Religious Manipulation #1: You can’t judge me!
I don’t know where my dad got the idea, being a member of the LDS church, that we weren’t allowed to judge anyone. But “you can’t judge me” was primed to come out of his mouth at the first sign of disagreeing with him. Next thing out of his mouth would be the accusation “I guess you just think I’m a terrible person.”
Suddenly any disagreement, any discussion, any type of critical thinking or learning went out the window. Because now it was all about him and how he felt.
But the confusing thing was, him making judgmental comments about others was not a problem at all. Maybe judging was OK to do behind people’s backs? I don’t know. It was confusing. Throwing verbal rocks at people was ok if he agreed with it, just don’t ever question him or we were being unkind.
Now wrap that idea up in a religious package. If you disagree with him, it can be implied that you are disagreeing with God. He knew scripture and could throw it around and if he couldn’t use it to support his own behavior, he could use it to tear down yours. If you didn’t have backing of the “religious high ground”, you were not only wrong, you were morally failing.
What did that teach me as a child? To agree quickly. To be on alert for where the emotional winds were blowing. I was taught that if you disagree with someone you cannot say anything. You have to stay silent. Silent and obedient. To “agree to disagree” did not happen in my family. You agree with the family or you became the target of passive aggressive verbal attacks. As an adult it’s not that big of a deal but as a child survival depends on your parents. So, agreeing means survival. Watching others in the family get punished only strengthened this idea.
As I grew older the choices were to physically leave to get distance from it or religiously leave so the manipulation was useless. The only other choice was to became a member of religious high ground society and join in with the manipulation so people couldn’t disagree with you either.
And no matter the choice, all without showing any emotion about it. No matter how frustrated you got at this, the act of showing any emotions became “proof” that you were morally failing. Any attempt to express a different view was dismissed or turned on you.
You are causing conflict
You are judging
You are angry
You are not a peacemaker
You are unkind
You are unforgiving
You are focusing on the negative
What did that teach me about God? That God was stern and confusing to understand and if you disagreed with him watch out or he’ll make you suffer. That God was waiting to catch me being wrong. So, stay silent and obedient.
There could be a million reasons why my father got there and why he could not figure out how to learn what his religion was actually teaching. But that is his problem not mine. What I have to deal with is the consequences of his actions.
I think that is the central theme that took me years to finally understand. It doesn’t matter why you did what you did; if you had a good reason to, if you didn’t mean too, if you repented later, if you were honestly sorry, if you were going through a really bad time right then, your choices have consequences that ripple out and you, along with others, will have to deal with those consequences.
It would be nice to sweep it all under the rug and say sorry and do nothing towards the work of cleaning up after ourselves and our consequences. Nice to use the religious get out of jail free card “I repented”, “you should forgive me” and just move on doing what we’ve always done. But that also brings a consequence. It brings a lack of trust and fragile breakable relationships. As well as stagnation in our own development.
My father recently gave me $5, “I know you have a long list of my faults and sins, so I have enclosed a few dollars to help cover the cost of the paper to write them on.”
It’s like a box of cereal has been spilled out onto the floor. And in the cleaning in up, someone wants to keep walking through the cereal spreading it out more, commenting on the way I’m cleaning it up. Eventually, you have to tell them to stay out of the room until you can get it cleaned up yourself.
If I have been taught incorrect ideas that are messing with the way I make decisions and how I live my life, you either need to stay out of my way so that I can learn, grow, and change them or else you need to be an active supporter and help me learn, grow, and change.
Circumstances had me moving back to the state I grew up in. Being close enough to watch and hear my dad’s commentary on living the gospel of Jesus Christ has me ready to leave God again. If what I am hearing and seeing from him is what God is saying you should be and do, then I cannot accept this religion, this God--his God. I’ve been seeing a lot of others in this same situation. How do you throw out the religious manipulations without throwing out God? How do you learn who God is when someone you trusted taught you a twisted version of him? When what you accepted as a child has just become a way of life, how do you step back and see it and make corrections? In the end, I had to give up the God my dad taught and find out who God is myself.
I understand that my dad’s fear of judgment comes from his own use of it and he isn’t thinking of the consequences of his actions at all, let alone how to help clean up some of the mess. I understand how easy it is to use judgement as a weapon instead of being authentically humble with a growth mind set and intentions.
I release him from my journey and let him travel his own.
