Faith is slowly poisoned as lies and false ideas are integrated into a person’s beliefs about God. For some, this occurs after a major disappointment in adult life. The faith of others is distorted from early years, by watching parents practice a faith with little truth and hope.
Toxic beliefs are tough to counter. At first glance they make such good sense. And plenty of people support the distorted beliefs that have been around for thousands of years.
Once persons are deceived, they vigorously resist changing their beliefs. Since they are so self-obsessed, they want to believe that they are right and are incapable of serious error. Additionally, these people invest much time, money, and energy in toxic beliefs, which they hold more sacred than God. Whether handed down, learned later in life, supported by others, or reinforced by denial, toxic beliefs take root and spoil the relationship with God. These beliefs must be countered and replaced with truth.
Melody illustrates the challenge. Years of pain stemmed from a set of toxic beliefs that took root when Melody was a child. At one point in her growing-up years, her minister father became obsessed by her beauty and form. He fought the temptation to touch her for two years. Finally, on an overnight outing, he went to her sleeping bag and, while she slept, he molested her. He unbuttoned her shirt to see her breasts. When she awoke, he was sitting beside her, staring at her.
She was horrified but didn’t scream. He took that as an invitation to come closer, and he lay down beside her and fondled her. She cried silently the whole time. When he was finished, he buttoned her shirt and returned to his sleeping bag.
Melody didn’t sleep the rest of the night. As she lay awake, the nucleus of a lifetime of toxic beliefs began to form. She wondered why God had allowed this to happen. She thought that she must be bad or this bad thing wouldn’t have happened. She felt this must be some kind of punishment for something she had done. Her faith shattered. Since my father is a fake, she thought, all believers must be fakes also.
Melody kept the secret. And although her father never touched her again, his relationship with her changed dramatically after this incident. No more sexual abuse occurred, but the emotional abuse was just as destructive. He became negative with her and very critical. It was as if he blamed her for what had happened. She never again felt an ounce of love from her father.
Over the course of the next year, Melody became a drug and alcohol abuser and a compulsive eater. Hoping to resolve the pain, she decided to tell her mother what had happened. Melody’s mother could not believe it and accused Melody of lying. The revelation destroyed her relationship with her mother. She felt isolated and abandoned by her father, her mother, and her God. In a deep depression, she slit her wrists and hoped to die. However, her mother found her in time and saved her life.
The suicide attempt forced Melody’s mother to find treatment for her, and she found it with us at New Life Treatment Centers. Through the program and staff, the molestation was verified, and the father was arrested after the authorities were notified. No legal consequences emerged from the incident, but he lost his church and his family.
Melody grew bitter and angry. She felt guilty about the molestation, guilty that she had not told her mother sooner, and guilty that her father had lost his job. She took all of the burdens of the molestation on herself. Yet she also blamed God for deserting her when she most needed him. She had no place for a God who could not be counted on or who must be punishing her for some long-forgotten sin.
Treatment did not restore Melody’s faith immediately, but it did restore her to spiritual and emotional health. Through hard hours of therapy, Bible study, and prayer, she worked through her self-deprecating feelings and emerged with a new sense of self-worth. She found tremendous support from the staff and other patients to see herself in a new way. As each day passed, she grew more and more in her quest for peace.
Before leaving treatment, Melody began to work on an aftercare plan. One question concerned church attendance. She stated that she had no plans to attend church, that she needed more time to heal before facing another male minister in a church setting. Her plan seemed very realistic; she did need more time. She might have been devastated by returning to a church too soon; the experience might stir up much of what she could not yet manage emotionally. The counselor expressed approval of Melody’s plan. She asked Melody to describe her feelings about God. Melody slowly responded, “I believe he is there. I believe he is real. But I believe he is tougher than I could have ever imagined.”
Melody had come a long way in her short stay with us. It is a long journey from belief in an uncaring God to belief in a God who is interested in each life. By saying God is real and he is there, Melody was on the verge of realizing that he cares about her and loves her.
Destroying the roots of toxic faith takes time and effort. It requires vulnerability and the admission that life and God can be viewed incorrectly. The first step toward spiritual health is to identify the incorrect beliefs. Once identified, they can be changed and a real faith in God restored.
Melody’s molestation was at the core of the toxic beliefs she developed. Her faith soured as she struggled alone to figure out who she was and who God was in light of the molestation. Through treatment, she identified some of those toxic beliefs: she felt that she must have been bad and that God was punishing her; she believed if she had been better, it would not have happened; she believed her behavior determined how much God would love her; she thought God should have protected her from a terrible incident; and she found her father was a fake, so she came to believe all Christians were fake. Melody came to see how one incident affected her whole concept of God, life, and her future.
Such toxic beliefs are not unique to Melody. Millions share them. The following are the most common beliefs of a toxic faith.
Toxic Belief #1: God’s love and favor depend on my behavior.
The central theme of the Bible is that God is love. But individuals plagued with toxic faith neglect that fact. They see God as a critical parent, waiting to say, “It’s not good enough. Try harder. You could do better.” Their faith is so toxic that they turn to a faith in self rather than a faith in God. They depend on their performance, not God’s wondrous love.
A young man came to me who had heard of my problems in the past. He felt extreme guilt over paying for a girlfriend’s abortion. Before that event, he believed he had a great future and that God wanted to use him. After the abortion, however, he doubted God had a place for him. He felt like a complete reject. He began to focus on his behavior rather than on God’s love. He worked and worked to resume a place of favor. But no matter how hard he tried, it was never good enough. He kept coming up short. He asked me, “Will I ever know God’s love and acceptance again?”
Whether this young man would ever again experience God’s love totally depended on his willingness to put himself aside and focus on a loving God. If he refused, he had no chance of knowing and feeling God’s love. In his desire to redeem himself he had become a religious workaholic, addicted to the job of making himself feel good about himself. A deep hurt and lack of self-worth drove him relentlessly. The sad truth is that his unending work might not make God love him more—but he might get to see God sooner. His self-induced pressure might easily have caused a heart attack or a stroke. It certainly made him feel miserable, without hope for restoration.
Restoration cannot come from more work or greater focus on fixing your mistakes. All you’ll get for your efforts is a miserable life of perfectionism where nothing is ever good enough. Such an attempt at restoration only further destroys faith and relationships.
The difficulty with turning away from such a toxic belief is that most of the world acts as if it is true. Most people operate under the belief that God is looking for a “few good men and women.”
Some of my friends teach their children that if they are good, God will be good in return. That is probably the most common theology in existence. People are desperately trying to earn God’s love—yet how ludicrous is the way they go about trying to earn his love! They make $100,000 a year and give $5,000 away, expecting God to be impressed. Or if they give an even more substantial amount, they place their names on a plaque for public display. Too few know that is not the way of God.
Restoration comes from worshiping God for who he is and trusting him to provide for one’s needs. If, like my friend who was burdened with guilt, you need forgiveness, God has gone to a lot of trouble to provide that for you. You cannot earn God’s love. His love does not depend on your behavior. Knowing that should be a very big relief.
Toxic Belief #2: When tragedy strikes, true believers should have a real peace about it.
The desire for instant peace in the midst of tragedy leads to denial, unresolved emotions, and a complete split from reality. People who have lost children, spouses, fortunes, and dreams have told me that they have this “wonderful peace about it” just moments later. What they have is shock! Shock is the natural reaction to protect ourselves, to deny the reality and depth of our pain. The stages of grief begin with denial, and this conjured peace is a form of that denial. The person who professes to have instant peace will have a troubled future, full of pain greater than the original loss and disappointment.
Even worse, this toxic faith is inflicted on others who try to deal realistically with the heart’s condition. Individuals who express their anger and disappointment are often challenged to be stronger, trust more, and find peace.
The true believer will find peace, but it will be on the other side of resolving the rage that comes with almost every lost expectation. I have heard “spiritual giants” tell people in pain to have more joy. But they cannot even spell joy while trying to grasp the pain of divorce or the void of a lost child. People need time to resolve emotions. Instant peace only delays and prolongs the time it takes to adjust and move on to a new life.
Scripture tells us to be thankful in everything. True faith will lead a person to gratitude even in adversity, but it is not instant. Alcoholics who go through years of misery finally reach a point of gratitude if their recovery is real. They relate that if alcoholism had not developed, they would not have recovered, and they would have possibly missed the most meaningful dimensions of life. This gratitude comes after alcoholics completely accept all aspects of their condition and how it will alter their future. Acceptance precedes gratitude. Scripture does not demand that we be grateful immediately. It takes time, lots of time. Those who experience “instant peace” are not showing instant gratitude to God; they are denying how God made them as physical, spiritual, and emotional beings.
