The Naked Journal
Thoughts, musings, and meanings behind NakedPastor Art.
The Naked Journal
The Church and Victim Mentality
Description: Sheep going to slaughter. One says to another, "Frankly, I'm sick and tired of your victim mentality!" The Church and a Victim Mentality (Victims are real, including of the Church. This isn’t about that but the victim mentality.) I claim the Church nurtures a victim mentality: Suffering: The cross, suffering servant, and lambs to the slaughter were concepts I embraced. This stuck with me through my ministry. It still echoes. It’s fatalistic. It views affliction as inevitable, desirable, and deserved. The result is you should always turn the other cheek and never stand up for yourself or fight back. In fact, any effort to change your situation is selfish. Humiliation: We were taught that we are broken sinners, weak, and needing to be rescued. We’re trained to believe that we should be so dependent on God that we have no will, no power, and no voice. Many say this is the most perfect way. We’re tools for God to use when God wants. Independence is rebellion. The “poor me” posture is an effective way for the Church to keep us ashamed before God, before the pastor, before the church, and before the world. Helplessness: Because suffering, servitude, and submission carry such currency in the Church, it feels no need to help us to be empowered. Being “more than conquerers” is only for controlling our sinful nature, not for living confidently in every area of our lives. The Church trains us to be helpless and dependent. Nelson Mandela said, “I am the master of my fate and the captain of my destiny.” This is a bold declaration to fully participate in our life rather than surrender it to fate, to circumstances, or to the will of another. You have the power!You have the right to change your life!You can be independent!
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Think For Yourself Be By Yourself
Description: People are leaving a woman behind. One says, "Fine! You want to THINK for yourself, you have to BE by yourself too!" I didn’t choose my loneliness. But it certainly is a result of my choices. I chose to submit no longer to the spiritual authority of others or conform to the group. I fought for my spiritual independence. I wanted to walk my own spiritual path and find my own spiritual land. This is your right and responsibility and reward too. The group informed me that I no longer belonged. I had betrayed my citizenship. I was a traitor. My passport was revoked. I was denied the access and privileges I once enjoyed. Unless I surrendered my rights. Unless I submitted to it all over again. It wasn’t me who told me I was no longer welcomed. It wasn’t me who unfriended me. It wasn’t me who cut off all communications with my former friends. It wasn’t me who banished me to a spiritual no-man’s land to fend for myself. I took a stand and the crowd that used to surround me abandoned me. Some say I abandoned them. No! They abandoned me when I stood for myself. I chose to be independent. They said, “You want to be independent? Fine! But that means you also have to be alone.” Many of you know what I’m talking about. You are lonely not because you are a loser or unfriendly or undesirable or because you deserve it. You are lonely because you made a wise and healthy choice! But, like healthy food, it costs you extra. You could eat what everybody else is eating, but you know this is not best for your spiritual health. You can gather where everyone else is gathering, but you know you would have to surrender too much. We are spiritual refugees. But we can’t have it any other way if we choose independence. I’m glad we can gather here online, meet up with other refugees, get encouraged, gather more resources, and strengthen our resolve to stick by our decision to take care of ourselves. Peace, my independent friends!
