i wore black

it's amazing how easy it is to be ignorant when you attend a conservative church, homeschool and only associate with other homeschooling and conservative churching families.

one of the many things i found myself totally ignorant of was abuse in the church. as much as catholics were reviled among my peers (from elementary through college) there still wasn't much talk or revulsion over the extent of the abuse scandals. the words "spiritual abuse" were not even in the lexicon, let alone explained or warned against. most likely because it was happening with frightening regularity. my parents never treated pastors as though they were on a different level than the rest of us, but that message was pretty common from other sources. if something bad was said about the church, it was the fault of atheists or just a misunderstanding. 

as time has gone by my perspective has changed quite a bit. time after time i find abuse of all kinds in the church. time after time pastors tell wives to submit to abuse. time after time pastors stand by each other against the victims. time after time pastors act self-righteous and put down the least of these. forget pastors - just think christians in general. 

i'm not even talking here about marginalizing women and minorities or other theological branches. i'm not talking about the jerks who feel they speak for god. i'm just talking blatantly and seemingly obvious moral wrongs. pedophilia. defending pedophilia. physical and emotional abuse. defending physical and emotional abuse. verbal abuse. manipulation. 

so. all that. i keep seeing more and more and more of that.

but there is another side to this.

being so sheltered as a child and young adult also kept me from seeing the good.

as long as there have been christians promoting and accepting and defending the indefensible, there have been christians and others opposing them. as long as there has been hate and horridness from christians there has been christians and non-christians opposing that and them.

social justice, women's rights, standing up for the oppressed - well, those are all new things to me. as an uber-christian for most of my life, it's kind of sad how ignorant i was of all the good i could do in the world, and all the good that was being done.

but it was being done. 

the awful things were being done, every day. some by people i trusted, by those who are revered by the people i trusted and revered. by people i used to think were "godly" and good.

but despite them, good things are being done and my life is richer now that i know. 

I'm not saying that christians manipulate and/or use others on purpose all of the time. but i can't give a free pass and say something is okay just because the right intent is there.

i have a beautiful, wonderful friend. 

she does whatever she can for others. she gives time. she gives money. she gives, most of all, a listening ear. if someone is one of the least of these, she is there.

if someone is a self-righteous jerk, she doesn't waste her time.

i watch her and see how much she loves people and her faith and i wonder if i had been surrounded by such as her from a young age if i would have a stronger hold on my own faith.

i don't know the answer to that question.

but i do know that her life is one i want to emulate. christian or not, someone like her changes the world. 

so maybe sometimes the world just sucks.

but when i remember that she is in this world, that people like her exist, it sucks just a little bit less.

giving up god

when i began to open up about where my theological fall out was taking me, i found it helpful to use this phrase: "i am not holding onto god anymore, but maybe he is holding onto me."

a dear and devout friend, upon hearing that phrase, told me essentially that maybe that is the place god wants me. and i wonder sometimes if it is the place he, if he is who he says he is, wants everyone.

okay, i know that making assumptions about what god wants for everyone is a strange thing to hear from someone who is holding to the "hopeful agnostic" title. and i'm really not sure if i even know what i mean, or what i'm talking about.

really all i know about theology is the things i can not buy into anymore.  i can't buy into a just and loving god who creates finite people just to send them into an infinite hell. i can't buy into an inconsistent morality which gives god leave to commit genocide, murder and construct different legal consequences based on gender. i can't believe in a god who lets people go to hell just because they were born in a different place, or born into a hindu or muslim family. i can't buy an all loving and powerful god who is "disgusted" by the "sin" of love that contains anything other than two opposite cis-gender people.

maybe, just maybe, i could buy a god who loves and holds on to you, no matter what.  a god who isn't threatened if you call him buddha or jesus.  a god who gives freedom without eternal consequences if he doesn't like your choices.

of course, most people i know would contend that what i just described isn't god, and i don't get to pick and choose what i believe in and that what really matters is truth, absolute truth.

well. my thought is that "truth" and "absolute truth" are just distractions.

they distract you from paying attention to yourself, to others, to the understandings and truths of others. if you're a christian, it distracts you from learning from other christian faith traditions, maybe the ones that have been ridiculed by your peers or teachers.

i loved this article by Brandon Ambrosino. he is giving up god for lent. i loved the first story he told, because for a long time that was all i knew of Nietzche. i resonated with the experience of rejecting god as wholly unknowable and other and building him to be what i wanted him to be or what i had been taught that he was. the only aspects of him that were unknowable were the faith-destroying things we had to just make up answers for, or say "well, god is god." the rest?  we knew.

this is the god i was introduced to, the god i thought i knew: "Indeed, the God of my rigid ideologies, of my complacent Theology; the God who validates my unwillingness to explore heresies, and rewards me for arrogantly dismissing them as sinful; the God who grounds my intellectual arrogance in His omniscience, and my politics in his omnipotence; the God who vanquishes all of His and my inquisitive foes, forever silencing their obnoxious questions with the fires of Hell; whose very Nature demands that humans separate and categorize the world into manageable divisions; the God who has made His Will known to us through Natural Law, and a Holy Book, every word of which we are to follow without hesitation or consideration; whose ethical character remains beyond discussion; whose decisions remain beyond the scope of human analysis; the God who grounds all Thought in his Being - this God, who is Himself nothing more than an idol of Modernism, is dead."

that god is dead to me.

