170. atavistic

So apparently two of the Phelps granddaughters, Megan and Grace, have left the Westboro clan. They even issued a public statement expressing regret for their actions as members of the family and the church. And everyone seems to be really excited and happy about that, ready to welcome these women with open arms into polite society.

And while I’m certainly glad that they’re out of that awful place and that there are two less Phelps in that clan to cause harm, I’m not entirely pleased with the reactions to this story.

Before I delve into my own feelings on this, here’s the statement they released:

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.

We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.

Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.

Okay, basic rules of public apology-making, as summarized on Billosophy:

1. Ask For Forgiveness
2. Admit What You Did
3. Do Not Excuse
4. Do Not Place Blame
5. Do Not Justify Why
6. Acknowledge The Consequences

I know as well as anyone who grew up in a fundamentalist home the regret that comes with wishing you had come to your senses earlier. The way things are is normal. You don’t know that you have a choice not to participate. But we’re not talking about just any family. This is the “God Hates Fags” family, just a step below the Manson clan in terms of notoriety. So it bothers me that not once in this statement did either Megan or Grace say, “I’m sorry.” The whole thing is essentially a non-apology.

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

“Regret” is a word you use when saying that you wish things had turned out differently: that the other car hadn’t run the stop sign; that you hadn’t sunk all your money into the Ponzi scheme; that you hadn’t wasted a year of your life pining after a guy who would never return your love. However, it’s not a word you use when talking about having intentionally caused pain and misery for so many people. Because if inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, I’d sure as hell like to know what was.

It’s as if a rapist-murderer said at the trial: “I know that I’ve done things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. I wish it wasn’t so, and regret that hurt.” We shouldn’t be surprised when the jury comes back with a guilty-on-all-counts verdict.

When it comes down to it, Megan broke pretty much every rule of apology making that psychology has identified as being integral to the healing process. She justifies her actions by laying the blame on her family, and on us by saying they were somehow misunderstood. She glosses over the painful consequences of those actions, and dances around the specifics of what she actually did (e.g., picketing military funerals, thanking God for AIDS, telling everyone God hates them). Then she justifies her actions by having the unbelievable gall to say that she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Personally, I’d have been satisfied with something like this:

I’m sincerely sorry for all of the pain and suffering I inflicted on innocent people as a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. There’s no way that I can ever fully undo the damage I caused or unsay the things that I said, but I promise to spend the rest of my life working to heal the hurt I imposed on gay and lesbian people, on the families of the brave soldiers who gave their lives defending this great country, and on anyone else my family has directed their hatred toward.

That might have convinced some of us of her sincerity—not that we doubt that she’s not a member of the Westboro cult anymore. Rather, that she grasps the gravity of who she was and what she did. At the bare minimum, I expect some real tears here.

Some of the anger I’m feeling comes from the fact that I’ve never been offered an apology by my family, or any of the people who unwittingly taught me how to hate and view myself as a disgusting, perverted, broken faggot. And probably never will. Even after I shared those feelings, no one apologized for the pain I suffocated under all those years, terrified and unable both to articulate that pain or to share its cause. So I’m left to heal all by myself, like the victim of a psychopath with a scalpel, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’m angry (particularly with the atheist and LGBT communities) with those who seem quick to welcome these women into the fold without so much as an apology that comes close to being adequate or forthright. I don’t expect anyone to crawl over broken glass, but I do expect them to own up to who they were and what they did. They owe us that much.

154. cacology

The past couple of days I’ve been getting caught up on the British fantasy-adventure show Merlin. One of my ex-boyfriends and I used to watch it, and it’s kind of cheesy and rompy in the sort of Stargate SG-1 sense, but it’s still a lot of fun. And I have a huge crush on Colin Morgan, which is a valid excuse for liking anything. (A half-naked Cam Gigandet was all the excuse I needed to watch Pandorum.)

Because I’m a history nerd, I’m painfully aware of all the anachronisms that nobody else seems to notice, such as the fact that medieval physicians had no concept of infection or bacteria, or that knights did not use the same hand signals that Marines use to signal attack maneuvers.

I get it. It’s a show for modern audiences that aren’t worried about those things. And, frankly, medieval Europe in its raw form isn’t very entertaining. There wasn’t much swashbuckling, unless “swashbuckling” is a term used to describe what happens when a plançon does when it collided with someone’s head.

