Undercover Agnostic (Update 27): A Sensory Overload Christmas

Sheldon's note: This will be a bit of a long rant, bear with me. ;)

I had been planning Christmas party with mom and dad at my house for the Sunday School class, and anyone else from the church I am "undercover" in (at least until next month, I'm planning to come out then, I've already come out to my sister). Mom had told me that she was going to help set up most everything Friday during the day, while I was work on a 12 hour shift, and then she would either be gone by the time I got home about 5:30, or shortly after.

She had said that she was going to take my 85 pound dog, "Happy Horse", a Black Lab/hound mix with her when she left. Imagine my surprise when I come home and not only is everything set up, but Happy Horse is still there, barking at me when I come in the back door, and she's still there with my dad. I hadn't suggested the idea of her leaving before the party started, that was her idea, but I was rather annoyed that she wasn't keeping her word about that

The party was due to start at 7, and they are both still there while people are showing up. Oh, and did the people show up. Everyone I invited came, along with some of their friends.

In all, it was around 18 people at it's highest point in a house that's only 763 square feet upstairs, bigger than my mom and dad's house, but still too small for that many people, especially considering that you can't go outside

(It was around 30 degrees and sleet/snow coming down). The living room and kitchen where every one was gathered is only about half of that space, and for some reason, people didn't want to spend time down in the basement, where I have essentially a second living room, and a kitchen style table set up.

It was really getting to my issues with sensory overload, the mass of people gathered, too many people having too many different conversations at once, which in me, leads to it all blending into an overwhelming cacophony of intelligible noise. I stayed to the edges of the crowd, talking to a few people, letting the crowd do it's thing, generally staying to the room where I felt the least suffocated.

My mom, however, didn't find that acceptable, she denies that I have depression, forced me off of medication when I came back home after my nervous breakdown, so the idea that I could possibly be autistic is beyond her limited comprehension.

 She starts working the crowd herself, her massive ego kicks in, and she starts overriding her normal aversion to crowds showing every the house, and acting like she owns the place so much that a few people who didn't know me (the friends of friends), actually asked her if we all lived there together.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 26): People Can Do Amazing Things, Despite Their Awful Beliefs

This morning, as I entered the church a little late for the beginning of Sunday School (I had a hard time waking up and getting ready this morning), I had walked into the room where Jason * normally has his Sunday School class, and the room was mostly empty. The music director of the church was telling me that Jason was in the hospital with his sister Kelly*, she has had recurring heart problems for years, and she was in emergency surgery to open an artery.

She had noticed that heart attack like symptoms were starting, and with her medical history (she had open heart surgery only about 4 years ago), she knew it was, and that it was definite cause for concern. Reports are that she hadn't had a heart attack yet, but was very close to having one, it was stopped in time.

The music director was trying to redirect people from Jason's class to his Sunday School class, but I went on to a class with a teacher and people I was more familiar with. This class, and a larger class was carrying on their tradition of meeting together for announcements before splitting into their classes, planning future events together both in and outside the church.

For some odd reason, both of these classes are mostly made of of middle aged people, some are married couples, but most are divorced (which is highly ironic, considering the views that the church has on divorce). some were divorced while they were at this church, others before they ever came there.

The church, among some other charitable endeavors that include a food pantry and clothes closet, has a habit of serving food in the church fellowship hall twice a month to a large number of poor and homeless people in the area.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 25): A.W. Tozer's Ideas on the Holy Spirit

I have written before in this series about the Sunday School  books from Lifeway that many Southern Baptist churches, including the one that I am undercover in, are so fond of. They are quarterly workbooks with studies based off of the text of two books from popular ministers and theologians, both past and present.

Right now, we're at the end of the fall quarter, and the last section of the book is from Mystery of the Holy Spirit by theologian A.W Tozer, who died in 1963. Some of his books are considered classics in the world of theology.

I noticed some passages from the last week of the study sections that seemed rather interesting to me, and I wanted to know what the people out there in the blog audience thought of them.

