I want to do a little thought experiment with you. I want you to imagine you are sitting with your best friend and they start to describe their relationship with one of their parents. For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s say it’s their dad, though it could just as easily be their mom. So there you are talking and they say, “The thing about my dad is, honestly, I really don’t deserve his love.”
“Wait, what was that?” you say. Maybe you didn’t hear them correctly.
“I don’t deserve his love.” They repeat. And then they go on: “The thing about my dad that just blows me away is that he loves me even though I don’t deserve it. And I really don’t deserve it. I’m rotten. I’m broken. Honestly, I was born rotten. If there was any justice in this world he’d just throw me away, cut me off, be done with me. But he loves me, and that’s what makes him so wonderful.”
At this point you are looking at your best friend – whom you know and love – like maybe they are not feeling well. This does not compute. Because they are not rotten, and you don’t know why they would ever even say that about themselves. So you ask them this exact question: Why would you say that you’re rotten? Why would you think you don’t deserve love?
Without missing a beat, they respond, “Oh, my dad told me that.” Your dad told you you are rotten and undeserving of love? “Yes,” they repeat, “he has been telling me this for years. He has explained how I was born rotten, that I don’t deserve love, but how he loves me anyway. See, the fact that he loves me actually gives me my value. All I have to do is do my best to think and act and live exactly the way he wants me to and maybe some day I can eventually deserve the love that he’s been giving me all this time.”
So here’s the question: What would you tell your friend? You would tell them that their father is abusive and twisted and that’s not real love: It’s manipulation. Right? You would tell them to get out of that relationship, wouldn’t you? You would tell them that anyone who talks to them like this doesn’t know them and doesn’t deserve them. Because you do know your friend. You do love your friend. You see them as beautiful and belonging. And you wouldn’t want anyone in this world to make them feel the way their own father has made them feel.
And yet this is the exact story that millions of Christians tell themselves about their relationship with God.
Many of us have been taught that we are born deserving to burn in Hell, that our souls are corrupt and rotten. My dad once told me of when he was a child in the garage working alongside his grandfather, who held up a dirty, greasy rag and said to him, “Gary this is what your soul looks like without God.” Millions of us have been trained to believe we are worthless garbage but that God loves us anyway – that God loves us despite everything we are. That the only good thing about us is that God loves us. That if we spend our lives trying to be good, maybe one day it will be true – maybe someday we will become lovable. Millions of people are being taught this right now.
This is not Christian education. It is abuse.
You know it’s abuse in your heart. Because if anyone – a spouse, a partner, a sibling, a friend – ever loved your best friend the way we are told God loves us, you’d tell them to run, and you’d be right.
Spiritually abusive Christianity, however prevalent it may feel in today’s world, is not reflected in the life, words, and ministry of Jesus. If you are a Christian who is being taught you were born dead and undeserving of love, you are in an abusive relationship. If you are someone who has left the church because you could no longer digest such a violent, toxic message about yourself, your leaving was not apostasy: It was an act of love – it was you recognizing something sacred within yourself that deserves to be nourished. That is exactly what Jesus wants for you.
Remember please that Jesus did get angry when he was on earth. He got angry when people in positions of religious authority used their power to make people think they were less than, that they were not lovable as they were, that they needed to change in order to earn God’s love.
Sometimes I wish I weren’t Christian. I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t want to be associated with hatred and abuse – I don’t want to be associated with intolerance and exclusion. I don’t understand this thing people call God: It looks nothing like the God I have come to know in Jesus Christ. Jesus is why I found a Christian tradition that does not portray God as a psychologically and spiritually abusive father. Jesus is why I am Christian. Jesus is why I will keep speaking up for a Christianity that reflects and embodies a real, a healthy, a life-giving and liberating love.
Self-loathing is not Christian. Hatred of humanity is not Christian. Worthiness vs. unworthiness is a false paradigm that has nothing to do with God’s heart or your humanity. Jesus shows up in this world restoring people who have been disconnected, healing people who are in need, and advocating for radical unflinching love of neighbor at all costs. Jesus never tells us humans are rotten. He never tells us we all deserve Hell. Jesus tells us repeatedly we are of more value than we can imagine. Jesus tells us that God loves us as we are – not as we could be.
Following Jesus is not a self-improvement plan. Nor is it a path to some ineffable worthiness. To follow Jesus is to walk in love – to live into your belovedness and the belovedness of your neighbor. To follow Jesus is to remind yourself every day that every single person is made in the image of God and is therefore beloved, beautiful, belonging, blessed. And that includes you.
