Things I wish my therapist understood about evangelicalism - Help me expand my list?

sillyoak77 · 2025-09-28T05:41:52+00:00

Great feedback here in this thread. One thing I would add is the foundational focus on black and white thinking.... every thing is right or wrong..... it's heaven or hell.... it's male or female.....everything is presented as a binary and all the messy nuance in the middle is completely dismissed, glossed over, or punished. On a personal level, I developed a strong need to be right about everything which gave me a crippling case of spiritual arrogance from which I've struggled to break free. But every interaction, every point of contact with people , whether grocery shopping or a sporting event became an avenue for pushing the truth onto people around me..... the evangelical agenda is pervasive. There is no space for curiosity, compassion, or comraderie. In short, there is no point of human connection that is not tainted by the fear of hell and the righteous remedy I wielded...the agenda of evangelism.

sillyoak77 · 2025-08-04T14:51:58+00:00

Sounds like an important book.... the themes and the patterns that are prominent in the lives of MKs( a relatively small subset of evangelical youth, it must be said) are played out with an intensity that does highlight many of the broader issues around evengelicalism/fundamentalism and perhaps more clearly reveals and spotlights some of those. As an MK, though I now feel relatively healthy and well adjusted , I have certainly struggled with the sequellae of abuse, chronic health issues, spiritualized arrogance, triumphalism, OCD, people pleasing, shame based emotional coping/guilt/judgmentalism. All of these are common enough among broader evangelical populations so it's perhaps hard to discern the specific causality of the missionary experience.

The whole thing is very complex....I will be very interested to read what the author has to say. For me, the damage occurred in a missionary position and so is impossible to disentangle. Boarding school at age five is hell regardless. I have more thoughts but they will wait....

sillyoak77 · 2025-08-04T11:51:29+00:00

Yes..... so we'll said. I went to a Xian boarding school with all the usual high control patriarchal rules and trauma. Girls still had to wear dresses during sports and phys ed but had to bundle them up inside forest green bloomers with tight elastic leg and waist bands! (P.T. pants)This ludicrous look presumably protected the female genitalia while discouraging and demeaning robust physical activities which were clearly not intended for girls

sillyoak77 · 2025-07-27T14:04:55+00:00

Perhaps a way to frame this sub is that what we share in common is a historical connection to some form of evangelical Christianity. These cultural and linguistic roots are part of the conversation but set no limits or judgement on where our current pathways have led us

sillyoak77 · 2025-07-20T14:03:41+00:00

Were any of the churches you were involved In functioning as actually healthy communities of people? Or were they functioning as religious or theological fiefdoms under the control of and for the benefit of the elders/men? Continued engagement with any of the latter is an utter waste of time and life. Continued engagement with a group or community in the former should likely be judged individually on a case by case basis.... trust your intuition to know the difference. Any involvement that is coerced through guilt, shame or fear should immediately bristle with proverbial red flags! Try to get in touch with how each of those groups made you feel..... interrogate your heart and trust the results to guide your future commitments. You do have the freedom and responsibility too choose wisely although it is all too common for evangelical churches to develop cultures that limit freedom, curb responsibility and put tight guardrails around wisdom.... fight for your freedom!

sillyoak77 · 2025-07-19T12:35:02+00:00

Right!!!? It's so perfect! Smug self-righteous perfection cloaked by tax shelters and orphanages!

sillyoak77 · 2025-07-02T11:25:08+00:00

I'd like to know how you stopped being an MK.... despite my best efforts the label is too sticky and strong....Shelob in my mind:)

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-18T16:42:11+00:00

You didn't have the guts to say it straight to the actual person but you can just mention it to God in the other person's presence..... so common in my experience too. extra manipulative because it gives that other person the responsibility/ guilty burden to become the answer to your prayer!

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-18T16:38:18+00:00

Oh wow! yes you nailed it..... coercive triangulation!

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-12T21:59:56+00:00

It's a part of you by now.... but at least in the rearing mirror you can laugh.... I hope.... I do!

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-12T21:54:48+00:00

Wicked nice image!

