Internalised Victim Blaming

One day last week, my husband got home and asked me how my day was. Ordinarily, it’s an innocuous question. This day, it was loaded. We had just posted something big on the blog. Something I had been carrying around for years, and he for decades: his story of surviving gay conversion therapy (what others might call ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ or the ‘LGBTQA+ conversion movement), which of course involved him coming out as bisexual. That kind of thing can make you feel a little vulnerable. Brene Brown tells me that vulnerability is courage though, so I was mentally feeling like a badass, while emotionally feeling a little…meh.



I rambled, as I tend to do when I’m feeling overwhelmed. As I rambled, I explained my fears that people would make it about them when it wasn’t, or that it would be seen as an attack on churches when it isn’t…that it was, in fact, a call for churches in general to wake up to damage that may be invisible to them and to become safe places for LGBTQA+ people. But I was scared that it would be taken the wrong way, and I was pre-empting the responses. 

Then my husband said something that made me sit up and listen.

He said, “Babe, that sounds like internalised victim blaming.” 

Yowza. He didn’t tell me what to do about it. He just let me sit with it. And sit with it I have.

I wanted to take a moment on this blog to pass on that little lightbulb moment. Victim blaming happens. We see it all over the news in all sorts of horrendous situations. It happens when people try to cover up institutional abuse. It happens when judges take the side of a neat, tidy, middle class perp and offer un-earned leniency or when people say the victim was asking for it. It happens in all sorts of places. It’s wrong on all counts.

But it also happens inside us. We blame ourselves. When someone has been the victim of any type of abuse, be it psychological, spiritual, physical, or sexual, it might be hard to realise that we are internalising the victim blaming – that we are blaming ourselves for things others might say or think, or pre-empting how they’ll react. 

I’m inviting you to notice it. In particular, I’m inviting survivors of religious abuse to take a moment to do so. Because noticing matters. It can be so healing.

Over the year that I’ve been writing this blog, it has gathered together a unique readership: we come from all over the world. We are mostly Millennials and Gen X’ers. We have been raised in and around churches, but have found ourselves at odds with doctrines or power structures that we weren’t allowed to question, or that crushed our spirits. Many of us are spiritually curious. We are Christians in and out of church, many of us are agnostics who have been burned by church, or atheists who have walked away from their childhood faith. So many of us are closet progressives who are wondering if we can be called “Christian” and still sit to the left of Judo-Christian conservatism.

I like you. You are my people. I blog for you. And me, but I’m one of you so there’s that.

A lot of us, sadly, have left groups that were toxic to us. I have a feeling a lot of us have suffered some type of religious abuse. So here are some things you need to know [1]:

• Religious abuse is real. It can involve psychological manipulation or various types of harm inflicted on a person through the teachings of their religion.

• It is often perpetrated by people in positions of power within the religion, but I’d argue that it can include lateral violence (whereby the abuse becomes part of the culture of a group or religion and is then inflicted by peers as well).

• Wikipedia, the font of all wisdom as we know, says “It is most often directed at children and emotionally vulnerable adults, and motivations behind such abuse vary, but can be either well-intentioned or malicious.”

• It’s confusing as heck, because sometimes it is well-intentioned and is interwoven with empowering moments or talk of a benevolent, loving God. A lot of us have heard church referred to as a “Family.” That can be so promising but so traumatic at the same time. All of this amounts to what can be well-intentioned and damaging at the same time.

• Regardless of the intent, the effects are real. Long term damage may include “the victim developing phobias or long-term depression. They may have a sense of shame that persists even after they leave the religion. A person can also be manipulated into avoiding a beneficial action (such as a medical treatment) or to engage in a harmful behavior.” Depression, anxiety, PTSD and dissociative disorders are among the other mental health issues that may arise from religious abuse. So it is serious. It shouldn’t be fobbed off.

• It’s not that uncommon. You might be surprised how many people relate to it. A recent study took a sample from a College campus in the States and found 12.5% of participants had experienced religious abuse.

An expert in the topic, Ronald Enroth, wrote a book called “Churches that abuse”. In it, he proposed 5 categories of abuse (Thanks wiki *again.* for the summary [1].)

1. “Authority and Power: abuse arises when leaders of a group arrogate to themselves power and authority that lacks the dynamics of open accountability and the capacity to question or challenge decisions made by leaders. The shift entails moving from general respect for an office bearer to one where members loyally submit without any right to dissent.

2. Manipulation and Control: abusive groups are characterized by social dynamics where fear, guilt or threats are routinely used to produce unquestioning obedience, group conformity or stringent tests of loyalty. The leader-disciple relationship may become one in which the leader’s decisions control and usurp the disciple’s right or capacity to make choices.

3. Elitism and Persecution: abusive groups depict themselves as unique and have a strong organizational tendency to be separate from other bodies and institutions. The social dynamism of the group involves being independent or separate, with diminishing possibilities for internal correction or reflection, whilst outside criticism.

4. Life-style and Experience: abusive groups foster rigidity in behavior and belief that requires conformity to the group’s ideals.

5. Dissent and Discipline: abusive groups tend to suppress any kind of internal challenge to decisions made by leaders. (end wiki quote)

You can imagine that all sorts of ploys would be needed to maintain that sort of control. The book is excellent. Read it if you need to. But consider the ways in which mind games, gaslighting and manipulative control methods would be needed to create such an environment (Even if it started out, or is still to some degree (of cognitive dissonance, I’d argue) well-intentioned).

Research has shown the people who depart from such groups often show symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In fact, complex PTSD is one of the points laid out in something called “Religious Trauma Syndrome [2] Mensline Australia has published a list of things to watch out for in terms of religious trauma [3]. Some of these cut pretty close to home, so I’ll leave it to you to jump over to that page if you feel the need. But why am I talking about this in an article about internalised victim blaming. Well for one thing, we need to understand the harm is real. For another thing, this:

Someone raised a point to me a few months back that really made me think: he said “people who have been gaslit (made to question their own mind) in abusive situations are often chronic over-explainers.”

Again. Yowza. When my husband mentioned the term “internalised victim blaming” it connected for me, instantly. When you’ve been made to question your own mind, you over-explain because you need to be believed. When other people have blamed you or made you question your own nature or worthiness, you can blame yourself too. Long after their voices are absent from your life, you still hear them. As long as this goes unchecked, the damage can continue. And you deserve better than that. We all do.

I lay all these things out for a few reasons: Firstly, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. Secondly, I want you to know that internalised victim blaming isn’t uncommon. But thirdly, that doesn’t mean what happened to you was your fault. And it doesn’t mean you have to continue to listen the voices that blame you. 

Even if those voices are from your own mind, or echoes from memories you’d much rather forget.

I’m a strong believer in therapy. I’m a strong believer that the company of positive people, intentionally chosen to support and empower you, is therapeutic. I’m a strong believer that meta-cognition, or the act of noticing your own thoughts, can help free you from the prison built by trauma.

I didn’t know that internalised victim blaming existed until this week. Or perhaps I did, I just hadn’t given it words. I didn’t know that victims of gaslighting were often chronic over-explainers until recently. I’ve noticed now. 

So if this is you, too, then I want you to know that you don’t have to blame yourself or explain yourself to anyone. I want you to notice that internalised victim blaming can sometimes mean feeling the pressure of what you are sure people are thinking even when it isn’t said to you. Hey – no one can read minds.

You don’t have to blame yourself or be responsible for what others think about you.

You don’t have to avoid God just because church was traumatic.

Not all churches are traumatic but that doesn’t meant you have to step inside if you just can’t bring yourself to.

If you can’t be a Christian inside church at the moment, then you can be a friend of mind and we can follow Jesus together, and grapple with the big questions, and get into the philosophical and hermeneutical mess of life knowing God’s shoulders are big enough to carry it if we stuff it up.

I just don’t think God would be nearly as hard on us as we are on ourselves sometimes. The irony in fearing hell is that sometimes you can live it anyway. I hope that, in noticing with me that internalised victim blaming and chronic over-explaining is a thing, we can release ourselves from that kind of hell.

Hey people – take care of yourself this Christmas. I’m aware this can be a triggering time of year for some. Make sure you check in with yourself and exercise some self-care if you need.

Peace! 


Kit K

How I Survived LGBTQA+ Conversion Practices

Earlier this year, I blogged on why I became an LGBTQ affirming Christian. It was, at that time, the most important piece I had posted on this blog – that is until today. The LGBTQA+ conversion movement (aka ‘gay conversion therapy’) is an issue that lies largely invisible, deniable, but its effects are devastating. So who better to tell you about this than the man I love best in the world – my husband. This is his story. (Guest blogger: Patrick McIvor)

“While most formal ex-gay/ex-trans/conversion organisations have closed down, the beliefs and ideology that formed the basis of the movement still exist in the form of non-therapeutic, underground conversion practices.”

– SOGICE Survivor Statement, 2019

Why the hell are people still subjecting themselves to a process the United Nations calls “torture”, to be healed from something that isn’t a disease? It seems like an obvious question, but only when you assume conversion practices exist in a vacuum, on their own.

They don’t.  

Obviously, I can’t speak for everybody. But what I certainly can do is share my story. 

So sit back, grab something to drink, and let’s talk about why a 15 year old high school drop-out with $800 to his name, packed up his Sony Playstation and moved all the way out to a country town called Sale, to pray the gay away. 

* All names have been changed for privacy reasons. Except for you, Ben Lorraine. 

GROWING UP DIFFERENT

I was a creative, extroverted kid. An intellectual and at times a bit flamboyant, I absolutely loved music and performing. If you asked me what I was going to do when I grew up, it was study music and join Opera Australia, conduct orchestras or something like that. A personality like this comes with certain social challenges for a boy in a world where masculinity was and still is in a state of upheaval and strain. 

To quote Steve Biddulph, “Most men today live behind masks.” My mask was first put on in 1998, in my grade six year at St Paul Apostle in Endeavour Hills.

There were a couple of games we always played at St Paul’s. One was “Truth or Dare.”  Look, let’s face it: it was poor judgement on my part, not a game someone with a tendency to overshare should immerse himself in. The other game at St Paul’s was British Bulldog. Basically, you run through a bunch of people and try not to get tackled to the ground. As it happened, one day we were playing Truth or Dare. I chose truth. The question was this:

“If you had to kiss any boy here, who would it be?”

I thought back to a game of British Bulldog earlier that year. A boy named Todd, sort of a “class bully” had tackled me to the ground, which in itself was nothing unusual. It’s the aim of the game. The memory that lingered with me though, was that he didn’t get up right away. He didn’t pin me down either. He just lay on top of me for a moment and our eyes met. It was nice. So, with that in my memory, I answered my truth question a bit too confidently. “Todd.” Well, you can probably imagine the response I got in grade six, in the far-less-woke year of 1998.

A little while later, Todd got angry with me. He lifted me up against a wall and choked me so hard that I couldn’t breathe, making sure others could see him doing it. He eventually let me go. To be honest I don’t think he really was that angry, just needed to put on a show of aggression given the situation. 

Turns out the whole “Todd incident” was the first of many more lessons in masculinity and masks I’d learn in years to come. After that, I was more careful how I acted around my friends. For rest of grade six, my attempts to be less honest and less caring toward my friends (for fear they’d think I wanted to kiss them) eventually led me to act like a bit of a jerk. Side note: If you’re reading this Ben Lorraine, I’m sorry, I never should have said your song was shit. I just thought if I complimented it you might think I was gay. Turns out Justin Beiber stole your lyrics for his breakout hit anyway.

For my family and I, our faith was life itself, and the Bible was the only road map for life. In this context, the lurch from Catholic primary school to public high school at Lyndale Secondary College was a little rough. Everyone was suddenly dating at school, but a broad trend in church at that time was the purity movement which essentially banned or frowned upon dating. 

I was trying to be the best Christian I could be, but also wanted to fit in and survive. I tried dating a couple of girls but was afraid to express any physical affection because my church had taught me it was sinful. I was never one to put out much machismo anyway. So I quickly earned a reputation around the school for being a bit “frigid.” Another F word started getting used too. 

Faggot.

So 90’s. Still not a great word, and thankfully not something you hear as much anymore. But it makes me cringe to even write it. Still, when I see the word or hear it, I’m transported back to high school like it was yesterday. I remember the fear I felt, whenever someone yelled “faggot” at me, especially when it was accompanied by shoves or punches. I remember the shame, not just because of the names, but also because my religion had taught me to believe I was vile and sinful for feeling attracted to boys.

I remember the stress and adrenaline I felt every time I had to enter a change room at school, go to the toilet, or just go outside. The possibility that someone would suspect I was looking at them and hit me or call me out, and that everyone would laugh again made me anxious constantly. I learned to keep a total poker face around guys. Eyes forward, not looking at any part of them too long. Definitely not looking them in the eyes. I became socially awkward, and the term creep was added to my list of names. 

ISLAND IN THE SUN?

During these years, my brother had moved out of home, three hours away to join a church in a small town called Sale. Ten years older than me, I idolised him. Anything he was doing, I wanted to do. He moved when I was nine, and I visited him as much as possible then and into my teens. The church he joined had gathered up a lot of young people, mostly from broken homes or vulnerable circumstances, and instilled in them a sense of solidarity and purpose. To me they appeared completely impassioned with life; it struck me as a beautiful, unique collection of believers living out “true” Christianity together.

When I visited Sale it was usually on the V/Line. With my Sony Discman in hand, I’d listen to Weezer’s Island in the Sun on repeat. Juxtaposed against a growing feeling of isolation at home, Sale became my own Island in the Sun. Initially, it was a place where I could be my campy self, where everyone laughed at my jokes, and where their faith felt more authentic than I’d ever known. 

Over a few years, I watched my brother and two sisters come of age, leave home for Sale, become immersed in the life of the church and connect with what they said was their destiny.  My heart ached to escape my own loneliness and one day be old enough to answer my own “call to destiny.”

One small red flag hid in the back of my mind though. In between inspiring, positive messages, the church’s teaching, like so many churches, was decidedly anti-gay. 

Around that time, a man in my church (let’s call him Ross, a father figure of sorts) started noticing that where I was once creative, talkative and extroverted, I’d become quiet and withdrawn. One day, he asked what was going on, and I plucked up some courage and said, “Kids at school are saying I’m gay, what if I am?”

Many of our church cultures don’t know what to do with such questions, which leads pastors and elders to be ignorant of the experience of people living in liminal, or marginal spaces. Life is complicated; at times confounding, and for the majority of Christians, church is a place of refuge, clarity and purpose. But for those outside the norm, God’s grace often comes with misleading terms and conditions. 

Ross’ advice, based on his interpretation of the Bible, was that gayness is a social construct. He said something like, “There’s actually no such thing as gay, it’s just a political identity that people choose to put on.”

As a young Christian questioning my sexuality, I had begun to grapple with a complex system of conflicting truths, each question and answer looping around to another question. Aside from snide remarks about pop-culture icons like Ellen “Degenerate“, the only wisdom the church had to offer me, could so far be summarised as:

Gays are other people, who choose to live outside God’s plan. 

At this point I’d like to acknowledge that if you’re a Christian reading this, it’s probably going to be uncomfortable. This story attempts to shine a light on a specific darkness within Christian culture. It is not a wholesale dig at Christianity or Christians. It’s one person’s story, not personally directed at you, and I believe many of us have contributed to this problem in one way or another.   

I grew more detached and isolated at home and school. I wagged many classes and failed some, eventually having to go to a different school. The homophobic bullying was relentless. Maintaining a posture of fight and flight, and adopting various masks to survive in an environment where just being myself was dangerous, was exhausting on every level. Not that I could even conceptualise what “myself” was.

It turns out that changing schools wasn’t a magic pill for the alleviation of all problems. Surprise! Some humiliating events occurred only a few weeks into my new school, and at 14 years old, I announced to my parents that I was never going back to school again. I had been ahead in primary school, in the accelerated program in high school but was now a drop-out by year nine. Crippled by social anxiety, I knew I needed to reclaim some self-confidence, carve out my own path, and find somewhere to belong. 

THE GREAT DOUBLE BIND

Life changed dramatically, but I didn’t. I auditioned for a show with Melbourne City Opera, I volunteered, eventually got a full-time job at McDonalds. I didn’t particularly like the idea of working in fast food for the rest of my career, but all I could focus on was my immediate needs – to take off the survival mask that was beginning to suffocate me, and also to just feel a little safe. 

While volunteering around this time, I met a guy named Joe – a guitar-playing, Rastafarian hat-wearing hippie sort. I thought he was ridiculously cool. Joe was gentle and caring, completely comfortable showing affection to friends. It must have been an hour we spent, with my head resting on his lap as a group of us watched a Monty Python movie late one night. I’d never before felt so connected to another person, and I could have stayed there for hours. 

Years later, during a conversion therapy session in 2011, this “sexual sin” with Joe would be identified as the origin of my demonic possession and idolatry. Yet nothing sexual had occurred. A good memory, one of feeling safe and at ease, had been poisoned and turned into a symbol of depravity. 

Living Waters, 2011: 

”Renouncing Baal and Ashteroth is a militant act to cleanse our hearts and minds of all effects of sexual sin, whether ours or others’. Thrust every foul image, every memory, every sinful action, every unholy sexual relationship, every habitual compulsion into the Cross. Let God’s presence… inspire a repulsion in you…”

That same year I met a girl named Zoe while volunteering at OzChild Interchange. She was a Triple J-listening, Ani DiFranco-loving adventurer. We instantly connected. The physical intimacy was exciting, but also induced massive guilt on my part. Purity culture meant any affectionate gesture with Zoe felt like it might bring divine judgement down on me. Still, it was beautiful. We talked late into the night about anything and everything, and one night, Zoe confided in me that she thought she might be a lesbian. The line went completely silent.

After some time, I said, “I think I might be bisexual.” 

It was the first time I’d even heard myself say it, let alone told anyone else. I felt relief in giving voice to what had previously been unspeakable. But I also felt shame and fear. I had been raised to believe that words have power, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the simple act of speaking it had cursed me with it.

Thus, an internal dichotomy began pulling me in two opposing directions. 

I continued to visit Sale. Each time immersing myself in the social and spiritual activity of the church. But when I went home, I also immersed myself in a sort of queer tribe of friends I had developed. Zoe and I, surprisingly, grew closer together as we explored what it meant, and offered each other acceptance along the way. It turned out some of my work mates were bisexual too. I was still constantly mindful of what God thought of all this, but at the same time I was excited to have other people like me to just enjoy being around. I started to come alive again, and for the first time in a long time, was happy. 

So I spent my free weekends in Sale, and the rest of my life immersed in the queer, free-spirited work crowd back in Melbourne. On more than one visit to the church in Sale, it was preached that homosexuality was a particularly “vile” sin, not to be tolerated, especially not in church. I didn’t want to be unacceptable to God, or rejected by the church. I coiled up my sexuality so tight every day, everywhere, partitioning it off somewhere inside me, trying not to feel it or let anyone see it anymore. 

The more time I spent with the work crowd though, the more my coiled-up self was unwound. A confident, attractive guy named Brad was the biggest personality among them.  We drank copious amounts of bourbon together, watched Queer as Folk, and danced to John Mayer’s No Such Thing. While dancing one night, Brad leaned in, looked me in the eyes and kissed me. We were in a crowded room, but unlike the Todd Incident, this time I didn’t have to worry at all about who was watching. We got into his bed and… I was paralysed by fear. All I could think about was endless suffering, fire and consequences. 

Living Waters, 2011:

”A reversal of what is sexually natural, they [homosexuals] exemplify the spirit of idolatry which is itself the fundamental subversion of true order.”

“An abomination with death as its penalty.”

It turned out there didn’t need to be a Todd present to hit me anymore. Peer rejection, compounded by anti-gay church teaching and the threat of eternal suffering, had created in me an acute and ever-present torturer. My own heart was now my accuser. Before much else could happen between Brad and me, I panicked, left the room and never went back. 

I grew increasingly distressed about it. I ruminated constantly on impossible questions, wondering if God had pre-destined me for hell and why. It seemed so unfair that just wanting to love and be loved meant I deserved relentless self-hatred and alienation from my peers, family and church. I was exhausted from the constant effort required to keep lying to my parents about where I had been. They didn’t raise me to be a liar, and they deserved to know who I really was. I was broken-hearted and riddled with shame over my inability to stop being so “vile”. I was disgusted with myself. 

I’d cried and prayed for many hours, many nights, but on October 2nd, 2002 it was different. On this night, more so than before, I really wanted to just die. But I also wanted to find someone to love, even if it meant renouncing my faith in God and risking eternity in hell. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to live. I needed to do something and it couldn’t wait any longer. 

ENTERING THE GAY CONVERSION ECOSYSTEM

I remembered how good I felt when I visited Sale, and how intoxicating their image of love and purpose was. I wanted to be loved, to be acceptable, and to escape. I resolved that I absolutely had to go to Sale, or I would die. It was my destiny. I no longer wanted to take part in my life anymore, I wanted somebody else’s and theirs looked pretty damn perfect.

Just weeks later, I said goodbye to my life in Melbourne and off to Sale I went. Like a criminal entering witness protection, I assumed a new identity in a new town, cutting off all contact with anyone I previously knew.  They never saw me again. I set about constructing a new mask to live behind and threw myself into church life 100%; I prayed daily, worshipped loudly, evangelised constantly, and read my Bible. 

I made so many new friends at my new church, and was never bored or alone. The old me quickly became unrecognisable, a secret only I knew, and kept close to my chest. 

I was assigned a discipler, just like everyone else in the church, to help me grow in my Christian faith. We met regularly for mentoring and “accountability” sessions. One day, I decided to share my same-sex attraction with him. He told me I needed to tell our pastor about it. The pastor provided ongoing guidance on why he thought people became gay. His advice was usually glib, uninsightful and to be frank, he had no idea what he was talking about. He said things like, “your father was absent”, or “you’re not gay, you’re just creative”. He told me I needed to talk to several other men in the church on a regular basis. They all offered the same calibre of advice.

Over the years, his advice was that I should behave more dominantly, and suggested various women who I might consider eligible wives. Keep in mind, this was a church that didn’t even encourage kissing before marriage, let alone any other forms of physical intimacy. My whole future rested on the ability to deeply, thoroughly, completely believe I was straight. 

I completed Year 12, and having achieved the State’s top mark for contemporary voice in the Music Performance exam, was invited to give a concert in Melbourne. It was an experience I’ll always remember. Encouraged by the result, I remembered my old dream of studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, and I’ll admit I did miss aspects of my old life. I was accustomed, however, to submitting all study, career or relationship decisions to the pastor, as did everyone in the church covenant group. 

When I proposed my study plans to him, his pronouncement was “nah don’t go there, bunch of faggots, not the sort of place that will be good for you.” There was that word again. Faggot. It had been a while since I heard it, but it had the same kick it always had. So in an effort to find something that would inspire less passion, to avoid fuelling prohibited desires, I studied Information Technology instead. I got involved in the “manly” pursuit of politics (which I legitimately enjoyed until a certain point). I took my career in a managerial direction. I worked hard, not just at life, but also at convincing myself I wasn’t bi anymore. I was straight. 

Then I got to know Clare (aka Kit Kennedy!), she was the girl you always noticed in a room. She also happened to be the pastor’s eldest daughter. 

