xjwsforChrist

[Guest post written by Deanna M. Boudov]

If you are like me and you were indoctrinated as a Christian since birth by your character-impaired parent(s), you may ask yourself: What came first, the religion or the personality problem? Sometimes these two wonderful things just come together in one wacky, messed-up package.

Neil and I are in a group of what I like to think of as a union of sorts, an International Brotherhood of Survivors of Christianity. We mostly just goof around on the internet, and on occasion meet up in Texas at a halfway-house for wayward adults. I am often shocked and heartbroken by Neil’s experiences in Dixie, and feel both guilty and grateful to live in the Northeast. Here Catholics and liberal Christians may think you are a complete weirdo for not sharing their beliefs, but the most likely scenario is that you are not going to lose your job, your spouse, or your lifelong friends. The worst that has happened to me outside of my relationship with my mother and brother is some side-eye, and the overbearing Italian mothers of my closest friends insisting that I am not really an atheist and ordering me to schedule my baby’s baptism.

I admire Neil’s desire to have the people around him understand him, and the graceful way in which he reaches out and responds to his critics. I myself have given up on being understood by Evangelical Christians. Neil has asked us how he can build a bridge so that people in the Bible Belt will stop being ignorant and hateful toward us irreligious folks. I have no good answers for him. The issue is deeper than the religion they practice, I truly believe the fallout he deals with has more to do with their narcissism than it does with their theology, and it is unfortunate that they use this theology as a justification for their narcissism.

People with character impairments are unskilled in practicing empathy. Granted, while many of them likely have zero empathy for others, they are often quite practiced in appearing as if they do. Some have empathy for those whom they consider to be like them, a part of their tribe, but none for anyone they consider to be “the other.” Some of them become aware that their self-absorbed behavior is negatively affecting their relationships and then begin to practice the skill of empathy in order to make positive changes. I think we see this when people change their opinions on homosexuality because someone they love “comes out” to them. Others who are deeply entrenched in their personality will never be able to change, or even see that their behavior is harmful. We see this in the people who abandon the people they pretend to love, because they are not living up to their (God’s) expectations. What they fail to grasp is that no one feels the love when their parents abandon them in the hope that this emotional manipulation will draw them back to God. Love usually feels like love, and this feels like exactly what it is: It is hate masquerading as love.

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD CHILDHOOD

Many of us who grew up in Christian households unknowingly experienced emotional abuse. We did not realize this at the time because in our culture some forms of emotional abuse pass for good parenting. A lot of us even believed we had good childhoods, and could not understand why we spent so many years struggling with low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. Hey, my mom clothed me, fed me, gave me shelter, she sent me to school, took me to church, and made sure I was polite. I did not get beaten often, or enough to leave marks, or sexually molested. On the other hand, I also did not get my emotions validated, get praised for being the person I actually am, or get my feelings mirrored back to me by an empathic parent. I did get shamed, however, and I did get to be on the receiving end of screaming, erratic rage. I did get to be responsible for managing my mother’s emotions and acting as her therapist. I did get to be called “stupid idiot” and get criticized for everything about me, including my physical appearance, or dismissed and yelled at simply for asking questions, or expressing my individuality. But that was only on the days I was actually getting attention; the rest of the time I was completely ignored. And because being responsible for a young child with needs was an inconvenience my mother did not have the energy for, I was a burden. Mind you, this was all considered “good parenting.” And if you ask anyone who knew me then, they will tell you I was a great kid, I was happy, I had a good childhood, and my mother was a great parent who loved me. So, you know, shut the f*** up about abuse, because it did not happen, do not rock the boat. Narcissistic family systems will make this clear: We will not change…the problem is you.

After my deconversion I got therapy for depression. I have had depression since I was a child. I did not even know what it was; I just thought I was born with something wrong with me. There was a deep emptiness in me that getting saved seven times, doing all my sacraments, trying to please my family by being a good girl, and begging God to help me could never fill. Jesus cannot give you any self-esteem if your parents consistently diminish you. He cannot magically fix bad parenting. I was reading literature about codependency, and as I mentioned before, I was astounded by how much I had in common with the adult children of alcoholics. The same family dysfunction, the same inconsistent, erratic parenting. But remember, my mother does not drink at all, and she denigrates alcoholics or anyone who drinks to excess. So I said to my therapist, “How can this be that I relate to this so much?” She responded, “Your mother is addicted to religion.” And I responded, “You can be addicted to religion?” It was the first time I had ever heard of this possibility. It did make sense, my mom does nothing but talk about her Christian beliefs. She works, cleans her house, talks to everyone about her work and cleaning her house, attends churchy things, reads the same rehashed Evangelical books; same crap material year after year, new exciting marketing cover! She prays in tongues and gets high on Jesus. She imposes her beliefs on anyone she comes in contact with but has such a lack of self-awareness that she believes she never shoved religion down my throat. She just did the right thing and what God wanted her to do.