Hats Off to the Pathfinders

Reclaimers, you are the pioneers.  Reclaimers discard their confining religions and free their minds from the cages made in churches.  I support you, I help you, but most of all, I salute you.  Because it is clear to me after many years of bearing witness to the soul-wrenching work that you do, when I have seen and heard tears and sobs and anger and fear, that you are the ones among us in our world that are birthing yourselves.  Most of it is quietly achieved, because you are so ahead of the times that there are not enough words to describe what you are accomplishing.  You yourself do not really know. 

To understand what you are achieving, let’s try to grasp the context.  We live in a world that is only partially scientific, only partially rational.  Zealous believers are still performing exorcisms.  Faith healing is commonplace, along with other “signs and wonders.”  People believe in the “power of prayer” or that an entity called God will change the laws of nature if asked properly.  A majority think that they have souls that will continue after they die despite no evidence.  They cling to visions of a blissful existence and fear eternal punishment.  The legal system is a simplistic treatment of people as guilty or not, which deals out retribution.  A shocking number of people are comfortable with ignoring the findings of science and willing to risk the future of the species because they trust in a supernatural solution for the earth.  The most powerful nation on earth deals death from the sky unprovoked on other peoples and makes claims about “just war.”

That is, our culture still has one foot firmly planted in the Dark Ages.  Most of the unchurched are also unquestioning.  It may be true that they have escaped the nightmare indoctrinations of hellfire and basic depravity, and they may have “self-esteem” and sleep well.  But they have also not been forced awake.  They have not been like reclaimers, jolted rudely and painfully awake and torn away from everything safe and familiar.  No, people do not do the hard work that you are doing if it is not required.  It is too taxing, too terrifying, too all-encompassing.  No one would willingly enter this wind tunnel that seems to have no end.

Reclaimers, you who devoted yourselves or were children in the folds of a religion that owned your soul and governed your very breath, will know about this transformation.  It is no gentle thing to have the ground give way until there is no where to stand.  You have lost yourself, lost the others you thought you knew, and lost your way.  It is not exactly the same for everyone.  But this much is true:  each of you must create your life.  You have had much taken from you and it must all be reclaimed:  your identity, your will, your thinking ability, your feelings, your trust, your intuition, your sexuality, your creativity, and much more. 

The creation of your new life is large, and more than you expected.  You are giving birth and you are the parent.  There is overwhelming joy along with the responsibility.  There is no more outsourcing to “god” and no more talk of being dependent or helpless or bad.  There is struggle and there is wonderful discovery.  There are questions that are basic and big and tough: Who am I?  What am I doing with my life?  What is life all about?  All of the questions humans have ever asked.

I respect you because I see you rethinking everything and rebuilding everything.  You used to have all the answers because they were handed to you and then enforced until you could recite them in your sleep.  Now you are working on getting them out of your head.  You are stripping away everything familiar even though it hurts because it’s worth it.  You have opted for integrity over false safety.  There is so much stripped away you are not only naked, your skin is raw. 

What a grand endeavor!  What heroes!  How great it would be if everyone did this complete questioning of everything they ever knew and started over.  Perhaps our culture would make more progress inching out of the Dark Ages.  And you, reclaimers, are doing this radical transformation with little help and sometimes with real opposition from the surrounding culture.  It would be nice, but you are not escaping from a harmful religion into a healthy, evolved, nurturing society.  The personal revolution and evolution that you are accomplishing (if you go all the way) will put you ahead of many who have never needed to question. 

And that means that you will have wisdom to share.  It will take some time, but you will find your place, and others will benefit from your hard-won life experience. You will be an “elder” in the best sense of the word. You live here now, on Planet Earth, and we need you.

Recovery is Revolution

Recovery is Revolution

“Re-examine all you have been told… Dismiss what insults your Soul"   – Walt Whitman

In the South Pacific, “cargo cults” sprang up as religions with people longing for the return of white gods in their ships with amazing stuff – their cargo.  It sounds quaint and innocent enough, just as hoping for Jesus to come back after 2000 years is quirky but “whatever gets you through the night,” right?  But what is the real cost of having millions of people holding to a belief system with a decidedly magical view of the universe?  The consequences may be hidden and far-reaching, personal and societal, even global.  Certainly we have increasing evidence that individuals are harmed by mental and emotional trauma often unrecognized. 

Two major factors seem to be responsible for this.  One is the nature of the trauma itself.  Unlike other harm, such as physical beating or sexual abuse, the injury is far from obvious to the victim, who has learned, as part of the abuse itself to self-blame.  It’s as if a person black and blue from a caning were to think it was self-inflicted.  Much like Alice Miller described, it would follow that because it is unconscious, we have thousands of walking wounded in society suffering deeply but at a loss about their fear and rage and lack of meaning in life. 

The belief system of Christianity teaches avoidance of self-reflection.  Even those who leave take with them their low self-awareness as well as their self-loathing.  Understandably this is passed on to their children.   Christians are warned not to engage their own minds and hearts, lest they be led astray.   The most insidious Bible verses, reminders that humans are evil and foolish, are repeated so often most believers know them by heart:  

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9)

"Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes."  (Proverbs 26:5)

Former believers have to engage in a tremendous battle to have any clarity of mind.  As one person put it:

I hear something, read something or think something and suddenly I feel panic about the decision I have made to leave Christianity.  I start to question my reasoning.   I just feel like a battered woman trying to leave an abusive relationship. 

