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| Image text: "Chorus: And I / I'm desperate for you / And I / I'm lost without out (x2)" Image source. |
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
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Here's a recent post from Sheila Wray Gregoire, Valentine's Day: What If Marriage Isn't Supposed To Be That Hard?, which raises the idea that maybe the women who write books about marriage do so specifically because they are in bad marriages and they're trying to cope. (The post also argues against the "marriage is hard" concept. I totally agree with Gregoire here- very not cool how people always say "marriage is hard." Then if you're in an abusive marriage, you will think that's normal because "marriage is hard." My marriage is not hard!)
Here's a quote from the post:
When a woman in a destructive marriage who is a good writer and has communication skills needs to process what she’s going through, and speaking opportunities are open for her, and then soon book deals, it’s natural that these women will write about relationship advice. And so it shouldn’t be surprising if our marriage advice is disproproportionately written/given by women in destructive marriages.
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I’m not saying that writers write deliberately to process their situations. I’m saying that when you’re in the midst of an untenable situation, and you’re desperate to make sense of it, you tell yourself fervently a lot of stuff about God. And teaching it becomes another way to prove to yourself that everything is actually okay and you’re fine.
Wow, this is a really fascinating hypothesis. What if, in Christian culture, the writers who are seen as authorities on "how to have a godly marriage" disproportionately have unhealthy marriages? What if the women in unhealthy marriages are doing a lot of very hard work to convince themselves that everything's okay, and to keep obeying "God's" commands about submitting to their husbands, and because they are doing so much work, and they're so dedicated to it, they are the ones who end up being seen as "experts" on marriage.
Whereas, the people in normal healthy marriages just kind of spend their time being normal people, and there's not really much to say about how they "make their marriage work" because it just works. So they don't write books about it.
I wanted to blog about this because it reminded me of myself, back when I was in college and I was "desperate for God" and believed that was a good thing that made me a good Christian role model. My "personal relationship with God" was, how shall I put this, unhealthy, and that's why everyone saw me as such a good and dedicated Christian. (Similar to how women in bad marriages end up being seen as the experts on marriage.)
We were always talking about how we "need" God. We need God more than anything- more than food, air, anything. Yeah it may not feel that way, but that's the reality, we said. And I felt like... it's quite hard to actually believe such a statement- "I need God more than anything else"- and the people who were the very very best Christians truly believed and internalized it, whereas the not-so-good Christians just lived like... not feeling a constant need and desperation.
I believed that this was the reality, even though it doesn't feel true at all. And that being a good Christian was about working myself into a state where I truly felt like I needed God more than anything. Constantly feeling like I'm barely holding on, I need to pray more, I need God, I need to feel that God is with me. I'm a sinner and if I ever feel like I'm fine, rather than feeling desperate and panicked over the status of my relationship with God, well, that would be bad.
(I should point out here that "we need God" doesn't logically have to lead to "we should constantly feel panicked about our need for God." What if we need God, but we always have God, there's no risk that God will disappear- "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." What if we need God, but that need is met all the time, regardless of what we believe or feel or do? "In him we live and move and have our being." This is what I believe now. But evangelical Christianity very much teaches that it's not okay to just not be aware of God/ not believe in God. And it's not okay to take it for granted that God is there. You have to always walk a very fine line of being perfect and not sinning, always thinking about God and how unworthy you are, always dedicating all of your energy to the impossible task of truly knowing God.)
I remember hearing a sermon once, on John 21. This is after Jesus' death, when his disciples went out fishing, and they didn't catch any fish, and then the resurrected Jesus showed up and told them to throw their net on the other side of the boat, and then they miraculously caught a LOT of fish. The pastor who was preaching this sermon emphasized how the disciples couldn't do anything without Jesus. The disciples were fishermen, and they went fishing, and they caught NOTHING. Because they thought they could do it themselves. They didn't know that they could not do anything at all, without Jesus. And the lesson for us was, we may think that we're good at something, we may be confident in our abilities, but we shouldn't be, because actually we can't do anything at all. Without God, we can't even do the most basic things- fishermen can't even catch a single fish- and we should never lose sight of that.
That sermon really stuck with me- and I think that's because I'm just generally more prone to having anxiety issues. Maybe other Christians wouldn't take it this way... but I took it to mean that being closer to God (which is what I should be striving for) meant being in a constant state of anxiety. Like everything is a crisis which could have eternal significance. At any moment I might sin- like, for example, having a selfish thought- and that would be an infinite offense against a holy God, and I should feel terrible, and Jesus died because of me, etc. At any moment, God might give me a chance to "share the gospel" with someone- someone who's in extreme danger of going to hell- and I needed to always be watching for those chances.
And if you ever feel confident, like "yeah I know what I'm doing, I'm good at this" and you're not thinking about how you can do NOTHING without God, well, God is going to sabotage your efforts, to teach you a lesson.