So this is why I tend not to enjoy historical romps such as A Knight’s Tale. Even the famous Monty Python scene above sends a little bit of a shiver through me as I’m reminded of the Trial by Ordeal. In the case of the witch scene, the medieval thinking was that if an accused person was thrown in water, because God has a vested interest in human affairs, if they’re innocent God would intervene on their behalf and they would float to the surface.

There was also a much nastier version of this involving boiling water, where the accused would be compelled (or forced) to put their hand in boiling water. The hand would be bound up and after several days it would be inspected by a priest who would determine whether God had intervened in the healing process on their behalf. The term “trial by fire” has its origins in this practice, where the accused would be branded and later examined for signs of a miracle (or no miracle, in which case you were summarily fucked), or forced to walk over coals or fire.

Oh, I could go on and on. This is what happens when you are homeschooled as a child possessed of morbid curiosity and access to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

The frightening thing is that we’re not so far removed from that kind of medieval thinking. Yesterday I was talking with a pastor who believes that natural law proves homosexuality is wrong. “Just look at how men and women fit together like puzzle pieces!” was the thrust of his argument. (Of course, he conveniently sidestepped the issue of what to do about infertile couples and the elderly.) Thomas Aquinas’ Quinque viae follows similar lines: “The universe exists, therefore: [poof] God.” ([Poof] added for emphasis.)

Most notoriously, Christian apologist Ray Comfort claimed bananas are proof the world is designed by God because they fit perfectly in our hands, and are pointed toward our mouths. (I’m really not making that up. Watch the video.) Julia Sweeney parodies this “cosmological” thinking in her show Letting Go of God when she sums up Intelligent Design:

It’s like saying that our hands are miraculous because they fit so perfectly into our gloves. “Look, at that! Four fingers and a thumb! That can’t have been an accident!’

In 1913, the American atheist Emma Goldman wrote: “The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.”

This is what prompted inquisitors to torture and murder their victims, whose only crime was not agreeing with them; it’s what prompts Muslim fathers to behead their daughters rather than allow them to become corrupt and worldly (i.e., not wear the hijab); and what motivates fundamentalists to persecute homosexuals and teach them to loathe themselves. At the core of their teaching is the belief that whatever happens to the body doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the soul to heaven, where it can continue its subjugation to the bloody celestial dictator, God.

This is inhuman, it’s anti-human, and it’s deplorable that in the twenty-first century, when we’ve largely put the evils of slavery and torture behind us, that we’re still putting up with medieval thinking of this sort.

One reason why we haven’t seen much forward motion in the gay rights movement is that fundamentalists of the Rick Santorum/Tony Perkins/Maggie Gallagher/Linda Harvey variety are sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming, “No! No!”, and getting their followers to do the same. It’s a bit like being on a tandem bicycle with someone who keeps dragging their feet, and even trying to drag the bicycle back to the shed.

As I’ve said before, you can’t fully understand these people until you understand that they truly believe that God actually gives a fuck where I put my dick, or where my boyfriend puts his. Theirs is a severe God, looking down from heaven scowling at all the people having fun on the earth—because theirs is a God made in their puritanical image. They are murderous men and women who think they have been given special dispensation from God to make this Earth into a heaven for Christians—even though they also supposedly believe “this world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through.”

They think the reason I can’t see this is because I’m spiritually deaf, blind and dumb to Truth.

You can’t understand their fervor until you understand that they truly believe that this is a war between Good and Evil, between God and the Devil, and that my being able to marry the man I love is somehow Satanic and will bring about the end of the world. Or locusts. Or hurricanes. Or a light sprinkling of rain with a little thunder.

120. screed

screed, noun: 1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe; 2. An informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.

Yesterday I found a blog post linked on Twitter entitled, “Why I love church even though I am an atheist.” It is a fascinating read by a girl who was raised secular and is drawn to the community, the ceremony and the sense of celebration that often surrounds the proceedings of the church.

As an ex-churchgoer, it was curious to read a piece like that since I can’t stand any of the things she finds fascinating, such as the “worship(=song) set,” the “worship band,” or the screens which the words to the songs are projected on, etc. Now, mind you, I used to participate in all of those things! I played piano, sang in the band, and even led “worship” occasionally. Now I’m trying to find the words to express exactly how I feel about the whole institution, which I find blitheringly chintzy, uninspired and even (dare I say it) mildly cultish.

Imagine: a couple hundred people gathered together in a large room, all facing forward, some of them with their eyes closed or hands raised in the air (some of them rocking back and forth or absently swaying side to side), mindlessly singing some bland, tuneless rock ballad (with the obligatory upbeat “gathering songs” to get people “in the spirit to praise god”) off projection screens, often with abstract or nature-inspired artwork on the slides that somehow aesthetically pairs with the words to the songs, which often make Lady Gaga sound like freaking T.S. Eliot in comparison.

I left all of that behind, and gladly, when I became an atheist—so why would a nonbeliever (indeed, the author of that blog does not believe in god) even want to participate?

In the post she wrote this:

I honestly have no qualms interpreting celebration of divine creation as celebration of existence—and at the end of the day, biblical preaching is by and large about living a moral and kind lifestyle—something I personally think is crucial to happiness as an individual.

Now, I get that. I get what it is that she finds in a church service, or in the community of friends she has there. There is something indescribably warm and inviting about going to church every week, finding where your friends are sitting (or walking in with them), and then participating. It’s the same kind of feeling of communion you get at a sports event or at a concert (not a Classical concert, mind you—that has the same formal, dusty feel as a Methodist church service).

But when you’re singing phrases like:

• I am full of earth / You are heaven’s worth (David Crowder, “Wholly Yours”)
• A loud song I sing, a huge bell I ring (Waterdeep, “I Will Not Forget You”)
• Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly choose you now (Phillips, Craig and Dean, “Come, Now is the Time to Worship”)
• I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever, I could sing of your love forever (Delirious—yes, that is the name of the band, and whoa, get this, the title of this song is—”I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”)
• I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace / Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place (Casting Crowns, “Your Love is Extravagant”)

… how can you honestly take any of that seriously as an atheist!? Or as a rational, thinking person!? C’mon! You’re singing what amounts to love songs to a totally fictitious person (God and/or Jesus—take your pick), and I get the impression from some of these lyrics that (so long as you’re not paying any attention to what you’re actually saying) everyone has a massive hard-on for Jesus by the time the sermon rolls around.

Again, I get it. Tess has friends in the church. She goes to bible studies where they cook each other dinner. “I love to be inspired,” she writes. “I love sharing my life with others, and supporting them with their endeavours and being supported in return. These are important aspects of my church experiences and I have not managed to find other groups here at university that fill those roles in my life.”

I’ve written about this before—about the appalling lack of community for and amongst atheists. Again, I think this is partly what’s at the heart of the planned building of an “atheist temple” in London. Now, I highly doubt that anyone would be singing songs of praise to Richard Dawkins, to Bertrand Russell, or to the Flying Teapot there. I doubt there would be atheist “services.” After all, atheists don’t have religious beliefs. We have no creeds that bind us together. Certainly we believe things, and many of us hold humanist values and believe in the vital importance of critical thinking and the scientific method.

And that’s part of the problem—there is really nothing binding atheists together, nothing to draw us together. Belief in god and reverence for hearing the bible taught brings Christians together every week. That is something they all have in common. Atheists? Well, we all seem to come from such vast and different backgrounds that there is little commonality amongst us, aside from non-belief in god(s). Most of the ways that we express our non-belief tend to be rather individual—through personal study or research, writing (such as I’m doing here), volunteering and humanitarian work, or activism to promote non-theism or to attempt to quell the growing lobbyist influence of Christian conservatism.

But don’t forget our favorite activity: shredding and mocking fundamentalist Christians.

In the midst of all this, and the lack of any organized atheist community, I can see how the church might be attractive to an atheist who hasn’t experienced the more sinister side of Christianity or the abuse and rejection of Christians. This is something we seriously need to address as non-theists.

After all, what is attractive about atheism?

113. poinephobia

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
— Psalm 37:1 (King James Version)

I’ve been a little crazy this week.

This past Sunday marked the first “preview gathering” of SafeHouse Church that many of my friends are a part of, and that Seth (my ex-pseudo lover) is a pastor of. To be honest, I’m a little jealous of what they have going. They’re having meetings, band rehearsals, and volunteer training meetings, and it’s all making me feel unhinged.

Part of it is feeling left out, and this sort of phantom limb pain that comes from the memory of what all of that was like; of being part of a church, being actively involved in the planning and execution of services and events—and most importantly, doing all of that with my friends, and with people I loved and cared about.

