Tomorrow will be Easter Sunday.  It’s the first Easter Sunday I’ll miss since my the day my mother dressed me up in a frilly white dress with matching bonnet and bloomers.

Easter is comforting in the same way all ritual is comforting.  Were I to walk in the doors of our church tomorrow, I’d know exactly what to expect: the same three songs we seem to trot out just once a year, flowers everywhere, everyone dressed up in spring colors.  “He is risen,” boomed from the pulpit.  “He is risen, indeed,” intoned back.

Easter is supposed to be a celebration, the resurrection of Christ, the forgiveness of sins.  But there can be no celebration without the tragedy of Jesus’ death.  There can be no ecstasy of forgiveness without knowledge of the depth of your degradation.  This is Easter. 

I have spent much of my life trying to force myself to make sense of Easter, trying to ignore my nagging doubts, trying to believe that it’s as beautiful as I’ve always been told it is.  I’ve always felt like the only one who didn’t “get it.”  Worst of all, I felt terrible guilt that I would ever doubt Jesus after the sacrifice he made for me. 

It starts so young.  Too young.  You’re filled with sin.  What sin?  What horrible sins could a five-year-old child commit?  The Sunday School teacher earnestly listed them off.  Did you talk back to your parents?  Take your little brother’s toys?   Well, because of that, you’re separated from God.  And Jesus had to die.  Do you want to say a prayer?

It made no sense.

Even as a child, it made no sense.  When I talked back to my Mom, it made her angry, but then I apologized, and she forgave me, and it was over.  I didn’t have to kill a pig, or my baby brother.  God couldn’t just do that from the get-go?  He had to kill Jesus—kill Himself—before he could start forgiving us?  Why the intermediary? 

God was perfect, I was told.  He couldn’t be around sin.  We had to be purified.  And the only way to be purified was through Jesus.  But God was all-powerful, I knew.  Couldn’t He just do whatever He wanted? 

It made no sense.

And, of course, there was problem of Christ’s divinity.  It was constantly drilled into us that Jesus was fully man and fully God.  Well, okay.  I’d already wrestled with the trinity at Christmas.  (So: God is One, but there are three, but He’s still One…just don’t worry about it, because you can’t understand, because He’s God…you’ll understand when you get to heaven.).  I may not have been allowed to question it, because there wasn’t an answer, but it still bothered me that God was basically killing himself.

Jesus was God.  The bible was filled with his miracles, with the foreknowledge of his death.  His whole ministry was a lead up to his death on the cross.  Jesus knew that his death was temporary.  How bad could it be, really? 

That was anticipated by our mentors, of course.  As children, we were terrorized by graphic descriptions of crucifixion.  Long before Mel Gibson’s released his torture porn, our pastors described the details of how Christ died.  Each Easter, we would watch a passion play, where the sound of nails hitting flesh and wood would ring out in an eerily silent church, accompanied by agonizing screams.

And, of course, the physical pain was not the issue.  When Jesus died, he was utterly separated from God.  He carried the sins of the whole world.  He carried the weight of every sin ever committed.  All of your sins.  As Tony Compolo said, when you sin, imagine Jesus screaming in pain, because he is carrying that sin on the cross. 

That’s a lot for a child to take in.

Once, once, I had the audacity to question a teacher about the veracity of the atonement.  I was perhaps eleven or twelve—before my baptism.  If Jesus was God, I wondered, how could he be separated from himself?  And while I was sure crucifixion hurt—I sure wouldn’t want to go through it—it only hut for a while.  Also, being God and all, couldn’t he just make it not hurt?  The astonished, horrified look on her face made me realize that these were questions I just couldn’t ask.  

Immediately, I felt ashamed.  How dare I question what Jesus had done for me, this ultimate sacrifice, the horrible suffering he had endured so that I could be reconciled with God?  And I felt like I was the only one having these doubts.  I stuffed these questions deep down and forced myself to believe, fervently asking God for forgiveness.

This pattern continued throughout my childhood and adolescence.  I learned there were questions that were off limits.  I  knew there were questions that would be answered with the hated response: “We can’t understand God.  We can only trust that His ways are perfect.” 

 Finally, there came a crack so large that the wall I’d built up around all the doubts from my childhood came tumbling down.  I picked up the book “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins.  The beauty of nature came alive.  I saw the world around me in a whole new way.  Every plant, even every bug seemed somehow marvelous in a way that believing in a creator God never did. 