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Clare and I were already acquainted as our parents had known each other for decades. And hey, my brother lived in her parents shed for quite some time. 

We became best frenemies, renowned for our ability to disagree on just about anything, and yet we spent more and more time together. People thought we couldn’t stand each other, and to be fair there were some spectacular disagreements. Which is why, when her dad sat me down one day and asked, “You and Clare seem to be getting along well? You wouldn’t… marry her, would you?” I was more than a little surprised. It didn’t take long, about 5 minutes after that conversation in fact, for me to see we really did have something special. A few months later, on January 3rd, 2010, our courtship began. 

We were sickeningly cute together. Clare made me believe in love again – as cliché as it sounds. I felt I must have done something so right to have found my soulmate. Naturally though, we were anxious about what our sexual relationship would look like. In pursuit of “purity” both Clare and I had totally shut down our ability to intimately connect with someone. My worry was compounded by a still unresolved question of whether I even liked women enough, having never had the chance to freely explore my own sexuality without shame. Our relationship spectacularly fell apart 10 months later, and we were both devastated.

Our breakup was shattering for me, because I felt the full force of the pastor’s anger. He told me I needed to stop being so feminine, stop consuming creative entertainment, and read books about manhood so I could become a man “that other young men would actually want to be like”. I went home and reflected on that. The pain of years gone by flooded in thick and fast. I was completely broken.

A short while later, after ordering four “manhood” books off Amazon, I met with the pastor at the Tall Poppy Cafe. It was January 2011. I told him how much I wanted to try, but despite all my efforts for the past eight years, I still felt deep down that I was “wired up” different. I told him I was still attracted to men, and at a complete loss for what to do about it. He said he had heard of a group called Exodus, who specialised in “Ex-Gay Ministry”, and suggested I reach out to them. A couple of clicks and a Google search later, I found their American website: https://exodusglobalalliance.org/.

SHIT GETS REAL WEIRD

Karen from Exodus took down my details and said a guy named Bob would be in touch. She said he was from a group called Living Waters Australia, which she hoped would be “very beneficial” for me.  Fun fact: Living Waters Australia first operated out of Frank Houston’s Christian Life Centre in Sydney, a forerunner to Hillsong. My pastor and I met with Bob at the Victoria Rose Tea Rooms in Rosedale, so that he could suss Bob out and give the tick of approval. (IMAGE: the email trail)

Bob and I met every fortnight for one year, in a counselling room provided to him a church in Traralgon. He showed me a biscuit tin he kept, filled with wedding photos of all the men he had counselled to “wholeness”. I was inspired by this underground brotherhood, and totally convinced that I would one day be in one of those photos. 

The process of Living Waters involved reading through a 400 page pseudo-psychological manual together, confessing sexual sins, receiving deliverance prayer with water and oil, and speculating about the sins of my parents.

Living Waters 2011 – Prayer of Atonement:

”Jesus… We are heavy with sin, guilt and shame. So often we have sought to justify ourselves, ignore our sinfulness or try to overcome in our own strength. We confess not only our sin but our pathetic solitary attempts to take hold of Your grace… we lay down our sin (each person names them specifically)… I love You, Lord. Release Your grace upon me now, so that I can be free. Amen.”

Similar to drug and alcohol counselling, it involved identifying triggers of lapse and relapse, and putting plans in place to prevent myself from even feeling attraction.

Living Waters, 2011:

“Addiction starts in the heart, which is both shame based and full of pain.”

IMAGE: (Dangerous Pseudo-psychology from the conversion therapy manual)

Homosexuality was considered synonymous with words like addiction, narcissism and witchcraft. 

Living Waters, 2011 – Prayer of Laying Down the False Self: 

”Father, we confess how we have schemed in our emptiness to create a ‘false self’… We confess to You the specific means we have employed, like lying, seducing, compromising the truth, boasting and intense self pre-occupation… Where our spirits have been darkened through the use of power to control others, as in witchcraft, cleanse us, free us and release us from the evil grip… We renounce the spirit of seduction and the spirit of witchcraft and repent of our sins of seduction and witchcraft. Reveal our darkness here, O God and cleanse us…”

The program presented sexuality as black and white; you were either heterosexual and part of God’s plan, or homosexual and will die a shameful, eternal death. The word bisexual was completely absent. 

It took my pre-existing self-hatred, compounded it, then reframed it as evidence of my sin.

Living Waters 2011 – Prayer renouncing self-hatred:

“Father, we confess the sin of self-hatred. We confess that we have turned against ourselves…”

The program dismantled my identity and criminalised the way I experience desire, reframing any bad thing to happen to me, past, present or future, as a punishment from God; I was the embodiment of God’s judgement on society. 

Living Waters, 2011:

“The sex addict [homosexual] bears the full brunt of the consequences of sexual sin in his life, as a reminder to the rest of society what they flirt with when they ignore God’s good order for His gift of sexuality. They bear His judgement in that their lives become increasingly unmanageable, decreasingly able to function, increasingly isolated in relationships and usually end up reeking [sic] havoc in theirs and others lives.”

My self-worth was filled with poison, and romantic memories (with men and women) coloured with regret. Fabricated memories of abuse and neglect wedged me away from my parents, and made me distrust my own mind and heart.

Living Waters, 2011:

“Victims of sexual abuse… have been bound to their abuser’s perversions. God does not hold you responsible for this and yearns for you to be free by engaging your will to renounce the spirit of sexual idolatry.”

Living Waters, 2011:

“You may have experienced the complete absence of a father because of death or divorce. Maybe you were orphaned by the demands of your parents’ career? Or is it just the childhood memory of broken promises or neglect that haunts you? Some of you screamed for hours as babies but nobody came to relieve you of your discomfort and hunger. Some of you whimpered behind locked doors, a small child, forgotten and alone.”

Living Waters, 2011:

“Let God break your heart… Acknowledge how your heart is already damaged by your sin… Acknowledge how your sin hurts God, others and yourself.”

Conversion therapy did indeed break me. But I also thought it was remaking me.

Living Waters, 2011:

“We need to continually put our former self to death.”

And after about 20 gruelling fortnightly sessions… I was still attracted to men. But just like 2 Corinthians 5:17 had promised, I felt I was more in Christ, the old me had died. Or at least shrunk so much he might as well have been dead. 

In hindsight, my Living Waters guidebook was nothing short of a death manifesto, a long winded oxymoron to help me find God’s love through self-hatred. An instruction manual on ways to self-harm, but wrapped up as love and delivered with kindness.

VIDEO: Living Water Program Promo

DECONSTRUCTING INTO SELF-ACCEPTANCE

After I completed Living Waters, Clare and I went to Malaysia together for a conference. We were both reminded on that trip just how fun life was together, how at ease we were with each other, and how much we just didn’t want to be apart. Far from prying eyes, it was nice to flirt and feel the chemistry between us. Our romance recommenced and I was finally able to pull the engagement ring from its year-long hiding place in my sock drawer.

Three and a half years into our marriage, on November 11th 2015, Clare woke me with a beaming grin and a positive pregnancy test. As the realisation sank in that I would be responsible for loving, protecting and raising my own child, it became a catalyst for serious reflection. Both Clare and I had already come to believe we were in a spiritually abusive church, but a number of factors had our hands tied.

I knew I didn’t want to subject my own children to another person’s control and I urged Clare to leave her father’s church with me. She didn’t want to leave, preferring instead to stay and fix it from the inside. As it happened, that night I provoked her father’s anger by offering him an unfiltered look in the mirror, and the process of our excommunication began.

In the months ahead, I started to reconnect with my own mind. Inevitably, my newfound free thought gave way to a predictable crisis. I couldn’t repress anymore; my soul had been coiled up so tight and it was about to break – big time. Denying my sexuality hadn’t changed it. Praying didn’t fix it. I finally allowed space for the possibility that after 13 years of trying to be fixed, I might never have been broken to begin with. 

Grief, anger and regret hit me like a tsunami. For about six months just about anything made me emotional. I cried most days on the way to work, then I’d pull it together, so I could case-manage other people through life’s challenges and traumas all day. I wore jumpers to hide constant sweating, and took prescription Valium to try to relax and concentrate through the fog that enveloped me. Vicarious trauma from working in a helping profession started to transfer into my own trauma, causing daily anxiety attacks, and eventually derailing my ability to be at work at all. 

With our second child just arrived, I could find no rest or joy in anything, and fell further into depression. Clare was heart-broken. Struggling with a newborn and a toddler and now a train-wreck husband, she had already lost so many relationships, and now feared she was losing me too. 

She stayed with me though, carrying me through as wave after wave crashed into us; as I worked through the questions I always should have asked – what am I? Am I gay? Am I truly bisexual? Does God love me despite it? What does this mean for us? I found proper counselling, and I also found Kevin Garcia’s podcast, A Tiny Revolution. 

We allowed a handful of close friends to see what was going on. They listened non-judgmentally, accepted us as we were, and loved us as we mended. Slowly, with a few steps forward, a few back and so on, I found a place of rest. Clare waited and loved me unconditionally while I found myself, and then we re-found each other. 

In May of this year, we renewed our vows. In front of 12 friends who had stood by us through the mud, and the mire, we reaffirmed our love and commitment to each other, fully knowing this time what we both wanted and who we both are. 

WHY TELL MY STORY?

I wanted to speak out so I can live my life with no shadows holding on to me. I also wanted to tell it because somewhere, in churches like yours, there is a young queer kid whose faith should be giving them life but instead it’s driving them to suicidal ideation.

I also want to apologise to local LGBTQ folks. My contribution against marriage equality in 2015 was wrong. I won’t make excuses, I won’t dredge up the details. But I want my regret to go on record.

Church-involved young people who are questioning their sexuality, are three times more likely to experience suicidal ideation than questioning young people outside church.

Conversely, for heterosexual young people, church involvement is often a protective factor against suicide.

The society I grew up in was harsher for “faggots” than it is today. Secular society has slowly but surely acknowledged the ways in which LGBTQ people have been marginalised, and sought to build a more inclusive society. 

Sections of the church are catching up too.

But others are digging further into denial, refusing to see the harm caused, especially to young people born into or “saved” into church. 

There are many Biblical arguments for an LGBTQ affirming stance, but honestly, I can’t be bothered having that argument anymore, and frankly, I don’t care. I no longer need someone else’s interpretation of the Bible to give me permission to love myself and others. 

Jesus didn’t need scripture to tell him who He could love either. The Priests were pissed off at him for healing a woman on the Sabbath. He told them to shove their scripture up their ass and look at the pain this woman was in (Luke 13:10-17).

And what I’m asking of Christians now, is to look at me. Wrestle with this the way I have. 

Sure, some may say, “If you don’t like it, leave it.” No. I’ve left enough places I didn’t fit in, and now it’s time for me to stay. 

Church should be a place where everyone finds refuge, not just those who conform to certain norms. It is a blight on our Christianity that we have excluded many people from faith, on the basis of their sexual or gender expression. But it is not too late for church to change. 

Further reading and resources:

• Survivor Statement: http://socesurvivors.com.au

• Faith and LGBTQ inclusion in Melbourne: https://thebravenetwork.org

• Vic Health Complaints Commissioner Inquiry: https://hcc.vic.gov.au/news/151-inquiry-conversion-therapy

• Guide for connecting with the queer Christian community.

PSA: God Doesn’t Kill People in Bushfires

Okay. My least favourite athlete is back in the news – perhaps because he and Margaret Court like to compete for titles (like Australia’s biggest homophobe). I joke. I joke. But he claimed this weekend that the bushfires in Queensland are God’s judgement for abortion and marriage equality laws. When lives are lost in natural disasters and an accusation like this comes out, it’s no joke. But sadly, it’s not even new. Daniel Naliah made the same claim about abortion law and bushfires back in 2009. 

It was outrageous and unbiblical then, and it’s outrageous and unbiblical now. But with lives lost, Imma drop a microblog on it to drop a few Biblical truthbombs.

Here they are. I’m sure there is more, but here’s the start:

• Isaiah 51:6 describes some pretty heavy weather but promises his salvation shall endure. (I.e. He doesn’t kill people via extreme weather)

•  Luke 9:56 says Jesus came to save our lives not destroy them.

•  Matt 18:4 says it’s not God’s will that even one should perish.

• Noah’s flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah occurred before the Old Testament/New Testament split whereby Jesus took the judgement of Mankind.

• Even if this wasn’t the case, Abraham negotiated with God in Genesis 18:16ff and God said that if there were even 10 good men in Sodom and Gomorrah, he wouldn’t destroy it. I know there are more than 10 good men in Australia.

This is a long way of say that Izzy Folau’s statements are unbiblical, unfounded fear-mongering that does nothing but tarnish the name and perceived-nature of God. God doesn’t kill people because of law changes. But maybe we should pay some attention to climate change (which, believe it or not is not a religious issue! You can be a Christian and reject single use plastic because it’s bad for the environment).

Anyway. Hi! It’s Monday. Hope your’s is good. It’s going to be a huge week on the blog here, and I’m working really hard on some kicking’ content for you. If you haven’t subscribed yet, get on it friends. You won’t want to miss Thursday’s piece.

Have a great week, safe in the knowledge that God isn’t  burning Australia down or causing crippling drought. Comforting, yeah?

Kit K.

The Good Christian Persecution Complex

Hey there bloggerati! It’s been a while. I’m afraid this months blogging effort has lapsed far behind others but I’m telling myself there’s a good reason for that. I’ve finished the first major redraft of a book I’m ghostwriting. I got a short-notice request for a coffee-table book of layman-friendly research articles that ate through a week, and in between, there has been man-flu, 2-year old molars and various kinds of growth spurts to hit Casa-Kennedy. In amongst this, something has been burning in my mind: the good Christian Persecution Complex. I want to take a moment to talk about it.

The truth is, it has been on my mind because we’ve been covering my least favourite book of the Bible at church recently: The Book of Revelation.

I hate it. I think I was put off it when I viewed a Kirk Douglas rapture film of some description when I was a touch too young, and thus my yearning for writings regarding apocalyptic prophecy died then and there. But there’s no denying it. Revelation exists. The powers that be saw fit to put it in the final cut of the Bible. So we’ve got to look at it, right? Nestled in Revelation chapter 2 is a reference to the church of Smyrna: the persecuted church. In his letter to the Smyrnaans, John encourages them not to fear prison, tribulation, poverty, or blasphemy, and promises they will overcome “the second death” and be given the crown of life. (Rev 2:12ff). Now, this is a beautiful note of encouragement to the persecuted church. But here is my strong feeling on it: we can’t call any opposition we might experience ‘persecution’. And perhaps not for the reasons you think.

Discomfort and bullying vs. persecution proper

Persecution is defined as “hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs; oppression.”  Among its synonyms are victimization, maltreatment, abuse, tyrannisation, torture, torment, discrimination and other such terms. Over the course of the last five or so years, I’ve observed a lot of good Christians cry “persecution” when someone challenges their ideals on Facebook (which, oddly, seems to be where ‘real-life’ plays out these days. Weird.). While I do concede that cyberbullying is very real and also agree that for some, it takes real guts and incites real anxiety when they put their faith out there for the world to judge, I do have to offer up a caution: we can’t claim the martyrs crown because someone disagreed with our belief system.

Society is becoming increasingly pluralistic if you ask me. We don’t have one faith that everyone needs to subscribe to anymore and thus we can expect a bit more pushback when we say things like “Because the Bible says so.” Even if we look at Christianity alone, there are increasingly diverse ways of looking at our individual and collective efforts at following Christ. Two people who are well-educated, well-read and genuinely searching for the best way to live a Christian life can arrive at two very different conclusions. This means a lot of people can disagree with us, and even within the Christian faith alone, a lot of us can disagree with each other.

The results can often mean conflict, even nasty conflict. But here in this complicated and uncomfortable zone lies a truth we need to acknowledge: Discomfort, bullying and persecution aren’t the same things.

For clarity, I’ll offer up a qualification here: bullying is bad! I’m not a fan of bullying! Don’t do it. Don’t take part it in. Don’t stay silent if you witness it and can safely speak up and help the target. But don’t equate it with persecution. There may be overlap, but it is not the same thing. Persecution is often systematic and wide-spread. Bullying is more often one on one. Persecution involves large groups or power structures bearing down on minorities or marginalised people. Bullying is more targetted and nuanced. Persecution may involve bullying, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true.

And then there is discomfort. Discomfort is good sometimes. I’ve heard countless motivational speakers remind us that no growth happens inside our comfort zone, and I have to agree! We shouldn’t fear discomfort. It is part of life and sometimes good things come out of it! Persecution, however, is crushing, life-altering, and in so many cases, life-threatening. Open Doors USA, an organisation that exists for persecuted Christians, has this to say on the matter:  “While Christian persecution takes many forms, it is defined as any hostility experienced as a result of identification with Jesus Christ. From Sudan to Russia, from Nigeria to North Korea, from Colombia to India, followers of Christianity are targeted for their faith. They are attacked; they are discriminated against at work and at school; they risk sexual violence, torture, arrest and much more.

In just the last year*, there have been:

• Over 245 million Christians living in places where they experience high levels of persecution

• 4,305 Christians killed for their faith

• 1,847 churches and other Christian buildings attacked.

• 3,150 believers detained without trial, arrested, sentenced or imprisoned.”

These numbers are mind-boggling. But a further look into them (which came from the 2019 World Watch List) is this: Saudi Arabia didn’t even crack the top ten in terms of persecution against Christians. China didn’t crack the top twenty.  The  United Arab Emirates sat at number 45. Open Doors only carried the top 50 countries in terms of persecution on their list: The United States of America, Australia, and Great Britain did not make the list. Yet, at least from my observation, there is a growing idea that Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, and we seem to buy into this rhetoric all too easily.

The idea that we, in our privilege as some of the richest nations on earth, with our human rights advancements, our employment anti-discrimination laws, and our religious freedom acts, might be persecuted ignores the very real systematic targeting of our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries like North Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan – places where confessing Jesus as your saviour may cost you your life or your safety and livelihood.

The worst I will face here, in my white Judeo-Christian privilege, is someone calling me names on the internet. Bullying or harassment, but not high-level stuff that makes me legitimately fear for my safety. Not systematic torture, displacement and even murder of my people. I feel for those who face bullying because of the effects it has on them. I pray for them because that hurt is real. But it isn’t necessarily persecution and its unhelpful to confuse the two.

I have to make another distinction here: there may be many of us who have faced a bit of harassment, especially online, because of a “Christian” argument. This could be taken as a lesser form of persecution, and perhaps it is, but if you don’t have to worry that someone will even find out that you are a Christian (regardless of your thoughts on certain doctrines or current events), the odds are you aren’t being persecuted. I used to get called a “churchy” at work. I learned to take it in good humour. Later on, there was a swear jar at work put up for people who swore around me (because their assumption was that I would be offended. If only they hung around me now!) It made me a bit awkward in the beginning but then I took part in the game. I’ve been involved in my share of debates, but when I changed my posture from one of dogma to one of debate (with a particular bent towards connection and understanding rather than making the other person wrong), I found the world was a much softer place than I originally thought.

Why am I pointing it out? For a couple of reasons. One is that it is sometimes the abrasiveness in the delivery of our message that gets peoples backs up. People sense when someone is trying to make them wrong, and automatically defend their status quo. But the second reason is one that I find gravely concerning – There is a difference between persecution and the persecution complex. Both are harmful, one unspeakably so. But the persecution complex is something that can isolate and divide unnecessarily, especially if a person believes they are suffering persecution when they aren’t.

As I said a few paragraphs up, I’ve seen Christians cry persecution over Facebook stoushes they willingly waded into. I’ve seen mindboggling claims that the President of the United States is being persecuted (i.e. victimized on an international scale). Like…wow! While repeated efforts at convincing an unwilling world of an unpopular opinion (especially on social media) may reap repeated disagreements or arguments that certainly have a negative effect on a person’s state of mind, it is not necessarily persecution.  Nor do I think you can claim persecution when you are the most powerful man in the free world. Holding that position of privilege is the antithesis of persecution.

Of late, I’ve started listening a little harder to my friends who are people of colour, or who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve been confronted by something I noticed here: we straight, white, cis-gendered, Judeo-Christian, middle-class westerners can be blissfully unaware of our own profound privilege and, by virtue of this, confuse the loss of that privilege with persecution. A better word for what we are feeling would be, I don’t know, crestfallen? Uncomfortable? But systematically victimized and oppressed, not so much. We might find ourselves needing to learn resilience a bit more, but the answer to this problem is compassion and self-development not fear.

Alan Noble, in an article for The Atlantic, pointed out some very real flaws in the evangelical tendency to buy into the persecution complex. He said: “Persecution has an allure for many evangelicals. In the Bible, Christians are promised by Saint Paul that they will suffer for Christ, if they love Him (Second Timothy 3:12). But especially in contemporary America, it is not clear what shape that suffering will take. Narratives of political, cultural, and theological oppression are popular in evangelical communities, but these are sometimes fiction or deeply exaggerated non-fiction—and only rarely accurate. This is problematic: If evangelicals want to have a persuasive voice in a pluralist society, a voice that can defend Christians from serious persecution, then we must be able to discern accurately when we are truly victims of oppression—and when this victimization is only imagined.”

But the last thing I want readers of this article to do is mock those who are suffering from a persecution complex. Here’s why:

The Persecution Complex is a Worrying Mental Delusion

The Merriam-Webster Complex Medical Dictionary calls it “the feeling of being persecuted especially without basis in reality.” In individuals, the persecution complex may be called a persecutory delusion and fall within a range of “delusional disorders’ in the DSM V (the diagnostic handbook of the psychological profession). In groups though, it is an interesting and perhaps dangerous phenomenon.  I found a study resource online that helpfully described a persecution complex in the following way: “A persecution complex is a type of delusion. A delusion is a fixed, irrational belief that one is convinced is true despite evidence to the contrary. In the case of people suffering with delusions of persecution, the fixed irrational belief is that others are plotting against and/or following them. Signs that someone may be struggling with a persecution delusion include:

• Increased isolation.

• Paranoid behaviors

• Verbal statements that make little sense or are not rational.

• An increase in angry outbursts.”

If we were to witness this in a friend, we would have the right to be very concerned. But with the rise of cultural and political discourse in the public sphere (i.e. media), it isn’t uncommon for people to face off against a strong or emotive and opposing viewpoint. When this hit to the ego (and we all have an ego, or a sense of self) is combined with a persecution complex, things can get ugly.

So what happens when a group of people holds to the same ideals and experiences similar opposition? You have the potential for a group persecution complex to develop. You have the potential for the group to isolate itself, to believe society is against it, to develop an “us versus them” mentality, and for verbal statements rooted in the persecution delusion to be met with confirmation bias and thus become part of groups’ folklore. My fear is that this can then become the narrative of their lived experience and entrench the persecutory delusion even further.

Let me be real here: this is a terrible situation. Imagine believing society is against you, and the only people who truly understand you are part of a particular group. Imagine constantly thinking everything people write online is geared at you. Imagine the mental and emotional toll that would take. I could unpack this a lot further but I hope the case is clear: Even if the persecution is imagined, the effects of the persecution complex can be very, very real.

