When religion becomes self-harm...

CONTENT WARNING: NON-GRAPHIC DISCUSSIONS OF RELIGIOUS ABUSE, SEXUAL ABUSE, AND SELF-HARM.

WHEN RELIGION – ESPECIALLY CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS – SEEM LIKE A SOCIALLY ACCEPTED ACT OF SELF-HARM.

I know this is a big thought, a big claim, but hear me out. In this essay, I will explain why religion sometimes sounds like self-harming to me as a former self-harmer (though with more “traditional” self-harming behaviours such as cutting), and how religion can be powerful and healthy instead. Because yes, I’m myself a spiritual person, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

SO, WHEN DOES RELIGION BECOME SELF-HARM?

I stumbled upon a young woman on YouTube who talked about how her husband rules over her even if she struggles with it, and it sounds like it prevents her from happiness. She said the Bible told her she must be her husband’s helper, and it’s very unappealing. Does anyone else see the comparison I do with cutting oneself? Doing what’s bad for your mental well-being and happiness instead of what makes you thrive… Sounds an awful lot like harming oneself to me!

I always see these fundamental Christians and extremely religious people talking about doing things the “godly” way instead of the “worldly” way. It’s just a fancier way of saying avoid happiness and what you feel is right in your heart, even if it literally harms you. Now, I don’t say that the Bible has no good in it. Of course, it has nuggets of wisdom. I’ve read it myself when I was a Christian. But you simply can’t read it literally since that is a recipe for a sad and difficult life. God doesn’t reward you more because you suffered more. What kind of God would do that? The God(s) I believe in reward us for doing good in the world, and how can we be a good resource for others if we harm ourselves with his (supposedly) inspired word?

Religion becomes self-harm when you do things because of it that harm you and go against your personal best interest. Like when women, seriously, in 2025, still believe (and sometimes are forced to) submit themselves to their husbands. Or when we restrict our sexual pleasure to be for marriage only, or restrict it in other ways, even when it doesn’t harm anyone. When homosexuality isn’t allowed, or female pastors. All of these harmful things are just products of their time, over 2000 years ago in an ancient society. They have no place in today’s modern society!

There is nothing wise about the refusal of societal change.

RELIGIOUS TRAUMA IS REAL

Now we will talk about something very real, very serious. It’s trauma caused by religion. That involves shunning, conversion therapy, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse in the name of a religion…Harassment and hate crimes in the name of God. When people believe God wants them to hurt others. And they don’t even classify it as hurtful, but it is!

When my pastor told me I was sinning because I had a girlfriend. Or even worse, when he told me I was sinning because I refused to forgive my ex boyfriend for raping and beating me for years, that pastor hurt me almost as bad as that ex boyfriend did! It made me leave the faith when the same pastor told me that if my boyfriend repented, regardless of what he did to me or if he told God he was sorry, no matter if he had asked ME for forgiveness, he would still go to heaven and be accepted. It destroyed me. It was just such an awful thing to hear, like my pain wasn’t a part of the equation at all! It made me doubt both God and religion as a concept.

It didn’t really helped that the church I went to wasn’t queer affirming either. In Sweden, queer affirming churches are common since we are as a whole a very secular country. But this particular one wasn’t queer affirming. In fact, the church was against homosexuality, and when I lived as a trans man (later realized I wasn’t trans, but still!), the pastor refused to use my preferred name and questioned me all the time. I even played the viola on Sundays, but when I entered a relationship with a woman, the leader of the musicians in church refused to practice with me for the sole reason that I was a gay out of the closet. It also really did hurt when other people in the congregation don’t even want to believe these things happened at all… So I quit my place in that church, and still to this day, some people ask why I left, despite behaving in this way.

Today I have two friends back from those days. I used to have more. Or… at least they called themselves my friends.

I was also tricked to become a member of this church since the very same pastor I told about above said that they were in the process of becoming queer affirming, but later – when I finally became a member – told to my face that the church would never change. Is lying to a vulnerable rape survivors face – for the sole sake of luring them into your cult like church – what you call christlike behaviour?

I’VE GONE MORE THAN 10 YEARS WITHOUT HARMING MYSELF

I’m 32 years old and I quit my cutting behaviour when I was around 20. So 12 years have gone by, and I’m self-harming free! I even have a nice tattoo of a phoenix (the mythical creature) that turns into a woman that covers the scars nowadays, so I’m completely free from that. I gave myself this tattoo as a reward for breaking free.

So I can, with a clear mind, see the connection between religious self-harm and physical self-harm, because I have distance from my own previous behaviour. And also somewhat of a distance from the religious emotional abuse in my church. After all, over 5 years have passed since I quit attending Sunday services there.

HEALING AS A SPIRITUAL PERSON – NOT A RELIGIOUS ONE

Since starting trauma-informed therapy, I realize I can be spiritual without adopting the concepts of a religion. I believe in higher powers, like a godlike figure or figures. That’s why I identify still with a spiritual path like Wicca or Paganism, and I feel more agnostic than I feel like an atheist. The truth is that I’m not an atheist since I believe in something higher.

What I do now is embrace the spiritual person I am without attaching the dogma of religion to it. Sure, as a Wiccan, I have some specific beliefs according to that specific religion, but Wicca is a very flexible and personal religion since it doesn’t have a holy book. I follow the Wiccan Rede and general guidelines, though. But they are not the same as a holy book. 

I keep my journaling bibles as memory, and those I haven’t written in so much, I might consider doing secular bible study as a part of my healing. With secular bible study, I mean critically examining the text and teachings and writing down my own thoughts as a free thinker – not as a devotional to the scripture.

I have become more used to the idea of not having a holy text to refer to. Actually that feels more empowering. Like ending a self-harming behaviour once and for all.

FINAL THOUGHTS 

I don’t have anything against any religion when doing it the right way. When being healthy in the beliefs. I’m not an atheist, even, and certainly not an anti-theist. I’m myself Wiccan, so I have a religion, so how could I possibly be anti-religion… But what I am against is when it becomes a thing that hurts either yourself or others. And what I really cannot stand is when a religion becomes an excuse for bad beliefs and behaviors. 

Like, for example, being gay. You can’t change that. What you can change, however, is your religion.

Religion is always a choice. You are not bound to your religion, and I stand by that. It’s not an excuse to be against reproductive freedom and homosexuality just because you’re religious. People act like they can’t help what their beliefs are… Yes, you can. Religion is forever and always a choice!

I know, I have converted from one religion to another.