When Faith Leads to Avoidance: Understanding Spiritual Bypassing in Christian Contexts
Introduction
A woman confides in her pastor that her husband’s temper frightens her. He tells her, “The enemy is attacking your marriage — pray harder, and don’t let Satan win.”
A ministry worker on the verge of burnout is told, “You’re under spiritual warfare. Keep praying; the enemy often attacks those doing God’s work.”
A young man struggling with depression is advised, “You need to rebuke that spirit of heaviness and claim joy in Jesus.”
A couple grieving multiple miscarriages share their heartache with their small group. One member gently replies, “God’s timing is perfect — you just need to trust His plan.”
Each of these responses sounds spiritual. But beneath the language of faith lies something deeper — an avoidance of pain, accountability, and the raw reality of human suffering.
Psychologist John Welwood first coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe situations when spiritual ideas or practices are used to sidestep unresolved emotional wounds, psychological pain, or accountability, relational issues [1].
Faith can be profoundly healing. Yet when spirituality is used to avoid vulnerability or responsibility, it becomes a form of defence — a way to deny rather than process pain.
In Christian communities, spiritual bypassing often appears as over-spiritualising distress (“It’s a spiritual attack”), minimising wrongdoing (“The devil made me do it, I just need more prayer”), or demanding premature forgiveness. These approaches are usually well-intentioned — but they can replace empathy with explanation or "pat answers", and compassion with control. In its more extreme forms, bypassing can slide into spiritual abuse.
Defining Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing can be defined as:
A defensive psychological posture that privileges or exaggerates spiritual beliefs and practices in order to avoid, suppress, or rationalise difficult emotions, experiences, or personal responsibility [2,3].
Welwood described it as “a way of trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it” [1].
This premature transcendence creates an internal split: a “spiritual self” that appears faithful or serene, while unprocessed grief, fear, or shame remain hidden beneath the surface.
What the Research Shows
Research by Cashwell and Young (2011) and Picciotto & Fox (2018) has identified recurring themes in spiritual bypassing. Common features include:
Emotional repression or detachment
Avoidance of anger, grief, or doubt
Blind allegiance to spiritual leaders (or systems)
Overemphasis on positive thinking
Denial of personal responsibility
Belief in spiritual superiority or “chosen” status
Viewing suffering solely through the lens of spiritual warfare
Picciotto and Fox’s (2018) study [3] explored therapists’ experiences treating clients engaged in spiritual bypassing. They found consistent signs of emotional dissociation, fear of confrontation, and an avoidance of “negative” people or feelings. In some cases, spiritual communities reinforced these patterns — framing human distress as weakness rather than a part of normal human experience.
How Spiritual Bypassing Appears in Christian Contexts
1. Spiritual Bypassing at a Personal Level
For many believers, bypassing happens internally and unconsciously. They may say to themselves:
“If I just pray more, this anxiety will go away.”
“God must be teaching me a lesson.”
“I shouldn’t feel angry — that’s unchristian.”
These statements seem devout but often conceal unmet needs for care and connection. Rather than engaging emotion and expressing vulnerability, they spiritualise it. The result is suppression of emotion — the inner world becomes divided between what feels “godly” and what feels unacceptable (feeling and expressing emotions).
Over time, this kind of repression can lead to emotional numbness, shame, and even psychosomatic symptoms (e.g., panic symptoms such as a tight chest, shaking, or a lump in the throat). People may appear calm and faith-filled on the outside but feel internally detached, anxious, or exhausted.
2. Spiritual Bypassing Within Church Communities
Congregations and church members can also participate in bypassing collectively. Examples include:
Framing emotional suffering as “lack of faith.”
Minimising suffering by stating that "God always knows what is best" or encouraging people to "trust in His perfect plan".
Talking to victims of harm or those who have been deeply hurt and minimising their experience as a "unfortunate conflict".
Referring to mental illness as spiritual weakness, or demonic, rather than psychological.
When such attitudes dominate, pain becomes taboo. Survivors of trauma, domestic violence, or abuse, and those experiencing grief and loss may feel invalidated or even blamed for their suffering. In these settings, spiritual language becomes a form of avoidance.
3. Spiritual Bypassing Among Leaders and Ministries
For pastors and ministry workers, bypassing often takes the form of over functioning and denial:
“God will give me strength; I don’t need rest.”
“I’m not burned out or depressed — Satan’s just attacking me.”
“People are gossiping because they’re jealous of the anointing.”
"There is division in the church because people are being influenced by evil forces".
These beliefs can mask emotional exhaustion or fear of weakness. When leaders equate limits or mistakes with lack of faith, they become disconnected from their humanity — a pattern that can contribute to burnout, mental health challenges, moral failure or breakdown.
Theological Forms of Spiritual Bypass
a) Attributing Problems to “God’s Will”
Another common form of spiritual bypassing occurs when painful experiences, conflict, or harm are attributed solely to “God’s will.”
Phrases like:
“Everything happens for a reason.” "You need to trust in God's plan"
“God must have something he wants to teach you through this.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“God allowed this for a purpose.”
