Chapter 5: Unlearning Some Horrible Ideas
I can understand how people get caught up in the fanaticism or falsehoods of a cult group. I
did for 10 years, and I have been told I have an outstanding theological
mind. I believe when people have a
hunger for something deeper and more meaningful, for a sense of belonging, that
when a leader or a group comes along which offers the appearance of something
different, it is easy to convince oneself that this is what one is looking
for. Donald Trump began doing this in
his first presidential run, and the result is the cult of Trumpism. I believe that Mr. Trump has led much, if not
most of evangelicalism and conservative Catholicism into apostasy, and the
church, the country, and the culture are worse off by far because of him.
This is also what I believe Loran Helm and Oliver Hogue have done, on a
much smaller scale, but with the same grievous, destructive consequences in the
lives of those they touched. Those who
were associated with Rev. Helm, I believe, fall into two groups. The first group is a group of people, who,
like me, eventually realized this ministry was spiritually destructive and
began to try to move on. For this group
the healing process has been, both in my experience and in what others have
told me, slow, and arduous. I know I
still have nightmares over incidents I recall from this time in my life.
The second group of people who were harmed consists of, as I see it,
everyone else in the group. I would
suggest that even those who did not have a painful or negative experience with
Rev. Helm or his ministry were negatively impacted by him, even it they are not
aware of it. His teaching and his
example set in motion negative effects on many he touched.
I also know there are those who suffered far more severely than I. There are stories of sexual abuse of adult
women and children, which were either perpetrated within the group, or
encouraged, or covered over. I am not
going to speak directly about those issues.
Those who suffered those tragic abuses should tell their stories when
they are ready, just as I am telling my story now.
What I am attempting to do here, having described my own experience in the previous four chapters, and in another manuscript, is to summarize what was taught by Rev. Helm in his ministry and where I believe he seriously deviated from the truth. I will be sharing some passages from his book, A Voice in the Wilderness.
It seems important to me at this juncture to state that I do not believe
everything this group did or taught was wrong.
There are no obvious theological heresies. They believe the traditional orthodoxy of
American Evangelicalism. It is also
true that some of the finest Christian people I know are part of this group,
which leads me to the second group of persons who have been harmed by this
ministry—and that is everyone who is not in the first group I mentioned
above. I believe everyone involved in
this ministry is being harmed by it—even if they do not know it. Having said that, these are some of the most
wonderful, loving, kind people I have ever known.
It is my belief that the beginnings of this ministry were
well-intentioned, and that Rev. Helm started off on a good trajectory. I happen to think that over time, things got
off-track, and I will explain some of that as we go. In chapter 7, I mention what is, in my mind,
the single biggest problem, which is the lack of anyone in the role of holding
leaders in the group accountable. There have
been both sexual and financial improprieties which were a result of this lack
of accountability.
There is much in the book, A Voice in the Wilderness, which I
would still embrace and agree with. Many
of the problems I have with the ministry stem from a deliberate contradiction
between what was taught and how the leaders conducted themselves. My hope is that this will become clear to the
reader. However, there are some areas
where Rev. Helm just simply, I believe because of his lack of a theological
education, twisted the meaning of Scripture passages, either wittingly or
unwittingly.
One of the things Rev. Helm used to say, which, looking back, seems incredulous to me is that when Jesus said,
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20 RSV),
Helm would say what this really means is that, since Jesus is the head of the church, he wants to place his head on an obedient body, and when the church is not obedient to God, Jesus therefore has nowhere to lay his head. That is not the meaning of the passage. In context, a man says to Jesus, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” After that Jesus says, “the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” What Jesus is saying is that following him will be difficult. Now, in all fairness, Helm also emphasized that following Jesus is difficult, but in the case of this passage, he takes it totally out of context and distorts its meaning.
Another Scripture which I often heard him
abuse was from Acts 2:1 (RSV). “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were
all together in one place.” Helm relied on the King James Version—I never heard
him use any other translation. The KJV
of Acts 2:1 reads, “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all
with one accord in one place.” Helm made
a big deal of the words “one accord.”