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Exploring Religious Microaggressions and Their Effects
I've been talking with friends and doing research about microaggressions. Microaggressions are insults against a certain group of people that come off as a joke or even a compliment. Often they’re not even thought about… the aggressor sometimes doesn’t even know what they’re doing. They’re automatic comments that are often made in passing. Description: A MicroAggressive Christian t-shirt with the words, "God Loves Even You!" Here are some examples of microaggressions “You don’t seem gay, though!” “You’re the whitest black person I know!” “Figures your family is rich, being Jews.” “You’re actually pretty cool for a Christian.” “You look like you’re from China.” “Have you gained weight?” Or this one: "God loves even you!" The accumulation of microaggressions in the daily life of the ones receiving them is exhausting. I get them all the time, usually in reference to my art and my beliefs or lack of them. I AM unique and different, and I'm okay with who I am, even though others think they're superior to me because of how they believe or choose to live their lives. But the microaggressions I suffer are nothing in comparison to the those suffered by others because of things they didn't choose... like the color of their skin or their sexuality or gender or where they're from or their shape, etcetera. Microaggressions are committed by people who consciously or unconsciously think they are superior to the one they are offhandedly insulting. They may not know it, but their language betrays it. Let's not do that to each other. And if we do, let's call each other out on it! Microaggressions deserve macrocorrections! I'm up for it. You? Related Religious Trauma Blog Posts Here is a list of other blog posts I've written on religious trauma and spiritual abuse. What is Religious Trauma and How To Recognize It? The Power of Vulnerability for Healing Religious Trauma What is Spiritual Abuse? And how to recognize when it is happening to you. 5 Steps to Recover from Spiritual Abuse
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Loving Relationships and Changing Beliefs
Description: A woman comforts her husband who is crying, “Honey, I didn’t say I was dying, I just said I’m questioning my beliefs!” LOVING RELATIONSHIPS AND CHANGING BELIEFS If you are one of the people in this cartoon, I have a warning and some good news. It’s very scary when the person you love changes. The person you’ve always loved has always been a certain way. Now they’re not. They are becoming someone else! Maybe someone you didn’t sign up for. I think pre-marital counseling must include warnings that the person you love right now, sitting right here in front of you, that you are absolutely head over heels over, is going to change. This includes their beliefs. Your partner may one day not be the steadfast believer you know, love and respect today. Lisa and I have been married for 40 years. Our beliefs have changed so dramatically that back then we wouldn’t have recognized ourselves now. But here’s the good news: we’re not just different, we’re better! Why? Because we’ve grown. We’ve developed. We’re more independent and authentic. We’re more ourselves than ever before. We are evolving into who we really are. We’ve courageously stepped up to personal growth. It’s like a blossoming. Yes, we’ve changed. But we’ve also burst open and are more beautiful than ever. Yes, it can be sad, shocking, and grievous to say goodbye to the former selves. But it can be exciting to say hello to the newer selves. When we say “I do promise to love this person”, you’re not just saying it to the person you see now, but to the person they will fully become that you haven’t even had a glimpse of yet.
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Have You Ever Been Shunned After Leaving The Church?
I’ve experienced this a few times after leaving the church, and I know many others have too. It’s called shunning. Some churches openly acknowledge it as “shunning,” while others shy away from the term because they believe it sounds unkind. Instead, they cut people out of their lives completely, leaving them with no connection or support. What’s the difference? Just a matter of semantics. Two women pass each other in the grocery store. One says, “Sally?! What do you mean, “Excuse me, who are you?”? I only left the church last month! When I’ve left the church, I often felt like they viewed me as someone who had catastrophically and cataclysmically backslidden into unforgivable error. They seemed to think I had demons or that I was contagious. Has this happened to you? If you want to read more about the emotional impact of losing church friends, check out my post, “Have You Struggled With The Pain Of Losing Church Friends?”.
