Anchored in Love Series: Love Takes Responsibility and Does Not Threaten Harm

90s Evangelical Christianity helped raise me, but it also kept me up at night.  After consistent messages of final judgments, eternal damnation, and the blood of the Lamb covering me… I struggled to fall asleep most nights.  “Do you KNOW you’re saved?” people would ask with intense eyes.  My insides were in a constant uproar, “yes! No… Yes! Maybe!? Tell me how to know!!”  I was filled with fear for myself and those I loved that we had missed a mark somewhere and would suffer in hell for eternity because of it.  I feared unknown timelines of death and that we weren’t moving fast enough to save people.  And all of it was set to a soundtrack of Carman’s hissing Satan voice with a choir raging, “Is your naaaaame in that book, for sure!?”  Needless to say, both sleeping and enjoying life as a kid proved to be quite difficult with all of this hovering over my mind and heart.

What I wish I could have known as a kid was that my fear wasn’t wrong; it was a teacher.  The fear that robbed me of sleep was trying to wave me down with red flags galore, preventing me from traveling that theological road any further.  Instead, I’d mumble the verse, “Perfect love casts out fear” as I squeezed my eyes shut.  But what my body was signaling was the presence of abuse.

Popular pastors, radio personalities, peers, and mentors were all questioning my salvation because they, too, didn’t want to see me go to hell.  We were all basing this off the assumption that in order to have eternal life, we had to accept and follow Jesus.  Otherwise, because of our choice not to do so, God would have to condemn us to hell.  But he doesn’t WANT to do that; he WANTS us to be with him in heaven.  But he is at the mercy of our actions and choices.

No. That is abuse rhetoric 101.   We are responsible for our own actions.

Now, I won’t lie, this one is hard for me.  It feels like the chicken and egg conundrum: which comes first?  If you choose to not associate with people who are dressed in purple, and I–knowing that–choose to wear purple, is it your choice or mine that we are not able to be around one another?  It gets messy.  Agency, boundaries, and choice make human relationships an interesting tango.  So, just like in previous posts, it helps me to do the direct transfer of theology to romantic relationships.

Let’s say I am dating someone who tells me that they love me and want nothing more than to be with me; however, they would never force love on me: I have the agency to choose whether or not I want to reciprocate love.  Fantastic! This feels healthy and right!  Oh, but there is a catch: If I choose not to be with them, they will murder me.  And if I can’t convince my family and friends and loved ones to support and follow my partner, then they will murder them too. But, I have free-will… so what do I choose?

Let’s say I choose to not be with the person, because they are super scary and controlling and manipulative and dangerous.  What I didn’t expect: they are, in fact, honest.  With a gun to my head, they give me one final chance.  “You control this, you know?  Just choose to accept my love, and you don’t have to die…”  No.  No, I do not control this.  That is manipulation and gaslighting.  They are the one holding the gun.  THEY control this.  But because I don’t want to die, I utter a gasping, “I choose you! Ok! I will love you only!”  The gun drops, the person pulls me in for a tight hug, smoothing my hair and whispering, “Oh, I’m so glad you chose that.  I wanted to be with you so badly.  I love you so much, and it pained me to think about living without you.  But remember, your family will have to die too, if they don’t choose the same… Gosh, I love you!”

That. Is. Messed. Up.
That. Is. Not. Love.

But on a cosmic scale, that’s what I believed God was like.  No wonder I couldn’t sleep at night.

If God is Love, something must have been off in my interpretation of the Bible’s message, for my interpretation was the epitome of abuse. 

I started marveling at my friends who were parents of toddlers.  When toddlers throw tantrums, it’s a force to be reckoned with.  Some moms would hold a child who screamed, “I hate you!”  It was captivating to watch them validate the child’s feelings while also taking ownership of their own.  “That’s okay,” they’d say while stroking the child’s back, “I still love you.”  Others would sit the child down on the floor, while still in their presence, doing the same but with boundaries, “I will not be hit, but I still love you.  When you are ready to stop hitting me, I am ready to hug you.  Until then, I will love you from a distance while you sit beside me.  But, no matter what, you are my baby, and I am your mom.  Nothing will change that.”  Though boundaries were set in place, the child was never separated from love. 

If God IS love, then maybe I could trust the Bible when it says that nothing can separate me from Love.  Not even my rejection of God.  What if Love is coursing through my veins and interwoven into my cells? What if my choice is whether or not I lean into that reality or not?  I honestly have no idea.  There is no certainty here about how this shakes out into specifics, which makes this anchor harder for me.  To break this down in my mind, I had to start asking, “What is love NOT?” 

But now I’m leaning into the fact that the source of Love is ever expanding and growing and evolving.  To grip it tightly in certainty causes me to lose hold of it; love is freedom, not control.  It demands holding loosely.  To experience love demands admitting that it can’t be fully known and understood.  This is part of the mystery of love.  It’s only scary when I start to realize how little I know of it, but then Love reminds me that I don’t have to know or be certain.  Love is beautiful, like that!  And–coincidentally–it helps me sleep at night. 

I’m currently committed to the discipline of writing about the six anchors that have helped me examine and call out abusive theology.  Just like when you leave an abusive relationship, reality feels skewed, and it’s hard to decipher what love really is.  Exiting the fundamentalist religion of my past felt a lot like this: hazy, confusing, and exhausting.  These anchors give me something to cling to when the self-doubt starts creeping back in.  It is my hope that writing about these six anchors will help me grow and potentially provide others some stepping stones on their own journeys, if needed.

The Six Anchors
1. Unconditional Love Doesn’t Have Conditions
2. Love Celebrates the Individual of Its Affection
3. Love Does Not Equal Control
4. Love Takes Responsibility and Does Not Threaten Harm
5. Love Builds Boundaries, but Not Isolation
6. Love Won’t Feel Fearful and Confusing