 I’d been told so many lies about evolution as a teen, given so much pseudoscience to combat the “militant atheists”.  But I wasn’t an atheist after reading “The Blind Watchmaker;” just fascinated with nature.  The world was so much more beautiful than I’d ever realized, so much more complex.  I devoured every book on evolution and biology I could find, checked out DVD sets from the library.  There wasn’t even a question about the veracity of what I was learning.  I was instantly converted.  And I began to wonder about what else I was being lied to about. 

 New questions began to form, questions I couldn’t ignore.  If Adam and Eve weren’t real (and, I was learning, of course they couldn’t have been), then there was no Original Sin.  I had to sit with that.  I sat with that for years.  I understand why Christians fight evolution so much.  It can topple your faith.  It toppled mine. 

I twisted myself into theological knots.  There are theologians out there who are only too willing to help tie you up, if given the chance.  I handed them the rope.  But it just wasn’t strong enough.  And I finally had to come to grips with the fact that, well, maybe there was no such thing as original sin.

 And if there was no original sin, I wasn’t born dirty.  We all weren’t born separated from God.  God didn’t have to create a system where He had to commit suicide.  And all the doubts came tumbling out.  I couldn’t stop them.  The wall collapsed. 

  I woke up one day.  There was nothing particularly special about it; I got up, ran some errands, and sometime in the afternoon, realized, “I don’t think I believe in God anymore.”

  And I didn’t. 

 It didn’t matter how much I tried to put the wall back up.  It didn’t matter how much I prayed.  It didn’t matter how many books I read.  It didn’t matter how many church services I attended.  It didn’t matter that I did my devotions twice a day.  It didn’t matter that I pleaded.  “Lord, I believe,” I cried.  “Help me in my unbelief.”  I didn’t believe. 

 So this Sunday, I won’t be going to an Easter service.  It hurts.  Maybe someday, the pain will go away.  Today, I feel like I’ve lost my best friend.  There’s still a part of me that I’ve put Jesus up on that cross, even though I haven’t really believed that since I was a young child.  I’m not sure how I can believe two things at once, one thing in my head and the other in my heart. 

 But I think tomorrow, while the congregation is singing “Up From the Grave He Arose,” I’ll put on my Glee soundtrack.  And I know what I’d rather be listening to

Download Dr. Marlene Winell on Search for Meaning With Caroline Jones

“I was in the main aisle of Barnes and Noble one day when I heard a voice
say “hello DJ”. I knew that it was someone from my Christian past
because I went by my initials DJ in those days. I turned and it was a
woman whom I had admired and respected and had sort of “adopted” as a
surrogate mom back then. We chatted about the usual “how are kids”, what
ever happened to so and so etc. and then THE question came. “Is the Lord
still part of your life and where are you going to church?” I smiled
and, without the anger I would have had a couple of years ago, without
the defensive attitude, and with the calm and self assurance I have now,
just said, “No, I’ve made the choice not to have that as a part of my
life any more.” The look of pain that crossed her face reminded me of
how I must have looked back in “those” days, when I asked someone who
had “fallen away” the same question. I just smiled at her, looking her
in the eyes the whole time and told her that I believe that Christianity
causes people to live two lives, and that I now do some work as a
support person for others who have left religion. I told her about my
thesis topic of Religious Addiction and Spiritual Abuse recovery and
that I am converting my thesis into a book. I acknowledged to her that I
could see that what I am saying bothers her and I said I dedicate my
life to speaking my truth from the heart. I had told her during the
conversation that she and her husband were two of perhaps three or four
Christians, I had known during my 25 years of fundamentalism whom I
respected and admired for really living what they believed and truly
showed love and acceptance toward others. When the conversation ended, I
walked away feeling empowered by my truth. I had finally spoken it
instead of running off and avoiding the conversation I knew would take
place after the usual “catching up”. I am not afraid of running into
anyone from my past now (I’ve been in recovery a little over ten years)
because I know that how they react to my story is their responsibility.
I can’t think of anyone I would rather have had this experience with
than this woman because I knew there would be no argument or attempt to
persuade me to “return to the fold”. She was a good practice run to
boost my confidence and to realize how far I have come in my recovery
from religion.”

Debra Thornley
Talent Oregon

I just realized a new, deeper level of understanding of my anger towards my family, and it has shaken me up.

I am the black sheep, the exchristian. ALL the other family members are still fundamentalist believers – my parents and five siblings, with two doing missionary work. In general they are cold and disapproving towards me and leave me out of key family events. Often it is passed off as an oversight, but to me the passive aggressive treatment is so obvious. Weddings, a 90th birthday, a funeral, holidays, and other occasions planned without my participation, considering my schedule, or even inviting me at times.

My missionary sister was sick for a year before anyone told me about it. The reasoning for that wasn’t hard to figure out. But I was angry and it hurt; after all, she was still my sister and I would have bitten my tongue about why she wasn’t granted a miracle.