In the last entry, I touched on my growing desire to find atheist/nontheist community of my own—my “tribe,” as it were. To find anything close to the equivalent of the church experience for any nontheist is next to impossible. We’re an independent-minded lot. We tend to think for ourselves and resist being herded into anything. It’s more likely that, as many have suggested, I’ll find community in the various groups I eventually volunteer with, sort of piecing together a nontheist “network” from those people I meet. But it won’t ever be anything like what I enjoyed years ago, in church orchestra rehearsals and the like.

That’s over.

It’s a bit like being exiled from your former life. But that begs the question of whether it was ever mine to begin with, and whether all of this wasn’t inevitable, in a way.

There are days when I do miss being a Christian—in particular, the days when I’m feeling lonely and depressed, and there’s no way that anyone can understand the immeasurably dark place that I’m stuck in, and no way that I can humanly express any of it. It would be really nice to have a god who listens. And like that phantom pain, I wish I could get that belief back sometimes. But it’s gone. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way that I could ever go back to being a Christian, not after opening the door to atheism. It’s a bit like Alice going through the tiny door and then eating the cake—you simply don’t belong anymore. As the moral of the story goes in Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat,

“You must not seek to add
To what you have, what you once had;
You have no right to share
What you are with what you were.

No one can have it all,
That is forbidden.
You must learn to choose between.

One happy thing is every happy thing:
Two, is as if they had never been.”

Part of me is also going crazy over everyone being there at church with Seth every week, chatting with him like absolutely nothing is wrong (because for them, nothing is wrong—because he didn’t brutally mangle their hearts); singing “worship” songs along side him to an imaginary god they fancy exists; being at church community events with him; listening to him preach; getting pastoral advice from him (as the “pastor of community care” or whatever the fuck he fancies himself); going to his apartment for dinner/parties where he’ll mix them drinks because he’s also a fucking bartender.

Then there will come the day when he meets someone, and that guy will also be in the lives of all my friends, further alienating me; and this guy will be Seth’s husband/partner, and they’ll love each other and be a staple of the community; and everyone will think what a great couple they are, how wonderful Seth is and how wonderful the other guy is…

Sigh. If you think that sounds like jealous ramblings, you’d be spot on. I fully acknowledge this, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. If there were a way to kill these feelings and forget all about Seth and all that happened between us, I would. Yes, those painful emotional moments are what define us and make us who we are; but this thing is still consuming my mind like a raging, out-of-control fire, nearly a year after the awful, infamous night of my birthday party when he dashed my heart to pieces. It’s almost like these thoughts and feelings are large enough to be another entity entirely.

Yes, some of my ire at the Church is fueled by my love/hatred of Seth—some transference, if you will. It’s completely irrational, and completely and totally unhealthy, but the moment that SafeHouse comes up or is mentioned, I basically turn into a crazy person. All of those raw, barely-beneath-the-surface feelings for him come bursting out and onto the paving stones like sulfuric acid, re-opening those wounds.

And of course this would all be happening right around the time that I formally became an atheist in the first place. It feels as though everyone I know who is going to that church, who I’ve considered my family for some time since my own family is less than welcoming, has slammed the door in my face and is rejecting me by virtue of building a community around the very beliefs that I have rejected so that I can’t be a part of their lives anymore. And these are people with whom I have history, with whom I have shared experiences.

Yes, I’m unhappily single, and that’s a factor (I need a boyfriend!!); but I’m also feeling increasingly isolated. Some of it is me pushing people away—and that’s bad. But I also don’t know where I stand with them now as a nontheist. I’m different, and you can’t choose whether you truly believe or not. It would almost be easier to cut ties with everyone and start fresh. But that’s hardly a mature reaction, nor is it healthy.

… but is this healthy?

98. cranberries

The other night I watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation for the first time. This was to correct a serious cultural deficiency in me—although now that I’ve seen it, I’m not sure that I’m actually better off.

While I realize that this is a lighthearted comedy (the purpose being to entertain), and the intent is ultimately to stress the importance of family and how we should stick it out despite how much we screw things up, offend, infuriate and torment each other (which—don’t get me wrong—is a positive message to send), it left me with the desire to never celebrate another holiday ever again, to never see my own family again, and to never attempt to ever deal with anyone else’s family at family gatherings.

