 In today's video I respond to a woman who says she's using music to overcome her religious trauma. There's a lot to talk about here. Maybe you or one of your friends have had a negative interaction with the church or Christianity or a Christian in general that really left a bad taste in your mouth and caused you to separate yourself from that group or maybe Christianity as a whole. Now as a Christian the last thing that I want to do is try to discount all of these experiences. To somehow claim that the church is perfect and that Christians are perfect and that they're just being overly sensitive. The truth is that people do abuse power within the church. There can be inaccurate teachings or emphases that can be harmful and hurtful. But as a Christian who wants to understand this better it's important that we separate the truth from the lies. What is it that they rejected that was truly harmful and what is it that they rejected that was actually the truth of Scripture that just offended them because Scripture is offensive sometimes? Was it the words and actions of men that hurt you or was it the words of God? Sorry that was a long build-up but as always let's dive in. Now I got to say she has a wonderful voice. I think a lot of Christians would resonate with aspects of her song. A couple of the phrases that I found interesting in that song were toxic shame bound by my religion, self-compassion, finding peace. Now what do we need to make of this idea of toxic shame? What is toxic shame? Well we've all experienced guilt and shame in our life to some extent. And so I've heard somebody explain it this way. This might be an oversimplification but guilt is basically what we feel when we do something wrong, right? So something we do and shame is when we you know basically feel bad about who we are based on what we've done so usually guilt and shame come one together but shame is more of an identity thing. We feel bad for what we are and who we've become. Now what I've noticed with the Exvangelical crowd is that they often argue against guilt and shame wholesale that it is all bad. But the truth is guilt and shame in their proper context are actually a blessing from God. They can show us that something is disoriented within us. When we feel guilty even as Christians it can draw us to repentance. Then when we think of shame to feel no shame at your darkest point is actually the worst thing that could possibly happen because why would you want to get out of that if you don't feel bad for what you've become? You'll never seek escape. Okay but what about shame for Christians? Well when Jesus died on the cross he took the weight of all our guilt and shame on himself. That when we talk about our shame and our identity about feeling bad for who we were that our identity has been transformed. That we are a new creation in Christ. So shame looks very different in that context because now when we look at even when we do something wrong and we feel that guilt and then we let that shame come on we should be saying okay look I am clothed in Jesus righteousness that I can stand boldly before God that I can confess my sin and I am forgiven past present and future that I don't need to sit in this shame. So what is toxic shame look like? Well I think it's when that kind of old mentality is applied to the new creation. The idea that you're constantly looking inward to see oh man I'm not measuring up oh man I'm such a sucky Christian I'm awful and dwelling in this place of perpetual shame especially when it's brought on by other people maybe their judgment maybe their words aren't uplifting aren't encouraging they're always kind of critical and correcting and not in a loving way that could definitely breed a culture of toxic shame where you're just kind of always looking inward and feeling bad as opposed to recognizing your sin yes recognizing yes you you're not a good person on your own but at the same time recognizing the reality that through Christ you are forgiven you are a new creation and that he has empowered you by his presence and power in your life that you can fulfill the mission that he has for you. Think of a child that has loving parents yes he may get disciplined from time to time but his identity is still as a child he has that security and love and acceptance from his father from his mother that he knows that okay even if I do something wrong and I'm gonna get disciplined it's all out of love and so there's that security and that confidence that flows from that. That's a picture of what our relationship with God should look like that we are given his love and his acceptance not because of what we've done but because of what he has done that we are his child by his grace nothing can change that nothing could separate us from the love of God so we have that security in that that doesn't mean that we won't do something wrong that doesn't mean that we won't encounter his discipline from time to time that doesn't mean that when we do something wrong we won't encounter shame or guilt but rather guilt is to draw us back to God to show us that man we need to confess these things to God in repentance and one aspect of what shame is trying to tell us as believers is is that we are not this person that this is not who we are where before we when we were an unbeliever and we were doing things and we felt shame it was a testimony to who we were and what we had become it's a reality a wake-up call and shame is equally now a wake-up call too but it's not to testify this is who you are it's to say man this is who you're not like shame when I feel this shame I'm like man because this is not the the new identity that God had invited me into and I want to step into this and that draws me to repentance as well. There's so many people that have yet to experience that security and that comfort in their relationship with God because there was this burden that was placed on them they never got to experience Jesus easy yoke to rest in his grace because they thought it was all about trying to earn or strive or or work to earn God's favor. They approach Jesus as the orphan who says I will do everything whatever it takes just for you to give me a place to stay yet they maintain the shame of being fatherless but an alternate analogy of what that could look like is that orphan approaching God and saying you know God I don't have a father can you let me stay here and God adopting that child adopting us into his family so we no longer maintain the shame of fatherlessness but rather have the security and confidence because God calls us his child and now as we live in his household we take on the responsibilities of a child to honor our