Church PTSD

Today I've been learning that there's a lot of talk lately about "Church PTSD" and "Post Traumatic Church Syndrome" as some are calling it.  As I read the posts and the comments, I find myself nodding along, because I know these feelings well.  I've had them myself.

Leaving my Baptist church is a topic that comes up on here from time to time, but years afterward...almost a third of my life after I stopped attending it, the pain is still there, raw and fresh and bubbling to the surface.  It's not a secret to those who know me; I have an almost instinctual hatred of Evangelicalism at this point, and it's not because I find myself in a liturgical church.  Rather, reading through those posts and their comments today, I realize that it's because I'm still suffering a bit of Post Traumatic Church Syndrome myself.

The first thing to make me realize this was to read the Thirty by Thirty post on the issue, and then nod along in agreement, and then wince, at the following statement:
1.) Everyone (except us!) is going to Hell. And if you don’t share the gospel with them, their blood is on your hands. Do you want to get to heaven only to see all those you could have saved from eternal damnation?

There we have it, the first gauntlet is thrown.  Even growing up, I always held an issue with this.  There are more than 40,000 Christian denominations in the world, some of which my own denomination did not recognize as being valid followers of the Christ.   I could not fathom that we were the only ones who eventually "got it right" as it were...and the shaming and guilt tripping was incredible for not having a missionary zeal 100% of the time.  I've quite literally heard before that "their blood is on your hands".

This sort of shaming was also couched in number three from that post:
3.) It is better to be hot or cold in your faith, lest God SPIT YOU OUT OF HIS MOUTH!!! (Referencing Rev. 3:16)

God will punish you for not being zealous enough.  If you're not on fire for God all the time, then you have issues in your life that need confronted.  If you're not on fire for God and praising His name at the drop of a hat, you're in trouble with God.  If you're not always 100% super Christian, every waking moment, you will be spit out from His mouth...or so I was assured.  I went forward for baptism at the age of 16; having believed for years, but having been too ashamed to go forward.  I felt as though I would be judged, and to be honest, I still feel like I was judged for waiting too long.  People congratulated me, people more often than not, did it in forms of "it took you long enough" or "I always knew you weren't a Believer", because unlike my peers, I didn't go forward by the time I was seven or eight at the very latest.

The truth I've discovered in my own searching and wrestling with this Church PTSD as it were, is that the songwriter Audrey Assad is completely right.  Sometimes faith isn't a fire, sometimes it's a soft glow.  There are times I am truly passionate for Christ, where I will be able to preach up a firestorm when invited to guest speak before Catholic student groups...and then there are times where I go, "I know You're there Lord, and thanks for all You do for me, but I just don't feel it".  That's not being lukewarm, it's being honest with myself and with God; fortunately our God is a god of Love.

Meanwhile, over on Jesus Creed, a former pastor's wife ruminates on just how toxic Church People can be.  The commenters, by and large agree with her, as do I.  One commenter remarks that he's found far more "Christian" people in behavior among his atheist peers in the business world than he finds in a church pew...sadly I have to agree again.  That old song is "They shall know we are Christians by our love", but working almost every Sunday between age eighteen and age twenty-two, do you know how I grew to recognize my brothers and sisters in Christ?  By asking myself, "Who are the angriest, rudest, and most demeaning customers we have?"  On the Lord's Day, to be blunt, there are a ton of holier than thou "Christian" assholes who turn people off to the message of Christianity and to the saving Grace of Jesus the Christ.

Church People often are the worst; smiling to your face, while slipping a dagger in your back.  Professing a belief in Christ, while acting the opposite of how He told us to behave.  For an example; my mother used to volunteer in the church prayer chapel back when I was a Baptist and had two rather unfortunate run-ins with the "Worship Band" from the contemporary service we went to at the time.  Once, she went to do her shift in the prayer chapel and couldn't, because it was filled with their equipment, as they were too lazy to take their stuff back downstairs.  Another time, she was there praying for the intentions in the book left inside the Chapel, when a few people affiliated with the Worship Band came in to set up finger foods for after the service and told her to "just leave.  Some of us have actual important things to do."  Prayer was unimportant to these Church People, but snacks were.

I watched a 94 year old retiree be fired from his volunteer librarian job and the library turned into new office space for someone's relative, because "nobody reads any more".  I watched countless people be driven out, persecuted for not liking the right candidate for the new Senior Pastor.  I watched my mother be the token dissenting voice (a fact she soon recognized) on a search committee for a person that was already picked out, they just had to make a show of looking at more qualified candidates.  I watched as a man was accused, and that's the only word that fits in the way it happened, of being gay, because he wasn't married at the age of 30.  I was personally called heretic, anti-Christ, and Satanist for daring to ask questions about our beliefs, because I wanted to understand why we believed! 

And when I did leave the church, or at least stopped attending, nobody said a word.  No one voiced a concern or a care.  One less troublemaker seeking to understand our faith, one less honest man to have to contend with in all the politicking and power plays and nepotism.  They only cared when I came back to request a letter saying I had been baptized, because I was joining the Catholic Church...then they cared, enough to de-friend me en-masse on Facebook and to tell me I was going to Hell.

