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“Are you mad at God?” This is a question that will almost certainly be posed to anyone undergoing faith deconstruction. It might come from someone who means well and who cares about the person deconstructing. Or it might come from a partisan advocate of high-control religion. What is happening when someone poses this question? Even if it comes from a place of care, how does it express the dynamics of high-control religion? And why, if it’s a question, does it so often feel like an attack, like a dismissal? Check out this week’s episode to hear Dan’s reflections on these and other issues related to this question.
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Moondy. this we talked about right now in"AAAAAAA",
Welcome to It's in the Code.
The series is part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
As always, I'm your host, Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Delighted to be with you.
As always, special thanks to all of you who support us in so many ways, but especially those of you who subscribe, who help us to do all the things that we do.
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A lot of content, a lot going on in the world that we want to try to stay abreast of and be with you.
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And so please keep those coming.
Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Always value that insight and feedback so much.
And in fact, today's episode is related directly to that.
We have been in a series and are continuing a series.
Looking at high-control religious responses to those undergoing so-called faith deconstruction, so how does high-control Christianity in particular respond to those who are experiencing this?
And as we've discussed, these represent these responses on the part of high-control religion.
They represent efforts to gaslight and discredit religious deconstructors, on the one hand, to...
To try to convince them to doubt their own intuitions, their own questions, their own concerns, and to discredit them to others if they're successful in lodging those criticisms and concerns and so forth.
And in that way, then, to insulate high-control religion from criticism.
So if I can't get you to doubt your own intuitions and return to the fold, so to speak, I can at least discredit you enough.
That everybody else who's in my high-control religious structure won't take you seriously.
They will see you as the cautionary tale.
They will see the questions you're posing as unreasonable and so forth, and that's the aim, okay?
So in this episode, I want to consider another interesting response submitted by a listener.
Again, this series is driven by you, and I really appreciate the listeners who've written in with some thoughts about this series.
And this one comes from Liz, who writes about being confronted with the question of whether or not she was, quote, mad at God as an explanation of why she's no longer religious or Christian.
And so encountering people after she has left the church, she's left Christianity, who say, are you mad at God?
And she writes about being taken aback by this response and struggling to make sense of what she thinks was going on with it.
And this is another response.
So thank you, Liz, for bringing this up because it's another response which I hadn't kind of considered or thought about, but it's one that I've heard.
It's another one I've had leveled toward me.
It's also a response that I think a lot of people will be familiar with.
You know, you go through the time, you know, to explain what it is that you're thinking, the questions you have, the concerns, maybe the reasons you've made, the decisions you've made.
And somebody says, oh, so like, are you mad at God?
And you're like, what was that?
I think it's also an interesting response for a couple of reasons.
One, it can really catch people off guard.
And this is another one of these kind of responses that I've talked with folks, like clients or just people that I've met, who hear this response, and they describe being really upset by it.
And oftentimes, you're like, I don't even understand why it's so upsetting to me.
And so that's one piece that I want to get at.
And I think another piece related to that...
Is that this response also doesn't only come from the active defenders of high-control religion.
It can come from a place of, I think, honest confusion among the well-intentioned, among people who care about the person undergoing faith deconstruction, who are sincerely confused by that decision and so forth.
It can come from a place of, you know, honest confusion, but it nevertheless operates to reinforce the dynamics of high-control religion.
And it can also come from those who are just the partisans of high-control religion.
We'll look at that as well.
So, let's start with this.
Let's start with the way this question might come from someone who's a friend, or a family member, or a churchgoer who sincerely means well.
The question or the sentiment behind it can come in a lot of forms.
Somebody finds out that you've left the church, or the faith, or that, you know...
Maybe you're just taking a step back to figure things out.
They sit down, you go out to a coffee, they're like, tell me what's up with you and your life.
And you're like, I'll just kind of step back.
I got a lot of questions or concerns.
I'm just kind of figuring things out, whatever.
And that's when the question comes, something like this.
Are you doing this because you're angry at God for some reason?
Or a kind of more accusatory question, which is, why are you so angry at God?
You can hear the defensiveness there.
Or another question that maybe has a lot of assumptions built into it, which is, you know, being at Matt, being...
Being mad at God isn't a reason to just throw everything away or something like that, as if you are being, you know, you're acting rashly and so forth.
And we could get into those, but those latter two are maybe not the people who are super well-intentioned.
Let's stick with the first one.
Are you doing this because you're angry at God for some reason?
When it comes from somebody who I'm describing as well-intentioned, and I realize that language could be debated.
There are those who would say, is anybody ever really well-intentioned in high-control religion and so forth?
But, you know, we could have that discussion.
But when it does come from somebody I'm describing as well-intentioned, it's a question that can register, again, among other things, really sincere confusion.
