Memories of MY Generation: Cults, Past Hurts and How We Should React as a Church

I come from a generation where there was such a deep darkness enveloping the land, from the West to the East. It was a generation when David Koresh arose, took captives with him, and died fighting for the "truth" that he was OUR "risen lord." It was the same generation wherein the Aum Shinri Kyo had arisen and gassed people in Japan, where Jagad Guru led many astray in IBC-13, and Judiel Narvasa claimed to see Mary the "queen mother" in Agoo.

Judiel Narvasa is now a lady. And he was a boy. *smirk*

My generation was ushered in by protests, by pomp and revelry, and by sexual immorality that reached to high heavens. My generation saw the last of Flying House and Superbook on free tv. My generation was probably the last of those who wondered if there was still a God.

Today's kids... Are pure of heart. They see something "good," they embrace it. They see something the rest of the crowds gather around, they like it, they copy it, they go do it, now they breathe it.

But tracing back to the generations of my fathers, I... I saw that something malevolent was at work. Aum Shinri Kyo did not rise from some abyss, only to be forgotten. Jagad Guru did not have an origin, and surely, those we think are God's sons... They were not placed there randomly just because God is a sick child longing for attention and He just liked to mess up our lives.

As I was resting from church and religion in the past two days (praise God for vacations!), I was reading up on random theology stuff... One of my passions, as you would notice. I bumped into this church that was related to someone I know.

I had held the notion that whoever puts up a church, the generations after it would have some of the spirit, if not all the spirit of the one who put it up. I realized this and held onto this notion months back, when I would agonize how much MY church is still so much like the church it used to be, in some pockets of OUR society. We don't mean to be like this, but it's just a sick residue of the past. Thankfully, the Lord is doing a new thing in our midst, and changes are rapidly happening, and to echo MorningStar Ministries' song, "There's a New Generation rising up."

Anyway, as I read up on that church and blanched on how uncannily the same abuse its (false) "apostle" had committed happened to a very dear friend of mine, I fully realized that the notion I had been holding onto, that whatever we start: church, discipleship, etc., who we are goes into that person or church we put up.

Reading the stuff I read gave me a mixture of revulsion and a notion of "Help! Are WE prepared?" and "Oh man. Does MY generation even remember the Fatima 'prophecies?!'"

To be honest, if you are from Victory and you have notions of reaching the lost, ask yourself: "Are you prepared to handle a person who has been hurt by mindsets that had crippled his or her life? Are you prepared to be Jesus' donkey in ushering HIM in to his/her life?"

Too often, we at Victory tend to be pressured by the "Go and make disciples" credo that even before we are free of our own chains, we already want to go out and disciple the world. But are we ready to handle the victimized, the robbed, the weary, and the bereft?!

Me, I am seriously not.

We are looking at a mass of people who had been raped by corrupt priests, robbed by pastors who felt entitled to God's "provision," and abused and battered by mindsets that bring death. Are we equipped?

And yet, even though we are not as equipped to the level that we should be, there is definitely no reason to shirk from the task that is ahead of us.

I believe that there is only one way to handle this bruised, bleeding, and weary crowd: Focus our eyes on Jesus!

On the practical level, that translates to being a leader who:

• Practices what he preaches.
• Serves, and not imposes himself on others to be served.

The previous generations before us were grieved by pastors, priests and preachers who preached that we should give and give to God, but lived lives of opulence on the people's money. They were also grieved by pastors who committed extramarital affairs, and even raped the members of their own congregations. Of late, these apostate preachers have relentlessly been exposed and removed from power, but the people... Most of them were left too hurt to want God anymore. Some became atheists, and some... Bitter creatures who would only spill bile on others.

I believe that the pastor should be allowed to be free to actually serve God. I like Victory's system of checks and balances, and removing the pastor's support from the tithes, but making them go out and actually solicit for support. The only sad part is on their part: when their supporters fall on hard times, their finances would suffer too.

I am on the guilty end here. I have been remiss on my duties to my pastors, and God is convicting me to focus, to streamline my energies, and to actually do restitution to the pastors to whom I had reneged on my agreements. My mother may not like it, but God would not like it all the more if I keep being unfaithful to His people. I only pray for an opening up of MY coffers, so that I will keep myself faithful to those I had promised to provide for. (While also paying my debts and saving up in case my parents get sick too. :p)

These realizations also opened my eyes to the fact that I should raise money on my own. My future husband and I are gearing up to be church planters, and he's going to be a pastor, so we cannot afford to make the same mistakes that the men before us had committed. Already, I am on the lookout for signs of greed, pride, and what-not on his part, and I am the first to rebuke him when this happens. His family had been grieved before by a pastor (from another church) who had taken his brother's equipment, feeling entitled to the "donation." I don't want us, as a family, to hurt others with this same sin, so I am already praying for strategies to amass legal wealth that would sustain us without needing to ask for ministry support.

I am thankful that my parents taught me to be financially independent. So now I see the value of this lesson to my future. I pray that my generation, especially my generation of future pastors and pastors' wives, would see the value of learning to work with their own skills, and the value of the time it would take to prepare for their ministry, so as not to grieve the people who do not understand the concept of giving and Jesus' returns.

