In this post I want to write about an experience that many of you can likely relate to. This is the experience of having been traumatized by my Christian upbringing. I have only recently realized just how deeply this trauma has affected me, and reliving some of the memories I will describe in this essay was quite painful.
Before I begin, I want to make a few things clear. First, I had (and still have) wonderful parents who loved me and did the best they knew how to try to make me happy. Secondly, not every child raised in a Christian environment has the same experience as I have. I believe three factors played a major role in my experience being raised Christian. First, I am on the autism spectrum. I would be considered very high functioning, but it profoundly affects my personality. The way autism has manifested in me is quite a bit different from how it manifests in some others. Despite being autistic, I am, I believe, more emphatic than most people. I understand the feelings other people pretty well. I am just not good at informal communication in group situations with people I don’t know very well. Anyway, a second factor that influenced my experience of being raised Christian is the fact that I have above average IQ and am highly analytical. This is not to say that everyone with an above average IQ will have the same experience of Christianity, but something about how my mind works seems incompatible with Christian dogma. Third, and perhaps most important, I have always been spiritually curious in a way that is incompatible with Christian dogma. I will come back to this point later.
I have vague memories of when I “became a Christian” at the age of three. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a bright spring day. My mother was telling me about how Jesus, who was God died for my sins and rose again, and asked me if I would accept him as my personal savior. She told me it would be the most important decision of my life, which I recall feeling a little uncomfortable with at the time. Despite the weird feeling, I said “Yes”. I was very young, and memories from that age are difficult to recall.
One early trauma was when I was first told about hell (I must have been five or six years old at the time). From the moment I heard of hell, I KNEW I was going there. I remember riding in the car with my parents on to the way to some of their friends where my brother and I would be staying for a couple days. For the whole trip I was complaining “I don’t want to go to the lake of fire”. My parents tried to reassure me that because Jesus had died for my sins and risen from the dead, I wouldn’t have to go. But I had the suspicion there would be a sin I either forgot to confess or failed to confess, or that my sins were just so horrible God couldn’t possibly forgive me, God would throw me into the lake of fire for all eternity. I recall being obsessed with confessing my “sins”, I always saw flaws in myself despite truly desiring to be a good person. Some of the “sins” I confessed were absurd. I recall confessing that I “tried to kill God” because I had made my hand in the shape of a gun, pointed it up, and pulled my thumb like a trigger. The sad irony is, while my parents were trying to teach me about “God’s grace through the sacrifice of his son Jesus”, part of me now saw God as a viscous sky monster who would torture his enemies (which I believed included me, despite the fact that I wanted to be a good little boy) for all eternity.
This fear of hell stuck with me all the way through my adolescence, although when I got a little older the fear changed from “what if I forgot to confess a sin” to “this whole thing doesn’t seem right, I am not sure I really believe; but of course if I don’t believe it will end up being true and I am still going to hell”. I remember when I was around 10, I seriously started doubting whether Jesus was really God. I now believe that we are all divine as all of reality can be seen as a manifestation of “God” (and thus “God” is also in all of us), but at the time I wasn’t really sure. And it was not lost on me, even at that age, that according to the Bible Jesus never went as far as to say “I am the Lord God Almighty, Worship Me!” (although there are some verses, especially in the book of John, that come sort of close). I also had constant nagging doubts about the whole religion. I was really trying to believe, both because it was part of my identity, and because I didn’t want to go to hell. I remember multiple road trips to my grandmother’s house (especially around the age of 10 or 11, shortly before my family moved to Bulgaria) when the whole time I was worried sick that I didn’t believe in Christianity, and wanted my parents to play a cassette tape by a woman named Darlene Rose because some of her stories sounded like miracles and it was something that I could try to use to “prove” to myself that Christianity was true, but the doubts persisted, and I felt tormented.