Having said all that, I must add that there are some supernatural exceptions. There are times that God intervenes in a miraculous way to provide peace to persons in the midst of extreme pain and adverse circumstances. For example, one mother had done everything to help her child and had to leave the rest to God. Her son’s kidneys had failed, and physicians told her that he would die. She described an experience that was not denial, but an instant awareness that her son would not die. God had decided to intervene at that moment. She said she felt a calm overwhelm her. She remained silent, in awe of the experience. She knew he would be healed. She prayed that God’s will would be done. Even though she believed he would be healed, she told God that she would accept the outcome whatever it might be. That night her son was miraculously healed. Her peace came from a supernatural intervention by God.
After I wrote the previous paragraph, I went to a dinner for authors—usually a boring time of hearing all about potential bestsellers. That night, however, was different. I met Becky Smith Greer, an author from South Carolina who had just completed her first book. It is the story of the sudden loss of both her husband and her twelve-year-old son in a plane crash. With this toxic-faith concept on my mind, I asked if she had an immediate peace about those deaths. She responded with both insight and conviction. She said there was no peace. Instead, she struggled with tremendous anger that took three years to resolve. But eventually the resolution did come, and her faith in God was restored. She simply needed more time than an instant to heal her relationship with God.
Tragedies bring various responses. God does not seem to deal with them, or the people affected by them, in a predictable manner. For some, a divine gift of peace prevents a total collapse. For others, such peace does not surface for months or even years. Whatever the reaction, those who experience peace early are no better or worse, no stronger or weaker. The experience of one should not be assumed for the unique circumstances of another. Lack of peace does not mean lack of faith. People in pain do not need sermons on peace. They need love and care and assistance through the healing process. Remember, faith in God will produce a peace that goes beyond all understanding. It probably won’t be an instant peace, but it will be a real peace.
Toxic Belief #3: If I have real faith, God will heal me or someone I am praying for.
My brother died from AIDS. (He and I wrote the story of his struggles in How Will I Tell My Mother?) He died because God chose not to intervene in the natural course of events to cure the disease. Before he died, however, we had tremendous hope that this type of intervention would happen. Many churches, my parents, my brother, and I prayed for him to be healed. We were not asking for a spectacular event; utilization of modern medicine would have been fine with us. But it didn’t happen. Jerry died, but not because of a lack of faith; there was plenty of that.
Jerry spent his last days on his knees, praying and reading Scripture. He would meditate on a memorized scripture and pray fervently. His faith had become rich and deep, and he had grown close to the God he was prepared to meet face to face.
My father has always had a strong faith. It grew stronger through Jerry’s ordeal. Dad wanted Jerry to have hope, and he wanted hope for himself. On numerous occasions he asked me to believe with him that Jerry would be healed and survive.
Jerry didn’t wait at home for the healing to come. He went looking for it. He attended many healing services in several states. Each time he went he had a strong faith that on that night God would intervene in his life and change the probable outcome. But nothing changed. Each time Jerry left a healing service, he felt worse about himself and his faith. He started to believe that if only he had more faith, he could direct the hand of God. His guilt continued to grow each day because he couldn’t move God’s hand through faith.
Thousands of mothers of babies with disabilities or serious illnesses pray with saintly faith for those babies to be supernaturally remade and infused with health. Each day that drags by with no change can bring on great guilt and even anger. Faith can become poisoned from the belief that “if only I were better, if only I were stronger, if only I had more faith, my baby would be healed.” I empathize with those mothers. Some of them feel like second-class citizens in God’s kingdom, and they often believe they are being punished for being bad and the baby is paying the price.
God doesn’t work that way. That he chooses to allow a child to remain sick is his sovereign will. Faith will help us adapt to his will, understand it better, and grow from and through it. But God is God. He heals whom he chooses. We may not like that one bit. We want to be God or like God, able to change events to meet our pleasure. When we find this to be impossible, our guilt and anger come between us and God.
Just because God didn’t heal my faithful brother doesn’t mean that he won’t heal other faithful believers. It also doesn’t mean he refuses to heal unbelievers. It is quite the opposite. While preparing to write this book, I was discussing with a dear friend about how God chooses to heal some and not others. He relayed a story about his secretary that illustrates God’s supernatural intervention.
His secretary had not been a believer, but she had always paid close attention whenever someone mentioned God and faith. One day as she flipped through the TV channels she stopped to see Pat Robertson on The 700 Club. He was praying for people to be healed of various ailments. This nonbelieving skeptic was startled to hear him say that he believed someone with a deformed bone structure in the hand would be miraculously healed. The surprise came because her hand was deformed, a bone protruding in an unsightly way. At the instant she looked at her deformed hand, a sensation overcame her, a peaceful calm she had never felt. She looked up to see something bright, like a large beam. A finger of light burst from the ceiling and ended at her hand. In an instant, the bone deformity vanished; her hand was completely and instantly healed. God’s intervention profoundly changed her. She became a believer and has grown in her faith ever since.
Now, her faith was not the reason for the supernatural event. She didn’t have any faith at that moment, yet God decided to deal with her and show his love to her. This should provide some relief for those who have tried to earn God’s attention and provide hope for those who think that the reason God does not heal them or their children is that they lack faith. This secretary is not the only nonbeliever God has changed. Consider Saul (who became the apostle Paul), smitten on the road to Damascus. One’s degree of faith does not bind the divine will of God. He knows the needs of every person and has a mysterious plan to meet those needs.
Second, we must remember that God does not deal with everyone in the same way. You may have the most incredible, powerful, mature faith in the world, but if God has a different plan, you will not be healed. You can’t “faith it” into a divine intervention if God knows it might lead you away from him rather than toward him.
Last, one aspect of the secretary’s story is more mysterious even than her healing. You see, the show she was watching was not live; it was a rebroadcast of an old show. This reminds us that a powerful God can work any way he chooses. Just because he doesn’t choose to intervene in your problem in a miraculous way doesn’t mean he hates you. Lack of healing does not indicate lack of faith. It simply indicates that the all-powerful God cannot be controlled or predicted. If he could be commanded at our beck and call, he would cease to be God. But he is God and does what he chooses. As frustrating as it may be, we can’t control him with our prayers.
Toxic Belief #4: All ministers are men and women of God and can be trusted.
One evening I was discussing the elements of toxic faith with a group of people. I asked if anyone had ever been negatively impacted by a minister in a way that affected his or her life. A woman in the group told how, while in high school, she won the honor of attending Girls State. (Girls State is an educational program that sends kids to the state capital for a week-long lesson in state government.) She was thrilled with the opportunity and excited to receive the honor. Then her pastor heard of her plans.
This pastor was a very controlling, manipulative individual. He told her that if she went to Girls State, it would be the beginning of many problems. He claimed that Satan would use the experience to damage her faith. He demanded that her parents not allow her to go.
As a former Boys Stater, I can tell you that nothing happens there to hurt a person’s faith. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I learned more about being a responsible citizen in that week than in years of civics and political-science classes.
This pastor was terribly misinformed. His influence led to the parents’ decision not to let her go. It hurt her deeply, and she never forgot it. Her chance to shine was stolen from her.
Compared to other scandals, this incident seems insignificant. But more people have been the victims of mistrust in small ways than have been hurt by major media figures. Ministers, whether in a church speaking to fifty or on television reaching out to millions, are real people with real problems. They are not superhuman, and they are not immune to all the temptations the rest of us feel. Even those ministers who remain faithful must be seen as imperfect and flawed. No matter how full of integrity, they cannot be the ultimate authority on every area of life.
Authority figures can provide tremendous relief to persons needing counsel and advice. A single person living alone may feel secure in trusting a pastor. Looking to that person for authority is okay as long as there remains a high degree of discernment about what that person demands or how he or she directs.
While living in Texas, I developed a close relationship with a pastor. Some of my problems demanded strong counsel and guidance. I met with this man for several weeks and grew to respect his judgment and counsel. As the relationship progressed, he learned that I was paid a base salary along with quarterly bonuses. I believed he was a man of integrity and was unafraid to share anything with him.
Two sessions after I told him I had been paid the bonus, he asked me for a sizable loan. Blindly believing in him and thinking his purposes were noble, I lent him the money at no interest. Eventually, I discovered he had no intention of repaying the loan. With extreme difficulty I got the money back. I felt victimized and my faith was shaken. Fortunately, I realized I had placed more faith in him than in God.
When a defective pastor crops up, those who have placed ultimate faith in him or her (rather than in God) come to believe that God is defective. They attribute all the evil of that one individual to all people of faith. While this toxic leap is irrational, it is the reason many people turn away from God. But just because a particular individual lacks pure faith doesn’t mean that the object of faith also is impure.
God needs ministers who face life’s problems and grow from them. He will not remove temptation from them so that more people see their perfect behavior and place their faith in them. Each time ego, greed, power, or lust turns a minister away from the faith, it should strengthen our faith in God by taking our eyes off of people. I am always saddened to hear individuals say they have turned away from God due to a disappointing experience with one person. Those pastors who molest or cheat are always the exception and show us how vulnerable we all are and how much we need to grow in faith. For every one who falters in the faith, there are thousands who remain faithful and true. We must not allow human failure to hamper the development of a godly faith and trust.
Toxic Belief #5: Material blessings are a sign of spiritual strength.
