A Broken Window and a Major Victory

This has been a stressful week. For two weeks I was out of Cymbalta due to problems with insurance, red tape and hassles involving my name change and an incorrect birth date in my file. Normally I fight through the pain and fatigue, and make sure that I'm using my CPAP mask for sleep apnea, staying hydrated, and just fight though it. By last Wednesday, I just couldn't do it anymore. I called off for the half day of work I had scheduled, and slept until noon. It took me until about 2 pm to be conscious enough to want to go work out, and when I go to my car, I see this.

 

 

I go on with my day, stopping by a Wal Mart to get Gorilla Tape and a roll of plastic similar to what is used when people are painting to keep paint off of carpets and furniture (I figured it would be strong enough not to rip). I knew damn well who did it, but I didn't feel like dealing with it further that day.

 

There's two people who would definitely do something like this, the kind of people who have such poor character that they think there is nothing wrong with beating children , molesting children and teens, holding someone hostage in their home, or attempting to force their way into a house and make violent threats towards the owner if said owner doesn't want them in their life anymore. To top it off, they are working on a rental house for a relative nearly two blocks away, so I know they have been in the area, and on the same street.

 

I made a police report Thursday evening, and thankfully the officer that responded did far better than the last two times officers had to respond to my address. I gave the dispatcher a little background the last two incidents, and made reference to the order that M. Dolon Hickmon helped to draft, and what the police chief had said the last time. I overheard another dispatcher say "oh God" in frustration as though they were saying "not this house again...".

 

The officer that responded did respond quite well to the situation and though he said what I expected that no charges can come from this without a witness or video recording, etc. If the object used to break it was left in the car, that would even help, since fingerprints could be run, but no such luck.

Stabbed in the Back By A Cult Leader.

Recently, I had called my sister to check on her, and as we were talking, she had informed me that my former pastor, who I call "Pastor Jones" for the sake of this post, had leaked out details to my former congregation of a conversation that I had with him, the day I had personally informed him that I was officially resigning my membership at the church, the church I had been a member at for 12 years, until I could finally break free form my abusive family

That day, he had asked why I wanted to resign my membership, so I laid it out there, told him the theological reasons, drifting away from Christianity and becoming more agnostic for lack of a better term, and finding a lot of acceptance and peace at the Unitarian church I am attending now.

Since the abuse of my past played a role in the life experiences that led me there, I told him about how I was beaten until I was about 11 years old, forced off medication for my depression,  barricaded in the house of my "parents" and threatened with violence when I tried to leave at 21 years old, and about the most recent of the abuse, "The Confrontation" , where just this past December, when I was forced to cut them out of my life, and they tried to break into my home, and nearly assaulted me in front of a police officer.

I told him, even if I could believe in Christianity again (which is a massive remote possibility), I couldn't go back to a church as conservative as that church, and I definitely could not return to that church, for my own safety. When I told him this, I explicitly told him that I expected this to be confidential, my exact words were "this should not leave this office". He never once objected to this, and I went on with the presumption that it would remain confidential.

 Unfortunately, Pastor Jones had sided with my family, used the old "honor your mother and father" line on me, doubted what I had told him about the past abuse, and tried to chalk up The Confrontation to holiday related stress, and encouraged me to reconcile with them.

Despite him doing that, I hadn't thought he would stoop that low as to stab me in the back by leaking this information out to the church, but that was the reports I was hearing from my sister. "Mrs. Sociopath" was talking to her about it, supposedly the pastor had told a deacon, who then went on to tell her this information.

After I had heard the news from my sister that he had let this information out, I was furious, I confronted "Jason", my Sunday School teacher when I was in that church about it, he works for the same company that I do, on a different shift.

He denied that Pastor Jones would have done that, and said I had no proof, it's rumors, it could have slipped out some other way, I was rather annoyed with him, defending him, and he got in a little jab about me being agnostic, said that if I considered myself a person guided by logic and reason, then instead of just believing rumors about it, I should ask him myself. I told him I would.

A Sunday of Self Reflection

It's been a long two weeks for me recently, hence why the blog has been silent. A lot of hassles with trying to get my home loan, which is being resolved right now, and I have had more fatigue and pain than I have had in years. Add to that a lot of emotional whiplash from a book that is an absolutely great and profound book, but highly triggering for anyone who grew up in a fundamentalist background, and it's been a mess.

The book is the brilliant work 13:24 by M. Dolon Hickmon. An investigation into a brutal string of murders in a small town leads to all the town's dark secrets spilling out. One of the biggest secrets is a minister who openly advocates child abuse from the pulpit, and whose ideology is remarkably similar to real life fundamentalist leaders.

