Spiritual Abuse
I am a survivor of what I believe to be spiritual abuse! I spent many years rebelling against my Pentecostal upbringing. Hell-fire was a constant theme of the sermons, and having a vivid imagination I had no difficulty in imagining myself in the lake of fire. Sunday became my most disliked day of the week; I often developed a tummy ache just before going to church. The pain was real enough, but psychosomatic in origin. My late paternal Grandmother, used to re-enforce the concept of hell when I had to suffer having Sunday lunch at her house, on my own! She would tell me how naughty little girls would burn forever in the flames of hell, if they didn’t repent! I knew how much fire hurt, having burnt my finger quite badly by striking an illicit match. Grandma said that as painful as my finger was, I should imagine how it would feel to be burning all over for eternity! The subsequent terrible nightmares damaged my psyche profoundly. I hope that my Grandmother had no idea of the harm she was inflicting in trying to ‘save’ my immortal soul. My parents were most upset when, years later, I told them what had happened!
I was told I should love God, but at the same time fear him. To me, even as a child, that was an oxymoron. How can you love someone you fear will throw you into a fire to burn forever and ever? For many years I completely rejected God and all things Christian, only revisiting my spirituality after my 50th birthday in 2000. I am still in the seeking phase, and look at life from a liberal Christian perspective.
In preparation for this article, I was talking over the subject of spiritual abuse with my youngest daughter (28). You can imagine my horror when she disclosed that she had also suffered this form of abuse, in Sunday school, as a child! A Sunday school teacher told our girl that as my husband and I didn't attend church, we would burn in hell, as would our daughter if she stopped attending Sunday school. She was too scared to tell us in case we removed her from this God forsaken place, and she was condemned to hell. I remember that she had a lot of nightmares, and used to come into bed with us most nights.
If only she had told us what was happening at the time, we could have spared her years of distress.I set up a discussion of this topic on a religious forum, and was amazed to find I had opened the floodgates for many to unburden themselves of the abuse they had endured in the past. Much of it was far worse than anything I had experienced. It would appear that spiritual abuse sometimes goes hand in hand with sexual and physical maltreatment, compounding the suffering.
It is possible that some preachers get a perverted sexual gratification from preaching violent sermons. As a teenager, I attended a service conducted by a guest preacher. His sermon should have had an adult classification, depicting as it did, rape and torture among the flames of hell! He was so caught up with his theme that he was practically frothing at the mouth! The congregation were stunned; I was so disgusted that I walked out, taking my younger sisters with me. Our parents, who had not attended the service, were dismayed that we should have been subjected to such a harangue. They were becoming disenchanted with the Pentecostal movement in general, and decamped to an evangelical Anglican church, which preached the gospel in a more moderate and measured way.
Victims of spiritual abuse often feel that God is in some way to blame for their suffering. In consequence, many reject Christianity, thinking the faith has let them down. If spiritual abuse separates us from the love of God, it is on a par with physical and sexual abuse, in my opinion!
I am coming to terms with this childhood ordeal, whilst I shall never be able to forget the trauma, I will endeavour not to let it become so much of a stumbling block to my spiritual growth, as it has been in the past.
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