Commandments of Men

The Mars Hill Mess

2012-01-26T15:44:00.001-05:00

A lot of you have surely heard about it or read about it by now, but for those who haven't, check out this account of what "church discipline" looks like in the Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill world...
Part 1
Part 2

Today, Matthew posted Spiritual Abuse Must Stop, inspired by the responses to the Andrew/Mars Hill story.

Also, check out this related piece from the ladies at The Wartburg Watch.

I don't have a lot to add. Matthew and Deb (as well as Andrew and Sophia) have addressed it pretty thoroughly. All I can say is it's obvious that the Shepherding movement influence is alive and well - at Mars Hill in particular, and in the neo-reformed, elder-led movement as a whole. So many layers of spiritual dysfunction are evident in the "leadership" at Mars Hill, so much absolute power become absolutely corrupted. "Church discipline" seems to be an issue (more like a weapon) ever at the ready for Driscoll, always on the tip of his tongue, always on the periphery of his "teaching". It even came up in the recent Christianity magazine, Justin Brierly interview I wrote about last week, and seemingly out of left field. It's what leads me to the opinion I posted there...

His Christianity is all about him. His position as pastor is all about his power - an effort to make up for some significant failings somewhere in his psyche, because without that power, he's nothing - and he knows it.

The Andrew story, and Mars Hill's handling of it, only makes that opinion all the more firm.

The really sad thing I'm noticing in the aftermath of these stories, though, is the cult of personality being formed around Driscoll. The comments on Matthew's blog...just mind-boggling. If THIS story won't get your attention and make you seriously consider/question the "ministry" and tactics of a leader and his church, nothing will. Nothing. It's the same kind of cult of personality that supports and upholds a man like Bill Gothard - people always at the ready to figuratively (maybe literally, in some cases) lay down their life in defense of him, even in the face of the slightest of criticisms. And worse yet, it's the same kind of cult of personality that allowed Jim Jones to create the People's Temple and Jonestown, do terrible, terrible things to the people there (while they supported him rabidly), and ultimately kill them - because they were afraid to or unwilling to question.

We ALL need to step back from time to time and see if our allegiance is to a man, a movement, a cause, or to Jesus Christ. If it's to Christ, it seems to me that our first concern would be for the people wounded by men like Driscoll, rather than rushing to defend his reputation. It brings to mind a quote from Quivering Daughters...

"It is a grave disservice to the heart, soul, body and spirit of a woman when she is given the subtle message that the truth of her own pain is not as important as the reputation of the ones who inflict it."

That says it all. Apply it to the people wounded by Mars Hill. I think you'll see it fits there, too.

My hope is that this whole episode will serve as an EPIC wake-up call for a lot of people, especially for those in the "halfway house mode" of their journey. My fear is that it won't.

"Purity Balls" - The Anderson Show

2012-01-25T16:30:00.001-05:00

For anyone who missed it, last Friday, Anderson Cooper discussed "Purity Balls", and certain aspects of the purity movement, on his show. Here's the preview clip...

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The focus of the show was a family of four - father, mother, two daughters, 18 and 16 - who are part of the purity movement and have attended Purity Balls in all their splendor, including the purity pledge/covenant ceremonies. Also featured were Jessica Valenti, author of "The Purity Myth", as well as a couple of individuals from the documentary I recently wrote about, Purity Ball founder Randy Wilson and Jessica (the young lady who became pregnant, ultimately chose a different path than her family's, and has been estranged and shunned because of it).

I'm glad to see this cultural, cultic insanity confused with religion being covered by the mainstream media. That said, there was much left to be desired. In all fairness, one hour (which translates to 40some minutes of actual airtime) is barely enough time to introduce the issues relevant to this subject. It'd take a month's worth of shows just to scratch the surface. Some good questions were asked, and some good observations were made, but I'd like to have seen someone more studied on cultic forms of religion (or even a qualified psychologist) asking the questions rather than Anderson (who likely knew only as much about the issues as his producers told him) or audience members who know nothing of the dominionist movement, or, who know nothing of the ideas behind the ideas. At best, I have a "battlefield commission" on this nonsense, but at that, I'd have liked to be the guy speaking into Anderson's earpiece with "Now ask this..."

The show revolved around the sexual aspect of the purity movement, and the religious undertones were either avoided or everyone was just oblivious to it all. This was largely due to Valenti's book, or at least that's my assumption (I haven't read her book). I agree with Valenti 100% that the purity movement pushes against sexuality with more sexuality - which is ridiculous, but coming at it from that angle is, in a lot of ways, like trying to cure a disease by treating the symptoms. Until the source of the wound is addressed and treated (the crazy, dominionist religious ideas), all the rest is just so many words in the wind. That's where the show dropped the ball, in my opinion.

For instance, the double bind that these purity pledges put these young women in. You sign away your own will, and if you ever come to the realization that you're an independent, autonomous person, with the same access to God as any other person (including your father or pastor), and have no need for a human mediator, the contract itself is used against you as proof of your lack of "character and integrity". The father of the family of four insisted that the purity pledges were his daughters' idea. To me, that's a roundabout admission of genuine suckage as a father. NO good or responsible father would agree to something like this. NOT ONE.

The two daughters were quite obviously naive and oversheltered in a lot of ways - if not every way. The eldest (in the brown dress - who rocked side to side for almost the entire show - she felt a lot of pressure and was searching for a comforting rhythm) mentioned a boy she had once kissed and how the relationship had deteriorated, mutually, after the fact. What she didn't go into was WHY the relationship deteriorated. The smart money is on "because daddy said so". THAT's some ground I'd have liked to have seen plowed. It was one of those moments where I wish I'd been in Anderson's earpiece. Also, she, and the rest of the purity movement people, kept insisting that it wasn't just about sex, that people shouldn't be judged strictly by sex, that purity was about the whole person, physical, emotional, spiritual, yadda, yadda, yadda... Yet, when she began speaking of some women she considered "impure", Anderson asked her, "Why do you consider them impure?" Her answer? You guessed it. "Because they've had sex." Why he didn't follow up meticulously on such a gross contradiction is beyond me. Everything these girls had to say just went in circles. Round and round and round. As is common in cultic groups, they could give you the company line to obvious and expected questions, but struggled to substantiate anything when questioned further. Their minds have been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they've become part of the collective, for lack of a better description.

Randy Wilson just made things worse every time he opened his mouth - saying that these Purity Balls were originally supposed to be about fathers being the fathers they're supposed to be, or something or other. He's just a dominionist nutjob. He was angered by even having to be there, and the frustration showed on his face and in his phrasing. He's a true believer - just the kind of stooge the dominionist movement/cult needs to forward its agendas. He also needs a better hairpiece. Preferably one that doesn't look like roadkill. In a short video package that Anderson played about Purity Balls, there was a clip of Wilson talking about "fathers being the High Priest of the home". As far as I'm concerned, here's the bottom line for homes where the father acts as "High Priest of the home"...

Such homes are absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably NOT Christian homes. Christ has been done away with. The Holy Spirit is obsolete. There's no argument otherwise that I can see. None. Either Christ is your High Priest or daddy is. Not both. Claiming Christ while denying Christ is a spiritually futile undertaking.

I believe Randy Wilson loves his children, just as I believe the parents in the family of four love their children, just as I believe most P/QF parents love their children. The problem is, doctrine is valued over person, and that love has become religiously/culturally perverse and unhealthy, denying personhood to human beings created with free will and, through the tearing of the veil, given full access to God through Jesus Christ, not through daddy.

The most telling moment in the entire show happened when Jessica (not Valenti), the girl from the documentary "The Virgin Daughters", shared a very, very small snippet of her story. While she was speaking, they cut to a shot of the two daughters on stage, and then to a couple of shots of purity movement girls in the audience. They LOATHE Jessica. They hate everything about her. In their faces, all at once, was this hatred, disdain, fear, loathing, and a complete disregard for her humanity. She was beneath them, rebellious, and didn't deserve to be heard.

The "whole person" my ass.

Just for context, I'm gonna list a few of the 8 dynamics of cultic Thought Reform of Robert Lifton. Those that I'm listing below were/are relevant to issues/behaviors that came up on the show...

MILIEU CONTROL

    the most basic feature is the control of human communication within
    and environment if the control is extremely intense, it becomes
    internalized control -- an attempt to manage an individual's inner
    communication control over all a person sees, hears, reads, writes
    (information control)
    creates conflicts in respect to individual autonomy
    groups express this in several ways:  Group process, isolation from
    other people, psychological pressure, geographical distance or
    unavailable transportation, sometimes physical pressure
    often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures, group
    encounters, which become increasingly intense and increasingly
    isolated, making it extremely difficult-- both physically and
    psychologically--for one to leave.
    sets up a sense of antagonism with the outside world; it's us
    against them closely connected to the process of individual change (of personality)

MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (Planned spontaneity)

    extensive personal manipulation
    seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such
    a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the
    environment, while it actually has been orchestrated
    totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or
    some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative
    the "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and
    claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only
    true path to salvation (or enlightenment)
    the individual then develops the psychology of the pawn, and
    participates actively in the manipulation of others
    the leader who becomes the center of the mystical manipulation (or
    the person in whose name it is done) can be sometimes more real than
    an abstract god and therefore attractive to cult members
    legitimizes the deception used to recruit new members and/or raise
    funds, and the deception used on the "outside world"
THE DEMAND FOR PURITY

    the world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the
    absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil
    (everything outside the group)
    one must continually change or conform to the group "norm"
    tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for
    the group's controlling and manipulative influences
    once a person has experienced the totalist polarization of good/evil
    (black/white thinking), he has great difficulty in regaining a more
    balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality
    the radical separation of pure/impure is both within the environment
    (the group) and the individual
    ties in with the process of confession -- one must confess when one
    is not conforming
SACRED SCIENCE

    the totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic
    doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the
    ordering of human existence
    questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited
    a reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of
    the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine
    offers considerable security to young people because it greatly
    simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a
    sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying
    the truth about human behavior and human psychology
DOCTRINE OVER PERSON

    every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles
    that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the
    experience of truth and feel it
    the pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict
    between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or
    ideology says one should experience
    if one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group,
    one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them
    to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the
    questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered
    directly
    the underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more
    valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or
    human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth"
    the experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt
    one is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil
    when doubt arises, conflicts become intense
DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE

    since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who
    are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not
    saved, and do not have the right to exist
    "being verses nothingness"
    impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed
    one outside the group may always receive their right of existence by
    joining the group
    fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses
    their transformation, for something bad will happen to them
    the group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil",
    "unenlightened", etc.

Halfway Houses

2012-01-18T18:31:00.000-05:00

The thought I'm going to present here is something that's kicked around in my mind for several months now, but I've never, until today, really been motivated to sit down and write about it. I expressed this thought recently in a conversation elsewhere where it seemed to walk right through a door opened by a particular question, and given some recent events in the arena of Christianity (involving one guy in particular - we'll get into him in a bit) it seems an appropriate time to write this.

Teachers/pastors like Driscoll, Piper, Mahaney, Harris, Dever, et cetera, and movements like Sovereign Grace and Calvary Chapel are often halfway houses for people coming out of cultic Christianity like Gothardism or Vision Forum.

Do you follow what I'm saying? If not, here's an explanation...

Anything looks grace-based and mainstream after you've been in ATI/IBLP or Vision Forum. Anything...including these men and groups - but they're far from mainstream, they nourish religious addictions, and they're religious abusers themselves. Any "elder-led" church (such as those pastored by the men mentioned above) is fertile soil for religious abuse and corruption, from the homeschooling/courtship/Shepherding mentality of Sovereign Grace to the "Moses Model" of Calvary Chapel. ALL of these men and groups marginalize, and basically render irrelevant, the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. Some of it due to their connections within the Christian homeschooling movement world, some of it due to the lingering traces of Shepherding movement influence. In an "elder-led" environment, the congregation has no voice. Any attempt to develop a voice usually leads to "church discipline" of some sort.

Sometimes I'd like to tell people who've left the Gothard or Vision Forum world and ended up under these men and movements, "You ain't quite out yet." But, I generally believe they figure it out on their own sooner or later - or at least I hope they do. Also, this isn't to say there aren't some wonderful people involved in these movements, or that all of the elders and leaders are corrupt (they aren't). It's just that the same can be said for the laypeople (and some of the leaders) in the Gothard/VF world, however seriously misguided they may be.

I think part of it is the personal journey out of religious addiction. No one who leaves Gothard or VF while still professing the Christian faith is without religious addiction. It's next to impossible. So many overt rules and regulations, unspoken rules and regulations, so much emphasis on the outward mechanisms of Christianity. That kind of baggage doesn't get dropped overnight. It's a process. When you're still clinging to a "God's word" mentality, and you've been in an abusive group, your natural inclination is most likely to find a "softer" version of the same legalistic message (we tend to stick with some form of what we know), and like I said, after Gothard or VF, anything looks mainstream.

I know, from my own experience, how hard it is to deal with religious addiction while holding on to my faith - and I don't come from an abusive church or group. It can be grueling and overwhelming. I can see where people would find a certain amount of comfort and safety within dysfunction when dysfunction is the "normal" of your past. Moving out into the unknown can be brutal - especially when coming out of an abusive church or group.

You don't think these men or groups are messed up in their own way, and seriously so? Let's look at Mark Driscoll for a bit as an example...

In December, Justin Brierly of the British radio program "Unbelievable", committed what was apparently the "sin" of questioning Mark Driscoll during an interview conducted by Brierly for an upcoming edition of Christianity magazine. For some context and background, Driscoll believes that church members (and maybe people in general - I don't know) who question his "leadership" are committing sin, is a hard-core complementarian, and Brierly is the husband of a female pastor in England. Quite a tense dynamic, no?

If you have an hour, the full interview is HERE, and there's a good breakdown of the interview at Cognitive Discopants. I heartily recommend that you take the time to listen to the interview. When you're done, read Mark's response to it, and when you're done with that, read Justin's response to Mark's response at the Christianity website. After listening to the interview, ask yourself if Driscoll's assessment of the interview is honest or accurate...

"With the release of our book, Real Marriage, we have now done literally dozens of interviews with Christians and non-Christians. But the one that culminated in the forthcoming article was, in my opinion, the most disrespectful, adversarial, and subjective."

Long story short, I've listened to the interview (in which Driscoll was an ass), read his blog, read Brierly's response - and I come away seeing Driscoll as an even bigger ass.

I fully believe Brierly's version of the way the interview was presented to Driscoll. No doubt in my mind. I think Driscoll leaped at the chance to ~~market~~ share his new ~~money-making scheme~~ ministry, the ~~intrusion into the bedroom~~ book he and his wife authored, "Real Marriage", with the British ~~consumer~~ church. He's building ~~his personal fiefdom~~ the kingdom one ~~sold book~~ soul at a time.

At the end of the interview, we see the real Mark Driscoll. When challenged, he falls into the "compare what you've accomplished to what I've accomplished!" routine at the drop of a hat, something that only insanely insecure people do. With him it amounts to "I'm a better, more courageous, more better, more better courageous Christian than you! Look at all I've done! Just look at it!" I'm pretty sure I could clean the guy out at poker. Too many tells. His Christianity is all about him. His position as pastor is all about his power - an effort to make up for some significant failings somewhere in his psyche, because without that power, he's nothing - and he knows it. His insecurity leads to the dishonesty you see in his blog post which responds to the interview.

Then, there's THIS. Yowza. "Courageous" anyone? You know, the movie that mainstream Christianity has so warmly received - and its merchandise line is being marketed by Vision Forum? Yes, that "Courageous". Looks like Mark might be taking some cues from the fine folk down in San An with these "vows". I agree with the blogger that the last vow is the most perplexing, and given the issues that I deal with here on this blog, the most alarming...

"And my grandchildren will worship the same God as me, because my children will worship the same God as me."

Yikes. I find that spiritually perverse, actually. Thanks, Mark, for making rather significant life decisions on behalf of your children and grandchildren - decisions which, to be valid, must be personal, but don't let me go raining all over your Vision Forum-esque multi-generational faithfulness parade.

The difference between men (such as Driscoll) and movements like those I mentioned above and Gothard/VF are really pretty minimal. Largely the same crap in a slightly more aesthetically appealing wrapper. For those individuals or families looking to get out of abusive groups while still holding on to your faith, the best advice I can offer is to thoroughly examine to make sure, in your effort to leave or your process of leaving, you aren't still using your faith as a drug, a numbing agent (as abusive groups indoctrinate you to do). If it is, it's gonna be unhealthy no matter where you land.

[For further examination and discussion of the abuses of Mars Hill church, read here.]

Culturally Convenient Urban Legends of the Christian Faith

2012-01-16T07:56:00.000-05:00

There's a ton of em. Urban legends through and through, yet we're so conditioned to accept whatever comes from the pulpit (from conditioned pastors and teachers), so used to not thinking, not examining, not discerning, that when our beliefs are challenged, we fall into reliance on cliche and urban legends.

For my readers from conservative backgrounds who may not fully understand what an "urban legend" refers to...

urban legend: a modern story of obscure origin and with little or no supporting evidence that spreads spontaneously in varying forms and often has elements of humor, moralizing, or horror: "Are there alligators living in the New York City sewer system, or is that just an urban legend?"

...except in Christian culture there's little "humor" involved with them, but more in the way of moralizing, and in their own way, horror. My recent post about a guy I know coming out as a gay man is relevant. There are probably as many, if not more, urban legends within Christianity about homosexuality as any other subject.

The other day, a FB friend posted a video about Joel Osteen's interview with Oprah. This FB "friend" isn't necessarily a guy I know. He's probably someone who knew of me when I was on the road and made a friend request. No big deal. Lots of my FB "friends" are of the same variety, as I seldom deny a request. This guy's post caught my attention because of the EXCESS of ALL CAPS and the generous use of exclamation points!!!!!!!! When I see those kind of posts in my news feed, I know they're usually religious in nature, and I'll read them out of curiosity. There was a video clip attached (which I didn't watch) with the description saying "Joel Osteen says that homosexuality is a sin, but homosexuals will go to Heaven." To me, the guy posting this, and the people who commented, completely lost the real basis for criticism in what Osteen was saying/doing because they got all worked up into a fundamentalist frenzy.

The problem with what Osteen is/was doing there, from my perspective, is that he was being too political, trying to scratch everyone's back, trying to keep everyone happy - to the point that his point was meaningless - but, he doesn't want to interrupt the cash flow by angering any particular demographic. The fundamentalists are already down on him, so he doesn't worry about them too much, but he makes sure to appeal to the evangelical community (his personal piggybank) with the "homosexuality is a sin" angle, but softens it up with the "but they'll still go to heaven" angle for the sake of the not so evangelical community (his potential piggybank). Smart business, but when our moral compass becomes a dollar bill...ouch.

Those who commented on this guy's post, though, dear God. Some of them were practically foaming at the mouth. "Homosexuals are going to Hell!!!" "Being QUEER is a SIN! QUEER is the right word! Its the word my mama used! Repent! Repent!!! Its SIN!!! Pray Pray PRAY!!!" And of course, the old standard urban legend - "If being a QUEER ain't a sin, God has to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!"

You guys know from my recent writing that I've taken no moral position on the matter of homosexuality, neither condemning nor condoning. The only position I've taken is that it absolutely isn't a black and white issue. Most of the Christian community's views on homosexuality are based entirely on cultural preferences which are justified by urban legend and nourished by not knowing "God's Word", otherwise known as the bible. Here in my own home state, while I can't speak to current law, as of a decade or two ago, there were still "sodomy" laws on the books. If only people knew that the application and use of the term "sodomy" was the product of biblical ignorance and urban legend (an urban legend that might give fundamentalists a heart attack), it'd probably disappear from our vernacular.

Let's be clear - Sodom and Gomorrah weren't destroyed because of homosexuality. What was their sin? What reached God as a "shriek"?...

Ezekial 16:49 Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

And from the Message...

The sin of your sister Sodom was this: She lived with her daughters in the lap of luxury—proud, gluttonous, and lazy. They ignored the oppressed and the poor. They put on airs and lived obscene lives. And you know what happened: I did away with them.

Excess. Gluttony. Becoming proud, fat, and lazy in their excess and gluttony. Uncharitable.

I dove in the comment thread on this guy's wall, which by now was populated with several Holiness ministers joining in the "SIN!!!" and "GOING to HELL!!!" and "God destroyed the QUEERS!" mentality, and I made a simple comment that brought a quickly and heavily traveled conversation to almost a complete halt for several hours. My comment was...

"Why does the bible say Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed? It wasn't homosexuality, btw. You guys should read Ezekiel 16:49."

Things went silent for a while, and then one of the Holiness pastors chimed in with the Genesis 19 account of the people of Sodom wanting to "carnally know" the men in Lot's house - therefore, THAT, not gluttony, excess, and a lack of charity, was the sin of S and G. Geez. That account isn't about homosexuality. It's about perversion. What was going on outside of Lot's house would've been perverse whether gay or straight. Gluttony and excess always leads to perversion. What went on at Lot's house was nothing more than a by-product of gluttony and excess, the same way mud is a by-product of rain.

Then, someone chimed in with "God's word says it's an abomination!" I don't deny, according to the OT, that at least at one time, God called it an abomination for man to lie with man (Leviticus 20:13). But then again, there are many things called "abomination" in the OT which are called clean in the NT, so anyone taking Levitical Law literally and applying it rigidly is handling the text irresponsibly - and probably shouldn't be pastoring. Eating pork, for instance, was an "abomination" under the OT law. When I brought this up to one of the Holiness ministers, his response was "Anything I pray over I can eat, bro. You need to read the bible." Judging by his profile pic, he prays over a lot of stuff. He was also helping me make my point.

