Religion Can't Heal Me

The Danger of Religion in a Broken Man

I had a point of clarity last nite regarding why I have such a strong aversion to religion and posturing. I was surprised to realize that alot of it has to do with fear. I look into the real dark parts of me, and I see how weak and worthless religious posturing is to actually change any of it.

When I feel out of sync with the church family around me, I want to try harder to make that dissonance go away. The problem is that I know that what makes me feel different is down way deep, and is very, very bent. I feel like a charlatan, a fake, or worse: a predator. So I try harder to be good. To read my Bible. To sing passionate songs. To pray fervently. All of these things are stacked up on the surface of me, with the hope that the good of these activities will somehow "sink in" and effect some kind of root change. But it doesn't. It hardens on the surface and creates a false, religious, exoskeleton. One that comes with a mirror on the inside so I can see how full of shit I am and how different the outside man looks from the dark man i feel struggling for control down deep.

"But Jesus lives inside of you, so there is no dark..."

I haven't been able to reconcile that yet. Every time I think I get a handle on it, darkness squeezes out somewhere else. Same mocking, haunting, taunting voice. And yes, Jesus does dwell inside, too. That brings great comfort, as He holds a larger and larger piece of real estate in me as time goes by. But it also increases that sense of a deep rift internally. Jekyll & Hyde. And Hyde is one terrifying bastard.

I painfully, grudgingly, look back at the hell I came out of, and it horrifies me to think about what that did to me. How much of that was sealed up inside of me when I slammed the vault door and spun the lock?

The net effect is that I walk around my life, living it only from the point I was 15 on. everything before that is locked away in an internal abyss. So I exist on two levels: the adult that knows redemption, that sings about it, that works toward healing and wholeness. But the other level feels wholly emotive, primal, bent. The part that swallowed all the trauma of gowing up in an environment of perpetual beatings, sexual abuse, mental torment, and then told by that same monster that I needed to forgive him or God would never forgive me.

How does a 9 year old boy deal? He doesn't. he takes all that devastation, opens real wide, and swallows it way, way, way down. But it doesn't stay down there quietly without a lot of feeding. So I find myself struggling thru-out my life with various forms of self-medicating, just to try to cope and create/maintain a semi-normal life. While everyone around me looks like they are "working out their salvation" on a wholly different level, and with no idea of the level of depravity that is entombed inside me.

But now I'm 34, and I can't keep ahead of it. I can't keep the frenetic pace, and I feel the swell rising up periodically inside. And I know that the only thing that is bigger and stronger is something very, very real with God. Only in those moments, when I know that it is nothing that I have manufactured (religion), when His massive grace and power surround me and change something I thought was un-do-able. That is my only hope of ever seeing these demons really exorcised. Of ever being really free. If it comes from me, it is false, futile, impotent. Only He is powerful enough to change what I think is unchangeable and heal what I can't even touch.

So I'm torn up by all these competing passions, and I can't achieve any equilibrium, because they won't cohabitate. Jesus, the Darkness, my love for my family, my craving for oblivion, my Destiny (in Him), the image I see of that wretched boy, the man that I try to portray, the man I fear I am...

I get this sense that there is a foot race going on inside. The godly man, working toward his Destiny. Learning to be a son, an intimate of Jesus. Walking in increasing measures of faith and trust and power. This man could grow into a Psalmist, a Prophet, an Apostle, a Leader, a powerful force for Jesus calling Heaven into Earth, bringing Light into great darkness. But in the other lane is the Dark man. Driven, dissatisfied, violent, scheming, manipulating, deceiving, predatory. This man could be (at best) a drunk, a broken, addicted philandering waste of life. At worst, a cruel, calculating manipulator of people around him, a monster, a killer. I honestly don't know. That's the part that scares me the most. I look down into those shadows, and they don't seem to have a bottom.

That is why I get pissed when I see my own religious posturing, or when someone else tries to foist their religious control onto me. It won't heal. It's impotent to fix what's really driving me. So it adds to the schism, adds to the anxiety, the dissonance. The more different the outside appears from the inside, the more I hate myself and feel hopeless to ever change. The more powerful the Darkness appears. In it's total inefficacy, it solidifies the perception of the permanence of the Darkness. That is why it is dangerous. That is why I get so worked up. It is not the zeal of the Lord, or at least not all of it. It is raw fear that I can't control what's buried in me, and you are giving me a can of paint and a brush to make myself look pretty.