Spiritual Harassment

My conversion process isn't something I look back on with sentimental nostalgia, in fact, I really don't like that memory. At seven years old, I found myself terrified, going face to face with an angry God and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I didn't accept Him as my personal Savior, I'd burn eternally in a literal hell. This being the case, I confessed all the sins of just a child, most importantly the sin of being born a sinner, and became a Christian. I repented fully, accepted the gift of salvation and shortly later was baptized. I did all of this, believing wholeheartedly and entirely convinced in the teachings I learned from babyhood. I knew I was a wretched sinner, deserved hell, but the remedy to my condition was Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. At just seven years old, the problem was solved.

The first time I was called to share the good news of my conversion was that very night it was made known. In front of the entire congregation, I was called to explain what had taken place. Suddenly, I was afraid and shy, unaware of the reasoning behind sharing this with others as my new title of Believer warranted. Fighting off nervous tears, I turned in my pew and buried my face into my proud father's arm, hiding from the request and all the curious stares directed towards where I sat.

For as long as I remember, I was always under the stubborn impression that accepting Christ as your personal Savior was just that—personal. I'm not sure why I so strongly held to this opinion, but even into adulthood, I did. Sure, I wanted to tell others the Good News of the Gospel, but mostly I felt that the best way to do that wasn't solely with your words but with your actions, too. You know, don't just talk the talk, walk the walk.

But as an Independent Fundamental Baptist, there were doors to be knocked on, gospel tracts to be passed out and flyers to one of our annual meetings to put up in the neighboring towns surrounding our local church. In some instances, it would be witnessing in nursing homes, joining in community holiday celebrations to promote our church or even street preaching. Maybe it was the small act of leaving a tract, a devotional or any other fundamentalist literature in a public place such as the grocery store or as a tip to a hardworking waitress at an alcohol-free restaurant. Good IFB go soul winning, plain and simple.

Although I was going soulwinning before my first memories were formed there are certain times that I recall clearly. The first time I was to take the lead in inviting someone to church, for instance. The instructions were simple: walk up to this stranger's door, knock (you know what I'm talking about: knock hard enough to make your knuckles ache, but don't pound or else you'll come off rude and that would defeat the purpose, right?), introduce yourself and invite them and if you see the opportunity, witness. All of this I couldn't do. I was instantly too terrified to try and burst into tears. I remember being admonished for making a scene, told it was ridiculous and I was an embarrassment and needed to "work" on that. Mostly, I recall the accusation of maybe not being saved, because I gave into fear. As a child, this stuck with me. Simple things called into question your spiritual status every time you would turn around, I would find.

The art of soulwinning often resembled taking a poor "lost" soul on a long guilt trip, a way of taking life's experiences to dress them up, using them as leverage in order to get the potential recruit on the other end of your haggle to be somehow interested in what you were selling, which, of course, was Jesus. Sometimes, it were actual tragedies used to get the person thinking seriously about their soul's condition...

I listened to her weep from where we sat on her living room sofa. For awhile, we all listened intently to this middle aged mother speak of her late son. A couple of months earlier he had been a victim of a car accident and his loss had devastated his family, she said. Awkwardly, I struggled to understand how to respond. At eight years old, death hadn't yet touched my family in a similar way. I wasn't sure I knew how to react, so I just continued to sit there quietly.

"Ma'am, I can clearly see you miss your boy...do you know if he was ever saved?" A man in our group asks, prompting this grieving mother to hesitate, before she confides that as a family they rarely visited church. "Well, if your son never received Christ as his personal Savior, I'm sorry to say he is in hell this very minute. The Bible is very clear on that." This young man's mother suddenly looks stricken and begins to sob, shaking her head even as our small group's leader goes on. "I have a question for you. If you died tonight, do you know where you'd go? Your son, if he wasn't born again, and by what you shared that you rarely brought him to church, it's very possible he never heard the Gospel clearly and is not in heaven today. He would want you to be sure. You know what he would tell you if he could? He would say, don't come here, Mom. Hell is real. I don't want you to know that for yourself, too. Don't end up in this awful place." The tears continued. I've never forgotten that poor woman.