What he preached was that those waiting in the Upper Room were so in
love with Jesus and so in harmony and good will to one another that this caused
the Holy Spirit to be outpoured. He says on page 185 of his book:
God revealed to me some years ago
that He will send a mighty World Wide Revival that is truly of the Holy Ghost,
once He can find a body of believers who will truly begin to wait upon Him and
put Him absolutely first above everything of earth. [1]
In a printed sermon entitled “In One Accord” he suggests that anytime a
group of believers comes “into one accord” the Holy Spirit will be outpoured
like on the day of Pentecost. Now, there
is a linguistic sleight-of-hand involved in this. The verse he uses says those gathered were with
one accord and then he changes it to in one accord. Of course, either of those is a poor
translation. The RSV has it correct, the
meaning of the verse is simply that “they
were all together in one place.”
What Helm does here is commit what
philosophers call the Post Hoc fallacy, the fallacy of False Cause. One cannot simply presume that because B
follows A, that A caused B. Nothing in
Scripture itself, nor in human experience, that I know of, indicates that the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit was contingent on what human beings did or did
not do. There is a theological danger
here of making the work of the Holy Spirit transactional. If we do X, God must do Y. Jesus told us this is not how it works. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, the Spirit
blows wherever it will.
This is one of two serious issues I came to
see within the group. Spirituality is
transactional. I have literally seen
Loran Helm run his hands over a soft drink vending machine and ask God to
divinely reveal to him which button to press.
I have also seen him run his fingers over the menu at a restaurant,
seeking God’s divine guidance as to what food to order. This is despite what he said in his book, on
pages 279-80.
I have never endeavored to be led.
I have merely sought to love God and worship Him. As I waited in His presence,
He began to slay out of me hindrances in my nature. These had to be crucified
in order that there would be no earthly intrusion of the mortal mind to prevent
God’s will and His revelation.
Do not strive to be led. Simply
wait on the Lord and let Him refine you. If we begin to seek for something, we
may get a result, but it well might not be of God. Our assignment is to simply
trust God, obey continually, praise Him often, and love Him for Himself alone.
Do not seek any specific type of experience. Strive only to be filled with His
love for all persons.
Not only is his own practice contradictory to his proclamation (which I
will demonstrate to be the case in other areas as well), but this is a prime
example of this idea of transactional theology where if we do X, God will be
obligated to do Y.
Nowhere was this clearer to me
than in the area of what he taught on prayer.
G. was a young man in our fellowship in Louisville who wanted me to pray
about whether he was to be his brother’s best man at his wedding. His brother was not living what G. thought to
be an acceptable lifestyle. My response
was that he should get alone and pray until he knew what he should do.
G. was unhappy because I did not tell him what I knew to be the right thing to
do, and G. had to pray for two hours to receive the answer himself. When G.
called me and told me he would be his brother’s best man, I told him I already
knew that was the right answer. He was
perturbed. “Why didn’t you just tell
me?” My answer was that doing that would
have deprived him of an opportunity to learn to listen for God’s voice on his
own.
This ministry had a bizarre and contradictory idea of prayer. Helm was telling people not to seek leadings and not to seek spiritual burdens, and when they did have some spiritual burden just offer it to the Lord without a lot of words and specifics, a counsel with which I agree. But then on page 281 he states:
Many people are striving to learn
the secret of intercession by reading books on prayer or attending prayer
retreats. These activities are fine, but the fact is that we can agonize and
labor in prayer for months and not once prevail with God. The key to actual
prevailing prayer is praying the exact petition which God desires. And it is as
we wait upon God in adoration and praise that He can more quickly lead us to
that petition which it is His will that we make.
The idea that “the key to actual prevailing prayer is praying the exact
petition which God desires” is a dangerous and troubling teaching. It makes God petulant and obstinate and
obtuse, and only willing to work in our lives when we say certain words. God is more concerned with the heart than
with the exact words. St. Paul tells us
in Romans 8:26-27:
Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not
know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the
hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (RSV)
The very suggestion that we can only prevail in prayer when we pray the
exact petition which God desires is injurious to any sense of God’s
providential care for us and should be rejected. If we see God as a heavenly parent—I would
suggest that only a selfish parent would only respond to a child’s needs if the
child said certain words. The image of
God this creates is the opposite of what God is.
Another aspect of this transactional spirituality is the idea that if
God reveals something to be God’s will, and a person does it, all is good. This not only was crushing to some people,
because what was declared “God’s will” was contingent on other people, but I
also believe it gave others a false sense of security because, if they married,
voted for, or went into business with the right person, all would be well.
On page 136, Helm states, “There is no way to adequately convey the
seriousness of waiting on God’s specific guidance concerning our vocation, our
companion, our place of dwelling, and our choice of a school or a
college.” I remember reading comments
like this in his book and thinking, “Okay, that is what I need to do—find out
where God wants me to go to school, who I should marry, etc.” I took passages like this to mean that it
was incumbent on me to wait on God’s guidance in these decisions. But in actual practice, the leadership told
people what to do for these decisions.
This harmed many people because, frankly, the leaders often missed God’s
will, and it stunted people’s personal spiritual growth because people were
denied the opportunity to learn to listen to the divine voice for
themselves. The number of these arranged
marriages within the group which ended in divorce is as shattering as an
earthquake.
Earlier I mentioned that I am not sure this ministry started off as
something bad. I do believe it became
something unbelievably bad. When I first
came into the fellowship, they were telling people, if they have a major
decision to make and they do not have a sense of divine leading, to pray
over the situation for four hours, and if they still did not know what to
do, then they could ask for guidance and discernment from the leadership. In the book, Helm says on page 301,
The spiritual person never
dictates what followers of Christ should do. Individuals call me from all over
the United States asking, “What does God want me to do? Which way shall we go?
Does God want me over here? Is this the work? Is this the right choice?” Many
are seeking counsel. I cannot answer according to my own personal opinion or in
response to my own ideas. I must have the guidance of the Holy Ghost. I must
pray to discover whether Jesus would be pleased to reveal His guidance to my
heart.
He declares, “The spiritual person never dictates what followers of
Christ should do”, and yet he often did just the opposite of what he says
here. Remember, this is the man who absolutely forbade me from getting
married unless the Holy Spirit told him it was OK. And yet he says, “The
spiritual person never dictates what followers of Christ should do.” Thank God I did not obey Helm’s
instructions!
What I began to realize over time was that the leadership in this group
did not want people to learn to pray and discern God’s will for
themselves—despite fact that they said they did! The real goal became, at some point, having
people who would follow what the leadership told them was the will of God. Conformity to the fellowship became more
important than conformity to Christ.
Helm writes about how the night he accepted Jesus as his Savior, he felt
led by God to go to his basketball coach’s home for prayer. He tells this story in chapter 12 of A
Voice in the Wilderness. Later in
the book, he writes about how each new convert can be similarly led,
Now if each new convert will
faithfully determine in his heart to do exactly what God lays on his soul to
do, the marvelous walk with Jesus will begin. A new life actually in Christ
begins to happen. But every step will be proceeded and accompanied by denying
what Self wants and what Self wishes. Self must never be permitted to make
another decision in your life. You must settle it forever and fix your will
like a rock: “Jesus is now Lord of my life. He sits on the throne of my heart.
I will seek His advice on where I am to go, what I am to do, how I am to dress,
what I am to speak.” Your life will become very simply “no longer I, but
Christ.” (page 371)
The longer I remained a part of
this fellowship, the starker the contrast between proclamation and practice
became. Helm often said God works with
each person a little differently. But
what began to happen is that people became imitators of Loran Helm, not in the
big things like a desire to be a real Christian disciple, but in the small
details of food, drink, and clothing.
One time during a revival meeting in Indianapolis, Helm told the story
of how, as a young preacher, he thought God had told him not to wear his
wedding ring anymore. My thought was
this is an area which perhaps his wife should have some input into also. I am not sure it was fair to her for him to
just stop wearing it. But within a week
or so, I noticed that most of the married men in the church had taken off their
wedding rings. This was not healthy.
I believe another shortcoming or
debilitating issue within this group is the insistence on the leading of the
Holy Spirit. I do believe in the leading
of the Holy Spirit. I was a Quaker for
nearly three decades, and in Quakerism church business decisions are made by
trying to discern the leadership of the Spirit.
But the entire congregation, as I have written, takes part in the
process. When Helm talks about the
importance of being led by the Spirit, I affirm that in principle. But I do think there is an enormous
problem with how they put this into practice. On pages 180-181 he writes,
According to the scriptures, Jesus
must be the Head of the Church. If He isn’t the Head of the body, it will be
because He is not leading. And when He is not leading, the body becomes a
headless body—a social organism incapable of sustaining life. Like a chicken
with its head cut off, it thrashes around meaninglessly in all directions and
is unattractive to the world. God has shown me that any congregation severs
itself from Jesus, the true Head, simply by working out a religious program
which is not led by the witness of the Holy Spirit—even when that program
appears feasible, beneficial, and helpful to both that church and the
community. This congregation may consist of apparently beautiful, religious
people. They may have excellent orthodoxy; they may preach conversion by the
blood of Jesus; they might have the finest Christian ethics; they may be
well-informed and well-trained; but, as yet, they simply have not waited on God
to be inwardly crucified and learn the leading of the Holy Spirit.
