Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

For those of you who have left coc, do you still have lingering doubts of "what if they are right"? If so, how do you deal with it, and especially for those with children, how do you deal with the feeling that you are setting your children up for hell if you are not teaching them "the one true church" doctrine? I've been doing some reading from coc reformers like Leroy Garrett, Cecil Hooks, Al Maxey and several more that has helped me, but still the doubts remain and I wonder if they always will. I have not left coc due to my family, but I also do not teach the usual coc answers to my children's questions, force perfect attendance on us, etc. and part of me feels guilty for this-I suppose because I'm brainwashed from my own raising.

I haven't worried about that in years. Be patient, keep learning and growing, and you too will get to where you do not worry about anymore either.

flawed wrote:For those of you who have left coc, do you still have lingering doubts of "what if they are right"? If so, how do you deal with it...

I occasionally get a brief sense of doubt like you described after being separated from CoC culture for about six years now. These feelings become less frequent as time goes by, but I notice them more often when I'm dealing with a situation related to church practices or beliefs that are completely foreign to my own or that are contradictory to my understanding and interpretation of scripture. However, all it takes is the slightest exposure to CoC culture to reaffirm why I left and that CoC practices can't possibly be correct; the legalism and judgmentalism so prevalent within the denomination/sect are totally alien compared to any narrative or description of Christian behavior that I've ever found in the Bible.

Bringing kids into the equation (which is not a factor for me at the moment) would no doubt alter my perspective to some extent (how it would be changed is impossible to say), but not to the point that I would ever have any desire to go back to CoC culture or doctrine. The CoC brainwashing is extensive, and it takes time to recover from.

I never have any doubts about leaving or have regretted it for one second.

Those feeling pass, and the sooner the better. But it takes a little time, plus if you are still attending (even occasionally) you are getting that message reinforced regularly, which complicates things.We call these lingering detrimental messages left over from the coc 'the tapes' (like a musical tape or recording) and sometimes these pop up off and on for years - but they do fade and become far less of a problem eventually).

I think it is good you are reading the coc reformers - and maybe sooner or later you will want to move to some NON-coc writers too. Like C.S. Lewis, and N. T. Wright, and many others.

I remember believing (and suffering severe anxiety from it) the coc teachings of 'we have exclusive truth' until I started learning more about what NORMAL Christianity teaches, and discovered the coc was neither unique nor even especially accurate, about a lot of things.

Metaphorically - Christianity is this huge enormous and beautiful tree that all works together, and the coc sits out on a branch insisting that the only way to be part of it is to be a leaf, over on the right side, of this one particular shape and size, or else you aren't part of a tree at all. And then they argue among themselves about the proper way the veins should be laid out.

(I ended up studying myself straight out of Christianity altogether, but that is not the usual course!)

Guys -
Read this one - if this guy isn't spot on about the 'coc worship experience', then I don't know who could do it better (and he's not even talking about the coc) -

h**p://impactmagazine.us/2016/03/please-dont-invite-someone-to-church-this-month/

Andy Gill reposted it at Patheos, which is where I found it originally:

h**p://www.patheos.com/blogs/andygill/please-s ... t=andygill

flawed wrote:For those of you who have left coc, do you still have lingering doubts of "what if they are right"? If so, how do you deal with it, and especially for those with children, how do you deal with the feeling that you are setting your children up for hell if you are not teaching them "the one true church" doctrine? I've been doing some reading from coc reformers like Leroy Garrett, Cecil Hooks, Al Maxey and several more that has helped me, but still the doubts remain and I wonder if they always will. I have not left coc due to my family, but I also do not teach the usual coc answers to my children's questions, force perfect attendance on us, etc. and part of me feels guilty for this-I suppose because I'm brainwashed from my own raising.

Add W Carl Ketcherside to your reading list; he destroys the hardline CoC beliefs and makes it much easier to leave without those lingering doubts. In my case, Al Maxey was the most instrumental in shattering my twisted belief system. A complete restudy of the Bible - without the CoC colored glasses and blinders - is the best way to understand how completely out-of-whack these churches are ... it's much easier to escape their grasp when you honestly/intellectually test their authenticity with facts.

