Why Won’t My Feelings of Church Hurt Go Away?
Editor’s Note: This week’s mini-series on the Grace and Truth Blog addresses the topic of church hurt. In today’s article, Nate Brooks discusses several key themes to stress with those whose pain isn’t going away. In other contributions to the series, Anna Mondal defines “church hurt” and provides words of comfort, counsel, and next steps for healing**, Darby Strickland shares how she and her counselees have walked through the pain, rejection, and accusations of fellow believers in ways that have led them closer to Christ, and Greg Gifford considers re-engaging in church after experiencing church hurt.
If you’re reading this, it’s safe to assume that something has either gone significantly wrong in your own church experience or in the lives of those to whom you minister. Church hurt is an inherently deadening topic, as it pierces right to the heart of the failures of God’s people in one way or another. Church hurt is confusing, concerning, and most often leaves hurting people isolated and unsure who to talk with to process their experience.
There are several different ways “church hurt” could be understood. As Christians, we are a people whose faith makes demands of us that are often counter-cultural and cut across what we would naturally want to believe. Sometimes people’s “church hurt” is really a quarrel with Jesus.
However, there’s another side of church hurt that is far uglier to look at and embarrassing to admit exists. In the last few years, the Lord has brought my way many people struggling with significant injuries dealt to them by abusive church leaders and members. Sometimes the abusive behavior is restricted to a few individuals; other times, it has become the pervasive culture that dominates the church. For the sake of this article, I’m defining “church hurt” to refer to this kind of church hurt—the hurt caused by abusive church leaders, members, and cultures. I am not referring to the still-painful experiences of one-off quarrels or disappointments with other sinners who are part of Christ’s body.
Is Something Wrong with My Faith?
Many of the people I meet with express significant concern that something is wrong with them because the echoes of the past continue to bring pain in the present. “I’m in a different church and surrounded by different people. I know they aren’t the ones who hurt me, diminished me, accused me, abandoned me. But for some reason, I just can’t shake this sense of hesitancy or suspicion. Is something wrong with me?”
When people say, “Is something wrong with me?” they are usually asking if something is wrong with their faith. It’s as though they’re saying, “If I were really walking with the Lord, if I were really faithful, I wouldn’t be hesitant to go to church, wouldn’t be suspicious of my new pastor, wouldn’t experience despair or distance from God while reading my Bible, wouldn’t look at new people with weariness, wouldn’t experience zero desire to build or engage in relationships.” And these are all righteous concerns! The Bible itself leads us to ask these kinds of questions of ourselves, as we’re called to engage with the local church (Heb. 10:25), believe the best about one another (1 Cor. 13:7), delight in God’s Word (Ps. 119:97), be hospitable (1 Pet. 4:9), and be known by others (Phil. 2:2).
Because these biblical commands are products of faith as God graciously works in the heart, it’s quite natural to assume that any waning in those desires is due to a crisis of faith or personal moral defect. But automatically connecting the two when someone has experienced significant church hurt is to move too quickly and too simplistically through our human experience. What happens to us has a significant impact on what happens in us. We are not tidy little boxes on the inside with no crossover between experiencing church hurt and delighting in the church, God’s people, and His Word.
Trauma? From Being Hurt at Church?
Trauma is a word that’s all abuzz right now, even within the church. Buzz words sometimes get thrown around in incautious ways, so it’s helpful to start by distinguishing two forms of hurt that are legitimately referred to as trauma. We don’t want to make the mistake of calling every hurt trauma, nor do we want to make the mistake of dismissing all non-physical trauma as being the construct of emotionally fragile generations who can’t handle being looked at crossly.
When we hear the term “trauma,” we usually think of something that in the world of counseling is categorized as “Big-T Trauma” (i.e., Trauma). Big-T Trauma speaks to cataclysmic events that can befall people, the kind that involves the severe threat of bodily harm or death. Sexual assault, robbery at gunpoint, domestic violence—these are instances of Trauma. While this kind of Trauma certainly can be wrapped around church hurt, such as sexual predation by a spiritual authority, church hurt doesn’t usually qualify as Trauma.
However, there is another kind of trauma, currently being described as “little-t trauma” (i.e., trauma; sometimes called “small-t trauma”). Little-t trauma refers to trouble that isn’t life-threatening or violent but consists of experiencing other kinds of abusive patterns and behaviors. Interpersonal conflict, lies and manipulation, spiritual abuse, and ostracism all can produce trauma responses within people that often mirror the impact of Trauma (Big-T), especially when an individual endures such troubles for extended periods of time.[1]
One metaphor I often use with my counselees is the difference between a car striking a semi-truck head-on and slowly being poisoned by radiation. Both events will kill you, but they’ll do it in very different ways. Big-T Trauma is violent and sudden, but little-t trauma often flies below the radar until you wake up incredibly sick. The way we speak of church loyalty often ensures that people experiencing church hurt have absorbed high levels of radiation. Church membership, church covenants, the authority of church leaders, and teaching on being committed to the church are good and biblical things. But these teachings are easily exploited to lock people into staying in harmful church situations. Articles abound on how joining a church is like entering a marriage covenant, but few exist that talk about how to choose to exit a church short of it plunging into heresy or moral chaos.
So What Do I Do?
