When the Gospel isn’t Good News. I don’t remember logistical details. I…
By: Emily Hedrick
Tags: Christianity, Emotional Abuse, Spirituality, Trauma, Religion

When the Gospel isn’t Good News

Getting saved can feel like hell.

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I don’t remember logistical details. I can’t tell you where I was. I don’t know who I was with or who the speaker was. What I do remember is that I was short, that I was sitting cross-legged in the grass surrounded by other children, and that I was pulling grass up out of the ground through my small fists. I was five. I was being told I was going to hell for my sins.

It was such a strange suggestion: I did bad things and therefore I couldn’t go to heaven unless I believed God’s son died for me.

I knew about Jesus. I’d been in Sunday school since I was a toddler. I liked Jesus. I didn’t realize I had to use him to get to heaven. I just wanted him to be my friend.

But I knew I did bad things sometimes as I was trying to figure out how the world worked. I stole a Reese’s peanut butter cup from the grocery store once when I was 3 -and I think maybe a word search book a little later. I was 3, so my memory is faulty, but from what I can recall, I didn’t understand why we had to go through so much rigmarole at the grocery store. I figured things could be more efficient if I wasn’t constantly asking permission to have things that were just sitting there. I did realize my mistake after the fact. I knew I did things that others would not approve of, so… I guess I was wretched?

I liked adults. I trusted them. They liked to talk about things, and I liked to talk about things. So even though what this adult stranger was telling me didn’t make much sense, I trusted. I prayed the sinner’s prayer. I entered fundamentalist Christianity, hoping folks were steering me in the right direction.

It wasn’t that big of a day. I imagine the adults I informed were relieved. If we’re assuming the truth of what I was told, no one wants their kid to be tortured for eternity. So it’s great when she accepts the possibility of eternal damnation and acts in prudent preparation for the afterlife.

But the underlying message, There’s something wrong with you. Do what I say and it will be okay, and my response to it, I have questions, but this seems like the most risk-free option, provided the foundation for trauma later on.

For their inherent wellbeing, children need to know that they’re safe and loved. Children depend on adults to provide this for them. Demanding that a child protect and love themselves in lieu of parents is inherently traumatizing.

And let’s face it, if a person believes that each individual must be saved from hell by believing in Jesus, we’re living in a world in which parents cannot protect their children from God. The moment a child learns it is up to her alone to think and do the right things in order to not suffer forever, that there’s nothing a parent can do to save them other than encourage them in the right direction, we are setting up a traumatic reality. A child cannot take on an angry God by herself.

But she must.

There are two things going on in this scenario. Emotional abuse and emotional neglect. The abuse starts from the very beginning of the “gospel” story. There’s something wrong with you. Do as I say and you’ll be okay. Emotional abuse, like other forms of abuse, is about control. It includes convincing a person that they cannot trust their own thoughts and feelings. With eternal damnation on the line, I was not about to trust my questions, and my feelings were secondary to imminent danger.

The need to control others in order to save them from hell almost seems loving, but it is not. The longer a person believes there’s something wrong with her, the more sense of self she loses, the easier it becomes to internalize shame, guilt, and toxic self-criticism that takes over her inner monologue later. That toxic inner monologue is a key symptom of C-PTSD.

And that toxic inner monologue is easily supported in the Christian tradition. It is reinforced in the lyrics of our favorite hymns, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” It can be hurled at us regularly from the pulpit — especially in churches where we are constantly being told about our “sin nature.” I can’t count the times I heard testimonies about kids re-asking Jesus into their hearts at summer camp just to be sure. The graceful forgiveness of God cannot stick with a story that starts by informing us of our wretchedness. Shame and hell will win every time.

Then comes emotional neglect. Emotional neglect surfaces when children’s (and adults’) genuine questions and fears about an abusive God are dismissed.

Pete Walker, whose writing has been incredibly helpful for me as I define the nuances of abuse in Christian theology, defines emotional neglect as “when a child does not have a single parent or caretaker to whom she can turn in times of need or danger.” For children who get evangelized into Christianity with fire and brimstone, there is often no parent in the room for them — the parents are taking advantage of free “family-friendly” childcare. Even parents themselves can cause emotional neglect after the fact. Because there are patterns of trauma in the stories we’ve been telling about God for decades (or centuries or millennia), religiously traumatized parents can experience children’s questions and feelings about God as dangerous and therefore dismiss them. With no room for the child’s feelings or thoughts to be validated, the narrative of there’s something wrong with me is reinforced.

Emotional abuse and neglect are not in and of themselves trauma, but they can be traumatic. With foundational beliefs of There’s something wrong with me and There’s a powerful force out there that wants to kill me forever unless I do what I’m told, the groundwork is laid for C-PTSD to develop.

Not all of us will experience trauma from the same things. Trauma is about the bodily reaction to traumatic experiences — not the experiences themselves. Many Christians experience love and hope through Christianity. Some people I grew up with in similar or even the same religious spaces have positive associations with the Christian tradition. That’s great.

But, when we can’t acknowledge the potential trauma within our beloved religious traditions, we run the risk of causing further harm in the name of God. It is imperative for the spiritually wounded and spiritually empowered to have open conversation about traumatic theology and how to heal from it. Otherwise, we isolate ourselves from each other and traumatic cycles continue.