Slideshow image

September 9, 2024

Toxic Faith

by Jason Neill

Scripture reading: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; 1 John 2:1-2

In college, I took a course that significantly influenced my thinking about the Christian faith. The class? Psychology of religion. One of the textbooks required for the course was a book titled Toxic Faith: Experiencing healing from painful spiritual abuse by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton. If truth be told, this volume made it into the top ten books that influenced my Christian life. It was that influential.

If you are like me, prior to reading that book, you did not think much about a person’s faith being healthy or toxic. It never occurred to you; it didn’t to me.

Arterburn and Felton define toxic faith as “a destructive and dangerous involvement in a religion that allows the religion, not a relationship with God, to control a person’s life” (p. 19). Toxic faith controls a person’s life in that it is addictive in the sense that it shields a person from facing reality and responsibility. Similarly to drug addiction, people can be addicted to a toxic faith system. They can parallel one another. The purpose behind each one is similar (i.e., to avoid reality by pushing out of conscious thought painful memories/circumstances and replace them with pleasurable and, sometimes, a euphoric experience).

I’ve seen this firsthand. Prior to teaching at a university, I was an active clinical mental health therapist. I worked with numerous clients and issues including parent/child issues, marital difficulties, communication problems, depression, anxiety, different kinds of abuse (i.e. sexual, physical, verbal), trauma, and issues related to toxic faith among others. The adversity I saw in a client’s life because of toxic faith was deplorable. Most, if not all, of my clients were unaware of their toxic faith system because it’s what they were taught growing up. Hence, if a person ever hopes to defeat their toxic faith and ascertain a healthy faith, they must become aware of it.

We know through the discipline of psychology via empirical research that our beliefs influence all other facets of our lives (i.e., how we see ourselves, how we see others, whether we trust others or don’t). There is also a commonsense element to this as well. If a person holds the beliefs “I am no good, I’ll never measure up, and my life is a waste,” then it inevitably leads to sadness and possibly depression. Likewise, a person who holds toxic faith beliefs will experience pseudo-spirituality. It won’t be the real thing.

Drawing from Arterburn and Felton’s book, I would like to share with you two beliefs that are part of a toxic faith system. First, “God’s love and favor depend on my behavior” (p. 36). Our world operates off the premise that if you want something you work for it. We’re taught this at an early age. As children, we learn that if we want our parents or teachers to approve of us, then we must behave in accordance with a set of predetermined rules. Some of these rules are explicit (i.e., we’re told what these rules are) while others are implicit (i.e., we’re not told what these rules are but are expected to know). The child may hear, “that’s not good enough. Try harder.”

Regrettably, these rules can carry over to how a person perceives God. The child pictures God as some ogre who looks at them disapprovingly because they can never quite get their act together. They imagine God telling them, like their parents and/or teachers, “that’s not good enough. Try harder.” Fast forward to their adult years and they still feel like this is how God views them despite their efforts to obey God.

The good news is that once a person trusts in Jesus alone for everlasting life, God is satisfied with that person because they are in Christ. 1 John 2:1-2 reads, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (NKJV). The word “propitiation” means “satisfaction.” Specifically, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross satisfied the holy demands of God the Father for justice. God the Father is satisfied with the work of the Son. If you have trusted in Jesus alone for everlasting life, then you are in Christ, and by virtue of being in Christ God is satisfied with you. Isn’t that great news?

A second toxic belief is “if I have real faith, God will heal me or someone I am praying for” (p. 39). God is in the business of healing people. We see this clearly in the four gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John). Regardless, God does not heal everyone. The Apostle Paul comes to mind as a case study. Paul was suffering from some ailment, prayed three times for God to remove it, and God said “no” to healing him (see 2 Corinthians 12:1-10). Job is another case in point. In fact, Job never knew what the source behind his troubles was. We have the advantage because we can read his story and know that Satan was behind it (see Job 1-2).

While I do believe in miracles, I know that God does not always heal, and I often don’t know why He doesn’t. To think that God “should” or “ought” to heal because we ask Him is arrogance on our part. We must be content with asking God to heal, then leave it in His capable hands. To expect anything else, we set ourselves up for a toxic faith belief.

God wants our faith to be healthy, absent of any toxic beliefs. My hope is that if you held either one of these beliefs, you’ll reexamine them considering the truth of scripture.  

For more on this topic, I would strongly encourage you to read Toxic Faith: Experiencing healing from painful spiritual abuse by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton.