“Gaslighting” is a scary word, a present participle that reminds us that it’s hard to trust people. After all, gaslighting, paraphrased, is the act of someone presenting a lie over and over until another person’s brain is convinced to accept the lie as truth. Frightening? Certainly. An even harsher reality is that Christians gaslight other Christians too, and most of the time, it happens inside the four walls of the church.
We say the churchy thing for the sake of saying the churchy thing. It’s the “easy” way to solve a Christian’s problems. But in all reality, the problems are never solved and Christ followers are left with even more confusion, even more lies, and even less truth. Here are 3 easy, sneaky ways that the church (knowingly and unknowingly) gaslights Christians:
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1. Presenting the idea that “God never gives you more than you can handle.”
I wish I had a dollar for each time a church pastor, church leader, or church meme spread this lie to believers. In theory, this phrase is meant to offer encouragement, to let the Christian know that God will see them through the hard stuff. However, the “gaslight” feature, the lie, is that this idea puts the power in our hands, as if we are able to withstand anything. But as humans, we can’t handle everything all the time. It’s impossible.
This is the very reason that Philippians 4:13 is so powerful, so prevalent, because we know that what’s impossible for us is possible for God. We can do anything, but only through His strength. Since Scripture is truth, then perhaps God gives us more than we can handle as the opportunity to teach us to channel Christ’s strength instead of our own.
Down here, on earth, there’s hurt and hard times, and it’s never been our place to put empathy aside for the sake of hiding behind, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” He will forever give us more than we can handle, if only to prove the beautiful collision of His power, love, and promise that He will forever bring us through things meant to consume us.
So, yes, God will hand us hard times that His beautiful, scarred shoulders have not only born, but have defeated too. It just takes a little time to see that come to fruition here, on earth.
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2. Convincing the congregation that “God calls ordinary people for extraordinary things.”
I’ve heard this idea many, many times. I’ve seen it plastered on church signs too. And honestly, for the longest time, I assumed it was true. It seemed like a basic, foundational Christian principle. After all, God used Moses, the murderer with a stutter, to bring His
children out of Egypt’s exile. He used John the Baptist, a homeless guy with some weird eating habits, to baptize Christ and welcome the Holy Spirit’s presence on earth. However, we’ve swapped the definitions of “ordinary” and “extraordinary.”
We often see extraordinary people as the ones who get things done—the movers, the shakers, the game changers. These are the guys speaking to thousands, banking millions, and offering an endless supply of happiness and bliss, but I believe God’s definition of “extraordinary” includes the worst parts of us, the darker, more intense pieces of us that make up our worldview.
As an accurately, self-diagnosed perfectionist, it was tragic for me to accept a mental health disorder, to own the reality that I sought clinical help and discovered that I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That diagnosis made me different, made me that 1% of the population that can’t shut off its adrenaline glands long enough to silence fear and wild, irrational thoughts. But that big gray patch in my life, the patch that with jagged, uneven stitches, became the needle on the dial, the turning point where I could share my story of God making beauty from ashes. My “extraordinary” thing was an ugly thing, a scary thing, not a flawless, put-together masterpiece of a testimony.
Now, I believe that “God calls extraordinary people for unexpectedly extraordinary things,” instead.
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3. Forcing you to interpret the infamous phrase: “Keep the faith.”
I know you’ve heard this phrase. It’s the one we pay $50 to monogram on our purses and $100 to have tattooed on our wrists, but barely know how to put into practice. Am I right?
Sure, we want to “keep” our faith, but how do we physically hang onto the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen? In the church, the answer seems to be obvious, the sort of answer that doesn't require background details or a thorough explanation. When people behind the pulpit utter the phrase, when it’s brought up in Sunday school, when it’s the topic of interest in small group, we’re taught to bob our heads and amen the idea. Yet, no one has ever taught us what it means to literally “Keep the faith.”
It took lots of personal trial and error in my journey with Jesus, but He’s taught me this secret: I don’t keep faith, I don’t sustain faith, I don’t bring faith to completion. That’s a total Jesus thing. All we can do is clutch faith with the feeble fingers we have. The keeping of faith rests in our ability to accept that Christ keeps us and keeps our faith—not the other way around.
Pressure’s off of us, and it’s on the God Who not only created faith, but keeps it safe in the palm of His hand.
Breath of fresh air, huh? To realize that the churchy saying isn’t always the Jesus saying, that just because a Christian had said something over and over it isn’t necessarily true.
These days, rather than taking churchy sayings at their word, I look to the Word, the character of Christ. I allow myself to see my weaknesses as His strengths, my flaws as His catalyst for something beautiful, His truth as the truth—and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
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Originally published Friday, 26 March 2021.
