Mark,
You said:
Of course, you could say that as long as a person is regenerated they meet the necessary criteria, but for a former Assm. member there may have been some very deep damage to that individual relationship with God that needs to be repaired first.
I agree. The question is how to do so.
First of all, let me say that I have not yet
fully recovered from my assembly experience myself. I still have some mild PTSD in which certain circumstances can set off my fight/flight response and arouse quite a bit of angry emotions. I have to be careful not to respond to people in this way, especially when they do not have a clue what they have caused. I also carry around some alarm bells in my mind: A false teaching alarm, a mystical superiority alarm, and a legalism alarm. Once burned, twice shy.
In fact, Monday night I was at a class with a bunch of pastors from the E. Free churches. They were discussing how a church finds "the mind of Christ". I gave them quite a bit of grief aimed at helping them to clarify, in their own minds, that this does NOT mean a process of unmediated mystical experience. They were able to clarify that they were speaking of Biblical exegesis and systematized theology arrived at prayerfully and humbly.
That said, there are some important things to see about "recovery":
1. The first thing is that the analogy of being "wounded" and "healing" are applicable only in a very general way. If my body is wounded my
physical injuries set off a physiological process by which the body heals itself over time. We can make certain interventions to avoid infection, set bones, sew up cuts and such, but finally and fundamentally the body heals itself, quite apart from our consciousness.
2. Damage to our souls is quite different. We receive bad information and/or treatment from outside of ourselves. We internalize it into our minds and emotions. This establishes, over time, a strong mind-body linkage. When we percieve something similar to the initial trauma, we react emotionally according to the linkage already established. This produces very strong emotions and actual body feelings that we do not like at all. we can feel sick, have sinking fellings in our abdomens, panic attacks, feel week, angry, resentful, whatever. So we begin to avoid things that trigger these experiences. So, trauma and habituated responses are better terms to describe this experience than 'wounded".
Time does not heal this type of injury! The damage is always there, lurking under our conscousness and ready to emerge whenver we percieve a situation similar to that which traumatized us before.
I believe that this is one of the "strongholds" that need to be cast down by the use of our spiritual weapons.
3. Three of our most important spiritual weapons are Truth, Faith, and Obedience.
The enemy, the Father of Lies, teaches us his lies. I believe that the Overcomer Teaching was one of them. But there are lots more. Take Busell's book for example. The truth is that negative church dynamics are a very real danger. They have existed since the founding of the church and can be seen in scripture. Corinth and the church Diotrophes ruled over come to mind. The lie is that we should therefore avoid gathering with other Christians.
The corrective to lies, is
Truth. I cannot think of a better place to get well rounded Bible teaching than in a local church. There, one can ask questions of the teacher if one needs to, and enter into deeper discusiion of the point as well. This cannot, by itself, eliminate the problem though.
The corrective to fear and anxiety is
Faith. When the false belief re-emerges, which it will, one must exercise the will to reject it and focus the mind on the truth. This is a way of "excercising yourself unto righteousness", and is profitable. By doing this whenever the particular emotional response arises, one can re-habituate the emotional reaction. Over time, this lessens its power to control you.
Then one can practice
Obedience. Obedience arises from the desire to love, submit to, and walk in step with the Good Shepherd. The more one walks this way, the more liberated one becomes.
If we understand idolatry to be, "anything that takes the place of God in your life" we need to realize that our trauma can become an idol as well as anything else. If it stands between an individual and being a joyful, serving Christian...its got to go.
Having said this, I fully recognize that it can be very difficult...especially if the person does not clearly understand what has happened to them and is troubling them. That is where counselling and or therapy can be helpful. Skilled, godly counsellors can help a person to understand both the trauma and its effects. Many, many troubled souls have been helped this way. Believe me, I know.
When a person gains understanding of what has happened, Truth has now entered the mind. The individual has to impliment it him/herself though. A counsellor can encourage and cheer us on, but we must become active and do the living out of the truth.
Blessings,
Tom Maddux
