Thread by @hlgriffin

@AndrewH88063358 Thanks, @AndrewH88063358 - Part of what is going on in the "experiential avoidance" dynamic is that there is very little practical wisdom in large sectors of white American evangelicalism about how people grow to become more like Jesus. 1/

@AndrewH88063358 If they aren't coming in with some relational capital that helps them form a healthy attachment to God, it can be pretty hard for people to find relationships that can help them learn how to pray and connect with Jesus so they can grow.

@AndrewH88063358 This is really sad because this is the last thing they are intending to do. Nobody means for it to be this way, except maybe a handful of uber-predators who are self-aware of how they benefit from the system.

@AndrewH88063358 Sometimes people still find people that are relatively wise and healthy that can help them grow, but even then the toolbox tends to be pretty limited and won't get you much further than being middle-class, stable, and having a happy marriage (all of which are lovely things).

@AndrewH88063358 For many people, there isn't much growth except for an occasional season of breakthrough or a few scraps of connection with Jesus here and there. For some people, there aren't even these consolations to sustain them.

@AndrewH88063358 One's faith becomes primarily an intellectual exercise of reminding oneself of the true things, learning more information about the true things, and trying to mean them as earnestly as possible.

@AndrewH88063358 The longer we go without growing or seeing anyone around us grow significantly, the harder it is for many people to hold on. They might remind themselves of the experiences with Jesus that they know are real, but they lose hope that there can be more for them.

@AndrewH88063358 They don't notice that they've lost hope or that they have tons of doubt about whether Jesus can really change people the way the New Testament says that he can.

@AndrewH88063358 The doubt gets dressed up as faith and the despair gets dressed up as hope. It's "faith" to keep on with the same impoverished toolbox even though hardly anyone seems to get better, and the "better" that is occasionally visible usually isn't that great.

@AndrewH88063358 When we know Jesus and love him but we aren't seeing growth even though everyone is Trying Harder to Mean it More, we can either acknowledge that something is wrong and start asking Jesus to reshape us and show us what we are missing and lead us to wisdom...

@AndrewH88063358 or we can avoid telling the truth about the lack of good fruit or the presence of bad fruit. The reasons that people avoid the truth are usually not that sinister. Most people in the system are not malicious predators, even though they may empower them through their avoidance.

@AndrewH88063358 In fundamentalist-inflected evangelicalism, it's hard to acknowledge that we are missing something because of how we are trained to think of knowledge. We are the people who see scripture and reality with Sincerity & Sanctified Common Sense.

@AndrewH88063358 If the goodness of God is bound up in God empowering us to be able to avoid getting it massively wrong about scripture & significant features of reality, to tell the truth about our failures is to doubt the goodness of God. There's nowhere you can go from there.

@AndrewH88063358 All the while, the Holy Spirit may be nudging people to have doubts about the false gospels that have become mixed in with the true gospel and they shut the Holy Spirit down in an attempt to be faithful to what they think God is asking them to do.

@AndrewH88063358 It's really sad, and it's deeply tied with shame at failing when we've tried to do the right thing for years and follow God, combined with deep anger at God that we don't have the tools to deal with.

@AndrewH88063358 If you get enough people in a group that are stuck in that cycle, they need each other to reinforce their suspension of reality and to reassure each other of their dignity and maturity.

@AndrewH88063358 They dispense Maturity Badges to each other and clap each other on the back for meeting the impoverished standards of flourishing in the community: believing the right Bible Facts w/ sentimental displays of Sincerity, doing devotionals, telling slackers the Hard Truths, etc.

@AndrewH88063358 They also manage shame by gatekeeping & scapegoating. If there isn't a significant distance in terms of people's current level of maturity or their growth trajectory in the church community, outsiders who are doing just as well or better have to be avoided at all cost.

@AndrewH88063358 If the world isn't astonied by the lack of transformation & they are committed to seeing the levels of maturity that they can achieve in their community as the Kingdom of God at Hand, clearly, it is a time of Great Darkness.

@AndrewH88063358 Outsiders aren't dazzled by our Light because they must be so committed to Darkness that the sweet incense of our Sincerity smells like the stench of death to them. Otherwise, why wouldn't they agree with us that our shit doesn't stink?

@AndrewH88063358 When all you have to convince people of the truth of the gospel is a schtick in which you tell them about how you Just Really Have a Heart for Telling Them About Your Heart for Things and they aren't impressed by your Sincere profession of Bible Facts, what is left?

@AndrewH88063358 Clearly, we must take the culture by force and keep sinister (outside- ALWAYS outside) forces away from the Fortress of Faithfulness.

@AndrewH88063358 Here's the trap for people that are leaving fundamentalism: They are shaped by it ways they don't realize that don't go away simply because they reject the fruit, the teaching, the relationships, and the culture.

@AndrewH88063358 They are understandably hurt by the authoritarian control oppression. It's hard to trust healthy authority because they have no idea what healthy authority looks like. Trusting someone else who claims to see something that they don't feels unsafe & potentially retraumatizing.

@AndrewH88063358 Without realizing it, they can develop the same self-protective strategies in response to these wounds that led their ancestors into fundamentalism in the first place.

@AndrewH88063358 The most obvious example (to outsiders) is that they may be just as in love with their judgment and capacity to see reality clearly as their evangelical or fundamentalist parents.

