Spiritual Bypassing

I recently stumbled upon something on Instagram. I don't know how to attribute it, but I will say it was on the abistumvoll and justinstumboll pages. They were talking about SPIRITUAL BYPASSING and this really explained what I have done most of my life in response to pain. 

Spiritual bypassing is using spiritual beliefs or practices to bypass:

• Pain
• Trauma
• Life's challenges

Spiritual bypassing produces what appears to be a very simple answer to complex human problems. 

Spiritual bypassing tells us:

• "You just need to pray more."
• "You. just need to forgive and it will all be good."
• "You just haven't been thankful enough lately."

Spiritual bypassing creates a world where you can't get the love and healing of God to the wounds that need it. Instead of acknowledging that there is a wound, it builds a bridge over the wound to try and avoid the wound entirely. And this just means that the wound festers and blisters and gets more and more infected until you have to go to the hospital.

Spiritual bypassing is a road to inauthentic living. Authentic living says, "I will not use spirituality to bypass this, but I'll use spirituality to pass through it." I'm going to come face-to-face with the reality of my human experience, and I'm going to use the truth of spirituality to actually face it, engage it, engage life and people, and walk through the process to the other side where wholeness is revealed."

Spiritual bypassing is birthed from the place of  "I feel so uncomfortable in pain myself, that I can't handle when you're in pain so I want to do or say or believe something that can help me get away from pain as fast as possible."

Let's say I feel uncomfortable in life so I decide to be like, "Well, God is good. You just have to trust that it will all work out" because I don't want to face my uncertainty or discomfort or fear."

Or you might be sharing grief with me, and I am so uncomfortable about your grief because I don't know how to hold it for you or for me so instead I just say, "Well, that person is in a better place." 

Spiritual bypassing is saying, "I don't know how to sit with the fact that there is loss and rejection and abandonment and heartache in life."

But by bypassing pain, we are stuck in more pain. 

This is what I have decided to change in my life! I will no longer avoid pain! I will bring that pain to Jesus and let him sit with me in my pain because only through grief and going through the pain can you heal from the pain! 

Wow! Wow! Wow!

This is what I have been doing for the last year. And I will continue to do it and to do it with others!