The conversation ended when I asked, "When's the last time you preached on gluttony? Have you ever preached on that?"

*crickets*

You wanna know where much of the urban legend about Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction being due to heinous homosexuality comes from?...

The Book of Jasher 19:

And by desire of their four judges the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had beds erected in the streets of the cities, and if a man came to these places they laid hold of him and brought him to one of their beds, and by force made him to lie in them.
And as he lay down, three men would stand at his head and three at his feet, and measure him by the length of the bed, and if the man was less than the bed these six men would stretch him at each end, and when he cried out to them they would not answer him.
And if he was longer than the bed they would draw together the two sides of the bed at each end, until the man had reached the gates of death.
And if he continued to cry out to them, they would answer him, saying, Thus shall it be done to a man that cometh into our land.
And when men heard all these things that the people of the cities of Sodom did, they refrained from coming there.

I've heard several ministers use some form of this story to support a message against homosexuality - obviously having no clue where it came from. OMG! Taking beliefs from something other than the infallible, inerrant, complete and finished Word of God?!!! Pfft. People do it all the time, even those who so adamantly claim they don't. They're just lying to themselves...and everyone else in the process. I used to not scrutinize this kind of thing, cause it usually supported my own cultural leanings and religious addictions. Now I do.

Just so you know, this Book of Jasher has been proven fraudulent and a work of fiction. Any "belief" taken from it is false and is the genesis of an urban legend. Any teaching supported by it is false and is the genesis of an urban legend. There are no known surviving copies of the text of the Book of Jasher referred to in Joshua 10:13 or 2nd Samuel 1:18.

You know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that something has become a "pet sin" when urban legends are used to support it. It's why I believe we should continually examine to see if we're devoted to Christ, to Christianity, or to a particular conservative Christian culture. Those are all distinctly different things, and I think what we'll find often surprises us - but only if we look at it honestly, and most Christians aren't really willing to.

We should know why we believe what we believe - and it should have more depth than cliche or urban legend.

Dumbing Down - It Happens

2012-01-12T19:38:00.000-05:00

As far as conditioned, desensitized, brainwashed, dumbed-down, evangelical "mainstream" Christianity, a scenario from the world of country music comes to mind. The story I'm gonna share here isn't a first hand account. I may not have every fact spot on. It's a story that's become a part of music business and studio world lore - which is where it was communicated to me a few years ago. It's a true story, however.

To set the background a bit, a lot of country music "purists" point directly to Garth Brooks for the poor state country music hit in the mid and late 90s. While he was wildly successful, and a very talented vocalist/entertainer, his artistry was considered rather shallow in a lot of ways - less music-oriented, more flash-oriented. He opened the door for marginally talented people like Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, and Shania Twain to become mega-stars - while singing shallow songs but putting on elaborate, sexy stage shows. Before long, country music became a bunch of largely urban people (who wouldn't know a billy-goat from their elbow) trying to write and sing songs about things they thought sounded country. It was all very shallow, and something of an affront to people who were devoted to the music. Purists left in droves (which is part of the reason bluegrass artists like Allison Krauss began to find a larger audience in the 90s - country music purists who appreciated artistry needed a place to go). Things got so bad that one major trade paper featured a cover with a caption that said "Can This Man Save Country Music?" under a photo of Brian White. Brian freakin' White. But...the people who weren't genuinely devoted to the craft and artistry of country music stayed with it, and celebrated the shallow, untalented acts and shallow songs, unable or unwilling to discern any difference.

Now, to the story...

Paul Overstreet is one of the greatest songwriters ever in any genre of music. It'd take a week's worth of posts to list all of his hits. Among his hits in the country music genre (as performed by him and by other artists) are "Forever and Ever, Amen", "I Won't Take Less Than Your Love", "Dance A Little Closer To Me", and "Love Can Build A Bridge". Great, great songs. Classics, with deep, moving, and provocative lyrics.

In the late 90s, he'd spent some time focusing on songwriting (from what I heard, he'd been on a "getaway" of some sort to do this writing), and came away with 6 or 8 of what he considered some of the better songs he'd ever written. He took them into the studio and made demos, and then proudly took them to present them to the record label. Again, he considered these songs to be some of the very best he'd ever written - and considering his catalogue, that's saying something.

The record company hated them. They told him they weren't commercial enough and they wouldn't be able to do anything with them.

He went home furious, steaming at the shallow crap that country music had become, steaming at what passed for a "song" within the industry. He sat down, and almost as a joke and to make a point, he determined to write the worst, most cheesy, crappy, shallow song he could possibly write. This is one of the greatest songwriters ever making a specific, determined effort to write the worst song he could write. He then went into the studio and made a demo of it to give to the record company. When he finished, this was the fruit of his labor...

"She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy"

The record label loved it. They pitched it to Kenny Chesney. He loved it. He recorded it, and it went to #1.

316, anyone?

Might be time to give bluegrass a try.

Patterns

2012-01-12T00:29:00.001-05:00

Interesting responses to my last few posts. Guess I should give you guys a heads-up - some of the things I'd like to write about in the near future might make me radioactive to those who don't already find me radioactive. Even in those, there'll be recurring issues and themes touched on, as they always have been, and probably ever will be, at least as long as I'm publishing this blog.

With that in mind, I'm a little baffled by the response to some of the recent stuff, particularly the Tebow-mania stuff. Yes, I've written a good bit about Tebow-mania in the last couple of months, but no more than I've written about other issues repeatedly since beginning this blog. For instance, look at how often I reference Jim Jones, the People's Temple, and Jonestown. There's a reason for that. I've even referenced Jones/PT/Jonestown within the Tebow-mania posts. There's a reason for that. I think and operate in "patterns". Connections. "If A=B here, it likely, on a level playing field, is the same over here, too". I look for patterns in everything, and for outliers which might influence them. It's entirely the way I approached music, for instance. Common threads. Perhaps I'm guilty of projecting my own tendencies. We all do to some degree. I see a common thread between the Jim Jones/PT/Jonestown scenario and Tebow-mania. I see it clearly. Maybe I'm off-base. If I'm not off-base, perhaps I owe people an apology for not making it clearer, because I don't know if people are understanding what I've been getting at - or if they just don't want to consider it at all.

People think I'm trying to be mean to Tebow. I'm not. While I'd like to make a few suggestions to him about a few things, have some suspicions about his belief system that I'm not entirely comfortable with, et cetera, I don't wish the guy any ill will. I hope he lives a long, productive, happy life. I see him as little more than an indoctrinated mouthpiece for the movements influencing him (which include most of the movements in my blog description). He's just a kid doing what he's been indoctrinated to do. I'm not trying to be any more "mean" toward Tebow than I am toward Jim Jones. Wouldn't make any difference where Jones is concerned. He's dead. I doubt he'd be offended. Tebow, himself, has been a sidenote in the things I've written about Tebow-mania. Some attention has to be paid to his background and behaviors for context if for no other reason, but the meat of the posts have been about fundamentalist fear and propaganda, the evangelical response, thought reform, emotionalism, and the complete lack of discernment in the Christian community. It's a shame that's being missed by so many - and if I'm at fault for as much, then I apologize. Frankly, I don't think I'm at fault. I think what's happening in this instance is symptomatic of what's happening throughout Tebow-mania.

As long as I'm talking about someone that those who read here don't like, I'm being discerning. But when it's someone we want to believe plays for our team, I'm being judgmental. The word "judgmental" has lost it's meaning in the Christian community. Once upon a time it was only applied to people who made rash and hasty, unfounded, harsh, usually ill-informed, conclusive judgments about people or issues (and realistically, no matter what mask we want to wear, we ALL do this at times). These days, if you examine the evidence, attempt to use discernment, and you come to conclusions others don't agree with - you're judgmental. This has dumbed down Christianity to the point that Lloyd Christmas might even mock us.

In our own bibles, the writer of Hebrews expressed his frustration at the lack of discernment in the people he was writing to, at how he constantly had to take them through elemental principles of the faith, at how they seemed to refuse to grow to any ability to discern good from bad, right from wrong, on their own. To do those things requires judgment. Paul instructed the Thessalonians to "Test all things, and hold fast to what is good". In other words, "discern". That requires judgment. To live the faith requires love. To grow in the faith requires discernment.

I don't consider myself important. I'm just a guy writing a blog. My voice is no more important than any other voice that speaks for justice and discernment within the Christian community. If there's any piece I've ever written here that I considered important toward the overall message of this blog, it's this one. I wanted people to know what thought reform and brainwashing looked like, and I wanted the term "the Kool-aid" placed in proper perspective. It's become something that's said almost flippantly.

Jim Jones conditioned, desensitized and brainwashed his people so thoroughly that up became down, wrong became right, black became white, they stood for things they should've stood against. Their bizarre inability to reason, to see things which were clear to everyone else, their emotionalism when challenged, well, those things are the evidence of brainwashing. Once they were conditioned to turn things completely inside-out from the way they should be, it was nothing for Jones to get them to drink grape Flavor-aid laced with poison. Nothing at all. 5 people got out, and according to eyewitnesses, only ONE person truly resisted. Over 900 men, women, and children died - willingly, even if not happily.

Do I think something like that is gonna happen in the evangelical community, or because of Tebow-mania? No. Not at all. But if you'll examine the evidence, educate yourself on thought reform, its tactics, and its symptoms, it isn't because it couldn't happen.

Remember, Jones had his people accepting quite obviously wrong things as right and good and just. In a post about P/QF I wrote probably in 2010 (don't have time to look it up), I ended it by asking this question (paraphrased)...

"If a movement has already convinced fathers to replace Jesus Christ as the mediator and high priest between their families and God...is it really all that far to the Kool-aid?"

A quite obviously wrong thing accepted as right and good and just. Few of you would argue with me that P/QF brainwashes its people, would you? So, with that in mind, let me just very overtly pose the question I've been trying to pose through my other writings on Tebow-mania...

"If the Christian community is enthusiastically supporting and celebrating Tim Tebow in doing something Jesus very explicitly said to NOT do...is it really all that far to the Kool-aid?"

Something very obviously wrong being accepted, even celebrated, as right and good and just. If we'll accept and celebrate this, what else will we accept and celebrate?

For Christians, it's no longer about Christ. It's the Christian culture that's important. It's winning the cultural war that's important. Just like Jonestown, where Jesus left the Jim Jones-crafted culture, and the people never even noticed, because the culture had become their Jesus.

It's like I told someone recently, "You know who are the easiest people to brainwash? People who don't think they can be brainwashed."

We're ripe.

This Tebow Stuff, I Tell Ya

2012-01-10T22:05:00.002-05:00

As if it weren't enough that he's so "in your face" with his religion, he had to go and pass for 316 yards this weekend, causing determined non-thinkers around the world to claim some kind of divine intervention, i.e. John 3:16.

"Yay! Everything he does promotes Jesus! Yay!"

Really? Is that what the Christian faith has been reduced to?

I'll say it again - I don't have anything personally against Tebow. I'll also say again - I'm utterly, entirely, and unapologetically opposed to the way he promotes his religion (and I say religion because I don't think the word "faith" properly applies to ritualistic behavior). It was confirmed to me by some former ATIers today that the Tebows were, for a time, involved in ATI (I've no idea of their current level of involvement, or of the depth of the connection there), and given his background as a missionary kid and being a product of the Christian homeschooling movement, his behaviors are somewhat typical of the indoctrination process involved in those things.

From the beginning of Tebow-mania, the fascinating (and maddening) aspect of the whole deal has been the response of the Christian community. It's confirmed most of my suspicions - and fears - about the state of modern fungelical Christianity. Not that I've necessarily "arrived" spiritually or otherwise, because I haven't, but the Christian community is completely gullible, has confused things of substance with things of no substance, and will follow ANY shepherd who says "I'm a Christian" right off a cliff. No one bothers to think. No one bothers to discern. No one bothers to look past the packaging. Like I described in my last Tebow piece, it's a shallow faith. Super shallow. Lots of religious addictions out there masquerading around as "devotion".

I usually keep my blog-related stuff off of my personal FB page. I'm certainly not ashamed of it, but I get enough grief just from what I write here that there's no need in generating more on my FB page from people in my world. This week, though, with my FB news feed just flooded with ridiculous notions about Tebow, pictures of little children "Tebowing", and tons of nonsense about the 3:16 stuff, I said to myself, "Well bull butter, I'm saying something." I started with a status that I hoped would make people bother to think a bit...

"Why aren't Christians as supportive of all the other Christians in the NFL? The Christians not named "Tebow", or in other words, those not living out their faith in ways Jesus instructed us NOT to?"

I got a couple of expected responses, and I say "expected" because not everyone is aware of the legalistic and cultic nature of Tebow's background. Can't hold that against anyone, and I don't...although I do believe it's everyone's responsibility to discern before we jump on a bandwagon. Beyond that initial status update, I joined in a couple of Tebow-related conversations elsewhere, and I ran into rationalization after rationalization, many symptoms of religious addiction, and lots of examples of cultural war emotional attachments. I was, and continue to be, amazed and befuddled at how easily Christians either rationalize or look entirely past Matthew 6:5-6...

“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

Ask yourself, would Tebow wear THAT scripture on his eye-black? No. He wouldn't, and we all know he wouldn't, and we all know why he wouldn't. He'd have to stop "Tebowing"...and he has no intention of doing that. That alone should be reason enough for people genuinely devoted to Christ to not be supportive of Tebow's methods. I didn't say "try to stop Tebow". I said "not be supportive of Tebow's methods". Big difference. Watching people tap-dance around direct instruction from Jesus Christ has been revealing.

I went on to post the following as a FB status...

"I wonder if the evangelical community would be so robust in their unflinching championing of Tim Tebow if they knew that his brand of Christianity looks more like FLDS in practice than their own brand of Christianity. I mean, it isn't like Jesus didn't specifically teach about NOT making public spectacles of our prayers, but when Tebow does it, he's somehow "witnessing"."

I made a few people mad at me with that one. Not every response was on my wall. Tebow's obvious defiance to what Christ instructed has been excused by several with the idea that we're commanded to be "bold in our faith". Well, Paul generally gave that instruction, so are we Paultians, or are we Christians, and does something Paul said about boldness negate something Jesus said about our faith (and prayer, specifically) having an etiquette that reflects on our spiritual character?...especially given that what Jesus said reflects directly, and poorly, upon what Tebow's doing, and what Paul said has to be applied generally. Tebow could take it down several notches and still be over the top. If he brought it down under the top, would that somehow mean he's less bold - or does it mean he's likely mature enough, spiritually, that his life can serve as a billboard for his faith without actually serving as a literal billboard for his faith? The irony is, those excusing Tebow's "boldness" regarding his faith wouldn't be nearly so enthralled with my own "boldness" in issues of faith here on this blog - and I don't promote this blog or force it on anyone. If you read here, you've done so by choice.

I finally posted the following as my FB status earlier today, and I think it sums things up...

"I think a valuable exercise for us ALL is to regularly examine whether our allegiance is to Christ, to Christianity, or to conservative Christian culture. Those are entirely different things which quite often get confused with each other. Tebow-mania is a good example."

From what I've seen in observing Tebow-mania, most Christians fall into the latter 2 of those 3. Tebow is, to them, a big ole "eff you!" to the other side of the culture war. They ceased to actually think about issues, whether cultural or spiritual, looooong ago - if they ever did at all - willing to accept whatever emotionally and culturally charged bandwagon the rest of the herd is riding. It's a faith that's really no deeper than devoted allegiance to a sports team - which probably made the segue to Tebow-mania an easy one.

Several people have lauded how "God gets his message out regardless!", referring to the Tebow deal with 316. They're lying to themselves, and the lies we tell to ourselves are the most powerful. They're cloaking their religious infatuation with Tebow-mania behind the guise of "the message getting out". They say it isn't about Tebow, but about the message. They're being dishonest with themselves. It's about Tebow.

"Lewis! You don't know that! How dare you judge them!"

I'm not judging them. I'm using some common sense. Let's say I decide to go streaking through a town with John 3:16 tattoos on my bum and John 3:16 banners attached to various appendages, and I get arrested at 3:16PM. Would their focus be on the message, or on "the Lord getting out His message"? Or would it be on me and my actions? At its core, it's no different with Tebow.

We need to be honest about these things, and we need to think. Hard.

Ramblin' Man: Quivering Scriptures

2012-01-10T02:05:00.000-05:00

I'm gonna be all over the place in a short amount of time. QF (as an example in a larger point being made), presupposition, the Old Testament God, the pitfalls of making the OT prescriptive, fungelical rationalizations, maybe more. We'll see when we get there.

We all know that Quiverfull, an entire theology, has been built upon this Old Testament passage from Psalm 127...

³ Children are a gift from the Lord;
      they are a reward from him.
⁴ Children born to a young man
      are like arrows in a warrior’s hands.
⁵ How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them!
      He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates.

There's no new ground there. We've been over it before.

QF adherents and proponents are extremely reliant on OT texts - particularly the Christian homeschooling movement and PeripheralVision Forum types. It's been a while since I've read it, but most of VF's mission statement and biblical tenets of patriarchy are supported from OT text, if I'm recalling correctly.

The passage above has to be taken waaaaay out of context to support the idea that "God controls the womb" and you should have faith for as many children as God sends even if your ovaries and uterus have to go nuclear. But they'd suggest that the instruction is clearly there. This is one of the biggest downfalls of presupposition (and "biblical worldviews" in general) - reaching a conclusion before you examine the evidence, rejecting any evidence that opposes your conclusion (such as science, and even worse, common sense), and twisting neutral evidence to "support" your conclusion. Some even use Psalm 127 to support pro-life views. Nothing wrong with being pro-life. I'm pro-life. But the Psalms aren't a great place to support either Quiverfull OR pro-life views.

Just a few chapters over, in Psalm 137, we find this...

⁸ O Babylon, you will be destroyed.
      Happy is the one who pays you back
      for what you have done to us.
⁹ Happy is the one who takes your babies
      and smashes them against the rocks!

Kinda hard to gloss over that one. If I were to take that verse and approach a group of fundamentalists with it, I'd probably get everything from the Rationalization Olympics to "They deserved God's wrath!" Really? Even the little ones? The babies?

Maybe, just maybe, our Christianity shouldn't be based on OT passages, written to Holy Spirit-less people by sometimes obviously quite vengeful people, and which often convey an image of a God that's pretty dark and complicated, sometimes jealous, and to a casual (or not so casual) observer perhaps even petty.

Elsewhere in the OT, we find similar passages, like this one from Ezekial 9...

⁵ Then I heard the Lord say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! ⁶ Kill them all—old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders.

⁷ “Defile the Temple!” the Lord commanded. “Fill its courtyards with corpses. Go!” So they went and began killing throughout the city.

Kinda flips the modern evangelical idea of the "age of accountability" entirely over, doesn't it? No mercy. No pity. Kill the children.

My hope is that even as much of the OT writings were inspired, they've got ample human fingerprints all over them - humanity misunderstanding and misrepresenting God, much as I believe movements like Gothardism, IFB, Christian homeschooling, and PeripheralVision Forum do today. People have always been, and ever will be, people. Although I believe it is, I don't know that my hope is accurate. I arrive at my hope through faith that Christ is the personification of the genuine nature of God - speaking words of condemnation only to the religious addicts and snakes. I'm not a "New Testament Christian", as the title itself is stupid. There were no Christians of ANY flavor prior to the events of the New Testament, and frankly, most people who claim to be New Testament Christians are more Paultians than anything - and I'm not always comfortable with the picture Paul painted of God, realizing that he wrote with the same kind of cultural bias that we would if we were composing the bible today, and he had no idea he was writing part of "the bible". I guess all of this is one reason I've always been partial to the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. It portrays an image of an awesome, majestic, powerful God whose main concern is His creation being decent to each other, taking care of each other, and loving each other.

Here's another example from Jeremiah 48...

¹⁰ Cursed are those who refuse to do the Lord’s work,
who hold back their swords from shedding blood!

Seriously? Cursed for not wanting to kill people mercilessly? Lord knows that if anyone on this earth has a case for revenge, I do, and there are moments where it still probably wouldn't be good for me to meet certain people in a back alley, but as much as I loathe everything about the type of people my former future in-laws are, the way they live their sociopathic faith, all the needless turmoil and pain they introduced into my life, I don't have a thirst for their blood. Yes, I want them to have a reckoning before God (I'd buy a ticket to that one), but not so I can see them punished. I just want to hear them say "I was wrong and I'm sorry" and genuinely mean it. I want to see the realization of the gravity of what they did in their faces. But, I don't want their blood, and I don't want God to want their blood, either.

The OT God doesn't really give me the warm fuzzies. Or at least the God portrayed by the men who wrote the books in the OT.

I see two main problems in all of this...

1) I was once told by a relative of some well-known P/QFers that (paraphrased) "they envision a utopia where everything is governed by biblical law". Yikes. I say "yikes" because being governed by "biblical law" negates Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (the most wholesome parts of the canon), and because the ugly scriptures above are the consequence of the infringement of biblical law. If those nuts ever did actually take over, it'd suck to be you or me. We might be on the business end of one of their swords, or have our babies' heads dashed against rocks. I mean, really, if you're gonna make the OT literal and prescriptive, and follow "biblical law", why not?

2) The remarkable propensity for mainstream Christians to totally gloss over this kind of scripture, to rationalize it away, or to go to the other extreme, embrace it, and promote what is essentially one angry-assed version of God. It's especially bad coming from those who refuse to see the biblical canon as anything other than "God's Word", complete and thorough, every syllable of every word breathed directly from His lips.

My advice to group 2: Reasonable people respect "I don't know" a heck of a lot more than they respect rationalization. There's a great deal of the "Worship me or die!" vibe in the OT. It might be in the best interest of our faith to consider that maybe the OT writers didn't always "get" God...

...and neither do we.