What do we do about it? I can’t give you all the answers, because I’m certainly not the authority on this issue. I write this for awareness and reflection more than anything. But I can say this: start with compassion. Regardless of whether someone is going through persecution proper or experiencing a persecution complex, something is going down here. You can’t fix the former easily. You can pray, and donate to good causes. You can be part of organisations working to end persecution. But if a friend of yours is experiencing a persecution complex, you can’t tell them they’re idiots and should get over it. That may just reinforce the delusion.

There could be something a lot deeper going on. The persecution complex isn’t uncommon in cults. It can also be part of mental illness. It may simply be a way of externalising some deep internal unrest. Either way, its tough stuff. It might require professional help to shift.

Approach it with care. But know this: we can’t fix a problem if we can’t accurately diagnose it. If it isn’t persecution, if its a persecution complex, then the system isn’t the problem. The problem is a lot closer to home.

Just some thoughts! Hopefully thats writer’s block out of the way! lol. I’ll return next week friends!

Capitalism and the Church: Strange Bedfellows

A couple of weeks back, I got a text message from my husband that read something like “Do we know anyone at C3? They’ve just gotten a run on 60 minutes.” The inference was that it couldn’t be good. As I mentally flicked through the friend list, I could only find a couple that were affiliated in some way: all people who were involved in smaller incarnations of the C3 (Christian church) movement lead by Phil Pringle. I watched the 60 minutes special and to be honest, it was no shocker. It was an attempt at a damning expose on the riches of Phil Pringle, earned off the back of the tithes and offerings of congregants. They showed pictures of him prophesying riches and success over people and then juxtaposed this against his multimillion-dollar property and the common Christian doctrine of tithing. 

*Sigh* We’ve seen this before. Hillsong has been criticised for it. American televangelists are notorious for the old “donate and God will bless you” line, along with private jets and lavish lifestyles. The prosperity gospel has been trotted out in many a church across the globe. I’ve heard it a lot. So how does one respond when another one of these TV specials sets out to expose the business of Church?  

I’ll say upfront that I have no problem with Phil Pringle, or C3, or Hillsong. I don’t even have a problem with people making good money. But there are some things that I think we ought to approach with caution: the false gospel of prosperity, mystical manipulation that comes in the form of nice but false prophecy, and the idea that God is a capitalist. The latter is one I’ve heard a lot. I’ve even heard it said just like that (by a pastor, no less). I smiled and thought straight away, “Huh. Well, Jesus wasn’t. Nor was the church of Acts.” Now sure, Jesus did learn a trade. He was a carpenter. He is known to have thrown the tables over in the temple when the traders moved in to sell their wares (and we get to assume or guess the levels of corruption that may have taken place within that context). I’m sure he was anti-corruption. I’m sure there’s loads of that in capitalism. But I’m also sure there are good things about it too.

But is God strictly a capitalist? No. I don’t believe so. I don’t even believe that God needs to stoop to our level in terms of social construct, but that’s another (highly philosophical) conversation entirely. Do we need to shun the capitalist church? Not necessarily, but I believe the era of handing our brains over to big institutions and letting them think for us is over.

We need to take responsibility for our faith, our discernment, and the place that God and church (both being different things) have in our lives.

We know that socialism is the antithesis of capitalism and within the socialist construct is communism. There are theorists who believe the church in the book of Acts was a seminal form of communism, and it’s not entirely hard to see why. In Acts chapter 2 “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” In Acts chapter 4, “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

My first thought here was that when forced communism (i.e. China) is juxtaposed against chosen communism (i.e. a group that you choose to be part of because it shares a belief system you choose to have), the latter can’t be harmful. But in truth, I’m yet to read a modern case where this hasn’t gone terribly wrong (i.e Waco Texas, Jonestown, The Family – Heck, even Ananias and Saphira in the book of Acts went deady-byes when they lied about the proceeds of the land they sold.). Like I said, the church in Acts was likely a seminal form of communism: shared beliefs, distrubution of resources, devotion to the doctrine of a central character or characters. If not handled incredibly carefully, this sort of thing can lead to cultish or totalitarian situations which terrifies me. I’m not saying the church in the book of Acts was like that. I am saying that centuries later, with the physical form of Jesus long having departed the Earth, we ought to step very carefully.

The truth is, I’m not a fan of pure communism, just like I think pure capitalism stinks. There are some fundamental problems with Capitalism that I don’t think God could possibly be happy with. Things like:

• inequal distribution of the spoils of capitalism leaving some of His beloved children to starve in poverty,

• power and money corrupting people or causes,

• money buying power,

• greed,

• environmental costs,

• short-term focuses sacrificing long term stability in various domains

• economic immobility.

When you pair any of these factors with good Christian gullibility, you’ve got a recipe for something I don’t like. Meanwhile, socialism on the far opposite end of the spectrum contains its own bad apples: reduced prosperity, devaluing of the individual, lost freedom of thought, and totalitarianism to name a few. So you won’t find me choosing one over other. Nor has God given us, in the Bible, a clear directive of which version we should operate under. 2 Thessalonians says “If a man won’t work, neither can he eat.” There are multiple scriptures about work and wages. There are also scriptures that clearly indicate we are not to tolerate inequality. Exodus 22 tells us not to charge interest if we lend money to the poor. Leviticus 23 tells farmers to leave the corners of their field to be gleaned by the poor and the needy, rather than taking it all. James 1:27 tells us that true religion is looking after the widows and the orphans (ie. the marginalised and those who cannot take care of themselves). There is more, but the debate can be argued from both sides depending on which you cherry pick.

What can be gleaned from all of this? God isn’t a capitalist! But He isn’t exactly a socialist either. So when we see preachers earning a buttload of money off the back of tithes and offerings, it can be offensive. It perhaps should be offensive, because in beside Gods directive that we all earn our wages, there is another mandate: that we care for the poor and marginalised. I spotted an account on Instagram called “Preachers N Sneakers” which found the prices for the shoes some of today’s Christian big-wigs wore: wow. Ouch! Some of them would clear some seriously big bills for me. But hey. $3,000 shoes matter too, I guess, in some universe. Maybe? Um…

The truth is that Christianity has become big business and while I don’t for a minute doubt that the likes of Phil Pringle, Brian Houston, and others are genuine in their faith and desire to serve humanity, I also have no doubt that some bad apples have gotten into the applesauce. Those bad apples = bad doctrine. And bad doctrine hurts people. I suppose I split church up three ways in my head: the local church, the dominionist church and the capitalist church. The local church is the type that exists in and for the local community. The leaders are largely altruistic and conscientious, with a heart to serve Gods people whether they are in church or not, regardless of their socioeconomic status. They don’t exist to line their own pockets. Then there is the dominionist church (which I’ve spoken about before). This church exists to infiltrate the so-called “seven domains” of society. In my mind, it is riddled with problems as it is a pseudo-Biblical heresy that can be very attractice to people who want to seek out power or wealth for themselves. (But more on that here).

The capitalist church is a funny one: We’ve established that God isn’t a capitalist (at least according to my rudimentary study on it). While these capitalist pastors (who are more like CEOs in the big business of church) may have started out altruistically with a desire/call to serve God, somewhere along the line they have found a formula that works and attracts big crowds. With the big crowds comes big challenges:  how do you teach them all? How do you encourage them all to devotion? Manage their communities? Often the answer lies in merchandise: books, CDs, conferences, podcasts, etc. I have no problem with that. Its a necessity.

The problem only lies in the area of motivation: who is this serving? God and his people? Or the self-interest of the price-setters/CEO’s who have amassed a huge following and a position of authority or influence in the lives of people with varying levels of biblical literacy and personal discernment? We don’t get to answer the question of motivation. We only get to speculate, and to speculate is to risk getting the answer drastically wrong.

Now this begs a question: If God isn’t a capitalist or a socialist, what should preachers earn? This is a tricky one. Pastors and leaders in the church should certainly earn a fair wage. That wage certainly shouldn’t disadvantage their people. But it’s an impossible question to answer. God didn’t lay out an enterprise bargaining agreement in the Bible, so it’s a hard call. In Malachi 3:10ff, the famous tithing scripture, it tells us to bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there might be food in the house. So the idea of the tithe isn’t so preachers can buy private jets and exorbitantly expensive sneakers. It’s so everyone gets fed (spiritually and otherwise). Fair wage for fair work, pastors should be paid because they are the ones who are looking after the flock – spiritually, pastorally, etc. So are we looking at a local church pastor who should earn a fair wage without disadvantaging his flock? Or are we looking at the CEO of a large (albeit faith-based) company.

My belief is that a good pastor should build up his flock. They should benefit from the fruits of his or her labor. Their lives should be made richer for it. And tithing should be less of a gospel and more of a personal conviction (like it was for Jacob, when he wrestled with God/the Angel at Bethel and instituted the tradition of giving a tenth to God.) I think the reason the Phil Pringles of the world irk us so much is that running a church as a multimillion-dollar enterprise with flights in first class, while we mere mortals pay our ten per cent and hang off prophecies that imply God will make us rich runs a little thin. And we have to question motivation: is he prophecying wealth over people so they feel obligated to tithe? Is he doing it because such a prophecy would make someone feel really good? Or is he doing it because they are legitimately destined for wealth.

The area of prophecy should be one we approach with care (in my opinion): people may place a lot of stock in the words spoken over them by the clergy, but these words may not be divine in origin. If they are not divine in origin, then what the heck is it? The gift of prophecy is one that attracts a bit of attention in the Bible. Ephesians says “Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, especially that you should prophesy.” Yet despite the exortation towards prophecy, not everyone is a prophet. The office of the prophet is to bring direction, confirmation, or correction for Gods people. There is often a slight sting to the word of the prophet, like there was when the Prophet Nathan came to chastise Kind David, or when the Prophet Elijah took on Jezebel. In fact, find me a prophet in the Bible who went around blessing people with riches and then demanding 10% of their future bounty. This, I believe, is why it doesn’t seem to ring true.

I admit I’m a bit of a prophecy skeptic: not because I don’t believe it is a legitimate gift of the spirit, but because I have seen it misused. As Christians, it is not a bad thing to test a prophet – do their words ring true or confirm something? Have their prophecies come to fruition before? Or are they using “thus saith the Lord” to demand obedience, gifts, or loyalty that otherwise wouldn’t be theirs. Discernment is key here. Not everyone is a prophet. Wolves sometimes wear a sheeps clothing. While the church is full of people who are legitimately serving God, there is also the risk that the ego becomes involved somewhere along the way and people lose the ability to tell what is the voice of God and what is the voice of their own ego. This opens the door for mystical manipulation: “How can I manipulate this person or this atmosphere to make people feel a sense of the divine and offer me more devotion?”

So step carefully. That’s all I’m saying.

As for the prosperity gospel, I’m going to be lazy and point you to an article I’ve already written on it: You can find that here. But if you want the scoop, it is this: when we adhere to a prosperity gospel that tells us all hardship is behind us once we accept Christ, we deny the scriptures that tell us to count it all joy when we share in His suffering. We deny the hardship that inevitably comes as a part of life, regardless of which faith you adhere to (including athiesm!). We deny the fact that salvation should not be judged on healing, wealth, relationship status, or a glowing aura, but simply on whether someone believes in Jesus.

Its a loaded topic. Do read the linked article! But for now ,this:

Perhaps we should be thinking of Phil Pringle, Brian Houston and others like them as CEO’s not purely pastors. Perhaps we should view their wages that way. But we should also certainly, absolutely, always, exercise discernment when it comes to the way people handle the word of God, the word of prophecy and the loyalty of their people. We can’t always tell the intent and motivation behind peoples actions, but we can use the gift of discernment and intuition when it comes to how we engage with them.

Soooo thats the tip of the iceberg of my thoughts on the matter. I’m going to have to leave the tax-exempt status of churches for a whole ‘nother day! So for now…
Peace! 
Kit K.

Deliverance: What the Hell?

I debated putting the word “Heck” in the subject line there, but look – I’m partial to a truly awful pun. However, I’m not partial to truly awful theology and/or spiritual abuse. Hence, I need to pull on my big girl panties and talk about what I said I’d talk about at the close of my last article: deliverance. It came at the conclusion of a discussion about mental health and Christians, specifically whether or not Christians can suffer from depression. For the longest time, depression, anxiety or other mental illnesses have carried an unfortunate inference in Christian circles: that they may be somehow, in some cases, spiritually underpinned. Read my last piece for my thoughts about that. But now we move on to the chunkier part of the argument: deliverance. Oh brother. 

I’ll start with a story, perhaps a cautionary tale. Once upon a time, I was struggling with a few dud hands life had dealt me. I found a counsellor that did wonders. I was making progress. Then I got in a *ahem* discussion with my pastor. He “suggested” strongly that I drop that counsellor and do something else. I said, “No thank you, this is working and I want to stick with it.” Next came a big reaction and the “suggestion” that I fly to a neighbouring country to go through a power-deliverance experience with a minister flown in from America. When I say “Power-deliverance” I mean the hard-core evangelical experience of being prayed over and having someone command spirits to come out of you. That was not my cup of tea, because I wasn’t dealing with demons. I was dealing with grief, loss and a few weird/traumatic curveballs. Even if this wasn’t the case, it still didn’t exactly sit right with me.

Anyway. The message I got from that interaction was “You are under the influence of demons. They need to be cast out of you.” I was flabbergasted. I sat on the couch and blinked while my wonderful husband recognised the signs of PTSD raising its head again and flew in to bat for me.

Thank God he did. Because I believe a power-deliverance experience like that would have been profoundly damaging for two reasons: It would have been administered without true consent, only guilt and shame over alleged “demonic influence” that would have lead me to discount the validity of my choice in all of this, and because being in the atmosphere described by the people who went to see this deliverance person would have undoubtedly triggered my PTSD. That would have looked like some evidence of demonic influence, and a vicious cycle would have continued. Gentle, qualified counselling however, worked great. (Side note: I am doing very well now. Thanks for asking!)

I tell this story for a couple of reasons: the practice of “deliverance” isn’t gone from the church. Not even close. Christian mega-church “Bethel” recently launched a gay conversion therapy program which would likely have some element of deliverance in it. If you plug the term “deliverance ministry” into a search engine, you will get all sorts of hits. But simplest truth is this: many Christian people have experienced it. Some feel good about it. Some say they feel good about it. Some really don’t.

I admit I sit in a place of privilege here. I know my own mind. I know the Bible to a fairly decent (though not scholarly) degree. I’m well read. I am a level-headed and self-assured person who has witnessed a good many Christian lurks and quirks over the years. It is with all of this in mind that I assert the following: there are three types of deliverance. You probably REALLY don’t need the third.

I’ll say straight off the bat that this is an uncomfortable topic for me. But I’m writing about it because as the NAR and Neocharismatic movements gain speed,  as pseudo-Christian doctrines can be taken up without so much as a reference check, and as paganism and Christian spiritual warfare appear to show significant overlap in the Venn-diagram of modern spiritual practices, its important to know BS when you see it. And its important to know what you need, and your rights when you are speaking with the clergy.

Before you say it: Yes, Jesus engaged in power-deliverance in the New Testament. We see it when he cast the demons out of the man who self-identified as having a legion of demons within him (Mark 5, Luke 8). Now, this is an interesting one, because we are talking here about a raving lunatic so dangerous he could not be held with chains. We also witness Jesus converse with the man and then agree to send the evil spirits into the pigs (2000 of them. Bacon exports from the Gerasene Region were poor that week).  

Now: we don’t know what significant psychiatric disorder this man may have had. We know he lived in a time where modern medicine did not exist, but spiritual practice was a lot more common. He was dealing with God made flesh, who had perfect knowledge of the situation. Therefore human error is removed from the equation.

The world has changed. Deliverance practitioners are now thoroughly and completely human with imperfect knowledge. They are largely unqualified (I mean, I haven’t read of a university with a degree in casting out demons – have you?). We have modern medicine that can bring calm when needed. We have anti-psychotic medication for extreme cases like the Gerasene man in Luke 8 and Mark 5). There is literally no reason or excuse for someone in 2019 to be forced into an exorcism. (When I say forced, I mean forced literally, or made to feel such shame that they submit under emotional duress). By and large, I don’t think this is what happened in the Gerasene case (but that’s a much larger conversation – too big for this tiny blog)

And side note: in John 8: 52, Jesus was told he was demon-possessed and then the pharisees tried to stone him. So thats fun. ANYWAY! On to the meaty part of this blog article. What do I believe every Christian needs to know about deliverance?

The first type of deliverance is Salvation. When you read through the gospels and their account of Jesus death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and humankinds reconciliation to God through Him, you read a powerful, all-encompassing and complete process. John 19:30 sees Jesus utter “it is finished.” Revelation 1:18 and surrounding scriptures chronicle Jesus’ descent into Hades to take the keys of death and hell. Ephesians 1:7 and 13 talk about the gifts of salvation and of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps most poignantly Phillipians 2:11 says “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” I.e. Once you believe in Jesus and have accepted the gift of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, that’s it. This is the bit where you can all sing Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, sealed, delivered.”

I could delve into all sorts of exegesis and hermeneutics about all the scriptures used here, but that would be a thesis in and of itself. The critical takeaway point is this: what Jesus did is thorough, complete and a finished work of deliverance in and of itself. We accept that then there’s no space left open for demonic possession. Ephesians 1:13 even calls it the “Seal” of the Holy Spirit. To say that someone can be born again and still demon possessed is a fallacy.

Another day, I will debate what salvation means. But for now, I’ll point you to Romans 10:9 and John 3:16 and get on with my day.

The second type of deliverance is the word of God. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians will likely be familiar with the old exclusion clause that helps deliverance ministries get around the complete nature of deliverance at the point of salvation. They say things like “Okay. You aren’t possessed, because if you are a Christian you can’t be, but you might be under the influence.” This is where the second type of deliverance comes in: it is the gradual strengthening of a person as they know more about the word and nature of God, and know more about their own mind and how it works.  Romans 12:1-2 says “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

I like the word “prove” here. I think of a math proof – where the answer to a problem is explained via the process the mathematician used to get there.  It’s not a matter of having someone pray for you to be all transformed and then “wham bam” I’ve totally changed how I think. That simply doesn’t last. Its the crash diet of Christianity. Old habits return. We see this in the parable of the empty house in Matthew 12:43-45 (where the tenant is evicted from the house, returns finding it empty, and brings seven friends back). It’s a simple illustration that we can’t just get rid of one way of thinking, living and being, and replace it with nothing. Old habits die hard. That’s why we learn, we study. We take in the scriptures, think about them, enact them and have them become part of our lives. It’s a gradual process of transformation and frankly, it’s beautiful.

Now I’m going to do something heretical here and suggest that the use of the word ‘mind’ in this scripture should suggest to us that we look after the mind in the same way we do the body. i.e. If there is something not quite right, we get help. If you are a reader of my blog, you’ll know I love therapy. I don’t just go when I’m not doing well. I go when I’m doing well so I might learn to do better. The wisdom I have gained from understanding how my mind works has been life-changing. I recently spoke to a person who had been advised by her pastors not to go see a secular therapist and had lived with decades of torment. My heart broke for her. That is bad advice. It’s like telling someone only to go to a Christian doctor when the only specialists available to save a life might be non-Christian.

A good therapist is qualified in the science of Psychology. They will counsel you towards your goals and in accordance with your own values. You will get value out of it. It’s worth shopping around for. So here is the heretical bit: the ‘mind’ is hard to define, but its largely thought of as the brain in action. When the Dalai Lama asked “Can the mind change the brain” in the 1980’s, he was laughed at. Then science caught on to what he was talking about, and now we have a far better understanding that we run our brains. They don’t run us. The field of neuroplasticity is proof of this.

There is a long-held argument in Christian circles that our mind and our spirit are different things: that we are a tripartite being comprising mind, spirit and body.  However, there is another, lesser-known theory buried within Christian scholarship that holds to a dichotomy rather than a trichotomy. I err on the side of ‘dichotomy’. But regardless of which side you come down on, here is something I believe solidly: While you are learning about your faith, your God, and your guidebook (being the Bible), it is a good thing to also learn about yourself. Was it Socrates who said, “Know thyself?” It is a profound and beautiful thing when you can reflect on your own growth, or reflect on how the Bible in all its complexity might help you grow. This growth, led by the word and spirit of God, is a form of deliverance.

So now for the third type of deliverance: the power ministries. Green vomit. Exorcisms. Etc. I did a bit of searching on this before writing this blog piece. I was aghast to discover that it hasn’t really progressed in its rational or methodology since Derek Prince Ministries released a document on it in 1985. Detailed in that document was a whole lot of demonology in dot point format with no real rationale or exegesis attached to it. I’m sure, in other corners of the internet, there is better documentation on it. I’m also sure that people can use all sorts of out of context scriptural arguments to back up their positions. The fact of the matter is that for the most part, the stuff I’ve read has relied upon “divine revelation” to spell out how to approach exorcism. This, for me, is wildly concerning.

Now I want to flag a danger here: it is so easy for the area of exorcism to cross over into abuse. It is so easy for it to happen without genuine or even explicit consent. It is so easy for a person to be shamed into it, or for it to be based on bad theology.

This is dangerous. So very dangerous. It is my belief that, in this day and age, it should be avoided at all costs.  When the first two deliverance options are complete in nature and process, there is no need for the third. If you feel there is a need for the third, I’d encourage medical assistance, counselling and more time dedicated the process of healing and transformation before you opt for the third. Do the work first. In life, as in mental health or even diets, you can’t cut corners. This could be a serious psychiatric problem that exorcisms might only make worse.

I’ve seen a few of these “casting out demons” moments in my time. If anything, I believe it gave someone an experience that was profound enough to allow them to tell themself a different story and empower them towards recovery. I cannot tell you what else (if anything) happened. But sometimes that’s all that is needed: that boost that allows the mind to break out of the familiar pathways it has been caught in for years and experience something new. But in other situations, all I can see in power-deliverance ministries is bad theology and stage-craft. I am not all-knowing. There might be something in it. But for me, it’s a hard pass. Leave it to the Son of God and the original apostles. Guiding people through the first two options, and when needed referring to mental health professionals, should be all we need.

I don’t discount the power of prayer. It is clearly Biblical. It is clearly a practice that has carried down through cultures and generations. It can be helpful and calming.  If someone needs or requests prayer for assistance, then more power to them. Support them. But don’t overstep the mark of what they are actually asking for. God isn’t waiting for someone to pray for you so He can do something. He already sent Jesus to do it. He needs no middle man. And I can’t stress this enough: shame, guilt, or feeling like someone thinks you need deliverance doesn’t mean you need to go through with an exorcism.

A moment of willingness to seek out or submit to prayer should not be used as an opportunity to be subjected to exorcisms or power-deliverance. I believe that this is an overstepping of consent at best, and spiritual abuse at worst. If in your own time you experience some profound moment in which something becomes clear and you become changed, wonderful. Bookmark that moment and celebrate it. But for someone else to step into that place and do it for you concerns me a little.

The human mind/spirit is an amazing thing. In it dwells the power to hurt and heal, grow and change, learn and develop. When we harness that mind in combination with faith in a Saviour who has done all the supernatural stuff that will ever be needed, then we have a complete picture of deliverance.

That, I believe, is all we need.

Peace
Kit K.

Can Christian’s Suffer From Depression?

