Healing Sense of Self

So today we are gonna be diving into how Christianity, the Bible, impacts your sense of self.

And that's going to be different depending on the specific denomination, your specific church, your family, your personal interpretation of the Bible.

There's a lot of factors that will go into how this will impact the way that you view yourself.

But there are several common themes that I've noticed between my own story and others that I've talked to.

So when we're talking about our definition of self, what I'm referring to is our identity.

our intuition, the way we view ourself, the way we present ourselves to the world, even down to our likes and dislikes and opinions and thoughts.

Anything that makes you, you.

And high control religion can really strip you of your sense of self.

In some cases, it may be intentional, planned by those in authority.

In other cases, it may be unintentional.

People may just be passing along what was taught to them, but that doesn't change the impact or the harm.

And I know that healing will be a lifelong journey for me, but nature-based spirituality and witchcraft has helped me so much in the last few years.

So one of the most foundational concepts that's used in evangelical Christianity to begin to strip you of your own identity and your sense of self and even your sense of reality is this teaching that you need to be saved.

So within evangelical Christianity, there is this teaching that you are born sinful and separated from God, and you have to have a savior in order to reconcile with God and have the opportunity to spend eternity in heaven rather than hell.

A common term for this is being born again.

So there's this idea that you're born once physically, everyone who exists has been born physically, but you have to go through this spiritual rebirth into this commitment to your Christian faith.

And when you're born again, that's when you get saved.

That is a salvation experience.

Now, one concept that was frequently used when I was growing up in evangelical Christianity to explain this concept of needing a savior and being born again is something called the Romans Road.

If you're familiar with the Bible at all, you may recognize the term Romans as a book in the New Testament.

And this Romans Road is frequently used by individuals who are evangelizing, people who are going out trying to convert people to Christianity.

And they'll walk them through several verses in the book of Romans.

to explain to them why they need to get saved and how to get saved.

Usually this evangelization will start with Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

So this verse is used to demonstrate that every human being who's ever existed is a sinner and we don't deserve to bask in the glory of God.