Are you familiar with this traditional evangelical Christian teaching? I was not. Not this specific one. That is, until a previous client—a remarkable, intelligent, loving, caring individual who recently came back to begin bravely unearthing the roots of early religious trauma brought it to my attention.
I’m sure much has been written on it elsewhere. I haven’t looked. I just felt moved immediately upon hearing about it to present one therapist’s view of how teachings like this can easily set the stage for foundational interpersonal and emotional problems, not to mention spiritual confusion and disillusionment.
While I’d not heard of this particular concept, the essence of it— Self last in particular—is the scaffolding behind much of the psychological, emotional and interpersonal damage and toxicity I’ve seen throughout the years of facilitating recovery from the effects of oppressive religious dogma. Most from the indoctrination of uber-conservative Christian churches (Southern Baptist, Church of Christ), some from isolated insular religious (Amish, Mennonite, etc) communities, and a few from bona fide non-Christian cults (Children of God, Scientology).
Ya learn something knew (almost) every day.
But before I go any any farther, let me be clear. This is NOT about disparaging, judging or condemning anyone’s faith, system, path, or practice. There will be no indictment of Jesus or Christianity.
My background
I was raised Methodist. And liberally so. I’m fortunate that my insatiable questioning, curiosity, and truth seeking from an early age was at least tolerated. Well, except by my maternal Grandmother, who, God love her, would always just say “It’s Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and that’s it!!.” In any case, the tolerance otherwise was a very good thing, because nothing was going to put an end to my questioning. That’s for damn sure.
I was also blessed in my later twenties to have a mentor-mentee relationship with a quiet but brilliant, naturally compassionate assistant Methodist minister who turned out to be just the non-conforming Zen Universalist in sheep’s clothing I needed to encourage my seeking without rejecting or abandoning anything in my ever-evolving worldview. Equally as blessed was I to meet my therapist-mentor at about the same time— a former Franciscan priest with a resoundingly Gnostic/Universalistic heart and expansive Interfaith outlook.
My own spiritual quest, studies and many mystical experiences have only encouraged me to follow my intuition to an inclusive view that celebrates the unifying thread of the major and many lessor known philosophical, spiritual and religious schools of thought. More recently, my personal post-DNOTS/Awakening/spiritual initiation is guided by an assortment of guides, masters, saints, sages and cosmic culture collectives all aligned with larger Christ Consciousness. Since the onset of all this, I pray the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary Prayer, a few Gnostic mantras, and a custom surrender-in-service type decree, and recite a set of I AM ‘Violet Flame’ decrees nearly every day. I wear a Maltese Cross and a Mother Mary pendant around my neck —a reminder of the Divine mercy, guidance, love and support I received in my darkest hours.
Would I call myself a Christian? That’s what many would want to know, down here in the buckle of the belt anyway. The answer is yes and no. Yes because I recognize The Christ/Christos as archetypal Divine Master, Prophet, Wayshower of Truth, and Liberator. So yes, but more so in the gnostic/esoteric than the traditional (and what I view as limited) canonical sense. And no because I generally oppose labels and categorization especially in the spiritual realm. I couldn’t authentically identify as a Christian (neither did Jesus, the passively radical, peacefully anti-authoritarian Jewish Messiah that he was) to the exclusion of any other genuine, life-affirming path or teaching I align with. In my heart, I could be just as much a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Taoist, a Spiritualist, a Theosophist, a Universalist. Yet, I’m not one of these, exclusively. I see all p,aths as ‘fingers pointing to the moon,’ none the moon itself. J Krishnamurti taught that ‘truth is a pathless land.’ I’m with that. It resonates as objective truth in my heart and soul.
In short, in the immortal words of the Doobie Brothers, “Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just alright, oh yeah!”
J.O.Y.
Okay, so if you’re still with me, let’s get to it.
Jesus First. Others second. Yourself last.
Not rocket science. I understand the intention. To teach the Christian value of placing ones focus, love and heart on/with Jesus, above all. To place others before and above oneself—ostensibly, to deflate the selfish ego and maximize ones self-less attention in service to our fellow man, grounded in the ‘shirt off the back’ ethos exemplified by particular teachings and examples of the biblical Christ.
On the surface, perhaps, a beautiful idea. Maybe?