I remember when I was probably around the age of nine or ten that my mother had begun reading the Bible to my brother and me from the beginning. I was exposed to some truly horrific stories and ideas that disturbed or confused me. The story of Abraham and Isaac, for example, or the times when God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide. Old testament law just seemed messed up to me as well (even though I was taught that most of the Old Testament law no longer applied because of Jesus, I wondered what kind of God would demand obedience to those types of rules). And I do realize that it is unfair to judge a different era by today’s standards, but there was a lot of messed up stuff. And home Bible studies about the new testament were also disturbing to me. I remember being taught a Bible verse (Matthew 16:24) where Jesus said that his followers must “take their crosses and follow him”. I was thinking “I didn’t know I was signing up for this”. Why would a loving God basically say I must gladly get myself killed, or at least sacrifice everything, in order to avoid eternal damnation? But part of me still wanted to follow the religion, because it was now part of my identity, because I was afraid of hell, and because I wanted to be “good”.
Based on the above paragraphs, it should be clear that the more I learned about the religion, the more disturbing it seemed to me; and because, as a child, I was dedicated to following the religion, the more I learned about it, the more disturbed I became, and the harder it became for me to feel comfortable with it. The whole idea of salvation through a human sacrifice did not make sense to me. The whole religion felt very wrong to me. And my problem with the religion was not with the idea of “God” in principle (I don’t like using the word “God” when discussing the ultimate divinity, but I still use it sometimes out of convenience). I still believe in “God”. As this is one of the first blog entries on my website, I will be using some terms that I have not yet explained, but which I hope to elaborate on in future blog posts or videos. I believe in “God” in the sense of “Kether” and the “nothingness” above Kether on the Kabbalah tree of life, or in the sense of the idea of Brahman from Hinduism, or the idea of “The Great Spirit” of certain indigenous American tribes, or the Tao from Taoism. I do not see this belief in “God” (which I see at once as a being and in a pantheistic/panentheistic sense) to be at odds with my polytheistic and animistic perspective. But the idea of a loving “God” sacrificing his son so that those who put their faith in this sacrifice can be saved from eternal damnation felt, and still feels, so incredibly wrong to me. And I believe that all humans, all living things, and in fact, all of “creation”, possesses divinity as we are all part of The All (a term I prefer to use to “God” when talking about ultimate divinity), even though we forget this fact most of the time. I think that religion should exist to serve the people who practice religion. People should be free to practice religion (and thus try to experience the divine) in whatever manner works for them. However, for me personally, I want to practice religion in a way that celebrates life, and by celebrating life allows me to contemplate my place in the cosmos (with the cosmos itself only being part of “God”). Instead of celebrating sacrifice and pain, why not celebrate life, love, and pleasure?
Even in the last year I had an incident in which I was haunted by all these emotions from my childhood. I was telling a friend about these memories, and all of a sudden I started telling my friend that these types of emotions and fears are not normal for a small child. And I started wondering and asking “what the f*** is wrong with me?” Then I started saying how I believed I was defective for having these types of feelings as a child. My friend was devastated hearing all this from me, and my dog started shrieking because he was upset too. I eventually realized that the feelings of being defective were delusional just as some of the fears I had as a child were delusions. It was very therapeutic in the end. I also acknowledge that I cannot blame all the emotional difficulties I had as a child to Christianity, but at the same time being raised in such a rigid belief system was, I believe, incompatible with my well being considering my unique attributes and personality.
In addition to the fear of hell, I also had to live with constant feelings of guilt and shame. Not all of this can be attributed to Christianity, but a lot of it can. As a teenager, of course I masturbated. Although my parents never quite went so far as to say that masturbation was a sin, I nonetheless felt guilty because of the sexual moral code I was raised by. I also believe that unhealthy attitudes about sexuality (which affected me at least into my twenties) had a harmful impact on my social development (being on the autism spectrum almost certainly had an even larger harmful impact on my social development, but I believe unhealthy attitudes about sex based on the religion I was taught as a child also had a significant harmful effect on my social development).
