When ‘God’ becomes the abuser: How Church wounds fuel Christianity’s exodus

Several years ago, someone I’d gotten to know at a church I briefly attended in the mid-2000s commented on a social media post in which I’d voiced my opinion in salty fashion.

If I recall correctly, it was about a touchy bioethics issue. She didn’t hold back her disgust, telling me in no uncertain terms what a repulsive barnacle she thought I was.

I didn’t take offense, but I was a little surprised. I’d gotten the vibe over the years that her views had shifted since I’d known her, but I’d never had a single unpleasant personal interaction with her.  Most people don’t let their claws out with me like that — she did.

As I’d later find out, she and many of the young people and families in that church had been horribly mistreated by one of its pastors. I’d known the man only briefly and had no reason to dislike him. But a few years after I left, I started hearing troubling things about him through the grapevine — things he’d done that were truly indefensible and deeply wounding to many.

I didn’t know any of this when she vented her ill feelings at me on social media. I suggested that if my posts bothered her so much, she might consider unfollowing me. She replied with something like: “Oh no, never. I follow you to know how the evil camp is thinking.”

Somewhat amused by her overt contempt for me — hey, at least she was honest — I kept engaging, noting that my views on the subject were shared by an ideologically broad swath of people, not just lowercase-o orthodox Christians.

“I disagree with those other groups and hate those religions too,” she shot back, “but I REALLY HATE Christianity.”

In this woman’s mind, I was no different from the abusive clergyman who’d burned her. As far as she could tell, I shared his theological views and philosophical outlook closely enough that the distinction didn’t matter. She was projecting her seething contempt for him onto me, as though we were one and the same. I don’t know the full intricacies of her story, so I can’t say for certain — but it sure seemed like she’d done the same thing with God.

To her, the cruel man represented God. And so, God became a verbally abusive tyrant — an all-powerful, all-knowing one, no less. Maybe I should put air quotes around “God,” because I believe she hates what she thinks God is, not who God actually is. Why would anyone want to revere and serve a divine-narcissist-abuser-almighty? If God is an abuser, why not fight back and champion the opposite of whatever God supposedly stands for?

She couldn’t separate Jesus from that dreadful man, or from the community of faith in which she and so many of her peers were wounded.

I can’t quantify it, but after years in Christian media, I’ve come to believe what I’ve described here is an epidemic. That’s not hyperbole. I’ve heard too many stories for it not to be a significant trend — and though it manifests in different ways, it is in churches and denominations across the board.

It’s more than just the human condition playing out in a fallen world. Some abusive leaders do more damage than others, because the doctrinal emphases, attitudes, and habits of mind cultivated in their institutions can end up legitimizing and reinforcing destructive patterns rather than checking them. And sure, I’ll grant that a certain self-centered narcissism also affects a sizable swath of young people who are quick to label everything “abusive,” even if it’s just a bold stand for God’s righteousness. That’s a real phenomenon, too. But that isn’t what I’m referring to here.

At The Christian Post, we’ve reported on the “pandemic of narcissism” in church leadership, and pastors and leaders of that ilk were mentioned in our 2019 article series “Leaving Christianity.” That series has stuck with me because I remember how delighted, almost stunned, that many readers were — some of whom had been terribly wounded in churches — that an evangelical Christian publication was willing to take a sober, honest look at the people it represents and tell the unvarnished truth, warts and all, about our moral failures, relational dysfunction, and structural problems in ministries.

It can take a while for the average Christian to see and admit some of these things, because it may not be in their immediate frame of reference. If they have a loving family, a kind-hearted pastor, a great church, and no exposure to this particular world, it’s just not on their radar. I don’t blame them for that. They don’t know what they don’t know.

But if I could talk today with the woman who lashed out at me all those years ago, I’d tell her that God loves her. And I’d mean it. She probably wouldn’t want to hear it. So mostly, I’d just listen — even amid our profound differences.

That old exchange came back to me recently, around the time the United States turned 250, alongside some words from our second president, John Adams. Adams believed it was the schools and pulpits that indispensably infused people with the “spirit of liberty,” institutions he considered vital to cultivating the virtues a constitutional republic needs to survive, and for the preservation of true freedom. In a 1798 letter to the Massachusetts militia, Adams famously wrote that the U.S. Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious People … wholly inadequate for any other.”

So, what happens when the pulpits — when “God” — become the abuser in the minds of increasing numbers of people? What happens when the very values and institutions Adams believed were essential bulwarks of liberty curdle and spiritually sour for so many? From what I’ve seen, what unfolds is a process: wounds don’t heal; infection sets in and spreads; hearts darken, harden, and rebel; godless ideologies rise out of this church wreckage; and sometimes an even crueler master fills the void, often one that seeks bitter retribution. Cherished freedoms that were anchored in Judeo-Christian norms and ethics erode once that happens, and they’re a Herculean task to recover once lost. 

And He still loves them.