@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr I'm planning on writing something when I'm done with my never-ending Master's thesis. I think a lot of people are wrestling with these things & need to hear from people who still have some hope, even if it's just 10% of what it used to be.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr I know that so many evangelicals & exvangelicals feel very alone & don't have spaces to talk about the betrayal that they feel in the face of the infidelity of their elders & friends.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It can feel really lonely especially b/c so many people who are feeling that betrayal are (understandably) responding by chucking everything. I can't chuck everything b/c there is too much that is real & good & necessary. It's hard to sift through.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It's also pretty terrifying if you are still trying to hold onto Jesus to wonder in what ways we might be deluded or self-deceived or become that way in the future if living in reality means we have to face shame for failures that we don't really trust Jesus to redeem.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr So much of the desire for certainty comes from a very understandable desire keep ourselves safe in a world that is unsafe. When we are afraid, we control. When our attempts to keep ourselves safe are reactionary & not coming from a place of wisdom, they will cause some harm.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr When we can't troubleshoot that harm b/c facing it would threaten our identities & God's goodness, we will reenforce our blindspots. If we are leaders, we'll institutionalize them & pass them on.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr The harm piles up well beyond the damage caused early on when we refused to walk through the shame in favor of focusing on "doing God's work." The longer that goes on, the more hardened we become to our awareness of our own sin & that of anyone else in our communities.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It's so much easier to give up & to stop trying to help people or stop trying to become someone who can help. We don't have to make mistakes & reckon with the harm we have caused while trying to help. Checking out for the longterm is its own kind of harm, though.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It leaves the leadership of our institutions (churches, government, etc) to people who are likely less burdened by the awareness of their own capacity to do harm.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr I think that there's plenty of deluded leaders who started out as people who wanted to take pain seriously & take God's ability to help us even more seriously.
Some of them protected themselves over time from the stress of ministry by becoming desensitized to their own failures
Some of them protected themselves over time from the stress of ministry by becoming desensitized to their own failures
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr They were carrying tremendous burdens & often had few people around them who were willing to step up & share the load. They opened themselves up to other people's pain & ended up with a ton of secondary trauma on top of their own unresolved trauma.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr I can see how it would be a very subtle, gradual thing to shut down the parts of themselves that were overwhelmed by the suffering by pumping up the parts of ourselves that were pushing through to hold onto Jesus & keep going.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr With a deep commitment to keep going & help people & to do the right thing by staying faithful to Jesus, we can unintentionally bury parts of ourselves that Jesus wants to heal so that we can actually be fruitful & see the healing we long for so desperately.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Nobody means to do this. Nobody recognizes at the time how those little decisions to shelve the mess accumulate over time into huge blindspots that can destroy the people we are trying to help.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr All of the most fruitful pastors that I know who have showed up to walk with people in trauma have experienced deep trauma themselves. If they waited for all their own trauma to be resolved before they became pastors, no would ever become pastors.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Some do better than others in ordering their lives to make sure they are still pursuing healing for themselves. The thing is, there's so little help available for even basic wounds that once you can offer something better than a bandaid, you'll be surrounded w/wounded people.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr There will always be more people to help than there will be time and energy to help. It's so easy to postpone our own continued healing, especially in areas where we are most stuck, in favor of saying "yes" to someone in front of us who is asking for help instead.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr The most compassionate people usually know the pain of not being able to find help. The last thing they want to do is to be yet another pastor who turns away from the pain of someone who is hurting or who dispenses bandaids for bullet wounds.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr If a pastor gets promoted too soon (most of them do) & makes even a little bit of progress w/helping people, everyone around him will be so grateful for anything marginally better than a bandaid that he can be tempted to think he's more fruitful than he actually is.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Continuing to show up for suffering people comes at a tremendous cost to the pastor & his family. One of the greatest temptations in ministry is to assume that people should be getting better w/the help that is available if we are burning ourselves out to give everything we have.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It's so easy to start blaming people who don't get better w/the help that's available. It's so easy to treat a little bit of progress as if it's much more than it actually is. It's so easy to minimize the harm that we do if we know we are also doing good.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr It's so easy to surround ourselves with people who are so grateful to have "better than a bandaid" & have been legitimately helped by us that they are willing to protect us from the pain of our own shame at our failures.