Recognizing and working with Church based trauma
Acts 2:
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
The Fellowship of the Believers
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Pentecost is widely considered to be the birth of the church. The body of Christ, the bride of Christ a group of people about to change the world. Since then the Church has done immeasurable good, leading on reforms such as the end of slavery, the abolition of apartheid, countless humanitarian efforts. In Keighley alone right now I could list so many projects run by churches that are transforming lives. The Church is a wonderful, exciting, powerful, spiritual yet physical body doing God’s work on Earth.
However, the Church is also a body of humans. Humans make mistakes, sometimes accidentally through poor judgement and often deliberately through greed, power and selfishness. Whilst the Church has had a huge positive impact on society we also have to recognise it has also been responsible for a lot of atrocities. To get an understanding of Church history I’d really recommend you read Nick
Pages “A nearly infallible history of Christianity”. Let’s read an extract.
“This book is the story of how a Mediterranean peasant inspired a movement of followers that eventually became the biggest religion in the world. And of how those followers – who called themselves Christians – did extraordinary, inspirational, world-changing things because they believed that’s what that Mediterranean carpenter wanted them to do and because somehow he gave them the power to do it. And how, even today, we’re living with the consequences of their actions. And of how a lot of other people – who also called themselves Christians – did awful, appalling things in the name of Christ. And how, even today, we’re living with the consequences of their actions as well. This is the story of some people who tried to live like Jesus, and many people who didn’t try very hard to live like Jesus, and a few people who couldn’t even be bothered to try it at all. The strange thing is that they all called themselves Christians, even though, with hindsight, it is clear that some of them had little idea of who Jesus was and what he represented.”
From the Crusades to the Spanish inquisition, over the course of history the Church has been responsible for much indefensible pain. Jesus hated violence, when you love your enemies as he instructed how can there be such a thing as a Holy War? That’s without even starting into sectarian violence between Christians with differences in theology.
As Nick Page writes:
“I mean, for Christians, which part of ‘Love your enemies’ is so hard to understand? Where exactly does Jesus say that burning people is perfectly OK? It’s not like ‘Love your enemies’ suddenly popped up in some previously undiscovered record of the words of Jesus. It’s always been there. And ‘they had different standards back then’ may be OK when it comes to personal hygiene. But it doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about one Christian burning another. Christian to death just because the second one believed something different about a piece of bread.”
What I’m trying to say is the Church because it’s human is flawed. I’m talking about this local expression of Church here, the global Church and everywhere in between. We try to get things right but we are human and we make mistakes. In fact I’ll tell you a secret, even Church leaders make mistakes.
What I want to address in this blog is the truth that historically, and in today’s modern world, the Church has caused, and is causing, lots of hurt and trauma. I want to acknowledge that, identify it as wrong, and think about how we as the Church can help to heal that hurt.
I’m no psychologist I’m no expert on this. But I have done some research and I know many people, some very close to me, who have experienced some of the behaviors I’m going to speak about. I’ve witnessed some of these in previous incarnations of our church community here.
What I’m trying to achieve with this message is to break the taboo around discussing this, in the hope that firstly it will continue to develop the culture of openness and accountability we have here and to prevent abuses happening here. Secondly so that anyone reading this can experience some sense of validation and, if they are ready, to begin to address the pain. Finally to increase awareness of the little spoken about elephant in the room in Church circles.
I don’t want this to be a bashing of Church leaders and Christians, I don’t think most people did anything deliberately, but they are guilty of failing to question why some of the practices they were promoting or enforcing were in place. Did they match the character of the God of love revealed to us by Jesus. It’s not an excuse but millennia of law and religion do this. I would never force a victim of abuse to forgive their abusers, that’s a deeply personal thing that can only be done when the victim is ready. I but I do know that God’s love is big enough for him to forgive and if anyone is listening to this who on reflection feels they may have been the perpetrator of some of these behaviors my message would be reflect, if possible do what you can to make it right but know the cross was enough to cover every mistake.
Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about in the modern church.
Controlling teaching that Christianity is about meeting a set of moral values and threatening those who don’t hold to that standard with hell. Including dressing up a set of Victorian conservative values as “Orthodox Christian teaching” and elevating sexual sins above others. I keep on saying it is not the job of the Church to tell people what’s right and wrong and decide on the moral standard of society.
