Episode 26: Matthias Roberts – Psychology, Religious Trauma, & Reconstructing Faith

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet. 

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Jared  

Well, it’s finally time to let you know about the next book in our commentary series, which is going to be “John for Normal People.” Of course, it’s got the best and biblical scholarship, but it’s also playful and our author Jennifer Garcia Bashaw has masterfully weaved these two together and explores what we might learn about Jesus when we’re attentive to the text. Of course, it unpacks issues of authorship dating, redaction history, cultural and social context, all the things that you maybe have picked up on in seven seasons of the Bible for Normal People, historical background, narrative criticism, all those big words, but it’s a way to look at the text and really understand it from all of those angles. So you can buy it online, wherever you get your books Tuesday, October 10th. So go ahead, bookmark it, write it on a sticky note, however you remember things. “John for Normal People” with Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. 

Jared  

Well, folks today on Faith for Normal People I’m joined by Angela Parker, who’s a member of our nerds-in-residence team. So welcome to the podcast, Angela.

Angela  

Oh, my goodness. Thank you Jared for having me. I am really excited for this episode because we are talking to a former student of mine on psychology, religious trauma, and reconstructing faith. This is with Matthias Roberts, who was with me when I taught at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. And I think that when I met Matthias, I introduced him to what I call the non-committal smile, and I think he practices that well as a psychotherapist now. 

Jared  

Jared  

Well beyond that Matthias is now, post-graduating, a psychotherapist specializing in religious and spiritual trauma, the podcast host of Queerology, and most importantly, the author of the upcoming book, “Holy Runaways: Rediscovering Faith After Being Burned by Religion,” which actually comes out tomorrow, October 3rd. Don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time where we bring Pete back in and the two of us reflect on the conversation with Matthias and get a little more vulnerable about our own spiritual evolution.

Angela  

We hope that you enjoy this episode with Matthias Roberts.

Intro  

Matthias  

“How familiar are you with the shape of your pain? I think so often when we’ve experienced trauma, we shut down a lot of those emotions. We need other people to be able to help us integrate these experiences. I think that is one of the core pieces to healing is being able to process through our pain in the presence of other people.”

Angela  

We are so excited to welcome Matthias Roberts to the podcast. So Matthias, thank you so much for being with us. And just wanted to go ahead and launch into our first question. Can you tell us why you became a therapist? And specifically, what was it from your own faith background that led you to this profession?

Matthias  

Yeah, thanks, Dr. Parker. It’s so good to be here and Jared, thank you as well. Yeah, so becoming a therapist for me was not actually in the cards. [Chuckles] It’s something that I didn’t want to do, I didn’t even think about doing, it was when I was in undergrad, I was a graphic designer and skipped every psychology class that I could, because I didn’t think it would be important in my life. So it’s something that I kind of stumbled across when I ended up at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology—which is how I met you, Dr. Parker—and I went there primarily to do a theology degree, a degree in theology and culture. And I started to quickly realize that so many of the questions I was asking around my own faith upbringing, things that I wanted to kind of untangle theologically—which mostly was my own pain from being gay in the fundamentalist world—so many of those questions, I started to find healing through psychological lenses, instead of theological lenses. And that already sets up a binary, but [Chuckles] I found there was a practicality in psychology that I was really yearning for. So through my own healing is kind of how I arrived at this place of deciding like, “Oh, I think I might actually want to help others this way, too.”

Angela  

Can I ask a follow up question on that? 

Matthias  

Yeah. 

Angela  

When you initially were thinking about entering and studying theology, was it just that theology was not capable of answering some of the questions that you had, and psychology opened up those doors? And was it really the merging of both, the integration of both that helped you unpack your story a little bit more?

Matthias  

Yeah, I think it really was the integration. Like [chuckles] in realizing, or awakening to this idea that so much of what we believe about theology—and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this—but is heavily influenced on our psychology. [Huffs] Kind of how we were raised, or what kind of version of Christianity or faith we’re attracted to, I think deeply relates to the psychology, how we were raised. And so I think the psychology started giving me answers for like, “Oh, no wonder I was attracted to this very rigid kind of idea of theology.” Because of the fundamentalism that I grew up in. Then it gave me the freedom to start to explore other ideas well within the Christian tradition, but that I didn’t even know existed, and then open up to a far more abundant faith.

Jared  

One of the main things we want to talk about today is this idea of religious trauma. And so at some point, I want to kind of have us go into understanding that, but I think it may be nice to come back around to that abundance and sort of on the other side of it, but can we go back and just talk about—its I think it’s very common to talk about religious trauma. You know, you mentioned being gay in a fundamentalist world, I’m sure you didn’t come out unscathed from some religious trauma. So what is religious trauma? What forms can it take to help people with some categories here of what they may be experiencing?

