WATCH · MEMORY · BELIEF
When Questions Are Called Rebellion
An exchange with Pastor Bryan Rocine about family, faith, and the right to question.
In WATCH, a young man finds shelter in Salvatore’s world—and learns how difficult it can be to question the loyalties that shelter demands. My own questions began elsewhere. After a family loss brought years of estrangement into sharper focus, I listened again to sermons from the church I had left. I wrote to Pastor Bryan Rocine about the divisions I hoped to heal and the faith behind them. What followed was an exchange about family, authority, and whether honest questions can be heard as anything other than rebellion.
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MEMORY · AUTHORITY · THE COST OF BELONGING
Faith, Family, and the Right to Question
When an effort to repair family ties meets a question of authority.
Adapted from my account, “Matters of Life and Death,” and my correspondence with Pastor Bryan Rocine from July 2007 through February 2008. This narrative is in my own words; summaries of Bryan’s replies are paraphrases. The original emails appear below in sequence, so readers can compare the correspondence with my recollection.
BEFORE THE LETTERS
The memories that returned
In WATCH, belonging begins with things a young man needs: food, work, shelter, a place in someone else’s world. The questions arrive within that shelter. What does loyalty require? What happens when gratitude makes it difficult to challenge the person who has helped you? My own history brought me to related questions through family, faith, and years of separation.
Spending time with my siblings could bring our shared past close again. After Aunt Sue’s funeral, those memories returned with particular force. The ties among us reminded me of the relationships I had spent years trying to repair, and of how much remained unresolved.
In early 2007, I found recordings of sermons from The Living Word Church online. Before then, I would have waited for cassette tapes in the mail; now I could listen from home. I began with sermons by Bryan Rocine and listened to seven or eight. I had started with restraint, but by then my anger was becoming difficult to contain.
In 1997, I contacted pastors in Syracuse, hoping someone might help me reach my father and family. Bryan Rocine, then an assistant pastor, was among those I approached. In my experience, my letters and telephone requests led nowhere. Ten years later, I heard sermons that seemed to give spiritual meaning to the very divisions I wanted someone to examine.
By July, I was writing again. I wanted to ask about the sermons themselves, and about the human consequences of the ideas they carried.
JULY 14, 2007 · MY FIRST LETTER
When pain becomes a reason to stay
My first letter responded to “Daniel’s Prayer” and other sermons. I heard them as emphasizing endurance while warning against the pursuit of peace. If relationships were broken, I asked, why treat the pain as something to accept instead of a reason to examine what was wrong?
I used the image of a hand held in a flame. Someone might call enduring the heat an act of faith. Yet pain could also be a warning to withdraw the hand. The question was whether suffering proved devotion, or whether it sometimes revealed a situation that needed to change.
I was thinking about my mother: warm, loving, and separated from much of her family. I could not understand how that distance could be treated as a sacrifice she was meant to bear. As I understood Christ’s message, it called people toward love. I asked how that message could justify the loss of family relationships.
My letter was angry. I challenged Bryan’s language about the anti-Christ and his comparisons with deceptive leaders, turning the comparison back toward the church’s influence as I saw it. I feared my siblings, cousins, and I might never rebuild our relationships with my mother. Beneath the accusations was a request: consider whether the message itself was causing harm.
AUGUST 6, 2007 · THE SECOND LETTER
The distance between a promise and its consequences
Weeks later, I wrote with even greater anger. I accused the church’s two leaders of allowing damage to continue despite years in which they could have reconsidered their actions. What disturbed me most was that the authority behind those actions was presented as God’s. I promised to expose what I believed was happening.
My language included insults and comparisons I do not need to repeat to make the question clear. The original letter preserves them. Here, the essential conflict is the one that kept drawing me back: when a person’s judgment carries the weight of divine instruction, how can those affected question it?
As a child, I remembered my father welcoming people who had been separated from their families. Their pain was met with sermons, prayers, and promises of reunion. When my own family became divided, I returned to those memories and wondered what we had examined. Had we asked why the separations happened? Had we looked at the choices people made, rather than explaining everything through God’s plan or the Devil’s interference?
I wrote about the way fragments of truth could be used to secure agreement. Religious or political language could make a human decision seem beyond ordinary scrutiny. If every challenge was interpreted as an attack on God’s work, the people making decisions could become difficult to hold accountable.
I wanted Bryan to sit with me. I wanted to show him photographs of my mother surrounded by relatives, smiling among people whose faces he would recognize. Some had once belonged to the church as well as to our family. I asked what had changed, and why those relationships could not be discussed.
The letter named friends and cousins, including Timmy, Jerry, Esther, and Donnie, and questioned how many more relationships my mother might lose. I saw a pattern in which those who came into conflict with my father’s interests were pushed away. That was my understanding of our history, and I wanted it examined in conversation.
My grandfather had died after more than twenty years without seeing my mother. I feared that my grandmother, and eventually my mother herself, would reach the ends of their lives with the same divisions unresolved. These were not abstract disputes over doctrine. Time was passing for actual people.
