A Pastors Guide to PREVENTING Religious Trauma

Hey there, everybody. And welcome back to part two of two. This is a pastor's guide to preventing religious trauma. In part one, we talked about understanding religious trauma. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In part one, we define trauma, explained the effects of trauma on all pieces of a person's life. We explored common types of trauma and and examined how scripture, the church and or the congregation may directly or or indirectly cause people to experience trauma. In part two, we're going to talk about strategies for becoming trauma informed. This is going to be a much more fun presentation. A lot of what we need to do in a trauma informed congregation is create safety. Remember, trauma leaves people feeling unsafe, powerless and abandoned, and we need to help them feel safe and empowered and loved. Makes sense, but how do we do that? Start out by asking congregants to let you know what things make them feel unsafe or triggered. You can have a box where they put little slips of paper that tell you things that are making them feel unsafe or triggered. Now, they can choose to put their name on it so you can talk about it with them or not. You know, if they don't put their name on it, it's just this note in there that says, well, the dim lights make me feel triggered. Well, I don't know how to help with that. We're going to have dim lights in church. It's just the way it is. However, if they put their name on it, then you can reach out to them and talk about ways that they might feel safe in that environment, things that you might be able to do to help them feel safer in that environment. I had one person that I worked with that felt very unsafe sitting in church because people would come in and out through the back of back doors of the church and they had seen on the news sometime when somebody had come in through the back doors of church during a sermon and, you know, had committed an atrocity so they didn't feel safe having their back to the door. There's a lot of people, police officers, for example, that don't feel safe having their back to the door. Having pews along the walls so people can sit with their back to the wall and they can see the entrances and exits is one way to help people feel. Yeah, it's not the exact same format, but. And if you can't move your pews, put chairs there so people who feel the need can choose to sit in the chairs so they feel safer. Empathize with the people's point of view based on their prior experiences. If they Feel like this passage in scripture says something or it triggers them, it makes them feel powerless or angry, then, okay, I'm hearing that's triggering something for you and your inter. Let me understand your interpretation of this scripture. When people are traumatized or when they're re traumatized, they will generally feel angry, anxious or depressed. So if they start feeling, they read a passage in scripture and they start feeling what one of those feelings, it's important to examine where that's coming from. What memory, what experience is that reminding you of? And helping them examine whether their perceptions and interpretations of that passage are exactly on point. Now, they may stick with their interpretation, and that's their right, but we can help them look at other biblical commentaries that have explained what that passage means to see if they read that, they say, oh, okay, well, you know, maybe that means something different than what I was interpreting. And I, I'm okay with it now. But we don't want to tell them that their perspective is wrong. We don't want to tell them that it's not right to be angry about when they read that passage. That's not our place. We need to empathize with them and try to understand what's triggering this, what is causing them to feel or react this way. Our reactions are based on our prior experiences. Anger and anxiety are your body's way of saying, hey, somewhere back in my psyche, this reminds me of a threatening situation and I need to fight or flee. Help them examine the facts in this context at this time. What was true for the Israelites back in the Old Testament is very different now. When the way they treated leprosy, the way they treated people with communicable diseases, we have much more advanced antibacterials and antibiotics and, and stuff now, so we don't have to exercise, quarantine, or excommunicate people. So it's different now, because now is different than back then. We still want to keep people safe, but we have different ways of doing it now. Help them understand Scripture within the larger framework. A lot of times, passages don't mean a whole lot unless they are put into context. Unless you understand the meaning of the passage, the words are often somewhat confusing. When writing sermons, hear it through the ears of someone who's experienced trauma, someone who's felt abandoned, abused, unsafe, powerless. How might what I'm saying remind them of that experience? How might this story that I'm telling or this chapter that I'm reading out of the Bible, how might this remind them of being abandoned, abused, or unsafe around a parent Around a significant other in society. How might this cause them to remember feeling afraid