Surrendering Your Mind
It’s always a bad idea!
“We aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.”
“It has only been since leaving the Assembly that the fog of deception and the fear have lifted, and we have begun to see what we were involved in and how emotionally and spiritually damaging it has been.”
“The road to recovery has not been easy.”
In the previous blog we explored the thought process of a christian blogger named Scott who says that a Christian’s life can be transformed, by “surrendering their mind to the rock-solid foundation of God’s true word.” Then and only then will they begin to think like Jesus.
Obviously, as a secularist, I have some concerns with Scott’s premise of surrendering your mind to God, or for that matter, to anything. Here’s how Scott justifies his reasoning.
“It’s a risky thing to surrender your mind to God and his word. The world will tell you that it is intellectual suicide. You might think that “surrendering your mind to God’s word sounds like brainwashing – the way people get sucked into cults. It’s not. Because we aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.” (prepared to answer.org)
That paragraph really raised some red flags for me. The interesting thing about his statement is that Scott seems to believe that christians are “surrendering their minds to the one true God”, which implies that everyone has a direct connection to the one true God. Perhaps that’s what christians want to believe, but that’s not how churches actually function.
Lay christians aren’t surrendering their minds directly to “the one true God”. The average christian looks to a spiritual leader for direction. It’s hard to imagine a church where everyone has a direct connection to the one true God. Wouldn’t that be rather chaotic? The churches I’ve attended don’t function like that.
Church hierarchy functions more like an extension cord. Church members plug themselves into pastors, preachers, and other religious leaders who (they believe) are actually plugged directly into God. Scott says that it’s not like a cult, but it’s precisely what happens in cults. When people surrender their minds to charismatic religious leaders, it can get pretty ugly.
Christians are often compared with sheep, and therefore, in need of a shepherd. You can’t have sheep from the herd wondering off in any direction according to their whim. They must be guided and controlled.
Scott: “We aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.”
Despite what Scott says, this is NOT how churches really work.
There are people in authority who claim to have a direct connection to the one true god, and that person tells their followers what God demands from them. It is simply a lie to tell lay christians that they are surrendering their minds “to the one true God”. If they are part of a congregation, they are surrendering their minds to other people, and are plugging their mind into someone else, who they believe is plugged into God. Therefore, the question becomes, “is that person who says he/she is plugged into God, actually plugged into God?” A great deal of spiritual abuse happens when someone claims to know what God wants.
While researching his book Recovering from Churches that Abuse, Ronald Enroth interviewed many “survivors of cults” who shared with him stories about their painful experiences in religious cults. One such survivor, who Enroth calls Eric, said this about why he stayed in the cult for over 20 years.
“When I left the Assembly, I was very confused. I felt numb. I felt as if I had made a very big mistake. For twenty years I had set aside my concerns because I felt that Brother George’s teaching was truly God’s message from the Throne and therefore my concerns were, no doubt, of the flesh or of the enemy.”
Notice that when cult members have doubts about what they are experiencing in the cult they are indoctrinated to blame 1) their own personal weakness or 2) the Devil. The true abusive nature of the cult is never questioned. That is a prime example of surrendering your mind and letting someone else tell you what to think. “There’s nothing wrong with the church. It’s the members who are flawed.”
Eric continues,
“After all, if you are being given ‘God’s message’ from ‘God’s servant’ who has ’God’s anointing’ for ‘God’s Work’ concerning ‘God’s testimony,’ how can you really question it?”
This is exactly when you should question it. There are enough red flags in that one paragraph alone to warrant many questions. For example: What exactly is God’s message? What makes someone God’s special servant? How do you know that person has a special anointing by God? What exactly does that mean? What is God’s work? (It’s certainly not Matthew 25.) What exactly is God’s testimony? Eric continues,
“It has only been since leaving the Assembly that the fog of deception and the fear have lifted, and we have begun to see what we were involved in and how emotionally and spiritually damaging it has been. The road to recovery has not been easy.”
If Eric had actually asked the right questions about what they were involved in early on in the process, they might have avoided the years of emotional pain and trauma. But of course, that would not have been possible. Questioning church leaders is seen as betrayal and is severely punished. Eric was not up to the task.
Eric continues,
“The most important thing in my recovery has been the need to get the proper balance between the heart and the head. In the Christian life, the mind is not something to be subjected to the heart.”
What exactly does it mean that “the mind is not something to be subjected to the heart?” I spent years in evangelical circles, and I never heard that phrase. My Christianese is a bit rusty, so, I asked the AI gods what that phrase meant. According to Google “this statement suggests that reason should be the primary guide in our decisions and actions, rather than being swayed or controlled by emotions.” If that’s what the Eric is saying, it’s not just a christian thing, it’s a universal idea that predates christianity. Perhaps, I didn’t get that right. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m no longer fluent in Christianese.
Eric: “It is false to say you cannot know or understand the Word of God unless you have the proper inner attitude, or unless you surrender and submit, and that only when you get to that place will God break through and show you the way.”
Eric is contradicting what “prepared to answer” says in his blogs about thinking like Jesus, and I quote,
“If you want your life to be transformed, then you must be willing to surrender your mind to the rock-solid foundation of God’s true word. When you do, God will begin to renew your mind so that you will begin to think like Jesus.”
Eric, who spent years in a cult, knows that this is false thinking. I know this is false thinking. So, why doesn’t Scott know?
Another cult survivor who Enroth calls Tracy also experienced ambivalence about spiritual matters.
“I have had to deal with much emptiness since I left. I didn’t know how to hear God’s voice. I never had to, because I always asked somebody else.”
She had surrendered her mind to “somebody else”. After leaving the cult, Tracy has finally learned how to think for herself. She says,
“I felt guilty about leaving. The crisis point was the third year after we left. I didn’t know if there was a God, or, if there was one, why he had permitted these things to happen to us.”
As a secularist I believe it’s false thinking to blame God for “permitting these things to happen”. She fell victim to a cult because she surrendered her mind to someone else. Plain and simple!
She continues,
“I got angry frequently. Now I have figured out what I believe, and I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do or believe. I don’t want to go to church anymore, and that makes me feel guilty”
I would say to Tracy, “Don’t feel guilty about not wanting to go to church anymore. It’s doesn’t matter much what church you go to, there will always be someone who wants to tell you what to do and what to believe. It’s the nature of christianity. You have been granted grace, don’t run back into the fire.
Another survivor whom Enroth calls Peter also still struggles with spiritual confusion after leaving a religious cult. He says,
“What I am looking for in a church is a place where I can be intellectually honest. I want to ask the tough questions.”
I applaud his new desire to tackle tough questions, but good luck with that. No christian church, I know of, is comfortable when people start asking questions and especially “tough” ones. Intellectual honesty is not really valued in christian churches. If this is what Peter is looking for, he will be gravely disappointed.
He continues,
“I have questions that were never resolved when I was a young Christian. I have to find out what I believe, not what others have told me to believe. I’m not going to roll over and play dead ever again.”
Once again, good luck with that.
From where I stand:
I would say to Peter, “Asking tough questions is a great start. It’s been said that “spiritual growth is the process of replacing lies with the truth.” Do that! Ask as many questions as you need to get to the truth. Once you’ve actually committed to intellectual honesty and decided to follow reason, evidence and truth wherever they might lead, there is a good chance they will lead you away from your cherished beliefs and away from evangelical christianity. That’s okay. Don’t fear secularists like me. What you have been taught about “the world” and non-believers is based on lies. Letting go of the false teachings of christianity can be a slow and sometimes gut-wrenching process.
It might take years… but it’s worth it.
From Where I Stand
Aug. 25, 2025
Dale Crum