It seems that my corner of the interwebs is all lit up with mental health awareness messages this week. It’s possibly because of ‘RUOK? Day’ that just passed in Australia, possibly because its Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States, and possibly because I follow a lot of people on Twitter who are grieving the death of Jarrid Wilson. He was a pastor and mental health advocate who tragically lost his battle with depression, even more tragically it was on the day he officiated the funeral of another Christian who lost her battle with depression. In amongst the outpouring of grief, the voice of ignorance seems to have raised itself in the form of people who assert that Christians can’t have mental illnesses, or that suffering from a mental illness disqualifies them from the ministry. This is a dangerous belief; one that is unbiblical and unhelpful at best, and flat out dangerous at worst. In a time when mental illness is thought to affect up to 25% of us, its not good enough to turn a deaf ear to such rubbish. So let’s talk about it.

First cab off the rank: Can Christians Suffer from Mental Illness? Short answer? Yes, they can. But of course, there is more to it than that. For some, this question stems from the NAR/Bethel-Esque belief that total healing from all conditions is guaranteed at the point of salvation. Thus, if someone is born again in Christ, they won’t suffer from mental illness, or indeed any other illness (!!! More on that later). For others, it comes from an antiquated and even subconscious belief that mental illness is demonic or spiritual in origin. Now, thankfully most Christian’s will at least acknowledge that some depression can have neurological or physiological origins. But others hold to the idea that depression is a spiritual, demonic or sin-related malady.

*sigh*

The latter is not helpful. And it’s not true.

Let me switch out my “Christian blogger” hat for my “Research blogger” hat for a second. Here’s what research tells us about depression: it is neurological. Every time. It is physiological. Every time. Why? Because thoughts, feelings, ruminations and such all take place in the brain which is a physical and neurological thing, and having stressors (whether they are physical, chemical or emotional) often factor into the etiology of depressive disorders. The research is a little fuzzy on why serotonin reuptake inhibitors help in a lot of cases, but it seems to have something to do with the neurotransmitters that help signals jump from one neuron to another (i.e. that lovely serotonin in your brain and gut that bathes your neurocircuitry).

There is also emerging research that indicates depression is an inflammation issue, and there are well-established links between mental health and gut health (with the gut being home to the enteric nervous system which houses billions of neurons and communicates to the brain via the vagus nerve and the gut-brain axis. I.e. Many depression sufferers have gut problems, too.

Depression is physical. Read that again. Depression is a physical issue. It’s time we stopped treating mental health as some ethereal, intangible thing. Its time we stopped saying “Oh its all in your head.” Guess what: your head is a tangible thing. Your brain is a tangible thing. If its all in your head, it exists. The thoughts of the mind (with the mind being the brain in action) can be seen on brain scans in the form of neuronal pathways lighting up on the screen. The activity of the limbic system (which governs our emotions) is something that can be measured. We can also measure sympathetic function (the sympathetic nervous system is the part of the nervous system that fires up under stress, and kicks our survival mechanisms into play). Thus, mental illness is tangible in many ways. (Research blogger hat now removed, FYI)

So when you ask yourself if a Christian can have depression, you are really asking whether a Christian can experience physical illness, inflammation, chronic or acute stress, or gut problems. If you can have diarrhea after you eat something you shouldn’t, your Christian brother or sister can have depression. One is no more demonic than the other. Yes, one is more short term than the other (hopefully!) but the point still stands.

Have you ever taken a panadol/Tylenol or aspirin for a headache? Have you ever put an icepack on a sprained ankle or knee? Have you ever gone to the doctor for an upset tummy or other condition? It might have been easy to say that it’s okay for you to suffer from those ailments because its just life, yet turn to depression and related illnesses and say “but that’s not.”

That, right there, is hypocritical. I’m coming out of the gate firing on this one because it matters. If we apply shame is to physical, neurological, chemical conditions that manifest as depression or other mental illnesses we may inadvertently create a situation in which someone may feel shame in getting help. This is the danger of bad theology. It can, quite literally, put a life at risk. People! Let’s not do this! Let’s make churches a safe place for someone to say “I think I’m depressed” and receive support in getting help – not shame or demotions.

It is my belief that depression should not be treated as a spiritual issue. It should be treated as a very real, very serious condition that requires a holistic approach for treatment. That approach should include professional (qualified) help such as counselling and medication. It should include diet and exercise (which is often prescribed as part of the action plan). The place where church should come into a Christian’s action plan is that it should provide community, pastoral support, an opportunity to connect in a positive environment, receive peace and encouragement through scripture (etc), and receive prayer for encouragement or healing if if IF the depression sufferer asks for it. *The latter should never be administered as the sole approach to recovery.* I say this as a person who has been ashamed to admit that attempts at faith healing had failed. In my case it was shoulder and elbow damage after an accident. It was obvious my conditions hadn’t been healed and I felt shame. The hidden shame when a mental illness isn’t healed by faith could be dangerous.

I do believe in prayer. I do believe that when we turn to God, He can perform miracles. I don’t believe that should be the only approach with mental illness. To limit “treatment” to faith healing could be deadly because it could cause a person to feel shame or failure if it doesn’t work. Worse still, it could cause them to feel pressure to act like all is well, or discontinue other treatment. I sweat at the thought.

A particularly concerning doctrine regarding and all healing is an increasingly prevalent belief in some NAR churches that healing from all maladies is guaranteed at the point of salvation. I mentioned it at the top of this piece and I’ll mention it again here: it’s not true and it’s not helpful. We can’t measure the quality of our salvation on whether or not our cancerous tumours disappeared when we said the prayer. Nor can we measure it on whether or not our depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, (etc. etc. etc.) disappeared when we said the prayer. Some people may get healed when they invite Jesus into their hearts. GOOD for them. Some people may take years to heal. Good for them. Others may be healed in eternity. Good for them. The fact is every walk with God is different and none should be judged against another.

Paul had a “thorn in his side.” Jacob had a limp. No one would look at them and say “disqualified.” God certainly wouldn’t. We shouldn’t do this to people who suffer mental illness.

Now to the question of whether or not someone should be in the ministry if they suffer from depression or another mental illness. I’d like to turn your attention to King David. As the author of many of the Psalms, it has often been questioned whether his natural artistry and melancholy crossed the line into depression or bipolar disorder. It’s possible! Some of those Psalms are dark! But he was called ‘a man after God’s own heart,’ depression or not. Then there is Elijah the prophet: perhaps the clearest example of burnout or depression in ministry, when the burdens of the call proved too much to bear and he felt the need to hide in a cave for three years and not look after himself (thank God for sending the birds as a catering service). Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. King Saul had moments of extreme darkness (not that he was a pillar of godliness, I know). All these illustrate the point that the personal struggles or mental illnesses of some of the greatest Bible heroes did not disqualify them from serving God.

Nor should it disqualify our modern ministers from serving God. What it should mean is better support around them, and medical help if required. It should mean that their occupational oversight makes sure they take their holidays every year to recharge the batteries and that stress or complexity is well-managed within the context of their role. It shouldn’t mean they feel shame over their condition or hide it from those around them while wondering why God hasn’t cured them yet.

In a secular workplace, you might feel the need to take extended leave if you were suffering to the point where it was affecting your job. A pastor may need that from time to time if his or her condition is serious or worrying, or that sharing other peoples burdens (as they so often do) is proving too much. That should be okay. I see it as the duty of care the denomination or oversight owes to their pastor. (If a church is independent, this would be difficult. Yet another reason I’m cautious of independent churches – but that’s another topic for another day).

So if you are a minister or a Christian feeling shame about mental illness – please don’t. We didn’t see God shaming Elijah, David, Noah, or many others for their walks with the black dog. You are loved as you are, valued as you are, and precious to God as you are – but don’t mess around with this illness. Please. You deserve care and the best chance at recovery.

“Now Kit, you’ve taken a very unspiritual look at this problem,” I hear you say. “Where does spiritual stuff fit in?” I know many people still believe there is potential spiritual involvement in illnesses including mental illnesses. I have heard of people doing prayer counselling to remove generational curses and such. I’m going to do another piece on this because it’s a loaded topic so come back next week for that one. But here’s the scoop: there are three forms of deliverance. The first happens at the point of salvation. The second happens more gradually, as we consume and internalise the word of God. The third is so rare and problematic I’d almost call it needless in a modern setting where the consent issue can push it over into spiritual abuse.

While it is obvious that Jesus cast out spirits in some extreme cases in the New Testament (the one with Legion and the herd of pigs in Mark 5/Luke 8 for example), He had the benefit of one thing: He was God and had perfect insight into the situation. He was yet to give His life for the redemption of humanity. He was yet to send the Holy Spirit as our helper, counsellor and guide. These are benefits that we now have. To invoke power-deliverance ministries and ignore the health-related fields dedicated to a more gentle and therapeutic approach to mental illness is, in my opinion, needless and dangerous. As Christians, as the living representation of Christ on earth, it is our duty to tread very carefully with the most vulnerable of people. But more on that next week.

I hope you’re intrigued. See you again soon

Peace
Kit K

R U O K? Some Thoughts

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with mental illness and suicide. I’m being kind. I’m advocating care and not just awareness, but if you are feeling fragile – then the place to be is calling your local hospital or GP and getting in fast. If you can’t fathom doing that, then call a friend, demand they drop everything and come over to make you herbal tea until you can fathom it. If you ARE okay – read on.

Cruelly, ironically, today is “R U OK?” day. This week, I’ve read that a minister and mental health advocate died by suicide the day he buried a Christian woman who died by suicide. The news headlines in Australia are still covering the death of Danny Frawley, a football personality who had been open about his mental health struggles before dying tragically in a single-car collision this week. The first thing I did when I woke this morning, after wrangling two moody toddlers out of their dirty nappies, was check in on a dear friend who is going through a hard time. I can’t tell you the profound relief I felt when they sent me a snapchat that clearly depicted chairs in a doctors waiting room.

I’m all for awareness. But I hate it too. Because too often it stops at awareness not action. We all know about breast cancer. How many of us know how to do a breast check, or what the signs are when something is abnormal? We all know about prostate cancer and Movember that raises money and awareness for men’s health issues like depression and that very cancer. But how many men skip that part of the check-up because it’s awkward to ask a doc to, well, you know. R U OK? Day is a great initiative that encourages people to notice any changes and ask “R U OK?” but my big heart-break is this: How many of us actually went to the website and got any tips on what to do if someone wasn’t okay? How many of us are prepared if the answer is “No.”?

People with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses do need our support. They do need us to be aware. But they also need us to know what to do. Bowling up to them in the lunchroom and asking “Are you okay?” because its the day for it isn’t the response they need.

Here is what they do need:

• Go to the website first. The R U OK website shows what to look for that might prompt you to ask if someone is okay. It notes things like any changes in routine, changes in mood stability, sleep patterns, concentration, engagement with activities they love, and things like work relational or financial stress. There’s more. Go to the website and have a look. Once you know what to look for, its a little easier to spot when something is going wrong for someone. Mind you, sometimes we don’t spot it. That’s why it matters to keep checking in on your loved ones all year round. Not just today.

• Listen and take time to hear whats going on, but don’t rush to chime in with advice. Pro-tip: Do not, I repeat DO NOT, send someone motivational memes if you think they are at risk. That is not likely to help the situation. Do something practical instead – something that makes them feel safe, cared for, and like they are not alone. It might be dropping around with coffee and a chat. It might be making dinner, dropping it over and hanging around to ask if everything is okay. If they start to open up, don’t rush in with your advice. This is a time to hear what is going on, empathize, and help them consider getting professional help. Because let me tell you, from someone who knows, advice like “Oh you just need to…” or “This meme always helps me” has (in the past) just made me want to rage-cry or swing punches. Imagine feeling like you are a 90 on the subjective units of distress scale and someone hits you with that. I know you mean well. But if someone is in real mental health distress and you aren’t a professional, then leave the advice to them. Your job is to love, listen, bring calm, and get help.

• Know the phone numbers for your local mental health triage service (usually a hospital near you).  If you don’t know that, then phoning the persons GP and saying “I need an emergency mental health assessment for X” will get you in the door ASAP. If it doesn’t, insist. If it still doesn’t, just go to the emergency room. Don’t take no for an answer if you believe a person to be at risk. If you can’t get someone to get in the car and go, then Beyond Blue has a hotline you can call to get immediate assistance. (If you are in another country, you might have to find out what your local mental health support hotline are. They are there, and they are usually free.

• Don’t just listen and run. You might need to be the one who gets the ball rolling and gets this person physically in the door with the help they need. You might need to alert next of kin, or arrange a group of supportive friends to continue to love and care for this person until they are back on sure footing. If they are in crisis, then nothing is simple for them. Call their mother, or best friend, or doctor, or whoever they would normally call. Do it for them if that is what they need.

• Never treat mental illness as a weakness or as something that’s “in their head.” Its a life-threatening illness in many cases. So treat it seriously, with care, empathy, dignity and respect.

• If you are Australian, I’d strongly recommend doing a Mental Health First Aid course. I did this one a few years ago and it is wonderful. Highly recommend.

Don’t assume that your Christian friends, or your strong friends, or your funny friends are not going to struggle. If you notice any of the warning signs (listed on the R U OK website I linked above) then check-in with them. Adhering to faith doesn’t protect you from mental illness. It can just cover up deep feelings of darkness without ever addressing them. Worse still, it can make someone feel shame for suffering a mental illness. It shouldn’t. It absolutely shouldn’t. Strength of personality can often mean that a person doesn’t know how to reach out because they perceive that they are the strong ones everyone else turns to. Humour can deflect away from dark thoughts.

Hey – I’m a funny, strong, Christian woman. I’ve felt all of these things. It is a double-edged sword, let me tell you. So if you are reading this and you are okay, check on your people.

If you are reading this and you are not okay, call your people. If I am one of your people, call me. Even if we have already spoken today. You aren’t a pest. You are valuable. You aren’t weak. You aren’t faulty. You aren’t hopeless (even if it feels like it right now). Let the right people get you through this thing. Call your doctor and your best friend in whichever order you need to.

Peace (which is always a throw-away sign off but today I mean it)
Kit K

What’s Your Number?

I’m usually that person who blogs on theology, culture, news, politics and current affairs through the lens of Christianity. I do it because I’m neck-deep in the grapple over what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and I’m just not able to trust that the type of faith/theology we’ve inherited from generations of dogma, changing cultural norms and retranslated translations of the Bible is the legit picture of Christ! Because let’s face it, the ever-searching light of truth is highlighting the dirty underbelly of Institutional Religion right now. Millennials are leaving Church in droves even though they aren’t necessarily quitting their belief in God. My queer brothers, sisters, and others are taking hold of their moment in history to say, “Hey church, you don’t have the market corner on God. We are beloved, too!” It’s beautiful. It’s uplifting. It’s challenging, life-giving and hard. So I’m taking a break from my norm to ask you a question: What’s your number?

The number in question is something called the “Subjective Units of Distress” scale. I just wanted to take a minute to share it because when it was introduced to me, it was a game-changer. We talk about self-care. We talk about mindfulness. We talk about how we need to look after ourselves when we are engaged in a fight – be it for mental health, physical health, social justice, equality or anything worth fighting for. But for the longest time, no one taught me how to recognize the moment when I need it.

For those of you who need a little framework to recognise your threshold for distress and your need for a little “you time”, I bring you the SUD scale.

The SUD scale (as it is called in psych circles) is a measurement out of 100 as to where you feel like you are sitting at any given moment in terms of ease and distress. Here’s an example of how it might work:

0 – If you were any more relaxed you would be asleep in a deep, dreamless, completely-at-ease sleep on a private resort in the tropics. Blissed out. Completely.

10 – No anxiety about anything. If you thought really really hard you *might* be able to find something to worry about, but there’s really nothing unpleasant rattling around in your brain.

20 – You might feel a little unpleasant, but not quite realize what it’s about unless you really took time to think hard and listen to your brain and body.

30 – Okay, you are mildly upset or annoyed. You notice it now. You can ignore it if you choose though.

40  – You are upset. You can’t ignore it, but you can handle it without too much trouble.

50 – You are uncomfortable and upset. Your feelings are still manageable but it takes some effort to do that.

60 – Okay. You have to do something about the way you feel, because it isn’t good. It takes a little more effort to manage your distress though.

70 – Yep. Starting to freak, feeling some big and unmanageable feelings around the corner. You can maintain control but its hard.

80 – The freak out has well and truly begun.

90 – Feeling desperate, extremely anxious and like you are losing control. You feel very, very bad.

100 –  “Feels unbearably bad, beside yourself, out of control as in a nervous breakdown, overwhelmed, at the end of your rope. You may feel so upset that you don’t want to talk because you can’t imagine how anyone could possibly understand your agitation.” (This last one was taken from Wiki because I really can’t explain it better.)

It’s called a subjective scale because it’s different for everyone. But the rule of thumb for me is this: stay under 50 if you can. If you are over a 50, then it is a time for self-care and calming down. It is not a time to start or continue big conversations that might bring distress, or to keep fighting a battle that makes you feel scared, scarred or vulnerable. There is a place for risk and leaving your comfort zone. There is a time for repairing your armor and bringing yourself back to a place of mental clarity and emotional ease and readiness.

What it feels like is different for everyone.  Some people are quite in touch with how they feel in terms of ease vs distress. For others, its an art learned over time. I’ve had to do a little bit of work in understanding how I work. I’m far better at recognising acute distress than I am at recognising chronic or underlying distress. But hey, I’m a work in progress like all of us.  I’ve learned to look for things like quickened pulse or respiratory rate, or the taste of metal in my mouth (adrenaline) when it comes to acute stress (or the sudden, daily stressors we all experience). I’ve learned to look for things like being unable to shift from my to-do list  when it comes to recognising chronic distress. My husband is far better at calling me on this than I am.

It’s different for everyone. And self-care after a long hard day is different to self-care during a long hard fight.
I’m a mother to two pre-schoolers. Oh. Em. Gee. There are days my husband walks in the door, gets mobbed by kids, and I tell him “I’m going out to the trampoline to say swearwords by myself and no one is following me or I’m going to go nuclear.” That is what I call an acute 85. Its short term. But good grief, I need a wine, a hot bath and some quiet.

Chronic 50-90’s are so hard. Because sometimes you don’t know what’s bothering you, and the self-care required is different.

I seem to be spending a lot of time these days connecting with warriors. Warriors might not look like they used to: they don’t have blood on their face, and weapons in their hands. They aren’t in physical trenches firing at a tangible enemy. They are armed with care, and compassion, and vulnerability, and an inability to give up on the good, noble, desirable things that matter to them and the ones they love. But oh that takes its toll. There have been times in my life when I have been so engaged in fighting for the good that I haven’t felt safe in my own home (like that one time someone stole my underwear, built an altar and sacrificed a bird on it in my front yard. The bird had its mouth tied shut. The cop that took the report swore. That was totally weird. But not the most distress-inducing time I’ve been “blessed” to have on record!). There have been times for so many people I’ve listened to, when they haven’t felt safe stepping outside their home either. My warrior friends have had to fend off attackers that visit them in dreams, text messages, media reports and so much more. They are no less real and no less distressing.

Chronic distress is when we don’t know this or recognise it,  we might even think we are coping but we feel in our bodies the results of it. We are tired. We don’t sleep well. Our immune system tanks because our fight-or-flight mechanisms are constantly firing. We aren’t meant to live our whole lives like this. But how can we put it right unless we know how to recognise our threshold for “enough.”

Hey friend, what’s your number? Ask yourself this question as many times a day as you like. Ask it when you are feeling great, so you can celebrate it. Ask it when you don’t know and think about the answer. But whatever you do, ask yourself knowing you are worthy of safety, care, and a bubble bath when you need one.

Hope that helps! Look after yourself. Because you are precious, beloved and on this planet for a good reason.

Peace 
Kit K

Jesus: God, Man or Mascot?

A good many writers have considered the formula C.S. Lewis put forward: who was Jesus? Was he a liar who defrauded the public on purpose, a lunatic who believed he was God but wasn’t, or was actually he who he said he was – the son of God? That’s a paraphrase, obviously. But you get the gist. It’s a question many of us have asked ourselves. Once we’ve come to the answer on that, which inevitably tells us (in our heart of hearts if not in our rational minds) whether he is God or man, I believe there is another question we need to ask: have we reduced him from divine status to simply a mascot? Have we edited him and changed his appearance until he is acceptable to us, but merely a caricature of himself?

A little context for you: Some months back, I wrote a series on dominionism. (You can find that hereand follow the links through to the end of the series if you so desire). Dominionism is the belief that there are seven mountains in society and God has destined Christians to dominate in all of them. The irony is that it is, according to my interpretation of the Bible, a pseudo-Christian heresy at best and completely unbiblical at worst. But how seductive it is: to leave behind the idea that God might have called us to minister to the poor, lift the broken, sit with the outcasts, give voice to the voiceless, and love those whom society has left behind, and trade this for a “predestined” position occupying the seats of power in society and letting other people do the nitty-gritty work of Christianity.

While dominionism has been around for quite some time, it was recently made chillingly and abundantly clear in the form of a Netflix documentary based on the investigative journalism of Jeff Sharlett. He infiltrated an American dominionist pseudo-church movement (my best explanation of the bizarre yet eerily familiar scenes laid out in that doco) and wrote two books about them, thus exposing an organisation that had made every effort to stay as secretive as possible.

I can’t tell you how many times words were uttered in that document that made my skin crawl – because I had heard them before. Almost exactly. But the thing that made my stomach drop was this ponderance: it was abundantly clear how “The Family” reduced Jesus to a mascot. They used His name to appear righteous but their one-eyed pursuit of power, and the methods they used to infiltrate high places and secure powerful allies, would have the real Jesus doing a heck of a lot more than throwing some tables around in the temple. But in truth, it isn’t just pseudo-Christian cult groups that use Jesus as a mascot and then just do their own thing. If we look at it, if we study Him then look hard at the world around us, we just might see it everywhere.

Jesus isn’t a mascot we can use to influence the mood of the crowd before we just go ahead and do whatever we want. Nor is He a “get out of jail free” card people can wave around to cover up wrongdoing committed in the name of the cross. We can’t just choose our own gospel and call it Christianity when true Christianity is followership of one who embodied truth, compassion, self-sacrifice and more, one who seemed to shun self-interest all His earthly life. I think Jesus would be angered by people using partial truths to advance a cause so far from His nature yet trotted out with His name emblazoned upon it. It made me mad. Then it made me think.

People of colour have long been joking about how there are different Jesus’s. There is white Jesus who appears on white Christian’s artwork (for those who like that sort of thing). When we pray, an image pops up in our heads of a white guy with sandy blonde hair, a beard, and flowing white robes. Go on. Admit it. It’s true. Then there is Black Jesus and Mexican Jesus, who appear a lot closer to those cultures. Rinse and repeat around the globe. But hey, reality check, the real Jesus was Jewish. He was Middle Eastern. We need not airbrush him to fit our cultural ideals and yet it seems we have. Already, by virtue of his appearance, He is a mascot of sorts.

