Confessions of a church bully, part 2

Read part one of this post

The Reinforcing Power Structure

If being a church bully is nothing but a symptom of an addiction to the high of spiritual prosperity then the church is the pimp and drug pusher. I was drawn to leaders during my addict years. They provided the means to get my next fix. They were given wonderful names, like shepherds, mentors and “servant-leaders”. And in this great euphoria the gateway drug is called “discipleship.” Oh how I have seen many fall prey to recreational “discipleship.” It always begins so innocently. A person has marital problems, or they are like me and see a great “cheat” that can be made by becoming a Christian, and they dabble in the religious arts. Next thing you know they are going out in the streets and handing out comic tracts that depict the flames of hell engulfing children because they did not accept Jesus after the age of accountability.

Since the dawn of tele-evangelism and the Evangelical movement Christianity has become a cesspool of corrupt power structure that compromise what a pure faith ought to look like. Our drive to “spread the word” has caused so many people to come to Jesus under false pretenses that what might be good believers are too easily led astray to cope in unhealthy ways for the reasons why they came to Christ to begin with. I thought Christianity would be a great way to meet people and gain true friendships. I had no idea at the time that I was masking my own insecurities and using my faith to only serve myself. The power structures in place only reinforced this behavior, as branding and bottom lines became the basic rubric of how the success of Christianity was to be measured.

The fundamentalist and evangelical church was the most welcoming environment I think I have ever experienced. To this day, I miss the incredible feeling of connection and fellowship that I had. But each “deep conversation” and each “accountability moment”, “shoulder touch prayer”, “spiritual warfare”, and “testimony” only gave me the next fix that I was craving. In those moments I knew that I was appreciated and adored by others in the way that I had always craved to be accepted as. In this group of people, in particular, there is absolutely no restraint in appealing to the basest of instinct in developing the faith of others. I fell victim to this treacherous system of religion.

And I do not say this to condemn Christianity. I am still a Christian, just as an addict is always an addict. I have gained certain perspective and restraint in my understanding of Christianity and I have learned how to best cope and manage my addiction. I have learned that if religion is the sickness then faith is the cure. I have ended my tryst and affair with religion, and I have learned to simply walk by faith.

Things Come Full Circle

A part of my recovery from my religious addiction is to stay in genuine relationship with other Christians. I did spend a season as an atheist, and during this time I was able to “detox”, of sorts. But in coming back to God I found that the last thing I was willing to do was put myself in a position of compromise once again. Yet, I still had this desire to be of service to God. I created for myself no ambition or plan of how this might look, but I kept my ear to the ground and waited.

Eventually, I got involved at another church and I had a good friend who also attended. This friend of mine shared many of the same intellectual pursuits that I enjoyed, and together we were a kind of kindred spirit. He was incredibly smart and I felt from him the same kind of self-imposed alienation that I had experienced my whole life. He was an abrupt and cagey person, like myself, and I could tell that he was largely misunderstood and misinterpreted for just about all his actions and words, much like myself, as well. Perhaps I projected too much into this relationship, but it was good for me to at least fantasize.

This friend became involved in our church in a sort of “think tank” group that met to discuss the doctrinal beliefs of the church and how they might appear on a revised statement of faith. This excited me, I must confess, because I hold a degree in theology, and I do take a bit of pride in my ability to communicate theology in practical and easy to understand ways.

Now I must confess that thus far the story is not being shaped according to actual events. I have set the general stage, but there is much that has been left out. The first thing you must know is that things between me and this friend were not exactly on par. I knew that he was most likely suspicious of my theological beliefs, but in all fairness he never actually confronted me on anything in particular, even though we were friends and went to the same church, and he knew of my heart to be in ministry and help others in a church-like setting. I operated in good conscience that this friend was not so opposed to me that he felt the need to confront me on anything, because if he were a friend he would keep me accountable. The next thing that you need to know is that this friend never told me about the “think tank.” I found out by complete accident, and as time passed and I made opportunities more pronounced for him to “include” me. He chose not to. In fact, he went to lengths to hide this information from me. And the next thing that must be made clear is that I met with the pastor of this church and he was excited to have me involved in the “think tank” and had no problems with me contributing.

So I will admit that it is a bit unclear what exactly happened, but I have a fair enough reconstruction that proves my point. I became the victim of church bullying. Apparently, this pastor did have reservations toward me, and he felt that the best choice to make would be to speak to one of my friends about it. My friend, without ever confronting me about anything, told this pastor in a closed door meeting that “my theology was off”. Effectively, he was shutting me out of having any chance to be a part of this group.

I will admit that I was pretty mad when all this happened. Recovery does not guarantee that bad things will never happen, but it does provide us with a healthy way of coping with these problems. At least when I was a self-righteous douche to my best friend I did it to his face. I did not go and gossip about him to his pastor and then keep it a secret from him, which is what was exactly done to me. This friend met with me that very same day for Bible study and did not say a word about what happened earlier that day when he “exposed” me before my pastor.

I sat and had coffee with my friend. It was like the past was repeating itself. This time he was the one trying to put me in my place with his righteousness, and I was the one so clearly in the wrong. At least this is how things appeared to the reinforcing power structure. The one that does everything it can to stay in power and keep its power. Now that I had been freed from my addiction to religion I saw it for what it was. I sat across from my friend who was so willing to betray me for the next fix he could get of being a “spiritual leader”. His self-righteousness gleamed from his eyes as he mounted defenses for all of his actions and retorted with his own offensive of how I should have known better.

The truth of the matter is that I completely expected my friend and my pastor to be hesitant about my theological beliefs. And I do not blame my friend at all for “protecting the flock” which is what I think were most likely his motivations. After all, I had many similar motivations. At the end of the day, what happened to me is exactly what I had done to so many while I was “cracked” out on Jesus. These two people decided that their need to imagine a spiritual threat that did not exist so they could “rise” to the call of “protecting” God’s children was greater then their need to relate to me as a person and to treat me with compassion and honesty. I was mad, for a time, but my anger turned to pity. And now I am thankful that I never contributed to the system of perpetuating Church bullying which is happening in that church.

I have been a victim of church bullying in the past as well, but it was always as an addict. I somewhat deserved it back then. This was the first clear example of it happening to me after my recovery. And it has given me new perspective. My enemy is not the evangelical fundamentalist church. I do not need to fight every bigoted and ignorant belief that is represented by most American Christians. This whole system is built upon one very easy idea; the idea that you can cheat to win. Their own idea is their undoing. It requires no response from me, except that I have the freedom to love them and show them the grace that I have received myself. I see no need to argue with conservative Christians about how wrong their theology is, because that only panders to the same addiction that led to my own burnout. I only see the same kinds of addicts that I once was. I used to be a church bully, but that was only because I was so addicted to the religious “fix” that I had no idea of the harm that I was actually causing. I so wish I could go back, because there are real people that I did harm to, but the only real change that can happen is the awareness of the problem that exists.

Christianity needs to take seriously that religion is the opiate of the masses, and learn how devastating unbridled religion can be on a person’s soul. I keep a very humbled and generous perspective on religious devotion, nowadays, knowing that to do otherwise would only tempt me to relapse. I remain a Christian only because it is what I like. It is my drug of choice, so to speak, and I feel that to be a person on a faith journey means that I should follow a religion that I truly do believe is of benefit to myself as a person, and though I have abused Christianity, I have come to really appreciate it and adore it for what it really is. It is my first love. And like all jaded romances I will always be devoted to it through the good and the bad.