Dear My Twin - 05

 Dear My Twin, 

One of the big parts that lead my deconstruction was beginning to study abuse. When I realized Shannon had been gaslighting, manipulating and abusing me, I was shocked. I thought I had learned about abuse, and could recognize it. Little did I know I had been in the middle of intense abuse for a couple years at that point. 

My response, of course, was to start learning about abuse. Ha! That's always my go to. "COME! LET US ... LEARN!" 

Little did I know that learning about abuse, what it looked like, who did it, how it changed the brain, how it forged enmeshed and trapped relationships, was going to circle me right back to the evangelical church. 

That was even more shocking than the way Shannon had been treating me. 

This is a hard one to explain and detangle. I'm sure where to begin, because there's SO MUCH information spinning in my head. How do I make it clear, concise, and understandable? 

I guess I'll start with the book, "A Church Called Tov," by Scott McKnight and Laura Barringer. I highly recommend it. There's also several podcasts they were interviewed on I could link you to, if you're interested. 

Their book broke down a few of the MANY (tragically) instances of egregious church abuse, focusing primarily on the sexual misconduct of Bill Hybels at Willow Creek. I'd actually attended one of their "leadership" conferences, several years ago, and remembered him clearly. He was very charismatic, personable, and easy to have confidence in. 

He also was sexually harassing and assaulting Willow Creek women employees. 

How's that for a dichotomy. 

A dichotomy that is repeated over and over again in the evangelical church in recent years. The Southern Baptist Convention has been rocked to it's core. Ravi Zacharias kept women across the world as his personal sex slaves. Mark Driscoll wildly misused church funds, abused his office staff, and taught a frankly perverted view of sex that is all about power, heirarchy and male dominance. You'd think that would finish him, but after leaving Seattle in a heap of rubble, he now has another megachurch. Where abuse of staff and employees are already starting to leak out. 

My own personal experience of pastoral abuse at Pleasant Hill by Pastor Steven, who is no longer there. I didn't realize it was abuse at the time, but I do now. 

As "A Church Called Tov" points out, these are not isolated events. They are rampant, widespread, and growing. Why? Because there is woven in to the very structure of evangelicalism a power play that protects men in authority, and silences victims. And abuse, is about power and control. 

One of the main pillars that upholds this continued power structure, is the continued insistence that emotions are "bad." As I mentioned yesterday, emotions are considered deceitful, sinful, and misleading, despite the fact this is NEVER TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE. It's actually a product of the Enlightenment. Individualism and intellectualism became keys to unlocking all the mysteries of the universe, and consequently, theology, and emotions - such obnoxious, unquantifiable things - began to be looked on with disdain. 

This seeped into theology, and the next thing you knew, emotions were being relegated to the "back of the train," to reference a popular metaphor. The idea being that your rational thoughts drove the train of your choices and actions, and then wisdom, and way at the back, was the little caboose of emotions, because they're unreliable, deceitful, and misleading. 

Emotions cannot be separated out like that. We are creatures of body, mind and feelings, whether we like it or not. While we can think that we have separated out our emotions and are being fully rational, what we've actually done is obscure our emotions, so we don't know what they are, we don't know how they're informing us, we don't now how they are shaping our thoughts (or how our thoughts are shaping them). 

It is not separation of thoughts and feelings that will lead to good decisions. It's integration of all parts of ourselves, to allow us to make a fully formed decision. LISTENING to our feelings for the information they are telling us, not ignoring them. 

Our emotions are the first to sound the alarm when abuse is happening. An uneasy, shifting feeling in our stomach. Confusion. Guilt. Shame. Feeling "crazy." Feeling "off." All of these emotions are warning signs that something needs to be examined with the rational brain. 

But in evangelicalism, these emotions are deceitful. They need to be supressed. Your feelings are the issue; you need to get them under control. Maybe they did hurt your feelings, but you need to forgive and let it go. Turn the other cheek. Don't complain. Don't gossip. 

And so abuse begins, continues and is kept secret from the victim themselves, as their emotions are drilled into silence.