I do believe suffering is involved in learning the leading of the
Spirit. It is tedious, and
trial-and-error. I do believe very much
in waiting on God. The problem is when
he says, “God has shown me that any congregation severs itself from Jesus, the
true Head, simply by working out a religious program which is not led by the
witness of the Holy Spirit—even when that program appears feasible, beneficial,
and helpful to both that church and the community.” This makes everything such high stakes that
every decision made puts the salvation of the church and its members at
stake. I think this can lead to an
extremely unhealthy scrupulosity and have the opposite effect of impeding the
spiritual growth of people. Of course,
we need the leading of the Spirit, but I believe that is found in Scripture,
tradition, reason, and experience, as John Wesley taught. To insist on “the witness of the Holy Spirit”
for every single decision made, seems to be to make the church into a neurosis
factory. Later in the book, he writes,
“In fact, unless the Holy Spirit Himself instructs us, we will not really know
anything about God’s Kingdom. We will only be supposing and guessing.” (page
275) This is not true. We can learn much
about how God wants to lead us through experience, through Scripture, and
through sacred tradition.
One of the most troubling aspects of this ministry was its attitude
about child-rearing. There was an
emphasis on corporal punishment which was very excessive. I have heard both Rev. Helm and his
son-in-law Jon Cullum preach about the necessity of spanking and continuing to
spank until the child quits resisting and becomes repentant. A review of Rev. Helm’s book on Amazon
states:
The
churches and religious beliefs inspired by the author are dangerous. They are
harmful to women, as this sect adheres to the idea that women must be
submissive to their fathers and husbands. I witnessed multiple instances of
child abuse in churches following Reverend Helm's teachings. Not spankings, but
a girl who had been whipped with a switch to the point of bleeding and
bruising. A two-year-old being beaten with a hard-soled shoe. All found
acceptable by the church, and/or carried out by pastors and associate pastors
themselves.
I bought the book for research after having
tossed my original, given to me by my father, who received his copy from
Reverend Helm during one of our visits to his home and church.
Please be careful and aware before reading this
book. Much of it sounds very lovely, but the outcome of following the ideas
expressed is disaster.
Another person who used the name “An RFOD Survivor” (the name of the
organization is Revival for Our Day) made a similar comment.
There are some truths here. There are also deceptions and
evidence of mental illness. Use this as a handbook at your and your children's
peril. People who brought up their children according to the chapter Parental
Discipline caused great harm to their children's emotional and mental
well-being. I know, because I was one of them, and I know many others. Be wise.
I
will share one final review:
I
grew up in the RFOD community. This community hid and perhaps even sanctioned
child sexual abuse. It encouraged violence against children and submission from
women. The fanatics under Helm's discipleship ruined lives. They arranged
marriages among children, they harmed and took money from families while living
lavish lifestyles. Run from this book and all of its teachings. [2]
Helm himself believed strongly in physical punishment for children. He
often said that children would never become followers of Jesus unless their
parents broke their will. I look back on
that and find it astounding. Maybe I did
not catch it because I did not know him until I was 17 years old, but there was
a definite emphasis on spanking, and continuing to spank until a child was
repentant. Helm himself says,
Think of the seriousness of this!
The Holy Spirit witnesses to the fact that, unless my father had lovingly
disciplined me—whipped me severely upon each disobedience, and consistently put
me in line—I would have missed the glorious Church and never known the purpose
for which I was put on earth. (Helm, pages 85-86)
The phrase “whipped me severely” is troubling. To suggest such whipping “upon every disobedience” is even more disturbing. As a mature theological thinker, I have become a part of a group of theologians known as the Open and Relational theological community. The basic idea of this community is that God is open and relational. God, as shown to us in Jesus, is by essence, love. And love does not use force. I am not saying that children should not be disciplined. I am not saying there should never be punishment. I am saying that punishment should never involve physical force.
