The Sin of Nonconformity
If you’ve seen The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll be familiar with a recurring scene where the handmaids sit in a circle and point accusing fingers at one of their sisters for committing a sin.
The first time I saw this scene, which I think was the first or second episode, my body involuntarily reacted physically as the all too familiar shaming ceremony called up emotionally charged memories.
When I was in church there were a few different names for it: Accountability Circle, The Hot Seat, Burnt Flesh, and The Threshing Floor. The mechanics varied in degrees, but the principle was the same: a group of your brothers, sisters, and leaders in Christ sat in a circle with or surrounding the person being called into accountability, and their sins were laid raw.
The purpose of such an exercise is to coerce admission of wrongdoing, break down the will, or cast out a demon (or both) and bring the person back into realignment with the rest of the group.
I’ve been in these circles and have done my best to distance myself from the memory of them. Until having to face them again while watching The Handmaid’s Tale. No, this is not the stuff of fiction.
My friend Christian got it particularly bad. As a kid, he was his own person. He didn’t fit in because he had a brilliant imagination and ideas that threatened our church’s group-think.
The following story is part of what Christian told me during an interview I conducted with him about his experiences in our church.
Growing up he was rejected from the youth group for being different, so it wasn’t a huge stretch for him to avoid the Hot Seat ritual that everyone in the youth group had to go through. He’d either not go to youth group, or he’d hideout somewhere in the church.
But one Thursday night he got pinned down, as he put it. And this was the night that changed everything for him. He was a strong-willed 15-year-old and it took the ministry leadership around two hours to cast demons out of him and break his will.
…putting hands on (me), speaking in tongues, yelling, screaming. I remember the moment I broke. Like brainwashing in the military where I couldn’t take it anymore.
That moment changed my life and I bought in to the whole church culture hook line and sinker and became very strong-willed for the church.
I’ve known Christian since we were kids, and upon graduating high school we both joined our church’s discipleship program and were in the same class. It was a program that trained disciples for the work of God’s kingdom, making us more like Christ.
I remember an overwhelming sense of guilt. The guilt was over absolutely everything. It was intense, crippling guilt. It broke me to the point where I couldn’t have a unique thought or make a decision without permission, without breaking and feeling guilty.
There were about 21 Burnt Flesh sessions, and I was the subject of 20 of them.
On one occasion during our year Christian got in a fight with a classmate who he had to spend a lot of time with. The classmate decked Christian in the face. The program leader became angry with Christian and let him know that he would never be in leadership and that he would be a failure.
Although Christian didn’t know what he did wrong, the guilt he felt melted him down. None of the leadership would or even could tell him what he did wrong, except to instruct him to be respectful and to be a servant.
On that advice, Christian cleaned the program tour bus, took care of classmate luggage, and did everything he could so no one else had to do anything. His efforts were invisible though, as no one from leadership came back to him to tell him he was doing well, that he passed the test, and that they approved of him.
Upon this rejection, Christian told me that it broke him down yet another level.
We all go through stuff in life where we try to identify the take-away, the lesson learned, or if possible find a silver lining. If not, our experiences can be crushingly tragic. Christian surprised me when he said
I learned how to handle rejection. It took me getting lambasted for hours and hours and hours to get over rejection.
I was stunned.
Is church the place we should be learning about rejection? From our Christ-like fellow church members and leaders?
Nevertheless, I certainly know what Christian is talking about. I experienced it too. We all did. I’m not sure any of us were quite as special as Christian though.
His story doesn’t end there. If you can even imagine it, he endured even deeper abuses when he finally married and became a parent. After recognizing the injuries his wife and family suffered, he’d had enough.
I finally realized that I had to get out. I stood up in front of the congregation and told them they were full of shit and I wasn’t going to do this anymore.
Christian was recently interviewed in a podcast for his remarkable life and business success. He said something that made me smile and remember who he was as a kid. Before the church broke his spirit and his will.
The interviewer asked Christian what he considered his greatest strengths, his gifts. And this is what he said:
I would say that I see the world in a way that I don’t know many other people that see it the way that I see it.
You would hear the traditional “out of the box thinker.”
I don’t even see the box, most of the time.
I didn’t know that I’m thinking outside the box ‘cause I wasn’t even aware that there was a box.
If you have sinned, slide forward.
I nearly cried when I heard Christian’s response. That is the kid I knew. Someone who didn’t even see the box. Unique ideas and a way of viewing the world that is different from others. A way that has caused him success and help to those who struggle with mental health issues, a passion he carries, which is the focus of his business. He’s a nonconformist and though our church nearly broke him beyond functionality, he escaped onto the backslide just in time to save himself, his family, and others in need.
Finally, he is himself again and it serves him well.
