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I Lost My Anger When I Stopped Taking My “Self” So Seriously

I Lost My Anger When I Stopped Taking My “Self” So Seriously

Last updated on: July 29, 2026 at 11:55 am by Larry Jordan

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I Lost My Anger When I Stopped Taking My “Self” So Seriously 2026-07-29T11:55:03-05:00 Larry Jordan

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.

We act with compassion when we depersonalize things. What I call my “self” is an impersonation of myself, a construct arising from chemistry, conditioning and connections.

I am not my body or my brain, nor my actions, my thoughts or my words. Image from Gemini/AI-generated, in the public domain

I wrote about anger here. I wrote that Christianity has become the religion of empire. Many people who taught us their beliefs did NOT do the homework. Some of us stayed in church too long. Speculative beliefs, supernatural doctrine, and unkind practices took their toll. For many of us, 21st-century Christianity does NOT look much like 1st-century Jewish Christianity.

Today, Christianity has largely replaced the mystery and uncertainty of Ultimate Reality with the supposed “certainty” and “security” of absolute, speculative, and unsupportable truth claims. Worse, many people think that it is more important to maintain beliefs than to maintain relationships. No wonder those who ask questions and those who reject them might both be angry.

Some readers commented that righteous anger has its place. Even the best of us sometimes rebuke Pharisees and turn over tables. I get the point, but in my life, anger is rarely the best response.

The Catholic Church Messed Me Up

I was a Roman Catholic for many years. I admitted in my first author talk that the church did not hurt me too badly. (Yes, I acknowledge the horrible abuses that many Catholics have endured). “The Catholic church messed me up,” I said, “but it messes everybody up.” All eyes turned to a Catholic priest in the front row. He shrugged and said, “The Catholic church messed me up, too!!”

Ryan Burge, a former pastor and prominent political scientist and statistician, recently wrote, “The Catholic Church is one of the most doctrinally specific institutions in the world.” In the article, he also mentioned “the big-tent nature of a tradition that has managed to hold together nearly a billion people across wildly different cultures, languages, and political contexts.”

How can we reconcile the “big-tent nature” with the “doctrinally specific” nature of the Catholic church? Burge continues, “The distance between official Church teaching and the lived experience of the average Catholic in the pew can be considerable…. The average Catholic is not regularly engaging in practices or holding beliefs that are distinctly Catholic.”

So there is NOT much difference between Catholics who reject the Church’s teachings and ex-Catholics who reject the church’s teachings. Many Christian denominations hold their beliefs tightly. And religious deconstruction can be more traumatic for Evangelicals (for example) who may hold their beliefs tightly than for Catholics (for example) who may hold their beliefs loosely.

Religion Hurt Many People Much More Than It Hurt Me

After I wrote The Way, I realized that religion hurt many people from conservative Christian denominations, like Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, and Orthodox, much more than it hurt me. Scholars suggest that approximately one-third of adults have experienced religious trauma, including emotional, financial, psychological, or sexual and physical abuse.

Religious deconstruction presents different challenges to different types of people, including Catholics and Protestants, clergy and laity, men and women, LGBTQ+ people and straight people, as well as neurodivergent people and neurotypical people. Deconstruction can produce feelings of anger, fear, grief and loss. It can disrupt our livelihoods and relationships as much as our beliefs.

Early in my journey, I became skeptical of Christianity’s speculative creeds, supernatural doctrine, and unkind practices. Then, I became aware of the frequency and toxicity of religious trauma. Now, I am much more concerned about the serious harm that Christianity has caused than I am about the false or misleading nature of many of its truth claims.

Here are some reflections on overcoming anger. As I said, religion hurt many people more than it hurt me. So it might be more difficult for some people to overcome their anger than it was for me.

I Realized a Few Things That Helped Me

I realized that most of the people who developed the speculative beliefs, supernatural doctrine, and unkind practices did NOT ever intend to create a harmful institution and/or to mislead anyone. Most of the people who taught us these beliefs did NOT intend to harm us, either. They believed what people told them, just like we used to believe what people told us.

