This profound disorientation cannot be underestimated. Literally every single belief is called into question and the previously strong foundation your life was built on feels like its crumbling beneath your feet.
This is a good thing.
I know it doesn’t feel like a good thing. In fact, its pretty scary. Are you losing your faith? Are you falling away from God? Are you going to hell for questioning the established teachings of the church? This can be a terrifying part of the recovery process.
This is also a crucial moment in your process. Since you can no longer live under the weight of legalism, shame and condemnation, there are two different paths you can choose.
The first is to abandon the idea of the Christian God altogether. I absolutely understand why people make this choice after going through abusive situations and I do not condemn anyone for making this choice. You are a loved and valued part of our community. But, I hope that you will consider another choice.
The second choice is to abandon the idea of the God that Teen Mania taught you. God is infintely more loving and awesome than you’ve ever been told about or ever experienced. I wholeheartedly believe that the God many of us served at TM was NOT the Jesus we see in the Gospels. Jesus constantly reached out to the broken, the marginalized, the sinners, the non-religious. He is nothing but love, grace and care. His heart is tender towards you. Any other caricature that pictures him as a demanding, graceless God is not only wrong, its evil.
Even though this process is a painful one, this death of our old ideas about Him and ourselves is the very gateway to receiving the new ideas He wants to give us. That is why we have to go through this death. Letting go of the old, legalistic mindset allows us open our hearts to a grace and love we never thought possible.
So if you are feeling confused or disoriented right now, take heart, God is very much a part of this process. And He so badly wants you to know His love and to never be afraid of Him again.
11 comments:
oh man I wish I would have heard this back when I left T.M.
This part of the process was HELL.
I couldn’t doubt God. I just couldn’t, I knew BEYOND doubt He was real. But I was so confused when I left and had no idea how to cope. This post blessed me just for the confirmation what I went through was normal. it took me about a year and a half to really settle down and trust Christianity again. (and that was after finding this blog and being in the middle of a revival, had those two things not happened, I’m sure i’d be a WRECK right now still.)
By grace we are saved through faith!
Yay I think that the people that are really creating their own ideal of God after the HA are at the most amazing part of the process.
I think this is so true! It’s taken over 10 years, but I think I’m finally coming to a point where I’m letting go of the “God of TM” and coming to a new understanding of Him altogether. I’m with Natalie, I wish this blog and post was around when I first left the HA, just so that at the time I would have at least known that I was normal!
I agree with Natalie. It was a hard process and I wish I had known how normal it really is to question everything. Time is really needed to process everything. You will feel so insecure after having so many expectations on you but it is worth it!
This is extremely true. (You’d think that a word like “true” can’t be modified by an adjective about degree or extremity. You’d be wrong.)
In my own experience in an emotionally abusive ministry (which I’ll only identify as Not Teen Mania), the real turning point for me was when I realized through a chance remark that weren’t just being cruel for the sake of being jerks; they were doing it because they actually believed God was like that. I could believe that All True Christians acted like jerks; I couldn’t believe that God was a jerk. Snap went the chains.
“Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens— if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.” –Oswald Chambers
This post truly moved me. To tears.
The TM Jesus felt so real, but only within the confines of the TM environment. Now I have an aversion to so many of the methods that were used in that environment (even the good ones).
I am starting to re-visit memories I have hidden for years.
Besides what you put in the post, could you explain more about what you consider the “teen Mania God” To be?
The answer to that question is all throughout this blog. I recommend starting with category “dangerous doctrine” on the right sidebar.
When I first got to TM I felt on fire and ready to conquer the world. Over the course of the year I saw my fire dwindle until I was just going through the motions. It’s so sad how many churches practice legalism and works-based salvation. “as long as I do ‘good’, I’m saved”. Jesus is love and when we catch that revelation is an awesome thing. He loves me no matter what. I just recently moved to new surroundings to help a ministry that I knew before my TM days almost 10 years ago. However, now that I’m here, I found this ministry to be legalistic as well. I don’t want to offend the pastors (they’re friends of the family) but I feel that old feeling again and it’s so ugly.
This is a beautiful post. Thanks, RA.
This is the God I want to know: “Jesus constantly reached out to the broken, the marginalized, the sinners, the non-religious. He is nothing but love, grace and care. His heart is tender towards you. Any other caricature that pictures him as a demanding, graceless God is not only wrong, its evil.”
gracemakesfree- Courage, friend. Take it step by step, He won’t overwhelm you. Even when our heart feels those things are the death of us. You’re in good hands.
i agee with this totally, not only being damaged by my experiences with teen mania, from from years of abuse from the church as a whole. (in my erea at least) i found that i wasnt so shure if i even belived god was even real anymore. this gives me comfort because now i understand that its part of this process of recovery. thank you.