An Aversion to Christian Language
When a buttoned-up faith turns sour
Have you ever been unable to enjoy a favorite food anymore because you vomited after having it once? The food may have had nothing to do with the sickness. It’s that whole correlation doesn’t equal causation thing—the food is now so associated with the nastiness of the encounter. You tasted it the second time, and now know of its ability to turn in your guts, haunt you by its presence, sour, work against your digestive flow, and stink. That aversion is hard to shake.
My relationship with much evangelical language has become something like this. So many beloved evangelical, theological terms and phrases have been so weaponized against me and my family, that we have developed aversions to them.
Submission should be a beautiful word, but it’s been weaponized to control, gain power at the expense of others, abuse, and dehumanize.
Repent has become a way to shame. It’s a way to be sure of one’s own status before God as superior. A way of not needing to be curious or patient. A way of banishing.
Forgive—oh yes, even this beautiful invitation—carries the message, We will not help you. Get over it. You pay the cost because we refuse. We do not care for true reconciliation or repair. We want you to fake it. Do not show your wounds or your full self. Christians forgive.
Biblical. This word makes me cringe now—the “Christian” adjective that makes one sound holy, learned, and faithful. Sprinkle it before your favorite cause and you can write books, speak at conferences, and tell people how to live. If you know how to find words in the Bible without standing in awe of their poetry, without patiently watching them unfold. If you know how to provoke fear with these words and offer security blankets.
Modesty. Yes, keep telling us what to wear. Blame us in place of you. Shame us. Silence us. Make us invisible.
Saved. From what, seems to be the confusion. Savior-syndrome is rampant in an institution that needs saved from itself.
Sovereign. Look, we can’t argue with God. We will polish our language about his power, and our supposed representative power, while you suffer.
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! If an email began with this greeting, I knew manipulation and shaming was to follow. Why use such grand language in an email? How important it is! As if you are bringing me the words of God himself, from a faraway land! Right here in my inbox is the very language the apostles used in their epistles to the saints!
I could go on; I could go on.
I’m tired of cleaning up the vomit. And the stains are everywhere. In the church, in my body, on my kids. I stumble when I want to share about my faith, Christ, his word, spiritual formation, separating what’s real and what is put on, counterfeited, and corrupted, because the language of our faith was weaponized against us. And my young adult children hear that language coming out of the mouths of Christian nationalists, hypocrites, and abusers. It makes me ache that words that were precious to me at one time have turned sour. But I also think that it is a mercy. It’s easy to hide behind words. It’s easy to speak the same lingo and feel a sense of security and belonging. It’s easy to parse theological doctrines and avoid inner work. To think you are all buttoned-up. How certain we can feel with the “right” language!
I’m not tossing out the whole Christian vernacular. I’m not saying, let’s get rid of the language. Or that the language is bad. But I don’t put my trust in the words. And I see how they can catch a virus, or how bacteria multiplies on them, and they can make you sick. It’s a tricky sickness because it disguises itself and masks as sanctification, another tainted word.
I am having to dig deeper, read wider, listen stronger, ask more questions, and be more descriptive about what is meaningful, beautiful, agonizing, disintegrating, real, and good. This is more difficult and much richer. This way doesn’t have all the answers, there’s no easy metric to measure how far along we are. But it recognizes that it’s so easy to get caught up in the striving: for a good reputation, approval, attention, companionship, success, children that turn out well, or whatever our version is of the good life. We want certain labels of success and maturity, badges of merit in the Christian life. The language polishes us up nicely. It's more difficult to notice the striving. And to ask, what am I striving for? What does that reveal about what I value?
I’m doing final edits on my upcoming book, Saving Face, and in there I ask the questions, what story do you tell yourself about who God is and what he wants from you? When have you experienced the love of God or felt his nearness? Here is the challenge for when we are caught up in the hustle: sit for a minute in the Lord’s presence and listen and look for reality. Look for Christ in the faces around us. Be curious. Feel your breath and take in the gift of the moment.
It sounds so simple, but we just don’t do it. Just like the most important directive of our faith:
“Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:36–39)
Why is the second greatest command like the first? Our love for one another is tied to our love for Christ. We find his love there in our neighbor. When we see their goodness, we find him. When we see their poverty, we find him. And we are found by him.
Biblical - I was a theological exam away from becoming certified as a biblical counselor about three years ago. I had received help from a Biblical counselor, and it seemed to work, and it was biblical, so why not get trained on how to help others the same way? This is IABC "Biblical" counseling, so there was a hardline stance against psychology and medication.
Multiple mental health diagnoses along with hours of actual therapy later and I'm realizing that what I really needed was a hug and some Adderall.
Your words consistently touch my heart, Aimee. I am a few months removed from stepping out of the pastorate in an evangelical tradition. While wrestling with depression and ptsd, I still missed the familial connection I felt with my church family. Several weeks ago we visited a church an hour away from our home, thinking we are far enough removed that we can attend and not be noticed.
The liturgy flowed the way it was supposed to. There were no outward messages that I disagreed with, but the familiar evangelical Christianese language messed me up in the head for the next 7-10 days. Hearing things like, we’ve all fallen short of the glory, we are all sinful, as a way to avoid looking in the mirror, or to absolve the denomination/tradition of truly thinking with the mind of Christ and changing the way they think, is too much to carry. Particularly when the falling short is the thing that has destroyed so many lives.
What does one do when the place of hope and restoration is the place that caused despair and division? How does one heal when the language used is the same as the abuser that lead them to this point? Evangelical circles talk so much about “the world” pulling people away from the church. When in reality, from my experience, it is more people finding the strength to leave an abusive relationship, and wrestling with the same issues one does when moving on from an abusive spouse. The problem is not vertical, but horizontal. Connecting with the trinity is easier than connecting to the “earthly” (there’s another word), representatives or “ambassadors” (there’s another one), of the trinity.