Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

For those of who are leaving the CoC, it's really important to understand that it is not just the CoC that pull the same tactics.

After deciding that I could no longer consider myself part of the CoC, I ended up joining a certain movement. It wasn't really religious, just a group of people that had a certain set of beliefs about the world. One thing about this movement that I really liked was a focus on gender equality [one of the main reasons why I despised my own CoC was that despite the fact that some of the elders there were 60+ years old seemed to still believe that girls had cooties]. Unfortunately this particular movement shared a lot in common with the CoC besides that. One of the biggest that damaged me was the fact that there was an omnipresent evil that was so prevalent throughout everything that you could never get rid of, no matter how hard you tried, but it seemed encouraged to drive oneself into madness just to do so. It got to a point where I genuinely believed that it would have been better for me to crash and burn than to actually try to live some sort of life and accepting that the world could never really be perfect.

And of course there were a lot of tiny things that one could do that needed constant forgiveness.

In a lot of ways it seemed worse than the CoC because I actually truly believed in their message.

It was only until this last month I realized just how bad it was affecting me, when someone who I considered a close friend made me reflect upon myself just how far I had fallen.

One thing I've noticed between this movement and the CoC is the complete distrust in humanity. I'm not saying humans aren't capable of monster acts, but the amount of misanthropy that I had assimilated within myself was enough to make me wonder why it was a bother to do anything good if humans were just nothing more than evil beings. It was something that I had first actively resisted, but eventually came to accept overtime seeing the worst humanity had to offer.

What I've been trying to do now is learn to trust people again. If I don't, I know that I'll find myself once again in some sort of group that powers itself on turning people into miserable misanthropes where the only possible solution is through relying on an contradictory deity or a set of beliefs encouraging distrusting certain groups of people or paying people money. It's really hard to look at things in a positive light after being told day after day, year after year to do the opposite, but I'm trying my best.

Thanks - this is a good addition to New Paths. Especially so, perhaps, for coc folks, who often have this overwhelming need to go SOMEWHERE on Sundays, even after they've realized they shouldn't be in a coc then.

Those of us who have been 'out' a longish period, almost invariably recommend a cooling off period of some months, before 'placing membership' - ANYWHERE.

ramennoodles wrote: One thing about this movement that I really liked was a focus on gender equality [one of the main reasons why I despised my own CoC was that despite the fact that some of the elders there were 60+ years old seemed to still believe that girls had cooties].

Just comenting on women in the church aspect of your excellent post I agree that you do have to be careful about rushing to something. The church has a big problem with how women are treated in general. There is evidence that certain women were far more powerful in the early church. The scriptures that were selected for inclusion in the Bible did reflect male dominance. The ones that reflect more equality were left in the apocrypha. Look up Thecla. She was a virgin extremist. She is in the Acts of Paul and Thecla. I believe she is even Sainted. It was a suspected forgery. Before there was a Bible this writing was scripture in some churches. As she preached you can imagine the kind of problem this would create in the church at large today. The ones deciding were men. Mary Magdalene had a close relationship with Jesus. Some think she may have been a wife. No where in the Bible was she presented as a prostitute. Yet many think she was. It is amazing how long a smear can last. The way women are treated bugs me a bunch.

ramen, I appreciate your sharing this experience with us. It serves as a helpful warning to us all. I am so very sorry this happened to you, I really am.

You're lucky to have such a good friend who knows you well, someone who could help you see what was happening to you.

Take good care of yourself...I bet from here on out, it's going to be easier to trust good people than before, because you'll see a stark difference between good people, and the way people were painted in that old way of thinking.