When Sycophants Spit Against the Wind

2012-01-06T12:59:00.004-05:00

By now, many of you who read here may have read this article, written by someone obviously sold out to the fundamentalist mindset of the IFB. To say that it's a dishonest assessment of the situation would be generous. The writer reminds me very much of the members of the People's Temple and residents of Jonestown irrationally defending Jim Jones, unable to be honest with even themselves. We know how that turned out for them.

Anytime, and I mean anytime, someone defends against accusations of abuse with a mentality of "show me the blood or shut up", that should raise red flags.

Joe over at Incongruous Circumspection responds here, and there's a great response to it over at Chuckles Travels.

ETA: My friend Cindy Kunsman posted her response. Give it a read. Thought-provoking stuff. Cindy has dealt closely with many Hephzibah House survivors. Also, check out this correlating piece she wrote a couple of days ago.

Shallow Faith (More Tebow Wars)

2012-01-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

This picture has been popping up around Facebook over the last week or two...

source

People are such sheeple. I've seen people post it saying things like "Right on!" and "God bless Tebow for the brave stand he's taking for God!" and "It's awful the kind of persecution he's facing!" Persecution complex, distorted information, and "us vs. them" are all clear signs that you're practicing an unhealthy form of religion, or are part of an unhealthy religious group or cult. If nothing else, the responses I've seen to the contrived and manipulated question within this photo demonstrate that the "faith" of most people is just an emotional investment - with very little of anything spiritual involved - no deeper than their allegiance to a particular sports team.

The photo is propaganda, and at that, it's quite similar to the tactics Jim Jones used as he made the call to drink the Kool-aid (which you can hear on the so-called "death tape"). Distorted information, persecution complex, us vs. them. If you want to shut your brain off and respond emotionally to propaganda, have at it. I just think it's sad that so many who claim Christ are so willing to be manipulated.

The photo, and the "question" it raises, falls into several forms of propaganda techniques - Appeal to fear, appeal to ignorance, appeal to prejudice, black and white fallacy, common man, demonizing the enemy, flag-waving, oversimplification, scapegoating, stereotyping, and most of all, the straw man.

No one has said that the picture on the left is "OK". No one really cares. Personally, I'm not familiar enough with the Quran to have an opinion on whether or not this fits within the proper etiquette of Islam. I can only assume that this group of Muslims had all the necessary permits and clearances to do what they're doing. If they all showed up and started doing this in my driveway, it wouldn't be "OK", but otherwise, it's really not a big deal to me one way or the other. I'm not Islamic, so I don't lose sleep over how people represent Allah or the Muslim faith.

As far as the picture on the right, I'm not aware of anyone who's made any aggressive efforts to stop Tebow from praying. I can tell several things from the manner in which he prays, though. He wants to be seen. He wants you to notice his prayer. If he didn't, you wouldn't. That's the bottom line on it. He comes from the Christian homeschooling movement, and his "faith" is as much about promoting and witnessing for a "Christian culture" - specifically white, neo-conservative, sprinkled with the parsley of the Victorian era, culture - as it is about any personal relationship with Christ. He's obviously more steeped in the movement's cultural ideas than he is in any understanding of biblical text, particularly the example and teachings of Christ - who sought privacy for his own prayers and taught us to do the same (never making them a spectacle).

If I were to ever meet Tebow, I'd definitely make the suggestion that he stop praying to be seen and making a spectacle out of his prayers, and I'd ask him his thoughts on Matthew 6...but I don't know of anyone, including me, trying to outright stop him from doing what he's doing. It's a free country. He's free to practice his religion (within the confines of the law) however he chooses.

The person responsible for putting this photo/question together tapped into Islam because, just as "the west" is the Great Satan of radical Islam, Islam is one of several Great Satans of fundamentalist Christianity. If you want to stir people up and manipulate their emotions, you do it with their Great Satans. Common enemies are derived from common fears. Fear is the most powerful manipulator there is.

Jim Jones once had some of his men go out into the treeline on the edges of Jonestown and, under cover of night, fire rifles into the camp. He told his followers that these were their enemies from the outside world, and these enemies desired their deaths - as proven by Jonestown coming "under fire". This ploy proved masterful for Jones, as on Kool-aid D-Day all he had to do was to point at this incident to "prove" to his followers that their enemies (law enforcement and the US government/military) would "parachute in on them", torturing babies and seniors before killing them all.

This kinda reminds me of a conversation I've been involved in regarding conservative politics. All a GOP candidate has to do is yell "Christian! Christian here! Vote for me because I'm a Christian!" and the evangelical community automatically shuts down their brain and jumps on the bandwagon. When a politician takes the platform and starts talking faith, it's bull. Christianity has become a form of propaganda all its own within the political spectrum.

Don't fall for ridiculous propaganda. Use your brain.

God's Will Isn't Rocket Surgery

2012-01-03T15:59:00.000-05:00

A lot of you who've been in fundamentalist, authoritarian churches and religious systems, as well as a lot of people like me from somewhat mainstream, or even "fundie-lite", backgrounds, have and still do suffer from various religious addictions. Among those is an obsessive pursuit of "God's will" as if it's some mystical element which we can only obtain if we climb the highest of spiritual mountains, pray until we're spent, and read the bible until our eyes bleed. We'll wring our hands until they're calloused, and we'll lose sleep over the worry of being "out" of God's will.

I don't think God ever intended it to be so complicated.

People like Bill Gothard, with his endless lists of principles (which feed and nourish religious addictions), movements like Peripheral-Vision Forum, who make non-essentials the entirety of their focus, and authoritarian groups like the IFB and the Shepherding movement have championed the confusion on the issue of "God's will", but even many of our mainstream churches have joined in.

Until just a couple of years ago, upon every major decision, my own attitude was usually "Well, I'll pray about it, then I'll see what the bible says about it." Religious addiction. That was a sign of the insecurity that religious addiction breeds, making you conform to a "Christian" mold and certain pattern of doing things without realizing it. I knew, and still know, what the bible says about pretty much everything. I've read it cover to cover numerous times, reading it so meticulously in the past that I often slept with 2 or 3 different translations in the bed with me, as I'd read, study, and compare until I feel asleep. The thing is, it's pretty much impossible to be addicted without insecurity, and the "search" for God's will would take me back to the bible to make sure of what I was reading.

While I still value the books within the bible, I believe it's healthy for Christians to come to the understanding that the bible isn't an instruction manual for life, that "bible" doesn't stand for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth", that the bible isn't a "love letter from God", as many like to say and think. That's just silly. There is an enormous amount of wisdom to be gleaned from the books of the bible, but when the bible becomes more than a supplement to our faith it has become the object of our faith. When "the bible says" or "God's word says" become nothing more than thought-stoppers, our "faith" has become unhealthy and cultic.

Yes, I still want to be "in the will of God". It's just taken on an entirely different meaning, and I have a totally different understanding of the concept than I did a few years ago. A better understanding? I think so. Certainly a healthier understanding. You may disagree.

The understanding of God's will is now very basic and simple for me. I've written before about my own base beliefs of life and faith - love God, love my neighbor, always tell the truth, and do the right thing by others even when it costs me. Those things are the foundation of ALL things for me. Regarding the first two, Jesus said that they were the basis for ALL of the law and the words of the prophets. If you're curious how I apply these things to determining God's will...

If I have a choice to make, and have two options, one of which fits well within these foundational beliefs, and the other which goes against them, there's really no need for me to search the fine print of the bible to determine God's will in the matter. If I have to be less than truthful, if I have to be less than decent and just, if I purposefully gain from the wrongful loss of others, I can be pretty certain that whatever I'm considering isn't God's will. It isn't that difficult.

"But what about gray areas? What about when you have several options, and several of them fit within that criteria?"

This is where the hand-wringing becomes needless, and where religious addictions can kick in. If you have several options, none of which would lead you against loving God, loving your neighbor, telling the truth, and doing right by others, I don't think God will be displeased with your choice of ANY of them. ALL of them are "God's will". It's up to YOU to choose the one you consider best for YOU, using your own brain, examining the evidence, considering all factors. Sure, ask God for guidance, for wisdom. I'm all for that. Just don't spiritualize something that doesn't need spiritualization, but rather just needs a common sense decision. Waiting around to "hear from God" is another symptom of religious addiction, and often a paralyzing one. If you know right from wrong, you've already "heard from God", so choose right - or, choose any one of your right options.

I firmly believe decisions need to be made from a basis of right and wrong, and I think those two things can usually be determined rather easily. When we know the difference, we should act upon it. When we don't, we should make every personal effort to learn the difference while asking God for guidance, not expecting God to make everything magically delicious without any effort on our part. When we have multiple "right" options, we need to just make an informed, common sense choice, confident that God isn't displeased with our choice - because He isn't.

Life is difficult enough without making "God's will" into a monster.

The Peace Game

2011-12-31T01:01:00.000-05:00

My friend Julie graciously invited me to write about this subject on her blog about 18 months ago. With a lot of ground covered between then and now, and more of my own religious addictions having been dealt with since then (hopefully), I want to revisit the issue and give a concise explanation of what I mean when I refer to "the Peace Game", which is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of authoritarians in fundamentalist belief systems.

Before we continue...Not everything that happens in your life is "God's will". Your choices matter. You aren't a puppet on a string being manipulated by the great authoritarian in the sky. God gave you free will, and the responsibility to use it wisely. I mention this because "God's will" often comes into play in the course of the Peace Game. The subject of "God's will" is something I'll probably write a bit on in the near future, being it's something that needlessly causes Christians in fungelical land so much stress.

The widespread implementation of the Peace Game within authoritarianism traces largely to the tactics of the Shepherding movement (with its heavy emphasis on the disciplee being in submission to the discipler), although I'm sure it's been around in some fashion as long as religion itself. What makes it such a handy thing for spiritual abusers is its stealthy, sneaky nature - controlling the choices of the people under them without ever directly telling them what to choose.

If you're an underling within the system - whether a QD (or a QS) within P/QF, a child of the Christian homeschooling movement, or just what amounts to a newbie in a Shepherding influenced or type of church (such as Sovereign Grace, IFB, et cetera) - you're expected to "seek counsel" on all of the major stuff (and sometimes the minor stuff) in your life, from jobs, to relationships/marriage, to church or spiritual matters. In this example, person 1 is "in submission" to the "spiritual authority" of person 2...

Person 1: I'd really like to do so and so.
Person 2: Hmmm...I don't really have peace about that. You need to pray about it some more.

Now to most of us, it's clear what's gone on there. Person 2 has clearly told person 1 "No!" But... to a person beaten into submission by fear-based, authoritarian, fundamentalist doctrines, this sets off a hurricane's worth of insecurity, instability, fear, concern, shame, guilt, you name it. It wasn't an outright "no", and surely this person who's supposed to care so much about their spiritual life wouldn't manipulate them (or so they think). So, they "seek the will of God" about it, and pray fervently. The distress caused by person 2's answer is now translated as a lack of peace within person 1's own heart about the issue. Thoughts such as these begin to emerge...

"If this were God's will for my life, person 2 would have peace about it, wouldn't they?"
"Why doesn't person 2 have peace about this? Why don't I have peace about this?"
"There must be something wrong with this? There must be something with me?"

This leads to almost desperate prayer, which often looks like this...

"God, this is obviously not your will for my life. I'm a sinner, and I've sinned. Can you forgive me?"

Person 2 manipulates, successfully, the outcome they wanted all along, having never technically said "no", while person 1 genuinely believes they've heard from God and made their own choice when they've done neither. Person 2 has successfully made "peace" the personal standard for person 1 in determining "God's will", when "God's will" is actually nothing more than their own will, and the only "peace" achieved in the scenario is the weight of needless guilt and turmoil over person 2's initial lack of "peace" being removed from person 1.

Person 2 also reaps the additional benefit of person 1 now being even more unstable, malleable, and reliant on person 2. Each successive time it gets a little easier to manipulate, as person 2 continually fosters instability and discovers more and more of person 1's buttons. "You need to pray about it some more" will from now on mean "You haven't heard from God until you agree with me" to person 1's conscience, and person 1 is completely oblivious to it.

This is a basic breakdown of the Peace Game. It has lots of little ins and outs that I haven't even touched in this post, but it typically follows a pattern similar to the one above. A lot of you have probably been on the receiving end of it. My ex certainly was. Her disappearance was the result of her need to "hear from God about us", when in actuality it was a reindoctrination session and her opportunity to arrive at the same conclusions as the people poisoning her. Once she'd done this, they lifted the pressure of instability, insecurity, uncertainty, and backhanded condemnation they'd been applying, and presto - she'd "heard from God" about our relationship, aka, "found peace".

Decisions shouldn't be made from "peace" any more than God's will can be determined by "peace". Decisions should be made based upon right or wrong - even if the right decision causes you a world of distress or hurt, which it often will.

Few things of true merit and value come easily or peacefully. Those of you who've found your freedom can certainly attest to this.

The Purity Movement - Life in a Jar

2011-12-29T01:59:00.000-05:00

I've compared P/QF to the People's Temple on several occasions. While the longterm goals differ a bit (a Christian theocracy for P/QF, with its leaders as profiteers - A socialist utopia in Jonestown, with Jim Jones living in absolute power), many elements of the characteristics of a destructive cult are found in both. Another, perhaps even better, comparison is to the FLDS. It's really sickening. It destroys people - from the inside out.

(Here's a big CLA for the rest of this post. I'm pretty emotionally "impure" after having watched the clips below.)

From the time you're born into a P/QF family, or from the time vulnerable, naive parents choose to begin following P/QF teachings and all its assorted little uglies - Christian homeschooling, purity, courtship, et cetera - you're planted in a jar. I once wrote the following...

"when you plant a seed in a jar, you sentence the plant that will result to a best case scenario of growing into the shape of the jar - but NEVER exceeding it. No matter how much the sprigs and shoots want to spread out and reach toward the sun that shines on them and gives them life, the jar forms a barrier that prevents it. More often than not, in the P/QF paradigm, the parents, particularly the father, play the role of the jar. Sadly, I think the reason that young women leaving the P/QF lifestyle encounter so much grief, resistance, and totally unnecessary and abusive drama is a simple one: For them to ever live in freedom, the jar has to be shattered. Few P/QF parents volunteer for as much. Exit is NEVER simple. NEVER easy. The jar has to shatter."

I still believe every word of that. More now than ever. The P/QF paradigm determines your life for you, makes your choices for you, tells you what you think, tells you what you believe. You're a resource in "God's greater plan and providence". You're only as valuable as your "purity" - sexual and emotional. Everything about your life in P/QF will tell you this. I want to tell you that's bullshit.

A friend recently sent me a link to a documentary about the purity movement. I'm gonna write a bit about it here. I almost have to. I watched some of it earlier today. There are 4 segments, and all I could handle was 3. I'm still furious from it, my stomach still literally in a knot. So much emotional ignorance, religious pride, complete stupidity. So many things which remind me of the idiocy (and accompanying idiots) I experienced.

Here's Part 1...

The woman who begins speaking at 00:20 (Khrystian Wilson - daughter of Randy) quite obviously has no idea what purity really is. To her, purity is about works, about the things she does. She doesn't appear to have a clue that she can do ALL of the things which she thinks keep her "pure", including "giving her heart" to daddy dearest, and her real heart, her inner being, can still be putrid and corrupt. She finds her value in the external element of sexual purity and the superficial element of emotional purity. She's most likely been brainwashed with this poison her entire life.

The woman who speaks at 1:22 (Jessica) mentions something I've written about here, how these girls are sooo far behind mentally and emotionally, something I noticed in my ex and her siblings long before I even knew what any of this crap was. I don't mean slightly behind. I'm talking about 13 year olds masquerading around in the bodies of 20somethings, or elementary aged minds and thinking (or lack thereof) in teenagers.

The guy who starts speaking at 1:50 (Ken Lane), aside from just coming across really creepy, he's reinforcing the milieu and indoctrination right there in the interview, even through his looks of affirmation given to his daughter as his states his key points. He's been brainwashed so deeply, and has bought into the propaganda so heavily, that he's completely numb to his own brainwashing tactics, freely engaging in them right in front of the camera. He isn't being brash. He's just that ignorant. "Why not shoot for the fairy-tale?" Ummm, maybe because life isn't a fairy-tale?...and because there's a reason that fairy-tales are a part of children's books and stories? Then again, when the day comes that he presents his daughter to her groom, he'll be presenting a child (regardless of her age), so maybe he's on to something.

And the whole ritualistic bunch of bull butter they're doing at this "purity ball"? Bringing in that cross is almost like spitting on Jesus. It's a mask. A smokescreen. Nobody at that purity ball gives a crap about Jesus. Daddy is being worshiped. Period. Little girls dressed up like fairies dancing around a cross, while the true object of their worship is daddy. It isn't the girls' fault. It's still sickening. It's like the dance of a geisha in training.

Randy Wilson, the guy responsible for this particular incest ba, err, I mean purity ball, comes across as being utterly rife with spiritual pride throughout the 3 segments I've watched. A "and they will know you by your Christianity" kinda guy. I'd dare say that if anyone is actually growing at his church, whether personally or spiritually, it's probably in spite of him. His wife Lisa, who first speaks at 2:44, is completely creating her description of the purity ball event as she goes. She doesn't want to use the "wrong" words, so she searches, speaking not so much from conviction as she does from initial creation. I almost feel like the event is, to her, nothing more than her chance to "play dress-up" with her daughters. It's especially disturbing when she says that she wants "romance" at a purity ball as an appeal to the sensibilities of these young girls. When the men involved are their freakin' fathers, that's just sick.

At around 4:00, Randy Wilson does what is obviously the Lord's work in letting women know how insecure they are inherently. And, by God, he knows how to fix it. It'll take a man.

Khrystian Wilson speaks again at around 4:40, and once again about issues she really has no valid frame of reference to talk about. She's just parroting. She's obviously not aware of that, being totally brainwashed, having been given digestible increments of the Kool-aid for probably her whole life, but she's still just serving as a mouthpiece for the opinions and ideas of other people - namely dear old dad. I know it all too well. She's a 13 year old in a 20 year old body, who knows nothing about nothing about life, but has put her faith entirely in the P/QF paradigm she's been taught. God is irrelevant and unnecessary.

Randy gets disgustingly creepy again at about 5:40 - completely oblivious to the psychology of a child (a 5 or 6 year old has no idea what "marriage" is - of course they'll answer "daddy", being mommy's "married" to him - it's their only frame of reference at that age).

I think Kevin Moore probably means well, but he's just gulped down the Kool-aid and gotten in over his head, probably like most of the men who take their daughters to incest ba, err, purity balls. His daughter, Rachel, who speaks at around 6:40, is another parrot who has no real idea what she's talking about. For instance, her example of someone who's been through three dating break-ups in a months time, and the emotional turmoil that results from it - I mean, seriously, seriously, just how much emotion could be involved in that kinda rapid fire scenario? It gives you a look at just what a dishonest and inaccurate portrayal of dating (and emotion) that these girls are brainwashed with. Purposeful dishonesty, too, which makes it sickening. Brainwashing works. By Kool-aid D-Day, the people at Jonestown literally believed that the people of America wanted to kill them, including their babies and seniors. Again, brainwashing works. Make whatever you need to be seen as the enemy into something so terrible, so evil, such a threat, through repetition and propaganda, and vulnerable, naive minds will buy what you're selling.

I hate to tell Mr. Moore that the 70s absolutely weren't milder than today. At least not sexually. Good Lord. Please join the rest of us in reality.

His daughter Claire speaks at about 8:35. One of the ways she describes "purity" is to "keep my heart pure before God". SMH. She's talking about emotion, for those who don't see the problem with what she said. How fitting that at 9:00 she totally whiffs on the 10 commandments thing (which the interviewer calls her on), and her sister, who she turns to for help, pulls some propaganda right out of her brainwashed rear-end to rationalize the mistake away. I feel sorry for these girls. It's pathetic.

When Hannah (daughter of Ken Lane) starts speaking at 11:10, wow, the whole thing reminds me soooooooooo much of my ex - at least as she was after she disappeared right before our wedding ceremony, was reindoctrinated for several weeks, and only allowed to speak to me thereafter with a moniter on the line with her (usually her father), quite obviously relying on him for answers to questions she couldn't handle - just like the child she was raised to be. Hannah has been raised to be totally reliant on her father. It's sad. I pity her. She'll become an "adult" having never made a decision of substance, and completely unequipped to do so. If her father ever allows her to marry, her husband will become her new idol. She'll never, ever grow beyond exactly who and what she is right now at 11 years old unless the jar is shattered. Her words are daddy's words. Period.

At 13:45, Hannah's mother and Ken's wife, Libby, proves that Hannah has to deal with dumbass on both sides of the family. Nothing but P/QF cult-speak. If it's so terrible to "give pieces of your heart away", and Libby's past is so checkered with the abominable sin of pieces of her heart having been given here, there, and yonder, how is she even fit to be a mother? While her mother is telling us all about her past in cult-speak, it's pretty clear that Hannah's heard this little propaganda spiel many times. She could probably recite it better than her mother.

Here's Part 2...

How perfect that this segment begins with Khrystian Wilson singing a song (which I'm guessing she may have written) about a girl whose "heart's beaten up cause her father's not there". That's almost as painfully cheesy as the Leif Garrett episode of "Behind The Music".

Her sister Amanda (who's quite obviously emotionally immature) then speaks about having "no regrets" for following the courtship/purity model in marrying a man she barely knew. It's a good thing. Regrets would probably earn her one free estrangement from her family. I mean, failure is NOT an option in a mind control dynamic.

