The Shame Gospel by Mel Kulenski

Day 1 of 3: Trust Versus Mistrust

“The heart is deceitful above all things…”
—Jeremiah 17:9

Erik Erikson’s first stage, “Trust Versus Mistrust,” is all about how crucial the development of trust is within our earliest years – roughly the first year and a half of our lives. If we do not successfully meet this stage’s important developmental task and thrive in trusting, dependable relationships with caregivers where our needs are consistently met, then we might emerge with a sense of mistrust, and our advancement to later stages of development could be inhibited.

If we were part of conservative Christianity in infancy, our sense of trust with adults may have been challenged by heinous, abusive practices such as “blanket training” and corporal punishment that are unfortunately popular in some fundamentalist circles. As we’ve gotten older, mistrust could’ve manifested in a variety of other ways in these spaces, such as mistrusting ourselves to not commit the “unpardonable sin,” practice “impure thoughts,” or convincingly convert every non-Christian within a 15-mile radius.

How could we trust ourselves, anyway? Some conservative Christian theology – such as the doctrine of total depravity – has promulgated the concept that we are innately filthy, rotten plebs deserving of eternal posthumous torment. We’re the equivalent of existential menstrual pads, soaked with scarlet uterine scraps and tasting of metallic. Even the ugliest roach cringes at us. One wrong misstep and we accidentally burn in flames forever by a so-called loving, trustworthy God…

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