These may possibly offer comfort when they arise from the person’s own meaning-making — but they can be deeply harmful when they are said by others and used to shut down emotion, silence grief, or avoid responsibility. Instead of being met with empathy, the hurting person is given a theological explanation in place of emotional presence.
For example:
A person expresses deep sadness after pregnancy loss and is told, “God’s timing is perfect.”
Someone is mistreated by a church leader and is advised, “God must be teaching you something important.”
A person reports that they experienced emotional neglect in childhood, and the response is, “You need to trust that God knew what He was doing placing you in that family.”
These interpretations may feel comforting to the person saying them, but to the person hurting, they can feel invalidating, dismissive, or even blaming.
Furthermore, responses like this often bring with it an implication that the person is not trusting God enough. When someone says "you need to trust in God's plan", they are inadvertently implying that the person is not trusting God enough.
b. Attributing Problems to Satanic Attack
Scripture acknowledges the reality of spiritual warfare. Yet, overusing this explanation can deflect moral and relational accountability. When leaders say, “This conflict is Satan trying to destroy our church,” it can shift attention away from their own behaviour — perhaps a tendency towards gossip, control, or abuse — to an invisible external enemy.
This form of bypass replaces:
Accountability with accusation (“You’re deceived by Satan”).
Repentance with deflection (“The devil made me do it”).
Dialogue with demonisation (“You’re under spiritual attack”).
In such cases, attributing harm to “the enemy” becomes a theological rationalisation for avoiding guilt, shame, or repair. Psychologically, it functions as projection — disowning "one’s own shadow" and assigning it to an external evil force [3,4].
c. “Faith Over Feelings”
Church slogans that pit faith against emotion (for example, “Don’t trust your feelings”) can unintentionally reinforce emotional disconnection. One well-known illustration used in some Christian discipleship materials is the “Fact–Faith–Feeling” train, where facts (doctrine) pull the train, faith follows behind, and feelings are positioned as the last carriage. The intention is to help believers avoid being driven solely by emotions.
However, the unintended message many people internalise is that feelings are unreliable, unimportant, or even spiritually suspect. While faith does call us beyond our emotions at times, and many psychological frameworks also acknowledge that feelings are influenced by our thoughts, these frameworks can be interpreted in ways that discourage honesty about sadness, grief, anxiety, or anger. When feelings are minimised or dismissed, people may learn to silence their emotional world rather than bring it into their relationship with God and others.
In reality, Scripture is full of emotional expression: lament, rage, and doubt are not evidence of unbelief but of authentic relationship with God.
Psychological Mechanisms Behind Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing operates through familiar psychological defences:
Denial: Refusing to acknowledge emotional or moral reality.
Projection: Attributing personal failings to “Satan” or others.
Rationalisation: Explaining away harm as “God’s plan.”
Intellectualisation: Quoting Scripture to avoid feeling.
Idealisation: Placing leaders or doctrines beyond question.
Each mechanism protects the ego from pain but prevents growth. Healing requires integration — allowing emotional truth and spiritual belief to meet without contradiction.
The Path Ahead - The Alternative to Spiritual Bypassing
When suffering is explained away too quickly through spiritual bypassing:
Grief has no room for outlet
Trauma has no space to be acknowledged and processed
People learn to mistrust their own emotional reality, and the emotional reality of others
Faith becomes a shield against pain, instead of a companion within pain
The Healthy Alternative
Instead of imposing meaning, we support people in discovering meaning gently, over time, if and when they are ready.
A compassionate alternative might sound like:
“I don’t know why this happened. I am so sorry. I’m here with you. We can bring this pain to God together.”
This honours both:
the reality of suffering, and
the hope of faith,
Healthy spirituality does not bypass pain — it embraces it as part of transformation.
Conclusion
Spiritual bypassing occurs when spiritual ideals overshadow emotional truth, when spiritual language and platitudes replace vulnerability, and when theology becomes a shield against responsibility.
True maturity holds both grace and truth. It looks pain in the eye, refuses to spiritualise harm, and trusts that there is a place for deep honesty in spiritual community and in faith.
Invitation to Seek Psychological Support
If you are carrying pain, confusion, or unresolved hurt, you don’t have to carry it alone. Your story matters. Your experience deserves to be heard with care and respect. You’re welcome to book a session any time.: Book a session.
References
Welwood, J. (1984). Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual integration. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(1), 63–73.
Cashwell, C. S., & Young, J. S. (2011). Integrating spirituality and religion into counseling: A guide to competent practice. American Counseling Association.
Picciotto, G., Fox, J., & Neto, F. (2018). A phenomenology of spiritual bypass: Causes, consequences, and implications. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 20(4), 333–354.
Masters, R. A. (2010). Spiritual bypassing: When spirituality disconnects us from what really matters. North Atlantic Books.
Cashwell, C. S., Glosoff, H. L., & Hammonds, C. (2010). The role of counselor spiritual and religious values in ethical decision making. Journal of Counseling & Development, 88(4), 387–394.
Langberg, D. (2015). Suffering and the Heart of God: How trauma destroys and Christ restores. New Growth Press.
Pargament, K. I. (2011). Spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing the sacred. Guilford Press.
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