Recovering from Spiritual Abuse - Part 4: Depression, Reflection, Loneliness

Hi all, welcome back after the Christmas break :) Today's topic is a hard one for sure, and is probably why it was so long in coming. I think it will be hard to separate externally-forced stage 4 grief from internally-forced stage 4 grief, but I will try. I think in handling personal grief, such as the loss of a loved one, there is a sadness once the loss is truly recognized. When leaving an abusive church, I'm sure there is that, too, but also, there is the sense of active abandonment. There is a distance with people like Chris who would not share the same fellowship with me now compared to the past, especially knowing my journey.

So, the external grief is very hard - there are people I saw week after week, invited over for dinner and was invited over regularly. There was a shared sense of purpose, of friendship, and even though we perhaps had similar views of the failings of the church, when I left, there was a rift. When I look back at the fun at conferences and church picnics and all of the fellowship common to RPs, it's hard not to feel left out and abandoned. When I left it was a very clear choice - I could stuff myself into the RP mold for me so that my family and I could have the RP experience, which was mostly good for the others in my family, or I could follow God without compromise and accept the consequences. There have been a lot of consequences - mainly bad from RP-land and mainly good from non-RP-land.

Internally is somewhat different, and I can't really say which stage I'm in - it seems to change from day to day. Much of the depression comes from being between a rock and a hard place with family and church. For both, there was fellowship and fun times and a sense of belonging, but at a cost of knowing and accepting my place. The places where I was supposed to be accepted offered that acceptance at a price too high to pay - shame and silence.

There is also a related self-shame spiral. I was as legalistic and hate-filled as any RP towards those who compromised truth for comfort. I thought of the people who left the church as weak and inferior, because I believed the RP church was the most pure. Even if I could try to right that, what would the response be? How do you apologize for something you never said or did, but felt in your heart? It seems the best I can do is promise to do better with my new-found freedom. But, even with freedom, there is conflict - what if following that freedom puts me in direct opposition to the born-and-raised RP position on exclusive psalmody and a capella singing?

Isolation has become a struggle because I don't feel like I can invite anyone into my processing of grief. On one hand, it would be good to have some help with the load I carry, on the other hand, if I show anyone the load, I doubt they would want to help carry. I think that is why online spiritual abuse groups have become a lifeline for so many, even if they cannot share things in person, they can still hear and commiserate.

Righteous Anger part 2 - a "whole brain" approach

 

Background: Part of the growing understanding of how the brain works is summarized practically in the book The Whole-Brained Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne. I'm trying to simplify what they say and there will be some inaccuracies, so if you have concerns, please consider reading the book.

When babies are born, they are ruled by the need for safety. Their consciousness is ruled by the need for safety, which is entirely dependent on their needs being met. This safety is ruled by what the authors call the downstairs brain - where the brain interfaces with bodily functions. When the baby is hungry, when the baby is thirsty, when the baby is tired or uncomfortable, the downstairs brain creates powerful emotions that translate into crying, screaming or other signals to the parents that the child senses a lack of safety that needs to be met.

As the parents meet the needs of the child, the upstairs brain is developing understanding of the world around. The child develops a sense that his needs will be met without jeopardizing safety. He sees the caregiver disappear and come back. The child's brain starts to be aware of its connection with others in the world, strategies for dealing with those connections, and other emotions like happiness and comfort.

During the first few years, the role of the caregiver is vitally important in developing proper conscious responses to emotions as the right and left brains develop pathways about what is important to bring to conscious attention. We start to understand things that happen in our bodies - hunger, thirst, cold, warmth, pain in various places, touch, loneliness, love - and our consciousness interacts with the world around us to meet needs and now desires.

Behavioralism: In 1913 a psychologist named John Watson created a rationalistic approach to understanding and processing the world around us. Behavioralism ignored emotions and focused on objective, rational observation. The worldview that Behavioralism brought in was that any person could become anything their superiors wanted through a reward and punishment system based solely on observed behavior. Emotions were seen as unimportant towards the end of producing the desired behavior. The desires of the child were secondary or unimportant in the drive for exceptional behavior. The psychologists powerfully demonstrated their theories by training pigeons to plunk out songs on a piano.

Even though Behavioralism has been shown to be flat-out wrong, it still powerfully occupies our understanding of how society ought to be structured, and this is readily apparent in instruction and discipline. We didn't just forget the tools of dealing with emotional development, we piled them up in the back yard and set them on fire!!! 

