The Naked Journal
Thoughts, musings, and meanings behind NakedPastor Art.
The Naked Journal
How Your Religious Beliefs Can Prevent You From Changing
Did you know your beliefs can prevent your spiritual growth? Let's talk about belief. Specifically, I want to talk about how belief can be the biggest barrier to personal transformation. I was always mentored by strong, bible-believing mentors and churches. (Click on image for a digital download of it, or click HERE!) It was no accident that I pursued the study of the bible and theology and eventually want into the ministry. I made sure I studied under the most highly respected Old and New Testament scholars. I studied years of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic‚ the bible's original languages. I then dove deep into Reformed theology with the likes of Calvin and Barth. The bible, theology, and belief were strong forces in my spiritual life. But I began noticing, early on, that there was another force competing with my believing mind. Within me was this battle between my believing mind and my inquisitive mind. My my inner journey led me to question my beliefs, initiating a spiritual deconstruction process. Now, the church told me this was spiritual warfare between my carnal mind and spiritual mind, the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit. This verse always killed me: Lean not on your own understanding but in all your ways acknowledge him. I was always reminded that Satan disguises himself as an Angel of Light, so don't be fooled by counterfeit ideas. This kind of reasoning was always used to discourage me from doubting and questioning and therefore growing. But this alternative thinking would just not go away. It repeatedly bounced against the walls of my belief system. As is always the case, my belief system was thorough, being the floor, ceiling, and walls of my worldview. My alternative thinking, my rebellious questions, my sinister doubts, were like malicious viruses in my belief system, and they really messed up my programming. How was I taught to deal with this? Confess, repent, seek forgiveness, and make my beliefs even stronger! So the cognitive dissonance between my beliefs and between my anti-beliefs became even more pronounced. But what happened in spite of my continued attempts to reinforce my beliefs, was that the continued assault of my alternative thinking slowly but surely expanded the walls of my beliefs. My belief system was stretching to include the dissonant thoughts. Like an elastic membrane, it was stretching to accommodate other truths and ideas. Sometimes I thought the membrane of my belief system was going to tear. Later on though, a conflicting idea that was too large or strong to be contained by my belief system would just break out and and separate itself. What was I supposed to do with that? The cognitive dissonance became even more difficult to reconcile. I remember the day. It was a terrifying moment when I saw that my mind was protecting itself, that its primary purpose was to protect itself and the organism, and that my entire system of belief was based upon fear that prevented me from having peace of mind. It wasn’t just about reconciling thoughts anymore—it was the deeper impact of religious trauma that I had been carrying for years, that had shaped my very sense of self and understanding of the world. It took years to work through this self-revelation until one day I had another self-revelation, and suddenly realized that my entire belief system was simply my thoughts and that I was believing my thoughts. Beliefs are just thoughts. And I saw that my thoughts were a kind of illusion, a smokescreen, an intricate and complex fabrication of my mind to protect and insulate itself. Belief was actually dividing my mind and causing internal strife. I used to think my beliefs and dissonant thoughts needed to marry in a kind of compromising fusion. But now I suddenly realized that there is another way of knowing, or unknowing, that transcends thought and belief. And the decades of theological anguish vanished. Once you see this, peace of mind comes. Theologically, your mind will finally be at rest. There will just be awareness, an awareness of what is. A love for what is. The dissonance between belief and knowledge no longer matters. There will just be a knowing, or rather unknowing, that is more like loving. It becomes a loving of all that is.