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Even if the people that we've helped have received some real healing from our ministries, they still have unhealed areas that are too scary to face. Most of us who have experienced severe trauma are exhausted & want to be able to rest & enjoy a normal life. We want to be better.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We need it to be done. We need the dignity of not being seen as hopelessly messed up. We need the fears that we will mess up our kids like our parents messed us up to be silenced. We need to know that the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We need to know that there is redemption and that the brokenness doesn't have to consume all the goodness of life. It's hard to enjoy the goodness of now when much remains unfinished. It's hard to keep going if the presence of unhealed wounds is seen as shameful or fearful.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Most church communities that pursue healing & try to show up with people in pain are going to develop shared blindspots over time (every community does). Those are the areas in which people pretend things are better than they are & overrate the quality of the fruit.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr If that goes on for long enough, they won't be able to distinguish the True Gospel from the False Gospel in their blindspots. The Holy Spirit will use just about anybody who is hungry & open no matter how screwed up they are, & it's never an endorsement of their health & maturity
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr If we are even a little less loopy than most healing communities, we can become overconfident very quickly & hardened to our own areas of immaturity & incompetence. Everyone that stays will assume things are more or less okay b/c the Holy Spirit still does stuff.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Everyone that leaves can be explained away as malcontents who have taken offense & failed to forgive & are being used by the enemy to conduct spiritual warfare against the persecuted faithful.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We all have a way that we need the story to turn out. Our perception is always skewed towards that agenda. We have to protect ourselves from shame beyond our hope of God's redemption. We will sacrifice our children to the family idols in the name of Jesus to avoid our failures.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr People can absolutely love Jesus & love their kids & do this & never be able to acknowledge that this is going on b/c facing that shame feels like death & like doubting God, whom we are confusing with an idol that we call "Jesus."
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Reality is so scary that we will do anything we can to avoid facing it. The more we've avoided it & the more the cancer grows in the blindspots, the more we are avoiding the small encounters w/Jesus that would have cut out the cancer before it spread & overtook our minds.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Those little encounters of listening to people when we hurt them that prompt us to apologize, make amends, & pursue more of our own healing to become people who can help instead of hurt are so easy to avoid or postpone. Even a little bit of shame at our failures hurts.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr If we continue to shield ourselves from those moments so that we can endure persevering in ministry & if we surround ourselves w/people who will shield us in the name of loving & protecting us, we will become spiritually abusive even if we love Jesus & want to help people.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr There are always areas of our soul in which we don't believe that Jesus is good yet. We don't have hope that he can help us there yet. Every failure that we avoid or postpone gets piled up there until the prospect of facing it feels like death.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr This is one of the many reasons that pastors are more likely to have narcissistic traits than the general population. If you are in a job that means facing failure & shame when you attempt to help people in incredible pain, it's "adaptive" to be someone who avoids shame.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr The best pastors who are in over their head end up becoming depressed. They hopefully leave ministry to take care of themselves & their families instead of staying or killing themselves. Some stay & do, miraculously, get help & support.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Others keep themselves safe by avoiding people & situations that involve deep suffering & evil. Others try to show up & help but have to shut themselves down to the harm they are causing & poor quality of the fruit that comes from their blood & sweat & tears.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr If we want healthier churches, the people who aren't willing to play pretend about the harm we are causing need to show up. We might need to stay away for awhile to heal, but we need to come back. We need to assume the risk & commit to repairing our mistakes along the way.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We need to support the pastors who are trying without enabling their avoidance of their own continuing need for healing. We need to sit with the sadness & acknowledge how discouraging it is that progress can seem so slow & so small relative to the suffering & evil in the world.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We need to be able to acknowledge that shame sucks & give people a way back from it that doesn't bypass their culpability. We have to be willing to build capacity slowly if that's what it takes to build a foundation for the next generation.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr We need to the people who know they aren't ready to be the grown-ups to be the grown-ups as best they can anyway & to keep telling the truth about ways they are still in process.
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Otherwise the people who need to pretend to be grown-ups will be the only ones willing to assume the risks & responsibilities of leadership, and they will train their followers to pretend that they are healthier than they are & call this pretending "faith & hope in Jesus."
@AmandaM16996130 @realmattcarr Sorry for blowing up your comments with my Somber Saturday thoughts, @realmattcarr . Stop asking such good questions.
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