So yes, I grew up in the late 1980s and the 1990s Christian subcultural bubble.  And my experiences in it have indeed left me with a bit of Post Traumatic Church Syndrome.  A while ago, The Atlantic posted a piece about atheists, in particular Atheist Millennials, and why they leave the churches.  What I saw was a reflection of the road my Evangelical scarring had almost taken me down.  Here are the high points of what was discovered:

Almost all off them had gone to church.

Most of the young atheists had not started from a neutral position ideologically, but had left Christianity.  Therefore, it was almost reactionary in nature.  I would be lying if I said the thought had not occurred to me and I didn't question my God's existence due to His followers and their seething hate.

The mission and message of their churches was vague.

Again, I got called a Satanist, a heretic, and the anti-Christ for asking questions about my faith beyond the standard "Jesus died for you" and "Roman Road" lines.  The message was feel good vagueness most of the time and an altar call, and you were expected to be at that altar before you hit double digits in age, or you were written off, by and large, as a lost cause.

They felt their churches offered superficial answers to life's difficult questions.

"Sometimes God says no."  "God never gives you more than you can handle."  "God helps those who help themselves."  "When God closes a door, He opens a window."  These are all platitudes I quickly grew tired of in tough times.  Plus then you had the anti-evolution seminars and such which relied on pseudoscience, then there were no satisfactory answers for things like why Jesus was the only way?  What happened to those who died before He came to die for us?  All of these and more, and there were no real answers given.  I would have accepted an "I don't know", because that would be intellectually honest, or for why bad things happen to good people, "God let His own Son die on a cross for our sins, why should We be treated better"?

They expressed their respect for those ministers who took the Bible seriously.

We had a few pastors I respected when I was little, and you know what, they all took the Bible seriously.  The guy when I left was more worried about his annual vacation to Cancun.  This goes for televangelists and radio evangelists as well; I will sit and watch Billy Graham for hours on end, or Fulton J. Sheen, but give me one of the clowns who preaches Prosperity Gospel and I'll turn the channel.  Once, working for a school project in the church's meager archives, the workmen renovating the place went to lunch and apologized for having left a preacher on the radio while I was alone there; it wasn't a problem, I told them, I was listening to it the whole time.  I respect someone who believes truly and firmly.

Ages 14-17 were decisive.

Age 16 I was baptized.  It was also the height of when I began to question my faith due to the vitriol from Christ's followers around me.  So yep, another checkmark.

The decision to embrace unbelief was often an emotional one.

Almost anyone who embraces atheism will tell you it's a rational decision, grounded in thought.  But often times it's linked to the fact you dealt with jerks, idiots, and bullies.  The Atlantic piece shows this pretty well.  And yes, when I did contemplate leaving my faith, I was in tears, bawling, because it was my foundation, even if I wasn't always "on fire" for God.  For me, knowing God exists, is as simple as knowing I breathe air; but at the same time, it's easy to doubt Him, even though this statement is paradoxical.  More often than not, when I look to nature or the stars, I see His handiwork and wonder how anyone can believe He isn't there; but then when I deal with His Christians, in particular, Church People, it becomes so easy to doubt.  I went through enough to leave me with Post Traumatic Church Syndrome...the emotion was there, and to an extent, the desire was for a time as well.  And while I didn't embrace atheism, I got worse spiritually, before I got better.

The internet factored heavily into their conversion to atheism.

Many of the respondents in the study that The Atlantic talks about, said that it wasn't the superstar New Atheists who converted them, but rather, it was the people who actually stopped to listen and talk to them about their fears and growing lack of belief.  I was blessed in this stage of things, because I had a number of Neo Pagan friends...and only one of them tried to convert me to her "side" as it were.  The others fought for Christianity and my staying a Christian than 99% of the Christians I knew, including the ones who knew I was struggling.  

People who worshiped Morrigan, Brigid, Bacchus, Odin, and Thor and so many others were there telling me not to give up on Christ, just because of His followers.  They were recommending books to me:  C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesteron, Archbishop Sheen, Billy Graham, and so many others.  They would spend hours on end listening to me rant and replying kindly.  Then if I had an issue with a doctrine or belief, where my former church had reacted with anger to stamp things down, the Pagans helped me research why that was believed that way.  Some of the greatest defenses of Christianity I've heard in my life, came from someone who worships at the foot of a goddess.  

And you know what?  God used them to help me stay, along with their free will and their friendship towards me.  I paid that forward too, to a young atheist who lost her entire social support network when she stopped believing in God.  I gave her boyfriend tips on how to coax her out of her shell, get her back on her feet, help build up a new system of social supports, because what she needed wasn't a firm foundation in her new belief, but the knowledge that people still care.  Sorting out faith could come later.  Her boyfriend asked why I did what I did, when he knew I was probably (and was) praying for her return to Christ, and the answer was simple enough.  "Some people did the same thing for me and they didn't share my faith, and now I'm in the position to do the same."  Yes, it's what God would want, yes it was the moral thing to do, but it was done from compassion as a person who experienced the same compassion.

I guess this is where I wrap things up.  I'm scarred emotionally and spiritually, but I'm happy where I am now.  I'm Catholic.  I'm encouraged to question and find answers.  I've got the Sacraments.  I've got the liturgy.  I've got a social support structure.  And most importantly...I've got Jesus.