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It's Okay to Grieve When You Leave the Church
Don't let anyone rush your grief! You've left the church. That's heavy! Grieve it. Feel it to the full. Go ahead and deny that it hurts. Then bawl your eyes out once in a while. Get angry. Get frustrated. Think about going back then change your mind again. Get depressed. That's the best way to let it pass and finally find peace. Grieving is an important and necessary step after any kind of loss. You have to grieve when you lose your favorite pen. You have to grieve when you lose your loved one. Of course they are on a different scale, but grief is a part of the process of responding to loss. Is there an appropriate length of time for grief? I don't think so. But let's take me for an example. I lose my favorite pen. I can't find it. There's nothing I can seem to do to get it back. It's gone. Forever. My response has been anything from denial, bargaining, anger, depression, to hopefully and finally a sense of peace. After all, I can go back out and buy another one. Maybe that grieving response took‚ I don't know‚ 15 minutes. But what if I lose a loved one? The same stages of grief apply, but they will take longer. It will take a much longer time for me to eventually and hopefully reach the stage of peace. But this depends on a lot of factors too. How close was I to this loved one? Were we living together? For how long? How dependent was I on this person? How much did he mean to me? Were we estranged when we were separated? And so on. You might grieve for a year. Or maybe 10 years with the occasional reversions on anniversaries, etc. Who knows? Even when we lose something that wasn't a totally positive experience for us, and maybe even unhealthy, we can still grieve. Like losing a limb because of infection: it's unhealthy to keep it, but painful to lose it, followed by a period of difficult adjustment. We grieve when we leave the church. Even if we left volitionally or were forced to leave‚ whatever the circumstances‚ we must allow ourselves time to grieve. If you just went one month to church just to observe and left, your grieving might not take as long. But what if you went to church for 50 years and were deeply involved in its life and then were asked to leave or you felt you simply could no longer stay? How long should grieving take then? A week? A month? A year? Five years? A life time? I would suggest having someone to talk to so that you can walk through it in a healthy manner, whatever that is. It is possible to get stuck in grief, bogged down in anger, stalled in depression, broken down in sorrow. Having someone to talk to may jumpstart you to make your grief manageable and help you progress towards a joyful life. But don't let anyone tell you how long you have to grieve. Take as long as you want. I remember just a few months after a devastating church split, some people who were strong supporters finally left the church because I wasn't healing fast enough. But I couldn't speed it up. And you might know me well enough by now that I just couldn't and wouldn't fake it. I was grieving. It took me a long time to get over that. I left the church in 2010 under strained conditions. I grieved that for years. I still experience grief once in a while. But no one's rushing me now. And I don't judge myself for it. I talked regularly with someone. I still do when I need it. I'm better now. And I did it at my own pace. I'm fine. Happiness finally came. You can do it too. Don't rush the grief. Let it come. Feel it to the full. This is the best way to let it pass. And it will. Eventually. And you will be happy again.
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The Fine Art of Gaslighting the Victim
I have a rambling confession. Please bear with me. This last week has been one of the most personally traumatic weeks of my life. What made it so traumatic for me was that I felt betrayed by the media. When I say "media" I mean mainstream media, and I mean generally. I mean the big news sources. I mean The Media as a business. Some mainstream media have good journalists, and I have respect for them. However, I would often get exasperated with them. I knew I was responsible to hear and read between the lines. I realized I need to employ my own critical thinking skills. So, I supplemented what I was watching by reading news online from other big name media sources as well as from independent journalists. I personally understood their struggle, having been clergy for years. I sympathize that they walk the razor's edge of doing their work with integrity while at the same time pleasing their employers. I empathize with people who are scolded when they apparently succeed and ridiculed when they apparently don't. But when the actual election happened, I was left absolutely stunned. I was in shock. It was the same sense of betrayal I felt from the church, actually. I had been mislead, misinformed, and misused. And I was complicit. I had let myself be duped! This is what bothered me. As I gave the church too much power, so did I the media. Now, I understand the confusing dilemma journalists face. How do you report lies and innuendo? How do you interview someone who has scant or no relationship with facts? How do you have a conversation with someone who plays loosely with truth? I'm not just talking about Trump, but about his surrogates as well as many other politicians, pundits, and pollsters on all sides. I felt like I was living in a Kafka novel and couldn't get out. Salena Zito summed up