Me and God

    How do people who have been through abuse view and feel about God?  Assuming that God is real, is it okay for someone who has felt largely abandoned and unprotected in so many aspects of life to figuratively give him the finger?

    Because that is how I feel sometimes.  I may have mentioned before (and maybe not, I can't remember at the moment and I'm not going to go through previous postings to see) that I was raised in a very religious environment.  The geographical area I live in is predominantly one particular Christian denomination, and the community I am in has the highest concentration of members. Since looking at my internal world honestly I have felt like screaming and running away as fast as I can.  In saying this, I am not saying that the religion I belong to is wrong and I am not going to go into the specifics of which one it is, because I don't want others to pass judgment based on what my personal experiences have been.  My life has been largely enriched by my church activity and associations, with certain meaningful experiences coming at crucial times in my life that guided my path in what I believe to have been the right directions for me.  These experiences brought wonderful people into my life, brought about the circumstances where I met my husband, and in general have shaped me into the kind of person I am.  There has been a certain protection in choosing to follow the standards of living recommended in the church guidelines, and I am thankful for that.

    But here's the thing.  And it smacked me right between the eyes at one point during this past year what a conflicted relationship I have with God.  On some levels I really hate him (sorry, God).  And then I feel guilty when I consider all the ways my life has been blessed and I have recognized His hand in events that have taken place.  And I feel guilty because I'm supposed to love Him.  And I do love Him. . .but, wait.  I WANT to love Him, but it has always felt to me like I have to earn His love.  That He loves me IF.  Or AS LONG AS.  Or UNTIL or UNLESS.  IF I am good enough.  AS LONG as I do what's right, exactly right. UNTIL I make a mistake. UNLESS I screw up, even if I don't realize I'm screwing up.  Oh, I have always felt that other shoe ready to drop.

    That defining moment that smacked me between the eyes was realizing how much I FEARED God, and how that fear had reached into every facet of my life and was ruling every single decision I made, even on a day to day basis with seemingly small and insignificant things that really should be no big deal in the grand scheme of things.  The stress of that has caused me so much anxiety, sometimes to the point of it being debilitating. And I realized that my whole religious experience has been colored by my mother's view, and that I have seen through her filter, which is very warped.  When I read verses in scripture, that "or else" comes out loud and clear to me, and it's my mother's rhetoric and tone that I experience in my head.  It took me quite awhile to accept the fact that there was spiritual abuse in my home growing up.

    I told my husband that if God is a God of fear, I don't want anything to do with him.  Fear and love can't exist in the same place and we are told that God is a God of love, but I have rarely felt that.  What I have felt most of the time is the fear and a desperate yearning to be worthy of His love.  I decided that I need space, or what someone described to me as "fallow time" in regards to church, so I can sort this out and stop seeing and hearing everything through my mother's filter. It's kind of a weird place to be in and I actually never thought I would be that person, but here I am.  And I think I am doing the right thing distancing myself from the organized aspect of church, even though this is new and sometimes scary territory for me.  In a way I am putting God to the test.  If He really loves me unconditionally, then He understands why I need to do this and isn't angry with me.  He wants me to feel His love.  And if church is triggering me (which it has been), then I need to not be there because I need to keep myself safe.  I am trusting that He will reach out to me in loving, joyful ways to help me along.