Hello my friends,

Given the uncertain times that we are in, I wanted to share a bit of my personal struggles with mental health in an effort to encourage you to prioritize yours, which includes decoupling yourself from bad theology that can make it worse. I hope you find my story to be an encouragement to take care of yourself as you take care of others.

But first, here are some resources to consider:

​-icuTalks: End The Stigma I shared this last week, but given today's topic, I thought I would share it again. It is the talk I gave at the icuTalks conference in May about ending the stigma around mental health in the church. They have many other helpful videos on Youtube as well as resources on the topic of mental health on their website.

​-He wore a toga and spoke Latin. This ancient philosopher can help you survive the anxiety of the 2024 election My dad sent me this article and I found it to be so insightful. I remember reading about stoic philosophy in seminary and it just brought so much of the wisdom I learned from it back to mind. With the anxiety of this election year, I think you will find this article really insightful and helpful.

​-Extremely American. The second season of this award winning podcast just recently dropped. It is created and produced right here in Boise, Idaho and this season focuses on Christ Church, which is Doug Wilson's church in Moscow, Idaho. It reveals the connective tissue between Doug Wilson's movement and the broader movement of Christian Nationalism. I highly recommend listening to both seasons.

​-When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion by Dr. Laura Anderson. Drawing from her own life and therapy practice, Dr Anderson helps readers understand what religious trauma is and isn't, and how high-control churches can be harmful and abusive, often resulting in trauma. She shows how elements of fundamentalist church life—such as fear of hell, purity culture, corporal punishment, and authoritarian leaders—can cause psychological, relational, physical, and spiritual damage. As she explores the growing phenomenon of religious trauma, Dr. Anderson helps listeners embark on a journey of living as healing individuals and finding a new foundation to stand on. Recognizing that healing is a lifelong rather than a linear process, she offers markers of healing for those coming out of painful religious experiences and hope for finding wholeness after religious trauma.

Okay, onto today's content.

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Bad Theology Is Bad For Your Mental Health.

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High controlling Christianity was the first Christianity I knew. It was the only kind of theology I thought there was. The theology I learned in the churches I grew up in gave me terrifying images of eternal torment in hell and getting “left behind” during the rapture if people didn’t turn and stay faithful to God. It painted a picture of a god who was as ruthless towards their enemies as they were severe towards their followers. It was clear I had to remain hyper vigilant because the line between being god’s enemy and being god’s friend was razor thin.

Given all the rigid rules and how skilled Satan was at getting us to trip into sin, I was constantly worried about messing up and risking my eternal salvation. It felt as though God was just watching over me waiting for me to screw up and judge me rather than caring for me every step of the way.

Needless to say, I grew into a very anxious teen. Then I was told by my church that my anxiety was a sin. Did you catch that? The same religious group that caused me to be so anxious about possibly being damned to hell for eternity by god if I sinned told me that my anxiety was a sin. I was going to hell because I was anxious about going to hell! Imagine believing in such a heartless god. You’ll notice I haven’t been capitalizing the ‘g’ in the word ‘god.’ It is because I no longer believe in that god.

High controlling Christianity gives you fear and calls it “God.”

Then it turns around and tells you that your fear is a sin.

I spent a lot of years thinking that I had irrevocably ruined my chances of going to heaven because of my anxiety. On top of all the other blunders one goes through in the process of becoming an adult, I legitimately thought I didn’t have a chance, which began to cause me to swing between anxiety and depression.

By the time I became an adult and because of some other tramatic life events, I vacillated between “fight, flight, and freeze,” with no middle ground between them. In a given moment, I would tense up and freeze because I thought an emotion or a decision might not be “in line with God” enough. So then I would respond defensively or leave the situation entirely, only to crash into depression later that day. This cycle would repeat itself throughout my life. It cost me jobs, relationships, and most of all, it cost me my physical and mental health.

It would take me years to unravel the picture of God I had been given. The picture of a vengeful, overbearing judge, who is just waiting for me to fail so they could inflict harsh penalties on me. The picture of someone who didn’t really love me but was rather so obsessed with their own “holiness” that they demanded complete conformity from everyone while threatening horrible consequences if they didn’t. When that is your picture of God, faith is not what you have. You just live in constant fear.