of God? As I, as I mentioned before, a lot of people have never read the Bible from COVID to cover. And quite honestly, even the first time you read it from COVID to cover, there's a whole lot of stuff in there that probably ain't going to sink in. So understanding the Bible actually takes a lot of time and several iterations of reading it. So it's important to recognize that when people first read about some of the bad things that happened in the old Testament, they may have felt like they were going to be abandoned or abused or severely punished by God. So they became afraid of God. And they've held on to that fear of God to this very day. And we don't want to incite fear of God. We want people to love God, to want to do his will. We want people to embrace the principles of love. You know, if we're loving, then we're not hating. You can't do one and the same. When discussing scripture, be aware of how someone who's never experienced unconditional love might have difficulty understanding the concepts. If you've never experienced it, then getting somebody to believe that it's true is kind of crazy. And we'll go back to an example I used in the other video. Dogs. If every dog that you've encountered until now has been in your perception, you've perceived them as being aggressive and you've perceived them as being dangerous, Then if you tell them that this dog is just sweet as pie, are they going to believe you? Probably not. They're not going to be able to even fathom that a dog can be safe, because all of their experiences till now or their interpretations of experiences until now have told them the exact opposite. We need to provide evidence. For example, if we say that God loves us, then we need to provide help people find evidence in the world that there is love, and that'll look different for different people, Help people understand. And what I've done with a lot of people that I've worked with in addictions recovery in 12 steps, they talk about God. And that's a trigger word for a lot of people. It's like God. Where was he when, you know, God's never been there for me? Da, da, da, da da. Okay, so we talk about good, orderly direction and the principles of love. As you see throughout the Bible and Galatians and 1 Corinthians, et cetera, the principles of love are what we're working toward. God is love. So if we are embracing these principles of love, then we are getting to know God. And as we get to know God, then we can start to see how these behaviors, how love is working in our life. Be mindful of your non verbals. If somebody says they're angry with God or they don't believe in God or whatever and you start getting these very closed off non verbals, they're going to pick up on that. So be aware of that. If they tell you their interpretation of something and it's totally different than what you believe, don't roll your eyes. And yes, I know you wouldn't intentionally roll your eyes, but sometimes it can happen unintentionally. You're like, ugh, okay, let's go back and talk about this. And they see that eye roll. If you notice yourself getting frustrated when talking to a person, they're just not, they're not seeing God's love. And I've had a lot of pastors talk to me about that. They're just, I get so frustrated because they don't hear all of the promises, they don't see God's love. And I'm like, you're right, they don't. But if you notice yourself getting frustrated because they're not understanding your point of view, they are probably getting frustrated too because you're not understanding theirs. You're at an impass. And at that point in time you can either acknowledge the frustration and say, it seems like we're both getting frustrated because we're having a hard time taking each other's perspectives. Or you may take a break, or you may switch gears for a minute and say, okay, let's approach this from a different perspective. Recognize resistance as a protective behavior. Resistance is not willful maliciousness. Resistance is a protective behavior. I, they've since passed on, but I had donkeys and when we first got them, they had been raised on a farm with 40 other donkeys. They were breeders. That's all they knew was popping out babies. But they never went into a barn. They never had a barn. They had a three sided run in that they could get in, but they never had a barn. And when they first came to our farm, you know, they were 24 and 26 years old. You know, know they, for donkeys, they were pretty old and I wanted them to go in the barn at night so they'd be safe. That was my perception. If you, if I get them in here, they're going to feel safe because they're going to know that nothing can get to them. All right, that's my perception. So I try to lead them into the barn. They dig in just like you would expect a donkey to do. Why were they digging in? Well, from their perspective, they were being put in a place where they couldn't escape from danger. It's not that they were being protected from danger. They were being put in a place where they were trapped and they couldn't escape from danger, so they weren't going to go in. And eventually we agreed to disagree and they stayed out. But I did learn from that. It was important for me to gradually get them used to the barn so they felt like