Spiritual Burnout, Part One

Can you list all the church rules?

In our modern day religious culture, the demand for perfection can be painfully real for many. Sometimes that pressure to be the perfect Christian originates internally, and other times it’s felt externally; either way it just kills.

The solution isn’t to run away from God, however – it’s to beat the behavior modification mindset that’s been engrained in many of us from years of mishandling guilt and looking for too much affirmation from the people in our lives.

Since you died with Christ and were made free from the ruling spirits of the world, why do you act as if you still belong to this world by following rules like these: [21] “Don’t handle this,” “Don’t taste that,” “Don’t even touch that thing”? [22] These rules refer to earthly things that are gone as soon as they are used. They are only human commands and teachings. [23] They seem to be wise, but they are only part of a human religion. They make people pretend not to be proud and make them punish their bodies, but they do not really control the evil desires of the sinful self.

Colossians 2:20-23 NCV

When we’re still controlled by the ruling spirits of the world, our lives get modified to fit into a Christian behavior but we remain conflicted internally. We do “right” things not because the Bible says to do it, but because we’re unhealthily reliant on approval in the church culture we’re in.

Instead of hopelessly following the implied rules we feel are Christian but aren’t actually in the Bible, we should spend our time learning to experience the freedom that is supposed to come from an authentic relationship with God our father.

If you’re feeling tired, like you can’t do this anymore – always feeling terrible about yourself at church, trying to act a certain way but unfree from the accompanying turmoil inside – this podcast episode, as well as the subsequent ones that will follow, are about helping you get out of that situation.

Join Russ Ewell and friends as they begin to dive into scriptures and discuss their experiences with extreme behavior modification, and how they’ve learned to free themselves up from it.