Somebody who just doesn't understand, what could lead you to deeply question or completely leave your faith?
Or what could have happened to push you to this point of decision?
And I think it's important to recognize that when it expresses this confusion, when somebody comes at that level of confusion, that level of just incredulity, they just don't get it.
It's coming from someone who literally cannot imagine making the same decisions or coming to the same conclusions as the person undergoing faith deconstruction.
And we can at least make sense with that idea.
I think all of us have probably known somebody in our world who at some point makes some decision, some big life move, whatever, and we just can't even sort of picture being in a position to do that or making that decision.
It's that kind of phenomenon.
It's a question that comes from someone for whom the kind of questioning that the person undergoing faith deconstruction is doing, or for whom the kind of experiences that have led to that questioning, they are likely and literally just incomprehensible.
It just doesn't make sense.
So in this context, again, it's a question that comes from someone who simply cannot even fathom coming to such a place of decision in their own life.
So for them, the faith deconstructor's decisions create a kind of cognitive, I think, emotional and experiential gap that they have to fill in.
That is, when we talk to people, we make sense of the world oftentimes by sort of projecting onto others the same kinds of experiences or cognitive understandings of things or emotional responses that we have.
And when somebody responds in really different ways or articulates something that we just can't identify with, it creates this kind of gap.
And I think the anger at God is the filler of that gap.
They can't make sense of it.
There's this gap that opens up, and they say, well, I guess they're angry at God.
That's the answer.
And so in place of an explanation that readily makes sense to them, the assumption, and it is an assumption, is that, well, they must just be angry at God.
That must be what explains this decision that I can't comprehend or make sense of.
And expressed in these terms, I want to be clear about this.
This question, in whatever form, it can be an expression of concern as best somebody knows how to express it.
Now, in just a second, I'm going to talk about why, despite being an expression of concern, it's still also an expression of high-control religion, but the intent can be there.
Okay?
So, fine.
Someone's concerned.
They're trying to make sense of what for them is an incomprehensible set of experiences and life choices and so forth, but there's more to it than that.
And this is the question that I want us to think about for a minute, is what does it mean when this is the response?
In other words, what's the significance of getting this response from someone?
You sit down for that coffee or that beer or whatever with the friend, the family member, the churchgoer, what have you.
You kind of spill a little bit.
And this is the response.
What does that mean?
There could be a whole range of other responses people could have if you tell them what you're going through.
So when you tell them what you're going through and this is the response, are you angry at God?
Are you mad at God?
When that's the response, what's the significance of that?
And here's the first one.
The first problem with that, and I think this is one of the reasons why it feels so just wrong or ick to people who experience it, is the person asking this question is trying to fill in a gap, a gap in their experience, their understanding, rather than listening,
rather than asking a question, instead of saying, wow, like, that doesn't make sense to me.
Help me understand.
They fill in the gap.
The question represents a failure to hear the reasons that somebody is going through this process.
It's like you spend your time and you say, I've been going through this and this and this, or I've been reading this book, or I really had this question for a while, or this thing happened in my life that's really made me rethink some of my fundamental commitments, whatever it is.
And the first thing they come back with is, oh, so are you mad at God?
And you're like, have you been listening to anything I said for the last half an hour as I've been telling you what I've been going through?
The fact that they're answering the question for themselves means they're not asking other important questions.
You're not hearing something like, wow, that's a really big deal.
What's going on?
Or, I can't imagine doing that.
Can you help me understand what brought you to that point?
Or, that sounds really hard.
Tell me what motivated that.
Or, just, I'm really sorry you're going through that.
Is there anything I can do to support you?
Whatever.
Whatever it would be.
Some other kind of response.
And what it is, and I think this is the point, is even when it is well-intentioned, even when somebody means well, even when it is a legitimate and sincere expression of concern, it
also, at the same time and despite that, a question that preemptively forecloses on really listening and asking more meaningful questions.
Yes.
It's rhetorically a question, in other words, but it's really an answer.
Oh.
You're doing this because you're mad at God.
I have now filled in the gap.
I have given the answer to the question of why you're doing this, rather than actually hearing you and what you're going through and the reasons you give and the answers you provide.
I've just done it on my own.
And here's why that matters.
That matters because that question, when we understand it that way, when we recognize, That it's not really a question.
It's a foreclosure of real discussion, real listening, real discussion, excuse me, real empathy going on.
That it forecloses on those things.
We recognize that what looks like a question, what it actually expresses is the internalization or the socialization or the conditioning.
It is the question of high-control religion on the lips of somebody who sincerely means well and probably cares about you.
When it's from the well-intentioned, when it's coming from one of those people, it isn't a question that I think is consciously intended to defend high-control religion.