There were scenes were the minister's son, Josh (who later becomes a lead singer of a death metal band) was having flashbacks to the beatings his father gave him. It was so raw, so vivid, that it was giving me flashbacks, not because of the violence, but because the lines that he used were the exact same lines that were told to me as a child.

There were so many profound statements that really spoke to me through the character Josh. A friend of his asks while he is in a mental hospital due to a suicide attempt and cocaine use. His friend asks them if he wants to bring back an old band that they used to have, he said he wasn't sure about that, and his friend said he used to be passionate about the music. This was his response:

I don't have a clue what I am passionate about because my father stripped away every shred of independence. It was never enough to follow orders. He had to pry me open, to make sure I didn't have any feelings or motivations that he hadn't given me permission to have.

Then, in a scene during a group therapy session for survivors of religious abuse, he talks about why he can't believe in Christianity anymore.

"I was raised to believe that  there was a God, who loves and helps people. I believed  that, and I prayed, with the faith of a little child. God was supposed to listen; but year after year my father stood in his church, daring him to intervene. God never did a single thing. He never lifted one finger to help or comfort me" 

When a Christian woman in the group become offended by this, implying that she thought he wanted everyone to become atheists, this is what he said: 

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we don't always get to believe what we want. Somehow we have to reconcile our desire to believe with the reality we have seen." 

When A Shirt Is More Than Just A Shirt

I had been needing new clothes for some time now, between working to rebuild my house, and gaining a few pounds lately, many of my clothes (pants especially), were too tight, had paint on them, or were wearing out.

I had been buying some clothes with each paycheck, and then my tax refund came in. I bought for myself what I wanted, regardless of what anyone else would think of it for the first time. It was liberating at first when I bought a Pink Floyd shirt and a Sons of Anarchy "Fear the Reaper" emblem shirt, and I could walk around without a care in the world.

You see, I growing up, my mother who absorbed a lot of the superstition of the extreme Pentecostal beliefs she encountered when she converted.

There was evil hiding behind every corner, most forms of modern music were "evil", and she unfortunately even believed the "Knight's In Satan's Service" hoax. I wish I was joking. Anything that seemed remotely loud, dark or edgy was something scary to her. She was always more extreme than the churches we were in, strangely enough, but this kind of paranoia does creep into evangelical/fundamentalist world in many ways, ways that I bought into.

The "fundigelical" world is very paranoid, convinced that outsiders are after them, convinced that the rest of the world is "persecuting them", and often fear and hate groups they don't understand, LGBT people, people practicing any other religion, and well, just the outside world in general.

Ironically it was the intersection of music/media and a person of another religion that in part, helped to lead me out of fundamentalism. Today, I met with a woman who I used to know. She owned a store in my town that sold hard rock memorabilia.

At that point in my life, about 4 years ago, I was starting to question everything I had even known, and I don't know what led me in the door the first time, perhaps it was curiosity, since the store was across the street from a local government building where I was doing a student internship at, seeing that store sitting there day after day, wondering what kind of people I would find in there, running a store like that.

I never knew I would find one of the most wise, mature, loving people I would ever meet in my lifetime. Here's the kicker: She's Wiccan. Many people in the fundamentalist world mistakenly believe that Wicca = Satanism, or at least fear it as something dark and mysterious that they feel is "evil", but at this point, I wasn't trusting anything I had been told before as truth until I learned for myself. I found out that everything I had been told was a lie, and I was glad that I kept an open mind.

Unfortunately, the store closed in October 2012, and life got busy for me, and I hadn't heard from her much since then.

"Born Free, But Still They Hate Me"

Sheldon's note: Part of this blog post may not make sense unless you have read Monday's post, "You Can Check Out Anytime You Like, But You Can Never Leave"  first. If you haven't, please precede to read it first before continuing.

The resignation letter I sent by certified mail after my disastrous meeting with "Pastor Jones" Monday was apparently received. I got a card in the mail from him Saturday that just reeked of the passive aggressiveness he has shown lately in my attempts to leave. Here's the text of the card:

I am writing to inform you that we removed your name from our membership list by your request. I shared with the congregation Wednesday about your decision, and we are committed to loving you and praying for your restoration to Christ's church. I would still welcome you to come and ask me questions. My door is open to you.

