Searching for Faith in the Setting of Your Abuse

I've had to excuse myself from church services or religious conversations on more than one occasion, and I suspect I'm not alone in my reasons for doing so. Like so many other abuse survivors, my abuse occurred within the context of faith and religious practices. The rituals and routines that bring millions of people comfort and strength have often been excruciatingly painful and disruptive to me. Many times, the icons of faith have not reminded me of God's love, but of abuse and exploitation. The dilemma - for many of us - is how to reclaim your faith in the midst of a setting that is inextricably connected to perversion, terror, secrets, and abuse of power?

Here are a few suggestions that worked for me. Please understand, they worked for ME and might not be helpful for you, HOWEVER, I hope this is a springboard to think through strategies that could potentially work for you.

1. Recognize that the religious practices of your abusers are not synonymous with your own spiritual journey - even if you remain in or return to those religious practices. This was a primary reason for my resistance to Christianity - it was the religion that my abuser was involved in and hid behind to justify the abuse. It took awhile for me to separate following Christ from the perversion of the Christian religion that stole my innocence. Freedom - for me - came when I recognized these as separate entities.

2. Embrace faith practices that bring genuine comfort to you. Resist feeling pressured into religious practices that are toxic to you because that is not an honest act of faith or worship, it is a performance. When I returned to Christianity, I struggled deeply with the music of the church - not because of the music itself, but because these were the songs of my abusers. While others around me found encouragement, comfort, and strength in songs like “Amazing Grace” or “There's Room at the Cross,” I found myself snatched away to the horrors of childhood sexual abuse. While the Scriptures provided wisdom, instruction, and enlightenment to my fellow believers, they bludgeoned me because it was THAT book that occupied a central place in my abusers' home. THOSE words were quoted with venom and hypocrisy and hammered into the soft heart of an exploited child.

3. Rehearse an inner dialogue that will help you navigate through worship services, sermons, and study groups. For years, when it was time for music during worship services, I had a conversation going in my head that went something like this: "This is just music. It is meant to help people to focus on the love of God, the power of faith, and the peace of hope. In no way is this my abuse or my abusers. It is what it is: sacred music. It is not my abusers, it is just music and I am going to look for the encouragement, strength, and peace that it contains. I am going to remove their voices from these songs and their actions from these words."

4. Do not be afraid to challenge teachings and beliefs that seem toxic to you. A true teacher welcomes honesty inquiry from a seeker. If those you challenge become defensive, aggressive, or condemning, find someone else with wisdom to help you explore your concerns and struggles. I vividly remember feeling like a ping pong ball being slammed from one clergy's paddle to another. My questions threatened many people and they turned my honest search into being judged regarding the condition of my soul. I was accused of being rebellious or having a hardened heart. These experiences were almost as painful as my abuse because I KNEW my heart. I knew that my search was motivated by a sincere desire to know the truth. I also knew that my very life depended on my pursuit of answers to really difficult questions, so I wouldn't back down. I kept asking. Kept seeking. Kept knocking. Eventually, I found a true teacher who wasn't rattled by my spiritual issues and let me thrash without attacking me.

5. Recognize that the measuring stick for a healthy spirit isn't how well you genuflect, how well you can quote Scripture, or how many times you attend worship services. The measuring stick for pure religion is this: ". . . to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27, New Testament Bible). Of course, the problem for abuse survivors is that the abusers of the world polluted you! To find you way back - to reclaim your faith and your spiritual quest to live beyond abuse - requires taking the time to extract yourself from that pollution, and recalibrate your heart towards the beautiful, sweet, and gentle love of God.

In my wilderness wanderings - first away from Christianity, then around it, and finally through it - I found that the uniqueness of my journey and my circumstances were met with the equal uniqueness and extremely person nature of God's immovable love for me. In Dr. Gerald May's book, The Dark Night of the Soul, he makes the statement that it is impossible for God to be any closer to you than he already is. That statement may feel just about as far from your reality as it could possibly be, until you really stop and think about it. Dr. May continues by saying that the challenge is for us to become aware of that fact.

Abuse can obstruct your journey to become spiritually whole, particularly if your abusers were associated with religious practices. Aggressively redirect your relationship with religious practices so that you seize ownership of those practices as your own. On the outside, it may look the same, but on the inside - where truth matters the most - your pursuit of God is YOURS. It is between you and God. You may need to strategically work through the difference between the culture of religion and how you relate to it, and all of these things take time.

It's ironic that I became a Christian, that I started a ministry, and that I am often immersed in the culture of religion - many times the religion of my abusers. The way that came about was that I carefully deconstructed that toxic, perverted, deceptive religion of my abusers, rejected that as an abomination to me and to God, and then reclaimed Christ as my own. Reclaimed faith as mine and how I practice that as mine. Not theirs. Mine. That's your task. Reclaim faith as your own. Reclaim how you practice as yours. Not theirs. Yours!

Written by Sallie Culbreth, Founder
Committed to Freedom . . . providing people with spiritual tools to help them move beyond abuse.