Thankfully, I am currently rising up from the things I needed to unlearn: spending as if today is my last, spending my time as if I had eternities on earth (I don't), and thinking like a teenager still and living for myself. There are days when I actually need to make a decision to not go to parties or get togethers because they would actually hurt my budget, then I pray for circumstances to agree with me (sorry, Grav peeps, we do need to grow up).

Sometimes I slip and I treat myself to a good meal and stuff, because there were times when I was deprived for so long, but then, lately, I discovered that my cooking was so much more delicious than KFC, so sorry na lang KFC and Pizza Hut, I'm sticking to eating my monggo-rice and delicious menu. :)

All this is in preparation for the role I am about to fill. While my fiance is still in his season of waiting on the Lord and amassing his own finances so he can earn more, I will be working to get out of debt and to set up the system wherein I would be in a position to give more, aside from living in comfort on my own money.

Pastor Robert Hern was so right when he said that we must be people who "walk the talk" (paraphrased): people who live their lives in purity and holiness, living what they are teaching. Unless we be like that, we will never be able to help Jesus bind up the brokenhearted. Instead, we will only be functioning the way our forefathers functioned: with the tendency to wait on other people for provision, thus dancing with the possibility that we abuse them.

If you ask me, is it hard to live without the things I used to take comfort in?

I would be the first to tell you: yes.

I live in a house of 4 men. No longer rat-infested because my landlord cleaned the place up, heheh. In this house, two of these guys smoke. I do not see them, but sometimes I do feel the urge to want to smoke, even though I've lived without smoking for quite a while. The only way I battle the urge is to remember how red my face was while I was still smoking, and how confused and dark my brain was when I would be high on nicotine.

If you ask me is it hard living without seeing my fiance, I would be the first to scream, YES.

The last time I saw him was when I stayed in his place on my 23rd birthday: May 15, 2007, I believe. It's been a year, and if you ask us if we miss each other, we would scream, YES.

He's grown prettier, and I've grown prettier, and I'm excited to get married already. But the fact remains that we have to wait on the Lord for our marriage to happen, because if we take things by force: having sex before we do, living together before God moves my fiance's mountains, these acts would only cut us off from God's promised land for us.

My mom sometimes fears that I am still the same old Lorie: profligate, promiscuous, hard of heart. To be honest, hard of heart, yes. I'm still Ruthless Lorie sometimes. Sometimes I care more for the principle rather than the person the principle is supposed to serve.

There was this time when my mom was texting me the entire night, and I only got to answer in the morning, and she was fearing that I was with another man, sleeping around, and I was like, "WHAT ON EARTH?!" I think I was with a girl friend that time or was just asleep in my room or something. I cannot blame her for her fears. I had my mottled past, and my generation is so dead guilty of being a generation of unrepentant Women by the Well (the Samaritan woman guilty of a profligate lifestyle). I cannot blame her if she thinks that I am like the other women before me: all heart and who are only more than willing to say "yes" to sin in the name of "love." (horrid, really).

Thankfully, God is such a jealous God that He will not allow that to happen to His daughters. Thankfully, my season of being in the wilderness was there to teach me, and not for me to keep living. Thankfully, miracles still exist, and I know He will be there to guard and guide me, even if my parents may think otherwise. I may buck under human control, but it's only because I am painfully aware that Jesus has other plans for me and I have to work on the paradigm that HE has set, and not any other's.

I firmly believe in accountability, and I firmly believe that we should be kept in check, or else pride may rule us. But I also firmly believe that Jesus is the head of every person, and that the true essence of wisdom is knowing the rules enough to know when to make exceptions.

Back to my litany on how to deal with the generation of broken hearts.

Walk the talk: Keep tethered to the Lord and have people keep you in check. Keep your life pure and blameless, but do it by living on His grace, and you do it out of love for Him.

Focus on living for Jesus, and not for man, not for self.


Serve instead of expecting to be served: Recognize every opportunity to serve the Lord and always take the stance of being ready to pull up a chair, give up a seat, pass the food to someone else first, etc.

I still have to unlearn my brattiness, which is the portion of the only child, and living under "relative deprivation." My generation was fed with notions of wanting more and more, and we forgot to be content with sunsets and flowers.

I was very fortunate, and well-provided for, but I wanted more, and this had created a serious breach in my personhood. Slowly, Jesus is healing me in this department.

I am, by no means, perfect. I am still in the process of being perfected, so don't expect me to be. I may be angry Lorie, ruthless Lorie, I may promise to show up at a reunion one day, but then realize that my budget is so gonna be killed if I do, and that I have a monumental task ahead of me (four commissioned articles and at least five blogs to revive, and a few more to set up. Oh man.), but life goes on, right?

I may want to take a rest from church and be given two weeks to run around and do whatever I feel like, but that doesn't make me any less of a Christian. :p

It's not about religion, cults, legalism, folks, it's about LOVE. Wanting Jesus so bad that you would take a break from the things that kill your passion for Him. Wanting to stay sane in this insane world by taking breaks and making sure that your body and mind are rested, so you beg off some activities. Wanting Jesus' purposes to be realized in your life so desperately that you would actually push everyone else's agenda aside.

And that, to me, is a satisfied life.



So this brings me to the answer to how we bind up MY broken generation (ugh, sorry, this hurts):

Love the needy enough to get them on their feet and strong enough to look to JESUS.