Toxic Positivity & the Spiritual Bypass
We have a Facebook group for those who attend our weekly gatherings. It’s a nice place for encouragement, discussion, questions… and memes. Some of them are funny or insightful critiques of fundamentalism.
Some of them are evangelical propaganda, posted so that we can groan together or chat about why they’re problematic. One of these last week was so groanworthy that I thought we could turn it into a blog post.
So buckle in, because we’re about to get positive. Way too positive.
A really bad meme
In the cartoon, a little girl and Jesus face each other. She is clutching a little teddy bear while [white] Jesus seems to be suggesting she should hand it over. “But I love it,” she protests. Jesus responds, “Just trust me. I have better for you.” And the girl can’t see it, but he’s holding a much larger teddy bear behind his back. The comic, in case we aren’t sure how to interpret it, tells us to Trust God, whose ways are bigger and better.
On the one hand, is this comic really so bad? We often turn to faith to help cheer us up during life’s disappointments; when God closes a door, God opens a window, and what not.
On the other hand, this one little drawing holds nearly everything wrong with evangelical faith.
We don’t have to read much between the lines to see the harmful messaging in this typical cartoon. The spiritual takeaways are clear:
Trust Jesus/God instead of feeling bad about hard things
When you lose something, inevitably God has something better coming your way
These two messages are related, of course: because God is allegedly always about to provide bigger and better things, we are able to trust God instead of fully feeling our pain. Stop crying, little girl. Jesus has a better teddy bear behind his back.
And so we’ve been told, again and again. Stop crying, stop yelling, stop cussing, stop frowning. While you’re at it, stop complaining about oppression and injustice and abuse and death and sickness and heartbreak.
Did you forget that Jesus has a better teddy bear behind his back?
Some helpful terminology
Thankfully, people who are leaving evangelicalism are ramping up their discussion of the various types of damage inflicted by it. And so two phrases related to the above reflection have become popular of late: toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing.
Toxic positivity is, according to the University of Washington Medicine (reporting on this phenomenon because it’s a big deal and is not exclusive to fundamentalist Christianity):
dismissing negative emotions and responding to distress with false reassurances rather than empathy
prompted by feelings of discomfort toward negative emotions
often well-intentioned but can cause others to be alienated and feel disconnected
The UWM article provides two recommendations for people when they notice themselves or others being toxically positive. First, be clear in communicating your emotional needs. Second, let yourself and your conversation partner feel your feelings without needing to fix them.
Spiritual bypassing is a term actually coined by a Buddhist therapist (John Welwood). It refers to when we “use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." This is clearly related to toxic positivity, and is perhaps just the use of religious or spiritual ideas to achieve the positivity. Psychology Today gives some common signs of the bypass:
Not focusing on the here and now; living in a spiritual realm much of the time
Overemphasizing the positive and avoiding the negative
Pretending that everything is okay when it’s not
Welwood’s advice, according to the PT article, is to “acknowledge the emotion, sit with it, and honor it without repressing it.”
Learning to Lament
A theme seems to be emerging here. Instead of dismissing, repressing, ignoring, or talking our way out of our negative feelings, we need to feel them. We need to actually sit with them. Acknowledge how they feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Yes, of course, we want to arrive at a place of healing, wholeness, and peace. But what we get from toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing isn’t wholeness. It’s denial.
Lament, on the other hand, offers us a way to feel and a way to work through the feelings. Lament is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow,” often in the form of “a song, piece of music, or poem.” In the Bible, lament is not a sign of weak faith—on the contrary, it’s often directed to God in prayer.
This blog post is already too long, but let’s close with an excerpt of scripture that helps teach us to lament:
Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
Have mercy on us, God.