Now, any teaching, we could argue, takes on a life of its own beyond the creation and original essence of teaching itself. Similar to a songwriter’s song. Until it falls on any other ears and merges with the idiosyncratic subjectivity of the listeners psyche and assignment of meaning, it’s the artist’s and the artist’s alone. Vacuum sealed in a container of the actual inspiration and true original meaning. Once released, all bets are off. In a sense, the listening public now owns, adopts, and assigns an infinite number of meanings and applications to that piece of art.
So a teaching— in this case a religious/philosophical one— like an original song, painting or other work of art, is of course wide open to interpretation and practical application. How it’s understood has much to do with the intent, delivery, the larger context in which the teaching is adopted and delivered, as well as the expectation(s)- real or perceived, spoken or unspoken- in putting the teaching forth. As well as the receiver/students receptivity, psychological and emotional makeup, and what he or she understands as to where the teaching originates from, what its about, how it is to be applied, and probably most especially in the case of evangelical Christiandom, what the rewards and consequences of either living out or failing to live out the teaching would be.
selfless or self-less? (anything but “selfish”)
A Secure Sense of Self.
Arguably, the goal of all good therapy, inside or outside the box as it were, is to assist in fostering this. Yet so few of us have it coming in, so well does culture and the world at large begin eroding it from birth onward. And many religious institutions and teachings, well-meaning as many are, only aid and abet this erosion, I’ve found.
One of the most common themes in my work, literally from day one, has been around emotional and relational boundaries. Boundaries in the way are a natural outgrowth of the health or lack of health of our secure sense of Self. As I’ve spoken about before, the very first words my very first adult client ever spoke to me was: “I can tell you what my problem is. I can’t say no.” I tell you I’ll never forget this.
Women, in my experience, especially struggle to identify, set, communicate and maintain healthy, solid boundaries. Meaning, knowing where they end and the other begins. Where their responsibility lies. The struggle to be responsible to and not for others; to discern the difference between healthy helping/giving and dysfunctional enabling/disempowering. I see more women than men struggle with this for two reasons: 1 Women come to therapy more than men (more courage!) and 2 Women are socialized and culturally conditioned to be selfless / self-less / self-denying. Traditional patriarchal religious teachings on the whole do nothing to offset this. More often, they reinforce it, if only by omission.
The individual, my client, who brought J.O.Y. to my attention is a good case in point, but might as well be a composite since the overall dynamics are so common.
J.O.Y. unmasked
My client, having been raised within an evangelical philosophy and community in the south, in a home marked by paternal alcoholism, apparent narcissistic patriarchal, traditional ‘kept woman’ dynamics, and all around dysfunctional family roles, the church was the focal point of my client’s world most of their childhood.
The father, who was a type of lay leader for much of my client’s childhood, was the quintessential roost ruling, heavy handed king of the household with a penchant for getting let go of just about every job or position he had, usually for being too difficult to get along with. He was a “do as I say not as I do” espousing, behind the scenes hard drinking partier who set impossible standards and regularly scolded and invalidated my client for being “too much,” too emotional” and “asking too many questions.”
My client’s one sibling, a younger brother, appeared to inhabit the golden child role—something of a Jungian puer eternus (‘eternal child’) who seemingly magically escaped the critical eye and flew under the radar. My client was clearly the scapegoat, or, in older family therapy speak, the “IP” (Identified Patient). That’s the child in the dysfunctional system who receives the projection of the all the marriage and the family’s denied and disowned problems, along with the blame. Not a fun role. Although all such roles suck, because they’re all false facsimiles of who the child really is.
Hence, the roots of having no secure sense of Self. How would anyone even have a shot at this when they’re not even seen?
Religion appeared to be used in this household in all the worst ways. As a ‘out’ for the parents with respect to their denial, hypocrisy and harmful parenting, as a tool of coercion, a punishment in the classic ‘you’ll go to hell’ type of way, and a way to reinforce/justify the limiting family roles, especially that of the Mom/wife and my client.
And it sounds like J.O.Y was the go-to instrument of shame. So frequent were early instances of my client demonstrating appropriate reasonable desire, want or need—any indication of a thought of Self (before Jesus or others) that it would be met with the J.O.Y. stick, so to speak. Before long, my client learned what any child, pre teen or teen would eventually learn when a teaching like this is routinely misapplied in a psychologically abusive manner:
I don’t matter. I’m selfish. My needs will never be met because I’m unworthy. I’m a failure. I’m unlovable (by God/Jesus and others). All that’s important is pleasing others—that’s where my worth lies.