The second reason that religious harm goes unrecognized is that Christianity is still the cultural backdrop for the indoctrination.  While the larger society may not be fundamentalist, there are references to God and faith everywhere in the U.S.  The courts use the Bible to swear in witnesses and the President is made to put his hand on the Bible to be sworn into office.  Having faith is a requirement in this country for being in politics at all.  At President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the invocation was given by a well-known evangelical minister and author, Rick Warren, who writes in his best selling book that people will be judged in the afterlife: “One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity.”

Common phrases in our language are “God willing,” “God bless,” “God helps those that help themselves,” “In God we trust,” and so forth.  A familiar song says “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”  These things imply the sanctioning of theistic authority. Even without the words, elements of a conservative Christian worldview are alive and well in institutions and public policies.  The justice system uses dichotomous thinking of guilty/not guilty and puts individuals on trial instead of complex systems.  We engage in blaming, punishing, and crediting with “meritocracy.”   War is to punish “evil-doers.”

Religious trauma in the form of mental and emotional abuse is difficult to see because it is camouflaged by the respectability of religion in this culture.   To date, parents are afforded the right to teach their own children whatever doctrines they like, no matter how heinous, degrading, or mentally unhealthy.   Unlike physical or sexual abuse, the larger society has not yet worked out how to protect vulnerable children in other ways.

But the victims themselves may not grasp what they have been through, and most helping professionals still have the mind-set of Christianity-as-benign.  However, beating children was once commonplace and victims often claimed they deserved their punishment because they were so bad they asked for it.  We know now that corporal punishment can have very negative long-term consequences.  Hopefully we will learn the same thing about mental and emotional abuse.  Here is one way mental anguish has been described:

You can't imagine how feverishly I've searched for answers to what
exactly is going on in my head and why I feel the way I do.

I've been in and out of counseling. I've cried out for help to anyone
who would listen, only to have my cries fall on deaf ears and turned
backs. I've listened to people tell me to "man up," "get over it,"
"stop being so selfish," etc. to the point where I just stopped
revealing my inner feelings altogether.

The change required.

The recovery and personal growth of an individual recovering from fundamentalist indoctrination involves a major transformation unlike healing from other kinds of trauma.  This is because the “deep frame” that a person acquires and lives on the unconscious, cellular, all-encompassing daily experiential level includes assumptions that touch on every aspect of reality.  The recovery process necessarily requires challenging and questioning and going through what can be a frightening collapse of all that is familiar.   

For the most sincere believers and the most indoctrinated, this can touch off an emotional breakdown or a complete existential crisis.  Because social supports often fall away and professionals don’t understand, it can be a lonely time as well – a dark night of the soul requiring courage and stamina.  The end result if and when a person weathers the storm successfully is a new construction of identity and a framework for living life with meaningful new commitments.  In essence, an individual goes through a personal paradigm shift. 

The concept of “paradigm shift” or “scientific revolution” was famously developed by philosopher and historian of science, Thomas Kuhn (1962), as a way of understanding scientific progress. According to Kuhn, a paradigm is a “constellation of beliefs shared by a group", or "a constellation of findings, concepts, values, techniques etc. shared by a scientific community to define legitimate problems and solutions.”  A paradigm shift happens when "anomalies " appear, leading to questioning of the paradigm, a stage of crisis, and then the development of a broader science with a new paradigm. Periods like this have happened many times in the history of science, such as Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution, or the Theory of Relativity by Einstein. 

For the individual going through the collapse of one worldview and the construction of another, there are striking similarities.  The initial worldview of Christianity is, like a scientific paradigm, a tightly knit system of core assumptions.  The believer goes through stages of doubt and questioning when “anomalies” are discovered that challenge what is assumed to be true.  Gradually, information accumulates that contradicts the paradigm until it no long holds and a crisis is reached.  The individual must release the old paradigm and find a new paradigm for life.

When individuals leave Christianity, an interesting and problematic aspect is the way the personal paradigm shift is embedded within a much larger societal shift.  A giant change has been going on for hundreds of years, creating enormous conflict.  Since there have been many shifts within it along the way, we could call it a “meta-paradigm” shift because it is so comprehensive. 

This shift is going on as humanity learns about the natural world and turns from a supernatural view of causation by forces of good and evil in the world to a naturalistic explanation.  It is no less than a transformation in the way humans understand the nature of reality. 

For western civilization, the Enlightenment marked a leap forward in this change. The Christian church no longer rules Europe and cannot burn witches for causing epidemics.  At least in public, gods and demons are less often used for explaining natural disasters, crop failures, or disease.  However, despite progress, the world is still in the agonizing middle stages of the meta-paradigm shift, a bit stranded in the wasteland between the two paradigms where religionists will shout scripture while hard scientists scratch their heads.

What are these paradigms or worldviews?  There are two that are clearly very different.  At present, elements of each are quite apparent and active in the world, often in conflict.