We’ve made him a caricature of himself by changing how he looks, altering the Bible to suit our need for power or influence, and we seem to have painted over the parts of Jesus we don’t like: we choose the prosperity gospel, or the gospel of the tidy middle class instead of the kind of gospel that takes us to the poor. We choose the purity gospel instead of the gospel that was shared with the woman at the well, who had had seven husbands and was living with a man who she wasn’t married to. We choose the shallow gospel that doesn’t confront us even though the Jesus who walked the earth stopped people in their tracks and made them want to change. We choose a gospel of aggressive conservatism, even though Jesus may have indicated his progressivism when he stood on the mountaintop and uttered the words”But…a new law I give to you.”

Christianity over the years has taken many forms. So very many. From dry, unengaging, obligatory attendance to immersive worship experiences that could take any secular song and swap the words “Baby” for “Jesus” and emerge with something like devotion.

But is this a caricature of Jesus too.

For once, I’m not blogging with the answer in mind, or a tidy list of references, or a neat ending waiting at the end of this paragraph. I’m asking us to think: the Jesus who walked the earth was a revolutionary not because of violence or stoic observation of the good old days. He was a revolutionary because of love. He did not defend himself when accusations came against him. He did not seek power. He took time for the unclean, the unpopular, the at-risk and those the world had cast aside. He was not controlling. He spoke in parables and allowed the listener to find the interpretation within their own heart. He was humble, seeking out another revolutionary with a camel-skin robe and an unkempt beard to baptize him.

That was Jesus. Who is it that we have created? How have we changed him so that he is fit for us to worship? That’s mascot Jesus. That’s not the real Jesus. As the church across the globe grapples with how to hold on to millennials (who seem to be seeking truth, not entertainment), we need to ask ourselves if we are failing to keep the interest of the next generation because we have disengaged mascot Jesus from social justice, equality and inclusion, and made him a vanilla, middle-class white dude who doesn’t ruffle feathers.

Just a thought. (I finish a lot of blogs with that sign-off, don’t I? I’m not even sorry about that. I guess I’m sort of inviting you to think with me.)

Peace
Kit K

The Deconstruction Deluge and Why Millennials Are Leaving Church

We meant to have a games night. And by games, I mean chocolate, wine, trash-talking and friends with a side of games. Instead, my husband, three friends and I ended up having a long conversation about Church: the local church, the global church, deconstruction, attendance, and what we need from the church. It got me thinking. People are deconstructing, the world is changing, but the church (globally) seems to be clinging to old structures and wondering why people aren’t flocking to it like they used to. In fact, church attendance has been on the decline for the last century with recent statistics revealing that 59% of Millennials raised in Church no longer attend. Last month, we read as Christian relationship guru, Josh Harris, donned the hat of the “apostate” and walked away from the faith. This week, Relevant magazine has carried a story detailing Hillsong stalwart Marty Sampson’s disclosure that he too is losing his Christian faith. 

It might be easy to assign blame and get our good Christian “judgment and gossip” hats out, but I think there’s a better way to go about this. It isn’t just Josh and Marty who have issues with the church. Millennials seem to be telling us that they aren’t happy here. 

Of course, I have to hit you with the good old-fashioned disclaimer – I don’t have all the answers here. I only have my experience of deconstruction and my own observations from looking at the church at large (albeit with a big penchant for Googling what the experts have to say.) I can’t ‘tell you why Josh Harris or Marty Sampson walked away, but I can tell you a few thoughts that have been burning in my brain over the last few months as I have pondered the plight of this vast and varied institution we call “the church.”

First, the stats: According to Pew Reseach, 59% of American Millennials raised in Church no longer attend. This has corresponded with an 8% dip in attendance overall, which perhaps shows that while older generations are holding on to Institutional church, we young whippersnappers aren’t. While Judaism is no longer the largest non-Christian religion (pipped at the post by Islam), the biggest growth in the religious survey was those who practice no religion. Interestingly, this has been marked by only a small bump in atheists (+1.5% of the “no religion” cohort) and agnostics (+1.6%). What this means is that there are a lot of people out there who believe in God, but don’t believe church attendance is the best way to outwork this.

McCrindle Research offered up some insights into why Australian church attendance is sliding. These data points relate to the church as a whole, not just to Millennials, but they are fascinating none-the-less. They found that:

• 47% believed church attendance was irrelevant to their lives.

• 26% didn’t accept how “it” is taught.

• 24% believed church had an outdated style.

• 22% had issues with clergy/ministers.

• 19% didn’t believe the Bible.

It’s not hard to see why some people would have issues with the clergy, as members of major institutions get hauled through the legal system over and over again because of child abuse. Even this week, Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he would rather go to jail than report sexual abuse disclosed in the confessional. This sort of thing can leave young people (with an increased interest in social justice) scratching their heads over why on earth that is thought to be noble. I mean…What the?

Its no longer good enough to blame people like Josh Harris and Marty Sampson for leaving their faith, when it is highly possible that these exits were fruit of a church that isn’t serving its people or recognizing their changing needs. Following Josh Harris’s journey over the last few years, and reading Marty Sampson’s statement about why he was losing his faith, I am seeing something familiar: they have deep questions about life, equality, purity culture, church culture more broadly, eternity, and the meaning and authority of the Bible that the church just has not answered. The word “Deconstruction” is being thrown around the internet a whole lot more as communicators and influencers go public with their journey into applying critical thinking to faith. A lot of them lose their faith during this time.

I didn’t. But my faith has changed a lot because of my own deconstruction. I don’t regret staying a Christian, but I do have some observations.

Its time we do away with the “Don’t ask questions, just have faith” approach to Christianity. Parenting a generation or two ago was guided by an ethos that said children were to be seen and not heard, and that they didn’t ask questions of their parents. “Why Mum/Dad?” was often answered with “because I said so.”

We don’t do that anymore. We don’t do it with kids (all the time at least). We shouldn’t do it with adults. But somehow, the experience of many millennial Christians (myself included, and I have to acknowledge my own bias here), is that “because I/Jesus/The Bible” says so cuts off our deep need to understand. The ability to go the hard yards and grapple with the big questions seems to be cut off at the knees and what I’m seeing in my own circles on the interwebs and in real life is that this isn’t good enough anymore. We want deep answers to the big questions. We want to know our faith is relevant.

We have witnessed our parents and grandparents generations somehow equate Christianity with voting patterns (republican in the US, and oftentimes Liberal or minor parties in Australia). We now get left with the question of why being a Christian means you have to support Donald “Grab ’em by the pussy” Trump, or Scott “Lock them up in detention indefinitely” Morrison.  We get left with the question of why the church willingly throws open its doors to anyone, no matter their past transgressions, as long as they are straight and cis-gendered. We aren’t sure how the best way to show the love of God is to hurl abuse at women who feel abortions are their only (heartbreaking) option. We are baffled as to why so many Christians are climate change deniers as if the Bible ever admonished us in the direction of denying science and being poor stewards of the Earth.

Denying these questions, applying the “because I said so” logic, isn’t serving Millennial Christians. We want the depth. We want the grapple. We want to hear if you don’t know the answers. We want to be open to the search.

My solid belief is that truth stands up to scrutiny. If you apply the critical thinking lens to matters of faith, and if God is real, He will still be standing at the end of the search. It’s interesting to me that, of the 59% of American Millennials raised in church who no longer attend, only a total of 3% profess atheism and only 4% profess to be agnostics. The rest are saying “There is a God, but I don’t want a bar of church.”

So what do we need from church then? 

We want something more than shallow Ted Talks and mediocre music. Church used to be the great obligation. A century ago, if you weren’t at church on a Sunday, then there were serious questions raised as to your morality and ideology. It might affect your employability or marriageability. As a young person, it certainly affected your social options. There were church dances, church bake sales, church missions, church church church. Many of the service clubs still hanging around the traps had their basis in church or faith (Scouts, Lions, Rotary for example). To step away from Church was a big, big deal. You were either in it, running it, or receiving its charity. Then the world evolved. Church isn’t a big obligation anymore. It has become an option. Gradually and over the years, the church has been evolving to suit the target market (except that very few churches have put those words with it).

We now have coffee machines in foyers (thank God! Because parenthood!), youth groups, kids ministries, shortened service times, hot topic Ted-talk-length sermons that barely have the time to delve into the big issues. We compensate for this with small groups and special interest courses. People have less and less weekend time they are willing to sacrifice for a service, so we shorten them. It’s needed, but it also means we have to cut content. It’s a conundrum. New research seems to be indicating a perplexing picture: we want digital engagement with quality resources, we want community but we don’t want to turn up regularly. We want deep intellectual reflection in big issues, but don’t turn up to hear it. It’s a contradictory wishlist and in truth, I don’t envy the people at the helm who have to sort through these debacles in order to create a picture of “church” that works for their tribe.

I love my church. I love serving in it. I’m also happy to acknowledge its shortcomings and to put my shoulder to the plow in order to fill the gaps that I can. It seems to do a pretty good job at giving progressives like me a seat alongside stoic conservatives and giving us all room to flourish together.

But when I look at the broader picture I can see something that’s an issue: Church isn’t blowing our minds anymore and obligation alone won’t pull us there.

We want to stand for something, not just against everything, even if it requires deep thought to re-form our picture of how to do that.  In the beginning, Church stood for belief in Christ, the benefit of community and a shared desire to emulate and imitate the Son of God who was the greatest example of love and life above temptation. (Ek, look that’s a crappy definition but it would take a whole series of blog posts to even get to the tip of the iceberg on that). My point is that church was for something. Now it seems to be an institution that is largely against things. You really only hear about church in the news when it is against marriage equality, or refugee rights, reproductive rights or left-leaning politics. etc.

Maybe there is a role for that among the non-progressive Christian cohort. But other indications suggest that millennial and progressive Christians want us to be standing for something. Church should never have been reduced to strong opposition to social evolution, and bunkering down on old social conventions. It used to be about giving to the poor and fulfilling the great commission too. It used to be about reaching out, not holding back. I found this quote interesting:

“Christianity in the United States hasn’t done a good job of engaging serious Christian reflection with young people, in ways that would be relevant to their lives. If it is the case that millennials are less ‘atheists’ than they are ‘bored,’ then serious engagements with Christian social innovation, and with deep intellectual reflection (and these two things are connected), would offer promising signs of hope,” said L. Gregory Jones, a senior strategist for leadership education at Duke University in North Carolina.

I know. Its a US-centric quote but it works anywhere there are millennial Christians grappling with faith. Since I started this blog, I’ve been a little flabbergasted with how many people have said to me “I didn’t think I could be a Christian because I didn’t agree with the Christian doctrine on X, Y or Z.” It seems to me that “Christian” is anyone who fits the Romans 10:9 clause (Confesses with their mouth the Lord Jesus, and believes in their heart God raised Him from the dead. They will be saved.)

Somehow, we have made Christianity mean “Unquestioning agreement with dogma and conservative ideals.” It doesn’t have to be that. It can be faith, belief and your best efforts at following Jesus who was divine love made human. I’m not saying conservative ideals are bad. I like some of them. A lot of them even. But that doesn’t mean I would say someone more progressive than me isn’t a Christian. Gosh! Why are we excluding people? That’s not our job.

We aren’t admitting that church is a social club, albeit one that isn’t really fitting the brief. I can’t exactly close off this blog post without commenting on community, can I? I do agree that church has a valuable part to play in providing community – a village of relatively like-minded people where you are likely to find people who can become your tribe. This provides a valuable asset for mental health and wellbeing, but its not the whole shebang. What concerns me is that people put too much pressure on the church to fill every void here.

The truth is we can’t and shouldn’t outsource our social life to our pastor. It’s not his/her job to fill our dance-card of friends. When we connect with a church, regardless of its size, it is our responsibility to choose and manage our friendships within this. Of course, this needs to be balanced by capable pastoral staff to recognize people in need and assist them in finding community if it’s difficult. It also needs to be balanced with a welcoming and accessible atmosphere. It’s a tricky balance, especially on either end of the size spectrum: this is hard to adequately manage in large churches, and easy to over-manage in small churches. My point is every individual is a contributor even though the church provides a pretty good social structure.

We hear often that the church is a family. I both agree with and cringe at the phrase. Why? Because family means a lot of different things to people. To some, it is trauma and mistreatment. To others, it is guaranteed inclusion with no personal responsibility. Both ends of the spectrum open people up to become disgruntled. “Why isn’t the church coming to seek me out and invite me to things? I’m part of this family,” or “Wow. Family. Triggered.” Throw into the mix the need for digital engagement and the management of changing expectations and wow – what a puzzle we have for post-modern pastors! Good luck with that guys and girls!

I don’t envy church leaders right now. I believe the right approach is to give them grace while they figure it out, offer our talents to help solve the puzzle and have patience while we also make the shift in our own hearts to be willing to go deep and ask the right questions. Like Jones said – social innovation and deep intellectual reflection. I like that. I like that a lot.

Just a thought. Or three.

Peace: Kit K

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BIBLIO:

Church Attendance in Australia [INFOGRAPHIC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-14/melbourne-catholic-archbishop-petrer-comensoli-on-confessional/11409944

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/12/living/pew-religion-study/index.html

Finding Kindred When You’ve Lost Community

It’s hard to make friends when you are a grown-up. One of the blessings of childhood seems to be that friends are a touch easier to come by. You meet them at school, at sporting matches, parks, parties, jobs. But as we age, we seem to bunker down into the world of routine. We meet people through work, then fail to keep in touch with the majority of them (Facebook notwithstanding) when we move on. This is despite our best efforts. We might meet people through sport, or common interests but that’s sort of it. That is one reason why leaving a church is hard. I’m sure its even a reason many people over the years have stayed, or stayed longer than they should, at a church that was toxic or damaging to them. 

Like it or not, a church is a social club of sorts. You join one, you make friends there. You have a common interest, a similar way of seeing the world. You meet through activities run by the church and the fact that you keep running into each other at church events manages to sustain the relationship to a point. So what happens when you leave the church and lose that community?

Let me tell you from experience: hurt. Hurt is what happens. Anger happens. Misinformation often happens. I’m currently watching from a distance as someone I know had her support network disappear overnight. I’m not sure of the particulars of her case, but I’m sure the dynamics would be the same: hurt, anger, disbelief. Potentially rejection and the shattering of an illusion. I’m looking at Josh Harris (author of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”) and given his recent renunciation of faith, I’d say he is going through a lot of this too.

So what do you do when something happens and *poof* up goes your support network in a puff of smoke and you find yourself all alone? This is my 100% unqualified, non-exhaustive list. But I’ve experienced this and I wanted to offer a little wisdom if I could be so presumptuous.

1. Find a good therapist. I’m putting this first on the list because frankly, I think everyone needs one. Science is starting to catch up with just how profound the physical effects of stress or emotional upheaval can be. So a good therapist (emphasis on the word *good*) should be in everyone’s bag of tricks. It’s especially important when it comes to reinventing your social circle or your community of trust for one good reason though: if you’ve just been through a situation that wounded you so deeply and turned your world upside down, you need to vent to someone and learn some strategies to get your resilience game on point. If you go looking for friends at the same time as you go looking for someone to vent to, and you don’t have positive mechanisms for emotional recovery in place, the two worlds may collide and you may become that person who always wants to bitch about the people who let you down.
   Don’t get me wrong. You need to do that. Just do it constructively so it doesn’t poison or define your new friendships. When my husband and I started redeveloping our tribe, we knew our story was pretty dramatic. We also knew there would be a lot of curiosity about it. We had to decide who was in the very small, trusted circle of people we confided in and who was in the circle of people we just got to know from a place of fun,  shared interests, and doing life together.  We also got a good therapist. Oh boy! She is worth her weight in gold, and the three-hour drive to get to her. (It’s also a night off kids though so I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m more excited about that than therapy.)

2. Understand, it’s different in adulthood. Friends don’t just fall in your lap. This takes effort, and sometimes that means confronting a bit of social anxiety! I used to do things like invite other mums to the park. That way our kids could play, there could be something there for us to talk about (i.e kids and playing) and I could leave at any time. Through that, I got the feel for who was easy to be around and who I could connect with. We also joined groups – things like playgroups, writing groups, book clubs, and theatre groups. Through them, we have met some amazing people.We also had a look at our Facebook friends list. On it, there were a few people we had often thought “Yeah, I bet we would get along great.” So we took the plunge and invited them out for dinner. (Risky move, seeing if it went terribly, it would have been just hideous!) Thankfully, the conversation came very easily! But still, the friendships we cultivate in adulthood do require cultivating. You don’t have a long shared history. You have to invite them to things. You have to put in the effort to work it. It’s 100% worth it because loneliness and social isolation are killers for mental health. All I’m saying is that it needs to be approached proactively.

3. Look for common interests. I remember chatting to this couple that makes “cool” look completely effortless. Like, these two were just so insta-perfect its not funny. I figured they were out of my league, socially. (Cue massive social anxiety!) But as we chatted in the foyer of our new church (which was scary at first! Whole other story in that…), we realized we both had an interest in the Middle East. My hubby was like “Great! You guys should come over and we can cook Middle Eastern food and watch movies about the Middle East.” I was petrified. This sounded like the perfect recipe for awkward. I usually invite new friends out for dinner at first so I can fake digestive distress and RUN HOME TO CRY if it’s awkward.Fast forward two years and they are among our closest, bestest friends. Yes, I just used the word “Bestest.” We actually didn’t end up talking about the Middle East at all though, and as it turns out that was absolutely fine.

4. Be ready to correct wrong beliefs about friendships. The tough truth of the matter is that, if you lost a church community overnight and had all your friends disappear with it, you might have been gifted with trust issues, God issues and friend issues all in one. I’m not going to trivialize that, because that is big. You’re going to need time to heal from that. You know that therapist in point number 1? Well! He/She is there for a reason. Depending on the reason for you leaving a church or changing churches, you may be going through some pretty deep personal upheaval. It can be easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose sight of what was real and what wasn’t. Perspective will come in time, and hurts will heal in time. But while you walk that journey, you can’t just hide your heart from the world in the hopes you won’t get hurt again. Inevitably. you will be the one who inflicts the damage of loneliness on yourself if you do that.But just because your old pond somehow became poisoned doesn’t mean there aren’t good people out there. Over the years, I have had to confront some false/unhelpful beliefs I had about friends, and replace them with new, helpful paradigms to think about friendships through. It takes time, and a bit of conscious reflection, but its doable. Perhaps with the help of some good books, or good therapy, but it is doable.

Take courage friend. Put yourself out there. Do it proactively. Do it bit by bit. Do it so you feel like you are in control and not in over your head or unsafe. Do it so you’ve got something to talk about (like kids, or a hobby, or a book, or whatever). Do whatever you need, but do it. If you put yourself out there, there is a pretty darn good chance that beautiful connections will be made: connections that can be deepened over time and cherished for a long time to come.

I’m sorry that you’ve been through such a tough time. My hope for you is that you discover resilience you didn’t know you had, that you go deep and rid yourself of unhelpful beliefs about yourself, or friendships, or life, or God, and that this time of pruning old branches results in rich new growth in your life. It sucks. It’s hard. It hurts. Nothing will ever erase the difficulty that you are going through right now…

But its just possible that you will look back on this time in years to come and see it as the making of you – a time when beautiful friendships were formed, when you realised how strong you are, how resilient you are, and how much life truly has to offer when you are pushed out of your comfort zone.

Wishing you peace and strength

Kit K

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K Thx Bye

PSA: Strong Women aren’t Broken Women.

Growing up complementarian is an interesting thing. From an early age, I was used to the idea that men and women were equal in value, but not equal in authority. It was everywhere in the Christian circles I moved in. Women were empowered to function only within certain “submitted” confines. Hey, some degree of empowerment is better than what many fundamentalist Christian women get, but still, I grew up knowing there wasn’t so much a glass ceiling, but a big fat Bible you’d get swatted down with if you rose “too far.” 

While I can’t remember if the complementarian “value vs authority” trope was ever said explicitly from the pulpit (by my pastor/father), it was spelled out a million ways in anecdotes and examples. To my sisters and I, he spoke the language of empowerment, while also educating me that I’d need to lay down my ministry to support my husband, and teaching me that love was expressed through submission. I read between those lines and learned I would do best if I made my opinions, intellect and even talent inferior to that of the menfolk around me. Also around me were examples of “good Christian womanhood” – submissive, diminutive women who deferred to their husbands or pastors on everything. Meanwhile, the men got to lead and achieve even if their aptitude was inferior to that of their lady friends.

I don’t blame my Dad at all. I think he was doing his best. I  also don’t think there were any better examples at the time he commenced ministry in the late 1980’s. That sense of inequality was cultural in the church and outside of it.  My mother was part of a sort of transitional generation. Her mother had been a stay home mum with no expectation to work. I’m (so far) her only daughter to marry and have kids. I don’t have the option to be a stay home mum. Life and economics have changed greatly in the last two generations. This is our reality now.

But here’s the kicker: I don’t want to be a stay home mum. The economic reality has changed but so have the expectations of women when it comes to fulfillment and contribution. I like to think. I am good at my job (as a research blogger and ghostwriter). If you ask me my opinion, I will lay it out for you. If you don’t ask me my opinion, then don’t expect me to sit on the sidelines of the conversation like an inferior wallflower. If Mamma K has something to say, you’ll hear it. That doesn’t make me out of step with my husband, or God, or out of line in general. It just makes me, me.

I remember when I first started stepping up into my call and being at peace with my brain and my place in the world, I was growing in confidence and thinking “Yeah! I love this.” That confidence had taken me 32 years and a lot of therapy to attain. But life was finally feeling good. Then an older, (well-intentioned) Christian woman placed a sympathetic hand on my arm and gave me a book on womens inner healing.

To her, the two were correlated. To me, a young woman just popping her head up out of the trauma and aftermath of a bad church experience, it was a fair whack. If I hadn’t have pulled that exchange apart with my husband pretty quickly, it could have been a “get back in your box” kind of a moment. It could have been a moment where the internalised patriarchy of another complementarian woman effectively chopped me off at the knees.

I’m a big girl. I wear my big girl panties with pride now. But not every young Christian woman has the ability to stand up to these systems. Not every young Christian woman has a husband (I know, irony) who says “Screw the patriarchy, baby, you be who you are meant to be.” Its for those women that I write.

The world is quickly adapting to women’s empowerment. In my observation, churches aren’t necessarily adapting so fast. Sadly, complementarian doctrine ensures, in many cases, that this inequity can’t be put right.

Inside my own experience, and when I hear stories of women like me, I often hear a familiar tale: outspoken women in complementarian Christian circles are often criticized and even shamed. Strength, if not expressed in stoic silence, is interpreted as a problem. But friend, we are not broken, just outspoken. We aren’t Jezebels. We aren’t speaking out because we are damaged and insecure or unsubmitted. We speak because we are valuable, insightful, and we have something to offer. That is a very good thing.

Even if a woman is speaking out of a place of damage, the correct response (I believe) is to respond to her with love and compassion that empowers her to rise above circumstances and grow beyond the reaches of her damage. It is never to put her back in her box.

I’ve been called a Jezebel in the past. It was horrible. It put on me a sense of shame, a belief that I couldn’t trust my own mind or emotions because I was under the influence of a demon. Can you imagine that? Knowing your thoughts are kindly motivated, well-thought-out and valid even if they weren’t, only to be told its potentially demonic? The effect this can have on a woman is immense. For many years, it was for me. I’ll freely admit this made me angry and frustrated. I’m a Kristen Bell kind of a girl. She once said that if she’s not in between 3 and 7 on the emotional scale, she’s in tears. I cheered when I heard that. Because that’s me. I cried out of frustration often and as soon as I did, I was often told I was too emotional and not thinking straight.