Matthias  

Yeah. So I think about religious trauma in a couple of ways. The first, I’ll give you an actual definition, because I always find that to be helpful. This is one that I’m borrowing from the Religious Trauma Institute, it’s a definition that they use. And they define it as the physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures, that is experienced by an individual is overwhelming or disruptive, and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well being. When I think about religious trauma, I really like this idea of too-much-ness. All trauma, in general, is this experience of too much, too fast, too soon. And many trauma experts use this definition, it is when we are overwhelmed by something that our bodies and our nervous systems can’t actually keep up with and then it has to kind of fracture to be able to survive. I think it is really important to mention that trauma, religious trauma included, is particular to every person. So I could be sitting next to someone in church, that person could be in trauma and I might be just fine. Right, like it is deeply related to who we are as people and the environments that we have been in as to what will actually be experienced as traumatic.

Jared  

So it’s not that helpful when somebody says, “Well, I was there too and it wasn’t traumatic to me,” like kind of the well, it shouldn’t have been traumatic to you, because I experienced the same thing and I was fine. You’re saying it’s a subjective experience, because all of our capacities are different because of our past experiences, and just our genetics and all of that. So that, too much, too fast, too soon. The “too” of that is personal. It depends.

Matthias  

Yeah, many different people can be in that same room. They might all be experiencing something terrible. But whether it actually darts across that line into trauma is, yeah, deeply personal.

Jared  

How can people identify that for themselves? Because again, I do think sometimes there’s messaging around, there’s maybe a dismissive messaging, if you’re still in a situation where you maybe have been traumatized, but you’ve been kind of conditioned not to categorize it that way. So what are some common areas of religious trauma? Or maybe—and, I can say, both-and—common areas to kind of watch out for that maybe you aren’t attuned to like, you might be surprised to realize this could be an area of common religious trauma. But also, how do people identify it? How would you know, if you have experienced religious trauma?

Matthias  

It can be really over at times, like, I think there are many people out there who, probably even just hearing that definition or like, “Oh, yeah, [Chuckles] like, that describes me.” But for me, as a therapist, I started to look for these places of what I would call kind of fragmentation, places of isolation. I’m borrowing from a researcher named Cathy Loerzel who talks about fragmentation-isolation being hallmarks of trauma. She’s doesn’t originate that research, but she talks about it well. Where are the places where we don’t actually have connective memories? [Laughs] Where are the experiences that we can try to start telling a story and everything gets jumbled, or we feel really hot, and like physically hot while we’re telling the story and can’t get it out, or feel really confused? That can be an indication that there might be something traumatic there. Or like, are we isolating from other people? Communities, for example, many of us who have experienced religious trauma, we isolate away from the communities that we were once in. Don’t hear critique there at all. But that is an indicator that there may have been something traumatic that happened because we need to get away. And so that can show up in really explicit ways, but also really subtle ways where we just shut down parts of ourselves, sometimes even unbeknownst to our own selves. 

Angela  

This is wonderful to discuss, because as you’re talking, Matthias, I’m thinking about the relationship between trauma and bodies. So I’m wondering, as you’re talking about religious trauma, and you’ve used the language of sometimes we get hot when we’re talking about the trauma or we isolate. How else do you talk about what happens in our bodies when religious trauma occurs? And as a psychotherapist, what are some of the bodily ways that we can exorcize that trauma from our bodies?

Matthias  

Yeah. So I really like to use this example of what’s called the window of tolerance—and this was originated by a researcher named Dr. Dan Siegel—and I talk about it a lot in the book, because I find it so helpful. And it’s this idea that we each have our own kind of particular windows, where we maintain our emotional experience. So it doesn’t mean that we’re always good when we’re in our window. But we can experience a range of emotions without it pushing us into what I would call, potentially traumatizing states—and I’ll describe what that is. And these will be words probably familiar to a lot of people. That’s our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. Fight, flight, freeze, most people are kind of familiar with those ideas; we run into something we need to fight or run away from it or we freeze up. The fawn response is one where we kind of lose an entire sense of self and meld into another person in order to keep ourselves safe. When we cross the boundaries of our window of tolerance, we go into those areas, those parts where our body actually takes over, our brains actually take over our cognitive abilities and we involuntarily do one of these responses. 

So hear that really well, we don’t have cognitive control when we enter into a space of trauma. Our amygdalas take over, our hippocampuses go offline, and our bodies only job is to try to keep ourselves safe. So we can’t think our way out of it, we, most of us can’t stop it, when it’s happening. We only have the ability to get away, [Chuckles] and then try to get that experience to someone who can help us integrate it and process it. Which, that leads us into this conversation of healing.

Ad Break  

Jared  

Can you take us through, for you—because I’d like to put some meat on the bone, so to speak—like an experience where you kind of realized that you had undergone some religious trauma and like what’s your bodily responses? And then how did you work through that? Can you kind of be a case study for this?

