More about Spiritual Recovery

The more I consider about spiritual recovery, the more I come to conclusion that spiritual recovery as well as psychological recovery are different for different people. All the people are different and have different experiences.

Also, there are some questions regarding what should be considered to be spiritual recovery and how to determine that somebody has recovered spiritually. I guess that it is commonly believed that a spiritually recovered person believes in God, reads the Bible, prays, and goes to church. He or she is supposed to be a member of a church.

On the other hand, the word "recovery" implies that a person is supposed to reach the same spiritual condition that he or she had before joining an abusive church or a cult of Christianity. Then, what about a person who was an atheist before conversion? Does he or she need to become an active member of some Christian church in order to be considered spiritually recovered?

Well, the more I think about these questions, the less I am clear what is the difference between spiritual recovery and after-cult spiritual quest. Is it the same thing or not? I do not know. I guess that if an ex-member of an abusive Christian church becomes interested in Buddhism or another religion, it can be considered to be spiritual quest and not spiritual recovery. But what about an ex-member of a Buddhist cult who becomes interested in Christianity? Is it spiritual recovery or not? I guess Christians will say that it is spiritual recovery, but Buddhists will say that it is not so. So, it seems that the concept of spiritual recovery depends very much on the belief system of the person who defines spiritual recovery.

In order to be objective, I prefer the following definitions. Post-cult psychological recovery is the process that has a purpose to completely eliminate psychological damage caused by the cult. I guess many people will agree with this definition. I think that likewise, post-cult spiritual recovery is the process that has a purpose to completely eliminate spiritual damage caused by the cult.

This means that if a person was an atheist before joining a religious cult, he or she does not need to become a believer in order to be considered spiritually recovered. If a person was not an active member of a church before joining a mind-controlling Bible-based cult, he or she does not need to become an active church member in order to be considered spiritually recovered. For these people, conversion into Christianity or church membership would be spiritual quest or spiritual growth, but not spiritual recovery. This is, of course, just my opinion.

Then, what should be included into spiritual recovery? I think that psychological and spiritual recovery are quite related. For example, many ex-members of Bible-based cults reject God because they had very traumatic experiences in their cults when these experiences were interpreted as God's will. In my opinion, these people should deal with this problem in two ways. On the psychological side, they need to cure their traumas. On the spiritual side, they need to learn that their experiences had nothing to do with the actual will of God. They need to learn what the Bible, not their cult leader, says about God.

Then, many ex-members do not want to read the Bible because this reading reminds them about the doctrines used by cults in order to support their authoritarianism and abuses. Again, they need to learn what the Bible really says and reject these wrong teachings.

Also, many ex-members do not want to go to church because they do not trust other people and because they fear that they will be abused again. I think it is more a matter of psychological recovery - they need to learn to trust people again and learn how to identify manipulative and abusive churches. So, in my opinion, psychological recovery helps in spiritual recovery.

Well, I do not think that if a person is an active church member, he or she is completely recovered psychologically and spiritually. He or she may still have many problems. On the other hand, I do not think that if a person is not an active church member, he or she is not recovered. It depends on many factors.