So, instead of me rambling on and on (which you did know what you were getting into, after all, the blog is titled Ramblings of Sheldon ;) ), I'll let A.W Tozer speak for himself:

His comments on understanding the Holy Spirit:

I wish all church people might hear this. that the realm of the Spirit is closed to the intellect. It is not difficult to understand why. You see the spirit is the organ by which we aprehend divine things, and the human spirit is dead because of sin. Therefore the human intellect is not the organ by which we apprehend divine things.

Undercover Agnostic: (Update 24): The Pentecostal Boss and the Pregnant Neighbor

There have been some recent developments with two past characters from my Undercover Agnostic series, the pregnant neighbor “Jennifer” from the post The Cult of Fetus Worship, and the Pentecostal boss of mine (let’s call him “Carl”) from my second post, Questions From My Boss About My Unbelief, that I wrote in January 2013.

First, I’ll start with Jennifer. Apparently either her doctors had made a mistake, or she had misunderstood what they had said. Their warnings about missing limbs and brain damage to the fetus were about what would happen if her blood pressure and blood disorder problems were to continue, they haven’t so far.

Ultrasounds have shown that nothing seems to have gone wrong so far, and so she had changed her mind about going to Maryland for the late term abortion. It still makes me mad that most states, including Illinois, wouldn’t have done it, even under extreme and/or life threatening circumstances, it’s putting religion over doctors when it comes to healthcare decisions.

What was just as bad as the broken legal system was the fact that my mother was still trying to convince her not to have an abortion despite the fact with what we knew at the time, she could have died giving birth (3 women in her family had actually died in the past under similar circumstances, it’s genetic).

Its why, in frustration, that I had titled the post “The Cult of Fetus Worship”, if someone is so strong in their views against abortion that they would rather take the horrible odds against a woman’s life in extreme circumstances over the idea of her having an abortion, they’re not “pro-life”, it’s a cult of fetus worship in reality.

Though she has decided to give birth, she is making arrangements with a local couple to adopt. Her doctors, once they knew she wanted to give birth, had started helping her to find possible adoptive parents.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 23): Discussions About Charismatic Christianity and Unintentional Double Meanings

(Pentecostal televangelist Benny Hinn)

This Sunday, at Sunday School, my Sunday School teacher "Jason", a regular in the Undercover Agnostic   series, said that his sister "Kelly" was gone because she was visiting their aunt and uncle in the town of Jacksonville in west central Illinois. He said Kelly was a wondering what she would be seeing this week since they are what is known as "Charismatic" Christians, (extreme Pentecostals), and she attends church with them when she visits.    


This had started a conversation on the entire Pentecostal movement, and it brought to mind my days in the Assembly of God denomination as a young boy, which is likely more moderate than the church that Kelly will be visiting, but still Pentecostal and fundamentalist none the less. Some time ago, I wrote a guest post titled Subconscious Phone Conversations with God about my first speaking in tongues experience on the blog Leaving Fundamentalism.

Jason talked about how his uncle was a big enthusiast of Biblical prophecy, the book of Revelation, and various theological debates surrounding the end times (Will we be raptured up before or after the Tribulation? etc.). I remember those days well, and just how popular that kind of theology was, and related fiction too, like the popular Left Behind series in the 90's and early 2000's.

I had a Sunday School teacher then I'll call "Jack", who was a big fan of such theology, and he had a very interesting life story. He grew up in a town in central England, was a solider in the final years of World War II, and met his wife, a German citizen, in the war.

His stories of coming from a rather rowdy British family were quite amusing. His family had the reputation of being some of the tougher people in the neighborhood, especially his mother and brothers. He once told the story of how in England, much like it was in the US at the time, people wouldn't hesitate to scold (or sometimes even punish) other people's children, or if they did something mischievous. Sometimes, they would practically drag them to their parents, explain the situation, and the child would have hell to pay from their own parents once they got in the door.

Once, he did something a neighborhood father didn't approve of, and the man thought nothing of it to spank him for it. His mother didn't approve of such societal norms, and was furious. She went to confront the neighbor, and asked him why he did this and he said he was "chastising" young Jack. His mother supposedly told him, "Oh yes? Well let me 'chastise' you!", and despite the fact that she was a foot shorter than him, punched him in the face.

