You are braver than me I haven’t been able to re-read any old journals yet!!! I was also such a tortured evangelical soul. It kinda speaks to how well the indoctrination systems work on vulnerable (autistic) people . . .
A very insightful set of remarks. I relate to pretty much all of what you wrote, but found two of your insights and/or phrasings particularly helpful for my own clarity and therefore my healing.
You wrote that you perceived your non-evangelical friend to be mistaken about the nature of God when she speculated God's nature to be primarily loving and forgiving. Exactly! For her to fail to see just how important God's *punitive* side is would have, to your young evangelical self's mind, seemed such an error, a very dangerous error. If your friend isn't running scared, dreading God's punishment, how can she get truly "saved"?
You also wrote about the fear of God revealing to you and/or your current beau that it was God's will for you to break up, due to how you got a message that God cares about your holiness, not your happiness. Wow. I have never heard that concept phrased so succinctly and pointedly. Very helpful! That matches very well the implications of the doctrines I had crammed down my throat, such as that suffering is redemptive. So destructive to mental health.
I want you to know I feel so much compassion for your young evangelical self, including her penchant for moralizing and her holding of the assumption she knew the answers that her non-evangelical friends needed. That was me all the way at that age, also.
And in fact, I have noticed the most powerful of my IFS protectors, now, today, is, yikes, my moralizer part. I felt very embarrassed about this truth when I first realized that, despite the fact that I, now, today, am an atheist, my most important IFS part is, ugh, a Christian. She sometimes even preaches at me about how I am going against God's will, being immoral, and will be punished, accordingly. This makes sense, though. Like you, I was all-in, 110%, with an autistic person's 110% sincere authentic embrace of the absolutist doctrines I'd had crammed down my throat.
May we extend compassion to every center of consciousness both internal to, and external to, ourselves, and lead lives we unapologetically make our own. Much love to you, Christine.
"I kinda just wanna give young me a hug. Such a tortured soul." I also felt a lot of compassion for young you, Christine. As for myself, my mental gyrations were different, being male and a married adult, but I still had many of them. I can't believe I was that naive, nor that I bought all that crap without analysis, but I'm grateful now to have done the analysis and found my way out of religion. Life is better with self-guided spirituality that is deeply personally meaningful.
I'm a Latter-day Saint and though we have our own silly, similar phenomena, one thing that stands out to me in reading your essay is the way in which our leadership has led us in this direction in the nearly 40 years since I joined the LDS Church as a college student - they're so anxious to become accepted by other Christian leaders, and to partner in political hot topics like the suppression of abortion rights and LGBTQIA+ rights, that they've entered into a devil's pact with the American evangelical right. They get LDS votes and support, we get - what, exactly? Public rhetoric against Mormons has toned down but private teaching remains the same, and our internal dialogues become more and more "evangelical Protestant" in tone and feel. It's not good for anyone.
Are you sure those weren’t my journals?? lol! Especially the spiritual condescension and decrying my loneliness as ‘not depending on god enough’. I have boxes full of sermon notes (burned/trashed a bunch). Yeah they really wanted us emotionally stunted, didn’t they? Big hugs for our younger selves. ❤️
Oh man - I can so relate! I was all in! Even my husband, I remember when we were dating, he wanted us to pray to make sure we were in God’s will, and I was so scared God would say we should break up. So much fear :( I also seriously regret putting so much stress on relationships with evangelizing non-Christian friends. I truly cared about them (obviously is I didn’t want them to go to hell), but it was a really horrible way to show it. Can’t change the past, but I do have compassion for my past self - she was so emotionally stunted, morally superior and not in a good place.
Oh, this hits sooo close to home. My journals were full of repentance for liking boys, repentance for feeling lonely, repentance for depression/anxiety, repentance for happiness (“distraction”). I was still in evangelicalism when I stopped journaling and threw all my old journals out. I remember saying, “I can’t journal because it takes me to a very dark place.” I was waiting for god to redeem it, but it turns out Evangelical introspection is just dismal. Now that I’ve left I have a number of weird little journaling practices that connect me deeply to myself.