But it is a question, or in the form of a question, that expresses all the dynamics of high-control religion.
And it also reveals some of the contradictions within high-control religion, high-control Christianity in particular.
We'll get to that.
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So what happens is it preemptively forecloses on meaningful discussion or honest questioning.
And so what we can see is once we recognize that, once we recognize that that's the function, the effect of this question, this question that's not a question.
Oh, you're doing this because you're angry at God.
Full stop.
We now don't need to discuss anything anymore.
I don't need to listen to you anymore.
I don't need to ask you questions to try to understand what you're experiencing anymore.
We're done.
And what it does is it insulates high-control religion from real critique.
Remember, with all of these responses, that is one of the key functions of these responses, is to make sure that even if I can't bring you back into the fold, I can defend high-control religion from the questions and the criticisms that you are posing to it.
And it does that.
So in attributing number one, anger, And number two, anger directed at God to you, the person undergoing faith deconstruction.
In attributing anger and anger directed at God, what's happening is I'm actually, if I ask you this question, are you mad at God?
I'm expressing the effort of high-control religionists to discredit those undergoing faith deconstruction.
I am working to discredit you.
Oh, you're just mad at God.
And by doing that, I'm insulating the structures of high-control religion.
So, despite honest care and good intentions, and this is something I want folks to hear because I have a lot of clients who wrestle with this, the idea that somebody can mean well and still really promote bad ideas, harm others,
harm the mental or, if you like, the spiritual health of others, that can happen despite good intentions.
It's really important to recognize that.
So, despite honest care and good intentions, The person who simply jumps to the conclusion that individuals undergoing faith deconstruction are quote-unquote mad at God, they are expressing the sentiments of someone shaped by high-control religion.
This is high-control religion replicating itself.
When it comes off the mouth of somebody who means well, who cares about you, and they just open their mouth and high-control religion discourse spills out, that's how high-control religion replicates itself.
And I think this is why the reaction can be so frustrating to the person who hears it.
And it can provoke such strong negative reactions, even if we can't articulate why.
And I talk with clients about this as well.
It really bugged me when my parent or my grandparent or my partner said this.
I got really upset.
I don't even know why I got so upset.
And part of the reason is because there's this intuitive sense that we're aware that we are not being taken seriously, that we are being dismissed, that there's a kind of statement lodged as a question and so forth.
And of course, then we get into the cycle where, you know, you have the negative reaction.
You respond negatively, which then for them means that, oh, well, you're acting really defensive or look how rude you are or you're not being reasonable at all and so forth.
And what that then does is reinforce, again, those efforts to discredit you.
Oh, Dan says he thinks all these things, but you try to talk to him about it.
He gets so upset and defensive.
It's clear that he's just not being reasonable and has nothing positive to say.
And we get back into other things we've seen, like, you know, you always focus on the negative and you need to listen to other perspectives and so forth.
That's how the cycle works.
Again, it fulfills the high-control religious aims of discrediting the person undergoing deconstruction.
So, even when it's well-intentioned, I think that this is a really, really problematic response, and I think it has those effects and reflects and expresses the dynamics of high-control religion, despite the intention of the person who might say it.
What does that mean?
It means that at its best, that question, are you mad at God, reflects the response of someone who has internalized the dynamics of high-control religion.
But this question, again, which isn't really a question, or a version of it, can also come from those who are not well-intentioned.
It can come from those who are not acting in good faith.
It can come from those who are active partisans and defenders of high-control religion.
And when it does, it lacks what we might call the innocence of those who are well-intentioned.
In these cases, maybe it comes from the pastor, or it comes from another church leader, or it comes from a parent who's trying to bring you in line or whatever.
Somebody who really just, they want to defend high-control religion.
In those cases, it's an intentional and fairly explicit accusation, and it feels like it.
But what are we being accused of?
When somebody says, are you mad at God?
And it's a question that looks like a question, but it's not really a question.
And it's a kind of accusation.
You are mad at God.
Like, what is the accusation?
It is essentially an accusation of the greatest transgression one can commit, which is to question God.
Those undergoing faith deconstruction are accused not simply of challenging religious practices or teachings or criticizing the adherence of high-control religion.
They're not questioning this worldly reality.
No, they are attacking God.
And this is the ultimate high-control religious move.
As I've discussed in this series and in lots of other episodes and other series, you know, you can go back and find me saying this all over the place.
People appeal to religion or they appeal to religion, but we never get to religion.
We only ever get to all of the individuals and the institutions and practices that mediate our access to it.
Or to put it in the terms that I did in the prior episode.
Religions are what their adherents do.
In other words, there is no religion outside of those individuals and institutions and practices.