her research into Trump: "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally." She's received a lot of praise for this take on the Trump phenomenon. It's a good line. But even though she may be poetic, this for me is crazy-making. It suggests that nothing means anything anymore. It validates the proverbial double-talk of the powerful, the politicians, and the press. Politicians will use this lovely poetic prose to legitimize their deceptions. I hate it. I protest it. (Click on image for a digital download or click HERE!) Many of my friends felt like they were victims in an abusive relationship. I too felt verbally assaulted while the perpetrators would try to convince me to not take what they said literally. Or seriously. Or whatever. They'd assail me with their lies, leave a wound, and then tell me it was my fault for feeling that way because they didn't really say it, or mean what they said, or that I was just hearing things, or it was the microphone. We saw it every single day all day. Someone would say something, they'd be questioned about it, and even when it was on tape they would say they never said that. Wait! I heard you say it. I watched you say it. But now you say you didn't say it? What? I watched person after person deny that those words ever came out of their mouths. Was I supposed to take them seriously but not literally? Or was I supposed to take them literally but not seriously? It drove me crazy to watch people, when challenged on the facts, say that they never said it or that they didn't mean how we took it or that we heard them wrong or that there were technical issues. And the interview would just move on as if nothing happened. I get it. When one raindrop lands on your glasses you dry it off. But if you're stuck in the pouring rain, what's the point? The fact that Trump apparently lies more than any other politician, and the fact that fact-checkers couldn't even keep up, simply doesn't matter anymore. It really doesn't. Fact and truth have been benched. Sometimes the media seem to seriously care about the facts, but unaware of the greater fact that facts don't factor in anymore. We're moving into a new paradigm and trying to understand it through the old one. The mainstream media were the perpetrator, the victim, and the enabler. So was I for entrusting them with my job. We are the victims of gaslighting. That is, we are pressured to question our own sanity, our own ability to think, to discern, and to decide. I've always believed I should take someone at their word. This is supported by a saying of Jesus, that out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. In other words, how people talk betrays how they think. When someone says racist things, they think racist things. I said earlier that the betrayal felt the same as the betrayal I felt from the church. I had been duped. My complicity was that I trusted something and someone to give me what I needed. I trusted in the lofty idea of an institution and its leaders, which Saint Paul called "powers and authorities", to give me the truth. They failed, and it was my failure to trust them. I let them do some of my thinking for me. So, what do I do now? Here's what I've decided. Maybe you can use these as suggestions for your own life: I will take people at their word. I will hold them accountable for what they say. I will confront every single lie that's told me. Why let one lie go just to be inundated with another one thousand? Deal with that one first lie, because the thousand lies lined up behind it aren't the primary problem, but the liar. I truly believe that how we communicate is important, and that lies have no place in the peace process. It's like any relationship: one lie is a serious threat to trust, the bedrock of relationships. So I'm going to believe what I hear people say. When they say a racist thing, I'm going to hear a racist thing, and I won't be persuaded otherwise. I will dignify the speaker by taking them at their word. It would be disrespectful of humanity to do otherwise. I will not be groomed to submit. If I was less independent, I'm afraid I might have passively participated even more in the now obvious agenda to lobotomize me and the public. I would have aided and abetted in the now blatant project of dumbing us down and shutting us up. Just like the church tried to subdue me, so do the authorities‚ the movers and shakers of this world. Much of the media failed to do its job to inform and warn us. It played along because it had to in order to succeed and even survive as a business. So, I will always be a conscientious objector and a critic. I will always be suspicious of power and authority. I will always question the lines of communication and their content because I suspect, as a result of my personal struggle for freedom and independence, that there is always someone trying to control me. I refuse to become a slave of any power or authority. I am a rebel. I will not abdicate my mind. I will not surrender my intelligence. I'm going to trust my mind to discern and decide for myself. I will not throw out the rules of grammar. I will not shred my dictionaries. I will not compromise the legitimacy of language. I will not betray words. I will not forget that freedom and justice are for all people, not just some. Racism still means racism. If they say a racist thing, then they think racist thoughts, which makes them a racist person. Period! They won't change my mind unless they change their attitude and their words and actions. I'm not going crazy, and they can't make me