Well these ideas have been kicking around in my soul for some time now so I decided to put them down “on paper” to get them out in the open & off of my chest.
Historically speaking, I’ve wrestled significantly with legalism in certain aspects of Christianity to which I was mightily exposed in my younger years (5th grade through Grad School) & whose tentacles I’ve been attempting to dislodge ever since.
Fifth Grade was a pivotal year in my life for that was when my family, at my father’s insistence, following “God’s leading” left our long-time Methodist church to attend what was then called Bethesda Missionary Temple (now known as Bethesda Christian Church). There were/are many good things about Bethesda overall, but here I am addressing a huge negative–legalism.
So these are obviously my own opinions and are not based on researching this topic necessarily, just sharing from my experiences. Back in the 70’s Bethesda appeared to exert an inordinate amount of control over their members’ lives–& my dad took to heart every one of the dictates & imposed them outside of church in our family’s life too. Here are some of the mandates that fall outside of scriptural authority in my opinion:
- No drinking of alcohol (scripture allows moderation & no drunkenness)
- No dancing (except married couples in the privacy of their own home)
- No card playing
- Women must wear dresses/skirts (my dad made Mom & I do so outside of church)
- No rated-R movies
Anyway, those are the major “rules” I remember & some of them had a Very negative impact on my life for years. I’m guessing that some of these “mandates” grew out of the “holiness movement” that may have in part birthed Bethesda in the early 20th century. It’s also possible (likely probable) that other “Bethesdans” didn’t as strictly enforce such “rules” in their private lives as did my dad so my experiences may not necessarily be reflective of others there.
The forced dress/skirt-wearing went on for me during 5th & 6th grade & for my mom perhaps a year longer. It was difficult/impossible to explain to classmates/peers when someone who never wore anything but pants to school for years suddenly only & ever wore dresses/skirts for nearly 2 years. This “dress code” continued at the college/grad school I attended (ORU) so further plagued me directly for another 6 years of early adulthood…At Bethesda, if a woman did come to church in pants she would be seated by ushers in the back & under the balcony. Many years later Bethesda ultimately lightened up on this restriction, but those damaging aspects had already invaded my soul…
The other biggie that impacted my earlier years was the “no dancing” mandate. I didn’t personally see a scriptural prohibition that applied, though a loose interpretation of “do not cause your brother to stumble” could perhaps underpin this & the drinking & card prohibitions…I was an overt Christian from a very young age & attended public school K-12 so was already on the “rejection track” for my faith. The artificial, imo, no dancing mandate further & unnecessarily alienated me from peers & prevented me from experiencing certain cultural rites of passage like Prom or Homecoming. I did attend the 6th grade square dance, which was apparently “allowed” by the church, & danced but only with other girls because no boys asked me & when I asked one on “girl’s choice” he practically screamed “No Way! Gross!” & told me to go dance with one of my girlfriends…I also attended my 9th Grade Dinner Dance but never danced except secretly before a mirror in the ladies room, sometimes with tears running down my face…
The legalism imposed on my life intensified when I was heading off to college to ORU–a place my parents wanted me to attend much more than my own desire to hopefully go to the University of Michigan. Anyway, ORU made students sign an “honor code” every year that listed the many rules imposed. If you were caught in an honor code violation you could be subject to discipline even if you were out of state on a break from school & supposedly ORU had spies everywhere keeping tabs on the potentially wayward students! Before heading out to OK for ORU my dad “forced” me to join Bethesda, something I really didn’t want to do, but was too weak to prevent. This added a layer of legalism on top of what ORU imposed in that now I was “honor” bound to keep the BMT rules even if those actions weren’t forbidden by my campus. This presented a real dilemma for me in restraining myself from “harmless” activities, like card playing with friends, not for conscience’s sake but for the sake of “my word” given to an organization I was “forced” to pledge some degree of obedience to…
I’m not saying that I managed those challenges well, for there was a pretty deep well of anger built up over years of perceived religious & familial “abuses” of my God-given right to have my actions dictated by my own conscience, in keeping with scriptural truth, not institutional non-scriptural behavior codes. I have always fully assented to God’s right to impose a behavioral code & though certainly have never fully lived up to His standards, I surrender my will freely to Him & seek to follow Christ with my whole heart & don’t try to weasel my way out from clear-cut scriptural truth regarding behaviors (ie no drunkenness & sex only belongs within marriage, etc.)…
Anyway, going from Bethesda to ORU was in some ways out of the frying pan & into the fire as far as legalism went. Here were some of the mandates from ORU:
- No drinking
- No smoking
- No sex outside of marriage
- Females must wear a dress/skirt M-F to class, chapel, & cafeteria
- Males must be clean-shaven with only certain smaller mustaches allowed
- Girls will have a curfew imposed on them for the entirety of their ORU experience
- Guys will have a curfew Only their first semester as freshman
- Girls (legal adults) cannot sleep away from campus without written permission from their parents
- Single-sex dorms with only brief open houses allowing the opposite sex to visit under very controlled circumstances
I actually can’t remember if ORU also had a no dancing rule but since there were no dances ever on campus that topic might be rather moot.