I remember watching Dead Poet's Society and I simply didn't get the point of it. As I reflect back, it's a statement against Behavioralism. The students are trapped in a dull existence of behavioralist expectation. The parents have paid top dollar for the school to produce perfect specimens. The protagonist arrives and with him, the light of emotion and purpose, which comes in direct conflict with outside behavioral parents. The student who is the most enlightened and freed finds his world crashing down when his behavioral parents will now do everything in their power to put him back on the approved track. This is a common theme - a child whose desires and gifts put him in conflict with parents' and societal expectations. Isn't this the story of the obligatory consecration service, where the (male) youth get to hear God's demands and expectations of sacrificial service to the church.

Reasoning vs. Emotional errors: Consider what happens when a child expresses a reasoning error. My family has a grocery list, when something is low or out, it gets put on the grocery list and the next time we go shopping, the item appears. A child realized this, and the next week, CANDY was scribbled on the grocery list. We didn't spank our child, we didn't even make it a big deal, we just explained that there was a logical error - the list wasn't a guarantee that we would buy something, just a reminder, etc. What happens when a child expresses an emotional error? One child feels jealousy because another child is playing with a toy they feel entitled to. Anger bursts out. How is that emotional error dealt with? Do we redirect? NO!! We somehow must punish all emotional mistakes. What do you think when you're in the store and your kid or someone else's kid throws a temper tantrum? If that parent doesn't spank the kid or take the kid out to the parking lot, they're a parental disgrace! Yet, in a sense, these emotional errors are equivalent to the logical errors we so effectively handle. We think of reasoning errors as perhaps innocent mistakes and emotional errors as sin that must be eradicated.

We have toys that teach logical cause and effect, our educational system is designed to teach reasoning and logic, but societally, the only solution, if you can say that, for emotional intelligence is punishing any sort of emotional outburst.

Lack of Connection: The purpose of our right brain is to develop a sense of connection with those around us. We develop sympathy and empathy to connect ourselves with others in a healthy way. We develop higher order emotions and emotional regulation. We develop trust. Our sense of worth and purpose is developed in our right brain. We can sense emotions in others and we can sense when things are "off" - we call that intuition. It's been studied that people's right brains recognize dangerous people, but because we're trained to suppress our "gut feeling", we put ourselves in harms way. In fact, studies have shown that dogs don't sense dangerous people, instead, they sense our emotions. For most people, their own dogs know more about what their emotions are telling them than they do! When the right brain is underdeveloped (or suppressed), our consciousness gets only half of the input - the rational input, which is very black and white. So, for example, when you have a theological disagreement with someone, your right brain may have shown you ways to be empathetic and gracious to this person, but your left brain is saying, "this person is WRONG, therefore EVIL". Consider this, if your value is what the church decides it is, and that is adherence to a system of doctrine, then what happens when you disagree with someone over doctrine? Your value is at stake. Losing the argument means that you are less valuable. You can't acknowledge the difference and still both be valuable people. I see this clearly in the political process. Societally, we can no longer accept other peoples' passion for issues like social justice and care for the sick and poor, yet at the same time acknowledge our desire for a peaceful and prosperous society. Therefore, we disconnect and demonize others. We use social media to connect only to those who share our opinions, and our Google news feed shows us only what we want to see.

The behavioral emphasis on reason also destroys self-worth. The clear piece is that the standard by which we are judged is someone else's standard. That is, our objective behavior is rewarded or punished based on someone else's desires for us. The pigeon will eventually plunk out the right notes because, regardless of what the pigeon wants to happen, the concerns of the pigeon are secondary to the concerns of the experimenter. So, in the church, we are taught that our [Spirit-inspired] desires are secondary to the direction of the Session. The less clear piece has to do with the brain. Just as we test our reason against our caregiver, we test our connection. As we bring our own desires into the relationship we look for confirmation of the value of those desires. The "terrible twos" is a developmental stage where the child differentiates from the caregiver. In the Reformed church, the will of the 2yo must be squashed. So, what has happened? The right brain seeks connection with the conscious. That connection is rejected. So, the brain must navigate the rejection. The conclusion (with the help of the black and white left brain) is that I must be bad if I'm rejected. From a behavioral point of view, this is good because the will of the child must be broken for the child to obey the adult. But, we are just setting the child up for a lifetime of self-deprecation and abuse.