1)  The Supernatural Paradigm is the one from antiquity that posits the existence of an unseen spiritual world to explain the material world.  It is mysteriously beyond human understanding but has ultimate power over human destiny.  The response to this condition is generally passive, while seeking guidance and mercy from an external deity while waiting for a better existence.

2) The Natural Paradigm views the universe as unitary and natural.  It is considered vast with many unknowns but available for human investigation.  Explanations are sought within the natural world only.  The approach to dealing with the human condition is to accept life as it is, despite its flaws, rather than leaving the planet.  Making good choices and taking responsibility is the preferred method of improving the world.

In the following diagram, the Copernican revolution is depicted, which was an upheaval not just in science but in Christendom.  It meant that the universe did not center around man, and challenged the Biblical view of reality.  The lower part of the graph is the “meta-paradigm shift” which subsumes all of the other paradigm shifts in history contributing to the ongoing shift to a Natural view of causation in the universe. 

Why is this important?  Because when understanding the process of recovering from religion, it helps to recognize that both the individual and the culture (Western civilization) are going through painful throes of revolutionary change.  For the person, everything they thought was true is up for question.  The context of cultural paradigm shift makes this personal transformation anything but easy or clear.  Moreover, the levels of analysis are embedded and inextricable, i.e. as “betrayal trauma,” the religious harm must be understood in relational terms and with contextual responsibility.

In the culture, large numbers of people with little self-awareness and damaged psyches battle to keep medieval social policies in the public arena and Bible teachings in school.   While climate change and international conflict threaten all of humanity, these millions who are still convinced of supernatural forces ruling the cosmos wait for their promised rescue party in the sky.  It looks just like the cargo cult.  Little children sing the pretty songs they’ve learned about it but it’s not charming, it’s dangerous.  

Moving forward.

Why in this day and age do so many people still believe such fantastical things?  It’s really quite amazing – a literal Adam and Eve, creation in 6 days, a virgin birth, Jesus’ resurrection, heaven and hell, a coming Rapture and Judgment Day, miracles, Satan, and so on.  There is no way of understanding this mindset in a purely rational manner.   With frame analysis, we can appreciate the power of deeply held emotional systems of metaphor and symbol.  Christianity is also entrenched by social structures in the culture and passed on to vulnerable children.  Human brains are wired in a number of ways to be receptive to religious ideas as well. 

Finally, it is clear that there are primal needs that religion, and Christianity in particular purports to meet such as safety, connection, stability, and meaning.  The terrifying human ability to envision the future and thereby imagine our own death is solved with the belief in an afterlife.  The longing for a perfect parent and family is met with the symbol of an all-powerful Heavenly Father and a spiritual family.  Jesus is a “Rock of Ages,” the rules for life are literally etched in stone, and God is unchanging -  “the alpha and omega.”  The religion offers clarity instead of uncertainty and the hope for permanence and perfection instead of constant change and cycles of death and renewal.

Religion gives pseudo-answers to big questions that can’t be answered.  This is what adherents discover when they make honest inquiry.  People in these meme systems do not grow up learning to make peace with life’s mysteries.  Then when they lose their religion, they lose the ground under their feet.  

Part of the scare in letting go of the old paradigm is the fear of the unknown, like the trapeze artist in mid-air, unsure of where or how to land.  Perhaps on the cultural level of analysis, this is less of an issue since the culture does not have a personal psyche that has been damaged by emotional abuse that has left it feeling shame and helplessness.  In the largeness of humanity we can hope, barring destruction of the earth by fundamentalists, there will continue to be a critical mass of strong, creative, and courageous souls who will lead on.  We have already climbed down out of the trees and changed many barbarous ways, so it seems reasonable to expect homo-sapiens to keep moving in a humanistic direction. 

Because Christianity saturates the entire culture, it would be fair to say that the wounds of religious harm belong to everyone, not just the traumatized.  We are all charged with the task of preventing future injury as well in looking after society’s children.  Helen Keller was one who favored an honest embrace of reality: 

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

How is a new paradigm reached?  For the individual, there are definitely some important elements in the healing and growth process.  To begin with, recovery begins with facing the facts of a failed worldview.  While this may be terrifying, and bring on anger and grief, it is also a relief.  The prohibition on having one’s own thoughts is more than lifted.  The process of getting acquainted with and learning to trust one’s deepest instincts is the path of liberation.  No longer is one a vile creature and no longer is the world a place of woe to leave as soon as possible.  It is the truth that sets you free after all.   

In the treatment of trauma generally, an important finding is that it is the personal telling of one’s story that generates the start of healing  (Herman, 1992).  It does not have to be a happy story, only a coherent narrative that gives rational understanding of what exactly happened.  For the recovering Christian, a key ingredient is to grasp the dynamics of indoctrination.  This is crucial in order to undo the constant tendency to self-blame and fall into the very content of the conditioning itself.  This aspect of recovery cannot be overemphasized because the relief in discovering what one has actually been through is so intense. 

Even though my heart felt ripped open the other night as I discovered the source of my persistent inklings of abuse, I was so happy knowing that now I could move forward and start a path of healing.  

