What if our deepest wounds drive us to fundamentalism?
A few months ago a reader sent me a beautiful story of healing that exemplifies a common dynamic that I see: People who can’t face the wounds they have from childhood often gravitate to a very legalistic form of Christianity, where everything is decided for you. It feels secure.
I’d like to let her tell her story today (anonymously, of course), and then there’s a few things I’d like to say.
Here she is:
I was the stronger force into patriarchal dynamics.
In the early years (got married very young) my husband had STRONG misogynistic ingrained beliefs about women (from his family of origin).
After a tumultuous few first years (we went to a mainstream church with the stereotypical evangelical views) we moved to a much more conservative area of the country, sans extended family. To find community and structure we ended up at a conservative church. Within the teaching (toxic Titus 2 “mentoring” groups were big here) I was exposed to very deep levels of the “man is head of house” mindset.
Wanting to provide protection from the subtle but harmful dynamics in my marriage, I subconsciously believed that roles would make us better people and create safety in our marriage. We dove in as I embraced traditional views on male/female roles. (We even went quiverfull)
For a while, fundamentalism seemed to work.
We had babies, adopted, homeschooled, clicked with conservative community… I was “hearth & home” and he was “priest, protector, provider”.Â
The cracks came, though, through the entire foundation of our lives–because we were role playing out of our deep fears.
The bigger the cracks, the harder we held onto the toxic theology, which at its core is shame & fear based.
The end came a few years ago. As my fertile years come to a close (after birthing almost a dozen children into my 40s) and perimenopause came I started desiring healing… I had made some groundwork in my late 30s but the drive became stronger.
Hubby was open to change a bit, but only as far as it didn’t trigger deep wounds. But of course as the dynamic slowly shifted into health & balance, he was unprepared for what that did within him.
The undercurrents of hidden addictions came forcefully out into the light.
It was very messy.
In hindsight it was what was needed to clear the air from the decades of this type of thinking- and allowed us the ability to heal our own inner selves, support the kids’ healing, and then choose whether or not to heal the marriage.
The explosion cleared the air, so to speak, as the dust cleared we were able to intentionally decide (individually and now together) how to rebuild.
We are now two autonomous humans who lead together- working within our strengths and areas of growth to create a space of unity and safety and authenticity.
My embodied feminine is confident, strong, capable, empowered, and yet now able to be genuinely tender, curious, and rest.
His masculine energy is more contemplative, gentle, inquiring, and geared to vulnerable connection than to the roles of the conservative church ever allowed him to express. He has no desire to be priest, in the “biblical” definition of conservatism. He feels less pressure to know all the answers or perform as if he does. He likes me as a partner!
We figure it out together.
It has been a complete mind shift in our lives.Â
We de-centered one another so we could show up as ourselves and consider the other authentically out of our best self.
We de-centered the “church” so we could meet Jesus as he is, without the trappings of man and toxic teachings.
Now, as I look back, I see why we chose the way we did. I also see in the now estranged community we once made our center, how similar toxic dynamics run deeply within families and friendships–the fear, insecurity, judgement, shame!
My marriage doesn’t have those much anymore, nor does it appear as massive themes in our family.
I love hearing about families who have found freedom from fundamentalism!
But what her story reveals is the intersection between therapeutic counseling looking at shame, fear, wounds, etc., and confronting toxic teachings.
I’ve done my best to confront toxic teachings for the last few years. I’ve shown you what teachings are harmful; we’ve given you so many graphs and charts in our books The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better (and the revamped Guides to Great Sex) to show you the long-term effects of bad teachings.
We’ve tried to replace it these toxic things with healthy teachings.
And for many of you, that’s what it takes to find healing. You’re able to reject the stuff that held you back (like obligation sex) and move forward in freedom.
But often the problem is why you were susceptible to toxic teachings in the first place.
Some of us believe it just because it was the water we swam in growing up. It was all we knew.