 Talk about a healthy dose of good old fashioned fundamentalist shaming and passive aggressiveness. A fellow blogger (and former fundamentalist) on Facebook told me that they're practically telling me in fundie speak between the lines that I'm on the road to hell. This about sums up the way I feel about that:

Tweet courtesy of the Tweet of God parody account on Twitter

I am also highly suspicious of what he means by sharing with the congregation about my decision. I don't trust him, and some of the details I had told him, and explicitly told him was to remain in that office (why did I do that?), I wouldn't doubt that he has probably at least told my parents, if not the congregation itself.

He doubted what I said from the beginning about how my parents were, and "Jason", my former Sunday School teacher, who is the only person from this church standing behind me so far, has said that my mom probably ran to him and spilled all kind of her lies about me, and fundie parents always stick together, even when one of their own is in the wrong.

There's no better examples of than the powerful fundamentalist homeschooling group HSLDA, which defended parents who forced their children to live in cages, and called the father a "hero". They circle the wagons, defend each other, right or wrong. (Especially the baby boomer parents in that culture)

I was surprised by the way Pastor Jones reacted, trying to make excuses for them, trying to manipulate me into putting them back in my life by using the old "honor your mother and father" line, but I guess I shouldn't have expected any better reactions to abuse victims from a pastor in the Southern Baptist denomination.

 They're the same denomination that had one of it's top leaders fire a man for marrying a divorced woman, even though it was public knowledge that this woman had left her first husband because he tried to kill her. Nothing has ever been done so far by the Southern Baptist Convention to punish or reprimand Mr. Patterson for this.

A Lost Puppy and a Letter From a Sociopath

I was rather stressed yesterday afternoon due to a letter from my sociopathic mother (I'll talk more about that later in the post), and I guess the stress was making me want to binge on food (maybe getting involved with OA, should be in my future, who knows....), I had stopped by a local pizzeria that I hadn't been been to in a while, but they were closed. So, I changed plans, and decided to go to a fast food place just off of a local highway.

I cut through some nearby neighborhoods to get to that highway quite often, and as I'm driving, I noticed that traffic on my side of the road on this busy street running through the neighborhoods is coming to a stop, and I don't know why.

A white pit bull pup, who looked a lot like the dog pictured at left here, is going up in front of vehicles, getting them to stop, and then eagerly running to their driver's side door, as though he expects them to let him in and take him for a ride. He's about 60 pounds, probably 7-10 months old, and seems like a very happy dog.

This didn't sit well with me, it was after 3 pm, and so I knew Granite City's Animal Control department would be out of their offices, and not running any trucks either, and I knew if I called the police department dispatcher, and this normally happy dog has an aversion to uniforms (like many dogs do), they wouldn't hesitate to shoot him, our police department is notorious for being trigger happy with large dogs, especially pit bulls.

I start driving through the neighborhoods on both sides of this road, looking for him, asking people walking down the streets if they had seen him, some had, and they were directing me as to where they last saw him. I kept searching, driving up and down the blocks, seeing school buses stop and let children out (I especially looked for him when I saw the buses, because a happy dog like him would probably enjoy children).

All my searching come to nothing, though. I thought I had spotted him at one point, but it was an English Boxer (Boxer/British Bulldog hybrid) safely contained in someone's yard.

I had hoped that either he found his way home or that someone with good intentions had picked him up. I was hoping to convince him to come into the car (which probably would have been easy to do), and turn him over to a no kill shelter in the morning, find out if they could help to find his owner.

He seemed well taken care of, even his bright white coat was very clean. I didn't know why I was so concerned about this poor lost dog. I have always understood dogs better than people, and I guess with everything that has been overturned in my life lately, I understand where this lost pup was coming from.

"You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave"

I haven't entered the premises of the old "fundigelical" church I was undercover in since The Confrontation. I went in to personally resign my membership, and oh my, was that a mistake....

First, I was told by the church's office director that formal notice would have to be given before Wednesday, to put it on this month's business meeting to be formally accepted. Then, "Pastor Jones" happened to show up as I was leaving, and requested that I meet with him in his office.

I should have known they were going to try to reel me back in. Pastor Jones, instead of trying to be the typical raging fundamentalist pastor, likes to portray himself as the soft spoken southern intellectual (originally from North Carolina, graduated with a PhD in church history).

He wanted to know why I was wanting to resign my membership in the church, and had told me that he didn't like the idea that the church's office director had about me sending in my resignation via e-mail to her. He wanted a signed paper copy mailed in, (so it will be more official, of course). I told him about my theological issues with Christianity, about The Confrontation, and finding peace and acceptance at the Unitarian church.

Undaunted, he kept wanting to ask more questions, kept wanting me to come back to Christianity, and actually had the nerve to pull out the "honor your father and mother line".