I have hope. I can flourish. I can learn. Best of all, this has helped me come to the realization that I am not alone.  That there is help available.   Thank you so much.  I knew there was a reason why I had to hold on.

There are multiple areas of healing and growth necessary in recovery, depending on individual situations, but a commonality is to construct a new worldview for living.  This can take some time because it involves every domain of life, including relationships with family and friends. 

I have viewed my recovery from religion as a maturation process, both painful at times and immensely rewarding. Ultimately it has involved reworking my entire reality over a number of years. It has made me more accepting, less anxious, and generally more satisfied with my existence.

Parts of letting go of the religious worldview can be painful and frightening, with similarities to the difficult adjustments western civilization had to make when the earth was found to not be at the center of the universe and evolution put humans with other animals.   Former believers have to get used to the loss of special status as a child of Almighty God on a cosmic mission and having plans to sit beside Him in heaven someday instead of returning molecules to the universe.  However in time they realize they can live quite well without certainty about ultimate questions.  They can mature in their own confidence and capabilities.  

Finding the support of other “reclaimers” is of enormous help – probably more so than survivors of other traumas because there is a huge need to counteract the impact of the huge group influence of the religion.  For many people leaving religion, the feeling of being alone is painfully real, and makes the fear intense when doubts set in about making a big mistake. 

New images and metaphors are needed.  For example, instead of standing on a “rock of ages,” imagine a bird perched on a branch, not concerned about it breaking because the bird trusts in its own wings.   Over time, the recovering person develops a new worldview from new information, and acquiring new skills.  Areas of human knowledge can be freely used instead of feared, even if they challenge the Bible.  

One of the most useful concepts in the new natural paradigm is to comprehend humans as animals.  To be part of the animal kingdom, belonging to the earth, enjoying nature, and living fully in the present, is a new approach to life.  With evolutionary psychology available to understand human behavior, new possibilities open up in very interesting ways.  Without the concept of sin at the center of everything, the former believer can transform their view of self and others.  

The move away from religion is not without sobering existential dilemmas.  The challenges of being human in an uncertain world are real and it is a mistake to fall into the trap of rationalism as an answer.   Fisher and Fisher wrote a brilliant book called The Psychological Adaptation to Absurdity:  Techniques of Make Believe, in which they sought to ferret out the problems of self-delusion, chief of which was religion.  What they found was that everyone uses fantasies to cope and “reality” is not at all what it is cracked up to be.  That is, simply eliminating the false shield of religion does not solve life’s challenges.

We still live by the mental frames we construct, and we are learning more about this.   In psychology and in neuroscience, we are finding out about the techniques and the benefits of quieting the mind and learning awareness.  For the former Christian it is an exciting time.  There may not be simplistic answers as before but the questions may not be as terrible as we thought.  Uncertainty also means wondrous mystery and impermanence also means the continuing glory of change.  

Many have noted the Christian preoccupation with death (Christopher Hitchens, for example).   The focus regarding Jesus is his crucifixion rather than his teachings.  Tragically, human life itself is completely denigrated in favor of dying to be with God.  The psychologist Walter Davis (2005) discusses this anti-life escapism:  “The longing for death is transformed into a sublime celebration of death. Life in its complexity demands too much of us. That in a nutshell is the fundamentalist message. Only death can deliver one from the threat life poses.”  

Without supernatural beliefs, a person with a Natural Paradigm seeks to be fully alive now, instead of in the afterlife.    Anais Nin said, “Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.”  The old paradigm centers around obedience as the central organizing virtue; the new paradigm necessarily requires it to be courage.  

Although I still sometimes miss the religious feelings I enjoyed and the beliefs that I had, I don't regret my decision to reject religious belief in favor of demonstrable reality at all. I am a stronger, better person because I am an atheist. I face reality as it is - even the most unpleasant parts of it - and I am good and moral because that's a part of who I am as a person, not because I am trying to please God or because I am living in fear of him. I have discovered how wonderful it is to face life on its own terms, free of religious myths and lies!

It could be said that a nontheist is most prolife. When Alan Watts compared life to listening to music, he said we don’t sit waiting for the music to end in order to do something better; we enjoy the music while it is playing, remembering to sing and dance while we can.  In working with former Christians, it has been my pleasure to share this most amazing, healing metaphor.

References

Davis, Walter A.  2005.  The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism.  Available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/davis01082005.html 
Fisher, Seymour and Fisher, Rhoda.  The Psychology of Adaptation To Absurdity: Tactics of Make-believe, Psychology Press, 1993. 

Herman, Judith.  Trauma and Recovery, Basic Books, 1997.

Hitchens, Christopher.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ2LehsA1dk

Kuhn, Thomas.  Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Watts, Alan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

journeyfree.org

Childhood Religious Indoctrination

Factors in Childhood Indoctrination in Fundamentalist Christianity

From this graphic, it should be clear that a child in a fundamentalist Christian environment faces a powerful array of factors influencing indoctrination. Many of these techniques are quite deliberate, such as keeping children at home for their schooling to control what they learn and don’t learn.  The primary goal of sincere Christian parents is to pass on their faith, not help their child develop critical thinking to make a fully informed decision about religion.  Christians do not present their offspring with literature on all the religions of the world and make field trips to temples, churches and mosques to help them decide.  Yet in their theology they claim that “accepting Jesus” is a personal choice of free will and only those who reject God’s free gift of salvation will go to hell.