But for others there’s more to the story–as there was to this reader’s story.Â
When you have shame and fear leftover from childhood wounds that were never healed; when you feel like you’re not good enough; when you feel scared of the bigger world and making a mistake–a theology that tells you “if you follow this exact plan you will be safe and your children will be safe” is really appealing.Â
You don’t have to do a lot of thinking. You certainly don’t have to do introspection and examine your own wounds (which her husband was very reticent to do)! No, you can belong to a church group that tells you that everyone around you is wrong, and you few are the only ones that know the truth. You are the only ones following the narrow path. And so you can feel superior and safe without ever having to look into your true self.
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One of the big findings of our new marriage book is that you can only put up with cognitive dissonance for so long.
We called it the “unfairness threshold” in our new book The Marriage You Want (comes out in March!), but over and over again we saw that people can put up with things for about 15-20 years, and then everything falls apart. You can put up with bad sex for 15 years. You can put up with doing all the mental load for 15 years. You can put up with unfairness or unhappiness and just keep telling yourself everything is fine for about 15 years.Â
Until one day you can’t.
Your body can’t put up with it for much longer than that.
And that’s what our reader found too. She pushed through for about 15-20 years until she couldn’t do it anymore, and she couldn’t pretend everything was fine.
She couldn’t convince herself that the roles were saving her.
They seemed comforting at first. They calmed down the part of her that felt insecure. But because it wasn’t real healing, it was just a facade, eventually it broke down.
This week I’m inviting you all to do some of that deeper work.Â
If you know you’ve been covering things up, not dealing with important stuff, because you don’t have time and you don’t want to rock the boat: remember, you can only put up with stuff for so long before everything breaks.
It is so much better to do that work and be able to heal yourself and be authentic. To stop hiding the wounds from yourself, and from God, and actually let yourself confront them and let God in.
So I’d encourage any of you who feel like you’ve been hiding: please see a licensed therapist. Or, if you can’t afford that, I told you about an awesome book last week called Rebecoming , which walks you through all the different ways a therapist would help you uncover your wounds and triggers and help you work through them.
I strongly recommend that book, even in conjunction with seeing a counselor (or on its own if that’s all that’s financially feasible right now).
It can be the start of the journey of truly knowing yourself. And I hope your journey ends as well as our reader’s did!
What do you think? Do people gravitate to legalism to cover up their wounds? Is insecurity a big thing in fundamentalist circles? Let’s talk in the comments!
Well I think the answer to the legalism question comes right out of the bible. Yes of course people gravitate to legalism before they lean on their faith to cover up their wounds. Why? Well law can provide a definitive answer. Faith does not provide definitive answers – well all encompassing that is. Faith leaves questions and potential paths for ripping open the wounds again. Law is law and even though laws can be viewed and enforced in gray manners such as Pilot did with Jesus; At the end of the day the law is black and white and that is exactly what Pilot did. He wandered in the law to “protect” himself. Anyway that was an interesting outcome to my writing lol. On another note, I picked up on the word Autonomy today. I have been wanting to write about that for over a month but I keep getting distracted. Autonomy can be healthy and not healthy. It appeared here as somewhat unhealthy – meaning it seemed a primary part of the solution in the marriage was to be separate rather than work together. For a marriage I would think autonomy is important but working together is far more important.
Yes, faith is definitely a lot more of a risk! But that’s what makes it faith!
About the autonomy you mentioned… I’d say that it wasn’t unhealthy per se, but rather they each needed to know they could be autonomous and would be ok, then they could be together in a more healthy way. If you have never had the courage or tools or whatever to be autonomous, you cannot be a fully healthy part of a whole. And sometimes we have to have autonomy so we can work on our own things before we can work on together-issues, too. Just my thoughts.
Thank you! 🙂
In my case, this is accurate. We have been out of strict fundamentalism for almost 15 years now, but like the woman in this story, I was the one who wanted to go deeper. My husband had childhood trauma he was coping with as well, but part of the result of that was that he never really wanted to be told what to do or what to believe by anybody. We had a crisis in our marriage that brought a lot of this to a head and we chose EFT counseling at that time. That helped a lot, but I have continued to struggle with the why of my dependency on that rigid system which I embraced and clung to for so long. And this has been my recent conclusion- it felt safe- it felt like a guarantee. I was sure that God would see my devotion and life would turn out right as a result. And that’s what I wanted. To do better than my parents, to get it right. I could say more, but it’s a long story. At 65 I am still trying to sort through my choices and discover what true healing looks like.