Emotional Trauma: Because the church minimizes and denies the work of the right brain, the church denies the existence of emotional trauma. Let's say there are two violent acts in the church. The first violent act is a woman who gets brutally attacked during a robbery. Her knee was shattered and through extensive surgeries and physical therapy, she's able to walk, but not without pain and a limp. The church surrounds her and recognizes that the limp is a natural consequence of the physical damage and pain they condemn the robber and vindicate her. Let's say there is another woman in the church. She is violently raped by her boyfriend. Her whole world is shattered. She attempted suicide and ended up spending time in a mental hospital, but even now that she is released, she is seeing a psychologist because she can't stop cutting herself. First of all, the church is reluctant to take sides without fully hearing both the perpetrator and victim? Did her sin contribute to the rape? Then, when they see the obvious scars from the cutting, they condemn it and start mentioning church discipline. They condemn her for seeking "unbiblical counseling". Do we see the difference?

Breaking the Peace - the Assault on Righteous Anger: Since behavioralism specifically ignores emotions and focuses only on observable behaviors, it's obvious that the results of strong emotions are going to be misunderstood and punished. Let's say I'm in middle school, and immaturely, I decide that I should poke the boy in front of me with my pencil during class. The teacher does not like interruptions when he is teaching, so the boy tries to suppress the anger while he waits for an appropriate time. It doesn't work. He explodes in anger. "STOP POKING ME WITH YOUR PENCIL!!!" What do you think happens? It's obvious. BOTH of us are going to the principal. Both the offender and the victim get punished for breaking the peace.

It makes sense, because right and wrong are somewhat superfluous in the quest for perfect behavior. The behavioralist does not care anything about the feelings of the pigeon so long as the expected behavior is met, and likewise, the tendency in the church is to not care what happens in private so long as the public peace is preserved.

That's why we expect sermons like Rut's on Righteous Anger. Imagine if Rut preached a sermon about logical discourse in Bible studies. He says that Bible studies are a great place to ask questions about doctrine. But... you can always keep quiet because "better to be quiet and have others think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!" [Mark Twain, not the Bible!]. But... lest you fall into the erroneous thinking of Satan, before you ask a question, you should make sure you've done all the proper research and read the right scholars' opinions on the matter, and... before you ask a question, you should make sure that you understand the definition of each word you're going to say, and... before you ask a question, you should search the Bible for every passage that speaks on the topic, because it's easy for our fallible logic to be led astray!

Every pastor I've heard has said that RP doctrine should withstand scrutiny, and that we should be ready and willing to answer questions gently and with wisdom. Why do we so much fear the other side of our humanity, then? If we are not afraid of reason, why are we afraid of emotion? Why are we so deathly afraid of "sinful anger" that it's better to hold our peace when some pastor tells us that God tells us to abuse our children in His name - the same God who sends rain on the just and the unjust commands us to withhold food from our own children?

Righteous Anger part 1 - stream and rocks analogy

 Since Chris brought up the concept of righteous anger, I thought it would be worth talking through some analogies about righteous and sinful anger. First of all, anger is an emotion. We may think that our emotions are fallible and we need our intellect to keep it in check, but in actuality, both our emotions and intellect are fallible. We need our emotions to keep our intellect in check as much as we need our intellect to keep our emotions in check.

For example, we talk about intuition or "gut feelings" - gut feelings are often right, and we somehow assume that it was luck or providence, but evidence shows there is more to it. My plan is to cover that in part 2.

My best description of anger is an energy we feel as a result of a sense of injustice. Our emotion is telling us that something is wrong, and not just that something is wrong, but something needs to be fixed. We feel a surge of adrenaline, our faces turn red, our pulse quickens. Often our emotional sense of the situation precedes our intellectual sense of what happened.

It is at this point that our intellect is racing to catch up. WHY? is the first question to ask. Why am I angry? What injustice has occurred? Because our emotions are fallible, we need the combined strength of intellect and emotion to understand. Is the injustice I'm experiencing true or false injustice. That is, am I angry because I or someone I care about being treated disrespectfully, or is it some perceived entitlement that has been threatened?

To understand psychology, anger can be resolved (processed) or it can be suppressed. If I understand that I'm at fault, I can use the energy of the anger to work towards change in my own heart - to seek forgiveness and restoration. It can be resolved through putting the energy towards constructive conflict - seeking justice personally or systemically. However, it can also be suppressed. Suppressing anger is flatly unhealthy, yet as we see, in religious circles it seems to be the most acceptable and compelling option.

