Deconstruction

             Maybe you’ve heard this word recently – deconstruction. What does it mean? It’s a difficult concept filled with so much emotion for many people. Many, many people would say they have experienced religious deconstruction to some extent over the past several years. Maybe it sounds like a bad word to someone who has not experienced it. Deconstruction sounds like tearing down your faith. But those who have experienced it will usually tell you that they didn’t tear down their faith – they tore down their religion. A lot of people think of faith and religion as being the same thing, but they are not. Faith is a belief in something. Religion is a set of constructs and rules. One can abandon their religion without losing their faith. And honestly, one can abandon their faith and hold onto their religion.

               To someone who is still nestled firmly in the religion they have held to for a long time, it may be difficult to understand those who are deconstructing. So, I want to say a little here about what that experience is like. I can only truly speak from my own experience, so I will do that here. I grew up firmly in the church. For 38 years of my life, I was the person who was at church every time the doors were open (unless myself or one of my children had a certifiable illness - ok and occasionally for trips). But the point is that my life largely revolved around church. I started attending as a newborn, was heavily involved in my youth group, hung out with the all the other Christians at the University Christian Student Center in college, got married in the church, took all of my children to church as soon as they were old enough to be in public (can’t say I heard much of those sermons while bouncing a gassy newborn and trying to recover from birth), volunteered in multiple ministries, taught Sunday school and led women’s Bible studies, taught preschool in the church and then became an on-staff children’s minister. To say that I was committed is an understatement. Fast-forward to today. I am 40  years old, and with the exception of one, every church I have walked into in the past two years has caused me to have a trauma response – an actual physical reaction to the place.

This happened over the course of several years for me. It started when I began taking graduate-level seminary courses. It only took me one semester to realize that much of the religion I had adhered to my entire life was manmade. I realized how many cracks there were in the theology I had been handed. And once you realize this, you cannot unknow it. You can either pretend that everything is fine, or you can dig deeper and search harder. And even though this enneagram nine is very good at pretending everything is fine, I had reached a point in my life where that no longer felt an option. Any more pretending felt like certain death. So, I had to ask the hard questions. Meanwhile, I was also finally admitting to myself that there were some very big problems in my own life. These problems were very intricately tied to the religion I had practiced my entire life. And while one cannot blame all their problems on external factors, it became more and more clear to me that the terrible situation I found myself in was linked heavily to the doctrine and theology with which I had aligned myself. I had suffered for a very long time due to the demands of my religion. And what I found when I started exploring was that there were SO MANY other people who had similar experiences, people who had been broken by the rules and constructs of their religion or the religion of the people they loved. So, I had to admit that for all the good things my church experiences had given me, they had also given me some poison. It is difficult to hold all of the beauty in one hand and all of the poison in the other and understand how both could come from the same place. But that is often the nature of things. However, if you are eating food that has health benefits, but is also laced with poison – you stop eating the food. No amount of good taste or vitamins can cancel out the fact that you are being poisoned. Poison is poison. And when you are aware that a food contains poison, you will react negatively to it. You will recoil at it. And this is what my body does now in most churches.

For those of you that think deconstruction is an easy way out or some kind of rebellion against God, let me challenge you. The deconstruction process is one of the most difficult and painful things I have ever experienced. In many, many ways, it is incredibly freeing and liberating. But it is also incredibly hard. I sat in church this past Sunday (the one where I feel pretty safe) and thought to myself, “Is this just over for me? This thing that has been a driving force and huge part of my life – is it over?” And I sat in my therapist’s office this week (yes, most therapists have their own therapist!) and cried and talked about the heavy grief and wondered aloud was I grieving what I feel like I’ve lost from not being an active part of a church community anymore or what I feel like was taken from me during all the years I was dedicated to it. And it is an ache. It’s not a loss of faith in a good and loving God or even a lack of God’s presence. It’s a loss of a community. It’s a loss of faith in human ability to create institutions that truly honor God. It’s a grieving of what might have been if I hadn’t had such limiting beliefs. It’s a realization that religion built on hierarchy and elitism and the maintenance of power is incredibly harmful and unloving. It’s a pain in your soul for the divorced people, the LGBTQ people, the people of different colors and ethnicities, the women – all who haven’t felt welcome at the table or were allowed to sit down but told to keep quiet. This is the pain of deconstruction. It isn’t a loud, angry rebellion. It is a deep, pounding ache in your soul. It is a sadness that things aren’t different and a determination to help them become different. But the large numbers of people who are leaving the church are doing so often because they feel the ache and don’t see the change. They finally realize that they can really only be responsible for themselves and their choices, so at some point, after begging to be at the table or to be allowed to share the ache for so long – they do what they can do. They leave. And then they aren’t sure what to do except to love their neighbors, be kind to their families, help the hurting, cling to God, and be okay with not having answers to all their questions or a specific set of rules to live by. And when they do this – they actually look a whole lot like the early Christians. Maybe that’s something to consider.  