Yes, he went there, and said that he wished that I could be reconciled with my family, made excuses, maybe it's because of the holidays, etc. I told him him that she has been like that my entire life, and now my dad is starting to act just like her.

I told him that I have always felt like I've been treated like property, and that she won't change that view, won't ever recognize me as an adult. Undaunted, he kept on, started saying that maybe there's a way to keep them in my life, but keep them at a slight distance. I told him that I can't go back to living my life that way, she will not change, I have given her plenty of chances. He clearly didn't agree with me, but he let it go, and then zeroed in on the theological issues.

He wanted to know what led me to change my mind on Christianity, and he kept pushing for me to meet with him later to discuss it. I had told him that I had spent quite a while going over everything myself, it's been 4 years now, it's not a phase (like many Christians I have come out to have thought).

I even consulted with a few people from the church, who ended up introducing me to John Piper, which just disgusted me even more. He said that he felt like he was more equipped to deal with the hard questions of theology, since he had had so much experience as a pastor, plus advanced seminary degrees, and tried to get me to set up appointments with him to discuss it

 Before I said that I had been talking to a few people from the church, he kept wanting to know who I had been talking to about this, it was very reminiscent of the guest post I had Sunday, "Somebody On That Internet".

Somebody on That Internet (Guest Post).

Sheldon's note: Today's post is from a fan of the blog who recently contacted me, she wanted to tell her story of leaving Christianity, and coming to terms with being transgender. She wants to only be identified as Natasha.

On Christmas day 1995, I received my first computer. It was all mine, no censorship, no controls. In the beginning, I used it to play games, sooner or later burning it out, and progressing to other computers, like my sister's Windows 98. Parallel to my computer progressions were personal progressions. Most notably, at around ten years old I scoured the internet to find people who felt like I did, my first exposure to the term "transgender."

When I was twelve, my internet exploration expanded. I found my way to conspiracy sites and then back around to sites that promoted skepticism and critical thinking. It was a total paradigm shift, as between the ages of twelve and fourteen I went from a Noah's Flood-doubting Jesusite to a full-blown atheist. To be sure, it was mostly my initiative: I became active in questioning the things in the Bible that didn't make any sense (starting with the flood) and worked my way to the actual scientific questions of evolution and the big bang. I was absolutely relentless in this search for knowledge.

It was somewhere in the middle of that period of rapid change where Somebody On That Internet first showed his face.

When I started openly questioning the doctrines of Christianity, asking my parents to source their statements or tell me how things were the least bit rational, they had a curious defense: Somebody On That Internet must be training me to be anti-Christian.

During this period, I had no internet friends, it was just me and Google, plus occasional regular sites like Bad Astronomy. To them, being from a hardcore Christian culture, it must have made no sense for someone so young to be able to think for themselves, so they had to invent a villain who was trying to warp my mind.

Somebody On That Internet didn't just dabble in skepticism, however. Somebody On That Internet was also the first (and last) person to go around trying to convert people to transsexuality.

My first time coming out as transgender was in 2005, when I would have been between fourteen and fifteen. I had been caught "crossdressing" no less than four times over the preceding 7 years and they probably knew that even after the last time I didn't stop.

 In retrospect, they had to know. Like atheism, it was just a phase, they knew what I wanted more than I did, and it wasn't "to be a girl." After coming out as transgender, I was told that Somebody On That Internet was brainwashing me into bad things, first turning me into an atheist and then making me think I didn't want to be a boy. Clearly, Somebody On That Internet was a master of manipulation.

Changed Locks and Violent Parents (Part 2): Picking Up the Shattered Pieces

Sheldon's note: If you haven't already, read post 1, The Confrontation, before continuing to read this post, because it will not make sense out of context.

After the confrontation Wednesday, I'm resting, and trying to pick up the pieces of my life. They haven't attempted to visit, or contact me, if they try, or if they make a huge scene if I encounter them in a public place (which could easily happen in a town of 30,000 people), then I'll file charges and/or a restraining order.

 I know some people had been asking about that, if I would go through with a restraining order, but I was already notified by the officer at the scene that they can be prosecuted simply for trying to contact me, or showing up at the house again. If they do attempt anything like that, or go after "Cathy", the neighbor that is helping me with my dog, "Happy Horse", then there will be hell to pay legally for them (especially if they try to go after Cathy and her kids).

Right now, I guess you could best describe me as being war weary, and trying to recover. I'm looking at where to go from here. All I know is that I'm going nowhere near them from now on, my mom has proven that she can't change.