This is probably not exactly the reaction the filmmakers were hoping to engender; and, to be fair, it’s not the reaction that most people will have when they see it.

Part of it is that the whole biologicalness of family gatherings makes me… uncomfortable.

All the parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, all gathered together under one roof. Now, of course, this is my lizard-brain talking: The part of me that doesn’t get humanity or its social rituals. I mean, I understand the functions and roles, and even the origins, but I don’t “get it” like one of them. The thought of everyone, young and old, gathered around a table, just seems to me overly sentimental, like something out of a Norman Rockwell or even a Thomas Kinkade painting.

My immediate family was removed from our extended families by virtue of the fact that my dad’s family is all in Pennsylvania, and my mom’s family is all on the West coast, so we never really took part in large family gatherings at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and only rarely got to attend family reunions. So family is peculiar to me, and therefore makes me uncomfortable.

And yet there’s another part of me that longs to be included in such gatherings: In being part of a lovable, cute, frustrating, “overcoming it” family. I’ve never had that experience, and the thought of being accepted as “one of them” has a certain appeal.

This appeal has even more urgency to it since, for the time being, I’ve excised myself from my immediate family since they’ve made it clear that they’ll accept their son, but not their gay son and certainly not their gay son’s partner—if and when that ever happens.

I have this elaborate fantasy of finding a guy who happens to come from a big, really welcoming family who will just fall in love with me like I did with him.

His parents will be the parents I never had, and when we meet for the first time they’ll make a big deal about it, and I’ll go over to their place for dinner or something, and his dad will give me a huge hug that’ll crush the breath out of me and his mom will cry because they’re both so happy that their son finally met someone.

And they’ll insist that I come to their home for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and they won’t mind one bit if we stay in his old bedroom (because they’re not old fashioned like that). And I’ll help in the kitchen in preparing the big meal for the family; and they’ll be atheists and agnostics and humanists, and dinner conversation will center around philosophy or science or literature or NPR (because they’ll be articulate, educated, thinking people), and he’ll squeeze my hand under the table because he’s so happy that I’m there; and nobody will mention “God” (except in passing), and nobody would talk about going to church for Christmas Eve service, or want to bring out a cake to sing “Happy birthday” to Jesus (even though Yeshua was probably born closer to Easter if we take the account of his birth seriously). And yes, my family did that, cake and all. And we’ll go on vacations together, and they’ll insist on taking us out to dinner when they’re in town, and maybe go see a show, and vice versa.

And it’ll be the family I never had.

Heavy sigh.

But that is not what I wanted to write about.

What I wanted to write about is Chevy Chase—or rather, Clark Griswold. (Although maybe Chevy Chase.)

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Clark Griswold is this well-meaning, passionate, caring, loving family man. And through the course of each of the National Lampoon movies, he ambles through situations with the well-intentioned grace and poise of a careening wrecking ball. He starts out Christmas Vacation dragging his wife and two very reluctant and freezing children out to a field in the middle of nowhere to pick out the “perfect Christmas tree.” In the process of he and his wife belting out Christmas carols at the top their lungs, he pisses of the locals with his inane driving, and nearly gets them all killed when he inadvertently ends up underneath a semi hauling tree trunks while playing King of the Road with a couple of red necks. He goes on about how picking out a Christmas tree is an American tradition, as if George Washington took time out from hunkering down with the Colonialists at the Battle of Valley Forge to drag a tree home on Christmas Eve to Martha to put up in their living room.

Quick primer on Christmas trees: The modern Christmas tree originated in western Germany as a prop in a mediaeval play about Adam and Eve, with the tree representing the Tree of Life. It first began to appear in British homes after the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert in the 1840s. It came to America in the 1850s via a publication known as Godey’s Lady’s Book, in which a picture of the royal family’s living room was reproduced with the royal crowns and whatnot removed in order to make it an American scene. So by the 1870s, Christmas trees were ubiquitous in the States.

Back to Christmas Vacation. It only continues to get worse from there. In his tireless and monomaniacal obsession with having the “perfect Christmas,” complete with two giant Christmas trees, every surface of his house being decked in lights (which, as one visual gag describes, drains the entire surrounding power grid to sustain it—a metaphor?), and a horde of relatives who descend obliviously on the house to add their own unique stamp to the mayhem (including one scene where a red neck cousin empties his RV’s septic tank into a storm drain). In the process, Clark’s kids and his neighbors are relentlessly and unapologetically terrorized in his single-minded quest for the “perfect Christmas,” which, in Clark’s mind, probably looks like something straight out of that Norman Rockwell painting, with the family happily gathered around the table, each joyfully taking part in the great American tradition of Christmas.