Eve

Last month I visited the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia while honeymooning with my new husband. For those unfamiliar with his work, Rodin is probably best known for his sculpture titled “The Thinker”. He was a very talented and famous French sculptor who has been called the father of modern sculpture. As we walked around the beautiful gardens, there were two sculptures prominently displayed on the front of the building. One of them was titled “Eve.” As I looked up at the sculpture (shown in the photo I snapped above), my brain reconciled the title and the image. I felt the weight of the artwork in front of me. Staring at this portrayal of the first woman God created broke my heart. The way the MET website describes the sculpture is: “Eve is a physical manifesto of remorse; her body twisted in suffering, her face imprisoned within a gesture of anguish.” And as I stared at her, I felt the weight that women have carried as “daughters of Eve” for all of time. I was struck by how Eve is shown as shameful and hiding, but Adam got to show his face in the opposing sculpture. Eve has been imagined for centuries as the biggest failure ever to walk the face of the earth. She is responsible for the fall of man according to many religious groups. And because a woman ate of the fruit, all women are marked forever by this momentary indiscretion. Eve ate a piece of fruit. She was hungry. She was lied to. And she believed the lie. So, she ate. Adam, by the way, was guilty of the same indiscretion in this story. But, because Eve ate first, she is held responsible. Regardless of if you believe the story of Adam and Eve is literal (btw, you can believe that some of the stories in the Bible are not literal and still love God and value the Bible!), it is important to look at how it has shaped us as a culture and society.

When I looked at that sculpture, I realized how much of my life I had lived in a similar posture. I felt like I was less in the eyes of God because I was a woman. I felt that it was my job to carry the shame and the weight and the responsibility for myself and everyone around me. And, especially, I had to carry the weight and shame of the men. To be submissive and respectful meant to allow things to happen to me that should never have happened. It meant to quiet your voice and suck it up and accept your role. It meant that you could be everything to everyone, but you couldn’t expect anything in return. It was the loneliest station. And so many women live in this station. I don’t think it is all that helpful to find somewhere to place blame for the tragedies we experience in life. Often, there is no blame to place, and that feels maddening. And even when there is, blame won’t change the outcome or alter the pain. And blame may just leave you bitter and a victim once again because you can’t live your life fully and freely in your bitterness. But, when I trace back the most damaging things I have believed about myself as a woman throughout much of my life, I think I can find a source – EVE. Now, incidentally, I’m not blaming Eve. When I say that it traces back to Eve, what I mean is that I was so heavily influenced by a religious system that believed that women were responsible for the fall and therefore more shameful and less valuable than men that I hid my face. I stepped back when I should have stepped forward. I sat still when I should have fled. I choked back words and tears when I should have let them flow. I was sorry for how imperfect I was and thought that meant that I deserved whatever I got. And somewhere deep inside myself, a voice cried out that this wasn’t okay. But I couldn’t listen to it. Because listening to it meant that I had to question the whole system. And the system was my life. And after all, who was I but a sinful woman who couldn’t trust herself? When you are so deeply intertwined in a system, it is nearly impossible to see through its walls. But something happened to me slowly. The walls of that building started to crack. At first, I tried to fill the cracks with mortar (or denial) because it was too scary to see cracks in those walls. But the cracks kept coming. And for a long time I stood inside the building and tried to explain the cracks to the people who could make the changes and fix the building. But they couldn’t see the cracks, or maybe they didn’t want to, so they just looked at each other instead and assured one another that there weren’t any cracks. But the more I saw the light stream through the cracks, the more I realized it was just a structure built by man, and I could walk out of it. There was a door! And outside of that building, there were trees and light and air! And I could run and sing and laugh. And there weren’t any rules about when I was allowed to do that or who I could be in front of when I was doing it. And I found my voice, and I uncovered my face. And I am still flawed, just like Eve. But I am also loved and accepted exactly as I am by the God who created me to thrive. I am living into my creation instead of living into “the fall.” What would the world look like if we all lived into our creation instead of living into “the fall”?