father. She mentioned the idea of self-compassion numerous times and this is something that I've struggled with and I've worked through in my own Christian journey because I have a propensity to be extra self-critical or live in this place of self condemnation but I think there's an important distinction that we need to make here between moral failures and just kind of your every day I didn't live up to my particular expectations of my own productivity because when we look at moral failings right when you do something wrong what compassion should you have for yourself this is the question right but when we look at Jesus and that he forgave us right when we ask for forgiveness ultimately that humility and that repentance of what needs to come first in our life so we say God I'm sorry like please I do not deserve your grace but I ask for it anyway I ask for your forgiveness and God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and so in that context when I ask for forgiveness I should recognize that as myself is forgiven and I should have yeah that compassion on myself to say okay I'm forgiven I don't need to hold this over my head anymore but that should come after I confess that to God I shouldn't just say oh it doesn't matter it's not a big deal I'm a good person no I come to God I ask for forgiveness and I recognize that as true as that I have been forgiven and I don't need to hold that over my head on my shoulders anymore and then there's the other side of it maybe you weren't productive on a particular day that you wanted to be and you had kind of two high expectations and maybe you weren't a slugger you weren't lazy about it but you just didn't get as much done as you thought you you wanted to and you might might hold that over your shoulders and say oh man you got to do better you got to try harder and that's good to encourage yourself in that way but sometimes there's certain personalities that you can just get in your head and it's really really not beneficial at all in those contexts I think this idea of self-compassion is actually a good thing like I think it's good to be like hey like you have two high expectations on yourself you need to recognize like do you hold these same expectations for other people and yes we should have the high expectations for ourselves yes we should hold ourselves to a high standard but at the end of the day a lot of us man we're just holding these unrealistic expectations over our heads and sometimes you just gotta let them go and that's also about imparting God's grace for us like seeing God seeing ourselves as God sees us that that it's not about us and our performance of being productive on enough on a particular day or accomplishing everything when we think we need to accomplish it but really just resting in his grace that we're trying our best that we're pursuing excellence but at the same time it's not that that gains us our approval in God's sight and it shouldn't be that that gives us our own personal identity that we should rest in the identity that God has for us she mentioned that she's finally finding peace and I get that especially if you are connected with a church that was holding these expectations over your shoulders it was it was weighty it was heavy and you couldn't bear it maybe it wasn't a very encouraging environment maybe it was just kind of judgmental and critical if that was the case and you stepped away from that I understand why you feel like you're finally experiencing peace but I need to tell you that true peace is not just like being away from this toxic environment but it's actually finding peace with God because all peace flows from him I am whole and I am good as I am really some people say that Christian teaching is toxic because it teaches us that we are bad people that we are broken that we are not whole but to me it's the opposite of toxic or abusive it's obvious our world is broken people have a propensity towards sin not to do what is right to ignore that would be to live in ignorance even for ourselves just to continually say yourself oh I'm whole I'm good as I am am is to neglect a core reality that we know in our hearts that we are not complete that we are not whole as we are that we don't have everything we need within ourselves she says she doesn't have to strive or prove anything and I agree in an ultimate sense without Christ our works are just dead ends it's like renovating a bathroom in a house that's on fire but what's the solution to that just stop renovating the house and just call it a night and go to bed like everything is normal no your house is still on fire and that's why you need Jesus he's the one that can put out the fire of sin and begin a truly restoration and renovation project in your life a transformative process where your heart of stone is being turned into heart of flesh the reason that you don't need to consume yourself with proving something is not because you're enough just as you are or that you are good enough or you are whole because the truth is we are broken but rather that we can find true healing in Jesus that's the truth of it that's why you don't need to continue to try to prove yourself because we can't we can't we failed but that's where grace comes in that's where Jesus enters the picture now if you've experienced religious trauma or church hurt you are evidently aware of the fact that people are broken and they're incomplete and and they are inadequate in so many ways but my question for you is why would you abandon the one person who is whole that is complete that Jesus who is the one person that is able to help you and heal you and mend you and give you new life and make you into a new creation like he is the one that we should be relying on and not just everybody else to give us a proper understanding of who he is because we fail we fail big time but it's about clinging to what God has said and yes some of that stuff is offensive yes some of that stuff is gonna prick your heart in a big way but ask God hey God I feel I feel like this is this hit me in a certain way help me be humble before you help me submit my pride before you that I will see myself as incomplete and as sinful at the beginning but that I would rely on you for salvation and healing thanks so much for watching this video if you enjoyed it subscribe because i'm putting out new videos like this all the time a huge shout out to everyone on patreon that supports me on a monthly basis this is my full-time gig this is what I do so you guys are helping me out so much by supporting me there and it enables me to continue to pursue my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily until next time God bless