Property by Carol Christie

Author:Carol Christie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

12

Submission by Force

There were two words we came to dread and fear in our church community under its new leadership: they would be “chastisement” and “correction.” The ways in which these were meted out became more and more alarming.

The first clue I had that our Leader’s volatile temper would make a horrible difference in our lives came on what should have been a routine back-to-school shopping trip during the late summer of my first year living in Guelph. My housemate and I were given permission to travel to Michigan to buy the things our kids needed to return to classes. Days before we were to leave on this day-trip, our Leader decided he would join us.

The day arrived. So did the departure time. We waited. When the minutes had ticked along into hours, we phoned the church Property, and were told He was just leaving. When He finally appeared, my housemate (one of His church wives) innocently remarked that she wondered if He had changed His mind about going, and that we had thought about leaving without Him. Reacting to this, He took her out into the backyard and yelled and screamed uncontrollably at her for even entertaining such thoughts. When they returned, her eyes were wet and red. Needless to say, the stress of it all put quite a damper on what should have been a rather pleasant outing.

This incident was minor-league compared to what was to come. I believe it was about a year after he assumed the leadership that I saw our new Prophet demonstrate physical violence for the first time. We were sitting in church one Sunday when He began to scream at a young member, a boy of about twelve at the time, for being lazy and refusing to help weed the garden at home. You and I could agree that some kind of “lecture” for such a misdeed might be in order, but this rant went way beyond that! Before I knew it, the Prophet was standing over the boy, who happened to be sitting right beside me. Up went the hands, and He slapped this young man twice on the head, so hard I thought the kid would fall off his chair. Everyone gasped, yet beyond that reflex, we dared not show any other reaction for fear that we too would bear the brunt of an outburst.

Over time, I observed that boy, and the rest of his family becoming frequent targets for our Pastor’s rage. Many times during worship, He ordered the mother to get down on her knees on the sanctuary floor. He would then either attack her with His fists and feet, or just as often remove His belt and lash her with it, all within plain view of the rest of us. We later learned there was a motive behind the forceful control of this family unit. What He really wanted, and soon got, was a relationship with the daughter, a girl of about ten. She indeed was in the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.