The fact that parents go along with churches inducting toddlers into the belief system and programs for preverbal children are readily available only indicates the depth of internalized fear and anxiety that would ignore such a blatant contradiction.  The saddest example of teaching toxic messages to preschoolers is the widespread use of the “Wordless Book,” with just colored pages for major concepts.  Gold is for heaven where you can’t go, black is for your sinful heart, red is for Jesus blood shed because of you, and so forth.  This is used in thousands of churches and now thousands of after-school Good News Clubs on public property.

Christians are likely to counter this diagram with wanting a vector listing the good things that are given a child – the love of God being the top of the list.  But in the fundamentalist scheme this comes at such a great price that it is greatly overshadowed by the anxiety of not knowing for sure about salvation and the intellectual suicide required to accept the irrationality of the system.

In effect, the indoctrination of a child with immature cognitive abilities in the helpless context of a family is an abuse of power.  The child has no perspective and no choice but to cooperate in order to survive.  The messages are received and embedded in the brain while certain areas of brain development are repressed through lack of stimulation, chief of which is critical thinking. This, combined with accepting the teaching that one is unable to trust one’s own thoughts, and the abject fear of terrifying consequences, completes the trap.  Even as the child gets older, there are social forces in place to enforce these dynamics and the circular reasoning can continue on, making the child feel highly disturbed but not have any idea why.

The typical pattern is for a person to keep trying harder to make the religion work because the doctrine always makes the individual at fault.  Many describe a pattern of highs and extreme lows much like the mind-twisting cycle of abuse in domestic violence. The victim is always to blame and escape is extremely difficult because there is periodic emotional relief but no overall perspective.  The attribution for the pain is always put on the victim’s bad behavior.  For Christians, even when they are living exemplary lives and still miserable, they are charged with searching themselves for “secret sin” to explain the problem.  It’s no wonder there is so much depression and “feeling crazy” when this mental abuse is happening.

Finding a path out of this morass is also complicated by the Christian training against self-reflection.  Just thinking about oneself is considered bad, so it is very difficult to sort out feelings.  Believers who are troubled manage to stay in the faith using self-deception and medication for their mental health issues.  Those who leave struggle with recovery issues both from the faith and also the trauma of leaving.  Beyond basic mental health, they also have the task of catching up with important areas of human development.

The most difficult thing to overcome, by far, is overcoming the intense indoctrination of early years.  As an adult, for example, the fear of hell can pop up and cause panic attacks even if a person rationally rejects the doctrine.  They have to learn how to label the emotion as “conditioning” instead of “truth” in the process of healing what is essentially early brainwashing.  Gradually people in recovery can learn to trust their own feelings and discover critical thinking.  Self-trust is the key to reclaiming one’s own life, and not easy when there has been mental abuse.  However, understanding what has happened can help to disengage the power of early messages.

“Ordinary Life Sucks” – A Christian Lie

The first crime of religion is to convince us that the world is not okay as it is.  Let’s think about the real immensity of this crime.  Picture the canopy of stars on a clear night when you can see hundreds of faraway galaxies along with familiar constellations, beautiful shades of color on planets, and the occasional “shooting star.”  Imagine the billions of light years it took for light to reach you from those remote parts of the universe and think about the exploding stars that once dispersed the same chemical elements that you have in your body.  

Now take a trip in your mind to soar above the Grand Canyon viewing the kaleidoscope of layers of rock carved around a river; now a trip down the mighty Amazon with jungles that contain more species of life than can be identified while birds cry and flash by in brilliant color; now beneath the sea at a coral reef where all is silent and the world is a liquid sonata and the stunning sea creatures large and small move among the amazing structures, which are unmoving but growing and spawning and spreading, because the coral is also alive. 

Now imagine a warm day - you have a swim in a tropical ocean, dry off in the sun and then stroll in the forest.  You come across a wild mango tree, and you eat a ripe mango, the juice dripping down your hand.  You pick a few more mangos and go back to the beach to share with others.  There is a mother holding a baby to her breast.  Three children are digging a hole in the sand and laughing each time a wave brings more water into the hole.  Some boys are playing soccer down the beach.  A man is fishing, and already has two fish in his bucket.  Out in the water, seals bob their heads up curiously. 

What is wrong with all this? 

Anything?  If that question confused you, it should.  Because there is nothing wrong.  A next step in the beach scenario, in some places, would be for a religious person on a mission to come along and start up a conversation.  It could start with something like, “Do you have a few minutes for a survey?. . . Do you believe in God?”  This “survey” would be a ruse to “witness” and move on to convince the person that they have a “god-shaped hole” in their life.  Whatever unhappiness or dissatisfaction they might have would be interpreted as lacking God.  The evangelical Christian message goes on to say that their role in the problem is their sin, which separates them from God.  Then, voila!  The messenger has the solution, which is Jesus.

