Hi brother Cal,

Please let me say how sorry that I am that you are feeling lonely and disconnected. The Christian life is not meant to be lived this way. Also, your cult story sounds pretty horrific. However, it serves as a great reminder to the rest of us that following a single individual or even a group of people is not the same as following Christ as the Head of the church. What I found very interesting about my most recent experience with the institutional church is that the more I pressed the elders on their beliefs, the more I could hear the voice of the Pope coming through. It was a message that lacked both mercy and grace. Thankfully, by God's unyielding love for me, I was familiar with John 10:27 where Jesus says, "my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me". So when my former church told me that I should leave the fellowship as they were unwilling to open the Scriptures and explain them to me, I knew that what they were telling me was not of God but of man

What for it's worth, I'm continuing to look for true fellowship with like-minded Christians outside of the church system. I have made a few friends, and I'm doing what I can to deepen those connections. My biggest fear at the moment is that as the size of any group grows, the interlopers begin to step in to cause distractions. It seems like anything good eventually takes a turn for the worse. Case in point... there is a YouTube channel that I found a few months ago that had some great content on how the church should conduct itself. Then suddenly last week, the content became all about a nationally recognized ministry and their perceived indiscretions. When I commented on one video about the content seeming rather gossipy, the response was that it was important that Christians not commit the specific sins that were called out in the video. That's all fine and good, but what I don't see is these same content creators calling out sins of their own and confessing them before God. It didn't take me long to realize that this was not a place for me to be. I mean, I get the fact that there is no perfect gathering of believers, but shouldn't we at least be trying to treat each other with mercy, love, and forgiveness rather than tearing each other down?

I am exhausted :-(