Undercover Agnostic: (Update 22): If That Is All We Give Them, Then We Have Given Them Nothing

The Southern Baptist church I am undercover in has been fond of participating in Operation Christmas Child, a yearly campaign by Samaritan’s Purse, a charitable organization started by Franklin Graham, the son of legendary Protestant evangelist Billy Graham, who was an influential leader in US Christianity at the height of his career.

                 

Operation Christmas Child is a campaign that encourages Protestant churches around the US to fill shoe boxes, or small rectangular plastic boxes full of toys and other items to be sent to children in third world countries at Christmas time.

They distribute information about what to include in the boxes, and what not to, and get a church in each local area to act as the local receiving and distribution center, gathering the boxes from local churches as they are dropped off, and coordinating the transport of them to Samaritan’s Purse.

One interesting aspect of this campaign is if someone doesn’t have the time to pack and donate a box to them, they can donate a set amount of money to “sponsor” a box, to cover the average cost of Samaritan’s Purse employees and volunteers to build one themselves, and send it off in the name of that person.

Before the church service, they played the normal promotional video clips for OCC, showing the children receiving the gifts, and what it takes to get the gifts to some locations, such as donkeys carrying into villages in the mountainous areas of Pakistan. At the end, however, it talked about the pamphlets that they include in each box in the child’s native language, encouraging them to convert to Christianity.

The video said that toys wear out, and “if that is all we give them, then we have given them nothing”, then the video carries on about how these gifts bring the “eternal gift” to them, a chance to “accept Jesus Christ as their savior”.

Undercover Agnostic: (Update 21) The Cult of Fetus Worship

Lately, my dad had told me that one of my new neighbors (I’ll call her “Jennifer”, you know my habit, everyone in the Undercover Agnostic series gets a new name), had confided in him and my mother some tough issues that she was facing with her pregnancy. With her being such a small woman (5’4 tall, about 140-150 pounds or so), it’s very easy to forget that she actually is pregnant. She is 7 months pregnant now, and recent ultrasounds have shown that the fetus is not only missing an arm and a leg, but will likely be born with severe brain damage as well. To top off this bad news, Jennifer also is showing signs that she is suffering from a genetic condition that is passed down through her family that causes high pressure, and severe heart strain during pregnancy and child birth (3 female ancestors of hers have actually died from this condition during child birth).

Her doctors brought up the option of abortion, but because of the successful campaigns of “pro-life” groups, even in a center left state like Illinois (for crying out loud, our politicians seem to think the state capital is Chicago instead of Springfield, but that’s another rant for another day), because the problems weren’t spotted until late in the pregnancy, an abortion can’t be done here because of later term abortion bans, and it can’t be done in any neighboring states either.

Because of abortion restrictions, and the risks involved due to the unusual complications in this case, her doctors started reaching out across the country, trying to find states where such an abortion would be legal, and then find doctors in those states that would be willing to take on such risks. The nearest surgeons both able legally to perform such a surgery, and accept the risks are in Maryland.

Surprisingly, even though it wouldn’t be legal here, Illinois’ Medicaid system has told her that they would be willing to pay both for the surgery, and basic travel expense to get there, and between travel time and recovery time, if all goes well, she will end up being gone for up to 5 days.

When told all this by Jennifer, my dad wasn’t fond of the idea of abortion, but he could understand it, he felt like it was a necessary evil so to speak, something that had to be done. My dad has always been the moderate, sensible one in the family, this is what I said about him several months ago in my post, Post Father's Day Thoughts:

“My father was also the more moderate one in the family when it come to fundamentalism, he believed what he believed (and he can still be somewhat homophobic to this day, he isn't perfect), but he also believed in letting people live their lives. He wasn't an angry, in your face fundamentalist, and still isn't. He taught me a lot of things, moderation, respect for other people, and most importantly, love.”

My mom, however, let’s just say that she is so detached from reality from spending so many years in fundie land that she actually believes in the old much debunked, "Knights In Satan's Service" hoax. Yes, I’m serious.