I mentioned earlier that I was always spiritual in a way that was not compatible with Christianity, at least in the form that it was presented to me. This section of the essay is rather difficult to write, as I am looking back at ideas and perceptions I had as a child that would eventually mature into my current belief system (which is still evolving). I know I was asking myself big philosophical questions (like, the type of questions that would be addressed in a college level course on metaphysics) at a very young age, perhaps 5 or 6. These questions included things like “how do I know I am not the only conscious entity in the universe?”. “how do I know everything I see isn’t an illusion?” (I now basically take for granted that everything is indeed, in a sense, an illusion; although it is an illusion that must be taken seriously in order to survive), “what is it that makes ‘me’ ‘me’ and not someone else?”, these sorts of things. To me, these questions seemed profound, and I continued to reflect on them throughout my childhood until (and even after) I formally studied some of them at my private high school in my philosophy class. Thinking about these sorts of questions demonstrates the way I was trying to probe reality using means other than dogmatic scripture from a very young age.
I remember, as a child, practicing yoga on more than one occasion without even knowing I was doing so. Yoga is valuable for allowing one to become more aware of the subtle energies within the body and for accessing states of consciousness that are difficult to reach using other means. At one point, my mother commented that it looked like I was doing yoga. I replied that I would like to learn more about it (I felt that way because it felt good, and it seemed really cool). My mother replied that actually yoga was something to be avoided because it could open up the mind to demonic influence and was based on Eastern mysticism (as if that was a bad thing; in my current syncretic practices, I combine Eastern mysticism, Western mysticism, and, to an extent, shamanic practices that resemble those used by indigenous people of the Americas). In fact, yoga has become an important part of both my spirituality and a form of self-care. I also wanted to take martial arts lessons as a child, but again, my parents decided not to allow it because it incorporated aspects of Eastern mysticism. I wish I had been able to learn martial arts as a child, I believe I would have enjoyed it, and been good at it. I also believe it would have been good for me. I believe it would have given me more confidence and made me more aware of my ability to influence the world. I am not angry at my parents for not allowing me to study martial arts, they were trying to do what they thought was best for me, and because I was so young, it was their prerogative to decide. Additionally, I recall one time when I was a teenager when I told my father that sometimes I like to try to clear my mind of all thoughts, but he responded by saying that it was a bad idea to do such things as it could open a person up to demonic influence and that it was related to Eastern mysticism (various meditative practices are a component of pretty much all forms of mysticism, not just Eastern mysticism). At that age, I basically assumed that what my father had told me couldn’t be true. What could possibly be wrong with learning to control my own mind?
From a very young age, whenever I saw what would be considered occult images or symbols (including, but limited to, Tarot cards), or saw Hindu or ancient Egyptian artwork, I was mesmerized. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but it seemed fascinating to me. I was a very curious child, and wanted to learn both about science and about whatever spiritual mysteries I could learn about. Just as I practiced yoga as a child without knowing it, I also practiced pranayama (breathing exercises) without knowing it. This type of exercise can be used to achieve an altered state of consciousness as breathing is generally controlled by the autonomic nervous system, and taking conscious control over breathing allows one to take control over other functions controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Furthermore, I remember when I was very young, I was extremely curious about magick, and asked questions about what the difference was between a wizard, a witch, and a sorcerer. I also asked my mother whether magick was real and she said something to the effect that some people make deals with demons to be able to do magick. I wasn’t sure I was really being told the accurate story about magick. And when I first heard about Wicca at the age of sixteen (I actually learned about it from a Wiccan who was trolling a Christian IRC channel on which I was chatting), I was fascinated. I actually tried debating the guy in a private conversation from a Christian perspective, but somehow I knew my arguments for Christianity were shallow. The idea of a religious/spiritual tradition that honored nature and practiced magick seemed very appealing to me at the time, but I was still trying to hold onto the Christian identity.
