When I was in middle school I had a t shirt with the three monkeys representing the philosophy of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” on the front. You’ve probably seen them at some point in your life. They’re three little monkeys sitting next to one another. One has its hands over its eyes, another has its hands over its ears, and the last one has its hands covering its mouth. I’m guessing my pastor, Fletcher Brothers, wasn’t aware of the Buddhist roots these little monkeys grew from…because if he had, I’m positive I wouldn’t have been allowed to keep that shirt. Looking back though, it’s amusing to notice how evangelical culture copied this philosophy, added a bit more fear to it, and made it a “Christian” philosophy.
“Oh be careful little eyes what you see, oh be careful little ears what you hear…for your Father up above is looking down in love, oh be careful little mouth what you say.”
I do appreciate how this children’s Sunday School song includes “in love” as it describes how God is looking down on us, but this song always felt heavy and foreboding to me when I was little. I knew from a very young age that if I looked at evil, listened to evil, or spoke evil, God would be displeased with me. I never really believed in Santa Claus, but my God was not all that different from a mythological good guy who rewards right behavior with blessings and punishes wrong behavior with consequences. But the potential consequence with this God wasn’t finding coal in my stocking one morning…it was eternity in hell. Songs like “Oh be careful” only reinforced this let-me-save-you-or-else-I’ll-kill-you theology that is still so disturbingly present in Christian culture.
God was always watching, and He knew everything I did. He saw what I watched on tv, He heard the music I listened to, and He kept records of every word I had ever said. But unlike Santa, God wasn’t only aware of my naughty or nice actions…He also knew every thought in my mind! So in addition to the three little monkeys constantly keeping me in line morally, I had another monkey that probably looked a lot like the mind-blown emoji…”think no evil.” Quite the task.
I don’t know why I cared so much about everything I was taught. I really, really believed. Even as a small child, I wanted to do whatever I could to be good. If this meant controlling my actions so God would be pleased with me, I was all about it. I didn’t watch any unapproved television. I didn’t listen to any unapproved music. I never swore or disrespected authority. I learned through tons of positive reinforcement that doing what you’re told gets you pretty far in the eyes of authority figures. I wanted to be good in every way. In fact, looking back now I can see how obsessed I became with being good at things. I didn’t ever want to be better than other people, though. It wasn’t about that. I just wanted to measure up and be good and acceptable to God. I didn’t want to be evil, because I knew that God hated evil. My biggest fear was being something that God hated. Because in the end, God was going to send whatever (whoever) he hated to hell.
Hm, so I guess we just discovered together why I cared so much about all of this. I didn’t want to burn in hell. I was going to separate myself so far from anything that was evil so that there could be no chance of hell for me. It’s unfortunate then, that the culture I happened to be saturated in was a late 80’s/early 90’s evangelical, fundamentalist, ultra-conservative one. Believe me, a lot was considered evil. There was so much to separate myself from. Yet despite the sheer enormity of the task that lay ahead of me of “avoiding all the evil, all the time”…don’t look, don’t listen, don’t speak, don’t think…I was totally determined. I would live the cleanest life if it would guarantee favor with God.
I was pretty great at avoiding evil, actually. I was proud to say that I had never tasted alcohol, smoked any substance or said a curse word. By the way…if you haven’t already read my first blog from 2018, I’d really recommend that you go back and read those chapters before reading these ones! Everything will make much more sense! You can find them by going to the website menu and clicking on “storytelling.” Scroll all the way down and start in Chapter 1 🙂 Anyway, by the time I got into my teenage years I wasn’t just avoiding actions and beliefs as potentially evil, I was also beginning to believe that people could be evil. And remember, in my heart I had given Fletcher Brothers the utmost spiritual authority in my life. He was the man of God, he was the shepherd of this ministry, and I believed everything he told me. Without question.
And he told me that a lot of people were evil.
Narcissists tend to have persecution complexes. When you add that to their tendency to be extremely persuasive and convincing…it’s a deadly combination. I feared anyone who seemed to oppose my pastor. I believed they were evil and trying to stop his ministry. You wouldn’t believe how long his list of enemies was/still is. I was convinced that certain people had the capability to destroy Fletcher’s ministry and that terrified me. See, Fletcher had successfully linked his persecution complex (a repressed need for safety and meaning) to his followers’ need for safety and meaning.
If I believed my leader was in danger, I also believed my place within the will of God -Freedom Village- was in danger. This was enough for me to kick into “avoid evil” mode and disconnect myself, with disturbing ease, from whoever my pastor opposed. I mean, a disciple resembles their teacher, right? Whoever he rejected, I rejected. Even when that ended up being my closest friends.
I can think of three very close friendships that I myself severed while at Freedom Village. I had an awesome friendship with a program girl turned staff member named Angelina when I was between the ages of 17-19. I appreciated so much about her and believed that we would probably both work in full-time ministry at the village for the rest of our lives. That was not the case. Angelina left in a way that many people did who feared Fletcher’s wrath. One day she was just gone. I won’t tell her story; those details are hers to share. But this experience mirrored so many losses of friendship for me. My heart searched for meaning and believed the lie that the reason this always happened was because evil was trying to thwart this ministry. The sudden departure of people who I considered to be my closest friends was really God purging the ministry of evil.
