A comment from the "Is it possible to have a true friendship with another in the Church of God?"
- I was in LCG for years and had so many friends. I threw baby showers, bridal showers, cocktail parties, bbq's and endless dinner parties for my "friends". We traveled the world together, shared condos for the Feast of Tabernacles, went through pregnancies/births together and spent all of our social lives with one another (it is frowned upon in LCG to have friends that aren't in the church).
For me, it was all gone in a spit second. These people, who I thought genuinely loved and cared about me, turned their backs on me as soon as I was no longer in LCG. I was de-friended by people with reckless abandon (it sounds trite but it was hurtful). I would reach out to people and they would refuse to reply to my messages. I was shunned repeatedly when I'd run into long-time LCG friends in public. Suddenly, all these supposed "Christians" who were my "brothers and sisters" regarded me with more disgust than their superior asses view the "people in the world".
To this day, I can not conceive of how they twist things in their infantile minds to think that what they did to me was in any way "Christ-like". I mean seriously, can you imagine our Savior advocating such disgusting behavior? No way!
If you are reading this and you are in LCG you are no exception. If you leave you will lose all of your friends. You see, the relationships are CONDITIONAL. People in these churches appear to be incapable of grasping the concept of unconditional love (let alone mercy or forgiveness). If you are telling yourself, "nah, that would never happen to ME" you are so deceived. It would happen to you as it happened to me and many, many others.
My favorites were the "friends" that replied, "I want to be a pillar in the Kingdom so I love you, but..." or "you will always be my brother and I love you, but..."
Guess what LCGers, love is a VERB. It requires action not just words.
I have never met a more fake, self-righteous group of idiots in my life. I am desperately ashamed that I wasted over ten years of my life with those people.
I fear for them because they will reap what they have sown and more importantly because they do not know the love of Christ.
LCG is the antithesis of the COG.