My nieces and nephews are all growing up now and I’ve missed out on the pleasure of being an aunt. They have been mostly home-schooled and sent to Bible colleges. Their parents don’t approve of me, my work, my politics, my divorce, my language, my “lifestyle” (sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll?). But mainly, it’s my apostate status that marks me, which in their view, means I knew Christ and rejected him. This is much worse than just “backsliding.” It means I crucified Christ a second time. They know I was once a sincere believer.

This is the crux of what has dawned on me. They have denied me my grief and taken it one step further.

Once upon a time, I was the most serious Christian in the family. Our parents were “nondenominational” fundamentalist ministers. All of us kids were raised “Christian,” obediently going to church and learning the Bible. But I was the one who became intensely religious. In addition to our more conservative church, I joined a pentecostal group, spoke in tongues, studied all things theological, fasted weekly, and talked a lot about my love for Jesus. My uncle declared that I was the only “real Christian” in the family. When we moved to Southern California, I continued my passion, now involving a lot of time with other young people evangelizing. This was for about five years during my adolescence. I was a virgin, bursting with hormones, and not immune to normal longings.

Looking back, knowing what I now know about human emotional cathexis and biological imprinting, I realize that JESUS WAS MY FIRST LOVER. He was the first man I truly loved. I never imagined having sex with him but the emotional intimacy was real. Ecstasy in love and ecstasy in religious experience are both delicious flights of imagination, and I have always had a lively imagination. So, at age 16, I was deeply in love with someone who would always be mine, would always listen, would always take care of me, and would take me someday to his mansion to love me forever. My purpose in life was simple and clear – serve him until that day. Of all the fairy tale imagery in the Bible, my favorite was the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. I was happy and I sang to myself as I looked at the clouds – often in tongues, sometimes with words. One song included references to lovers in the Song of Solomon.

Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus, what a wonder you are

You’re brighter than the morning star.

You’re fairer, much fairer,

Than the lily that grows by the wayside,

You’re precious, more precious than gold.

You are the Rose of Sharon,

You’re the fairest of the fair.

You are all my heart could e’er desire,

Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus, what a wonder you are,

You’re precious, more precious than gold.

So to have my faith crumble was no small thing. It came apart for reasons intellectual, moral, and emotional. It took time and I resisted. In fact, I hung on, fighting back with apologetics, and evangelizing more. But I was anything but dishonest. My faith had to be true; God had to be the Rock of Ages, solid and real. But with life experience and jarring new information, I had to come to terms with the cracks in my closed worldview. I could see that I wanted Jesus to be my hero, my savior. It was painful but now I craved authenticity. I needed integrity, and for that, my life had to change.

That meant letting go of my Jesus! As my new reality became clearer, Jesus slowly faded away into the distance. I had to break up a relationship that was not good for me, even though it had been such a sweet illusion. Looking back, I could see that it was just not working out. I was never good enough, and much as I wished it so, Jesus had not come through with his promises. I was exhausted and it was over. Emotionally, my first lover died. And I grieved, deeply and privately. I wrote poetry, and I made art. Sometimes I raged, but I had no idea what to do with my feelings. I could never turn to my family.

It was long after my affair with him that my siblings became enamored with Jesus. I don’t think they remembered much about my relationship with him and I didn’t speak of it, so ever since then, it seems they don’t realize how in love I was, or what my loss was like.

Instead, they act as if I KILLED HIM. After all, this is what the scripture says about apostasy. My sister goes on all the time about Jesus. My younger brother writes books about Jesus in other countries, and he would not remember my days of zeal and devotion.

What crazy, mixed-up feelings I’ve gone through with them. It makes more sense to me now as I think, What If I lost a dear husband and my family only accused me of killing him? I would not only feel unsupported; my anger would be understandable. Or, what if they wouldn’t let me mourn because they thought I chased him away and he was still alive?

Of course, having been in their shoes, I understand their loyalty to this imagined being called “Jesus” that gives meaning to their lives. Especially with my father, who is 85, I wouldn’t want to take away that comfort. But I also want to scream when I feel the hostility, “No, I did not kill Jesus! I LOVED HIM MORE THAN YOU EVER WILL.” Nor did I turn my back on him, leave him, cheat, or chase him off.

Don’t you know I wince when I hear the music? The love songs that come right back if I hear just one bar? I used to play them on the piano, for God’s sake. How do you think I feel when I hear ‘What a Friend,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘How Great Thou Art,’ or this?
‘There’s within my heart a melody,

Jesus whispers sweet and low,

Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still. . .’

