A few weeks ago I checked in on a friend from our church who I hadn’t seen in a while, asking how she was. Her response about her and her husband’s absence was as revelatory and prophetic as it was honest.
“…we’ve needed a religious detox for some time.”
A religious detox. Wow, do I get that.
I bet you probably do too.
Many people out here get it.
I think a lot of us are like my friend. For a long time (perhaps years or even decades) we’ve been carrying around this dull, heavy malaise; one we couldn’t quite name but one we’ve known was making us ill, slowly draining the joy from our spirits.
Turns out we can name it, we’ve just been afraid to: Religion.
Over time you can gradually develop a soul sickness and be completely unaware of it, until one day you turn around and faith just feels… toxic. The reasons aren’t necessarily clear, but you realize that the spiritual pursuits that once gave you life now seem empty and burdensome—and it can scare the hell out of you.
There’s a profoundly terrifying sense of cosmic alienation that comes, when what you used to turn to daily for sustenance suddenly grows caustic; the Bible, prayer, corporate worship, preaching, faith community. When theological study, discussions about God, and even silent reflection all become dry and laborious you start to feel the bottom of your belief system dropping out. In the cruelest of ironies during these times, the more you effort to fix yourself with these very “good things”, the deeper you seem to sink and the more guilty you become as a result.
At first we all try to ignore this internal nagging or to rationalize it away, because to fully admit it would be to acknowledge the very kind of existential crisis that we’ve grown up believing was tantamount to spiritual suicide; the most sinful of willful rebellions against God. We begin to suffocate beneath the weight of this faith failure upon our chests.
Friend, if you’re in this place let me give you permission to feel it all; to name it, to own it, and to breathe deeply in the midst of it.
You see, for a million reasons and despite our greatest desires and most earnest seeking, religion can become tainted for us and when it does, simply doing more of it is often not the answer. Getting our souls healthy may not be a matter of merely redoubling our efforts and muscling through it. When your system is polluted you don’t ingest larger amounts of the contaminant in a quest to get clean. You either need to wean yourself off of it gradually or you need to quit cold turkey, and there isn’t an answer that fits any two of us perfectly.
The greatest misconception when we are in a season of deep spiritual fatigue, is that it is somehow our fault; that our inner turbulence is all a symptom of some moral weakness or a sign that we are doing something wrong—we must be. In reality this very thinking is what may be most wrong.
This is not about what you are doing to God, but about openly acknowledging what God is doing in you.
This unrest is a sacred alarm that something is not right with your soul and if in your most vulnerable, honest moments you believe that the culprit is the Church or your theology or some religious activity, you can’t behave your way around it and you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of God and just go through the motions. The only thing you can do is respond in obedience and authenticity and trust that is enough. For you this may mean stepping away from church attendance or abstaining from some spiritual discipline or opting out of social media or avoiding certain people or changing your routine or making space for things that have no particular “religious” meaning ascribed to them.
When you feel the need to withdraw from organized religion even for a brief moment (as frightening as that is) perhaps the most panic-inducing thing is the fear that it may not be temporary; that your initial short pause may eventually turn into a prolonged or even permanent Sabbath from what you once though was a given.
Fortunately that is out of your hands and in the very capable hands of God. No matter how much you’d like to be, you can’t be in the future anyway, so just attend to your present under-the-weather-ness while you wait for Tomorrow to show up twenty-four hours from now.
If you believe you need a detox from religion my friend, take it. If you’re wrong you’ll be able to course correct without fear. This is the very essence of Grace.
You can’t go where God is not anyway, and so the most faith affirming decision you can make right now is to trust that wherever you place your feet, even if it is outside of religion—it will still be holy ground.
May your under the weather soul get well soon.
Questions for reflection:
What in your own spiritual journey feels unhealthy or joy-stealing?
When did you begin a religious detox and how long did it last?
How do you know when to persevere and when you need to withdraw from your current spiritual routine?
