Nov 21 | Tear it down, Part 3 (Letters from the Coast)

This is the third and final entry in my three part piece on Christian fundamentalism and the harm it can and will cause in people’s lives.

PART III: NO PARACHUTE

After years of spiritual gaslighting, eventually X experienced abuse at the hands of a trusted person. When X told, it was swept under the rug. Nothing happened to the abuser, and because the abuse “wasn’t that bad” (i.e. didn’t look like the kind of abuse that Hollywood loves to titillate people with in movies with little light and close-ups on trembling lips), X’s feelings of anxiety, depression, and fear were unacknowledged and belittled.

It got to the point where X could barely sit in church. Panic attacks would set in. Again, people X trusted waved it off, or, worse yet, claimed that this demonstrated an appropriate level of reverential fear toward the god of vengeance and ‘justice.’

As X grew older, things became more complicated. X started having feelings toward others of the “wrong gender.” Pickled in years of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and screaming spiritual abuse, X opts for conversion therapy.

“It’s my choice,” said X. But was it?

After a time that doesn’t even bear mentioning, X returns unchanged, except the panic, anxiety, and self-loathing are even worse.

X begins to discover that maybe they’re not even in the right body. When X shares this story, X is told, “You’re just afraid that no [person of the “appropriate” gender] will want you because you’re not attractive. It’ll be fine.”

X enters adulthood and finally decides that enough is enough.

The break from the faith is not dramatic, but slow and messy and awkward. It is never so satisfying as the feel-good Hollywood narrative shows. Instead, X feels constantly as though they have betrayed family, church, and god.

X tries out different churches, unable to fathom leaving Christianity at first. These are all churches X was warned against. Some of them are still fairly conservative, but much more lenient. Others are wide open and socially progressive.

Two have rainbow flags in their ads, so X steals in. One is truly affirming and celebrates queer Christians and their gifts. The other acts as though they are, and claims love, but eventually tells X that these feelings are a sin just like any other sin and need to be conquered. X leaves, feeling completely betrayed and gaslit.

Over the next few years X swings back and forth between a strange sense of peace and nail-biting terror. X has always been told that peace is not the correct feeling, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that X should feel “convicted” in church. When X tries to explain that they can no longer be at their old church because the anxiety is too great, they are told, “What anxiety? Why would you feel any anxiety?” Every time one of these new pastors tells X that God is a God of love, it feels like a cop-out, like a way for Satan to entangle X into taking the easy way out.

X starts to feel like they’re losing their mind.

X contemplates suicide, but is too afraid of the vengeful god that still haunts their dreams.

Finally, after getting into proper therapy, X starts to unravel the years and years of abuse.

X starts to date. It feels like a coup. It takes forever to even contemplate holding hands, much less having a long term relationship.

X starts to messily and beautifully struggle out of the mire they were born into.

And as X begins for the first time to prioritize their own health and well-being, X contemplates leaving the church altogether.

It feels like stepping off a plane with no parachute.

It feels impossible.

Over and over, X spirals through the questions, the tears, and the terror. The one conviction X has is that it’s bondage or freedom, life or death, now or never.

It takes months, but finally X makes the decision.

Some of the folks who make up the story of X did stay in Christianity, and some left.

Each choice was theirs, and I honoured it each time.

And I wept bitter tears for the beautiful broken souls who were put through such disgusting abuse.

There was no God, no Jesus, no Holy Spirit in the stories I wove into the story of X. There was only pain, self-loathing, self-doubt, and gaslighting. Worst of all, some of the people that made up X went through this in the ‘80s and ‘90s…and some went through it much more recently.

There are still churches that encourage conversion therapy.

There are still churches that tell young people they can change their sexuality.

There are still churches that use and abuse their people, and prime them for this abuse by telling them they can’t trust their feelings, because “the heart is deceitful above all things.”

This church still exists, and I believe it has tainted Christ’s Body with its lies and deceit.

And I will not rest until, through the rest of us, Christ tears it down.