When we put the weight of Eve on women, we disgrace the image of God within them. When we put the weight of Eve on women, we pile bricks on their shoulders and tell them to jump. We expect them to keep the whole world going, and we don’t even give them the freedom to run. There are countless women today who carry the weight of Eve. Some of them live in countries where they aren’t allowed to attend school because they are girls. Some of them live in countries where they are forced to be child brides or worse. Some of them sit next to you in church and go home to "Christian" husbands who abuse them. Some of them work in your churches but aren’t allowed to speak from the front. Some of them are raising children alone and feeling ashamed for being single mothers. Maybe you are carrying the weight of Eve. I certainly still feel it creep in some days. The weight of Eve says you must be in anguish. You must be ashamed. You will never be enough. You will never get it right. You need to hide your body and your face. You will never be beautiful and lovable. You have to carry the weight of his decisions. You have to be perfect to be loved. The weight of Eve feels like chains around your ankles and a cloud over your head. But it’s a myth. A very widely believed and distributed myth, but maybe it’s one we can start to dismantle. Because even Eve should be able to show her face. God created her and loves her too. Every good parent loves their children and wants to see them thrive. 

 

Religious Trauma

 

        

            What is religious trauma? Well, I would say that this term refers to any scenario where one’s religion either causes or contributes to traumatic events in one’s life. For instance, in my job I encounter women whose religion contributed to the dynamic of their abusive relationships and/or caused them to stay in abusive situations far longer than they otherwise would have. There are plenty of other examples. Maybe your religion told you that you were inherently and hopelessly flawed, so you spent 30 years of your life hating yourself. Maybe your religion told you that if you tripped up and had sex before you were married you were like a dirty rag or a partially eaten candy bar, so you always viewed yourself that way after that one night and therefore decided you should settle for any spouse who would accept you in your dirty state. Maybe someone told you that you were going to hell because you liked boys and not girls, but you had no idea how to make yourself like girls. So, you lay awake at night as a 12-year-old terrified of burning eternally. If that’s not traumatic, I don’t know what is.

My supervisor in my internship often said that the real long-term effects of trauma don’t come from the event itself. They come from the beliefs a person forms as a result of the event. For instance, if a woman is assaulted and forms the belief that all men are dangerous and no space is safe, it is that belief that will cripple her in the long run. Religious trauma is unique because it often instills the traumatic belief on the front end. Some examples might be “You are inherently bad and dirty” or “You are supposed to be subservient to men” or “If you do anything at all wrong you are in danger of hell”. People then live their lives out of those beliefs. And the consequences can be traumatic. For people who have experienced this, it is nearly impossible to not link the pain of their life experiences to the religious teachings that led their decision-making processes. When a person goes through the healing process to recover from devastating life events, it can become nauseating to be in the same religious environment where those guiding beliefs were learned.

I think religious trauma is hard for some to understand because some people haven’t endured the type of jarring life experiences that expose flawed beliefs. If you ascribe to a set of beliefs and life goes swimmingly well, then there is not really a reason to question them. However, when you traipse through the dark wilderness of trauma and pain, you are forced to consider what led you down this path. Oftentimes people find that their religious beliefs were a major player. This is religious trauma. And then there is the more obvious form of religious trauma where churches publicly shame or even disfellowship members who step out of line with their doctrine. This has happened to too many domestic abuse victims to count. They finally got strong enough to file for divorce, and the church called them sinners and cast them away – often supporting the abuser who claimed he wanted to change or denied the abuse altogether. Human beings are created by God for community. When a person invests years of their life into a community and is banished (for whatever reason) from that community - it is traumatic.

