The Needless Suffering of The Evangelical Church
Looking back at my time in the church, one concept has continued to stand out to me. If you’ve spent any amount of time in Christianity, you may have heard of the suffering guarantee in Christian life. Minus prosperity gospel factions, congregants around the world have been brought into the story of the suffering Jesus and likewise heard of the Apostle Paul’s suffering life. The Bible is quite clear that if you’re alive, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you will suffer.
Within the American Evangelical context, the concept that has most intrigued me is that of needless suffering. Humanity, of course, will have to learn to embrace pain. Anyone who has lived has suffered in some way, shape, or form. Oppressed communities, specifically, know this all too well.
Yes, suffering may be the one thing humans all share in common and yet, I am becoming convinced that the Evangelical Christian church produces and perpetuates needless suffering.
When I was still active in church life, I was struggling with depression to a fairly severe degree. It started when I was 13 and has lasted until the present, at 27. Sadly enough I didn't get help until 22 where my depression had been increasing in severity throughout college.
The funny thing about those last few years of school was that they included more effort and time put into my faith than ever before. I had never prayed more, read more, listened more, shared more than any time in my life. Even so, my mental health kept getting worse.
I would read accounts of famous Christians who experienced depression. They prayed like David in the Psalms with such intensity. I figured depression was just my “cross to bear” and that I must withstand it’s devastation to be a good Christian.
Mental Health and Christianity in my experience didn’t have much overlap. The mental health options that did exist centered God to such a high degree that I question how much mental health was even considered in the process. As I was depressed, as I hated myself, as I questioned suicide at times, I never even considered the thought that a better life was possible.
Suffering was always valued in my Christian spaces. Martyrs were glorified in the long line of Jesus and those who suffered greatly would be the most similar to Him. There was almost a game to see who could suffer the most. Many of us envied those whose testimonies were ripe with suffering as if they were more godly because of it. Due to this culture, depression seemed like something I had to grind out to the end. Simultaneously, it was suffering that only God could help. Except, that specific God didn’t really help me. And I now know why.
The greater evangelical church fosters a culture of spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is a defense mechanism employed in order to flee hard or difficult feelings. Because many people cannot tolerate their feelings, because they lack emotion regulation, they may ignore their mental health in order to pivot into something more comfortable: spirituality. Dr. Ingrid Clayton claims spiritual bypassing is in service to repression.
Phrases such as “God is in control” or “God works all things out for good” can be means of such bypassing. Instead of experiencing deep hardship and learning how to tolerate and manage emotions, one may immediately run or deny their feelings in order to hang onto a word of God. It doesn’t really matter if they believe it or not because this act isn’t about faith. It’s about avoidance. We are uncomfortable facing our internal mess. (One reason for this is how much the church didn’t allow for real mess and makes us think we need to be perfect, but I digress).
Within Evangelical churches we experienced both of these phenomenons at the same time.
A glorification of suffering
and
an avoidance of pain through spiritual bypassing.
What this creates is a devilish experience.
We are told suffering is a must while we are encouraged to avoid the underlying feelings of such suffering. It’s almost as if we yearn for and are entirely afraid of the concept of hardship. We want the badge of honor without the associated feelings the badge brings.
And what if we experience suffering that could be partly alleviated? That’s not allowed either. We fear losing something others may value us for. A strange psychology, but a psychology nonetheless.
Applying these same principles to relationships and marriage and we find similar outcomes. If you’re like me, you experienced Christian married couples constantly decrying the hardships of marriage. “Marriage is hard”, “it shows you how selfish you are”, “you really have to choose to love” and the phrases go on. If I had to count the amount of times I heard about the difficulty of marriage compared to the joy of marriage I would say it was 90% difficulty.
And it makes sense why people say this. They want to justify their difficult marriage to themselves by wearing a badge of honor: marital suffering. They want to convince themselves they’re doing the right thing by staying in their marriage even when they question if that logic makes sense for them. They also want others to look at them and validate their struggle, they want to be seen as the suffering models of the christian life.
“Wow, what a faithful marriage. 30 years pushing through all the hard stuff.”
The church values longevity far beyond valuing health.
Spiritual bypassing appears in this dynamic as well as couples consistently spout phrases such as “the Lord will deliver us” or “Jesus reveals himself in our struggle.”
Even if every relationship we experience goes through turmoil and hardship, deep down people know that unhealthy marriages aren’t supposed to be that way. Difficulty and unhealth are different things. But, we can never admit that because we have to struggle as we avoid the deeper feelings of struggle. It’s in the code.
And so if it’s life struggles, relationships struggles, or any sort of mental health struggle, instead of finding help, we were taught to double down on our suffering. Because that’s where the Lord would meet us.
Such a toxic way of life. It needn’t be this way.
Part of the difficulty of contemporary Evangelical Chrisitanity is the rigidity of theology and therefore rigidity of God. Got has been chiseled into stone, unable to be changed, like the 10 commandments he supposedly gave to Moses.
If the whole answer to life is supposed to be summed up in God or in Jesus, what happens when that doesn’t work? What happens when the answers for alleviation of certain levels of suffering are outside the traditional window of what God is supposed to be? What if the helpful thing for temporal suffering is therapy? Or Marriage counseling? Or even divorce?
What if those things aren’t directly talking about God?
The fear of having our faith framework rattled or changed is high for many. It was high once for me. Yet, when our conception of the Divine is black or white we miss the intricate benefits of the world around us. Jesus multiplied bread for hungry people after all, not give them a theological lesson.
Here’s my main point.
Evangelical Christianity often pushes people towards suffering while keeping them from experiencing alleviation that’s possible.
Certainly some churches have moved more to value mental health. Yet as one who studied clinical mental health in a seminary context, there are still many who see God as the only way to withstand suffering, even when it doesn’t work.
I think back on my time in the church and wonder what life had been like if I started therapy at 16 and not 23. I think about what could have been different in the unhealthy marriages I witnessed if they didn’t use God as an excuse to avoid hard feelings and harsh realities. I fear for the people who continue in churches that decry sin as the root for mental health issues, who push bible reading over seeing a professional, and miss the abundance of divine help that is possible through means outside of the church.
It need not be this way. Needless suffering can be greatly avoided.
Additionally, whether one believes in God or not, there is never any guarantee our sufferings will be totally alleviated in this life. Oppression still exists, racism still exists, white supremacy still exists, mental health issues still exist. There are struggles we may never see the end of.
Simultaneously, alleviation of suffering is possible! We have research to prove this. Negative shame cycles can be reversed, new conceptions of self can be found, healthier communication in relationships can be discovered. And much of the time this happens best outside of the evangelical church.
Since I left, I’ve invested in my mental health outside of the confines Christianity and widely outside the confines of spirituality. Much of my journey has been discovering who I am outside of religious context. It’s been life changing.
I’ve been able to find strategies to help my depression and anxiety. I’ve found new ways of thinking about myself that have helped me flee the effects of shame. I’ve found research that has changed my view on my concept of self. Much of this has nothing to do with Christianity.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. It doesn’t even mean it’s not Divine truth. For truly, if God exists God exists in a way beyond what we can comprehend. As much emphasis as people want to put on the Book, we really have no way of knowing all things Divine.
I hope that many still chained in the shackles of needless suffering can be awakened to a better way of life. I hope we can be people who can see suffering, meet it head on, withstand its might while pursuing the healthiest life we can.
If you resonate with this, I hope you know you’re not alone. And I hope you know it can get better.
<3
Reid
