Throughout my “bible-thumping, smitten with God” years, I scribbled countless thoughts and prayers in four devotional journals. Recently I came across these journals, wiping away the years of dust accumulated. As I have been detaching from the Pentecostal god, it was a painful, downright mortifying experience to read through my past communication with god. This god seemed so foreign now given my liberated, enlightened, evolved self. I remember writing to and about Him, but I couldn’t help thinking how dysfunctional and convoluted the language I used really was.
I love you Father. Take me…surrender me to your will…your ways. Let me not lean on my own understanding and foolishness.
Mary Daly in Beyond God the Father advocates, “Time to go beyond God the Father. Don’t you see? If God is male, then the male is God. Reclaim the right to name your self, your world, your God. The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves. Be a wild woman…God is not A Being. God is Be-ing.”
Many social scientists contend that language is the foundation of our socially constructed realities. We use language as a creative tool and guide to frame our perceptions of the world around us. We also use language to create our own unique creative expressions. That even though we share and appropriate from the accessible pool of creative expressions, each individual designs and discovers their own true form.
God, I love you. I need you. I long for you. Do you love me? Do you long for me? Reveal your unconditional love for me my Lord. I don’t feel you. Is it because of my sins? Cleanse me. Clothe me in white.
In theology, language is used to describe concepts of God, spirituality, and religious ideas. Each religion and spiritual practice has its very own form of expression. In the Pentecostal sect, my former faith, God was described as the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Prince of Peace, and the Lord of Lords. He had many names and referential meanings. My relationship with God was complex. It was mandated and described to us, the faithful congregants, that God was to be our ALL. He was to exist within us and work through us. He represented our lover, parent, friend, and above all, our supreme ruler. As believers, we were to look to Him for all answers and guidance in the world with our sights set on our future home, in the heavens.
The world is passing away…but the one who does the will of God lives forever: John 2:17
As God meant everything to me, I utilized a language that incorporated Him into everything. Every social institution, including religious spaces, have a shared language to convey a message to, recruit, and validate its participants. In the Pentecostal church, we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, allowed the Holy Spirit to guide us, and worshiped our Holy Father. Although all were One, God was seemingly the head of the trio. Most faithful congregants had devotionals or prayer journals. I was proudly one of those devoted congregants.
I acknowledge my mistakes, and confess them to you Jesus…continue to show and tell me how deep your love for me truly is.
These devotional readings were my normal at the time; although it is disconcerting looking back now. I realize now how removed and transformed I feel from that self. At one point I became embarrassed of that self. Now I face her with open arms, helping her unwind the tangles of a religious past to discover an agentic self.
Recently, I decided to deconstruct and analyze the process through which I faced the shame of the self who used to be in love with the Pentecostal god. Through examining, understanding and confronting my shame, I discovered freedom from an oppressive, submissive, and co-dependent language.
Father, are you there? I feel lonely, not worthy. Show me how to rest in you my King.
Through my recovery, for a long while, there was no god. I didn’t want anything to do with a monotheistic deity of any sort. Once I understood that god can mean many different things at different times, that god can be essentialized, that god can be whatever we wanted; I came to the subjective revelation that we all have our own unique creative expression of and for god. For some, god is nature, family, and friends. For others, god is self, philanthropy, and love. At its essence, god is whatever we breathe meaning into. It’s where our linguistic expression resides at the time.
I need you. Desperately. I don’t want to doubt you, but I do Lord. I’ve been crying out to you, but no answer. Give me a sign that you’re real, please.
Throughout my journey, I realized addictions and obsessions had many parallels to the god I used to worship. I saw god in people’s addiction to drugs, work, and sex. I found god in cultural taboos, feminist activism, in the classroom. I wanted to discover my own god, utilizing an agentic power I didn’t believe I had access to before. I made the conscious choice to change the way I spoke to and of god. That meant I had to view god differently. A new language had to emerge.
Gordon Kaufman, who taught at Harvard Divinity School, states, “Devotion to God must humanize us – make us better, more loving, more just – and it must relativize us – guard against the tendency to make ourselves into gods” (An Essay on Theological Method & The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God).
Once I understood that I had the ability to claim and create my own creative expression and language of god, I discovered new spaces for spiritual growth and evolution. I don’t have to be embarrassed by my former language of and to god, rather I accept the self that was limited all those years ago. I extend that self healing and understanding, and thank it for its unique expression.
New Prayer & Affirmation: Universe, Infinite Source, the Divine within, I welcome you into my life today. Stir in me a creative expression that I may improve myself and help those around me. I am grateful for the breath and blessings I have access to, and I pray for strength and guidance when faced with struggles. Guide me in forgiveness, acceptance, and strength. Thank you for being alive and well, Andreea.
Andreea Nica is a freelance writer, media strategist, and egalitarian. She writes for Sociologists for Women in Society, Apartments.com,Huffington Post, AlterNet, amongst other top-profile online platforms. She is a featured expert on SheSource, Women’s Media Center, and the Founder of OrganiCommunications, a consultancy that empowers organizations and enterprises in content development and media strategy ventures. Currently, she is writing a narrative nonfiction on her transition from the Pentecostal sect. She holds a M.S. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. in Psychology from Northern Arizona University. You can find Andreea hiking throughout the Pacific Northwest with her better half and kitty. Follow her @integratedcom and connect on LinkedIn.
feminismandreligion.com 
If you feel up to it, I would love it if you analyzed the dynamics of your former piety in terms of submission and self-negation or other terms you choose. Often, feminist theologians speak only of subordination without speaking in more specific terms of the psychological dynamics. Sounds like you have the material for a more detailed analysis in your journals.
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Thanks for your interesting outlook and direction, Carol. Interestingly, I have written about the parallelism of sadomasochism and charismatic religious experiences taking on a psychoanalytical approach in a much older post on a blog I started in 2009. Here it is: http://progressivethinkingandreea.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/praise-god-and-spank-me-the-parallelism-of-religious-experiences-and-sadomasochism/
My writing was very different at that time…as you can see. ;) Your suggestion is certainly something I will take into consideration in my future writings!
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Thank you for sharing this part of your story Andreea. I do believe that all the parts of our stories are valuable and blessed, even the ones we now consider embarrassing as we enter into new maturity and understandings. They led us to the wonders we now experience.
Having recently moved, I’m also finding old journals and re-reading them! (blush!) :-) But it’s kind of fun to see where I came from and how it led me to where I am.
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Yes, I completely agree Barbara. Thank you for your expressed support!
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Very interesting. Back in those days, did you also speak in tongues? Did you write in tongues? That’s something I’d like to see–glossolalia on paper. How would anyone spell those sounds?
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Yes, Barbara, I did speak in tongues…quite regularly. I shied away from the practice during my transition years ago battling my intention and belief in the significance of the practice. What an interesting point – no, I never wrote down the glossolalic utterances, but I also wonder what that would look like. Perhaps it could have been conveyed on a canvas, even.
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If you can transcend the addictive ego, or inwardly comfort or strengthen yourself, then who is “you” in that transcendence — who does the healing, the comforting? Isn’t there a deeper self, sometimes called the true self, walking with you and who guides in myriad ways?
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What a beautiful expression, Sarah. Yes, the healer and comforter, I believe now, is a true self, a higher self if you will. At the time, in my former faith, I believed it was god – an separate being. It’s an incredible revelation…that all along…it was me. That we have the ability to transcend in such spectacular ways.
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Thanks, Andreea. It’s fascinating to see the changes you’ve gone through. My own coming-out (of my birth religion) happened so long ago that I don’t remember much of it. That makes your transition that much more interesting.
For me the difference between my birth religion and what I practice now has a lot to do with where I locate(d) the divine. Like you, I looked outside myself for God in my birth religion. When I first found feminist spirituality, I looked inside myself for the Goddess. But for many years now, I’ve realized that inside/outside is a Western concept and that my experience locates Goddess both inside me and outside. Or to better express that last statement, I don’t distinguish between inside and outside anymore, but see all as sacred.
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Do you think the “outside” God is, in part, a reflection of our consumer driven/capitalist culture, i.e. “there is something I need out there and I just have to have it to be fulfilled.”?
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Nmr —
I think that the “outside” god by definition reflects the idea that there’s something a person needs out there to be fulfilled. But I believe this concept predates our present economy by millenia. I think the “outside” god is a patriarchal invention that helps create hierarchy in a culture. We start seeing this concept with the advent of patriarchy about 5, 000 years ago. You can see it in Greek myths (For instance, “Know thyself” on the outside of the temple at Delphi meant “know your place as lesser than the gods.”) If God is outside us, then we don’t have any part in him (I say “him” purposefully), we can’t really trust ourselves to be ethical or spiritual, and we are hierarchically inferior to him. And if he’s male (which he is in patriarchal cultures), then men have a right to be superior to women. Mary Daly said this last idea best: “If God in ‘his’ heaven is a father ruling ‘his’ people, then it is in the ‘nature’ of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male-dominated.”
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Thanks, Nancy. I agree, especially with your last sentiment. I tried to worship the Goddess shortly after I transitioned, but the practice felt the same – focusing on a superior being. For me, it felt more natural throughout the years to eliminate the inside/outside. And so, yes, many things become sacred when taking that perspective.
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