I grew up thinking I could not judge others. I was willing to take the blame because I thought that was what God expected of me. I spent years working on myself and saying everyone else can do what they want. I found out the hard way that you can’t draw healthy boundaries if you don’t make good judgements.
My husband and I had to sell our house during a recession and move to get our children away from a neighbor because we did not know how to set strict enough boundaries. It ran like a bad movie. My husband and I could not figure out how to get them to leave us alone and that stemmed, we realized later, because we never drew strong boundaries in the beginning. We just tried to be overly accepting to everyone. They took it as an invitation to stick close to us. We didn’t understand the consequences we would get from not drawing a firm line. We didn’t understand that making them upset at us would be less of a problem in the long run than having to lose money on a house and move completely away.
You can’t make boundaries without first making judgements. You can’t even set your own values without first making judgements on your life experiences and what you feel, see, and do. We grow up learning from what happens around us and if you take away a child’s ability to make judgements, then you have put them in a dangerous position.
If I could tell my younger self a message it would be this: If the people telling you that your opinions are “judging them” and are “wrong” and “you can’t do that”—Take a step back to see better and look at them EVEN CLOSER.
*Are they trying to force your decision making to go a certain way? Why? What are they getting out of it?
*What are the other choices?
*Are they showing you an example of how you want to live your life?
*Are they inspiring you to learn and be a better person?
*Is there a sharing of ideas that is respectful and goes both ways?
*Do they respect your boundaries?
*Do you feel like you can trust them?
*Are they condemning you if you disagree with them?
*What are the consequences coming in their life from their choices? Do you want those?
*Will they treat you differently if you disagree with them?
Often, we imperfect humans, use judging as a weapon, smashing it down on other people’s choices and taking the role of the final Judge ourselves. It can quickly move into the realm of giving up on God’s “let people choose and give them a way to repent” idea and trying to force others into Satan’s authoritarian rule idea. But that doesn’t mean you throw judging away. It is ironically often the very people using it as a weapon who do not want it used on them. They cry out you are condemning them because that is what they use judging for. Judging is a tool you need to know how to use to be able to make choices, and decide your values, and to set boundaries. It is important to learn how to use this tool.
The letter from my dad also contained a lot of religious sentiments. They all sounded very righteous. This is where the religious manipulation shows its ugly head. If I were to take those righteous words as genuinely sincere, then I am primed to take the entire message as sincere. It gives the appearance that the passive aggressive jab at me, to ‘write down his sins since I think he has so many of them’, as a statement a righteous person would make. As a child being raised with this why wouldn’t I think God was passive aggressive too? Why as an adult would I trust God? Religion and passive aggressive attacks have been actually linked in my mind since I was a child.
Emotional wounding is an easy form of manipulation, especially to someone younger than you, like your own children. And when a parent has gotten away with it for so long, I suppose they don’t even see themselves as doing it. They just find themselves with adult children who they don’t have close relationships with and just blame that on the adult children.
Disentangling an earthly dad from a Heavenly Father means first looking at this behavior and realizing that our Heavenly Father doesn’t work this way. In fact, he has given us the tool of making judgement calls to help us navigate this earthly life. He has even invited us to put his promises to the test and judge HIM.
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachai 3:10
When I moved away from family and got to learn about God on my own, I decided to take God up on his promises. I decided to let go of people but hang onto God, wherever that would take me. I gave up allegiance to a certain religion or the people in that religion and I was ready to move to wherever he led me. I ended up never leaving my religion but I learn a lot about how trusting God was a lot safer than trusting imperfect people. I put his promises to the test—actual tests that I measured and tracked. I proved to myself the principles that I believe in. Slowly and bit by bit, God let me prove to myself that he could be trusted. And he didn’t condemn me for not trusting him in the beginning. I felt like he understood.
A child feels threatened by the fear of abandonment whether physical abandonment or emotional. But as they grow, they learn that the love that was being offered to them was a limited version crippled by human failings. People fail us but will God fail us? By disentangling the religious manipulations, I was taught, I am finding a God who I trust.
Like sending out a message in a bottle to other stranded souls confused by religious manipulation, I am writing my journey down. Not to focus on who is doing the manipulating, but on finding the path out of it!
Go ahead and judge me. That doesn’t scare me. My Dad’s religion actually teaches that how you judge is how you will be judged by God and I’m at peace with my intentions.
My dad reminded me that God is the perfect one.
Not your God, dad. I don’t trust your God. But my God, yes.
And now, I have to go buy more paper.
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