Everything good is a blessing from god. That has always been the language I heard from Christianity. “Oh god blessed me with this!” “I am so blessed by god.” And sometimes even as far as, “God has shown how much he loves me by blessing me with these good things.”
But the problem with this language of course is, what does it say about people who don’t have those things? They aren’t blessed by god? God doesn’t love them? When I bring that up, most Christians I speak to say, “That’s not what I mean by that.” But the fact of the matter is, you should be held accountable to the things you believe. I know Christians probably have a good handle on doublethink, but nobody else has to accept that kind of hypocrisy.
But this is the real problem with the language of “blessing”: it implies that good things; simple basic good things like food, clothing, and a loving family, are extras. They are gifts from god that are over and above what you should expect or deserve. That language says that people who don’t have those things are actually the default – that if you don’t get any “blessings” in life, well then the natural course of your life is to be abused and bullied and hungry, riddled with mental and physical problems.
In fact, it doesn’t just imply it. Conservative Christianity blatantly purports that ideology. One of the things I’ve been learning as I make my way out of those thought processes is that I have an incredible propensity toward Stockholm syndrome. Even in something as silly as a movie; if the bad guy tries to get the good guy to come with him, my gut reaction is, “go with him. Then he won’t hurt you, you’ll have approval, and everything will be good.” It’s incredibly dangerous thinking.
But that thinking came just as much because of Christianity as it did because of my abusive family. Because who is God? God is a God who can hurt you, who should hurt you, because you are a terrible, worthless sinner, and he can’t stand that sin so much that he should destroy you, and if he did, you would deserve it. And since he doesn’t that proves that he loves you. Accept his love because he could hurt you and doesn’t.
Stockholm syndrome is defined as: “a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.” (from Wikipedia; bolding mine)
See the parallel?
As my former pastor put it, “If life were fair, we’d all be dead” because if life were fair, apparently God would just kill us all off and send us to hell because we (who had no say over being created or not) are the terrible ones for being exactly how he created us.
This is a dangerous message. I grew up believing that all I deserved was abuse. It doesn’t help that Christians also like to throw the idea around that God gave you the parents he wanted you to have. Obviously I was supposed to be abused, right? It’s what God wanted, right?
And Christians who believe these things can spout, “but that’s not what I mean” all they want, but the truth is, that is the explicit message being sent. That is exactly the message that conservative Christianity reinforces. I’ve heard “Jesus said the poor will always be among us” as a reason for not helping them. You’re going hungry because you deserve to go hungry. Just listen to politically conservative Christians response to socialism, “stealing and giving to the undeserving.”
The fact of the matter is, I deserved to not go hungry as a kid. I deserved to have clothes that fit and weren’t run down, shoes that didn’t hurt my feet because I’d worn through the soles ages ago.
And I deserved not to be abused. I deserve basic human respect by doing nothing else but being human. I deserve to have parents who love me and treated me with kindness. I deserve good parents and good siblings. You who had those things are not blessed, you merely had what everyone deserves. That is a basic, bare minimum right. To used “I am blessed” language or even “I’m so grateful” (grateful meaning appreciating a kindness) is to say that abuse is some kind of expectation you should have had, and you got more than that. You got something everyone else deserves.
That is the language I will stand by. Because when we as a society make that the default, when we decide that lack of abuse is not kindness and blessing, but something every person should have, then and maybe then, all of us, not just survivors, but all of us, can transform this abuse culture. How can a religious and cultural Stockholm syndrome stand against survivors who have learned to believe that they naturally deserve to not be abused? How can it stand against non-survivors who would see abuse not as a thing they lucked out of, or were blessed by God out of, but something that should never be happening to anyone in the first place? How can you victim-blame if you already believe the victim didn’t deserve it, they deserved to be treated with kindness and respect at all times?
I don’t deserve the people who raised me. I don’t deserve the God I was told to believe in. I deserve far more than that. If you got far more than that, don’t consider yourself blessed, consider yourself one who got what you deserve. Don’t consider yourself grateful, because those of us who were abused do not exist as a frame of reference to make you feel good about your life. Instead, we were treated in ways we were never supposed to be treated. Stand behind that belief instead.
Speaking When the World Sleeps 
[…] Jesus come because we are nothing? Because we don’t deserve anything? Is this what the gospels boil down […]
I absolutely love this. What I don’t get, is how this message squares with the fact that we are all created in God’s image!!! Of course we deserve love and goodness and grace and everything good and amazing…because we are image-bearers!!!!! That’s the whole reason Jesus came – to restore us, not to save us. To break the power of death, not to whisk us away.
When the framing of the argument is changed, then it is much easier to say ‘look at all this misery. We need to do something because this is NOT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!’….instead of ‘oh what a sinful world we have, thank god I get to leave it’.
