I am not a Christian
or Psychobabble, Bibliolatry, and being a lukewarm Apologist for the Church
Our Christian couples therapist Sean is gaslighting us again.
When either Annika or I say something that triggers him, he usually responds with a cold, clinical, manipulatively worded set of questions designed to bring us around to his way of thinking.
He also has no idea he is doing this, and vehemently denies that he is doing this when we point it out.
For context, Sean is an Evangelical Christian psychologist (interesting combination, huh?).
We picked him because of that: Annika and I have navigated a lot of drama the past few years, and in general being around conservatives that believe in the values of grace, God, and marriage has been invaluable for us these past few years.
Except Sean, like some other Christians we know, is not so sure whether Annika and I should stay together.
Whenever we act in ways that he deems are either unhealthy (from a sciencistic or psychological worldview) or unbiblical (from an Evangelical Christian worldview) he will often hint at us needing to get a divorce.
He never says we should, just asks those same clinical questions trying to get us around to his way of thinking.
This is one of the many hypocrisies I have experienced since entering into the world of Christianity.
But before I jump further into those hypocrisies, I’ll speak about how I became immersed in the world of Christianity, and why I am and have been so grateful to be a part of that world.
Growing up, I looked down on Christians.
I grew up in a household of two religions: Conservative Judaism and Sciencism.
And I looked down on the uneducated goyim who went to church on Sunday, dressed a little differently than me, and worshipped a man nailed to a cross.
It was weird, and I didn’t like it.
Don’t get me wrong, I had Christian friends growing up, in college, and as an adult. But I quietly and often subconsciously looked down on them for their “backward ways”.
And I was drawn to them as well. I had several friends in college who were Evangelical Christians, and would often invite me to Bible study.
And I really wanted to go.
But, for a sciencistic rational Jew, becoming a Christian is basically committing social and familial suicide.
I wandered into the New Age world instead, of shadow world, parts, Jungian psychology, and integration work.
And, eventually, I finally lost my mind completely. It turns out chronically exploring what is underneath the surface will eventually bring it to the surface.
And so my mind broke under the pressure of a lifetime of repressed experience, trauma and shame.
It was in the context of being mostly disconnected from reality that I met my wife Annika, and started to be introduced to the world of Christianity.
Annika was rather hesitant to show me this world: once a devout Evangelical Christian herself, she became disillusioned with Christianity after being blamed for being in an abusive relationship, and seeing the many hypocracies of the church.
She turned away from the church to the worlds of Paganism, wokeness, and gender ideology. And once she was heartily thrown out of that world for uttering such heresies as “what do you think a woman is?” Annika return not to the church but to Jesus.
And it blew my mind.
We went to a service at Bethel in Reading California, and my heart exploded open during the worship.
Through and with Annika, I started to feel the consistent presence of God for the first time in my adult life.
And my whole world broke when I first felt the experience of grace.
I remember it well: I was sitting on the bed of the travel trailer I was living in with Annika.
I had been in a trauma flashback where I mistook Annika for the person who had mistreated me the most as a child, and had been treating Annika extremely poorly as a result.
As my vision unclouded and and I saw who it was that I had been talking to, something broke inside me.
A flood of guilt, shame and pain washed through me, as I realized who it was I had been “protecting” myself from.
I begged her forgiveness, and she acceded.
But I felt something more.
As the grief and regret ripped through me, I felt something deeper stirring. As I begged God for forgiveness, for all the times I had acted out of these delusions, I felt it, deep and true and pure.
I felt that God forgave me. Had always forgiven me. and was waiting for me to forgive myself.
I let myself go into the flood, rushing deeper and deeper into the embrace of God, of myself, of love, of eternity.
I was home.
But I was not content.
While I had felt the presence of God, of grace, and of eternal love, I could not believe that it was real.
I rebelled, looking for a system, a way to “get it right”. I looked back to the mix of Judaism and sciencism that I had grown up with, but found nothing new there. I looked to the New Age world, and also came up short.
And it was in that context that I started to go to church.
And while I fought against it tooth and nail, I also loved it.
I loved it for the same reasons I love conservative churches now: in these churches you are allowed to actually be a man, to not use pronouns, to worship and pray to God, to protect children from experimental drugs and procedures, to honor and love the sanctity of marriage and more.
And to parts of me, it finally felt like I was home.
I started going to a small house church every Sunday, and sometimes a larger church in the Asheville area (where I was living at the time).
And I also started to feel and experience the hypocrisy of Christianity.
The first massive blow to my honeymoon with Christianity was when Annika and I were cancelled by some more “experienced” Christians for believing we had something to offer to them.
And I saw things my mind could not make sense of.
I saw a man welcomed to church every Sunday who had been sexually abusing his children, while his wife and children were quietly shunned for leaving “the faith”.
I saw pastors preach on morality, while looking a little too predatory for my liking.
I saw narcissists on stage talking about worshipping God while seeming to only worship themselves.
But still I felt gratitude, to be allowed to be a man, to worship God, and to stand with people who were committed to making a marriage work, even when that marriage was messy.
Then Annika and I moved to Philadelphia, and my experience of Christianity began to grow and change more.
When Annika and I moved to Philadelphia, we joined a progressive Christian church. If you want to know how that was, you can read my article in more depth here. (The long story short is that Annika and I are no longer welcome at that church, and I hold up signs outside of the church like “God Loves You” on Sundays.)
Also, in the past year I have been to more types of churches than I can count: Presbyterian, Anglican, Evangelical, and more: you name it, I have been there.
And in each place I see the hypocrisies, the places where dogma has written over the truth.
I feel that hypocrisy strongly with Sean our therapist, when he alternates between quoting scripture and pointing to the degrees on his wall, and more.
I hear it in the sermons, see it in the places where people or beliefs are excluded because they would bring pain to the surface.
And I do deeply love these churches, and the beautiful and flawed poeple that inhabit them. I see them and honor them for the imperfect refuges they are for people like I was. And I would gladly send people who were in my position to those churches, to get to step into values like grace, masculinity, prayer, being a man, and honoring a marriage.
And I can no longer in good faith consider myself a meaningful part of that world.
My theology is growing and expanding, and I can no longer limit myself to just what a particular church of Christianity has to offer, or Christianity as a whole.
I’m hungry to begin to integrate the rituals, culture and experiences I have had from my Jewish upbringing, my years as a New-Ager and more and bring that all together into something more cohesive.
That thing is called polynousism.
When I met my wife Annika, she introduced me to the worldview that she created called polynousism. Polynousism (Greek for “many minds”) is the first totally comprehensive worldview I have ever come across.
And the past few years I have paid it lip-service while rejecting it in favor of Christianity.
But I will do that no more.
In the coming weeks and months, I will be writing more and more on what it means to me to be a polynousist.
For now I will say that polynousism is based on one core value: that there is nothing wrong with you, just as you are.
You do not need to be fixed, argued with, changed, “prayed” with, shunned, threatened ar manipulated.
You can be challenged, or asked questions, but at the end of the day you do not need to be changed: you are perfect as you are.
You are perfect as you are.
More to come.
A photo me standing outside our former Mennonite church communicating my belief that “you are perfect as you are”