The Children of Tyranny (Chapter 1)
She's 84 now. She was 62 when it
happened. It's been almost 22 years since I've been in
her home.
I went there recently to break the silence, to ask her forgiveness, to comfort her as best I could for all the years I participated in the ceremonial shunning.
And as I've looked back, it's all been so futile, this shunning thing demanded by our church leaders, on a poor man and his wife. The "marking" as we called it was supposed to discipline and shame them into submitting to a church leadership they felt they could no longer follow. Instead, by doing it, we drove them away and made it impossible for them to come back.
But the saddest, most despicable thing about it all was that we blamed them for the "marking" when, in reality, we were as much to blame as they. And because we blamed them, we absolved ourselves of any guilt like Pontius Pilate when he washed his hands of the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ. Yet, all the while, Pilate was as guilty as the self-righteous Pharisees, just as we were in shunning my dear mother and father-in-law. And, just as he and the Pharisees did Christ, we placed the blame squarely on my mother and father-in-law and took none to ourselves.
Faultless, we thought of ourselves, back then. Faultless, because we thought we held the keys to the Church and thought that heaven bound what we had bound. And we did bound, whether heaven accepted our bounding or not. It's just that we couldn't loose. And we couldn't loose from bondage those we bound because we just didn't know how. And because of pride, the kind of pride that could not admit that we could possibly have been wrong, ever!
And the years went by and the bonds remained. And we did not lift them because we held the scales of justice and we saw no repentance as we thought it should be from my mother and father-in-law. They could never say enough or say it right and, so, the gulf remained. The "marking" stood for 22 years before I decided that enough is enough and I got in my car and drove to her house and walked to her door and knocked. And when she came to the door, I forgave her and told her I was sorry for inflicting such pain and suffering on her for all these years, and for encouraging her daughters to keep the "marking" and for keeping her grandchildren away from her. And all she could do was weep and say "That's okay! I forgive you, Richard. Come in will you?" And I did.
I pulled the screen door open and stepped inside and hugged her gently for the first time in 22 years. She wept. We both did. It was sad, but it was good also, for a long-standing wall had been removed. And we sat and talked for a long time.
My mother-in-law's name is Mozelle Inman. Her husband we called Buddy.
They were Irish people, hard working, honest, frugal -- part of a large group of Americans that made up the backbone of our great nation. Men and women who answered the call to fight for our freedom and the freedom of mankind in the Great War against the tyranny of a few men, who would rule the world. And, yet, they themselves became the victims of tyranny within the very country from which freedom rang. This tyranny came in the name of God, it took over the pulpit of their little church, it compelled men and women, whom they loved and called their friends, to shun them at the demand of a priesthood who sought nothing less than their total submission.
Because Buddy couldn't do this and tried to leave peacefully, he was declared a contentious dissembler by church leadership and "marked" to be avoided until he either suffered the destruction of his flesh or repented of his rebellion. His wife was included because she would not betray him.
This happened in the spring of 1982. At that time we began to dishonor what God had commanded us to honor. But we complied, obeyed leadership because we were convinced it was our duty to comply, to obey them, as the scriptures taught, "who had the rule" over us. And this, we were convinced, was the leadership that raised itself up from among us over the years. We were constrained from questioning. We dared not lest we also suffer the same fate as Buddy and Mozelle!
Had I to do it again, knowing what I do now, I would have walked way then with Buddy and Mozelle and with my family rather than participate in this tyranny and one day lose my family just as they. But I did not do that. I was still very much blind and zealous to follow a multitude led by a few who were driven by a greed for power and control. And, even I may have been infected by this greed, though I feared it. Yet, I didn't understand it because I was young and it was strong and powerful and I liked the power. Intoxicated, I followed it, yet I didn't trust it at the same time. In time, I came to understand what it was and how it worked in the hands of a few to control and direct us all. And I came to realize that it destroyed, it scattered, it ruined, and it consumed without remorse those who came to oppose it.
And now, I too, am "marked"-- separated from the group to be shunned, avoided by all within the group, even by my own children and grandchildren just as my mother and father-in-law have been all these past 22 years.
It must stop! Somewhere, somehow, the cycle must stop! And the only way I know how to make it stop eventually is to tell of it to others. To warn! To shout aloud! To mark the danger of such abuse so plainly that souls awake and flee before they are sucked into this cauldron of lies, this den of venomous vipers who latch onto men's minds and souls and won't let them go.
This is the beginning of a tale you may not believe, yet, it is true! Many in this tale are truly "born again" believers and there may be some who aren't. The tragedy is that those who ply their deceptive skills to control, to rule over and moderate the lives of those within a church in Joshua, Texas, do so for their own pleasure, for their own purposes, and for their own benefit. And they do it in the name of God. And the control they exert they do so with immense fear and with profound guilt in order to possess men and women who call themselves Christians and demand obedience of them and stand between them as holy mediators through whom everyone must go to reach Christ.
My desire is to hurt no one, to malign no one, only to tell the truth, to expose what is false, what takes away from our service for Jesus Christ who so deserves our love, our affection, our devotion in service to Him and to none other except Him and Him alone because this makes God, our Father, happy.
I have told you some about my mother and father-in-law. They are not the only ones. There is much more. And it only becomes more incredulous.
My father-in-law is now deceased. He died several years ago. He was buried. Three of his sons-in law with his daughters, their children (his grandchildren) refused to attend his funeral for no other reason than he was "marked" by our church leadership and the "marking" had not been lifted. It is for him that I am writing. It is for him that I must attempt to right what is terribly wrong. He was a good man. He loved Christ. We forsook him. And he died forgiving us because in our zeal we knew not what we were doing.
May God forgive us all, as I know He has many times, and grant us the strength to confront this travesty of justice to one of His very own and an elder in His congregation -- a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather whom we refused to honor at the behest of a cruel and self-righteous leadership drunk with a quest for power and control over the souls of men and women and children who seek after the true leader, Jesus Christ.
The story begins in the next episode.