This is an analogy of an abusive relationship that has blown up. The person on the left is experiencing mostly unrighteous (idolatrous or self-righteous) anger. The person on the right is a target of idolatrous abuse, and is angry as a result of being treated disrespectfully or unjustly. Because the anger grows past the "ability to tolerate", the public peace is broken. For the sake of the argument, this has happened in the church context.

What should happen? I would argue that the church needs to deal, first and foremost, justly in this situation. If you read Shepherding a Child's Heart, you would see that Tedd Tripp disagrees. In his mind, we notice that there is red (unrighteous anger) on both sides and we deal solely with the red without recognizing the sheer volume of red on one side. In his description, the child who holds the toy is sinfully greedy instead of sharing, while the child who steals the toy has resorted to violence. The solution, then, is to punish both for disturbing the peace of the house.

So, what happens is what is called all sorts of things - gaslighting, grooming, normalizing, burying one's head in the sand, whatever. This can happen as a result of one's own codependency or external factors. The point is that the anger is not "put away" - it's still there and it's still as big as ever. Yet, the anger is no longer visible in the community. The abuse is still as strong as ever.

This is what is taught in the RP church. Instead of teaching people to deal with anger in a healthy way by choosing to stand up for justice and give strength to victims of abuse, the church chooses a peaceful image. Under the holy and righteous image of the church is unresolved and abusive conflict. What is unfortunate is that it is the opposite of justice.

There's more complexity to it, but as long as the RPCNA chooses to whitewash over conflict in the church through sermons like this, not only will abuse and injustice persist, but anger itself will grow unchecked, hidden under what appears to be a a calm sea of suppression. This is what I mean about choosing image over truth. The anger is still there, the abuse is still there, but it can all be conveniently ignored because everything looks like a calm stream. The church does the opposite of its calling. Instead of shining a light in the darkest places, the church chooses to hide and obscure injustice because it looks good.

Not TRUTH at all costs, but IMAGE at all costs

In working through some struggles as a result of childhood, I was asked the question: "What if you just said to your family, 'well, that was your perspective, but I see things differently?'" This was about what seemed to be a significant disconnect in family stories. My response was, "In my family, truth was more important than any one of us."

That is also what the RPCNA teaches. Our responsibility to God and to truth is a responsibility that even death pales in comparison to. We were told of martyrs throughout history who refused to accommodate the half-truths of the Catholic church, or the half-truths of the state churches imposed on them. They met in private, risking arrest and even death. All because the truth was more important to them than any harm that could be done.

I'm not trying to invite compromise on core Christian principles, but what if the reality was not so rosy?

When I looked back on my family, I realized that there was a standard claimed for being treated as an equal, intellectual, musical and athletic giftedness. That was presented as the family truth. Yet, somehow, I was never able to claim that equality. No matter how much I succeeded intellectually, musically and athletically, there was always some new expectation. Material possessions were added, expertise was added, salaries were added, music was removed and the result was that somehow I always had no claim to sit at the same table. This became especially true as I started questioning our "superior RPCNA upbringing". This has shown itself in action, as well - small but clear reminders of my inferiority and standing.

After talking with my counselor, I started realizing. It wasn't the truth that defined our family, but image. The truth was that I was an equal in every way, but image dictated that others in the family had to be superior. The truth of our upbringing did not support the image that we wanted to present.

I believe this is part of the core problem in the RPCNA. The image of the RPCNA as a superior church, claiming both amazing love and joy among the brethren, amazing care and concern for Biblical truth, and competent, godly and thoroughly vetted leadership is more important than confronting the truth of what the RPCNA is.

