THE ARCHIVE OF THE GRIP
[ THE PRISONER’S COMFORT ] “You better be glad you were kept under tutors until this day… the alternative is appalling. If I hadn’t grabbed you, what then?”
[ THE SEMANTIC VOID ] “I now see how those words were empty. I wasn’t conscious of what I was really saying, just what I was taught.”
[ THE CAPTAIN OF THE WRECK ] “There is a real way in which I have been as or more a victim than you… think of that. You didn’t waste 25 years.”
[ THE “IGNORANCE” SHIELD ] “I did it in ignorance. A hypocrite knows he is doing it; I just did it. Gayle, how about you defend me?”
[ THE MONOPOLY ON TRUTH ] “The great teacher is unable to speak. Very hard for me to believe it… I wonder if God purposely made me blind to it.”
[ THE ISOLATION PROTOCOL ] “Why is it that there is no fellowship between me and other Christians? First of all, I gave up long ago.”
[ THE NORMALIZED ABUSE ] “How was I behaving toward you? A cruel father… but nobody wagged. I actually said ‘rely on your faith’ and you still went for it.”
[ THE MOVING GOALPOSTS ] “It is time for you to transfer your allegiance from my spirit to His Spirit… everything has to be re-examined.”
[ THE “GIFT” WITH A PRICE ] “Salvation is a gift, while under the counter you have to earn it by faith. Why don’t the brothers marry? Because they have no confidence.”
[ THE SAND FOUNDATION ] “This teaching is a house built on sand. It is based on error and contains appalling errors. Flat statements contrary to the gospel.”
[ THE FALSE SINCERITY ] “And is there someone more sincere than me? Maybe, maybe not. But the deepest possible error… I can’t believe no other Christians spotted it.”
[ THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VACUUM ] “You can’t yank something out of something without damaging what’s left. There is a vacuum, and there is damage.”
[ THE SILENT WITNESS ] “I find it hard to believe… you pushed everybody away and made it so hard for everyone to talk to you.”
[ THE SCORECARD TRAP ] “Now how’s the score card going? How do you tell the difference between a big sin and a little sin? Since you’ve obviously decided something.”
[ THE DEFERRED FREEDOM ] “For freedom Christ has set us free… but tough luck, that is the route we must go. There is a huge potential to take advantage.”
[ THE AUTOMATIC PILOT ] “Everything is sort of disconnected in a strange feeling way… every week it is a new direction and teaching… running on automatic pilot.”
[ THE MIRROR OF SHAME ] “I wonder if I could have done it as well. I tried to remove grace this well, leave no traces, tried to make some weird thing… it’s proof to my sanity.”
[ THE PERFECTION BURDEN ] “You don’t want to accept that I make mistakes… because if you don’t have to face that, then you don’t have to trust Jesus. You just trust me.”
[ THE VANISHING WORD ] “Look in these books… does the word grace appear anywhere? Just the word… I’ll bet it doesn’t.”
[ THE TREACHEROUS WINE ] “Wine is treacherous… and the spirit is mad. We have to redo everything from the bottom up. That is no exaggeration.”
[ THE STIFLED INSTINCT ] “How many of you thought, ‘The problem is grace… there is no grace,’ and you didn’t say it?”
[ THE SURROGAL AUTHORITY ] “It started out as Jesus showing you things through me. But then what did it turn into? ‘Stewart told us,’ ‘Stewart said.’”
[ THE BROKEN CHAIN ] “Without grace the chain of how everything connects is broken. So all becomes mysterious. An amazing space where amazing grace should have been.”
[ THE DEBT OF FORGIVENESS ] “Does anyone find this incredible? That Stewart would treat forgiveness for 17 years of verbal and emotional abuse as a ‘topic’?”
[ THE IGNORANT SAMARITAN ] “I am given to dramatic exaggerations to make a point. I’m not exaggerating. We as a church have no appreciation of grace.”
[ THE MEASURE OF CONTROL ] “Faith is not a seed. We were assigned a measure of faith long ago. Are you of those who still have faith or have you lost it?”
[ THE “PETERING” OUT ] “I was petering out. I wonder if that word actually means Peter’s problem, which is my problem.”
[ THE CRUEL BENEVOLENCE ] “God’s grace was extended to us while we were enemies… twenty-five years of colossal error… try to beat that.”
[ THE PHONY RELIANCE ] “You have to remove the phony relying on faith before you could actually rely on Jesus. How much are you relying on faith?”
[ THE ULTIMATE INDICTMENT ] “Job said, ‘If only God would write the indictment, I’d be proud of it.’ Well, He didn’t have to write the indictment. I did.”