When people reject Christianity and deconvert, they are usually clear about debunking the doctrine of original sin.  A big part of healing is reclaiming self-worth, which includes valuing your own thoughts, feelings, and intuitions.  One saying for this is: “Born fine the first time.”  It can take effort, but for most people, they can see that they need to change the messages they have internalized about the self as bad and sinful and needing salvation.  There are so many of these, both in scripture and in hymns, which can be haunting.

In other words, healing from the damage of religious indoctrination means finding a way to return to normal.  If only we had a “reset” button to make it easy.  But it’s not necessarily easy, because religion teaches us to hate ourselves, hate the world, and hate life itself.  That may sound like overstatement, but didn’t Jesus say his followers needed to hate their families to be worthy to follow him?  And we are quite familiar with Bible verses telling us how unworthy we are, denigrating this life, and condemning everything about “the world.”  It’s as if the goal is to get this life over with as soon as possible and get to the afterlife.  Get off the planet and get to heaven. 

As I’ve worked with people in recovery, the need to help them heal from the harm of “original sin” has been obvious.  No matter how much pain or fear or guilt or depression a person might have, I will confidently say with regard to being a “sinner” in need of redemption, “There is NOTHING wrong with you.”  This doesn’t mean people don’t have problems or make mistakes, but that’s very different.  I consider it emotional abuse to teach children (and adults) that they are basically bad. 

But the teaching that is incredibly insidious has to do with convincing people that the world is full of evil and pain – that it is fallen and the domain of Satan. (Any effort to make it better is hopeless.)  Human life is meaningless if there is no cosmic purpose in following God’s will, since everything else is small and pathetic in comparison, according to this view.  Even the beauty of nature is simply attributed to God’s handiwork and seen as a temporary thing ready to decay. 

As a result, reclaimers (people reclaiming their lives after religion) struggle tragically with meaning in life.  The Christian indoctrination is so thorough as to convince adherents that the Christian worldview is the only one even possible.  Giving it up can feel like jumping off a cliff, free-falling into complete groundlessness with nothing to hang on to for a sense of reality, much less goodness or purpose.  In other words, if you were thoroughly marinated in the toxic juices of fundamentalist Christian doctrine, you were set up for existential crisis if you decide to think for yourself. 

Christianity is in a number of ways simply a death cult.  While Jesus, presumably the central figure in the belief system, had a great deal to say about how to live, fundamentalist Christianity is entirely obsessed with his death on the cross.  In denigrating life and denigrating the world, Christians look forward to death and thereby neglect and miss out on their lives!   Hoping for the catastrophic End of the World with massive death and destruction is ok from a Christian’s view because it means their own salvation.  Churches do not get involved in serious environmental issues and Christians with their fatalism and blocking of action actually hasten the destruction of the planet.  The colossal selfishness of this is rarely mentioned.  But the message is there – this earth is not good enough, it’s expendable, and not worth the trouble of saving.  Christians are also not at the forefront of diplomacy and peacemaking.  War, after all, is another sign of the end, which is welcome. 

The religion teaches you to value an imagined life somewhere in the beyond, and in order to be worthy you have to live a constrained life now and constantly repress your desires for the present.  That is, you are to deny yourself normal human satisfactions and pleasures and consider all personal hopes and dreams and ambitions to be selfish and wrong.  Essentially you are asked to give up your life; you are supposed to “die to self.”  So when you think about Pascal’s Wager (asking you What is there to lose by believing, compared to the risk of not believing?), the answer is: “Quite a lot.  My whole life!  A whole world of possibilities!”

From a secular point of view, humans are considered amazing and admirable as well as deeply flawed.  In our language, when we say to someone who has been having a hard time, “it’s what makes you human,” we don’t mean it as a criticism.  And when we quote Alexander Pope saying “To err is human,” we are expressing compassion, not judgment. 

Likewise, nonreligious people expect life to be mixed and for the world to have good and bad in it.  They do not seek the perfect will of God.  Christians are told God has a perfect plan for their lives!  They are promised a perfect place for eternity and a perfect intimate relationship with the Lord of the universe.  If they follow Jesus, they are led to believe they can become “perfect, as He is perfect,” and they strive for perfect mind control as they “take every thought captive to Christ.”  The promises go on and on – becoming a new creature, doing all things through Christ, etc. 

Leaving this mindset, while freeing, can also feel like an incredible letdown.  If you are no longer part of a cosmic mission, a soldier in the Lord’s army, a person with a calling, then what?  “Just” living one’s own life can seem small and the world so tawdry.  This is what I mean when I call it a crime.  All of that perfectionism nonsense poisons the mind.  The idea of God Almighty having a perfect blueprint of your life hidden somewhere while you sweat it out trying to find it like some kind of life and death treasure hunt is the most ridiculous yet cruel hogwash.  With such high stakes, why on earth is it so difficult anyway?  Is this some kind of “hunger games” entertainment for heaven to watch?  It makes no sense because it isn’t true, that’s all.