I absolutely had those doubts at first when I left. I'd say the doubts lingered for several years, and even caused me to go crawling back a couple times. Now that I'm completely out of the COC and no longer try to hide it from family or old COC friends, I feel so much better. I've joined a local community Christian church (musical instruments, women leaders and all that "wicked, evil" stuff!) and the people there to me show what true Christianity is all about. They're some of the nicest people I've ever met, there are always opportunities to do community work to help others, and their prayer and worship are far more genuine than anything I ever experienced in the COC.

Just go to any COC page. Whether it be Facebook or a web site, take a look at their sermons they post. A large majority of them are on the following topics.

- We're different from other churches because we do what the bible says and they do what man says.
- Instrumental music in worship is wrong.
- We don't have a denominational name, we're the Lord's church.
- We have it all figured out and we're going to tell you why we're right and everyone else is wrong.

They're obsessed with patting themselves on the back over how "right" they are. They love to put down other denominations for being wrong and telling us how they won't be with us in heaven, but they'll be in hell. Their worship more often tends to be revolved around them being right than around worshiping God. I could be wrong, but I don't believe any other church is so determined to constantly preach on how wrong everyone else is. Even over the most trivial things. I saw a sermon on YouTube of a COC preacher blabbing on for 30 minutes about how hand clapping was wrong. Seriously? Is that really what God wants? The longer I've been away and the more I look at COC things now the more I'm absolutely convinced that there's no way that their "We're right and everyone else is wrong" teaching is right.

I remember once on a COC page, someone simply posted, "There are going to be a lot of people surprised on judgment day." Implying that only they would be in heaven and lots of other Christians that weren't COC would be surprised when they didn't go to heaven. I responded, "I agree. A lot of COC members will be very surprised when they realize that they won't be the only ones in heaven." In response I got quite a few verses thrown at me out of context and twisted around to "prove" that the COC would in fact be the only ones going to heaven. Such loving people, aren't they?

Yes, I had doubts but I eventually realized that what I was leaving was the CofC and not leaving God. That while CofC was right IMO about a lot of things, that it ultimately was also a deeply flawed human organization run by folks in charge who had not really been transformed in mind as they were about power, control, and prestige. Most all the CofC folks are driven by fear, but often the fear of being kicked out, called unfaithful/weak, or not as zealous as others. The show, presentation, and front had to always be maintained or else people would know how you really are. And then there were all the brotherhood connections, associations, cliques, colleges, and magazines that just added another layer of branding and control of thinking.

That is the stuff I left behind, not God. It was the CofC junk on top of all the God stuff that I wanted to avoid. But finding another brand church is IMO really just adding back on a different layer of junk. So I have not figured out how to be "in a church" yet and also not have all the brand junk they bring to the table. But I have no doubt in my choice of leaving the CofC world I left. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just go back to a CofC but I know I am just forgetting all the garbage that drove me nuts for decades.

flawed wrote:For those of you who have left coc, do you still have lingering doubts of "what if they are right"? If so, how do you deal with it, and especially for those with children, how do you deal with the feeling that you are setting your children up for hell if you are not teaching them "the one true church" doctrine? I've been doing some reading from coc reformers like Leroy Garrett, Cecil Hooks, Al Maxey and several more that has helped me, but still the doubts remain and I wonder if they always will. I have not left coc due to my family, but I also do not teach the usual coc answers to my children's questions, force perfect attendance on us, etc. and part of me feels guilty for this-I suppose because I'm brainwashed from my own raising.

No, I have no doubts whatsoever. The CoC is incredibly wrong on most things, because their basis for interpreting the bible is incredibly flawed from the beginning. The bend and twist the scriptures like no other denomination I know of, which makes it extremely ironic as they claim to "only go by the bible". Bring up a verse that doesn't fit their Campbellite views and "that verse doesn't mean what it says".

Good luck and God bless.