For example Sex before marriage, can anyone tells me where the Bible says you can’t have sex out of marriage? No, because it doesn’t yet it’s made into such a huge deal. It can also have a hugely negative effect on people who then consider sex as wrong even when they are married. So called purity culture. I’m not here making a moral judgement on that either way . It’s none of my businesses and it’s none of the churches business. To put it bluntly other peoples sex lives are none of my business. The church business and my business as a leader is loving people. Full stop. Yet I’ve seen churches publicly humiliate people because of some “sexual sin” force them to apologise, how is that loving?
Conversion therapy, “pray the gay away”, it’s damaging it causes trauma and it has to stop.
Sexual abuse by those in authority; an abomination that has been and still is far too common.
Teaching women that they are inferior to men by not allowing them into leadership roles or treating women differently. Sadly misogyny is very much alive in many churches today.
Failed healings, making people think that when someone is ill or when they are not healed it is somehow their fault through lack of faith or a sin.
Unworthiness, teaching people they are intrinsically bad and unworthy and that without God, who is gatekept by church leaders, they are useless and worthless. Again pushing control on often vulnerable people. Telling people that they have to be something they’re not in order to be accepted either by God or by the Church. Convincing people that part of who they are is intrinsically wrong.
Forcing people to forgive those who have hurt them before they are ready yes we should try and forgive those who have hurt us. But we also need to recognise and deal with the trauma.
I could go on, the number of people I speak to who used to go to church but have been driven away by these practices and ones like them is staggering. Because church represents God these people then often stop believing, they don’t believe in God or their true heavenly empowering identity and lose out on so much.
It even has a name PTCIS, Post Traumatic, Church induced trauma, or RTS Religious Trauma Syndrome. Abusers are clever, shaming gets relabeled as convicting, controlling as mentoring and guilt as repentance.
If you have been hurt by the Church, I want to say sorry. Like everything pure and good when a fallen humanity gets its hands on it it gets corrupted. Often not through any deliberate fault of an individual, years of human interference often centuries old to control the masses dressed up as tradition and religion permeates the Church.
If you’ve been hurt I want to validate your hurt, I want to acknowledge it, remove the taboo, make it OK to talk about it. To deal with hurt, first we need to recognise it exists. There is often a tendency to brush things like this under the carpet, the ostrich approach, bury your head in the sand I the hope it goes away. Often these tendencies come from a good place, a desire not to upset someone or cause scandal, we don’t want to bring the church into disrepute. Or perhaps not wanting to open yourself up to questioning.
Well let’s put victims first. It’s OK not to be OK, it’s OK to be hurt. I’m not saying you should publicly go and shout about it, but acknowledge it yourself and talk to someone you trust. Not because the person you talk to will have a solution but talking helps.
Once we’ve acknowledged the trauma we can begin to process it. How has this affected me? How has it affected my relationship with my family? My relationship with God? Now some people would say lets process it so we can put it behind us, forget about it and move on. I don’t believe that’s helpful. The hurt is a part of our stories.
I was talking about restoration at a children’s event last year and An 8 year old boy said something really remarkable to me. This is a boy who has been through more in his 8 years than most adults will in their lifetime and he said to me:
“I don’t want to be restored to how God made me because what’s happened to me makes me who I am”.
Firstly what a wise 8 year old! That question really made me think but the next day I was able to respond to him and I said, God never makes bad things happen but he works with us to make good come from those experiences. When we’re fully restored to how God made us, either when we die or Jesus returns, all of the hurt that has been a part of our story on Earth will still be there because it contributes to what makes us who we are. But the difference will be Jesus has healed the bits that hurt and what remains will be the parts that make us stronger.
While I believe that God can and does heal all kinds of hurt and I’m certain when we are restored we will be fully healed. But for reasons far beyond my understanding sometimes in this life healing happens and sometimes it doesn’t. When healing doesn’t happen, like grief, I believe we can learn to live with the hurt, it will still be there, it will still surface sometimes and be painful but we can work with God to focus on the parts of the bad stuff that make us stronger both in our faith and as a person.
So how can we begin to do that, how can we partner with God to begin to heal the hurt? I don’t want to minimise this process or say that a simple prayer will fix it. It could but it usually doesn’t. It could be a long process maybe one we don’t complete until we are restored in heaven. There’s also not a one size fits all approach so I kind of have a tool kit of ideas that might help.
