When you take the lyrics "would he devote that Sacred Head for such a worm as I?" into your very core as a 5-year-old, it takes A LOT to get shut of that unsightly baggage as an adult.
Even "Amazing Grace": "...how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...."
Really? I was a child. A baby.
A wretch?
Reprobate & miscreant are some of the synonyms. I was to learn those as well.
Wretch: from Old English "wreċċa," meaning "outcast."
Wreċċa itself from a Proto-Germanic word that meant "fugitive."
Sure, I didn't know any of the #etymology, and it's not like that etymology or even the word "wretch" itself come up in everyday conversation.
But even though the ancient roots of our #language never enter our actual day-to-day lives, I do believe the sense of them remains somewhere in our collective subconscious. And some of those roots are rotten. And they fester.
When you use music and targeted lessons to teach a little girl that she is continually observed by an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being...
...and that she herself is a wretch, an outcast, a worm that can never even approach being good (Mark 10:18, Romans 3:23) much less being omnibenevolent...
...then what you have in her adulthood is a woman with a lack of self-worth so profound, it goes deeper than the cellular level.
And all of your "but #Jesus loves you and died for you!" protests to the contrary simply are not sufficient for countering the insidious, pernicious programming you installed in her Core Self during her most malleable, most vulnerable season of life.
Fundamentalism isn't limited to conservative religion.
Fundamentalism can rear its ugly head in any arena, any set of beliefs, any type of nonbelief-in-deity, any political identity, any life season.
I still struggle against a #fundamentalist mindset gifted to me in the cradle. I still struggle against the fundamental lack of #SelfWorth that underlies so much of who I am.
I am healthier than I was. #Meds...#therapy...loving support from people who give me #grace (grace = full acceptance; grace = accepting that you are accepted)...all have contributed to a measure of healing.
But I will likely struggle with these things in some form for the rest of my life.
...the wider implications of my experience & of the fact that it is not unique to me.
There are so, so many of us.
And when those of us who critique Christianity & #religion & church engage in our critiques, I think we underestimate the depth of the trauma that has damaged and is continuing to damage the people who remain caught up in Christianity, religion, church.
They are all walking around with raw, open, festering wounds that they deny deny deny so as to neither see nor feel them.
6/
None of this is to excuse how they go about being in this world.
None of this is to excuse how I sometimes still go about being in this world. None of this is to excuse my regressions, my poor word choices, my questionable thought patterns.
But it does explain.
None of us can do more than what we have the #tools to do at any given time. When we acquire more and better tools, hopefully we will take more beneficial #actions.
@courtcan I feel this so much as a recovering catholic. I'm recognizing how much most religions rewrite themselves to infect & exploit people with toxic shame. To make sure an enforce narcissistic hierarchy. To constantly compare yourself to the very people in your own community, and either look down on each other for a lack of performance or resent each other for having more energy to do more for the church.
It's exhausting and manipulative, and fighting against this narrative isolates you.
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