Matthias  

Yeah. So I really distinctly remember after I moved to Seattle—so this was I was in my early 20s, I had gone through undergrad, decided to start grad school, I had been involved in kind of conservative evangelical church space for most of my life, and had just started my way kind of out of that world. And when I moved to Seattle, there was… they called themselves an evangelical church that had just become fully LGBTQ-affirming. Queer folks could be part of any level of leadership. And I heard about that, and I was like, this is the space for me. [Laughs] Like it matches the world I came from, and I’m welcome there. And so one Sunday, I went to that church, and within minutes I started feeling hot, sweaty, feeling really hyper-vigilant, like I distinctly remember looking around at all the people around me and feeling like I was just waiting for the shoe to drop. Like waiting for someone to start berating me or see that I was, you know, visibly queer and kick me out. Like, my body was setting itself up for an encounter, one that never came. But I needed to get out of there. 

I didn’t, I shut it down, like I sat on my hands. I like, crossed my legs, kind of tried to stop the shaking and just sat through the service, and when it was done I did get out as quickly as I could. That was one of the first experiences that I realized, though, like something is going on here. This was really scary, especially to be in a place that was supposed to be safe, where people were telling me, this is a safe place for you. And I didn’t feel safe at all. And it took me a few years to start to have language for what was actually happening. I was outside of my window of tolerance. [Chuckles] I was in a state where I wasn’t being traumatized, but there was indicators of, something has happened here. And my body couldn’t discern this church, from all of the other churches that I had been a part of previously. 

And so healing that version to where I could even start to walk into a church again—which is still difficult for me, like, [Laughs] I still have a really hard time walking into, especially, churches that feel kind of evangelical in structure—but it took a lot of therapy, it took a lot of getting my experiences to people who could help me integrate those, understand what was actually happening in my body, and then helping me find a more compassionate approach to my own self. So that when these things happen, I actually can regulate them in better ways.

Angela  

That’s, I think, a story for a lot of us who have been in these religiously traumatic spaces that when we encounter folks who say, “Oh, no, this is going to be a safe space, you’ll be okay here,” and then you, your body just still almost rejects it. It makes me think about, as a womanist, how I tried to talk about brave space, instead of safe space. And so I’m wondering if there’s any correlation between how you may talk about brave space instead of safe space, as you work with folks who are dealing with religious trauma?

Matthias  

Yeah, I love the term brave space, because I think it acknowledges this reality that safety…We’re on a tight rope here. I was gonna say safety is not necessarily the goal, although it is. Like, [Laughs] both of those things are true. But we can’t guarantee safety. And especially when we’re in community, rupture, disagreement, harm, hurt, like all of those things are almost a given. And so if we want to walk into a new community and expect it to never hurt or feel uncomfortable, or whatever, that’s not the way community works. 

I’ll use my own kind of language here is, can a space actually repair, though? Can we be brave enough in a community where harm has happened? And—I’ll be really clear, I’m not talking about like egregious harm here. I’m not talking about abuse—but places where we feel hurt. Is the space brave enough that we can actually bring that hurt, and trust that it is going to be tended to and cared for by the community around us? And for so many of us, I think, who grew up in churches, we’ve never actually had an experience of that. It’s hard to even imagine.

Jared  

Can I have just a follow up? Angela, maybe I’ll ask this to you, just because we dove into some specifics. But this is a new term for me. How would you differentiate between safe space and brave space in how you guys are talking about it?

Angela  

Yeah, that’s a great question, Jared, and happy to open that up for our audience. Brave space is essentially, for me, a womanist takes seriously the lived experiences of Black women. And so when I think about the spaces that I go into, such as academic spaces, they have been spaces curated normally for white men. And so as a biblical scholar, I’m just—as a womanist biblical scholar, a visibly Black woman—the space that I enter into in academic settings, was just not curated for me. So oftentimes, I go in knowing that it may not necessarily be safe, but if I find allies, who also recognize that the space may not be safe, they will help me to curate a braver space where the other folks can begin to talk about, “Oh, this space was not curated for you.” So how do we recognize that and then begin to actually actively curate a space where even more identities and more people groups can enter into? So it’s often walking into spaces that I know just were not curated for me, and being brave as I do that, but then being in conversation with the people around who I can recognize as folks who will be in solidarity with me as I enter that space.

Jared  

I appreciate that. And so Matthias, as a follow up to that kind of, tying the pieces of what you said together, is it valuable—I guess, it’s tricky for me. So it’s a genuine question of how do we navigate and how do we be wise about, like for you, what I heard you say is coming into a church. In the same way, Angela, you’re talking about academic spaces were not curated for black women, churches in the last 50 years—for sure, I’m sure forever—but certainly not in the last few years, evangelical spaces, at least, not curated for gay people to be in. And so there is a trauma that has occurred for you previously, by being in these spaces. 

And now, you’ve shown up again—I guess the question I’m asking is, how do you navigate the wisdom of when is it appropriate to try to create a brave space like Angela’s saying of getting allies and working through that to becoming a space that is safer? Or is a space where you can have allies and be able to show up? And when is it retraumatizing and not helpful? Because I think some people feel compelled to like, overcome this trauma and space in a way that actually just kind of retraumatizes, and then we just get in this cycle, versus it actually being productive and leading to a healthier integration. 

