My own little 20/20 article..

My husband was so excited the other day when he had heard that 20/20 had done a expose about IFB churches. We missed the viewing of it, but we watched the show on YouTube. It is truly scary to think that there are other churches, even worse ones than what we attended. There was a lot of talk about sexual abuse involved. At first I was shocked, but then when I think about the things that were done and that were swept under the rug, why not take it to that next level or so. I am not in any way stating that I was "sexually abused" by anyone. There are several instances where I believe that people were overstepping their bounds as a "elder" or a teen counselor. The church is a very touchy feely church, the Pastor used to always say if you don't like being hugged your in the wrong place. Well for most people the hugs were a sign of warm welcoming and family, but there was this one man, elder in the church (also a deep pocket, allowing these certain few who gave much to the church liberty to do whatever) who whenever I would go to hug him, he would wrap his arms around me in a way where he would either grab my butt or side boob and squeeze as hard as possible, after a few rounds of this and telling my associate pastor and Sunday school teacher that this made me very uncomfortable and nothing being done I just had to make the conscious decision to no longer go near this man. There were also instances of another teenager who would come up behind  myself and another young lady and grab our butts, pinch our butts and poke at our breasts. I immediately told my parents and told the youth pastor and Sunday school teacher, who supposedly pulled the young man aside, however his behaviors never changed, I again had to consciously stay away from him. I was also told each time that I would report these actions that it was probably just me and that I was making something out of nothing, even when there were several of us complaining about the same thing. Another instance of allowing weirdness to happen was the oh so obvious lesbian Teen Counselors. Now, after being involved in a cult that condemns the gay and lesbian community to hell, my views have changed. That is neither here nor there really, but when you are a part of something that is telling you repeatedly over and over again how wrong this one thing is and you have two very obvious lesbians running your youth group ( I will say that after these ladies left the youth group was never ran the same and it immediately went straight down hill) something just doesn't seem right. These ladies were the best of friends and lived in the same house. The girls were always invited over to their house every weekend for one reason or another. Cooking, baking, decorating, swimming, bible study, to watch a movie, I mean you name it, we were there. I recall one time we were having a spend the night party over there and we were trying to get changed for bed. The one teacher said something to a group of us girls who were changing in her bedroom, we were saying something about being comfortable, and she said, "you can walk around in your sport bras or topless here, I don't care. We are all girls". This always struck me as an odd thing to say, but of course us being stupid naive little girls we just laughed it off.

Santa is just another word for Satan right?

Wrong! First I apologize for the length in between my posts, life gets busy sometimes you know. Anywho, back to the topic at hand. One Sunday we recieved, when I was younger, was exactly the title up above. Well, actually I believe it was "Santa is Satan!". Semantics. So in the sermon we were taught how wrong it is to allow your chidren to idolize a man of fiction, whom you write letters too, asking for toys, baking cookies ( this was considered an offering to the idol) and other nonsenical reasons, but that you should teach your children the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Jesus. This last part I do not disagree with in the least, many of my veiws have changed because of the cult, but knowing that Jesus was born of a virgin, died on a cross and rose 3 days later is not one of them, I will believe that forever. But teaching your parishiners that Santa is Satan and that by allowing your children to believe in him is blasphemous and you will surely be sent straight to hell for this. Of course any thing that differed from what was being taught would result in the same ending, eternal damnation!! Because if you were truly saved and a true believer you would not even entertain these ideas! Blech! So another case of do as I say and not as I do, once the associate pastor and his wife had children, guess who they are waiting in bach breaking long lines to sit on a jolly fat man with rosy cheeks and a beautiful red suit to out on the Christmas cards and use as the Facebook profile picture??? Not SATAN, but SANTA!!