One tidbit of ORU life was the propaganda value of a series of paintings of the “12 Disciples of Jesus”. Only Judas, of the 12, was shown with a beard! As if men from Israel during Christ’s ministry always shaved their faces fully, unless they were His betrayer!
The lies that were told were subtle at times in that by imposing certain restrictions there were implications that the rules were biblically based when at least some of them were surely just the impositions of men. A blatant lie encountered impacted one of my grad school classmates directly. She was a single mom, divorced or widowed, who came to Tulsa from Tennessee. She had been heavily recruited by ORU’s grad school which had made specific promises to the point that she agreed to leave behind her TN life, sell most of her possessions & come to ORU as some type of promised land situation. She had been told that Everything would be provided for her & her children, housing, furniture, etc. When she got to Tulsa many of the promises made fell through & she was in a desperate state trying to get herself & her family situated. She never would have crossed the country if she would have known in advance the reality of what she would have to face…
Another aspect of the “lie” was the mass marketing campaign that brought periodic pilgrims to the Oral Roberts Campus. One of my friends observed 2 elderly ladies pulling the exact same “personal letter” from their purses. The literally both believed that Oral Roberts wrote to them Personally to request them to become Prayer Partners & to “plant seeds” financially in his ministry. Some people were rumored to send all of their limited income to Oral believing that his prayers would mean they would receive back “30, 60, or 100 fold” (or times) what they had given. It was heart-breaking to see someone flash a “letter from Oral” with an outline of a hand on it–where they were to place their hand so that Oral could personally pray for them & their needs….anyway this isn’t a post about potentially “fleecing the flock” & I’m not necessarily judging Oral’s or any other person’s “ministry” but these things were, and still are frankly, quite disturbing.
Another “lie” I encountered directly while in Oklahoma happened when I worked at the Oral Roberts hospital complex called the City of Faith (it’s now one of the Cancer Care Centers of America, I believe, in Tulsa). Anyway I worked with adult psychiatric patients many of whom came specifically to the City of Faith because they believed that Oral would come & lay hands on them & they would be healed of their afflictions (though I don’t believe any such promises were made so these were likely personal assumptions on their part). Anyway, one day while working there we received word that Richard Roberts, Oral’s son, was going to be coming to our unit within an hour so we were to assemble the patients in the day room (I worked on the locked unit so these were the patients with the most severe & debilitating psychological issues). Anyway hours went by so we finally fed the patients & eventually news trickled up to our unit that Richard wasn’t coming after all. This caused major set-backs for most if not all of our fragile patients. It was such a brutal blow to their pointlessly raised hopes & could have been avoided entirely by not telling patients of RR’s allegedly pending visit until he was actually (if ever) on his way. This was horribly cruel to people who were already reeling from the various traumas of their lives & an infliction of needless, thoughtless pain.
The discrimination against females was something that weighed very heavily upon me while at ORU. I heard tales of a student who got pregnant & was kicked out of school while her boyfriend was allowed to stay–the hypocrisy. I experienced this disparate treatment directly during my Senior Year. I lived in Graduate Housing, an apartment, as a Senior but the Curfew System was imposed on women even there. Once I had my boyfriend over, also a student, after curfew & we were caught because I kept the light on! Anyway I was penalized, I think 50 hours of “community service” in one of the campus offices while he experienced no restrictions.