I challenged the idea that reconciliation depended on supernatural intervention. I believed people could begin by telling the truth, acknowledging the choices that divided families, and changing their conduct. If my father faced his own role honestly, I thought many would welcome a renewed relationship. The renewal the church prayed for, I argued, might begin with human accountability.
I asked Bryan whether he wanted that outcome, and whether he was willing to challenge the authority he served. I believed his sermons were teaching people to settle for divisions that earlier promises of unity had failed to heal.
Read beside WATCH, this is a question about the terms of belonging. A community can offer care and still make certain questions costly. The difficulty is recognizing when the story that holds people together also keeps them from examining what is happening to them.
AUGUST 11, 2007 · “GODLY SORROW”
A temporary sorrow that lasted a lifetime
Five days later, I wrote after listening to “Godly Sorrow.” I understood Bryan to be teaching that Christians sometimes needed to cut off relationships, even with loved ones, and that this sorrow would eventually lead to joy and prosperity.
I asked what conduct justified those separations. The sermon referred to drunkenness, fornication, railing, and similar behavior. Yet people I knew who had been excluded continued to practice their faith. How, I asked, did separation from my grandfather protect anyone from wrongdoing?
The sermon also mentioned Brother Tom Conena. I questioned how that reference fit with his exclusion, and what he had done to warrant it. I wanted the standard made clear, and applied to actual lives rather than left in general terms.
Bryan spoke of his first seventeen years as a negative period before he served the Lord. I answered that, from my perspective, his later influence had contributed to an enduring sorrow. What was described as a necessary interval of pain had become, for my mother, much of a lifetime.
AUGUST 12, 2007 · BRYAN’S FIRST REPLY
Two different conversations
The next day, Bryan replied. He declined to address my letters point by point. He believed I could raise complaints faster than he could answer them and saw the exchange as an invitation to fight, particularly in front of others. He said he would not take part in that contest.
He asked whether I had changed since the rebellious teenager he remembered: whether I had grown, could get along with others, and enjoyed warm relationships. He characterized me as manipulative, narcissistic, competitive, and unhealthy. His concern, as he framed it, was my spiritual condition.
He said I was angry with God and resisted submission. He urged me to consider Jesus’ obedience at the cross, seek cleansing through his blood, and surrender my pride. He distinguished submission to a heavenly Father from submission to my earthly father, which he said would be inappropriate at my age.
He also urged me to accept a deeply negative account of myself. Human affection, he wrote, would distract from the healing I needed. He deliberately withheld assurances of love from himself or my family because he believed wholeness had to come through Jesus alone.
The reply made the distance between our positions unmistakable. I had asked about relationships, decisions, and responsibility. Bryan understood the central problem as my need for conversion and submission. Each of us was addressing a different account of what had gone wrong.
I answered with a question: how could he judge my character so confidently after declining opportunities to speak with me? I asked what inquiry supported his judgments and what evidence he could offer people he was warning about me. Scripture, as I read it, called for care before making accusations.
I challenged his refusal to engage by referring to sermons in which he spoke of confronting evil. If he believed my position was wrong, why would direct conversation not be a fitting place to show it? I wanted claims about me tested through contact with the person being described.
I also told him that my relationships with my two sisters had been restored after roughly twenty years of separation. I asked whether he welcomed that restoration, and whether he had ever encouraged it. For me, reconciliation was already proving possible.
When he asked about my ability to maintain friendships, I offered an invitation: come and meet my friends. They were busy people, so a visit would require planning, but it would give him a chance to know something of my life beyond my letters and the account he had inherited.
I refused to describe myself as a loser or a wretch. I could acknowledge that I had been troubled without accepting that I was worthless or fundamentally bad. The invitation remained open, alongside my determination to reject language I experienced as harmful.
AUGUST 15, 2007 · THE EXCHANGE CONTINUES
Who gets to describe a person?
Three days later, Bryan described the exchange as a cycle of attack and defense. He said he had no interest in justifying himself to me and thought I should stop trying to justify myself to him. Arguments, explanations, and revisiting history, he wrote, could not justify a person before God.
He invoked Job: a good man who experienced injustice, questioned God, and ultimately repented after hearing God’s voice. Bryan urged me to seek mercy through Jesus and find peace. His answer again returned to my spiritual condition rather than the history I wanted discussed.
My reply was brief. I explained that the invitation to meet my friends had been an answer to his own questions about my relationships. If he did not want to hear that answer, he could decline. What I wanted on the record was the limit of his knowledge: we had never had the substantive conversation on which such confident judgments might rest.
The exchange then fell quiet for nearly six months.
JANUARY 30–31, 2008
Who decides what obedience means?
A later sermon brought me back to the same questions. On January 30, I wrote about Bryan’s call for members to remain in The Living Word Church despite its faults and work through their differences. I also challenged the order he gave to obedience and critical thinking.
If people were expected to obey first, how could they decide whether they were following God or another person’s interpretation? I believed questioning was necessary to distinguish the two. Without that distinction, obedience could become loyalty to whoever claimed the right to define it.