think so. I will be suspicious of backtracking, explaining, waffling, excusing, and justifying. I will accept apologies but will look for verification. I have a mind... a good one‚ because it's mine! I will not let them have it ever again. Sarah Kendzior, tweeted today, "There are individual journalists who get this. Media on whole will capitulate due to fear or favor. Research independently, be the media." With today's circumstances and now armed with this information, I can do one of three things: First, I can give up and become a passive subject. I can just let myself be totally ruled and controlled, surrendering my thoughts, my voice, my future, my life, and live out the rest of my days in servitude. Second, I can quit and start somewhere else. I can leave a country, a marriage, a job, or the church, and find better ones. But I can never quit being governed, which leads me to what I think is the best solution. Third, I can become a vocal, active participant in the way we, the people, are governed, so that we work together to improve the lives of everyone. Thoughts manifest as words and deeds, and words and deeds manifest as policy. I believe that. The thing is, words are only the tip of the iceberg. They are always a sign of things to come. I trust words to indicate what is within a person, and that there is something going on behind those words that I can expect to see at some point in the future. This applies to both promises and threats. Like Chekhov's gun: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." I claim this applies to words used by those in power too. If a racist idea is thought in chapter one, it will be said in chapter two, it will be tested in chapter three, and will be implemented in chapter four. I think it was Slavoj Žižek who suggested that if purity of blood is talked about now, real blood will be spilled later. Romeo Dallaire witnessed the same thing. If someone says racist things and they or their surrogates, defenders, and followers, say they weren't serious or literal, then we have the right to challenge them on why they said it until the rotten root that motivated them is exposed. Racism is not okay, but they're trying to make it okay by denying it or redefining it and confusing us to justify it. And I know enough now about human nature and the malignancy of evil that to tolerate racism is to promote racism. We are seeing the rise of something malicious, not just in America, but around the world. It is a movement that's gaining ground. I live in Canada and we are starting to see signs as well. Be warned and wary! Stay alert! So, I learned a lesson, all in a day! I need to become even more independent in my thinking. Just like I had to trust that I could take care of my own spiritual health, I have to trust I can take care of my own intellectual health. I will not relinquish my human right to be able and allowed to judge people based on their words and deeds. I will not put my trust in the powers and authorities again. I will research independently. I will be the media.
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Are you in trouble for being intelligent and spiritually independent?
Think intelligently? Trouble! Be independent? Trouble! (Click on image to get a digital download of it!) Actually, I think this cartoon applies to our schools in many ways too. Our children are taught, mostly, to follow the party line thinking and also to tow the line period. But this has been my experience in the church, without a doubt! Oh, I would agree that for many, including myself, thinking and being independent is tolerated up to a point. But somewhere I crossed a line where it was not only inappropriate, but offensive, illegal, and prohibited. I believe, largely, that the church has failed in allowing people to grow in wisdom and intelligence, and providing the space for us to grow into our own spiritual independence... which I claim in necessary. Even now, "outside" the church walls, I constantly feel like I'm being called to task for thinking what I think and not being under any authority. Do you feel like you're constantly having to explain yourself? That's because you don't fit within the parameters set for you. My advice? Keep going!
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Take Your Time To Process Your Pain From Church Hurt
For some people, when they leave the church, it's no big deal.But for others it is. I can speak to this from my own experience. I invested everything into the church. It was my family. I was deeply connected, deeply involved, deeply committed, and deeply in love. Then the day came when I realized I could no longer be true to myself and stay. The pressure to leave was undeniable. Even though I initiated the step to leave, it felt like a rejection. No one said go. But the signals were all there that I was no longer welcomed, especially if I were to continue down the path I was walking. Even though this happened years ago, in 2010, once in a while the pain still surfaces. My theory is that we process pain at the level we can cope with. Then it goes on hold for a while until we are capable of dealing with the pain at deeper levels. Like layers of an onion... with tears included. The other day I had a dream that made it very clear to me that I have yet another layer of pain to process. It's hard and sad work, but I know it's necessary if I want to reach higher levels of happiness. I bet you know what I'm talking about.I drew this cartoon about church hurt to remind you that healing can take time and that's okay.