“Tara, what are you saying? Do you hate the church?!” No, not at all. I love it. The idea behind church is beautiful. A community of people who love and support one another and build each other up like the one in Acts is amazing. Like I said, I firmly believe that we were created for community. The church has given me the beautiful gift of community at so many times in my life. But it has also given me religious trauma that makes it hard for me walk through the doors right now. Like so many things in life, the good and the bad coexist and can’t be untied. However, when it comes to church, I think that the vision Christ set out for the church is so different from where the majority of churches find themselves today. In America, we run everything like a business. Churches too. And it is a problem. There is a balancing act that occurs within church leadership to keep the money coming in (that keeps the church running) that is complex and exhausting.

The other place where we struggle is in deciding what church is supposed to look like. I don’t know how many Christian denominations there are, but there are a lot! How did we end up with so many different versions of the same religion? Well, have you ever played the game “telephone”? You sit in a circle with a lot of people. One person whispers a long message to the person next to them. Then that person whispers it to the next and so on. By the time you get to the end of the circle, the person who repeats the message usually has a very different conglomeration of words than the one who started out. It is the nature of the transmission of information. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault (though occassionally it is malicious). Usually, they really tried. The church has had centuries of “telephone”. Peter got his say. Paul got his. Constantine, Augustine, Calvin, Luther - they all put in pieces. Over time the idea of church as a community of believers who gathered together and supported one another became an institution with a list of rules. Which community has the right list of rules? Whichever one YOU are in of course. Who can be in the community? The people who agree to follow these rules. Who made the rules????? A lot of different (mostly male) humans. You see the issue.

“But, Tara, what about the Bible? Are you saying it isn’t correct?” Okay, again, “telephone”. Do I love the Bible? Yes. Do I think it is useful and informative about the nature of God and the life of Jesus? Yes. Do I think you can take every word literally and make a perfect book of rules using it? Nope. Even if you had the original transcripts of the Bible, you would have to make assumptions as to what a writer means at times just like you have to with any writing. But with our English Bibles, they have been put through a many-tiered translation process. I’m so thankful for that process because it gave us access to the Bible. But it also means that there are certainly things that are not exactly on par with the original. And even if we were to assume that every word of our English Bibles was absolutely in line with the original transcripts (it’s not), it contradicts itself on basic factual information in several places. What am I saying? People have used literal interpretations to shame and punish people for a really long time. And they choose which ones to use. “Women are to be silent” – that one is forever! “Don’t braid your hair or wear pearls” – well obviously that’s cultural. “God hates divorce” – obviously an overarching statement for all marriages for all time! “If you look at a woman with lust you are committing adultery” – well obviously he’s exaggerating. You get the idea. It’s a double bind, and people get caught in the crossfire. And lives get damaged.  

I want to touch on something here, what do you do with the people who taught you the things that ended up hurting you? After all, they were your community. They invested in you. Well, I guess everyone’s experience and level of trauma is different. For me, I truly believe that the unhealthy messages I learned came (for the most part) from people who genuinely loved me and were doing the best they knew how to do with the limited information and experiences that they had. They were a part of the same institution and system that I was bought into. And there is so much fear instilled within those systems, that people truly believe that the only way to love someone is to build the same walls around them that they have built around themselves. So, for me, I choose to love and accept those people who unknowingly hurt me and be thankful for the positive things they gave me. I find this the most freeing and healthy way to live. I myself am certain that in my 20s I taught things to the teenage girls at my church that would make me shudder now (and I have apologized to at least one of them). We all grow and learn over time. But here’s the thing – choosing to have a loving and forgiving attitude toward the people who perhaps misled you doesn’t mean that you have to stay in that environment. YOU CAN LEAVE and still love them. YOU CAN SPEAK UP ABOUT THE HARMFUL PARTS and still love them. YOU CAN BE HONEST and still love them. YOU CAN ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR EXPERIENCE and still love them. And if they truly loved you all along, they will still love you when you go down that path and they will want to hear you out.

               Religious trauma is real, and it is heavy. It hits at the most core part of the human experience. Every aspect of life is affected by spiritual beliefs. If you have experienced it, I highly recommend therapy to help you work through it. EMDR therapy can help you reprocess the beliefs that hurt you. And if you know someone who tells you they are dealing with religious trauma the best thing you can do for them is to be safe and nonjudgmental and have open arms. Kind of like, um, Jesus.