Jessica speaks again at around 3:00. She still hasn't come to terms with the fact that the quality of her parents, as people, was largely a facade. Religion (particularly P/QF) was and is their heart, as you'll see later in Part 3. As she tells her story, it becomes obvious that her parents made rules and religious culture their focus in parenting (as most P/QF parents do), eschewing the idea of self-control, and unable to impart life skills or information that were anything more than isolationist religious drivel. Her life paid the price. Jessica doesn't understand that her mother in fact never trusted her. Never. If she had, she'd have taught her about life. What her mother most likely holds against her is the stygma that she now thinks she carries - having a sinful, "worldly" daughter. Naturally, no one wants to think the worst of their parents, but P/QF is a hopelessly selfish system that breeds sociopathy. Everything you thought your parents incapable of, P/QF makes them capable...as many of you reading this know first hand.

David Diefenderfer strikes me as a man, nearing the end of his life, content to allow a paradigm (which makes promises, albeit empty ones, toward the opposite of all of the things he's lived - therein its appeal) raise his daughters after his death. His daughters are just products of its brainwashing and propaganda, although not quite to the poisonous degree of most of the other young girls in the video.

Part 3...

Early in this segment, we meet Colton Wilson, fittingly wearing a Patrick Henry College sweatshirt (Christian homeschooling movement! Yay!). As he's asked how he feels while watching his sisters prepare for the incest ba, err, purity ball, he starts talking about how "lovely" they are, and the look on his face at 00:32 of the video is more than a little creepy, almost like there's a part of him that could cut glass at the moment (if you know what I mean). It's just all creepy and has a vibe of incest, whether the vibe has a basis or not. This stuff just isn't healthy or normal. It's also disturbing how he allows his mother to define who he is emotionally and sexually. I couldn't help but notice that as he says "That's my plan" in reference to saving his first kiss for his wedding day, he looks in his mother's direction.

At around 2:20, we go back to Jessica's story. We see that the "love" of Jessica's parents only genuinely goes as far as Jessica's willingness to drink the Kool-aid. They aren't just bad parents. They're bad people, driven by their out of control religious addictions. They have NO concern for the well-being, or lives in general, of anyone SHE cares about. All they care about is her doing what they want, and they would willingly and purposefully destroy innocent people to make that happen if they could. They're religious sociopaths. I should know. I've seen the same thing up close and personal. So have a lot of you.

Around 5:00, it gets religiously sickening. The Blessing. One big ole flip of the bird and an eff you to their Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ. It's disgusting, from the physical positioning (making the children approach him on their knees) to the seeming desire to go back to the old covenant suggested through the action undertaken. Disgusting. And Lisa Wilson's speech at around 8:10, a large part of me feels it would've never happened if not for cameras being there.

Kevin Moore mentions his father having an addiction. His was gambling. Kevin has one, too. Religion.

The arrogance and pride that rolls off of Randy Wilson at around 10:00 is almost physically tangible. He doesn't seem to realize that being "controlling and patriarchal" IS a negative. He then demonstrates his disconnect from reality with his statement about his daughters' freedoms and liberties. Total whackadoodle. "I'm not about controlling. I see it more as 'launching'." SMH. Ok then. Asshat. Lisa Wilson then tries to rationalize away the controlling. It isn't about dignity, standards, or anything of the sort, Lisa. If you'd look past your own propaganda for even 5 seconds, you'd see exactly what it's all about: Taking Dominion. If you don't hold up your end and produce little SuperChristian dominionists, the multi-level marketing scheme which is P/QF crumbles. End of story. Just tell the truth for once.

I don't even want to get into the Purity Covenant, and the way it bows up and takes a crap all over Matthew 5.

I'm not sure I'll even watch the last segment. It's nearly 2AM here, and this has me so stirred up that sleep isn't really in view right now. I watch this and I see blatant emotional incest, and see these idiot patriarse fathers eventually offering prospective grooms the emotional equivalent of what would be, in crude sexual terms, sloppy seconds. If you're emotionally incestuous with your father, how exactly are you "emotionally pure"? The response to that of any healthy man would be "Yuck!" It's as if the only way these girls will ever be "fit" for marriage is to be emotionally unhealthy. This is aside from the perpetual immaturity.

So many bad memories, the dots of which connected easily when watching this. Back when I was in the midst of my deal, I really had NO idea just how big the monster behind my ex's dysfunction actually was. I'd have still loved her and still fought for her, but Lord help me at the futility of it.

To you ladies (and guys, too) who've been in this, gotten out of it, and started toward healthy, productive lives...I can't really put into words just how much I admire and respect you. You're amazing. All of you.

To those of you still in it, please read here.

The Joke Was On Me (Part Sixteen)

2011-12-25T23:04:00.000-05:00

Tuesday promised to be a busy day. Errands to run, and an engagement party that night to prepare for. There was a function going on at the local church that evening, so we timed our party with that in mind, being that a good number of family friends would be involved at the church. We invited people to begin coming by at 4PM, so we'd need to get an early start on preparations.

I awoke a little after 7AM and walked back to the bedroom doorway, cracking the door just a bit. She was sleeping soundly, and I stood there and just soaked her in for a while. She looked beautiful. More than beautiful. I woke her at about 8, and we cuddled for a bit before having breakfast. Within a couple of hours, we were off to town.

As we were pulling out of the driveway, I sensed some unease in her...

Me: Everything ok?
Her: (hesitant) Yeah, I'm just worried about tonight. What if they don't like me? They'll be judging me, and what if they don't like me? I don't even know how I should act around these people. What if they don't like me?
Me: Don't even begin to worry. The people coming tonight are coming because they care about me. They'll be curious about you, no doubt, but the only way they'll judge you is whether or not you make me happy. That's all they'll be concerned about - "Does she love him and make him happy" - so more than anything, I'll be the one under the microscope. All they want is to see me happy. You'll blow them away. Trust me.
Her: Are you sure, Lew? I'm just not very good around people I don't know.
Me: Just be yourself and they'll treat you just like an old friend. They're gonna love you. You're gonna be fine.
Her: You sure?
Me: Absolutely. And besides, even in the event that they didn't like you, I'd still love you. Nothing changes either way. They can either board the train with us, or wave goodbye as we leave the station, but either way, we're on the train.

After a few minutes of building her up, she settled, and her nervousness and insecurity gradually shifted to anticipation. This concerned me a bit (more now than then). Yes, I wanted to be strong for her, for us, but I didn't want her to perpetually adopt my strength and confidence. I wanted her to discover her own strength. For so long she'd been taught that confidence is actually arrogance and conceit, that she had to remain meek and mousy to be "godly", and socially, in human interaction, for her up was down and down was up.

We'd once had a conversation about some of our initial encounters, and she'd conveyed her impression of me as "busy, confident, aloof yet attentive" (paraphrased a bit). I told her that I probably was busy (the week we first met I had a lot of irons in the fire), but that I intentionally walk and move confidently, even when I'm not confident, because body language can be a loud conversation. Projecting healthy confidence usually drives away the people you don't want to interact with, and puts at ease those you do want to interact with. She was completely clueless to this kind of thing. Her parents had failed her as mentors in so many ways. Way back in our first conversations, I'd ask her questions not concerned at all with her answer, but with the way she answered - her body language, the sources she tapped to answer - because in doing so I'd get answers to several questions I hadn't actually asked - at least not verbally. This is what she interpreted as "aloof". She was naive, and while that was beautiful in its own way, I wanted her to expand beyond her small parameters, to grow beyond the helpless little girl who was "created to be my helpmeet", adrift in a dangerous world without her man to uphold her.

We picked up a few things for the party. Nothing elaborate. A cake, some finger foods, et cetera, and being that a lot of the people would be coming straight from work and leaving straight for church, I wanted to feed them something of substance, so we picked up about half a dozen pizzas. Like I said, nothing elaborate or formal, no gifts required, just good friends (and a few relatives) getting together to meet my bride.

I was honestly blown away by the number of people that came. They started trickling in right around 4 o'clock, and by 5, the little country house had probably 40-50 people in it, numbers that held on until probably 8PM, with some leaving and new batches arriving regularly. Some of my dear friends from the recording world drove in excess of 2 hours to attend (and the woods out here aren't on the way to anywhere), and that meant a great deal to me. Many of them would arrive, take one look at me, and immediately start crying and hugging me. Being happy, yourself, is a blessing, but seeing other people happy at your happiness is genuinely humbling.

Of course, I had her right there on my arm, proudly presenting her to my world. She looked incredible.

A couple of hours in, a bit of mental (and probably emotional) fatigue hit me, so I asked her, "You doing ok?" She answered with, "I'm fine, Lew." With that, I made my way to the sofa and plopped down. The next 30 minutes were amazing. The room had gravitated from "us" to "her", and I sat there and watched her work a crowd of strangers like a long-time pro. She had the grace and easy rhythm of a willow, moving seamlessly from one conversation to the next. I don't know exactly what was being said, what with a symphony of rapid-fire conversations going on all throughout the house, but whatever she was saying, I could see the faces on the receiving end of her words light up, sometimes casting looks of affirmation in my direction. Occasionally she'd look in my direction and mouth the words "I love you". One of my long-time professional buddies dropped in beside me and said, "She makes you happy, doesn't she?" I answered, "She does." He responded with, "Well, she loves you, and she makes you happy. That's all I care about. It's a beautiful thing, buddy. Good for you." This confirmed to me everything I'd suspected about the quality of my genuine friends. Solid people.

As things wound down that evening, the crowd thinned out to just a few of my long, longtime friends, and along with my family, we talked about the old days, back when we were younger and a heck of a lot prettier, with few cares other than when we could get the next basketball game together out back. It was a good visit. Once all the visitors had left, and it was just my folks and brother (and his family) left, we sat around and talked even more about our childhood, and she soaked it all in attentively - even if she couldn't relate to all of it, laughing at times, elbowing me in the ribs at times, and blending in as part of a family that would love and accept her - good, bad, or ugly.

By the time we'd visited, as a family, and then cleaned up the residuals of the party, it was nearing 11PM. We were exhausted, and had another busy day ahead of us on Wednesday. I walked her to her bedroom, where we had a few minutes of "us" time, cuddling, kissing, and exchanging "I love yous", we said a prayer together, I tucked her in, and then once again settled in a chair beside her, stroking her hair and forehead until she fell asleep. It was, to that point, the happiest day of my life - something I'd be able to say a few more times during her stay.

In a period of no more than 8 hours I'd seen her full spectrum - the frightened, insecure, helpless, naive child she'd been raised to be, and the bold, confident, vibrant yet graceful woman for which I'd always seen the potential. I wouldn't rest totally easy about her until the day when that might even out, and lean toward the vibrant and confident, but I was content and determined to love her without relent no matter what stage of her journey she might be in, even if she were consistently a different woman, or a lesser woman, as she was when the people from her world were in her ear.

Wednesday morning found us saying farewell to my brother and his family. It had been a good visit, having them celebrate our happiness with us. Later that morning, we headed to the jeweler to get her ring resized. We had wanted to wait until after the engagement party (naturally), and while we were there, we spent some time looking at wedding bands for me, finding two or three prospects we really liked. We also spent some time strolling through the shops and stores around the jewelry store. She'd grown up with little of anything, and as I watched her looking at various items, I decided that at some point in her visit, the girl was gonna shop. I wasn't exactly wealthy, but I had enough that I was absolutely gonna take my bride to town and say "have at it".

Once we got back to the house, we scarfed down some leftover pizza, and then got dressed to go to a wedding. A younger cousin, who'd always looked up to me like an older brother, was getting married about an hour away, and there's no way I'd have missed it, or have missed the opportunity to present my own bride to yet more people of significance to me. My ex (it really sucks to use that term this deep into the story) looked incredible, wearing a blouse/skirt combo (I don't really know the right terms for women's clothing - J.Edgar I'm not), but was concerned that she didn't look "dressy" enough for the occasion. I told her, "You look great. Look at me." I was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved dress shirt, and Rockports. Not exactly formal. The dress code was "casual dress", as it was an outdoor event.

Me: Would you feel better if you put on a dress?
Her: I don't have a dress.
Me: Didn't have room to pack one?
Her: No, I don't have one. I've never owned one.

If nothing else, I knew what I'd take her shopping for. At some point, soon, she was gonna be the proud owner of any dress she wanted.

The drive to the wedding was beautiful, through a small mountain range, apple orchards, and spring in full bloom. She was soaking it all in. Happy. Breathing. The ceremony was held on the porch of a little, rustic log cabin, with the sun setting over the Blue Ridge mountains, just beyond a rugged log fence, behind us. Quite a romantic setting. She squeezed my hand and snuggled warmly against my arm all throughout. After the ceremony, as we all lined up to greet the wedding party, my cousin broke down in tears when I got to her, telling me, "I was doing ok until I saw you. I'm so glad you could come." I love her, sweet gentle soul of a beautiful young woman she is, and I was thrilled to share in her happiness, and share a bit of mine with her. When I introduced her to my ex, my ex embraced her deeply, warmly, once again demonstrating almost a chameleon nature, taking my condition upon herself as her own, almost as if she were communicating my feelings to my cousin on my behalf. I think some of it came from a healthy connection to me, a genuine connection, or at least I'd like to think it did, while some of it probably came from her own gravitation toward whatever she perceived as the nearest "strength", whether it was strength or not.

She willingly and happily joined in with some of my other relatives in prepping for the reception, which was happening there under the porch of another cabin. When it reached the point where the bride shares a dance with her father, my ex and I stood to the side, watching my Uncle very awkwardly, but lovingly, dance with his daughter. That was a difficult moment for my ex, and that difficulty manifested in tears. I just held her close and told her, "We're gonna be ok."

On the trip back home, I took a winding mountain road that weaves its way up to the top of a ridge. For a stretch of two or three miles, you can look below at the town lit up like a Christmas tree, and see the lights of half the county beyond it. She was at the same time pensive and at ease. She enjoyed the lights. It was a great night, with beautiful weather, to see them. Through the rest of the trip, little was said. It had been a busy and exhausting three days. She'd occasionally lift my hand to her face or to her lips, and she'd tell me "I love you, Lew." I really thought my heart might burst. So in love with her.

The next day would finally give us a chance to rest a bit. The three days since she'd arrived had been wonderful, but rest was needed and welcomed.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T23:03:00.002-05:00

I hope you all are surrounded by love and warmth this Christmas, and have a safe, peaceful, and happy Holiday. God bless.

The Tebow Wars

2011-12-23T10:35:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing a lot of you have seen the Tebow skit on Saturday Night Live last weekend. If not, here ya go...

A pretty accurate portrayal of Tebow's overkill, and probably of the feelings of most of us concerning it. Funny stuff. I was rolling, especially at 1:40 and 2:10. Some Christians may be uncomfortable with the folksy, sarcastic portrayal of Jesus, but I don't think Jesus is losing any sleep over it. It's strange, but more people seem upset with the "attack" on Tebow than the portrayal of Jesus, which pretty much strengthens my belief that the "Christianity" of a lot of people is no deeper than the emotion of being a sports fan. Tebow has been defended the same way a Patriots fan would defend Tom Brady, a Lakers fan would defend Kobe Bryant, or a racing fan would defend Dale Earnhardt, Jr. In other words, no thought process, no logic, all emotion. Probably even more emotionally and irrationally than those people are defended.

Here's our old friend Pat Robertson...

Terrible analogy. Terrible. I hate to break it to you, Pat, but in a radical, Islamic country (Iran, for instance), Tebow himself would likely be dead. In trying to point out the moral decay which is so clearly evident in the SNL spoof of Tebow {SA}, all Robertson did was point out all the things that make America a great nation. Pat goes on to say (regarding Tebow)...

"I think that he's a wonderful human being, and the fact that he prays and seeks God, I think we ought to applaud it. We need more religious faith in our society. We're losing our, our moral compass in our nation, and this man, uh, has been placed in a unique position and I applaud him. God bless him."

Jesus said (Matthew 6:5-6)...

"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace."

Drastically different approaches, it appears.

Again, I'm not against Tim Tebow. I'm against people celebrating the practice of the Christian faith directly opposed to the way Christ told us to go about our faith.

We need to stop being sheople.

Here's a Solution

2011-12-20T23:10:00.001-05:00

Oy Vay.

My last post about thought reform and conditioning (not about homosexuality) created still more discussion about homosexuality and sin, just like the post that preceded it (which also wasn't about homosexuality). It's almost as if the people getting all up in arms about sin and homosexuality don't realize that they're serving as the proof of the merit of what I was writing.

I sometimes wonder if I'm writing in a foreign language, and if not, if some people can see through their threatened, angry emotions to actually read what's been written. In my last post, I even said the following in reference to the post prior...

"And, once again, I didn't even write about homosexuality, by default taking no position on it! Although it always happens to varying degrees, that post was a masterclass of an example of people reading in to what I wrote rather than reading it. What a shame."

...and, there you have here it again - for the post prior, just like last time.

So for those whose hearts are literally breaking over the GLBT community, believing they've punched a one-way ticket to hellfire and brimstone, having made a deliberate choice to live a sinful, depraved lifestyle...I have a solution for ya.

Pray for them. It's that simple.

I don't mean this...

"Dear God, please show the gays the truth of the sin of homosexuality."

That would seem to me to be a selfish prayer, prayed by someone who doesn't genuinely care about the person they're praying for, the truth, or even really God. The person who would pray such a prayer would seem to me to only care about the comfort and security of their own paradigm.

Try something like this...

"Dear God, please show them the truth, Your truth."

If your heart/motive is genuine in your prayer, that should be more than enough.

While you're at it, ask the same for yourself. I always do.

Conditioning

2011-12-19T13:02:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago, we'd have had a heart attack if we were expected to pay $3 for a gallon of gas. Here we are, just a few years later, conditioned to the point that many people will drive miles out of their way (and probably burn up the difference in cost) to buy gas for $3 a gallon. These days it's a steal.

conditioning: a process in which a stimulus that was previously neutral, as the sound of a bell, comes to evoke a particular response, as salivation, by being repeatedly paired with another stimulus that normally evokes the response, as the taste of food.

Watching my last post being interpreted, both here and as it made its way around the interwebs, was fascinating and telling. I didn't write about homosexuality. I wrote about a friend and about hypocrisy in the political and social realms, as well as within the Christian community. I didn't write in support of homosexuality. In fact, I took no moral position on the issue of homosexuality one way or the other (other than saying it isn't a black and white issue within the comment thread). I wrote in support of a friend, and I wrote in opposition to hypocrisy.

I've written and posted right around 200 pieces since beginning this blog a little over a year and a half ago. In the course of those posts, I've delved deeply into some ugly, abusive stuff. Ugly. Things that turn humans into human debris. Things that often destroy the heart, mind, and soul. Belief systems which are blatant idolatry and horribly abusive - sometimes emotionally, sometimes mentally, sometimes physically, always spiritually. Then, a couple of days ago, I wrote a post that wasn't even about homosexuality, but highlights a guy who just happens to be homosexual, and within the (as of now) 20 something comments there's more discussion of "sin" than on the rest of my blog combined.

That's the result of conditioning.

Fungelical Christianity has its own set of buzzwords, just like the Christian homeschooling cult does. It would tell you that it doesn't have pet sins, that all sin is wrong, and that it treats all sin equally. That's blatant dishonesty. I would agree with most that some sins are more overtly harmful and destructive than others. That said, homosexuality, sin or not, isn't any threat to the greater good of American (or international) society. Personally, I feel that lying is the most destructive thing an individual can do (it always tears down) - but no one has made a political issue out of that, have they? People seldom get emotional about that, do they? How often does the topic of "lying" cause a debate about "sin"? Not very. But somehow, homosexuality/gay marriage and abortion are on the verge of destroying us all! Right?! A lot of people seem to believe as much - and they're the victims of conditioning via thought reform.

Homosexuality is mentioned even in passing, and it's sin, sin, sin. Abortion comes up, and suddenly Christians become staunch and unflinching advocates for society's most vulnerable. The irony is, if Christians really want to be advocates for the vulnerable, it seems they'd be advocates for people in the homosexual community. Also, this passionate defense of the unborn is hard to swallow for some, being it can't really be supported from the pages of the bible, what with OT accounts of a God who ordered the killing of live babies. These issues - from homosexuality, to abortion, to the bible, to our understanding of God - aren't black and white issues. Conditioning takes what is truly gray and places it in forced tones of black and white. The fungelical community has become quite good at this.

trigger: anything, as an act or event, that serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.

When you add the element of emotion to the definition above, you get a passionate version of "Loaded Language", thought-stopping terminology, #6 in Liftin's criteria for Thought Reform.

Fungelicals have for so long, and so repeatedly, told us that homosexuality was an abomination, so utterly depraved, and a choice made only by lustful, depraved, perhaps even reprobate, minds, that now, when we even sniff the word "gay", our first thought is "sin!". When we hear the word "abortion", our first thought is "murder!". The result is that few even bother to think about these issues anymore.

We've made our spirituality, our "Christianity", and our politics into nothing more than being emotional sports fans. We've picked our teams, and we've bought all the assorted paraphernalia, and our rivals are the devil. What depth we have!

In the greater Christianity community, there's been greater condemnation of my friend Lucas - who's a man of honesty, character, and integrity, and just happens to be homosexual - than there'll EVER be for my former future in-laws - who have no integrity, don't know what character is, and are allergic to honesty, but who own the right paraphernalia. That's pathetic. People can argue that this isn't really the case, but you'll just be spitting into the wind. I know this to be the case.

Terrible things have been said to and about Lucas on the interwebs over the last few days. Terrible things. By Christians. Again, he lives honestly, with integrity and character, and just happens to be a homosexual. By the same token, even today, I've seen Christian people on FB livid over the "abuse" Tim Tebow is getting - and Tebow goes about his faith in just about every possible way Jesus said not to. The thing is, Tebow owns the right paraphernalia, and he'll show it to you at every available opportunity...whether you want to see it or not.