It wasn't just that one sermon, of course. I always heard evangelicals talk about how we "need God." There are SO MANY worship songs we sang in church that had that theme: "And I / I'm desperate for you / And I / I'm lost without you." "I'm falling on my knees / Offering all of me / Jesus you're all this heart is living for." "I need Thee / oh I need Thee / Every hour I need Thee." And like I said, maybe I interpreted them in this way because of my own mental health/ anxiety issues. Maybe other Christians didn't take them to mean the ideal is to be in a constant state of desperation. But my obsession, my ever-present desire to be "closer to God", that's what my faith was about, and I do think people viewed me as a good devoted Christian role model because of that.
I didn't know anything at all about mental health back then. I definitely had no awareness of the concept of "maybe if something is stressing you out all the time, it's bad." Heaven and hell were at stake, I couldn't waste time thinking about my emotional state. It's logical to be stressed out all the time, because there are always people in danger of going to hell, and I need to help as many as I can.
One thing I did a lot of in college was start bible study groups with non-Christians. I was really good at it, actually. Thinking back on it now, I'm like "wait, how did I convince my non-Christian friends to read the bible with me?" but yeah I really did. But oh my goodness it stressed me out SO MUCH. And I worked so hard, trying to do all these things that "God" wanted me to do, trying to trust that God was working and my efforts made a difference... dealing with all the emotions that came from this and laundering them into lessons about what God was "teaching me" and how it helped me be closer to God.
For example:
I started a bible study group at a fraternity house. Please note, I am a girl, I was not in this fraternity, I was just friends with a lot of the brothers. I enlisted 2 of the brothers who were Christians to help me promote it. At the first meeting of the bible study group, 1 of the 2 didn't come. And I was mad about that- I felt like, "he doesn't understand how hard it is to start a bible study- he should be here to support me on the first night." But then after thinking about it more, and praying about it, I decided I shouldn't be mad at him- he is free to help me or not. He didn't do anything wrong. And chalked it up to God teaching me to trust Him more, or something.
The reality of it was- and if I were more aware of my emotions, I would have been able to realize this- I felt so self-conscious and embarrassed, trying to invite people to my bible study. I felt so worried about whether anyone would actually come or not. But in evangelicalism, there was no way for me to process those emotions. All I had was the framework that "I'm doing what God wants me to do, so I have to stay strong."
As I continued doing this fraternity house bible study, I sometimes felt unhappy because not many people came. So I prayed about that, and came to the conclusion that my role is to offer this bible study, to the people who want it, and if they don't want it, that's okay. I'm at least doing my part, I'm doing a good thing, and if I resented the fraternity brothers who didn't attend, then that wouldn't be a good thing. And I felt that was a meaningful thing that God was teaching me.
Looking back at it now, I feel like... it would have been much better for my mental and emotional health if I weren't always doing evangelism and trying to start bible studies. It was so stressful for me all the time- but at the time, I would have said "it's hard but it's worth it." (Just like all the Christian leaders who will tell you that marriage is so hard but it's worth it.) Because I loved the feeling that I was working for God and doing important things. Life was an exciting adventure. There was always a crisis, and it was so exciting to feel like I was clinging to God to get through it. That's what a "personal relationship with God" is supposed to be, right?
Our campus Christian group had "evangelism training" sessions where we were very explicitly told to NOT care about these mental health concerns (though obviously they didn't use the term "mental health"). They said if you don't want to do evangelism because you feel awkward / because you're worried about alienating your friends / because you don't know what to say- well you should just repress all those feelings because PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HELL and isn't that more important than your fears of being awkward?
I believed that the best Christians were the ones who not only claimed to believe in the talking points about how everyone who's not "saved" is in incredible danger of going to hell, but who truly deeply believed that, so much so that they could constantly feel the danger, feel it as real and palpable, all around them, threatening their friends all the time. They would be constantly driven to do evangelism and push people toward "getting saved" as much as they could.
(In other words, being close to God causes you to have an anxiety disorder, and that's the ideal you should be striving for.)
And I remember one time, one of my friends told me that she was going to be doing a bible study with a friend of hers who was not a Christian. And I was very happy for her, and gave her some advice. And one of the things I said was, you're going to learn more about God by doing this. I was thinking of my own struggles, trying to handle my feelings surrounding how my bible study wasn't going as well as I wanted, and the way I clung to God through it and believed that God was teaching me.
And that's what I thought of when I read Gregoire's blog post. The idea that I had useful advice to give someone, because I had been pushing myself to do things I didn't want to do, which weren't really healthy for me. And other Christians who had better mental health wouldn't have been seen as role models with good advice.
So... So where am I now? Well now my faith is completely different. I'm ex-evangelical, and I don't believe in hell. It's just indescribable, how good it feels to stop believing in hell. I don't have to constantly worry about the eternal fate of every random person I meet. I can just interact like a normal person.
I'm still a Christian- and I'm really happy about being a Christian. I don't have a "personal relationship with God" and I don't want to ever again- it was just way too much stress. Evangelicals always say the word "gospel" means "good news"- well now I believe in a Christianity which actually is good news.
I'm not "desperate for God" now. I no longer believe being a Christian is about maintaining a constant state of anxiety.
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Related:
This is what a "personal relationship with God" looks like. Be very afraid.
With God, Everything is a Battle and You Can't Just Leave
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