She tried to persuade her not to have the abortion, and I was so angry that she would do this, though I can’t say anything, at least not around her, I’m still undercover. It made me furious that she would actually convince her not to have an abortion in this kind of circumstance, and not have any kind of understanding about why she would consider it, noting these horrible circumstances.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 20): If You Are Going to Go New Testament on Us, At Least Be Consistent About It

Recently, “Jason”, a frequently occurring character in the Undercover Agnostic series, invited me to a viewing of an old A&E special on the history of the early church at the house that he owns with his sister “Kelly”.

Our new pastor, let’s call him “Pastor Jones”, was interesting in viewing the video himself, so Jason had let him preview it before the showing at his house. Pastor Jones’ has been a pastor in churches mostly in the south for some time (North Carolina and Arkansas, he is originally from North Carolina himself), but his theological background is mostly in church history, he has a seminary doctorate in church history in fact.

Since the video was produced by the cable network A&E, it looks more at the history of Christianity from well, a historical and outsider’s perspective instead of a more rigid fundamentalist view. Pastor Jones had a few objections to some statements and assertions that were made, and he had come with a printout detailing his disputes. We were all discussing his list, and then the discussion took a different turn.

Jason spends quite a bit of time with Pastor Jones, especially when he is counseling new church members or prospective members. He had talked about an incident where he had went with Pastor Jones to speak to a man who had been attending the church for a while with his young daughter, and had wanted to convert and join the church.

The pastor asked him if there was anything that he wanted to confess to god and to him as his pastor, and the man said that he had been living with his daughter’s mother, but was not legally married to her. Pastor Jones said that before the church would accept him as a new member, he must either break off the relationship with his girlfriend, or marry her. Jason said the man never contacted either of them again, and both this man and his daughter have not been to the church since.

It started a discussion on marriage and divorce, and Kelly brought up something I never knew about the practices of the church. She said that her son wasn’t willing to join our church because he has been a member of a moderate Christian denomination (I can’t remember which one, I think it was a branch of the Lutheran denomination), and he had married his wife in a ceremony officiated by a female pastor, and the church had already told her and her son that they would not consider his marriage to be legitimate because he was married by a female minister.

I was rather shocked by this, since in over 12 years of being a part of that congregation, (although 3 of those years have been spent undercover), I had never heard of such a policy in place. I had asked the group then about what the policies on divorce were, because I had never heard of anyone being excommunicated, refused membership, or having their second marriage deemed illegitimate in the eyes of the church before. For reference, let’s look at the New Testament view of marriage, divorce and remarriage before, I discuss the group’s reaction.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 19): “I Wish I Could Believe Sometimes”

“Is that a pentacle or a pentagram?” I asked “Mark” as he took over for me in the guard shack because the guy who normally works that night shift for early in the week had called off. I was asking him about a tattoo on his right arm.

He said it was in fact a pentagram, he said he got it some years ago when he was “mad at god”. He grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist background, and was beginning to separate himself from Christianity, and was feeling a lot of anger about his time spent in it, and what he had been taught. He had no connections to Satanism, either now or at the time, but regarded it as a kind of “screw Christianity” kind of message, like some hard rock singers and death metal bands viewed the pentagram in the 70’s-90’s.

He said he wished he didn’t have the tattoo now, mostly because it was so visible, he said he has other tattoos, but he kept them in places out of sight, places where a short sleeved shirt would easily cover them up. He said now that he considers himself an atheist, but he seems at times to be rather confused. He said that he finds many aspects of the Bible to be rather absurd, like Noah’s Ark, the Creation story, etc, and is repulsed by some aspects of Christian theology, (he also agrees with me that the concept of free will in Christianity is a false illusion), but he said something that surprised me, he said he wished he could still believe in Christianity.

He said that he thought that people in Christianity were much happier than people outside of it, and talked about various studies that claim that Christians are happier than other groups. He finds Christianity to be highly contradictory, and rather bizarre, but he’s longing for that sense of joy that many Christians appear on the surface to have. You see, unlike me, he has been very open about his mental health issues at work, he has OCD and anxiety issues, and chooses to deal with it sometimes by making a joke of it, laughing about being on Xanax to keep the anxiety down, etc.