And yet, the practitioners of religion will constantly appeal to God.
So when you are critiquing anything, individuals and institutions and practices and teachings and so forth, you are accused of attacking God.
Well, what's the aim there?
It's not to protect God.
What kind of weak-ass God would need our protection anyway?
It's not really about protecting God.
It's about protecting the practitioners of high-control religion and everything they have built.
If you can say, you're not attacking me, you're attacking God, you are attacking something that is not open to critique because it comes from God.
You're attacking God.
You are obviously, painfully, obviously working to insulate all those structures and individuals and institutions and practices from critique.
So when somebody says you're attacking God, when somebody says, oh, you're just mad at God, the intention on the part of the practitioners of high-control religion is to protect their religion and everything they've built.
And I mentioned earlier that there's a contradiction here.
This accusation also trades on one of the ultimate contradictions in the discourse of high-control Christianity.
It's really, I guess, more of a bait-and-switch than a contradiction.
But one of the things that you will often hear within this kind of discourse and within these contexts, I grew up hearing it, is that God is not afraid of your questions.
Whatever your questions are, your doubts, your concerns, your fears, God is big enough to have them.
God's not afraid of them.
But if someone does pose real questions...
They're dismissed on the grounds that they're challenging God or not trusting God or they don't have strong faith or whatever.
And we're going to dig more into some of this dynamic in this series on questions I couldn't ask in church.
We're going to get to that in a future series.
But for now, I just want to pose this tension that exists where they say, God is big enough for your questions and your concerns and so forth.
And yet, as soon as you start posing real questions or concerns, all of a sudden, they're dismissed on the grounds that you're attacking God.
So what happens is there's a kind of apparent invitation to ask questions.
This is why the high-control religion practitioners will say, we're the reasonable ones.
God's not afraid of questions.
We affirm questioning.
We affirm rationality, all that kind of stuff.
But then as soon as somebody does that, they're attacked for doing so.
And what I think is going on there is it's a really effective way of flushing out individuals who could be a threat to the edifice of high-control religion.
Basically, you say, does anybody have real questions or concerns?
And then somebody raises their hand and says, well, actually, I've been wondering about, you know, I don't know, the ethics in the Bible of destroying entire cities full of innocent people, or I've been wondering if we need to rethink our views on LGBTQI inclusion or whatever.
You have just outed yourself as somebody who can be critical of high-control religion, and now we're going to flip the switch, and we're going to accuse you of attacking God and so forth.
With all the aims we talk about of either cowing you, gaslighting you, getting you to fall back into line.
You're like, oh, I didn't mean to accuse God.
I didn't mean to have a lack of faith.
Okay, like I'm back in line.
Or to insulate the religion by discrediting you.
So that's what I think is going on.
So when the question, quote unquote, it's not really a question, of being mad at God comes from an active defender of high control religion, it is an accusation.
It doesn't just feel like it is explicitly.
And there's no question there.
As there is with the well-intentioned person, there's no question of curiosity or concern for the person undergoing deconstruction.
It is solely about discrediting their questions and preserving high-control religion.
So the question, are you mad at God?
Tying this together here.
It's a common question encountered by those undergoing faith deconstruction.
If that's you, you know this.
You've probably encountered this question.
If you have people in your world who have undergone this process, they have probably experienced this question.
I've experienced it.
I've talked with lots of people who have.
I work with clients who have.
It's a common question, and it can come from a full range of people.
It can come from the well-intentioned.
It can come from your mom or dad who really, really, really are concerned about you, all the way to people who are acting in bad faith, people who want to actively discredit you and your questions.
It can come from the full range.
But even when it comes from someone who sincerely means well, it expresses the structuring dynamics of high-control religion.
And it goes without saying that when it comes from the hardcore practitioner of high-control religion, the partisan of high-control religion, that that is the aim.
And again, I think that that's why it feels dismissive.
It feels dismissive because it is, even when we can't always put our finger on it or we might have trouble identifying why it's dismissive.
It is.
And that's also why it could be triggering or hurtful for those undergoing faith deconstruction, because it is dismissive.
Even when you can't put your finger on exactly what about the question feels like it's so off.
And that's the response I get.
They asked, are you mad at God?
And I said, no, that's not really the issue, but something about the whole question felt weird or wrong.
That's why.
Again, as always, The high-control religious response is about exactly that.
It is about control.
It is about coercion.
And high-control religion replicates itself by putting that expression into the minds and hearts and bodies and out of the mouths of even those who are well-intentioned, who might care about you, who are not trying to harm you,
who are not actively trying to replicate high-control religion, but they have internalized those patterns.
They have been socialized into that system, and that is what they express when they ask this question.
Have to wrap this up, but as always, thank you for listening.
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