A reclaimer has to let go of the master plan idea and get used to making decisions. Just the skills for that are hard enough, aside from figuring out what you want.  Healing includes reclaiming your right and your ability to think for yourself, have your own feelings, and trust your own instincts.  Then you have to gain some existential muscle, i.e., gain some courage in making choices and owning them.  For the exchristian, this means accepting that choices are never perfect.  They aren’t even “right.”  They’re just choices.  We make them and then make them right.  If you agonize about whether you are doing God’s will, you will make yourself miserable.  A common “leftover” from being a Christian is to agonize about making “the right” decisions, and that too can make you miserable.

Personal responsibility is actually a big subject we are only touching on here.  Decisions and direction are issues for everybody to an extent.  There are losses of course and that’s part of it.  When you pick a flavor of ice-cream, you lose out on the others.  But if you choose a chocolate ice-cream cone and then while you are eating it, think about how you might have enjoyed strawberry better, what does that do to your experience of the chocolate?  Or what if you stood at the shop trying to figure out the “right” flavor?  Or the flavor God would have you order?  I don’t mean to trivialize this topic by using ice cream; it’s just a metaphor. I wish I had easy answers.  One thing I do know is helpful is to acknowledge the extent of the brainwashing.

The biggest issue is when your mind has been so poisoned with religious purpose pablum that just living your life on this glorious earth isn’t good enough.  You feel compelled to ask what the (larger) meaning of it is.  I’ve concluded that religion creates in people the bad habit of asking huge questions that shouldn’t even be asked.  In my view, the question about the meaning of life is the same as walking down the street asking yourself “What is the purpose of this chocolate ice-cream?”  If that question got a blank from you, then you might understand the blank stare from a secular person when a Christian tries to evangelize by questioning the purpose of life.  The thought in response is “To live!” and those of us reclaiming our lives have been learning to embrace life as it is - without perfection.  We also try to pay attention to our ice-cream because ice-cream is “To eat.”

In a similar vein, Alan Watts once compared life to listening to music. He said we don’t sit waiting for the music to end in order to do something better; we enjoy the music while it is playing, remembering to sing and dance while we can. In working with former Christians, it has been a pleasure to share this most amazing, healing metaphor.  There is hope.  There definitely are other worldviews and other ways of approaching life.  It does not have to be a formula with answers for everything that you get from an authoritarian system.  Life is more nuanced and subtle and mysterious than that.  Perhaps having some responsibility for creating the meaning in our own lives is challenging, but it can have wonderful results.  After all, we actually exist, here and now :-)

Some helpful resources:

Alan Watts, “Music and Life” (This animated short uses a selection from a lecture by Alan Watts, produced by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

  

What the Hell do People Believe in if They Don’t Believe in God?  Video by Stephen Fry on “How Can I be Happy?” from a humanist point of view.

Another worldview:  A Guide to Naturalism,  by Tom Clark.

 

Another worldview:  Humanism and its Aspirations.

Marlene Winell, journeyfree.org

 

 

Christianity as a Failed Religion

by Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

People notice and wonder why Christians of the literal Bible-believing kind are so angry.  Doesn’t their faith provide any peace and love or uh, “Christian” spirit toward others? Yet they are known for being judgmental.  And if an evangelizing Christian doesn’t get a receptive response, there is always a threat about where one will spend eternity, often delivered with a touch of "you'll get yours" vengefulness. 

But there are serious problems for a person with Christianity as a framework for living in the modern world.  The anger is because it is a failed religion. The reasons for resentment are well below awareness, and taking it out on other people is not appropriate.  In general, all sides appear to be rather confused about the hair-trigger emotional reactions to many issues, the rush to defend God and morality, the frequent condemnation, and the strange vitriol.   

The thing is that Christianity is not just a cognitive set of beliefs.  It is a worldview that completely colors reality.  It works on a deep level of the mind through metaphors, images, and tacit assumptions.  The Christian worldview is a closed, irrational system which is taught to small children who can’t and don’t question.  It is transmitted like a virus down through generations and supported in the larger culture.

The images present in Christianity can help with understanding its power - not the words but the images, which in the human brain are more connected to emotions than language.  Children and adults alike process information and act on it more easily and quickly when using symbols and metaphor rather than language. This becomes unconscious, so an all-encompassing system like Christianity can easily become a lens affecting one’s entire view of life.  Picture these images:

• A powerful male god - creator, hater of sin, destroyer with flood and fire, demander of blood sacrifice, final judge – the symbol of authority and power

• A kneeling subject, head down, weak, subservient – the symbol of shame

• A bloody torture and execution of an innocent man on a cross - the symbol of guilt

• An evil, dangerous Satan, lurking and stalking with his demons throughout the world – the symbol of terror

• The world as a battlefield with a mighty fight between good and evil, the Christian wearing the “armor of God,” and life as war – the symbol of struggle.

• A heavenly afterlife with mansions and streets of gold, being with God, where the “lion lies down with the lamb” – the symbol of ultimate contentment

• Jesus’ return in force, with armies of angels, ready to slaughter and win the Battle of Armageddon – the symbol of vengeance and justice.

• Burning hell fire with people screaming in pain, lost for eternity, separated from God – the symbol of fear.