If you or those you minister to have been sickened with little-t trauma from church hurt, the natural question is, “Now what?” There are several key themes I stress with those I minister to whose pain isn’t going away:
Understand Common Trauma Responses**.** Common trauma responses include increased anxiety and fear, intrusive thoughts, avoidance, increased vigilance, grief, anger, despair, feelings of guilt and shame, a loss of delight in previously enjoyable events, and even suicidal thinking. While sin may certainly be wrapped up in such troubles, the fact that a person is experiencing them is not automatically because they’re cracking up or losing their faith. Our experiences inform our struggles, and these are natural human responses to trauma.[2]
Time**.** The question “What do I do?” almost implies that one can overcome the impact of little-t trauma through willpower. While there certainly are things that one can do to help, at its core, healing takes time. The experience of trauma is like the aftermath of a hurricane. The storm of abuse may have passed, but residents must now deal with floodwaters that only recede with the passage of time. Confusion often turns to greater clarity the farther one is from the hurt. We connect God’s grace with our circumstances over time as we see how the Lord has met and ministered to us in our hurt. New memories overtake old ones, replacing painful emotional associations with healing ones. All of these aspects of healing take time, and there are no shortcuts.
Grace**.** Godly people who have experienced church hurt are often frustrated with their inability to “just move on.” I hear things like, “New church, new people, but the same old feelings and worries,” or “God isn’t the same as His people, so I shouldn’t be this hesitant to read my Bible.” The truth is, we are not simply intellectual beings who can separate rational processing from our emotions, memories, and physical sensations. Be patient with yourself, as it takes time for our emotions, thoughts, and desires to settle after trauma.
Endurance**.** One question I like to ask my friends who have experienced significant church hurt is, “Why haven’t you deconstructed?”[3] Public deconstruction has become part of our cultural narrative, and I’m quite amazed at the faith of those who don’t deconstruct. The answer is usually some variant of “I believe in the gospel and have experienced God’s work in my life. Where else would I go?” Sometimes not deconstructing is the greatest expression of faith there is. The Bible might seem disconnected from their life, they might be quite hesitant about engaging at another church, and their spiritual fervor might have evaporated, but they haven’t abandoned their God. Those other things will likely return with time, but sometimes the greatest act of faith is simply not walking away when there are plenty of reasons to turn their back and never return.
Faithfulness**.** Lastly, there’s continued engagement with the ways God grows us spiritually. Our hurts do not change the avenues through which God ministers to us. How do you learn to trust a pastor again? It’s going to require knowing a new pastor. How do you come to desire relational engagement again? It’s going to require knowing people. How does God minister to broken hearts? Most often through broken bread, poured wine, and spoken words. It’s okay when it takes time for these pieces in our recovery to fall into place.
Things Are Different, But God Heals
These four aspects of healing don’t offer a quick fix of restored joy in God, the church, or relationships. But they do guide us along the often long and circuitous path of recovery. One of my favorite books on suffering, The Cup and the Glory by Greg Harris, ends with a beautiful analogy of life after traumatic church hurt. While walking across the seminary campus he taught at, Harris mourned the view of uprooted 100-year old oak trees, destroyed by a thunderous storm a few days before. As he grieved the fact that he would never see their beauty again, he noticed that the gap in his field of view was now filled with the brilliant fire of the setting sun. The trees would never inhabit that space again for the rest of his lifetime. But in their place stood new beauty. And so it is with church hurt. The landscape might never quite be the same again. But there are new rays of God’s goodness and grace to delight our eyes and warm our skin.[4]
Questions for Reflection
- If you are hurting, is the concept of trauma new to you? If so, how does an understanding of normal human responses to painful circumstances help you as you seek to make sense of your church hurt?
- If you are a counselor, how would an understanding of trauma aid you as you seek to care for individuals whose experience has been abusive or cruel?
- If you are hurting, what steps of personal faithfulness is God calling you to as an act of faith to take one step on the road to recovery?
[1] For an easy to read introduction to these two levels of trauma, I recommend Elyssa Barbash’s article “Different Types of Trauma” on the Psychology Today website, available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trauma-and-hope/201703/different-types-trauma-small-t-versus-large-t. “Little-t” (or “small-t”) trauma is not a formal diagnosis, but rather is an attempt to describe and explain how a large number of individuals who exhibit PTD-like symptoms have not experienced an event that qualifies as a traumatic event. This language may change or be used differently in different places. For those interested in the use of the term in the psychological field, I suggest doing a search in Google Scholar for “small-t trauma” or “little-t trauma.” Many helpful articles will populate.
[2] For a helpful introduction to common trauma responses, I recommend the article “10 Common Reactions to Trauma” from Oxford Clinical Psych website, available at https://www.oxfordclinicalpsych.com/view/10.1093/med:psych/9780199334513.001.0001/med-9780199334513-appendix-9.
[3] “Deconstruction” speaks to the process of abandoning Christianity. This was usually spoken of as “deconversion” in the past, but “deconstruction” emphasizes the process of slowly taking apart one’s prior belief system. Church hurt often is involved in deconstruction as the failure of Christians to live out biblical virtues leads to a questioning of the truthfulness of Christianity and the power of God.
[4] Greg Harris, The Cup and the Glory: Lessons on Suffering and the Glory of God, (The Woodlands, TX: Kress Christian Publications, 2006).