Month: October 2023

A Legalistic Retrospective

In the opinion of the Religious, in what ways am I judged and responsible for my sins?

To My Wife:  

Thank you for standing by me through the years, and through these struggles.

Thank you for encouraging me.

Thank you for lifting me up in prayer to our Heavenly Father.

What I most resent about my Baptist upbringing is the rigid legalism ingrained in me, serving as a constant yardstick against which I measured my worth.

Throughout my life, I operated under the belief that an angry —or, at the very least, discontented—God was judging me for not meeting His divine standards. The teachings of Sam Cathy resonated in my soul strongly:

  • If you skip church, God will not forgive you.
  • When you willfully sin, there is no sacrifice.
  • After we’re born again, God does not separate our sins from us as far as the East is from the West.
Sam Cathy, paraphrased – about mid-way through; 20-30 minutes

I dreaded facing the Judgment Seat of Christ, knowing that God would list all my moral and spiritual failings, showcasing them as the wood, hay, and stubble that evidenced my inherent unworthiness. Surely the gold, silver, and precious stones could only be reserved for those who did God’s work, those in the ministry – and perhaps a few special others.

I always assumed that my few accomplishments would ultimately be negated; after all, how could someone as inherently flawed as myself ever please God?

Yet, it was nothing short of infuriating and gut-wrenching when I realized that my so-called ‘sins’ were not simply the result of Adam’s original failing or my deliberate straying from the path. No, they were the ghastly outcomes of unresolved emotional and physical trauma that had silently guided my life, unbeknownst to me. The absolute atrocity of the unjust judgment and constant condemnation for elements of my life that were never in my control filled me with silent rage.

In other words, and in the opinion of the Sam Cathys of this world, in what ways am I judged and responsible for my sins, which were unwittingly guided, influenced, and directly seeded by the sins of others who, with malice and forethought, intentionally harmed me? For us, that’s a dark valley journey where only the fearless may walk and ponder1.

So here I am, the Recovering-Legalist, still recovering. I’m not as naive to believe that a world given to sin does not influence our decisions nor the spiritual death of our souls. But neither am I so naive as to think that my worldview, and consequently my broken belief systems that informed my actions, were purely my doing.

For I now understand that I had help. The people who assaulted me helped. The people who molested me helped. The Baptists who taught me legalism and condemnation helped. The Sam Cathys of religion, who taught me to earn the graciousness of God beyond the cross, helped.

I had help to get to where I found myself.

But today, I have found myself in the presence of the unwavering graciousness and mercy of God, who lifted me out of the pit of mirey clay.

Who, by the way, also raised someone else who found themselves in a very similar pit. A person to whom I will be eternally thankful. A person who helped me find, express, and heal the pain lingering in my soul.

You know who you are. Thank you.

  1. Hebrews 4:12 (AMP) For the word of God is living and active and full of power [making it operative, energizing, and effective]. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of the soul and spirit [the completeness of a person], and of both joints and marrow [the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and judging the very thoughts and intentions of the heart. ↩︎

Trauma Healing

Trauma happens. But when it occurs in our formative years, 0-6, or 6-10, it can be especially damaging to our soul. In many cases, we will not remember the trauma until many years later. When the memories do return, we’re thrust into a period of self-reflection and self-discovery of a new person. But one of the most fearful things of all is learning new coping mechanisms that do not involve the ways we learned during the trauma, the way we approached the world for the entirety of our life.

When our brain blocks the memory of a traumatic event, we are spared the damage of something we’re not cognitively able to process. But that doesn’t mean we don’t remember: the memory is simply, for a while, hidden1.

Not only that, but as those events lurk under the surface of our consciousness, they play a significant role in building our worldviews and coping mechanisms. While those mechanisms do not accurately reflect reality, they help keep us safe from a certain point of view.

Healing

Trauma healing can be compared to the parable of plowing a field – but with a small exception: we MUST look backward for a time2. We must acknowledge that what happened was a sin against us and allow the pain to escape and move forward in time and space. When we bring it forward, we step into and through the manure of the bulls, pulling our plow and moving us forward in life under our guidance.

Similarly, we must recognize that the now unhidden pain is a personal sin against our soul, an insult against ourselves towards our ability to thrive and survive.

When we “confess our sins to one another3,” it is not about attributing blame or self-condemnation. It is not about presenting our misdeeds to God or others for reconciliation.

Instead, we seek a trustworthy individual prepared to lend an ear and assist us in navigating the anguish and tribulation that readily ensnares us. It takes a particular type of person possessing the right character to understand that repressed and hidden wounds need a voice, and sometimes, that voice is ugly.

Those who don’t leave your side during the process are your true friends. The others are either too bamboozled to comprehend what is happening or too broken to help. Or perhaps your current state is useless to them – so they don’t care for your failure to bring sunshine to their world.

Summary

Look back and remember. But recognize these things: it is a painful process; learning new non-trauma coping mechanisms is scary; be sure you have a trained professional to guide you through the process; make sure that person has used their techniques on themselves, that they’re not practicing from a place of non-experiential theory.

  1. van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Publishing Group, 2014. Kindle. (FILLING IN THE HOLES: CREATING STRUCTURES > Page 302 · Location 5782) ↩︎
  2. Luke 9:62 (Complete Jewish Bible) ↩︎
  3. James 5:16 (Complete Jewish Bible) ↩︎