What we’re left with to witness is a nightmare that spirals out of control. And at the center of it all is Clark, with his almost child-like faith in the institution of Christmas and what it represents, no matter how much hell he puts everyone else through.

You know what else is like that? The fundamentalist Christian.

I saw in Clark’s enthusiasm for the Christmas tradition the same single-minded devotion to the teachings of scripture and to the God of the Christian faith: The belief that no matter how dark or confusing things get, what really matters is toughing it out, and that the only thing that truly matters is knowing God and knowing Jesus.

I also saw in his megalomania that same devotion in evangelical fundamentalist Christians that leads them to try to impose their beliefs on others, and cause reckless emotional and psychological havoc in those around them. On a personal level, I look at the issue of homosexuality and the untold lives of misery and agony that have been suffered by gays and lesbians over the centuries at the hands of Christians alone, all because a narrow reading of a number of scripture passages leads them to teach that homosexuality is wrong. And then there’s the doctrine of original sin, and how wickedness is basically imputed to every human being ever born all because “Eve ate the apple.” The church teaches that you’re an evil, worthless, corrupt, wicked, rebellious, repulsive and depraved sinner who deserves to suffer an eternity in Hell because God can’t stand the sight of you… all because of what someone else (who probably didn’t even exist in the first place) did however many millennia ago. So you’re constantly asking God for forgiveness for even the smallest of infractions (e.g., losing your temper, telling a “white lie,” watching a show with sex on it), terrified that he’ll send you to Hell anyway or are content with the story that God tortured his son Jesus to death on a cross, basically as a sacrifice to himself.

I kept thinking in watching Christmas Vacation, “It’s a commercialist holiday, for pete sake! All these ‘traditions’—the house decked out in lights, the huge and exorbitant feast, the presents, the bringing the whole family together—are a cultural construct that you’ve been suckered into! And do you really need a pool, or is that just another status symbol that will boost your self-image and your self-worth as a man, and provider as a husband and a father—or rather, in what America tells you that you should be as those things?”

Religion does the same thing. It holds up an image of what a Christian should be: An idealized, romanticized, impossible-to-live-up-to superman (or superwoman). It’s an image that millions of well-meaning and sincere people think they have to squeeze themselves into every day, and they beat themselves up when they ultimately fail to do so. Because after all, the only thing that matters is getting to Heaven to spend eternity with Jesus, at any cost—even if that cost is a lifetime of misery.

So Clark Griswold… you’re doing it wrong.

85. dreaming

This’ll probably be a shorter post than what normally goes up here.

I was doing some thinking the other night while commenting on a blog post about a pastor being fired from his church for posting (yes, just posting) an article about the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal. Naturally I jump on this topic as yet another proof of how Christianity’s a sham and a fraud. There was a mix of opinions and perspectives, but one woman, “DR,” stood out. She posted this reply to one of my comments:

I can’t imagine a reasonable person who cares about good things, possesses a sound mind and character and who’s gay would ever choose “Jesus” as a result of what the church offered you (nothing but abuse). I’m a Christian – that you rejected what we offered to you was probably the healthiest decision you could have ever made for yourself spiritually and emotionally (maybe even physically).

I’m sorry. An apology or a thousand apologies will never be enough to repair the damage we’ve done. And it’s our fault we allowed this to continue, even those of us who didn’t ever buy into that nonsense taught. We weren’t loud enough, we weren’t strident enough. We weren’t brave enough to stand up for you. I am now but it’s too little too late for so many of you who experienced such rejection and devastation as a result of what Christians did. But it’s our responsibility now to clean up this mess that we’ve caused, to try to repair the damage these beliefs have done to our country – and hopefully, just leave you alone in peace.

I nearly cried reading and re-reading that—but, of course, I’m a man so I stoically held them back. (Kidding! I don’t have a soul, that’s why I don’t cry!)

It made me stop and think why I’m so angry at the Church, and at God. I have to wonder just how much of my anger is really still at Seth. After all, his final rebuffing of me, on my birthday no less, was the final straw in my haystack of doubt that led me to walk away from Christianity. And I want to be totally honest in my reasons for being a non-theist and do it because it’s what I really believe.