@AndrewH88063358 Not everyone does this. I've met people who leave fundamentalism that have a profound self-awareness that they share their parent's human capacity for self-deception & do not magically become different sorts of people from their parents by Sincerely not wanting to be like them.

@AndrewH88063358 That path takes a long time and is fraught with uncertainty, and certainty is sexy because it feels like safety. When the entire foundation of your identity gets pulled out from beneath you & you lose everyone you've known, finding certainty again in a different form feels safe.

@AndrewH88063358 A related way that we try to keep ourselves safe is the fantasy that we have control of our experiences. Experience falls into the category of what I call a "Magic Knowledge Receptor" for white western liberals.

@AndrewH88063358 White Americans outside of evangelicalism & fundamentalism are also trained into a foolish overconfidence that we are people who see reality clearly if we are Sincere, only "Authenticity" tends to adorn this preferred self-image outside of conservative circles.

@AndrewH88063358 "Experience" tends to be treated as this thing that we receive as it is, as if it were a new form of Bible Facts & we are receiving its Plain Meaning because of our Authenticity and WIllingness to Ask Questions & Think For Ourselves.

@AndrewH88063358 The plot twist is that there is no such thing as uninterpreted Experience just as there is no such thing as uninterpreted Biblical Truth.

@AndrewH88063358 An additional twist is that the more privilege we have, the more likely it is that our definitely interpreted Experiences are also experiences that we select with our navigation system, which is usually calibrated in React Against Fundamentalism mode.

@AndrewH88063358 Tragedy can still happen. Even the most privileged person can be acted upon by others in ways that they do not choose. Still, the Experiences that we DO select in our self-protection manifest are just parochialism masquerading under the pleasing self-image of cosmopolitanism.

@AndrewH88063358 When we are still shaped by fundamentalist self-protection and the need to control, we are looking for experiences that make sense to the people we are now. Our ability to select experiences and to interpret them is only going to be as good as our current level of maturity.

@AndrewH88063358 Ex-fundamentalists & evangelicals can get caught in a loop when they leave in which they only trust what immediately makes sense to them unless they were already people that had the opportunity to cultivate intellectual humility & self-awareness before they deconstructed.

@AndrewH88063358 Evangelicals & fundamentalists can develop naive ideas in which they see themselves as not shaped by wider American culture because they see themselves in opposition to the World.

@AndrewH88063358 Fundamentalism & Liberalism are both "bastard children of modernity," & both provide niches for white people to see themselves as the Most Reasonable & Well-Intentioned people around.

@AndrewH88063358 The impulse to control and to construe freedom as "no one can put one over on me and I can do what I want" leads to endless cycles of self-reflexivity in which we select experiences that are attractive given our current maturity & interpret them confidently from the same place.

@AndrewH88063358 It's not that growth can't happen at all, but the "I can figure this out on my own because I am already someone that sees reality clearly" mindset that is a totally normal thing to develop in response to the harm of authoritarian systems leads to stunted growth at best.

@AndrewH88063358 It can also lead to new forms of fundamentalism in a progressive guise. It can lead to wasted energy, like going to therapy & learning the language to deploy against our enemies (who else does that sound like?), all the while avoiding the difficult & uncertain process of growth.

@AndrewH88063358 It can lead to an appropriation of any cultural practice (never one's own culture) that has been commodified for white people under the name of "spiritual," as if the world is a buffet that our Liberated & Authentic selves can sample according to our exquisite taste & judgment.

@AndrewH88063358 Just as our fundamentalist parents saw themselves as equipped to navigate all of reality rightly due to their Sincere Commitment to Biblical Truth...

@AndrewH88063358 A lot of their adult children are running away from the spiritual control of their authoritarian churches only to establish themselves as those who have the judgment to control their own Spiritual Experiences.

@AndrewH88063358 This can be heady stuff, whether the fundamentalism you are leaving is cessationist: the Holy Spirit doesn't do anything anymore but convict me of my sin & help me believe Bible Facts Sincerely...

@AndrewH88063358 ...or leaving a pentecostal/charismatic form of fundamentalist authoritarianism in which the Holy Spirit showing up was proof that the leaders were doing something right and that God was signing off on their immaturity, dysfunction, & spiritual abuse.

@AndrewH88063358 The Adventures in Authentic Consumer Spirituality trope of Deconstructionland is often a highly individualized form of spiritual control licensed by the confidence that we somehow are able to make good judgments (based on something being interesting & attactive to us)...

@AndrewH88063358 ...and that we will never get more than what we bargain for, because there is nothing there but what I can see or anticipate through my Open-Minded Authenticity, and I don't anticipate that these things can harm me or others if they feel real, intersting, & helpful at the moment.

@AndrewH88063358 The fantasy of Western control is that our judgment is free and unshaped (unlike other people who lack our Open-Minded Willingness to Thing for Ourselves). This fantasy keeps us from noticing that the experiences that we select shape us in ways that are beyond our control.

@AndrewH88063358 Our experiences are not just things we do. They do things to us, and the people we are right now rarely have the capacity to think through this shaping carefully because we don't think our decisions have impact beyond our intentions any more than our fundamentalist parents do.

@AndrewH88063358 Experience Avoidance is about dispositions and character traits of self-protection & control. If we don't deal with the wounds, we can see ourselves as people that are now Open to Experience & still be just as trapped in self-serving, self-protective fantasy worlds as our elders.

@AndrewH88063358 @threadreaderapp unroll