Since writing the post where I mentioned and supported Lucas, I've been asked and told things like...

How can you be a Christian and support homosexuality?
You aren't a real Christian.
How can you waste your gifts to promote such a thing?
Are you a fag too?

And, once again, I didn't even write about homosexuality, by default taking no position on it! Although it always happens to varying degrees, that post was a masterclass of an example of people reading in to what I wrote rather than reading it. What a shame.

Being a product of thought reform isn't a good thing. It's one reason for my own continual examinations.

Let's shed the conditioning and develop some depth to our spirituality, shall we? Count me in.

Ideas Held Hostage

2011-12-16T19:56:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine made a bold move a few days ago. I gotta say, I didn't see that coming. I applaud the guy.

I'm not writing about homosexuality, the rightness or wrongness of it, et cetera. I couldn't care less about that in the point I want to convey in this post. What I want to address is the way the fungelical crowd holds an entire segment of American ideas - from the political realm, to the social realm, to the religious realm - hostage with their exclusionist, holier-than-thou attitudes. In much the same way the religious addicts and fungelicals took over the Christian homeschooling world, pushing out any person or idea that didn't/doesn't toe the line of the straight and narrow-minded way, the fungelicals of the Religious Right have done the same to American politics, specifically in taking over, and ruining, most of the dialog within the GOP.

I've known Lucas for a few years now, going back to my days of touring. Always a stand-up guy, always sharp, astute beyond his youth. Our paths used to cross a few times a year in the course of touring. Lucas has been involved in the music industry, to varying degrees, for several years. It wasn't difficult to see him as a guy who would "go places". Determined, prepared, and involved would be good descriptions. I haven't seen Lucas since I left the road in 2008. Other than a few FB messages and a few text messages on election night in 2008, we really haven't communicated much in the last few years. I've kept up with his political comings and goings a bit on FB, not surprised at all to see his involvement at significant levels or to see him rise through the ranks.

Lucas has a heck of a lot to offer the world.

What's unfortunate is that with his public pronouncement of his sexuality (which should be among the least of ways one would measure a person), he's now at odds with the rabid, vocal fungelical minority which expects the GOP to act as its personal vehicle. He's still a limited government conservative (which would probably be a good description of me, too), but that doesn't matter to the fungelicals who hold the party hostage. He's the enemy to them. His ideas are now meaningless to them (unless they can steal and take credit for them). In the linked article, he's spot on. The "Christian hate" - not hate of Christians, but hate from Christians - has crippled conservative politics. The handling of issues of sexuality by the Religious Right is pitiful. Thanks, Jerry Falwell and cohorts, for your useless rhetoric, your "Moral" majority, and your general dismantling of the free exchange of ideas within conservatism.

In this election cycle, the stranglehold is evident, from the constant pandering to the Tea Party idiots, to Rick Perry's recent gay-bashing and fungelical pandering, to the fact that religious idiots like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are still even in the race.

The church's handling, as a whole, of issues of sexuality are even worse, and are the foundation of the larger problem. I've personally heard well-known pastors like John Hagee and Jesse DuPlantis preaching, from their pulpit, the idea that homosexuality is a choice, chosen only by the rebellious and sin-infested heart. Science be damned...which it usually is in fundamentalist Christendom. By promoting such ignorance, they fuel the fires of irrational fear and hate, and this nonsense spills out into the social realm, and then into the political realm. Look at Michelle Bachmann's husband, Marcus, for a prime example of the ignorance. The church should be ashamed of its treatment of the gay and lesbian community. Pathetic.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're a person suffering from 2nd Chronicles 7:14 syndrome, and abortion and gay marriage are used as litmus tests concerning candidates, you may actually be a threat to your country when you enter the voting booth. I'm not saying those aren't significant issues, or that it's wrong for those issues to be important to you. I'm saying that those issues are only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the larger picture, and the greater good of the nation shouldn't be held hostage to what are, by and large, cultural, ancillary issues in context. That's trying to rearrange shades of gray into tidy packages of black and white. This isn't a "Christian nation". Americans aren't "God's people". Use your freaking head, examine all the issues, know all the issues, and pick your candidate accordingly. Be informed. Propaganda from the fungelical community doesn't exactly qualify as "informed". Take your sacred cows and have a big BBQ. Know what you're doing, and why you're doing it, when you close the curtain next November, or do us all a favor and stay home.

Knowing the world that both Lucas and I come from, he's probably gonna get shunned by quite a few people. Lots of hypocrisy in the world of Christian music. Tons of it. It's a shame. Like I said, Lucas is a stand-up guy, and he's demonstrated some serious cajones and integrity in the very public stand he's taken, hiding nothing. The real shame is that he's the exception within our world of hear no evil, see no evil. I know of a very well-known Christian music person who is right now "vacationing" out of the country with a women not his wife. Lots of the power-brokers within the industry are known philanderers, having kept mistresses for years. I don't really care who they screw. What I care about is the sale of their CDs and the peddling of their miscellaneous goods on the premise that they aren't doing that kind of thing, but are wonderful, godfearing men (and women). That's the tragedy in all of it. The con. The shysterism. People playing out their Tony Soprano mafioso fantasies, living the dream, speaking only the language of dead Presidents.

I wish the best for Lucas. I hope his life is lived at a happy, fulfilled pace, and that he's able to help and be a voice for people marginalized by moral injustice at the hands of those who should love them most. I hope he can be a positive force within conservative politics. God bless him.

Faith? Or Fear?: Tebow-Mania and the "War on Religion"

2011-12-14T01:46:00.001-05:00

Fundamentalist evangelicals are rife with paranoia that Christianity is "under attack". Heck, Rick Perry is banking on it - even though he's done so in such a way as to make himself completely nonviable.

I call BS.

Secular Americans, by and large, have no problem with "Christianity". Some of them are probably extremely welcoming of the idea of a loving Christ. The problem secular people have is with evangelical Christians forcing their version and vision of Christianity on them. Big difference. HUGE difference.

Since I have no local sportsradio channel to tune in, I always listen to NPR while I do my weightlifting. Today the topic being discussed was Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. I recently stated, in this post, my concerns with "Tebow-mania". Not so much Tebow himself as the response of the Christian community to him. Make no mistake, I DO have some concerns about Tebow individually - homeschooled, missionary kid, Gothard connection, et cetera, and his over-the-top wearing of his faith on his sleeve. I question the motive behind it - for reasons I'll get into in a bit. I don't think Tebow's a terribly bright guy (not a personal knock - just listen to him do an interview), and I think he's allowed himself to become fodder and ammunition in a ridiculous, largely manufactured cultural war, all while having no real grasp on the scope of it all.

The majority of the people commenting on the NPR show weren't evangelicals. They all conveyed admiration for Tebow as a competitor (rightly so), and not a single person among them had a problem with Tebow being a Christian. I mean, it's not like Tebow is the first professing Christian in the world of professional sports. There are TONS of athletes, professional and otherwise, who claim the Christian faith. The concern that arose was Tebow's perpetual, public, and very in-your-face way of wearing his Christianity on his sleeve. Constantly bowing to pray on the sidelines, telling every microphone stuck in his face just how much he loves Jesus, et cetera. Of even more concern was the irrational worship of and devotion to Tebow by evangelical Christians. I was almost compelled to call in and tell them, "There's a few things you should probably know about Tebow's brand of "Christianity"..."

The issue of Jake Plummer's (former Broncos quarterback) criticism of Tebow's overt religiousness came up. Some of what Plummer had to say...

"Tebow, regardless of whether I wish he'd just shut up after a game and go hug his teammates, I think he's a winner and I respect that about him," said Plummer. "I think that when he accepts the fact that we know that he loves Jesus Christ, then I think I'll like him a little better. I don't hate him because of that, I just would rather not have to hear that every single time he takes a good snap or makes a good handoff.

"Like you know, I understand dude where you're coming from ... but he is a baller. He knows how to win and when your teammates believe in you that you can do good things and that's what they are doing. They are winning. That's fun to see."

Plummer actually complimented him as a "winner", only taking issue with the in-your-face Christianity.

Tebow's response...

"If you're married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife 'I love her' the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity?

"And that's how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ is that it is the most important thing in my life. So any time I get an opportunity to tell him that I love him or given an opportunity to shout him out on national TV, I'm gonna take that opportunity. And so I look at it as a relationship that I have with him that I want to give him the honor and glory anytime I have the opportunity. And then right after I give him the honor and glory, I always try to give my teammates the honor and glory.

"And that's how it works because Christ comes first in my life, and then my family, and then my teammates. I respect Jake's opinion, and I really appreciate his compliment of calling me a winner. But I feel like anytime I get the opportunity to give the Lord some praise, he is due for it."

Now, to the average evangelical Christian, that seems like a "godly", level-headed response. They'll completely look past the lack of logic in it, the poor example he uses in his first paragraph, and the symptoms of religious addiction and "movement" indoctrination. Evangelicals are pretty gullible that way. Tebow should be listening to Plummer, and to the other people trying to tell him similar things, but he can't get past his indoctrination, which leads him to get defensive about his practice of his faith. What Plummer was trying to tell him was, "Dude, I respect you. Now it's your turn to respect me." It's not like Jesus needs a national television broadcast to get the message from Tim Tebow of "I love you, Jesus". Tebow is doing his duty - at least in his, and his parents', reckoning.

In another segment, Tebow responded to the issue of his overt displays of "faith" by saying, paraphrased, "I take every opportunity I can to witness about Jesus Christ. I do this because I love the Lord." And that's a problem. A big one. Bigger than big. Children of the movement can tell you how much of an emphasis is placed on "witnessing" (my ex thought she should be able [in the sense of willingness and preparation] to "witness" to anyone - anytime and anywhere). Tebow is doing it because he "loves the Lord" (same as my ex - Christian duty and obligation). We shouldn't witness because we "love the Lord". We should communicate our witness, in whatever form, because we love other people. This love respects the personal rights - the physical and intellectual space - of those it encounters, and recognizes that not everyone wants to "talk about Jesus", nor does everyone care how much we "love Jesus". It doesn't impose itself.

All of this really suggests that Tebow is doing what his fundamentalist, homeschooled indoctrination prepared him to do - to be a cultural warrior for Jesus, and when the stadium is full and all attention is on him, or when the cameras go on and the mic gets shoved in his face, it's "Showtime, baby!" for his version of Christianity - and screw you and your personal intellectual space. Rather than letting it be evident in his life simply by living, he has to purposefully let you see the rituals.

THIS is the kind of stuff that turns people off to Christianity. People aren't turning so much away from God as they are away from those who claim to be "God's people", and for good reason. Fundamentalist evangelicals look at a rejection of them, and their message, as a rejection of God Himself - a gross error on their part - and this skewed vision of religious reality leads them to see any word or action against THEM (not against God) as a "war on religion". They seriously need to get over themselves. Those who have spoken out in criticism of Tebow's overt religiousness aren't at war with Christianity. Like Jake Plummer, they're essentially saying, "Enough already. We get it. You 'love Jesus'. Just shut up and play football."

It's like the issue of "prayer in school". As I've said before, NO ONE can stop someone else from praying in school or anywhere else, short of knocking them out cold. Evangelicals aren't content with a silent personal prayer that no one else but God knows was prayed. They want it to be PUBLIC, and they want everyone else to reverence the "Christian" God. Think about it. It's the only thing that makes sense. This ignorant attitude and selfishness is what people are at war with, if anything. I mean, I'm certainly at war with it, and I have faith in Christ. I can see how infuriating it could be to non-Christians. They should be infuriated by it.

I think back to a situation in the late 80s in a town about an hour west of here. A fundamentalist church over there was openly pushing young kids - like 8 year olds - to do street preaching on the sidewalks of the small downtown area. The town had to put a stop to it. I mean, imagine it's lunchtime, and you're walking up the street to the local diner to find a hamburger, and some little kid jumps out in front of you and starts screaming, fists clenched and veins popping out on his neck and forehead, "If you ain't accepted Jesus, you're a sinner, and you're going to Hell!!! Repent of your sins!!! Do you want to go to Hell?!!! Repent!!!" I saw the footage on the news of these kids "preaching". Sickening. All they needed to add to their sentences was "Damn you!" and it would've been perfect.

The public line of this church, in response to the city's action against the street-preaching, was something about being "persecuted because of their faith". Actually, they were being regulated because of their ignorance and their disturbance of the public peace. The regulations had nothing to do with their faith. They probably got off relatively lightly. How would I fare if, let's say, I took a boom box and blasted every person who I passed on the street with AC/DC (for those of you from the homeschool world, that's a heavy metal rock band that was popular in the 70s and 80s...Some evangelicals thought they were "devil-worshipers") - and did so right in their face? I'd be arrested.

In the end, they turned a LOT of people off to Christianity, and understandably so. Some street-preaching still goes on around here occasionally (I know of a couple of locals who've done it), but it's pretty heavily regulated...as it should be. It's ridiculous.

Men like James Dobson, with his aggressive forays into the political realm, turn people off to Christianity. When religious zealots like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell declare 9/11 to be "God's judgment on America", people reject them. When Benny Hinn calls Katrina "God's judgment on the city of New Orleans", people reject him - especially knowing that Christians died there too.

I've been asked many times what's behind the radical shift(s) in my own views and the practice of my faith in the last few years, and my answer is always the same: Christians. Contrary to the opinion of a lot of fundamentalists who visit here, I haven't rejected God, nor have I turned my back on Christ. I've simply rejected their version of Christianity. I don't claim to have all the right answers, I've just been able to discern a few wrong ones. I've discovered that a lot of people who profess Christ are actually more concerned with protecting the perceived institutions of Christian religion (often confused with patriotism by the religious right) than promoting the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives or the lives of others. It's disheartening. I saw a lot of the same in the world of Christian music - people making moral choices not based on right or wrong, but rather based on how it would affect the "industry" and the lifestyle they so dearly loved. I reject that lack of a moral compass in the same way I reject the perceived institutions of Christianity. When a religious movement or endeavor is more highly valued than the people involved in it, God has long since vacated the premises.

Believing this to be a secular nation (that just happens to have a lot of Christians in it) which recognizes the right to peace, liberty, and the religion of personal choice for ALL people isn't a waging of war on religion. It isn't a rejection of God. It's reality.

Only a very few radical atheists openly and aggressively fight against the idea of faith. Even most secular people generally marginalize such voices. There's really only one side fighting a cultural war in this country.

Don Quixote would be proud.

Rick Perry's Hail Mary

2011-12-08T17:49:00.001-05:00

Have you seen Rick Perry's new campaign ad?

Wow. Panic mode. Stirring up fundamentalist religious emotion/fear and pulling issues straight out of his butt cheeks to do so. Pretty manipulative, but I'm sure at least some of the fundamentalist community will take the bait. Looks like his candidacy has run into problems his coffers and Bilderberg background can't quite overcome, so now he's going for broke and throwing a culture war lob, talking about the Anti-Christ's, err, I mean Obama's "war on religion".

Want to read a thoughtful and intelligent response to it and the mentality behind such an ad? Here ya go. Some of you may not like the source, but if you're genuinely willing to accept truth in whatever package it comes, you'll get over it.

There's Crazy, and Then There's FIC Crazy

2011-12-08T01:00:00.001-05:00

Courtesy of the folk at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, we have yet another sign that the Apocalypse may indeed be upon us. O.M.G.

Perhaps they just made a really poor choice for a title, but God help us all, preparing a 2 year old for marriage? What the...?! At 2 years old you should be learning how to go poopy in the potty, learning to not eat boogers, learning to talk without spitting, and playing with blocks and Legos.

This kinda crap is just more evidence of just how uptight this crowd is. (I'd pay an enormous sum of money to see Zach Galifianakis do his stand-up routine at a Family Integrated Church, or at a VF or Gothard conference)

A couple quotes of note...

It is folly to think that we can wait until our children are on the brink of marriage to communicate to them a Biblical vision of courtship and marriage.

Folly? Really? Folly? Proverbs a lot, do ya? Speak English, please. Not a legalistic, uptight version of Christianese. And I got news for ya - You can wait until your kids are retired and you still won't be able to communicate to them a "Biblical vision of courtship". It doesn't exist. It's a figment of your religiously addicted imagination. Besides, 2 years old ain't exactly on the brink of marriage in any culture I know of.

I'm curious if they start training them on the sexual aspects at such a young age. I mean, in a system resourced by rapid, rabid procreation, sex is the most important element, no? At what age is it "biblically" appropriate to let them know precisely what their ha-has and hoo-hoos are for?

The world doesn’t wait; It begins attempting to instill an unbiblical, romanticized view of marriage in your children from their earliest years.

No fear mongering there. Yep. That's exactly what the world does. In fact, I think there was a board meeting for the leaders of "the world" a while back where they decided to do that very thing. So, if you don't learn to control the mind of and brainwash your child early, you're definitely gonna lose them to the world. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya. {SA}

Employing an array of passages primarily from the book of Proverbs, Mr. Sides demonstrated that in scripture the language that’s used to describe wisdom is largely the same language used elsewhere to describe a good wife. It is imperative that parents teach their children to pursue and love wisdom as a training ground for courting a wife in future years.

There's the Proverbs infatuation rearing it's legalistic head. Don't get me wrong, I love the Proverbs. I also realize that they weren't written to me specifically, but were written to and for the Holy Spirit-less children of Solomon in most cases, and to and for some other Holy Spirit-less people in a few other cases. It would be more than a little spiritually immature for me, a believer with access to the Holy Spirit, to use the Proverbs as a rulebook for life rather than as a supplement.

I've always wondered how the Proverbs worshipers feel about drinking. I mean, there's this in Proverbs 31...

⁴ It is not for kings, O Lemuel, to guzzle wine.
      Rulers should not crave alcohol.
⁵ For if they drink, they may forget the law
      and not give justice to the oppressed.
⁶ Alcohol is for the dying,
      and wine for those in bitter distress.
⁷ Let them drink to forget their poverty
      and remember their troubles no more.

Are they ok with booze as a numbing agent for people in peril, whether physical, emotional, financial, what have you? Do they consider it "godly"? It's obviously "biblical", but is it "godly"?

From where I sit, it's kinda hard to argue that the FIC crowd isn't a cult.

Home Childbirth - A Few of My Thoughts

2011-12-05T16:01:00.001-05:00

I've never really written specifically about this issue, but I've glanced across it in other posts and it pops up from time to time in the comment threads. I thought it might be time I shared my thoughts in a topic-specific post. I'll start with the summation and then get into the qualifiers...

I don't have any problem with women choosing to have their children at home...

(now for the qualifiers)

IF...every precaution is taken to insure the health and safety of both mother and child.

IF...a qualified mid-wife is involved in the process.

IF...the woman is willing to go to the hospital if the delivery becomes problematic, unwilling to needlessly "give her life for her child", because that's just ignorant.

IF...religion has no part in the decision to do so.

My ex was very ignorantly adamant about home childbirth (for all the wrong reasons). My philosophy was "don't make immediate concrete plans for future fluid situations". It isn't terribly wise to set plans in stone when you have no idea what the circumstances and ancillary issues will look like when the time actually comes to implement the plans.

(paraphrased)

Her: I prefer home childbirth. That's what I want for our babies.
Me: (knowing she had no clue what she was talking about, but was just parroting) Ummm, ok. I prefer you and our babies to be healthy, so let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
Her: Home childbirth is the best way.
Me: Why do you believe that?

(silence)

Her: Well...it's just better. I don't want to have my children in a hospital.
Me: How do you know it's better? What's that based on?

(more silence)

These ideas had either been poured into her directly by her parents and their like-minded, fundamentalist fear-driven friends, or through the filtered literature and education she received at their hands. She was just a mouthpiece for the ideas of others in the same way the people of The People's Temple and Jonestown were a mouthpiece for Jim Jones. No mind and will of her own on the subject. No set of undiluted or manipulation-free facts upon which to base her "decision". Her "desire" to birth her children at home was a religious thing, her indoctrination coming to the forefront. It was just one of the countless ideas placed on religious pedestals by the Christian homeschooling movement (or elements thereof) and reinforced in her by her parents and circle.

Her father thought all of these bizarre ideas made them the "peculiar" people spoken of the KJV translation of 1st Peter 2:9. That poor translation is yet another reason to dig up the bones of King Jimmy and kick the crap out of them. The Greek phrase there doesn't mean "peculiar" as in "weird". Neither word is even close. It means "purchased by God". Most of the other translations have a more accurate rendering of that passage.

An outright effort was made to be this "peculiar people". It made MFFFIL peculiar alright, as well as creepy, as well as ignorant, as well as a religious ass. Frankly, he was (and most likely still is) just an ass, religious or not. He was so poisoned by the Kool-aid that he wanted his children to be the same religious asses that he is. Any strain of "faith" or religion that requires you to check your brain at the door is toxic. Theirs was, and is, toxic.

Outside of the Christian homeschooling world, some other strains of fundamentalist religion (Christian or otherwise), and secular counter-culturalism, home childbirth isn't very common or popular among people with access to professional medical care. Outside of a couple of relatives in my extended family who are pretty fundamentalist pentecostals, I don't really know of any other home childbirths in my world post-1950. It just isn't a terribly common choice. My advice to Christians who prefer it: Examine thoroughly and make sure that traces of previous indoctrinations aren't contributing to your desire. If they aren't, and the qualifiers I made earlier are being met, I support you 100%. If those qualifiers aren't being met, and any strain of fundamentalist religion (or religion, period) is coloring your decision, I think you're just as reckless and irresponsible as the QFers.

It's your choice. My opinion about it is my choice. Just be responsible.

I want you and your baby to be healthy.