She actually had the nerve to tell my sister in Indiana that she couldn't understand why I got law enforcement involved. Seriously? Relative or not, if someone is trying to force their way into your home, what else would you do? Better question, why can't a mentally healthy 54 year old adult understand this basic concept (or is trying to pretend not to, she's good at playing stupid sometimes)?

My life is going to drastically change, I know that I have to rebuild all of my social circles all over again, from this week forward, I'm no longer the Undercover Agnostic.

The time had come for me to finally come out, my sister already knows that I'm not a Christian anymore, though I didn't tell her about becoming an atheist, but from now on, if the issue comes up in conversation, or I'm asked, I'll calmly lay it out there. I'm not the kind of person to shout what I believe on faith, politics, etc, from the rooftops offline, it's not who I am.

The problem arises however, that I'm going to have to rebuild all my social circles all over again, the people I knew from the fundie church will drift away for various reasons, whether it be simple lack of contact/no shared interests, believing the lies that my mom will inevitably tell them about this incident, or rejecting me as being an "evil sinner", even though my lifestyle won't change that much, I'll be "one of them", the people from the evil outside world, no matter how I live my life.

Some of them will stick around like, Jason, the Sunday School teacher (partly because we still work for the same company), and the young couple Sam and Rose, that I have been good friends with for years, but I need to start new circles, look for new groups, it's getting too quiet and lonely around the house.

I had thought that I would skip anything resembling a church from now on, but it turns out that getting up and going somewhere on a Sunday morning is too hard of a habit to break.

I went this past Sunday to a Unitarian church. I had to go about 10-15 miles to a nearby community for the closest one, it only took me about 20 minutes to get to the neighborhood, but about 30 minutes to find the church within the historical neighborhood that the church is in (thanks, Google Maps).

Sometimes, I Think I Should Just Get It Over With Already

I'm sure many of you are probably tired of hearing me gripe about my life, but I have something to tell you: I'm sick of it too. I keep having this strange compulsion to keep writing, to keep opening up those wounds, both new and old. Maybe it's because I can't speak openly about such things in my personal life. Few people know about me being in the closet about my atheism, and none know anything about the abuse in my past.

Right now, I'm getting frustrated, I want out, I want to finally break free, and declare to the world I'm an atheist. I want to no longer have to support a denomination I abhor, a denomination that refuses to do anything about the pedophilia in their midst, a denomination that's misogynist, supports complementarian theology, and is highly homophobic.

It makes me sick to think that in order to keep my cover, I have to keep donating to this despicable group. My money going to support this, my name on the membership rolls. I don't know what's holding me back, if it's fear, or something else. I know it's inevitable, I must do it sometime, I must come out, I didn't fight this hard to get what little progress I have made in my life, just to give up, and roll over, and pretend to be something I'm not for the rest of my life, just to make people around me happy.

There's an American analogy that some situations are like "ripping off a Band Aid", if something you are dreading is inevitable, it's best to just get it over with, fight through the pain. That's the way I need to think about it. I'm thinking that sometime after Christmas, I'll just go ahead and do it (or is waiting that long procrastinating out of fear, I wonder, putting it off for another day?)

Isolating Kids to Shield Them from "The World" Is Not Only Harmful, but Counter Productive

Recently, I published a post titled Can You Sincerely Believe in Something If You Have Never Doubted or Questioned It?, it was a repose to a blog post by Christian blogger Kansas City Bob about the "Idol of Certainty". I had said that I can't really see how a belief in anything, politics, etc, but especially religion can be a personal belief, a true and powerful part of someone's identity if they have never seriously questioned it or doubted it at some point.

Blogger Jack Vance  had this to say in response to the post:

Here was my long, rambling response, which really got me thinking about the fundamentalist homeschooling movement and how it makes questioning downright impossible when a young person is in it, due to the constant isolation in order to protect children from "the world":



Not only question the maturity of it, but the strength of it? How strong can someone's beliefs be when held up to questioning and opposition if someone has never questioned and tested it?

I think that was kind of a fatal flaw of the current fundamentalist system. Fundies like to blame secular colleges for their kids leaving the faith, as though professors are actively trying to de-convert students (you of all people would know that's the farthest from the truth), (Sheldon's note: Jack Vance is a university professor in Mississippi) but it's not the colleges that are leading to the de conversions, it's being allowed to experience the outside world for the first time, being exposed to all varieties of people, and realizing that the world doesn't fit in a nice little fundamentalist box, and that some people aren't as bad as they were lead to think.Their faith is being confronted with reality, and it has never been questioned by reality before. They've never asked the hard questions about their faith, because they haven't been outside of fundie land, and never been faced with questions before.

