other is the solution to the issue.

“And at most I’m sleeping all these demons away But your ghost, the ghost of you It keeps me awake”
“My lover’s the sunlight To keep the Goddess on my side She demands a sacrifice”

Furthermore, it seems like the message is some pain is the solution to the issue, which is true. The idea that “there is not forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood” does not disappear because you are not Christian. But I feel as though many people apply repentance as the “shedding of blood” in their lives where it was already been shed on the cross. We should keep looking to the cross and striving to be like him, so that he can change us from within.

“In the past when I read the bible I always thought of morality and ethics when I read “Repent.” I had been taught that it means turning away from a sin. But it means something more than that.”

This sounds similar to Spurgeon. I like what Spurgeon say about the word “repent”.

For example:

“I will begin with this remark—that trembling beneath the sound of the gospel is not “repentance.”

“It is possible that you may confess your sins, and yet may not repent.”

“There is another mistake many poor people make when they are thinking about salvation, and that is—that they cannot repent enough; they imagine that were they to repent up to a certain degree, they would be saved. “Oh, sir!” some of you will say, “I have not penitence enough.” Beloved, let me tell you that there is not any eminent degree of “repentance” which is necessary to salvation. You know there are degrees of faith, and yet the least faith saves; so there are degrees of repentance, and the least repentance will save the soul if it is sincere. The Bible says, “He that believeth shall be saved,” and when it says that, it includes the very smallest degree of faith. So when it says, “Repent and be saved,” it includes the man who has the lowest degree of real repentance.

Spurgeon’s sermon No. 44 http://spurgeon.org/sermons/0044.htm