CW: Discussion of church, religion, Christianity. No worries, it is not a Bible thumpin’ post. It is me talking about my experiences in churches. And why I don’t go anymore.
Ima tell you all why I no longer go to church, why I no longer actually go into my bedroom to pray out loud from my heart, why I no longer listen to Christian rock or contemporary worship music—
—and why I now believe in God—on my own terms.
I do still pray, but I pray not just with words now—I pray several ways now—
by just conversating with my unseen God,
or I will pray with just key words,
or my vocal stims and sounds,
or my thoughts, body movements, and body positions.
I pray in my heart.
I pray this way because I am too tired and lacking the spoons anymore to form the long, detailed eloquent prayers I used to pray in my bedroom.
But I do still pray, inside.
I pray for everyone who I care about, I pray for my enemies, and I pray for our country and for this world.
Dialysis, and, well, my own personal lived experiences with my family, and then a long string of past caregivers and past friends who are now obviously ex-friends
—-plus my various church experiences—-
experiences which, altogether, have traumatized me so much that I now am left each and every single day, with a very limited spoon supply to get through each day, is why I don’t set myself any actual time schedule to go sit in my bedroom and compose long eloquent formal prayers anymore.
I talk to God and Jesus all the time, but I do it informally, as if I am talking to and confiding in a close friend. I pray as I watch TV, as I am on the dialysis machine, as I ride in Natalie’s and Connie’s cars, as I am just sitting her enjoying my music. I pray, all the time. I just don’t do it the conventional way anymore.
It was a culmination of one negative church experience after another negative church experience, after another, that turned me off, cold, on church and religion as an institution.
I simply do not do lists of do’s and don’t’s. I abhor any type of compliance-based therapies. I abhor authoritarianism. My neurology is not wired for it.
From the beginning, of me being born into a narrow-minded, bigoted racist Catholic family who did not accept me because of my autism….to all of the churches I was a part of where I got the “let’s befriend Melissa so we can change & fix her and lay hands on her and pray all of her autisms off of her” shit.
And when their praying don’t work, they throw me away and condemn me to hell.
Churches where I got the holy roller hellfire and damnation shit—of me being told not to listen to
Nine Inch Nails,
Depeche Mode,
Cure,
Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Nirvana,
Pearl Jam,
Soundgarden,
Ozzy Osbourne,
Guns & Roses,
Korn,
and
Metallica,
or watch Beavis & Butthead anymore….and even the alternative group REM was thought to be sinful. Yeah….even REM.
I got told that if I watched and listened to certain TV shows and music that I would go to hell.
I got told that I HAD to forgive those I could NOT forgive, in order for me to be “set free”.
I literally got told that if I did not forgive those that hurt and traumatized me, that I could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
They didn’t understand C-PTSD trauma at all, or mental illness, or neurodivergence.
C-PTSD trauma from decades under a family’s roof where I was taught that God was an angry God who was just like my always angry too-strict wrathful father. A God who was intolerant, unjust, unfair, disrespectful and cruel.
As far as I am concerned, church people still don’t get it. And many of those church people now embrace the even crueler Trumpified w-y-t-e Christian Nationalism movement now.
To me, forgiveness is a thing that happens when I can at least come to a place of being able to pray for that person who I
_just_cannot_forgive_
because of the nature of the trauma that person caused me.
Yes. I //can// at least pray for God’s mercy & grace, and pray for that person’s well-being.
But the pain of their cruelty, abuse, rejection
….Still Sits Inside Of Me.
The pain and hurt does not go away.
That’s how C-PTSD trauma works, folks.
Forgiveness is for those who come to me and are truly sorry and they make the effort to stop hurting me and start showing UP for me.
In the Southern Baptist church I went to from 1988 until 1992, I had a lady friend who liked to belittle, scold and shame me on the regular, and when I got my drivers license, she told me that God was going to blow my car’s engine up if I kept taking long drives up and down the 101 freeway instead of going to church every time the doors were open.
I had actual bullies in those churches who singled me out to pick on and intimidate me…I had one church lady falsely accuse me of being like serial killer Ted Bundy, for real, folks, and another church elder put me on notice that I was fucking demon possessed. Very scary shit to be told, right? And being told that kind of shit, has had a severe psychological effect on me.
Shit that has only added to my Complex PTSD trauma.
One cruel curly red-headed lady from a Charismatic church I went to in 1994, (the same church where I got nicknamed Ted Bundy and got told I was demon possessed) tried her hardest to get me kicked out of a Christian singles group I was in in Arroyo Grande, where I WAS happy, where I DID have a small circle of friends who DID support and have my back.
Actually, it was the singles group where I was actually at my happiest, — that was, until some uppity cliques formed that began excluding me….yeah, I left that group after that shit started…..because that’s the kind of very painful shit I had to endure when I was in school. I wasn’t here for it anymore as an adult.
