As usual, y'all are so good at describing many of our experiences! At the end, D.L. said, "it teaches children that there's no point in being honest." That was me. I said & did what I needed to to be safe & survive, but my parents never really knew me. It was easier to live a lie. As a child, I knew it was a sin to lie, but I honestly felt like God must know what I'm going through & must see my heart, so I don't need to ask for forgiveness or start telling the truth, lol. Now as an atheist, I'm glad I used whatever I had to stay safe. Those spankings were no joke. They were trying to drive the rebellion out of me!
I've been reading FotF articles about estrangement, and continue to see parents complaining about how their children aren't forthright with them about what's wrong with the relationship.... well, here you go.
Welcome back! And right out of the gate in 2025 with a banger of an episode on estrangement. This from Krispin hit me hard:
"And yeah, and it's not about forgiveness or even apologizing. At least when it comes to these big relational ruptures, apologizing and saying, I'm sorry, isn't the thing. It's like, I want to know that you understand my experience."
I, too, am bothered by the cultural pressure to be quick to forgive those who do harm in lieu of pursuing accountability and justice. There's this implication that this is required in *all* harm situations to prove you are the better person because something-something Jesus and grace.
Until now I haven't wrestled with this in an estrangement context, but it's there, hiding in plain sight, a blaring warning against breaking no-contact with parents and giving into the healing fantasy. It's a trap. They will pull you into a seemingly good-faith airing of differences, only to short-circuit the proceedings by saying, "Okay, fiiiine, we give up, we hurt you, just forgive us so we can get past this." And if you don't capitulate and forgive, then guess what? You're the asshole, you're culpable for this broken relationship, not them, and they've escaped accountability for the harm caused by their beliefs yet again.
I could be reading into it too much, but that's my takeaway.
I think you are spot on. I am working on some materials around how evangelicals view forgiveness not as an emotion (which comes and goes) but a social contract -- and one you can never go back on. It's easy to see how this benefits abusers and abusive systems and never the victim.
Looking forward to this! Really appreciate how you guys delve into and spend a lot of time with these long-tail aspects of deconstruction--things that we may have rejected on a surface level years ago but are more deeply embedded into our brains than we realize. And also putting these seemingly "good parts of Christianity" into context of the greater patriarchical-white-Christian-nationalist project that most of us were born into unawares has been quite helpful as well.
I need to re-listen to this episode to really hang onto all the points of "aha!" and convergence I noticed in my first listen...so much resonance with what I've been working through recently. But the part that hit me hardest (and is probably the most necessary) is when y'all were noting that the reality is parents (and maybe alao siblings still in it???) will never be able to hear us without re-examining their worldview, which would be blasphemous. So no matter how much my sisters and I (one who is still evangelical, but thinks my parents should have some accountability) try to finesse a letter or conversations, they will likely all be a dead end (or cause us even more pain).That is both heartbreaking and liberating. I'm going to be pondering that in the context of your email today about not being able to avoid politics. For close to a decade, *I* have been the one enforcing a "no politics" rule in our core family while alao clearly living/having differnt values from them. And now I'm going to be rethinking that completely. I don't know what replaces a moratoriumon political convos, since politics = hate & bigotry in most of my family. But, I appreciate the firm push to reckon with the reality that not talking politics validates the hate.
As usual, y'all are so good at describing many of our experiences! At the end, D.L. said, "it teaches children that there's no point in being honest." That was me. I said & did what I needed to to be safe & survive, but my parents never really knew me. It was easier to live a lie. As a child, I knew it was a sin to lie, but I honestly felt like God must know what I'm going through & must see my heart, so I don't need to ask for forgiveness or start telling the truth, lol. Now as an atheist, I'm glad I used whatever I had to stay safe. Those spankings were no joke. They were trying to drive the rebellion out of me!
I've been reading FotF articles about estrangement, and continue to see parents complaining about how their children aren't forthright with them about what's wrong with the relationship.... well, here you go.
You have just put words to EVERYTHING about my estrangement experience! How do you even do that??? 😳😃❤️
It's like there is a playbook or something . . .
😂 made me laugh even though it’s not funny…and yet it kinda is! 😳
Welcome back! And right out of the gate in 2025 with a banger of an episode on estrangement. This from Krispin hit me hard:
"And yeah, and it's not about forgiveness or even apologizing. At least when it comes to these big relational ruptures, apologizing and saying, I'm sorry, isn't the thing. It's like, I want to know that you understand my experience."
I, too, am bothered by the cultural pressure to be quick to forgive those who do harm in lieu of pursuing accountability and justice. There's this implication that this is required in *all* harm situations to prove you are the better person because something-something Jesus and grace.
Until now I haven't wrestled with this in an estrangement context, but it's there, hiding in plain sight, a blaring warning against breaking no-contact with parents and giving into the healing fantasy. It's a trap. They will pull you into a seemingly good-faith airing of differences, only to short-circuit the proceedings by saying, "Okay, fiiiine, we give up, we hurt you, just forgive us so we can get past this." And if you don't capitulate and forgive, then guess what? You're the asshole, you're culpable for this broken relationship, not them, and they've escaped accountability for the harm caused by their beliefs yet again.
I could be reading into it too much, but that's my takeaway.
I think you are spot on. I am working on some materials around how evangelicals view forgiveness not as an emotion (which comes and goes) but a social contract -- and one you can never go back on. It's easy to see how this benefits abusers and abusive systems and never the victim.
Looking forward to this! Really appreciate how you guys delve into and spend a lot of time with these long-tail aspects of deconstruction--things that we may have rejected on a surface level years ago but are more deeply embedded into our brains than we realize. And also putting these seemingly "good parts of Christianity" into context of the greater patriarchical-white-Christian-nationalist project that most of us were born into unawares has been quite helpful as well.
I need to re-listen to this episode to really hang onto all the points of "aha!" and convergence I noticed in my first listen...so much resonance with what I've been working through recently. But the part that hit me hardest (and is probably the most necessary) is when y'all were noting that the reality is parents (and maybe alao siblings still in it???) will never be able to hear us without re-examining their worldview, which would be blasphemous. So no matter how much my sisters and I (one who is still evangelical, but thinks my parents should have some accountability) try to finesse a letter or conversations, they will likely all be a dead end (or cause us even more pain).That is both heartbreaking and liberating. I'm going to be pondering that in the context of your email today about not being able to avoid politics. For close to a decade, *I* have been the one enforcing a "no politics" rule in our core family while alao clearly living/having differnt values from them. And now I'm going to be rethinking that completely. I don't know what replaces a moratoriumon political convos, since politics = hate & bigotry in most of my family. But, I appreciate the firm push to reckon with the reality that not talking politics validates the hate.
Yes! And that's what today's post hits on, plus next podcast episode, DL will be talking a bit about what this has looked like in their family.