Once Angelina was gone, the lies began from Fletcher’s mouth. She was evil. She was a backslider, living in sin. She was a traitor. She was never who I thought she was. We were all better off without her in this ministry. And I believed it all. Isn’t it fascinating how influenceable we all are? We are all constantly swimming in a sea of truth and lies, unaware of which is which. It’s not our fault that we can’t discern…it’s simply our starting point. We are designed to go from blindness to sight, from darkness to light. Lies dwell in the darkness, where they can remain unseen. Anyone who truly believes they could never be mentally manipulated like I was, is already deceived.
Liars don’t seem like liars if they’re good liars. I would know…not just because I was deceived by one of the best liars, but also because I became a pretty skilled liar myself. I lied to other people almost as much as I lied to myself. I believed that Angelina was never my friend. She wasn’t safe to talk to, listen to, or be around.
I don’t have the time to tell you every true story that involves me disconnecting from people who I believed to be evil. But rest assured that they’re all really the same. Another sweet friend left on “bad terms” when I was around 20-21 years old. She left the ministry without warning and I found out about the scandal the next day. I remember being in shock and initially texting her a panicked paragraph pleading with her to talk to me. I told her that if she did talk to me, I wouldn’t tell anyone. I just needed to hear why she had left, from her own mouth. Sadly, I think that even if she had confided in me, I would have told everyone. Later on that day I got word that Fletcher -Pastor- wanted to see me in his office. One of his cronies was sent to me while I was at work in the schoolroom to intimidate me by asking “have you spoken to her since she left?” I immediately lied and said no. “Pastor wants to see you in his office after lunch.”
Cue heart attack.
I remember being sickeningly convinced that Fletcher had magically already gotten a hold of my cell phone records and discovered not only that I had indeed talked to her…but that I also had lied to him. I went home for lunch and spent the whole time researching whether or not civilians could obtain cell phone records and if they could, could they see the actual text messages sent?? I concluded that it appears you can find records of who you texted, but not necessarily what you texted. I figured, if Fletcher already knew I texted her…which, looking back now I realize he obviously couldn’t have known…he most likely didn’t know what I said to her. I didn’t want him knowing that I told her she could trust me.
So I went to my meeting with Pastor and he asked me if I was aware that my friend had left on “bad terms.” I told the truth and said “yes.” He asked me if I had reached out to her after I knew she had left on bad terms. The truth…”yes.” He asked me what I had said to her. I took a rare leap of faith and lied to him, hoping that he hadn’t already seen my text messages.
“I did text her, but only to tell her to come back. I told her that nothing is worth leaving God’s will for. I was only reaching out to her to tell her that she needs to come back.”
I had carefully constructed a pretty good lie. And he believed it. I successfully made myself appear “good” and he fell for it. He said something to me about how I was a good kid, and he knew I was trying to do what was right. However, I needed to cut her off. She had made her choice, and it was better for the ministry that she was gone. Less dead weight. The message was clear…I wasn’t in trouble, but I would be if I tried to connect to her again. I obediently and eagerly deleted her contact information from my phone. I felt like I had dodged a bullet. Look at what almost happened because I was interacting with evil! I had almost lost the blessing of my pastor. I didn’t speak to her again until after we left Freedom Village, almost 5 years later.
A similar thing happened with a fellow staff kid, named Jaci, who was my best friend throughout middle school and high school. When Mike and I got engaged in 2006, I chose her to be one of my bridesmaids. I couldn’t imagine my wedding day without her there…we had been through so much together. And yet. At some point in our engagement, Jaci’s parents started to butt heads with Fletcher. Things moved pretty quickly and to my horror -and my friends’- their family decided to leave the ministry. As soon as the decision was final, I knew she couldn’t be in my wedding. It wouldn’t work. I’m disturbed looking back at how easily I decided she would no longer be my bridesmaid. By that time in my life I was so used to this process. Connect, love, leave, disconnect.
Jaci is one of the friends I believe I hurt the most. I betrayed her, because I believed her parents betrayed the ministry. That first staff meeting once they had left consisted of Fletcher telling us all how much of a “Judas” they all were. How God had been revealing to him all along who the ones were in the ministry that needed to go, and Jaci’s family was top of the list. Once again, I believed to the core of my being that this was all God’s will, and we were all better off without them. They were lost in evil. The ultimate betrayal in this story was on my end. Not only did I exclude my best friend from being a bridesmaid in my wedding…I disinvited her whole family from it. I told her it would be better for everyone if they didn’t come at all. Needless to say, when I emerged from the fog of lies that was Freedom Village, Jaci was one of the first people who I reached out to and asked forgiveness from.