The toxic belief that material blessings are a sign of spiritual strength is a reflection of our materialistic society that measures people by the amount of money they make. Those who have much want to believe it is a direct result of God’s blessing for faithfulness. A physician stated that he believed his house and cars and booming practice were the results of God’s rewarding him for his godliness. This wonderful Christian had been tainted by his own materialistic existence. Those who get puffed up over all they own should reevaluate the lives of the truly faithful who live in poverty and inconvenience so they can serve others. Wealth is not an automatic reward for faithfulness.
Before Sandy and I were married, we took a missionary trip to India. There we met the most Christlike person either of us has known. He was a physician practicing out of the Baptist Hospital in Bangalore, India. When he saw the need for emotional care of so many mentally ill people, he went back to school after his children had been raised, and he obtained a degree in psychiatry. He then started a counseling center next to a Methodist church, where he would see people for free if they had no money.
While psychiatrists around the world drove expensive sports cars or were chauffeured in stretch limousines, he drove a car that had to be pushed to start. Only the horn worked consistently. On Sundays he would go to a small church in the slums just outside of town and hold a service for faithful believers. We went with him to participate in the service.
The church met in a small lean- to shack made of scrap boards and raw lumber. As the hot sun beat down on the roof, it became a sultry oven. The open sewers outside pumped billows of odors on waves of humidity through the church walls. The faithful walked, limped, and dragged themselves to that mat-covered room to worship.
No one made more than one hundred dollars a month; most made nothing. It was poverty at its most extreme. The people listened to the sermon, sang, prayed, and had Communion. Then they did an astonishing thing. They gave their money. Having almost nothing, they gave very little, but an extraordinarily high percentage of their earnings went to God. Although they were barely able to feed their families, their donations revealed their great spiritual strength.
If God always blessed people materially for their faithfulness, that slum area would have miraculously turned into a row of mansions, or at least a subdivision of comfortable tract houses. But it did not, because faith does not work that way.
Our doctor friend did whatever he could to serve people in need. While others sit through retirement, he and his wife became a wonderful ministry team. His wisdom and insight exceed that of anyone I know. Yet he lived in a small house that lacked hot running water. Material blessings have not come his way—but I have a hard time thinking of what he could do to have more faith. Many have more money, but few are closer to God.
If you believe that the more faithful you are, the more wealth you will gain, you can look forward to great disappointment. In my experience, greater faith has often brought an end to financial wealth. For some reason, God often tempers a faithful follower in the fires of loss and financial poverty. These tested saints seem to prove that when all you have left is God, you get as much of God as you possibly can. The comforts of wealth often rob people of dependency on God. Although wealth is not bad and can be a great blessing, it is no sure indicator of spiritual strength.
Toxic Belief #6: The more money I give to God, the more money he will give to me.
It just isn’t true that the more money you give God, the more money he will give to you. Yet you hear this all the time from fund-raisers who try to manipulate you for their gain and the establishment of their empires. If you give your money to churches and other ministries so you can get more money back, save your money; you are wasting it. God is not a financial investment opportunity. He isn’t “a good bet” on which to place your money. What kind of faith would it be that guaranteed a return on money invested? That would not be faith; that would be a bank account.
Giving a portion of what you make is an act of faith going back to the days when the Jews sacrificed the very best lamb and gave one-tenth of their earnings to the temple. This form of giving has always been an act of worship and an act of faith. The ancient Hebrews sacrificed to God because they wanted to show him their love and dedication. It was not a scheme for wealth accumulation.
Today the element of sacrifice is absent. Too few understand time-honored principles of giving. Rather than sacrifice, they essentially give God a little tip (but far less than they would an efficient waiter). The key in giving is motive. Do you give to honor God, or do you give to get?
An interesting phenomenon occurs when people give with godly motives. I have heard many people say that the money they have left over after giving to God seems to go further than when they kept all of the money for themselves. They did not become wealthy, but they were much more satisfied with what they had. The worry factor greatly decreased. Once they gave the first portion of what they earned to God, they were better able to relax about how the rest would be spent. Putting their money where their faith was allowed them to believe more deeply in a God who would provide for all of their needs.
I never had strong faith in God until I trusted him with my money. Once my faith grew strong enough to let go of the money, I could grow spiritually as never before. I believe this to be a common experience with those who finally learn to write out the first check to the church. Giving to God first is a real test of motives. It is an act of faith that strengthens commitment at every other level.
Giving is often the first step in moving out of merely believing into taking action. When people do not commit their money in this way but use it as a ransom for future blessings, they might as well toss their coins in a wishing well. Giving money to get more money always ends up with getting less of God. If the motivation is for money, faithless givers have chosen a master: money. No one has ever been able to serve two masters at once. Money will master the heart and rob the greedy of any relationship with God.
Toxic Belief #7: I can work my way to heaven.
Just as some think they can get God’s love by being good and others think they can overcome some bad past event by working hard, there are those who believe heaven can be earned. They spend their lives in a working frenzy, trying to do more and more so God will look down, observe their fine works, and decide they will be fit to enter heaven. It seems that most people working so hard have never resolved some tremendously debilitating issues from the past. If they could deal with those issues, perhaps they wouldn’t need to punish themselves through all of the work they hope will be the key to eternal life.
A man in a small town had kept a secret from his wife that very few people knew. But those who did know the secret never told the man’s wife; they were all willing participants in his personal cover-up. The man had been married before for a short while, then got a divorce. When he met the woman he wanted to be his second wife, he discovered she would never marry a previously married man. He loved her, so he decided not to tell her about the first marriage. After a month of dating it seemed less appropriate to tell her than it did in the first week. Months of courtship made his love grow deeper and the truth more difficult to reveal. He just never got around to telling her. Ten years into the marriage, there was no way he was going to blow the whistle on himself.
His dilemma created one of the most driven businessmen and church workers I have known. He would do anything to help someone. It went well beyond servanthood; it was an illness. His marriage could not have been worse from revealing the secret than it was from his religiosity and perfectionism. He died at forty-five. I think he discovered then that most of his work had been in vain. If only he could have revealed the secret, it would have saved him and his family a lot of misery.
Many others live like this due to some event in the past, some terrible secret they fear would spark rejection if revealed to others. In this cover-up mode, where the inside is dirty, they try to clean up the outside so it looks spotless. They look perfect, incapable of any wrong. They succeed in fooling most people because it is hard to see through the mask of perfectionism to the pain and other problems inside. Their drive to be and look good deceives many as they try to earn enough points to be accepted into heaven.
I’m glad I don’t have to function under a system like this. I have messed up so many times, I know there is no way I could ever be good enough to make it to heaven. I know I could never make up for my messes by church work, service attendance, or bribes to God. I have to trust that he has forgiven me for my sins, just as he said he would. I must believe in Christ and what he did to wipe out the consequences of my sin.
You can’t win by believing that good behavior gains a ticket into heaven, yet this is a much-taught theology. I was having dinner with one of my friends and his family. He and his two girls were discussing heaven. One asked him what a person needed to do to get to heaven. He told his kids that if you were a good person, you would make it. He said that God honors good work and lets those who measure up be with him forever.
I thought of how sad that must be for a young girl to hear. Every time she messes up, gets punished, or just can’t seem to live up to family standards, she will believe she’s not good enough for heaven. It must be very depressing for a child to believe the one thing that you have to do to get to heaven is the one thing you cannot do.
Heaven is a gift. It cannot be earned. Those who are trying to work their way to heaven possess a toxic faith that will drive them into a futile frenzy of activity, exhaustion, and depression. Those who live around these people will also find it very difficult to live comfortably as the driven workers impose their standards on the rest of the family. What a relief it must be to discover that you cannot earn a place in heaven!
Toxic Belief #8: Problems in my life result from some particular sin.
A parent hoping and praying for a healthy child but ending up with a defective one is in pain beyond comprehension. My wife and I have some friends who have been through this devastation with two girls. Both were born with severe birth defects. One will never outgrow the defect; the other has a good chance of developing normally. The parents’ great pain increased through the remarks of some Christian friends who told them that there must be some hidden sin in their lives for which God was disciplining them. Their grief was only compounded by the insensitive remarks.
It amazes me how many people believe God is too busy to help them and yet in bad times has plenty of time for destruction. He is not there to support, but he still may hurt. What a sad way to live!
All problems are not results of sin; many are simply results of reality. Life on this earth is imperfect. No matter how hard we try to change that, it will not change. Believers or not, we are going to suffer tragedy and failure as long as we live in this difficult world.
God has given us the freedom to make choices. Some choices will be better than others. The worst ones will cause us discomfort and pain, but the pain will not always be the result of God’s punishment for sin. When people play with fire, often they feel the heat, and some get burned. The pain is from the fire, not the punishment of God. Sin is like that. Pain is often a result of sin, but not necessarily a punishment for it.