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10 Signs You Might Be in an Abusive Situation
Are you in a situation where you never know when the axe is going to come down? Do you want to know if you are living under abuse or not? 10 questions you can ask yourself to find out if you're in an abusive situation. Are you living under perpetual fear of harm? I don't just mean physically. I also mean emotionally, spiritually, or in any other way. Are you nervous in the presence of leadership that you can't seem to trust? When we feel anxious in the presence of someone who claims they are in authority over us, that's an indication that we don't trust them with our vulnerable lives. Are you watching other people get hurt by authority? Sometimes we have to see others being abused in our circle before we realize it's actually happening to us too! Are you anxious that you might be next?Do you feel you're going to get "called into the office" any day now? Are you afraid of the consequences for stepping out of line? If you constantly have to watch your step, like you're walking on eggshells, then it isn't a safe environment for you. Is it? Are you lacking the confidence you feel you need to lead yourself? Leaders love submissiveness. And the most submissive people are those who have no sense of self. Are you terrified that if you reject the abusive authority that you're going astray? Spiritual leaders will often invoke evil or even demons to scare you from wandering. They don't want you to leave, and they'll do anything to make you stay. Including terrifying you of the consequences. Are you waiting for someone else to rescue you? When we have totally lost our autonomy, that's when we start looking for rescue. The trust is, we can help ourselves. We just don't think we can. Are you hoping that maybe the abuse or threat of it will just stop? Maybe this won't last forever. But the truth is, abusive leaders rarely stop. If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then maybe it's time to lead yourself astray. That's my advice to you. I encourage spiritual independence. Check it out and set yourself free!
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Deconstructing and How to Change in Front of Your Kids
This is a letter I wrote for someone deconstructing with kids. Here's the letter (slightly edited): I'd been looking forward to working on this letter and sending it to you today. Many people have been asking me to write about this issue. Obviously it is an important one that occupies many of our minds and evokes concern in our hearts. It's about our children. How do we deconstruct with our kids? (***NOTE: This doesn't just apply to our kids. You can apply these principles to any loved one‚ a partner, a family member or a friend. One thing I've learned: The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. The way you treat anybody is the way you treat everybody.) I'm going to talk about how to deconstruct with your children. As parents we like to appear that we are in control of our lives and by inference the lives of our kids. We like to be responsible. So when we experience the deconstruction of our faith and beliefs and experience confusion, how do we take care of the spiritual lives of our own children? How do we oversee the spiritual development of our kids when we can't even oversee our own? Here are a few suggestions that are more about themes than advice. Relinquish Control But Not Responsibility Many people grow up in very tightly controlled homes where their spirituality is assigned. When I became a father I wanted to do it differently and help my children find their own selves and their own paths. We relinquished control. At the same time, we saw ourselves as gentle guides‚ like spiritual sherpas‚ showing our kids where the possible pitfalls and the safest pathways were, what foods were good and what wasn't, and who and what to trust or not. When Lisa and I left the church, our children were already in their older teens, so they were already well on their way. We could hold adult conversations with mature themes. When Lisa and I were talking about this topic the other day, she said our kids were already deconstructing before we were because we allowed them to question from an early age. They had the ability, without our baggage, to be honest about what was real, authentic and true, and the strength to reject what didn't pass that test. They were far more sensitive to control and nonsense than we were because they were raised differently than we were. So when we started deconstructing, they were already prepped for it. We had obviously raised our kids in the Christian faith. We still have a collection of children's bible story books that we used read from them every night. They grew up in the church so they knew the stories, the traditions and what church means. But we never required them to believe this or that. Like the sower with the seeds, we cast the seeds everywhere, knowing that what was good would stick and what wasn't wouldn't because it depended on what kind of soil their own hearts were. They'd develop their own spirituality and therefore find the special food that needed to feed it. In 2002 Lisa's father had come to live with us because he was dying of cancer. This was when we were in New Hampshire planting a church for a ministry. The day before Christmas, Lisa's father died. Our approach to it was to try to understand it theologically, and we had our long-held world-views and the ministry people to bolster this attempt. Not our kids! They loved their papa, and when they watched him die in our house despite all the prayers and promises, they immediately questioned what all those prayers and promises claimed to be. So they not only questioned that, but they went to the source: God! They realized that the idea of God everyone talked about and what actually is are completely different things. The ministry fired me the next day and the church I planted and all the staff ignored us. We never saw them again. This, for my kids, was inexcusable. So they saw the church for what it was: just another collection of disappointing human beings. Not to say that they don't think people and our groups can't be good, but that the