The Hardest Part About Living with Religious Trauma
Marcos and Candice here,
Did you know what the hardest part about living with religious trauma is?
It’s what we call the “Omnipresent Bully Syndrome”…
Here’s what that means:
In most abusive relationships, the abusive party is someone who - with the right support - victims can get away from.
For example, this is what shelters are for. They are a safe place where you can go to get away from an abusive partner.
But when it comes to religious trauma, it doesn’t really work that way…
Because if God is the abuser, where can you go to get away from him?
If God is the one who insists that,
— you have to be perfect or else he’ll punish you in a “lake of fire”
— you have to stay with your abusive husband because he is the “head of the woman”
— you are automatically discredited from his love because you are LGBTQIA+
Then we are talking about an abuser that simply can’t be escaped.
Everywhere you go he is there.
And the toll this takes on our nervous systems is overwhelming.
This is the worst part (for some of us anyways) about religious trauma…
But there is good news. God isn’t like that at all. It’s man-made systems of control (institutions, establishments, social structures, religions, dogmas) that frame God this way in order to force us to zip our lips and comply with their crooked demands.
All in the name of “being a good Christian.”
And Jesus came to smash that toxic, nauseating view of God to bits. 🙌
The truth is, God is on the side of the oppressed, on the side of the marginalized and abused. ❤️
He is not cozying up to systems of power or coercion.
Quite the opposite, he is tearing all of them down. 🥳
And what this means is, once you see God as he really is,
rather than an Omnipresent Bully Syndrome, we start to experience an Omnipresent Friend…
A friend that is with us everywhere, and stands with us, even when the whole world seems against us…
Now the journey to this peace is not something that can be reduced to one step.
We never want to pretend that this stuff is easy or simple.
The journey can involve social worker support, therapy, and even medication (no shame in that!) as well as a new community that supports and empowers you…
But even though this journey can be big, we wanted to do our part by offering a new way of seeing God,
A way to break the spell of man made lies,
And finally start to see him as he really is,
Not a bully in the sky,
But a humble king, serving us with love and compassion, filling our lives with his beautiful friendship…
If thats something you want, keep checking your emails every week. We have more content all focused on seeing God with new eyes coming your way.
As survivors of religious trauma ourselves, its our gift to you. ❤️
With love,
Marcos & Candice
PS. Discovering this new way of seeing God is what our app, “Hunger” is all about. No religious weight. No churchy expectations. Just you and Jesus. 🤗
