Erikson and Evangelicalism

 I recently had to complete an assignment in which I was to apply Erik Erikson’s stages of identity development to my own development thus far. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Erikson proposed eight stages of identity development in which an individual has to resolve a “crisis” for each stage. For example, in adolescence (12-18) the crisis to be resolved is identity vs. role confusion. Someone who positively resolves this stage would advance to the next with a solid sense of personal identity, whereas someone who resolves it negatively would experience identity confusion and take that with them into the next stage of development.

For my assignment, I broke down my life into the stages presented by Erikson and analyzed each one based on memories or in some cases, information I gathered from others because I was too young to remember.  I did my best to be as objective as possible. The results were surprising.

Before I begin to disclose the results, I want to first state that I grew up in a “Christian” home.  My parents were Sunday School teachers, my mom played the piano for worship and all five of us kids were involved in the children’s ministry and youth group. If you had seen our family on a Sunday morning, you would have witnessed

two well-dressed, well-behaved adults with the gaggle of five children, all equally well-behaved and well-dressed, taking up a whole row of chairs and assumed that we were the picture of a good, 90’s Christian family.

If you had spoken to me on a Sunday morning, you would’ve encountered a smiley, polite and pretty teenage girl who was basically a Tom Petty song incarnate. She loved Jesus, horses, America and her future pastor boyfriend and you would’ve assumed that she was a healthy, happy teen.

And you would’ve been wrong.

Well, not about the Tom Petty song part. That’s all true. 

As I applied Erikson’s stages to my life, I realized that I have not resolved a single stage with a positive outcome thus far. Not one.

How can that be, one might ask? I grew up going to church with two parents who are still married and did not become a delinquent to society so things couldn’t have been that bad.  And if you were asking me that, you’d be right. There are so many who have experienced so much worse than I ever have and most likely ever will.

But the truth is, while my family looked okay from the outside (sometimes it really didn’t but those are details that are not mine to tell), behind the front door of our home was a family that was slowly disintegrating. It was a house built on the sinking sands of fear, control, legalism and performance and it was being pulled away slowly with each ebb and flow of the tides of life.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard this story many, many times from my Gen X and Millennial peeps who grew up in the church. More unfortunately, this story has resulted in many of them rejecting Christianity all together.  My family is no exception. 

We grew up with Purity Culture and Courtship Culture and the Left Behind series and James Dobson and Bill Gothard. We grew up being told that our shoulders lead to sin if exposed and that people who identified as homosexual were less than human, all the while many of us suffering abuse at the hands of our church leaders.  We weren’t allowed to watch Rugrats and our families boycotted the happiest place on earth, for Heaven’s sake and yet we watched our parents and families cover up and justify terrible behaviors that harmed others. We picketed outside of abortion clinics on Saturday mornings with our parents as they held up gruesome signs, using shame as a tactic to draw people to Jesus. If this is what Christianity is, then they’ve decided they want no part of it. And who could blame them, really?

So then why did some of us stay? 

Well, I can’t speak for everyone, just myself. But I can tell you why I’ve stayed. I can tell you why I’ve worked tirelessly with the help of people who love me and the Holy Spirit to untangle the truth of the Gospel from the lies of legalism; Why I will be wrapping up Erikson’s 6^th stage of development with a positive outcome despite the negativity of my upbringing.  Why I still feel so passionate about the church and seeing her thrive despite the damage many have done in her name.

Deconstruction is a popular word these days. And deconstruction is actually a really great and necessary concept. Sometimes, you really do have to take a house down to the studs to build it back up rightly.  We all have to do that at some point in our lives, it’s part of becoming a critically thinking adult.  But deconstruction doesn’t have to mean burning everything to ground.

What I’d love to help you do is take some of those cringey ideas from our past that we feel shackled and disenchanted by down to the studs. Let’s figure out what scripture actually says about some of this stuff. And not to go all “Ricky Bobby” here, but before you throw the sweet baby Jesus out with the bathwater (and trust me, I know there’s a lot of bathwater), let’s get to know the baby. 

Will you join me?