Fear and Self-Loathing in Lost-Jesus
At that point, I was convinced that I deserved that because I was such a horrible person that I deserved everything I got. My husband even pointed out to me that I felt like I wasn’t a good person.
This isn’t how her story began.
Teresa Ann tagged along with her dad and friends to People’s Park, a place at the river to hike, swim, have a picnic and hang out - a place enjoyed by all society, hippies and the nudists included.
Yeah man, just come to church, Jesus loves you.
The invitation was extended to share in the peace and love community that was a come-as-you-are jeans and flip-flop-clad group of people who saw God as the father who loved you no matter what you did. Perfection was not expected from anyone and if someone spilled their milk and broke their glass, they just picked it up and moved on. They kept no record of wrongs.
And then at some point, she can’t exactly place when, a switch was flipped and the love-bubble of acceptance that Teresa Ann knew as a child was burst. One day while doing a youth group outreach in the park to invite people to church, one of the ladies used Teresa Ann’s high school friends who recently died as an example for why they should come to Jesus
Do you want to go to hell just like her friends who died?
Teresa Ann was shocked. That wasn’t fair. This lady didn’t even know these kids - who gave her the right to judge them and assume they are going to hell? This didn’t sound like Jesus. This was not a compassionate, loving response toward someone who had just lost her friends, and certainly not toward those who just lost their lives.
The threat of going to hell contorted Jesus’ love into a thing to be chased through perfection. It started with falling on the floor and begging for forgiveness for being such a horrible human being.
As teenagers there's a lot of self-loathing because we're told we have to be perfect.
By the time she reached 18 years old, she was ready to get out of the church that cradled her as a child but scorned her as a teenager. She was planning to leave and live her life in a way that made sense. However, the church had gathered steam on convincing young people that they were destined for the glory of God and the best way to control and train them was through a new discipleship program. The program sounded like a crock. No way would she do it. She wanted to go to university. But her friends were doing it, someone said it would be good for her, so she delayed her plans for one year thinking she’d just go along and then be out of there.
Thus was launched a new regime and while it started nothing like what it became in subsequent years, the program was not all fun. There were always the come-to-Jesus moments where they had to sit in the chairs while someone’s perceived sins were exposed. They were required to keep journals and record what they had done with their days and Teresa Ann recalls sitting with a classmate making up shit just to fill the assignment and avoid discipline. The most heinous act she and her classmates committed was to find themselves inadvertently participating in dating during a ministry trip when they were permitted free time at the beach. Some of the students paired off to search seashells, or maybe even enjoy a one-on-one moment, but their innocence and teenage attractions were in direct violation of the no-dating policy and they all got in trouble. By the end of her year, the leaders had failed to harness her energy for their scheme and they called her out for lacking drive.
She wasn’t driven for their brand of perfection through rule-following, but she did find a drive for Jesus’ love again when she discovered someone who had a street ministry that echoed of the accepting messages she received as a child. Hungry for what made the most sense to her, she moved across State to help out with the street ministry while attending another branch of her home church. What was supposed to be a fresh start turned out to be hell.
One day she made an innocent comment about how cool it must be to be a pastor because she noticed they were always going shopping and eating out. She didn’t mean anything by it, she just remarked and thought it was interesting. Her observation changed her life and made her a threat to the pastors and their lifestyle.
From that moment on, having no idea that her comment was wrong, she was cut off and not allowed to speak to anyone except the pastors themselves when it was appropriate. She had one family member in town, her uncle, who she was no longer permitted to see. She was made to live with a family who could keep an eye on her. The street ministry she moved there for was taken from her and she wasn’t allowed to associate with them. The pastors saw something in her and told her that there was sin in her and that she needed to own up to it. Until she did, she was being kept away so that she didn’t spread it to anyone else. She didn’t know what “it” was. She was unaware of the sin she had in her, or how to prove she’d expulsed herself of it. And if that wasn’t enough, the church started spreading lies, saying things about her that weren’t true.
She packed up and moved back home. Her home-church pastor wanted to know what happened, but she couldn’t even tell him. She said that the people she trusted broke her down so badly that she crumbled. She stayed away from the church, alone in her hurt. At 19 she met someone and started dating behind her parent’s back, moved in with him, and married without knowing anything about him. Once again, getting herself into another abusive situation.
At that point, I was convinced that I deserved that because I was such a horrible person that I deserved everything I got. My husband even pointed out to me that I felt like I wasn’t a good person.
Teresa Ann’s story didn’t begin here, nor does it end here. But she lived the transitional point in time where the simplicity of love was replaced by the agenda for control. A child who got caught up in a whirlwind of the Christian revolution, the one that lost Jesus in favor of leaders, their money, and how much they could mobilize people for their interests.
As I spoke with Teresa Ann, she admits that she’s unable to say the exact time or even why her church took the turn that it did. Trying to make sense of this myself as I share in the essence of her experience, my digging and research have led me to a theory: As does society, so does the church. And vice-versa. Of course, there are exceptions, and this is a perversion, but it can’t be ignored that the church and society serve one another for optimal self-interest, which has nothing to do with individual spirituality, love, or compassion for humanity.
Think about the decade of the ’70s, church teachings in our very early childhood (Gen Xers) keeping in line with popular culture. I’ve always pictured Jesus as the original hippie and why not - he hung out with society’s outcasts. He accepted people as they were, had a particular distaste for hypocrites, and wanted people to know that they were loved. But as America transitioned from the ’70s, the decades of the ’80s and ’90s used the church at large to clamp down on free love and order society through capitalism, sex-shaming, and conformity to standards. The fabric of tolerance and acceptance disintegrates as the church militarizes for a cultural overhaul to serve the delusion of a righteous destiny, and most importantly, to promote the groups who hold the most power. Jesus’ love and acceptance are replaced in favor of Paul’s dogmatism and religiosity. Who is right is more important than the command that is above all else to love. And when love loses, fear and self-loathing are control’s favorite instruments.
Teresa Ann’s story finds its way back to love. She figured out how to break free from the cycle of self-loathing and the people who abused her. She is in a loving relationship and lives a life that makes sense to her again. The love and acceptance she has for her children teach her to do the same thing for herself.
She is not a bad person. She is a good person, and she deserves love.