I asked how the instruction to stay and fight for a relationship applied to people whose attempts at conversation had been refused. If we were told to remain with our families and church, what means of addressing harm were available when even dialogue was closed?
I also questioned the implication that people who left were seeking lower standards elsewhere. A building was made of bricks. It could not, by itself, establish who was seeking truth or where they would find it. I argued that answering sincere questions was part of the responsibility that came with leadership.
Bryan replied the following morning. He said I had misunderstood him: the danger was giving critical thinking priority over obedience. He viewed my claim to be a questioner as a way of masking rebellion against God.
Bryan said reason could be useful, but could not replace Jesus as the ultimate guide or secure acceptance before God. In his account, placing human intellect above obedience was a serious spiritual error. He again urged me to set aside the church, my family, and him, and turn to Jesus for healing.
This disagreement touches a tension that also runs through WATCH. A person may be told that loyalty is the condition for understanding. Yet the demand for loyalty is itself something that needs to be understood. Who is making it? How can it be examined? What happens to a person who asks?
FEBRUARY 1, 2008
The questions left outside the answer
In the next reproduced message, dated February 1, Bryan explicitly acknowledged that he was ignoring my questions. He reiterated that I should forget the disputes about my family and the church and focus on Jesus.
He rejected the idea that coming to faith required a series of preliminary steps: making people understand my pain, changing how the church operated, or getting to know him. He characterized those steps and the arguing around them as spiritual diversions.
He urged prolonged prayer, repentance, and surrender, even if the process felt crushing. He said human help would be superficial without God’s intervention, hoped the people copied on the messages would reinforce his appeal, and indicated that he probably would not write again.
The original account describes this message as arriving nearly an hour later, although its displayed date is the following day. I retain the dated sequence here rather than resolving an uncertainty the record itself does not settle.
By this point, after many hours of listening and writing, my anger had intensified. I believed the concerns I raised were being repeatedly redirected into judgments about my soul. I wanted the human questions answered: what had happened, who had made the decisions, and what could be done to restore relationships?
FEBRUARY 4, 2008
When the questions became public
I decided to send the correspondence to members of the Syracuse press. I copied Bryan so that he would know what I was doing. My message, titled “Danger in Syracuse,” identified me as the son of Robert Mazur, the church’s pastor and founder.
I described a separation from my parents and two siblings lasting about twenty years. I said it had not followed a drug problem, trouble with the law, or a quarrel with a brother. In my account, it followed my decision to stop attending my father’s church and my refusal to disown grandparents who had left earlier.
I warned that others could experience similar losses if someone close to them joined the church. I said I had letters from other people describing family separations, attached the exchange with Bryan for review, and asked the recipients to consider its implications for their community.
Those were my concerns and allegations, presented in a moment of anger and urgency. Sharing the correspondence was my attempt to move questions I could not get answered privately into public view.
That afternoon, Bryan replied with a notice stating that his emails might contain privileged or confidential information and prohibiting unauthorized disclosure, use, or dissemination. The answer did not address the underlying questions about family separation.
I experienced that response as another effort to close down examination of the exchange. To me, it reflected the secrecy and suppression I had come to associate with the institution. That is my interpretation of the response; readers can examine the original words below.
READING THIS BESIDE WATCH
The voice a person carries out
This history belongs to my life and to the record surrounding COR Values. WATCH approaches questions of belonging and authority through fiction. The two should not be collapsed into one story, but they can be read alongside each other.
In each, the need for connection makes independence difficult. A person can remember kindness, depend on a community, and still need to question the conditions attached to that care. The desire to speak may grow from an effort to preserve a relationship, even when the act of speaking puts it under strain.
My letters were often harsh. Preserving that fact matters as much as preserving the refusals and judgments they received. Readers should be able to consider both voices, the questions raised, and the limits of what the exchange resolved.
I kept asking for a conversation where lived experience could be heard and claims examined. My original account points readers to Chapter 37, “Chaos Ensues,” for what followed. The questions remain: how do we recognize the authority we have inherited, and how do we recover the freedom to answer in our own voice?
THE COMPLETE RECORD
The Original Emails
The original text of the emails between Bryan and me is presented below, in sequence.
Original · Page 1
7/14/2007
Bryan Rocine; I listened to your sermon “Daniel’s Prayer”, and more. You talk an awful lot against the pursuit of peace and show much favor for enduring pain and suffering. A person of reason might think you do this because you and your church are swimming in chaos and you don’t want change. Lots of talk you make about the anti‐Christ, one individual possibly here even today that wants to take God out of our lives. It’s hard for people like me not to consider you to be such a person. Sometimes pain and suffering is a simple message that you are doing something wrong, that you need to change. A person of great faith in God could make a good case for holding his hand to a flame and enduring great pain. But to me, it seems more sensible that the pain felt is simply a clue that you need take your hand out of the fire. My mother is a simple person, as is a quality necessary for anyone to continue attending your church. The message of Christ was to love one another, not to endure suffering of broken relationships with family. It is not proof of devotion to God to fight your tendency to be in the company of those you love, who love you, but is proof that one man, or constant exposure to rhetoric as yours can lead good people away from what God has intended for us all. You can talk about Hitler all you like, about others promising hope and peace that deceive people into wrong and immoral acts, but it is going to be hard to convince those like me that you are any different. I may never have a relationship with my mother again, neither may some of my siblings, cousins and other loved ones because of efforts such as yours and others within your church. So who is the anti‐Christ Bryan? Is there one, or is the anti‐Christ a figure as you’ve mentioned, one against Christ, against the message of Christ. Because Bryan, you are doing a tremendous job finding every excuse for people like my mother to continue living a life of suffering. Please consider that you may be preaching the wrong message.
