Four years ago today was Ash Wednesday. I began my Lenten fast.
Four years ago I fasted from church and ignored the Lenten practice of not fasting on Sundays. It was almost the first time in my adult life that I'd intentionally missed getting to church on the "Lord's Day."
No regrets. None. Two years ago I wrote:
"That was a massive step. It took me a couple of years of deep searching and questioning to get to the point of even contemplating the experiment of a short break from communal services.
I didn't know whether I'd manage that fast. Not after more than 20 years of living for Jesus and God, giving myself to prayer, the Bible, worship and so much that daily destroyed me a little more.
I never went back. The release from guilt about missing even one Sunday was beautiful.
I soon found that life was far better outside of my old faith."
It's took a lot more to recover from it than I thought it would.
I don't mean the homophobia and transphobia parts of religion which naturally caused me to perpetually reject these parts of myself. I'd recovered from all that by spending a few years among people of faith who didn't believe or teach anything like that in any way and who offered a real welcome rather than a "Welcome, gay person. Stop being a gay person" kind of thing.
I mean firstly the way that, whatever it is, if you have something that is the ground and root and total centre of the meaning in your life as well as being your biggest source of community, belonging, and much else that's good for all of us then rejecting it leaves a massive hole and a confusion about how to fill it.
The evangelist says it's a "God shaped hole" and knows that most of us aren't satisfied and feel a hole. It's not God shaped at all. Finding out what it is is an individual journey. Eventually we may even learn that there never was a hole beyond the hell hole we created through the beliefs we received and held. There isn't a hole, it's an imposed illusion. The magician's box is not empty though it looks impossible that it contains anything.
Secondly I mean the damage done by orthodox Christian doctrine, especially for me the presuppositions on which the gospel depends and the way the doctrines of original sin came to be believed.
As we sang, "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me; a sinner, condemned, unclean."
If you're in wonder and amazement that someone who is meant to be love, infinite love, infinite mercy and so on could possible love someone as bad as you then that's going to lead to more than a few problems.
Jesus says in John chapter 3, a very famous passage, that God so loved the world ... but if you don't believe in Jesus you're already condemned. Now if that's not a picture of emotionally abusive parenting I don't know what is. When you're taught to believe you can't do anything good unless daddy does it, when your dad tells you you deserve to burn forever but he'll help, when he says he can only bear to have you in his presence because blood was shed, it's not great for self esteem, self acceptance and reaching the fullness of your potential.
Yes, Christians tell you, rightly too, that the emphasis is on love, mercy, hope and so on. Being joyful because of salvation. I wrote an excellent sermon on joy and got halfway through writing a book on Christian joy. Trying to convince myself?
But the premises lying behind that salvation are, in orthodox formulations of the religion, anti-human. Calvin takes the doctrine of original sin, developed via the apostle Paul via Augustine, to its logical conclusion and teaches - it's the first point of Calvinism - that we are all born in a state of total depravity. Total depravity. Right from the beginning. Perhaps the most negative view of the human race found in any religion or belief system in history.
It's taken so much to recover from that and it's no coincidence that the phrase "Post traumatic church disorder" exists. It cost me my happiness and mental health to "see my sin upon the cross" which I wrote about a few years ago.
Recovery began some years before leaving the church. Firstly through a book I didn't even finish because I wasn't read for it. Seeds were planted though by what I read in "Original Grace" by Matthew Fox. They were developed by meeting, eventually, Christians who also rejected all of the original sin teaching and taught me to embrace words like "I am beautifully/fearfully and wonderfully made" from the psalm I used in my final ever sermon before being banned for accepting myself as wonderfully made and stopped rejecting who and what I am. Other Christian authors came to be important to me too. Bishop John Shelby Spong. John Main. Paul Tilllich. Plenty of others, all Christians whose books I still have on my shelves.
Four years after leaving the church I'm much less angry about the damage caused to me. If it wasn't for the Christians who made it safe for me to walk away I'd still be angry and hurting. Books like "Leaving the Fold" by Marlene Winell helped immensely and four years of looking at that hole and noticing it wasn't real helps. No, it's not real. We're bombarded by propaganda telling us it's real, that we and our lives are inadequate. God will fill it. Flora margarine or Bisto will make it okay. Yes, advertising can work just in the same way as the most manipulative of religions.
There is nothing to fill. There never was. Blindness to the meaning and wonder of your own self and the selves of others only makes it seem that there is.
Four years on I'm still finding that in some ways I'm recovering from religion. I was already messy and vulnerable when I became "born again" as the religious term puts it. I already had some pretty major experiences of mental health distress. Religion gave me good things and I was very glad to have them. It gave community, friendship, meaning, purpose, music and much more. Looking back, I know that any religion or faith group, theistic or secular, could have provided those things in different ways. The fulfillment of community wasn't because of Jesus but because of community itself, humans coming together to support one another. These are all good things and need to be nurtured outside of religion. They're also things that the secular world hasn't quite developed to the same extent. Perhaps it's harder to do it when people aren't gathered around a particular set of dogma or doctrines. Perhaps it's just that these things take time and the transition from religious to secular is always a challenge.
I don't mean the homophobia and transphobia parts of religion which naturally caused me to perpetually reject these parts of myself. I'd recovered from all that by spending a few years among people of faith who didn't believe or teach anything like that in any way and who offered a real welcome rather than a "Welcome, gay person. Stop being a gay person" kind of thing.
I mean firstly the way that, whatever it is, if you have something that is the ground and root and total centre of the meaning in your life as well as being your biggest source of community, belonging, and much else that's good for all of us then rejecting it leaves a massive hole and a confusion about how to fill it.
The evangelist says it's a "God shaped hole" and knows that most of us aren't satisfied and feel a hole. It's not God shaped at all. Finding out what it is is an individual journey. Eventually we may even learn that there never was a hole beyond the hell hole we created through the beliefs we received and held. There isn't a hole, it's an imposed illusion. The magician's box is not empty though it looks impossible that it contains anything.
Secondly I mean the damage done by orthodox Christian doctrine, especially for me the presuppositions on which the gospel depends and the way the doctrines of original sin came to be believed.
As we sang, "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me; a sinner, condemned, unclean."
If you're in wonder and amazement that someone who is meant to be love, infinite love, infinite mercy and so on could possible love someone as bad as you then that's going to lead to more than a few problems.
Jesus says in John chapter 3, a very famous passage, that God so loved the world ... but if you don't believe in Jesus you're already condemned. Now if that's not a picture of emotionally abusive parenting I don't know what is. When you're taught to believe you can't do anything good unless daddy does it, when your dad tells you you deserve to burn forever but he'll help, when he says he can only bear to have you in his presence because blood was shed, it's not great for self esteem, self acceptance and reaching the fullness of your potential.
Yes, Christians tell you, rightly too, that the emphasis is on love, mercy, hope and so on. Being joyful because of salvation. I wrote an excellent sermon on joy and got halfway through writing a book on Christian joy. Trying to convince myself?
But the premises lying behind that salvation are, in orthodox formulations of the religion, anti-human. Calvin takes the doctrine of original sin, developed via the apostle Paul via Augustine, to its logical conclusion and teaches - it's the first point of Calvinism - that we are all born in a state of total depravity. Total depravity. Right from the beginning. Perhaps the most negative view of the human race found in any religion or belief system in history.
It's taken so much to recover from that and it's no coincidence that the phrase "Post traumatic church disorder" exists. It cost me my happiness and mental health to "see my sin upon the cross" which I wrote about a few years ago.
Recovery began some years before leaving the church. Firstly through a book I didn't even finish because I wasn't read for it. Seeds were planted though by what I read in "Original Grace" by Matthew Fox. They were developed by meeting, eventually, Christians who also rejected all of the original sin teaching and taught me to embrace words like "I am beautifully/fearfully and wonderfully made" from the psalm I used in my final ever sermon before being banned for accepting myself as wonderfully made and stopped rejecting who and what I am. Other Christian authors came to be important to me too. Bishop John Shelby Spong. John Main. Paul Tilllich. Plenty of others, all Christians whose books I still have on my shelves.
Four years after leaving the church I'm much less angry about the damage caused to me. If it wasn't for the Christians who made it safe for me to walk away I'd still be angry and hurting. Books like "Leaving the Fold" by Marlene Winell helped immensely and four years of looking at that hole and noticing it wasn't real helps. No, it's not real. We're bombarded by propaganda telling us it's real, that we and our lives are inadequate. God will fill it. Flora margarine or Bisto will make it okay. Yes, advertising can work just in the same way as the most manipulative of religions.
There is nothing to fill. There never was. Blindness to the meaning and wonder of your own self and the selves of others only makes it seem that there is.
Four years on I'm still finding that in some ways I'm recovering from religion. I was already messy and vulnerable when I became "born again" as the religious term puts it. I already had some pretty major experiences of mental health distress. Religion gave me good things and I was very glad to have them. It gave community, friendship, meaning, purpose, music and much more. Looking back, I know that any religion or faith group, theistic or secular, could have provided those things in different ways. The fulfillment of community wasn't because of Jesus but because of community itself, humans coming together to support one another. These are all good things and need to be nurtured outside of religion. They're also things that the secular world hasn't quite developed to the same extent. Perhaps it's harder to do it when people aren't gathered around a particular set of dogma or doctrines. Perhaps it's just that these things take time and the transition from religious to secular is always a challenge.
My Christian experiences contained those good things, in varying degrees in different churches. I learned years later that the church which gave the greatest fulfillment of community was also the one which had the largest incidence of child sexual, physical and emotional abuse. That's something for others to write about when the time is right. However, my Christian experiences also created a religious form of C-PTSD as it's done to many people I've listened to in the last few years. Some Christians have a much healthier form of religion without the damaging aspects that have been pervasive in Christian societies. That's possible. For them, who I naturally disagree with about belief in God, I am glad. While I'm up for philosophical discussions with believers it doesn't matter to me if someone believes in God and that belief leads them to ways which are full of light. Why would it, even after I was damaged so much? There are Christians I know and love and whose lives, largely flowing from their faith, I admire greatly. None of the above is an attack on Christians or on Jesus, at least not the psychologically healthier interpretations of his person and actions. It is in part an attack on abusive or inhuman forms of religion and for that I make no apology.
Recovery is possible. It's hard work. It's full of surprises. It demands much patience. But it is possible. Never doubt that.
Recovery is possible. It's hard work. It's full of surprises. It demands much patience. But it is possible. Never doubt that.
No comments:
Post a Comment