I was thinking straight. That was why I was crying.

Tears don’t mean weakness. They aren’t shameful. They don’t mean you are no longer capable of rational thought. They mean expression. They mean passion. They mean what you are talking about invokes a deeply personal response in you. This is good. Fine. Normal for a lot of people. It took me a long time to be free to realize that, and the moment I did, I cried less.

I’m so not alone. There are thousands of women like me: strong and smart because God made us that way, silenced because the church isn’t ready for this but determined to find our way out of these woods if not for our own empowerment then for the empowerment of our daughters. I’m lucky that, in adulthood, I found a husband who freed me of that internalised sense of patriarchy, and a church that empowers women. I am forever thankful for that (while also seeing the irony of a man being the one who helped me shake off the patriarchy). As a blogger, I am seeing a familiar message from my readers a bit too often: women are too often told their passion and opinions come from a place of brokenness that makes them untrustworthy, that their strength means they are unsubmitted, or that they can’t lead because they aren’t men.

Not Broken. Just Outspoken

I’ll never forget this particular church group that visited some years ago. I’d felt uncomfortable with their style and theology, so I’d been a bit standoffish, I’ll admit that. But the ministers took this to mean that I was broken somehow. At one point, a member of the team came up to me, grabbed my hand, and tearfully told me I was beautiful. I politely thanked her. She cried more and said it again. I again thanked her and said, “its nothing to cry about.” (I’m no Heidi Klum, but I also have a lot of faith in my cheekbones, you know).

It was like they tagged me as a problem. Another tried prophesying over me, but the prophecy didn’t ring any bells at all. Not a single stirring or moment of resonance. I listened politely but when this person asked me if that made sense, I very nicely said: “I’m sure you are hearing from God, it’s just for someone else I think.”

I wasn’t accepting a prophecy that didn’t sit right. I believe that words have power, so a wrong prophecy is a bad thing. At the end of the weekend, my husband said: “We should go let these people pray for us, even if we don’t really like them.” We wanted to be seen to do the right thing. You know, pastors’ daughter and son-in-law and all that. That’s when the kicker happened. One of the guys in the group came and prayed for my husband. Over him, they prophesied wealth, prosperity, influence and success. I stood holding his hand, clearly his wife, clearly happy about it. There was obviously no animosity between the two of us.

Then the minister prophesied over me: I was unsubmitted. I was out of line with my husband. I needed to submit or God would not be able to use me. On it went. I zoned out.

Why tell this story? Because its time we stop treating women as the lesser ones. Its time we stopped disrespecting their boundaries or their agency over themselves. Its time we stopped assuming the word of God comes through men because they are better and through women only when there are no good men available. It’s time we shake off this culture of disempowerment that means even women treat eachother like strength is a problem sometimes.

Let women in the church be who they are meant to be and make no assumptions about the limitations of that. Let them function. Because history shows a rich tapestry of womanhood: Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Naomi, Junia, Pheobe, Euodia, Syntyche, Lydia, Dorcas, Mary, Elizabeth, then in post-Bible years the Kathryn Kuhlmans, Amy Semple-McPhersons, Elizabeth Eliots and Rachel Held Evans’s of the world – they show us the power of the feminine when it works in partnership with the divine. That list is finite unlike the possibilities of women who inhabit their strength in service of their creator

Femininity is divine. It is also evolving and that is okay.

I don’t know why I am telling this story and sharing this post this week. Maybe one of my readers needs to hear it. Maybe several of you do. Maybe its in reaction to things I see in the world, be it politics, current affairs, church life or even “the twitters.” I don’t know.

But I’d like to share a little reminder. God made mankind in their image (the image of the triune God). Male and female He made them. Perhaps no scripture could have been more complex to translate. But how can you make woman in your image if you aren’t feminine too? When Moses asked of God’s name, God responded “I Am.”

Women are made in the image of God just like men are. Women can be strong, smart, intuitive, submitted, leaders, quiet, loud, passionate, clinical, teary, tearless. Whatever it is, thats okay. I dream of a day when church leaders around the world aren’t scared of womens tears, talent, intellect or opinions.

We can be outspoken. It doesn’t mean we are broken.

Okay thats all!
Have a good day! I’ll be back next week with someone more intellectual (probably). In the meantime, go follow my socials! Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. (More YouTube content coming soon)

Peace.

Kit K

Deconstruction: Why the Church Needs To Do It Too

I was reading a critique of the Christian deconstruction phenomenon this week (because I like to challenge my own thoughts, too, not just everyone else’s!). It seems the movement is greatly misunderstood. Several articles I read alleged that the problem with deconstruction was that people who went through it seemed determined to do away with absolute truth, or the concept of sin, or the deity of Jesus, or the authority of the Bible. They seemed to believe that the only way to be a Christian and a progressive is to erase these fundamentals in order to line up with our own changing ideals.

As a deconstructor, and as a Christian progressive, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the process of deconstruction calls us to delve further into truth. It causes us to search for it beyond dogma and beyond what we have been told scriptures mean, sometimes from the days of early childhood. Deconstruction is applying critical thinking to the concepts we just assume are true. It calls us to really look for truth, and once we find it, to wrap thoughts and words and ways of living around it.

Here’s the kicker: If what you are living by is the truth, then you shouldn’t fear to apply critical thinking to it. The truth will survive examination. If anything, it will become more meaningful because of it.

I’ve been listening to a podcast called “This Cultural Moment.” It’s been fascinating, and while I don’t necessarily agree with everything these guys say (because my analysis on certain things differs), I love the process of looking at cultural moments and current affairs through the eyes of what it means to be a Christian. But a thought hit me when I was listening to it: this phenomenon of “deconstruction” doesn’t just apply to Christians. It applies to churches as well, and that’s a very needed, very good thing.

I look around church establishments these days and I see a few things (and I should note at this point that this article is wholly and solely my opinion!). I see some institutions trying to hold on to relevance by arguing old ideas, asserting dogma because “God says so” in the face of civil rights advancements, and generally bunkering down in some ill-fated attempt to hold on to influence and relevance. I see other churches trying to get hip in order to maintain relevance. Here are fancy stage designs, cutting edge music and tech, coffee machines in foyers, sermons that are less like delivery methods for spiritual and scriptural truths and more like Ted Talks. What is the “right” way, if indeed there is one? I don’t know. Some of these ways of staying hip are very much enjoyed and appreciated in my corner! But I can tell you one thing for sure:

The church needs deconstruction too.

Church attendance used to be every week. Now, to be a regular, you need to go only once every three or four weeks. (I go almost every week. That must make me a zealot. Or a musician). Attendance is deconstructing. Church used to be a moral measuring stick. Now, it isn’t. Church used to be a place where we found God, grew convicted of our sin, and sought the way forward in terms of living a more Godly life. Now, we figure out ethics and morals within the context of our own spheres of influence and our own devotion. Evangelism isn’t so cut and dried. These aspects, too, are deconstructing.

Of late, I’ve found myself asking whether it’s possible to have Christianity without the fear and self-loathing. The answer I came to is that it should be possible: because Jesus was the highest example of love, compassion, and progressive ideas when it came to the inclusion of those the religious system had shunned. He was/is the highest example of life above temptation, of grace and truth in the face of persecution and death. He is always worth following. He doesn’t require me to hate myself so that I can follow Him. He only requires me to love, acknowledge and follow Him, knowing that in my humanness I will mess up and that in those moments, His grace is sufficient.

As more people embark on this journey of deconstruction, and as modern life marches on, there are a few changing realities we can expect: digital church attendance will matter more to people, so our web presence’s need to offer more than shiny pictures and short clips of sermon highlights. Depth will matter. Preaching, being an experiential thing, will take precidence over teaching in many settings, but this does not negate the need for good teaching. If anything, it makes it more important (especially as more independent churches pop up, which has many benefits but also the ever-present risk of bad theology and cults of personality). The community of faith will maintain its importance, but the way this manifests may be faced with challenges.

These are my hunches. There are better experts with more thoughts, I’m sure. But what I’m saying is this: deconstruction is here, and it applies to groups as well as individuals. If the church doesn’t change, it is done. But Jesus isn’t. Because He is still relevant and will always be relevant. Now is not a time for digging in and attempting to maintain old structures of power, influence, dogma or even format. The structure we have now is something we have inherited generation after generation since Constantine. But even that didn’t bear any resemblance to the early church we saw in Acts. So why we have such a devotion to the old familiar format is a curious thing.

Maybe its time to reinvent it.

Just some thoughts! See ya’ll next week for something a touch more scholarly!

Peace out,

Kit K.
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Cultural Marxism: A Christian’s Perspective on a Cultural Myth

Nearly 2 years ago, the ever-wise politicians in Australia put us through a national plebiscite in which we voted on marriage equality. During this time, social media became a particularly toxic place to be as the conservative/Christian right went to war with the progressive/humanist left. Among the many insults thrown around the web during that time (and other times to follow) was this fancy term “Cultural Marxism.” I didn’t really know what it meant, but it seemed it was always aimed at “progressive” ideas pertaining to culture, equality, diversity, feminism, LGBTI issues and such that are supposedly undermining Western Culture. It seems a little like the term can mean whatever you want it to as long as it is railing against so-called “progressive cultural” ideas.

But what does it really mean? A little research shows a disconcerting truth: Cultural Marxism is a myth, a meme, a conspiracy theory that isn’t real. But as much as its a fairytale, its one that people believe in and thus it exists anyway albeit in a poorly defined manner. Therefore, it still has power. But I like what Paul Kengor called it: intellectual laziness that leads to intellectual nastiness. How true that is. It has become a banner for those who want to oppose the rights of others. Concerningly, the myth of Cultural Marxism has grown into an obsession for some and even violence for others. It’s a myth that needs to be dispelled. But how do we do it? With information, of course! And as the whole world reads my blog and agrees with everything in it (heh heh…), let’s take on this heavily misappropriated term.

You’d think it would have something to do with Karl Marx, right? After all, Marxism is based on the political and economic theories of Marx and Engles (in which government control of resources and production theoretically ensures equality.) Yeah, cultural Marxism isn’t that.

So what is it really?

It generally refers to one of two things: First – Extremely rarely – “cultural Marxism” (lower C, upper M) refers to an obscure critique of popular culture by the Frankfurt School, framing culture as being imposed by a capitalist culture industry and consumed passively by the masses.

Second — in common usage in the wild — “Cultural Marxism” (both uppercase) is a common snarl word used to paint anyone with progressive tendencies as a secret Communist. The term alludes to a conspiracy theory in which sinister left-wingers have infiltrated media, academia, and science and are engaged in a decades-long plot to undermine Western culture. Some variants of the conspiracy allege that basically all of modern social liberalism is, in fact, a Communist front group.

(Thanks wiki for that quote). Right out of the gate, we can ignore the first point. Almost no one accused of cultural Marxism is being accused of engaging in obscure academic critiques a la Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal and Friedrich Pollock. More to the point, almost no one doing the accusing has any knowledge of these guys and what their criticisms of capitalism actually were.

The second definition is usually the one people are trying to allude to. It’s the idea that these sinister lefties have infiltrated universities, schools, Hollywood and other cultural hotspots. The supposed evil indoctrination includes the idea that freedom and patriotism are bad, and feminism, LGBTI rights, civil rights more generally,  and anti-war sentiments are good. (For clarity, this reverse is supposed to be true according to the far-right accusers). Supposedly, according to those who rage against this movement, this is a product of the Frankfurt School’s infiltration of western cultural institutions like Hollywood and Academia, and of cultural decay. It’s also, supposedly, the Jews. Say what? Check this out:

“A 2003 article from the US-based Southern Poverty Law Centre described cultural Marxism as a conspiracy theory with an anti-Semitic twist that was then being pushed by much of the American right. In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of ‘Marxism’ that took aim at American society’s culture, rather than its economic system,” the report states [1].”

Yes, to rail against Cultural Marxism is to rail against the Jews and is plain, old-fashion, vile anti-semitism. Sorta like the Nazi’s, right? But in the same breath, railing against Cultural Marxism is an accusation of Communism, which is ironic given the Nazi’s still seem to be the poster-children for that one. So if you ever hear someone ranting against the Cultural Marxist’s who are taking over culture, this is Nazi Propaganda updated for 2019. You’re welcome.

The term has sort-of become a catch-all for far-right conservatives engaging in public debate. It’s been thrown around by the likes of politicians Mark Latham and Suella Braverman, but concerningly its also been used by extremists such as video game hate group, Gamergate, and even mass shooters like Anders Breivik and the Christchurch shooter (allegedly) [2]. So the definition of this phenomenon is sort of loose, sort of “whatever you want it to be as long as it is anti-progressive.”

This statement by journalist James Wilson [2] helps bring more clarity here. In it, he refers to post-cold war right-wing activist William S Lind: “The changing parameters of economic debate and the beginning of American decline demanded that conservatives embrace a politics centered more, not less, on cultural issues” – the family, education, crime, and morality. The fairytale of cultural Marxism provided a post-communist adversary located specifically in the cultural realm – academics, Hollywood, journalists, civil rights activists, and feminists. It has been a mainstay of conservative activism and rhetoric ever since.

While Lind has recently become a more marginal figure, his story of cultural Marxism has proved durable and useful across the spectrum of right-wing thought because it offers so much.

It allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world. It offers an explanation for the decline of families, small towns, patriarchal authority, and unchallenged white power: a vast, century-long left-wing conspiracy. And it distracts from the most important factor in these changes: capitalism, which demands mobility, whose crises have eroded living standards, and which thus, among other things, undermines the viability of conventional family structures and the traditional lifestyles that conservatives approve of.”

I have looked with disbelief as white supremacy seems to have raised its ugly head again. I wondered how it happened, whilst simultaneously acknowledging my own privilege in that I’d never experienced racism or anti-semitism. In fact, I’d been blissfully ignorant of the problem until a friend shared her experience and disabused me of my privileged vantage point.

But as ugly undertones spike up into violent sentiment around every election or terrorist attack, its time we unveil the truth of this thing. Racism, antisemitism and class discrimination isn’t noble. It isn’t Christian. It isn’t righteous. This isn’t a term we should gather behind. (I say ‘we’, while also acknowledging that as a progressive Christian (yes, you can be both), I’m probably called a Cultural Marxist in some corner of the internet. Eh. )

So how does this railing against these “evil leftist commies” play out in the most extreme cases? I. e. Where can this rhetoric lead?  It’s potentially best seen in far-right terrorism which we have seen in times all too recent.

Sarah Manavis of the New American Statesman wrote: “Cultural Marxism’s move from political theory to full memeification was fast-tracked when it was used by mass murderer Anders Breivik. Breivik was the sole perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks in which 77 people died across several sites. Before committing his attacks, much like the Christchurch shooter, Breivik sent an enormous personal manifesto to a group of friends and family which outlined his anti-multiculturalist, racist, and misogynist ideals. In the manifesto, he spends huge chunks of time crediting the writers who pushed cultural Marxist conspiracy theories into the mainstream. The 1,000-page document references “cultural Marxism” and “cultural Marxists” nearly 650 times.

For the growing audience of anti-Semitic, alt-right white supremacists online, his musings have turned him into an icon – and “cultural Marxism” has become a foundational alt-right belief. It became an easy label for those white supremacists looking for an umbrella term to describe the people at which their anger about diversity, feminism, and religious freedom was directed. Cultural Marxist soon became a signal to mean anyone vaguely left-leaning – in some cases, even if this simply meant those who didn’t agree with white supremacy.”

At the heart of the Cultural Marxism meme is this: “If you are a right winger and you don’t like it, call it Cultural Marxism.” (In this light, it links seamlessly with an unbiblical doctrine that has crept into many churches; that of dominionism.)

A layer beneath that is anti-semitism and verbal or physical aggression against anyone who disagrees with you. Everywhere I’ve seen it, its simply been a trope used by those who can’t debate ideas – Play the victim. Hype the emotions. Then you can slink away from the brawl.

This is not the Christianity we are called to. Our faith and the One we emulate (Jesus, for the latecomers) calls us to better things.

The Problem with Cultural Marxism: 

There are many problematic layers here in this impossible pie. The first is the Cultural Marxism frankly doesn’t exist. It is completely made-up and used to incite fear. It is the boogeyman. The second is that it is often completely misappropriated by those who fling it around, meaning they may be unknowingly engaging in activities that they don’t align with. Poorly defined terms that can mean anything to anyone can mean you end up joining a fight that isn’t yours. What do I mean?

• Let’s say a Christian who loves Israel and believes the Jews to be God’s chosen people rails against Cultural Marxism. They are engaging in antisemitic dialogue without knowing.

• Let’s say an alt-right Christian man wants to oppose women’s rights and reproductive rights. He might use Cultural Marxism as his argument. Is he then also against equality across cultures, or is he automatically a white supremacist who believes women shouldn’t vote or work let alone take the Pill?

• A man walks into a Christchurch mosque and opens fire, mowing down Muslim worshippers in their sanctuary. In his pre-massacre rant, he rails against Cultural Marxism. To him and those who think like him, it means violent anti-Islamic sentiment. He has been egged on by what he feels is a growing mood against Cultural Marxism. He might know Cultural Marxism is anti-Jew and anti-diversity. Did the other people who engaged in online forums ever know what it meant? Did they mean to egg him on?

We have to stop using terms when we don’t know their meanings. Cultural Marxism is communism. It is anti-semitism. It is white supremacy. It is the suppression of womens rights and the rights of people of colour and of those who don’t fit rigid sexuality and gender stereotypes.  It is anti-Freedom of religion. It might seem like the kind of campaign God-loving Christians can join the fight against, but it is not that. It is so very far from that.

Can I also just say that there are some people who believe the early Christians in Acts 2 and 4 practiced a version of “Christian communism.” *Shrug* Its a topic for another day, and two sides to the argument. But if you know me by now, you know I have to throw it out there.

But can I revert to one line from Wilson’s article? He said Cultural Marxism “allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world.” I have heard good people, good Christians, use this term to explain their concerns. I winced every time because they did not know that to others their comments were anti- Jews/People of Colour/Women etc etc etc. They just thought they were sticking up for good, old fashioned, Christian values.

They have been the privileged ones in generations gone by, but times are changing. Its highly possible that large chunks of conservative and far-right movements are feeling the pressure and the sense of loss there, and reacting out of that feeling. The church is just one place in society where social justice movements are inspiring the deconstruction of old systems of power. The #MeToo movement has shown us that men shouldn’t have the power to abuse women. Its feminism but its pushing back against abuse and sexual misconduct. The Royal Commission into Institutional Abuse has shown us that the older ones and the members of the clergy don’t have the right to abuse the young and hide behind institutions to cover it up. As social justice movements march forward, society is saying “Don’t use your Bible as an excuse for homophobia, transphobia, the opposition of equal rights for all nationalities, sexualities, genders, or religions. If one of us is free, we should all be free.” That is a big threat, a big change of posture, for the institution that used to be the measuring stick by which all of society sized itself up. I think we can all empathize with a fear of loss of power. But to some, it is still unfamiliar.

The church isn’t an all powerful institution anymore. In fact, the secular world is leading the charge in all matters related to social justice. The Bible told us to care for the widows, the orphans, the poor, and the broken. How odd I find it now that large blocks of Christian voters in the states and in the west oppose refugee rights while the secular world campaigns for their better treatment. Shouldn’t we be leading the charge here? Shouldn’t we be the first ones beating down our politicians’ doors with blankets, food, and demands for fair treatment? Instead, the very idea that we can do better here is “Cultural Marxism” to some. The Bible charged husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave His life for it. Yet women’s rights are cultural Marxism? The very first Gentile convert was an Ethiopian Eunuch – a person of color and a sexual minority, yet God broke the laws of space and time in order to reach that man. Yet some people call all matters of equality and diversity “Cultural Marxism.”

God calls the Jews His chosen people. Yet Christians who follow the most famous Jew with their lives (that’s Jesus, by the way) are among those who rail against cultural Marxism, and by virtue of that, engage in anti-semitism.

Yeah, let’s not do that.

If you are against something, be against it. But form your thoughts. Make your argument constructive. Don’t let intellectual laziness lead to intellectual nastiness like Paul Kengor pointed out. But I put this thought to you: Maybe God/Jesus loved people of color, women, LGBTI people, Jews, Gentiles, the oppressed and displaced. Maybe that wasn’t what the religious institutions of his day approved of. Maybe He was sorta, kinda, in that way, a progressive.

Would we call him a cultural Marxist and rail against His right to stand up for everyone He ministered to and loved? Would we crucify Him all over again?

Just a thought.

Kit K

References:
Sydney Morning Herald – Chris Zappone  – Cultural Marxism: The ultimate post factual dog whistle

The Guardian – Jason Wilson – Cultural Marxism: A uniting theory for right-wingers who love to play the victim

The New American Statesman – Sarah Manavis – What is Cultural Marxism? The alt-right meme in Suella Bravermans speech in Westminster

The American Spectator – Paul Kengor – Cultural Marxism and its Conspirators

Novara Media – Cultural Marxism isn’t a Thing

What Made You Hold Onto Jesus?

If you know me, you know I love a reader question. Not only does it mean that someone’s reading my blog (and those stats aren’t lying to me after all!), but it means I don’t have to think of a blog topic for the week. That, right there, is a ‘double yay!’ This weeks reader question wasn’t necessarily a tricky one, but it did still make me delve into the archives of my brain and wrench up some details I’d sorta forgotten. The question was this: “In the enormous process of dismantling and re-establishing your faith, what made you sure that Jesus was still real and worth committing to?”

I’m not going to lie to you; my first answer was “fear.” It’s an answer shared by many a person with a similar background to me. Evangelical, a bit fundamentalist, raised in churches – we Christian kids learn to behave for Jesus before we fall in love with Him. I’d behaved for Him all my life. Of course, there was genuineness in my faith, but for the early part of my walk with God at least, fear was the big motivator. No, not the “awe-inspiring, fear of God” type. Just pure, unadulterated fear. Fear of judgment, hell, stuffing up, getting caught, getting embarrassed, missing out – you know the types.

But in the early process of deconstruction, I realized that the way I’d been viewing faith so far was incongruent with the message of the cross.

If love drove Jesus to the cross, why should fear be the thing that drives us to Jesus? Was it possible to discover a love-based faith rather than a fear-based religion? Was it possible to have Christianity without fear and self-loathing?

As a loving mother, as the wife of an incredible husband, there is nothing in me that wants to scare my husband or my children into devotion toward me. I don’t want to scare my husband into cuddling up on the couch and watching movies with me on a Friday night or whatever. I don’t want to scare my children into sitting on my knee and letting me cuddle them or read books to them. I don’t even want to scare them into behaving well. Rather, I want them to understand how to be safe in the world, and to grow up to be people who make it a better place.

If we stop and think about the reality of scaring our partner or children into loving us, we understand pretty quickly that it isn’t love. It’s abuse.