Weeks later, I sent another…
Original · Page 2
8/6/2007 Bryan, I want you to know it said from me that I’ve never met people more vile than the two at the head of The Living Word Church. What makes you especially disgusting are two things; first that there have been many years to contemplate your actions, to correct mistakes as their wrong nature is clearly demonstrated within the consequences of your actions. Second, what you do is done in the name of God. Furthermore, three specific things come to mind when I think of you, that what you do is vulgar, profane and blasphemous. Nothing I can think of that anyone else does, no foul mouth, no self‐inflicted drug, deviant sexual act, nothing other than an act of the likes of murder or rape can compare with the disgust of what you do. You take advantage of simple and weak‐minded people for your pleasure and advance. And because your cognitive abilities are so limited, stifled by the poor character you demonstrate, you cannot comprehend the extent of damage and devastation you have caused that spreads through generations of families. It was the likes of you causing Christ to say forgive them for they know not what they do. But me, I could never forgive you knowing your bad character. You are being used as a tool for harm, nothing Godly, and I am making it my job to expose you. You two are no exception to laws governing life, and like the Jimmy Bakers and other selfish and false prophets already known for what they really are, so too in the end will the world know about you. It is my promise. Living Word, It is an amazing organization, disorganization, lesson about human nature, this creation said of God. A Church? With fabric familiar to other Churches? Deeply involved with two potential considerations, that it can be of God or Man. And who has fully considered both? Those from both views? The God view, as it pertains to the Church, I remember as stories about Family reunited. As a child I remember those my father took in, said abandoned by their families. How sad for them. How hard for them. The sermons. The prayers. The prophesies. But now that my own family is deeply divided, is it only me who looks back to consider the development, to question the lines between acts of God and Man not just in terms of reaction to such
Original · Page 3
happenings, but to the cause? Who has considered the possibility of a more simplistic view, something less grand than supernatural, something simply human? Before there could ever be a teacher to teach, there had to be an experience. Are we so sure of what we’re told that we have nothing to learn from our own observations? Yet, any point can be made, so what’s the point? It’s not a riddle, just a fact that any problematic situation is prey to the clever who cherry pick bits of truth spinning the weak of mind into submission. It is the non‐supernatural I speak of, the human element that humans use a God format or Political stance to sway others into compliance. Terms like Faith are too often used to keep the confused from searching for answers, you know, the God’s Plan is beyond our understanding and the Devil is trying to destroy the Lord’s work. Now, as I listen to The Living Word sermons, calamity has become the norm, the accepted, and what was once sought, unity, is an unworthy aspiration. I hear your teachers teach, but what of past observations? I’m a member of a growing group, not by coincidence or act of God, but by a man’s design making me as those once pitied. Has no one from your Church compassion for me, my family, my cousins, your cousins and friends? Am I to believe you abandon your friends to secure the destination of your soul? This is the good synonymous with God? Am I so bad for caring more about the wellbeing of family and friends than for doing what a man says I must to make it to Heaven? Is no one else as bold as me to care for another more than myself? Bryan, where have you been? Why do you hide from me? I’ve asked to talk with you for many years. Are you afraid of me? How can I harm you? You’re very bold from the pulpit with no one to question or criticize you. I’m curious to know, how is your family? Is it as mine? I’ve been there, through it all, knew my mother when she was warm and caring with me and the rest of her family. What happened to her? Sit with me Bryan. Tell ME why you think peace is an unworthy goal. And when you’ve said your piece, I will show you dozens of pictures. You will see my mother with family, dozens of cousins and relatives, smiling, happy, the way I remember her. Many of the faces in the pictures you’ll recognize because for years they were not only part of my mother’s family, but of your church. But that has all changed. Need I list the names of cousins, friends, sister, parents and children? Who has my mother now? Mary Dean? Anne Levante? And who is next to go? Whoever she’s closest to most likely. How long will it take before friends remaining say or do something getting in the way of my Father’s interests? It’s the price to pay when you get in his way.
