Fear and Religion
When angelic visitors unexpectedly turned up within the Jewish Scriptural accounts of Divine visitation, it seems to have been a pretty terrifying experience.
Why?
Well, by all accounts they were big, fiery, and definitely not human! Enough for their human host to nearly pass out with fright. Their old fight or flight wiring hadn’t a chance; instead the traumatized soul just froze with fear and collapsed in a heap.
So why the angel angle?
Well, more often than not the first utterance of the heavenly visitor was paradoxically, ‘Fear not !’
A bit late methinks but, I guess, somewhat reassuring to the wilted soul lying before them.
This has got me thinking.
God and His/Her sidekicks aren’t really into fear as a motivational emotion.
Fear stems from the perceived threat of annihilation and Divine Love doesn’t do that, having too much respect for the countless projections of its image in the sons and daughters of Adam, no matter how dysfunctional they are.
Yet, bizarrely we walk along our religio-spiritual path, subliminally motivated by this nagging fear of Divine rejection both here and in the reality beyond death.
Let’s face it, fear is more prevalent than trust in our day-to-day psycho-spiritual lives. It has been programmed into our central nervous system for survival but has gone into hyper-drive mode following our brushes with early life trauma, either real or illusory.
My premise is that much religio-spiritual belief and practice is conceived and birthed in the womb of fear. We believe in our heads that God has somehow forgiven us but deep within the darkness of our inner world we sure as hell don’t really believe it. Like an abusive parent we just don’t trust the Divine Father/Mother who might suddenly lash out at us after a session of normal family life.
Our early childhood experiences of parental rejection and overbearing physical and emotional power makes it difficult to take Divine Love at its word. We live in a somewhat schizophrenic world comprising moments of protective belief mixed with the angst of subconscious fear.
Unfortunately we don’t have to have been around religious circles for too long before this schizophrenic nature of our faith life is reinforced. Like all of us, those who appear to Model the love of the Divine Father/Mother often have a dark side that only pops up under extreme pressure. With one swipe of a Bible text the trusting child-like follower can be sent into the religious equivalent of the naughty chair, or, more insidiously, wounded by words claimed to be Divine in origin.
Is it any wonder that so many folk drop out of such a religious environment; one that promises much but more often than not, reopens and deepens the inner wounding of pre-birth and early childhood. Frankly put, many leave to maintain their sanity. The overlay of spiritual abuse on top of the psychic tears of childhood, is too much to bear. The average God follower can’t handle this extra parental abuse in the guise of spiritual discipline or righteous anger.
The disillusionment that often follows this dashing of our God dreams within religious community is our protective shell against further rejection and pain. ‘Enough is enough,’ the wounded child screams out. ‘Who needs this stuff?’
Who needs it indeed?
True faith or trust is birthed in the healing Presence of Divine Love and nowhere else. Only Other can get into our psychic nooks and crannies where we hide from our past and present abusers. When we set our hopes of psychic healing on religious salesmen and their business-like pseudo-communities we’re making a big and painful mistake. Like a quick acting pain-killer the effect of our involvement will dull the inner pain for a while, but only leave us with deeper wounds for future healing.
So back to our angel friends!
‘Fear not Beloved of God, you Child of Divine Love. Arise into the wholeness of Being that flows from Source, the One who birthed you before the wounds of man etched their deadening pain on your innocence of soul. Let my touch extract the torment of those slashes on your infant psyche, rejections fused in womb dark days, the piercings of a tender heart that came from the innermost Mind of God.’
Have we met our angel unawares?
I doubt it.
May the Messengers of Healing Love invade the psychic fortress of our hidden pain, pull out the thorn of parental threat and lift us to our Spirit feet, to walk again in Eden’s Peace.
Trust not Fear.
Wow! I’m in the midst of this deep healing, knowing that the childhood fears are swallowed up in victory!! Thank you for sharing your gift of writing to set many free!!
I enjoyed your post Dylan, interestingly I’m studying the implications of toxic shame as experienced in early childhood, the ramifications of which often carry on into adulthood and often if left unresolved result in stagnation and despair in later adulthood. All of which if compounded with a shame-based church experience can drive one close to the edge of insanity. There but by the Grace of God go I!!
Hi Jan
Agreed! I reckon your study is a much needed one within most faith groups! For multitudes shame absorbed in childhood is the key battle that they fight throughout their lives. Guilt based beliefs under a religious guise are often the fruit of such a subconscious subpersonality. Many of us Yeshua followers have been closer to insanity than we would like to acknowledge. I know I have.
Shame is the antithesis of Divine Love, one scripted by ego in the Garden of our lives.
🙂 Dylan
Great post, but I think most “angelic” encounters are fictional. If one only looks at all the angelic messages throughout history, they most always represent the current theologies and dogmas of the day. This why the unmistakable message of God reconciling the cosmos to himself through Christ on the cross is so important…it forever eliminates the need for all other messages regarding the nature of God.
Thanks for dropping by Jason! My angel reference was just an illustration of the Divine response to our fear when Transcendence approaches us. I’m not an angel chaser myself but looking back over my life I’ve had a few encounters with ‘folk’ that were very strange; those who may have been ‘angelic’ with the glory turned off! You can read of them in my wee book.
Blessings
Dylan
Can’t say I’ve had any experience of angels, but knocked in the spirits of the world. So true for me that past experiences cloud my thinking about “god/father/mother image” or the divine as I prefer.
& left the “church” to find more freedom & a path which is less judgmental or harming. Though some of the others I’ve choose could be just as bad.
But this writing/blog seem to remind me I’m not a weirdo (though perhaps I am) to be searching for something more.
Loved your blog – inspirational and definitely hit the spot – thank you. Hope you don’t mind but had to share it. Look forward to checking out your book.
Glad you liked my wee blog Julia. Feel free to share any of my stuff!
Do let me know how you get on with The Prodigal Prophet!
🙂 Dylan
Good points, especially about abuse/neglect growing up. We have no real inkling how abusive child rearing actually was and still is, even though we’re surrounded by its gruesome results in the dehumanizing, war-crazy mess we call “society.”
Something you didn’t mention that’s related to the fear we operate under is the adversarial relationship we assume with the world. We characterize our relationships with nature, other living creatures, and society first and fundamentally as matters of survival. That only makes sense if survival is in question.
Almost none of us challenge the assumption that survival is in question. Almost none of us recognize that it’s an assumption, let alone that there’s an alternative.
Instead, we concern ourselves with spirituality AFTER we’ve taken pains to ensure that we’re safe enough to be concerned. When our survival is threatened in any way–financially, socially, or physically–we automatically, involuntarily prove by our responses that spirituality is secondary. Survival is paramount, so we submit to whatever it takes to secure it. We think that responding otherwise is either crazy or saintly. Funny how we put those two so close together.
Presuming that survival is questionable and letting survival concerns preempt love of truth, dignity, and each other are the essence of slavery, spiritually and in every other form. Even if we don’t theoretically hold those premises, (or don’t want to admit that we do,) we prove them in fact by our actions. When our blood pressure rises as account balances fall or the termination slip arrives or the foreclosure notice is pinned to the door, do we get spiritual or do we get survivalist? Maybe we took such pains to preclude those possibilities that we’ll never face the question.
As long as survival concerns rule, so will our masters.
Thank you Dylan, well said!