Dr Alishia Powell a clinical psychologist experienced in helping people with religious trauma syndrome describes some steps for healing. She approaches these from an atheist point of view assuming that victims have no further interest in God. I have adapted them slightly using testimony from many survivors of abuse to guide a recovery where faith doesn’t just survive the trauma but emerges stronger and is an important part of the healing process.
First we need to be ready to begin, as I’ve said we need to be able to acknowledge the hurt and we need to want to try and fix it. If you’re not there yet that’s OK, when you’re ready, if you’re ready, God will be ready. Don’t go believing any nonsense about your salvation depending on it; the God of love isn’t sending you to hell because you have unprocessed trauma.
Next we try to separate the false theology from Jesus. Challenge your beliefs just because you’ve always believed or been taught something doesn’t make it correct. Read the words of Jesus who was all about love not judgement. Ask yourself “does that teaching line up with Jesus?” if it doesn’t reevaluate it. Explore what you really believe by thinking for yourself. My word 5 things I want my friends to know about God is worth a watch here.
When you are ready the key thing to try and get your head around is it’s not your fault. You were not to blame. You have nothing to feel guilty about. God isn’t disappointed in you, he doesn’t love you any less. Your pain doesn’t make you any less holy, loved or worthy. You are not to blame. One of things about abuse and abusers is they try to convince you that somehow you are to blame for your own abuse. That is a lie of the enemy.
Another point is the Church isn’t God. The Church and individuals who are part of it were made in God’s image they often claim to speak for him but they are not God. It’s not fair to blame God for the mistakes of the Church. Whilst God loves both the abuser and victim unconditionally he abhors anything that hurts someone he loves and he loves you. However, God is big enough to take it if it helps you to blame him. A cornerstone of what I have come to believe about God is that he never makes bad things happen, he doesn’t send bad things to test us or to teach us a lesson. God only makes good things happen. If it’s not love, if it’s not good it’s not God. I haven’t got time to go into that now but there are lots of messages online where I do so check them out.
Possibly the most important part is learning to see yourself as God sees you. Put away the lens of trauma that shows you a broken distorted view and see yourself as God sees you. How does God see you? As his beautiful child, as the one he loves beyond measure, as worthy, blameless, holly and redeemed. He sees you as made in his image, to be like him. Learning to see ourselves like this is hard at the best of times but it’s even more difficult when you’re suffering trauma compounded even further if that trauma was delivered in the name of God. I strongly recommend looking up God’s love letter online, it’s a collection of all the verses in Scripture that show what God truly thinks of you. There’s a printed letter and also an audio recording, listen to it regularly and believe what it tells you.
Community is important and whilst the Church may have hurt you in the past not all churches are the same. If you feel able to find an inclusive, trauma informed church as I believe we are here. Here are some tips on finding one of those:
If everyone pretends to have no issues they’re lying and there’s not a culture of walking a real life together. Avoid.
Speak to the leadership politely tell them you disagree with them on something and see what their response is. If they dismiss you, if they won’t listen, if they’re rude. Avoid.
I really believe that being part of an authentic worship community, made from imperfect people trying their best to love one another will help address trauma.
Seek therapy if you need it, professional help and treatments like CBT and DBT can really be effective. If the trauma has caused a mental health condition such as depression or anxiety don’t be afraid to seek medication to help. Some people will tell you that getting medical help shows a lack of faith in God healing you. That’s rubbish. I believe one of the most important way God heals us is by inspiring and enabling modern medicine after all God works in partnership with humans.
Finally, spend some time with God. Be honest with him, sit down, lie down and just say God I’m hurting help. Cry if it helps and let him pick you up wrap you in his arms and love you.
To finish, let me again apologise. I’m sorry to everyone who has suffered abuse by the those claiming to represent God. Religious trauma is real, it hurts and has destroyed lives. The Church needs to wake up and acknowledge it’s part in this and work to make it right. However, God is Love and he want to work with you to help you see yourself as his beloved child, powerful, worthy and beautiful. You may not be there yet but don’t give up on who you are. Not all churches are the same, if you’re in a toxic controlling or abusive church get out and seek better.
This is why our mantra here at All Nations is freedom not control, acceptance not judgement and community not isolation. Love is the only mission.