Do You Hold Your Beliefs on a Faith Pedestal?
What Happens When They Get Knocked Down?
When spiritual abuse hits us for the first time, the blow can seem harsh and ugly enough to knock us off of our faith pedestal. My own experience, and the experience of the various authors that I’ve read on the subject, lead me to believe that to be a true statement. It is true no matter how deep or shallow our faith was at the time. It’s the shock, the total surprise of it that knocks us off our faith pedestal.
And then we have to deal with the ensuing emotions that come tumbling out, as though we were vomiting them. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.
Sigh. Sometimes I think writing is my salvation, because it helps me to know what I’m thinking below my conscious awareness of what I’m thinking. Do you know what I mean? For example, I started writing that first sentence of this blog thinking that I was going to write about intentional discipleship, what it consists of, and how it could help us heal from spiritual abuse. Instead, what spilled onto the page? “...a blow that can knock us off our faith pedestal.”
I can assure you that I have never had a conscious thought about ever being on a faith pedestal before those words stared at me from the screen. So now, I have to figure out why I wrote them. What could that phrase possibly mean?
Usually, that phrase of someone “being on a pedestal,” means that we revere them more than we should, and we need not to place them on a pedestal any more, because they are simply a human just like we are. I know that when a church member has had me on a pedestal because of being their pastor, I was very uncomfortable. None of us belongs on a pedestal. We’re simply human. Wondrously and marvelously made, yes, like Psalm 139 says. But still simply human. Flawed and human.
So what could I have meant by writing the words, “a faith pedestal?” Have I had myself on a faith pedestal? Can you hear my mind whirring, trying to figure it out?
Do you think it’s possible that we could have the particulars of the way we believe “on a pedestal?” What are the implications of that? We worship our beliefs? And we resent like hell the occasion that makes those beliefs no longer valid? That they didn’t work in the face of the abuse? And we’re lost at sea? We’ve been knocked off our faith pedestal?
Well, I think that’s it for today: Questions. Questions to chew on.
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