After reading several papers on the role of religion in general with mental illness, the pattern is clear. In a well-functioning church that offers a community of acceptance and encouragement, people’s mental health fares better than that of non-religious individuals, especially those without a social network. But an ill-functioning religious setting can be corrosive and devastating to one’s psyche.

When I was part of a much larger “post-evangelical” online community, spiritual/emotional abuse was a common theme among its members. While most of the abuse was subtle or mundane, some of it was horrendous.

The Good News

Let me start with the positive. The Christian community has only one directive from the Bible regarding meetings: Paul encourages Christians in Hebrews 10:25: “Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

The Greek word for “encourage” in that verse is parakaleō, which literally means “to walk beside someone” and “call them,” i.e., to say encouraging things to them. That is the simple marching order of the church; everything else is human-derived and extraneous. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Many people enjoy church meetings, such as Sunday morning worship, as they are, and that’s fine. However, that’s not the mandate, and I use the term “mandate” lightly. Perhaps “an intelligent suggestion” would be a better term, so that no one would think I’m talking about dogmas.

Encouragement is one of the most powerful tools a person can wield over another’s psyche. It is a powerful tool that is often neglected. Telling people that they are decent and have done good work only leads them to become better and happier people.

In the famous Rosenthal-Jacobson study, intelligence tests were administered to elementary school students, and the teachers were (falsely) told that 20% of the lowest-performing students were the smartest. At the end of the year, those 20% of poor-performing students had moved up to the highest-performing level. This is now called the Pygmalion effect. It was because the teachers were tricked into encouraging those students more than others.

However, there are problems within cultural Christianity that impede that encouraging atmosphere.

The Myth of Godliness

In the Christian world in which I came of age, an evangelical discipleship group, “godliness” was the goal. I think there is some level of godliness or spirituality held up as the standard in most churches, too. Our group used a flowchart of twelve levels through which we would progress until we became godly. The first levels were external behaviors: stop saying shit, stop smoking, stop drinking, stop having extra-marital sex, if you were, and start going to church every Sunday. Those were the bottom layers, but the top layers were internal, having perfect doctrines, the perfect attitude all the time, and… like Mary Poppins, “practically perfect in every way.”

We considered all our leaders perfect; we obeyed everything they said, even if it was pure lunacy. We competed with our rivals, believing we had only godly motives, whereas the others were sinful. If there was a disagreement between us and someone else in the group, we must find a way to prove they were wrong, inferior, and less godly than us. Maybe less human.

This atmosphere was conducive to spiritual abuse in many forms. You could always play the god card to manipulate people. “You did what? I can’t believe that you believe that or did that.” A judgmental attitude. It was always a moral problem, unlike in the scientific world, which I prefer, where, if you disagreed with someone, you still respected them and considered it merely a disagreement…. nothing else. In the Christian-religious world, if someone disagrees with you, you must make it an issue of morality; they are morally inferior to you, you being the godly one, the one God prefers.

This spiritual competition stifles encouragement.

But Godliness is a myth. From the moment we become Christians, until the end of decades of Bible study, fellowship, hard work, training, etc., we are still basically the same people… but who doesn’t say shit.

The Christian has the model that we are purely spiritual beings, our natures fluid like air (spiritual means air) that can change rapidly. In God’s other book, nature, it is clear that we are physical beings, contained in brains. Brains are shaped by genetic, developmental, and experiential influences. Some things can change, but methodically and insidiously, not like throwing a switch.

I remember our godly leader asking us, “If a man had been arrested and convicted of molesting children, went to prison, in prison met Jesus and became a Christian, would you have any hesitation allowing him to watch your small children?”

The answer the leader sought was “No.” He wanted to illustrate that, as Christians, we are brand-new people; nothing from our old selves remains the same. But that is not true. We would be complete fools to turn our kids over to him, no matter how godly he claimed to be.

So, the ill climate that can make some church experiences not good for mental health is where some Christians think they are near perfection, because their souls are spiritual and have been purified into almost perfect people. We manipulate, harm, and damage people while believing we are superior to them. Because I write controversial things, I’m on the short end of that stick, perpetually.

Yeah, love is the answer. But if we have overestimated our lovingness, we will miss the mark. I think humility is the answer, along with love. It gives us the freedom to encourage other people, to come alongside them, and to help them navigate life, putting them first, not as punching bags. If you have not noticed, life is damn hard.

I want to come back and do a part II and refocus on the positive, what encouragement looks like.

Mike