They thought they were helping us, even as they were hurting us. Why else would they say we deserved “eternal conscious torment” or we were “intrinsically disordered” or “totally depraved”? These are some damaging and scary things to tell people, even if the speakers have “good intentions,” and especially if they have malicious or selfish intentions.

I realized that I was largely responsible for spending so much time in such an unhealthy place. No one held a gun to my head to keep me in church. Now, I see I stayed longer than I should have. Also, I see that I can NOT ever recover the emotion, money, or time I expended in church. That’s water under the bridge. And it’s mostly my fault; it’s NOT mostly anyone else’s fault.

I realized many of the people whom we trusted are still trapped in the prison of speculative beliefs, supernatural doctrine, and unkind practices that we escaped. They are still being harmed, and they are still harming other people. Many of them are still afraid of God or death or hell. And some are distressed, NOT relieved, to see that many of us who leave church are no longer afraid.

We Act with Compassion When We Depersonalize Things

I realized that it is NOT our job to organize a “prison break” to free the people who still believe what we once believed. Unless we extend the courtesy to them that they did NOT extend to us, then we are hurting them, as they hurt us. We have no more right to harass them than they had to harass us.

I realized that it is NOT our job to call out individual hypocrisy between what Jesus did and said and what Christians do and say (although we can and should call out institutional hypocrisy). Since many people have written, transcribed, translated, and interpreted the Bible in many ways over many years, we can NOT ever know what Jesus actually did or said, anyway.

I realized that it is NOT our job to control anyone else’s behavior. We have no right to denigrate their beliefs or terrorize them with scary stories. And they had no right to do those things to us. Indeed, all religion is cultural, and all theology is speculation. Nobody knows, and anyone who thinks they are saving someone might actually be damning them.

I realized that we only control our own boundaries. Brené Brown, a researcher, once explored the sources of compassion. She wrote, “Boundaries are a prerequisite for compassion and empathy.” Compassionate people know which behaviors are acceptable for them and which behaviors they are willing to accept from others.

We act with compassion when we depersonalize things.

My Zen Practice Helps Me

I realize that we should address the world as it is, NOT as we want it to be. We should inhabit the world, NOT see it from afar. We should live in the present, NOT in the past or in the future. Buddhist principles such as impermanence, no-self and suffering changed my perspective.

I am not my body or my brain, nor my actions, my thoughts or my words. What I call my “self” is an impersonation of myself, a construct arising from chemistry, conditioning and connections.

Dr. Julia DiGangi says this in scientific language, writing, “As a neuropsychologist, I can tell you: constantly trying to fix your ‘self’ is like chasing a ghost. Located in a fluctuating neural network called the Default Mode Network, the self is NOT fixed. It’s a temporary ripple of metabolic energy.”

Recently, I accidentally angered a friend, who lashed out at me. It felt like a sticky ball of rage had bounced off my chest. “Are you trying to hurt me?” I thought to myself. “There’s no ‘me’ to hurt.” We act with more compassion and wisdom when we depersonalize things. We create less friction. And we do NOT take the bait that others offer us.

Imagine that I personalized the situation instead. “He is attacking me,” I might have thought, seeing a personal attack that his person launched on my person. Then, I am reacting, not reflecting. For me, it is better to see that my friend is acting on his influences and that I am reacting to my influences. Then we can both proceed with open hearts and open minds.

We act with compassion when we depersonalize things. What I call my “self” is an impersonation of myself, a construct arising from chemistry, conditioning and connections.

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The Way received a 2024 Nautilus Book Award.

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About Larry Jordan

Larry Jordan is a follower of Jesus with a Zen practice. He wrote “The Way,” informed by the Eastern religions, the mystics, and the quantum physicists. "The Way" won a 2024 Nautilus Book Award. You can read more about the author here.

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