Matthias  

Yeah. I would love to hear Dr. Parker’s thoughts on this too, because I think you’re hearing—even in the way I answered that question and Dr. Parker answered that question, like you’re hearing the realities of our lived experiences, even in the ways we’re answering [Laughing].

Jared  

Yeah, yeah, and I love it. I love to get both these perspectives, for sure.

Matthias  

You know, I think for me, it’s a question of, do we know, and are we familiar enough with our own capacities to know what will be kind? Or if it is not kind, to actively choose and know what we’re getting ourselves into and know what we’re choosing. So it takes a level of self-awareness. But I think we need to step away from those spaces until we’ve grown that kind of self-awareness, where we actually have agency. Where we’re not stepping back into these spaces because we feel like we have to, or feel like we need to rescue the people from it, or that we can jump in and change a space and make it safe. Like, all of those might be good reasons at some point. But if we feel like we don’t have a choice, we start to get dangerously close to that retraumatization.

Angela  

And I think what’s interesting, as I’m listening to Matthias and thinking about what it means for me and my own identity as womanist,  queer identity and womanist identity are identities that have very much been placed to the margins. And so I think the correlation between our identities and how we can have conversations with one another shows that there’s a desire to be in community and be in belonging with various groups of people. And so we can have this conversation and say, “This is how I enter back into a certain space. But then this is also how I retreat and isolate from that space in order to take care of myself.” So it’s that connection of self-awareness that Matthias has been talking about. And how do we enter, exit, enter, exit, enter, exit, taking care of ourselves, but still trying to be a presence that changes a space. Whether it’s a church space, or an academic space, or any other unwelcoming space. But not to the point where I get myself sick or downtrodden or feeling bad, because I’m forcing myself to go back into that space. Now, I only do that when I am healthy enough and self-aware enough to be able to engage for a little bit, and then I tap out.

Jared  

That’s good. Okay, well, I want to turn the conversation, if we can, to the future, you know, or maybe the present for you, Matthias. What does your faith look like now? And what were some of the tools you had to use to get there? When we—again, when we’re thinking of religious trauma, everybody’s response to that, and in their recognition and what their faith looks like after those, you know, that awareness is different. So what does that look like for you?

Matthias  

So I play with this idea a lot in the book, [Chuckles] about what faith actually looks like. My faith right now—I’m playing with a somewhat paradoxical idea of what does it actually look like to have no faith and let that be faith. [Chuckles] I think for me, because I have been so harmed by this world of faith, I’m finding a lot of freedom in this idea of faith not showing up in the ways that maybe traditionally we’ve understood faith is supposed to look like. I’m finding freedom in not going to church [Laughs]. Not talking about my faith that much—even though… you know, granted, I just wrote a book about it—but like [Laughs] not talking about it that much. 

All  

Matthias  

Like—

Jared  

That’s going really well for you, Matthias, real well.

Matthias  

Jared  

Yeah, it just reminds me of my experience when I was kind of going through a faith shift as a, you know, an evangelical, kind of megachurch pastor—which was very difficult because I had to preach a couple of times a week—but I had to put the Bible down for a long time. One, from a very practical standpoint of like, well, I only know how to engage faith in this way. And I can’t really try to shift it theoretically, when practically I’m just showing up and doing the same thing every week. And so that absence allows time to… that distance can help create new neural pathways, create new ways of thinking of how to engage faith in a different way. 

But I also think of it as, a little bit of—not to bring in another concept completely—but kind of like attachment style, like this, this anxious attachment where there’s this, like, I have to keep it up or it’s gonna like go away, or I have to, like, do a lot to like, stay close because if I don’t, it disappeared. And that was the messaging I was taught throughout my whole childhood. It was like, we were very much anti-work, but it sure did look like a work a lot to like, keep a good relationship with God or the divine or whatever. And so the health for me came in like letting like working through that anxiety and realizing on the other side of it was actually peace, to just let it be. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that at all.

Matthias  

Yes, very much so. And I think this is something that I discovered in my own experience, but also through working with a lot of people now who are in this process is that, often when we leave a space, if we haven’t actually kind of healed from that space, we will jump back into spaces that may have different beliefs, [Chuckles] we may have kind of quote unquote, “deconstructed,” whatever, but where they operate almost the same way. They hinge on the same kind of anxious energy—to use your language there—that actually keeps us stuck in a very similar loop. So… That’s not to say they are the same, but our bodies experience them as kind of the same, that they hinge on the same mechanisms, maybe in and out politics, or, you know, fill in the blank. I think that stepping away, so that we can actually start to find healing, experience what peace might actually feel like in our bodies, then allows us to step into maybe familiar spaces or new spaces and not repeat some of the same things that used to feel comfortable.

Ad Break  

Angela  

I’m wondering—and this is for both Matthias and Jared—what the potential of experiencing other faith traditions looks like as you’ve come out of fundamental or even megachurch faith traditions. And I ask that, because I’m sitting here and thinking through my own Black faith tradition, and how I’ve gone through my own changes, and I’m just wondering if experiencing other faith traditions—and for a Black woman who also has been in more conservative, all white faith traditions as well—what does experiencing other faith traditions look like for, first you, Matthias?

