Originally written January 2013.
{TRIGGER ALERT: Today’s post is about Spiritual Abuse}
Continued from “Divorcing the god of Hierarchy”
THE ABUSIVE CYCLE
One of the first things you learn in an abusive recovery class is this tool: what an abusive cycle looks like. As I was getting ready for bed one night, I was thinking about how this cycle is often perpetuated in many relationships of our day…and wondered if this could be at the route of Spiritual Abuse. If you don’t mind, let’s play along with my idea for a minute:
Honeymoon Stage: Everything is all rosy, perfect, sweet. Both parties are flying high on the emotional connectedness they feel for the other, on the energy they feel called “being in love”. For the Church and us, it is the idea that god loved us so much he sent his one and only son to show us the way to himself and then to die in our stead. What could be more picturesque of love than a god saying that he will sacrifice his own son for us so that we can be with him?
Tension Building Stage: This is when things between the lovers starts to head south a bit. One of the lovers does not like something the other has done and tries to share this with their lover. But instead of there being a conversation that leads to some resolution, one or both start to shut down in fear of being hurt or of losing their position of power. They start pointing fingers, enacting the silent treatment, etc.
For our relationship with the Church, this tension builds around issues like:
- not tithing enough
- not serving enough
- considering taking care of yourself important while the Church calls you selfish, prideful, vain and worse
- having sex outside of marriage
- not holding the Doctrine and/or the Bible as the Supreme Authority over your life
- admitting that you are 10% of the population and prefer same sex to opposite sex
- admitting that you agree homosexuals have a right to love and marriage just as much as you
- not “voting” your values
- deciding divorce is better than being killed by someone who “loves” you
- deciding that women ARE equally gifted and capable of teaching/pastoring/leading
- claiming to be a woman who is gifted with gifts to see the world through her own glasses and challenges the current Church system
- deciding that there is a Feminine Divine as well as the Masculine and you wish to see Her brought into your Church to Balance the Masculine
- not submitting to a certain church’s leadership and/or disciplinary actions they want you to take in order to prove yourself
- deciding the Doctrine touted by the System is not really helping you LOVE as Christ called you to love, so you start to publicly challenge it.
The list could go on.
What is really happening is that you are showing you are a separate person from the entity of the Church, one who has your own thoughts and feelings and dare I even say it – authority over your OWN Soul and you are willing to exercise that authority.
When the tension reaches a certain point, it moves us into the 3rd stage.
Explosion Stage: In the diagram above they call it acute battering stage…it’s the same thing. In one-on-one abuse, the person who wants to remain on top (which is always driven by their own fear of not being a valuable enough person/entity themselves) uses whatever means they can to keep the person they wish to keep on bottom…on bottom. This could be as little as raising the voice to intimidate the other, it could be throwing a few things around so that they look serious…it could be threatening them or their kids with violence. If these means do not work, the one on top has many other tools in their tool bag…financial abuse, verbal/emotional abuse, knowledge abuse, religious abuse, the threat of harm to their own body or suicide because you are causing them depression, and the tools go on.
Abuse doesn’t ALWAYS look ugly and scary like we have seen in the movies…abuse can be very subtle and nondescript…but the intent is always the same: find what makes the other person falter or give up who they are so that they will be who you want them to be and can thus remain on top. This allows them to remain ignorant of their own fears and anxieties.
The System of the Church, really driven by fear of losing their position of power to dictate the word of god as IT views it, turns up the heat by doing things such as getting people to pray for you, to talk to you, to try to “gently” or not so gently coax you back to the “right” way of thinking – their way. The Power of the System is strong…and IT moves in such similar ways to the actual TRUTH, we just perceive it as the TRUTH. The System often times seems to be acting independently through different people…random friends that do not even know each other nor your pastor/priest approach you all with the same message.
How does this work if it is not “of God”? It works because the System has taught us well. We have all drank virtually the same “Kool-aid” for hundreds of years and can spot when someone is challenging the System and threatening the homeostasis of the “group think”.
How many times have we heard of a “black sheep” story and are asked to pray for them to “see the error of their ways” until there is an answer that the black sheep finally returns to the group? How many side conversations did this person have to experience with well-meaning friends, family and acquaintances about how they must just not be seeing things straight, they must not be living correctly, they must just not be professing the right things and that is why this person has “strayed?” How long can someone in this position not familiar with the cycle of abuse literally refute these well-meaning conversations before they get tired and succumb to the pressures of those around him/her and once again “fall in line” with the familiar homeostasis of the group – even if it is dysfunctional? Is this REALLY the working of God in this person’s heart…or is it the working of “group think” and much pressure put on this person by the people in his/her life that only wish for him/her to “return to the fold” and to once again drink and eat from the same Kool-aid?
