No Perfect World

Only imperfect people choosing, every day, whether to reflect Christ

How do you reconcile the contradiction when something you thought was inherently good and holy turns out to be something deeply harmful—if not evil?

It is in this space of cognitive dissonance that I found myself three years ago.

Today, in hindsight, I see this experience for what it was. While I’d like to say I can see it without the strong emotion I felt back then, it still stirs feelings of grief, but not the overwhelming confusion or despair that I felt then.

Three years later, I have clarity that I didn’t have back then.

At that time, I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that so much evil and abuse even existed, and in fact was rampant, within the 2x2 church I was a part of. I knew abuse was prevalent in churches, i.e., the Catholic Church scandals, but never in a million years would I have imagined it existed within the 2x2 church.

To me, this fellowship group I had grown up in was a Mayberry, an Eden. It was an island of what’s good and right, surrounded by the evil world, including every other church. It was safe and whole. You see, we all believed that the 2x2 church was different—it was right and holy, untouched by the world in every way. I would trust nearly everyone in the group with my child, even more so the ministers. I mean, I was trustworthy, so why wouldn’t everyone else be?

If you attended a church convention, it wasn’t unheard of to see four-year-olds running around together unaccompanied by adults. Adults who had absolutely zero idea of the predators lurking around and possibly targeting their children. And, while we tried to keep watch over our daughter, I will admit to letting her go off and play with her friends when she was a little older. I never feared for her safety.

But here’s the thing: the workers (ministers) knew about the abuse and about abusers and did not tell parents. The very people whom we welcomed into our homes (they live with members of the church, traveling from home to home) were the very ones who had no qualms about putting children at risk of pedophiles, and they still don’t. They give grace to the pedophiles while ostracizing the victims and anyone who speaks up about the harmful practices of the group.

This naivety of heart made the revelations of child sexual abuse within the church even more of an atomic bomb being dropped upon my soul. I began to see cracks in my perceived Eden. The impact was devastating and destructive. It shattered who I was as a person, made me reexamine all of my beliefs and experiences within the church, and threatened relationships that I considered unchanging.

I could no longer sit in a meeting without feeling massive anxiety and a visceral urge to run out of the place. I would cry in every single meeting. Heartbroken.

The abuse that I was reading and hearing about wasn’t isolated to an individual or two. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of abuse suffered at the hands of mostly ministers, but also church members. Not only that, some were stories shared by personal friends and family members, not strangers whom I had never met. It was real, and it was evil.

Even worse, I knew the abusers too. Some had stayed in my home and played with my daughter. I had listened to some of them preach my entire life. I shook hands with them, greeted them, and had fellowship with them.

So how do you reconcile this dissonance of believing you are in “God’s perfect way” versus the reality that you grew up in, and chose to live your life within, a church that groomed its members and abused thousands?

By being honest with yourself.

Deep inside, I always knew something was wrong—but I pushed those feelings aside as hearsay. After all, we were told to have a faith that “questioned not” (which is not Biblical, by the way). I no longer accepted the contradictions and instead looked to the Bible for answers. I took the 2x2 lens off when I read the Bible and began to interpret it as it was written, not as I had been taught.

And I began to listen to my gut, guided by scripture and desperate prayer.

I remember talking to my therapist at the time about this. She told me she could not give me advice about what to do, that it was my choice to make, but also said if it were her, there would be zero question, she would leave.

To someone outside of the group, it makes zero sense why someone would stay within this group—they are not bound by ties with family and friends, have not been indoctrinated, have not been instilled with the fear that leaving this group means abandoning God, and that you will go to hell. To them, the choice is simple—leave. Right and wrong. When my therapist told me this, I thought to myself—she just doesn’t understand because she hasn’t had a revelation of God’s true way. Gross.

We still didn’t leave for over a year after these conversations. Despite seeing the evil, the cognitive dissonance was so large that we thought the ministers would want to make changes—after all, we trusted them wholeheartedly as godly people. It took time to discover that they did not want change and would fight it at all costs, always protecting the predators over the victims, to this day.

The ultimate decision for leaving came down to realizing that what was happening and the choices leadership was making were evil. And we wanted no part of it. Plus, over time, we had discovered major doctrinal errors within the church, to the point that now I wholeheartedly say they preach a false gospel and the people are being misled by wolves in sheep’s clothing, or at the very least, extremely misguided ministers who have not been honest with themselves about the contradictions in scripture with what they believe. They, too, are tangled up in webs of friends and family obligations and years of indoctrination and self-importance that make up their identities. It’s hard to leave that and admit you’ve been wrong.

Looking back with clarity, I know we made the right decision to leave. The true Gospel is actually life-changing, and you don’t realize it until you experience it. I thought I had experienced it as a member of the 2x2 church, but I had confused conformity with salvation. There is no true peace in conformity, but only when you realize that there is absolutely nothing you can do to make yourself holy and acceptable without Christ as your Savior, not just as your example to follow.

I view the world a lot differently now. The Christian Church (ekklesia) is so much larger than I believed, and people are full of honest and fervent faith, despite what we were taught.

But I also know evil lurks in every corner, and I don’t trust people like I used to. This tendency may be the scars I carry from the injuries endured, or it may be a result of experience and seeing reality for the first time. I notice characteristics of pedophiles, sometimes in uncomfortable places (like churches), and I no longer ignore them. I am always watching behavior. Once you are educated, you’ll start to notice. Keep your children close.

There is a collision of good vs. evil that I’m a lot more aware of now than I was before. My acceptance of it helps keep my family safer. I am aware that, as former members of what many consider a cult, we are simultaneously more susceptible to being deceived while also more aware of the tactics—I don’t trust myself completely anymore. I no longer see anything in black and white except for the core tenets of the Gospel.

This experience is the perfect picture of life in the fallen world that we live in. Someday, all will be the perfect “Mayberry” or Eden that we once believed we were a part of, but that time is not now.

The world and its people are broken, all of us. We live in a broken world, and we are a broken people. But we have a choice now to choose that which draws us closer to a perfect God or accept the things that, when distilled to their core, are evil.

That’s where we’re at right now. We have the choice every single day of what to tolerate and what to abhor. And I pray that each and every one of us continues to choose what is right and holy before God, to love the things that he loves and hate the things that he hates.

And that's what the choice to leave the 2x2 church was. It wasn't forsaking the people, as some accused us of, and it wasn't us giving in to our fleshly desires to do whatever we wanted. It was a step in faith outside of the metaphorical boat, walking upon the water into the arms of Jesus. It was choosing Christ over everything else. And that choice can be costly, but it will be worth it.

Let’s do our best to bring about a little piece of heaven on earth, our Eden, by choosing the better part, no matter how difficult it is. We won’t see that perfect heaven and earth fully now, but we can see glimpses and glimmers of what’s to come when we see Christ in our fellow brothers and sisters on earth.