Matthias  

Yeah. You know, for me, I found refuge in the Episcopal Church, like I think many people have for a season. Where, you know, I had never experienced liturgy before. I didn’t know what the church calendar was, at all. 

Angela  

Matthias  

Like, what? There’s a calendar?

Angela  

Matthias  

And like it was so different from the world I grew up in, that it allowed me to practice this deep faith that I had and still have. But in a way that kind of bypassed all of the pain points that were present. And I think it was when I was in the Episcopalian Church that I came out. And like I didn’t even really have to come out, because I just hung out with all the queer folks, and people just assumed, and it felt really good. [Laughed] I didn’t have to come out in church so to say, like explicitly. It gave me a whole new way of experiencing faith and an imagination for what faith could look like that bypassed these places so they could start to heal. And I think that was vital to my experience, was experiencing that tradition.

Angela  

Mhmm.

Jared  

I would say, just as a follow up, for me, something that you said earlier was really helpful in answering your question, Angela, that I think you mentioned, Matthias, and that was agency. And I think that was a huge byproduct of experiencing other faith traditions. I think growing up, there was this idea of church shopping, right, and it was like a bad thing to… Well, you’re just going to fit whatever church, you know, fits your fancy. And it’s sort of like as a way to get away from the more difficult—we would always say—like Bible-believing, that the truth is hard to swallow, and you’re gonna go to one of these cotton candy churches, and you’re just like church shopping. But under that rhetoric, what I actually experienced was, once I saw that the way I grew up wasn’t the only way to be Christian or to be spiritual or to be religious, even, actually gave me agency because it gave me choice. It gave me more experience, a breadth of understanding of what it is that we’re trying to do in these communities, and how we’re trying to express our faith, and what are we trying to get at here. And that information, and knowledge not just in my head, but sort of in these bodily experiences, I think gave me a sense that I, in some ways, am responsible for my own spirituality. And I don’t mean that necessarily in this like hyper individualistic sense, but just in a sense of having a voice and agency in my own spiritual maturation. Which was incredibly helpful to me, because my tradition was often one of, you have the responsibility to do it, but not necessarily the authority. So all the weight is on your shoulders, but you’re sort of a passive agent in this, which leads to a lot of anxiety. So that’s kind of been mine. And maybe I’ll pass it back to you, Angela, on how has that been for you, again, coming from a Black faith tradition? I appreciate that we all come from different perspectives and traditions here.

Angela  

Yeah, I think what’s interesting for me is the expansive nature of faith, that there are so many different ways that people practice their faith, whether it’s through high church or through liturgy, or thinking about their own spiritual maturation, as you’ve put forth, Jared, and recognizing that faith and getting to—I think my final question—that God is so much bigger than our own little slices, or corners of the world in which we’ve been brought up. I think we’ve been led to believe that it has to be this precise way of practicing faith. And if you don’t do it in this precise way, then you’re completely wrong. But I think as we look at the world, and we look at the varying ways that people practice faith, that it opens up so much more possibilities for us. And even as Matthias has written in his own works, the different ways that we can think about God and faith and Jesus and constantly explore them. And so I think for my final question for Matthias, as you’ve delved into your own faith, journey, and perhaps reconstruction, I’m wondering what your picture of God looks like. How have you reconstructed who God is for you now? And I think you’ve written about not simply flipping from a conservative God to a progressive God, but I’m wondering if there’s any type of multiplicity in God for you.

Matthias  

Could you define for me how you’re thinking about multiplicity there?

Angela  

That’s a great question. [Laughs] Because I’m… And now this is really coming from my own Black faith tradition, which I’m constantly wrestling with. This idea that God does not change. And because oftentimes people believe in my Black faith tradition, that—and hold fast that, you know, God can’t change and, also even this idea that Jesus can’t change. That there’s only one monolithic way to understand God and it may just be that I want to push my own Black faith tradition to think about God in probably a multitude of ways instead of one static way. And so that’s how I’m beginning to define multiplicity.

Matthias  

Something that I feel like I’ve come back to time and time again, throughout my life, throughout all of these different kinds of versions of faith that I was part of, was this fundamental idea of God as love, which I realize is almost a cliche sometimes when we have these conversations, but it’s deeply meaningful to me. And I think this journey, like one lens to look at it is discovering more and more and more, how vast and open that love actually is. So when I think about God, I mean, I think about love. [Chuckles] And I think about this non-competitiveness that I now believe is kind of one of God’s attributes.

Angela  

Can you unpack non-competitiveness?