Heaven vs. Hell, Forgiveness vs. Justice

In my post, The False Illusion of Free Will, I talked about the concept of free will in Christianity, more from a fundamentalist perspective, and how it was a horrible illusion. The can not truly be any free will, any free choice to accept or reject god, if the threat of hell is hanging over our heads as the consequence of rejecting Christianity.

It’s a false illusion of a choice, how does it make god any better than an abusive spouse? God can not possibly be a loving and just god, if you believe god is like that, that he would send people to hell not just for what they have done wrong to other people in their lifetime, but also because they chose to reject Christianity for whatever reason they chose to do so.

In that post, I put up a disclaimer that I was talking about the concept of god strictly from a fundamentalist Christian perspective and that some more liberal Christians, especially Christian universalists, who believe that god’s grace covers all wrongdoing, and that everyone is going to Heaven, do not even believe that hell is a literal place, it simply doesn’t exist to them.

To me, however, such a viewpoint also raises quite a bit of questions about the just and loving attributes of god. At least in the fundamentalist perspective of god, there is a sense of eternal reward and punishment. Although people do go to hell simply for not believing in Christianity, they also go to hell as punishment for wrongdoing, for what they have done to other people in their lifetime.

I can see how this view would appeal to some people, it gives them closure, and it gives them hope that people will receive their just dues for what they have done in this life in the afterlife, whether they are rewarded or punished.

 I think it’s one of the biggest aspects of religion that really appeals to people, and there have been times in the past where I have wished it was true myself, but reality sets in. It seems strange to me that someone could believe in a just, merciful god when they look at the suffering in this world, much of it happening to people who didn’t do anything to deserve it.

If you take the perspective within Christianity that there is no hell at all, to me, all sense of final justice is gone. Is it fair to let someone who has committed horrible crimes against other people and has went unpunished in this life receive no punishment in the next life?

The Most Intense Guest Post I Have Ever Written

Now that I am in the process of moving forward in life, since I have bought my own house (closing was this past Thursday, June 20th, I now legally own it), I have realized that I still have a lot of work to do, not only on the house, but there's a lot of work to do emotionally as well. I've realized that if I am really going to move on in life, I have to confront my past, and start building networks of new people in my life.

Well, in the spirit of confronting my past, I recently wrote a guest post for the blog Confessions of a Heretic Husband (I really love the tagline under the blog's name "Everyone's a heretic to someone"). It's a guest post that was harder for me to write than anything I have ever written before, it's still hard for me to read. On this blog, I have generally been very open about my life, but there are some details of my life, especially from the last 5 years of my life, after that infamous nervous breakdown, that I haven't told anyone, either on this blog or in person. All of that changes today with this guest post.

It's not an exaggeration in the least to say that I have been held hostage for the last 5 years, it's hard to say, and humiliating as well. 

There was a time, about 3 years ago, that I attempted to leave my mom and dad's home, and my mom in response literally barricaded the door to keep me from leaving, knowing that if I tried to push past her, she would either become violent, or play the victim, and claim that I physically harmed her. Some abusers are really good at playing manipulative games like that, playing the victim to gain sympathy when they are the ones carrying out the abuse. 

Here are some excerpts from the post:

“Where are you going?” she kept asking over and over again, with defiance and a hint of amused contempt as she stood in the middle of the only doorway out of the room. 

More Philosophy from Tom Clancy

13 days ago, I talked about military/spy drama writer Tom Clancy's surprising statements about war, while speaking through his main character, spy master Jack Ryan in his book, Debt of Honor. I have noticed that Clancy has a habit of interjecting his own views into the books through plot lines and statements of main characters, and when I started reading his first book, The Hunt for Red October, I noticed that pattern hasn't changed.

In the book, a Soviet sub commander Marko Ramius (the book was originally published in 1984) is planning to defect to the US with his sub and entire crew to the US. Both he and his crew are becoming frustrated and disillusioned with the Soviet government for different reasons.

His crew is starting to have their doubts about the political and economic views of the Soviet Union, and are starting to feel unappreciated by the Soviet Navy. Commander Ramius is starting to have his own philosophical issues with the Soviet government, but in a much different way: their views on religion and the afterlife.

Shortly before this plan was put into play, Commander Ramius' beloved wife, Natalia, died in a hospital during what should have been a routine appendix removal surgery due to the inefficiency and downright incompetence of the medical staff, and the medical system. Several unfortunate events led to her death, including a surgeon who showed up to work drunk, and spent several minutes with an oxygen mask on before the surgery to try and become more alert.