church has no divine right to claim that it is good by default. If you say you're good, you have to walk the talk. So we continued relinquishing control, but kept our responsibility by allowing them to process this trauma in their own way. When our kids, who were very attached to papa, cried "I don't believe in God anymore!", we didn't try to correct or balance them or even affirm their developing belief. We just let them say it and deal with it in their own way. As a result, years later, they have their own spirituality that is uniquely theirs. It isn't the same as ours, and this is as it ought to be. We saw that they required a spirituality free of smoke and mirrors, magical thinking, and horse-and-pony shows. Acknowledge Their Intellectual Curiosity And Honesty Without Surrendering Yours: When our children asked hard questions we found it very tempting to give easy answers. Sometimes we're just too exhausted to explain everything. Sometimes we're just too confused. Sometimes we're afraid and just want them to believe the magical thinking that religion is so good at nurturing. Sometimes we just couldn't care. Lisa and I sometimes fought. We decided when they were young that we wouldn't pretend that our marriage was out of Disney, but the struggling union of two, real flesh and blood people. Lisa and I have been married 35 years. So our kids have seen us fight. Our strategy was to let them see us argue, but also let them see us resolve it. If I offended Lisa and the kids saw it, we would also let them watch me apologize and see us reconcile (yes, it was honestly usually my fault). So when we went through our own deconstructions, we let our kids watch. When our kids questioned the existence of the rescuing God that our Christianity promoted, this affected us. We didn't interpret it as a rebellion, backsliding or foolishness. We recognized the fear that their questions invoked in us. It's terrible to think your children are forsaking your path and taking their own instead. But we had to believe that they, like us, would find their way. We would continue to point out dangers and make suggestions, but primarily we trusted that if their intelligence had integrity, they would make it. Relationships are formed and transformed in a crucible. When one person changes, it forces the other to change. Otherwise the relationship will fail. It's the same with the relationship with our kids. If they change, it forces us to change. If we change, it forces them to change. It's a perpetual dance. So when our kids changed direction theologically, we had to in some ways go their way while at the same time not forsaking our own. When we changed, if they wanted to remain in relationship with us, they had to adjust their steps as well without forsaking their integrity. Unlike the homes many people grow up in, it wasn't My way or the highway! It was an intersection of our own highways weaving in and out of each other. As a result, we hopefully fostered a respect for their journeys and in them a respect for ours. That still holds. Respect Their Discoveries And Conclusion But Allow For Cross-pollination Our children formed opinions that differed from ours. So in our house their was the fascinating interplay of five different opinions. This isn't to say that the five world views blended together to become one syncretistic stew called Haywardism. Instead, our different beliefs were uniquely our own in a home that fostered a mutual respect for the other. And when I say different, this could even mean contradictory. It is like a United Nations of Spirituality. But Lisa and I learned early in our relationship that it wasn't compatibility of beliefs that held us together. It was a love that respected the other no matter where they were. Lisa and I believe very differently, but we love each other. That's the glue that binds us. There have been difficult times when our differences created sparks that could have possibly turned into a raging fire that might have incinerated us. But we learned how to negotiate those heated moments in ways that enabled us to put the fire out, divert it, or let it burn off the dross and change us. Without a doubt, our kids learned from us. Without a doubt, we learned from them. Perhaps our kids learned from us how to be persistent, steadfast and faithful through difficult times. Perhaps we learned from our kids how to be honest, independent and outspoken through times of pressure to conform. While we taught our kids to think for themselves and believe what they believe with integrity, they also forced us to do the same. We told them our version. They've told us theirs. We've told them our stories. They've told us theirs. We pollinated them. They pollinated us. Like a hardy apple that has developed over the years through cross-pollination, we have fed off each other and developed traits that hopefully help us to survive even in the harshest of conditions. Conclusion I don't want to give the impression that we are a perfect family. We are not perfect! We have our issues and problems as individuals and collectively. But there is a love and mutual respect that keep us together. There have been moments and seasons of unbelievable stress and confusion. There have been terrors and tensions. There have been separations and reconciliations. But so far we have survived them. I was tempted at first to give maybe a 10 point list of advice for parents going through deconstruction in front of their kids... things like let them see the books you read and answer their curiosities about them; teach your kids how to think, not how to believe; tell them everything you're going through and let them deal with what it means for them; ask them what they believe and listen objectively and engage in conversation about it; openly share your struggles with what you're going through with the church and let them process it themselves, and so on. Rather, I thought I would give the three points above as sturdy blocks that help build an authentic, honest and thoughtful life. I hope you find this helpful. Have a great day, and peace on your path and the path of your kids! David
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Does Recovering from Religion Always Have to be so Morose?
