Reba: What does the Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome term mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\nFrank: It\u2019s a way of describing what I\u2019ve been trying to write about it my memoirs\u2026the church experience that I came out of had some trauma, and I\u2019ve received literally thousands of emails from people coming out of the evangelical, right-wing, conservative movement, and if you had to put a hashtag on them, your title [Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome] would represent 90% of the stories\u2026<\/p>\n
The trauma of leaving isn\u2019t about one experience; it\u2019s the distance of getting away from your roots. There are aspects of earlier parts of your life that you miss, even if they were screwed up\u2014leaving results in a kind of discombobulated rootlessness that no matter how logical the progression of faith away from some crazy fundamentalist faith was, you are now unmoored from something that was once the center of your life. That\u2019s traumatic, even if the change has been a good one.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like people who walk away from abusive relationships. Yeah, it\u2019s a good thing they walked away from it, but that doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t aspects or earlier parts of their life that they miss \u2013even if they were screwed up. So it isn\u2019t simply the leaving, it\u2019s the aftermath of getting used to the new you and trying to cope with that.<\/p>\n
Reba: There is a lot of paradox in your book, including the title.\u00a0 How can the title be true?<\/strong><\/p>\nFrank: \u00a0Simplicity is really a false avenue when it comes to who we are\u2026 I\u2019ve never met an Atheist, and I\u2019ve never met a Christian\u2026these labels do not actually define anyone, because none of us are one thing to our core\u2026<\/p>\n
One of the things I cite in my book is my Dad\u2019s personal relationship with Billy Graham and how Billy used to tell Dad, \u201cHey I\u2019m standing up here preaching salvation, and I don\u2019t even know if I believe in it.\u201dBilly was terrified by death\u2026 So where is the Billy Grahm \u201cfaith\u201d in that? Well, it\u2019s in the same place we\u2019re all in.<\/p>\n
We need to quit pretending there\u2019s only one answer, that we\u2019re never going to change our mind, that the formula stays the same.<\/p>\n
Saying I\u2019m an Atheist who believes in God is like saying I\u2019m a faithful husband who nevertheless looks at other women\u2026I\u2019m the same guy and I\u2019m not the same guy.<\/p>\n
Reba: How can people deal with PTCS?<\/strong><\/p>\nFrank: The only way to deal with it in some ways is to simply put it aside and say, \u201cI\u2019m not going to try to decide who was right and who was wrong, I\u2019m just going to accept where I\u2019m at now and move on from there instead of trying to find simple answers\u2026Recognize these are traumatic things and deal with them by not dealing with them. I know that sounds nuts, but by simply saying, \u201cHey, this is where I find myself, I\u2019m not going to replace one set of fundamentalist certainties with another one, you can embrace the paradox\u2026<\/p>\n
Maybe the path for you is Atheism, maybe the path for you is agnosticism or maybe the path is to walk away completely, like someone who was raped or molested as a child. There\u2019s no halfway there. You don\u2019t want to see the molester you don\u2019t want to be healed in the sense of \u201clet\u2019s fix that\u201d because it\u2019s unfixable.<\/p>\n
Some people have to make a full break. But then there are lots of other people who are being given a black-and-white choice\u2014and to those people, which is most people, because most of the trauma isn\u2019t as definite as a rape\u2026most people are walking away with a certain amount of sorrow or ambivalence and questions, and I think it can come as a great relief to them to say, \u201cLook, these are not issues of truth and falsehood\u2026then you can relax and feel free to pick and choose. You can relax and not have certainty yet still be able to say [about a church] \u2018I like this place; I can grow here.\u201d You can pray and not know if God or anyone else is hearing that prayer, but still take tremendous meaning from it.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t try to be a Bible-believer or an Atheist or any of these types of things; break it into bite-size pieces, and if that includes going into a church and enjoying that experience without having to decide this is where you belong and all these hot and heavy questions, then do that. And if it doesn\u2019t\u2014don\u2019t. And feel an equal freedom in either direction. I think there a big sense of healing and completeness in not seeking the healing and completeness\u2026look, I had Polio when I was two. I had an atrophied left leg. If I could have spent my life trying to get it fixed and worrying about it .. but there was a great sense of peace after my teenage years when I didn\u2019t care if people saw my withered leg\u00a0 and wasn\u2019t trying to get anything fixed. So sometimes you can deal with things simply by accepting them and not dealing with them.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been traumatized by a religious background, the last thing you need is that absolutist thinking about: \u201cNow how do I solve that?\u201d Instead, you can just say: \u201cHey this is who I am. It doesn\u2019t have to be logical.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can still pray if you don\u2019t believe and believe if you don\u2019t pray\u2026<\/p>\n
\u00a0So, what\u2019s the bottom line?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIf there is a God, your creator loves you like I love Lucy, my little granddaughter. And if there isn\u2019t, we\u2019re all on this empathetic journey together, a gift from the cosmos. Either way you\u2019re not going to know. But you can choose how to live so that the next time you look up at your version of Lucy, what you see there is unconditional trust.<\/p>\n
And if you can find that\u2026that is the meaning you\u2019ve been looking for all along. It isn\u2019t in the big \u201cTruth\u201d questions. Meaning is in who you are, and what you see reflected back in the eyes of the people who love you most.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Excerpts from my interview with New York Times bestselling author Frank Schaeffer about his new book Why I\u2019m an Atheist Who Believes in God. (See the Washington Post\u2019s excellent review ) Reba: What does the Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome term mean to you? Frank: It\u2019s a way of describing what I\u2019ve been trying to write about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1839,"featured_media":96,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,7,11,12,10,14,4],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-frank-schaeffer","tag-leaving-church","tag-post-traumatic-church-syndrome","tag-ptcs","tag-reba-riley","tag-recovering-christian","tag-spiritual-abuse"],"yoast_head":"\n
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