Or how about:

‘He touched me, Oh, He touched me,

And oh what joy that filled my soul,

Something happened, and now I know,

He touched me, and made me whole.’
Or this one, which can touch a nerve and make me cry:

‘I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear

The Son of God discloses,

And He walks with me and He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.’”
Could that be any more personal? Hearing it is like being in a night club somewhere and having “our song” come on. Yes, the heart strings are fiercely plucked. It’s not rational; I have to compose myself and come back to reality.

My family members have never accused me of not ever knowing him, although in-laws have tried to shame me and say I left the faith because I wanted a life of sin. It was beneath me to answer that and my siblings were embarrassed. But my having truly “tasted the heavenly gift,” according to Hebrews 6:4-6, makes my falling away so much worse. It is so serious that repentance and restoration to the faith is impossible. According to that passage, I have “crucified again the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”

But I reject this about myself. I never did anything to Jesus. My mother once said, “What did Jesus do to you to deserve this?” I was taken aback and also startled because I no longer thought of him as real.

In my own experience I have discovered that Christians seem to think they need to defend God constantly. Mere words can create anguish if they are deemed blasphemy, so I try to watch my language. I also try to be a loving, generous family member myself. But nothing I do will ever be enough and I cannot change the way my family sees me.

What I can do is honor my own history. And that is: I had my adolescent faux love affair with Jesus, my Prince Charming, and it was lovely. So was Santa Claus (although not so sexy). I didn’t kill either of them; I’m quite sure of it.

Dr. Marlene Winell speaks about the abusive effects of indoctrination by authoritarian religion. Keywords: ex-christian, fundamentalism, ex-fundamentalism, recovery from religion, spiritual abuse, toxic religion, free thought, freethinker, atheism, secular, humanism, deconversion.

As I become increasingly reconciled to life as it actually is (as I encounter
it from moment to moment), and as my formerly strong suspicion that life may
be nothing but a nasty trap set by a sadistic god fades, the moments when I’m
seized by the thought, “What if it’s (i.e., Protestant fundamentalist dogma
is) all true and what awaits me after death is everlasting torment, Hell,
become fewer and further between.

But when that thought does arise, here’s how I deal with it:

* I think back to the time when I was first seriously contemplating leaving
the fundamentalist fold. I was a graduate student at a state university,
studying literature and reading much more widely than I ever had in missionary
kids’ boarding school or Bible college. It began to occur to me that,
according to what I’d been taught while growing up, many if not most of the
authors whose books and essays I was finding most compelling were either
already burning in Hell or were destined to burn there after the Judgment. It
occurred to me further that if I were to die and go to (the fundamentalist
notion of) Heaven, my companions there would include many people whom I either
have known personally or seen on TV who are blowhards and hypocrites. I
particularly remember wondering if I’d want to spend the rest of eternity in
the company of the likes of Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart, as opposed to,
say, Mark Twain and Albert Camus. Over time, as I began to feel increasing
solidarity with the men and women who were becoming my literary and
intellectual heroes, the answer to that question crystalized within me: a
resounding “Heck, no!!”

* Sometimes I also remind myself of the solidarity I feel with the millions
(billions?) of people who’ve “died in darkness, never having heard.” Growing
up, I was often troubled by the fact that I’d been born to parents and into a
subculture (a “family” of missionaries) that had a corner on the Truth, while
many other children hadn’t been so fortunate and thus were likely, ultimately,
to die unsaved and spend eternity in Hell. As far as I could see, that wasn’t
fair, no matter what the theological rationalization I was offered. In
graduate school, as my feeling of solidarity with my new literary heroes grew,
so did my solidarity with all the “regular people” destined to burn or already
burning in Hell because they weren’t born into exactly the right
circumstances.

* For me, the thought that most powerfully counters any recurring fear that I
may be on my way to Hell is: “If I were the one in charge of the universe,
would I set things up so that billions of people would sooner or later be
consigned to eternal torture and torment?” For me now, the answer to that is
obvious: NO. Never. Not under any circumstance. So the next question
becomes, “Would I want to spend eternity communing with a god who would set
things up that way?” And the next, “Wouldn’t that be much worse, even, than
spending eternity communing with an unrepentant Hitler?”

* As time goes on, I realize with increasing conviction that hell is right now
and heaven is right now. We create our own hell or heaven for ourselves and
one another right now, each moment we live. That’s what I believe Jesus meant
when he said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Hell is within us, too.
It’s up to each of us individually to decide which we’re going to inhabit –
right here, right now.

