Imagine losing everything, including the shirt off your back, and having to maintain modesty with a barrel or cardboard box. Then the last thing you want the place you need a loan from to be called is “Forever Brother”. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but loan sharks, baseball bats and cement boots flash through my mind. I’d rather it was called “Friendly service, reasonable terms and you’ll never hear from us again” (sure it’s cumbersome, but it’s so much more reassuring).
I don’t mind “forever” when I’m speaking of my relationship with God, wife, kids, etc. but beyond that I prefer, “Lets take it a year at a time, shall we?”.
“Forever” is the kind of language cults use, and to leave is to risk damnation.
I remember when my wife and I joined a specific ministry early in our marriage and we left because it was an ill-fit. The pastor supervising us described our leaving as committing divorce. Whoa!…Hold your horses pardner…Let’s not turn everything into a blood covenant.
He wasn’t part of a cult, but let’s just say it was on the spectrum, albeit low down.
I looked up some cult scales (which measure the coerciveness of organizations on a scale of 1 to 10): the lower scores involve information control, devotion to the leader and dependence, moving on through coercion and isolation all the way up various forms of abuse and imprisonment. Yikes!
God deliver us from premature, cheap, lazy and cowardly exits but deliver us also from false forevers.