Thomas Jay Oord, my friend and colleague in the Open and Relational
community, suggests that when we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. Elton Trueblood used to say the same thing,
“God is like Christ.” For Oord, this is
the key to his entire theology. He
suggests that God’s very nature is essential Kenosis, which means that
God’s essence is self-giving love.
Self-giving love is never overpowering or coercive. In his book, The Uncontrolling Love of
God, Oord says,
Jesus Christ is
primary evidence for most Christians that God seeks well-being through
non-coercive means. Although Jesus can
be angry or even exert strong force on occasions (e.g., clearing the temple),
Jesus never acted coercively in the sense of controlling others entirely. The a posteriori evidence of the life
of Jesus, whom Christians believe reveals God better than any other person,
suggests that God does not coerce.[3]
I believe Oord is correct. It
would logically follow that being Christ-like is therefore an exercise in being
non-coercive. Helm contradicts this.
I tell you, friends, there are
things in us that need to be taken out, and if we don’t take them out of our
children—if we don’t break our children when they are little—they will break us
and grind us down when they are twelve or older. Unless we severely discipline
our children, they may not make it to Heaven. (page 91)
Children are a gift of God. Psalm 127 says children are a gift from the
Lord, and like arrows, a man who has his quiver full of them is blessed. It would seem to follow that if children are
a gift of God, we do not want to break them. Breaking something God gives us seems to me to be
unthinkable! We want to love and nurture them. I am convinced that the approach which Helm
advocates is harmful to children and threatening to their becoming the
wonderful people God calls each of them to be.
I have struck my children, and I have regretted it every time. I
have had to apologize to them and seek their forgiveness for doing something
which I should never, never have done.
And yet this is a ministry which advocated “whipping severely” for every
infraction. It reminds me of the adage,
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Honestly, severe whipping over minor infractions is absurd. I think whipping itself is contrary to
Christlike parenting, and the view of this which Helm advocated is destructive
and wrong. Often there are natural
consequences which have a greater effect on a person than some punitive action
taken by a parent. I did my own best
parenting when I allowed the consequences to just follow from the behavior and
use that as a teaching opportunity.
Didactive parenting is much more effective than punitive parenting.
Another emphasis in the Helm teaching was that people should never
criticize anyone. Criticism, according
to Helm, blocked the Holy Spirit from working in someone’s life. He teaches:
If you say one critical word about
anyone, you have grieved the Holy Spirit (Rom. 2:1; 14:13; Mt. 7:1). If I were
to criticize or find fault about any person to my wife—in any way, at any time—I
would grieve the Holy Spirit. He could not use me in God’s Kingdom until I
repented of that. (Helm, page 302)
This is the secret of revival in
the church, for if the people of the church are willing to wait upon God, it
won’t be long before they are confessing their criticisms. Tender hearts will
be confiding to neighbors: “Oh, you didn’t know it, but I criticized you a year
ago. It grieved God’s heart terribly and I am sorry.” Repentant souls will tell
pastors: “I talked about you to my companion and I can see now I was out of
divine order. Please forgive me.” (Helm,
page 302)
When I took a pastoral care class on Anger and Aggression in the Fall of
1987, I wrote a paper in which I contrasted Rev. Helm’s teaching with the
thinking of Paul Tillich. Tillich said
that when leaders preach against criticism, the prime motivation for that is to
insulate themselves from criticism. Leaders who preach such messages shift the
focus, so the object of faith is no longer God (although biblical and God
language are still used.) The finite
replaces the infinite as the ultimate concern, and this is, for Tillich, the
essence of idolatry.
If they try to
enforce spiritual conformity, and are successful, they have removed the risk
and courage which belong to the act of faith.
They have transformed faith into a behavior pattern which does not admit
of alternatives, and which loses its character of ultimacy even if the
fulfillment of the religious duties is done with ultimate concern.[4]
From the Christian point of view,
one would say that the Church with all its doctrines and institutions and
authorities stands under the prophetic judgment and not above it. [5]
I also found that even with this preaching on criticism, Helm did not
practice what he preached. He claimed,
even in the 1970s and 1980s, that he had not spoken one word of criticism
against anyone at all since 1942. I
found out that was a lie because I learned he had criticized me. He said in his
book (quoted above),
If you say one
critical word about anyone, you have grieved the Holy Spirit (Rom. 2:1; 14:13;
Mt. 7:1). If I were to criticize or find fault about any person to my wife—in
any way, at any time—I would grieve the Holy Spirit. He could not use me in
God’s Kingdom until I repented of that. (page 302)
I happened to learn, however, that
he made the following statement about me, “Clarence thinks God leads
him, and once in a while God actually does.”
