147. qualia

“It is a horrible thing for a man to be so doctrinal that he can speak coolly of the doom of the wicked, so that, if he does not actually praise God for it, it costs him no anguish of heart to think of the ruin of mil­lions of our race. This is horrible! I hate to hear the terrors of the Lord proclaimed by men whose hard visages, harsh tones, and unfeeling spirit betray a sort of doctrinal desiccation: all the milk of human kindness is dried out of them. Having no feeling himself, such a preacher creates none, and the people sit and listen while he keeps to dry, lifeless statements, until they come to value him for being ‘sound’, and they them­selves come to be sound, too: and I need not add, sound asleep also, or what life they have is spent in sniffing out heresy and making earnest men offenders for a word. Into this spirit may we never be baptized!”

—Charles Spurgeon

Earlier this month I met up with my Former Fundamentalists Meetup group at a coffee shop in Saint Paul. It was a larger turnout than usual, about ten altogether, with several new faces there, and some of our meetings are usually devoted to sharing our “coming out” stories of how we left Christianity or religion. (Not all are atheists, but the majority is probably nontheist.) The purpose of the group is really to provide a sense of community and belonging, and a safe place for people who have been abused or had negative experiences in religion to share their stories—and there are some sad and even horrific stories amongst our members.

One of the guys is a former member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, my old church, so we have fun comparing stories about our experiences there and with John Piper, the lead pastor there, and the awful things that he says and does. In all honesty, it’s not at all productive or helpful and not in line with my current proactive kick, but it does feel good to be able to vent once in a while and feel understood.

In trying to find one quote from the eighteenth century preacher Jonathan Edwards, I came across the above passage from Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth century British preacher and evangelist. I was really struck by how antithetical his statement is to what normally passes for conservative Christian attitudes today and how indifferent many of those Christians are to the thought of hell as regards the “damned.”

At Pride last month I met a Christian couple who was going around handing out Bibles and having conversations with people there. To my surprise they weren’t concerned at all with preaching or converting anyone to Christianity—or away from homosexuality, which was kind of a shock. Mainly they wanted to share the “love of God” with anyone and everyone there, and find out where people were at since they figured that so many of us at the festival probably had negative experiences with and perceptions of the church. They didn’t believe that homosexuality was a good thing, but also didn’t believe that it was their place to judge or tell anyone how they should be—which was also a bit of a shock since most Christians I know see it as their duty to “proclaim the Truth” (yes, with a capital ‘T’).

What Spurgeon describes is almost exactly what passes for “compassion” in most churches now. Oh, they’re sorry that some people won’t enjoy the pleasures of worshiping God in Heaven for all Eternity, but it doesn’t really keep them up nights. They seem to take a secret enjoyment in knowing that they’re on the winning side, on Team Jehovah.

Johann Gerhard wrote that “the Blessed will see their friends and relations among the damned as often as they like but without the least of compassion.” Jonathan Edwards wrote, “The sight of hell’s torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. . . Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell. . . I tell you, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish his bliss.”

And this is supposed to be the more moral worldview? The one that encourages parents to take sadomasochistic pleasure in the damnation of their own children, and of their friends and neighbors? This is the loving God that supposedly sent himself to die for the supposed sins of the sinful people he created?

Now, I would be remiss in not saying that there are plenty of Christians who do not subscribe to this doctrine. All in all, they are good, kind, compassionate people who believe that their God is one of love. But I have yet to hear from them a satisfactory answer to why, according to their own holy book, their God has done such horrific things—ordering the mass slaughter of entire cities in order to populate them with his “chosen people” (Deuteronomy 3, Joshua 6), ordering kidnapping and rape (Judges 21), slavery (including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11)), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and human (including child) sacrifice (Genesis 22:1-19, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, Judges 11:29-40, 2 Kings 23:23-25), to name just a few of his crimes against humanity.

No wonder the Christians are so lacking in genuine compassion when they see examples like this from their God in their holy book.

In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Frank Bruni takes on the perennial subject of Michele Bachmann and her very public image as an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian. He quotes Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who said: “Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children.”