Jesus, in the famous poem "Footprints in the Sand", says, "The times when you have seen only one set of footprints is when I carried you." Carl Jung said, "Walk your path or be dragged." This version seems more accurate for my life. So I drew this cartoon, "Walk or Be Dragged": (Want a fine art print of this cartoon? Click on the image! If you want the actual original drawing, click HERE!) Actually, that's not what this is about. This is about the question, "Does recovering from religion always have to be so morose?" Yesterday, a friend commented on my cartoon and blog post that he misses the funnier cartoons I used to post and that I seem to be focusing more and more on the privileges and abuses of power. He's not the only one. Others have mentioned the same concern. This cartoon is in their honor to hopefully show that I haven't lost my sense of humor. It is true. I have focused more on the privileges and abuses of power because I think it is the core consideration about communities, including religious or spiritual ones. It is serious business. And, to be honest, when I do cartoon and write about this, I know I'm helping a lot of people embrace their experiences, trust their guts, find their voices, muster their courage, and liberate their lives. But it doesn't and can't stop there. I also want to help people find their happiness. You might not realize this, but I laugh a lot. There have been seasons where I haven't. But I'm generally a happy person, in spite of what many people think. And I generally help other people laugh or at least smile every day, in spite of what many people think about that too. One of the misconceptions about people who are deconstructing is that it is full of vindictive victims, a wailing wall of woe-is-me, a bath of bitterness, or a coven of complainers and whiners. Not true! I've seen it over and over again, not only in my own life but in the lives of others, that it is totally possible to achieve a place of joy again. My desire is to turn this possibility into an inevitability. So the answer is NO! Recovering from religion does NOT always have to be so morose. You can be happy, even following the worst abuses, or even in the midst of the most burning questions and profound confusions.
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Why It's Important To Heal From Spiritual Abuse
I care about the victims of abuse. Especially church and spiritual abuse. This is what I do. Too often I see people treat such victims with bandages rather than with the serious interior work that's required. Even after the victim is removed from the abusive situation.Even after the victim is recompensed for his or her pain and suffering.Even after the perpetrator is punished.Even after the victim is advised about new skills to move on.Even after the trauma is over and done and history. The victim must be given the opportunity and any available resources to heal the damage, the wounds, the trauma, the hurt, the pain, that is within. This is my "Still Not Healed" cartoon. They must be given voice. They must be heard. They must be understood. They must be believed. They must be supported and encouraged and empowered in every possible way so that they can assume their free, independent, and sovereign authority over their own lives and resume their lives in healthy ways. I look forward to the day when churches stop using the bandage effect to cover up the symptoms of abuse and begin to deal with the real problem, and that's their propensity for abuse. Bandages don't cure. They just cover. Churches need to be healed within. And people do too. Related Blog Posts on Spiritual Abuse What is Spiritual Abuse? And how to recognize when it is happening to you.10 Reasons Why The Church Is The Perfect Culture For Abuse
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