Losing Control and Finding Safety

External control over our lives is not a sign of godliness. It’s a coping mechanism.

Sometimes faith in God can be a big part of our healing after sexual pain, shame, or violation. But faith in God can also serve as an addiction as harmful as sexual violation. Sounds crazy, right? How could sexual abuse be anywhere near as bad a faith in God? Isn’t faith in God always more pure, more holy?

There is a name for this tendency to use God to mask our pain: religious addiction.

Controlling faith communities can feel “like home” to us when we are accustomed to controlling sexual encounters or controlling home communities. But this is actually just trading one addiction (e.g. pleasing a parent) for another (pleasing a pastor). Both can be authoritarian, both can be shaming, both can get into our heads, both can even (mis)use God and the Bible. Both teach put us “out of touch” with ourselves, our emotions, our beliefs, our sexuality, our spirituality.  As the Linns explain in Healing Spiritual Abuse and Religious Addiction

An addiction is any substance or process we use to escape from and get control over a painful reality in our lives, especially painful feelings. We use something outside to escape something we’re afraid of inside. As Anne Wilson Schaef says, the purpose of an addiction is to put us out of touch with ourselves.

We cannot truly come home to our real selves and the God who loves us if we remain addicted. And this is true if our addiction is sexual or spiritual.  If we want to recover, we must find a more authentic way to belong to God, to ourselves, to our families.

Dr. Sellers explains why it FEELS less risky to bury pain in a new set of rules. We think it ensures that we won’t be hurt again. But keeping a tight lid of control does not always mean we’re safe.

We cannot shelter our children from the shame or violation we experienced by tightening up control. This is something I’m experiencing firsthand these weeks as my oldest goes off to kindergarten. I’m encountering the anxiety of letting him grow without me at his elbow.  I’m finding there is a lasting, beyond comprehension peace, when I stop micromanaging my son’s life and learn to trust other capable, reliable adults.  I’m realizing there is goodness in letting others help me raise my son.

Next week, we’ll conclude our Summer of Sexuality with tips to guide the kids we love to grow up into appropriate and joyful sexuality. I’ll also have a new kids book recommendation.

Did you miss our summer eCourse on “God, the Bible, and the Gay Christian”?  Sign up today for my next class!

If you value the honesty, safety, and biblical faithfulness within our interviews, here’s a chance to go deeper. Join me in the hard questions, and sign up for God, the Bible and the Gay Christian. Over 100 participants worked through this eCourse with me last summer, and now we’re offering the same class as a self-directed study. You’ll get video access when you sign up today. As always, eCourses are included with Platinum and Gold partnerships (details and sign up here).

Summer of Sexuality Series:

Click here for being mismatched in lovemaking.

Click here for abuse recovery.

Click here for purity kids and sexual disfunction.

Click here for honeymoons for the formerly-abstinent.

Click here for duty sex.

Click here for male and female sex drives.

Click here for Jesus’ sexual ethic.

Click here for shutting down shame in marriage.

Click here for how shame gets in the way of pleasure.

Click here for why sexual and spiritual abuse go together.

Click here for why your sex-drive is changing.

Click here for when women initiate sex.

Click here for what’s allowed in Christian bedrooms.

Click here for sex with the lights on as a spiritual discipline.

Click here for sex with the lights on as a spiritual discipline.

Click here for the therapy solution for sexual shame.

What’s this summer series all about?

This summer, I’ll be sharing short videos taken from my two hour Emerald City interview on “Shame, Intimacy and Sex Ed” with Christian sex therapist, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers. You’ve already seen her at RubySlippers’ posts and interviews. See part one.

Because of Dr. Sellers practical concern that Christians understand that God created erotic desires, Tina is one of the best sources I’ve found in helping me navigate the pillow talk between me and my husband.

Dr. Sellers is a wife, mother, professor, founder of ThankGodForSex.org, certified sex therapist, and licensed family and marriage therapist. Those last two are a dynamic duo of credentials that are rarely seen together. And the lack of professionals who practice both family/marriage and sex therapies is a big problem for those of us who want thriving marriages and thriving sex lives. Thank God for Tina!  I particularly love the way she lives a sexual intimacy that she teaches (My Love List for My Husband . . . And Why Gratefulness is Good for the Heart). Follow her blog and thoughts @TinaSSellers.