Hiding and Hypocrisy

This is a postscript to the post on Brokenness and Dysfunction.

Hiding

What you have when you live in this paradigm ("we are not broken") is a need to not look bad on the outside (see the post on Spiritual Abuse) so what you get is everyone really trying to hide what is going on. People are hiding what's going on in their marriage. They're hiding what's going on with their kids. They're afraid. They want to be "good" like they see their pastors being "good," not realizing that their pastors are simply hiding how bad things get in their own lives. Or perhaps the pastors really don't have any real problems (right). But the rest of us do!

I can remember being shocked when I listened to one staff wife talk about how she had been so depressed after the birth of a child that she just kept questioning her salvation. Yet this was never shared publicly. Why? Is it private? Yes. But still would be monumentally helpful to others struggling in the same way. (That is why I love recovery groups so much. Confessing what you struggle with or struggled with is important.)

I was told, in fact, as I mentioned earlier, to stop telling the Mom's group about the depth of struggles that I was having. Privately, I was receiving so much positive feedback from women telling me how much it helped them. In fact, although I was told that the opposite would happen and that I would discourage women, I can't think of a single time when someone said to me, "Cathy, you sharing your struggles is really discouraging me!"

Let's talk about the pressure that puts on women for a second. As one friend pointed out, you had to be hyper-controlling of your children because you HAD to fit in. If my kids didn't act as well as everyone else's, I was out of the club. And that was true. There was a gravitation of the 'functional' families to hang out with other 'functional' families. So if you had a problem child or a hyper active child, you weren't going to get invited to playdates. I saw this reek a lot of havoc with people. They were afraid to let people know the kinds of things their kids were doing and then would just beat the crap out of them behind the scenes trying to get them to behave.

One friend mentioned that she didn't enjoy her small group because it was obvious that no one was going to share their real problems. There was a definition message: We are all ok. You need to be ok too!

Hypocrisy

This system also breeds a good deal of hypocrisy.

There was one particular Victory Weekend where I was just openly chastised for watching the television show "The Medium." The leader in charge said to me, 'It's just another nail, Cathy." Implying that by my watching such an "evil" show, I was NAILING JESUS TO THE CROSS. I totally submitted to this, repented, and have never watched that show since (even though I wanted to a few times).

Imagine my outright shock when this person's seven year old child told me that they loved watching "Pirates of the Caribbean." I swore I must have misunderstood and asked the child to repeat because I simply couldn't believe it! If I watch a show about a psychic, I'm nailing Jesus to the cross. If your impressionable child watches a full-length movie about pirate ghosts who pillage and plunder and kill people then that's ok??

See this is what we get when we decide that we are going to set standards for all Christians based on our understanding of the Bible. And when we decide that we are going to cover up all of our own serious problems and not share them. Image is everything.

(I would like to say, if you are a hurting Christian but are afraid to talk about it, there are some good resources out there to help you. CR is one. New Life Ministries is another. Both of these are solidly grounded in the word of God and much more healthy in dealing with brokenness. I also really recommend the book 12 "Christian" Beliefs that Can Drive You Crazy by Cloud and Townsend. There is healing available but it never comes through covering things up and trying to look good on the outside.)