When I think through many of those questionable moments, I see this principle clearly:

• Was the trial of Bruce Hemphill primarily driven by a desire to seek and act on truth, or was it primarily driven by a desire to appear unabashedly committed to Biblical truth to fellow NAPARC churches? Before you answer that, ask yourself why the RPCNA overruled breaches of many of the procedural and disciplinary protections that were in place at the time.
• Why is insubordination the primary cause of discipline (as told me by an elder)? Is it because the session seeks truth, or because the session seeks members to uphold the image it has claimed?
• Why would a presbytery commission claim to have rebuked an elder (quest for truth!) and then reject a request from a member that the rebuke of an elder be public as required in scripture instead of behind closed doors?
• Why does the RPCNA constitution give the right of appeal to all members, but only by submitting the appeal through the court whose decision is being appealed, and then, only if said court finds the appeal to be in order? Why are members of the session being appealed given speaking privileges of the floor and have their travel reimbursed, while the appellants, if they travel to presbytery must do so at their own expense, and expect only to be silent observers to the presbytery discussion of their case?
• Why is it the implication that every member who has left the RPCNA has done so because they chose sin or unrighteousness or compromise over truth? Why do we mourn the generations "lost" when many of these generational members left the RPCNA for a different church?
• Why do Reformed churches demand that formal seminary training is a requirement for all pastors, even though there is essentially zero scriptural support to make this a requirement? Is having 100% seminary-trained pastors a Biblical truth or does it convey an image of intellectual superiority?
• When the RPCNA takes great care to make public the causes for excommunication of members, but deals with sins of leadership privately (I know many occasions where this has happened), is this a stand for Biblical truth, or a desire to protect the image of a godly leadership?
• Oh, and the small, but clear reminders of inferiority (hint: how the RPCNA butchers Total Depravity) and standing (hint: how much leaders want the congregation to be removed from the important decisions of the church)

This is also why the OPC is at a crossroads. Their handling of Aimee Byrd is clearly designed to restore the image of their church leadership. Their report makes the actions of their leaders appear innocent and inconsequential, while portraying the actions of Ms. Byrd, the concerned pastors and the "whistleblower" as divisive, scheming and improper. I fear that the OPC will choose image over truth, as it has presumably done in the past. Why would this presbytery committee feel so emboldened to distort justice otherwise?

The four quadrants of shame management and church "personhood"

One of the big questions that keeps popping up in religious abuse discussions is whether an organizational culture can take on the characteristics of a personality. Psalm 115 1-8 says:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, But to Your name give glory
Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth.
Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?”
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them.

I am not surprised, then, when a theology of internal subjection of wills within the Trinity leads to a church culture of subjection. I'm not surprised that a shame-based, narcissistic and authoritarian view of God leads to a shame-based, narcissistic and authoritarian church. This is a very helpful diagram, proposed by Patricia Gianotti on how we build defense mechanisms against shame: https://www.treatingnarcissism.com/the-four-quadrant-model

This seems very helpful in mapping out personal, familial and even church responses to shame. For example, through stories about Daniel, I was taught that faithful living and natural giftedness would result in being raised to positions of power. So, in quadrant 1, I had a drive to perfection and high standards for my own conduct, which were justified because of quadrant 3, waiting to be acknowledged and rewarded. But, years passed and I often experienced the opposite. That led to a sense of despair and brokenness and some lack of care for myself - quadrant two. Emotional and spiritual abuse also led to the quadrant 4 fantasies of revenge, violence and even the typical RP persecution complex.

I see the same sorts of things when it comes to the church response. Ultimately, the RP "distinctives" fall into quadrants 1 and 2 - we hold high standards of self-imposed righteousness, with the belief that personally, and as a church, we will be lifted up and recognized, if not now, then at the judgment as being free from shame. But, when dealing with chronic shame and unworthiness (a tragic misunderstanding of God and the gospel among those in the RP church) - the church suffers from the right quadrant issues. For example, quadrant 2, I would suggest is the continual joyless existence common among RPs, who cannot let their real selves out for fear of shame. Quadrant 4 tends to be the RP story, though, in the interpersonal church relations, and especially within the church leadership.

Being raised on the conservative side of the RP church, I heard the conversations about certain liberals that threatened the church order. Talk of what sort of church discipline would be most appropriate - public rebuke, excommunication, humiliation, silence, whatever. I see the church testing God - putting preaching stations and missions, pastors and missionaries out in the world with nearly non-existent support, and then, when God does not send immediate growth, sabotaging the work. I continually see the leaders of the church refusing to accept blame. For example, I heard elders talk of all the "ministry opportunities" that were provided for the members to step into, but the members did not volunteer. I see self-sabotage also in the quest for numerical growth. Growth in the RP church provokes bitter animosity and jealousy. On the one hand, numerical growth is celebrated because the overall church feels rewarded and validated, but that growth occurs somewhere. So, when my church is dwindling and another church is growing, despite the fact that I'm faithful and loyally waiting, I want to put the blame elsewhere - that pastor is straying from some RP principle to win people over, or he is cow-towing to some radical fringe group like the Steelites.