In 2011, the last church I tried to become a part of—outright rejected me, blocked me off of their Facebook page, removed me from their email list, all because I wanted to form the same kind of friendships like I had in the Christian singles group, and I wanted the church’s pastor to just help me to be able to better understand how to use my then new iPhone 4 that I got, through Verizon Wireless so I could take pictures and videos and have my music all on one device.
He promised me he would help me with my then new iPhone if I came to their service the next Sunday night.
I showed up that next Sunday night, but he gave a sermon where he suddenly broke down crying, and then he walked out to never return again that night.
I spent the end of that service trying to get other church goers to help me, and instead they all laughed at me and made fun of me. Hurt and angry, I went in the back to where they had snacks set out, and ate all of the brownie bites I could, and then I left, screeching my tires in their uppity parking lot, vowing to never darken theirs, or anymore uppity self righteous church doorways.
When I tried to get that pastor to reschedule the iPhone learning session,
—and yes, I did post my appeal for his support, and to gain friends, on their Facebook page— this man suddenly—-out of the fucking blue—-
—accused me of asking for plane tickets for a European trip, and being rude to church members on their Facebook page, and so I found myself suddenly banned from both their Facebook page and email list.
I kept wondering why I suddenly couldn’t comment on their Facebook page anymore. It wasn’t until I personally emailed that pastor, that he emailed me back, unleashing so much hate towards me, that I knew what had happened. He had somehow gotten it in his head that I was a monster who did all those things he said I did…..
I had some of my Facebook friends email him, to explain that I was not the kind of person who would go onto Facebook pages to post mean comments and ask for plane tickets to Europe.
They explained to him I just wanted new friends to hang out with and to be a support system to me. I did talk about my life goals and dreams, that I do remember doing, but I never asked for any plane tickets to Europe. And I wasn’t rude either.
He was asked by my friends, to produce screen shots as proof of his accusations, and he could not produce ANY proof—-because I did not do the things he was accusing me of.
I looked that church up on Yelp years later on to find that many others have also lodged bad reviews of him and his church. I now feel the reason he left his former church as their youth pastor, to start his new church, was because they had problems with him there too. And either they may of asked him to resign, or they fired him. I don’t know, I am guesstimating.
I have always sought to know God and Jesus, but too many roadblocks and church people’s bigotry and hatred, and now Trumpism, have turned me off, cold, from ever wanting to darken the doorway of anymore churches.
Why am I writing about this today?
Because when I went to check my three email accounts this morning, when I got to my Yahoo account, I saw the folder I had made for that church, and clicked on it to see the hurtful email I got from the nice, youth-oriented church where it was THEM who unsubscribed me from their email list, not ME.
If you believe in God and go to church, ANY church, it does not give you the right to play judge and jury with the people who come to you seeking God with all of their heart, like I was doing. It does not give you the right to police what music we listen to, what political party we are affiliated with, what we do in our bedrooms, who we love, who we have sex with, who we identify as.
I am not done here. I need to go eat, and then I can finish….so I will see you later. Because this will be a blog.
I am back.
But hey, people….church is supposed to be a hospital for the sick and hurting….and does Matthew 25 not say, over and over again, in Jesus’s own words for us to:
Warmly welcome the immigrants, refugees and strangers.
Give water to those who thirst.
Take tender care of those who are widowed, weak, and orphaned.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
For I was thirsty and you gave me a cold cup of water to drink.
For I was hungry and you gave me a delicious hot meal to eat.
For I was houseless and you gave me shelter.
For I was alone and you came and sat with me and then you walked with me.
For I was naked and you clothed me.
I only got that in my Christian singles group, until the cliques took it over.
Catholicism didn’t do it for me. with their strict confess your sins to a priest in a dark cold cubicle, forced communion, and their endless guilt, fear and penance narrative.
The Southern Baptist church threw me to the curb when I stopped coming that often, and began to prefer my long drives over their hellfire and damnation message and old tired hymns.
The charismatic church threw me out when I joined one of their weekly support groups and confided way too much to the wrong people, and suddenly I became Ted Bundy 2.0, and I had a demon residing within my being.
I went to one more church, another charismatic church, where I found my singles group….and then I went to one more nice church where I was mostly happy, until their youth pastor left and started the young at heart church where I got burned at the stake so bad, I have not been back to ANY more churches since.
Moral of the story?
Don’t put your trust in a church building, or its people to help you, to support you, to give you the love, and companionship and validation you are seeking.
Where you find the kinds of people who will:
laugh with you,
be with you through darkness and light,
who will embrace you,
who will make you feel seen, heard, and validated,
who will have your back,
who you know you feel safe with,
who are honest, who won’t lie to you and steal from you,
It is there where you will find God. God’s love. And peace.
Melissa Fields, Autist 