Spiritual Bypassing: The Seeking and the Satisfied
It’s just over a year since I walked out of my former church. The further back I step and the longer I sit on the outside looking in, God continues to bring more healing and transformation of my mind. I have become very interested in the concept of spiritual bypassing. I never knew this term before. But it is so perfectly descriptive of the manipulation and gaslighting that we do to ourselves and each other. It’s a powerful and almost undetectable weapon. It works unfortunately very well. Until it’s exposed. Once you point it out, it’s like the white minivan we used to drive - we see them everywhere. They are not more common. We just recognize them more. Here’s something that came together for me after one more conversation like this. I’m not at all afraid to press a point with someone. But it worked against me still! This most recent one was so illuminating I decided to write it down.
Spiritual bypassing: AI Summary
Spiritual bypassing is the tendency to use spiritual ideas, practices, or concepts to avoid, sidestep, or escape unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, or unfinished developmental tasks. It involves using spirituality as a defense mechanism to suppress difficult feelings or problems instead of addressing them directly, which can hinder emotional and psychological growth. While spiritual bypassing might serve as a temporary coping mechanism, relying on it long-term can cause negative consequences like emotional confusion, spiritual narcissism, and lack of authentic healing. For the rest: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/define-spiritual-bypassing-Pi9nAiT1TkGIOMXJ6rikXQ
What spiritual bypassing looks like – a conversation between friends, where one decides to say something reflective of a difficult question. I have two of these conversations in mind, and both of them ended the same way.
1. One person is blunt about their feelings on a subject. I’ll call it frank honesty, that is not varnished with the tied-up-neatly-in-a-bow spiritual answer. Some in the group internally feel excited because we are about to have an honest conversation about our true selves. The spiritual bypasser blurts out “God can do anything.” The initial person restates the opinion in a friendly stubborn way. Think about how friends talk to one another in small groups when they finally step into the frustration and state their real opinions. Bypasser repeats, and then repeats again interrupting. The train of thought eventually stops because the bypasser was more persistent in the rude halting of the opinion. Unfortunately for everyone the conversation died there. If anybody else had a vulnerable thought to share, the lid was slammed shut on it and the future opportunities to say something diminished.
2. One person decides to be honest and describe how they struggle with processing difficult circumstances that don’t have a clear way out, to admit doubt and uncertainty toward God’s intention and direction. The bypasser says, “God can do it.” The initiator tries again, “I know, I’m just saying it seems like an impossible situation.” Bypasser repeats again, and again. Even when the initiator makes the point that we still have to take some action, the conversation ends there because the bypasser had just effectively negated any reason for further conversation.
In both of these situations the initiators are strong, mature people who have zero problem sharing their opinion. And the environment was a friendly social gathering of 4 or fewer people. I was a part of both and I can tell you how it felt from my perspective. Frustration, discouragement and anger. I know that I have been the person to shut down conversations in the past, so that also makes me sad. I wonder how many times I effectively killed a conversation where someone was being vulnerable. This is not godly counsel. It’s disrespect and dishonor, and closes people off to honest exploration of deeper things. I must apologize to my children for how often I have done this to them.
I can understand why people do this. We all have pain in our lives that we bury below the surface rather than confront it. I know that trauma causes us to create all sorts of coping mechanisms. I am empathetic towards the pain that they are trying to avoid. And I am saddened by the many people in religious environments that suppress their true selves by not questioning the shallow answers given to them in a spiritually programmed system.
It reminds me of wearing noise cancelling headphones. The best ones are able to shut out nearly every other sound, and they are useful in many situations. However, they also have a setting that allows you to still hear the ambient noise around you so that you can hear things like traffic, a stranger approaching, a baby crying, or your phone ringing. In many situations, we need to be able to hear the real world and not be so deadened to it that we only hear the sounds from our curated source.
It is dangerous to our soul to be so focused on a predetermined narrative that we have to shut down anyone who speaks contrary to it. And it’s very dangerous to the soul of a seeker to find that the only answer they’re going to get is a one-liner about God that does not satisfy.
We’re studying the Sermon on the Plain. In looking up the word origins, this idea is running through my mind. Luke 6:21 and 25 contrast being hungry and being well-fed.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied. (21)
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry. (25)
Another way to explain these terms is to crave ardently or seek with eager desire, contrasted with being satisfied. It seems like this is a deeper application of what Jesus is saying. Blessed (happy) are those who are seeking with eager desire for they will find satisfaction. But for those who do not seek because they have all that they think they need, they will find themselves looking around for the real thing later.