Toxic faith is a destructive and dangerous involvement in a religion that allows the religion, not a relationship with God, to control a person’s life. People broken by various experiences, people from dysfunctional families, people with unrealistic expectations, and people out for their own gain or comfort seem especially prone to it. It is a defective faith with an incomplete or tainted view of God. It is abusive and manipulative and can become addictive. It becomes so central to a person’s life that family and friends become insignificant compared with the need to uphold the false beliefs.
Those with toxic faith use it to avoid reality and responsibility. It often results in perfectionism; people are driven to perform and work in an attempt to earn their way to heaven or at least to gain favour with God. Like other addictions, it causes great damage but the addicted continue to pursue it.
Toxic faith has nothing to do with God and everything to do with men and women who want to concoct a god or faith that serves self rather than honours God. In short, toxic faith is an excuse. It is an excuse for an abusive husband to mistreat his wife because he believes God would want her to submit to him as if he were God. It is an excuse to put off dealing with the pain in life. It is an excuse to wait for God to do what He wants you to do. It provides a distraction through compulsive “churchaholism” or religious ritual.
Toxic faith is also a counterfeit for the spiritual growth that can occur through a genuine relationship with God. The toxic faithful find a replacement for God. How they look becomes more important than who God is. Acts of religion replace steps of growth. A façade is substituted for a heart longing to know God. The façade forms a barrier between the believer and God, leaving the believer to survive with only a destructive addiction to religion.
Characteristics of Religious Addicts
Plenty of people are susceptible to religious addiction. Their brokenness, misery, and conflict leave them open to becoming hooked on working hard to win God’s favour or believing any doctrine that promises to make life easier. They develop toxic-faith practices that become every bit as addictive as heroin. Out of a desire to delay or deny pain, they develop their own toxic beliefs. There are many variations of religious addicts.
Common Characteristics of Religious Addicts
- Rigid parents.
- Experience of disappointment.
- Low self-worth.
- Victims of abuse.
Rigid Parents
As strange as it may seem, the child who grew up with a rigid parent (or parents) enters adulthood attracted to those who serve up any form of rigidity. One might think that once freed from the rigidity, the adult child would avoid it. Instead the individual is often drawn to it, which makes the person highly susceptible to an addictive religious system or to follow a toxic-faith leader. Why is this so? One explanation is that human beings are creatures of habit. Or perhaps people are drawn towards a rigid system because they have a hidden desire to fix it, to loosen themselves up and free themselves to enjoy life – something they were unable to achieve with their parents.
Experience of Disappointment
A deep wound from a major disappointment lies in the background of most religious addicts. It might have been the early loss of a parent or parental divorce. It could have been their own divorce or abandonment in later life. The loss and disappointment cause a tremendous fear of yet another abandonment. Addicts become attracted to and attached to any group that promises acceptance without risk. Often the group promises instant relief or gratification. Feeling the pain from their disappointment, religious addicts want relief, especially if it does not require effort on their part.
Low Self-Worth
We all know that peer-pressure helps to destroy many young people. But we seem to forget it is just as powerful among adults. If people do not value themselves or have their own beliefs, they will fall victim to the pressure to conform. They cross over a line from rational to irrational belief. Distrusting their ability to discern truth from manipulation, they go along with the group consensus even if it invalidates everything they’ve been taught.
Persons with low self-worth feel alienated and isolated. They want to belong and be accepted. Toxic-faith leaders know this. They can pick out wounded followers who are looking for someone to make them feel important. Under the guise of ministry they cater to people’s weaknesses until those people believe they are receiving genuine caring. Thus, the religious group gets new members potentially forever.
Toxic-faith practitioners seek out those with low self-worth and minimal boundaries. They ask them to trust just a little. With that first step of trust, the targets are flooded with affirmation and love. Every need is met. Childhood trauma is soon forgotten, in the euphoria prompted by so much affection. The ones being manipulated then place greater trust in the leader. Even when they notice exploitation, the new followers don’t turn away, because they continue to reinforce their decisions. They feel bad about themselves already, and admitting they had been duped would seem devastating. Their minds block out the reality of the toxic beliefs, and they become faithful followers under an exploitative leader.
If they had felt self-worthy in the beginning, they would have discerned the unhealthiness of the group and refused to be part of it. But their addiction moves them to believe the unbelievable if it will provide at least a moment of relief. They don’t see the exploitation – or at least, they refuse to acknowledge it – because their low self-worth has allowed them to be exploited all their lives. It seems almost normal.
Victims of Abuse
Childhood abuse, whether sexual, physical or emotional, often leads to further victimization in adulthood. The abused feel detached and unloved. They function with a continual feeling of loss. Often they go to great extremes to fill the void left by abusive parents. Their faith is almost always poisoned by these early incidents. Some forsake God, blaming Him for the abuse. Others believe in God but consider Him to be detached and uncaring about individuals in pain. Still others replace God with a human being.
Attention from an adult friend, especially a father replacement, can set up a craving for more attention and vulnerability to be victimized again. Seeking a saviour, the adult child of abuse repeats being the victim. When the “saviour” turns out to be yet another victimizer, the act is so horrifying and degrading that there is often a complete break with reality. The victim blindly complies with the victimizer as the poisonous faith continues to grow.
Susceptible people have something in common with those who are not susceptible: They all hurt. All of us are hurting people; we all struggle with pain and disappointment. Religious addicts, however, believe they are the only ones who hurt. They think no-one else cares or has to endure their kind of pain. When a practitioner of toxic-faith arrives with what appears to be a heart of gold and a simple plan for an easy life, the followers are quick to sign up.
(from Toxic Faith, Experiencing Healing from Painful Spiritual Abuse).
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