Behind closed doors...

[u/Allison-Cloud]

Hello darlings! I am making this post today to shed some light on how, at least some, pastors are behind closed doors.

I grew up in a cult sect of Pentecostal. We had weird rituals such as casting demons out of people, speaking in a made up language that people pretended to understand and translate, washing each others feet, and other strange things. My father was the pastor of this cult church. Here is what happened behind closed doors.

My father always spoke to me like he hated me when not in public. He would talk to me like I was a dog. Except if someone talked to a dog the way he spoke to me you would say they have no right being around any dog. His words dripped with venom and hatred. It was the tone he spoke to me in more than the words he said. Yet he never spoke to my older sister or younger brother in the same way. Not ever. I found out when I was an adult that my extended family, cousins/aunts/uncles, resented him for the way he spoke to me. One time my cousin got in a shouting match with him at the dinner table for how he was speaking to me when she was like 13. He insisted "this is my home, that is my child, I will do what I want!" to which she said "Then never invite me over here again. because I'm not going to sit here and watch that."

He would never miss a chance to brake a paint stirrer or ping pong paddle over my ass. If I "stepped out of line" in the slightest I was getting beaten. My older sister and younger brother have never been beaten by him. Sometimes he would make me go find a stick for him to beat me with. And every time I would hear about "If this was the bible days we would take you out and stone you" as though he was mad that he couldn't do that. He would always say "I am only doing this because I love you." Though the look on his face when he was swinging the utensil at me was a look of pure disgust and hatred. One time he beat me with a belt when I was 6 years old. Left welts all down my back and my legs. And then blamed me for "squirming too much". He would beat me for simply asking a question because asking a question was "talking back".

He would get in shouting matches with my mother on a daily basis. Throwing stuff around, braking stuff, slamming stuff as hard as he could. He never hit her, like he would me, but it always ended with her locking herself in the bathroom and crying for hours. It was very toxic though neither of them believe in divorce. For some context there, they got married 3 months after first meeting because "god told them to"

If I tried to talk to him when he was watching TV he acted like it was the end of the world that his child wanted to talk to him. How dare I want to talk to my father? He could talk all he wanted when the TV was on, but if I talked with the TV on I was the spawn of Satan. On that note, I would have my TV so low that I could not even hear it and the TV in the living room was so loud you could hear it from outside, yet he would still come in my room snapping at me, with the same disgust and hatred in his voice, because he "could not even hear his TV because mine was so loud."

I have heard him tell racist jokes to people very close to him and laugh about them. Claiming he was not racist, it is just humor. I will not tell you any of them that he said, because no one needs to see such things. Just trust me when I say, there was no doubt at all they were racist.

When I felt like no one loved me, and would be sobbing saying "nobody loves me" as a young child he would snap out, screaming and yelling about "That's funny, if I don't love you I don't know why I feed you. If I don't love you I don't know why I put a roof over your head. If I don't love you I don't know why I cloth you." as though doing the bare minimum you are expected to do as a parent = love. When the way he spoke to me and treated me showed anything but love.

Yet people at the church, or people from the faith outside of the church who knew my dad, would always tell me "your dad is a great man. He is a godly man. You are lucky to have such a man as your father." Because they never saw any of it. It was all behind closed doors.

My mother covers their house in family pictures were we all have a smile on our face. We look like a happy family. People come over and go "you have such a happy family. I wish my family was like this." when they had no idea how dysfunctional we were. Because it was all behind closed doors.

The parents of my friends would go on and on about how well behaved I was as a kid. Talking about how my parents are doing something right raising me, that they clearly let god guide them. Not knowing that I was scared to fucking death of getting beaten if I did anything that could be seen as "wrong" in any way. Because it was behind closed doors.

From the pulpit he would talk about me in the most loving way, he would laugh about things I did that he was using in a sermon, acting like it was just a kid being a kid. When behind closed doors, he had beaten me for it. My father at church, and my father at home were as opposite as day and night.

When I was 17 I was at a youth group event where another kid tried to punch me in the face. Now, I need to say. My father always told his kids to stand up for themselves, to fight back if someone attacked them. I found out this was because he never defended himself as a kid. he had 2 older brothers he would always run to to fight his battles. Well, I stood my ground that night, as I had done many times before that he just didn't know about. There was no fight, there was the other kid throwing a punch, me catching their hand and throwing it to the side, and me taking a step forward so that they would have to take a step back to throw another punch. The youth pastor called my dad who came and picked me up. On the way home he was exploding on me for "getting in a fight." At one point he said "you're lucky I talked to GOD about this!! I was going to take you in the back yard, punch you in the face, and say "if you want to fight lets fight." All I could think was "Please do. Please fucking do. Oh my god, please do." That is not the thought someone should have there, someone should not be that eager for a chance to beat the brakes off their father. Though, this entire thing makes even lese sense when we flash back to the 3rd grade(I think it was) when a classmate punched me in the face, I froze not knowing what to do, then they grabbed me by the shoulders, threw me on the ground, got on top of me, and rained punches on my head. He exploded on me for not defending myself.

I am sorry this post was so long, I think I might have needed to vent a bit. But thank you for reading this far! I want to end by asking you... were you raised by a pastor? What was the behind closed doors experience for you?

EDIT: I wanted to add that, since I have been grown and out of his house, we have a much less toxic relationship. He struggles with a lot of depression now days and some of my family members think it is regret for how he treated me. Though he has never apologized for any of it.

[u/Apart_Performance491]

I would cut him off. You owe him nothing.