Christians are quick to quote John 3:16, but seem to forget what follows it— “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world…”

117. excogitate

excogitate, verb: 1) To think out; devise; invent; 2) To study intently and carefully in order to grasp or comprehend fully.

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Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit.

And nothing would be worse than a scholarly analysis. Erudition. Interpretation. Complication. Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness.

I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see that I have been found out.

— Margaret Edson, Wit

I’ve always been a solitary sort of person. Just ask my roommates. Like the stereotypical scholar, I can hole away in my room for a day or two, seemingly without the need for human company. The west end of my bedroom is lined with books up to the ceiling, and my headboard is currently filled with volumes that are in the process of being read. I often emerge having forgotten how to actually talk to people, or converse with them in a way that isn’t on paper or screen. Such is the peril of the writer.

When I was about twelve years old, I distinctly recall driving to church with my family. I don’t remember specifically why, but on this occasion I can remember being angry with my father. That isn’t particularly notable since I was often angry with my father. Aside from the occasional connection over music, we’ve never really gotten on well. That in itself is also probably not particularly notable. It’s the age old theme, isn’t it? Father against son? Son against father? The Jungians were fascinated by “father hunger” and the pang felt for an absent parent, physically or otherwise.

My own father was physically present in the home as much as he could be. When we were younger he literally worked across the street at the Christian community college he taught at in rural Kansas. My two younger sisters and I were homeschooled during our entire stay there (1986-1993), so we’d see him when he came home for lunch some days. But he was largely absent emotionally. He and I rarely spent any time together, and if we did it often ended in a fight and me getting sent to my room. I don’t know if I even knew what was going on, if I knew to ask for his attention, or if he even knew how to reach out. Likely he did not. His own father was distant, from what I can hear, and physically abusive towards his own children.

So that afternoon, driving to church, sitting behind my dad with my sisters in the backseat of his blue Saturn, I suddenly decided then and there that I was going to have nothing more to do with love of any kind. (Yes, I know, very Ring des Nibelungen. And yes—das Rheingold is a gimmick.) It was messy, nonsensical, human, and left the lover open to getting taken advantage of and hurt. The best course of action was to shut myself off from the world; to be hard and untouchable; and all that sort of thing.

But the sad thing is that it rather worked. Now, this is around the time that I started to enter puberty, and was also starting to get an inkling that I might not be heterosexual, despite all the indoctrination and against the expectations of my family, so this may have been an unconscious tactic to guard against them finding out.

Part of it was too that I was tired of not being accepted by my family. Shortly after this my parents started attending parenting seminars and began to see all of the mistakes that they’d made, but it was rather too late for all of that. The damage had been done. And to keep myself safe, I shut my family out. I refused to let any of them love me, because for so much of my early years “love” meant getting hurt. Sadly, this also meant that attempts on my parents’ part to make amends for that glanced off, and were met instead with violent resentment from my child-self.

Even now, I still resent my parents for what they didn’t do then; but there’s no going back to change anything. They’ve apologized, but I doubt it will ever be enough.

Yes, other people have had much worse from their parents—years of physical (and even sexual) abuse, neglect, abandonment, etc. But it feels as though they left me half-formed as an adult. Most people miss out on those things from their parents, but find it in friends or other parental figures. My younger sister and I were homeschooled up until the 9th grade; but aside from some friends from church and a few kids in the neighborhood, I didn’t have many friends. My younger sister had many friends from dance, and my youngest sister had friends from band. For me, I threw myself into the only thing I was decent at: piano. I practiced a lot, sometimes up to four hours a day.

For me, love, self-worth and acceptance are tied up in what I do, and how good I am at those things. Any failure (perceived or real) is viewed as a personal defect that downgrades my personal worth. The only way that I felt I could get my parents’ approval was to be really good at piano. And for a while I was. Then I was good at composition. And then I wasn’t getting commissions, and getting rejection letters from competitions and contests and artists.

And the sick thing is that I know intellectually what’s happening. I’m writing about it in an almost auto-narrative fashion! But I can’t seem to do anything about it.

As desperately as I want to be in a relationship, there’s no way I could be in one right now without unconsciously sabotaging it. I can’t believe that anyone loves me because I don’t truly love myself.

So much for being smart.