Why Christianity is not the Answer for Ritual Abuse Survivors

You have put into words one of my major beefs with christianity, and religious institutions in general.

How do you co-opt something like love and fuck it up so badly? "God is love"? Then love killed 2 million people, according to the bible.

"God is love" is one of the profound truths of the bible.

Yet the "god" of the bible is anything BUT loving.

We immediately understand that human abusers are NOT loving. We can all easily agree upon that.

The problem is that when "god" is abusive, it all magically becomes okay. "His ways are not our ways" and we're not allowed to question them, not allowed to be angry, and not allowed to demand an accounting of the atrocities.

Which is another point in the discussion that I'll make a new post for.

That's a very good point and one I've stated many times. They listen diligently to whatever sleazeball makes their way to a podium and they never once validate any of it with their supposed source of righteousness. No wonder they are called sheep.

Sandi, you've really shown your courage by creating this thread. If there was a God, I'd pray for you to recover fully. But it would be a pointless gesture. Thank you for making me feel less alone for a brief moment.

Because I am a ritual abuse survivor, I hear a lot about how Christianity has 'saved' and 'given hope' to 'so many' other ritual abuse survivors. How it's the answer to their misery and their pain.

There are a lot of reasons why this is not true.

I'll start on the first one for now, and get into some of the other reasons why Christianity is really just as big a problem from an abusive standpoint later.

Reason number one, and probably the most important one, is the whole teaching from Christianity about how humans are inherently bad/evil/sinners/etc.

The main practice of abuse is making the abuse out to be the fault of the person who is being abused. So, for example, I saw some children be killed and others raped or beaten. I was told that they were being harmed because of my personal failure.

This is a standard issue punishment/brutality used on abuse victims.

This mentality of "it's your fault" and "you are bad" is actively reflected in Christianity in multiple ways. One is, as I stated, simply the basic premise. We must be "saved".

How?

Someone has to die because of us. That's the first gross abuse. Someone was killed, and it's all your fault. Someone suffered horrific abuse, and it's all your fault.

The basic premise of Christianity is that. And it is the SAME premise upon which a significant portion of the abuse of ritual abuse is predicated: others are abused because you are bad.

Therefor the basic premise of the christian religion underscores this brutal suppression of the victim's right to feel worthwhile, acceptable, worthy, loveable. It suppresses the natural right we all have not to be made to feel that our very existence forces suffering upon others (even one other).

Anyway, that's the first and probably deepest issue with trying to save victims--ANY victims, with christianity. Because victimization often includes this "it's your fault" aspect. Christianity supports that terrible lie.

But it takes it beyond "it's your fault because you are bad" or "because you disobeyed" and makes it into the very fact of your existence and your humanity makes you evil and just being BORN made Jesus have to suffer and die.

Beyond the level of wrongdoing, it takes it to the level of our personal EXISTENCE (which we do not control as human beings) being BAD.

But, as I'll discuss tomorrow, that's just the tip of the iceberg in how christianity actually exacerbates, not improves, the painful condition of people who have suffered such horrific abuses.

Hopefully by the time I am finished with explaining the various ways in which this religion worsens the mental state of ritual abuse victims, people will begin to stop trying to 'save' abuse victims by telling them that they're bad people and going to be burned and tortured (as if they haven't already!).

I doubt it. But slim hope is some hope, I suppose.