The False Illusion of Free Will in Christianity

Sheldon’s note: Though I use the word “Christianity” in the title when talking about the Christian doctrines of salvation and hell, I am primarily referring to understanding of these doctrines from a fundamentalist perspective; I do understand that some Christians, especially Christian universalists, don’t even believe in the doctrine of hell at all.

My understanding of Christianity primarily comes from my fundamentalist upbringing and former beliefs, so that is my frame of reference when discussing theological matters.

Though fundamentalism both annoys and repulses me, few strains of fundamentalism (other than cults like the Independent Fundamental Baptist group and Sovereign Grace Ministries of  course), annoy me more than people on the more extreme end of Calvinist theology, what the writers of the Christian website The Wartburg Watch like to call “Neo-Calvinists” or “Calvinistas”.

There’s many reasons why I find their theology highly repulsive (and probably still would feel the same way if I had become a more moderate Christian instead of leaving Christianity altogether), but primarily it’s the way they view god, and the way they view humanity. This line of thinking, to me, completely strips away all sense of human dignity, and free will, all while claiming to believe in free will at the same time.

Due to the popularity of ministers/theologians like John Piper and R. Albert Mohler, and the influence of the denomination’s deep connections to the cult Sovereign Grace Ministries, which I mentioned earlier, Neo-Calvinism has become extremely popular among Southern Baptist churches, including the one I am undercover in.

“Jason”, my Sunday school teacher, and co-worker, who makes quite a few appearances in my Undercover Agnostic series (I talked about him just last week), has fully embraced this kind of theology (sometimes I can almost hear John Piper’s voice instead of him when he is speaking about theology).

I was having a discussion with him a few weeks ago about theology, it’s odd that whenever we are outside the church, he still wants to talk about and debate theology, I suppose it’s because he’s one of the few people I have come out to about my change in beliefs, and it’s like a fun challenge to him, he wants to know if he can hold his own in a debate with an agnostic.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 18): A Foggy Mind, a Wedding Ring, and Bittersweet Memories.

Sheldon's note: This post is somewhat of a continuation of update 16 in my Undercover Agnostic series, A Long Talk with Rose. If you are not familiar with that post, please read it now before proceeding to read this post, otherwise it will not make sense to you.

This past Sunday, the normal after church conversations were going on, and Rose's father "Jim", said for Rose to show me a picture on her phone. I saw what it was, a wedding band, on what was most definitely her hand. I had so many different emotions then, ranging from confusion, fatigue, bewilderment, happiness, to somewhat of heartbreaking disappointment.

I was already in a fog, and this picture didn't help my confusion any. Not only was I having some bad fatigue from my depression that put me in a mental fog, but I was starting to have the lottery ball effect at the same time, and I have never had both at the same time. I don't know why, because I have been taking my Cymbalta regularly, but sometimes I still have my bad mental health days, where I feel lost and like absolute crap, tired, confused, and like absolute crap. I haven't had days that bad since the Cymbalta, but I guess life happens that way.

I suppose I should start from the beginning on why this caused so many different emotions for me all at once. I have been good friends with both Rose and her now fiance, Sam, since between they ever started their relationship. I have known both of them for at least 10 years. When we were teens, and shortly after high school, I was very close to Rose, and we had a odd and unique friendship.

She kind of startled me at first, with her happy personality, and her insistence in the first few years that I knew her of always wanting to hug me. I did get used to that, and after some time came to enjoy it, which is odd, because I have talked before on the blog about my resistance and discomfort about people touching me in my post, Personal Space Invaders. I can only tolerate anything more than a handshake if it's coming from a close female friend, like Rose, or if I am in a relationship. Not even family can get too close.

Rose liked being affectionate with me, and we spent a lot of time together in those years. When I was about 19, she brought up the idea of us dating. That's when I made one of the worst mistakes of my life, and one I still regret to this day: I shot down the idea. It's not that I didn't care about her (I did), it wasn't that I wasn't attracted to her (I was, and I still find her to be cute), quite frankly it all boiled down to the fact that quite simply, I was a coward.

There, I said it, it's the truth, and it was a very pretty truth to confront about myself. I was too sacred to take that leap. I was scared of what would happen if we would break up, I wondered if we would still be friends, I was afraid to lose her that way, I was afraid of my abusive mother, who  didn't approve of her, since there was not much I could do to break free of her then (this was very shortly after the nervous breakdown that so greatly changed my life in many ways), I was just scared all around.

