Nine weeks of this now.
If you have been reading since September, something has been accumulating, and it is probably not insight. Insight is the pleasant part and it tends to arrive first. The other thing shows up a few weeks later, at an inconvenient moment, and it does not feel like understanding at all.
Angry About How I Was Raised in Church Is Information Worth Listening To
Being angry about how I was raised in church is not a stage to be moved through on the way to something healthier. It is information worth listening to, arriving late, about something that actually happened.
It is also not a verdict you are obliged to obey. Anger is fairly reliable at telling you that something is there. It is a good deal less reliable about what caused it, who is responsible, or what you ought to do next, and those are the parts you work out afterward, slowly, usually with help.
That distinction matters because you were probably trained out of it. For a lot of us, anger was the reaction the old arrangement had the least room for. Sadness was acceptable and could be prayed over. Doubt was acceptable if it was on its way somewhere. Anger got treated as a spiritual condition rather than a response, which meant the correct move was always to work on yourself rather than to look harder at what happened.
So the first thing I would say is do not talk yourself out of it. If you find yourself running the sentence about how it was not that bad, notice that you are doing the thing Week 6 was about.
People apologize for it. In my office, about a church, to a pastor, which is a strange room to be apologizing in.
And some of you are reading this with no particular anger at all, which is not a failure of attention. People come out of the same childhood with grief, or relief, or a flat sort of curiosity about how any of it worked. None of those need converting into something hotter to count, and if the last nine weeks have mostly made you sad, that is its own accurate reading.
Why It Shows Up Now Instead of at Twenty-Two
A lot of people get through their twenties without much of this and then run into it hard somewhere around the arrival of a child.
Part of that is simple proximity. You are now standing next to a six year old every day. You know exactly how big six is, how much she can carry, what she believes because you told her, and how completely she trusts your account of the world. Then some ordinary Tuesday you do the arithmetic and realize you were that size when somebody explained hell to you.
The other part is that you are being asked to make the decisions now. Church or no church, what to say at the funeral, what to do about the invitation to vacation Bible school. Every one of those forces a position, and a position requires you to look at what you actually think, which is a good deal more work than not looking.
None of that requires the anger to have been sitting there all along. Sometimes parenting gives an old experience a context it did not have before, and material that had been at a comfortable distance turns immediate.
Two Ways It Gets Handed On
The anger itself is not the problem. What it does when nobody gives it anywhere to go is the problem, and it tends to go one of two directions.
The first is that she inherits the case. She learns the whole indictment before she has met any of the defendants. She can tell you what is wrong with the church down the street at nine years old, in your phrasing, with your emphasis, and she has never been inside it. That is not a child who has thought about religion. That is a child who has been handed a verdict, which is the same transaction you are trying to interrupt, running in the other direction.
The second is quieter. The anger goes underground and turns into vigilance, and ordinary religious moments in her life can start feeling like things you have to manage. A friend mentions praying. A grandparent says something at dinner. A song comes on. Nothing here is worth a battle, and yet each one gets one, and after a few years she may work out that this subject makes her parent strange, and stop bringing it up.
You are allowed to be furious about this. She is not required to be.
What She Should and Should Not See
Not zero. A child who never sees a parent angry about anything real learns that anger is not permitted in the house, and that is a familiar arrangement.
Ages 3 to 6. She should never have to guess whether it is about her, so say the plain thing out loud. I am not upset with you. I am upset about something that happened a long time ago, when I was small. She does not need the content at this age and she does need that sentence, and she may need it more than once.
Ages 7 to 12. She can know the outline. I grew up being told some things that frightened me, and it took me a long time to sort out. Say it as history rather than as a case being made. Then stop, and let her ask, and answer what she actually asks rather than what you have been waiting to say.
Ages 13 and up. Give her the real account, including how angry you still are, because at this age she can already tell, and denying something visible mostly teaches that adults say one thing while showing another. Then give her the other half. You do not have to be angry about this. It is mine, not yours, and you are allowed to conclude that I have made too much of it. Week 52 is where this series lands, and it lands there for a reason.
It Needs Somewhere to Go That Is Not Your Kid
This is the practical part and it is short.
Anger that has nowhere to go does not reliably evaporate. It can show up sideways, particularly with the people closest to us, and in a house with children the people closest are often children. So give it a destination on purpose.
A therapist can be a very good place for it, particularly somebody who has worked with religious material before, since not every clinician has. A friend who was actually there is worth more than most people expect, because you will not have to establish that any of it happened. Writing it down works for some people and does nothing for others. And a pastor is a real option, including one at the church you left, though I understand entirely if that sentence lands wrong.
If any of this is sitting heavier than ordinary anger, if it is affecting your sleep or your work or how you are with people, that is worth taking to a professional rather than to a blog. I mean that plainly and not as a disclaimer.
Ten Weeks of Looking Backward
Ten weeks. The god who was watching, the ark on the wall, the week at camp, the woman with the felt board, the checklist at one in the morning, the packing list, the verse at the end of the argument, the compliment about how easy you were, and now this.
That is the inheritance, laid out. Ten weeks of looking backward, and I would not have spent them any other way, because you cannot interrupt something you have not looked at.
Next week the series turns around. Your kid asks you whether God is real, and you have to say something, and the rest of the year is about what.
About Pastor Brad Jagger
Pastor Brad Jagger is Senior Pastor of Windermere Union Church (UCC) in Windermere, Florida, a community committed to Love Above All. He writes about faith, doubt, deconstruction, belonging, and raising children who never have to be afraid of God.
If you are raising kids after leaving the faith you grew up in, and you want a church where questions are welcome, people are affirmed, and nobody has to pretend to have it all figured out, learn more at windermereunion.org.
Pastor Brad Jagger | Windermere Union Church | Love Above All