Spiritual abuse

I distinctly remember one talk I heard where the speaker's main argument was that God does NOT love you as you are. If he did, the speaker argued, then he wouldn't be trying to change you.
This had the effect of making me feel hopeless and disappointed with myself. If I wasn't changing to becoming better, then God clearly didn't love me.
I was taught from a very young age that I am broken, sinful, and that nothing I do is righteous. I was taught my own worthlessness, helplessness, and moral deficiency. I was taught that nothing I could do would ever earn God's favor or love.
This one had a HUGE effect on me which remained for years. It taught me to hate myself for who I was, for who God created me to be. It taught me that everything I did was worthless and evil. It taught me that no matter what I did, I would still be an evil, depraved person. It taught me that I could not trust my thoughts or my emotions, and therefore it destroyed any shred of confidence I had in myself or my self-worth.
I was taught that if I wasn't reading my Bible and praying every day, then my spiritual life was dead.
This had the effect of making me feel guilty for years when I wasn't doing either of those things. I assumed I was a worse Christian than everyone else because of my inability to establish these habits.
I was taught that if I didn't get baptized, I was sinning.
Again, this also caused me to feel guilty, and inferior to everyone who had been baptized--which was nearly everyone in my midst growing up, because I grew up in a Baptist church and a Baptist high school.
I was never informed of God's unconditional love; that was something that I had to learn about on my own. His love was always conditional.
I had no guarantee of God's love. I had no anchor. For me, God's love teetered on whether or not I did what was right and what he wanted me to do.
I was told that if I wasn't plugged into a church in college, then my faith would die.
Fortunately, I saw through this bullshit. If I didn't however, I'm sure I would be hating myself right now for apparently giving up on my faith.
I was taught that God loves you less when you sin, and his love for you is conditional on your asking for forgiveness.
Thus, I was taken by surprise when I opened up to my youth pastor about something I was struggling with, and he responded by saying "God doesn't love you any less." I didn't believe him when he said that. I thought I was worthless in God's eyes because I hadn't asked for forgiveness.

The danger of spiritual abuse is that it is often not seen as abuse. A victim who voices that they have been spiritually abused might be labeled as having a bad attitude, being unrepentant in spirit, or being rebellious against authority; all of these continue to shift the blame back on the victim. Additionally, it is an especially painful form of abuse because for people like me, faith is extremely important, and we consider it an indispensable part of ourselves. So when this indispensable part of our beings constantly reminds us of how awful and wretched we are, we internalize it and it destroys us.

So what is the lesson here? We need to be very careful about the things we say to other Christians, especially at a young age. We need to truly know and understand people so well that we know whether something we say will send them into a spiral of shame and self-loathing.

Christians are so funny: The Series; Part III - Prayer Dressing

"Before we begin, let's pray."
"Let me pray for us really quick, and then we can get out of here."

Prayer is Christian culture's bread and butter. It happens at pretty predictable moments--most commonly before an event starts or when an event ends. And before meals, of course. It is a staple of many large Christian gatherings. I suspect that this might actually do more harm than good.

I was talking with a really close friend of mine, and we shared about what was going on in our lives. After we shared, he said, "I feel like we should pray. Do you want to pray?" And my response was, "No, because I wouldn't be in it at all." He said he felt the same way. But he felt some kind of an obligation to pray, even though it would have been an entirely forced and probably inauthentic prayer. This is similar to what I'm talking about--why do we feel a pressing need to ritualistically pray, even if we're not going to actually mean it or engage with it?

I think that praying just because "you should" or because "you're supposed to" trivializes the practice of prayer. Notice the quotations that began this post; they seem to imply that a beginning or closing prayer is a hurdle that must be leaped over before we can continue with our lives. It views prayer as an obstacle that must be overcome, rather than as an opportunity to deepen one's relationship with God the Father.

This is why I don't pray before meals. I realized my first day away from home in my college dorm that praying before meals has no significance for me; I only say words because it's something that I'm "supposed" to do. I realized that it's extremely hard for me to care about what I'm saying if I am doing it out of compulsion rather than out of sincere desire. So I stopped praying before meals. Which makes it really uncomfortable for me when I'm asked to do so at my fraternity dinner table or in fraternity meetings.

I don't want prayer to be used just as a dressing to cover certain Christian gatherings--I think it needs to be treated as something more than that. It's kinda lame to just blow off a hangout session with God like that.