This equated to a bit of an “ah hah” moment for me. It was followed quickly by another “ah hah” moment: Jesus wasn’t a Christian. This means that this thing we call Christianity is simply mankind’s best attempt at building rituals, systems and understanding around a God too vast and infinite for words. It was always going to fall short. It was always going to be messed up by messed-up people and made better by the best efforts of the well-intentioned ones. It was always going to be a mish-mash of the good, the bad and the ugly. Because Christianity was only ever going to be an attempt at humankind housing the divine.

Expanding the search beyond the fear 

The realization that fear was my first motivator was a sobering one. Thankfully that lightbulb moment happened in a church while listening to a level-headed, and theologically strong pastor. He had dragged a scripture out of the archives that I’d only ever heard one way: it was the scripture about Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son with the clubbed feet. I’d only ever heard it preached one way – that because when Jonathan gave his armor to David, he held back his shoes. The message was always that what you don’t give up in covenant becomes a curse on the next generation. The message below that: obey because of fear that God will curse your kids.

But that’s not what this pastor had said in his message. My husband mentioned it after the service, and the pastor’s words have stuck with me ever since. “To read it that way is to completely misunderstand the nature of God.” He went on to explain himself in more detail, but I wasn’t listening at that point. I was thinking “What else about God have I misunderstood?”

The truth is that Biblical scholarship is an art almost entirely lost. It used to be that people didn’t read the Bible because they couldn’t. They were illiterate, or the Bible was only in such short supply that the scribes were the only ones who could access it and read it.

Now, in an age where most of us can read, and all of us can get free Bible apps on our smartphones, we still seem Biblically illiterate. Thus, we trust the people standing behind the pulpit to explain what we need to know. But what if “what we need to know” is tainted by lost context, personal agendas, leadership challenges, or the colored lenses of the pain and loss life might have thrown them?

There are a million reasons why we can’t just do this. We don’t know what a preacher is thinking when they choose the message for the morning. We don’t know what lens they are viewing that scripture through or what motive is behind it. If we don’t have enough knowledge about God and the Bible to inform us and ring the bell when and if something is a bit skewiff, then we are at the mercy of bad doctrine that takes us further away from a relationship with God, not further into it. But the sad thing is that bad doctrine almost always drives us further into fear and condemnation than into the redemptive love of God.

That realization drove me into the thing I’d always had in my pocket but never had the power to use: the Bible. But I ditched the complexity of the whole thing for a while and just stuck with the Red Letters.

Red Letter Christianity

I blogged on this a while back, and I won’t rehash the whole thing (because you can read it here). But a personal challenge I took on back at the beginning of my deconstruction was to read just the Red Letters for a while. After all, these were the words spoken by Jesus who was one-third of the Trinity. What could get us closer to the nature of God than the words spoken by the Son of God?

They are a big challenge in and of themselves, so much so that the rest of the New Testament seems largely geared at helping us understand how we can live out followership of Christ. But the revelation that I got from my foray into Red Letter Christianity was that judgment was not the goal of God. Love was. Love had always been. Judgment was a thing that He hoped He could spare us from, so much so that He sent Jesus.

He wasn’t after a perfect people. He was after a devoted people. And if our hearts are turned to him, then despite our humanity and the inevitability of failure, our imperfections are all covered. This, essentially, is the nature of God – love. He is love. He does love. He gives love. Yes, he is holy. Yes, he can’t stand sin. But because he loves us, he found a way around that.

That took me back to the fear-abuse conundrum I spoke about in the beginning: If God loved me, then He wouldn’t want to use abuse to drive me into His embrace. And right there, in that sentence, was the great inconsistency I had witnessed over and over again – People professing to have been moved by the love of God, and the higher way of living He called them to, using the fear of Hell and judgment to drive people into salvation and keep them there. “Just do this one thing different and God will love and bless you. Just change this. Just repent of this. Just cease this…” Always one more thing when the truth of the matter is that His Grace is sufficient and His strength made perfect in our weakness.

Boy, it takes the pressure off. Just like that, a lifetime of striving and wrestling got swapped for the safety in knowing God loved me even in the midst of deconstruction. Even if I had difficulty trusting Him or understanding Him for a time, that was totally okay. Because God has big shoulders. He can deal. He could see the grapple, and he could see my struggle to get to the heart of true Christianity, and He wasn’t going to judge me for that. Because that’s not in His nature.

Other World Religions

During the heavier initial stages of my deconstruction, I read a lot and watched a lot of documentaries. I always did so with one thing in mind: my own life experience had taught me that there is a God. That was something that history and science both echoed and did nothing to refute. Even atheism seems consistent with the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, as written in Genesis. If we choose that tree, we eat of its fruit.

(Whole magazines are devoted to these topics, so I’m not going to talk about that in this blog post.)

But one documentary series stood out: Morgan Freeman’s “The Story of God.” In it, he looked at many different world religions including Christianity. It seems that, throughout the world and throughout history and even the post-modern age, we all seem to seek out the divine. And though our words for it differ, very similar themes echo through.

It seems to me that from the beginning of time, mankind has been aware of the divine. From the farthest stretches of the world to the modern centers of civilization, there exists an awareness that there is something out there – some greater power. We find different words to wrap around it. We find different lenses and structures to see it through. But its there.

What makes Christianity different? Well, I guess that’s a series for another day. But the place I arrived at is this: throughout my life, I had seen the hand of God. I had seen Him protect me from certain things, and seen him enable certain things that I’d always thought impossible. He had seen what I prayed in the silence of my room, or in the loneliness of my darkest times. He made these things happen in time. Other people might call this divine force something different. But I call Him Jesus. He calls Himself the way, the truth, and the life.

One day I’ll tell those stories, of the things he rescued me from and the things he bought me through. But for now, here is my truth:

Illness, personal upheaval, loss of church, loss of community, financial hardship, deconstruction of faith, a search through science and other world religions, a critical look through the Bible in its various translations and iterations, a critical look at the world around me – none of it has driven me away from God. Rather it has driven me towards an understanding that He is bigger than what I can possibly understand, and more loving than I ever thought. I don’t have to understand everything about him. But I can spend the rest of my life trying and that will be just beautiful.

Anyway! That’s kinda my thoughts on it. Its taken years to live through, so it’s going to take longer to unpack. But these are some of the things that made me realize, throughout the enormous process of dismantling and re-establishing my faith, that Jesus was still real and worth committing to.

Why I Became and LGBT+ Affirming Christian

It’s Pride Month. In Australia, there is a storm in a tea-cup over Israel Folau’s homophobic comments and consequent sacking from Rugby Australia. Some Christian’s are in an uproar over it, claiming its a freedom of religion/speech issue. (It’s not. But I’ve already blogged on that). So now seems as good a time as any to talk about why I’m an affirming Christian: that is, why I believe LGBTI+ people are loved by God just as they are, that they should be equal in the eyes of the church and that gay conversion therapy is dangerous, unnecessary and a form of torture (and it is, according to the UN). 

First a little about me so you know where I’m coming from. I was raised evangelical, the eldest child of Christian ministers. I suppose you could call us fundamentalists in some ways, in that my father’s church believed homosexuality was an abomination, and largely subscribed to complementarian theology which puts men above women ( I do concede that Dad let women lead in some ways, but always under his “covering”).

Growing up, I was used to the idea that I would have to give up any ministry or career I had prior to marriage so that I could serve my husband. I remember my dad telling me this, and advising me to achieve what I wanted to achieve before getting married.  Ironically, it was my husband who freed me from that thinking.

After my husband and I left my fathers church (a painful, dramatic split by the way), I found myself on a journey of discovery. The people who showed my husband and me the greatest, most unconditional love came from places we did not expect. Among them were atheists, agnostics, lapsed Christians – all sorts really. But all of a sudden many of the people closest to me were queer (Gay, lesbian, bisexual, non-binary). These were the people showing the most love to us as we battled our way through recovery. We were also fortunate enough to fall into a new beautiful tribe of Christian friends, but the LGBTQ+ crowd impacted me with their open-heartedness especially when I could have been thought of as undeserving, even a transgressor by association.

I was met with two realities during this rather turbulent time: one was the deconstruction and reconstruction of my own faith. I had to break down the old one and go on a deep search for the truth about life and God (which I thought I already had sorted). The second was the jarring challenge I saw in Mark 12:30-31. If you’re a little fuzzy on that, let me remind you:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” 

I say “jarring” because, during Australia’s marriage equality plebiscite, I’d seen some atrocious behaviour on social media from all places on the political spectrum. But in my opinion, some Christians were among the worst bullies – these were people who should have been living by Mark 12:30-31. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to vomit every time I read, “I have gay friends and I love them, but…”

I’ve heard that too many times. I think we all have. I think that’s why Israel Folau’s carry-on hits such a sour note. That line is nothing but a cheap cop-out. If you love your gay friends, then my strong belief is that you need to approach God and read the Bible as if you are them. You need to ask yourself the hard questions. You need to really, truly, deeply search. Because that’s what you would do if it were you. You’d ask yourself:

• Does God love me as I am?

• Does He accept me as I am?

• Did He, the One who supposedly makes no mistakes, make me as I am? Destined for hell?

Admit it: Even on face value, these questions are brutal. These are things I never had to confront as I sat there in my straight privilege, worshiping a God I knew loved me. But it struck me that in churches all across Australia there are young, closeted, Queer Christians asking these same questions and the answer seems different and eternally unjust. The answer seems like “If I hate myself enough, if I pray the gay away, if I never find love, and if I gouge my eyes out so I never have to see a person I find attractive, then maybe God will love me.” What a crushingly impossible standard to have to live up to! No wonder the rate of suicide and mental illness among young LGBTI+ people is so hideously high. It makes me angry and heartsick all at once.

Here’s the thing: It’s the *wrong* answer. Because when you read the Bible like it was originally written, the answer is a clear. “Yes! God loves you. Yes, He made you. No, He doesn’t make mistakes.” But there’s a whole lot of “lost in translation” that gets in the way of that message.

So here’s what the Bible really says about it: I know I’m wading into big territory here by taking on one of the largest, most viciously perpetuated myths in the Christian world, but it’s about time we started talking about it. One “clobber” scripture often used as “evidence” that homosexuality is a sin comes from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, which reads: “ Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,  nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” There are other scriptures, such as those listed below. I’m not going to break down all of them, but there are a few things to note:

• Genesis 18  and 19 – This actually isn’t referring to homosexuality, but to rape. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were about rape, about sexual violence, and not about same-sex attraction per se. It is this that is referred to in Jude 1:7 (another clobber scripture). Objectively, they don’t apply.

• Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 Interestingly, the Levitical scriptures are translated from the Hebrew word “Toevah” which covers a specific sexual act that violated cultural boundaries (Source: Unclobber, by Colby Martin. Go read it because I’m not going into detail). It was a prohibition to God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, who were called to live differently. It was not a directive to Gentile Christians that did not exist at that time. Yes, we are still called to be set apart for God and if God speaks to you about that one, then great. But the detail around that is something between each believer and God alone. Leviticus had no prohibitions towards lesbians because it was about one particular, male-to-male sexual act. (Read more in Colby Martin’s book, because Mamma ain’t giving you the sex talk today.)

• Matthew 19:4–5 and Mark 10:6–8 – In both of these, Jesus was quoting the Old Testament in answering questions about divorce, not homosexuality.

This leaves Romans 1:26–27; 1 Timothy 1:8–11; and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. All of these were written by Paul, who was ironically the only Apostle who didn’t physically meet Jesus. He’s as human as the rest of us, and he has been criticised by some Biblical scholars for being inconsistent in that he advocates love as our only law, but then gives a whole bunch of guidelines including calling homosexuality a sin. But is he really doing that? Here’s a noteworthy quote (from Chuck McKnight,) that illustrates just how far a little cultural awareness goes at calling that one into question:

“Prostitution was standard practice, often tied to idol worship, and often including sex with young boys. Additionally, it was common for boys to be paired with older men who would have a sexual relationship with them until they reached adulthood. It was also accepted that men would have many sexual partners—male, female, and children—as long as they only played the role of the “active” partner, and as long as they did not have sex with another man’s wife (because wives were property). The “passive” partner was considered the weaker role, reserved for women or young boys. 

The concept of an equal, loving, consensual same-sex partnership, though not entirely unheard of, was not at all a common occurrence in Paul’s day. We have very little basis for assuming that this was the kind of relationship Paul had in mind. It is much more likely that Paul referred to specifically harmful same-sex practices like those described above.”

For a bit more of a scholarly look into the topic, I look to Professor Joan Taylor, professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College, London, and author of “What Did Jesus Look Like.” In a guest post on “Historical Jesus Research” she wrote:

My own translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9 would be: “Or do you not know that unrighteous men shall not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: neither whoremongers (pornoi), nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor spineless cowards (malakoi), nor ‘male-bedders’ (arsenokoitai), nor thieves, nor covetous, drunk or reviling men, shall inherit the Kingdom of God”. 

In the Greek text, it seems very clear that the concern Paul has is with damaging male behaviour that would lead to a complaint by another man. All these can easily get lost in translations, done by different committees of translators at different times. So, one of the greatest outrages of Bible translation ever done has been that the word arsenokoitai is translated as ’homosexuals’ in many English Bibles from the 20th century onwards. The problem for all translators is that arsenokoites is a rare word. However, studies have shown that it is always associated with vices of seizing or raping, and therefore it should be understood as involving male-on-male rape or coercion, and socially at the time, it would be more connected with pederasts seizing boys. This behavior does not in any way map on ‘homosexuality’ as we understand it: it is not a word about same-sex love. It is a word describing abusers. To translate arsenokoitai as indicating homosexuals is utterly, totally mistaken, wrong, and itself a kind of abuse by faulty translation. 

In the Jerusalem Bible and New Revised Standard Version, we have ‘sodomites’, which would only be right if the sodomy was understood as forced. The King James Version has more vaguely ‘abusers of themselves with mankind‘, which does at least still ensure that the fundamental concern is with abuse (though here it is of themselves). But all these get interpreted as indicating ‘homosexuals’ thanks to certain interpretive trends.

Furthermore, malakoi, literally ‘softies’, indicates spineless cowards and weaklings in other comparable lists of male vices, but is translated in the King James Bible as ‘effeminate’, again making the Bible condemn male to female transgender people or indeed any male who seems to be ‘girly’ in the eyes of certain beholders. This again is a wrong translation, and its ramifications are incredibly serious, as we see.

The Key Message and the Modern Damage:

The above section is both immensely condensed and substantially paraphrased by Taylor’s own admission. There are entire books and entire theses devoted to this topic. I’m just a little blogger using her little corner of the Internet to holler, “Hey! We’ve been wrong here and its hurting people!” I’d laugh (if it weren’t so damaging and unfunny) when I hear the seemingly age-old retort “it’s been written in the Bible for 2000 years,” because in reality (as Taylor pointed out) its more like 200 and there is a whole lot of historical context missing from those translations.

Beyond all that, the irony is if Paul’s messages were to be condensed into one key message, it is this: Don’t abuse people. Don’t use your power, position, or privilege to exploit others. Yet it is this that the church is guilty of in so many places and so many ways.

I understand that many of the translation errors may have happened at a time when homophobia was much more entrenched, or when sexual and marital practices differed greatly, but that is not our reality today. I understand that Christian leaders don’t all read Hebrew and Greek, nor do they seek to. Heck, even I don’t. But it isn’t hard to find good information from those who do.

In this day and age, it is utterly unacceptable for the church to effectively say “come one, come all, come you rich, come you poor, come you sick, come you whole, come you sinners, come you saints. Just don’t come near us if you aren’t straight or cis-gendered.” That is a complete misrepresentation of the heart of God. I could give you example after example from the Bible, but I’m running out of time in this blog because we’ve got to talk about another burning issue…

The Gay Conversion Therapy Issue:

The fact is that one can’t change their sexuality. Recently, the Premier of my home state in Australia pledged to make gay conversion therapy illegal. I cheered and I did it for a number of reasons. Here are some of them:

• Psychology Today has reported that young adults whose parents enlisted the help of a professional to change their sexual orientation (i.e. Gay conversion therapy through church-based or other therapists) had 5 times the likelihood of attempted suicide than their peers.

• The UN Committee Against Torture has made it an issue for international law. I.e. They are effectively, and reasonably, calling it torture. The American Psychiatric Association has called it unethical. A past US Surgeon General has said there is no evidence for it (read more here).

• The Human Rights Campaign noted that “In 2007, a task force of the American Psychological Association undertook a thorough review of the existing research on the efficacy of conversion therapy. Their report noted that there was very little methodologically sound research on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCEs) and that the “results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through SOCE.”  

• In 2009, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a damning report that showed the dangers of SOCE (Sexual orientation change efforts). Among the risks were: “depression, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, social withdrawal, suicidality, substance abuse, stress, disappointment, self-blame, decreased self-esteem and authenticity to others, increased self-hatred, hostility and blame toward parents, feelings of anger and betrayal, loss of friends and potential romantic partners, problems in sexual and emotional intimacy, sexual dysfunction, high-risk sexual behaviors, a feeling of being dehumanized and untrue to self, a loss of faith, and a sense of having wasted time and resources.” Furthermore, the American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that “Therapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.”

• In short, there is clear evidence that conversion therapy does not work, and some significant evidence that it is also harmful to LGBTQ people.

Even shorter: You are more likely to emerge from gay conversion therapy psychologically damaged and/or suicidal than “straight.”

I’ve heard people ask why anyone would voluntarily do gay conversion therapy. But that is part of the problem. The why lies in hearing, week after week, that you are an abomination (when you aren’t). It’s in loving God but believing He made you for hell unless you change the unchangeable. It’s in the deeply ingrained internalized homophobia taught to young, impressionable, good-hearted, God-loving people in churches and homes across the world. But as we see from scholars like Taylor (and others), it’s all built on faulty translations of the otherwise Good Book.

I’ve told you about why the clobber scriptures are very likely victims of faulty translation. I haven’t told you about the many stories in the Bible that, once you are aware of them, are blindingly obvious in their LGBTI content. It’s just that the blinders have been on for generations, and in an age where the world is more familiar with what the church stands against than what it stands for, it seems there is a great unwillingness to take them off.

When we look back in the Bible we see Jesus scorned by the religious establishments of the day because of His inclusiveness. But today, we seem to see many religious establishments scorning inclusiveness because of Jesus. I find this to be the worst type of misrepresentation. That’s why I’m writing about this in pride month.

Why I’m Not Encouraging LGBTI Christians To Go Back to Church Just Yet:

Ladies, Gentlemen, Others – this has been my “Coming out” as an affirming Christian. It had to happen in pride month, yeah? But I have one caveat: I’m not encouraging you all to get to church just yet. Why? I am aware that the church universal is not always welcoming. I am also aware that if a church is not affirming, then it’s not welcoming either. (thanks Kevin Garcia for that truth bomb).

I think of my beautiful best friend. She rocks rainbow hair and tattoos, and she is looking for the right woman to spend the rest of her life with. She is kind and generous and fun and an adored aunty to my kiddies, and I don’t want her anywhere that isn’t ready to embrace her with no “if’s but’s or despite’s”. I think of my trans friends and I don’t want them to have to deal with sideways glances. I think of my gay friends, I don’t want them to have to wonder whether they can hold their husband’s hand in church. I think of my bisexual friends and I don’t want them to have to explain themselves.

I know that church is a place that has hurt many of you. I’m speaking up about the injustice and bad theology so that one day you will feel safe, welcomed, and affirmed. Until that time, or until such a time as you feel you want to be inside church flying the diversity and equality flag, I’ll do it for you. Others like me will too.

Until that time, where two or more are gathered, there God is in our midst. So you are welcome at my dinner table. Let’s be Christian’s together. You just bring the wine, okay?

Peace, love, and rainbows

Kit

The Israel Folau Debacle: Why This Isn’t a Holy War

“Don’t write an article on Israel Folau” I told myself. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” Which is all well and good but I knew I *had* to do it. Especially when I saw this article and others about religious freedoms. It seems this has sparked a whole lot of panic over the rights of Christians to practice their faith. I even saw whispers of proposals for a so-called “Folau Bill” to be put before Parliament. I couldn’t find the article when I looked for it again so I’m hoping its dead in the water. But I felt compelled to write today because there is a whole lot of fearmongering out there about what this means for Christians. 

Here’s the answer: it means nothing. 

On the 8th of May, Peter Fitzsimmons wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald dispelling the 6 worst misconceptions about the Folau Case (which, for the uninformed, was a Rugby Player violating his code of conduct by posting an inflammatory statement vilifying homosexuals and others on Instagram. He has since been stood down by Rugby Australia for that violation). Common sense is out there, like Fitzsimmons wrote in this article which everyone should read (I’ll wait…).

But so far common sense has taken a back seat to cries of “we’re not free anymore” from the Christian Right. Don’t let Fitzsimmons tone of “Do I seriously have to explain this again” deter you. Underneath that, there are some well-made points.

Here is my take on it: I was blissfully unaware that this time a year ago, Folau did a similar thing. It caused a stir that lasted three weeks and threw Rugby Australia under the bus. In their handling of the case, it is alleged that Folau was warned against doing it again as it broke their code of conduct. The caution was given and then business resumed as normal.

But then he did it again. This time, the meltdown has been much longer than three weeks.

The fact is that this is not about religious freedom or freedom of speech. The core issue is about employee-employer relations. And its reasonable. I have friends who worked for councils during local council elections.  It was against their code of conduct to post about their preferences because they were employees and needed to stay apolitical. I have friends who work in the public service. None of them post anything that would bring their branch of it into disrepute. I am sensitive to the political atmosphere that surrounds my line of work, so I stay away from anything that would draw it into the mire. This is not encroaching on any of our rights to free speech. All of us could break the implicit or explicit code of conduct if we chose to. We would  not be free from the consequences of it though, and that would be reasonable. A reasonable employee knows they need to uphold the reputation and values of their company.

What makes Folau’s case so special? 1) Because the Christian Right seem to have made him a martyr for the so-called cause of Christ and 2) Because he was supposedly making statements on his own Instagram feed – i.e. away from work. This raised the question over whether our employers could take action based on what we do away from work.

Well if it violates their code of conduct, if it brings their brand or business into disrepute, and especially if the person in question has already been warned, then I’d say yes, they can. But I would argue that Izzy Folau wasn’t away from work when he made the post. Allow me to explain:

1.  Folau, as a player in a major sport, has amassed many followers. It would only be an extraordinarily (perhaps wilfully) naïve player that was unaware that they are role models to that following. Rugby Australia hasn’t been without its challenges on the actions of players, but each of these seems to have been met with various attempts at just responses. Folau’s is no exception, apart from that the potential damage was done not to one person but to a group of people who have already got a raised likelihood of depression and anxiety.

2. A predictable perk of sporting fame is the social media following it seems to attract. This following was made possible because of Folau’s Rugby fame. Sure, he would have had some followers, but not the 364,000 he has at the time of writing. The majority of them follow him because of his sport, not his faith. While Folau may be tempted to use this platform to evangelise that number of people, he needs to remember it’s a following basically handed to him by his Rugby career. It is completely reasonable for this crowd to be offended by such ranty, legalistic posts as the one that caused the stir.

3. Currently “Social media influencer” is a job in and of itself. SM influencers can be paid in the thousands if they have a much, much smaller following than Folau. But the thing is Folau’s social media following is tied directly to his career as an athlete. So are his sponsorships.

