Hope all is well with you. I wanted to welcome you to my new blog, and I hope you find as much enjoyment reading it as I have in writing it. I can’t believe I’m finally here, in a place where I can write about my beliefs and my aspirations for life. I’m so super excited for this opportunity. I do have but one request of you and that is, please comment and give me your ideas and perspective on the things I’ve written about. I am open to learning and with your input, that helps me to grow. Now onto the blog, my first post on Have You Evolved Today.

Happy Tuesday,

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about shunning and how some religions practice this policy. You see, it was not too long ago where I was a part of a religion/cult that practices shunning or disfellowshipping, whatever you call it. It is truly the most demeaning and horrific experience a religion could do to someone.

A little glimpse of who I am, or maybe I should say, who I was. I was raised in a high controlling narcissistic religion (my opinion) and when I woke up to their teachings being false in my mind, I was shunned by many, including my mother. My mother hasn’t spoken to me in nearly six years because I no longer believe the way she does. She truly believes that shunning me is a loving provision, because this is what she is taught, and she is so engrossed in it and believes its teachings are absolute, simply because this is what the church tells her.

Mother uses 1 Corinthians 5:11 to back up her decision to shun me. According to the New World Translation, it says, “But now I am writing you to stop keeping company with anyone called a brother who is sexually immoral or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man.”

Nothing about this scripture applies to me, however, because I left the church, I am shunned and since I don’t believe, and I refuse to teach or preach their doctrines most within the religion avoid me as though I were fungus under their toes. One scripture the church uses to justify such policies is 2 John 10,11 where it says, “if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. For the one who says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works.”

My question to this religion would be, how can simply being civil to someone cause them to become a sharer in someone’s wicked works, should they have wicked works that is. Now I know that these people of the religion I left will preach to anyone; however, if you leave the church, you are shunned, sort of seems like a hypocritical stance on things, don’t you think?

According to their Bible, in John 3:16 it says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” I believe in Jesus, I live a morally, clean lifestyle, I just don’t believe the way of this religion, so why am I shunned?

A quote from their literature dated May 2015 in a study article it says this, “All in the congregation show true love to the disfellowshipped person by supporting the discipline that God has given him through the elders. This means that they (family and those in the congregation), should not spend time with him (shunned/disfellowshipped one) or talk to him. Then they say, “We should never make them (the family of the disfellowshipped one) feel that they have also been excluded from the congregation.”

Mother has three adult children and two of the three of us are shunned, my sister has been publicly announced as being disfellowshipped and to date, I have not, at least not to my knowledge, however, since those in the religion know I don’t believe what they believe anymore, I am shunned just like my sister by many, if not most.

I say it doesn’t bother me, but that’s not being 100% totally honest with myself. I mean, I do push those feelings aside and I try not to dwell on them, however, there are times when I see someone or hear of a gathering where people I was close to are at and it hurts my heart knowing that I’m dead to them.

It’s strange to me now, how one day I was loved and accepted, then the next, I don’t even exist anymore. I’ve heard many podcasts and YouTubers talk about their experiences of having their entire family and friendship core ripped right away from them. Many have said that when you leave this religion you must be prepared to have your entire world turned upside down and so true those statements are. To personally experience the shunning practice and to know others who are shunned, this policy is horrific and not even close to being a loving provision, it’s more of a fear tactic to keep members of a cult/religion in line.

According to https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-shunning.html, it says this. “Although shunning is related to excommunication, the two practices are not synonymous. To be excommunicated is to lose one’s membership rights in a church; the excommunicated person may no longer vote in the church, teach a class, etc. Shunning goes beyond excommunication: to be shunned is to be denied personal interaction with members even in social, non-ecclesiastical settings. It is possible to be excommunicated without being shunned. While shunning may connote legalistic tendencies, and shunning can be misused in spiritual manipulation, there is a proper place for breaking an association. ” The article then goes onto say this regarding what is often a misused scripture, one taken out of context by certain cults/religions, it’s the scripture found at 1 Corinthians 5:11. The writer of the article makes sense of Paul’s admonition to “not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.”