Sometimes we are astounded at the level of revenge evident in the RP church. Bruce Hemphill comes to mind. Elders and Pastors from every corner fell over themselves to exact their revenge - and it falls very well within this narrative - a desire for the church to appear "pure", a desire to be recognized as "zealous for the truth", but then critical and consistent process failures and the overall hatred and revenge shown in the process.

I still struggle to read much of the Biblical narrative through my de-facto RP lens. The Old Testament God does seem narcissistic, and the RP obsession with the OT seems to foment the sort of narcissism and shame evident. However, the OT prophets and especially the NT shed a more gracious and productive light on those actions. For example, a juxtaposed narrative of the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah as against gross sexual sin, but also about hospitality and justice to the disadvantaged. The more I look through the lens of Jesus's life, though, I see the possibility of forgiveness and restoration of personal sin, and I see the rejection of those who refuse justice for the disadvantaged.

There is much more to explore in the RP church's embodiment of their narcissistic god, but I'll leave this model as a helpful way to see our experiences within the church as a refusal to accept and process thoughts of shame among the leaders and members.

Recovering from Spiritual Abuse - Part 3: Anger & Bargaining

The two most transformational books I read while recovering from spiritual abuse had extensive discussions of anger.

The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse - said that understanding the abuse we have experienced would inevitably lead to anger, sometimes strong anger. Their recommendation was not to repress the anger, but be very careful about what actions the anger might lead to - especially any sort of antagonism in the church that would lead back into a cycle of abuse.

Boundaries - also said that anger was a natural consequence of the understanding of our boundaries, understanding that our boundaries had been trampled on, and reacting to continued boundary violations. Again, once we recognize the violence against our boundaries, there will be an angry response that leads us to action.

Unlike what the RPCNA leadership wants to claim, anger is a God-given emotion. The Father and Jesus both model purely righteous anger - not for leaders only, but for all. Jesus was not a boundaryless pushover. Anger is not pretty - Jesus angrily overturned the tables and created quite a chaotic scene!

In addition to those powerful books, the best advice I've heard about anger, and even all human emotions, is that we should able to invite God into that emotion. If I'm angry because I did something stupid and got caught, would God agree with my anger? If, on the other hand, I'm angry because a trusted friend broke confidence and shared my pain and anguish with others, I think God wants to be there with me as I experience it. God wants to be near at all times, it's just a question of whether God would say my anger is directed appropriately.

I believe anger is the emotion God gave us to save us from abuse! It was my anger at false teaching (ironically, about anger), and then supported by RPCNA leaders who also falsely taught that anger was inherently evil, that gave me the energy to walk away from the abuse.

But, that's not really the anger I think this chart is talking about. I would say that, for the first six months after I left, I was pretty numbed to what I felt about the situation. Anger pushed me to leave the abuse, but I really didn't understand the depth or breadth of that abuse. After that point, it began to dawn on me just how severe the abuse had been [and I know that many RPs suffer much more personal and traumatic abuse than I did!] The RP church preached to the unsaved - sin, guilt, condemnation, legal requirements, judgment, and the anger of God against all unrighteousness, of which we cannot go a day without displeasing him. My new church preached to the saved - comfort, friendship, blessing, grace, the love of God for all who are his, the Spirit poured out on all, if we would just listen and walk in what we now know is the right path. At first, this was a comforting and warming message, but then I began to realize this was not what I experienced in the RP church. It was not what I experienced in my RP family. I felt like I had been in jail my whole life, imprisoned by those who should know better. At first, I was angry at my captors and myself, but at some point that anger turned to God - first actively - why, sovereign God, did you actively choose for me to be taught an evil caricature of YOU! Why did you bring me up in these chains that still hold me down. In a sense, the bargaining was a question of what my life would have looked like without the chains and abuse. There were significant decision points in my life - Why did I choose to attend Geneva? Why did I stay in the RP church when I felt mistreated at Geneva by RPs? Why did I stay in the RP church after I graduated? What would my life have looked like if I had chosen differently?

I still feel anger when I read the Bible. It is hard not to feel the chains when passages I read lead to the legalistic and abusive RP argumentation. I feel, to some respect, that the very words of the translations have been poisoned with legalism and judgment.