it was a place where they would be safe. Neither one of them ever took to loving it, but they wouldn't try to bust out. And I could get them into the barn occasionally. But that was the different perspective. I saw it as a wonderful thing. And Flo Jo said, no, you're not putting me into that death trap. So, resistance. She wasn't trying to be bad. She wasn't trying to do a bad behavior. She was trying to protect herself. People can be resistant to change for a lot of reasons. They can be resistant to adopting your point of view for a lot of reasons. Let's look at five of the most common. They feel overwhelmed to start. What you're saying goes so completely counter to what I've ever believed. I just. I don't even know where I would start trying to change my point of view. It's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm out. All right, so that's the first one. For that, we break it down. We say, you know, let's. Let's take a smaller step. What is it that we can do to start helping you feel safer? Or what is one thing that doesn't make sense to you about Christianity or God's love or whatever? Let's just talk about that. We don't have to talk about the whole Bible. We don't have to talk about Protestantism or Catholicism or any. Any of those big meta concepts. Let's just start somewhere. And we help people pick a point and start somewhere, and we support them in that, recognizing that it's overwhelming. All of a sudden, you know, they're walking through this sort of fun house where they can't tell exactly where they're going because everything's confusing. Lack of awareness of the problem. And in this case, the problem is your point of view. And I'm not saying your point of view is wrong. I'm saying that they don't have any concept of what you believe. They don't understand what you believe. They don't understand scripture. They just. They don't understand that God is this loving, nurturing father figure. And so they have a hard time hearing anything you say because they haven't read scripture. They haven't learned about who God is. Number three, lack of skills to make the changes. In Matthew, he talks about, you know, don't worry about tomorrow. Today is sufficient for its own problems. But he says, don't worry. You know, God has this. He makes sure that the. The birds have what they need. He makes sure that the grass has what it needs. And that's wonderful to read, but we can't just tell somebody you're feeling threatened, you're feeling vulnerable. Don't worry about it. God has it. And expect them to go, oh, okay, no problem. We need to help them develop the skills to. What can they do to help them let go of anxiety, to help them let go of fear, to help them feel safe? How can we expect them to trust God? They may not have the skills to know how to develop trust. They may not trust themselves. They may not trust anybody else. They may not trust God. So how do we help them start learning to trust? Well, by evaluating behaviors, I learn in. In relationships, I learned that I can trust you through your behaviors. If you behave in a trustworthy way, then I start learning to trust you. And if I'm trusting you and you do something that's untrustworthy, then I have to step back and go, huh, you know, was it a mistake or are they untrustworthy? The same thing is true with God. We need to help people start seeing God's love in everybody else. We need to help people start seeing God's hand in their life each day. You know, you got to work and you got home. You didn't get into a car crash. That's, you know, somebody was watching out for you because the roads are kind of crazy out there. And I'm not saying that facetiously. I'm saying encourage people to take stock of the times throughout the day that they were blessed, that they were happy, that they were kept safe, when they didn't necessarily have to be. A sense of futility due to past failures is another reason for resistance. I've tried this before. I've tried going to church, and I felt ostracized. I didn't get it. I just walk in, I'd hear the pastor saying a bunch of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It didn't do anything for me. I didn't understand it. It didn't Sink in it, whatever. So why should I try again? Well, let's try it from a different perspective or try it a different way. Not everybody does well in weekly sermons. There are a lot of people who are, number one, are not auditory learners. So expecting them to sit in a sermon for an hour is agonizing. Not everybody understand because they don't understand. The whole Bible may not understand all of your sermons. So you want to make sure to draw connections between what you're saying and real life. Give real life examples, Help people apply it to their life, not only just in theory. There was this person that I knew at this time, blah, blah, blah, here's a story. But asking people, stopping in the sermon and asking them to think for themselves, how would what we're talking about today, how does this apply to your life? How could this help you strengthen your relationships with yourself, with your loved ones, with God? And there can be people who just, you know, they. They're resisting this whole faith thing because they're afraid they're going to fail. They're afraid