Then, one night in 2016, I had a brush with scuidiedal ideation. The vacillating between fight, flight, and freeze had gotten so severe within my high-stress job as a pastor and all the shame I felt like I deserved, that the anxiety and depression became utterly paralyzing. I didn’t think there was any way out. Thankfully, because of my dog Ripley, I made it through the night and called my mom, then my doctor, then a therapist.

Over the course of the next six months, I would be diagnosed with PTSD, be put on medication for extreme anxiety and depression, and be given EMDR therapy. I couldn’t believe the healing that came from this time. While not completely healed at the end of it— mental health recovery is a process after all—I still couldn’t believe the transformation. I felt like an entirely new person. For the first time in my life, I could have at least 5 uninterrupted minutes where I didn’t fear that my world was going to fall apart. With the mental practices I was gaining from therapy, 5 minutes then turned into 10, then 10 turned to 20, and then 20 turned to 30. I was starting to gain command over my anxiety rather than my anxiety commanding me.

Even though my picture of God is radically different than it was, I will still have moments of terror, where I question every thought and every emotion and every action, putting them all under a microscope, making sure they please God and those I love. In fact, I am writing this piece because I recently had one of those moments. It takes almost an entire day to recover from that kind of tailspin, which is so much better than it was before.

I would later learn the name for this behavior is “religious scrupulosity,” which is a type of OCD that comes from high controlling religion. People who experience it have constant obsessions, compulsions, and distress related to issues of faith, spirituality, and their religion. I am still one of those people.

This is what is so heartbreaking about the kind of theology given to me by the Christianity of my past. It literarily trapped me in a world of fear, where God would only love me if I lived as perfect as I possibly could but it set me up for failure by telling me I would never really measure up. Then when this fear began to breakdown my mental health, my mental illness was named as part of my failure. How could someone ever rise above the belief that they are inherently a failure? Why would you ever want to advocate a god who acted in such ways towards others?

To make matters worse, seeking counseling and therapy was also seen as “lacking faith” because you were supposed to rely on God to provide for all your needs. God needed to be the one you went to for these things and you needed to just have enough faith that God would get you through.

This is such isolating and dangerous theology. It literally lays the groundwork for mental abuse, then traps people in their mental illness, all while framing avenues of healing as lacking faith in God and threatening shame if you pursue them. This can (and has) led some Christians to feeling like they have no hope and no way out. This often leads to devastating consequences and even loss of life. As it almost did to me.

As someone who is both a pastor and who has been hurt by such terrible theology, these beliefs deeply offend me as a follower of Jesus. Not only because of the toll they take on people but because of how it presents God. In this belief system, God is not only seen as someone who will condemn you for suffering a mental illness, but as someone who is either unable or unwilling to heal people through therapy or counseling. What a limited, fragile, and tyrannical god. That is not the God revealed through Jesus Christ.

This is represented by one of the most common and most hurtful phrases I heard in my journey with mental illness, which is “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” This added so much shame upon my already unbearable experience, because I couldn’t handle it on my own. If I couldn’t handle it, I thought, I must not be relying fully on God. It turned my mental illness into something that was threatening my salvation. It just deepened my pain and my anxiety. No one deserves that kind of hurtful shame, especially during such a vulnerable moment in life.

Your Mental Illness Isn't A Sin

So, I write all of this to tell those who need to hear it, especially from a pastor, your mental illness is not a sin! What is sinful is when someone adds to your mental illness by telling you that your mental illness reveals a lack of faith in God. If anyone tries to imply that your mental health places you further from God, please direct them to this Psalm and remember its truth for yourself: “God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalms 34:18

We must normalize the awareness of the realities of mental illness, especially within the church. We must remove the negative stigmas surrounding therapy and counseling, which avenues through which God can powerfully work.

Please know that you are loved by God and get whatever help you need and may you find support and encouragement from your spiritual community.

Remember:

God heals through therapists too.

You matter. Your mind does too.

Take your mental health seriously.

Make sure your faith community does too.

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