Dear Editor,
EN's article on over and under dosing of the gospel caught my attention.
I think there are lots of strengths in the analogy it makes to chemotherapy. The author spent more time describing the risks of under dosing and concluded on that subject.
I have had the dreadful experience of being overdosed with the 'gospel'.
As a student I attended an Evangelical Anglican Church. Lots of UCCF, Word Alive, Keswick types to be found there. My parents weren't Christians and neither was my boyfriend who I had been in a relationship with since age 16.
I had become a Christian age 7 and my experience to age 19 had been of a more liberal persuasion.
I did a long degree course and as I neared the end of it was coerced into ending my relationship because my partner (by this time of seven years) wasn't a Christian. The Church took a strong stance (at least publicly) on Christian marriage and could not be seen to condone a Christian marrying a non-Christian.
I nearly lost my mind and my life in the years that followed. I was told by church staff members and others within the church that my despair was due to idolatry of my partner and putting him above God in my heart.
The heartless, negligent and inhumane pastoral approach left me a sitting duck for a predatory male in the congregation who then sexually and emotionally abused me for 5 years.
I eventually escaped, married a Christian and had three children. I continued to attend conservative evangelical churches. I thought I was finally happy but I had suppressed something huge about myself to survive.
Many times I made attempts to disclose the extreme distress caused by my ordeal. I was frequently blamed and shamed for lack of contentment, trust in God or for the relationship with the predator.
18 years after my relationship with my partner ended; someone associated with my trauma died. The tectonic plates within me (that I had attempted to stick together with Bible reading, prayer, church attendance and suppression) ripped apart. Leaving a chasm that my whole life has fallen into.
I gradually realised that what I had always been told was conviction by the Holy Spirit had actually been coercion. I had always felt I had been forced to leave my partner but had thought it was God who had forced me.
It was the last thing in the world I ever wanted to be true. Horrifically, what I had been told was the gospel was in fact a cultural misapplication of the Bible in my specific circumstance.
I think the practice of forcing people to leave their unbelieving partners is similar to that, 50 years previously, of unmarried women being forced to give their babies up for adoption by the church.
It is a cookie cutter approach to cross cultural mission.
'This situation doesn't fit our framework so we will chop off the bits that don't fit so we don't have to wrestle with what is wrong with our framework.'
Or, to return to the analogy in the article, the oncologists in my case, had incorrectly diagnosed me with the cancer of sin. They had no idea what the short or long term adverse effects of the 'surgery' they prescribed would be, nor did they care. They did not know what dose of the chemotherapy would lead to toxicity. They didn't know how to manage the side effects I went on to develop.
The consent process was negligent. They may have treated the cancer as they saw it but in so doing, destroyed the host. They destroyed me.
I wonder if others have stories to tell of such an overdose?
Name and address withheld
Anyone affected by any issues raised in this letter may wish to contact the 31:8 safeguarding helpline (0303 003 1111) or www.replenished.life which "supports those who have experienced abuse and trauma within faith".