Brandon is giving up this god for lent. i plan to give him up entirely.

whether another god will show himself to me is beyond knowing right now.

and i'm entirely okay with that.

meanwhile, i'm going to learn. and breathe. and dance. and sing. and just be.

love

it's valentine's day.

i know. it's over commercialized and cheesy and sometimes insulting. and i usually ignore it.

but this vday i just want to write about my marriage. a little bit. because my husband rocks.

i used to think he was pretty much perfect. before we were even dating he told me his biggest flaws, which of course just served to reinforce the idea that he was perfect. when we married i had all kinds of expectations for our life together. i doubt my man had half as many expectations. he just wanted to live and love and be together.

when we married one of my expectations is that he would lead, i would follow. he would be the patriarch, i would be the perfect and submissive wife. i felt like a rebel because we agreed to use birth control and i was working outside the home. sam, on the other hand, basically expected that we would work as a team. that the only real gender roles were that women just didn't preach and men had a heavier burden to provide.

when i finally grew to believe that my husband wasn't some liberal radical in that area, our marriage became what fit us most naturally. equal. a partnership. beautiful.

that does not mean things have been easy since. some of our toughest times have happened since we truly began to try to see each other. it's not easy to go from two someones who are trying to squeeze their true selves into a pre-determined mold to a couple trying to find completely new footing in a new and honest relationship.

on top of that, the scare stories told to christians about the evils and dangers of being "unequally yoked" are numerous. so here we are, unequally yoked and in a god-dishonoring equal marriage.

our love and our lives are pretty much the exact opposite of what "god wants."

and we are so. stinkin. happy.

i can not believe how much he loves me. or really, how much i love him.

it's so good, this love. better than ever.

so this vday, i'm in the mood to celebrate.

*insert shy grin here*

maybe

maybe i sound a tad bitter.

am i bitter? i don't think so. i just might be wary, and cynical. just a tad.

maybe i sound vengeful.

am i vengeful? i don't think so.  but i am tired of knowing other people are hurt by the same things i was.

maybe i sound like a hater.

am i  a hater? do i hate christians, christianity, religion of all kinds?

i'm married to a christian. a christian whose entire life was wrapped up in ministry.
and we love each other like there is no tomorrow.

i have no bitter angry feelings toward him. i am not vengeful toward him. i do not paint his faith with the same wide brush you may think i paint everything. we have disagreed on numerous things in the past and we will continue to disagree for the rest of our lives.

but i do not feel the need to stop him from believing what he believes.
he does not feel the need to stop me from believing what i believe.

my husband has a good friend who does not understand what i'm going through.
i respect him and his viewpoints and i trust he respects mine.
he cares and he knows i care, whether or not he understands.
he doesn't try to tell me what i should be thinking or feeling, so the relationship stands.

my husband has a good friend who does not understand what i'm going through.
this friend told my husband to do his leaderly duty and make me believe truth.
my husband said "do you not realize that's what made her run in the first place?"
i am nothing but a heretic to this friend, so the relationship can not stand.

some christians can respect that others may not ever believe the way they do.
some christians can't respect that, and can't imagine there are good reasons for it.

i respect, and totally understand, where christians are coming from.
i haven't forgotten what it's like to be immersed in that community.
i haven't forgotten what it's like to need doctrine to make sense so your life does.
i haven't forgotten why christians act like jerks - it wasn't that long ago i blamed my jerkiness on jesus.

but maybe, just maybe, i need time.
maybe i need healing from christians.
maybe i need healing from doctrine.
maybe i need healing from god.

maybe i am all the bad things people have said about me.

maybe that's okay.

an abusive faith

i know, before i even begin to write this, that not everyone has this experience with christianity. for me, what i am about to write is very, very true. you can explain it away all you want, by saying it's not jesus and the people who perpetrated these ideas aren't really christians (no true scotsman, anyone?) and that it's just this one sect or type of christians that make me draw this comparison.

maybe.  just maybe.

but growing up in a conservative evangelical faith tradition, i found that their claim to having the "truth" encompassed these things. they still preach (in fact, this very week) that they have the right answers and the right interpretation. it's very difficult, after a lifetime of that, to see real-true-christianity in any other light.

unfortunately there are liberal-basically-agnostic people who have felt this same thing from their churches, communities and versions of christianity. so make of it what you will - take it or leave it.

i feel this way.

The Warning Signs of Abuse - from www.stoprelationshipabuse.org

[insert church/christians/doctrine/god in place of partner]

Do you feel nervous around your partner?

Hell yes. The reasons will become apparent as we go through the checklist.

Do you have to be careful to control your behavior to avoid your partner’s anger?

Yes. Even when I was dealing with people/ideas of god that didn't blatantly say he would punish or reward specific behavior there was always the idea of "put god first" if you want the good stuff. If nothing else you needed to control your behavior to avoid the anger and scorn of fellow believers. If they were progressive enough to believe that God wasn't going to punish you (or "withhold blessings") then at the very least they saw their concern or frustration with you as righteous, and something they did on God's behalf.

Do you feel pressured by your partner when it comes to sex?

In this context "sex" could stand for evangelism or staying pure or whatever you wanted - and YES i felt pressured in all kinds of things. But I also felt pressured by christian doctrine to put out for my husband whenever he wanted because my "body is not my own."

Are you scared of disagreeing with your partner?

I was scared of disagreeing with god. That would make me a "fool" or "disobedient" or most likely rebellious, which is as bad as witchcraft. We all know that a truly surrendered Christian does not disagree with God. That is the slippery slope to hell. God is GOD, you know. And on top of that, I was scared to disagree with the powers that be, and fellow Christians. Shame, shunning and gossip was the least of the things to be scared of, with future job positions being taken away and being sent away from the church community being absolute possibilities.

Does your partner criticize you, or humiliate you in front of other people?

Does God do this? Well... I could maybe make a case. (His word humiliates enough people in it's pages.) But enough of His People do it in His name that it doesn't matter if He does it. Public confessions and repentance requirements can often be humiliating. Public criticism in the name of God is just par for the course.

Is your partner always checking up on you or questioning you about what you do without your partner?

Hahahaha! I just have to laugh. It's amazing how accurately this describes the Bible College campus where I spent six years of my life. And then, of course, there is the "God is always watching! God knows everything you do!" stock christianese.

Does your partner repeatedly and wrongly accuse you of seeing or flirting with other people?

It's amazing how just a small departure from the prescribed script will bring about accusations of wrong doctrine, even if you have expressly stated you agree with the person accusing you. Repeatedly and wrongly - absolutely. If you head down a path not explicitly laid out as okay, get ready for accusations and gossip. Lots and lots of gossip.

Does your partner tell you that if you changed, he or she wouldn’t treat you like this?

As I was told, time and again: "Following God's laws means you will be blessed! If you would just obey him then you wouldn't have all these bad things in your life!"  And, of course, you hear the same thing from church leadership. Stop living together, THEN I will marry you. Become a Christian and THEN I will baptize your child. Start obeying Jesus and I will stop telling you that your very life is wrong.

Does your partner’s jealousy stop you from seeing friends or family?

In more extreme cases, yes. When friends and family are not "good influences" or are the ones who are "leading you away from Jesus."

Does your partner make you feel like you are wrong, stupid, crazy, or inadequate?

Hahahah! YES! Both God and Christians! 

Has your partner ever scared you with violence or threatening behavior?

I can't even tell you how many times I heard "if you are not where God wants you to be then ANYTHING can happen to you." Also see: The ENTIRE old testament.

Does your partner say, “I will kill myself if you break up with me” or “I will hurt/kill you if you break up with me”?

How about "I'll send you to hell for all of eternity if you leave me?" Does that qualify? SUre, you could say that Jesus said "I will die so we can be together." which is all fine and good, but completely loses all goodness once it adds "And if you refuse me, then eternal suffering and torment for you!"

Does your partner make excuses for the abusive behavior? For example: saying, “It’s because of alcohol or drugs,” or “I can’t control my temper,” or “I was just joking”?

"it's because I love you" would be the one.


To be honest, I just don't know how to get past this. I can't find solace in any doctrines - anything but universalism seems cruel and abusive. For a time I found a home in a very strict lutheran interpretation of law and gospel, but there was just still such an emphasis on hell and punishment/reward (even if it wasn't directly salvation related) that I quickly tired of trying to make that work. I could possibly embrace universalism but I am wary now of everything. Everything.

I suppose that's about how I would feel if I had been with an abusive partner.

I would be wary of every potential partner.