I’ve written about this before, but part of my reason for sticking with Christianity for as long as I did was because of Seth. He was a Christian and future pastor, and frankly I’d never met a guy like him before who seemed to think the way that I did about faith and what the church should be. He was radical and passionate, and loved people, and I loved all of that about him. And I wanted to be a Christian because it meant being part of him and what he was doing. So when he rejected me and my feelings for him that night on my birthday, that whole identity was shattered. It was already falling to pieces by the time I met Seth, but that second rejection was the coup de grâce. If there was to be no Seth in my world, then there would be no more God in my world; and if no God, no religion.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there hadn’t been God in my world… for some time. He’d gradually slipped away piece by piece over the years as I’d studied the bible in an attempt to (ironically) better understand my faith, and to reconcile faith and homosexuality. And God was a part of the past that I was holding on to, like a security blanket.

And, truth be told, there is also a bit of a mean-spirited, bitter component to my ire towards religion—a part of me that doesn’t want anyone else to find happiness and contentment in the church. “They are all deluding themselves! There is no God. It’s a façade, a fiction!” And I am angry that I can’t be part of Seth’s church, as I’d hoped to. And not just his either—my friends Adam, Jenny and Joe are all in it too. My roommates Mark and Emily are probably going to join too, and I can’t join them, so yet again I’m the perennial outsider, and the only role I know to play is the Satan character. (I’m usually cast as the villain in a show, partly because I’m good at it.)

Part of me wants to still believe in God—the part that longs for transcendence, that hopes against all hopes that this world isn’t all there is and that there is a larger purpose and design for it; that no matter how dark it gets, or how lonely I am (which is too often these days) that there is someone compassionately listening, understanding, comforting.

And then I see those words and realize how I’m falling for the emotional bullshit all over again. I’ve never had a direct experience with God. I had religious experiences as a teen and young adult, but never ones that couldn’t be explained rationally afterward. I’ve never been healed, or known anyone who has been healed. I’ve never heard a voice, or had a vision, or whatever else counts as a “religious experience.”

To the best of my knowledge, that is all we have of God—a sense that He exists, that we are not alone, that He’s hearing our prayers. But wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.

Seth was only that catalyst that tipped me over the edge, in a direction I was headed when I met him. Between how my parents raised me and the lack of answers from the Christian community, it’s surprising I didn’t become an atheist sooner. Doesn’t mean the old familiar ache doesn’t spring up from time to time, and make me miss Seth, or God, or the church, or the community and fellowship that I once enjoyed.

Still doesn’t necessarily make any of it true.

51. terminiology

I was just looking at an email that my dad sent me back in March of 2007, just after I’d left my home church of fourteen years when a new pastor took over and was steering everything in more of a “megachurch” direction. (That, and the executive pastor was just an evil, evil man.) These were from some notes he took at a church conference.

The language that you’ll often hear in discussions like this about churches is Seeker vs. Missional. Considering that I’m looking for a new home church, this conversation is pretty relevant at the moment. I’d have to say that most churches now appear to follow more of the “Seeker” model. See what you think. Where does your church lie on this spectrum? I’m curious if the four models outlined at the bottom are the only ones, or if there are more. It seems too simplistic, reductionist, and even dangerous to boil it down that much. Is it the nature of Emergent churches to have liberal theology?

As Jack D. Caputo observes, “Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear” (from Deconstruction in a Nutshell).

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SEEKER

• Business model mindset
• Market-driven (surveys, polls)
• Gain larger following
• Dispenses services
• Pragmatic
• Bring ‘em in mentality, events
• Programs to attract non-Christians
• Sharing vs. preaching teaching/sermon format

MISSIONAL

• Theologically, biblically led
• Counter-cultural
• Theology impacts culture
• Christians reach out to non-believers
• No evangelical events, no surveys
• Go-out mentality
• Christians gather to worship, fellowship; scatter to evangelize
• Every believer a missionary, each trained to that end

Under “Emerging v. Emergent” [Mark] Driscoll lists 4 current directions churches may take in addressing a post-modern culture:

1. Emergent – very liberal theologically, people-driven pragmatic approach
2. Emerging – house churches, basically moderate evangelicalism
3. Evangelical with upgrade to music (“edgy”)
4. Missional – reformed theology (above characteristics)