How To Know Whether Your Religious Group Is Healthy Or Toxic
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(OPINION) As I display in this publication every week for all to see, I don’t know much.
My life has been an exercise in learning heartfelt humility through heart-rending failure. I’m not the expert type. I can’t even fix a broken toilet, much less the world.
Yet there is this one thing I claim for myself. I’ve had more experience with religion than almost anybody I know. Some observers consider this a blessing and others an illness, but that’s another discussion.
My dad and uncle were career ministers, and both of my grandmothers taught Sunday school for 40 years each. I’ve been a pastor myself for 44 years.
I’ve written about spirituality since 1990, when I became the full-time religion writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. That job was an education equal to a seminary Ph.D.
For 40-plus hours a week, across seven years, I visited all manner of houses of worship, met lay people and clergy of every stripe and discussed weighty theological matters with bishops, theologians, lamas, imams, rabbis, nuns and university scholars of religion.
I regularly got my mind blown. I’ve never seen God the same way since, even as I’ve continued to proclaim the Christian gospel as a Pentecostal minister.
I recite my vita to make this point: I’ve seen a whole bunch of religion, good and bad. Maybe the one thing I’ve come to understand is what good faith looks like.
You may or may not agree, which is your privilege, but here are my signs any particular religious organization — megachurch or storefront, famous or obscure — is spiritually healthy:
— It embraces a joyous hope instead of hissing fear and anger. If a group defines itself by the supposed threats against it or all the infidels it loathes — look out. Ugly things will happen. Healthy faith is about trusting God to see us through whatever challenges we face.
— Its primary focus is on God rather than on a particular human leader. Unavoidably, some leaders will be more charismatic than others, and it’s important to respect all those charged with shepherding the group. But human leaders are by definition destined to falter sooner or later. That’s a design, not a bug. God doesn’t share his glory. Beware cults of personality that simply can’t exist without a particular pastor or prophet.
— It embraces mystery and paradox rather than claiming definitive answers for every problem. God is way yonder too big and complex to be confined to the walls of one church. As the Lord told Isaiah, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you would build for me?” If a group thinks it has the Truth (capital T) nutshelled into six sure-fire doctrinal statements … well, watch out. That group is in for rude awakenings.
— In the same vein, a spiritually healthy group welcomes questions instead of shaming those who ask. Since the leaders don’t claim to know everything about everything through divinely received revelation, they have no problem saying, “Well, gee, that’s a great question. I’m not sure what the answer is. Let’s search together.” And when they say that, they’re not just looking for a pretext to bodyslam the asker with their own superior knowledge. They truly want to find the answer. They don’t mind opening the financial books, either, because they have no chicanery to hide. They are, to use religious jargon, transparent.
— It considers doubt essential to the normal process of spiritual growth, not a character flaw. Even Jude, the very brother of Jesus, instructed the early church to “have mercy on those who are doubting.” Why? Jude himself battled doubts — and he grew up in the same house as Jesus! We all doubt sometimes, or even a lot of the time. It’s wise to be honest about that. As I’ve said here a lot, doubt isn’t antithetical to faith; it’s part of faith.
— It treats sinners with love, forgiveness and compassion. Various groups, of course, have differing ideas about who the “sinners” are, according to their own tenets. Also, sinners can be people inside the group who’ve done something unacceptable by its standards, or they can be people outside the group who haven’t accepted the group’s beliefs. Either way, a healthy group doesn’t condemn, persecute or shun sinners. It aids, embraces and prays for them.
— It habitually roots for underdogs and outcasts. It contributes to the local food bank. It helps families fleeing wars in the Middle East or Europe to find warm places to live until their legal status is resolved. It visits nursing homes and hospitals to provide companionship to the lonely and dying. You get the idea. It doesn’t turn its back. It doesn’t scold. It unashamedly wears its heart on its sleeve.
I’ll grant you, probably no religious group manages to do all these good things perfectly all the time. Even the best fall short occasionally. But the healthier groups do strive for these things all the time, and manage to do them mostly.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.