Former porn star’s testimony highlights the exploitative nature of Christianity

Former Only Fans star Nala Ray recently committed her life to Christ, causing a heated controversy online. Clips of her sharing her testimony and encouraging other women to leave OF and follow Christ circulated on X and TikTok, Recent interview with Michael Knowles She explains that her income is monetized (a pittance compared to her previous porn career).

Speculation abounded about the authenticity of her conversion, with comments ranging from joy at the return of the prodigal son to derogatory remarks about a “body count” and a sociopath. While Hollywood has its share of false and shallow conversions from time to time, I was surprised by the cruelty even so-called Christians treated Nora. Critics cited her red hair and presence in the public sphere as evidence of inauthenticity.

she witness It didn’t make an extraordinary impression on me in itself. Jesus Christ saves sinners, and many of the experiences she recounted sounded familiar: conversations with God, asking what was wrong, why she felt so numb, her emotions restored, and everything seemed brighter after her baptism. This is standard and, in my opinion, believable.

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What really shocked me was the exploitation she experienced as the child of a Baptist minister and the exploitation of herself as an adult. She described her childhood where her job was to always be “on,” to be the happy face at every church event along with her siblings and parents (who she emphasized did their best). She lived through church schism and the instability of her parents’ marriage (they divorced, remarried, and then divorced again). She described feelings of alienation from her parents, peers, and herself.

This emphasis on separation resonates with me: “toxic positivity” is rampant in the church. Forcing people, especially children, to behave according to religious ideals of perfection and eternal joy is a form of control and manipulation. It encourages separation and is exploitative. It turns humanity, who share the suffering of Christ in this fallen world, into a prop or commodity designed to sell the gospel as a solution to negativity and failure.

Is this a huge leap for an ambitious young man to go from shutting down his emotions and selling out the church to shutting down his emotions and prostitution on the Internet? Are we really surprised when young men and women who grow up in repressive environments lose inner contact, leading them into deeper, darker sins? Of course, this depends partly on temperament. Nala Ray describes herself as a driven, natural-born leader who capitalizes on her brokenness. Other personalities may simply shut down and become consumers.

A 2013 study released by the Barna Group found that children of pastors retained their faith at the same rate as their congregations (40% doubted their faith, 33% were no longer active in church, 7 % of people no longer consider themselves Christians) ). The Bible teaches that if you train your children in the way they should go, they will not depart from it when they grow up. So we must ask, in what ways are churches failing to train children in their ways? should go?

“Feel good” Christianity is an example of the church’s failure in this area. Teaching children strategies such as “talking about life” based on the Bible and “rejecting lies” can become destructive if turned into mechanisms that block the mind, leaving children vulnerable to dissociation and emotional abuse. However, some streams of Christianity mistakenly take the opposite view of toxic therapy, encouraging otherwise healthy children and adults to constantly examine their emotions, and even leading to what is commonly referred to as trauma culture. (A particularly toxic form of church culture is the use of therapy to expose thoughts and emotions, which are then influenced by well-intentioned thought control mechanisms to encourage adherence to religious ideals.)

Nala Ray’s lack of stability in her childhood was one reason the church failed to train her in the path she should have taken. Divorce at home and in the church led to a lack of security in her life. “I never felt safe,” she said. So perhaps we underestimate the destructive tendencies of schism in Protestant and non-denominational churches. Perhaps we rage against divorce and abortion in the political realm while modeling divorce in our church structures, which is hypocritical and misses the incarnational call of Christianity.

It was interesting to see Nora talking to Catholics. I cannot accept Roman Catholic theology and practice, but I see value in its relative stability. The Orthodox Church also seems to have more success in maintaining unity, but some things about it are difficult for Protestants to accept. We value truth, and we need to value truth—but truth cannot simply be an intellectual agreement. Is it possible for the Protestant church to regain a concrete sense of wholeness without returning to an abusive church hierarchy?

Neuroscientific philosopher Dr. Iain McGilchrist has written extensively about how modern society is moving toward a “left-hemisphere-dominated” way of being: categorical, abstract, and impersonal. This is certainly true in the modern Protestant church and is reflected in our structure of teaching first, beauty last. The Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches lean more toward a right-hemisphere worldview: concrete, tangible, and glorified. It is almost as if the physical space of these traditional churches, combined with the heavy personification of the church as an indivisible “oneness,” has become a safeguard against the more separatist tendencies of abstract Protestantism. Even the physical nature of the sacraments practiced in more traditional forms of Christianity protects against the technical abstractions of the faith, in a way that Protestant Christianity does not. It’s much easier to say church can happen online when “church” is hearing a good message, agreeing with it, and reading the lyrics on a screen. This technical approach to faith is also separate.

Nala Ray’s story is that of a young woman who cried out for physical love, for unity in family and community, and for a more concrete practice of faith in which human emotion and experience The full scope of is considered and embraced. Without these, she is forced to numb herself in order to survive, which leads her to act in extreme ways in an attempt to regain the feelings she has denied. Her story implores us to examine the physical and emotional manifestations of our faith as Protestant Christians. A Christianity that is disembodied, fake smiles, and stoic is not what Jesus Christ of Nazareth preached. He came to eat, he loved, he was betrayed, he bled, he suffered.The apostle Paul wrote about joy although Suffering – We have lost this picture because we tend to view the Bible as a collection of fragmented parts rather than as a whole. We have lost the humanity of the text, so we tend to dehumanize ourselves and each other when we apply it to fit our understanding of what it means to be Christian. Nora mentioned several times that after years of numbness, she was able to cry and feel pain as evidence of God’s redemptive power in her life.

How many of us view the ability to cry as a gift?

I hope and pray that this young woman continues to grow healthily with her new husband and family, and I pray that the church in general reconnects with its own humanity and that the stories of children who grow up in the church and become addicts as sex workers become increasingly uncommon.