Original · Page 4
Timmy, Jerry, Esther, Donnie and many others, cousins of mine got in his way years ago, so they had to go. This is the future made for my mother, hand delivered in the name of God, from the organization you call Church. It is what lay at the foundation of your preaching that you protect. Peace, is it really an unworthy goal or is it simply unattainable for you and those with you because of the way you live? Do you want the good or don’t you? It’s really the only question worth exploring, and you don’t have to solve the mysteries of life for the answer. No need to concern yourself with God’s name, be it Jehovah or Buda. The situation is complicated, not complex, but you don’t know the difference. Nothing supernatural is necessary to attain what for years you’ve said you pray for, and all the praying in the world won’t bring it anyway. It’s not up to God to impose on your will, or the will of others any more than this letter can make you do what’s right. There’s the word of God and the words of others. Do with them as is your will. Want a revival, Bryan? You could have it, and call it that if you like. But it’s not up to God, it’s up to you, a man. All the prayer in the world won’t matter. All the years of division, it’s not the work of the Devil, or lack of intervention from God. As much as my father says he’s a small‐town preacher following the message of the bible, and as you do his bidding, there’s a flaw within that not only prevents the unity once sought, but actually has caused it. And you, you may not be the source of this sickness, but you certainly are being used as a tool to nurture and perpetuate it. The head of your Church once spoke of reuniting families. The irony is that it’s he who single handedly caused the division and destruction that infiltrated your Church long ago. And now, because it is so out of hand, because you haven’t faith or spine for unity, you’re teaching others to settle for the bad consuming you. Bryan, if you were wise enough to know what it would take to unite the families of hundreds, would you do it? Would you want the revival? If my Father “repented”, became honest about the years of his doings, of lying and manipulation, his fight and need for control, if he came to grip with what he has done for dozens of years, you would need another Church to hold the people that would certainly fill it. You’d have your revival, Bryan. But my father has become his own worst enemy, too proud, too hardened, and everything he touches, like you, turns bad. It’s wisdom you need, that would make the difference, that comes from character you’re lacking. You haven’t the backbone to stand up for what’s right. Are you proud of this, this
Original · Page 5
quality and prerequisite for your position? You are spineless, weak and selfish, everything necessary to be the tool you were made to be. Christianity, Godliness? Certainly not, more like smoke and mirrors. If you had a heart you’d tell people like my mother there’s family and friends that miss and love her, that want her back in their life. But your sermons, that won’t do that. Her sacrifice is for the Lord, right? My Grandfather died without seeing her for more than 20 years. What does God have to do with that? My Grandmother is next. I want you to remember that the next time you preach about settling for division, and the day when my mother breaks down because she can’t take it anymore. She’s on a course where she’s going to end up all alone, old and miserable, broken relations with children, grandchildren and everyone else. But why bother Bryan, as you’ve become like my father, what does any of this have to do with your goals? My guess is that things need to get worse before all of you pay attention to more relevant passages, like the fruit of your labor. Simply know that as you move ahead, this Church, it is being used as a most destructive force, and people should be informed.
And again, five days later…
8/11/2007 Bryan, I listened to your sermon “Godly Sorrow”. Still you’re telling others separation is not only necessary, but required by God. You say that Christians need to “cut off” relations, from even loved ones, sometimes even with those from family. You say that it is temporary sorrow, that joy and prosperity will come as consequence. What characteristics have you seen in those you cut yourselves from that require such action? The requirements, as you mentioned, are drunkenness, fornication, railing and the like. There are dozens you cut from that continue to serve the Lord. According to your reasons why Paul wrote to the Church of Corinth, how does separation from the likes of my
Original · Page 6
grandfather protect others in your church from living a life of sin? Maybe this poor selection is why it is not only a “dose” of sorrow that my mother experiences, but a lifetime. In the end of your sermon you mentioned “Brother Tom Conena”. Shouldn’t you have said former Brother Conena? And tell me, what evil sins has he demonstrated that require separation from him to keep your Church Godly? You said that the first 17 years of your life you lived in the negative, as you didn’t serve the Lord. I say your negative didn’t begin until after those years, that now your efforts are doing worse than nothing, that single handedly your influence is one of the greatest contributions in your community to an enduring and ungodly sorrow.
Apparently, this was the letter that finally captured Bryan’s attention. For the very first time, the next day, he wrote…
8/12/2007 Hi Dan, I am not going to try to answer you point‐by‐point. I don't think my answers would matter to you. You can definitely set up criticisms and complaints faster than I can knock them down. I think you are just trying to lure me into a sort of arena where we can fight it out. Not interested. I won't fight with you. Especially in front of Pam and Debbie and Mary Jane or anyone else. Have you changed in the last twenty‐five years and more since we might have last talked? Have you grown? Can you get along with others? Do you enjoy warm, happy relationships with others? I am sure you have honed your skills as a manipulator, but have you grown in noble ways that God would be pleased with? You strike me as the same narcissistic, incorrigibly competitive person that you were as a rebellious teenager.