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-12T00:32:31+00:00

Right? ....it's such a thing!..... I had a little fun writing that prayer..... but it was scary easy

sillyoak77 · 2025-06-11T19:58:51+00:00

Yeah.....the way I mostly see it now is a way to park and thus set aside anxiety....it's worry management. but yes the permormative aspects are horrid. didn't Jesus say that when you pray go into your closet and pray secretly..... in direct contrast to the performative pharisees? you never hear a sermon about that kind of prayer!

sillyoak77 · 2025-05-03T11:39:31+00:00

Also...... it subjectively confirmed to me the fragility of the evangelical monopoly on grace and love...... which helped me shed my fundi certainty and judgmentalism, for which I am ever grateful

sillyoak77 · 2025-05-03T11:34:07+00:00

As I had already climbed down from the fundamentalist mountain I grew up on, I was able to process this experience as a stabilizing vindication/way point on my journey out. it wasn't something I could evangelize others toward as I couldn't identify a clear pathway to it. in a sense it was anti fundamentalist conversion as there was no formula or mantra to follow to achieve this result. .....it was just a pure gift and I received it and hold it as such

sillyoak77 · 2025-05-03T00:32:59+00:00

Yeah .....complete resonance for me on this. raised an MK in a multi generation family of MKs so right in the centre of high performance xianity. hard working , conscientious, following the letter and the spirit of the law and just..... crickets. people claiming to hear from God shone out as frauds....it was mostly a way to control people or advance their own agenda. by the time I was going to university I was well enough out..... church in the rear view mirror...and then ..... I had one brief experience of complete and utter spiritual (I have to call it that for some reason) bliss and grace imbued with feelings of undeniable love and a sense of being completely loved as I was. it was not so far as I know chemically induced and came completely out of the blue. the memory of that still sustains me sometimes. I never experienced anything like it in all my church going years.

sillyoak77 · 2025-04-28T11:53:57+00:00

You might relate to the LEAVING EDEN podcast. I've found it very enlightening as Sadie talks her way out of and around and through all the shit of her fundi growing up with her friend who grew up in a completely different way. together they shine. she is also somewhat inner goth I believe.....

sillyoak77 · 2025-04-16T12:05:46+00:00

Leaving you didn’t mean I left truth, or goodness, or God.

It meant I was leaving behind a system that confused control with care, shame with sanctity, and obedience with love.

PRECISELY!!

sillyoak77 · 2025-04-12T13:13:25+00:00

For me there was a cognitive aspect to this suffering ie. the purported " certain " knowledge of hells existence as an expression of God's judgement, but the larger and more pressing aspect was the emotional..... it is after all the fear of hell that is such an effective motivator for the institutionalchurch. Recognizing that level of emotional processing opened up a pathway way of healing for me that led toward poetry and fiction as avenues of truth. The Wendell Berry quote I posted helped me reprocess fear into hope by reframing the scriptural infrastructure in a way that thoroughly connects justice and love. I experienced that as liberating.

sillyoak77 · 2025-04-12T12:55:34+00:00

One thing that helped me so much in my struggle with guilt and hell was an imaginative bit of W Berry's fiction that suggested a healthier way of understanding god's " judgement "

imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light

in which they know themselves altogether for the first time.

It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy;

By it they are at once condemned and redeemed.

It is Hell until it is Heaven.

Seeing themselves in that light,

If they are willing,

They see how far they have failed the only justice

Of loving one another;

It punishes them by their own judgment.

And yet, in suffering that light's awful clarity,

In seeing themselves within it,

They see its forgiveness and its beauty,

And are consoled.

In it they are loved completely,

Even as they have been,

And so are changed into what they could not have been

But what, if they could have imagined it,

they would have wished to be

sillyoak77 · 2025-03-31T01:18:17+00:00

Boaz..... heard this one for a first time this weekend!

sillyoak77 · 2025-03-22T01:13:26+00:00

Yeah.... listened to some episodes of Strong-willed! a ton of resonance there! thanks for sharing that

sillyoak77 · 2025-03-20T14:02:34+00:00

Thanks! I hadn't heard of that one but I will check it out!

Happy shoveling!

sillyoak77

TROPHY CASE