As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral
career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer teach
Christian doctrine with a good conscience and realized this teaching was
not truly changing people’s lives… and so I walked away from the whole
enchilada.
Below are 14 things that the misguided religious establishment doesn't
want you to know. Speaking for myself and my personal experience, I was
not able to see or admit these things to myself. I truly got into
ministry initially because I wanted to make a difference and help
people, and I relied upon the belief-system I learned as the proper
framework to achieve this. It took a lot of post-religion reflection to
see the ways this belief-system was hurting people.
I offer the below list in hopes that you might disentangle yourself from
harmful beliefs and attitudes impacting your life.
14 things the misguided religious establishment doesn’t want you to
know:
1. Toxic religion is rooted in fear, especially fear about the
afterlife. It leverages the false doctrine of hell to win converts and
demand holiness. The fear of God's disapproval, rejection, abandonment
and punishment is another hallmark of toxic religion.
2. Clergy have no innate authority. Holding a church leadership position
or having a theological degree does not imbue a person with special
divine authority or superiority. The terms "anointed", "called", or
"chosen" or titles such as "pastor", "priest", "bishop", "elder",
"evangelist" or "apostle" do not confer any innate authority on an
individual or group.
3. We hold sacred what we are taught to hold sacred, which is why what
is sacred to one community is not sacred to another.
4. The stories in our sacred books aren’t history, nor were they meant
to be. The authors of these books weren’t historians but writers of
historical fiction: they used history (or pseudo history) as a context
or pretext for their own ideas. Reading sacred texts as history may
yield some nuggets of the past, but the real gold is in seeing these
stories as myth and parable, and trying to unpack the possible meanings
these parables and myths may hold.
5. Prayer doesn’t work the way you think it does. You can’t bribe God,
or change God’s mind through obedience, devotion, or groveling. The
underlying theistic premises of prayer are untenable.
6. Anything you claim to know about God, even the notion that there is a
God, is a projection of your psyche. What you say about God—who God is,
what God cares about, who God rewards, and who God punishes—says
nothing about God and everything about you. If you believe in an
unconditionally loving God, you probably value unconditional love. If
you believe in a God who divides people into chosen and not chosen,
believers and infidels, saved and damned, high cast or low caste, etc.
you are likely someone who divides people into in–groups and out–groups
with you and your group as the quintessential in-group. God may or may
not exist, but your idea of God mirrors yourself and your values.
7. Nobody is born Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Protestant, etc.
People are born human and are slowly conditioned by narratives of race,
religion, gender, nationality, etc. to be less than human.
8. Theology isn’t the free search for truth, but rather a defense of an
already held position. Theology is really apologetics, explaining why a
belief is true rather than seeking out the truth in and of itself. All
theological reasoning is circular, inevitably “proving” the truth of its
own presupposition.
9. Becoming more religious cannot save us. Religion is a human invention
reflecting the best and worst of humanity; becoming more religious will
simply allow us to perpetuate compassion and cruelty in the name of
religion. Because religion always carries the danger of fanaticism,
becoming more religious may only heighten the risk of us becoming more
fanatical.
10. Becoming less religious cannot save us. In fact, being against
religion can become it’s own fanaticism. Becoming less religious will
simply force us to perpetuate compassion and cruelty in the name of
something else. Secular societies that actively suppress religion have
proven no more just or compassionate than religious societies that
suppress secularism or free thought. This is because neither religion
nor the lack of religion solely nullifies our human potential to act out
of ego, greed, fear, hostility, and hatred.
11. A healthy religion is one that helps us own and integrate the shadow
side of human nature for the good of person and planet, something few
clergy are trained to do. Clergy are trained to promote the religion
they represent. They are apologists not liberators. If you want to be
more just, compassionate, and loving, you must do the personal work
within yourself, and free yourself from the conditions that lock you
into injustice, cruelty, and hate, and this means you have to free
yourself from all your narratives, including those you call “religious.”
12. Religious leaders claims that their particular understanding and
interpretation of their sacred books should be universally accepted.
Religious leaders often say, “My authority is the Bible.” It would be
more accurate for them to say, “My authority is what they taught me at
seminary the Bible means.” People start with flawed or false
presuppositions about what the Bible is, such as: the Bible was meant to
present a coherent theology about God or is a piece of doctrinal
exposition; the Bible is the inerrant, infallible and sole
message/"Word" of God to the world; the Bible is a blueprint for daily
living. Too often religious leaders make God about having "correct
theology." There are a lot of unhappy, broken, hurting, suffering,
depressed, lonely people in church with church-approved theology.
13. If your livelihood depends on the success of your church as an
organization, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you will
mostly define and reward Christianity as participation in church
structures and programs. Christian living is mostly a decentralized
reality or way of life, not a centralized or program-dependent
phenomenon. Church attendance, tithing, membership, service, and devoted
participation, become the hallmarks of Christian maturity.
14. You are capable of guiding your own spiritual path from the inside
out and don't need to be told what to do. You naturally have the
ability, capacity, tools and skills to guide and direct your life
meaningfully, ethically and effectively. Through the use of your
fundamental human faculties such as critical thinking, empathy, reason,
conscience and intuition, you can capably lead your life. You have the
choice to cultivate a spirituality that doesn’t require you to be
inadequate, powerless, weak, and lacking, but one that empowers you
toward strength, vitality, wholeness, and the fulfillment of your
highest potentialities and possibilities.
Jim Palmer
