Shunning is NOT Loving
"The silence that followed my departure was not peaceful. It was charged, heavy with judgment. Leaving was not a clean break, but a painful disentanglement marked by avoidance and quiet rejection.
"Once, at a grocery store, I encountered a former friend from church, someone I had shared years of worship with. As I approached her, her expression tightened. She turned away abruptly, feigning interest in a shelf of canned goods. The message was unmistakable. I was no longer welcome.
"That moment stayed with me. It revealed how rigid and unforgiving the boundaries of that community would be." - Ashley Cooley, Holy Enough Until I Wasn’t: A Faith Deconstruction Journey
The deafening silence of leaving.
Controlling Christian assemblies share the very un-Christ-like attribute of shunning/ignoring people they claim to love.
It's a group think conditioned response. Many of us know this to be true because we inflicted the silent treatment on those we had once called brother and sister before they left..... sometimes the very day before they left.
It's not a natural human loving response
Same. You and Derrick were the only ones who would fellowship with us after departure. Chris Barnes, Kekoa Fotu, Emmanuel Darnell, Jaime Rodriguez, Joseph Fryar, all of the “ministers” and their spouses froze us out. It didn’t bother me that much because I expected the reaction. Forgiveness aside, this makes it difficult for me to care about their plight as they too depart from that hateful, abusive and manipulative organization.