There are other images from the Bible, such as Jesus as the Good Shepherd, Jesus blessing the children, or giving the Sermon on the Mount.  But in modern, fundamentalist Christianity, these are not the popular images of Jesus.  Much preferred are the muscular ones having to do with his image at the Second Coming.  Especially among young people, by the looks of the Christian T-shirts available for sale, Jesus the King riding on a white horse, is a far better image, almost like a superhero expected to appear in the sky. 

An example on YouTube is at a revival meeting before a group sings a rousing version of “The King is Coming.”  The minister says that Jesus came the first time as a baby and not many noticed, but next time he’s coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords; every eye shall see him, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess, he says.  

The problem seems to be that it’s not happening.  Many years have gone by – over 2000 – and he has yet to return like he promised.   From outside the belief system, like a visitor from another planet, one can pretty easily read the scripture and notice this pesky problem.  It is a tribute to the power of belief, and the nature of passing on unquestioned beliefs to new generations that this issue can slide by.  (Right?) 

But the bald truth is the Christianity is a failure.  Some religions have a cyclic concept of time and the religious concepts are largely precepts for living, e.g. Hinduism and Buddhism.  But Christianity has a timetable.  This is a problem.  The god, Jehovah, created the world, the Fall occurred, the Plan of Salvation had to be installed, and then the plan was for Jesus to come back, win a last battle with Satan, have a Final Judgment, and send everyone to heaven or hell.  Telling this story to a potential new believer is difficult if they are an adult, even from this planet.  The promise of heaven and the threat of hell aren’t real enough, and there is no sign of Jesus showing up.  The “signs” constantly claimed are easily disputed.  In fact, to the unbeliever listening to this, using natural disasters and political upheavals as indicators of the End Times sounds more like avoiding responsibility for the world.

Christianity also does not have a track record for coming through on other promises such as answered prayer and changed lives.  “Jesus Saves” doesn’t seem to mean a lot.  Even the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, while sounding amazing at Christmas, hardly announces the birth of a savior who actually saved the world.  Even in terms of the afterlife, from a strict “accept Jesus as your personal savior” point of view, a tiny fraction of humanity gets the benefit of going to heaven, thanking the baby in the manger, while the rest of the globe is headed for hell.  Fundamentalist Christians don’t mention this part of their theology when they rail about the “war on Christmas.”  

Statistically, prayer makes as much difference as anything else when it comes to matters of health.  Divorce and domestic violence is actually higher in religious families, and the incidence of sexual abuse is shocking.  In general, Christians are known for lagging behind the rest of the culture in terms of progressive values like tolerance, human rights, torture, and war.  Over many centuries the Christian world has opposed progress in science, and is currently waging war in public schools against evolution, which is the basis of biology and other sciences.  Again, like the Christians at Christmas, the personality profile does not impress.  

At present, it seems obvious that many people with a Christian worldview are deeply angry and resentful.  There is much railing against the morals of society, as though the entire country is endangered.  Natural disasters in various places have been attributed to God’s judgment for sin, (which is an Iron Age understanding of nature).  In fact, because of the view that this is a fallen world ruled by Satan and very dangerous, there is a constant anxiety that if God becomes fed up with the rampant immorality of our nation, he will withdraw his blessing and his protection, sending us into disaster.  Unfortunately for the scared Christian looking around at cultural developments, the direction of change is toward secularism, not piety.  After 9-11, many Christians were convinced that America was being taught a lesson and that the proper response was to repent and change our immoral ways.  Obama was even criticized for his words at Ground Zero about being strong and rebuilding.

Looking at the state of the world and at life through this lens of Christianity is thus pretty dark.  Changes are out of control and pretty frightening.  The images listed above overshadow all else, including worldly things like interesting developments in the arts, diplomatic achievements, or exciting scientific discoveries.  This supernatural frame is radically different from a natural, secular frame on reality.  The events of importance are Jesus death of 2000 years ago, and the return of Jesus at some unknown time in the future.  Christians constantly hope that this return will be soon and historically have always claimed that the End is imminent.  The present is not important, and the earth is not a priority.  Physical bodies and pleasure are not important because the spiritual world is what counts.  

Christianity teaches followers not to be invested in this life.  Peace in the Middle East is not a goal because if war in that region were to escalate, it could mean Armageddon and that would herald the Messiah.  The passion is not for building a better world but for escape to a different, perfect world.  Unfortunately, modern believers do not understand that Jesus, if he did exist, was one of many apocalyptic prophets who was sounding the alarm in his time that the end was nigh.  That was why he told his followers to not make any plans for the future and leave everything to follow him.  

  

For the present day Christian, raised to never question dogma, Jesus’ promise, “Behold, I come quickly,” is impossible to digest with intellectual honesty.  Instead, the deep grief and rage of the abandoned child gets lodged in the psyche and plays out in a plethora of unconscious ways, causing harm to the self and society.   Even when spoken, as a Christian defends his faith to a skeptic, the anger is barely concealed.  The promise of Jesus’ return sounds more like a threat, like the Terminator:  “I’ll be back.”   

Unfortunately, the best solution is also the most unlikely for hard-core believers: to achieve a level of self-awareness and insight to recognize Christianity as a lost cause and reject it as a framework for living.