Spiritual Bypassing & Manipulated Scripture

Day 1: What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens; a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.
-Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4-5

Spiritual Bypassing is a term first coined by John Wellwood in his 1980s text, Toward a Psychology of Awakening. He defines spiritual bypassing as “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.”

There is sure to be a season in our lives when we have manipulated spiritual practices to avoid engaging with our emotions, or at least know of those who have.

Manipulating spiritual practices to avoid confronting difficult emotions can take many different forms. Wellwood offers the example of those who go on spiritual retreats to escape reality, and then return with a sense of enlightenment; on retreat, they escape a reality that asks them to confront their emotions. Not too long after returning, however, they are often triggered by the very thing they attempted to escape on retreat in the first place.

At its best, spiritual practices call us to be present and better our awareness of our self, of others, and our sense of placement in the world. At its worst, spiritual practices act as a defense mechanism or distraction and can actually disconnect us from our emotions and others.

As we practice eager waiting during Advent, we find ourselves anticipating more than just the birth of Christ. We are in eager anticipation for a vaccine, to reunite with loved ones, to let out a deep sigh when this pandemic is over. We have globally experienced a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people; with that, we have experienced global, communal grief. We grieve our loved ones who have died, lost experiences and celebrations due to self-isolation, the anxiety that undergirds daily life, the regular police shootings of BIPOC, civic unrest and uncertainty; the list goes on and on. It is tempting to lean on spirituality as a distraction from reality. As pandemic depression collides with seasonal depression in the winter months, any escape from reality can seem welcoming.

When we lean on spirituality as a distraction mechanism, we not only block ourselves from engaging with our emotions, we also deter others from expressing theirs. When we do this, we distance ourselves from our loved ones who attempt to express their grief and anxiety. We fail to be present with ourselves and with them.

One of the ways Christian people spiritually bypass their own emotions and others' is by relying on scripture that overemphasizes the good and fails to address the negative. We use scripture to brush off one another’s pain and hurt instead of engaging with it. When we use scripture to bypass an individual’s grief, we fail to engage and be present with them.

Often, scripture is taken out of context to ‘comfort’ someone who expresses anxieties and trauma. However, by putting the scripture in context, we come to know how it calls us to be present with one another in times of loss and grief.

Orient our hearts towards those who grieve this Advent season; let us recognize and engage our own grief and know it is done in community.

Christina Toney-Schmitt

Day 1: What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

Start reading this 6-day devotional in the app. Find it on the Featured shelf.