Wouldn't you want to protect this precious creature from a cobra?

Reader, I should probably warn you that I don't really hold my punches anymore. Enjoy!

It's time once again to dote on my adorably gorgeous cat. Aww, look at that photo above. I think she's doing one of her supercatmodel poses. Wait. Why is her leg striped like a tabby's? Isn't she supposed to be a Siamese cat? And why does she have one white paw with a gray finger while the rest of her leg is gray-tabby-striped? And this isn't showing in the picture, but why does she also have beigish-tan coloring, especially on her back feet, as if she were a calico? I guess there's something wrong with her, because she isn't like any other Siamese cat I've ever seen. A Siamese/tabby/calico cat? I've never heard of such a thing. I can criticize her like this because I'm God, right?

Wrong! Of course there's nothing wrong with my little cat. (Reader, I hope you could smell my purposeful ridiculousness in the above paragraph.) I am definitely NOT God, and I definitely did NOT create my adorably gorgeous little cat. God did. He really did make her to be a half-Siamese, half-tabby, partially calico cat who's very petite and still very kittenish even though she's technically a senior cat. And she's extremely precious to me. But do you know who thrives on criticizing precious, perfectly designed, innocent creatures like her? Cobras.

"Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed the tune of the charmer, however skilful the enchanter may be. Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; tear out, O Lord, the fangs of the lions!" (Psalm 58:4-6)

"A serpent may bite when it is not charmed; the babbler is no different." (Ecclesiastes 10:11, NKJV)

"...they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all..." (Mark 16:18a)

Those of you who are my Facebook friends may have read some of my allegorical stories/status updates this past summer. I really did used to be a cobra, even after I got saved. From what I understand, the passages I quoted above are talking about people -- metaphorical cobras. (I don't think Mark really meant for Christians to test their Christianity by handling literal snakes.) I used to be a Pharisee -- a hyperreligious, spiteful little cobra -- even after I got saved, and I've recently let God defang me. (Painful, non-anaesthetized procedures like that can happen in the wilderness.)

Cobras can be pretty darn scary. They're venomous, and they can seriously snap. When I did a tiny bit of research, I discovered that cobras aren't peaceful little vegetarians. They can sometimes eat other cobras.

Why am I talking about cobras? Previously, I've blogged about spiritual abuse. Today, I want to continue blogging my thoughts about spiritual abuse. After you leave an abusive environment and integrate into a healthy environment, you may take a while to notice the healthiness because you've been steeping in the unhealthiness for so long... but you'll notice that in the abusive environment, you had tolerated certain behaviors that you shouldn't have tolerated, and you put up with mistreatment that you shouldn't have put up with. Some parts of this post may sound a bit vague, but I hope they all fit together and make sense in the end.

Often, living among spiritual abusers means living among cobras. The abusers/cobras more than likely believe that everything is urgent, everything is potential for unnecessary/desired drama, and anything can be forced. God showed me that the internal default setting of a cobra is strife. I believe He's also shown me that one type of strife is mocking.

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers." (Psalm 1:1)

"Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended." (Proverbs 22:10)

"Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared." (Proverbs 22:24)

Please understand that what I'm about to explain (and I'll explain my experience/opinion) doesn't describe every situation. I'm sure that not every spiritually abusive environment contains strifey/mocky cobras, and not all cobras are spiritual abusers. I would just like to share my observations of certain characteristics of many spiritually abusive environments. I hope that my doing so is helpful for you, reader, especially if reading this makes a light bulb go off in your head and make you think, "Aww! Is that why my experience at that church or with this person was so crappy?" I don't want to disrespect, shame, or condemn anybody. I just want to hold my nose, point at the rotten fruit, and muffledly declare, "This is really nasty. When is somebody gonna lug this out to the Dumpster?" Also, I can talk about this because my fruit used to be this nasty, too.