In his grief, he starts to lean on the Catholic faith that his grandmother, a woman who grew up in Lithuania in the pre-Soviet era, tried to raise him with. It's unclear whether he has fully converted back to Catholicism, but he is starting to head in that direction, he is starting to doubt Soviet doctrine, and is hoping that his grandmother was right all along. He is angry at the Soviet system for not only taking his wife from him prematurely, but he feels that they are trying to rob him of his memories of her, and the hope he is trying to cling to that he will see her again in the afterlife.

It is in these scenes that Tom Clancy's views on religion become much more clear, I had always suspected that Clancy was a religious man, probably a Catholic fundamentalist, and after looking up information about him online, it appears I'm right. I'll let Clancy's own words speak for themselves, though:

Marko Ramius watched the coffin roll into the cremation chamber to the somber strain of a classical requiem, wishing he could pray for Natalia's soul, hoping that Grandmother Hilda had been right, that there was something beyond the steel door and mass of flame. Only then did the full weight of the event strike him: the State had robbed him of more than his wife, it had robber him of a means to assuage his grief with prayer, it had robber him of the hope --- if only an illusion --- of ever seeing her again. 

(Emphasis placed on the text by Clancy, not me).

Stained Glass Masquerade

I had been thinking about something yesterday. I have noticed that living with one foot in the outside world, and the other in alternate universe, I'll call fundie land, I've noticed many differences between the two cultures, obviously, but there's one that has really stood out recently: People in the outside world don't hide who they really are very often, and when they do, they aren't very good at it.

People in the real world, where real life happens, often don't feel as much of a need to be obnoxious in sneaky, underhanded ways, if they are an asshole, then they are an asshole, they don't flaunt it (well, some do), but they don't shrink away from it. There's a lot of people who are deceitful in what they say, but not about who they really are as a person. 

When someone has a complete lack of any moral character whatsoever, and tries to hide it, I can see though it much faster in people in the outside world than I can living undercover in fundie land. I have known some great people in my time in fundamentalism, including "Jason and Kelly", despite Jason's tendency to put dogma over empathy sometimes, but some of the most absolute worst people ethically I have ever known, I knew from fundamentalist circles. Not only were they the worst in what they did, but they knew how to hide what they did, and who they were better than people in the outside world.

When you are a fundamentalist, or someone who is still living undercover in that world like me, you become an expert at putting on a false front. Even people who are basically good people still have to learn this technique, because the expectations placed upon you are so high that no one can measure up to them. You constantly have to monitor what you say, what appearances you give off (can't appear to be "too worldly"), and must appear happy, at all times. 

Since true happiness comes only from god, you must act happy all the time, even if you aren't happy and it's because of mental illness, and if you aren't, then we will question whether your "relationship with god" is  in order, or we will out rightly state that is the case. I've talked before about how people, especially children, teens, and young adults have it impressed upon them that they have no right to have their own emotions. This leads to almost everyone learning how to become an expert at being fake out of necessity

Undercover Agnostic: (Update 12): Christmas in June

The real estate agent who is handling the sale of the house for me had some big surprises for me today. First of all, the closing will happen sometime next week. The vacation I had planned will have to wait, but that's not a big problem, actually. I still have the time off from work, and no plans were greatly wrecked by this. 

The second surprise that he had was that a relative of his had recently replaced all the windows in her house, and was going to get rid of the old ones, and didn't know what she would do with them.

Most of the windows in the foreclosure house I bought need replacing, and this will save quite a bit of money at a time when finances are already stretched. I bought a gift card for a local restaurant chain that is very well known for good pasta and fried chicken that I will give him when I see him again. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, but apparently my family doesn't. Though they were glad for the gift, and thanked the real estate again, for them it's all about praising god over and over and over, and counting it as a small miracle. 

It's kind of tiring to hear, but oh well....

I say thank those here on earth who do good things, and do all we can to make this world a better place for everyone, but that's just my opinion. ;)

Anyway, I still will be rather busy, even though I won't be out of state for vacation, and I don't think I will be posting more than once or twice a week to the blog for a while, until everything settles down. Not only will the house take some time, but I will have to plan for living post-fundamentalism.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 8): Fighting on the Wrong Side of the Culture War

It's official, the church has a new pastor, he was approved this past Sunday with a 98% yes vote. The church had been looking for a new pastor for a while, in the meantime, they had a interim pastor, a man from Oklahoma who was a retired missionary (spent many years in Argentina).