In later years we found ourselves attending a small CMA church (Christian Missionary Alliance) that was part of the Great Lakes District. Apparently, at least this district, (if not the entire CMA) restricts women in ministry in the US! These same women can serve overseas on an equivalent footing, I believe, to men & be paid accordingly but once they are stateside they are placed in some type of subordinate role. In fact our recent pastor & his wife had equivalent graduate level training but he can be “ordained” but she cannot due to being female. This is, at least to me, hypocrisy of the highest order and not in keeping with scriptural truth as I understand it.
Ironically, my view of women in ministry has likely been impacted by my Bethesda background for that church was founded and pastored by a woman for many years. And many years after her death her granddaughter filled the role of senior pastor for a season after her own father, the founder’s son, stepped down in that dynastic-style ministry…hmm…
Well, getting from legalism & lies to liberty is a long-term, ongoing process. I cannot say that I have fully arrived. Nor can I claim that my pathway was exemplary. Here are some things I did to try to address the legalism, not all healthy:
- Wear shorts under dresses as a kid to increase playground freedom
- Wear tennis shoes with dresses in college to increase freedom of movement
- Forge my parent’s signature on an overnight permission form to babysit for a local family heading out of town
- Drank a free margarita while on break from school while in California
- Speak to the Dean of Women to discussion my sex discrimination concerns
- Allow myself to play cards on campus
- Grant myself permission to let go of bondage-based rules gradually
- Dance at a wedding & a couple of social events
- Watch movies of my choosing
- Purpose to Not needlessly burden my kids with non-biblical mandates
- Walk away from various churches whose policies & practices were wounding
- Speak with friends & help them cope with personal fallout of lies/legalism
- Pray with & for a disabled student who was abandoned/ignored at the prayer altar by nationally known “healing ministry” figures
- Continue to “work out my salvation with fear & trembling” in these arenas
- Minimize contact with those still trapped in bondage who don’t desire to be set free but more seem to want to drag me back into the morass
- Purpose to be open & direct with my kids on the pitfalls of spiritual abuse
God has been very good to me & I am quite thankful for a relatively healthy grounding in biblical truth, much of which can be attributed to Bethesda’s strengths. My relationship with the Lord is foundational for my life & was begun at a very early age & has permeated all seasons of my life. I am blessed in many ways & God is in the process of healing some of the wounds of my heart in various domains. We all remain works in process as long as we live on the planet.
I’m so thankful for certain key scriptures that point toward freedom & liberty in Christ. These are a comfort to me and a spiritual antidote for the poisonous lies & legalism that were imposed on my life for so many years. Praise the Lord that he has ultimately gotten (& is getting) the victory!
Also, here a few posts on one of my other blogs that might bless you if this post has touched you at all:
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/faith-vs-the-prosperity-gospel/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/rewriting-an-old-tape-of-lies/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/never-alone/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/special-forces/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/complex-ptsd-personal-touchpoints/
https://specialconnections.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/abel-true-father-of-faith/
May God Bless & Keep you. May He heal us all of our wounds & set us free to serve him wholeheartedly unencumbered by the burdens of baggage imposed by men! In Christ’s Love, Valerie
Pioneer Perspectives 
I shared a link to this post at another Christian sister’s blog, where she was writing about church camp experiences. Here’s a copy of my comment to her, which is currently in moderation, by way of archiving here:
You made me recall some vague memories of the church camp of my early years while we still attended the Methodist Church my dad had grown up in in Detroit. This was a much smaller & more intimate congregation than the church my parents still attend. Dad had practically life-long friends from his childhood church & a number of the families were very close to ours, including my god parents whose family we vacationed with pretty much Every Summer of my childhood! Such good times!
Anyway that Methodist camp was also at a lake, like the other church camp I mentioned on your previous post. This lake might have had some pond-like features as I recall some cattails & other tall & lush aquatic vegetation along its perimeter. We kids used to like to catch frogs & turtles & just generally enjoy playing outdoors. I saw the largest spider I’ve ever seen there, the body being about the size of a typical saucer for a teacup–yikes–on its web in some of those reeds, shudder! There were some formal activities too but given I was no older than 4th or 5th grade–when we changed to that much larger church–I don’t have much recollection of them now.
