SPOILER ALERT: You are not the helpless, powerless, inadequate, incapable, weak, incompetent, dependent person that toxic religion wants to convince you that you are.
The crippling impact of toxic religion includes the way it convinces people how weak, incapable and helpless they are.
This morning I read this:
This belief and attitude is one of the greatest obstacles and deterrents to personal growth and development. I address this mentality often in the religion recovery work I do with people.
The truth is that you naturally have the ability, capacity, tools and skills to guide and direct your life meaningfully, ethically and effectively. These include the use of reason, intentionality, critical thinking, intuition, proactivity, and virtue.
In the religious deconstruction work I do with people, I support them in cultivating new mindsets for creating the life they desire. One of those mindsets is "personal agency."
An "agent" is a person who takes a decisive role to produce a certain effect or outcome. Personal agency is seeing yourself as the decisive force in your own life. Toxic religion thwarts and corrupts personal agency by teaching that God is the primary mover in your life, namely because you are powerless and inadequate for this role.
Personal agency involves utilizing one's capability to originate and direct actions for given purposes. It's your ability to take action, be effective, influence your own life, and assume responsibility for your well-being and fulfillment. Where you feel incapable of doing so due to internal restraints, you have the ability to seek help and assistance. You are innately equipped to take personal responsibility for your happiness and well-being and cultivate a life of meaning and fulfillment. This includes self-care, coping with unmet wants or needs, persevering when faced with obstacles, and aligning your actions and choices with your values and what matters most to you in life.
You have the choice to cultivate a spirituality that doesn’t require you to be inadequate, powerless, weak, and lacking, but one that empowers you toward strength, vitality, wholeness, and the fulfillment of your highest potentialities and possibilities.
Do we do all this perfectly? No. Do we do this alone. No. We have the capacity to look upon ourselves with acceptance, patience and compassion, and not to demand perfection from ourselves. We are capable of cultivating loving and caring relationships. We are capable of seeking professional help and support when we need it. All of these actions are a sign of strength and not weakness.
The idea that you are powerless and inept to guide and manage your life is false.
So, I re-wrote the Facebook quote:
"The key to accessing the necessary power and resources to cultivate a meaningful and fulfilling life is to discover them within yourself. The truth is, whether we realize it or not, that everything we need is knit into the fabric of who we are. You are not weak, but strong; not inept, but competent; not dependent, but resourceful; not bad, but good."
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