Conservative Christianity has not taught me to be a healthy person, and it has not taught me how to raise healthy children.

The view I was raised with, the advice I keep seeing handed out, the wisdom I listened to for 90 minutes this morning, basically assumes everything needed for life – even for parenting and marriage – is in the Bible.  And ok.  The Bible is helpful, as far as it goes.  Prayer is helpful, as far as it goes.

But prayer and the Bible are not the ends!  They are not even always the means! ‘The glory of God is man fully alive’ is a good end, I think, and the means for that requires looking at what you need to be alive.

‘What do people do without the Lord,’ they ask.  They seem to not understand that all people look for ways to address their problems.  And healthy people look for healthy ways, lord or no lord.  Emotionally healthy people do not simply rely on Bible verses as medication for life’s troubles.

If someone was abused in their past, and/or has a fear of that happening to their child, the only answer is not ‘pray and read your Bible’ !  And if you tell someone that if they are anxious about it, they are probably passing that anxiety onto their children, especially do not say ‘it’s even more important to pray and read’ !!!!

I heard that today from a panel of seasoned Christian women, and I felt my blood pressure spike and my heart pound and I could not breathe.  I thought I was going to pass out in front of everyone.  Therapy!!!!!!  Medicine!!!!!!  They do not need to take the place of ‘christian’ responses, but can come alongside of them – and, I would argue, therapy can be just as sacred as praying – if not more so!

If the goal of following Jesus is being fully human, fully alive to who God made us to be, then it is going to take very human methods to bring healing.  Redemption and Restoration are very slow, complex processes, and I’m sorry, but they require more than the Bible.  Jesus did not just tell sick people to pray.  He did not just point his fairy wand at them.  He touched them.  He used spit and bread and pigs to heal people.

Incarnation – it means something!  It means rather than just giving parenting advice like ‘know what makes your kid tick’ – give useful ways of doing it!  Psychologists and psychiatrists have figured out how people work!  The Bible is a very human story of people seeking God, and if all truth is God’s truth, then ‘secular’ methods of healing are just as godly as a bible story.  (There is a reason we can so easily place ourselves into the biblical narrative.  Human behavior has not changed!)  The Christian thing to do is to learn and understand how humans work.  So we can understand ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our enemies, our world.

I was a pretty depressed person for probably a good 4 or 5 years.  Being an introverted homeschooler with 5 kids under the age of 7 in a teensy house with no bedroom will probably do that to a person.  But I didn’t know that at the time.  My youngest left toddlerhood at the same time my oldest began babysitting training, and all of a sudden, I was happy sometimes!  I had energy again!

All of the prayer in the world couldn’t make me get out of bed in the morning to face an overwhelming day.  (It’s such a good thing I was still a fundamentalist on alcohol back then.)  I didn’t realize anything was wrong.  I didn’t know how to process emotional trauma from growing up, or that I even needed to.   Christian advice never told me what it would take to become healthy, or that I even needed to be. 

Honestly, about the only thing it did was make me self-righteous, instilled in me an unhealthy fear of hell, and gave me an inappropriate amount of control over my children.  Growing up immersed in conservative Christian culture is why I’m drinking a glass of wine at 1 in the afternoon, because I never learned how to handle Christian women who give me panic attacks!

And then we talk about ‘those people’ with various addictions and problems, and don’t understand that these addictions are in here – in ourselves, in our churches, and that they are merely coping mechanisms.  They are not there because we hate ourselves or are trying to self-destruct (although that may be true).  I have not spent years addicted to the computer because I don’t love my children and shame on me.  I have spent years cultivating unhealthy habits because I grew up in a culture that never taught me healthy ones.  They never told me about therapy or taking care of yourself.

The parenting advice I heard this morning not once talked about helping kids (and us) understand and manage their emotions.  They did not talk about how when your kid is throwing a fit, it’s for a reason!  Maybe the reason really is she wants to embarrass you in Target, but I doubt it.  Children have needs, emotions, and need to learn how to handle them autonomously, not shut them down just to avoid a spanking.

When people ask experienced Christian women questions about marriage and the answers are, continually, ‘your husband is #1, build him up, do what he wants, do what he says’, and then the answer to ‘how do you take care of yourself’ is, always, ‘get up early or stay up late, and pray/bible’ – just – no.  Hell no.  That is unhealthy human behavior!

There is a long passage by Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet where he talks about how, instead of dying to ourselves for someone we love, we need to become a world unto ourselves so that we can share that world with someone else.  I vastly prefer that to a belief system that says the only way to be a godly woman is to suffocate myself for the sake of my family.  That is not a belief system that believes in the power and meaning of incarnation.  Jesus did not just come to show us how to die.  He showed us how to live.

You know, if Christians want to exalt the banner of being pro-life, then be pro-living.  We need to recognize the utter humanness that goes into being alive.  Christians need to stop shaming the addictions, the consequences, and the fears.  We practice a religion based on following someone who was utterly human, and faith-based answers that are only spiritual intangibles are inefficient both on a religious level and a practical level.

Incarnation models a better way.  We need to follow it.

Resources I’ve found helpful:

MBTI

HSP

Enneagram

Grace-Based Parenting

Todd Cartmell books (especially Parent Survival Guide)