The new pastor is a married 39 year old man, originally from North Carolina, who has a doctorate in church history. I was surprised at how fast the approval process went after the pulpit search committee approved him as a candidate for pastor after checking out his background. One week, he's giving a sermon, and then sitting through a Q&A session with the congregation, and the next week he's approved as pastor by an overwhelming vote.

 I'll let you know more what this pastor is like as time goes on, but there's nothing to suggest that he won't be anything other than a typical conservative Southern Baptist pastor. Saying of conservatives, I noticed this in the church bulletin, a message from the Southwest Illinois "faith based pregnancy center" chain, Mosaic:

A Frustrating Exchange with a Fundamentalist Blogger

I don't even know why I bother reading fundamentalist blogs sometimes. Self hatred, perhaps? 

I don't understand why I have a compulsion to read blogs I know are going to make my blood boil, like William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" website, or John Piper's Desiring God. I don't fully understand why I get in debates with fundamentalists online either, but I keep getting drawn into it, even though most of the time, the fundamentalist at the end, will choose this as their debating tactic:

Having an obsessive personality is a pain sometimes....

Well, today, I run across a fundamentalist blogger saying that the reason fundamentalism is losing people is because churches, because wait for it..... churches are trying to be too modern.

Yes, you read that right, and for those of you who have never been fundamentalists, it seems like a strange argument to make, but I have hear it many times. Here's a quote from the post:

Back to the link. The church is too normal and mainstream to mean anything to young people. Such a great insight. The church just continues to adopt cultural norms and expects to have an effect on society. Today's church reacts to pop culture by...wait for it...becoming more pop culture.  The Bible doesn't do that. It is the Truth. God's Word doesn't care about Sodom and Gomorrah's practices. The Truth is not democratic. A church cannot possibly hope to reach young adults by appearing no different than the rave they went to Saturday night.

Undercover Agnostic (Update 7): Why the Obssesion with Getting Married and Having Children?

A conversation was going on in front of me during the time between Sunday School and the morning service. Two people from the Sunday School class I am in were talking, one was a 21 year old woman I'll call "Miranda", and "Kelly", the sister of our Sunday School teacher "Jason". (I'm changing names to protect their identity and mine. Both Jason and Kelly are what most people would consider middle aged people (Kelly is 52, her brother Jason is mid/late 40's).



Miranda was saying that her mother has been pressuring her to get married and have children (she really stressed the children, her mom can't wait to be a grandmother), and I was surprised by Kelly's reaction. She said to Miranda that she shouldn't feel pressured into making such a major life decision by anyone, even family. That is something I most definitely didn't expect to hear.

Had Miranda been saying this to any other woman about Kelly's age in the church, I'm quite the reaction would be something along the lines of "Well, your mom just wants what she thinks is best for you, don't worry about it, the right man will come along, and you will want to marry him". Very likely there would be a not so subtle hint inserted in there about what that woman felt was a suitable young man that was single in the church, and she would try to set them up on a date.

I spoke a few minutes later to Kelly's brother Jason about this conversation, and I said I was surprised by his sister's reaction, that wasn't the norm, and that in every Christian circle I have been a part of, there's always been a lot of pressure on people of the younger generations, people like me and Miranda to get married.

There's this perception in evangelical/fundamentalist churches that you should get married by the time you are 25, and have children, and that if you are in your 30's or later and aren't married, that you aren't living a fully fulfilled adult life, or that, quite frankly, you are completely an adult, that you have missed a critical stage in your adult life and maturity.

A Comment on My Blog That Makes Me Want to Vomit

Lately, I've had to apply moderation for comments here on my blog, making sure that all comments are reviewed by me first before they are posted. I had to do this because of some determined spammers who were unfortunately getting through, and posting comments, despite the CAPTCHA's that everyone has to enter before posting a comment (I have no idea how they were doing this, unless they were actual people instead of bots).

Well, as it turns out, I have have another reason to keep the comment moderation going: Angry, bitter fundies. There was an anonymous person who wanted to speak their mind on a post about Hephzipbah House, a home for teen girls ran by a minister and his wife. There have been accounts coming out from women who were residents there in the 80's and 90's, sent there by their fundamentalist parents (mostly IFB families, who thought they were "too rebellious", I've shown you on this blog who vicious the IFB can be to women and children), of horrendous physical torture and outrageous psychological abuse.

I considered deleting the comment, but I decided against it for two reasons. One, I would feel like a hypocrite, I'm very libertarian, and not very fond of censorship, and two, I want to show just how vile and disgusting the IFB and their defenders are, here it is, for all to see: