Why Christians Hurt You at Church
Understanding what happened may help you move on from your pain
Many years ago I had a terrible experience at church. It was so painful that I quit my job, sold my house, and took my wife and two children to a new location hundreds of miles away. Many other people in many other churches have had experiences much worse than mine. But many of our stories fit into a similar pattern.
In my case, I did not stop attending church. I continued attending various churches for decades because I wanted to understand what had happened. I even moved back to the city I’d left after a couple of years and tried going back to the church where I’d gotten hurt. Over the years I got hurt again a couple of times at various churches. I used those opportunities to try responding in better ways. And I studied whether or not my different responses led to different outcomes.
I eventually learned that much of my pain resulted from an important but unspoken difference in views about Jesus between different people at church. I will explain that lesson here with the hope that it will help others deal with their pain.
How I realized there were two different views of Jesus
My insight came, ironically, when I started talking to non-Christians a few years ago. I was surprised to discover that non-Christians have a different idea of Jesus and of love than Christians do. (Of course I am speaking very generally here; this is a short article, not a book. “Christian” is short for “conservative Christian”, for example.)
If you are a conservative Christian, you may have trouble grasping the non-Christian conception of Jesus and of love I’m going to describe. It’s difficult for anyone to see two different perspectives on anything; we all tend to think there is one perspective, our own, and then all those wrong perspectives held by others. It’s even easier not to realize there are multiple perspectives at all. We typically take it for granted when we talk about Jesus that we all mean the same thing.
For me, the reason I was able to comprehend the different views myself was probably because I didn’t enter into conservative Christianity until I was a teenager. I grew up thinking of Jesus the way non-Christians do. For me, talking to non-Christians these last few years brought back memories of my own initial view. It may be harder to grasp this non-Christian view of Jesus if you were raised in conservative Christianity.
The two views: “pagan” and “theological”
A non-Christian may not believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
Or that Jesus was divine.
Or that Jesus was born of a virgin.
Or that Jesus performed actual miracles.
Or that we know exactly what Jesus said.
Or that anything Jesus said was new.
Or that everything Jesus said was true.
Or that Jesus will return.
Or that Jesus even existed at all.
However, there is a general understanding among non-Christians that Jesus had some powerful ideas about how people should get along with each other. Something about love. This understanding may include the sense that Jesus’ ideas about love sometimes came across like commands. For lack of a better term, I’ll call this the “pagan” view.
For conservative Christians, Jesus is very, very different. Sure, He may have said some interesting things during His earthly ministry. But all that matters now is something about blood and the cross. Because of that something, once you are a Christian you can do whatever you want and know you will go to heaven, while all your friends who choose not to agree with you will go to hell. I’ll call this the “theological” view.
In the “theological” view, every single person is either “lost” or “saved”. “Lost” people have problems. “Saved” people need to be nice to “lost” people, and help them with their problems, because helping them might lead them to becoming “saved”. “Saved” people, on the other hand, can’t really have problems — except, for some reason, illness. The existence of a problem suggests that something, somewhere might need to change, and there’s no room for change for anyone involved in any situation if that person is already “saved”.
Some people can’t get hurt at church
People at church with this “theological” view are pretty much immune from getting seriously hurt at church themselves. They know they are “saved”, the people around them are “saved”, and “problems” can’t really exist. Anything that looks like a problem can be made to disappear — or it can be fixed using the power of their social ties at church.
People with this view can’t really get hurt; it’s not a conceivable outcome for them. That means, importantly, they also can’t comprehend how anyone else who is really “saved” like they are could get hurt either. Anybody at church who openly expresses a serious need or pain (besides something related to illness) may not really be “saved”. That’s the only explanation that fits well with the theology.
Who can get hurt at church
But there are also people at church with what I’ve called the “pagan” view of Jesus — the view that the church is a community of people working together to follow and serve Jesus, including at least parts of what He seems to have taught.
Such a person might end up at church in a couple of ways. One way, which I’ll come back to, is to be a child. Children have a natural expectation of the kind of love Jesus talked about. Another way is to come into the church from the outside, perhaps with needs. But the key thing is to come into the church while holding the pretty much universal understanding of Jesus that is held outside the church itself.
An important step in the process of getting hurt at church occurs when a person with some expectation of love at church, that is, someone with the “pagan” view, identifies as “saved”. In the minds of those with a “theological” view of Jesus, that newly “saved” person instantly stops being a person with needs that might lead them to Jesus. Now the person is on the team and is expected to help maintain the status quo.
Something terrible happens
Now we are ready to talk about how you get hurt at church. In the pattern I’m describing you will have two characteristics: (1) you have an expectation that the church involves love somehow and (2) you are viewed by others in the church as “saved”. You have those characteristics and then something terrible happens.
The terrible thing could be large or small, multiple incidents or only one. Amazingly, there is often a fairly obvious solution. But the vast majority of people at church will react by moving away from any solution — away from accountability and healing and growth. Instead, because of their “theological” world-view, they will work hard to deny or cover up the terrible thing itself.
If you were one of those who hold to the “theological” view of Jesus, you would go along with the advice to “forgive” and “move on”. You might feel hurt but not a lot. However, because you have some expectation of genuine love from the church — that “pagan” view — you will be pained, you will be devastated by the reaction of people at church.
At the deepest level, it’s not the terrible thing(s) someone has done, it’s the way everybody else at church actively supports those terrible thing(s) that drives people away from church.
As I look back over my own painful experiences at church, here’s what I remember most clearly: sitting with my wife in a room with a pastor or church leader, telling our story and then just getting a blank stare. I’ve had that experience multiple times over the years. Decades later, I see it’s that silence that baffled and hurt me the most. But now I understand the silence. And that understanding helps me move on in a healthy way.
What about children?
As I study the stories of people who have left the church I think I can understand the pain. The stories often seem to match the pattern I’ve outlined above — a pattern I’ve experienced myself. But in many of the stories I’ve heard, the “expectation of love” part of the pattern comes in because the person getting hurt was a child. Set aside the topic of sexual abuse for a moment; I’m also talking about the extreme and persistent psychological and emotional abuse heaped on many, many children in the church. I acknowledge this; I don’t have anything to say about it. I’m very fortunate I was a teenager before I got involved in the church.
Conclusion
When two people truly fall in love with each other, there is an understanding of vulnerability, the knowledge that each person can hurt the other. The key to getting over hurt at church is to understand that the church never intended to love you in the first place.