Matthias  

Yeah, yeah, I’m happy to. I’ve come to this through kind of Girardian lens, the philosopher René Girard, and also through a theologian named James Allison, who’s a scholar on Girard—but Allison talks a lot about this idea of God not being in competition with anything. [Chuckles] God is, and is not against. And I think that that idea, you know, frees us up to actually be human. And I think—you know, Allison isn’t the only theologian who talks about this, I think, Dr. Parker, you’ll know if I’m getting this all wrong, I think, is it Kathryn Tanner, who talks about this as well? Like this idea of, this actually frees us up to be fully human. Because God is not against or in competition with human-ness. In fact, God actually designed us [Chuckles] to be fully ourselves. And so that’s some of what I mean, when I think about this, this non-competition and we could go deep there into atonement theory and all those other things. But this idea that we’re actually freed up to be the most ourselves as we were created to be. And that is, you know, what God, what Jesus has come to kind of reveal to us: we get to be us. And I find that so freeing and deeply beautiful.

Jared  

As we wrap up here, just a final question, I want to kind of come back in two ways, one, to the idea of religious trauma and two, to some practicalities. You know, we kind of in this conversation have gone from trauma to kind of reconstruction and the ability to explore and navigate questions of God and faith. And I think for some people, they’re stuck between those, they’ve recognized the trauma piece of that, but they haven’t worked through it. they haven’t healed in a way that allows them to explore or to be curious or wonder what faith might look like, because there’s still so much pain and so much hurt, so much healing that needs to be done. So as we kind of wrap up our time, what are some steps? What would be some ways that people who are interested in saying, “Oh, I wish I could get back to that point where I’m curious, I’m interested, I want to be interested in what God looks like, and how I can reconstruct God in my life. But I’m not quite there yet because of church trauma or other religious trauma.” So what are some practical steps that people can take to kind of move that needle, so to speak.

Matthias  

The first thing I would say is like, if you’re not interested, pay attention to that. Like you don’t have to be interested and can you actually give yourself the space and freedom to not be interested and not feel a requirement there? And trust that if you are kind of meant, or want to come back at some point, that you will, [Chuckles] that time will allow that, that there isn’t something wrong with not striving. So that feels kind of fundamental in how I think about this because that’s actually also reintroducing agency, like you get to choose. 

Jared  

Matthias  

If you’re at a point where you’re like, I am interested now, or this is prompting something, I feel something within myself that wants to explore this more. Then my question would be: How familiar are you with the shape of your pain? Have you actually dug into your pain and allow yourself to be angry? Allowed yourself to grieve? I think so often, when we’ve experienced trauma, we shut down a lot of those emotions—not always, but quite often—and many of us don’t actually have access to them. We need other people to be able to help us—and I’ll use the word integrate again—help us integrate these experiences. And that requires us to 1) know what our pain actually is, and 2) feel the emotions that we haven’t been able to feel yet. I think that is one of the core pieces to healing, is being able to process through our pain in the presence of other people. So hear that, I don’t think we can do it alone. There are things we can do alone. But I don’t think healing can necessarily happen in isolation. We need other people and need community, to be able to hold us with kindness and care, so that then we can stitch these pieces back together, which allows us to then find more agency and more choice and freedom in these spaces. So there’s no three steps to healing unfortunately. But it is a process.

Jared  

Wonderful. Thank you, Matthias for reminding us that healing is messy, even though that’s super frustrating and I wish there were three steps to healing. I thought this was what it’s all about, I thought that this whole episode was going to be you telling us three steps to healing. So… 

Matthias  

I wish, yep [Chuckles].

Angela  

No, this just was a soothing, calming episode, where we were just speaking through all of these questions and how we can get there. But we’re always striving to get somewhere. I think that’s just trying to be human. 

Jared  

Mhmm.

Angela  

And I’m not exactly sure what our whole complete healing looks like. I think we’re always on that journey.

Jared  

Thanks so much, Matthias and best of luck with the book and everything. It was great to have you stop by and have a chat with us.

Matthias  

Thank you.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time.

Pete  

With Pete and Jared. 

_  

Pete  

So Jared, you and Angela talk with Matthias about hallmarks of religious trauma. So, you know, I’m just wondering have you experienced, yourself, any sort of religious trauma? Besides working with me?

Jared  

Yeah, that’s not religious trauma.

Pete  

Isn’t it? 

Jared  

That’s a different kind of trauma altogether. That’s for a private setting with my therapist.

Pete  

Yeah, that’s for a therapist.

Jared  

No, I don’t think I actually, you know, I was trying to give it thought, as we were talking, even before and since, thinking about it my own experience, and I don’t think I have experienced religious trauma, I’ve never felt a sense of overwhelm, by demands or by pressures within a religious setting. And I think some of that is my personality. I’ve always been a little bit wary of authority so I didn’t take that on. There’s a lot of people I know who that is not the case and they took that serious, in terms of the demands. Not that I didn’t take it seriously and not that I didn’t work to it, but it always went through my own filter. So it always felt balanced in the sense of it was it was always filtered through “What can I handle? What can I handle?” If it felt overwhelming, I just didn’t do it. And so-

Pete  

I think that’s unusual. I think it’s great. I think it’s unusual, especially given you know, your evangelical-ish, or maybe even fundamentalist background. Right? 

Jared  

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Pete  

In the great state of Texas. 

