Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Progressive Christian

We Need To Stop Being Weird

September 19, 2026 by Duncan Pile

David Entering Petra

Adobe Stock

I have to confess that, as a younger believer, I used to spiritualise poor behaviour. By ‘spiritualise’, I mean that instead of taking responsibility for my behaviour, I would justify it in spiritual terms.

At the age of 30 I had an awakening. I stopped lying to myself, took an honest look at my motivations, and laughed out loud at how self-deceived I’d been. Much of my behaviour had been driven by fear – of poverty (I was chronically ill and living on benefits), of being alone, and of being unimportant.

That day, I made a decision to be honest with myself from then on, no matter what that would force me to confront. It was a life-changing decision that has resulted in personal growth and freedom in the 20-plus years since. Perhaps the greatest benefit is that being truthful with myself has allowed me to build healthy relationships.

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve become sensitive to spiritualised poor or frankly weird behaviour. Today, I’m going to address some of its most common forms.

Treating people with suspicion

About a decade ago, I joined a church that had a ‘You are welcome here!’ sign by the front door, but it simply wasn’t true. My wife (fiancée at the time) is spiritual rather than religious, and when she didn’t show an interest in attending the ladies’ small group Bible study, she was quickly sidelined. We were living together and raising her son in a loving home, but we were ‘out of wedlock’, and they never got over that. Some treated us as dangerous outsiders.

This behaviour is often spiritualised as guarding the church or exercising discernment but, in effect, it is a way to marginalise people who are different.

Manipulation and control

Similarly, the pastor of that church preached almost every week, morning and evening, with a very small clutch of people who were permitted to stand in for him if he were away. He would spiritualise this as ‘protecting the pulpit’, but it could also be another form of control. There were plenty of people capable of teaching in that congregation, and listening to the same guy week after week limited everybody’s exposure to a broader range of ideas that might help them grow. This measure effectively controlled what people were exposed to and therefore influenced by.

As a younger man, I served as a missionary, and the leader of that organisation used prophecy as a means of control. On one occasion, he delivered a devastatingly critical ‘word’ to a friend of mine, who came to me in tears and told me all about it. Later that day, this same leader attempted to deliver that exact, verbatim prophecy to me. He was flinging it at folk in order to control them. No doubt he convinced himself he’d been redirected by God from my friend to me, but the smell of excrement was overwhelming.

Delivering a ‘challenge’

One of the most damaging commonplace behaviours in Evangelical settings is giving yourself permission to ‘deliver a challenge’ to someone you don’t have the personal relationship with to bring up a difficult topic. We spiritualise the decision on the basis that we’re all brothers and sisters and should be challenging each other because ‘iron sharpens iron’, or some similar phrase extracted out of its biblical context. In real terms, behaving like this is a way of bypassing respect for basic human boundaries and leaping on in there with judgement.

The church should not be a less respectful place than society at large, and the basic rules of healthy human communication should still apply:

If you don’t know someone personally, and haven’t established trust, it’s not your place to challenge them.
Remember that your perspective could easily be flawed or only partially informed – tread lightly!
Even when the person you feel the need to challenge is a close friend, be respectful and ask permission to share your view.
Be kind and gentle.
Remember that the person matters more to God than their flaws, and we should share God’s perspective on this.

None of this should need saying, but I’m often amazed by the rudeness and imposition of believers who are content to spiritualise very poor behaviour.

Obsessing about masturbation

This is one of the most unsavoury and downright odd behaviours among groups of men in church. At university, the Christian union had men’s groups who met up to talk about ‘sexual sin’, which mostly involved confessing when you last played with your genitals. For some reason, this was considered a dreadful sin rather than a natural part of life, and believers would tie themselves in knots about it.

Since that time, I’ve come across the same kind of guilt-focussed men’s groups in Evangelical churches of various types and can’t shake the feeling that this is incredibly unhealthy, off-putting to new believers, and ultimately harmful. The worst thing about it is how young it starts, sowing guilt deep into young minds. I think we need to leave each other’s sex lives alone (with the very rare exceptions of protecting others and especially children from abuse) unless we want to be perceived as an invasive, sex-obsessed cult.

Accountability in general

The principle of accountability can be a healthy one, if it is an agreement between two friends who want to help each other address particular struggles in a safe environment of openness and trust. The problem is that it is easily used as a method of control. In my experience, the danger signs are:

A system of ‘accountability partners’ where there is a power imbalance between individuals, i.e., accountability between an ordinary church member and a pastor or elder.
Someone without a personal friendship with another person sticking their nose into the other’s private life.
Accountability being taught as a general principle rather than as a personal choice between friends.

Again, this is invasive, boundary-crossing behaviour that is so far from an organic process it looks, and often is, cultish. We spiritualise it as keeping each other on track in our walks of faith, but are we not just monitoring and controlling each other in an unhealthy way?

We need to stop being weird

One of our core goals as the Body of Christ is to showcase the love of Jesus to the world by forming loving communities where people are welcome, safe, and accepted. If they step into an environment of distrust, where you have to behave to belong, where people invade their space without permission, and where men frequently get together and talk about sexual guilt, they’re going to run a mile, and so they should.

My suggestion to a reader struggling with any of this is to commit to reflection and total candour, and ask themselves a few questions before doing any of the above:

‘Why am I doing this?’
‘What other reasons might I be doing this?’
‘In what way could this be abusive or controlling?’
‘Why am I really doing this?’

9/19/2026 12:41:51 AM

more at patheos

Patheos November 2022 Featured Writer Greg Smith

Alan Crandall

Stone Soup for the Soul: An Intern’s Lesson in Community Building

Faithful Democrats

Patheos March 2026 Featured Writer: Stuart Delony

Alan Crandall

Patheos October 2026 Featured Writer: Richard Ostling

Alan Crandall

About Duncan Pile

Duncan Pile is a writer, author and speaker, living in Derbyshire, England with his wife and stepson. His mystical approach to faith straddles the Evangelical/Progressive divide, and flowing from lived experience, he is passionate about the deconstruction and reconstruction of the Christian faith.

Patheos Logo Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Subscription Support Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In

Follow Patheos