January 9, 2023
In this article, I’m going to talk about two very important factors that relate heavily to you as a deconverted man. Those two factors are blame and responsibility.
Blame and responsibility go hand in hand in many ways, but sometimes they diverge, causing confusion and problems and drama. More often than not, when deconversion from a fundamentalist religion is concerned, blame and responsibility diverge, therefore causing confusion and problems and drama.
I’ll explain.
When negative things happen, there is usually someone to blame. Society and common human decency usually dictate that the person to blame for the negative thing that happened also has the responsibility to fix it.
- When someone rear ends your car at an intersection, they are to blame for the accident. It is their responsibility to pay for your car repairs.
- When a quarterback throws too many interceptions in a game, he is to blame for the loss. It is his responsibility to practice and get better.
- When you don’t study for a test, you are to blame for the bad grade you get. It is your responsibility to study.
Pretty simple. Whoever is to blame also bears the responsibility of making things right.
But what happens when the relationship between blame and responsibility gets murky? Not all negative situations are as cut and dry as the examples I’ve just listed.
This is one of the reasons why recovering from fundamentalist religion is so difficult. The people that are often to blame for your time within religion are not responsible for making things right for you today. The social contract that you’re used to is broken and you’re left spinning your wheels, confused and pissed off.
- Your parents are to blame for indoctrinating you at a young age to believe in God. But now, it isn’t your parents’ responsibility to un-indoctrinate you. It’s yours.
- Your youth pastor is to blame for teaching you a bunch of misinformation about the reliability of the Bible. But now, it isn’t your youth pastor’s responsibility to teach you the truth about the Bible. It’s yours.
- Your church is to blame for telling you that the money you tithed to the church would be returned to you multiplied someday. But now, it’s isn’t the church’s responsibility to put money back into your bank account. It’s yours.
It just isn’t human nature to easily take responsibility for something that someone else did to us. In these instances, we know exactly who to blame—parents, pastors, churches—but those people or groups aren’t going to be there to help you get better. That responsibility falls on you.
The difficulty of deconversion often comes when someone is (rightfully) blaming all the people and things that kept him within fundamentalism, but he hasn’t yet truly accepted full, personal responsibility to recover. Usually, this describes people still in the anger phase of deconversion.
So how do you get past this? With a reframing exercise.
Step 1: Relax the Blaming
When you blame someone for pretty much anything, you are basically implying that it’s their responsibility to fix it. That’s just the basic social contract that we all inherently live by. Even if you’re only after a mere apology, on some level you expect it and get angrier as more time goes on without you getting it.
Stop and think. Whoever is to (rightfully) blame for your time in fundamentalism, you don’t actually want that person or group to fix anything in your life today. How can they? What would they even do? Pray for you? Invite you to church?
There is nothing they can do for you. And what they think they can do for you, you don’t want. So immediately you can let go of trying to get anyone in your former church community to take any responsibility for what they did to you. It just isn’t realistic and won’t help you in the long run.
Step 2: Shift Responsibility From Them To You
Next, you do just that. Shift responsibility from your former church community and place it all squarely on your own shoulders. You may not like it and it may seem unfair (because it is unfair) but it’s ultimately the right thing to do.
It’s important to keep in mind that responsibility is empowering. It can be a scary word sometimes. It means you need to get up and do something, and if things go wrong, then it’s your fault. But ultimately it’s empowering. Why? Because it means you have control. Being in control is the best possible position to be in because it means you decide the outcome. It’ll take some work to get to that outcome, but it’s an outcome that you chose and serves you.
When you were in your religion, you didn’t actually have control of anything. All the rules of the game had already been decided for you.
Those two steps I described above are only a couple of paragraphs long, but realistically could take you months. If you’re still in the anger phase of your deconversion, then you’re likely all about the blame game and spend a lot of time venting about the people and religion that hurt you.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the anger phase of deconversion is normal and healthy, but it is not normal or healthy to stay there long-term.
Venting about your deconversion problems is therapeutic and definitely has its place. It’ll make you feel better temporarily, but it won’t fix your problems. For that, you need to make a firm decision to take action and fix your own problems (regardless of who caused them).
My work here on this blog and in my book is focused on practical advice and actionable steps that you can take toward finally fixing your life post deconversion rather than simply venting all the time.
Therefore, the practical advice for today is this: if your life is not improving after your deconversion, examine yourself to see if you are still blaming others while not taking responsibility. If you discover that that’s true for you, then follow the two steps I described above. Doing this puts your unique situation into your own hands and under your control.
No one cares more about your own life than you do. No one can fix your problems better than you. Therefore, taking responsibility for everything that happened to you (even if you aren’t the one to blame) is one of the best first steps you can take when you’re ready to move on from the anger phase of your deconversion and start taking practical steps to recovery.