Sometimes it was pointing out to the sinner how sinful they actually were and yelling "You're going to bust hell wide open!" after they tossed a gospel tract with a gruesome depiction of hell on its cover to the ground and walked away. I mean, I would think if you tell a person they're going to burn eternally it probably would be met with some resistance, you know? I can imagine hearing I was going to bust hell wide open by a complete stranger who knew nothing about me would warrant a similar result. Just my feelings.

As a fundamentalist child, I heard this screamed at me since birth. It would rain down from a fiery sermon. Men of God with faces blood red would yell down from the pulpit how wretched and worthless the people in the pews were and how we deserved hell. We needed to be broken to truly be repentant. Christian love demanded it. Apparently, God did, too. Sitting in my pew, I would find myself worried I didn't repent enough even though I had been saved for years. As Independent Baptists, we constantly heard that God gives Christians assurance of salvation. Too often, it was the man of God screaming that would steal it from us. The fear was real that we didn't "know that we know, that we know."

Watching that fear tear people I knew and saw numerous times a week apart, I was left more with resentment rather than the shared emotion of fearfulness. Resentment not to those who were terrified for their souls, but towards those that screamed that they hadn't repented fully and made them believe such in the first place. I truly felt it was unnecessary and was a bully tactic, even though revealing that sentiment could be asking for God's judgment since criticism of a pastor or preacher could warrant such. So, for years that resentment continued to grow and was present during those final days in the movement and gradually I did voice it, regardless of the impending judgment.

The thing was, they were all about salvation when all along so many of us found ourselves needing to be saved from them. We needed advocates to plead our cause, relying on Jesus wasn't doing it. The mind games were unending, our emotions felt like quicksand and were constantly weaponized against our very selves.

The irony for some of us former fundamentalists is that very often we not only witnessed this form of spiritual harassment, experienced it while in-group ourselves, but for some of us, we still experience it.

It's funny to be on the opposite side of the Saved, hearing a point by point take of the Salvation Plan coming right at you. I remember doing the same thing to others; it's surreal. Even more head scratching and difficult to wrap your brain around is that you haven't done anything to warrant this soulwinner trying to win you over but left their church. Five years removed and I continue to receive letters warning me of hell, of never finding "true" happiness, that I'm going to end up ruining my life with drugs, alcohol and sex. That I can even become reprobate, to forever be doomed to a fiery hell. Sometimes, it's being called out publicly on social media by a relative to say how much I need Christ; other times, a tract inscribed to me left in my home's front door. Most astounding is that the people that do this are those that, for fifteen years and then some change, used to attend Soulwinning Saturdays with me. Many were even there when I "got saved" and the same goes for me being present for their Spiritual Birthdays.

I wept tears of joy right along with them when an old sinner turned their life over to God and accepted that free gift of salvation we wholeheartedly believed in as the remedy it was to be. I shouted, sang and testified in the same services. Cried, experiencing those high emotions when God showed up on the scene during revival meetings. I was even called to walk sinners through the steps to be saved after a salvation message was preached and rendered results with the altar filled. We listened to each other share our burdens for our unsaved loved ones and then prayed together that would no longer be the case. It was those sort of things and more, those kinds of memories that I know they also remember that baffle me the most, I think. Often, too, I admit, I battle the urge to reinstate that our salvation experiences are identical. The same. If I'm not in The Fold, than neither are they.

You see, a myth we heard all the time was that those that leave the church were non believers all along. We believed this so much that I remember feeling fear when I crossed paths with a former member in those days, which I suspect was part of the motive behind this stance being so often preached. I try to keep that in mind when this happens. In many ways, I've been in their shoes and I remember the burdens walking in them caused.

I left a church. An abusive church. I don't need saving, I need healing. And the gift I received is the gift of second chances to do just that. On the outside of fundamentalism, there's hope. It may be a different interpretation than that of my former fundamentalist self, but it's the kind of hope that I don't mind sharing with others. If you've experienced a hurtful faith, this is genuinely good news. And like an act of kindness, I aim to pass it on.


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