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April 4 · Leave a Comment

The Churches Use of Spiritual Bypassing

Family

Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual Bypassing (v): 

“The tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”-Wikipedia

When churches experience scandals, hardships, or anything that sparks negative emotions they use spiritual bypassing to avoid those exact emotions. 

Let me give you some examples. 

Someone’s grandfather died in a car wreck. 

“God works all things for good.” 

A woman is struggling with infertility and it’s causing her to become depressed.

“God has a plan. His ways are higher than our ways.” 

A pastor is caught cheating on his wife or being inappropriate with other females other than his wife.

“Don’t forget all the good he has done for the kingdom of God.” 

A huge scandal came to light after a decade.

“It happened so long ago and they’ve done so much good.” 

“This is going to hurt the kingdom of God, we need to just move on.” 

“Everyone’s human, no one’s perfect.” 

“He asked for forgiveness and the Bible tells us we have to forgive.” 

Someone is struggling with a mental disorder like depression, anxiety, and more. 

“You just need to pray more.” 

Spiritual Bypassing

There are so many more examples I could give you, but I think you get the picture. 

All these situations bypass the real issue at hand leaving people unable to properly process through their negative emotions. At the same time, it conditions them to accept toxic and abusive behavior because “everyone’s human” or “they asked for forgiveness.” 

HILLSONG

I just finished the documentary on Discovery Plus about Hillsong the Mega Church. It was a great documentary and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. 

But as I was watching it, I realized just how much Hillsong used Spiritual Bypassing to try to minimize their MANY scandals. 

Just days before the documentary was released Brian Houston resigned from the church because of inappropriate behavior with 2 females who had issued complaints. (Mind you, these issues came in the last 10 years and yet the church is just now forcing him to resign. Suspicious…) 

Well, after Brian resigned, the church came out with a statement and while they were explaining what was happening, they quickly redirect the reader to remember just how much Brian and his wife have done for God. 

That is textbook spiritual bypassing. 

The emotions of a scandal with the founder of a mega church provokes huge emotions, none of which are good. So instead of facing the music, sitting with the emotions, and letting people process through their emotions, they decide to redirect and minimize. 

THEY AREN’T REAL CHRISTIANS

A way that Christians try to distance themselves from people who don’t act, preach, behave, or believe in God/Religion like they do, is by saying something to the effect of, “They aren’t real Christians.”

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This is basically saying that since a specific person says, does, or believes something they don’t agree with then it automatically means they aren’t a “real Christian.” This is said to me all the time when I call out the abusive and toxic behavior by pastors or The Church as a whole. Since they don’t agree with me, or I would dare speak out about the Church then I’m not a real Christian. This is there way and distancing themselves from the real issue giving them permission to just bypass it instead of actually address it.

Spiritual bypassing isn’t accountability, it’s a free pass for abusers and toxic church culture to perpetuate abuse, hide scandals, and more.

« I Don’t Lead People to Jesus…
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Hello! I’m Laci…

Hi my name is Laci & I’m a deconstructing exvangelical who’s passionate about helping others heal from religious trauma and find what spirituality means to them. Read More….

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It’s been a hell of a past 20 days. The number 1 It’s been a hell of a past 20 days. The number 1 lesson I’ve learned?? I NEVER WANT TO BE A LANDLORD BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE GROSS!
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Being flexible is our motto at the moment. We have a mice problem in the basement of our new house which has cut us off to our 3rd bedroom, storage space, and my office until it can get treated and the insulation replaced.
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Allow yourself the time to grieve and process. Allow yourself the time to grieve and process.
I grew up in small town Texas. Where everyone kno I grew up in small town Texas.

Where everyone knows everyone and somehow we are all inter-connected.

When I visited my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins we gathered in more small towns.

These are the kinds of small towns that most people would never know exist, and the townspeople are more than happy to keep their hometown out of the public eye so they can preserve that small town feel.

These towns have a way of making you feel safe, that’s why many people call them home.

After I got married my parents moved to Uvalde for my dad’s work and lived there for a couple years.

The Uvalde house was the last place my mom, dad, and all my siblings and I spent Christmas together.

Uvalde is another one of those small Texas towns, but unfortunately everyone now knows this town.

But what they don’t know is how a tragedy like this impacts a small town.

It hits different.

Small towns people are inter-connected in a deep way.

Uvalde citizens are mourning the loss of their child, their child’s best friend(s), their child’s teacher whom they may have known for years or even grew up with. Teens and adults are mourning the loss of the child they babysat.

Some may be mourning all of the above at the same time.

I’m mourning for them. For complete strangers.

I have a child in public school and I can’t imagine experience this kind of trauma.

From the moment I heard the news I broke. I don’t hide my emotions well, so my kids know I’m upset.

They asked why but I didn’t tell them. I just said that there was something on the news that made me sad.

I know she will probably hear about it at school tomorrow and come home with questions.

I won’t know what to say. Just like I didn’t know what to say or how to explain the fact that we didn’t have ‘active shooter drills’ growing up like she does.

The reality is, this is her normal, because this is the new normal.

I hate it.

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“I would give anything to be your size.” The “I would give anything to be your size.”

The few times I’ve opened up about being unhappy with my body I get that response, or even, “You don’t know what real body image issues are.”

So I shut up. Feeling as if my insecurities were invalid because I wasn’t big enough to have them, I stopped opening up and silently hated my body and berated it in my own head.

I finally opened up to a dear friend who is a survivor of anorexia, in which the battle almost claimed her life. She not only listened, but validated all my feelings. For the first time I felt seen. Thank you @lacijanea 

I’m still processing and to be honest I still hate my body. At this point I’m not trying to learn to love my body, I’m just trying to accept it, then maybe eventually I can love it.

So this is me being vulnerable, buying clothes that fit me regardless of the size, wearing a body suit and trying not to focus on my rolls that show, or the fact that my once thigh gap is no more. This is me trying to be comfortable in my own skin, one day at a time.

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Fun fact, I never thought tattoos were sinful, but Fun fact, I never thought tattoos were sinful, but I sure as hell was given many pamphlets and articles to explain how they were. Needless to say I didn’t listen. 😂 I’m back at it again! This is tattoo number 2 for today! 😁 Is this self care? Who cares, I say yes!!
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The way our lives crashed together here in Idaho h The way our lives crashed together here in Idaho has been one of the best things in such a hard season of life! Love you my dear friend, and not just because we share the same name!​​​​​​​​
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Why not speak to us who are actually deconstructin Why not speak to us who are actually deconstructing? Is it because our reasons for leaving and deconstructing make you uncomfortable?😬​​​​​​​​
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Making clay earrings has been a wonderful self-car Making clay earrings has been a wonderful self-care activity and it has accidentally turned into a fun business! I might plug it from time to time on here but if you want to follow my business page for all my clay earrings and goodies check out @LaceAndHerClay on here and on Tik Tok!​​​​​​​​
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My deconstruction journey has been wild. Being rai My deconstruction journey has been wild. Being raised as an evangelical I as taught we had all the answers. For so long things were very black and white. Now, there are many days I don't know what I think about God. The amazing thing is, I'm ok with that. I've gotten comfortable with the unknown, asking questions, doubting, and just being ok not having it all figured out.​​​​​​​​
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Did this confuse anyone else, or was it just me?? Did this confuse anyone else, or was it just me?? ​​​​​​​​
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