In the Bible is a story of Jesus and a blind man. The disciples asked him who had sinned to cause the man’s blindness. Was it the father or the mother or the man? Jesus replied that none of them had sinned. He told them to forget about the sins-of-the-fathers idea because it did not apply. This toxic belief was poisoning faith thousands of years ago. Christ told them that the man’s blindness was not a result of some particular sin (see John 9:1-7).
Problems can result from poor decisions, negative circumstances, and the fact that we live in an imperfect world. God does not choose to remove the imperfections, and until he does, we must deal with those problems. To inflict further difficulty on ourselves by believing that sin lurks behind every problem serves only to drive us further from true faith in God. Rather than focus on a fictional past sin, it is better to focus on how God can use the problem to build our faith and the faith of others.
We cannot rule out that some problems directly result from certain sins: intravenous drug users can get AIDS; theft can land you in jail; arrogance and greed can lead to the pain of loneliness. God does not “zap” us each time we choose to sin, but if we partake in sinful behavior, we may in effect be zapping ourselves.
Toxic Belief #9: I must not stop meeting others’ needs.
An old joke, though not a very funny one, is full of insight. It seems a mother worked all of her life meeting every need of every family member. After her children were raised and out of the house, she was ready for a wonderful life. She had lived for everyone else, and just when she was ready to take time for herself, she died. On her tombstone they wrote, “Now maybe I can get some rest!”
A lot of great moms out there have worked themselves to death meeting everyone else’s needs, taking no time for themselves. They see themselves more as slaves to God and family than as free persons equal to others. For them, life is one miserable sacrifice after another. I am sure God will honor such dedication, but I think he would be a lot happier if they would take some time for themselves. After all, he created them and loves them just as much as the people they so incessantly serve.
Women today live under a lot of pressure. Their children leave home later, marrying in their late twenties. Their parents live longer and often need intensive care. Just when a mother finally scoots her children out the door, she often stands there welcoming her mother or father or in-laws into the home. She spends the next ten years playing mother to elderly people, and before it is all done, she has spent 90 percent of her adult life as a caregiver. This role frequently produces anger, depression, and resentment of God and family. A late nervous breakdown is a common outcome.
It does not have to be this way, and thousands are starting to find out that there are alternatives to modern slavery. The codependency movement helped to open the eyes of many who thought they were helping out of love when they were actually helping because they knew of no other way to exist. They became so wrapped up in everyone else that they lost sight of who they were and what they wanted to accomplish. One woman described it this way: She was so codependent, so caught up in others’ lives and meeting their needs, that if she had a near-death experience, someone else’s life would probably flash before her eyes!
It is healthy to recognize that we all have some basic needs that must be met. Yet not every nice, loving, or serving deed is a codependent act. There must be a balance. Life is wonderful when it is spent serving others. Most religions stress putting others first. The Christian faith is one of self-sacrifice—but carried to an extreme, it can become a compulsive act rather than an act of compassion.
What good does it do to meet needs of others if that produces so much anger in you that you cannot relate to them in a loving manner? Why should a person work hard for others if the result is exhaustion and depression, disabling the person and causing a break with reality? Each helping heart must assess its own needs and determine if some have been neglected. God does not love only the rest of the world and expect you to serve those he loves. He loves you, too, and he knows you have needs. He wants those needs met.
An analogy helps explain the concept. You cannot feed the poor if you do not eat. Sacrificing your need to eat will kill you, and then you won’t be around to feed anyone else. The same applies to the emotional and spiritual dimensions of life. When they are not met, those areas shut down. The longer they go unmet, the greater the problems that arise.
Christ came to serve people, and yet he took time to maintain his health. Balance reigned in his life. Christ took time to eat. He took time to rest. He took time to pray. He could not go on until his own needs were met. He spent time alone, getting away from the crowds.
Likewise, Christ calls those who choose to follow him to serve others as he did. I think he desires a place of rest and a time to regain perspective for all of us. If you do not have that time because you are driven to meet the needs of others, take a second look at where you are. If you are angry, exhausted, and depressed, take the time to back away and find the rest that God wants for you.
Toxic Belief #10: I must always submit to authority.
I grew up in Texas, where I witnessed some strange marriages and beliefs about marriage. The issue of submission always provided controversy. Some people believed the ultimate act of faith was to submit to an abusive authority. My parents helped one woman who lived with an alcoholic husband. He would get drunk and beat her, then she would hide in her home for a couple of weeks so no one would see the bruises. He was a very angry man, and alcohol brought out the worst in him. The abuse grew more intense until finally he broke her jaw. Yet she stayed with the man.
My father became involved in the situation and helped the woman talk about the abuse and why she continued to live with it. She revealed that a pastor had told her she must stay even if it meant she would be killed. He told her that she could have no greater act of faith than to die while submitting to her husband. He promised her that God would honor her decision to be loyal and faithful to authority.
In working with people in need of psychiatric care, I have seen some very depressed mothers who let their children be abused because they didn’t think they could oppose the head of the house. Their children were badly hurt before they realized God didn’t want such abuse. When they understood they could have done something to stop the abuse, many sank into deep depression. Their desire to submit poisoned both themselves and their families. Their faith withered because they questioned how God could allow such things to happen.
The submission issue is not for abused wives alone. It applies also to employees of unethical managers. Certain things are wrong, and God wants you to move out of those circumstances or make the dirty secrets known. The God I know would not want an accountant to write out a bribery check as an act of submission to a boss involved in wrongdoing.
I was aware of a misguided leader of an organization in Texas. This man was pursuing all sorts of illicit activities, one of which was an affair. A secretary was the only one willing to see the leader’s flaws. When she risked her comfortable position to challenge the authority of the organization and her boss, no one believed her. In fact, many coworkers did not consider an affair a problem that should concern a mere secretary. They said a secretary should not question her boss’s personal life and a boss should not question his secretary’s personal life. But it was a Christian organization. The affair affected the man’s job performance and harmed his integrity in a job where integrity matters. As a result of his actions, the integrity of the organization was in jeopardy. So the secretary did what most would not do. She placed the principle of integrity above the principle of submission. Although she lost her job, I believe she did the right thing. And eventually she was vindicated when it was discovered this leader had a part in other wrongful activities.
When authority is well placed, it respects the individuals over whom it has authority. When it is not well placed, it is our responsibility to expose the abuse and be part of the solution. Christ challenged the religious authorities who turned away from God and toward rules developed by men. Christ stood up to those people and told them they were wrong. He tried to produce change by what he said and by how he lived. If we are to follow his example, we must intervene when abuse is part of submission. We must have the courage to follow Christ’s example and overturn the system, be it a marriage or an organization, if that system is wrong. Silent submission in the face of violence, dishonesty, and abuse will only allow that abuse to be passed to new generations. The abuse must end—even if it means risking financial security. Faith in God allows us to move into uncomfortable zones for the sake of honoring him and proving the reality of our faith.
Submission to authority both protects and liberates. When we submit to God, when we act according to his guidelines, we are freed, not bound. When children submit to their parents, they are protected. The experience of a husband and a wife submitting to each other is liberating, not confining. The relationship is strengthened and better defined as each person finds the areas that need and demand submission. Submission is part of God’s plan, and it is biblical. Submitting to a husband, to a boss, or to a parent mirrors our relationship with God and helps us grow closer to him. Rebelling, confronting, and not submitting are appropriate only in exceptional cases. When God’s work is compromised or when a person’s life or limb is at stake, submission must give way to responsible confrontation.
Toxic Faith #11: God uses only spiritual giants.
This generation has seen the fall of many so-called spiritual giants. The myth has been shattered that if you are in the ministry, you are always a wonderful and dedicated human being.
Yet some individuals still do not believe we are all on equal footing. They believe God has called some into service—the ministers—and the rest must assume second-class status. Rather than minister to others’ needs, many prefer to pass that duty on to those who have a special calling to do so. They also feel that because they are such terrible sinners, God could not use them anyway. Many fail to receive the blessings that come from ministering because they mistakenly believe that God uses only the perfect, the near perfect, or those he called into a special ministry.
A preacher in the twenty-first century can talk to millions of people via one broadcast on television. Because one person’s reach can be so vast, others start to think of their own contribution as meaningless. They become lazy in their service and become unmotivated to find a way to further the kingdom of God. They neglect the gifts God has given them because they do not seem as “great” as those of others. They view themselves as inferior.
In my life (as well as in Scripture), I have seen nothing but the opposite to be true. God often uses those with major flaws or those who have been through a great deal of pain to accomplish many vital tasks for his kingdom. Look at Moses the stutterer, Paul with his thorn in the flesh, and David the adulterer. It seems that God uses the “spiritual giants” despite their flaws.
No one is too messed up for God to use, and no task is too unimportant to matter to God. On the sidelines and in the lower levels of ministry organizations, hundreds of faithful, invisible believers do the valuable, powerful work of prayer, the foundation for greatness in organizations as well as in people. When people pray, miracles occur, people change, countries develop new political systems, and God unleashes his power.