Oh, Jessie, I know that’s so hard! It is a really difficult road. I’m glad you’ve got some insight, and I wish you all the best!
My story seems similar. I wanted a guaranteed good outcome with safety and was willing to give up my own humanity to get it. Trying to heal now also.
This is absolutely true, at least in my experience. I was raised in a strict IFB church, and my parents held all of us to even stricter standards than everyone else.
Not only did my parents have traumas of their own, but reflecting back, I think most of the other adults did too. The men were insecure, immature, too interested in power; the women let themselves be pushed around. No adult who lives like that is healthy. Add some undiagnosed neurodivergence (in the adults and the kids) and you got a very toxic stew.
I’ve been out for about 6 years. The depth of anger I feel about the whole thing is frightening. I’m messed up, just like most of the other kids who grew up in the group, and none of it had to be like that.
Wow, I can relate to a lot of this, especially that “you can only put up with stuff for so long before everything breaks.”
I am fortunate that I did not know about fundamentalism because I grew up in a home where my parents were partners. Even though Mom stayed at home to raise us and my dad worked outside the home, Mom was the one who managed the money. Dad used to joke with his coworkers that “his wife gave him an allowance.” So, I thought the husband being the “head of the house” was just old-fashioned and sexist. Then I got saved at a charismatic church before my senior year of high school. I left the church because of some of the sexist beliefs. Well, several years later, I married my first husband who believed in these sexist teachings. We both went to a church that taught some of this stuff, but not from the pulpit. These teachings came from a pre-marriage class. To appease my husband and try to be a good, submissive wife, I didn’t set boundaries by letting him monopolize all of my free time and trying to give him as much sex as possible. I could only put up with this for so long, then after two years of marriage, I tried to set boundaries but he could not handle it. He believed because he was the “head of the house” whatever he said went and my opinion mattered less. So, after putting up with the controlling behavior and sexual abuse, I left him after 2.5 years of marriage.
I never really bought into those toxic teachings, but I felt that in order for God to accept me, I had to believe them. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not buy into those beliefs. Thankfully, the man I recently married (we celebrate 4 months of wedded bliss) is not like that at all. He’s a wonderful, godly man who sees me as his partner, his equal.
Besides, there are no verses in the Bible that say anything about the husband being the priest, protector or provider of the family. It’s Christ who is all of those things. Christ is our Priest who gives us direct access to God. He protects us from harm and He provides our needs.
Phil, you are spot on right about the law being about certainty and with faith, we do have to wrestle with many questions. Jesus asked far more questions than He gave answers. I understand as humans that we want certainty. In the past, I have found myself thinking that things were easier in my grandmother’s time. When she and my grandfather got married in 1953, she already knew she would stay at home and raise a family. I have asked my grandmother about that and she said she never had to think about going to work outside the home. She was content with that. During a lot of my single years, returning home to live with my folks at 30 and dabbling in part-time jobs and focusing on furthering my education, I have felt frustrated in the uncertainty of my future. I thought I wanted to settle down and raise a family. I guess I wanted that because I was uncertain about what career I wanted after having been a hairdresser throughout my 20’s and up until 31. When I realized I no longer wanted to do hair, my parents allowed me to continue living with them while furthering my education. To make a long story short, I am now 48, still working part-time and almost finished with my master’s in library science. Currently, my husband is a caregiver to his grandfather. We both split time between two homes due to the high costs of living. So, getting married and being educated does not guarantee certainty in life. All I know is that God has always been there for us.
Hi Laura – well arent I glad I came back to read here. Second and more importantly – I want you to know that I am SO happy for you that you found a GOOD man. Ya know – I love a good story with a happy ending. You warmed my heart this morning. Best to you!
Laura Anderson, guest of the podcast and author of the book “When Religion Hurts You,” says that fundamentalism is a sign of a disregulated nervous system.
Yes, I completely agree!
This is somewhat related.
I follow a few reporters from Nashville mainly to keep up with what the legislature is doing.