Turns out…she wasn’t evil. None of my friends were evil. But even if they were…I’ve now learned a truth that completely contradicts a very core belief from my childhood. (I’m used to this by now!) The way of Christ is not to avoid evil. His way is not to remove himself from all things evil…if it was, well, there would be no Christ at all because it is the very nature of the Christ to immerse himself in a fallen world of evil. Christ embraces, never avoids. Christ’s way is not ever to look away, tune out or disconnect. Do you know why? Because the God revealed in Christ is perfect love, and perfect love is the opposite of fear. In fact, perfect casts out fear. You can’t have both. You can’t love something purely and also turn away from it. No, the way of Christ does not command us to “see no evil, speak no evil, fear no evil.” Rather, the compelling invitation of this God is forever and always
“Fear no evil.”
So why then did a man who claimed to love God spend his whole life teaching us to fear evil? Fletcher Brothers is a man afraid of evil. It’s such a simple truth, but the implications of that truth are incredibly complex. I believe at some point in his life, perhaps even the very beginning, Fletcher began to strive to love God. But striving does not belong in Love’s realm. It produces obviously-bad fruit. In all of Fletcher’s attempts to avoid all evil, he caused massive amounts of harm. I sincerely wonder which God he was praying to all of those years, because the God I know now is one who comes close to anyone under the influence of evil. This God of light has no problem coexisting with the darkness, because even the darkness is light to them. Love cannot be afraid.
And good thing! It is this absence of fear that allows God to reach in to our very filth, to pierce into the deepest, darkest night of the soul, and lead us out of hell itself. You don’t rescue something you’re afraid of. God avoids nothing because God fears nothing. Somehow I have begun to take on the nature of this God, because I find myself detached from detachment itself. Woah! How else can you explain loving a supposed enemy? How else can I feel true empathy for Fletcher Brothers? Because I know how it feels to believe what he believes. It feels like hell. Resisting love is hell.
Here’s a part of my continuous theory as to why Fletcher Brothers is the way he is. Have you ever heard of “The Great Commission?” If you haven’t, here is a crash course. The term comes from a passage of Scripture where Jesus is documented telling his disciples to “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” This command is a pretty central piece of the evangelical Christian culture puzzle. Growing up in this culture, it’s blindly assumed that God himself must have named this passage The Great Commission. Turns out it was a human who did this. Some scholars believe that it was Baron Justinian von Welz, a 17th century Lutheran nobleman who argued that this was a command given to all Christ-followers, not just the specific followers the text record Jesus speaking to.
At the usual heretical risk…I’m going to oppose Mr. von Welz, and suggest that perhaps THE greatest commission given by this Christ-man was not “go,” but rather, “come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
If you truly believe that God wants to use you more than heal you, you will resist the love of God until you feel you’ve done enough to earn it. Fletcher’s main goal was to reach the most lost souls. Missions. Being a faithful servant. And when the stakes are so high that you could be rejected by God and sent to hell if you don’t go enough or do enough…you will strive hard to serve the most. But here’s the thing I have discovered…We aren’t meant to give. We are meant to receive. We don’t love God first…we can only love when we realize we were loved first. God does not send us away to do some kind of necessary work. The God of love invites us to come, not go. And when we do come before this Christ…we are not to serve him. We are to let him serve us. What!! Heresy? I’m starting to think not.
This God I have encountered is one who wants to wash my feet. This God takes on my brokenness and mends it all. This God does not avoid the mess that is me, tainted by the evil I have been exposed to and influenced by. This God is not offended by sin, because this God is perfect love and love does not hold offense. This is not a God of punishment, because love does not keep record of wrong. This God fears no evil and delivers me from my fear of evil.
It’s obvious that Fletcher never knew this God, for if he had, he would have resembled it. He is too busy serving to allow himself to be served. It takes much more humility to allow God to wash your feet than it does to get out into the world and “do great things” for God. Striving is fear-based. I understand now that a life of true service to others only begins when you accept love yourself. In my faith these days, I stay spiritually planted in one place: submitted to the healing hand of the God of love. I don’t give this God anything…what could I possibly offer a God who lacks nothing? Accuse me of “making the gospel all about me” if you want, but I believe God descended to our level to seek and save those who were lost. I was lost, now I’m found. I was sick, now I am being healed. I was filthy, now I am being washed clean. God did all of this, for me, while I was still in sin and believing lies. So I just keep seeking love from its source, and receiving it when I find it. And now that I know where to look, I find it every time.
And the more I lean into this God, the more my heart changes toward my fellow humans. I’m receiving the heart of God and I know it because I want to lean in now, instead of backing away. I desire unity -even with my enemy!!- instead of division. Perhaps the flames of the hell that torments Fletcher to this day will prove at last restorative and his fear will be burned away. So much healing is needed, because so much damage has been done.
And so I choose to pray for this man I once called my enemy. He is lost, he is blind, but he is not alone. The God I know serves him still…offering the kind of cleansing, healing love which nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing can separate us from. Evil cannot separate us from goodness. Lies cannot erase truth. Darkness can not overcome the light. There will never be more sin than grace. There is nothing left to fear.
Until next time… 🙂