Date Posted:27/03/09 8:26:33pm Author: Peter Eveleigh Subject: Re: Control freakery In reply to:
Barbara
's message, "Control freakery" on 27/03/09 9:22:44am
I know, but I think what controlled me was not Mick's prayer (and therefore, not God) but Micks's revelation to me that he was praying.
Ultimately, it was Mick's power over my life, not his actual influence with God, which made me give in on this.
I didn't THEN feel (any more than I would now) that Mick COULD make God do something bad. But Mick wouldn't have believed he was asking God for something bad. He would have convinced me that God Himself had layed this on his heart and that God wanted me to fail......since that was the only way to convince me that I was going a "worldly" way in my life.
The fact is that when I joined, it was not for life, but just for the period that I was to be at college in Coventry. Mick had led me to believe that this would be ok....and I had believed him. Once I was a member, I realised that people are always allowed to think whatever they want....while all along, the elders have other plans.
Even as I approached baptism, I still didn't grasp that the covenant was for LIFE. I knew this was the implication for others doing baptism teaching, but I still believed that Mick was being straight with me. Probably everyone there thought he was a special case, one way or the other. I wonder how many of us really believed that they really were there for life.
Only when I was recieved into covenat, did the full implication crash in on me and I had a real crisis. I knew that I had committed to the fellowship, irrevocably. Mick said that everyone goes through such a crisis after baptism. He said that they call it the dark night of the soul. So, maybe everyone else felt as trapped as I did.
I am not saying that I didn't understand the theory and I still accept personal responsibility for my actions, but I felt intellectually fooled and that I had been swept along by something I hadn't really understood emotionally or spiritually.
My submission to Mick on the issue of going to college (a month or so after baptism) was nothing to do with superstition. It was all to do with psychology....and you are right when you call that control freakery.
This is the man who Noel Stanton has chosen to succeed him.