Everyone has some gift granted by God that can be exercised in a mighty way. Through stories about individuals who developed their talents and others who neglected theirs, Jesus expressed the need to cultivate our talents. When we do so, we will accomplish greater things than we ever imagined. When we do not develop our gifts, chances are we will never be satisfied or fulfilled.
Some could never speak in front of more than fifty people, but they have felt comfortable for years teaching a Sunday-school class of five. Year after year they teach, not knowing the long-term impact they have. Although they may belittle their contribution, God is using them to lay a foundation for years of future service.
My third grade public school teacher was a great woman of faith. She wanted her kids to know the Bible when they left her nine months later. Each day after we returned from lunch, my teacher read from a huge book of Bible stories. The stories started with Adam and Eve, and before the year was over, we had parted the Red Sea, gone with Moses through the wilderness, and moved into the Promised Land. Those stories increased my faith greatly. I believed them. And I believed that if God could watch over the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness, he could watch over me. I learned a lot from those stories. They taught me of God’s power and his forgiveness. When I messed up later in life, I remembered how his chosen people messed up, and he always found a way back for them.
There have always been people who have impacted the world in small but powerful ways. They take what God gives them and use it as effectively as they can. They don’t stop to compare their gifts with those of others; they just trust God to use them.
We must not allow sins of the past or limited gifts to stand in the way of working for God and being used by God. A simple prayer, asking God to take what we have and use it as he sees fit, can open up a whole world of opportunity. God is big enough to take the simplest contribution and make it as significant as anything the greatest of the “giants” could do. He wants us to trust him to do wonderful things with our skills. Out of a pure faith we must first act; then we will be amazed at just how much God can do with so little.
Toxic Belief #12: Having true faith means waiting for God to help me and doing nothing until he does.
The toxic belief of passivity lays the foundation for laziness and disaster. I have seen many people hurt as they waited around for God to do something that God expected them to do.
Let me repeat, just so you don’t miss one of the biggest problems facing dedicated believers. Sometimes we wait for God to do what God is waiting for us to do. Wives of alcoholics allow drinking to continue when intervention would reverse the course of the problem. Church leaders allow a minister to crash and burn under the influence of sex, silver, or self-obsession. They pray God will change him when they need to exercise the tough side of love and confront the person with his character defects. Parents allow a child to grow up spoiled and immature because they pray God will protect him rather than force the child to take responsibility for himself.
Too often in the name of waiting on God, people fail to take responsibility or action. They wait for God to perform a miracle while God waits for them to act. Remember, they call them miracles because they rarely happen. It is often easier to wait on a miracle than to do the difficult thing and take action. Tomorrow the pain will still be there, or the person will still be involved with the destructive behavior—unless we take action today.
God wants an active faith. As that faith develops, our relationship with God is stretched during uncomfortable times when we must act beyond our comfort zones. These painful times make us more reliant on God. We seek his comfort as we strive to accomplish those things that would be easier to delay. The risk we take in accomplishing each one brings us closer to God and builds our faith.
I met a couple who loved their son very much, even though he had disgraced them repeatedly with his drinking and drug use. There seemed to be no end to the agony they went through for him. Instead of making him face his responsibilities, they paid his way and made life “safe” for him. They prayed that God would heal him of his affliction. They felt it was their job to support him while God worked on the addiction. One night in a drunken stupor, their son walked off a balcony and was killed. Those parents had to live with the guilt of knowing they never did anything to help. They only enabled his negative behavior as they waited for God to perform a miracle. Out of a toxic faith in God, they loved their son to death.
I am aware of a wife who let her husband’s unfaithfulness go unchecked. She knew he was running around, but she fervently prayed that God would change him. When she developed genital warts, she wondered how it could have happened. When she came down with herpes, she knew the cause. Her husband left her with a gift that cannot be cured. Had she taken action, she could have spared herself a lifetime disease and perhaps saved her marriage.
The Bible makes many references, especially in Psalms, to waiting on the Lord. Some people have misinterpreted waiting on the Lord as a call to roll over and play dead. Waiting on the Lord does not mean turning off the brain. Waiting on the Lord is waiting on God’s timing and power. We are to do everything we can in faith, then leave what we cannot do to God. If we are unemployed, we should not use waiting on the Lord as an excuse to sit and idly wait for a job to appear magically. God wants us to look for a job and go through interviews, all the while remembering that God is still God and we must wait on him.
Waiting on God for help does not mean we are to neglect the mind he gave us or the will we have to accomplish things. We must take action and do those things within our power and trust God to do those things not in our power. The balance of this approach will accomplish much without producing a driven need to do it all alone. God gave us all many strengths. He expects us to use those strengths while we depend on his strength to assist us.
Toxic Belief #13: If it’s not in the Bible, it isn’t relevant.
The battle between religion and psychology has gone on for years. Many people have nothing to do with anything relating to emotions unless it is in Scripture. Their train of thought goes like this: If there is no scripture to back the idea, it must be harmful.
This belief is close to the truth but not quite on the mark. True faith means that a person should do nothing that opposes God’s Word. It doesn’t mean that every behavior or insight into life is going to be found in Scripture.
The Bible is not a manual for brain surgery. It does not tell us to avoid smoking crack cocaine. There is no scripture on what music is bad or good. How to operate a computer has been left out. We must figure out some things for ourselves; when we do, we should base our figuring on the foundations of Scripture. If that is a priority, what we think and feel about things will continue to line up with biblical truth. If we don’t start with that foundation, we are victims of the crowd and the mood of current thought. When we have no foundation, we get into trouble and poison our faith with half-truths. But just because something is not in Scripture doesn’t mean it is evil or a half-truth.
One woman who came into New Life Treatment Centers had been dealing with depression for years. She came to us from a psychiatrist who diagnosed her problem as a manic-depressive condition needing medication. Without medication, she would never be able to maintain a stable life, keep a job, or relate to her family. She was fine with her medication, and her life improved dramatically. For the first time in years she was happy and able to accomplish things without breaking down.
Then she made the mistake of attending a church that frowned on anything other than the Bible to help a person cope with life. When the members discovered she was on medication, they confronted her with her “lack of faith.” They told her she was a new creature; old things were behind her and everything was new. That included her problem with depression. She was instructed to stop taking the medication and have faith that God would meet her needs and help her stay in control.
Our patient blindly trusted the minister and stopped the medication. For a couple of weeks it was difficult, but she managed to ride a religious high until her body could no longer respond. Then in a fit of depression she slit her wrists, called the people in the church office to tell them, and hung up. They called an ambulance as the men on staff rushed over to help. When they arrived ahead of the ambulance, they found her lying unconscious in a pool of blood. They tried to stop the bleeding as they waited for the paramedics. Fortunately, they made it in time to save the woman.
This event had a dynamic impact on the staff of that church. It changed the way they thought about medication and the need for some people to get help beyond what the church can provide. The church had a counseling ministry that, before this incident, instructed people to fast, pray, and read Scripture to handle any problem. The woman now goes to the same church, but there is no longer any problem with her need to take medication. The members realize that medication does not stand in the way of people’s obtaining help or growing closer to God. It is the one thing that allows many to continue to develop a relationship with God. Medication is a gift from God to help some individuals function in the real world. Of course it can be abused, but that does not mean it is evil when used as prescribed.
Why do some ministers believe that truth is found only in Scripture? Why do they resist assistance from counselors outside the church? Why do they reject the idea that many faithful believers who have degrees in mental health are following God’s calling for their lives? I think many ministers are threatened by anything outside their field. They want to play physician, counselor, and parent to the flock. They want nothing to challenge their authority. They often will lead people down a path of misery rather than suggest that individuals get help from a specialist.
At one time few counselors could be trusted to build rather than destroy faith. Now there are thousands who integrate counseling and faith. Ministers need to feel comfortable in suggesting help beyond what the church can provide. If a minister ever needed brain surgery, I doubt he or she would swear off doctors. At that point, I think he or she would seek out someone who knew more about brain surgery than was revealed in Scripture.
The balance between real and toxic faith lies at the root of one’s beliefs. Is your faith based on godly truth, or is it based on a make-it-up-as-you-go philosophy? Those who make it up lead very insecure lives. Those who base life on God’s truth and place their faith in him develop a security found no other place. But to believe that every fact required for survival is contained in Scripture is naive or the result of manipulation. Once a toxic believer wakes up to this reality, he or she finds a new world that does not need to be feared.
Toxic Belief #14: God will find me a perfect mate.
Lisa was raised in a conservative Christian home in a small town in Texas. She came to Baylor University as a naive and beautiful young woman. The boys lined up to ask her out. (I’m afraid I wasn’t eligible for the line. She was too pretty and too good.) Lisa loved to date and to get attention. She stayed true to her belief of waiting until marriage to have a sexual relationship; she was determined to marry as a virgin.
Lisa’s senior year was a good one. She dated a senior from a respected fraternity, they became very serious, and following the traditional meeting of the parents, they decided to marry after graduation.
