My testimony pt. 2:Parting with them

I went to psychiatric hospital because of some emotional disorder. This was a new situation for me in the “community”. I was not surrounded by “brethren” but I lived then among people from the “world”, people mentally ill. Of course I tried to speak with many about God, because it was the only thing I thought I could do with people from outside my community.

My “brethren” came to me every day for a short period of time and talked with me about some simple things. I was disappointed, because I wanted to have fellowship with them and they only asked how I felt and so on. Now I know it was not good for me to deal with the Scripture at that time, but then it made me feel deceived – that the rules for me in the “community” changed. Anyway, this aspect caused lack of trust in me to the “community”.

With time I gave less time to reading the Bible and concentrated rather on getting to know other patients. Many of them were interested in God and the Bible what surprised me, because I had completely different image of people from the “world”. The person I owe much is a mother of one of female patients. Her mother was an eager Catholic believer and understood  and explained to me some difficult topics. After some talks I realised that I can no longer accept the teaching of the “community”.

It was not completely sudden change. My thinking evolved slowly during whole “community” time. When i joined the “community” I was really prejudiced to the Catholicism. During the time in the group I dealt much with theology – also the Catholic theology. I saw more and more that it was not that primitive as I imagined. And in some points the “community” was closer to Catholic than Protestant thinking (contraception; “brothers” of Jesus are not children of Mary; understanding of presence of Jesus in the Bread and Wine).  Yet I needed that time in hospital, separation from the “community” and the talks with a believer from the “world” to convert back to Catholicism.

At their next visit after my talks I said about our disunity in one point of teaching, and they replied in one sentence: We cannot have fellowship anymore. This way I parted with them.