Coach Kim: Don’t let religion define other people

Question:

I read your recent article about how to tell loved ones you are leaving the family religion. I am having a hard time understanding how my family thinks if someone leaves their religion they are automatically going to be a bad person, who will end up in Hell. What is it about religion that makes people judge others and determine their worth or worthiness, instead of the kind of person they are? And how come we tend to see people with different beliefs as the wrong or bad ones, and think ours are the only right?

Answer:

It will help to understand some things about human behavior. All human beings (without exception) struggle with some fear that they aren’t good enough. We all compare ourselves with others, worry, and stress about our appearance, property, and performance. Since we naturally struggle with insecurity, our subconscious minds have been working, since we were children, to figure out ways to quiet our fear and feel safer in the world. Here are some of the ways we do this:

• We get competitive and try to beat other humans at anything. (If I can win this game, at least I am better than this guy. That will feel good.)
• We become know-it-alls and show-offs trying to prove we have value.
• We get critical and judgmental of other people and their behavior, and we gossip about them, because the more we focus on bad in them, it takes the focus off our own bad.
• We get critical and judgmental of institutions, the government, the church, the schools, anything, and everything, which again takes the focus off our bad.
• We try to establish a sense of identity we can feel confident about, through our work and we make our job who we are. This could quiet your fears for a while, but if you get laid off or downsized, your whole identity goes away and you crash.
• We try to establish a sense of identity in our children and focus our whole life on their accomplishments. This works until they all leave home and aren’t there anymore.
• We join groups that we find amazing, cool, fun, or special and we lean on a group identity and define ourselves and our value by the group. We do this with religions, college alumni groups, sports fan clubs, teams, hobby groups, political party, race, neighborhoods, even things as simple as seeing yourself as a Coke drinker instead of Pepsi drinker. Anything that makes you feel superior to other people, in another group. This is the most common and most harmful of the strategies.

We are seeing this in politics right now. Both sides are dug in on their views for the country as the right ones, and they see those crazy, illogical, immoral, bad, evil people, who don’t share the same views, as dangerous. They are the enemy and there are only two options, you are with them, or you are with us. Some candidates are seeing the danger in this. If we can’t find a grey place in the middle where we all agree, nothing will get done, and we will continue to divide us from each other.

Psychologists call this practice of creating “us” versus “them” groups, othering. We see us as good and those other people as bad. This requires us to see the world in a very binary way. There are only two options, us and them, black and white, good and bad, righteous and evil, taller and shorter, or thinner and fatter. This binary, black and white thinking forces us to remove the grey area (where we might not be enough) and clearly put ourselves in a good group. By yourself you might not be good enough, but this group is good enough, even though you only think that because you are seeing the other guys as worse.

The dangerous thing about this human tendency is, it can be used against us. Advertisers know if they can present a cool identity that you could claim just because of the cool people who use their product, you will buy it because you need the self-esteem boost.

Any organization that wants to keep you buying it’s products or in its ranks, can subtly use this tendency to make you see them as the only good one and everything else as bad or evil. The truth is no person is ever all bad or all good (except maybe a few like Hitler, I will give you that). The rest of us are all grey, and purple, or blue striped, and totally diverse and different from everyone else. So, though othering (dividing yourself and joining groups) can provide a temporary boost to your ego, and quiet your fear, there is a cost.

The cost comes to your relationships. It’s hard to have mutually validating, safe relationship, if you tend to see everyone outside your group as bad or wrong. But that is what you need to do to get the self-esteem boost that being in the group provides.

This is the catch. How can you get the benefits of being in a special, elect, amazing group, yet be able to interact with “them” and not make them wrong, bad, un-elect or evil? There is a way, but let me explain about religion first.

The reason religion creates more fear than any other type of grouping is the beliefs are of eternal consequence (at least thats the belief) and God himself is involved in it. Religion makes us more scared and in this fear state, we are going to be less loving, tolerant, and open and more threatened. The more the other religious group insists they are right, they are obviously saying you are wrong, and that makes them a threat.

What you didn’t ask me was, How can you have safer, less threatening conversations and relationships with people, who have different religious beliefs or who see your beliefs as wrong?

The answer lies in removing the fear. Here are some ways to do that:

1. There is no absolute truth about God and which religion is right. You may believe, because of what you have felt, you know absolute truth, but you can’t prove it. This is what makes religion tricky, there is no way to disprove anything. Anyone can make any claim and you cannot prove them wrong. So, we must all (everyone in every religion) own the fact that our truth feels like truth to us, but we don’t know if it IS the truth. Instead of saying, “My church is the only true one”, go with, “This is the only church for me.” It’s much less threatening and is actually more accurate.
2. Make sure, when you hear about a person, who has left your religion, you don’t dwell on or focus on fear for them, because you will be incapable of showing them love if you do. In any moment, you can either show up in fear or love, but not both. Choose to focus on showing them that your love, friendship, kindness, and happiness doesn’t change because of anything they do or believe. If we all focused on being kind, warm and friendly to each other, we would all be living our religions too.
3. Don’t judge anyone by their religious beliefs or which church they attend. Don’t assume that anyone in that group, is any kind of person (judgmental, evil, deceived, righteous, honest, kind, lost, or wrong), just because they are in that group. Get to know them and put their groups out of your mind. Know them as an individual.
4. Don’t worry so much about which religion they belong to. Treat everyone the same. Honor and respect everyone’s right to believe their truth.
5. If someone tells you they have changed religions and believe yours is false, say, "Okay, I totally respect your right to whatever truth you believe in and I love you the same either way."

Watch what groups you are identifying with and why. Make sure you aren't using black and white thinking to see your groups as better than anyone else. All human beings have the same intrinsic worth, no matter to what they belong.

You can do this. 

Coach Kimberly Giles is a sought after human behavior expert and speaker. She is the founder of 12shapes.com and claritypointcoaching.com and provides corporate team building and people skills training.