Lisa had been taught that through prayer and faith, God would provide her with the perfect mate. Her system said that someone out there was perfect for her in every way and God would deliver him to her. Her senior-year romance lived up to what she had been looking for. She loved Jim and was excited to marry him.
They were married, and shortly afterward Lisa began having terrible headaches. The doctor discovered a tumor that required brain surgery. She needed the perfect mate God had provided. Jim stood by her through the ordeal and remained supportive in every way. Lisa recovered fully after a year of bed rest and chemotherapy. At the end of that year, when she was ready to resume her life, Jim left her and eventually married another woman.
The divorce devastated Lisa, especially coming off the surgery and chemotherapy. It pushed her into a deep depression. While Jim deserted her, she focused most of her anger on God. How could he have let her down? How could he have taken away the perfect mate she had longed for and saved herself for? It was an extremely difficult time for her, and her faith was shaken. A new reality about God crashed in on her. Eventually, she accepted her new awareness about God and life, but it was not easy.
The perfect-mate belief has caused tremendous heartache for many people. They search for the one person God is supposed to provide, and when they think they have found him or her, they expect marriage to be instant bliss. When nirvana does not arrive, the naive believers move from a faith in a God who provides perfect marriage partners to a belief in an impersonal God who does not care about them. Going from one extreme to the other, they lose faith in God, and they lose hope for a wonderful future.
Sandy and I endured a very rocky first sixth months of marriage. We were convinced we had married the wrong partners and that whomever God had really picked for each of us was lost forever. We would argue, turn around, and quietly shake our heads and murmur, “Well, I’ve married the wrong person.” Sandy sometimes slept in her clothes just in case she wanted to leave in the middle of the night. If we had not been totally committed to each other and to marriage, we would not have made it through the first year. The change came when we stopped focusing on the imperfections of God’s “perfect mate” and started working on our relationship. We went from faith in a one-time event that would fix our problems for life to a life of work that helped us grow toward each other and a solid faith in God.
The perfect-mate belief is a nice idea, but it has some major problems. I would hate to think that there was one perfect person for me and that I could never be happy with anyone else. What if that one was killed in a plane crash before we met? Would I be stuck with number two all my life? What if the perfect mate made a mistake and married someone else? Would I be forced to live with the next best because of another person’s mistake? If I marry God’s perfect mate and she dies, am I destined to be married to a number seven or fifteen?
I don’t like that system, and I haven’t found much evidence that it is the way God works. God has a will for each of us, and that will might involve any one of several people. There is a will for marriage, work, and every other area of life. But in addition to this direction from God, he gave us free will. We are not robots programmed to make the “right” choices. God’s way is bigger than that. He can work in our lives, no matter what foolish or wise decisions we make.
You could probably choose from several people and still build a happy marriage. Some choices would be better for you than others; some would be a disaster. God wants you to use your faith and your ability to reason to find a person who will be wonderful as a spouse. The more you use your mind, the more likely you are to discover aspects that could be problems later. Courtship is no time to overlook the obvious because of a belief that God has sent a person your way.
Toxic faith always has an element of quick fix and once-and-for-all thinking, and if you apply it to mate selection, one of the most important decisions in life can end in disaster. You need to make informed decisions and not rely on blind faith. Six sessions of premarital counseling go a long way in building a good start for a marriage. Opinions of friends and family can also help.
Once the marriage begins, nothing will take the place of realistic thinking and hard work. No matter how perfect the person seemed before marriage, flaws will continue to be revealed after the ceremony. If you aren’t expecting them, they can be horrifying. If you realize that all marriages require effort, you are more likely to get busy, go to work, and create a great marriage. Marriages are never made in heaven; they are developed on earth by two committed partners.
Toxic Belief #15: Everything that happens to me is good.
A preacher on the radio described the plight of a woman who married a man, lived with him ten years, and watched him die of cancer. A woman in her church insisted she be happy about it. “God has done a good thing. Everything he does is good.” Two years later the woman was married again, and after one year of marriage her husband died. Again the lady from church demanded she claim this as a great and good victory provided by God. The woman recovered from her loss, married for a third time, and shortly afterward discovered her third husband had cancer.
Some people in the church believe everything is an immediate blessing. To them, only a real Christian is able to say, “Praise the Lord!” as the house burns down, the car is totaled, a child is hurt, or the cow dies. I believe that if you told these people they were going to be fried in oil, they would grin and say, “Praise the Lord anyway!”
Is this real? Can a person in touch with reality be grateful in times of crises? Is it a real test of faith to be able to greet each new piece of bad news with a big grin and a trite expression? I don’t think so. I think it is evidence of unreal people manufacturing an unreal response. They try to rationalize that everything is good, even though it looks bad, feels bad, and is bad. They grow up believing that a positive attitude must be used to face every crisis. They deny how they really feel and delay dealing with the pain and agony they feel due to death or loss.
The woman who lost two husbands and was about to lose another was not grateful, nor did she believe the events were good. She was quite angry until she resolved her hurt over the losses. Years later she looked back and said that none of the problems were good but that God used each one for her good. He took the crisis and made it a faith-building experience.
The widow’s perspective is much more accurate than the lady who demanded each new loss be viewed as a good thing. They were not good; they were terrible losses. But God takes such losses and over time makes them into something good. God will work everything together for our good if we will allow him to do so. Bad things provide God a stage to produce something good.
I have worked with many alcoholics who go from acceptance of their problem to gratitude. They mourn the loss of being able to drink, and then finally they see their lives as more meaningful because of recovery. The admission of alcoholism is a starting point for maturing and concentrating on life’s deeper meaning. It is not instant and the problems caused from drinking were not good, but allowing God to work through the problems produced many good things.
People in pain have enough problems without some well-meaning folks trying to short-circuit the grief process by declaring that everything is a good event sent from God. I think God allows bad things; he does not cause them. The toxic thinking that all things are good makes people question whether God is cruel. It forces them to see God as a sadistic joker who inflicts pain and expects his followers to be happy about it. This perspective is a means of avoiding reality. It is an addictive habit, producing quick relief with poisonous faith, but blocking reality.
A loving God wants the best for us and is grieved when the best is missed. True faith in him allows these bad things to be woven together in a protective covering that grows stronger in fiber and softer to the touch.
Toxic Belief #16: A strong faith will protect me from problems and pain.
On the celebration of the one hundredth birthday of Rose Kennedy (mother of John, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy), NBC aired a tribute to the matriarch of the United States’ most famous family. I was surprised to hear of the depth of her faith.
A daughter died in a plane crash, a son died in World War II, and two sons—John and Bobby—were killed by assassins’ bullets. She had reason to be angry with God. Her faith had not protected her children. And yet she was not angry. She said that she often would think of how Mary felt as she watched her Son die by crucifixion. Rose expected no less or more for herself. She shared in the sufferings of others who had great faith.
For many, a belief in God and the practice of faith are just fine … until tragedy strikes. Then there comes the realization that the practice of faith does not accumulate brownie points of protection. It does not assure God’s intervention. Bad things do happen to good people, and it has nothing to do with degrees of faith. We live in a world where big animals eat little animals. Decay, rot, and death are realities. Faith provides perspective, endurance, and purpose through the tough times, but it will not excuse anyone from them.
This toxic belief is not conjured up only by unknowing believers. It is preached from many pulpits across the land. It is used manipulatively to bring people to Christ. Rather than seek Christ, listeners seek relief. Then when evidence of lack of protection confronts them in the form of a death or other loss, sufferers become nonbelievers. They were never true believers to begin with, however. True believers know that those who walked with Christ were beset by pain, poverty, tragedy, poor health, beatings, and other hardships that stretched their faith, but the hardships built their faith. The difficulties drew believers closer to God because their faith was real before the difficulties started.
Those who believe because they want protection have picked the wrong faith; in believing, we often invite problems that otherwise would not develop. Those who preach this variety of poisonous faith have ruined many lives; the individuals turned away when they learned the hard truth about life.
If you’re disillusioned because you were sold a bill of goods that didn’t pan out, you’re not alone. Many others share your pain. They, too, had to deal with tragedy and at the same time resolve many issues with their toxic beliefs. Their disappointments in God increased their pain, just as they may have multiplied yours. Let the Great Teacher use your pain to bring you closer to him. It does not have to be a barrier to God; it can be a bridge.
Toxic Belief #17: God hates sinners, is angry with me, and wants to punish me.
Many hurting individuals see God as an angry, vindictive old man ready to hurl lightning bolts at those who get out of step. In fact, some people do not accept a real God because they are afraid of him. They write him off as a myth because they are so afraid of what he might do if he were real.
And yet he is real, and he loves those he created.
Many people cannot conceive of a loving God because they were raised in a family where an angry father inflicted his wrath on every member. Because one’s concept of God is frequently shaped by the relationship with one’s father, having unresolved feelings about a father can poison a relationship with God. Individuals come to believe God is angry, just as their fathers were angry. They may even associate all love with anger. Until the father issues are resolved, the God issues remain to cloud faith.
