The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Religion: Debulking a Loaded Word

There are some words that, when you say them, carry a power or energy behind them. They trigger a response.

I often hear the sentence “I’m not religious, but …” and immediately I know what the person is saying. Well, I think I do.

They have the word “religion” loaded with a thousand other words — sentences of experience that have been linked to form an understanding that might be true, or might be false.

These are loaded terms.

A loaded term is a word or phrase that carries strong emotional weight or hidden implications. A word that has a thousand sentences behind it.

Jump to a section

• Say the Word “Religion” and Connections Are Made
• Debulking the Word “Religion” Back to Its Original Meaning
• The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly of Religion
• Religion, in the Good Sense, Can Truly Help Your Mental Health
• What Is Your Experience of Religion?

Say the Word “Religion” and Connections Are Made

Say the word “religion” and connections are possibly made to other words:

• Control
• Authority
• Rules and regulations
• Patriarchy
• Domination
• Subjugation
• Submission
• Obligation

Name your go-to word here.

And maybe you’re right to have these connections. But what if those words and beliefs have created a fear-based barrier to discovering the other side of the word? What if the word has other connections that are actually good?

Here’s another word. Debulk.

“Debulk” has a connection to cancer surgery. When you “debulk” a cancer tumour, you reduce as much of the bulk (volume) of a tumour as possible, without the intention of complete eradication. After this, the tumour is possibly treated with other forms of therapy.

I want to debulk the word religion, and then “bulk” it back up with good content. Truth that will help.

Debulking the Word “Religion” Back to Its Original Meaning

The Two Parts of the Word

The word has two parts to it:

The Ligament Connection

I immediately think of the role of ligaments in our bodies — those strong bands of fibrous connective tissue that connect bone to bone and stabilize joints.

Without ligaments, we would simply be a bag of disconnected bones and organs. Nothing would hold us together.

So, simply — religion is regarding how we hold everything together.

The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly of Religion

The Good

For me, the religion I follow is Christianity. It helps me make sense of the world. It gives me form, direction, and meaning. It has an ancient path heritage, where I can follow the traditions of millions who have gone before.

My wife and I are part of the worship community at Clevedon Anglican here in New Zealand. The church building was built in 1861, so people have been worshipping in this historic building for 165 years. That’s 165 years of people coming together under the banner of a religion called Christianity — people wanting to form ligaments together around a common faith tradition.

In this little country church, there is a richness of heritage and an abundance of acceptance. Recently, I was invited to speak about the Trinity, and I talked about the Trinity as being a kind of dance that we are invited to be part of. After the service, two of the vicars and I did a little dance outside.

Our ligaments have freedom and movement. There is dance that encourages and empowers the daily lives of those who are part of the community.

The Bad

I’ve also been in the bad. Places where there was no dance, or if there was, it was more like a stiff performance dance. People sitting on the sidelines — or in the pews, in this case — judging everyone’s performance. Noticing the steps, commenting on how someone is in or out of rhythm.

The body, with all those ligaments, is stiff, starchy, but functional. Performing a role, but killing the flow.

The Just Plain Ugly

I have been in churches where the expression of Christianity has been just plain ugly. I visited, I smelt the death, and I ran.

It’s all about control, getting it perfectly right. But in trying to do so, getting perfectly wrong. You have to wear this, sing that, dance like a soldier on a parade ground. Stiff, starchy, staunch. There can be connection and community, but only as long as you follow the rules. If you don’t, then you’re out. Excommunicated.

It’s a death march, and it kills life.

And it’s also what gets the most attention from the media and others. It’s what bulks up a terrible understanding of the word religion.

Religion, in the Good Sense, Can Truly Help Your Mental Health

It can tie things together. Give structure to who we are and how we dance in this world. It is the container, or the nest, in which we can be formed, not flattened.

Life is too short for bad religion.

What Is Your Experience of Religion?

We all have a religion — a way of binding things together that helps us make sense of the world.

But is your “religion” serving you, or enslaving you?

Is it causing you to want to get up and dance into the world, or is it stifling you into a compliance mentality, always trying harder?

An early church leader called Paul, who was once a very strict religious man — in the just-plain-ugly sense of the word — wrote a letter to a group of early Christians who were being told to leave a life of freedom and return to rules, regulations, and ritual.

He wrote to them, explaining what a truly good religion — good ligaments — should bring out in a life:

Perhaps it’s time to re-energize the word “religion” with life — to see it as a way of reconnecting ourselves to God, others, and even ourselves.

Quotes to consider

• On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ― Annie Dillard
• If you are an individualist, you are surely not a believer, and if you are a believer you are utterly responsible, connected, and aligned everywhere. Before we can reconstruct this deconstructed culture, we must be utterly reconnected ourselves. That is the work of healthy religion (re-ligio = “re-bind”). Maybe that is another way to describe our inherent need to submit to classic patterns. Rohr, Richard . The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder
• Religion either produces the very best people or the very worst. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
• Most bogus religion, in my opinion, is highly sacrificial in one or another visible way, but not loving at all. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
• When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
• People with a large and repressed shadow world usually will be stern and moralistic. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
• An awful lot of religion is an excuse for not facing our fears and doubts. True religion is not denial but transformation. Richard Rohr Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections
• If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than any solution. Richard Rohr Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self
• The essential function of religion is to radically connect us with everything. (Re-ligio = to re-ligament or reconnect.) It is to help us see the world and ourselves in wholeness, and not just in parts. Richard Rohr The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
• Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Larry Crabb

Further Reading

• I’m Not Religious but I Have A Religion — ‘I’m not religious’ is something many say, but religion is a place of reconnection and realignment. Mental health grows in healthy religion
  
• 6 Markers of Healthy Spirituality for Mental Health — Discover what a mentally healthy spirituality looks like and how to find a faith community that keeps you grounded.
  
• Your Faith has Made you Unwell — Is religious shame making you unwell? Discover how to move past toxic church rules and find true healing by reaching out to the real Jesus.
  
• Is Taking A Spiritual Bypass Harming Your Mental Health? — Spiritual bypass shields us from the truth, it disconnects us from our feelings, and helps us avoid the big picture.
  
• Yes. A Christian can have a Mental Illness — Having a Mental Illness can mean you feel very alone, but does being a Christian mean that you’re somehow on the outside?
  
• Relinquishing The Need To Control Can Give Us Freedom From Anxiety — Relinquishing any need to control our worst case scenario (and any need to avoid the pain of it) we find freedom from anxiety.