that they're not lovable enough, so it's not going to work for them. They're afraid to even try because if they start hoping that this is going to work, they. They start hoping that they're going to have that wonderful epiphany that some call a spiritual awakening, and they don't, then it's just going to confirm that they're a failure. So we want to help them see all the progress they're making and that they can't fail. They can't fail. We want to create an environment in which people feel safe approaching us, not. Some people are not going to feel. Feel safe approaching us right after a sermon. They're not going to feel safe approaching us when we are in our robes. They're not going to feel safe approaching us, maybe even at church. But create an environment where people feel safe approaching you, where you're wearing street clothes and you're volunteering or you're working at the, at the bake sale or, or whatever, where they can talk to you, like, person to person. They don't feel like they're talking to you. Person to pastor. Because person to pastor is definitely a power differential. Create a congregation that works together to help each other meet their basic needs. Actions speak so much louder than words. If you want me to feel God's love, you need to help me feel, feel loved, period. And creating congregations of care, creating outreach to help people within your congregation. Before you start going to Africa or wherever on missions Helping the people that are in your congregation get their needs met. Welcoming them, hearing what they need, instead of thinking that you know what they need. Hearing what they need. Creating focus groups where people can say, hey, I need addiction treatment. I need help with my child. They've. They've got colic. I don't know what to do. They're driving me to my wit's end. I need some respite care, helping, getting them to let you know what, what they need. Now, it doesn't mean the church can provide all of that. That's asking a lot. But the community may have resources that you can tap into. You can develop coalitions. There's a lot you can do when you start banding together to meet the needs, even as an interfaith community coalition. One church may provide respit care. One church may provide clothing and a food bank. One church may provide something else. So every church isn't trying to do everything all by themselves. Get a strong grip on gossiping and judging within the congregation, within your staff, within yourself, within the congregation members. When you get a whiff of people judging others, we need to remind them that it's not our place to judge. We need to take the, the log out of our own eye before we start trying to criticize or help anybody else. And we need to make sure that that is a very loud message in our congregations, that infighting and backstabbing and gossiping, all of this high school crap is not going to fly here because that's not what Jesus wanted. That doesn't embrace any of the characteristics of. Of love. Strengthen the Holy Spirit in people by recognizing how they demonstrate courage, love, love and faith through behaviors that reflect love. And I keep referring to the behaviors that reflect love. And when you look throughout the different explanations of what love is, what a Christian is, you find these behaviors. Prudence, endurance of trials and distress, respect for self and other, for forgiveness of self and other. Earnestness in all that we do. I'm just doing our very best. Compassion for self and other. Truthfulness with self and other and selflessness. Look at these behaviors. If somebody is new to your church and they come up and introduce themselves to you, or if they've been a member of your church for a while and they've always kind of shrunk to the background and they come up and want to set a meeting with you or something, acknowledge how much courage that took, acknowledge how awesome it is and how happy you are that they feel safe enough to make an appointment with you. Focus on the things they're Doing right. Focus on how they're respecting themselves as well as other people. If they hear something in a sermon or in scripture that they feel is attacking or condemning, and they come to talk to you about it, you know, they're showing respect for themselves. They're saying, hey, we read this in scripture today, and I don't think it's right. All right, you know, you are trying to show respect for yourself. Now let's look at what the scripture actually meant. But try to see people's behaviors as communication, as communication of either love or as communication of feeling threatened and wanting to stay safe. Generally, our behaviors fall in one or two. One of one or one or the other area. Create safety and empowerment by acknowledging and not minimizing their feelings of abandonment and fear. Don't cite Psalm 23 or footprints. If somebody's talking about, well, where was God? When or why didn't God answer my prayers? If you start telling them, oh, he was there, see, the Bible says they're going to tune you out because you're invalidating their feeling. They felt abandoned. They felt alone. When we need to sit with them with their feelings. Help them find passages in scripture that talk about enduring trials. Job, you