Ever since God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, a rumor has been making the rounds that he is very angry with all of us here on earth. We envision a God not just angry with the world but angry with specific individuals, ready to send down his wrath. People live their whole lives in constant fear of a God out of control who might make them the next target. This view of God prevents a personal relationship with him and produces tremendous fear and anxiety.
The confusion arises over the just nature of God and the balance of his character. Does he get angry? Consider the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were living ungodly lives of self-obsession, lust, and pleasure. Their wayward lifestyle resulted in fire and brimstone from an angry God. God finally had to inflict the punishment that was deserved for such self-indulgence. He loved those people, but in the face of total disregard for him, he destroyed them. In God’s economy, sin must be paid for.
Fortunately, the coming of Christ was designed to change all of that. What animal sacrifices pictured before Christ’s coming, his atoning death was to accomplish forever. His life was offered in place of ours. His sacrifice enables us to flee the punishment that we earned. Christ paid the necessary price that wipes away our sin and wrongdoing so that we can enter into a relationship with a holy and perfect God.
Of course, sin may produce dire consequences, and these should not be mistaken for God’s anger. An unwed teenager who gets pregnant should not look at her circumstance as punishment from God; it is the natural result of a sinful action she chose to take part in. God has created an ordered world where a direct relationship between cause and effect exists. If we do A, then the result is likely to be B. It could be God’s punishment, but more likely it is the natural consequences of our negative choices. So many of the things we do bring undesirable results that, in essence, we punish ourselves. God might choose to punish us, but we are so busy punishing ourselves, he often does not have to.
When the AIDS epidemic hit the scene, many ministers said God was angry with homosexuals and was sending a plague to wipe them out. At a time when men and women of faith should have been reaching out to those who were dying, many were standing back and yelling, “I told you so!” The angry-God belief was used as an excuse to condemn, not acts of homosexuality, but the homosexuals themselves. Many dying from AIDS have sought to restore their relationship with God, but the anger of so many believers preaching the plague theory has caused them to search for God as far away from a church as possible.
The plague scenario doesn’t make sense, and I think many ministers have figured that out. If God were sending plagues to wipe people out, he would have wiped out millions of unfaithful spouses. Adultery is rampant, as are greed, lying, cheating, and thousands of other sins. The AIDS epidemic is not a plague from God to wipe out homosexuals, but it does present an opportunity for many believers to reach out to a group of people who have been alienated from God.
God does not wipe us all out because he loves us. He knew us before we were born, and he knew all the trouble we would get into. Even knowing all that, he paid the price for our sins because we could not do it ourselves. If he hated us and wanted to punish us, he could easily do so. Yet his loving nature and Christ are our assurances that he will guide us back to him if we are willing to follow. If we are unwilling, the consequences are of our own doing.
One of Christ’s greatest messages was that of forgiveness. When asked how often a person should forgive someone else, he said seventy times seven. His answer indicated the need to never stop forgiving (see Matthew 18:22-35). Confronted with an adulterous woman, Jesus didn’t want her stoned for her sinful acts. Instead, he took the occasion to challenge her accusers to look at themselves. Because they all realized they were equally guilty, they threw nothing at her. Christ didn’t take the opportunity to lecture the woman, make her feel bad, or try to convince her of the seriousness of her sin. His compassion for her was the convicting element. He encouraged her to go and sin no more, refusing to condemn her even after she invited his condemnation (see John 8:1-11).
When people talk of the wrath of God, I refer them to the story of the woman caught in adultery. The case made for a God who loves to punish wicked people is countered by this wonderful story of love. We should do no less. We should communicate love and compassion. That does not mean we have to compromise what we believe. Our standards don’t have to change. All that needs changing is our attitude toward people who are hurting and confused and in need of encouragement. We must hate, not the sinner, but the sin. We must never confuse the two.
God is very clear at confronting us with his love in sending us his Son, but he is just as clear in his opinion of sin. Because he wanted a relationship with those he loved so much, he provided a way to cover the payment necessary for sin. The cross makes it obvious that while God does not hate the sinner, he does hate the sin.
One day I was visiting some patients at New Life Treatment Centers who were discussing various childhood tragedies. Many felt that God had singled them out from birth and was angry and vengeful, bringing terrible abuses into their lives. One man had never moved beyond childhood to adulthood. He had been badly abused while young and was opening up for the first time. His view of God had been distorted by his sexually abusive father. Our program stresses forgiveness and the loving nature of God. He said to me, “Coming here and finding that God loves me is the greatest experience of my life.”
I wish everyone could see the love of God rather than a distorted image of his anger. Many people use this toxic belief as an excuse. They mess themselves up through irresponsible behavior and then blame a vindictive God who is supposedly showering down wrath. They behave just like those who continue to walk around with guilt for something they did years ago, and their guilt becomes an excuse to stay stuck in pain and disappointment.
An angry God is used as an excuse for too many blunders and mistakes. God loves us. He wants the best for us. He doesn’t want to punish us. He wants us to be free from the past. He doesn’t want us to spend the rest of our lives trying to hide the skeletons in our closets. He went to a lot of trouble so we would not have to be punished and feel guilty. His system enables us to start over. He is there for all of us, encouraging us to go and sin no more—no lightning, no plagues, no earthquakes, just love with the expectation that we will respond to that love.
At the same time, God’s love, grace, and expectations are balanced with justice. He is not vindictive, but he disciplines those he loves as a father or mother would discipline a child. He does this not out of anger, but out of a love tough enough to stop the progression of irresponsibility. His discipline is always for our own good, provides opportunity for growth, and stems from his measureless love.
It is hard to differentiate between problems we cause and problems that come as God’s discipline. Perhaps God most often simply uses the consequences of our own poor decisions to discipline us.
No one seems to have the authoritative word on consequences and discipline. The key to understanding both is God’s love and great desire to help us grow toward him in faith. He will never give us more problems than we can handle, and he will assist us through the problems if we will trust him for help. His loving discipline comes when we veer away from his will. That’s when he moves to bring us back.
Toxic Faith #18: Christ was merely a great teacher.
Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, and Christ are often placed in the same category as great teachers and philosophers. Many people say they believe in Christ, but they really mean that they believe he existed as a historical entity. And without question plenty of evidence documents his existence. But believing that he was one of many great teachers is far different from accepting him as the Savior of the world. His own statements show that either he was the Savior or a liar or crazy.
Christ made several exclusive statements about himself. He claimed he was the way to God and to heaven. He insisted that except through him, a person had no way to come to God. Was he a liar, or do you believe there is only one way to God—through Christ? He even went so far as to call God his Father—quite a heady statement for a merely human teacher to make, no matter how wonderful! He declared he was the truth and the light. Now, either he was truth and light, or he was a psychotic with delusions of grandeur.
To see Christ as merely a great teacher is to dismiss what he taught. He did not tell people that if they wanted to go to heaven they had to be good. He told them that he came to save the world. No sane great teacher would make such a claim—unless he really was who he claimed to be. Christ was either who he said he was or he was a fraud, an egomaniac, a manipulator, and a deceptive leader. Those around him were following either the Savior of the world or a man who masterminded one of the all-time great hoaxes. He either came to save us, or he deceived us and falsely went down in history as the most significant person who ever lived.
Many of the disciples lay low after Christ’s crucifixion, thinking their leader had come to a tragic end. They remained hurt and confused until they saw an empty tomb and met him face-to-face as the risen Christ. Scripture and history both record major changes in each disciple after the crucifixion. They became stronger in their beliefs, with more determination than ever to spread the message he left them. I doubt a mere good, mortal teacher could have developed this kind of loyal posthumous following.
Jesus certainly was a great teacher; but he was also the Savior he claimed to be. I know this to be true. I suffered tremendous guilt and depression until I finally accepted that Christ died for my sin. Because of his sacrifice, I didn’t have to endure the punishment I deserved for the problems I caused. I had tried every other way to live. Nothing worked until I asked Christ to be who he said he was, the Savior of the world and the Savior of my world.
Is he the Savior of yours?
Toxic Belief #19: God is too big to care about me.
Those who do not believe in a personal God—One who cares for individuals as well as groups of people—are missing out on a personal relationship with God that can make life bearable in the bad times and incredible in the good ones. I believe God cares for people individually and that he will reveal himself to each of us if we will allow him to do so.
Sadly, faith in a personal God has declined with the decline of the family. As divorced and working parents have spent less time with kids, the concept of a personal God has faded. Our ideas of God are often wrapped in our experiences with our parents. An absent father is almost a guarantee for a belief in an absent God who is too busy to care about individuals. If your parents were not individually devoted to spending time with you, you probably began life feeling overwhelmed from a lack of support. If you carried that experience over to God, your sense of being overwhelmed may have grown to an unmanageable point. You may have broken down because you felt there was too much difficulty in life with too little support from a distant God.