Quiver Me Timbers

2011-11-21T21:57:00.001-05:00

I was involved in an exchange regarding QF a couple of days ago on a friend's FB page. Some things that were said there, things on which QFers hang their religious hats, were and are bewildering. All the more reason for me to view the P/QF movement (just like the Christian homeschooling movement that undergirds it) as a full blown cult. QF isn't really something you can "dabble" in. The mind has to be given over completely to some terribly irrational concepts, and in my opinion, a lack of personal responsibility comes to the forefront as the goal for a group of people stuck in perpetual immaturity, spiritual and otherwise.

As is usually the case, I'll lack the grace of others in addressing this stuff. I may use the verbage of a brute, but so be it. I'm not really looking at QF from a "biblical" perspective. It has no biblical perspective, no biblical basis, no "biblical". I'm often asked, "Why don't you argue your points biblically?" The answer being for the same reason I won't pour an alcoholic a drink. They've already proven they don't know how to handle it. Same for Imbiblers. Their imbibling is the primary symptom of their religious addiction, and until the addiction itself is addressed, no sense in me pouring them another glass of bible to misuse and mishandle. They'll only take from it that which feeds the addiction, and they'll reject the rest. Until logic and critical thought become a part of their process, it's a waste of time.

[Kristen addresses the lack of biblical support for the belief system, and does so well, here]

Some of the arguments made by a proponent of the QF practice in the recent exchange were as follows (some slightly paraphrased)...

"We can trust God for how many children He will send. We trust him for everything else."
"Being Quiverfull is not a falsehood at all, so could you clarify what is false about trusting God."
"If someone wants to trust God for the size of their family that is admirable."
"If they wanna talk about abuse, that is universal, from families with no kids to many. Abuse comes in many forms, but is metered out by humans...mere mortals in need of a Savior."
"Who makes babies?...So you know more than God?"
"To label a group of people as abusers when you and I both know God is Sovereign should really bother every poster reading this thread."
And my personal favorite..."Are children the only blessing we refuse more of? It's not a large family issue. It's a trust issue."

Total P/QF cult robot-speak. Ironically, to be coming from a person who has personal issues with Stacy McDonald, this person sounds just like her. Also ironic is that a person who supposedly loves to debate is so poor at it, devoid of logic and critical thought while totally committed to the movement's talking points. If I wanted to hear her arguments I'd just read Stacy's blog, or Kelly Crawford's, or any number of other blogs that I have no interest in reading. There's really no difference, and I only have a limited amount of willingness to shut down my brain.

To address the comments individually...

"We can trust God for how many children He will send. We trust him for everything else."

In context, that's a blatant lie. Blatant. Do you trust God for transportation? Then why do you have a car? Do you trust God for food? Then why do you have a pantry and a fridge? There's MORE biblical basis for the idea you should "trust God" to supernaturally transport and feed you than for the idea that you should "trust God" for how many children He'll send. "Trusting God" and willingly being irresponsible and stupid don't go hand in hand. Maybe you should "trust God" for a little common sense and personal responsibility.

"Being Quiverfull is not a falsehood at all, so could you clarify what is false about trusting God."

That could be labeled as one of several disingenuous forms of argument - appeal to prejudice, straw man, redefinition, among others. No one in the exchange expressed anything resembling the idea that "trusting God" was a falsehood. "Being Quiverfull" and "trusting God" aren't the same thing. It was very manipulative, and very cultic, for this person to choose that route. If you believe that "being Quiverfull" is taught within the books of the bible, THAT's a falsehood. If you believe "being QF" is "trusting God" rather than passing the responsibility and consequence of personal actions off to God, THAT's a fallacy.

"If someone wants to trust God for the size of their family that is admirable."

When God gives us common sense (hopefully) and knowledge of what happens when two fertile people have sex at certain times, QF isn't admirable at all, but reckless and irresponsible in many/most cases.

"If they wanna talk about abuse, that is universal, from families with no kids to many. Abuse comes in many forms, but is metered out by humans...mere mortals in need of a Savior."

Nice Stacy McDonald and "Abigail" impersonation and deflection there. P/QF beliefs are the abuse. Yes, different types of abuse happen in ALL kinds of families, but not P/QF abuse. Not all families are P/QF, Christian homeschooling cults.

"Who makes babies?...So you know more than God?"

What I know is that God gave me the common sense and knowledge to know that if me and a women decide to go at it regularly like a couple of drunk monkeys, and we're both fertile, babies will happen. The same way I know that if I put my hand in a fire it'll burn. The same way I know that if I eat high-cholesterol fatty foods 8 times a day I'll be making regular doctor visits. The same way I know that if I plant grass seed I'll probably be mowing regularly. The same way I know that if I jump in front of a bus doing 60mph, I'll be a greasy spot. It really isn't that hard to figure out.

I'd offer THIS question to QFers in response...If an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, did God make a baby? Or did two people have sinful, lustful, sweaty, hellbound sex? Funny what a little perspective can do - provided we don't worship the "institution of marriage" to the point where perspective is moot.

"To label a group of people as abusers when you and I both know God is Sovereign should really bother every poster reading this thread."

In the discussion where this statement was offered, no one had called anyone an abuser - at least not to my knowledge. But, for the record, I'll once again state my personal view that the P/QF belief system itself is abusive. A few other things, too, like "dumb", but abusive will suffice for the point in question. Also, my view and this person's view of God's "sovereignty" are entirely different things. For starters, I don't use an "S", but feel more than comfortable with an "s" - and I have no interest in worshiping a God who renders me nothing more than a pawn in a controlled environment.

"Are children the only blessing we refuse more of? It's not a large family issue. It's a trust issue."

When it's taken out of context over and over and over and over and over again by QFers, the idea of children being a "blessing" loses its meaning and significance. And a freaking "trust issue"? Seriously? That tripe again? If you want some "bible", every time I hear that QF is a "trust issue", it reminds me of this...

Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say,

‘He will order his angels to protect you.
And they will hold you up with their hands
so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’”

Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’”

And that's pretty much how I feel about QFers "trusting God" with something he gave them the resources, knowledge, and power to do for themselves. Lazy spirituality cloaked in Christianese with a "faith" facade.

And to those of you who practice QF who "mean well", you've been duped. Your belief is nothing but a stool pigeon of the dominionist movement. It has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with numbers. Like I wrote here...

"Hmmm. So how do we get the numbers we need? I've got it! Breeding! But if we tell our people to just start outbreeding everyone, that'll never really sell. Sounds kinda kooky and cultic. Hmmm. So how do we do this? Hmmm. I've got it! We'll make it biblical! We'll tie it into their faith and godliness and stuff! We'll give 'em the Kool-aid under the guise of homeschooling and "family values" and stuff! They'll never even notice! Someone get Mary Pride in here ASAP!"

{CLA}If you want to have a large family, and you can provide for the physical, material, and emotional needs of a large family, knock yourself out. I fully support you. Just don't make it a religious thing, or try to sell me on the idea that it's a "faith" thing. You'll just have a quiver as full of shit as the people who sold you the Kool-aid.

The Irrational Worship of Tim Tebow

2011-11-18T14:22:00.001-05:00

Last week I opened another post by mentioning how much of the Christian community rides on an emotional wave. Then, a few days ago on my Yahoo news feed, the headline "Furor over custom NFL jersey" popped up. I knew immediately what it was about. Immediately. I clicked on the link and my hunch was confirmed.

I don't get it, people. I don't get it at all. Truth is, I don't think the Christian community really gets it where Tim Tebow is concerned. Sure, they know he's a Christian. How could you not? I mean, the dude wears his Christianity on his sleeve. But they don't know that he's part of "the movement" - homeschooled, missionary kid, probably chock full of his share of strange religious ideas, probably lots of the movement's religious baggage. Yet the Christian community wants to plant its flag with him. I mean, within weeks of being drafted by the Broncos last year, he had the top selling jersey in the NFL. Not bad for a guy considered to be a marginal (at best) pro quarterback prospect. Christians have just been completely irrational about the guy - since he decided to wear his faith on his sleeve. I mean, this...

...is waaaay over the top. If I were Tebow, I'd put a stop to it immediately if I could. It really bothers me that he hasn't, or at least hasn't spoke up about it or voiced displeasure with it.

Tebow probably isn't a terrible guy. His teammates at the University of Florida respected him as a teammate. By the same token, his teammates in Denver aren't quite as enamored with Tebow mania, and there's been some division within the locker room over the push by the fans for Tebow to become the starting QB. Many of the players feel there are better options on the team for the QB position.

As a football player, Tebow is an interesting paradox. Great high school player, incredible college player, marginal NFL prospect and terrible NFL quarterback. Last year, in his rookie season, he got a couple of starts toward the end of the season. He wasn't downright awful, but didn't exactly set the world on fire. The Broncos were out of the playoff race, and their coach, Josh McDaniels, had nothing to lose by playing Tebow. McDaniels had spent a 1st round draft pick on Tebow (VERY controversial of him to do so - like I've said, Tebow was considered a marginal NFL QB prospect with poor throwing mechanics and questionable grasp of the mental aspects of the game), was on thin ice with both the fans and the Broncos brass, and playing Tebow was a risk worth taking. If Tebow had succeeded, McDaniels might save his job. Tebow was very average, and McDaniels was fired.

Coach John Fox was hired to replace McDaniels - and Tebow was demoted to 4th string (where he probably belongs). But, with other QBs failing, and the Broncos' season going down the toilet, a couple of weeks back Fox gave in to the pressure from the fanbase (who worship Tebow's wearing of his faith on his sleeve) and gave the starting QB job to Tebow.

The Broncos won their first game with Tebow starting against the Dolphins (one of the worst teams in the NFL), but not because of Tebow. He had a poor game. The next week, the Lions utterly destroyed Tebow and the Broncos. Some of the Lions players mentioned that the Broncos had no hope as long as Tebow was their QB. It was that bad. The next week, the Broncos beat a weak Kansas City team - largely by taking the ball out of Tebow's hands. He attempted a total of 8 passes (he completed a paltry 2 of them). The average NFL QB throws 30+ a game and completes about 2/3 of them. What does that say? It says the Broncos' coaching staff has more faith in Tebow's ability to lose a game for them than to win one. Then, last night, the Broncos beat the Jets on a last minute TD run by Tebow and with another gameplan that had, by and large, taken the ball out of Tebow's hands passing-wise. Tebow played historically bad right up until the touchdown at the end. Yet my Facebook feed lit up with people singing Tebow's praises after the game last night - ONLY because they're caught up in the emotion of the Christianity he wears on his sleeve.

So, in 2 of his 4 starts this season, Tebow's been radically awful, and in the other 2 starts, he's been well below average. His own coach, John Fox, said just last week, "If we were trying to run a regular offense, he'd be screwed." That's his own coach saying that.

The bottom line with Tebow - he's just not a very good pro quarterback. If anything, he's a bit annoying with his "faith", wearing it so proudly on his sleeve, making sure everyone sees him pray, saying "blessed" somewhere around every third word in his interviews. And if homeschoolers want a posterboy for their movement, they might want to pick someone who doesn't sound like a 2nd grader giving an oral book report when being interviewed, because Tebow does. From my understanding, his SAT score was barely a qualifying one when he entered the University of Florida. He's not exactly "bright". That doesn't mean he's a bad guy - he's just probably not the guy you want to use to demonstrate the benefits of homeschooling.

Tebow isn't the only Christian in the NFL. There's lots of em. He's just the only one wearing it on his sleeve and making his religion a public spectacle. I prefer the approach of the others.

Tebow's overt Christianity gets on my nerves, but I'm also willing to consider that maybe it isn't Tebow that bothers me so much as it is the obnoxious and irrational Christian fanbase that promotes him.

"Godliness" Isn't Next to Godliness

2011-11-17T19:09:00.001-05:00

From the Patriarchal/Authoritarian Dictionary...

godly: adhering to a list of self-punishing, arbitrary, and superficial religious rules designed to cosmetically defeat the sin-nature and produce a SuperChristian
godliness: the manner of a SuperChristian - the result of adhering to a list of self-punishing, arbitrary, and superficial religious rules designed to cosmetically defeat the sin-nature

A lot of the less supportive emails and comments received here come from people defending the "godly" choices of legalistic and religion addicted people. After all, they have a "heart for God", and who am I to question it? They're trying to "honor the Lord", and who am I to criticize the means by which they choose to do so?

I'm not of the opinion that the leaders of the Christian homeschooling movement/mafia all genuinely have a "heart for God", or a desire to "honor the Lord". I think they have plans to make a lot of money, and in the cases of those with religious addictions, plans for social engineering and domineering. I think most of them are sociopaths (read Raymond Moore's White Paper) or are religious addicts who've lost touch with reality (as this would attest).

Patriarchy and Courtship certainly didn't originate in a "heart for God" or from desires to "honor the Lord". Those things originated in hearts desiring to engineer and control. Those concepts were sold to make small fortunes as well as to give the movement a means to preemptively control the future of the movement. Those things are among several external, yet somehow "godly", solutions to what are internal issues - and are promoted in an environment where the Holy Spirit is an ancillary player (generally a nuisance) and discernment is scarce.

Those things create perpetual personal immaturity. Those things create externally-driven fakes and phonies.

I've written before of how my ex's family, and the people in their world, were sweet like poison. Total frauds. I once wrote this...

My ex's family was like a group of really bad actors playing the role of "Christians", and doing so in the over-the-top way that egotistical bad actors often do, in a jack-legged local theater production of "Christianity" written by an ignorant legalist. They're all wrapped up in the show, and the show must go on, regardless of people getting hurt...whether on stage or in the audience. The irony is, at its origin, "hypocrite" meant "stage actor", from where the idea of "pretending to be someone you aren't" arose.

And that's an accurate depiction.

"Character" replaced education as a priority within the movement decades ago. The problem is, the "character" promoted by the movement is a facade. It has no integrity, and a person can't genuinely exhibit character without exhibiting integrity - and vice versa. The two go hand-in-hand.

Once again, from the P/A Dictionary...

character: forcing yourself to meet a certain quota of bible reading, praying, witnessing, adherence to religious rules, and Christianese speaking, even if it's merely ritualistic and not heartfelt

Genuine character isn't a matter of reading what amounts to a religious recipe - use x, y, and z ingredients, smile, "keep sweet", and presto. Character requires a genuine moral compass, and real ability to discern between right and wrong, a commitment to truth, and the integrity to act upon those things consistently, even to your own personal loss. Character takes more than indoctrination to accomplish. It takes real world application and experience.

"But Lew! The bible says..."

The bible says lots of things. It also says that scripture and religious text should be "rightly divided", or, handled responsibly and with discernment. A recent comment pointed out a passage in 1st Timothy 6 in defense of those who choose courtship out of a desire to live a "godly life" and "honor the Lord with that area of their lives." The passage from 1st Timothy 6 is as follows...

11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

To use that passage to defend choices to practice courtship out of a desire to live a "godly life" is an irresponsible handling of the text. For starters, that letter was written to Timothy - not to us. Timothy was a very young man in an unusual position, serving as a pastor to a group of believers which obviously contained some seasoned citizens. Apparently Paul was worried about some of them using Timothy's youth against him, and advised him from that context.

Personally, I prefer the two Greatest Commandments - Love God, love my neighbor, and the two things my parents instilled in me as a child (and lived in front of me) - tell the truth in ALL things, and do the right thing by other people, even when it costs you (both of which are supported by biblical text). A person who focuses on those things until those things become a part of them, well, that person doesn't leave a heck of a lot of room for deviance. I think genuine character and integrity is found in those things.

One person in my ex's camp, the adult son of the people where she was sent to be reindoctrinated, when I confronted him about some of the weird beliefs he practiced and promoted, and told him that probably 99% of the Christian community disagreed with him, well, he openly mocked the rest of the Christian community. It was pretty clear that he considered himself a "better" Christian than others who didn't share or practice his fringe, cultic beliefs. Spirituality becomes extremely inbred in the closed environments the movement fosters, and when it does, the P/A Dictionary definition of "character" fits it perfectly.

What's worse is when young people escape the movement and have to learn, often the hard way, what constitutes genuine character and integrity. Sadly for them, there are so many gaping holes in their information field, many traps of needless guilt they have to shed and navigate around, and they have to spend significant time gathering general life information and connecting the dots. Most of them are committed to truth and ultimately thrive in matters of character and personal growth. I want them to know how proud I am of and for them. Incredible people.

You can know and endlessly spout bible verse after bible verse, you can pray religiously for hours a day, you can always sport a "happy" countenance, you can know, and follow, every religious formula the movement taught you forward, backward, and sideways, you can always obey your "authorities", you can be in church or devotions without fail, you can do every "godly" thing promoted by the movement or by your family - and you can still lack character and integrity. What if you aren't committed to truth, but rather only to a paradigm? What if you aren't committed to doing right by others, but only that which is deemed "right" by the movement?

A lot of atheists love their neighbor, tell the truth, and try to do right by others. Frankly, I prefer their version of "godliness" to that of the movement.

Don't play a character. Live with character.

Faith? Or Fear?: The "Last Days" Syndrome

2011-11-11T15:33:00.001-05:00

So much of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity is wrapped up in an emotional wave. I always find it humorous how people in the Christian community talk about "the Last Days" as if they were communicating a campfire horror story, all fear and dread, all pestilence and famine and blood up to a horse's bridle, and then talk about how anxious they are for "the Lord's return", i.e., the "Rapture of the Saints".

I find it humorous for several reasons. For one, the "Last Days" syndrome makes for a convenient, and hokey, Jesus-juke. After my ex disappeared, and I was still pressing the issue trying to get answers for the masterclass of dysfunction and idiocy I was being trampled by, in the limited communication from people in her family and circle came a common theme - "Let this go! It's the Last Days!!! There's work to be done!", or some variation thereof. That would always leave me thinking, {CLA} "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" First of all, in hindsight, I'm not even sure we were all on the same team. I thoroughly and completely reject their version of God. But the disturbing thing was that their decree of "the Last Days" struck the people in my world as pretty much a concession of the wrong done to me, but represented what one close friend tabbed as a pattern of "deception and diversion." In other words, "The wrong we did to you isn't important, cause it's the Last Days! It's the Last Days, dude! Get your priorities straight!"

If I ever get pulled over for speeding, I think I'll revert to "Last Days" syndrome...

Me, to the police officer as he hands me a ticket: "Are you kidding me?! Come on, man! It's the Last Days!!! There's more important work to be done than enforcing the highway laws and holding me accountable for breaking them! It's the Last Days!!! Geez! Where's your head, dude?!"

Somehow I don't think he'd be impressed, nor would the judge at traffic court.

All of the Last Days syndrome is wrapped up in the idea of "the rapture". Most of you know that the word "rapture", or any original language word from which you can derive "rapture", is nowhere to be found in the biblical canon. The idea of a pre-tribulation rapture was basically unheard of until about 4 centuries ago, really caught steam in the 1800s, and then again with the rise of fundamentalism about a century ago. An entire theology is now built (and is the dominant end-time belief of mainstream evangelical Christianity) around what's largely a fairy-tale created from doing scriptural gymnastics with a couple of vague proof-texts. Think about it. It's bad enough to draw serious theology from proof-texting. Even worse when the proof-texts are vague. How much worse when scriptural gymnastics are done with the vague proof-texts?

The worst part of it is how most Christians get all energized about the apocalyptic scenario and start in with the "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus" stuff. They say the Last Days are something to be excited about - and then they go to the polls and cast votes that suggest otherwise. They say they want the end to come, but they'd rather elect officials who'll help "restore America as a Christian nation", which would seem, to me at least, to be a deterrent to the apocalypse. I mean, if we're gonna take the account in Revelation literally as the playbook for the "Last Days", the world has to pretty much go to Hell in a handbasket before any of it can start.

Having faith in Jesus Christ, and confidence in my eternity, I'd just as soon all this ish down here go ahead and get wrapped up however it's gonna get wrapped up. It could've wrapped up yesterday, for my part. I see no need to fear an apocalypse that we don't even know for sure will happen. I also have no interest in a selfish, fairy-tale theology which takes ME out before things get bad - and leaves the poor schmucks who don't believe in Christ behind to die in it or suffer through it and then die. Boggles my mind at how much money Tim Lahaye made selling this cheese.

After my experiences with many various Christians, both pastors and lay-people, through my real world experience and through this blog and issues dealing with it, I can see why so much of evangelical Christianity wants to believe they'll be raptured before any bad stuff happens. Much of Christianity folds like the French army at the first sign of difficulty. They'd never survive a "tribulation". I've seen earthworms with more backbone and moral fortitude than a lot of the Christians I've encountered in the last few years. Few people genuinely want to get their hands dirty in living their faith. Lots of people are "sold-out, fired-up, born again believers", and then life demands something of that sold-out, fired-up belief, and their "faith" becomes little more than an emotional planting of the flag, a flag easily toppled by the wind. Saying you have strong faith is pretty cheap. You can find it for a dime a dozen right next to the microwave burritos at 7-11 (and I think some actually do buy it there). Actually living a strong faith - and doing so in such a way as to improve the world and the lives of others (including non-Christians *gasp*) - well, that's a little more pricey.

I'd be curious at the response in the evangelical community if it somehow became known, for certain, what the end times will look like - particularly if it was made clear that things would become apocalyptic, but with no early rapture, and Christians having to suffer right to the end along with everyone else. I mean, they already vote as if that's the way it'll be. Fear is a great motivator of quantity. Terrible motivator of quality, though.

It all reminds me of the old Bluegrass song, "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven (But Nobody Wants To Die)".

The best way to avoid the Last Days syndrome? Live every day as if it's your last. It might be.

The Dangerous Mix of Religion and Education - More on the Christian Homeschooling Movement

2011-11-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

It may be more accurate to say "fundamentalist religion", but even so, I'm no fan of the mix of religious ideas (of any kind) with an academic education. I want to use this post to pool a few of the thoughts I shared in the comment thread of my last post, hopefully providing some clarity as to my own thoughts, even though I believe I've been fairly clear already.