Original · Page 7
Can't you see that your perennial tirades and caustic letters show that you are not a healthy man? I feel sorry for you. Isn't it time to get whole? Isn't it time to be healed? I am not talking about family relationships. I am talking about you. No one else matters in this letter. Only you. You are angry with God, Dan. You hate Him as your arch‐enemy.. You hate Him just because He is at the top. But soon you are going to meet Him, to stand before Him in judgment. You certainly are trying to hurt the Lord right now. You are trying to pile on the damage. In the end, though, He is going to be the one on top, not you. I know you think you will never "tap out" and submit, that you rather die than submit to anyone, even Jesus. You would rather be in eternal perdition with your pride intact than ever break before Jesus. Come on, Dan! Look at the cross. There is Jesus succeeding at something that is so far beyond you‐‐humbling Himself before God the Father in obedience and submission. Jesus grew so much through that experience. He gave His life to save His life. And He saved us as well. Look at Him there on the cross in your mind, Dan, and ask God, through the cross, to give you a new chance at life. I am not talking about submitting to your earthly father. That would be silly at your age! I am talking about submitting to your heavenly Father. Plea the blood of Jesus, Dan. Ask God to cleanse you by His blood, to set you free from yourself and your hell‐bent pride and competitiveness. Allow yourself to be disgusted with yourself. Admit you are a loser, a wretch. You can have peace! Peace is better than some psychologically twisted conception of winning! I don't even want to tell you that I love you or that your mom or dad or brothers or sisters or anyone else loves you. You know why? Because it would be a distraction. Healing and wholeness for you cannot come through the agency and labor and comfort of any human relationship. Rather, you need a miracle. You need to be healed within by the power, love, and mercy of heaven. Jesus alone can make you a clean and good and whole man. Sincerely, Bryan
Original · Page 8
The very same day, I wrote Bryan back…
8/12/2007 Bryan, More than a dozen years have passed since I practically begged to speak with you. Now, without ever having a conversation with me, you're telling me who I am and what I need to do. Every tragedy experienced, and those continuing may not be caused by this missed step, this lack of communication, but it's certainly an element always there. Do you deny, as stated within the Bible, your requirement to investigate claims of wrong doings? As I understand scripture, doing so is necessary to protect the wellbeing of the Church as much as Paul's warnings to the Church of Corinth. The Bible clearly states the necessity of Christians to be presented with facts demonstrating accusations false to ensure no confusion exists about those abolished, or as you say "cut off". As a Pastor with responsibilities to so many, and having judged me narcissistic, incorrigible, rebellious, unhealthy, a God hater and more, what can you tell anyone with competence about me to protect them from my influence? You asked if I have changed in the last 25 years since we might have talked. Since we may have talked about what Bryan, something that demonstrated me this terrible person you describe? I gave you the opportunity to meet me, many times, but you denied me, and now you're saying you know me? Let's assume for a moment that your criticisms about me are correct. If I were trying to lure you into a fight, what are you afraid of? You stand on a strong foundation, don't you? Isn't this the "arena" where God would have you pick your fights anyway? I heard you talk in a Sermon about revenge, about fighting the Devil back, and how good it would be. What better way is there to do this than in dialog showing me, the God hater wrong, as the Bible requires you?
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You have preached many sermons about sorrow, about accepting calamity and hardship. Your congregation is exposed to an abundance of division and separation they don't understand, and you don't want them to understand, but to simply accept. You're digging for scripture to preach, to keep people divided, to keep them from seeking truth about separations, and you're going to do it again and again. But the truth will always be there, building behind the dam you've assembled, patiently waiting to be released and flow. There is a reason you never talked to me. I'm only a pawn in your world, but you, my father, your years of labor at the head of a Church have caused my two sisters to separate from me for 20 years without their ability to state a single incident between us as justification. Are you happy for me, that my relationship with my sisters has been restored? Is it your desire to contribute to restoration? Is it something you ever encouraged my sisters to do? Every word you ever read from me comes from an interest in bringing people together. What I hear from you is always about keeping them apart. This is why you received letters from me recently, from which you determine me to be a God hater and so much more. Fight it all you want, but the day is already here that restoration is possible, even without your support. You can speak to me about my need to be healed, to be cleaned and made whole, but the real need is a commitment from you, to stop separating people from each other and stop preaching about the necessity for separation and division within your church. And if you're sincere in question about my ability to get along with others, to have grown, to have warm and happy relationships, the best way I can think to answer is to invite you here and introduce you to some of my friends. Remember, you have never known a friend of mine or had a single conversation with me. Your talk of me being a rebellious teenager, of God being my arch‐enemy, all are conclusions expressed sure of, yet how? But again, and though such conclusions oppose the chance for truthfulness within your questions, I invite you. I will not admit I am a loser, a wretch, because I’m not. I am a good person, and always have been even though at times I have been troubled. I have not earned nor do I deserve the negative implied or the discouragement you may have unknowingly volunteered. I am not afraid of your words, your presence, and am sincere about inviting you here to introduce myself and friends to you. But in doing so I will make no secret about my need to reject the negative you offer and protect myself from dangers created and existing within your world.
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If you decide to come, try to let me know with plenty of advance as most the people I know that would be relevant to your meeting are very busy and travel. It will take some planning for their availability during a same short period. After meeting with them, and only then will you have what is necessary to say anything about me, to me, or to anyone else.