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Growing Together With Humor When Deconstructing While Married
Change is a natural part of life, and when we grow, our relationships change too. Changing your beliefs changes your relationships. Change and others must adapt if they want to stay in relationship with you. Same for marriage! If you change, your partner must change. If your partner changes, then you must change. We learn to adapt to the other, give them room to grow, and provide a safe space for their transformation to unfold. But it’s important to have fun along the way. I call this cartoon, “Streaming or Steamy Church”. Lisa and I found that as we grew and changed it made it easier and happier if we could be lighthearted and even make fun of ourselves. Laughter is good medicine. This doesn’t mean we despise, ridicule, or shame our earlier lives. Rather, we hold our former selves with compassion as part of our story. We would not be who we are now if we hadn’t been who we were then. The fact that we can look back with gentleness on where we were and how we got here is affirming, liberating and joyful. Lisa was 19 and I was 22 when we got married. What did we know?! In our youthful Pentecostal naïveté, influenced by toxic purity culture messages, we wrestled with sexual and relational questions that are immaterial now. Even though we enjoyed each other, we were far too serious in our ardor for what was righteous. We had some self-liberating to do! So, we laugh! All beliefs must be falsifiable if they are to be taken seriously. Armed with this attitude, we can enjoy them as they are: provisional attempts to apprehend and articulate the deepest mysteries of an abundant and joyful life! This is an adventure almost as exciting as exploring one another’s bodies. Navigating spiritual deconstruction in marriage is never easy. It forces us to ask, can marriage survive a change in views on faith? With love, mutual respect, and humor, it just might. If you enjoyed this blog post you might enjoy this one, 3 Reasons to Joke About Spirituality. Related Blog Posts What is Deconstruction of Faith?How My Wife and I Survived Religious DeconstructionStrengthening Your Marriage During Deconstruction
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Marriage, Deconstruction, and Contempt
The most precious thing I nearly lost during my deconstruction, changing my theology, leaving the ministry and the church, was my marriage to Lisa. We better now than ever. But if we weren’t prepared, we might not have survived the crisis. (Not to say that all marriages should stay together. Sometimes divorce is the best solution. Just because you are married it doesn’t you should always be or that if you get divorced you failed.) John Gottmanm, in, "The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work", says there’s one principal that will break a marriage. He can determine whether a couple will divorce or not in under 5 minutes with them. The one thing that will split up a marriage faster than anything is contempt. If Gottman detects this in the first five minutes of a session with a couple, he predicts they’ll divorce with 91% accuracy. It’s challenging to allow your partner to grow at their pace while they let you grow at yours. To be different. Lisa and I used to be on the same page. But then our theology changed and we struggled with ministry. Our bond strained. We felt we were no longer on the same page, or the same book, or library! But time taught us that we were in the same story. Our story proved that we can grow together. Our relationship is richer for it. We avoided the deadliest pitfall: contempt. We maintained mutual respect, even though we struggled with one another. I entrusted her to her own journey. She entrusted me to mine. We hoped we would eventually feel like we were sharing the same story. It worked.
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Can A Marriage Survive A Change In One Partner's Religious Beliefs?
This post is sad but it’s real. Buckle up!When faith deconstruction strikes a marriage it can be devastating. By deconstruction, I mean the changing of spiritual beliefs, the loss of faith, or leaving the church. By strikes a marriage, I mean when one or both partners experience deconstruction.I am not going to sugarcoat the reality. My observation is most marriages don’t survive when one partner changes their belief system. I get messages from people all the time who are struggling in their marriages and relationships because they have changed their faith or religious beliefs. One thinks it's still okay to believe in God and the other thinks it's stupid to. One still loves the faith and the other hates Christians. One is perplexed by what they think is their partner’s naïve beliefs, the other is perplexed by what they think is their partner’s dangerous unbelief. So their relationship falls under strain, and they may end up separating and divorcing. This not only happens in marriage but in all our relationships. When Lisa and I started deconstructing our faith and beliefs well into our marriage, we had no idea what to expect. We had been madly in love for many years. We met in Bible College and served churches as a team for a long, long time. Our marriage almost didn't survive when I left the ministry. Feeling suddenly free from all limitations, I began being more authentic about my spirituality. We felt we were no longer on the same page, or the same book, or library! But time taught us that we were in the same story. Our story proved that we can grow together. We learned that compatibility of beliefs wasn’t the glue of our marriage. Love and the mutual respect love fosters was! Our relationship is richer for it. Here are 5 reasons why many marriages don’t survive spiritual deconstruction 1. They realize the only reason they got married was to have sex legally. They wanted to have sex, but the only way was to get married. Now, years later and starting to question everything about the faith and the church, they admit getting married just to have sex isn’t a good enough reason to stay together. Especially if sex is no longer an important part of the relationship. 