r/exchristian • u/Large_Drawer3515 Ex-TJC (True Jesus Church/真耶穌教會) • Apr 28 '26

Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion The grief of watching my siblings stay in church (True Jesus Church/真耶穌教會)

TLDR: Leaving the True Jesus Church didn’t just change my beliefs, it fractured my relationships with my siblings in ways I never expected. One stayed silent and the other scolded me for leaving. Our shared childhood and shared faith didn’t lead us to the same life. The grief isn’t loud, but it’s constant. In the end, leaving saved me, but it cost me a version of my family that can’t be rebuilt.

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The photo

I saw a photo recently: one of my siblings who remained in the church attending the African Ministry Training Course, smiling at the camera with other members from all over the world. It’s an annual event at the London Central church, kind of a gateway into TJC’s overseas ministry work. I stared at the picture longer than I meant to, feeling a mix of emotions I couldn’t quite sort out.

My sibling looked so devoted and, strangely enough, I felt proud of them. They’ve gone to this seminar for years, so they’re clearly committed to the cause. I didn’t feel anger but a quiet ache of knowing they’re still giving their whole selves to a system that left me so hollow.

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Grief

It’s a strange kind of grief, "loving" people who stayed in the place you had to leave to survive. They’re still living by rules I had to unlearn and still holding beliefs I once clung to myself. It's something people outside high‑control churches rarely understand: leaving isn’t just a shift in belief. It's movements in relationships, identity, and the entire emotional landscape of your life.

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The silent sibling

The aforementioned sibling and I don’t talk anymore. Even more so now that I’ve left the church. It’s a painful feeling. I don’t know if they hate me, and I don’t know if I’m dead to them. Absence takes on a shape, and you feel it even when no words are exchanged.

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The vocal sibling

Then there’s my other sibling: the one who didn’t go silent, but scolded me when I left. They told me I was being reckless and selfish, that I was throwing away everything we were raised to believe. I remember listening and not knowing what to say. It felt like they were speaking to the version of me they needed to exist in order for their world to stay intact. It taught me something I didn’t want to learn: siblings raised in the same environment can end up living completely different emotional realities. How true this is...

We all grew up in the same house, being downright goofy together at times. Now my first sibling and I are like strangers. The last time I reached out to meet up, I didn’t even get a response. As my other sibling has their own traumas, we don’t really talk either. Family trauma and church trauma have a way of intertwining until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

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The loss

Maybe that’s the real loss: not the distance itself, but the realization that the story that shaped us also separated us. I can’t do anything but hold the grief, and it just sits there as a constant reminder.

Sometimes I wonder if they ever think about me, if they ever feel the shape of my absence the way I feel theirs. We grew up under the same teachings, and somehow that same story sent us down paths that no longer touch.

Home life was really complicated, and it left deep marks on each of us. It’s a layered situation that isn’t black or white. All I can say from my perspective is that TJC really destroyed my family. Not in one dramatic moment, but in a way that shapes how people relate to each other.

Maybe that’s the quiet devastation of leaving: you save yourself, but you lose people you never thought you’d lose. The irony in this sentence is not lost on me.

I didn’t just leave a church. I walked away from a version of my family that can’t be rebuilt.

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Read my other posts about my True Jesus Church experiences

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