Most of us have heard the horror stories over the years about the broken relationships caused by Armstrongism. When you entered the church you were expected to leave the world behind, associate with fellow believers and mark as 'Satan's own' the rest of humanity. We have seen the families in the church ripped apart by its divorce and remarriage doctrines. By parents refusing medical treatment for children causing deaths. The mindless rantings of Rod Meredith that lead one of his parishioners to go on a shooting rampage during church services. And more recently with Gerald Flurry's asinine rantings prohibiting PCG members of having any contact with parents, children, brothers, sisters, and relatives who had left a COG.
Looking back I can see that one of the most effective ways our church controlled people was by controlling their relationships. If a leader could convince the followers that loyalty to the group was actually loyalty to God, then that leader had the ability to control everything about the followers from something as big as personal relationships to something as small as whether or not they shaved.
One way relationships were controlled was by encouraging members to rat on each other. Of course, this was masked in Scriptural language like, “exhort one another to love and good works.” But what it really meant was that there was no confidentiality. This made for guarded friendships, at best. It was simply impossible to build deep, meaningful friendships when I wasn’t sure if my “friend” was going to report on me to my grandparents.
All this violation of personal boundaries was justified by our belief that we were literally responsible for each other’s souls. If we failed to “stand up for God” in the lives of our brethren (aka, get involved in their personal business), we would answer for that at the judgment seat of Christ.
Fear of God, fear of man, fear of eternal repercussions dictated and motivated much of our relational interactions.
From Friendships In High Demand Cultish Groups
