Being Sick from Religion
Just today, I heard from a middle-aged woman who tells me she recently gave up on religion entirely. Finally. After struggling for years to try to make sense of it all, she resolved herself to giving it up.
What made it doubly hard, I'm certain, is the fact she grew up immersed in religion, as the daughter of missionaries. Like many MK's (Missionaries' Kids) and PK's (Preachers' Kids), there was a big price to pay with that decision--a decision she does not "broadcast," she's quick to tell me.
Nobody understands more than I do. In fact, I was so sick of religion that I decided not to formally be a member of any church for fourteen years after my husband Ron went on Disability, forced to leave the pastorate because of several chronic conditions that left him unable to do anything beyond part-time work, a few hours each week.
I made that decision as a quiet act of protest, a way to be true to myself, to give myself space, though I never ceased attending a church. I needed time to think, and I felt perfectly at peace with that decision. In fact, for me it was healthy.
There was just no denomination that I had respect for anymore, after spending more than a decade with the binding of wounds of survivors and listening to the number of Christian workers who had left the ministry because they could no longer stomach the degree of collusion they'd discovered operating among colleagues, all pent on protecting men who had committed atrocities and gone on unscathed and protected from "gossip" by their peers. It was the lack of integrity that bothered me the most, the hypocrisy, and knowing that the world knew the truth and had lost so much respect for the institutional church because of the abuse issues. Women would say that to me, not even knowing who I was. I couldn't believe how many of my patients had friends who had been victimized and then treated like dirt!
"Religion is for people who do not want to go to hell," a survivor of long-term sexual abuse committed by a Catholic priest said to a crowd of several hundred survivors more than twenty years ago at an international gathering of a powerful organization, called Linkup.
However, spirituality is another thing entirely, he explained. "Spirituality is for people who have already been to hell and don't want to go back."
Many MK's and PK's were often forced to "live in hell" as children, due to expectations put on them by others. Not necessarily by their own parents either. For many, the expectations came from congregants or individuals who wanted to put these kids on pedestals or on display. To hold them to standards that were impossible, same as people in congregations like to do with their own ministers or their spouses.
Sadly, many of these children turn to addictions as they grow older. For the split created took them to a fork in the road--they either had to live up to impossible standards or succumb to the belief that they were total failures. There was no room for simply being human. Therefore, the results can be disastrous, including long-term depression and other very serious mental health issues, some as great as the survivors who have suffered long-term sexual abuse by clerics.
Almost all of us who have grown up in the enmeshed systems of the institutional church, in the fishbowl of "first families," share some common characteristics.
Another middle-aged woman, just this week, also pointed this out to me as she wondered out loud how common it is for the daughters of ministers to be drawn into a long-term abusive, exploitative relationship either as a teenager or young adult by a clergy perpetrator who senses the young woman's vulnerability and takes advantage of it. This is what happened to her, and she remained in that state for many years, sadly.
Waking up is hard to do. As hard as figuring out what to do about religion. Yet that's not the most important question for any of us--this I decided many years ago. It's what we do with our spiritual selves, and that's an entirely different question than the one about religion, whether we've been to an earthly hell or not.
What made it doubly hard, I'm certain, is the fact she grew up immersed in religion, as the daughter of missionaries. Like many MK's (Missionaries' Kids) and PK's (Preachers' Kids), there was a big price to pay with that decision--a decision she does not "broadcast," she's quick to tell me.
Nobody understands more than I do. In fact, I was so sick of religion that I decided not to formally be a member of any church for fourteen years after my husband Ron went on Disability, forced to leave the pastorate because of several chronic conditions that left him unable to do anything beyond part-time work, a few hours each week.
I made that decision as a quiet act of protest, a way to be true to myself, to give myself space, though I never ceased attending a church. I needed time to think, and I felt perfectly at peace with that decision. In fact, for me it was healthy.
There was just no denomination that I had respect for anymore, after spending more than a decade with the binding of wounds of survivors and listening to the number of Christian workers who had left the ministry because they could no longer stomach the degree of collusion they'd discovered operating among colleagues, all pent on protecting men who had committed atrocities and gone on unscathed and protected from "gossip" by their peers. It was the lack of integrity that bothered me the most, the hypocrisy, and knowing that the world knew the truth and had lost so much respect for the institutional church because of the abuse issues. Women would say that to me, not even knowing who I was. I couldn't believe how many of my patients had friends who had been victimized and then treated like dirt!
"Religion is for people who do not want to go to hell," a survivor of long-term sexual abuse committed by a Catholic priest said to a crowd of several hundred survivors more than twenty years ago at an international gathering of a powerful organization, called Linkup.
However, spirituality is another thing entirely, he explained. "Spirituality is for people who have already been to hell and don't want to go back."
Many MK's and PK's were often forced to "live in hell" as children, due to expectations put on them by others. Not necessarily by their own parents either. For many, the expectations came from congregants or individuals who wanted to put these kids on pedestals or on display. To hold them to standards that were impossible, same as people in congregations like to do with their own ministers or their spouses.
Sadly, many of these children turn to addictions as they grow older. For the split created took them to a fork in the road--they either had to live up to impossible standards or succumb to the belief that they were total failures. There was no room for simply being human. Therefore, the results can be disastrous, including long-term depression and other very serious mental health issues, some as great as the survivors who have suffered long-term sexual abuse by clerics.
Almost all of us who have grown up in the enmeshed systems of the institutional church, in the fishbowl of "first families," share some common characteristics.
Another middle-aged woman, just this week, also pointed this out to me as she wondered out loud how common it is for the daughters of ministers to be drawn into a long-term abusive, exploitative relationship either as a teenager or young adult by a clergy perpetrator who senses the young woman's vulnerability and takes advantage of it. This is what happened to her, and she remained in that state for many years, sadly.
Waking up is hard to do. As hard as figuring out what to do about religion. Yet that's not the most important question for any of us--this I decided many years ago. It's what we do with our spiritual selves, and that's an entirely different question than the one about religion, whether we've been to an earthly hell or not.
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