How is this above pattern any different than a co-dependent family member who continues to enable the dysfunctional abuser or alcoholic because it is more familiar and comfortable than the seeds of change?
Here is one real world example of how subtle Spiritual Abuse can appear in this day and age: Sue Monk Kidd in her book The Dance of a Dissident Daughter talks about her conversation with a priest who was “concerned” about the path Sue was now leading. Here are her words:
The System might shout at you loudly, like with pastors like Mark Driscoll. Or it might be very quiet and just give you that “gentle yet disapproving stare” like the priest in Sue’s story. Whether it shouts at you till you cannot hear yourself think, or sends subliminal messages that you are not worthy to trust yourself…the System will find out whatever means works to get you to bow down over and over again.
Once you have bowed down again, the System will then lovingly stroke your hair, pet your shoulder and remind you of how much god loves you that he sent his only son to die for you. That they are so glad to have you back into the fold, to welcome you home once again, to have you recommitted to your commitment to the “Jesus” (which is really their version of Jesus)…no matter if its your 2nd or 100th time.
And before you know it, you are right back inside the honeymoon stage getting ready for another go on the Crazy Ride of “love.”
A STORY OF THE UNDERWORLD
Why in the world would any of us unknowingly want to ride this Crazy Ride?
For it is much easier to go through life in a bubble, to live in a world with people who all eat, drink and speak the same language as us than to be confronted by the uncomfortableness that others potentially are not us. If we realize that people are not us, that they have their different ideas and beliefs that challenge our own world, well we then have to confront our own internal world – the world that lies beneath our conscious level. The world that lies in the “underworld”…in Hades…that is in our subconscious.
The subconscious world in Ancient days was referred to as a place of “death,” of “decay,”…it was their idea of Hell. Where the idea of the masculine essence was where conscious thought lived, where light shined…the idea of the subconscious was the feminine side of life. It was a place where light doesn’t shine, where ugly things happen, where things that don’t always make sense in the “conscious” world happen ~ where there is often “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The subconscious was a place of deep power, mystery and sacredness…if not also of great fear. It was a place where if you went, you didn’t return…at least not as the same person as you once were. In order to return, you had to die to your old self..and had to experience a rebirth. You had to forfeit your old self. You had to find a substitute to take your place in order for you to return to the land of the living. Basically, you had to “sacrifice” yourself in order to be rebirthed.
This above is actually not the story Jesus. Well it is, but he actually doesn’t lay the earliest claim in written history to this story. Inanna, also known as Ishtar or Astarte or Asherah, lays claim to the earliest version of this story. Inanna was a Goddess from Ancient Sumer. She was known as the Queen of Heaven and Earth…and the stories of her translate into a girl who learns and grows over the course of her years until she reaches adulthood at which point she becomes a god. Her last act before she reaches this point is to travel to the “underworld”. You can listen to this story by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom and downloading “Initiation of the Goddess.”
So my theory is this: it is easier for us humans inside the Church to avoid that dark place of the subconscious by staying in dysfunctional homeostasis in a System that seeks to have power and control over our lives than to actually confront the dark side of life. I mean heaven forbid we actually have to confront our own internal world and make changes that allow us to grow up. What fun is that?
THE MORE YOU RIDE THE HARDER IT IS TO GET OFF
So why do I share all this? Why am I putting myself out there like this?
Well, for one, because somehow or other a little over a year ago I was taken to some verses in Ezekiel. For the most part at the time they confused and alluded me as to what they had to do with my life at the time…until I got to chapter 34.
See, I was, as I often did, praying about the abuse I saw inside the relationships in the Church and wanting to know what I could do to help. These verses are a result of that prayer. True, while I now see much of the Bible in a different light; I do think the real God, the one labeled LOVE shows up in the Spiritual Truths exemplified in the Bible, and chapter 34 seems for the most part to be an example of this. Ezekiel has some pretty harsh words for those shepherds of his day…and I cannot help but think the Divine Love has a message for us in our day and age as well using ancient texts in metaphorical ways.
Lastly I share because I know the power of the System…I know how incredibly hard it is to see when abuse is happening right in front of you because you hold out hope and love in your heart for the very best from people or the Tradition/System you have served with your whole heart. This hope and love makes you blind to the reality of abuse…and so you continue to stay for another round, hoping this time it is different…this time you will get a chance to make things different. This time you will find the love you are looking for. The only thing you do not realize is that the more rounds of the Crazy Ride you stay for, the more hooked you are.
See this cycle is NOT a flat circle going round and round. No it is like a cyclone, with each round taking you further and further down to the center, to its “heart”…the power growing ever stronger…making a break from your abuser, that person or System on top harder each time you stay on for another round.
The only way to get off the Crazy, Cyclical Ride of “love” is to step out of it before the honeymoon stage starts again…the only way to stop feeding the System is to starve it.