Today a story came across my feed about a Mid TN IFB pastor that had been charged with agg sexual battery. He had made his $200K bond, gotten out of jail and promptly shot himself in the head.
Also, he was an associate of Dave Hyles. Y’all Google Dave and his Daddy, Jack for some interesting reading regarding the subject at hand.
I heard about that story! Didn’t really surprise me at all. But the damage that man left in his wake…
And, yes, the Hyles family is so atrocious. I hate to think of all the trauma there.
This resonates. I grew up in a very chaotic home environment, and by the time I met my wasband all I wanted was a peaceful, godly home. I thought that if we did everything just right, we would succeed. And when my husband turned out to be someone who was averse to true intimacy on any terms, I thought that if I worked hard enough and doubled down even more, I could make him understand where he needed to change things and stop hurting me. And when I finally reached the point of collapse (right at 20 years!) I thought that if I just had enough faith and joy as I rebounded from my depression, it would never happen again, I would have a good testimony, AND eventually my husband would love me because I was doing so much better… I ran on that treadmill for 30 years before I began to truly question everything I had believed for so many years. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.
This is very thoughtful and well-written.
“What do you think? Do people gravitate to legalism to cover up their wounds? Is insecurity a big thing in fundamentalist circles? Let’s talk in the comments!”
I think it is a little more nuanced than that. I think for some, and in some circles, it is sold as the cure for these wounds, and a specific disclaimer is given that it is not legalism. People are taught to self-gaslight and spiritually bypass into believing they are secure, so they don’t actually think they are insecure, and they don’t actually think they are covering their wounds, they think they are healing them.
This has been my experience. I felt very duped when I realized this. My mother is still in this belief system. This makes it very hard to see the actual shame that is there, because we have been taught that Poof, it is gone because of Christ. For me, I could not wrap my mind around the question, “If there is no shame, then why can’t we talk about these things?” But it is very hard to see that shame when you are told there is none.
A question I have tried to teach my younger son (18) is, when evaluating an idea, “What, if anything, are you being taught/asked not to see in this statement or argument?”
This definitely aligns with what my therapist has said to me. She has told me multiple times that people with my background of growing up in an emotionally volatile home often gravitate toward high-control churches because it offers a form of security. I can’t blame myself for my trauma and the choices I made that led to it. Abusers abuse, and I didn’t know any better at the time. Now I know better and can (and do!) make better choices.
Do you think that a lot of the turning towards strict fundamentalism is driven by the conservatives’ fears around what’s happening in secular society? For example, these people see the radical gender ideology out there, it worries them, and so in reaction against it they dig deep into the “traditional” gender roles.
I think so, likely, yes. I think it’s also that men are losing power in the wider society and so they want to double down on it in church so that at least in the family and the church they can still be in power.
I gravitated to fundamentalism when I converted because I believed it was the only way I could be sure that I would choose God’s ways above the world’s ways. I had been liberal and feminist, educated and widely read, indoctrinated into some of the tenets of “Cultural Marxism.”
Lately I was thinking about Jesus being tempted by Satan. Jesus had His chance to become Jesus Caesar instead of Jesus Christ. Then, if it had really been God’s will for the Greco-Roman household codes to be lived out by all believers for all eternity, Jesus Caesar had only to accept Satan’s offer.
The Greco-Roman household codes for women, slaves and children were a part of the law of the very same empire that was the fourth beast kingdom in Daniel and the sea beast in Revelation.
Paul said that Christians were under grace, not under the law. But three out of thirteen Pauline epistles contain teachings that syncretize bridal typology with Greco-Roman household codes. Previously the bridal typology had stood for faithfulness. Faithfulness stood for loving God more than idols and loving husbands more than other men.
What I have realized, at last, is that there are so many ways to be worldly. The Greco-Roman world was wordly, too. There is not just a “liberal” way to be worldly.
I have felt better since listening to Jesus, who taught that He was to be the sole teacher and sole pastor of His church. He taught that the messenger is not greater than the one who sent him. Apostolos only means messenger in Greek. It isn’t supposed to mean anything like Papal Infallibility.