Another behavior I engaged in at a young age was obsessively drawing pentagrams (not pentacles, which are inscribed pentagrams, just the five sided stars) and hexagrams not really knowing the meaning of the symbols, or realizing that they were occult symbols (at the time I probably was aware that the hexagram is at times associated with Judaism). Looking back, I see this as yet another example of me being interested in occultism at an early age. Taken together with the previous paragraphs, it should be clear that I had a deep yearning for an authentic form of spirituality, and that Christianity was not meeting my spiritual needs.
The purpose of this essay is not to promote any type of drug use. That said, I cannot complete this essay without at least mentioning drugs. First of all, the word “drug” is so broad as to almost be meaningless. And I can also testify first hand to the dangers of certain types of drug abuse (and even the negative consequences of psychiatric medications). When I was in elementary school, I was put through the “DARE” program (a ridiculous anti-drug curriculum presented to small children by police officers that many in my generation had to go through), it succeeded in making drugs look “sexy” or “edgy”. However, the part that really caught my attention was the class of chemicals that are characterized as “hallucinogens” or psychedelics. I was simply told that these chemicals could dramatically alter the way the mind works. I was curious. When I actually met a friend who had tried LSD, I was simply fascinated by the stories he told me, and how he told me it could be “mind expanding”. At the time, before having touched any drugs, I was already reading about things like astral projection and was practicing lucid dreaming techniques. I was also reading about self hypnosis and NLP (neurolinguistic programming), which, from the sources I was reading, actually sounded a lot like magick (at the time I did feel guilty about exploring these things because they somehow seemed “unchristian”, but I also concluded that if it is something that my own mind can do, how can it be wrong to learn to master my own mind?). It would end up being over a year from the time I decided I wanted to try LSD and the time I finally got my hands on a small dose.
I won’t go into detail on my psychedelic use. They did indeed dramatically alter my way of thinking, but in a way that was compatible with the deep spiritual yearning in my heart. One fear I had about abandoning Christianity was that it would mean abandoning all spirituality. Psychedelics affirmed the suspicion that had been developing through my life that there was indeed a larger spiritual reality that could be known through direct experience. This knowledge gave me the courage to free myself from the psychological torment of Christianity and allowed me to begin to develop my own way of celebrating the divine and developing my magickal abilities. In my belief system, magick and mysticism are two sides of the same coin. Yes, magick can be abused, but so can any other type of power. I think of magick as spiritual experimentation. Successes and failures both help me learn about how the universe works.
Throughout this essay I have outlined how being raised as a Christian was very traumatic to me. I also outline how, despite (and also probably to an extent because of) my Christian upbringing I had deep spiritual instincts and was drawn to mystical-looking art from a variety of traditions from a young age. Many people reading this blog may have been raised in Christian households as well. I am hoping that the description of how I was ultimately able to move past Christianity and begin to heal the deep trauma that it caused me will be encouraging or inspirational to others dealing with trauma from their religious upbringing. Not everyone will need to touch psychedelic drugs to move past the trauma. And, even without psychedelics, it is possible that I could have eventually gotten to the same point. Either way, this is my story.
There was an opinion piece written by Phil Zuckerman and published in Psychology Today on 8/4/2014 entitled “Does Christianity Harm Children?”. When I was first read the article, although I could certainly personally relate to a lot of what the author said, I also realized that, having been written by someone who presents himself as a “secularist”, the article would come across as a bit snarky to Christian readers (the author doesn’t have the same degree as smugness as someone like Richard Dawkins, but I certainly can see how the tone of the article would rub Christians the wrong way). Additionally, some of the “core tenets of Christianity” that Zuckerman takes issue with are debated by some Christian theologians. Nonetheless, I am inclined to agree with a lot of the points that he made for a couple reasons. First, he begins the opinion piece with a very relatable story about his younger daughter being terrified after being exposed to a chapel hall full of crucifixes. Secondly, my experience growing up in the context of Christianity demonstrates that, at least for children who think about and see things in a certain way, the issues discussed by Zuckermann along with other issues can indeed be very traumatic.
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