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Holy Shift: Deconstructing Without Losing God

• Tabitha • Season 1 • Episode 2

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What if what you were taught about God isn't what God actually wanted you to believe?

In this powerful episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook dives deep into what happens when our theology has been shaped by fear, shame, spiritual abuse, or coercive control. If you've ever questioned your faith because of how it was used against you, this episode offers permission to wrestle, reexamine, and rebuild.

Tabitha explores:

  • How faith gets twisted in abusive environments
  • The weaponization of submission, forgiveness, and suffering
  • What deconstruction really means (and why it’s not a dirty word)
  • How disentangling false beliefs can lead to healing and deeper connection with God
  • The difference between condemnation and conviction
  • Why Jesus never sided with abusers, and how God actually responds to your questions

Whether you’re in the middle of reexamining long-held beliefs, grieving spiritual harm, or just wondering where God is in your story, this episode will meet you with truth, tenderness, and hope.

📥 Download the free reflection guide mentioned in this episode: tabithawestbrook.com/heytabi

🎧 Listen to Safe to Hope, Season 6 Episode 2, Jesus is My Captain here - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/season-6-episode-2-jesus-is-my-captain/id1643769999?i=1000690797075

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💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
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🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

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Tabitha Westbrook:

What if what you were taught about God isn't what God actually wanted you to believe? What if it isn't accurate? Well, if your faith story has become tangled with fear, shame or silence, this episode is for you. Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud, with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Welcome to this week's hey Tabby. I'm really excited that you're here with me. We are going to talk a little bit today about what I am calling Holy Shift, and that is when we start to take a look at our theology and what we've always been told and say is that true, is that accurate, what is the real truth here and where are we at? And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today and walk through some different things that are just worth thinking about. We're going to start off with what happens when faith gets twisted by abuse or coercive control. Spiritual abuse and we've talked about this a number of times on this program can really do a number on what you believe about God, what you believe about yourself. Just as a reminder, my definition of spiritual abuse and I have this in my book Body and Soul, healed and Whole as well is weaponizing someone's good and right devotion to God against them. So it is taking their true desire to follow the Lord and weaponizing it as means of control and saying well, this is what it looks like to follow God and essentially what it does is. It takes the concept of submitting to teaching doctrine, leaders, spouses, and twists it into something that God never says that it is and that can get really tricky, because if you really want to follow the Lord and you've been taught I have to listen to my leaders, I have to submit here, don't speak against the Lord's anointed, and things like that that so many of us have heard then it can actually take our voice from us and it creates this picture and painting of God that is anything but actual God and it doesn't look a thing like how he presents himself in the totality of scripture.

Tabitha Westbrook:

We also find that with a high control space or coercive control and abuse in spiritual realms, forgiveness ends up being weaponized as a way to dismiss us. So if someone harms you, let's say it is a pastor, let's say it is an abusive or coercively controlling spouse, and you're told well, you have to forgive. God says forgive 70 times 7. And forgiveness in that moment is equated with total reconciliation and not actually solving the problem. Now, I know that can be a tricky space because we are called to forgive. There's a lot around that, but forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation. If someone is an axe murderer, let's say, and they have hacked up half the church, we'll just use that as a ridiculous example here, right, then you would say, yes, I can forgive this person for the actions that they took, but I'm not going to hang out with them because they are dangerous. And I think that when we misstate and misapply what forgiveness actually is, we're asking people go hang out with an ex-murderer that hasn't repented and changed at all. You just have to forgive and forget because they said pretty words. And we know that that's not accurate, but if you are trying really hard to be a faithful believer, it can get really tricky if you're told well, this is what it looks like and you've never had the opportunity to think about it differently.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Also, we find in these spaces that suffering is glorified, and I have had so many survivors say to me I was told to suffer like Jesus that even in this horrible situation and they were able to say that my wicked spouse was in fact horrible I just had to suck it up and suffer for Christ because I was in Christ's sufferings. And again, that's another misstatement of what the Bible says. Yes, we are going to suffer in this world. It is very clear. Jesus says it a number of times. It is throughout the New Testament. Things are going to be hard. However, when you can stop oppression, you should, and we're called to that. We're supposed to be anti-oppression as believers, because God is so.

