Faith and The Power It Had Over Me

I currently have three versions of this post sat waiting for me to finish in my drafts folder. You'll have noticed that I haven't posted in a week or so. It seems that the idea of faith still holds considerable power over me that I find it incredibly difficult to talk about its impact on me. I start it and then can't find the way to say what I want to. So here is attempt four.

I've talked before about struggling to feel emotions and feeling disconnected from them. After a few months of therapy I found that one of the first emotions to come back was anger, and boy did it come back in full force. It's target? Christianity or at least my version of it. When I first conceived of this post I thought it would a litany of grievances and ramblings about the shattered faith that lies around me now but held me in its grip for so long. I thought this would be an easy post to write but it is not.

So where to begin with this tale? I must make it very clear that this is my story and experience. I fully and warmly support anyone who has had a different relationship with their faith and I am glad for anyone that finds comfort in that.

I was born into a culturally catholic family on both sides, even though my parents came from different parts of the country the influence was that of Irish catholicism. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would recognise that faith system. Go to church on Sunday, honour thy father and thy mother, be good or you'll get black marks on your tongue. Dare to step out of line and you're told that God is watching and take vengeance against you. Forget about it the rest of the week. It was very much do as I say not as I do in the community I was part of. Do drink too much, do smoke too much, do put your own needs first, do show anger and toxic masculinity towards the world but as long as you go to church on Sunday it was fine.

I internalised the messaging that to stray from what was perceived as the correct way to live was to condemn yourself to hell. It was very clear to me that my feelings around gender were not acceptable in this world and so I felt condemned, lost and hopeless. If only I could be good enough maybe there would be some hope of salvation and so I abandoned my playful spirit in search of seeking what I thought to be goodness and righteousness. I did as I was told, I studied hard, I did my best in everything. I tried to help people wherever I could and tried always to put others before myself at the expense of what I wanted. I became serious and I know my friends would have called me a bore. I was so known for being straight laced that it became a regular game at parties to try and get me drunk.

As a pro tip don't use gin in Diet Coke as your concealed alcohol it tastes like washing up liquid and I will notice.

This was the role I knew I had to play, to seek good deeds in hope of salvation. The guilt and fear when I fell short was overwhelming. As I grew older it felt empty and hypocritical. This isn't to say that catholicism is inherently these things, this is just my experience of it. It lacked depth and it lacked internal consistency and felt too constructed by the needs and rules of authority rather than the people it was meant to serve.

Then I went to university as a quiet, introverted, straight laced person. I found that adjustment hard. It was lonely, it was isolating, I was away from Clare and my family. I was lost. I felt so horribly out of place in an all boys flat. It triggered my dysphoria badly. I was sad and didn't really know what to do.

Then a group of people told me that I was welcome. That I would be accepted as I was and I could be part of their community. I became an Evangelical Christian. I found the messaging and acknowledgment that we were all flawed and there was nothing we could do to change that liberating. The sense that our salvation came from submission to God rather than from deeds. I knew because of my dysphoria I could never find salvation in catholicism, but evangelical christianity promised me that salvation was mine and that through submission to God I would be liberated and set free from the shackles of the pain my gender identity caused me. There are many aspects of this life that I enjoyed. I found community and I found friendship, it was what I needed at the time when I was so lonely. I am still grateful for that. What I didn't quite realise was the cost that that brought to me. It was very clear that to prioritise your own needs was not the correct way to behave. Phillipians 2 is often quoted as a model for our behaviour:

"2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

The concept is that you always sacrifice yourself in order to meet the needs of others and in turn they will sacrifice their needs to meet yours. It sounds beautiful and simple but of course it never worked like that. I was always the first there, the last to leave. Cooking, cleaning, never being able to just exist in that space and it was always couched as a gift to be able to serve whilst others enjoyed.

The impact of this on my thought process around transitioning was profound. One of the first questions I asked my therapist was:

'It it not selfish to seek your own happiness?'

Surely to meet more than your basic needs was to take away from your ability to meet the needs of others and was selfish. Therefore, as I was able to function as man in the world, to spend time, energy and money on transitioning was inherently selfish when that resource could be used to benefit others. I still find asking for what I want next to impossible. I am intensely aware of the power faith still has over me even now I've stepped away from it.

One of the other aspects of faith that was taken about a lot was taken from 1 Corinthians 10:13

"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

This stuck with me because I should have been able to be liberated and set free from my dysphoria. To be able to endure it and live well and happily despite it. God would never allow me to carry something that I couldn't bear. No matter how much I prayed, no matter how much I cried and reflected asked for freedom from this It did not come. I redoubled my efforts, I read my bible more, I prayed more, I did everything I could and still it was too much to endure. As the bible was clear that God would take this from me if I submitted myself to His will then the fact that it was not taken could only mean that I had failed, that I had not submitted myself enough and the shame and guilt and sadness that came from that was immense.

It took me years to realise that this was not a choice I was making, this was not a battle of wills to be fought and won. My gender identity just is, it cannot be changed and it doesn't need to. It doesn't determine if I am acceptable to God and worthy of salvation and fundamentally if it does I have no hope of salvation anyway.

I thought I was angry at Christianity for this, at the people who told me this, who said I was accepted but only on their terms. I'm not. I am sad to have lost some people I considered friends but that was inevitable.

They were trying to show me love and kindness in the only way they knew how. I do not blame them for that. In their rejection of me know they're still in a weird way trying to show me love their condemnation of me is an attempt to help me return to the path they think is the right one. Their motives are kind even if misplaced. I cannot allow myself to be in a situation where I am no accepted though, no matter how kind their motives are.

I am angry at myself for allowing faith to have such power and control over me. I have so much regret that the internalisation of this messaging from childhood to my adult life stopped me accepting myself for so long. It made me feel such shame and disgust at who I am, feelings that I still get flashes of it even now.

I am sad that I gave so much of my life to something that fundamentally has been toxic for me and I am left with the scars of that life.

I am not angry at Christianity, it is what it is, I am just disappointed in myself that allowed to pervade so much of the way I view the world.

I have spent a long time understanding that to seek my own happiness is ok. That I am allowed to take up space and assert my needs in a given situation and that growth comes from acceptance of that which you cannot change rather than trying to fight against something that is innate. I am not a failure for that I am just different and I wish I could have seen that sooner.

When something so core to your belief unravels it challenges the whole concept. I think when I realised my gender identity wasn't wrong it made me consider what else I was wrong about and made my faith shatter.

I still believe we are connected in someway as part of this world. I long to believe that we are part of something more than ourselves. I hope one day I can have the peace to explore that and try to find a new path in my faith.

For now though my mind is focussed on healing, to unlearn all of the things that stopped me embracing life and enjoying it for its own purpose rather than as away to seek a higher one.

Where tomorrow leads who knows but for today that is enough.