One of the first individuals to enter New Life Treatment Centers was a confirmed atheist. One night, desperate and in a suicidal rage, he went to the phone book to find the number of a psychiatrist. At 3:00 A.M. few psychiatrists are available, but ours answered her own phone. She instructed the distraught man to come into our center that night. He woke up the next morning and said that if there were a God, then he had played a terrible trick on him by landing him in a Christian treatment center. It was tough for him to stay, but he struggled and managed to make it to the fourth day.
On the evening of the fourth day, a remarkable event happened. The man, an alcoholic, attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with other patients. At the end of the meeting a young boy stood up and asked for help. He told the group he was suicidal. He said that he was visualizing, in color, putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The atheist could relate to him since he had been in the same frame of mind four days earlier.
When the boy sat down, the room went silent. Suddenly the back door of the room opened and a man walked in, wearing what looked like a turban and a robe. He said his wife and kids were in the car, but he felt that God wanted him to come into the room and say something. He had not heard the boy but said, “If anyone here is thinking of killing yourself, I want to encourage you to reconsider. God loves you and wants you to live. This turban on my head is a bandage from where I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, I survived so I could come here and tell you not to do it. God loves you.”
At that moment our atheist patient left behind his atheism. He believed God had sent that man especially to talk to that boy. The other patients believed God had sent the boy and the man to show the atheist that he is real. I believe God interrupted the natural course of events to build the faith of all those in that room and potentially all who read this story.
This is one of millions of stories about people who have met a personal God who is not too big to care about each individual. When we understand how powerful God is, it is not too hard to believe he knows even the number of hairs on our heads. I can point to many times over the years when God has moved to intervene personally. In a thousand ways, through good times and bad, God tries to make himself known through meeting personal needs. I believe everyone can point to instances where God’s divine intervention makes more sense than mere coincidence. We search the universe for God, but all the time he is with us. I believe he is in love with each of us and cares for us individually.
Toxic Belief #20: More than anything else, God wants me to be happy.
Every day a career is ruined, a marriage is destroyed, and a sexual relationship is started in pursuit of happiness. People want to be happy. In our society, everything is acceptable as long as it makes a person happy. Entire belief systems are based on the search for happiness, and someone is always around to utter the modern bromide, “Well, as long as you’re happy!” When people are asked why they do certain questionable things, they reply:
“I was never really happy in my marriage. I have found it in my new eighteen-year-old wife of three weeks.”
“I don’t think God would object to my finding what makes me the most happy. I moved in with him, and I’ve never been happier.”
“We divorced because of the kids. If we didn’t do what would make us the happiest, we knew our kids would never be happy.”
Wrong!
Wrong!
Wrong!
God’s primary goal is not for us to be happy. Although he grieves with us when we are in pain and would prefer that no one suffer problems, he sees the bigger picture and knows that the pain is only temporary. He wants more than mere happiness for us. Trusting in God will allow the pain to be transformed into joy, which is a deeper, richer experience than happiness.
You cannot justify rejecting God’s teachings for the sake of happiness. A female who is abused may need to leave a marriage for the sake of survival, but to leave just to be happy would be wrong. The search for happiness apart from God always ends in ruin. The truth is, when you search for something more meaningful, happiness develops as a by-product.
If God wanted us all happy, the world would be one big Disneyland with no lines, no admission fee, and continuous rides. But that is not the world I live in. That might be a modern-day description of what God intended for us when he created mankind in the Garden of Eden, but because of Adam and Eve’s sin and the fallen nature they bequeathed to us, we live in a fallen world. Physical laws govern our created world: For example, a knife always cuts, whether in slicing a piece of bread or in committing murder. God does not magically make it blunt because it is used in an evil deed. And so there is pain—not because God prefers it, but because we live in a fallen world.
Pain can be a great motivator to draw us closer to God. I have been closest to God when I allowed him to produce a deep satisfaction and joy, even in the midst of the worst sacrifices or pain or hardships. Exhausting all my resources to find joy, I finally turned to God and drew closer to him.
God’s primary goal for us is not happiness. Happiness is a temporary good feeling based on our circumstances. It is a meaningless pursuit. It is the counterfeit of what God wants for each of us. The heroin addict who shoots up is instantly happy, yet the word joy cannot be associated with a quick fix. Joy is a deeper satisfaction, regardless of circumstances. It comes only from faith in God and his involvement with an individual who trusts him totally. Happiness can be obtained alone; joy requires teamwork with God. Happiness is always fleeting; joy can grow over time.
Joy and satisfaction are results of faith in God and living out that faith. With God, circumstances are much less important than perspective. Perspective allows you to accept that each painful moment matures you to handle greater pain and to develop wisdom from the experience. Growing closer to God through adverse circumstances produces joy. Rejecting his teachings may result in a quick thrill and a fleeting bit of happiness, but it will squash joy and satisfaction.
God wants us to be mature, wise, and full of satisfaction. He paid a big price for those things to occur. Once we begin to mature and develop wisdom, we want more of it. As we grow in wisdom that produces a lasting joy, we are less satisfied to return to those childlike behaviors that provided cheap thrills and instant relief. We can no longer act out the opposite of God’s standards and rationalize that we are doing what God would have us do to find happiness. God wants us to find lasting joy, and the cheap counterfeit of lasting joy is fleeting happiness. The search for happiness has destroyed our joy and left us empty, looking for another fix. But when we stop seeking happiness and start seeking God, joy—lasting joy—comforts and sustains us.
Toxic Belief #21: I can become God.
The idea that we can become God is perhaps the most depressing of all the toxic beliefs. Many ungodly people believe they can become God. They say if you just focus on all that you are, you will discover that you are God and in control of your fate. But such an idea inevitably becomes overwhelming and confusing.
I was listening to a lecture by a woman who said that each individual knows everything. She said that inside everyone is an unconscious knowledge. According to her, you know it all, but you don’t know that you know it. Now it seems to me that if you knew everything, you would know that you know it. If you didn’t know you know something, you wouldn’t know everything. The process of trying to become God when you have absolutely no ability to do so will drive you crazy. When you know you are not God, it is necessary to engage in many rationalizations and mental games to convince yourself that you actually possess a divine nature.
Many men and women devote their lives trying to achieve the power that God alone has. They pick up trinkets along the way and attribute special powers to those trinkets. A recent power-trinket fad involved crystals. For many, crystals became the source of healing and power, the cure-all to life’s frustrations. Playing God becomes easier if you have the right crystals with the right powers! So the message came through: “There is nothing you can’t do.”
I have been amazed that those who reject the traditional values and teachings of the Jewish faith or those who refuse to believe that Christ is God’s Son find it easier to believe that each of us can become God. I find it much easier to believe in a powerful Creator than that I am the Creator. I know my limitations, and I fall short of being all-knowing or all-powerful. A quick assessment of my life reassures me that I am not perfect and have no way of being perfect! The “you are perfect” saying is part of the “you are God” mentality. Both concepts keep one from developing a relationship with the Creator.
My wife and I visited a town in northern California where one person spends his days playing God. To everyone he meets, he says, “You are perfect.” He believes that each person is perfect, but the problem is that no one recognizes the perfection. This is like the “I know it all, I just don’t know I know it all” dilemma. His proclamation of perfection is supposed to free persons to discover their godliness, release them from their mere human limitations, and help them move to their heavenly state of existence. It is incredible how many people buy into the silly concept.
“Buy into it” is a good description, too. Few are satisfied with the man’s free proclamation. They pay hundreds of dollars to attend seminars where they are told they are perfect, they are powerful, and they are God.
But you can’t turn mortal man into God. You can’t take a sinful person and make him or her perfect just through thoughts of perfection. A limited mind cannot know all or comprehend the eternal truths of the universe.
This is not bad news; it is a relief. We can end our frustration of trying to become perfect or powerful. God took care of that problem when he sent Christ to form the bridge between finite man and infinite God. It is easier to accept Christ’s sacrifice for all than it is to accept the idea that all are free from the need for sacrifice. Each day our mistakes and difficulties reinforce the knowledge of our limitations. We cannot become God, but we can accept the means by which God has made a way to him. His Son alleviates all need for perfection and power. Accepting his perfect sacrifice and the power through his Spirit into our lives, we no longer need to fake it or convince ourselves we can be who only God is.
Toxic beliefs are the bases of toxic faith. Possessing just one toxic belief can poison an entire relationship with God. Until each person has eradicated all of the toxic beliefs in his or her relationship with God, faith in God will not be what it could be.
Pure faith is a rare thing in our world of many religions, cults, and mind benders. To possess pure faith, a person must come to believe in a source of knowledge, a point of reference held up as an authority. That authority for me and millions of others is the Bible.
Men and women distort what Scripture says; they add to it, subtract from it, and make it say something it never intended. In its untainted form, it is the means by which faith in God is developed.
All of the spiritual truth we need is within the Bible’s covers. It is the Word of God. Faith in God cannot be developed without knowing God’s Word. It may seem easier to make up our beliefs as we go, but relying on the source of faith that has been used for thousands of years has never failed. To detoxify the mind and purify faith, God’s Word is the cleansing agent.
Twenty-One Toxic Beliefs of a Toxic Faith