Tabitha Westbrook:

When we distort what suffering actually is and what it really looks like to suffer for the cause of Christ, then we are also putting people into a cage. And I often think about the quote from when Home Hurts, which is by Jeremy Pierre and Greg Wilson, that abuse is a dangerous reversal of love. And the thing is, man, it is couched in words of love. I am just trying to help you be godly, I am just trying to help you walk on the path to Jesus, and that is a distortion. This is really truly what it means, in my opinion, to take the name of the Lord in vain, to use it to create something that he does not condone or to push something that he does not condone. That is absolutely taking the name of the Lord in vain. It's really, really important that when we look at trauma responses and our understanding of things that we aren't saying, hey, this is a lack of faith. We understand things rightly as a trauma response, and we understand that it is really difficult to disentangle a lot of these things.

Tabitha Westbrook:

So I'm going to use a word here that a lot of folks really struggle with in the church, and that is the word deconstruction, and I want to define it well. So some of you just heard that and I think you thought, oh, my goodness, I think she pretty much just used a curse word, because it's become equated with that and I've said this before as well that there are plenty of people who misuse this, plenty of people who utilize this to denigrate our faith and all kinds of things. Just like everything, there are people in good spaces and people in harmful spaces, but I want to talk about what it really is, versus just the buzzword that it's pretty much become. So, first of all, deconstruction isn't the end of faith. Honestly, there are a lot of people who say, hey, this was actually the beginning of something very authentic for me, that was outside of the high control and abuse that I walked in. I'm going to use another word for it.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I'm going to use two actually throughout this podcast that I prefer to deconstruction. One is disentangling. I'm not completely dismantling my faith at all. When I am looking at things, I'm disentangling it. I'm disentangling it from things that were not of God, things that are not in the Bible and things that it got stuck to that it should never have been stuck to. So, like I was talking about forgiveness. Well, if I was talking about forgiveness, well, if I always believed that forgiveness was now I have to forget and just suffer, then I'm going to disentangle from that harmful teaching and press into something more accurate. So I'm going to pull those threads out that don't need to be there and weave something different.

Tabitha Westbrook:

The other word that I like to use for this is sanctification, and we are being changed from glory to glory to be like Jesus, something that I might have believed been taught. I need to reevaluate that. We're always supposed to continually go through the scriptures and learn and ask the Lord to bear weight on our heart from the gospel and from his word and from the spirit, and there are going to be things that I read when I had a different understanding of something and go wait, is that really what this says? And maybe I'm going to go do a word study. Maybe I'm going to go do something that helps me understand a little bit more of the original context. And if you have not learned how to study the Bible, I definitely encourage you go back to the episode on biblical literacy. There are some great resources in how to study the Bible well and how to learn how to understand it for yourself.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And a lot of times we want to take the word of our pastors and elders and leaders and spouses very seriously. Sometimes they've gone to seminary and they have a lot of knowledge. But honestly, wisdom is more than just knowing stuff. Wisdom is knowing what to do with the stuff that you know, one of my favorite memes is something along the lines of knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is knowing you shouldn't put it in a fruit salad. And sometimes I think we have folks who, to achieve their own ends or because they just don't know, think that we're going to shove that tomato in a fruit salad, and so they're using knowledge that it's a fruit and absolutely not using wisdom that you shouldn't put it in with your strawberries.

Tabitha Westbrook:

We want to be able to work through our sanctification, and that does mean challenging things that we have believed maybe forever, especially if you grew up in the church, and that's not a bad thing. When we wrestle and we question and we ask, we are more able to have a fuller understanding of our own faith, and that's really good. That's important. I want to just normalize that this actually has been something that has been going on since the beginning of time, where we have had to work out our faith and we have had to try to understand different things about God. And as we age and we get wisdom of life, I also think that presses us in to different places as well. You know what I understood at the age of 20 and what I understand now, which is like nearly three decades later, is still much different. I have life experiences. I have experiences with people and I have more experiences with God, and that is super important.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Also, it helps us disentangle from the systems that are not really following the Lord. I've said this before many times it is a quote from Dr Diane Langberg that Jesus did not come to die for systems. He came to die for the people in the systems, and that is so accurate. So sometimes we have to look at the system that we are walking in and go is this really what the Lord has? Now? Look, no church system is going to be perfect. You want them to be safe enough, right, they're still run by people. Things happen.

Tabitha Westbrook:

But when you have humility and leadership, then you can really ask some harder questions about hey, why do we do this this way? Hey, why is this what we're being taught? And those are good things. And if you can't do that, then I would just encourage you to ask questions anyway of the Lord. Just because your pastor or elder or leader doesn't want to answer those questions or go there with you doesn't mean you shouldn't. Our faith is our own and that is really important. I also want to speak to folks who are in more of a high control space, and that is really important. I also want to speak to folks who are in more of a high control space, and that is questioning, is not backsliding. It is okay to question, and I really think that wrestling with our faith is so important, and God is not angry. I mean, look at Job. God was not mad at Job for asking lots of questions. Job was like what is happening here? David asked questions of the Lord.

Tabitha Westbrook:

There are a lot of people in the Bible who are like I don't get it. Habakkuk, as he's staring at the wall, how long, oh Lord, how long are you going to just let this happen? Eek, I don't love this. These are all really important questions and God doesn't vilify any of them. He's not mad about any of it and he's not scared of our questions. He knows man, he knows, he knows what's already in our heart, and so if we say, lord, I want to understand this better, he's going to come and show up and help us Now. Probably not in our timeline. I'll be honest. God does not operate in the timeline I want him to sometimes, but he's always obviously knowing what's going on. He knows far more about everything than I do, but it can be hard because I like, oh, I want answers and maybe I don't get them right away, but he's not scared of you asking those questions at all.

Tabitha Westbrook:

A healthy faith for a survivor of abuse is to eventually understand that God is safe and not controlling. Especially when scripture has been weaponized, we can think man, god's a narcissist, what the heck? Y'all already know how I feel about the term narcissist and I am not a fan, but I know that it can feel like well, is he just going to be like these abusers or is he like the abusive individuals have cast him toward me? And the answer is no. I think about folks who've said to me but in the garden, he knew it was going to happen, he did, he gave us free choice. But he is so tender in that passage and this is something that if you have not heard the episode with Chuck DeGroote, go back and listen to it.

Tabitha Westbrook:

We talk about the where are you question and the posture of tenderness that God has. And if you're like well, how do you know? You couldn't hear his tone? Facts, that's right. I was not there in the garden. I am definitely not that old. What I do know is that he went and made clothes for them. He said, yes, there's going to be a consequence to this, but I already have your rescue plan. I'm sure that his heart was broken. If you are a parent, you know how it feels when your kids don't do the good things that you have for them, when you're like, ah, I set this up for you and you went and did something else instead. Man, we know, we know how it hurts. As a parent, I think God's heart was more broken than angry and we see his tenderness in the making of the clothes. We see his tenderness in saying this is how it's going to be, but I've already got a rescue plan for you, and that is truly tender. So he is not a dictator, he is not a controller. He is not the angry buzzkill in the sky. He's a very tender God with a whole lot of patience.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Jesus also never sided with abusers. In fact, the harshest words he had were for wicked church leadership, the Pharisees and Sadducees. If you go through and read the gospels and really look at who he said the hard things to, it wasn't the broken and hurting. Those are the folks that, yes, he said go and sin no more, but he also healed them, sat with them, touched them, allowed himself to be touched by them. There's such an incredible gentle and tender space there for people who are broken, and it was the leaders who thought they had it all together that Jesus said hey, you are not as together as you think and you need to humble yourself.

Tabitha Westbrook:

When you interpret scripture correctly, even if it is bearing weight on something that needs to change, you find freedom, not condemnation. Anytime I've ever been convicted by something I read, I'm like, oh ouch, jesus man, we got to work that out. It is sad, I'm grieved by my brokenness, I'm grieved by my missteps, but I'm not shamed. And this is hard for a survivor because, honestly, sometimes breathing makes you feel shame, right, like it's just a whole thing, and I totally understand that and that is part of our own work of healing is not like just doing the backstroke in the bubble of shame most of the time because we've been so conditioned to think everything is my fault forever. But when we really interpret it rightly, when we really are secure in our identity in Christ and we're looking at scripture, it doesn't bring condemnation.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Romans 8, 1 says that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and called according to his purpose so important and that's right. After Paul is like I cannot seem to get it right. Go read Romans 7 and 8. They are absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the New Living Translation for anything in Romans because Paul is the king of a run-on sentence and it can get a little lengthy. But I think the New Living Translation, or the NLT, does a really good job of that. And so you can look at Paul's wrestle and him go ah, but thankfully there's no condemnation because the Lord has saved him. He's sealed by the blood he knows.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Reading through scripture with a trauma-informed lens is so life-giving when you look at what is the character of God and, like it says in James and I know I quote this often, but I love it so much God is not mad when you ask him for wisdom. He wants us to. There's a ton of Proverbs about ask for wisdom and seek wisdom and God wants us to do that. So as we understand our own trauma, understand what we need to disentangle from a bit, understand a little bit more about our own sanctification, then we go who is God really? And God wants us to know him. He says that from Genesis to Revelation. He wants to be known and he makes himself available to us.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I know that in my own story, disentangling, deconstructing sanctification whatever you choose to call it has been at times really scary, because I am letting go of, in those moments, things that I was taught, and a lot of times they were tied to salvation. And when I look at it now with a greater understanding and greater depth of Bible study, I can go that is not what they call a salvific issue. That means it doesn't relate to your salvation. Right, so don't speak against the Lord's anointed something so often misstated to keep you from questioning a wicked leader. I look at that and I go oh yeah, but when I was younger, that was couched with and you're going straight to Hades if you do that. Right, because there was always a consequence, always some sort of totalitarian control with that. So I've had to go.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Okay, it feels to my body like I am going to get in trouble, but here is what I know about Jesus, even if I don't feel safe yet, knowing this, and I have to work those things out. Right, I really think this in some ways gets to the essence of working out our salvation with fear and trembling because we are potentially pushing against family of origin rules, pushing against things that we've been taught in the church, that are inaccurate and yet all tied to whether or not we are worthy of heaven, and it is scary. It is scary when you say I don't think this is right, I don't think this is accurate anymore, and you start to let it go. It also is really tough sometimes for relationships, because if you have friends who are still in that space or family who is still in that space of saying no, no, no, this high control, twisted version of God is what's accurate, then it is going to affect relationships. I'm seeing more and more in this day and age that if you don't have tacit agreement with something, that people will just get rid of you as a relationship, and I am not a fan of that.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I do think that, especially with things that are not salvific issues, things that do not pertain to actual salvation and there is a lot that is in that gray area in the Bible that is, you know, we can come to different spaces that those are things I think we should hold gently with each other. I would hope that the people that know me, that are maybe in a different place from where I am currently, would really lean in and say I love you, I know that you love Jesus, and so I'm going to hold this tension with you instead of push against you. And I am all for good debate, I am all for let's go look at this together, let's wrestle through it together. But it's super important to look at the other person not as an infidel or backslidden or whatever else you want to call an individual and say I love you, I know you love the Lord. I'm going to wrestle with you. We can have intense debates, we can wrestle through things together, but at the end of the day, you are still my brother or sister in Christ and we're going to stand together in that.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And I think that overcomes the enemy's attempts at division in these spaces. And you don't have to make a friend agree with you if you're in a different place, but you can love them well and say I don't understand this and if you feel like, oh my gosh, they're just like sliding right into a terrible place, like maybe pray for them, maybe look at it from their perspective, maybe ask more questions, which, again, I think is a bit of a lost art these days and that's very unfortunate. If this is really tough for you, I really would encourage you to find a therapist that can help you wrestle with it. And again, this is where I would say a faith-based therapist who is not a legalist individual or a. Let me tell you what you shouldn't believe, because there are some therapists out there that are just not doing very good, and biblical counselors as well. There's some really excellent ones that are biblical counselors and therapists and some really terrible ones.

Tabitha Westbrook:

So interview well, but really wrestle through it, maybe in that space, or find a safe pastor who's willing to do the wrestle with you and not tell you what to do. And there are those people in the world as well. And I know if you have been hurt in your faith and you are disentangling and working through your sanctification, it can feel like is there anybody safe and good? And I assure you that there are. It does take work to find them, it does take lots of questions, it can be a little bit of a messy process and I hate that. I truly hate that.

Tabitha Westbrook:

But it's really important to find community support that is going to wrestle with you but not tell you what to believe. At the end of the day, your faith is yours and yours alone, between you and God. Because at the end of the day, the end of all the days, we're going to stand before God without anybody around us. It's going to be us and him. I want to say I have wrestled honestly and I have sought Jesus and trust him. For the rest, if he's God, he can absolutely be trusted. For the rest, I know that it takes an enormous amount of courage to even start doing this.

Tabitha Westbrook:

It is really hard because it does push against family of origin rules potentially, rules that you grew up with in the faith that you took as absolute gospel. That has nothing to do with the gospel potentially, and so it is a really hard, hard space sometimes, and I want to acknowledge that Anytime that we wrestle through letting go of something, even in our faith walk, even when it is right and good and beautiful, it feels awful. There is grief. You'll be grief of things that you have to reckon with, and that is okay. It's still my contention that all trauma work is grief work because there is so much to grieve. But we also have a God that understands and has given us lament. So even in all of that, it is worth doing. I just want to encourage you. You do not have to lose your faith, to lose the fear.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I'm going to leave you as we wrap up today's episode with a few questions for reflection, and I am going to put this in a downloadable guide that you can get. It will be in the show notes so that you can really sit with this and wrestle with it for yourself. So the first question is what beliefs about God or faith were used to control or silence you? God or faith were used to control or silence you. How was scripture weaponized for you? And that's just a great place to start, because sometimes we got to look at that. The second question is what parts of your faith bring you peace today? I will tell you that knowing that I have a suffering Savior is really helpful for me, because I know that he gets it On my hardest, darkest days. I know he gets it, but what is it for you? What parts of your faith today bring you peace?

Tabitha Westbrook:

The next question is what do you want to rebuild and what can you let go of? We are not completely walking away from faith here. We're disentangling right. We are taking this and going okay, what needs to stay and what needs to go. It's sort of like decluttering a house right, we have a lot of great things in there and it's like, oh, this is great, this is great, whatever you know. But it's like do I really need 14 of these? Does this thing even work? Right, have you ever pulled out an electronic and plugged it in and been like, why do I still have this? It's kind of like that what do we need to disentangle? What do we need to take out? What needs to go? And then here is the final question, and this one takes some time sometimes for folks, and again, there is nothing wrong with wrestling taking a little bit of time. We put timelines on stuff. God does not put timelines on stuff like we do at all. But where is God actually in your story? Where is he actually in your story? And you might have to take a bit of time and look. But look for him because he's there and he shows up and there are questions about why did God allow this, and I totally get that.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I'm going to link to a podcast episode from Safe to Hope and it is season six, episode two. Jesus is my captain. I will link that in the show notes and in this question guide as well, and I think that it does an excellent job of saying where is God and why didn't he stop it? I think it just it's one of my favorite episodes for that particular topic and so I will link to that as well.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I know that shifting theology and shifting what we believe can be unbelievably difficult and scary, especially if you've been told to question. It all means that you are apostate, that you are wicked, that you are not really saved, and I just want to tell you that isn't true. First of all, there's lots of questioning in the Bible and secondly, I want to honor that. Your body might be really reactive listening to just the thought of it and I want to encourage you that God loves you. He is not afraid of your questions at all and he wants you to know him, to really know him. He doesn't want you to know just about him.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Remember, our faith is all about relationship and when it has been harmed in relationship we have to reevaluate it, and that is okay, and he understands it says that a bruised reed he will not break, he knows. So I leave you with that encouragement. I'm really glad that you joined me this week on hey tabby and I will see you next time. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom. Forward slash heytabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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