Jared  

And that though, I think that goes into the second reason in terms of my personality and upbringing, I often joke to my mom—sorry, mom, if you’re listening to this, which I doubt you are-

Pete  

Jared  

But I often joke that my parents weren’t good fundamentalists, as much as they wanted to be. They tried. But you know, it was sort of like you can’t listen to non-Christian music. And it’s like, well, my mom loved Motown and Michael Jackson too much like, that wasn’t going to work for her and so she kind of just didn’t do that. And so I kind of picked up on that. And it just didn’t lead to- So I was definitely raised in a tradition that could have gone fundamentalist because of—it was a fundamentalist teaching, but it got filtered through my family system where they tried really hard to take it seriously. They wanted to, but in reflection, I’m like, you weren’t that good at it. And thank goodness you weren’t. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

I see it as a good thing. Although my mom may still think of it as a bit of like, “Oh, maybe I should have done a little better.” But…

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

Because look, [Chuckling] look where we are. 

Pete  

Look where we are [Chuckling]

Jared  

Look at this podcast and what we’re doing. 

Pete  

Jared  

But what about you? What would you say ,in terms of religious trauma?

Pete  

Well, I’ve that given some thought to and I’m, you know, one caveat, I’m sort of wary of using the word trauma too casually because there are people that have experienced deep trauma. But I think, you know, if trauma is defined by, you know, something that happened in the past that stays with you, which I think is as a minimalist definition of trauma then, yeah, I mean, I think I still have at times—I mean, I’m working on it, that voice in the back of my head, “Oh, there you go Pete, just like they said you would you’re becoming a liberal or some bad person.” And you know, I’ve learned to address that rather quickly and move on, but it’s still something that sticks with me and it comes from being part of a community that was not as, let’s say, free formed in shapeless [Chuckles] as yours was—you know, yours was shaped—but you know, you didn’t have a lot of the triggers that some people have but, you know, and I don’t want to get into where that was, the people who know my story can put the pieces together. But when you, you’re part of a group, a tribe that holds very tightly to theological formulations, and then you start, and you sort of buy into it—although I never really did that wel—but even so, you leave that and it sticks with you. And it’s it’s a recurring thing that comes up. And-

Jared  

One thing we haven’t talked about before, but I—it just came up when I was thinking about, I don’t want to lose this question—because for you, I don’t, you’ve said you didn’t fully buy into it. You didn’t you weren’t raised fundamentalist, but I do think you have some triggers. And I’m curious for you, because I think this might be helpful to folks, if it’s more tied to the belonging aspect of it, the social component of the belief, in the sense that you had to—even though you maybe didn’t fully buy in, intellectually—you had to buy into it socially. And you were always in fear of getting kicked out of the group. In your case, that also meant losing your job-

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

-Which I think has a bit of a traumatic experience just in that.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

Not necessarily, “I bought it hook, line, and sinker and now it like, has all these triggers.” But I do think there is this—you know, I don’t want to speak for you—but I feel like there’s more of like a social component for you.

Pete  

I think that’s a very good thing to bring up. And I would argue that that’s probably, for many people in a similar situation, that’s a social component. And it’s hard to divide the two because you’re losing your group, your tribe, right. And it’s like losing a family, really, is what it was for me. And I had friends who were still there when I left, so I’m leaving all the stuff behind. But it’s probably—I’m not gonna say it’s both, you know—but the social component should not be lost, because I think that’s almost the glue that keeps it hanging on.

Pete  

Right, right. 

Pete  

Right, yeah.

Jared  

Yeah, yeah. Because it just seems like that could be a very powerful feeling. In terms of like, trauma is like losing your social network and losing your friends and your community.

Pete  

And if you have a personality as I do, that likes things like comfort and predictability and certainty-

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

-Then that whole structure was very helpful to me. And I think part of my own journey has been learning to not just say it, but to actually believe in the power of ambiguity and not knowing and just think it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to know everything. In fact, you can’t know everything.

Jared  

Yeah. Well, let’s take a turn here, because I want to ask you—I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this, you know—just it struck me with Matthias talking about being queer in a church space and his response to that, and how it was uncomfortable for a time and all that. So it what it did, it is sparked a question of: What was your own journey and becoming affirming of queer folks in faith spaces? Was it theology, doctrinal, a personal story? It just creeped in over time?

Pete  

Yeah, no, it wasn’t doctrinal, it wasn’t a theological conviction. I think those things came along later. It was more—and I’m trying to, like sit here and say, when did this happen? And it’s definitely a process. It wasn’t like, one day I just woke up. But I think, you know, it was it was probably personal. It’s basically seeing people. Right, and, you know, hopefully getting to a point your life where you don’t want to judge people right away and just seeing… I mean, it sounds elementary, but I think it is elementary. These are human beings, we share the same DNA, basically, and there are people just like me, and they are who they are and I’m who I am. And that’s all there is to it, end of discussion. You know, and that was that was based on experience, which that has gone into, you know, reconfiguring hermeneutics or theology or anything else. How about you? I mean, again, I can’t imagine you grew up affirming in your house.

Jared  

No…

Pete  

Right? 