know, that's. That's my go to all the time. And how we don't always understand why things are happening. Remember, Job kept getting admonished by his friends. Job was this upright guy. And his friends kept saying, you must have done something to bring this kind of punishment onto yourself. And Job said, I didn't do anything. And they said, no, you just. You don't remember or you're lying to us. And they went back and forth and back and forth. And Job finally kind of got angry at God and he's like, why are you doing this to me? I don't understand. And God said, sometimes you're not going to understand. And we know from the beginning of that story, God and the devil were talking, I guess, talking. And God said, job won't turn against me. And the devil said, I'll see if I can make him. And we see the similar thing in, in the New Testament when Jesus faces his trials. Um, but in both cases, the devil was trying to get somebody to turn against God. Either way, we don't want to minimize their feelings of abandonment. We want to help them explore how people who have felt abandoned by God or felt tempted by the devil endured and recognize that sometimes they didn't understand why either. Help them feel safe. Getting angry at God and grieving what they lost as a result of their Trauma. Too often people are so afraid that God is going to, you know, harm them that they're afraid to get angry at God. And God's a big boy. God created the whole world, and God can handle it. God can handle our, our anger. God can handle our wrath. And getting angry is, remember, a response to feeling vulnerable. We get angry at God. We, we say, I felt abandoned, I felt angry when. We need to get that out there so we can process it and figure out what was going on. Just like our parents can handle us getting angry at them. God can handle us getting angry at Him. Our parents don't hold it against us when we get angry at them. God doesn't hold us, hold it against us when we get angry at Him. He may not change, but he's not going to hold it against us. We need to encourage people to find scripture for and against their beliefs and help them process it. If they say God is a, an unforgiving, jealous, angry God, okay, well, find some scripture that supports that, because obviously you got that notion from somewhere. And then find some scripture that says that he is a loving and forgiving God, you know, and, and let's talk about what all this looks like. This is true for anything in life. There are two sides to the story. There's always, or almost always facts for and against our beliefs. And we need to choose which one is more accurate, I guess, for us as we interpret it. Help people reconcile seemingly contradictory messages and embrace the why. As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament that Jesus seems to kind of unravel, even though he said he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So that causes a lot of people quandary, and we want to help them reconcile those messages. Why did this happen? Back in numbers. And then, you know, why did God say that your diet was limited to only these things? And, and then in the New Testament, Jesus is saying it's not what defiles one. What goes into one's mouth is not what defiles them. It's what comes out of one's mouth. And we shouldn't argue over what, what one chooses to eat versus what another chooses to eat. Jesus is saying that. But in the Old Testament, it was very clear, you don't eat some of these things. So how do we rectify that? How do we reconcile those two opinions as being meaningful? And remember I said earlier, a lot of what Jesus was doing was helping people realize the spirit of the law, realize the intent of what was Being said back then, you know, they may have had to do certain things in order to protect themselves, in order to stay healthy. Those things may not be so true now. So we have a little bit more leniency in what we're doing. We need to understand why the rule is there. In what way does this rule help us create a more loving, compassionate, supportive kingdom of heaven on earth? Help people embrace the dialectics. God unites and strengthens those who act lovingly towards themselves and each other. And God is working in their lives. Okay, well, somebody may say, well, he's working in my life over here. But he didn't answer this prayer. True. We need to embrace the good with the bad. We need to embrace the fact that sometimes bad things are going to happen and. And sometimes things that are amazing are going to happen. And recognize that every experience we have, if we use prudence, if we use endurance, if we use respect for ourselves, if we use truthfulness and earnestness, then we're going to be able to explore those experiences and hopefully grow from those experiences. May not be something you wanted to experience, but it may help you become stronger. It may help you grow. It may be preparing you for something that's more challenging in the future. Help people recognize what they do, have the power to change and. And focus their energies on improving themselves and their community, improving their relationship with themselves, and strengthening the community around them. I'm always reminded when I talk about creating community, for example, of