Three days later… From: B. M. Rocine [mailto:brocine@twcny.rr.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:29 AM To: Daniel Mazur Subject: Re: You know who I am? Dear Dan, Your letters criticize me and defend you. Attack‐defend, attack‐defend, attack‐defend. I told you: Not interested. I am not going to fight. I am not even going to fight about not wanting to fight. 1. I am not in the least interested in justifying myself to you. You have already outlasted me in this regard. 2. You should not be so obsessed with justifying yourself to me. You need to be justified before the Lord. And you cannot justify yourself to the Lord with e‐mails and lawyering, arguments, complaints about mitigating factors, counter‐attacks, and rehashing histories. I don't think the Lord is going to play verbal chess with you.
In the Bible there was a man who really was a good man, but he experienced some terrible injustices. He began to criticize God and justify himself until the Lord said to him, "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me." The man only had to hear the voice of the Lord and he completely reversed his aggression. The man responded, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know… Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." Have you…can you hear the voice of the Lord?
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Your only hope to be just and clean before the Lord is the one hope for any of us‐‐that is the blood of Jesus and the glorious hope of His resurrection. Cast your care upon Him, Dan. Cry out to Jesus for mercy! Find peace for your obsessed soul. Sincerely, Bryan And again, I decided to respond to Bryan, the very same day… 8/15/2007 Bryan, We never really met, never a conversation between us, but you have a lot to say about me, who I am, how I hate God, etc. You asked me how my relationships were, if they've improved. I don't know how it is you have an opinion about my relationships to begin with, with God or anyone, or how you've come to other conclusions mentioned about me. But as it appears I've no credibility with you, I offered the chance for you to meet my friends, so as to have an option other than taking my word about what you've asked. If what you are saying now is that you didn't want me to answer you, well, OK, you don't have to learn or know anything about me, and it still is your option to never speak to me, as you know there has never been a conversation between us. Just so everyone understands, for the record, that you never knew me. Dan Nearly six months later, our dialog resumed…
From: Daniel Mazur <dan@compits.net> On Behalf Of Daniel Mazur Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:46 PM To: 'brocine@twcny.rr.com' <brocine@twcny.rr.com>
Subject: Fight to stay in The Living Word Church
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Bryan, Listen to yourself (attachment). You say that Christians should stay at the Living Word Church, regardless of its many faults you admit to. You say it’s wrong to leave and go elsewhere, that Christians should stay and fight through their differences. I imagine they should do so with the critical thinking you now teach, that you say is dangerous yet necessary. But obedience you say comes first. Shouldn’t critical thinking be what leads Christians to proper obedience, to knowing it is God they obey, not man, and what protects them from misguided obedience supposedly imposed within the watered‐down standards of Churches you imply past members have left to? Are you saying I should have fought to stay with my family; within The Living Word Church as flawed as it is? And when you and your pastor refuse to engage me; refuse any dialog regarding the harm I felt from similar wrong you now admit to, as you forbid yourselves and others to even have conversation with me, how else is it you expect me and others to fight to stay within our homes, within our families, within our Church? What is it you are asking those thinking of leaving, or may be asking of those who recently left to do? Haven’t we tried to talk with you? What’s left other than the pain you intentionally and with planning inflict, the rejection, the shunning from you and others influenced by you? Are you sure you want to encourage Christians to think? If a Living Word Christian asks if it’s true you ignored me all these years, what will you say demonstrating your higher standards that shows you to be other than a liar or hypocrite? Critical thinking is dangerous? Consider what will happen, the inevitable as The Living Word Congregation simply begins to think. Then again, maybe you already have, maybe you’ve been critically thinking and use the pulpit, your influence, the bible with bits of truth, with parts left out to convince those still there to stay. Your building is nothing more than bricks, and if I were you, if people are looking for God I’d reconsider the idea of getting in their way. Standards within your Church certainly are different than elsewhere, and if you follow your own advice, if you think critically about it, you’ll know this and more. Questions are as healthy as you say, and not only is it right to answer anyone questioning you, it’s also an obligation. This every critical thinker, every obedient Christian knows, and that it is the way to enlightenment, the path to truth, to God.