Jared  

No, no, no, for sure. But mine was it’s the opposite, in two ways. One mine’s a very distinct timeframe. I remember very clearly, so, it wasn’t like kind of frog in the pot for me. Like it was a very specific time. And it also, for me, was more theological or intellectual, and less personal, although that certainly came afterward for sure. 

Jared  

I think my emotion and my conviction around it was personal, but it didn’t start that way. It was, I was a pastor at the time—this was like in 2008—and we were asking these questions as a teaching staff, like we, you know, people in the congregation who would come, they were gay and these things, and I just- I wanted to figure it out for myself. And so I’ve literally like bought every book I could find. I remember there was a Presbyterian Church had commissioned this committee to do this, like broad study—and, of course, leave it to like a Presbyterian Church to do that—and it was like 300 pages. It was it’s a massive book. And so I read through that And there were just there weren’t as many resources in 2005 or 2008, as there are now, but there was enough to change my mind basically, reading through all of it. I would say I was primed for it, having gone through seminary, where things were not black and white. So the hermeneutical frameworks or like how I looked at the Bible and interpreted it had already shifted. And so this was an easy step in that in that same direction.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

But yeah, it was a very clear intellectual process—or theological process—and then it happened, yeah, over like a period of about a year. Just studying through those, where my default now became like, I didn’t fully understand all of it. But at some point, my default in that year or two switched to being affirming and saying, “Yeah, you would have to kind of convince me why we wouldn’t do that.”

Pete  

Cool.

Pete  

Right. Well, I want maybe one more quick question, Jared, this intrigues me, and it’s something that I think about as well. But Matthias talks about the structure of his faith, now, by saying that not having faith or a specific faith practice, is his version of faith. Have you ever felt peace in not doing anything particularly Christian?

Jared  

Yes. I think most of my waking hours now. But I think it started was a long evolution, because there’s all these feelings of guilt, and what should be done, and what does it mean to be Christian, that were going on for, you know, a decade or more there. But yeah-

Pete  

But what does “Christian experience” even mean? You know, it’s like-

Jared  

Exactly.

Pete  

You could say breathing is a Christian experience. But I think Mathias means more like in an official sort of systemic kind of way.

Jared  

I think it’s the cultural norm-

Pete  

An institutional way, almost.

Jared  

-Of, I think it’s the the cultural norms of Christian practice. Things like, I can kind of rattle them off, it’s getting up early and having a quiet time, like having a devotional and reading your Bible, it’s praying several times a day praying before meals, it’s going to church.

Pete  

Well, I get up early and I just sit there.

Jared  

Right. 

Pete  

Like, I don’t read my Bible, I just started be quiet for a few minutes, because I need that as much as anything or just breathing. And I’d like to think that is in the framework of Christian practice, but not in the in-culture way. It’s actually countercultural for that mentality to do something.

Jared  

Well, and the irony is, I grew up thinking that we should do everything in a, quote, “Christian” way. I think the irony for me is, I’m at the place where yeah, anything I do, is done in a Christian way. It just is, because that’s where I am. And so like you said, it’s not. I feel like it goes back to—not to get too nerdy about this—but it’s using the word Christian as an adjective.

Pete  

Jared  

Like a Christian music, Christian practice, Christian… It’s like, I don’t need that, the adjective is a marketing term. It’s, it’s a way to, like-

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

-Label one particular way of being in the world as though that’s the, quote, “Christian” way.

Jared  

And it’s one of the main things we do on this podcast is show how diverse Christian expression, belief, and practice can be. And so there’s not a lot that we could do that couldn’t be called Christian in some form, or fashion, if we’re talking about things like meditation, or—and again, for me, it’s not even that it’s like—it’s showing up with kindness and grace to people who are acting out against me because there’s something else going on in their life. Like-

Pete  

Right.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

That’s me acting in a Christian way. Like that doesn’t… Even talking about it, in this moment, I’m realizing I don’t even really understand the question anymore. [Laughs] 

Pete  

You know, but yeah, me too. Exactly. It seems very culturally driven. Which is fine, we’re all culturally driven. But it’s like, it’s so embedded in a certain culture that if we don’t see the sense in that culture anymore, the question as it’s asked doesn’t make a lot of sense. You know?

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

Yeah.

Pete  

Anyway.

Jared  

Yeah. But I think that does wrap to kind of what Matthias is trying to say and I think what we’re saying here is, yes, I’ve felt a lot of peace in not doing anything particularly Christian because it’s not-

Jared  

-What my Christian faith looks like, is to do things Christianly anymore. 

Pete  

Right. 

Jared  

And that is yeah, very peaceful. 

Pete  

That’s the end of that.

Jared  

Alright.

Pete  

We solved it.

Jared  

That’s the end of that. 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

Yeah. So you know what, as a closing remark, what we do, this is called Quiet Time. So we are having our quiet time right now, we are, so I take it all back. 

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.         

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.        

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode if you email us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com   

Outro  

You just made it through another episode of Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch our other show, The Bible for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Prescott, Steven Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Jessica Shao, and Lauren O’Connell.