the Amish culture, which the community works together. We don't have everybody doing the same thing because then a lot of stuff wouldn't get done. Everybody has their own lane. But when there's a problem, they all come together. They all come together to raise the barn. They all come together to make sure that the harvest go goes accordingly and everybody has enough to eat. They all come together. And so they know that when there's a problem, that they can count on those in their community to help build them up. And that's what we're talking about with love. We're trying to create a loving kingdom on earth. Acceptance and empowerment. Teach practical tools to deal with life's adversity and purposefully use energy to create the kingdom of God on earth and their rich and meaningful life. Now, hopefully there these two things kind of go hand in hand. If we create the kingdom of heaven on earth, you know, we're creating this loving, nurturing, uplifting society, which hopefully is something that's a part of somebody's rich and meaningful life. In order for us to live our Rich and meaningful life. In order for us to have the things that are important in our life, our relationships, our health experiences, whatever. A lot of times that relies on us having people that we can count on to support us. So in order to have a rich and meaningful life, we need to have this kingdom. We need to have this village or this body, whatever you want to call it. We need to provide options for developing a relationship with God. Not everybody's going to be happy about Sunday sermons. That does not work for everybody. And that actually may be traumatizing for some people because that's what their abusive parent used to make them do or whatever. So we want to provide options. Some people are still too angry at God to even think about worshiping him. All right, so how can you engage in some of those behaviors of a loving person, Being prudent, enduring, respectful, compassionate, truthful, those things. What can you do? So volunteering comes up. Going out and doing things in your community that are loving towards others, helping a neighbor, picking up trash as you walk past, and you see it on the ground. Little things. It doesn't even have to be this big ordeal that takes up four hours in a day. Doing little things to be more loving, to be more caring and compassionate towards yourself and others, is often the first step into developing a relationship with God. Some people may be open to doing Bible study, especially those who aren't auditory learners. They may prefer to be able to read a text and talk about it with people and do Bible studies or read a text and do some worksheets. They're. They're not ready to interface with others yet. That's fine. We just want them to get to know God. We want to get them to help them get to know Scripture. Obviously, going to church, that's probably the one that you're hoping for, but that may not work for everybody. Sitting in the pews for an hour or. Or more, depending on the pastor, may also not work for them. You can offer online services. A lot of churches are doing that now. Many churches have a coffee room or I don't know what you want to call it, where they offer coffee and sometimes breakfast foods or something, and people are able to hear the sermon. But. But they're also able to do something that helps them feel more comfortable. Um, so that's. That's yet another option. And then sponsorship. And what I mean by that is connecting people with mentors in the church, new new members or people who are trying to reestablish a relationship with God, connecting them with somebody in the church. Who can meet with them after sermons, who can meet with them to do Bible studies, whatever, in order to process what they're reading, what they're learning, what they're feeling, what they're experiencing through the lens of a loving God. Roll back the narrative that forgiveness and acceptance mean being doormats. That's just not what it means. Forgiveness and acceptance mean not holding on to that grudge because it does no good, and instead using that energy to move forward, to stay safe and not be harmed by that again, but using that energy to move forward and recognize behaviors as communication. We want to teach how God wants us to care for all pieces of ourselves, care for us ourselves, physically, care for our relationships with ourselves and others, care for ourselves emotionally and cognitively, care for our environment and care for ourselves spiritually. God wants us to be whole. God wants us to care for ourselves partly so we can be a functioning part of the kingdom. We're no good to anybody else if we're broken. If our battery is completely dead, we're kind of like a paperweight. So we need to keep ourselves charged. We need to keep ourselves healthy. We need to keep our saltiness, so to speak. That way we can be helpful in the kingdom. So physically, we need to encourage people to actually rest and take care of themselves physically, interpersonally, encourage them to create healthy relationships with themselves and others. Emotionally, teach them skills to help them release distress so they can be become aware of the good. Now, sometimes we just got to tolerate distress. It's not