* To be more specific: As I study myself and the things that interest me
intensely, it becomes increasingly clear that freedom, equanimity, joy,
integrity, and authenticity — all qualities to which I aspire — are NOT
primarily dependent on external circumstances, nor are they “gifts” provided
by some external agent. I personally make choices that either nurture these
qualities or cause them to wither through neglect. And I carry them around
with me, so they’re present anywhere I may happen to be. “If you cherish and
nurture these qualities,” I remind myself, “you’d be more free and joyful in
prison — or in Hell, even — than anyone anywhere (even in Heaven) who neglects
to cultivate these qualities.”

* I’m also becoming increasingly convinced that what awaits me after death is
identical to what I was before I was conceived. I have no memories of that
time. Apparently, that time produced neither fear nor joy in me, because if
it did, surely I would remember something about it. But I don’t. It’s just a
neutral blank. I expect that’s what it will be like after I die, and I’m not
the least bit afraid of it.

-Richard Irwin

November 19, 1995
Address at annual meeting of the Eremos Institute, Sydney
(c) Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

I’m here today to share with you my thoughts about spirituality and wholeness. However, I want to be clear that I am not speaking as a guru with grand conclusions. I think we share in this task of looking afresh at spirituality after the trauma of rigid religion. So, forgive me if I do not have answers. I have become a healthy skeptic and prefer to simply discuss evolving thoughts on the matter.

But first let’s go back and look at fundamentalism for a minute. My book, Leaving the Fold, was written for people who have decided to leave and recover from an authoritarian religion like Christian fundamentalism. Yet the attractions of the fold are very strong. It’s a comfortable cocoon where you are are taken care of in some wonderful ways. You are given answers to all of life’s difficult questions, you are reassured about death, offered safety and protection from the world and Satan, you have acceptance and intimacy with God, and you have a tightly knit community for social support and constant affirmation of your worldview. For many people, surrendering to an all-encompassing external system of authority is a huge relief and comfort. Being saved gives you a giant stamp of approval from on high so therefore you can accept yourself and that feels great. Are there people here who know what I am talking about?

Yet there is a price, and it is this price that often propels people to leave. Membership in an exclusive group which is right while everyone else is wrong requires obedience and relinquishment of individual identity. In exchange for the benefits I just described, you give up your right to your own thoughts and feelings. You are taught to completely mistrust yourself. The system also denigrates the rest of the world and teaches you to mistrust anyone outside the group. In essence, there is a high cost of separation–from other people, the world, and the self. Other people are objects, either objects of fellowship or objects of conversion. Your purpose in this world is only to prepare for the next and to warn others. There is so much dichotomous thinking and judging and dividing into right and wrong, godly and worldly, that life itself is fragmented and repressed. Creativity and spontaneous feeling, not to mention animal instincts, are woefully suppressed.

For many of us, this package deal just became impossible. We matured and craved the personal integrity of believing our own experiences. We wanted to be alive now, and connect with other people with appreciation instead of judgment. We ventured out, despite the fear of becoming lost, and eventually found our own paths. In my book, I have gone into various aspects of recovery, centering primarily around trusting yourself again. In my own case, it took many years to shed old beliefs and develop a new approach to life. For a long time I knew I felt better but I worried about the arrogance of going my own way.

Then one night I had a dream in which I found myself in heaven. I was confused and said, “But I’m not a believer.” Then I gradually felt the presence of God and realized that he liked me. I was surprised and wondered why. He told me that people are misguided about the criteria for heaven. He said, “You’re here because you dared to live.” When I woke up I was amused at first and then deeply reassured that I was on the right track.

And for a long time I had ignored and avoided any semblance of religion or any mention of God. My fundamentalist religion had monopolized God for so long that I couldn’t conceive of any other kind of faith or spirituality. I still have trouble with church services and religious vocabulary. Many of my clients have also talked about spiritual damage where they feel they have been robbed of the nurturing and healing potential of a spiritual life. It’s hard to turn to a “higher power” if you feel that is the source of your injury.

However, for many people who leave a rigid religion, they return to the idea of spirituality after a time, wanting meaning and connection with something profound beyond their individual lives. People who have been religious often retain an interest in broad issues and a consciousness of deeper levels of experience. As one man put it:

“It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve quite quit praying, though there was a time when I fought a religious orientation. Sometimes it feels depressing. Sometimes it feels okay and I do some reading. Periodically I go to church. I feel less of a need to tie everything up in my life now, and make sure that I know where everything fits.

“I still have this abiding faith inside of me that transcends the situation and the circumstances and churches and experiences I’ve had in my life. It feels like an anchor. All this other stuff swirls around that I react to and respond to, and I might even move away from that anchor periodically, but I always come to the realization that it’s still there–an abiding faith.