What am I saying? Folau wasn’t away from work. His social media activity is part of it. Rugby Australia, and the majority of Australia it seems, kicked up a stink not because of Folau’s Christianity, but because we are really sick of the whole “let’s use the Bible to target LGBTI+ people.” I say “we” because I am right there with those who feel that way. Its Pride Month, so my next post will tell you about why. Anyway…

The Freedom of Speech Issue

There are some Christians and Christian groups who took this as an assault on Freedom of Speech and Religion, and this has sadly left them open to fear that Australia isn’t the beautifully free place to live, love and practice our faith. This is an absolute fallacy. Why? Check out what else the UN has to say about the right to free speech (remembering that article 19 is the free speech bit):

Article 29:

“(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

What does this mean? Our right to free speech is balanced by our responsibility to the community. We can’t just cherry pick the bits that let us say what we want. If it victimises, targets, vilifies or puts at risk another group, then its not okay. If it makes it difficult for another persons personality to develop fully (as I’d argue homophobia in churches does), then we have a responsibility to adjust our expectations of “freedom.” If the community kicks back, then that is fine. It is to be expected. We can’t just say what we want and call it religious freedom. We have to be considerate of others. Ironically, that is what I believe Jesus would want us to do. Show love. Show compassion.

Anyway…

Fitzsimmons put it this way: “While he [Folau] has broad freedom of speech, he has no freedom from consequences. Secondly, those who are howling loudest about freedom of speech for Israel – Alan Jones et al – are precisely those who howled loudest against the likes of Yassmin Abdel-Magid – who tweeted on Anzac Day 2017 we should also reflect on Manus Island. Ditto, when Scott McIntyre tweeted his own views about the Anzacs and those who commemorated Anzac Day, there was not a single peep out of them about his rights to freedom of speech. They wanted him sacked from SBS, and he was.”

Again, we can’t just cherry pick the bits that suit us and kick up a stink when other peoples right to freedom (of speech, religion, and development of personality) is at odds with what we want.

The Freedom of Religion Issue

There have been those like Jones who believe Folau is under attack for being a Christian. This, to be honest, is ridiculous. This isn’t Folau’s first ride on the homophobia bandwagon. Rugby Australia have had to deal with this before and they did not fire him straight away. If they were anti-Christian, then they’ve already had a chance to be rid of him and didn’t take it. They have made no anti-Christian comments. The community may have, but there are a couple of points I feel compelled to raise to rebut this:

• We can’t get caught up in the Facebook discussions on this. Comment sections on news articles have always been and will continue to be where mud is slung and anger is vented. It does not reflect the policies of Rugby Australia or of the Australian government where discrimination based on religion, sexuality or gender is not allowed.

• The rage vented against Christians who have defended Folau is likely to be, in a good many cases, based on the fact that the community is sick of the carry-on. Marriage Equality passed because the majority of Australia felt it should. It passed because the majority of Australia believed that love is love and that LGBTI+ people deserved equality in every manner. We can’t be surprised about at people’s lividness that such judgements still exist.

• I get that Folau’s motivation may have been evangelism and not hate speech. That’s all well and good, but it all came out the same. There are better ways to reach people than to scream from the loudest megaphone we have that “you are going to hell.” My personal take on it is that we should follow Jesus because He is/was God and set us the ultimate example of love, not because we are afraid of what He’ll do to us if we don’t (which is a topic for yet another day).

• If Folau, nobly, felt that preaching fire and brimstone would be an excellent witness for Christ, I’d counter that it isn’t. It simply entrenches attitudes that the church is nasty and out of touch.

On the final point, Pastor Brian Houston (of Hillsong fame) had this to say:

As Christians it is equally important to look at ourselves and our own failings and imperfections,” Houston wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald.  “If you look at the list of sins that Izzy listed there’s not too many people he’s left out, including Christians. There isn’t a person on earth who hasn’t told a lie or put something before God (idolatry). In 40 years of telling people about the good news of Jesus, I have seen that the ‘turn or burn’, approach to proclaiming the message of Christianity alienates people. Scaring people doesn’t draw them into the love of Jesus. The world doesn’t need more judgmental Christians.”

Its a point well made. As a Christian, my gentle challenge for all of us is to recognise that legalistic, narrow minded, homophobic rants do nothing to further the cause of Christianity which has always been and will always be to disrupt the status quo with love and draw people closer to God. My gentle encouragement to everyone else is “Be encouraged. Christian Progressives do exist. We are just quieter than the far right for now, but we are finding our voice.”

Australia is a great place to live, love and practice faith. We are free here, to live as our conscience and faith demands. We are not free from the consequences of our actions, nor should we be. Because Jesus, who sat with society’s outcasts and gave his life for all, is not represented well by fear-mongering and exclusion. The irony is that Jesus was looked down upon by the religious establishments of His day because He was inclusive. Yet many of the religious establishments of today seem to look down on inclusiveness because of Jesus.

Don’t let Israel Folau become a martyr for that cause. Don’t let this debacle draw you into a place of fear. We are free here. Truly.

This article is already as long as it needs to be. I have long run out of time to talk about why the Christian fundamentalist tendency to use the Bible to justify homophobia is simply a case of “lost in translation.” That’s a topic for next week. While it is deeply entrenched in Christendom, and not easily shifted, it is not all it seems.  There is a growing movement of Christian progressives who are willing to challenge the status quo, and a growing number of scholars willing to look into the original translations of the Bible and reconstruct it. Nestled within that are many things that have been hidden in plain sight for as long as there has been terminology for same sex attraction.

I’ll break it all down for you next week. In the mean time: Happy Pride Month to all Queer Christians and LGBTI+ people everywhere. Ignore the rhetoric: You are loved by God. You are loved by me.

See you next week.

Kit K

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A Quiet Word to Disillusioned Voters

Originally posted just after Australian elections. But possibly very relevant to the US elections too. Read on babes.

Hi Australia. You voted this past Saturday. And the result wasn’t what the opinion polls indicated it would be. There are a lot of crestfallen people hanging around today, a lot of flat out fury at ScoMo’s win and a lot of hyperbole on the internet about racism, fear and various types of discrimination that may now be possible because of the election result. But I just want to say a few things to hopefully ease that feeling of disappointment and apprehension. I get the fear, I do. I’m disappointed too. But I want to encourage you – it’s not likely to be as bad as all that. Because frankly, I don’t believe our PM is a narcissistic megalomaniac like Trump. So there’s that. But that’s only one sorta-kinda comfort that can be found.

The fact is that our government doesn’t define who we are. It doesn’t define how we act (within the bounds of law, obviously). It doesn’t remove our voice. It makes it more important to be smart though, not just voicing your opinion on social media but voicing it to your local Member of Parliament, doing your research via credible sources and not falling for or spreading false information.

In amongst the elected are a lot of good people. My local guy, Darren Chester, is one such person. I have no doubt he will fight for what matters. So go direct. Contact him. Contact his colleagues. Contact your local Member of Parliament about the issues that matter to you. Don’t let Facebook be your only activism, because even though we are almost programmed to think a well-worded update on social media will effect change, it rarely (if ever) does.

While so many of my millennial peers nurse disappointment after Saturday, I feel like its a good time to reflect on the fact that democracy isn’t limited to election day. Democracy is when you write letters to your local MP or drop into their office. It’s when you organise, form communities around an issue or a cause, petition, protest, join a party and make your voice heard. You might have to knock on a few doors but there will always be ears that listen. These days, it’s easy to let the reasonable, kind, conscientious members of our State and Federal Parliaments take a back seat in our minds when compared with their more extreme counterparts, but they are indeed there. Over the next three years, and forever after, we need to find them. Pester them. Befriend them. You’d be surprised how much participation is welcome.

To those who think God requires a certain vote from us, I’d like to challenge you to look further. God has no party membership. If He were us, I’m sure He would judge each MP by their actions, their statements, their voting records, and not by which party they sign up for. I was chatting to a dear friend on Saturday night and she said something to me that resonated so hard. She said, “My biggest fear is that I become so passionate that I become ignorant.”

“My biggest fear is that I become so passionate that I become ignorant.”

That, right there, matters.  We can become so blinded by who we think represents our values in parliament that we actually don’t watch to see if their actions line up. That is a problem that can only be solved by watching what unfolds in the public sphere and avoiding temptation to be a fanboy/fangirl.

I know good Liberals. I know of dodgy ones. I know good Nationals. I have met those who have fallen from grace, but who I would still struggle to call “bad” and yes, I know the dodgy ones too. I know some incredible members of the Labor party. I have no doubt they have their own kind of crazy in their ranks too. Parliament, Political Parties – they’re just like churches and communities in that they are a mixed bag with some wonderful and some weird all mixed in. Find the good. Support them. Get behind your cause. Don’t be discouraged.

Next time Clive Palmer won’t likely spend $80 million on advertising that effectively scoops up the disillusioned L/NP voters only to funnel them straight back to those parties in preferences – all for the sake of coal. You know?

The next election will be different. In the mean time, I hope that we have a stable government for the first time in 12 years. I hope ScoMo manages to chart the middle ground and lead reasonably, putting to rest the faction wars. And I hope that my millennial peers do what I know they can do, and show the world what smart, empathetic, forward thinking people we are and that we are non-judgemental (even when it comes to people who are judgemental to us). Thats what the world needs.

 Lets be what it needs. Let’s lead by example.

Peace

Kit K

Christian Spiritual Warfare: The Occult Crossover

I remember a visiting preacher coming to church ten or so years ago. He strode to the platform, took the microphone from my Dad’s outstretched hand, greeted us and then began his sermon by hanging something on the pulpit. A large map of our country unfurled. I’ll never forget the silent reaction. Double chins appeared all over the congregation as people pulled their faces back in a collective “Ergh, what is that?” The map was covered in splattered blood.

Okay, it turns out it was nail polish. The sermon was on blood splattering – spiritual warfare by symbolically splattering the blood where God reveals. In retrospect, it was a manifestation of spiritual mapping, like that which C. Peter Wagner referred to.

But the thing is, washing by the blood of Jesus is a metaphorical thing that happens at the point of salvation. Its something you enter into by faith not nail polish. As to whether one needs to splatter  ‘blood’ anywhere in order for the land to be returned to God, well I’d argue Psalm 24:1 – The earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof, and the people who dwell within.

But now that argument is done with, lets talk about the stewards of the Earth. Us – people of faith be it Christian, Islamic, Pagan or otherwise, people of no faith, people of colour, whities, traditional owners of the land, recipients of the spoils of colonialism – I gag a bit on that last one now that I understand the damage of colonialism a little better.  The point is, I don’t believe God is so insecure over what happens with the Earth. He knows the Endgame. Its us mere mortals that need to keep a watch over our own actions and intentions.

It seems to me that the practice of spiritual warfare is dreadfully uninformed. Not only do we not understand the full impact of the finished work of Christ, but we in Christendom seem to have a very poor grasp on the nature and power of the rituals we enact “in the name of God.” So dear Christian friend, let’s talk about some of the rituals that Christian Spiritual Warfare may have actually borrowed from  occultism.

Destruction by Fire and Controlling the Elements

I mentioned in my last article that if you’ve ever been involved in a burning party, you needed to read this. Well here’s the soft opening. “Destruction rituals by fire are very pagan,” says Carrie Maya. “I use fire to destroy things literally and figuratively all the time. Fire is one of the four elements acknowledged and invoked in the oldest shamanic, earth-based spiritual traditions that exist. Often seen as being a living entity in and of itself—with it’s own energy of destruction and creation. It can also just be seen as a symbol of these things without being supernatural in nature.”

Carrie’s statement shed interesting light on my experience as a teen. I remember being about 15 and at a youth group event in the back yard of a farmhouse belonging to a church family. The fire barrel was blasting with heat, and into that barrel went Korn t-shirts and CD’s, Weezer CD’s, band posters, romance novels, old letters, you name it. We gleefully destroyed our items and snapped pictures with our (film) cameras hoping to capture images of demons dancing in the flames. I laugh now. And I want the weezer CD back (Okay, the Weezer CD belonged to my future husband, but still.)

As for whether or not the ritual worked or was necessary, I don’t know. It was certainly spiritual, as evidenced by our intent and by Carrie’s example. But was it something the scripture instructed us to do? Not so much. In fact, I can’t find an example in scripture. Examples of sacrifice by fire always sacrificed something acceptable to God. Something living. God has no want or need for our band CD’s and trashy romance novels. Yet the ritual was spiritual, and oh so common in Christian and occult practice.

Its interesting to note, while we speak of one of the elements, that spiritual warfare has been used to target weather patterns. Carrie remarks, “Controlling the elements (earth, water, wind, fire, spirit) is occultic. I don’t think it’s bad. I’m just saying that this has existed since long before Christianity. So when we have Christians commanding tornadoes, tsunamis, storms, and fires to do things, it’s essentially spellcraft.“

This should make us stop and reflect: in the last entry in this series, we discussed how the difference between spell craft and Christian prayer lay largely in the dichotomy between “my will be done” and “Thy will be done.” Yet if we aren’t even cognisant of the line that delineates the difference between Christian spiritual warfare and witchcraft, how can we be sure where we stand?

Modern Extremes: I.e. Grave Soaking

I’ll admit to being rather aghast when I saw this video of a group of Bethel congregants “Grave soaking.”  This was the act of going to the graves of great Christians and lying on them to “soak up the anointing.” I watched the video with a queasy feeling in my stomach. Not only is that person long gone (in this case, Smith Wigglesworth), their spirit in Eternity with God, but it was extremely disrespectful to the grave and there’s no instruction in the Bible towards this thoroughly odd practice. I shared the video with Carrie and this is what she said:

“I just can’t believe Bethel are doing this! I personally don’t have an issue with people engaging with the spirits of the departed; I’m a medium myself and also practice ancestor veneration. However, the Bible condemns mediumship so whether I agree with it or not isn’t the point. It’s whether the sacred text they’re claiming to live by allows it. And it doesn’t. 

Also, grave soaking (as they’re calling it) goes beyond common mediumship but probably lands on the more extreme end of the necromancy spectrum. I mean, they’re straight up trying to absorb a dead guy’s power. So for the sake of this discussion, say they were actually “soaking up his anointing” but what else were they soaking up? Smith Wigglesworth may have been a good person in their eyes but he wasn’t perfect because he was a human being.

Imagine this: Maybe he was like Mike Gugliumucci and had a secret pornography addiction. Maybe he was like Ted Haggard who had a homosexual affair with a sex worker (but just didn’t get caught). These are things that, in their eyes, would be considered immoral. So do they want to soak that energy too? 

Their flawed logic and cognitive dissonance (the occult is bad but it’s okay to practice necromancy for Jesus) leaves them open to soaking up EVERYTHING Smith Wigglesworth had operating inside of him and that, technically, wouldn’t be energetically safe.”

What does energetically safe mean? “Everything is energy,” says Carrie. “Not just in a woo-woo way but also from a scientific perspective. Conservation law within the science of physics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It’s ALWAYS converted from one thing to another. This is usually talked about within the context of applied force. E.g. My cheeky cat slides my mug across the bench then pushes it. The push is the applied force and through the power of gravity it falls to the floor and smashes to pieces. The applied force converts a whole cup that can contain liquid into fragments of glass all over the place. I could take that one step further and say, “Hmm. I liked that mug and don’t want to throw that out. I’m going to use the smaller pieces to create a pretty mosaic art piece.” Yes, I just compared Smith Wigglesworth to a mug. But hopefully that creates a clear illustration of what I’m trying to say.

I’d also like to point out, as a former Christian who is familiar with the Biblical perspectives and protocols around “the laying on of hands” that Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians generally have an understanding that they shouldn’t be touching just anyone. Because they don’t know what kind of “demons” or “spirits” a person might have. So even within Christian tradition there is an acknowledgement of the transfer of energy (or impartation). So it surprises me that these people at Bethel could do this when, within their own worldview, it is actually much more extreme than the laying on of hands.

As a side note, this whole grave soaking thing feels kind of idolatrous from a Christian perspective, right? Like isn’t God big enough to give them the same gifts that He gave the person lying in the grave? Not to mention that, separate from whatever religion or beliefs ANY of us have, isn’t it just bad taste to treat someone’s grave like a spiritual amusement park? Not as a witch, but as a person, that makes me feel icky.”

Why mention the different people’s and beliefs at the beginning of this article? Because threaded like a theme through-out the Bible is honour. Honour thy Father and thy Mother. Honour the Lord with your first-fruits. Honour. Honour. Honour. Yet grave soaking, to me,  smacks of dishonour. Imagine the family of the deceased seeing a video of elated Christians filming youtube videos on the grave of their granddad. But Carrie raises a good point: God is big enough to give you the same gifts without requiring you to go to a deceased and potentially dodgy second source.

But she had another cringy source ready to rock my world: Adolf Hitler was a grave soaker too. Eeesh. In a documentary called “In Search of History: Hitler and the Occult” the documentary makers allege that Hitler and the leaders of the SS were consumed with Aryan Mythology. They found people for the SS based on their ethnic purity going back generations. In order to ensure that the next generation of soldier were racially pure, they recommended sexual rites on the graves of Nordic/German heroes in order to conceive babies that would carry the spirit of the deceased warrior.

Wow.

Other Rituals 

Admittedly, and thankfully, grave soaking is not commonly practiced in Christian circles. (Thank God. Literally.) But as the influence of Bethel spreads, so too does the importance of knowing good doctrine from bad increase. In the last blog post, I put out a laundry list of other practices. So lets take a quick tour of the rest so this article doesn’t go forever.

First up: Extended periods of praying in tongues, warfare worship, prophetic declaration or strategic prayer. The Bible does clearly show the gift of tongues (on the day of Pentecost, and the Apostle Paul saying he prays in tongues more than all of us). It also advises that praying in tongues should be accompanied by the gift of interpretation. Thus, one needs to question what public and prolonged displays of praying in tongues actually achieves.

The same with extended “warfare” worship. My experience, and my reading of cult literature, raises one answer here (you might have others): It brings us to an altered state of consciousness.  Is this good or bad? Carrie reminds us time and time again that it is the intent that matters here. But she also mentioned this:

“It reminds me of the Benandanti of Italy. They took it upon themselves to go on a crusade in the spirit realm to “deal” with God’s enemies. Whether through prayer and discernment (as within the modern Christian Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions) or drug use (as with the Benandanti), these people put themselves into an altered state of consciousness in order to “perceive” spiritual truth about other people. Just as with the visions that were considered “evidence” during the witch trials, it’s not fair that a Pentecostal Christian’s “discernment” or a Benandanti’s drug-induced visions of God’s enemies should be considered any kind of proof of someone’s guilt. Especially if that alleged guilt leads to persecution and even punishment.”

In Carrie’s mind, and in mine, spiritual mapping is a 20thcentury witch hunt. “It sounds just like what they did with the Malleus Maleficarum beginning in the 1400s. Wagner’s methods of using prayer and discernment also remind me of how, back during the witch trials (in America and Europe), random people could say they had visions of people being witches and it would be considered “evidence” in a court of law. Lots of people were persecuted that way which is quite horrific.”

I love the, forgive me, dumb logic of some of the trials. You get thrown into a river with weights around your ankles to drown. If you drown, you aren’t a witch. If you don’t, and you manage to swim, you are a witch. It’s all semantics at this point. Either way, you are dead. Often the accused only had ‘discernment’ as the evidence against them. Yet discernment is what is used as evidence in a good many spiritual warfare practices.

Secondly, repressed memories or generational curses. Yes, the scripture does mention the “sins of the fathers” which could be called generational curses. But to put too much stock in this is to undervalue the complete work of the cross. Lets go back to John 19, people. It is finished. Its all finished. If you are saved, you are in Christ. You are a new Creation. The old things have passed away. A new thing has begun.

As for repressed memories, this represents a hugely concerning area for counselors and psychologists alike, as repressed memories may be false or heavily influenced by suggestion. I cite, for example, the satanic panic of the 90’s when many people were diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder due to Satanic Ritual Abuse realised in repressed memories. Many, potentially the vast majority of them, were found to be false memories. Yet the damage these memories did was real. Real suffering came as a result.

As someone who knows what I believe to be a genuine survivor of Satanic Ritual Abuse, I’m horrified. Not just because fabricated memories devalue the suffering of genuine victims, but also because there is no reason for a person to carry a false memory and suffer the pain and disability it potentially brings. The mind is a powerful thing. Therefore, we should not mess with it. Pastors or Christian counsellors should, in my opinion, step very carefully and only with appropriate qualifications when it comes to counselling anyone. They can do great damage if they follow “discernment” as their guide. Repressed memories are just one area where good intentions and inadequate therapeutic qualifications and professional standards can damage a life incredibly.

Thirdly, and I’m hurrying: Vicarious repentance. Hey guys, the finished work of the cross is finished. There is therefore no need to repent for what others have done, regardless of whether or not you are related to them.

There might be need to make amends. But by and large, this is a civic thing (in my belief). I’m referring mainly to the generational effect of colonialism on first people. I.e. Kevin Rudd, when he was Prime Minister of Australia, issued an apology to our first nations for the stolen generation. It was symbolic, important, and it meant a lot to the recipients. It is not complete reparation, as there is still a lot of disadvantage in these people groups but that is a topic for another day and another expert as it’s a bit over my head to be honest. But on with the show…

Fourthly, Prayer journeys or locational rituals. Followers of the Spiritual Warfare Network and other practitioners have been known to go to specific locations to undertake their rituals. Not only is this not advised or commanded in scripture, its also expensive for no good reasons (plane tickets, yo) and is little more than super-spiritual tourism as its usually an extension of spiritual mapping which is highly subjective. Why? Because God is omnipresent and omnipotent. Praying to him here in the backblocks of Gippsland is as effective as praying to him at the wailing wall in Jerusalem. The important thing is the prayer, not the location.

Upon reflection, I’ve been involved in this sort of thing too. At the instruction of a prophet who visited my church many years ago,  we gathered our church members and the members of another church, went to every entry of our local down and drove a stake into the ground to declare the town to be the Lords. Nearly two decades on, that church still has the roughly same amount of people in it. Despite “reclaiming” the city, it remains largely unchanged except for the hard work of local law enforcement, council and community groups to make it a better place to live and work. But hey, they’d have done that anyway.

It makes me wonder how many towns have been “taken for Christ” in spiritual warfare rituals, and yet they remain, strangely, unconverted. This alone should make us question whether this type of spiritual warfare is pretty much a fruitless fig tree. We know what Jesus did with that.

Lastly, discerning, naming or renouncing demons and territorial spirits. Tune in next week for that one, kids.

I guess in conclusion, there are a good many similarities between what has been included in Christian Spiritual Warfare and the occult. But a personal area of conviction I felt when speaking with Carrie was this: she considers intent and energy a lot more carefully than many Christians I have experienced. We can be far too gung-ho, and plunge ourselves into a world that we so poorly understand.

There is a place for prayer. There is a place for the armour of God. There is a place for resting in the finished work of the Cross and standing firm in what our God has done for us. In my opinion, this is the light by which we should see all our spiritual activity.

*There are two articles left to be written in this series: “Territorial Spirits: Are they out there?” and “The Role of Prayer and Intercession in the Christian Life.”

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Peace 
Kit K