When Faith Becomes a Burden: Have We Forgotten How to Hold the Hurting?

Have you had moments where, out of nowhere, an old memory appears?

It may seem like it came from nowhere.

But did it really?

I have learnt that the body talks a different language. It talks in sensations, and then sometimes gives us information about where that sensation was once felt before.

The context might be completely different. The circumstances might have changed. Years may have passed.

But the body doesn't always determine what is now and what is then in the same way our thinking mind does.

So today, as I stepped into the shower, I found myself contemplating anger.

Anger was something I was once very familiar with.

And suddenly I remembered a time, many years ago, when I had asked my church if they could sponsor me to do an anger management course. I remember practically grovelling, I had no means to pay for it myself, but I was desperate to understand myself and my responses.

The idea had only occurred to me because one of their own family members had been encouraged to attend one. She was my friend, and they were more than happy to finance it for her. She too had experienced a troubled upbringing. But I don't think either of us really understood then that our past might have been playing itself out in our present.

After all, we were Christians.

We have got this, right?

Prayer. Faith. Forgiveness. Try harder. Trust God.

And yet I was asking for help because clearly there was something happening inside me that I didn't understand.

When faith becomes another measure of whether we're trying hard enough

That memory then transported me to conversations with my sister during years of rehabilitation. I won't go deeply into that story. There was betrayal there too, and that particular centre eventually made the news for its own corrupt practices. But I remember the messages she received.

She wasn't trying hard enough.

Her faith wasn't strong enough.

As I write those words now, I realise I never fully understood then, physically or emotionally, what hearing those words must have done to her.

Because when someone is already struggling, what happens when the place that is supposed to represent grace tells them that their continued struggle is evidence of their failure?

I was advocating for something different.

Seek help outside the church.

Seek help outside the rehabilitation centre.

There has to be more that we don't understand and now, years later, I think there was.

I don't believe understanding trauma, the nervous system, our bodies, patterns, psychology or our individual capacity takes us away from God.

Perhaps understanding them can help us become far more compassionate toward the people He created.

Scripture itself gives us a confronting picture of what happens when faith becomes burden rather than refuge.

Jesus spoke of religious leaders who:

“tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders.”

Matthew 23:4

That verse hits differently for me now.

Because sometimes I wonder whether we have unknowingly done exactly that.

Come as you are... but then what?

I look at why churches and religious organisations can receive such a bad name. We deliver a message that says:

All are welcome.

Come as you are.

And then sometimes, once people arrive, another message begins.

You must do this.

You shouldn't feel that.

You should have forgiven by now.

You need more faith.

You need to surrender.

You need to pray harder.

You should be further along.

And somewhere amongst all those expectations sits a person who may already carry a lifetime of believing:

Something is wrong with me.

I am failing.

I am not worthy.

I am too much.

I am not enough.

And I truly wonder what He thinks of all of this, because the invitation Jesus actually gave was:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28

Rest. Not perform for me. Not prove yourself to me.

Not hide until you've cleaned yourself up enough to belong.

Come weary.

Come burdened.

Come.

And Scripture describes Him again:

“A bruised reed he will not break.”
Matthew 12:20

How different would some people's experiences of faith have been if that had been the posture that met their brokenness?

Sometimes what looks like faith may actually be fear

For all intentions, the words people speak may come from genuine personal faith. They may deeply believe that trusting exclusively in God is the answer, Bbut sometimes I wonder whether there can also be something else underneath it.

Denial.

Fear of questioning.

Fear of feeling.

Fear of dealing with our own inner turmoil.

Fear that acknowledging psychology, trauma or the body somehow diminishes God's power. I don't believe it does.

I remember overhearing a conversation at church about someone who had remarried. Another woman, herself living within an abusive marriage, was judging the woman who had remarried. She distanced herself and no longer wanted friendship with her because of the choices she had made. Yet underneath that judgement I couldn't help seeing something else.

Her own turmoil.

Her own inability to cut the cord of her union, regardless of the physical and emotional cost, because:

That is not the way.