But I get confused about what I believe, what the deity is–if it’s this kind of Judeo-Christian god, or some other. I don’t know that part.”

In my way of thinking, reclaiming spirituality is like other areas of healing and growth after fundamentalism. It becomes a matter of taking responsibility for one’s own spirituality. It needs to be redefined and personalized by each individual.

Unfortunately, the word spirituality is often laden with old meanings: obedience, religiosity, piety, ethical or moral behavior, denial of worldly pleasures, concentration on matters of cosmic concern, or a focus on mystical experience. Usually the implication in church circles is that spirituality is special and separate from ordinary everyday life. The danger is that creating a category of sacred also creates the unsacred and thus another dichotomy in which one part is superior.

In my experience and that of others I have talked with in my work, there is a strong need to stop judging and to embrace all of life. Spirituality must be life-enhancing, not an escape from life. It also must be honest, which means a recognition of what is, not what we wish life to be, or how things should be. In many religious traditions, a spiritual practice is an effort to find a place of no conflict. Peace of mind is the goal, at all cost, including massive denial and withdrawal. Yet life is not like that. Life is messy, with chaotic surprises, difficult times, and painful disappointments as well as times of triumph and celebration.

So living fully must involve courage. And we use the words courage and courageous when there is an element of fear. You have courage when you have fears and you act anyway. You may not have the certainties of a fundamentalist religion, but that does not keep you from having faith, faith in life.

Joseph Campbell said, “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” He recommended finding your life’s true passion and following it. “Follow your bliss,” he said.

You have a right to your bliss–to any form of spirituality you want. But to reclaim it, you need to explore it yourself, and find out what it is for you, making it personal and nurturing.

Spiritual has the word “spirit.” A “spirited” person is a person full of life. Not shrinking. Taking responsibility for co-creating one’s life. Willing to reflect honestly, examining values and making choices. For some people their spirituality may include retaining and reaffirming portions of their faith that are still valuable for them. Because of prior indoctrination, it can feel like high heresy to value and cherish only certain portions of scripture or to relate to Jesus or pray to God in your own way. Thus it may help you to know that there are many, many people who would support you in your desire for a more accepting and nurturing Christianity. Spirituality is not simply obedience to a code, no one owns God, and no group owns the Bible. One woman described it this way:

“I still believe there is some promise there. When I look at some of the things that Jesus said, they seem brilliant to me, like “Love one another,” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I find the church I attend is all right for me now. I can go there and most of the time I don’t come out of the worship service all screwed up. . . I enjoy the liturgy and the rituals involved with it. And nobody tells me what I have to or can’t believe. . . So that’s why I still consider myself a Christian, but not a Christian in the way that people wanted me to be. I believe in the best, and the stuff that’s not the best, I just leave by the roadside. I just don’t listen to it.

“Sometimes I feel myself starting to slip back into fundamentalist things again, and then I’ll go through a period where I just hate God and I hate Jesus and I don’t want to hear another word about this nonsense. And then I finally come to what I hope is equilibrium, which is that I need spirituality in my life and that the form of that spirituality which happens to fit with me is a belief in God and Christ.”

Many church groups respect a wide range of individual interpretation of scripture and worship. Doubts and questions are encouraged as part of the quest for integrity. They often value things like love, joy of living, and social change much more than conformity to doctrine. There is comfort with ambiguity, with not having all the answers, and even with celebrating the mystery of it all.

In your quest for a new, personal spirituality, you also have the option to explore new religions and philosophies. People who have been raised with only one way to think are often amazed when they start reading widely. However, this does not mean you simply replace one dogmatic system with another. An important part of the process is learning to trust your own judgment and your own need for information. Some former fundamentalists tend to continue looking outside themselves for guidance on spiritual matters. Yet even the most enlightened system can become rigid and dogmatic, robbing you of your self-reliance. The search for another guru, another personal growth workshop, another author, can be endless, and the dependency continues.

Another common reaction is the feeling of having been “burned” by adhering to a rigid belief system and thus finding it difficult to benefit from any kind of organized group experience. Your new found trust in yourself can feel like a precious commodity, and you don’t want to give over your thinking capacities to someone else’s “truth.”

At the same time, you may want to incorporate the wisdom of others in your spiritual growth. A fine source of guidance on this point appears in Ram Dass’s Journey of Awakening (1978), in the chapters on picking a path and finding your way. Here he explains that there are many paths, no formulas for enlightenment, and that the real goal is liberation. He recommends that you learn from whatever teacher or group that you wish, even submitting to that leadership for a time, until you have learned enough and need to move on. He reminds us of Shakespeare: “To thine own self be true.”