The mom herself appeared to have deep, religiously-informed esteem and security deficits, subservient and codependent, with underlying depression and anxiety problems that only further reinforced her sense of brokenness. This set the stage for a pattern of denying indiscretions on the husbands part—overlooking replete with self-blame and recrimination which funneled in part back to her own perceived failing to uphold her duty to perform her wifely and householder functions. Church doctrine and the good old boy evangelical system likely contributed to the brushing under the rug and providing of cherry picked scriptural counsel that ensured full responsibility on the husbands part for his actions would never take place, as well as spiritual chastisement for the wife’s sense of core unworthiness.
Almost needless to say, the marriage eventually ended via an affair. And with the addition of the new partner— a classic alcoholic enabler in her own right— the Father/abandonment wound on the part of my client would proceed to be ripped open and salted again and again throughout early adulthood.
rescuing and re-enactment
As mentioned, this client worked with me years back, but we never got much into the early religious trauma. As I recall, our work then centered largely around the effects of the fathers hypocrisy, mistreatment, emotional bait and switch abandonment, my client’s fraught friendships, and professional discernment themes.
Now ready to put the other pieces together, the J.O.Y concept had began reverberating in my client’s head, as if Higher Self were offering a skeleton key to unlock the secrets of the painfully distorted ideas of what being a sovereign, valuable person looks like. And what being in healthy relationship means, what it requires, what equality and true reciprocity looks like, and what a healthy partner is and should aspire to offer in return.
While this client long ago essentially turned away from organized religion, it was replaced, as it so often is, with a ever-evolving SBNR (spiritual but not religious) metaphysical outlook. Yet psychologically, emotionally, and relationally, J.O.Y had been running things on auto pilot since the get go. Specifically the Others first, Yourself last.
You could say, as my client now would, that J.O.Y., or the way it was administered, was a set up to becoming a professional level, unpaid rescuer.
Every one of the client’s romantic partnerships—from first serious love interest on—characteristically became some version of lopsided, dramatic, emotionally and verbally abusive, resulting ultimately in a sense of abandonment: a reflection and most common outcome of the core unworthiness wound (modeled by and absorbed from mother) and reinforced through the heavy handed, shaming way in which the J.O.Y. teaching was administered. The denial of needs, the lack of clear personal self-value, core relational values, and lack of boundaries led the client again and again to select the familiar: emotionally immature, dishonest, often substance-abusing partners (mirror: father) all too willing to take, to use, to siphon off every ounce of codependent energy in whatever form (sex, money, shelter, various forms of ‘help’) was willingly offered.
The last two partners, self-described polyamorists or ethical non-monogamists, appeared to haven no discernable ethics to be found. Giving authentic, integrous polyamorists/ENM’s everywhere a bad name (yes, they exist), both partners in their own ways evidenced callous disregard for the client whenever any objection would be raised as to their not walking the talk. And in both cases there appeared to be an unspoken expectation that my client agree to simply overlook or put up with anything she didn’t like, thus re-enacting the original patriarchal narcissistic patterns with father, father’s pattern with mother, and remaining true to the problematic essence of J.O.Y: putting Self last.
The rescuing concept, once my client was ready to dig into it, and now with the beginning to understand the roots, hit like a ton of bricks. With this last relationship as a catalyst—seeing the toxic dynamics in clearer light, and more unable to stomach giving in again and again to manipulative, albeit covert, requests for rescue, in this case financially by an otherwise able-bodied adult whose admitted priority was partying, seemed to break the camels back. Righteous anger!
For the first time recently, able to see and truly discern the difference between healthy helping and dysfunctional enabling, with abandonment fear in tow, my client found the will to test out the responsible to, not for concept. As a stop gap measure, we identified some ways of helping/giving distinct from rescuing, more along the lines of helping another learn to fish rather than repeatedly catching them fish, as the old Christian parable illustrates.
We’re now starting to incorporate intuitively-guided Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) to assist the parts of her most directly impacted/burdened by the J.O.Y-related abuse burdens and concurrent dysfunctional beliefs.
