Unveiling the Church’s Silent Weapon

“When you get to die,” The preacher explained, “You’ll come face to face with God, and then you’ll have to explain everything you’ve done.”

“I can imagine that there will be a big screen where your entire life will be replayed — every word, every thought, every action — even those done in secret, will be laid bare for everyone to see!”

I was a teenager — one of several hundred — sitting in another Christian youth rally, listening intently to the “Good News” of the Gospel, as declared by the evangelical tradition. The preacher man went on:

“You and I both know that there are things that you have done that you are ashamed of. You would die of embarrassment if everyone got to see all the wrong things you have done.”

My best mate sitting next to me shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. Maybe he was thinking what I was thinking. The preacher cast his gaze from one side of the room to the other as if eye-balling each and every one of us individually; then, he paused for effect as if waiting for some desperate soul to cry out, “Tell us the answer! There must be an answer!”

And there was.

And the preacher man wasn’t going to wait to be asked for it. With full evangelistic fervor, he explained that surrendering your life to Jesus will set you free from all your guilt and shame. When God turns to you (presumably after watching your whole life on the big screen) and asks you to explain yourself, Jesus will step in on your behalf and explain to God how all the horrible things you’ve done are all forgiven because you put your trust in him.

Finally, the preacher gave us his ultimatum.

You will either accept Jesus now or be left to confront God in your miserable wretchedness, all by yourself, later.

So, I chose Jesus.

So did several hundred others in the room. What else could we have done? If a bullet is coming at your head, you duck and dodge the bullet.

A false conversion

Far too many years later, I realized that my conversion to Christianity had been something done under duress. I was pressured. I was shamed. I was emotionally manipulated. I was presented with a horrible choice, and I chose the path that I thought would deliver me from the nightmarish scenario presented to me from the pulpit — time and time again.

When I started following Jesus, I did it to avoid the consequences of not following Jesus. I did not love Jesus. I was not compelled to follow him by reading about his exemplary life through the Gospels. I was simply following Jesus to avoid punishment — to escape the flames — and to avoid the kind of public humiliation that might make one wish to vanish into thin air.

I arrived at a troubling conclusion: The church’s primary weapon to achieve many of its goals is shame. I think back over the years that I was part of the evangelical church, and I saw it time and time again — experienced it myself and, though it pains me to admit, participated in the shaming of others. It was the culture in which I was raised.

The many uses of shame

The church is full of lovely people beholden to a broken system — a guilt-based religious structure that ultimately keeps people enslaved. Here is a snapshot of the various ways that I have observed the use of shame and shaming in the church:

Using shame to create converts

Shame is used to convince people that they need to accept Jesus in the first instance. I want to say that my ‘conversion’ story was an exception to the common narrative, but sadly it is not. The threat of Hell was the sales pitch that was used to get many to sign on the dotted line when it came to following Christ. Vivid images of having your worst sins exposed for all the world to see are all too typical.

Annette Kämmerer, in her article on the scientific effects of shame, points out that adolescents are more susceptible to the harmful effects of shame than fully grown adults. It makes me wonder if the whole “Your-life-will-be-played-back-on-the-big-screen” illustration was actually used by design to achieve a particular result or elicit a certain response in teenagers.

Either way, a person will only follow another out of fear for so long before deciding to break free from their puritanical regime. Love, on the other hand, compels a person to follow indefinitely. The problem is that love takes longer to reap a harvest than fear, and the church has never been known for its patience.

Using shame to create conformity

Shame is used in the church to make people conform to the norms of the group. Belief, in any system, is a social exercise. Nowhere is this more evident than in the evangelical church. To be part of the community, there’s a set of supposed “truths” you’re expected to embrace — some of which go beyond what’s directly stated in the Bible, often rooted more in tradition and dogma than in the practical teachings of Christ.

Challenge the idea of Scripture’s absolute perfection, express support for gay marriage, or question the literal interpretation of a seven-day creation, and you’ll likely feel the chill of exclusion. The more liberal your beliefs, the more you may find yourself viewed with suspicion.

In the evangelical church, there’s not much room for independent thinking. Those with unconventional views are often subtly shamed through gossip or directly from the pulpit, as concerned pastors aim to squash any perceived heresy before it spreads. When you voice doubts or ask tough questions, your well-meaning Christian friends may betray a sense of worry. The desire to belong often leads us to stifle our doubts, as we’ve witnessed the fate of those who refuse to conform — they end up on the outskirts of the community.

Using shame to generate income

Shame is used in the church to make people open their wallets and give. In a system where churches spend around 75% of their income on paying the pastor’s wage and maintaining the church building, money really does make the world go around.

If I had a dollar for every time I had been guilted into giving more money to the church, I would have a considerable amount of money to give to the church. The ancient Old Testament practice of tithing — giving away a tenth of your income — has found its home in modern Christian churches, even though much of the rest of the Old Testament has been dispensed with. Moreover, the biblical command to tithe is taken to literally mean, “You ought to be giving your money to the institutionalized church.”

What is even more abhorrent than this is the suggestion that your financial giving is somehow linked to the blessing of God. Some churches will assert that the more you give, the more God will bless you. In fact, your monetary gifts are capable of unlocking the blessing of God, they say. Commonly known as the “prosperity Gospel,” this mindset insinuates that God can somehow be ‘bought off’ and that the blessing of God is somehow for sale. Appalling!