2. They discover that they’re not really in love. They thought they were in love because of pressure from the church to behave as though they were. It takes a lot of self-awareness and honesty to say, “You know what? I don’t love him/her. I never really did!” Once they can admit that, then they realize there’s no reason to keep trying to make this work. 3. They conclude that it’s not worth the effort required to fix it. They realize they’ve changed so much and that they no longer feel compatible. Sometimes people realise that the person they are with is not the person they married, and they don’t have the energy or the time to try to fall in love with this version of their partner! They feel so out of sync with each other that the happiness is gone and there’s no point in continuing. Unfortunately, this happens. 4. They want to leave anything to do with their religious past. This may include their spouse. I’ll be honest with you: this was one that nearly broke up my marriage. I wanted to run from everything. I escaped religion and the church, abhorred the thought of feeling trapped, and considered walking away from my wife, my family, my home. Everything! It was one of the most confusing times of my life. Some don’t survive this impulse and do leave everything associated with their past, including their marriage. 5. They decide they got married too young. They've never known anything but married life. Some people who get married very young feel they have never colored outside the lines, and were never allowed to live authentically without being responsible to or for another. Related to this are people who discover they’re not monogamous or heterosexual or their assigned gender, etcetera. Often the woman decides she will longer participate in a misogynist or sexist relationship. Many go their separate ways in order to live their own way, something they’ve never done before. Only you can decide if your marriage is worth saving Sometimes, when deconstruction hits you and you change your beliefs, you might realize that you were never really in love in the first place, or that your love has died, or that the pressure and expectations of your church forced you to marry and stay together even though it wasn't right. The veil lifts, you see your marriage for what it is, and you decide that it might be better to go your separate ways. This is not failure. It’s self-awareness!Sometimes divorce is, sadly, the better option. However, a huge part of the problem is the stigma of divorce that survives in our minds from our religious days. In your mind, you think: God hates divorce and I should suffer long even in a terrible marriage because that’s always better than divorce. But, I do not judge anyone going through this or for the decision they make. Religious deconstruction is always messy. It’s never clear or clean.If you want to end your marriage, do it as well and as kindly as you can. The goal is the personal well-being of each person and taking the steps necessary to make sure that happens. If both partners want to make the marriage work, it’s not easy but it can be done. Ask me, I know! Here are 5 ways you can help your marriage and yourself survive spiritual deconstruction Don't be rash. When you were on the same page there was no need for patience. You had what you wanted: one hundred percent agreement. But as each person in the marriage begins to grow, mature, and change, disagreement is bound to and ought to occur. When one partner in a relationship changes, it forces the other to change. Marriage is like a crucible of transformation. We influence and change each other. This is what love does, actually. We make compromises (translate: improvements) in order to make our partner happy and our relationship more pleasant. So, when our partner starts to change, don't prematurely and immaturely dash out the door and abandon your partner or the relationship. Give it time: they will change again and so may you! Don't compromise too much. This one goes against a lot of info out there but it needs to be said (it’s also why it’s a longer section than the others). If your partner can no longer tolerate you, gives you ultimatums, or gets impatient and angry with you, and decides to leave, that's their problem, not yours. Their attempts to pressure you into a certain way of thinking is controlling and unfair. You didn't require that of them, and they shouldn't require it of you. The best and healthiest growth is natural and unforced. Everyone knows that. So don't compromise yourself too much by becoming what they demand you to be just so they'll be happy and stay with you. It's not worth it, because you are more important than the marriage. What I mean is, the healthiest relationship