Explaining My Faith
It is very important to me that people understand my faith. I have a Batchelor's Degree in Ministry but I do not ascribe to the modern church or organized religion; however, I am a believer of the Word of God, in its purest and richest form. I have a profound understanding of good and evil that allows me to truly understand the spiritual warfare that is our actual reality. I have seen darkness and danced with the devil; for this reason I turned to the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. I overcome the darkness by faith in the one who rules over it. I rejoice in my suffering, because suffering yields perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope....where sin abounds, Grace abounds more.
"Be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Romans 12:2
Religious Trauma is a Real Thing
The problem here is that the Christian Church is not recognizing or cleaning up its own mess. This leaves those who have experienced emotional abuse at the hands of church into the arms of the secular world, a world devoid of God and truth. They are lead to the ideologies of secular humanism, which is the grandfather of the atheistic worldview. Simultaneously, this is causing those who need the love and acceptance of Christ the most to hate God himself. This simply cannot happen. It should not be a reality that people are falling away from the church because of the evil within, only to find comfort and love in some of the darkest locations. As Paul says, God forbid! But this IS the current reality.
Secular society (aka: Mental Health) has latched into this religious trauma narrative and have stepped up to provide the cure. Live your best life now and embrace your truth are their mantras. They promote people to define their own morality, reality, and individual identity while saying be damned to any voice other than their own. But they are deceived. Human decision making is only guided by two basic motivations: to escape, avoid, or relieve suffering; and to seek pleasure or feel good feelings. This is the nature of the flesh and mental health is empowered to condone it all. The church must do better. If you are reading this and you hate God because of damaging religious experiences; let me just say I am sorry and God can handle your anger. If you are reading this and you see the truth in the church and you want to learn more. Please visit: GRACE a Christian non-profit determined to teach the Church how to avoid Religious Trauma and how to heal it when it occurs.
The Healing comes from Christ
God has called me to give testimony to His Truth and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the world. My life has been a mosaic of human trauma and failures. I have been abandoned, abused, and manipulated to the point of loosing myself and even my faith. My story is painful and portions will be hard to talk about along the way; I needed to see the devil to know he existed. I have faced spiritual warfare for years because the devil never wanted me to tell this story but God says otherwise.
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I do not believe in Christ because I was taught to believe, I believe because I have seen Him and His truth profoundly with my own eyes. My walk with Christ has been filled with the highest of highs and more than one rock bottom. God has used every circumstance imaginable, both positive and negative, to teach me along the way. Often times I was not even aware I was being taught until I reflected years later. Many will think that I am a fountain of unending emotional vomit and on this point I digress. The true value found in my story is the revelation of the Lord through all the pain.
A Little Talk About Truth
Truth is defined by the Webster’s Dictionary as (1) the body of real things, events, and facts: actuality (2) the state of being the case: fact (3) often capitalized: a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality. Currently it feels as if truth has become a relative term. For example, truth has become something that can be defined by an individual. Today if you ask ten different people to define truth you may get ten different answers. Does anyone stop to ask themselves how this has happened and why? From the aforementioned definition it would be reasonable to deduce that truth should be real, based in reality, and grounded in facts. It should be immovable and unquestionable. So why does our current society have so much disagreement about truth?
Let’s start with reality. Each individual’s perception of reality is based only in what they know. Reality is constructed by the lessons learned from various experiences across the life of each person. This would explain why different people subscribe to different truths because each individual has different life experiences. Additionally, even people who share some of the same life experiences may have drastically different interpretations and responses to those events. This is why divorce may be utterly devastating to one sibling while the other appears to be unaffected. Part of the human condition is an uncanny ability to believe that our feelings justify facts. If something hurts me than I decide it is a fact that it is bad. This rational causes people to create perceptions in their minds that are ridged and ultimately limiting. This thought process plays a significant role in forming a personal worldview and discernment that is based on feelings and the internalization of experience based dialog is inherently flawed. Now that we have confirmed that the human brain has the ability to use life experiences and feelings to create a narrative that becomes a person’s reality we can understand why each individual has their own version of “reality”. Given the differences and complexities of human reality created in individual humans it is no wonder there is so much strong argumentation, judgment, and ridicule in our society. People are simply acting according to what they think or believe. Individuals approach the world and those around them based on their self constructed thought processes. I would venture to say that there is not one person who has not experienced some form of trauma in their lives that had an effect on their perceptions. I will now use myself as an example of how this happens.
I have experienced many traumas throughout my life that have left me feeling tremendous anger, guilt, and shame. I look in the mirror and I can only see two things: 1: I see a culmination of bad choices based in my damage and trauma that yielded very painful ramifications to myself and those around me 2: I see a series of abuses against me that were beyond my control which created triggers, unhealthy behaviors, and endless struggles with my own self love. This in a nutshell, is Brooke and it is a chaotic mess. I carried so many negative feelings about myself and the world around me; and the weight was overwhelmingly suffocating. Now you are probably thinking what does this have to do with truth? My reality became my truth. My pain, rage, and sorrow became who I was. But my reality was not truth it was simply the result of all the struggles and abuse.
The Bible teaches that in the beginning everything was good (Genesis 1:31). My life did not appear good and neither did I. My way of perceiving the world was obviously not working. God promises to give the believer a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26) and instructs us to die to ourselves (Luke 9:23) but I could not really understand what that meant. I realized that free will is the greatest gift because we get to choose but most do not know what they are choosing. The choice is a choice of truth. Do you want to follow your own truth, based on a reality of trauma, or submit to His truth? Once we can separate our self from our own understanding and lean on His (Proverbs 3:5–6), only then can we be wise. I had to lay down my fight to be right and abandon my own understanding, my own beliefs, and my own damaged reality. My past, became baggage I simply carry as He carried the cross for me (Matthew 16:24–26). Paul says do not be conformed to this world but become a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:2). Sacrifice requires releasing something you don’t want to release. I had to release hold of my truth!
God is giving me a new heart and changing my perspectives and worldview to something that parallels Him. The human condition and function of the brain will never allow us to avoid the bias and ramifications of life experiences on our own individual truth. Each person has to choose to follow their own personal truth, which is often times a result of the evil in this world, or trust in the Lord for truth and understanding. I am no longer following my own wisdom but the ultimate wisdom of God. His truth meets the definition of truth. His truth is not yielding, factual, unapologetic, and accurate every single time. I challenge you to discover who Christ says you are and abandon how your trauma has defined you. I chose the Truth that brings joy, peace, and freedom and I am turning away from Brooke’s self prescribed truth that caused nothing but tragedy. There is amazing redemption that can be found in the Word of God and If you are interested in trading worldly truth for life changing truth feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help you understand. God Bless you all.