going to go away magically. But if we can learn how to tolerate distress, then we can have this thing over here that's stressful, but I can't change it right now, so I'm just going to put it on a shelf. And then we can also notice the things that are going well, like when you're waiting on results from a blood test or from your physical or something and you're worried about the results, well, that's not going to make the blood test come back any faster. Is worrying about it going to change the results? No, it's just going to take days off your life. So acknowledging your anxiety, you know, it is what it is, and saying but worrying about it is not a good use of my energy. I'm going to put it here on the shelf for right now and I'm going to turn my attention. I'm going to force myself to turn my attention to other things for right now. Cognitively encourage people to read and understand scripture in context. Encourage them to develop an understanding and read different interpretations of Scripture, read different commentaries that are out there, do to get a bit better picture of what scholars have come to understand about the Scripture itself. Now, obviously they're going to come to their own understanding, but when you do it in isolation, then you're just arguing with yourself. When you get your own interpretation and then you read four other people's interpretations, you can figure out, am I 100% on? Am I my 60% on? Is there anything I'm missing here? And you can get a fuller understanding of what's going on. Environmentally, encourage them to create a safe environment and spiritually encourage them to do things to help them feel connected to others and recognize their interdependence, recognize how when they're having a good day and they smile at people, that person smiles back. And it actually literally does trigger the release of oxytocin and helps that person feel a little bit better and help them understand this connectedness, how our energies are connected and how we can use them to build up something much greater than any of us, much stronger than any of us is by ourselves. It comes to guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling angry at yourself for something that you did that you shouldn't have done or something that you didn't do that you really should have done. And guilt is acknowledging something that you did wrong and making amends for it. Guilt is anger at yourself about a behavior. Shame is anger at yourself for being imperfect, for being who you are. Shame says, I'm a bad person. Guilt says I did a bad thing. Help people separate behaviors and guilt from feeling like they are shameful as a person. A lot of people I've worked with in recovery have done a lot of things that they feel guilty for. And a lot of times they think that means they're a bad person. And we work on embracing the fact that they're a good person, that they that made some really bad choices, they did some really bad things, and yes, they may have to atone for those. But we're separating the person from the behaviors. They're in treatment now. They're in recovery now. They want to be the person they know they can be. They they who they know they are, which is a good person, which means they want to get away from doing the bad behaviors. We want to understand the function or the cause of the behaviors. Was the person trying to stay safe. They were reacting to something because they felt threatened. Okay, maybe there's a better way to handle it, but we understand what triggered that behavior. You weren't trying to be mean. You Weren't trying to be hateful. You're trying to protect yourself. Is it due to being neuroatypical? Are they reacting based on overstimulation or under stimulation? Are they reacting? You know, people with ADHD have difficulty sitting through lectures, have difficulty not interrupting, have difficulty sitting still. So have having somebody with uncontrolled ADHD sit in a pew for an hour. Being quiet is a monumental task for a lot of people. And recognizing that and saying, okay, how can we have a situation, a setting that is more conducive to people with adhd so they can hear God's word, so they can be a part of the community, but they don't feel. Feel stressed out the entire time trying to hold it together. And sometimes the cause of the behavior can be trauma. The person has been traumatized. And again, they're trying to get safe. They're trying to protect themselves from further trauma. Identify and teach alternatives to the problem behaviors or compromises. And sometimes when people feel unsafe, they may react with anger and they may get loud and boisterous. They're trying to protect themselves. What could you do instead that wouldn't be as intimidating, as disruptive? That might be more prudent in this situation. That might be more respectful of yourself and others in this situation. Other examples, tithing. In church, we hear a lot that if you're not tithing, you're not being a good Christian. And, you know, tithing is 10%. And. And a lot of people are really struggling to put food on their table right now. And they feel guilty if they can't go to church and put a whole bunch of money into the offering plate. They feel guilty about that. So we want to help people get past that