To this, Bryan responded the following morning;
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From: B. M. Rocine [mailto:brocine@twcny.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:50 AM To: Daniel R. Mazur Cc: Pam Palladino; Debbie Conena; Gary Lawton; MaryJane Lawton Subject: Re: Fight to stay in The Living Word Church
Hi Dan,
I am very happy to have another chance to share Jesus with you. I hope I will continue to get such opportunities once in a while until you come to Christ. On the other hand, I will probably not respond often. You're struggling with understanding my message on critical thinking. I can tell because you mentioned that I think critical thinking is dangerous. You are subtly and vitally incorrect. I said that giving critical thinking priority over obedience is big problem. Flip‐flopped priorities is a problem in your own guidance system. In fact, one of the ways you mask your own rebellion against the heavenly Father is by claiming to be a noble questioner of everything. However, your use of critical thinking will not protect you or justify you before the Lord. The heavenly Father is not intimidated by your mental capabilities. He is not even impressed. Your preference for critical thinking leaves you naked, not noble, before Him. Jesus came from heaven for you. He paid the ultimate price for your sins at the cross. When you stand before the Father in heaven on your own judgment day, the Father will not applaud your critical thinking and let you in heaven without submission to Jesus. The Father will never disrespect Jesus in that way, that is, to weigh your mental capabilities more heavily than His own Good Son's obedient sacrifice. Jesus is more important to the Father than any of us are! Do you see how critical thinking, as helpful as it is, falls short as the ultimate guide for our lives? Jesus is the ultimate guide! Critical thinking is just a helper. To let the helper usurp the role of the ultimate guide is a grave, damnable sin. Forget Living Word Church! Forget your (earthly) father, mother, brothers and sisters! Forget me! You are so tortured in your soul, you must forget all else besides Jesus! He loves
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you. He can heal you. In desperation, lay down your devilish arrogance, and embrace the Savior, who can heal the hurt and bring peace to your writhing, restless soul. Lose your life for Jesus' sake and the Gospels, and you will save yourself. Bryan
Nearly an hour later, he wrote to me again. From: B. M. Rocine Date: 2/1/2008 11:46:44 AM To: Daniel Mazur Subject: Jesus is the Way
Dear Dan,
Of course I am ignoring your questions. I meant what I said. Forget about your family. Forget about me. Coming to Jesus is not a multi‐step process, like so: First I have to make people understand my pains and frustrations and complaints. Then I have to fix the way Living Word Church operates. Then I have to get to know Bryan. Then I have to X, Y, and Z. The steps are the devil's diversions. So is the arguing. The arguing is nothing other than the work of demons. I am not going to argue with you. Time is wasting away. We don't know if we have tomorrow. Surrender to Jesus. You will be crushed in the process, but you will discover His love. Weep before Him. Smite your breast in contrition before Him for your wickedness. You are just making up a way to live that you think is right apart from submission to Jesus. That's wicked. Cry out for mercy. Keep praying for hours and days if you have to until the Holy Spirit gives new birth to your soul and spirit. Keep trying and trying and praying and praying until He touches you. I can't promise you if heaven will be near when you cry out or
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far away, but we have to believe He will finally see your sincerity and meet you with favor you don't deserve. Don't stop reaching out to Him until you feel the touch of Heaven's Hand. If the Lord doesn't intervene in your life, any human's help is just padding and whitewash. I hope the people you are copying these notes to are confirming what I am telling you about your need to humble yourself before Jesus. I wish that serving Jesus would be the only thing we talk about. I probably will not write again. Bryan
At this point, after countless days and hours spent listening to Bryan's sermons and witnessing his unwavering refusal to address any concerns raised, my anger reached its peak. Moreover, I became acutely aware of the profound harm his rhetoric had inflicted on my family over the years, solidifying my determination to take decisive action. In a renewed and earnest effort to inform the public and raise awareness about the prevailing situation, I decided to send a copy of my correspondence with Bryan to members of the press in Syracuse. I was convinced the community needed to be made aware of what was happening in their midst. To ensure Bryan was fully aware of my intentions, I included him as a recipient by copying him on the message I sent. From: Daniel Mazur [mailto:dan@compits.net] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 9:07 AM Subject: Danger in Syracuse My name is Dan Mazur. My father is Robert Mazur, Pastor and founder of The Living Word Church in Syracuse NY. I’ve been separated from my parents and two of my siblings for about 20 years now. I never had a drug problem, trouble with the law, not even an argument or fight with a brother to blame. I simply stopped attending my father’s church, and refused to disown my Grandparents who left long ago.
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Why Should you care? Well, if you know someone who becomes a member of the Church, someone from your family, a neighbor or friend, there’s a chance you may never see that person again. But don’t take my word for it, I have dozens of letters from people this happened to. For the past year I’ve been corresponding with Bryan Rocine, the assistant pastor of The Living Word Church. I’ve been questioning him about the separation in my family, in other families, his tactics, sermons posted on the Church website encouraging division and more. A copy of the correspondence is attached for your review. http://corpits.net/forms/rocine.doc I recommend you provide this information to family and loved ones; any good hearted, trusting person in Syracuse that may be vulnerable to those dishonest who misuse the title of Pastor. Thank You,
On the very same day I wrote the letter, I received another response from Bryan in the afternoon. From: B. M. Rocine [mailto:brocine@twcny.rr.com] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 4:16 PM To: Daniel R. Mazur Subject: Re: FW: Danger in Syracuse Hi Danny, Any e‐mail I have sent or will send to you may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. Any unauthorized disclosure, use or dissemination of this e‐mail message or its contents, either in whole or in part, is prohibited. Thanks for your anticipated compliance with this prohibition! Regards,
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Bryan
Bryan's relentless evasion of responsibility for his words, along with his deliberate attempts to conceal his actions, struck me as sheer cowardice. Yet, his behavior did not surprise me. I was acutely aware of the culture of secrecy and suppression deeply ingrained in the core tenets of his dogma—principles that underpinned his church's beliefs and practices. The rest of the story continues in Chapter 37, "Chaos Ensues."