One final time - I have no problem with homeschooling, or with Christians who homeschool. I have a HUGE problem with the Christian homeschooling movement. If you're not a part of the Christian homeschooling movement, what I'm saying here doesn't apply to you, and there's no need to defend your educational choices. They aren't under attack. If you choose to lump yourself in with the Christian homeschooling movement, don't expect me to change my language to suit your choice. I won't.

Homeschooling itself isn't the problem. It's merely another mode of education - and a good mode when done right. When homeschooling becomes mixed with religion, or becomes a religious endeavor, it becomes a gateway, and that's the problem.

Homeschooling makes up a small percentage of the educational process in America. A small percentage. Yet, probably 75% or more of my readership, here on a blog where I write about spiritual abuse, patriarchy, quiverfull, the irrational positions of the religious right, and Christian fundamentalism, are either graduates of homeschooling or are currently homeschooling. That's VERY telling. Speaks to a connection, I'd say.

Ideas like patriarchy, quiverfull, purity promises and pledges, super-rigid roles regarding gender, and so on, aren't entering the Christian arena through the mainstream. Most mainstream Christians don't really know what those things are. I didn't in any detail until 4 years ago when I encountered a Christian homeschooling cult - my former future in-laws. Those legalistic ideas are entering the Christian arena through the world of Christian homeschooling. I don't think there's a rational argument against that, and I don't think anyone reading this would deny as much.

As far as what constitutes being a part of (or having been a part of) the movement? Here's a few of my own parameters...

If your curriculum introduced ideas of patriarchy - you were/are part of the movement.
Quiverfull - you were/are part of the movement.
Purity pledges or promise rings - you were/are part of the movement.
Connected to HSLDA - you were/are part of the movement.
If your curriculum stresses YEC - you were/are part of the movement.
If your materials came from Vision Forum, Bill Gothard, Bobby Jones, A Beka, any similar materials, or any individual or group associated with the aforementioned - you were/are part of the movement.
If your curriculum mixed and intermingled faith and patriotism - you were/are part of the movement.
If you were homeschooled because your parents didn't want you exposed to things like evolution, feminism, or any other "liberal" or "worldly" ideas - you were definitely part of the movement.
If your homeschooling brought you into contact with, and encouraged the reading of, literature from people like Elizabeth Elliott, Mary Pride, the Pearls, the Ludys, et cetera - you were/are part of the movement.
If your homeschooling placed heavy emphasis on words like "honor" and "character" (usually only definable with "obedience to authority") - you were/are part of the movement.
If you were homeschooled, and "missions" was or is one of your primary interests - you were/are part of the movement.
If you think homeschooling is the only "godly" way to educate - you're definitely part of the movement.

Maybe you measured and rejected some of the ideas in the list above (and I applaud those of you who did), but just the fact that your homeschooling experience brought you into contact with those things says that you were/are part of the movement. Maybe you rejected THOSE parts, but the money spent on the materials or events that introduced those things still went or goes into the industry that promotes those things. In other words, your money was/is funding the movement.

This doesn't make you a bad person. Perhaps you didn't or don't know these things. Now you do. It's easy for the toxins to sneak into the mix. I think things like the Christian homeschool world might be one reason that Christ taught us that while we're to be as harmless as doves, we're to be wise as serpents. I look at how mainstream Christianity is embracing the movie "Courageous" - and it's chock full of anti-Christ ideas and teachings! Chock full of sneaky little Vision Forum ideas and concepts wrapped up in ideas of "honor" and "godliness" and "responsibility"! Heck, Vision Forum is even marketing a line of "Courageous" merchandise. It snuck right in under the noses of most mainstream Christians. Gradualism usually reveals Christians to be more wise like doves and harmless like serpents than anything else, and it's a shame.

When homeschooling becomes a religious endeavor it becomes a gateway. Mainstream churches don't generally promote or mandate it. Authoritarian churches and groups do. They need to indoctrinate the young to keep them in the fold and continue the fundamentalist cause. Homeschooling is the perfect method. From that, we have the Christian homeschooling movement. "Courageous" is evidence that these cultic groups are seeking out new gateways, and given how successful it's been, how most Christians have gotten caught up in the religious emotion of the movie and decided to not discern the actual message and undercurrents, expect to see more of it.

Teaching about Jesus doesn't need to color every aspect of education. For instance, if you start mixing the Christian faith into teachings about American and world history, and your method shines a positive light on the practice of the Christian faith in history, you're failing your child. History shines a poor light on the practice of the Christian faith. Jesus doesn't need to be forced into every equation. Why not just educate your children, while loving them as Jesus loved and instructed us to love, and when you want to talk about Jesus with them, then talk about Jesus. It's nearly impossible to use Christian homeschooling curriculum that doesn't bring a heck of a lot of baggage with it, and practically all of it opens a gateway into some ugly, legalistic stuff.

I'm don't foresee a change in my ideas on mixing religion with education. I'm not going to be changing my terminology regarding the Christian homeschooling movement unless and until there's good reason to do so. Right now, there's NO reason to do so.

To paraphrase my friend shadowspring, homeschooling is an educational choice, not a divine mandate. If you think it's a divine mandate, or part of your "godly" obligation or duty, it's become positively unhealthy - and likely your religion in and of itself.

I strongly encourage you guys to invest the time to read Raymond Moore's "White Paper". He's one of the pioneers of home education, and gives a detailed account of where "Christian homeschooling" went off the rails. From that derailment sprang all of the craziness I write about here.

The Threshold of a Christian Homeschooling Cult

2011-11-06T23:12:00.000-05:00

A lot of people object to me calling the Christian homeschooling movement a cult. It is a cult. If I called it something else, something lesser in intensity than "cult", I wouldn't be addressing it honestly. Let me explain why I believe "cult" fits.

First of all, if you haven't read this, please do (consider it a sister-post to this one), and please watch the videos embedded there. It's an awakening.

I have two nephews and two nieces (ranging in age from 20 to 3), and I love each of them as if they were my own children. If they choose a path other than one of faith in Jesus Christ, or make unusual or controversial lifestyle choices, sure, I won't like it, but I won't begrudge them their choices or emotionally (or in any other way) punish them for their choices. As long as their choices don't endanger others, the choices are theirs to make. If the logic they use to reach their conclusions is faulty, and they discuss it openly, sure, I might argue the logic with them. Even so, I won't begrudge them or punish them for their choices.

Christian homeschooling doesn't allow the freedom to make such choices. Children within this world MUST accept the conclusions of the paradigm and curriculum - or be expendable, facing brutal emotional leveraging, ostracization, and emotional abuse.

They're taught little and indoctrinated much. There's a good threshold for ya.

I'm a strong believer that education and faith/religion should be entirely separate matters. Matters of faith, in my opinion, should NOT be matters of homeschool curriculum. Faith should be entirely separate within a family dynamic. Matters of faith, matters of biblical text, should be discussed in such a way as to encourage the freedom of critical thought within a child, with no failing grade, or corresponding punishment, for "wrong" answers. Faith in Christ is a personal matter, unique to each individual. When Paul wrote to the Philippians, telling them, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" [Philippians 2:12], the "fear and trembling" he spoke of wasn't the punishment, whether physical or emotional, of a disapproving parent, but of a personal understanding of the magnitude of salvation in Christ.

When religion, or a religious lifestyle, becomes intertwined with an "educational" curriculum, and the only hope of achieving a passing grade (or avoiding punishment) is to agree whole-heartedly with the doctrinal and lifestyle conclusions of the curriculum - no one is being "taught" anything. Instead, indoctrination is happening. This is the work of a religious cult.

My former future in-laws wore a mask of Christianity, and could speak Christianese with the best of them, but the fact is that they indoctrinated their children into a religious culture, into believing a boatload of ridiculous things, because they themselves, full of cultural and religious fear and paranoia, drank the Kool-aid of the Christian homeschooling movement, essentially flipped the bird to the Holy Spirit, and took it upon themselves to engineer and control the outcome of who and what their children would be as Christians (I would say "as people", but the movement doesn't shive a git about who people are "as people"). They lived their own brand of "godliness" vicariously through their children, allowed no room for any other conclusions than the approved conclusions, and punished what didn't conform, what they couldn't engineer or control (my ex and I are proof of this). In doing so, they couldn't possibly have been more anti-Christ. Their family is a cult.

Indoctrination kills.

It isn't a matter of whether or not there's love between family members. The people at Jonestown loved each other. They're all dead. It isn't a matter of intelligence. There were some very intelligent people in Jonestown - who drank the Kool-aid. Indoctrination trumps love and intelligence in a closed environment. Indoctrination kills. Jonestown is evidence.

The Christian homeschooling movement indoctrinates the same way Jim Jones did. As I've said before, it may not always kill the body, but it kills the soul.

Consider that in a recent exchange (regarding doctrine as it relates to salvation) with a die-hard Christian homeschooler, the Christian homeschooler stated "If you don't believe in Young Earth Creationism, you may have a salvation issue." Now tell me that person's ever been truly allowed to come to ANY conclusion regarding faith or lifestyle without the fear of punishment of a "wrong" conclusion (and do so with a straight face)...and then I'll stop calling the Christian homeschooling movement a cult.

I'll use even stronger language...

The Christian homeschooling movement and industry, as it exists today, is anti-Christ.

To Daughters of Patriarchy

2011-11-06T18:04:00.003-05:00

Here's a Letter from a Friend.

Death to Courtship

2011-11-04T19:02:00.001-04:00

[More of my thoughts on courtship can be found here and here]

I learned of yet another instance of legalistic and intrusive parents destroying a beautiful relationship involving adult children this morning. Sad. Breaks my heart. Makes me want to speak some pointed words toward the courtship concept, and those who practice it, once again.

I've written at length about courtship in the past. I'm not sure I'll really be plowing new ground in this post, or introducing many new thoughts. I might be getting into "Department of Redundancy Department" territory. I'm gonna write it anyway. It's an emotional subject for me - for obvious reasons. Buckle up.

I'd like see courtship die a gruesome death - equal to the pain and emotional dysfunction it's inflicted - then be buried in a shallow grave marked only by the urine of feral dogs and cats.

I still hear from people occasionally who tell me "but we didn't do it legalistically". SMH. There's no other way to do courtship. If you tell me that you're planning to practice courtship, or if you defend your decision to have practiced courtship in the past, you're telling me a lot about yourself. Here's your profile (probably 95+% accurate)...

You're the product of Christian homeschooling. (homeschooling isn't the problem - "Christian homeschooling" is)
Your family is/was likely involved in ATI, Vision Forum, or Sovereign Grace Ministries.
If you're a full-blown courtship-er, you're probably currently involved in ATI or VF.
If you practice a "more reasonable, less legalistic" version, you may have been involved with ATI or VF in the past, but now you're probably involved with SGM or are a fan of the Calvinistas (Piper, Driscoll, Mahaney, Harris, Dever, et cetera - translation: You aren't entirely out of legalism).
You're probably very supportive of the Religious Right.
You've probably read books like "The Way Home", "So Much More", or "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", and other Christian homeschooling world literature, whether from homeschooling periodicals, or from Christian homeschooling authors like Harris, Pride, McDonald, Lindvall, the Ludys, the Botkins, et cetera.
You bristle at the idea of anything "liberal", while not really knowing what it means.
You're socially and emotionally many years behind your age, having been indoctrinated to avoid "the world" and to view your emotions as "evil and deceitful", to the point that it's rendered you naive about much of life and the way it works.
Your information has been filtered tremendously.
You've been indoctrinated to only view life through a "biblical worldview".

This doesn't mean you're a bad/dumb/unintelligent person. Chances are you're a great person with a bright mind. You're just a product of the religious cult that is Christian homeschooling.

It's a free country, so I respect your right to choose the courtship model - but I don't respect the choice - at all - and I pity you. If you're a parent who's chosen courtship for your children (forcing this legalistic, emotionally dysfunctional mess on them), indoctrinating them to believe it's the right way, or even a good way, frankly, I have more respect for some Caribbean strains of halitosis than I do for your parenting. To parents of minors, I respect your right to be heavily involved in their lives and relationships - but their hearts DO NOT belong to you. Teach them the importance of discernment and self-discipline, not legalistic concepts of control. You aren't the mediator between them and God. If you think you are, here's a bombshell for ya - you're anti-Christ, and that's all there is to that.

Occasionally, I hear from a person who still insists, "but me and my spouse practiced courtship and it worked wonderfully for us"... SMH again. If your marriage is flourishing, it isn't because of courtship, but rather in spite of it. Courtship in no way, shape, or form prepares you for marriage. Nothing that courtship is supposed to provide or prevent can't be provided or avoided in dating. The only thing courtship "reveals" is controlling parents. In the dating world, we call that "meddling" - something which, ironically, 1st Peter 4:15 lumps in there with murder and thievery. In a few states, including my own, there are actually LAWS - civil statutes - against meddling in engagements and marriages.

Bottom line: You can't practice courtship in a manner that isn't legalistic, that exercises SELF-control, or than doesn't compromise your maturity. It just isn't possible. Courtship is, and ever will be, legalistic and immature. There's no way around it.

It's just one of several poisons that wouldn't even exist if Christian homeschooling, and the paranoid/legalistic ideas within it, hadn't created it and served it up in its Kool-aid.

Definitely toxic. I hope it dies. Soon. The longer it lives, the more loving, happy relationships it'll kill.

Hey! American Christians! Listen Up!

2011-11-01T15:25:00.001-04:00

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

I hope no one clicked on "continue reading this post" thinking, "Yeah Lewis! Right on!"

That verse (2nd Chronicles 7:14) is not about you. That verse is not about, nor is it applicable to, America. That verse has nothing whatsoever to do with anything you might do when you close the curtain of your polling booth next year, or in any other future election.

That verse was a message spoken by God to Solomon, meant specifically for the nation of Israel a few millennia ago. It was not spoken to you. If you read something more into it than a historical perspective of the relationship between God and the nation of Israel, it may be time for you to put down that bible for a spell.

Americans aren't "my people". Some Americans are. Some Mexicans and Canadians are. Some Sri Lankans are. It's kinda naive, not to mention terribly selfish, to think this OT verse is somehow applicable to America (at the expense of those poor Christian schmucks in other countries - I doubt they're Republicans anyway, so they may not even be saved. *SA).

If you think that verse applies to America, to abortion, to gay marriage, to prayer in schools, to keeping those mean ole libruls out of office... you've been duped. You may think spouting that verse, even going so far as to put up signs that say "VOTE THE BIBLE - 2ND CHRONICLES 7:14", makes you a better Christian, a better American, better period. It just makes you look narrow-minded, and makes you look like a sheople.

Don't be duped by emotional rhetoric and fear-mongering. Separate your patriotism from your faith before your patriotism becomes your faith.

Faith? Or Fear?: Creating A Rallying Cry

2011-10-27T20:57:00.001-04:00

Check out this short blurb based on this "news" story, and then very honestly (willing to accept whatever truthful conclusions you find) ask yourself if the news outlet is portraying the situation accurately, and if the blogger is portraying the situation accurately or creating an issue where no real issue exists.

First of all, leave it to Fox News to pander to its conservative and evangelical base and say the Fromms were fined for having bible studies, when the truth is that they violated a city zoning code. I'm pretty sure there's no ordinance in California, or any other state, which prohibits "home bible-study groups".

If the Fromms had been hosting Tupperware parties, drawing upwards of 50 people, twice a week, they'd have received the same fine. They'd have been violating the zoning code. Same deal if upwards of 50 people had been coming over twice a week to watch football.

They violated a zoning code, and they were fined for it. The news outlets played up the "home bible-study group" angle, even though it has nothing to do with anything - except pandering to and stirring up their base.

Then, the blogger (who's obviously a Kool-aid drinking product of the Christian homeschooling movement) attempts to stir up religious fervor and fears, declaring "This is an outright assault on freedom of religion." Yeah, that's what it is. Geez. Stir em up. Get them all emotional, indignant, and threatened, and give them a cause - and make ignorant fools of them all. This person doesn't seem to be a person of faith so much as a person of a conservative sociopolitical cause, but probably perpetually confuses the two.

All the Fromms have to do is get a permit.

But no. Its Christian jihad time, baby! We're being assaulted!

Persecution complex.

That's some kind of faith being exhibited there, let me tell ya.

Faith? Or Fear?: Introduction

2011-10-27T20:15:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping this will be a series that compels some really serious thought and examination of all of our beliefs, mine included. I want to take just a couple of paragraphs here to tell you exactly what this is going to be about.

I've made no secret of the enormous changes in some of my own perspectives over the last 3 to 4 years, even since the beginning of the blog just a year and a half ago. Enormous changes. One thing that has really spurred much (most is probably a better word) of the change, and the further introspection change always brings with it, is the realization of just how many of my personal beliefs, whether in matters of faith, politics, social issues, across the board, really, have been based on little more than fear of the alternative, or fear of the opposition. Not necessarily the "cowering in the corner" type of fear, but the more stealth variety - the types of fear that enter your being in small quantities (and in some cases, build up over time) as you navigate through the social/religious/political environment you've settled into or were born into, and then are signaled into action by particular buzzwords and emotional pulls.

The "beliefs" that result from such fears are brainwashing in their own right, and they're dead weight. These "beliefs" are the kind of things I'm trying very hard to rid my life of.

I look at the evangelical community, and I see fear. I look at the religious right, and I see even more fear. Fundamentalism? Christian homeschooling? P/QF? Dear God, nothing BUT fear for those guys. I loathe reactionary living, even as I, in various ways, still live in reaction - a "trait" I hope to shed, and probably a lifelong endeavor to do so.

Where people desire control, you'll find a lifestyle based on fear. Controllers are the most fearful people on the earth. Their lives are predicated not on what unlimited growth can be achieved, but on what growth can be regulated and engineered, falling only within certain parameters, hoping to create a carbon copy of themselves. That's fear. It certainly isn't faith. They fear that which is more than themselves, which they can't control, which they don't understand, that which shines a light on their weakness or ignorance - and a system of "belief" rises from the fount of their fears. Any closed community, which P/QF and Christian homeschooling cult families are, is a community whose borders are fear.

If a person "accepts Christ" merely because they fear "going to hell", is that really a proactive faith or a reactionary fear?

If a person votes against the positions (real or perceived) of a candidate of a certain party, rather than voting FOR the positions of the candidate of their own party, are they voting proactively or reactively? The religious right and Tea Party will turn out in droves next year to vote against Obama. Please pay attention to what I said there. Their political "convictions" are based on nothing more than fear of that "mean old librul" Obama. The same thing happens on both sides of the political debate. Scores of people from liberal interests voted only to cast a vote against Bush in 2000 and especially 2004. If I'm only driven to vote against a particular person, I probably should do society at large a favor and stay away from the polls, because all my vote says about my "belief" is that I either fear or hate a particular candidate.

It's all emotional reaction, which makes many of these "people of conviction" nothing more than sports fans who've substituted religion or politics into the equation in place of their favorite team or sport. Think about it. Few Cowboys fans can think, talk, or act rationally concerning the Redskins or Eagles. Same thing for Red Sox fans and Yankees fans. Their greatest fear, as fans, is the success of their enemies - and this makes them even more rabidly and ignorantly loyal to their own team of choice. I can certainly relate. I've been a diehard UNC basketball fan since I was 6 years old, and I consider Duke (proper UNC fan spelling: dook) to be the Evil Empire. I hate everything about them. I want to see them lose every choice recruit, every game, and rot in their own evil brew. It's all emotional, but I try to keep it in perspective.

It's a shame that the exact same thing transfers over to important areas of the critical mass of our lives, particularly religion and politics.

If you only believe in something because you fear the alternative or opposition, you don't really believe in anything at all. As this series continues, I hope to demonstrate examples of this fear, how irrational it can be and usually is, and how it's a/the driving force behind most of the religious and political issues in the world today, common sense and logical thought process be damned.

It's a terrible thing to put our faith in fear.

Odds and... Odds (Volume 3)

2011-10-26T02:06:00.001-04:00

I found this first video via a posting Jocelyn Zichterman made on FB. BTW, Jocelyn deserves a hearty round of applause for her advocacy and work on behalf of IFB abuse victims.

Consider this video the culmination of daddy-worship (which is central to Christian homeschooling, IFB, VF, and Gothardist brainwashing), and try to avoid hurling all over your keyboard...

Wanting to grow up to live with and marry Daddy? Snuggle, hug, and kiss him? O.M.G. Perverse. The only thing lacking there was an expressed desire to shave him. If they ever sing this song at the VF Father/Daughter retreat, I'll officially declare the apocalypse to be upon us. This stuff is seriously messed up.

I came across this next video via Joe Sands' FB page, and it may be one you've seen before. Personally, being this guy's such a literalist, I think a toilet might be more sanitary than a wall, but hey, that's just me...

Come on, men! We can do it! For AMERICA! What do you girly-men who pee sitting down have to say about that?! Nothing?! I thought so. Wusses.

Came across this one on my Yahoo news feed a couple of hours ago. Ironic on several levels...

Wow. If Pat Robertson thinks the GOP candidates are getting too right-wing extremist...

Hey Pat, you're a leader in the evangelical, religious right world, and have been for several decades. You helped to create this extreme, fringe, right-wing monster that demands their GOP candidates feed them or die political deaths at their hands. So now you don't want GOP candidates to appease the rabid, extremist, vocal minority you helped create, which now holds conservative politics hostage? You'd better start retraining the monkeys more than worrying about the potential zoo-keepers. They're the problem.

Of course, Pat's gotta be nearing 150 years old by now, and his memory isn't what it used to be. If any of the candidates actually heeded his advice, he'd probably end up blasting them on his show for being godless moderates and evil libruls. He might not even remember having said any of this by tomorrow.

