Today, I Was Spiritually Violated

Violated.

That’s how I feel.

Completely violated.

I am still reeling from a conversation I just had with a hardcore fundamentalist Christian. Though, it would be generous to call it a conversation. The word “lecture” would be a better description.

It all started when I bumped into a guy at a wedding that I hadn’t seen in years. He knew me back when I was a pastor in a conservative evangelical church. And while I was always a square peg in a round hole in that environment, I was rather more orthodox in my beliefs than I am now.

Heck… who am I kidding? I’ve pretty much become one of those wicked liberal Christians that conservatives loathe and fear.

He asked me how life and ministry were going, and for a moment, I thought about lying and just saying, “Yeah, terrific!” But I had already consumed slightly too much liquor by that point — as one does at weddings — and that, unfortunately, tends to unlock in me a tendency to be unhelpfully honest.

So, I told him straight that I’d walked away from the church. I still have faith in Christ, but it looks different now. As I shared about my deconstruction journey, his brow began to furrow like ripples at the edge of a pond. I think I even saw him wince when I used the word “deconstruction.” And, at some point, he must have decided that I was hopelessly backslidden and needed to be saved… again.

That’s when the Bible-bashing started. It went something like this…

Let’s pretend to have a dialogue

I knew it was a bad sign when he said to me, “Dan… if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Sounds good,” I lied.

“Do you believe that the Bible is the word of God?” He asked.

I rolled my mind’s eyes. This was not going to be a conversation. This was going to be an interrogation. Even so, I decided to give an honest answer… “Geez, I’m not really sure….”

But he cut me off. “How can you lead other people if you don’t believe that? That’s how cults start! It’s dangerous.”

The conversation followed this pattern. He would ask a question. I would start to answer it. He would cut me off mid-sentence. He would tell me how I was wrong.

I have the truth, so you’d better listen to me

This man probably believed he was engaged in a dialogue. He may have even patted himself on the back later for being so accommodating — in his own mind.

But a dialogue consists of two people reciprocally sharing. One speaks. The other listens. They take turns. More importantly, a dialogue is utterly impossible with someone who believes that they are right and you are wrong. Because this man already understood and knew everything, he could debate and discuss, but he could not dialogue with me. After all, whatever I might share with him was merely an opportunity for him to help me know what he knew so that he could fix and correct me.

One of the most despicable attitudes among Christians is the one that says, “I have the truth. You don’t have the truth. You need what I have. You are lost. I am saved. You are walking around in the dark. I am enlightened. You need to learn from me. You have nothing of value to say to me, but what I have to say to you is of infinite value.”

This man had this attitude in spades. It made me cringe.

The Bible is clear…

Several times throughout his rants, he would use the phrase, “The Bible is clear, Dan! The Bible is clear!”

I felt like saying to him, “If the Bible were so clear, why are there a million different interpretations and ten thousand different Christian denominations all formed over disagreements in what the Bible is saying exactly?”

If the Bible is so clear, tell me why theologians and pastors can’t agree? Is it that the Bible is clear to some people but not others? The chosen few? Or could it be that the Bible is not clear on many things?

Why can’t Christians admit it? When they say, “Yes, but the Bible says . . .” they completely fail to recognize that they themselves are viewing scripture through a particular lens — namely, the glasses of their own tradition. Almost always, those glasses are handed down to us by our spiritual ancestors.

The German evangelical theologian W. Schlichting wrote: “The blind spot of the biblicists is that they do not realize the extent that their own thinking is influenced by the time in which they live, by their predecessors and their surroundings — while they criticize this attitude severely in others.”

It’s written in black and white

My friend insisted that Jesus died to pay the price for our sins. “It’s written in black and white,” He said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that penal substitutionary atonement theory was really only popularized about 400 years ago by John Calvin.

For most of Christian history, Christians have had other theories about the purpose of the death and resurrection of Christ. Who would have thought?

However, to my overzealous evangelizer, it was black and white. He told me I was wicked from birth, destined for hell, but the good news is that if I accepted Jesus, I would be saved because God punished Jesus instead. There couldn’t possibly be another way of understanding it!

It was either his way or the highway (to hell).

His was a world of black and white. In and out. Good and evil. Saved and unsaved. In his world, there was no room for nuanced thinking — no space for the hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. The kind of thinking that reduces everything down to just two options where one is the right way, and one is the wrong way is known as dualism.

Dualistic thinking works well for the sake of simplification and conversation but not for the sake of truth or the immense subtlety of actual personal experience. Or, to put it simply, this kind of thinking takes no account of the individual person, which is precisely the opposite approach to that of Jesus Christ.

Hell avoidance is the goal

And, of course, he talked about hell.

A lot.

You would be forgiven for believing that the highest goal of this man’s version of Christianity was avoiding hell. “Don’t you care that people are perishing?” He asked, flushing red as he did.

I get it. The fear of hell is a very powerful motivator. With the threat of hell hanging over me, I was very cooperative and compliant when it came to accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior back when I was a child.

But these days, I believe that using fear and shame as a means of binding people to certain beliefs or practices related to God is actually a form of spiritual abuse.

You’re not a suitable person to lead anyone else

When I didn’t provide the answers he wanted to hear, he decided to resort to personal attacks.

“You’re not a suitable leader. If you don’t have the basics worked out, what business have you in leading others?” He scoffed.

Without realizing it, he uncovered one of the fatal flaws in the modern Western institutionalized church: There is no room for doubts. Questions are shouted down. Belonging is given to you when you agree to a certain set of beliefs, ideas, and behaviors (some of which are Biblical). If you deviate from the socio-spiritual norms of the faith system, you do not belong anymore, and people will make sure you know that.

Further, my friend unwittingly divulged a major problem with church leadership. He basically insinuated that a man with doubts and questions is unsuitable to lead. What a terrible burden to have to bear! How unrealistic and how utterly fake. This is how we end up with the Brian Houstons of the world… surviving in ministry on a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills. This is how we end up with Ravi Zacharias — presenting as a pillar of wisdom and knowledge only to be exposed as an abuser and a deviant.

The message for church leaders is clear: Suppress your doubts, hide your fears, quash your questions, and keep your wounds hidden. Present to the church as something you are not so that they can maintain the illusion that faith without doubts is possible.

I faithfully carried out the Lord’s work

After I finally managed to escape from the conversation, the man walked away, giving thanks to God that he had the opportunity to preach the “good news,” quietly congratulating himself for having faithfully administered the Word of God.

At least in his mind.

As for me, I felt attacked. I felt repulsed by his version of Christianity. And as for his evangelistic efforts, I felt violated — spiritually violated.

A lesson learned

I cringe at the fact that once upon a time, I used to have these kinds of conversations with people as well. Sure, I don’t think I was overly rude, loud, and abrasive like the guy who cornered me. But then, I’m sure he didn’t think he was rude, loud, and abrasive either. So… maybe I was?

What a horrible thought!

One thing I know: I definitely used the threat of eternal damnation as a way to convince people to accept Jesus. And I regret it. But today, I am thanking God that he has shown me what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such conversations.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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