It is honestly still hard to work through the anger. The RPCNA and especially my family did not allow negative emotions. Anger and fear were altogether considered inappropriate. Sadness was "okay" - but led to emotional distance which was reinterpreted as rejection. So, I was never taught how to recognize and work through those emotions. Instead, strong emotions were meant to be suppressed. To point this out more visually, look around at others singing Psalms - the Bible's textbook on emotion. How much emotional repression does it take to sing "HALLELUJAH!" with no visible emotion. Or "Oh how long, Lord, forget me"? Or, pick pretty much any section of the 150 Psalms - all with loud, precise 4-part harmony, but absent any sort of emotional understanding. It's not just the RPCNA, but many, many evangelical churches in our emotionally repressive culture! Not only do we see strong emotions in the Psalms, but we see different tools as the Psalmist works through these emotions in a holy way. We see how God wants to be pulled in as a trusted friend in our happiest and most tragic times - not to reject our negative emotions - but to be our help and support. I remember the poem Footprints where a man sees two sets of footprints in his life when times are good, but when times were difficult and he felt abandoned, there was only one. His conclusion was that God left him in those times to deal alone with the trauma, but instead, when he asks, God says, the time when there was only one set of footprints was when I carried you.

I'm still angry that in the times of my life when I felt most angry, most rejected, most abandoned, instead of being understood, supported, prayed for, by the church, I was given a trite Bible verse, told to suck it up, told that others had it worse, told that I was suffering because of my sin, distracted, deflected, whatever so that the church could be full of seemingly emotionless zombies singing Psalms with "fervor" to the Lord.

Recovering from spiritual abuse, part 2 - pain and guilt

I think many will experience this differently. I experienced pain and guilt more while I was figuring out how to deal with the abusive situation than when I finally left. My RPCNA journey reached a pinnacle of sorts soon after I graduated college, and a steady decline.

The guilt I had was in seeing abusive leadership and not trying to stand up against it and protect the abused*. There was some pain in being one of "those people" who, if the leaders were asked, left the RP church because they couldn't stand the strict righteousness required and held some area of sin too closely. Yet, in the process of leaving, I was reprimanded for bringing up my "many grievances". So, I guess the little I did speak up was already too much for the leaders to bear.

I did have a great fear that I would try to escape the pain of church. The first Sunday post-RPCNA, I drove to a church that I had researched online. The sermons didn't have the self-doubt and authoritarian lingo I heard from NAPARC churches. When I turned off the car, a thought washed over me. No one would know if I started my car again and drove away. I had some regrets when I had to walk through the welcoming committee and got pulled aside to get my "Hey everyone! I'm a first time visitor!! bag". But, those regrets soon vanished when the service started and I saw people worshiping in their own individual way. Some sat, some stood, some raised their arms and some swayed. It wasn't like people singing "Oh praise the Lord!" loudly in four-part harmony, but with absolutely no hint of joy on their faces. I heard a pastor preach that it was okay to take our anger, our pain, our negative emotions in prayer before God. That God wanted us to draw near, not like a beggar addressing a king, but like a loving father.

In the next few weeks, I would meet with a few of the RPCNA leaders who tried to find the appropriate way to apply the right amount of guilt to me. What right did I have to take the elders' valuable time and energy when they were so busy dealing with other peoples' issues? If I had just disagreed in the "appropriate" way, I would be listened to. Come back and be a part of the solution (if they didn't listen to me in the past...why would they listen to me now?)

In a sense, the "excruciating" pain came from a mutual process of disconnection. Since invitations happened in the church, I simply didn't get invited. When friendships were centered around church, there was nothing else in common to hold us together. Even going to a church-related family event post-exit was awkward. At that point, there was a pain of being unable to participate in significant events. Marriages, funerals, graduation parties - they were all centered around the church.

Note(*) - While I saw the abuse of the church, I was mostly blind to the impact it had on me. I was mostly concerned about protecting those around me. When I had disconnected from the RP church for maybe six months, my eyes started to be opened to how pervasive the abuse was and how crippling it was. Much of it was hidden in hypocritical/contradictory behavior. For example, we are praised for being this pinnacle of righteousness, yet at the same time berated week after week for our filthy rags and unworthiness. Because I felt worth (pride/self-righteouness) along with unworthiness (not measuring up), it was hard for me to really know how worthless I really felt in the abusive environment.