My family and I helped start a non-denominational Christian ‘fellowship’ in Florida. By all rights, it was a church in everything but name.

After about a year, the atmosphere in the fellowship became toxic and adversarial with the Pastor, along with a number of supporters, on one side and the rest of us on the other. I certainly have an opinion on how I believe it all happened, but I won’t post it.

The atmosphere was so bad that my folks couldn’t stay anymore and stopped going. I felt a duty to stay because of the responsibilities I had accepted. After a month, an event occurred which sealed it for me. The next week, I dropped everything off and I left.

Yes, I quit but if I stayed I would have taken my life.

I think God was telling me to leave, to work on my own emotions and health and to remove myself from that situation.

Easter Sunday, this year, my folks and I went to another church and are fitting in.

My point is very simple…If you’re in a situation you need to escape from, leave. If it’s a job, a relationship, a church, it does not matter. I don’t believe God wants His people to suffer.

Advice given to a crowd of students by the Dalai Lama: “Before you can have ‘external disarmament’, you must have ‘internal disarmament’.” (The 14th Dalai Lama in a speech given to students at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida in February, 2010)