Does anyone own a DSM IV?

My prayer for today…

“Dear God,

Can you please wake up the church?  It seems much of it is in some sort of trance.  I’m not kidding God.  It’s weird, and frankly pretty creepy.  It’s so hard to explain.  So much of what is happening is blatantly violent and abusive, but so few seem to see it.  I admit,  and repent, that it took me a while to snap out of it, and for a long time I just perpetuated it.  Frankly, sometimes I see myself still buying in to the lies, and if not causing more abuse, giving it permission by doing nothing about it.  But now that I’ve experienced and studied the trauma of such severe abuse, I can’t stop seeing it, and I don’t want to keep causing it.  God please, save your people from our own slumber.  Give us the wisdom and strength that it takes to learn about our own abusive ways, and to spot it in others.  And God…forbid us to keep pretending that we don’t have a serious problem, before our children reap the consequences, and develop even more manipulative tools than we did to keep the fantasy going.”

~ Botolff

This prayer comes as a result of a post that was forwarded to me by a friend…

http://matthewpaulturner.net/jesus-needs-new-pr/mark-driscolls-church-discipline-contract-looking-for-true-repentance-at-mars-hill-church-sign-on-the-dotted-line/

To Andrew and others who find themselves in similar situations, please know that there are people in the Seattle area, and around the country, who are committed to working specifically with faith based folks who have found themselves tied up in abusive institutional structures.  Speaking from experience, there are religious leaders locally, nationally and internationally who say they are guided by Biblical standards, when in all actuality, they are guided far more by their mental illness.  We want to try and help those trying to recover from that kind of leadership.

If you, person of the church, are starting to wake up and willing to risk your own responsibility in the matter, a helpful tool to begin reading is a DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).  Start by reading about NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).  If you need some help interpreting, contact me and I promise to do what I can to help you wade through the professional lingo, and help you become part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.