Spiritual abusers/cobras tend to be excessively judgmental, critical, and insecure to the point of gossiping about people, possibly lying about it later, and definitely being two-faced to the people that they talk badly about. And sometimes the unnecessary criticalness can happen frankly to a person's face as well. I'm not talking about constructive criticism, which often is necessary. I'm talking about micromanaging and nit-picking at a person in a way that poops on them and makes the cobra look shiny and clean. For example, saying something like "Your essay has many problems that need to be fixed" would be constructive criticism, but "You suck as a writer and shouldn't even own a computer" would be cutting-down criticism and shaming.

The way that I fictionally criticized my non-fiction cat at the beginning of this post is, in a sense, a way that I have been criticized. "Why do you like Christian headbanging music? I didn't teach you that" is a minor example. "You want to be a writer, but writing is easy; I want to be an engineer, and engineering is hard" is a harsher example. "You can't be a missionary in such-and-such country, because you don't have any skills that they can use. Have you ever thought about being a musicologist in China?" is sort of a slap-in-the-face example. (There's nothing wrong with being a musicologist in China. It's just that if you believed that God wanted you to do A, being told that you should do Z, pardon my French, makes you want to say WTF.)

God made my cat very uniquely different from any other cat, and He made me very uniquely different from any other person. Perhaps I have certain characteristics that make sense, and perhaps I have other characteristics that don't make any sense at all, and perhaps God put me together that way on purpose and wanted other people to look at me, scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck. (Reader, God very uniquely designed, you, too.) If I'm square, I won't fit into any round holes, and if I'm round, I won't fit into any square holes. I know, because I almost died trying to fit into a hole that I would probably never fit into. A tragedy of spiritual abuse is cutting down a person so badly -- in a sense, redesigning them to fit your agenda, as if you were God -- that they don't fully become everything that God wants them to become... and that they don't believe they're even worth being alive anymore.

Since I used to be a cobra, I understand how cobras think and act, and I would like to offer you some tips on recognizing them and dealing with them.

1) If you're involved in church leadership, and your planning meetings turn into "let's criticize every teeny flaw that everybody has, even to the point of gossiping about the gossipers who are supposed to know better" sessions, that's a red flag. That could mean that you're accidentally spiritually abusing people yourself. Simply ask the Holy Spirit to convict you, repent if He does, and then ask God to defang you. Regardless, I think it's always a good idea to ask God to help you love people the way He does. Also, don't feed any gossipers any new information (Proverbs 18:8).

2) If you feel shamed about not doing something that Jesus commanded us to do -- especially if you hear "you better" before His command -- that could be a red flag. I'll give you an example from my life. I've always struggled with evangelizing, to the point of pushing people to pray salvation prayers (I was spiritually abusing) to ease my conscience. Hearing this during one pastor's sermon on evangelism didn't help, either: "You say you don't share the gospel with people because you don't know that plan of salvation. If you don't know the plan of salvation, then shame on you!" Once, I went to a trusted discipler/friend for help in this area. She had the gift of evangelism. So, I emailed her and asked her if she could teach me how to do evangelism. If memory serves, she emailed me back and said, "The reason you don't know how to do evangelism is because you don't do it." Well, her reply didn't exactly help me stop feeling ashamed or condemned.

3) If somebody keeps giving you a steady stream of unsolicited spiritual advice, but they're not actually spending any time with you and getting to know you, that could be a red flag. Do you remember my cat photo above? The lighting is bad. You would probably be able to tell exactly how gorgeously designed she is if you could see her in better lighting. Better yet, if you were to meet her in person and spend some time with her, you'd get to know her personality, see her intriguing patches of coloring, be amazed by her quirks, and probably understand why I love her so much. People are the same way. I'm not saying that unsolicited spiritual advice is all bad. Correction is important (Proverbs 12:1; Psalm 141:5). But giving genuine advice flowing out of a heart of genuine relationship/friendship (Proverbs 27:9) can be a very sweet, very refreshing, very awesome thing (Proverbs 25:11). Also, some unsolicited advice can be illogical, depending on the situation. For example, I've been told that cats like to be petted with a great deal of pressure, but if I pet my delicate little Siamese/tabby/calico very hard, it will hurt her. On the other hand... if somebody is spending too much time with you to the point that it's unhealthy and you don't know how to get rid of them, and they're giving you a steady stream of unsolicited spiritual advice, that's a red flag, too, because they are possibly micromanaging/nit-picking/abusing you and possibly trying to be God to you.

