My wife was walking with our daughter, Michelle, on Santa Fe Avenida across from our International Church when someone started shouting at them from across the street.

“Liars, thieves, con artists.” The woman on the other side of the street was yelling, referring more to me than to my wife. We had a history with her in our church. But it was unsettling, to say the least, to have this kind of confrontation in public.

And this wasn’t the only time or place where she has made these kinds of accusations against us. We know her quite well actually and have ministered to her multiple times and generally been friends for years.

So, what happened? Some people call them “Well Intentioned Dragons” and every church has a few hanging around. Sometimes they suffer from some sort of mental problem, but many just have a toxic faith. As a Pastor or leader in the church, it is our responsibility to know when people need faith counseling, therapy or psychological help. Not easy work.

In the case of this woman, she felt that she had a just cause against us and we have tried to resolve it with her and will keep trying. But it’s difficult because of her belief system about her faith and about us. She believes that we stole some books from her. She believes that we are con artists and that we bilked people in the church out of their money. There is always a story behind every accusation, but it is generally twisted out of shape to such a degree that one doesn’t even know how to solve the problem.

Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton have written an excellent book called Toxic Faith in which they say, “Well-meaning but misguided people can turn religion into a harmful addiction, an addiction that can be used to avoid commitments, avoid pain, avoid reality, avoid fear, and avoid growth. This type of faith is toxic.”

Whether someone grows up in a dysfunctional but religious family or they bring their phobias into the church directly, or some combination of the two, the result is usually disastrous. When we understand that toxic faith is, in fact, an addiction and must be treated as such, then we can start the process of healing. There are therapeutic centers where they deal with these kinds of things but usually the more extreme types. The question is whether the church can be a center of healing for toxic faith addiction. For myself, I have never seen a twelve-step group set up in the church to deal with this kind of problem.

And there is a good reason for that.

Very often the church itself perpetuates the toxic faith of many of their parishioners which makes it difficult for them to also be a place of healing. The goal of today’s post is simply to make it clear that the religious spirit that is such a big part of so many of our churches has an impact on many people in the church. We all suffer from sin addiction but that is dealt with in the process of salvation and then worked out in a lifestyle of repentance and discipleship. But toxic faith in a religious church perpetuates the sin addiction in a particular way that makes people ineffective in ministry and perhaps even denies them the joy and peace of their salvation if they are even saved in the first place.

Toxic Faith can take on many faces, according to Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton, such as “conditional love, instant peace, guaranteed healing, Irreproachable Clergy, Monetary Rewards, Investment Tithing, Salvation by Works, Spiteful God, Slavery of the Faithful, Irrational Submission, Christian Inequality, Passivity, Biblical Exclusivity, Heavenly Matchmaking, Pollyanna Perspective, Bullet-Proof Faith, Vindictive God, Mortal Christ, Impersonal God, Divinely Ordained Happiness, Possibility of Becoming God.” You can probably recognize one or two that you have seen in your church or homelife. Be on your guard.

I often talk about triumphalism and prosperity theology as the two big theological or belief problems in the church and they include a lot of things on the list above. But we can also talk about a shame-based culture filled with “blame, control, perfectionism, delusions perpetual cheerfulness, blind loyalty, conformity, mistrust, avarice, and a spotless image.”

Certainly, addictions can be progressive and follow certain stages. Certainly, your home life as well as your church life are involved in the process. Certainly, different people, including yourself, may have different roles in the process of creating a toxic faith system.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It is a toxic faith system. It isn’t just about the individual but about the religious church that has created a shame-based culture that they can manipulate to get what they want out of the people.

I remember this same woman who now condemns us publicly, telling my wife that in her former church, she had to show up on time to certain meetings, and at one point the Pastor simply got fed up with her and told her that he would no longer pray for her. Excuse me? Since when is praying for someone a basis for manipulating them to do something you want them to do? So, there is a connection between spiritual abuse and toxic faith, no doubt.

But you see the problem, don’t you? Even if that particular Pastor read this wonderful book on Toxic Faith, which would be doubtful, to say the least, how is he in any position to do anything about it? He is the problem. He can hardly be the solution without first going through a process of addiction therapy. Then maybe.

Even as I write about this topic, there is a deep emptiness in the pit of my stomach. There are so many churches that would agree that toxic faith is a problem but that their particular faith system is not toxic. There are many who believe in “guaranteed healing” and “investment tithing” as well as “monetary rewards.” And that isn’t even talking about the incredible “passivity” that has invaded the church or the continual problem of believing in some form of “salvation by works.”

This concept of “heavenly matchmaking” hit close to home a while ago when two of the young people in our church started dating and immediately the Pastor and his wife declared that it was God’s will for them to get married and be together permanently. We were in shock. This was a personal friend of our daughter and when she told us about it, we didn’t have a clue what to do about it. Ultimately, they broke up under the pressure of such commitment at the early stages of their relationship and at least one of them is happily married ten years later to another girl.

None of us are immune and we have to get serious about the religious spirit and how it can produce toxic faith even in ourselves. In the last post, we talked about the many faces of the religious spirit and how a focus on the anointed church will help us find a way through all of the schemes and strategies of the evil one. In this post, we give more details about toxic faith and the beliefs and cultural systems that promote it.

But one thing is to have a strong anointed church-based faith system and have to deal with an aberration or two when it comes up in a small group or an individual. That can be dealt with. I would advise you to also look at your leaders (and yourself) carefully on an ongoing basis to make sure that you aren’t falling into a particular toxic faith trap set by the Devil.

But still, my heart hurts deeply for the many churches that have fallen so far into the trap that they have a web of justifications and reasons and even Biblical precedents that seem to support the toxic faith system that they are promoting. Of course, they don’t see it that way. That’s the problem. They would see it as a legitimate belief system based on a literal understanding of the Bible or a particular interpretation of a Biblical passage.

A case can be made that the authors of this wonderful book on Toxic Faith also come from a particular church background which acts as the north pole of their Biblical beliefs and that anything that deviates from that would be “toxic.” That is a fair question, and you would have to investigate that further.

In my case, I believe in the anointed church based on spiritual unity in the Way of the Cross focused on the Ministry of Reconciliation. I believe in the significance of our “Job Testimony” whether we are healed or not. I believe in suffering for the gospel together with Christ as we pick up our cross daily and follow Him.