In the language that I use, this approach means you are taking responsibility for yourself. Your adult can be sensitive to the needs of your inner child and actively draw lessons from your environment without losing yourself in someone else’s journey. Ram Dass also points out that if you stay grounded, there is no need to fear the influence of teachers or groups. In fact, all of life can teach you. He quotes Suzuki who says, “When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.”

Finding your spiritual path is a personal creative process. Father Leo Booth emphasized this in Breaking the Chains (1989):

“God is understood as the Creator: We need also understand that God is creating–and He/She is especially creating in and through our lives. We are co-creators with God. We are not puppets on a string waiting for “something to happen.” We make things happen. We create the difference. In our determined choice, the miracle exists.”

Your own ideas about spirituality might be quite vague now and this is fine. Spirituality can be as simple as connecting with nature, intimacy with others, or appreciating the life force. One way to get a better sense of your present notion of spirituality is to express yourself visually, letting go of words and just drawing with crayons or pastels. You can just relax and let the process unfold without consciously planning a picture or being concerned about the product. I did this in a small group of people who found the process to be reassuring and exciting–they found that they did indeed retain a sense of spirituality.

Here are some of their comments about their drawings:

Carol: The thing that comes up for me is how undefined my experience of spirituality is these days. There are no set forms that I am aware of. What stands out here is this dark black ball of energy. It feels like a lot of power, with a wavelike quality to it. Sometimes there’s momentum or intensity. My spirituality doesn’t have any concepts attached to it anymore. It’s coming out of the unknown. But it’s filled with power and it’s filled with creative juice. Out of this comes all of these colors and the colors represent energy. . .energy in motion. There are a lot of emotions I am knowing. It just feels like all of creation comes from this place and I don’t need to be concerned about it taking on any form. Plus, I feel much more open to new ideas, to other people’s experience. Things don’t fit or not fit. It’s not black or white. It’s like everything is included; everyone’s experience of God or nonGod is equal to me these days. If someone has this tremendous realization of God, saying “God is on the mountain,” and someone else is into their booze every night, it’s equal to me. There isn’t a better or worse in all of this. In fact, I question it all and am equally curious about it all. Like “What’s your experience in your bottle?” and “What’s your experience on the mountain?” There’s no hierarchy in this spirituality. It’s very organic and it comes from this darkness of not knowing. This place of “I don’t know.”

June: There’s a sun here. I do feel there is light and there is something of the wonderful heat. I love the sun. And so there is that penetrating deep heat and light that I really appreciate. Over here is the other side which was a black cloud with drops, a lot of movement, and in the center of it is a place of nothingness from which everything else can come–a significant center–and these were like tears too. The whole emotional process is something cleansing, just like after a rain everything is made new.

And these are just the first roots. And from them comes growth and expansion and life and healing. This is movement, which feels to me to be very much a part of god and Goddess.

This just felt like forgiveness to me. I put some on the sun because it shines on everybody, it’s not discriminating.

This was passion and sexuality. . . and this is just the spiraling kind of enfoldment, the nature feeling that God is everywhere. There is something larger, and I am a part of it, but it is all around me. And this is my own female, my own version. And laughter, humor.

Janet: I just kept feeling that where I am at now is to just clear out. I just want to clear out all these concepts–all this right and wrong and all that kind of thing. So for me spirituality is a lot rawer, a lot gutsier, a lot more spontaneous. I kept thinking, clear all the judgments out. I kept feeling energy, all this energy. Spirituality is everything.

Doing the drawing felt good. For so many years it’s been a group process–basically thinking the same things, feeling the same things, that it is much more personal now. It almost doesn’t matter if anyone agrees with me. This is it.

Darla: This drawing has an aspect of direction, moving in a direction. This is a center, an intensity, mostly having to do with being present. I don’t want to go through life being half asleep.

These things coming out are the creative energies that are coming from that center, from that sense of being present: the involvement, the contribution, the engagement with life, with the world. And then these arrows coming in are the other side of that: The receiving, the openness, the acceptance, the greediness of life, whether it is good, bad, or ugly. Letting it in. Letting life in.

And this has a symmetry, an order, a beauty. I am amazed at some of the things we know from science, especially physics. It’s incredible the way things work. It’s almost like a machine wheel where it just fits. The other stuff can be wild and chaotic and full of energy. And at the same time there is this order. I’m still not sure of what words to use for that, except that there is a perfection about it.”

