Are You Spiritually Bypassing the Real Work?

I met a man (let’s just call him “Trevor” for the sake of this story) at a church we once attended who had been saved off the streets from addiction, cleaned up his life, and dedicated it to ministry. Trevor often shared the testimony of what God had done for him. He was the first one to show up to serve when it was needed. He led prayer gatherings and was loudly outspoken in public for Jesus. He carried his Bible everywhere and attended or served at everything the church ever hosted.

But there was something a little “off” about Trevor. He stirred up drama on social media. When he wasn’t ignoring his wife and treating her as an extension of himself, he gaslit her because she disagreed with something he said or did. He confronted leadership in the church in a way that demanded he be a top priority. He couldn’t take any sort of correction and was always the victim if anyone spoke up about some issue that he’d caused.

A couple years after I met Trevor, he disappeared from church. He began an affair with a woman who wasn’t wife. He went back to a life of addiction. His wife was left to pick up the pieces and adjust their children to life in a divorced family where the father wants all the benefits but little of the responsibility.

Trevor had the form of religion, but not the power of it. Instead of facing his issues, some of them stemming from a horrendous childhood, and working through his wounds with the Holy Spirit and other wise counselors, he had simply used Christianity as another coping mechanism. For him, it was another addiction that soothed the pain that God wanted to address and heal.

In the therapy and counseling world, this is called “spiritual bypassing”, and it’s a way that we inadvertently take God’s Name in vain. We use spiritual things as a cover for practical work that we need to be doing in our lives to heal and grow in our character. People who spiritually bypass their very real issues and struggles often look like the saintliest of saints because they don’t want anyone to see what they are hiding. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. There is no consistent or solid fruit showing up in their lives.

I think it’s important for us to examine our lives for ways that we are spiritually bypassing because we can’t grow in Christ under the façade of already being grown in Christ. Spiritual bypassing is almost always the result of pride and ego. We would rather be seen and respected as mature Christians than actually honestly grow into them. We would rather sing worship songs and quote Scripture all day than address the things in our lives that are harming us and harming others.

The Pharisees and Sadducees in the Bible were like this. They were gathering in church buildings and plotting how to “protect God’s people” by killing God’s Son. Jesus and His teaching were forcing them to examine their hearts and lives, and they were perfectly fine going through the traditional motions that made them feel like they were serving God. They thought getting rid of Him was doing a service to God. That’s how far they’d bypassed the entire point.

Take it from someone who was once the worst of Pharisees, the only way to stop spiritually bypassing what God wants to do in your life is to get really honest and practical with God, with yourself, and with others. That’s hard. Because it feels like you are damaging your own reputation when you admit that you aren’t as far along as you seemed…when you admit that you are struggling with doubt, insecurity, or sin. But those are the very things that God’s Spirit wants heal within you, and He can’t do it if you can’t even admit it.

Growing in Christ requires humility and honesty. There is no other route. Every other road bypasses true spirituality. Those of us who walk around considering ourselves “good Christians” are the first ones who should check our hearts. If you asked me if I’m a good Christian, I’d tell you that I am a messy Christian saved by an amazing God who never gives up on me and is hopefully growing me into the person He had in mind when He created me.

We need to be able to clearly see our mess…and we all have mess…so that we can clearly see His great grace in coming down into the mess with us and not leaving us in it. When we see our mess and work with Him on our mess, we more easily have grace for the mess in those around us. We want them, too, to experience the redeeming power of walking with the Holy Spirit out of the mess.

One last thing I want to say about this concept of “spiritually bypassing”. We need to be aware that God uses all kinds of things outside of Bible verses and church services to heal and grow people. To be sure, the Bible is the foundation of all that He’s given us, but He often heals through practical means. All the practical resources that I use in my coaching practice are also foundationally Biblical, but they aren’t necessarily spoken of in the Bible. Every good gift comes from God, and He’s given us so many in this created world that Christians are afraid to use because they aren’t directly from Scripture. Yes, we need to guard ourselves from deception, but we also need to guard ourselves from neglecting the answers to our prayers because they aren’t “spiritual enough” for us.

It pains me to think of all the years that I walked around spiritually bypassing the things that God wanted to do in my life. I talk more about what led me to spiritually bypass and how this looked in my life in the book that I am releasing next month. You’ll be able to find it on Amazon and on my website, so stay tuned.