Broken Arrows: Our Emotions
Parents at Christian Fellowship Center require their children to submit their decisions and emotions to authority figures, primarily parents and pastors. In order to do this, children learn to constantly question their own needs and place them second to the desires of others. From an early age, children are denied a basic component of personhood: recognizing individual desires and needs.
When parents do not recognize the separateness and individuality of their children, they override the boundaries of personhood. Children who are taught that they must ask for permission for even the smallest of choices and that they cannot make any decisions for themselves are taught to not have boundaries at all.
Children trained to instinctively people-please will either not recognize the violation when people breach their boundaries and abuse them or will passively accept mistreatment.
This training starts at a very young age. Consider how Darlene Sinclair proudly describes how she would not let her children play with their toys without permission.
Children should ask permission for everything they want to do or get out. And I remember when I think it was when Jamie was born, and a young lady from the church came to help because I had three little people running around. And so she came in, she helped. And she just came to us a day or two later and said, it's unbelievable. Your children asked me for permission to open their toy box.
This same mindset that teaches children they cannot act without parental permission continues into young adulthood. Rick Sinclair tells this concerning story about his adult daughter as an example of what daughters should do when faced with romantic decisions:
She says “Dad, I got an email from some guy... And I know his sister. And you know, his sister suggested that maybe he contact me.” And she's like, “What do I do?” I want to stop for a second, I want to say she did the right thing just by telling me. I mean, she, she did the right thing. She basically said, “Dad, how do I, how do I handle this? Should I respond? Should I not respond? If I do respond, how should I respond?”
These examples highlight the long-lasting impact that such parenting methods have on children. When faced with an ordinary decision, Rick’s adult daughter immediately freezes. She has not been taught how to navigate interpersonal situations on her own and immediately turns to her father for guidance and permission to respond. Parents who operate out of this boundary-less enmeshment neglect to teach their children agency and, in so doing, fail to equip them to make decisions on their own as burgeoning adults.
At CFC, this is by design. Rick and Darlene intentionally took personal choices away from their children while simultaneously expecting them to obey all parental commands without thinking or questioning.
CFC’s extreme parenting practices teach children that their instincts, intuition, thoughts, desires, and needs are inherently bad or untrustworthy. This has a damaging impact on children as adults. Parents who seek to control a child’s thoughts and emotions use tactics that instill a deep internal distrust in their children’s minds. If children can’t trust their own thoughts, emotions, or intuition, they will have no choice but to turn to an authority figure. One Sinclair daughter—now a pastor’s wife—describes how she couldn’t trust her emotions about her future husband. She says:
The Bible teaches us the exact opposite, you know, that our hearts are deceitful, who can even understand them, we tend to lead ourselves astray. And that there's a safety in an abundance of counselors.
A steady diet of CFC’s spiritually manipulative teaching prepared this woman to label her own intuition as “deceitful.” Significantly, it is never the parents’ or authority figures’ hearts that are deemed “deceitful” but only the more vulnerable people, a tactic that keeps children subject to the decision-making power of others. See how this plays out for Rick’s daughter:
“What do you think, Dad?” And then he said to me, “I think it's the Lord.” You know what, four months earlier? He had said to me, “I think this is the Lord.” And I had yielded to it. And I had found great joy and great prosperity in it. And so when he said to me, “I think it's the Lord,” suddenly, the emotions I was feeling were interest and hope. I felt like I could let them let them out because I had somebody saying to me, “I think it's the Lord.” And there was such safety and confidence I got in that.
She does not permit herself emotions until her father has given his approval. It’s worth noting that Rick doesn’t just give his opinion or permission, he speaks with a divine spiritual authority that, especially in the culture of CFC, cannot be questioned. In the end, the only option left for this young adult is yielding to a parent’s guidance, something that she has been trained to see as granting “safety” and “confidence.”
We’ve shared an excerpt from Rachel Clinton Chen and Dan Allender’s podcast on spiritual abuse before in this series, but it’s worth repeating:
“The message is clear: The world is dangerous. You can’t talk to those people. We’re the only ones who really know God, the only ones you can trust if you want to be safe and happy. What makes these messages so devastating is that they also seek to distort, undermine, and create doubt in your own ability to interact with the world or read scripture, to the point where you are dependent upon the leader to make decisions and clarify what you believe. Mind control is so linked to identity formation. When we’re talking about mind control, we’re talking about how you’re being told to make sense of yourself, how you’re being told to make sense of God, how you’re being told to make sense of the world.”