[disclaimer: i do not intend this post to diminish in any way the physical, emotional, verbal abuse that many people endure every single day. for me, to acknowledge abuse in a spiritual sense does not take away from the reality of other kinds of abuse, and i hope that i am not an idiot for thinking so.]

the same

the tribal aspect of christianity lends itself to many strange delusions.

like the idea that agnostics, atheists and liberals are some kind of strange beast. who knows what they talk about or plot in their living rooms at night. they probably watch colbert and hate on christians and smoke pot and watch porn and tear pages out of priceless bibles, if they even own one.

whatever they are, it isn't normal.

they don't pray over their meals or obsess about having their *devos* and they don't spend time "in the word" and time "with god" and they are probably being constantly attacked by demons - except maybe demons attack gods people because they want to get those active in the faith! - and they live in fear of things like demons, having an empty life that means nothing and going to HELL when they die.

these people are in rebellion to god and his word and they are reaping the fruits of their sinful, disobedient and godless lives. therefore they are miserable, on anti-depressants, probably coke heads or hippies.

as i said before, when i called myself a "hopeful agnostic" i really didn't see it as a complete derivation from the faith. i didn't imagine that i was a godless hippie. it wasn't until i truly began to realize how others who were IN the fold saw me that i understood. i had become the "fool who says in his heart, there is no god."

suddenly i know, from intimate experience, why and how everyone is flipping out and why this is such a big deal. i'm not ME anymore. i'm not whole. i'm not safe. i'm not a christian.

i am the cautionary tale.

but the truth, from my perspective, is completely different.

i'm still absolutely the same.

dropping a title of faith has not changed what i believe to be right or wrong. my political and faith switch from conservative to liberal was pushed forward and encouraged by my faith, by the things i was learning and by the bible - by jesus.

my moral and ethical beliefs haven't changed. i still don't spank my kids, as much as i want to. i still don't cheat on my husband - but to be fair, ian somerhalder hasn't approached me yet. i still teach my children to be kind and generous and i hope some of it sticks. i'm not watching porn tonight, i'm watching the biggest loser. but that's kind of a false comparison for me, since i gave up my crusade against porn a long time before i gave up my crusade against women pastors and those who pervert law and gospel.

i spend my time doing the same things i enjoyed before my fall. studying theology and psychology and sociology. taking photographs and making my own little bits of art.  writing. i finally want to write again. i even finally enjoy digging through my crap and finding who i am, who i really am, deep down.

the anti-depressants went the way of faith. instead of being that faithless person who can't live without them, i was a stronger person who found life bearable again.

this whole process has been one of finding so many things that were presented to me as undeniable truths fall apart.

maybe it was the idea that christianity (minus the evil libruls) is a cohesive and united bunch.

maybe it was the idea that "the bible clearly says" anything. take your pick of your pet theology.

maybe it was that atheists are amoral or immoral people.

most likely it was that christianity is a force for good in the world, as i watched and heard person after person testify to the hurt caused in their lives by christianity and read historical story after story of christians oppressing and hurting others.

for me, my personal experience held more weight than often conflicting abstracts that others were using to shame me into being someone i'm not.

and i'm a happier, healthier person now.

hopeful

The first time I told someone I wasn't the christian they thought I was, I used the phrase "hopeful agnostic."

I chose the word hopeful because I still had hope that christians could be kind, wonderful, people. I had hope that some things in the Bible may be true and even more I hoped that some things were false. I had not yet given up on people or truth - even if my ideas of people and truth were not what I had been taught they should be.

I chose agnostic because I didn't know. I don't know. I don't know if god is there, or if he is what kind of god he may be or what name he may use or what he may or may not ask of me.

To me, hopeful agnostic is a very honest and hope-filled phrase. It means I'm searching and learning and that I can't restrict myself to beliefs that no longer ring true. It means growth and questions.

All good things.

I continued to use my preferred, helpful phrase while we moved from seminary to shunned status.

It took a long time for me to realize how others were seeing that phrase, and consequently, seeing me.

It seemed to scare people. It wasn't a phrase of hope, as I imagined it, but one of self-condemnation and, often, self-illusion. It didn't mean questions and learning - it meant demons were deceiving me, or I had fallen prey to "the world" and most of all (worst of all) it meant I was going to hell.

I don't think I even realized how far I had fallen from grace until the moment I realized how much my very existence scared the people who used to welcome me as their own.

I was already so far from being one of them that I couldn't even comprehend their fears, I couldn't even grasp the reasoning that led to their fears. That I should be afraid for me, or concerned for me did not even cross my mind.

In my mind I was not condemned. I was hopeful.

They saw me as if in a dark, needy place.

And for me it was different. For me it was the first time in a long time I was overcome by light. By peace. By hope.

You can't fight that feeling with circular biblical reasoning. Say all you want that it is because my heart has hardened or my eyes have been clouded or I am a fool or possessed by demons or have been enticed away by the lust of the eyes and the foolishness of my human heart.

But to finally have peace and some measure of joy? You can't fight that with doctrine.