Create fractured people. Tell them the “soul” (including our mind, will and emotions) is inherently bad and only our renewed “spirit” (as you conveniently get to define it) is good. Rather than becoming integrated, whole and healthy people, subordinate their minds, will and emotions to your fractured, “deeper life” revelation about their “spirit”. As you then invalidate individual thought, action and feelings, you ensure dependence on your own ministry and vision.
Related articles
- How to Become a Cult (Part 1) (crossroadjunction.com)
- How to Become a Cult (Part 3) (crossroadjunction.com)
- How to Become a Cult (Part 4) (crossroadjunction.com)
Crossroad Junction 
A sinister how to guide for sure. Sadly this has been done and continues to be done.
Truth above all my friends, truth above all.
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Yes I recall visiting a church once where the members would talk of their old man being dead and being a new creation such that there was no need to discuss or process their past sins or dysfunction. Some even went further and I struggled to get them to tell me where they were ‘from’… as in home country or town. They would say, I am from ‘here’.
It would have been somewhat palatable if they did not have character flaws like the rest of us that needed addressing/improvement (as we all do). Some sort of ‘wall of spirituality’.
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Wendy Backlund has a book, simply written, and a joy to read, called “Living from the Unseen” that takes the mystery out of living a transformed supernatural life that Jesus intends for his followers.
The proof of the pudding is in the healthy people who live in active contact with a living God in the places where she and husband Steve serve.
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I haven’t personally experienced churches “telling” me that the soul was of lesser importance, but they stressed “spiritual revelation” so much to the denigration of the soul/mind that I got the point!
…this has been one of my TOP pet peeves in the Church, more specifically the Charismatic branches of the Church…while “emotions” are justified “in the Spirit”, when the mind is actually utilized to question and search and test and analyze, THEN the prejudice and mind-control comes out…if anything, it is more subtle…
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