And I wondered how often judgement of another person's freedom exposes the prison we ourselves don't feel permitted to leave.

This is the story of so many people within faith. They are in fight and fight.

Clinging to willpower.

Clinging to determination.

Surviving.

Enduring circumstances because they believe enduring them must somehow be God's will.

But was that really what God meant when He asked us to do His will?

Jesus also said in Matt 11:30:

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

So perhaps there are times when we need to become curious about the burdens we are carrying in His name.

Did He actually place them there?

Or did we?

How did we get this so wrong?

I understand why people outside faith sometimes look at Christianity and shake their heads, because from the outside it can look like such a contradiction.

Hope. Grace. Faith. Love. Forgiveness.

And yet within some spaces there can also be enormous guilt, shame, hiding and feelings of unworthiness.

And I won't lie, that troubles me.

Because the people who were drawn to Christ in His day were so often the people who needed shelter the most.

The rejected.

The hurting.

The sick.

The shamed.

The people whose lives weren't tidy.

And yet sometimes today they are drawn into our spaces looking for that same shelter, only to discover language and narratives that don't necessarily provide the shelter they were seeking. Romans 8:1

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

No condemnation.

Yet somehow we have become very good at creating it.

How did we get this so wrong?

And this is where my shower conversation came back around

It has taken me leaving a place of rules and regulations, and allowing my nervous system to regulate more, to recognise something incredibly painful.

The very place I had been yearning to experience as somewhere I could surrender, be held and seek renewal had become an environment in which parts of me felt they had to hide.

And in doing so, I wonder whether we can actually deny the very meaning of the cross.

Because the cross wasn't given because we managed to become worthy.

Grace exists precisely because we couldn't earn it.

Back to my shower conversation...

I genuinely believe many faith communities don't invest enough in learning tools that help them understand the people sitting in front of them. You have people coming through the doors from every walk of life.

Trauma.

Abuse.

Addiction.

Neurodivergence.

Grief.

Poverty.

Family breakdown.

Mental illness.

Chronic stress.

People whose bodies have spent years learning how to survive.

And yet sometimes prayer and faith are offered as though they are the only forms of support a person should require.

Prayer matters deeply to me.

Faith matters deeply to me.

God matters deeply to me.

But I don't believe learning how to support a traumatised human being competes with any of those things.

Scripture actually tells us in Galations 6:2:

“Carry each other's burdens.”

Perhaps carrying someone's burden sometimes looks like prayer and perhaps sometimes it looks like sitting beside them.

Listening.

Learning.

Paying for the course they cannot afford.

Helping them access professional support.

Understanding trauma.

Learning about nervous-system responses.

Providing practical resources.

Recognising that the person who appears angry may actually be frightened.

That the person who keeps returning to addiction may be desperately trying to regulate unbearable pain.

That the woman who cannot simply “leave” may have a nervous system, history, finances, children and fear all tangled into that decision.

Maybe faith isn't threatened by understanding those things.

Maybe compassion requires us to.

And sometimes I wish churches, much like governments, would stop spending so much on what looks impressive and look more closely at the people already standing within their shelter.

The extra equipment.

The social media.

The production.

The buildings.

The paid positions.

None of those things, in themselves, heal the heart of someone who is broken.

People do.

Presence does.

Compassion does.

Practical help does.

Being believed does.

Being safe enough to finally tell the truth does.

And Christ does.

Maybe the question isn't whether people have enough faith to survive what they're carrying.

Maybe sometimes the question should be:

What are we, as the body of Christ, doing to help carry it?

Maybe this is why this memory came back to me today.

Perhaps there was something in that younger version of me that needed me, all these years later, to finally understand what she was asking for.

She wasn't asking someone to excuse her anger.

She wasn't asking God to take away her responsibility.

She was asking for help to understand it.

And perhaps what moves me most now is recognising that she was already trying. She just didn't yet have the language for what her body had been carrying. Maybe that is part of why I do what I do today, because sometimes people don't need another person telling them to try harder.

Sometimes they need someone willing to become curious with them about why trying has been so hard.