4 Toxic Theologies (and their alternatives)

You’ve heard them. Maybe the crotchety, old man in the back row of the church said it loud enough for you to hear. Or perhaps you heard a guy with a perfectly groomed beard at the local coffee shop whispered it to his understudy across the table from him. 

When you hear it, you recognize it because it makes you cringe. It sends shivers up your spine. It makes you turn to Twitter to rant. 

It’s toxic theology and it’s everywhere. 

Toxic theology is difficult to define. Some would say it is relative — what is toxic to you, may be life-giving to another. We are voyaging into dangerous territory defining what is toxic and what is not. 

Here are a few guidelines as to how to identify toxic theology: 

1. Is it being used to shame or coerce someone into doing something? Theology should never participate in shame or coercion. 

2. Does it represent a God who is capricious, vindictive, or angry? Here at The Holy Craft, we ascribe to a God who is wholly loving, rather than capricious, vindictive, or angry. 

3. Is it a way to explain away suffering? Many toxic theologies are subtle because they are good-hearted attempts at explaining away suffering.  

Though not an exhaustive list, here are four toxic theologies, what they mean, and their alternatives. 

#1. God helps those who help themselves. 

This toxic theology is often accompanied by muttering about people who take advantage of “the system” (without recognition that “the system” is not set up for everyone’s flourishing). Behind the thought that God helps those who help themselves is a question about the nature of God’s care and compassion. Does God offer love and care only to those who deserve it? Or does God freely offer love and care to everyone regardless of circumstances and condition? 

We have created God in our own image, preaching and teaching about a God who only helps the people we want to help. We don’t offer love and care freely to everyone regardless of circumstances and condition. 

Alternative: God does all that God can do to offer love, care, and compassion to everyone. 

Obviously God can’t just stop time and intervene in the human realm every time someone prays to God asking for help with something. However, God does what God can do (to unpack this idea, read Frank Tupper’s A Scandalous Providence) to show every person Divine love, acceptance, and care. 

#2. Everything happens for a reason. 

You may have heard this one when your friend’s parent passed away unexpectedly. Or when you’ve been struggling with fertility. Or when your spouse was fired from her job right before Christmas. Whatever your difficult situation, it seems like some well-meaning religious person always responds to it with this phrase. 

Everything happens for a reason implies that whatever the difficult situation, the Divine caused it to teach you a lesson or make you appreciate something. If everything happens for a reason, was there a reason for the Holocaust? What about Jim Crow? What could the Divine reason have been for the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Or the September 11th attack? You see, if everything happens for a reason, God is pretty heartless. If everything happens for a reason, the Divine is more concerned about teaching lessons than life itself. 

Alternative: God can bring life from death. (Non-religious version: Life will find a way)

Look at the seasons. In the springtime, God brings life in the form of leaves and flowers from bare trees and bulbs. A loving God will do everything to continue creating life in our world whether that is through another person, a community, or a self-sustaining creation. So you don’t buy the bodily resurrection? That’s okay. Goodness is always a possibility and can come from something that was not good. Life will find a way. 

#3. Jesus died for your sins. 

Be prepared to hear this one a lot if you are a church goer, especially from the children. For some reason, Christianity has been boiled down to this one line and packaged as “good news.” Given the gruesome image it connotes, it has mysteriously become the easiest way to tell kids about the role of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather than mentioning how he loved people or showed us a new way of life, we talk about how he died to satisfy the wrath of an angry father-god.

This one is so frustrating. Behind the idea that that Jesus died for your sins, there are all kinds of problematic theologies. There is the wrathful, bloodthirsty God who demands blood for crimes committed against HIM (yes, in almost everything written about this model of atonement, the god is almost always male). There is a glorification of suffering. There is this strange magic that happens throughout eternity in which one man’s blood somehow washes every other person clean. Not to mention it disregards EVERYTHING Jesus did in his life. 

Alternative: Jesus brings wholeness by his Way of life. 

Try living exactly as Jesus lived and see if it changes you. Seriously. He loved those who were not loved. He touched the untouchables. He taught people to pray for their enemies and love them. He taught forgiveness and honesty. His way of life is meaningful and life-giving in and of itself. 

#4. Invite Jesus into your heart. 

Here’s another one for the kids. This one is often partnered with an easy three-step prayer to pray. We tell children of the God-shaped hole in their hearts. Poor kids walk around thinking that if they don’t invite Jesus into their hearts, they might have heart problems when they grow up. 

When we say, “Invite Jesus into your heart,” we are making a claim that we can tell the God of the Universe where to go and when to go there. As if God isn’t already there. We are also individualizing religion in such a way that sets people up to be lone-wolves, saying they love Jesus but not the church (another post for another day). Jesus never told anyone in the Gospels to invite him into their hearts. 

Alternative: Wake up to God who is everywhere.

See the difference? What if God is already in your heart? What if God is also in the sunset and in the snowfall? What if God has been near and you haven’t even noticed? As we are invited to wake up to God’s presence, we will come to realize that there is no place God has to be invited into because there is no place where God is not. 

BONUS: Jesus was thinking about you on the cross!

You might have heard this one followed by, “It was your sin that held him there.” Talk about shame! Tell me, exactly how could a homeless, Palestinian teacher in the first century anticipate the things someone in the US over 2000 years later do wrong in a religion that he had no intentions to found? 

This toxic theology is used to shame people into feeling sorry for Jesus, that he died the death we deserved. 

Alternative: Jesus suffered on the cross because of the radical message he lived and preached. Friends, he didn’t go to the cross because he knew that in 2000 years there would be someone who stole a pack of gum from the grocery store. He went to the cross because he challenge the Roman government and the religious establishment over and over again through the message of the Kingdom of God. He was a political insurgent and died the death of one. His message got him there, not your sin.