is between two consenting adults who don't manipulate or coerce one another. When you promised to take one another in sickness and in health, this meant spiritually too. So if they can't love you as you are right now, and as you are in your own spiritual process, then that's their problem, not yours. Don't sacrifice your essential self on the altar of their selfish insecurities and fears. Stay open-minded and curious rather than judgemental. As adults mature, they begin to understand what true love is - a safe space to grow individually without judgement. You don’t need to understand your partner’s religious beliefs or even agree with them to show your partner respect. Instead of pushing to shift their perspective, lean into curiosity. Ask, listen, and really try to see where they’re coming from. It’s not about winning an argument or being right— it’s about opening a door to deeper understanding and letting your connection grow stronger. Realise you are not alone in this and it’s not wrong. Thousands of couples navigate the complexities of different religious beliefs every day. There’s nothing wrong with you or your partner; it’s just part of the journey. There are plenty of resources out there, from books to professional counselors. Seeing a therapist can make a world of difference. But, a word of advice, look for someone impartial, who understands both sides without taking one. If you get a counselor who shares one partner’s faith, the therapist will struggle to stay neutral and focus on helping you grow together. Love with humility and respect. I was going to say love means tolerance, but tolerance has the ring of superiority to it‚ like, because I am right and you are wrong, I will tolerate you in your error until you finally see the light like I did and come around to my way of thinking! I definitely don't mean that. I mean love is humble and doesn't think of itself too highly. When we acknowledge that life is full of mystery, and all knowledge, beliefs, theories and conclusions are transitory and provisional based on incoming information, we can be humble about our own beliefs and respectful of our partner’s. Good scientists take this approach. Good partners do too. In mature, loving relationships, there’s a mutual respect that goes deeper than held beliefs. That is, we must trust our loved one to take care of themselves intellectually and spiritually. The beliefs are just thoughts rippling on the surface of a deeper reality called the self, and we trust their self to their own search and discoveries. When we trust each other and leave our insecurities and fear of judgment aside, we can discover a whole new and more authentic version of our relationship that is deeply rewarding. But only if we are brave, patient, honest, and open-minded. More resources for marriage and deconstruction of faith You can read my personal story on this blog post - How My Wife and I Survived Religious Deconstruction.You can watch this video, with Monica Alhbin from the G(ud)-Punkten podcast, where I talk about the terrifying experience of not knowing if my marriage would survive spiritual deconstruction. You can read my book, Til Doubt Do Us Part: When Changing Beliefs Changes Your Marriage.
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Your Marriage and Your Crisis of Faith
Does Changing Your Beliefs Change You? For people who were really devout believers, deconstruction or going though a crisis of faith is global in its application. I was just asking my wife Lisa about this. She is a nurse. I couldn’t think of the right word to explain how deconstruction affects our lives globally. I asked her what word they use in treatment of a disease. She said systemic: it’s when we treat the whole body at once rather than just one aspect of the disease’s manifestation. Yes! That’s exactly what it’s like. Because when we were those super-devout believers, our faith affected everything about our lives. Our beliefs weren’t just isolated thoughts, but were systemic: the way we related with other people, the way we talked, the way we thought, the way we ate, the way we parented, the way we spent our spare time, the way we had sex, the way we spent our weekends, the way we thought about tragedy, the way we prepared for death, the way we thought about the future, the way we used our money, the way we thought about morality, the way we‚well the way we did everything. Our devotion seeped into every little detail of our lives. So that when that belief system started to erode, it’s like the glue that holds our life together loses its grip and everything starts to fall apart. This is why deconstruction is not only an exciting time, but a frightening and even dangerous one. Exciting because we are growing deeper into our authenticity. Scary because we are losing the paradigm that made our lives meaningful. Dangerous because we are questioning the rules that kept our lives in check. Lisa and I made it. Barely. But we made it. And we’re better for it. We’re more authentic. Our lives make sense in more mysterious ways. And we’ve navigated the dangerous waters to arrive in a peaceful and loving place. Everything’s better! The sweet little Christian girl in the wedding photo behind them is gone. Forever. But a new person is on her way that will shine even brighter than before. It’s like gold. It looks dull at first. But fire exposes its essence and beauty.
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