guilt. Help people get past that belief that if they're not giving 10%, then they're not good Sunday attendance. Some people have to work on Sundays. Some people just can't sit through an entire sermon. Some people. There's a lot of reasons helping people recognize alternatives for Sunday attendance. Maybe going to Wednesday evening Bible study. Even if you can't stomach go into the sermon, going to Wednesday, even evening Bible study is a good alternative. You're still connecting with the community. You're still connecting with God. You're just not doing it maybe in the typical way. Drinking. Some people drink to numb pain, to, you know, or as a result of already being addicted to alcohol. Okay, so what are some alternatives? If you're drinking when you're stressed out or you're drinking when you're in pain, what are Some alternative behaviors that you could engage in that might be healthier. Regardless, when people are trying to make positive changes, recognize their progress in the behavior and their enduring worth as an individual. If John is trying to quit drinking and he comes to church and he is hoping that feeling the be feeling like a part of a community and feeling God's love will help him not need to drink. Okay, well, John, you're trying to do the next right thing. You're coming to church. You got here, I can smell whiskey on your breath. But you're here and I am proud of you for coming, for trying. Now let's talk about what the next step might be. And remember, we need to stop repeating patterns that abusers have used through cherry picked scripture and biased preaching. A lot of pastors maybe intentionally in order to get butts and seats, try to really play on that guilt. And it may be intentional to get dollars in the coffers. And again, butts and seats, they may want to make people feel guilty. I don't know. I'm hoping that's not the case. But I see it happen again and again. And messages like, you're not lovable for who you are, only what you do, so you better do a lot. Revelations 20, chapter verse 12. And I saw the dead standing before the throne and the book of life was opened and the dead were judged by what was written in the book according to what they had done. So did you do enough to get into heaven? That's a little bit different than, you know, Jesus died so that we may have our sins forgiven and we may be able to go to heaven. There's nothing about you have to do these 15 things in order to get into heaven. And in that I remember seeing. But revelation kind of indicates that there's a scorecard. Romans 2, verses 6 through 10 and 1 Corinthians 3:13 and through 15 also kind of communicate this message that God doesn't love you for who you are, but what you do. You're judged by your actions. And we need to remember that, yeah, you know, we are judged by our actions, but not just our bad actions. We are given credit for the good things that we do. Stop repeating patterns. Oh, yeah, we already talked about that. You'll never measure up. It's your fault. Your prayers weren't answered. You will never actually be deserving of love he has for you. And you're a sinner, which makes you unlovable. We hear these messages communicated in a lot of churches in order to convince people that you've got to Come here every day or every, every Sunday in order to get cleansed of your sins, you've got to come here and be present. Instead of acknowledging that God is everywhere and God is in our hearts. God. God is everywhere. And we can ask for forgiveness. We can try to do the right thing. And it doesn't mean that everybody has to actually physically go into a church. And I know some people are like when I say that, but if people aren't ready, if, if the people you're working with are not ready to, to go into a church, we need to help them recognize what's good in their life. We need to help them start hearing the calling about, oh, my, oh my, how much more wonderful would it be if I could commune with a bunch of people who were loving, who were safe? You know, we want to help communicate that message to people so they almost feel drawn to come in, not feel driven out of fear to come in. If you disagree with my opinion or the church's stance, you're going to hell. That's another one where a lot of pastors have told people that what they said is right. And if you disagree that you are wrong and that that is a offense to God. And finally, God had a reason this bad thing happened. Whether you were a victim of crime or death or disease or something, well, God had a reason for this. And, and that's not real comforting. That's not real comforting at all. Sometimes it can even be perceived as blaming. So we want to help people embrace where they are, embrace that they've survived, try to recognize the good with the bad, and work through their grieving process. People who've experienced traumatic injury have felt unsafe and powerless, maybe even abandoned by God. A trauma. Informed church helps people learn what love is, to love themselves and others as Jesus does, and come to understand that God is love. Review your sermons. As someone who's experienced abuse or tragedy, what unintentional messages might you be communicating and how can you balance that with the message of safety, hope, and empowerment?