What does this mean, what is the opinion of gotquestions.org? Well, I love this interpretation, where it says, “in this context, Paul is dealing with a man involved in gross immorality” (verse 1) “the command is to excommunicate the man for his own spiritual good (verses 2 and 5), and for the church’s own purity (verse 6). The apostles counsel to ‘not even eat’ with the man is based on two things: the man claims to be a Christian, and he is consistently involved in public, unrepentant sin (verse 11). After excommunication of such a person, the church must be careful not to give the impression that everything is all right. As long as an unrepentant sinner claims to be a child of God, he can have no real fellowship with the body of Christ.”

So based upon this interpretation, it’s not telling parents, or relatives or even those within the church to not have contact with someone, especially a family member, what its saying is, keep the congregation clean by not having this person participate in certain things. Nowhere does it say if your child doesn’t believe the way you do anymore, SHUN them.

I remember years back, a good friend of mine went through a divorce with her “elder” husband. She was disfellowshipped and her youngest daughter was also disfellowshipped because she had premarital sex and got pregnant. This young 18-year-old girl couldn’t live with her mom because mom was left with nothing and was barely able to live on her own, and her dad wouldn’t allow her to live with him because she was unclean, she was disfellowshipped. This young girl knew no other life, so she fought to get reinstated so she could have her family and friends back. She would attend church meetings, but nobody would speak to her, not even her dad. Here this young girl was trying to get back to the “faith”, but she was doing it alone, even though she was attending the same congregation as her dad.

It was one night service and this girl’s baby was super fussy, the baby had colic, and anyone who knows anything about newborns, they need their homes in the evening time. They need their bed, and they need to be soothed, especially when they suffer from colic. Well, the baby was crying, didn’t want her bottle, her pacifier or anything else, she just needed to be soothed and cuddled. The girl took the baby to the nursing lounge, and she was nearly in tears. I knew this young mother since she was five years old, so I went up to her, which was against church policy and asked if I could take the baby and hold her. She gave her to me and said,” you could get in big trouble for this.” I told her I didn’t care and told her to go out to the main hall area and relax and just listen to the services.

I sat with this newborn baby in the nursing mothers lounge, cuddled her up tight in her blanket and soothed her belly.

After the church service, the young mother came and took the baby from me and left the church. People weren’t allowed to speak to her, so what other option did she have but to leave, so that’s what she did, and she was right, I was approached by a couple of elders, and they asked to speak to me and my husband at the time in the “back room.” My husband was quite upset with me and as I sat there hearing how this 18-year-old was a “gross sinner,” my mind wondered to how unloving these men were. When they were done with their lecture and tossing what they called supportive scriptures at me, they asked, “are you sorry for speaking to so-in-so? “Nope, I am not I,” replied. I then said, “if nobody helps her, do you expect her to continue coming? She’s 18, she made a mistake, she’s paying a high price for this mistake and if you want her to continue coming to meetings, then she needs help.”

Their teeth nearly hit the floor all while asking me to wait outside so they could deliberate. As I walked out the door, my husband said to me, “great, now you’ll probably be disfellowshipped for your attitude and for helping her.” I told him I quite frankly didn’t care. We were called back into the “back room”, and I was disciplined by being told I couldn’t participate in commenting anymore, nor could I do anything spiritual within the congregation, since I wasn’t willing to not help this young mother. Basically, I was privately reproved for my abhorrent actions to not honor the shunning policy. They did say I could continue to help her, but I wasn’t allowed to speak to her. “Whatever!”

The young mother, after about a year was reinstated in the congregation and shortly after that I was told I could participate again. My privileges were given back to me, but I never used them again. I’ll share more about that in future blog.

The shunning policy that some religions/cults adhere to is cruel and, in most cases, an excessive amount of punishment. The church I left or escaped from, would instill the shunning/disfellowshipping policy for a minimum of a year. Can you imagine going to church and not having anyone speak to you for a year or more? Can you imagine having your family indoctrinated in a cult/religion where they don’t speak to you or speak to you so minimally that you feel isolated from everyone and everything. You see, the religion/cult I left also had the rule if you were disfellowshipped and you were trying to come back to their teachings/faith, then you couldn’t even associate with anyone outside the religion. Imagine, your family wont’ speaks to you, and you can’t have friends with anyone outside the faith, how cruel that punishment of being shunned is.

Well guys, that’s about all I have for today. If you want more content, check out my podcast at: https://anchor.fm/hyet