You are braver than me I haven’t been able to re-read any old journals yet!!! I was also such a tortured evangelical soul. It kinda speaks to how well the indoctrination systems work on vulnerable (autistic) people . . .
A very insightful set of remarks. I relate to pretty much all of what you wrote, but found two of your insights and/or phrasings particularly helpful for my own clarity and therefore my healing.
You wrote that you perceived your non-evangelical friend to be mistaken about the nature of God when she speculated God's nature to be primarily loving and forgiving. Exactly! For her to fail to see just how important God's *punitive* side is would have, to your young evangelical self's mind, seemed such an error, a very dangerous error. If your friend isn't running scared, dreading God's punishment, how can she get truly "saved"?
You also wrote about the fear of God revealing to you and/or your current beau that it was God's will for you to break up, due to how you got a message that God cares about your holiness, not your happiness. Wow. I have never heard that concept phrased so succinctly and pointedly. Very helpful! That matches very well the implications of the doctrines I had crammed down my throat, such as that suffering is redemptive. So destructive to mental health.
I want you to know I feel so much compassion for your young evangelical self, including her penchant for moralizing and her holding of the assumption she knew the answers that her non-evangelical friends needed. That was me all the way at that age, also.
And in fact, I have noticed the most powerful of my IFS protectors, now, today, is, yikes, my moralizer part. I felt very embarrassed about this truth when I first realized that, despite the fact that I, now, today, am an atheist, my most important IFS part is, ugh, a Christian. She sometimes even preaches at me about how I am going against God's will, being immoral, and will be punished, accordingly. This makes sense, though. Like you, I was all-in, 110%, with an autistic person's 110% sincere authentic embrace of the absolutist doctrines I'd had crammed down my throat.
May we extend compassion to every center of consciousness both internal to, and external to, ourselves, and lead lives we unapologetically make our own. Much love to you, Christine.
"I kinda just wanna give young me a hug. Such a tortured soul." I also felt a lot of compassion for young you, Christine. As for myself, my mental gyrations were different, being male and a married adult, but I still had many of them. I can't believe I was that naive, nor that I bought all that crap without analysis, but I'm grateful now to have done the analysis and found my way out of religion. Life is better with self-guided spirituality that is deeply personally meaningful.
I'm a Latter-day Saint and though we have our own silly, similar phenomena, one thing that stands out to me in reading your essay is the way in which our leadership has led us in this direction in the nearly 40 years since I joined the LDS Church as a college student - they're so anxious to become accepted by other Christian leaders, and to partner in political hot topics like the suppression of abortion rights and LGBTQIA+ rights, that they've entered into a devil's pact with the American evangelical right. They get LDS votes and support, we get - what, exactly? Public rhetoric against Mormons has toned down but private teaching remains the same, and our internal dialogues become more and more "evangelical Protestant" in tone and feel. It's not good for anyone.
Are you sure those weren’t my journals?? lol! Especially the spiritual condescension and decrying my loneliness as ‘not depending on god enough’. I have boxes full of sermon notes (burned/trashed a bunch). Yeah they really wanted us emotionally stunted, didn’t they? Big hugs for our younger selves. ❤️
Very relatable! Evangelical journals are such a trip--so much to cringe at and so much to extend self-compassion to!
Oh man - I can so relate! I was all in! Even my husband, I remember when we were dating, he wanted us to pray to make sure we were in God’s will, and I was so scared God would say we should break up. So much fear :( I also seriously regret putting so much stress on relationships with evangelizing non-Christian friends. I truly cared about them (obviously is I didn’t want them to go to hell), but it was a really horrible way to show it. Can’t change the past, but I do have compassion for my past self - she was so emotionally stunted, morally superior and not in a good place.
Oh, this hits sooo close to home. My journals were full of repentance for liking boys, repentance for feeling lonely, repentance for depression/anxiety, repentance for happiness (“distraction”). I was still in evangelicalism when I stopped journaling and threw all my old journals out. I remember saying, “I can’t journal because it takes me to a very dark place.” I was waiting for god to redeem it, but it turns out Evangelical introspection is just dismal. Now that I’ve left I have a number of weird little journaling practices that connect me deeply to myself.