Though we remained friends, we have never been as close as we were at that time since. She went on to date Sam, and about a year into their relationship, I confessed the way I felt to Rose, just laid it all out. I felt so guilty, like I had betrayed her, since she cared about me so much. She was surprised that I was carrying so much guilt about it, and I believed her when she said that she had forgiven me, but what was done was done, there's not much I could do about it.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 17): “He’s an Atheist, So He Has Nothing to Say to Me”

I have talked about “Jason” on the blog before. He’s my Sunday School teacher in the church I am undercover in, and he also happens to be a co worker of mine, albeit on a different shift than I am on. Jason can be quite the paradox sometimes, in many ways, he’s a typical fundamentalist, but in other ways he can not only break the mold, but downright shatter it.

He was a theology student after spending several years in the US Marine Corp, and he intended to become a missionary after graduation. He has never said why exactly he left the college he was in a year before graduation, and I’ve never asked. There are times that he can put fundamentalist dogma over his sense of compassion, even for his own family.

I’ve had many discussions with him where he has stood by many of the more absurd tenets of fundamentalism like Young Earth Creationism (he is one of the few people who know about my de-conversion, it’s led to quite a few interesting discussions), not only is he a YEC supporter, but he insists the earth has to be no more than 6,000 years old, it can’t be 10,000 or 25,000, like some YEC supporters say, it must be 6,000, and he won’t budge on that.

Then again, he breaks from the fundamentalist mold in some ways. He doesn’t understand why fundamentalist parents push their children to marry young, he enjoys the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and John Oliver, despite their very liberal leanings, and his own personal sense of humor is well….. the best way to describe it is as being rather twisted. A fellow co worker of ours, a blue collar, non-religious kind of guy, who likes to party on his days off once said that sometimes he can get too vulgar even for him, and that’s really saying something.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 16): A Long Talk with Rose

Last Sunday, I’m in the sanctuary of the church I am undercover in, the service has been dismissed, and the crowds are thinning down quite a bit. I had just been a part of a conversation with Sam and Rose, and another couple about some issues in their relationship.

I have known Sam and Rose for many years, since I was about 14 years old, and they are two of only 5 people in the church I am undercover in that knows about my loss of faith over the last few years. Last year, I wrote a guest post on Laughing in Purgatory about coming out to them, they were both surprised, but both of them have still accepted me, and put up with my odd personality (believe me, that’s not easy to do).

Sam and Rose were talking to a young married couple (the wife is only a year older than me), I’ll call for the sake of this post, Mr and Mrs. Jones. Sam and Rose have been together for nearly 4 years now, and Rose has been pushing the idea of getting married.

There’s many reasons involved in this, I have wrote before about the evangelical obsession with pressuring people to marry young, and the way the culture there tends to alienate single people, and I know that Rose really loves him, and sees this as the next logical step in life and their relationship. However, there’s a lot of issues standing in the way, some I already knew, and were brought up in this conversation, and others, I was told shortly after this conversation (more about that later in the post).

I just sat back and listened for the most part to the conversation between the two couples, and joined in only occasionally. I’ve found through experience that most neurotypicals prefer to take the lead in conversations, especially in groups, and that fact, once I realized that, actually makes my life easier, because sitting back and listening and watching gives me time to prepare for what I am going to say, making sure that I understand not only what they are saying, but what they aren’t saying, the hidden context, tone of voice, body language, etc.

I think it’s more that Sam can’t get married right now, I don’t think the problem is that he doesn’t want to. He kept bringing up that he is supporting his family, his father, who is sincerely as lazy as he can be, and his mother, who has mental health issues (kind of a hoarder type personality, I found out shortly after that she was 15 yappy little dogs in the house that they all live in).

Both Mrs. Jones and I were trying to steer Sam in the right direction, I had suggested that he should try to convince his mom and dad to move into a HUD apartment complex in our town that is designed for the elderly and disabled in our town, instead of living in the house they can’t really afford to live in (and Sam is pouring money into it to keep them from losing it).