Jesus, the Restorer of Dignity: A Healing Reflection for Faith Deconstruction and Religious Trauma
For many healing from religious trauma or spiritual abuse— whether from evangelical, fundamentalist, Mormon/LDS, or other high-control religious systems— encountering the figure of Jesus can feel complicated. It’s not that faith itself is the wound; it’s what was done in faith’s name.
If you're someone who’s walked away from high-control religious systems, yet still finds yourself wondering about Jesus, you're not alone. For many, there’s a deep ache, grief, or even anger, around what was taken, twisted, or lost.
This post isn’t here to prescribe belief or call you back to anything. It’s here to offer a different lens. A story you may have heard, but not like this. It’s here to wonder aloud: What if Jesus wasn’t a tool of control, but a restorer of dignity?
Let’s start at the well.
A Woman. A Well. A Radical Act of Seeing.
John 4 tells the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. A Jewish man and a Samaritan woman should not have been talking. Their conversation— public, unchaperoned, initiated by him— broke multiple cultural norms. She was a woman. He was a man. She was Samaritan. He was Jewish. Their communities were divided by ethnicity, history, and religion.
And yet, Jesus stayed.
He saw her. He did not look away.
He named her story: five husbands, and now a sixth, yet he did not flinch. Where others might have shamed or dismissed her, Jesus remained present. In naming her story, he restored dignity. She had likely known degradation her whole life, but Jesus’ attention wasn’t invasive. It was healing.
He engaged her body and her shame, not to deepen it, but to draw her toward hope. And she believed him. She risked returning to her community with the words: “Come see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.”
This wasn’t just a story about revelation. It was a story about dignity being restored in real time. A story where someone long unseen is fully seen, and still wanted.
During my first year of training in Narrative Focused Trauma Care (NFTC) at The Allender Center, Wendell Moss shared this perspective on the story of John 4. I would like to think I am pretty well versed in this story having grown up in the church, while attending a private Christian middle and high school, an Assemblies of God university (as a religion minor, no less), and grad school at a theological seminary. But on that day, Wendell spoke about Jesus as the "restorer of dignity"— a concept I had never encountered in all of my years of religious education. His words began to dismantle the walls of fear and hypervigilance that I had built up over years of spiritual striving.
For the first time, I began to see faith in a way that felt true to who I am. I had always longed to believe in a Jesus who was not distant, demanding, or concerned with my failures, and on that day, I was told about a Jesus who is present and kind. The idea that Jesus might actually see me— not as someone to be corrected, but as someone to be loved and understood— shifted everything.
The Tables He Flipped, and the Ones He Sat At
In Matthew 21:12–13, we find another image of Jesus: overturning the tables of money changers in the temple. Not in a quiet protest, but in righteous anger. Because those profiting from the religious system were exploiting the vulnerable, and he would not stand for it.
So many of us were taught a version of Jesus who was meek and mild, calm and quiet, always peaceful. But here we see Jesus confronting power, not people. Calling out injustice without resorting to abuse.
He didn’t condemn the poor, or those asking questions. He condemned systems that harmed in the name of God.
Jesus, the Refugee
In Matthew 2:13–15, after Jesus’ birth, Joseph was warned in a dream to flee to Egypt because Herod wanted to kill the child. And so, Mary and Joseph— Jesus' earthly parents— became refugees. Fleeing political violence. Seeking safety in a foreign land.
This, too, is part of the story.
The Jesus so many were taught to use against the marginalized, was one of them.
Who He Chose to Be With
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus spends time with those most often cast aside:
Lepers (Luke 17:11–19)
Tax collectors (Luke 19:1–10; Matthew 9:9–13)
Prostitutes and women with “sinful” reputations (Luke 7:36–50; John 8:1–11)
The sick and disabled (John 5:1–15; Luke 8:43–48)
Gentiles and foreigners (Matthew 8:5–13, healing the centurion’s servant; Matthew 15:21–28, the Canaanite woman)
Samaritans (John 4; Luke 10:25–37, the Good Samaritan)
Children (Mark 10:13–16; Matthew 18:1–5)
Women and widows—those without legal or political power (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 7:11–17; John 20:11–18)
He was not impressed by wealth or authority. He honored faith in unexpected places. He chose proximity to those dismissed by religious and political systems. He dignified bodies, stories, and people long discarded by society.
And so it makes sense that many of us, when we begin deconstructing or healing from religious trauma, are surprised to realize: the version of Jesus we were taught doesn’t match the one in scripture.
The Jesus We Were Taught vs. The Jesus Who Stayed
Some of us were taught that God demands perfection, submission, silence. That faith means obedience at the expense of our intuition. That to question is to betray.
But what if Jesus welcomed questions? What if he restored dignity to those called unworthy? What if he saw shame not as a tool to control, but as a wound to tend to?
For those healing from religious trauma, this is where so much grief, and so much possibility, lives.
That the name used to control you, might still hold healing, if allowed to breathe.
As Wendell spoke that day, something shifted in me. I began to wonder: What if Jesus actually sees me? What if Jesus doesn’t want me to conform to the expectations of society, or even to the rigid norms imposed by the institution of the church? What if, instead of calling me to endure shame, God is calling me to a deeper honesty— a raw truth about who I am and who God is, even when it would be easier to run the other way?
Why This Matters
So much harm has been done in the name of Christ. Harm that mirrors power, not love. Shame, not grace. Control, not compassion.
The story of Jesus at the well, the Jesus who fled as a child, the Jesus who flipped the tables and sat with the forgotten— this story matters because it reminds us that dignity isn’t a reward for obedience. It’s a birthright. One that no religious system should have the power to take away.
This thought shattered my world. It wasn’t just a theological shift— it was a profoundly emotional and spiritual awakening. The idea that God might actually see me in my vulnerability, was radical. It was life-changing. And it opened me up to the possibility of a faith that isn’t about perfection, but about being seen, known, and loved, even in the messiness of life.
This moment in my training at The Allender Center transformed my understanding of God’s love and radically reshaped my relationship with spirituality. For the first time, I could imagine a faith that wasn’t based on fear or shame, but on the restoration of my dignity, and freedom in my humanity. It was the beginning of a healing journey—one that has shaped both my personal life and my work as a trauma therapist.
If This Stirs Something In You
If you feel the ache of longing, for a Jesus you never got to meet, or a story you weren’t allowed to believe in, know that you’re not alone. Therapy can be a space to hold that grief, name what was taken from you, and rebuild a relationship with your own sense of worth, safety, and sacredness.
You don’t have to figure it out alone. You don’t have to go back to what harmed you to move forward.
If you’re ready to explore your story— whether you’re holding grief, anger, curiosity, or hope— I’d be honored to walk alongside you.
You deserve a healing that doesn’t ask you to disappear.