Consequently, the church has, at times, suggested that if your life is not going according to your plan, perhaps you are not giving enough of your cash. Either way, the message presented in the church is clear. Good Christians give their money to the church. Bad Christians do not.

Using shame to lift attendance

Shame is used in the church to make people participate, attend, and serve. As a Christian who does not attend a mainstream traditional church, preferring instead to practice my faith simply and free from the institution, I have experienced first hand the kind of shaming that is dispensed at the hands of good, Bible-believing, church-attending Christians towards those who choose not to attend, participate and serve in a traditional church setting.

When I bump into friends from my past life — a life of church-attending — I am commonly asked where I am going to church these days. When I reply that I am not part of a congregation anymore, I am usually met with a mix of pity and concern and just a hint of indignation. “Well, I’ll be praying for you,” is the common conclusion to these kinds of conversations — as if I were somehow a lost pagan.

In reality, since leaving the church, my faith has found new life. No longer is my life hyper-scheduled with prayer meetings, potluck suppers, and Bible studies, largely at the expense of God’s command to observe a Sabbath and have a rest. I am no longer made to feel bad for spending Saturday with my family instead of going to the church working bee.

Using shame to manage behavior

There’s a striking irony in the church’s message urging people to “Come to God as you are and receive full acceptance,” while at the same time endorsing a performance-based religious system that clearly outlines acceptable and unacceptable behavior through distinct boundary markers. How many of the sermons you hear in your average church, when you boil them down, are simply a message of condemnation: “You’re doing it wrong! Get better, do better, do this more, do this less,” and so on.

I cannot believe that I sat through so many sermons where I was told that I needed to improve myself — wherein all my very human actions, emotions, and reactions were painted as shameful to God.

Christianity is supposed to be a life-transforming faith, but it has been reduced to a sin-management program in many churches where there are very clear guidelines about what a good Christian is and does. The result is quite the opposite of the Gospel’s intent, with many believing that they don’t measure up, that they aren’t good enough for God and never will be.

The result of a shame-based system

Guilt-based religion and shame work well to keep the troops in line because shame certainly is a powerful motivator — but only in the short term. It does not result in real, lasting transformation. In the longer term, it produces some somewhat different results:

A misrepresented God

A system that relies on shame to achieve its goals inadvertently paints God in the same light. It’s like the church accidentally turned God into this stern, eye-rolling, head-shaking, fist-waving figure, forever disapproving and impossible to please. Worse, it portrays God as if he reluctantly came and died for our sins, making us feel perpetually guilty for causing his sacrifice in the first place.

So, here we have this version of “God” the church presents — struggling to show unconditional love or mercy to us, sinners, even though, if you ask Jesus, that’s supposed to be in God’s very job description.

It’s weird, right? Under the messages we’ve been hearing, we end up seeming more loving than God, and it’s hard to take God seriously. When I think about my non-Christian friends, regular folks, they’d usually cut someone some slack, overlook mistakes, and not even on their worst days think about torturing people who don’t like them, worship them, or believe in them. Yet, that is how the “God” that the church presents appears to be. He ends up looking rather petty, needy, narcissistic, and easily offended.

In the church, we’re told to love unconditionally, but the God who gives this command seems to have a rather conditional and exclusive love himself. We’re told to love our enemies, yet it appears “God” doesn’t get the memo and punishes them for all eternity.

Now, why would anyone want to trust or love such a God, let alone spend eternity with them?

Why would anyone trust or love such a God and want to follow him? Much less spend eternity with such a being?

I wouldn’t.

A breeding ground for hypocrites

In every sense, it feels like, in a church, you cannot be both fully known and fully loved. To be fully known seems to risk rejection, rooted in the invisible and unspoken expectations imposed by the church — expectations that everyone is, in reality, struggling to meet. This perpetuates a familiar problem, echoing back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve felt the need to hide from God, thinking that full exposure would lead to outright rejection.

Consequently, many churchgoers end up donning their metaphorical fig leaves, covering their shame and the feeling of not measuring up. Christians find themselves compelled to put on a facade, suppress their struggles, or become hypocritical because it seems like nothing they do is ever good enough. It’s not so much that hypocrites actively seek out churches, but rather that the evangelical church’s structures inadvertently push people to act and pretend.

At some point, many Christians — finally fed up with the sheer level of energy it takes to play this game — give up and leave the church for good. Often these are people of real inner integrity and spiritual intelligence who refuse to deny, repress, or pretend any longer. In a cruel twist, they are treated as backslidden, fallen, and unfaithful Christians by those who remain inside the system — what a tragic irony.

A Church without shame

All of my experiences of the church to date — some four decades worth — have taught me that the church, as it is right now, couldn’t function without shame.

And that’s a shame.

I wonder, though, what would a church look like if it did not resort to shame and shaming to achieve its goals? Could we really convince a person that Christ is worth following based on the compelling life that he lived, wherein he demonstrated that he is the preeminent teacher and practitioner of love, compassion, and mercy?

Could the man who was humiliated and hung naked on a cross convince us all that in shamelessly bearing our wounds to the world, we may actually become agents of healing and change?

Could we become a community without pretense, where the need to act, perform, and pretend was overrun by unconditional acceptance and love?

I am not ashamed to say that I am holding on to that hope.

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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.

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