I dove into some of the problematic aspects of some of those church experiences here, fyi:
I do remember that there was a free-standing wooden concession stand, I think they propped open the area of the service window as a bit of a roof when it was open. You could get cold drinks, candy, & ice cream there I believe. There was definitely glass bottled pop that you had to use the built into the side of the stand bottle opener to open. There was a dusty dirt road that some of us kids walked along barefooted just enjoying the Summer weather. I have really warm feelings thinking of those days.
When married we attended a similarly sized local church that also had summer family camp. We all went, hubby & I & our 4 kids for a number of years. Later there were a few years that I chose not to go & a couple times I used the “free” weekend to marathon clean & organize my “office” that tends to segue into a room size junk drawer, over the years. That weekend I spent close to 40 hours on that room while I had the house to myself so that it was all finished by the time they all came home. I wish I was able to maintain that level of office management so that the room would be more usable right now…sigh…
One year, when my husband had planned to take the kids to camp again, for some reason he ended up deciding not to attend, I think based on mostly rain being forecast. That Sunday, the last day of camp, we got that phone call we’d been anticipating for more than a year & a half, that there was a “perfect” liver available for our son Josiah. My husband was able to use text messaging to get that major prayer request out to our church family, who were still gathered at the camp so that prayers in earnest for that transplant adventure could get kicked off. Because we’d gotten that call so early on that Sunday morning we ended up having Josiah’s transplant being a prayer request at a number of churches that day having gotten the word out on the grapevine to family & friends. Being buoyed by the prayers of the saints during times of extreme need is one of the most beautiful aspects of the Body of Christ!
Telling these tales, even, perhaps even especially, all these years later can really have a wonderful & at times nostalgic impact on so many people’s lives. You continue to use your gifts & memories for Body Ministry, & I thank you most appreciatively!!!
May the Lord continue to bless & keep YOU Lady/Susan ❤ ❤ ❤
PS: I’ve written many things in connection to my son’s liver transplant over the years & hope to get a 10 anniversary post kicked out later this week, if possible. In case Anyone might be interested here are some of the main posts dealing directly with his transplant…
This one is a Very Long encapsulation of Many Aspects of our journey to & through that transplant scenario:
This one is a much shorter version, including some links to other of my transplant related writings:
This one is the shortest & sweetest base-touching on that topic:
This one includes aspects of our more recent scare with his bout of liver rejection:
Blessings to All!
Here is the original location of the above comment:
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Thanks Valerie, you’ve tickled me pink(haven’t use that phrase in years – lol). My oldest sister went to ORU for one semester. We broke many of those rules in our house on a weekly basis. I’ll have to asked her why she only did one semester, as I was just a kid(probably 10 or 11) and would not have been privy to any conversations her and our parents would have had. I now can suspect what she’ll say. I’ll call later today. I’ll have to come back to the other links – I have a to do list for today and there are other things higher on the list, reading them is on that list, so I will get to them.
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Fun. I’ll be curious what she might say.
I’ve shared a number of links w/ you over multiple comments but they are all just in an fyi manner…Zero Pressure for you to read them. Just some things you’ve shared, or my processing of your writing, brings some of those posts to my mind.
You never know where info shared might go & sometimes it might be the “lurkers” who “need” the clues from pathways we’ve trod & attempted to articulate to the glory of God!
By the way, small world for ORU ironically. I was there from ’82-’88. I wonder if that overlapped your sister’s time & if so if we ever brushed shoulders…such a small world! ❤ 🙂 ❤
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I think she said it was 79′.
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OK, slightly before my time but perhaps overlapping that of a family friend whose attendance there was what prompted my parents to highly pressure me to attend…
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Here’s another comment awaiting moderation that can be applicable to this discussion here so I share it also as a way to archive these thoughts 🙂
This is an interesting concept, kind of like we can take “neutral” things & they can be used for good/the Kingdom of God or bad/evil. Many things in this world I agree are inherently neutral & it’s the person’s heart or intentions that might push them one direction or another. As always, we need to “spoil the Egyptians” of their treasures & leave their idolatrous & enslaved ways behind us as we follow God’s Presence to the Promised Land!