Helm said that to another minister in the fellowship, who happened to
relay it to me. I have absolutely no
reason to believe he did not make said statement. Immediately, I realized it
was a word of criticism because its intended effect was to cast me in an
unfavorable light. Simply put, despite
what those around him said, Loran Helm did not practice what he preached.
In his book, The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich speaks of the need
for self-affirmation. This was a
contrast for me to Helm’s emphasis on self-denial. Please do not misunderstand, self-denial is a
vital part of the Christian life, but it is only helpful in a context of the
self being something of great worth because it is the creation of God. I once saw a video called Unleashing the
Church, in which Frank Tillipaugh said one preacher told his congregation,
“The only difference between you and a bucket of slop is the bucket.” I can tell you first-hand, the preaching of
Loran Helm had this kind of impact on me, and on others. A valid biblical teaching, self-denial,
became the sole emphasis, in a way which rendered the practice of the group a
caricature of genuine Christian faith.
When Helm said, “Self must never be permitted to make another decision
in your life” (page 371), he created a breeding ground for neurosis. His preaching ended up creating the exact
opposite of what he said he was trying to do.
Tillich put it this way, “The
neurotic is aware of the danger of a situation in which his unrealistic
self-affirmation is broken down and no realistic self-affirmation takes its
place.” [6]
Tillich said, in
the same work, “No self-acceptance is possible if one is not accepted in a
person-to-person relation.” It is
impossible for me to read that without thinking about being told that there was
not a woman anywhere holy enough to be willing to love me. I have asked myself why this memory is so
painful, even 36 years into a wonderful, blessed marriage. The reason is that in making such a
statement, Helm, (if Tillich is correct) de-humanized me by closing all hope
for my ever having the most intimate and significant of human
relationships. Loran Helm de-humanized
me.
Tillich said, in The Courage to Be, chapter 2, that the biggest
anxiety humans face is the threat of non-being.
The ultimate expression of that non-being is death. I believe when he speaks of “The New Being”
which is ours in Christ, he is aware of the Christian hope which conquerors
this fear of death. However, there is
still a fear of the unknown, and there are still smaller threats and fears
which we undergo between the present and our death. Now, as a Catholic, I pray the “Hail Mary”
and I ask for the Blessed Mother to pray for me, “Now, and in the hour of our
death.” For me, that prayer addresses the existential threat of death and the
smaller, intermediate threats.
These smaller threats, Tillich says on page 45, come from threats
perceived to me matters of fate. For me,
the very notion that I would never experience the love of a wife and family, as
I said, was dehumanizing. It created in
me an existential crisis I never expected to come through and survive. I have heard Loran Helm say, many times, he
loves everyone with all his heart, just like Jesus does. He suggests as much on page 382 of his
book. In the end, I asked myself, would
Jesus tell me no one would ever want to be in love with me? I concluded that Jesus would never have
told me that. Therefore, sadly, I
concluded Loran Helm was a liar and a fraud, and not a servant of God.
Tillich suggests that the need for self-affirmation comes from the
existential condition of sin, which he defines as a sense of estrangement from
God and from others. In response to that
estrangement, people seek self-affirmation, first as part of a group, based on
conformity rather than community. Only
as people come to a measure of spiritual maturity do they seek that
self-affirmation as an individual. He
called this, in chapter 5, “The Courage to Be as Oneself.”
As I studied Tillich, which is something Oliver Hogue told me not to
do, I found that remaining in the group would mean I would never find this
courage to be who I am. I believe that I was told not to read Tillich, not
because what he said was not true, but because they knew it was, and they knew
it would set me free from their destructive influence. Deciding to leave was a
step toward the “Courage to Be as Oneself.”
[1] All references from this book are from
the BookBaby Kindle Edition. Helm, Loran
W. A Voice in the Wilderness. Parker City, IN. Evangel Voice Publications.
1973.
[2] Customer reviews of A Voice in the
Wilderness. Amazon.com.
[3] Oord, Thomas Jay. The Uncontrolling Love of God. SacraSage Press, 174.
[5] Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith,
29.
[6] “The Courage to Be
Quotes by Paul Tillich.” Goodreads.com.
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