The next question people usually have about spirituality is what to do about it. Over the centuries and in different societies, people have developed various ways to cultivate spirituality. Many faiths include devotional practices, including prayer, contemplation, and meditation. The concept of prayer may be problematic for you if it still feels connected with your old religion, but prayer can mean something entirely different. One person told me:

“For years I couldn’t even hear the word prayer; it turned my stomach. But finally I began looking at that. It was a hard period in my life. I felt I needed to pray, and I didn’t know how to do that. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I had been doing it. Prayer was really listening, not talking. That made a big difference to me because it was permission to listen to everything. You know, it’s interesting that Christians are always talking to God. They never shut up, do they? I mean, they never listen or pay attention. They’re so busy building a fantasy about what life is really like. They tell him what he wants them to do.”

As you consider your own newly defined spirituality, you may want to nurture it in some way. For some people, time spent in nature is of spiritual benefit. This may be a daily walk, day trips, or longer retreats designed to connect with the natural world. Other people find spiritual satisfaction through attentive parenting and making sure they have “quality time” with their children when they can be childlike as well.

Many individuals make use of music and art to experience and expand their spirituality. In the act of creation, artists will often describe an ecstatic experience of “flow” as they connect with a larger creative force.

This brings me to an area of concern that has become more clear and important to me recently. Spirituality in traditional terms, whether in Western or Eastern religion, has not emphasized creativity. This is because believers are taught to bring themselves in line with authority and hence to fear themselves. In the East, you are also taught renunciation of the self in a quest to unite with all of existence. Self-interest and self-centeredness are the worst traits to exhibit, and in traditional Christianity it is the essence of sin. All of our training has emphasized giving and doing for others and guilt for thinking for oneself. Yet concern for self is not only normal and natural, but necessary for health. In my therapeutic vocabulary, this means a person’s adult self must provide for their inner child. This is not to say that self-interest is above concern for others. That would be another dichotomy, another form of either/or thinking.

But an unfortunate legacy of religions that teach self-denial is a divided psyche. People are at war with themselves, consciously or unconsciously and unaware of the root of the trouble. This topic is taken up brilliantly in the book, The Guru Papers, by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. These authors examine authoritarianism of all forms and the ways that dualistic thinking affects our culture. Much of our thinking is still in terms of good and evil, healthy and sick, creator and creation, real and false, living and dying, order and chaos, control and surrender. Most devastating is the way we live with so much inner conflict. We still try to live up to ideals which are often unlivable standards. As a result we judge and disown parts of ourselves. This creates a constant inner tension and a powerful tendency to project and judge others.

We pit our “goodself” against our “badself” in an ongoing battle. These selves are not actually good and bad but are treated that way. In truth, the goodself has aspects one would be far better off without; while the badself contains elements that need to be legitimized and expressed. They typically have the following characteristics: the goodself is responsible, reliable, truthful, temperate, industrious, and productive; works on self-improvement, delays gratification, does not hurt others, obeys the rules, and puts someone or something other than oneself first. The job of the goodself is to remain in control to ensure these values are lived up to. The badself is the unwanted part of the self. It cares little about future consequences or effects on others, manipulates people, is hedonistic and reckless, more interested in fun than accomplishment, pushes against boundaries and taboos, flirts with danger and when crossed it displays so-called negative emotions and behaviors such as anger, pettiness, and vengeance. People usually identify with the goodself and this is supported by authorities in society. Yet the effect can be puritanical and repressive as the goodself fearfully tries to control the badself. Much of self-centeredness and carnality is relegated to the badself where it is distorted. This also suppresses spontaneity, creativity, and enjoyment for their own sake because these expressions often undermine the goodself’s control mechanisms. Thus you can see how we develop our own inner authoritarian. We can become driven to be good enough and at a deep level, fear and mistrust ourselves. And then with a world filled with divided selves, it is no wonder that there are deep divisions and wars between cultures.

Spirituality can be considered that process of bringing together all the parts of who we are in a loving wholeness. What we need in ourselves and in our world is to accept the oppositions and include them in a continuous, moving process. Each side is necessary for the other and is embedded in the other. There can be an interplay between polar opposites that informs and feeds the whole. We need to be both selfish and selfless, altruistic and egoistic, giving and taking. We need both control and surrender, individuation and merging. We need to act creatively with forcefulness and receive with humility. In simple terms we need to make friends with ourselves, allowing every part to be acceptable. The inner child needs to be loved in every way, not just for being good.

In conclusion, I believe spirituality is synonymous with life. It is not something to search for, it exists in the fabric of the everyday. It is the whole of reality, not something separate or ideal. We do not need to strive and change, but rather celebrate everything that already is. We can open ourselves to the wonder around us, here and now, not in the hereafter. We can reclaim our inherent spirituality. Take it back from authorities who would define it and try to monopolize it. Cherish your spirit-filled life as only you can live and understand.