This type of mind control removes a person’s ability to know and befriend themselves. It leaves psychological damage that children carry into other relationships throughout their lives.
CFC’s teachings repeatedly portray human emotions as untrustworthy and something to be guarded against. CFC combines this with an ultimate spiritual authority element, and the result is a high-control religious community that utilizes mind control tactics on both children and adults in the congregation. In this Mother’s Day sermon excerpt, Rick Sinclair’s oldest daughter uses a passage in Nehemiah to urge the women in the congregation to be constantly vigilant of enemy tactics against the “great work” of CFC-sanctioned child-training.
Recognize the attacks of the enemy on your mind and your heart. Those feelings of defeat, despair, hopelessness, and apathy. That is actually not the Holy Spirit. Okay, sometimes it sounds so true, like it must be the Lord. No, no, those are not things from the Lord. That is the devil.
CFC teaches that the devil infiltrates human minds through anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts in order to keep people from living obedient, godly lives. She indicates that the devil also employs those tactics to destroy families. She goes on to instruct women to confess these feelings to their husbands, to further isolate themselves from any outside influence, and to seek “child-training” counsel from, presumably, CFC-endorsed sources.
Confess these things to your husband - to people who will pray over you and help you. Comparison, depression, anger, laziness. Don't just hope that like, somehow it gets better. Grab a sword! Let's see some victory. Delete Instagram, get counseling on child training. Cancel Netflix. Throw away the chocolate chip stash in the pantry. Whatever you got to do. Let's not be fools. Let's recognize ‘oh, these are low spots and the devil likes low spots.’ Let's get in there. Ask! Be transparent with one another! Guys, the devil is real. He wants to destroy you. He wants to destroy your marriage, your home, your family.
While it is fully appropriate to talk to friends and licensed professionals about your mental and emotional struggles, saying that women must “confess” them implies that unpleasant thoughts and emotions are inherently wrong, bad, and/or sinful. This is dangerous language to use when approaching mental illness (depression, anxiety, etc.) and the basic humanity in yourself and others.
Unpleasant thoughts are not morally wrong, nor are they an indication of a sinful heart. They are just thoughts.
Towards the end of her sermon, this Sinclair daughter claims that the devil also uses Instagram and self-care culture to deceive mothers, making them lazy, negligent, and, above all, infiltrating the way they think. Note the spiritually manipulative gaslighting language that suggests that whatever negative emotions these mothers may be feeling, they should reject those feelings as enemy attacks. They must spiritually bypass this in order to tell themselves they are in “good pastures.
The enemy will appeal, he'll put on sheep's clothes, and he'll show up in your Instagram feed. And he'll show up in whatever it is that's infiltrating the way that you think. And he'll show up with maybe probably not devil horns. Okay, probably something more like ‘you deserve a break. God just wants you to be happy. Okay, you need self care.’ Now. Does the Lord give us breaks? Yes. He leads us by green pastures and still waters praise the Lord. He restores my soul. I don't have to go finding that. I just lean into my shepherd.
CFC regularly teaches both children and adults that they cannot trust their own thoughts or listen to their own physical and mental health needs. This is an immeasurably damaging deception that impacts the entire community. If individuals cannot trust their own thoughts, who can they trust? What if they cannot discern what God is saying? Should they then trust their father’s intuition? What about a pastor, since he is God’s mouthpiece in the community?
This is one way CFC leadership maintains the intense psychological grip that they have on their members and ex-members who are so afraid to speak out or leave. By “othering” personal thoughts, CFC trains children and adults to be constantly at odds with themselves in a state of passive indecision that looks for outside direction. CFC leadership then offers church-approved philosophies, practices, and opinions as though they are God-ordained truth, keeping members trapped in the vicious codependence of high-control authoritarian communities.
People who experience a constant state of internal turmoil will often do anything to find peace in their lives. CFC stands ready to extend its version of a peaceful life but at the cost of living exactly as they say. This requires people to follow CFC’s rules and ask for permission to make decisions. This is a hallmark trait of cults and spiritually abusive environments.
CFC’s theological stances use a whole host of spiritualized language to control people, including the typical threat of eternal damnation, and they also use the threat of isolation from the community here on earth. Compliance is seen to be godly behavior that brings acceptance and belonging; independent thought is cast as rebellious temptation that brings personal problems and potential exclusion from the community.
If you have one minute
Ask yourself: My emotions are important clues. What are they telling me today?
If you have 5 minutes
Practice this guided meditation.
Or if you prefer a religious practice, try welcoming prayer.
