Anniversary Blessings and Haunting Memories

 

Today is the 38th anniversary of my wife Gay and myself.  We were married on July 14, 1985 at the Caldwell Chapel of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, with Rev. Gordon Lilly officiating, while I was a student at the Southern Baptist Seminary across the street.  I knew of other Southern Seminary students who went across Lexington Road to get married because Southern's Chapel was maybe four or five times as big as the one at "Prez." I took a course over there, in Historical Theology, while at Southern.

I have written about this experience on Facebook, but I wanted to write about it here this year.  It was almost a miracle that I ever was married, because at the time I was  in what I now call a cult group, Revival for Our Day under the leadership of Rev. Loran Helm.  Rev. Helm claimed to be an apostle.  I came to believe over time he was a false apostle, and I actually now even question whether he really served Jesus Christ at all.  While claiming to love everyone in the world just as Jesus does, he exhibited toward me, and I think toward others, a meanness and hatefulness and judgementalism which were the exact opposite of what he claimed.

Rev. Helm thought we should always rely on God's direct guidance and never on human knowledge.  His scriptural exegesis was awful.  And there never was any kind of liturgy or order of worship in his meetings.  He would literally ask God to reveal to him, step-by-step, what should be next in the service, Scripture, preaching, prayer, testimony, music, offering.  He said we cannot do it according to our own ideas.  Every moment in a worship service has to be God's direct leading. Looking back, I believe liturgy is what God ordained and what pleases God most.  I think Helm did the very thing he accused others of.  He took his own ideas for the mind of God.  He was a dangerous man.

He wrote a book entitled A Voice in the Wilderness.  I wrote  about the spiritual abuse I went through at his hands and in this group, which were meted out by him, and by his right-hand man, who happened to be my pastor, Oliver C. Hogue.  My book about my time in this group is available on Amazon.  The title, playing off his book title, is The Wilderness I Left Behind.

What this guy would do is tell people what "God's will" for them was.  This was in spite of his saying, in his book, a spiritual person never tells people what to do.  But he would tell people where "the Holy Spirit" has revealed they were to go college, what career to pursue, who to marry, (sometimes people broke up with someone they had been dating, and married someone else in a few days time, just because they were told the Lord had revealed to the leadership that this was God's will.)  The divorce rate in this group was astronomical!  

I have been with this guy when he ran his fingers over a vending machine, asking God to reveal to him what soft-drink he should drink that day.  I have been with him when he would look at someone in the congregation and say, "God has called you to preach the Gospel."  And they would be in a ministry role within a  few days sometimes, with no formal preparation at all.  This approach left a string of physical, emotional, and spiritual carnage.  He destroyed some persons' lives.

I knew I was called to ministry before I met this guy and got involved in the group.  But he and my pastor both said they did not believe I was.  I was told that because of my cerebral palsy I was not suitable for marriage.  When Gay and I got married he was so offended he had no use for me after that.  He had actually forbidden me to marry without his personal approval.  When the Lord made it apparent to me that I was to marry Gay, I was not going to give him a veto.  I was not going to even consult him.   He got an invitation to our wedding and he was offended that I was getting married.  He called another minister to ask about the situation but did not have the decency--he was not man enough--to call me.  I think if he had called, and had told me not to do this, I would have by then told him where he could shove that idea.

So here we are, 38 years later.  I earned two seminary degrees, served as pastor of five congregations in three states, was a college professor and dean, a Christian publishing executive editor, and an author.  We own our own home and my credit rating is in the 98th percentile nationally.   God has blessed is with two wonderful children, who have been a physician and  a college professor.  (In fact she was a professor at the place where Loran Helm graduated.  God has a sense of humor.)

Gay and I have a wonderful marriage.  Not easy, but wonderful.  I am not easy to live with, having cerebral palsy and  Parkinson's disease and diabetes and an INTJ personality at the same time.  I am not always in a good frame of mind, and not always in good humor, but Gay has been a rock.  She has loved me and supported me and stuck with me when many would not have.  Loran told me he did not know of a woman godly enough and holy enough and loving enough to love me, and he was right--because he did not know Gay.  But he had no business telling me that stuff.  I believe the way he treated me--alone--is enough to prove he was a  liar.  He did not love everyone the way Jesus did.  Jesus would never had said such things to me.

And even though he died 17 years ago, he still has a devoted cult following.   That is so painful for me to realize.  I wish everyone who knew him would denounce him.  He is as much an abuser as any Catholic priest ever was, even if he did not commit sexual abuse.  If his memory is washed away that would suit me fine.