But the joy-less rescuing tendency runs deep, as this tendency does in most who unconsciously employ it as an attempted, yet bound to fail, solution to childhood attachment wounding. In this case even beyond intimate relationships and friendships and into race-based activism efforts that, for all their purity of intention, are laced with the same shirt off the back victim-rescuer dynamics that often ensure similar dysfunctional patterns and outcomes. Why? Because, in my experience, anyone treated like a victim in need of rescue, as much as they may consent and allow it, unless they’re wholly actively involved in helping themselves, they ultimately resent it. That resentment turns to persecution of the rescuer, who then in turn feels victimized i.e. “for all I did for you, this is the thanks I get?” Thus completes the Drama Triangle (see: Stephen Karpman) in action. And around and around it goes.
Ultimately, what pulls us onto the triangle is the unwillingness to assume complete responsibility for ourselves, and hold others (adults) responsible for the same. When we’ve been trained or indoctrinated to see others as helpless/victims (usually a projection of our own unhealed helplessness/victimization) with the help of teachings like J.O.Y. that often teach and reinforce our own essential unworthiness and ‘selfishness,’ we’re especially ripe for living our lives and relationships on the triangle.
wwjS?
What WOULD Jesus say about J.O.Y?
Would Jesus think it sound? In integrity? Reflective of what’s in the highest and best good for all? Reflective of Absolute Truth?
In the course of mentalizing about this concept and writing this post, I submitted the query to my own Higher Guidance. (More about how this came about can be found here). For what’s it’s worth, all such inquires on my part are approached with care, humility, reverence, and the surrendering of all ego based, conscious, unconscious and personal agendas, biases, expectations and attachments to outcome.
The answer? To each of the above questions it was a “no.”
I then tested my own hunch about a revision that might be more sound, integrous, in the highest and best good, and reflective of Absolute Truth.
“G.Y.O.” God first. Yourself second. Others last.
(Doesn’t have the same neat ring as J.O.Y. I admit).
The answer? “Yes.” To each of the same queries: “Yes.” Are you surprised? I’m not.
Two personal principles at play in my own revision here:
One is, Paramahansa Yogananda’s frequent admonition: “GOD FIRST!” which I’ve always loved and resonated with. Because he truly lived it. His whole life was a testament to it (See: Autobiography of a Yogi).
It also reminds me of Apostle Paul’s admonition to “…pray without ceasing…”
Jesus himself also either taught or co-signed concepts like ‘Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God,” “The Kingdom of God is With You” and “Be Still and Know that I AM God” while himself essentially refusing to be personally deified.
And didn’t Christ offer plenty of examples from his own life of exceptional personal boundaries, of not allowing oneself or others to be taken advantage of, and even the appropriate use of force? (See: flipping tables over and throwing money changers out of the temple, calling out the Pharisees as hypocrites, etc).
The other is the oxygen mask principle. The idea that we cannot safely, truly help another unless and until we have helped ourselves. That we cannot pour (give) from an empty vessel. When we do, all parties lose.
So, what if it was God First. Yourself next. Others last?
Of course, putting oneself before others can be taken to unhealthy extremes of judgement and uncharitable-ness. That’s not what I’m suggesting with this revision. But in addition to the above, if we are all a spec of the Divine, a drop in the ocean and an ocean in a drop—and if we are all part of an interconnected, inseparable whole of the mind of God, then to deny or subjugate our own Selfhood—our essential worth— our own hierarchy of personal needs— is to deny our own divinity; to deny the whole.
I believe all of our overall emotional and interpersonal health and well being as spiritual beings having a human experience could stand to benefit greatly from this re-ordering. Once we’re dialed in on our fundamental worth, solid in our boundaries, clear on our values and sense of purpose, we’re then in a prime position to more fully inhabit our gift to the world. And to go forth serving our fellow man without rescue compulsion, undue self-sacrifice, or self-abandonment i.e self-betrayal.
If YOU are looking for an ‘outside the box’ Nashville Therapist or a Therapist in Franklin, TN to help you face religious trauma, deconstruct or deprogram from destructive religious dogma and/or cult indoctrination, my Integrative Counseling and/or my Spiritual Support specialty might be just the thing.
I’m also available via Telehealth/Secure Video from virtually anywhere in the world (provided we can make the time zone differences work).
Visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box or contact me directly at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com or call me @ 615.430.2778.
Peace, love, and G.Y.O.!
Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP
Franklin, TN