Which brings me to this final video. A lot of you have asked the origins of the "Church Lady Alert". Here you go, circa late 80s SNL...

Courageously Determined to Avoid "Courageous"

2011-10-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

Same song. Different movie.

Christian people are all over the place on this movie. While I don't think any rational person believes it to be a cinematic masterpiece (small budget and marginal to poor acting are typical for Sherwood films), the message of the movie seems to be the divider.

[For the record - this is not a review of Courageous, but a personal commentary on the Sherwood body of work]

The only Sherwood films I've seen are Facing the Giants and the one about the car lot (the title escapes me). They could've been the same movie, just that one story was centered around a high school football coach and the other around a used car salesman (which may actually be the same thing - you sports fans will know what I'm talking about). Neither one blew me away. I LOATHE watching movies, television shows, or reading books that I can stay ten steps ahead of, plot-wise.

Then Sherwood went and got involved with Kirk Cameron for Fireproof. When that movie came out, I knew nothing of Vision Forum, and obviously not of Cameron's affiliation with them (whatever it may be), and really didn't know anything about P/QF and its litany of spiritual and emotional dysfunctions - but I knew Cameron gave me the creeps with his "Way of the Master" crap and the way he "witnessed" on the street, not to mention how itchy Ray Comfort always made me (and still does).

In hindsight, the Cameron/Sherwood connection is potentially pretty religiously dangerous. If the Sherwood folk would get involved with him, despite his raging religious addiction and weirdness, it doesn't speak well of their ability to discern the merit of ideas that might be introduced into their thinking and storylines. Their movies already have a lot of works-based, particular action=reward, prosperity "gospel" thinking and teaching in them. I'd say it's a safe bet that within their next 3-5 movies we'll start seeing some outright sociopolitical concepts (with dominionist roots). They'll have to do something. People aren't going to keep buying tickets to the same movie with a new title. When plot-lines (and what they teach) are already formula-driven, the logical next step is legalism and dominionism.

In a discussion elsewhere, my friend Darcy summed up exactly why I find Courageous unappealing and have no real desire to see it...

I don't need to see the movie. I can predict exactly what happens: dude's life sucks. Family is going to hell, he doesn't do anything about it. Suddenly tragedy strikes. Dude realizes he "needs god", dude recommits his life to god. Dude is excited and gets his buddies to
recommit their lives and live like "godly men". Life magically starts working out, dude's wife and kids shape up, and everyone lives happily ever after, proclaiming the blessing of living "god's way". The End.

That's the formula that Courageous (and all Sherwood films) present, and, frankly, that just isn't how the Christian life and Christian faith work the vast majority of the time. It isn't realistic in the slightest. A prosperity gospel formula is what it is. The overwhelming theme of the state of life in this world that you'll find throughout the books of the bible is a pretty easy one to pick up on if you're willing to look for and at it: Life on the earth generally sucks. That's true for all people, those of faith and those not of faith.

The true happiness of Christians should rest in their hope of eternity, in their reconciliation with their Creator, in the hope of life beyond the grave. Not in what faith can give them in life right now. Seems silly and shallow to expect more from life on earth than what Christ or the early church got from it. Those early Christians in Rome lived with passion, loving God, trusting in Christ, loving each other, praying, sharing, giving, helping - and a lot of them ended up as lion poop. Hit shappens, Christian or not.

Faith isn't about doing the right series of things and expecting a particular result. That's formula. Faith isn't about doing this, this, and this, living "godly", and everything becoming fluffy flowers and puppies playing and birds singing in sophisticated harmonies while God acts as your celestial bellhop, miraculously paying all your bills, fixing all your family problems, and healing your diverticulitis - while giving you a new car and helping you lose 30 pounds. Yes, those things CAN happen - but those things also happen to unbelievers. Don't ask me how and why those things happen. I don't know.

Yes, I believe in prayer. Yes, I believe that those of faith in Christ should live as Christ lived and taught - selflessly, loving God and neighbor, being honest people of integrity, doing the right thing even when the price is steep, caring for the less fortunate and the outcast. Those things aren't formulaic. They're minute by minute choices, opportunity meeting decision. Take out the "loving God" part, and a lot of non-Christians live in the same manner.

Yes, I believe that strong faith can bring about happiness. I just think we need to be able to tell the difference between faith bringing happiness and money, health, new cars, new homes, et cetera, bringing happiness. They ARE different things. Would the football coach from Facing the Giants have still been happy had vermin completely overrun his home? Had he not been given a new car? Had his team's record actually reflected its talent (0 for forever)? Had he lost his coaching job? Had he and his wife been unable to conceive? If he'd still followed the formula - praying, living for God, et cetera - and all of those things failed to happen? Somehow I don't think the message would've worked...which shines some light on exactly what the message was - a formula, live this way, and miracles will happen in your life.

Maybe you're planning to see the movie, or have already seen it, and right now your life really sucks. You may decide to follow the formula the Sherwood movies present - surrender to God, pray, live "godly", et cetera - but (unlike the Sherwood movies) just be prepared for life to still suck, because it's probably going to. Life will still be life.

Find and relish in happiness and hope wherever you can, even in the midst of the suckiness of life. Just don't expect to find it in a formula. It definitely ain't there.

I know more Christians than I can count who've lived as beautiful a faith as can be lived - and the external elements of their lives (finances, health, family issues, and so forth) are continually in upheaval. The true beauty of their faith is in how it perseveres through these things, how they find happiness, peace, and continue to love and give relentlessly through those things. Their hope of eternity is their payoff.

If Sherwood wants to make a realistic film about a real faith-based miracle, base one on the lives and faith of those people - and at the conclusion, let the main character end up broke, sick, his car perpetually in the shop, his dog dead, his wife run off with another man...yet still content in his faith, still loving, still giving, and not waiting for the big payoff to come anytime soon. That's more like life. What they're offering now is largely a fairy tale which sets people up for disappointment.

ETA this (ht to Eric). If Courageous passes the mustard for the dominionist cult Vision Forum, do you want to support it too? And this collection of manly words from manly men, compiled by the Kendrick brothers (Sherwood films) - creepy. Sherwood has absolutely gone the route of VF kookiness. Under no circumstances will I see, encourage others to see, or support, Courageous.

Pearl Drops

2011-10-21T01:52:00.000-04:00

Michael and Debi Pearl have been getting a lot of attention lately, what with multiple children now dead (and their deaths, at least indirectly, related to discipline methods prescribed in TTUAC) and with the recent coverage from CNN. Since beginning the blog last year, I've been asked quite a few times for my opinion of the Pearls and their teachings. The photo above is as far as I'll go in relation to TTUAC. I haven't read it, and as a result I don't feel qualified to give any semblence of a "review" of it. I've seen enough and heard enough to know it's pretty poisonous teaching, from the twisted scriptures to the misguided ideas on matters of psychology from people who generally reject that Great Satan "modern psychology".

My friend over at The Eighth and Final Square is currently doing a series, taking a hard and thorough look at TTUAC, and for some excellent insight and commentary on TTUAC I'd suggest you look there. Here's what she has so far...

Introduction
Chapter 1 Part 1
Chapter 1 Part 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

She's doing a great job - and she's a young lady I'm very proud of.

Now, to my general thoughts on the Pearls...

I'd never heard of the Pearls until a couple of years ago when, in trying to understand the insanity I'd dealt with in my former future in-laws, I came across Micheal Pearl's "Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families" article on his No Greater Joy website. There was some good stuff in it, but also a generous dose of weirdness which left me feeling a bit like I'd just read an article by one religious kook about some other religious kooks. Sort of a "Well, he's a little strange, but maybe not as goofy as the crowd I've been dealing with" vibe, and after perusing his other materials, I didn't see anything else that jumped out at me explicitly about patriarchy, so I never really examined much of what he had to say. I thought no more of the Pearls. I knew nothing of their books, and had no interest in them.

Once I began writing here, emails gradually began to stream in asking me my opinion about certain teachings of the Pearls, their books, certain articles, et cetera. As I looked into things a little more, it wasn't hard to see the reasons for the concerns of so many of you who read here. Red flags galore. In a recent exchange about the Pearls with a person who knows them personally, I was informed that my view was pretty accurate, with the caveat that the Pearls were, at heart, trying to be decent people and live decent lives. I don't doubt that in the slightest. I really don't. What's that old saying about the "road to Hell" and good intentions? (and no, I'm not saying the Pearls are "going to Hell")

The view I had shared with this person was something like this...

It amazes me how "discerning" Christian people so easily fall for buzzwords and turn to a bunch of socially ignorant and religiously arrogant isolationist fundamentalist hillbillies for advice and counsel on matters of marriage, family, and parenting.

Seriously. It blows my mind.

Nothing personal toward hillbillies. I live in Appalachia and have more than my fair share of country bumpkin in me. It's the religious arrogance, religious addiction, hyper-fundamentalism, and isolationism that go along with the hillbillyism that creates the toxic concoction for me where the Pearls are concerned.

But, but Lew! You can't judge a book by its cover!

Well, that's not entirely true (if you believe it's true in all cases, I'd love to play Poker with you), but even so, I'm not judging a book (TTUAC for example - or really any Pearl teaching) by its cover. I'm judging by its author.

How many copies of TTUAC would've sold if THIS had been its cover?...

I mean, that IS the guy who wrote it. If you want your marriage, family, and parenting advice from someone trapped in a 19th century state of mind dictated by early 20th century fundamentalist paranoia, who looks like Jeremiah Johnson and Laura Ingalls hooked up and had a baby that went on to play Uncle Jesse on the Dukes of Hazzard, then maybe the Pearls are for you.

I'll pass on what he has to offer, and coming to that conclusion ain't exactly rocket surgery.

Ramblin' Man

2011-10-02T03:01:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while a thought on a particular subject will cross my mind - sometimes stirred by an IRL conversation, sometimes via an online conversation, sometimes via others' conversations, and sometimes God only knows why - and I just kinda push it to the side thinking, "It's not enough to really write a whole post about." Well, it's time a few of those thoughts had a home, so this Ramblin' Man might become a recurring character here on the blog. I'll chase a few rabbits, maybe kick a few dead horses, maybe vent a pet peeve or two.

First ramble: Heresy. "Heretic" is a word thrown around pretty liberally on all sides of religious issues. To me, personally, it seldom really applies in the way people use it. Everyone has their own threshold for heresy, their own measurement where, when crossed, the crosser has become a full-blown "heretic". Let's look at the actual definition...

a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church/anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle.

There's a lot of wiggle room there for a person to write their own definition between the lines of the standard definition. I've said many times that I believe the aspect of my faith which pertains to salvation, reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ, is as doctrinally dogmatic as I'll ever get. Just that alone is unique and personal to each individual, and I'm not the gate-keeper of the faith of all mankind. Only when people screw around with the simple gospel of Jesus Christ do I, personally, feel the label "heretic" would apply - and even then, I don't really use it. It's kinda lost its meaning. Do I feel people who practice courtship, for instance, are heretics? No. I just think they're immature, probably legalistic, and in some cases, fruitcakes. Now, if they tell me I need Jesus AND courtship - definitely fruitcakes, but also heretics. I once wrote about the "Jesus and ____" mentality. As far as the essential doctrine of the Christian faith, to me there's Jesus, and then just a bunch of details. Not necessarily unimportant details, but details nonetheless, and certainly nothing worth cutting off your hand to spite your foot over and nothing worth building an entire paradigm around.

Second ramble: The "Christian package". Most of us, upon becoming believers in Christ, accept a "package" of Christianity. Wherever we enter the faith, whether through a church group or a family group or what have you, we tend to, at least initially, accept the general views of the group as what the Christian faith is all about. In other words, if you profess faith in Christ in Forky Creek Baptist Church in 1995, and you've attended Forky Creek Baptist Church all the years since, chances are you pretty well match up with the "Statement of Faith" of Forky Creek Baptist Church. Same for those from other denominations and churches and so on, and for those from Christian homeschooling families (or just Christian families) who live somewhat off the grid of the traditional church. Ideally one will eventually move beyond the limits any particular group may place on them, not be restrained by fear of asking questions, and have the ambition and room to grow beyond the initial package. Some of it you may keep. Some of it you may chuck. The goal should ultimately be to make your faith completely personal, not reliant on the belief of someone else or the parameters of others. Fear is usually the obstacle in the way of questions. A lot of you who correspond with me have communicated the fears that make steps toward freedom and growth so difficult - "If I ask that question, will lightning strike me?...If I don't obey such and such person and what they teach, can God really be pleased with me?" My advice is to ask the questions which cause you the MOST fear, because in the answers (and sometimes even in just questioning) you might find your greatest personal growth. SisterLisa wrote an interesting piece today about our personal journey and growth. Unless we question, we often become stagnant - no forward movement. I don't think we can ever truly begin to grow until we question "the package" we accepted, and learn to discern the truth for ourselves about a lot of things that we've always believed merely because they were a part of "the package" we initially bought or were immersed into, which leads me to...

Third ramble: Tithing. A commonplace teaching throughout all shades of Christianity. I grew up learning to tithe my 10% faithfully. Until just a couple of years ago, I practiced tithing (usually more than 10%) faithfully. Seldom to a church, though. Generally to whomever I felt compelled to give it to. I no longer believe that a 10% tithe is required. It's an Old Testament requirement (before there was a Christian church). It isn't mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. It's really just a religious tradition. What do I believe about giving these days? I give what I can give when I can give it, with a willingness to give all if and when someone needs it and I'm compelled to give it. That's the general idea on giving in the gospels, the Acts, and the epistles.

Back in 2007, I heard the pastor of FBC of Jacksonville, FL tell his congregation "The bible says you bring your tithe [as he pointed toward the audience] to the storehouse [as he pointed toward the floor in front of his feet - signifying the church building]. If you don't agree, argue with God about it [as he gestured with his bible]." Sigh. Pretty ignorant, twisting an OT text to make it say something about modern Christianity that it isn't saying at all. Of course, if he can't keep his congregation tithing, even if only from guilt and obligation, he probably won't get that nice fat paycheck, which leads me to...

Fourth ramble: How churches choose pastors. You know, I've read all of the epistles every which way but with 3D glasses, and in all of the qualifications for church leadership that Paul wrote about, not once do I see anything that can be construed, in any way, as "seminary" or "theologian". Most churches, of any size, won't even consider a man to be their pastor unless he has several consonants after his name. The math doesn't work. "But Lew! We need a man that knows the bible!" Really? I know the bible very well, and I've never been to a theological seminary. Many of you who read here know the bible very well, and you haven't attended a theological seminary.

One "certified" theologian is generally like a second belly-button - it's one too many.

A lot of pastorates pay BIG bucks. Some well into six figures. Most pastors of any decent-sized church are living fairly comfortably. Hey, evangelical Christianity is big bidness, folks. Big bidness. These churches want a potential rock star book-writing theologian in the pulpit or they want nothing at all.

The artist I used to tour with is chummy with John Hagee. He once told one of them that he puts upwards of 30 hours of preparation into each sermon. My advice to pastor Hagee would be, "Hey, John, you're not really that important, and neither is the speech you'll give on Sunday." Traditions, traditions. Spinning our evangelical wheels. Wanting that rock star pastor, who's also a noted theologian, who's also prone to write a really popular book. Everything about our religious world spins around that big speech on Sunday morning.

I've always felt like a pastor truly doing a good job as a pastor will be just about the last person you'll notice in a church setting. Isn't a pastor supposed to be a servant? Why then, does the church send prospective pastors to theological seminary? Why not have them volunteering at hospitals, nursing homes, convalescent care facilities? Why not waiting tables? Why not working at a soup kitchen? That seems like better training to me. Rather than spending their time writing books, why aren't our pastors going to hospitals and reading books to patients, or volunteering at schools and reading books to students? That would seem more service-oriented to me.

Professional theologians. Bleh. There are already plenty of Pipers, Mahaneys, and Driscolls wreaking havoc on the church.

Quiverfulls of...ummm...Crap

2011-09-29T21:49:00.000-04:00

I wanted to use the other word. Trust me, I did.

This post isn't intended to speak against large or "mega" families. I've said it before - if a couple wants a large family and can provide for a large family, more power to them. I'm fully behind them. This post isn't intended to speak against homeschooling. This post is intended to speak toward the naive, gullible nature of and the spiritual laziness, immaturity, and irresponsibility exhibited and practiced by many conservative Christians.

I want to write a bit about the idea that "God controls the womb." It sounds like a nice, "godly" thing to believe - but it's gullible, extremely spiritually immature and irresponsible, and once again, it makes conservative Christians almost identical to the people they so vehemently oppose. People are too willing to give up their minds and grasp empty, worthless spiritual platitudes - which "God controls the womb" is. When I talk about people consuming servings of Kool-aid every day, and doing so without question, "God controls the womb" is certainly one of those servings. There's a reason I posted this a few days ago. I want people to understand the ramifications and dynamics involved when you give your soul to a movement and its ideas.

[For the rest of this piece, "God controls the womb" will be condensed to "GCTW"]

Nothing in any book of the bible suggests or instructs that God is responsible for your womb. You need to get the notion that GCTW is "biblical" completely OUT of your head. GCTW is the product of ONE thing: Dominionism. Period. End of story. So, while you may not be a dominionist, you're certainly drinking the Kool-aid they offer if you subscribe to GCTW.

To take dominion, you need numbers...

"Hmmm. So how do we get the numbers we need? I've got it! Breeding! But if we tell our people to just start outbreeding everyone, that'll never really sell. Sounds kinda kooky and cultic. Hmmm. So how do we do this? Hmmm. I've got it! We'll make it biblical! We'll tie it into their faith and godliness and stuff! We'll give 'em the Kool-aid under the guise of homeschooling and "family values" and stuff! They'll never even notice! Someone get Mary Pride in here ASAP!"

Ahh, Mary Pride. A "made" (but submissive) woman in the Christian Homeschooling mafia, champion of all delusional things QF, and the root of most modern GCTW nonsense. A legalistic religious addict's legalist.

My question is, how far are you willing to go with the whole "God controls...____" concept? In the past, I asked if GCTWers believe God also controls other aspects of life, such as "transportation". Has a nice, Christianesy ring to it - "God controls transportation". In all seriousness, there's as much biblical evidence that God controls transportation (Elijah the prophet and Philip the evangelist come to mind almost immediately) as there is for the idea that GCTW. Will you forsake your car the same way you've decided to forsake birth control? What? No? It's obvious, then, that you have no faith, right? I mean, if you can't trust God for transportation, you must not have much faith. I mean, you may not even be a Christian at all!

I think it's telling that of two ideas presented in the paragraph above, both with equal amounts of "biblical evidence" to support them, one (for those keeping score at home, the "transportation" one) would be immediately dismissed as crazy or totally ridiculous and irresponsible if you tried to promote it. The other has had an entire paradigm built around it - because it provides a solution to resource issues and fits nicely into the long-range goals of dominionism, respected voices within the Christian homeschooling mafia/cult promoted it and served it out in dixie cups, and naive, non-discerning (though usually well-meaning) conservative Christians, reacting in fear and paranoia to that mean old world closing in around them, drank it without even thinking to examine what it was. They were told it was good for them, and they never even thought to exercise discernment. Discernment isn't terribly important in their world. "Godliness" is (as defined in the Patriarchal/Authoritarian Dictionary).

Discernment is SOOOO terribly lacking in Christianity, mainly because fundamentalist Christianity is intent on keeping the Holy Spirit behind a veil. Christ reconciled the separation between man and the Spirit of God, but few Christians pay any attention to what the veil of the Temple being torn means in context. It's the single event that everything else in the bible built up to - reconciliation with God. The Holy Spirit is what's needed to genuinely grow in the faith. Otherwise, those who profess Christian faith just spin their wheels in perpetual spiritual infancy, blown by any wind, latching on to every legalistic formula, driven by cultural fears, unable to move past elemental things. In response to the piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Reb Bradley's article, and its distinct lack of the Holy Spirit, someone elsewhere in the cyberworld made the comment (paraphrased) "We have to trust that the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus to them." I appreciate the heart behind the comment, but I think the opposite is actually true. Since they already profess Jesus, they need to understand that Jesus has revealed the Holy Spirit to them (with the tearing of the veil) and made God available on a personal level. They already claim Jesus. Now they need to rely on the Spirit to grow past the works-based ideas and role-playing that makes up the critical mass of their "faith".

Unfortunately, most fundamentalist and legalistic Christian leaders want few things less than for their flock, market, what have you, to be personally lead by the Holy Spirit. They go to great lengths to prevent it, and seemingly with considerable success, what with ideas like GCTW saturating conservative Christianity - and sadly seeping into some mainstream circles.

GCTWers are pretty aggressively pro-life in their views on abortion. They feel that birth control, in and of itself, is a form of abortion. What exactly is being aborted through birth control? Something that might have, could have, possibly have happened? Well, it never happened, so that's an argument over something that isn't. An egg? Sperm? Neither of those are a baby. Those two things have to actually come together for there to be anything that can be argued is a baby. The vast majority of birth control prevents those two things from coming together - therefore, there's no baby - and therefore, there's no abortion. It's a nice "I love babies and life more than you do" idea, but it isn't grounded in reality, but rather in spiritual immaturity and futile attempts to be "godly".

And the worst part of all of it? The GCTW "choice" recklessly disregards and takes a pass on personal responsibility for sexual actions, which is EXACT argument that this same group of people makes against what other group of people?

They look identical to everything they stand against, but can't even begin to see it. Fundamentalism is like an intellectual death spiral.

I probably should've went with that other word.

The Herald/Scotland - Great Article on P/QF

2011-09-25T14:26:00.002-04:00

Update: A version of the article which doesn't require registration to read can be found here.

Children of God...bred to take over the world.

You'll probably have to register to read it, but registration only takes a few seconds.