Phoenix Faith - Toxic Christianity

It amazes me to discover more and more the extent to which toxic and unchallenged dogma really hurts people. Those most hurt by it don’t even realise the damage. Like fish in water who don’t know they’re wet.

One massive thing this existential journey has been about is being able to hope and believe that transcendent goodness and love actually exists. I realise now that my whole life has been a struggle to believe that was true. A sense of awe and transcendence and enchantment, I've always felt about the world. Religious context or not.

But that it was good and loving? Or that I could be a recipient of divine love and goodness? Doctrine and dogma made that much harder to accept. It's hard to fully trust and hope in certain contradictory and disturbing depictions of deity.

I think given the Christian ideas and theology which most of us who grew up Evangelical were exposed, it's no wonder that this issue occurred.

Don't believe me? Just try taking about self-love, self-care and self-esteem. These ideas are absolutely anathema in many Protestant circles. Don't even get me started on Reformed or Calvinist ones. That's a whole other monster.

But this is not just an Evangelical/Protestant problem. There is a real self-destructive and self-deprecating aspect to much of Christian theology which goes further than just trying to make one humble, but it’s trying to make one believe that they are fundamentally scum all the while saying but inspite of yourself, someone, God, is willing to put up with you. To love a scum, a wretch such as I. It’s like wounding someone continually and then applying the balm so they’ll find it to be a sign of love. That’s more akin to abuse than love.

It doesn't even make sense unless one somehow believed that the imago dei was completely obliterated in humanity. Or if one held to some nonsense notion of a "sin nature" where evil, rather than being a disposition of the will, become some sort of actual substance, spiritual or otherwise that people inherit and are born with.

I don't want to say yet that this is what Christianity is of necessity, but it is how it is usually presented or implicitly taught. I realise now just how soul destroying this really is. How this can't really build up the human spirit without always imparting a deep sense that they are worthless, even if it preaches otherwise.

I believe that my next steps in growing will begin with undoing the years of self-destructive thoughts and patterns which go hand in hand with how religion is often presented.

How much more damage has been done that I'm yet aware about? God only knows.