4) Red flag! Don't argue with a cobra! They crave strife! Cobras know how to take any tiny little word that comes out of your mouth and turn it into a criticism of you. A made-up, silly example would be telling a cobra, "You need to get more sleep, because you're always tired" and them snapping back at you in return, "When do you ever sleep? I always see you yawning and waving around a coffee cup." Sure, I can talk about how cobras operate, because I used to be one. I don't like to be around them anymore (unless they're willing to let God defang them) because they make me feel unsafe now. When I defriended somebody a while back, I concisely and frankly told this person that they smelled like a cobra. When this person replied back, they did so with a rather lengthy lecture about forgiveness and acceptance. So, apparently this person's way of proving to me that they weren't a cobra was by coiling and snapping venomously. (Reader, I hope you're catching the irony.) Sorry, but pointing a finger at me and saying, "You better love me, because Jesus loves me!" ain't exactly gonna endear me to you.

5) Cobras tend to force and manipulate. I've learned the hard way that things like love, forgiveness, and acceptance aren't things that should be demanded or forced. Cobras probably don't understand this yet. They believe that anything can be forced, and they've got the fangs and the venom and the self-power to pierce their agendas into their victims' innocent souls. In a nutshell, that's what abuse is -- forcing. Also, as a former cobra, much of my "rehab" and defanging has been unlearning bad lashing-out patterns. Anyone who I've snapped at recently can probably vouch for this. Of course, I'm not saying that anyone who's ever snapped at anybody is a cobra. (More French: PMS.) I'm saying that this is one characteristic of cobras. Cobras can also latch on with their fangs and hold on to their victims for a very long time. In my opinion and experience, cobras can be parasites, and unfastening them from your soul can be very tricky and very dangerous... but it's worth going for it. Here's a very powerful cobra-repellent word that you can always use: NO.

I've noticed that in healthy non-abusive, non-cobra environments, instead of forcing me to do something or to believe something, the church leaders will point me to God and help me see how He fashioned me uniquely. I'm not saying that they won't give me hard challenges or frankly speak truth to me. I'm saying that instead of "you better," I'll hear "I encourage you" or "I want to empower you" or "I want to help you."

Pharisees/cobras often lie to maintain their slick whitewashed look, and they often recoil and snap to defend themselves. So, reader, I can't force you to believe everything you've just read, and I don't want to lie (except for the purposefully fictionalized stuff) to make myself look good anymore, so I'm gonna have to let God defend me if I've done or said anything wrong in this post. And, of course, if you feel that I need correction, please correct me with kindness. Hopefully anyone who takes the time to get to know me will know that I've shared as truthfully as I can (and I was hopefully also a teensy bit diplomatic when it seemed appropriate).

Cobras can be very deceitful because they're snakes. But there's hope for cobras. They need to listen to the charmer. I believe that the charmer is Jesus. Another way of translating Ecclesiastes 10:11 is that if snakes bite before being charmed, "there is no profit for the charmer" (NIV). I believe that Jesus wants to charm cobras profitably. Could charmed, defanged, rehabilitated cobras become evangelists? Maybe. Could they make good entertainers? Perhaps. Are they beloved creatures? Most definitely.

As I type this paragraph, my other cat (the big tabby) is reclining next to me. He's designed very differently than my supercatmodel. He's more of a GQ cat. But I dote on him, too. Aww!