This post is one of my main issues I have with conservatism. It is so painful and damaging and false.
I think this is the first time I’ve read your blog – came over via Sarah Moon sharing the link on Twitter. I’m going to check out more posts once I finish this comment.
Do you think that thankfulness necessarily requires a comparison to someone with less? Or can one be thankful without comparing – in a way that’s more acknowledging the joy one feels in something being xyz way? I’m not talking about the language of “blessed” here – what you said is so important in that respect. I’m talking about thankfulness in general, not even to a deity, just..it’s there. Being grateful that a person you love is the way they are, perhaps.
Perhaps I am missing your point entirely, and if so, I’m sorry.
I think it’s possible to be glad, happy, thankful, etc. without a comparison. It may just be that “grateful” has almost always been used as a comparison word against me, i.e. “be grateful for what you have because other people have it worse than you” that makes it a word I don’t like. It may just be pedantic, I was less focused on the word itself though, and more the concept of being thankful, grateful, etc. specifically because other people have had it worse. Yeah, there are starving kids in this world, but their struggles are not ours to use just to make ourselves grateful we have food. That kind of thing. Does that make sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense. Thank you for clarifying!
And thank you for this entire post. I wasn’t abused, which puts me in the general category of those you’re talking to here – though, I’ve been vaguely uncomfortable with “blessed” language, and I can’t understand ever thinking that anyone deserves to be abused. But in viewing the conservative Christian god, I don’t see the things you’ve mentioned here. Those things NEED to be acknowledged. I don’t know what to do with them, but I know they need to be dealt with. So thank you for bringing them into the open.
I’m just sobbing right now because of how close to home this hit. I was raised to think the same way. And I’ve recently realized that the God I was raised to believe in looks and sounds exactly like people who’ve abused me in the past. Most Christians’ response to this realization is literally “it’s not abuse because that’s what you deserve, yet God is good enough to give us better!”
Thank you for reminding me that I don’t deserve this. Thank you for your powerful words.
I just chanced by this blog and this was the second post I read. This really struck many chords with me.
Strange thing is… I was never confronted or indoctrinated with explicit religious ideas to underpin this cultural “Stockholm Syndrome” but this line of thinking is very familiar to me. Like remnants of tradition and convention for which the reasons have been forgotten but need to be followed anyway.
“Don’t consider yourself grateful, because those of us who were abused do not exist as a frame of reference to make you feel good about your life. ”
Honestly, I “use” the people who have suffered as a way to beat myself up and feel bad about myself. Telling myself that I don’t know what actual suffering is. Telling myself that perhaps I would have needed or deserved to suffer more. Feeling guilty or ashamed. Because, surely, it is not fair that I am more fortunate than other, possibly better people than me. Isn’t that horribly “entitled”? (A favourite word of abusive people, it seems.)
Is that something you have experienced, too? This being used as a put-down, as the opposite of making oneself feel good about one’s life, but feel guilty about not being worse-off?
Of course, that’s looking at things the wrong way around. Oh definitely, it is not fair. Because those other people deserved better. And because submitting to hurt never helps the victims.
From what little I’ve read so far, you have probably seen much, much worse in your life than I have and comparing experiences is presumptoous. But dismissing my own experiences doesn’t make anything better – it’s still true that there were aspects of my live where I deserved better.
Oh definitely – a lot of my blog tends to be with me thinking about the middle class non-abused Christian friends I had and how they’d solely see my experiences as this way to say, “oh, I’m so grateful for all the good things” and it would frustrate me that my experiences would revert to being about them.
I got the whole “other people have it worse you have no right to complain” thing from my mother and used to think that way so much and dismiss my own pain. It’s a really good abusive tactic to make the abused feel trapped in what’s happening to them. When I first started talking about what happened every other thought was “oh no I’m self-pitying” or “oh no, I just have a victim mentality” or “oh no other people have it worse.”
But your pain and your experiences is valid. And how you responded to that pain – your hurt and suffering – that’s valid too. Other people’s experiences don’t dismiss that. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but if you have suffered at other people’s hands in any way, you didn’t deserve that. You deserved better. And it’s okay to be suffering from that. It’s really okay.
I’m SO glad you’re back from blog hiatus. I usually read you on the iPad so I’ve never commented before (can’t get the hang of the touch keyboard). You are right on target. I remember when I read John Piper’s “Desiring God” and I said to myself, “His ‘God’ sounds like my abusive mother! But this book is an evangelical bestseller, am I nuts?” That was before I realized how pervasive abuse is – it’s created a whole culture of re-enactment in the churches. I still consider myself a Christian but I understand why you have chosen a different path. Keep speaking truth.