Pentecostalism Attacks Our Integrity

Pentecostalism Attacks Our Integrity

The buildup of integrity in life is a long process of growth. We make small promises and keep them – to others and to ourselves. This builds character and confidence. We build relationships with others over time, and the work and the effort eventually blossoms into a strong friendship or partnership with another human being. We become honest with people to the point that our word is taken seriously. Rick Pitino once said, “Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.” We mingle among total strangers with small courtesies and kindness, which over time builds up into friendship. We clarify expectations among those we work with without hidden agendas, and we are upfront. We allow others to give us feedback and we give honest feedback also. This entire process is called Integrity.

Making Promises

As Ex-Pentecostals, sometimes we must remember and relearn Integrity because Pentecostalism is a direct attack upon Integrity. How is this? Well, we make promises to recruits that we wish to get into the church. What do we promise? Life everlasting, the greatest feeling on earth, a church “family” ready to take care of people and such, but guess what? We lied to them. The Pentecostal promises were empty. We exaggerated healings and miracles. We exaggerated our “love” for one another with smiles that were a little too bright and cheesy. All these little lies add up. Eventually, it attacks our core self – our integrity. One cannot continuously violate his integrity and get away with it. There are consequences such as anger, broken relationships, revenge, backbiting and backstabbing. One cannot live a lie and expect that the lie will not catch up. Pentecostalism caused us to live lies.

Building Relationships

Building relationships with others is the sweet stuff of life. But, how many times did we neglect very good people just because they were not Pentecostal? How many times we were mean to people because they would not “accept the “truth?” Well, again, we cannot violate basic decency and get away with it. It will destroy our emotional center, and our ability to make relationships. It breeds isolationism, paranoia of outsiders, lost opportunities, emotional self-indulgence, and many other negative things. We cannot violate our integrity with others and get away with it.

Being Honest about Claims

Being honest with people about the religion was not a high priority as a Pentecostal. We would recruit people using deception. We would not tell them about the rules up front before they became members. We were taught to hook them in with elaborate sales pitches, and once they were hooked, we gave them the rest of the nasty rules of Pentecostalism – whatever they were. This again, was an attack upon our integrity. We cannot build a life upon lies and deceit and get away with it. This is why others did not have much trust in our word. This is why our bosses might not have trusted us because we knew how to sell garbage and put on a show and make things look better than they actually were.

Small Kindness to Others - Courtesy

Small courtesies and kindness are the rules of life. We have no reason to be mean to people. But, as Pentecostals, how many times we were mean to the waitress at the restaurant? How many times we were mean to a priest or protestant pastor dressed up with his robes, rings and chains? How many times we yelled at beggars in the street to “Get a job!” How many times we turned our heads or were nasty toward a “backslider?” again, we cannot violate the small courtesies in life – part of basic integrity – and expect to get away with it. The blowback from these violations is a Napoleonic complex where we think that we own the world and that the world is here to amuse us in between church services, so we have the excuse to be absolutely rude to people, and to go back to church the next service and snicker about how we made fun of innocent people.

Hiding Things, Unnecessary Secrecy

Since we were under the morality of Obedience, instead of the inner compass in our hearts, we always had things to hide because nobody ever agrees totally with a dictator in their hearts. Thus, we had to hide things from other church people because we could not tell them, because they would go tattle to the pastor and we would get “called to the office” and humiliated. This is Master/Slave Morality, which is to mean, no morality at all. True morality comes from educating the heart and the conscience at what is right and wrong through stories and moral sayings, and the like. The master/slave moral system breeds hidden agendas, and we took this into our social life. Bosses and friends sensed this, and probably did not trust us because we were not being up front and real to them – they knew we were hiding something. We were taught very well to hide things. Again, we cannot get away with this violation of integrity; people will not trust us.

Constructive Criticism

Also, were not good at giving and receiving honest feedback. The master/slave moral system only accepts feedback from on high from the pastor, but nobody under another in the “chain of command” has any right usually to question his superior. This leads to superiors getting ego trips from the constant lack of feedback. They think that they are above criticism because people cannot tell them anything, and the cycle continues on until they are living in a fantasy land because people are always telling them that they are the greatest, etc. In the real world out on the job and among normal people, we get feedback, and this can be shocking at first. We do not know how to give constructive criticism, since the only form of criticism we knew of was gossip, and character assassination.

The Challenge of the Ex-Pentecostal

Thus, I have given an outline at how Pentecostalism attacks a person’s integrity. We as Ex-Pentecostals must commit to doing the right thing. We must regain and make a study of Integrity in the rebuilding of our lives. Once we regain integrity, we will life the good life apart from fear and intimidation, and wondering if people will really know us and then hate us. We will finally be free.

We will have conquered ourselves, and will be ready to conquer the world, and make it a better place than we found it.

derkrash-at-earthlink-dot-net
JP Istre