Some of what is on your list reminds me of “holiness” issues that tend into arenas of legalism. I touched on some of that in a blog post elsewhere (I think I also shared it with you in another comment somewhere). In using the Brave search engine to try to find my other blog post quickly this search turned up some stuff on the topic that looks good 🙂
https://search.brave.com/search?q=legalism%2C+lies%2C+liberty&source=web
One item on your list that I disagree with would be cannabis. From my way of thinking using cannabis is akin to drunkenness for I believe that any usage is getting someone high. I could be wrong about that for I haven’t delved deeply into the topic. Granted many substances can be misused like alcohol, caffeine, sugar, pain killers etc. The guiding principal is from scripture, “be not drunk with wine wherein is excess” & “do not use your liberty as a stumbling block for others” (both loose quotes without looking up the specific verses. Clearly scripture doesn’t forbid the usage of “wine” but forbids drunkenness, which, to me, means the over usage of alcohol to the place of being altered & out of control. I don’t believe that cannabis can be used w/out the drunkenness/high happening.
Now “whom the Son sets free is free indeed” & praise the Lord for that liberty! Many Christians have a problem with Any usage of alcohol & they should not partake if their own conscience forbids it or they’ve absorbed teachings that are legalistic on such topics & can’t step out from under error without violating their own conscience. In that sense even though I do not believe Scripture forbids Any use of alcohol I would not partake around people who believe it’s wrong, or someone who wrestles with alcoholism, or even around children if that might “cause them to stumble”. This is not to act as a hypocrite for I would not be proclaiming teetotaler status but rather being sensitive to an arena that that can be problematic for many people in certain settings. I’ve seen my parents go through a transformation in this arena from being OK w/ alcohol back when attending traditional denominational churches, to becoming extreme teetotalers (Dad would pour alcoholic gifts from suppliers at work down the drain rather than cooking with them or even giving them to someone who didn’t think drinking was wrong) under the restrictive lifestyle teachings of their independent Spirit-filled church, to now being OK w/ occasionally having a drink of alcohol, including medicinally, since that same church has loosened it’s control of its members lifestyle & changed its teachings in this domain (from my view from afar)…
I look at cannabis as a gateway drug to the harder stuff & the getting high aspect of it, regardless of legality in a given location, as something that the spirit of scripture forbids, if not actually spelling out that prohibition. I remember hearing Michael Savage on his radio show years ago discussing how the dangers of marijuana were largely hidden or lied about in the rush to legalize its usage in many places. I don’t think that MJ really has any safe level of usage that would be sub-“drunkenness” like alcohol has. That’s really the bottom line why I disagree with its inclusion on your list.
All that being said I also believe it’s important to walk in grace toward one another & not to sit in judgement (much) about how other people choose to live their lives. A scriptural foundation is mandatory for “authentic” Christian living, to be sure, but we are always in an iron-sharpens-iron, refiner’s fire, potter’s wheel condition while we live on the planet. Discussing such things amongst believers can help us refine how we understand what God desires of us & how we should live to please Him.
One pastor we had talked about Convictions, Opinions, & Absolutes. Absolutes were based on scripture & should theoretically be universal across the Body of Christ. Convictions could also be scripture based but were formed out of those arenas where the scriptural teachings aren’t completely clear-cut. They also could be the result of denominational perspectives or even long traditions that aren’t necessarily scripture based but still underpin one’s life to the level that diving deep into whether or not they are necessary or appropriate, per the Word, is not where one wants to work on the “working out their salvation with fear & trembling”. Opinions are really just our own personal views that may or may not have a real basis in biblical truth. Only Absolutes arise to the level of scriptural authority in this paradigm. This 3 part division of personal beliefs concept has helped my husband & I over the years as we wrestle with walking the Christian narrow road to the best of our ability & understanding so it’s a useful tool, at least for us! (I don’t claim that my articulation of this concept is entirely accurate nor that the original preacher of that long ago sermon would agree with how I’ve come to understand or express this framework here, so, as always, grain of salt) 🙂
Blessings Lady/Susan & thank you for presenting the topic for discussion! ❤
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There is an excellent and balanced teaching on The Sabbath here that does not stray into legalism, please check it out!
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed!
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