Puritans, Devils, Ephesians ... oh my!
Please don't use this post as a "Christians hate gay people/Christians killed thousands in the Crusades" thread. I want to hear some more perspectives that involve personal experience
It's an interesting request. Accepting as we have the presence of those "crimes" of Christianity past, we might, as you suggest, look to the contemporary execution of Chritianity to discover what motivates the contemporary regard.
I lived in Oregon from '91-'96, voting in the state in all those years. In 1990, Christians scored local victories against the First Amendment, proscribing the rights of homosexuals in accordance with their Biblical interpretations. The fight still goes on, despite a Colorado victory being gutted by the Supreme Court. Now, as much as we would like to look past such institutionally-founded idiocies, we cannot escape the fact that those idiocies of institution are impossible without
people--that is, individuals--subscribing to the institution.
Thus the bigotry extends down to the personal level; I know a good many Christians whose definition of equality is Christian supremacy. Co-workers, smoke-break associates, and people in taverns, when issues of Christian authority arise, seem to feel that unless society adopts Christianity as its model, the rights of Christians are violated. Thus, I have attended book-banning hearings at which a Christian asserted that their right to free expression and free religion is violated by the presence of books which disagree with them. Quite personally, I'm tired of it. In my life, Christianity threatens to be the undoing of the liberty which has allowed what human progress we have achieved in our nation.
On the human level, I can't count the number of times this has been reinforced. One need not look to the press or the libraries to prove this. Personally, I can encapsulate the tale of my aunt quite conveniently here. Dissatisfied with life, she joined a church, seeking social grounding. Within months, she had nearly destroyed her marriage and family.
She attempted to forbid her 19 year-old daughter entry to the family home over the issue of the movie
Last Temptation of Christ. Disgusted at the slatterny of a daughter, she once kicked the girl out of the house, leaving no place for her to go except to the boyfriend's, and we can guess what happened there. The books she acquired during that phase (Dr Dobson and others) were utterly distasteful; at the time I recoiled from their condescending tone; the more reflective summary of those family-guidance books is that my aunt chose a theory that reduced people to automatons with specific instructions and no real will. The reliance on arbitrary standards of right and wrong amazes me. We could say that, at one point, the home officially reached the point that children are to be seen and not heard. Communication and understanding were undermined in favor of obedience and dogma. Quite frankly, it was only after she ditched the Missouri Synod, took dancing lessons, and moved onto the boat with her estranged husband (who fled the insanity) that the family got healthy again. Coincidentally, of the daughters, three lived in the home when she started her holier-than-thou kick. One moved out, and is an RN. The youngest is close to her RN, and the daughter kicked out of the house and forbidden entry into the home--who was amid her rebellious phase when hostile religion invaded the house, caught the worst of it. By whatever standard of human results, that daughter is the only one adrift; soon to be married, on her way to her third child, and absolutely not a functional brain cell in her skull. Believe me: the differences 'twixt my regard for the Christian experience at, say, 10. 13, and 17 changed dramatically. Each phase has a certain impact. I watch the youngest daughter, close to her RN, and wonder about those differences. Why was she not so screwed as the other? Well, when she got to that point, the storm had passed. There's that, at least. In the end, my aunt has not dropped her religion, but has returned to the more tolerant, reasonable, and less-ridiculous flock of mainstream Lutheranism.
Of Lutherans, I can tell you a good deal. I'm a confirmed Lutheran, and at force of law. That may sound strange in the United States, but a condition of my scandalous adoption into the current family was that I be given a certain degree of Christian education.
So in my time among the Lutherans, I watched scandalous people chase out a pastor who might, had my experience been consistently positive under his tutelage, have kept me in the flock. The nicest guy in the world chased out on trumped-up (never proven nor prosecuted) charges of indecent liberties ... it was political. His replacement was as uber-conservative as you can get without being Missouri Synod. HIs method of educating young people in the ways of Christ included frequent excoriations, overturned furniture, and hurled Bibles. When a child asked him a question that he could not answer--e.g. confusion about Alpha/Omega, &c--his answer was that the child was either idiotic or insane.
I used to watch Robert Tilton's
Success-n-Life ministry purely for the comedy factor. In addition to physically reminding me of Satan, good Bob used to heal via the airwaves; it was amazing. In fact, a little-known thrash band called Panic included a sample of his show on their album. I was thrilled that a local band making a national statement had chosen to ridicule the same Dallas, Texas-based ministry that kept me rolling on the floor. Nonetheless, to consider that televangelism is a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry, I personally resented this profiteer threatening me in order to make money. The condemnation of those not Christian, the constant harping on money and labels, these are hallmarks of Christianity in America in the late twentieth century.
In high school, among Catholics, the list is endless. In fact, this Christian sect undid my
a priori regard for the sanctity of sexuality. Much like La Vey and the circus patrons, I watched my fellow students kneel for absolution on Friday mornings and kneel to give fellatio on Friday night. Falling in love was a dangerous affair of the heart; it was safest to never fall in love. And I hold this standard of conduct against Christianity for all time. How dare the needs and considerations of faith create a state where human sanctity is elastic and arbitrary. But, that's the Christians for you.
There were the publicly-touted anti-abortion missions to the state capital which the school liked to remind were an education in civic participation, in equality, in free expression.
Needless to say, the dissenters were kept under lock and key. Political cartoons disagreeing with the school's "free expression" policy--even those that weren't cruel lampoons like
Ed the Horse's Ass or
Lollipop Nazi--earned suspensions.
If your parents kicked you out of the house, they were to call the school. The student would be suspended and banned from campus until returning home. Yes, that's as backwards as it seems. One of our students ended up in prison after one of those; his dad threw him out for something--I think it was joyriding in the car--and the school suspended him. A couple of afternoons later, he was attacked on the street and, in a youthful burst of enthusiasm, beat the guy within an inch of his life. The result of the solution is
so encouraging, right?
And I'm at the center of one of those scandals, too. As a junior in high school, I met a lovely freshman whose mother disliked the notion of her daughter going to prom with a 17 year-old. Well and fine, but after she was kicked out of the house over the issue, she went to a friend's house. Her friend took her to a party and ditched her there to be taken by several men. Bruised and cut, I still remember the last time I talked to her.
The school expelled her. Her mother trundled her off to somewhere, and I've never found her again.
Compassion?
You know, my grandmother, a Baptist first and then a Lutheran, was thrilled when I was accepted to a Catholic school, so much so that she made my inheritance (she was dying when we got word that I was in) a sum specifically to ensure that I could finish out there. And this is the woman who bombarded my brother and I with books and records when we were young; Evie, and the Gaithers were often our Christmas carols; children's tales reminded us of how small and useless we were, and how God--who created us as such--loved us anyway. From the start, my involvement with Christians has worked to reduce the human condition.
I can remember a specific conversation with one of the lay instructors who took me to task for "reading notes during Mass". I asked him why I shouldn't look to see what just hit me in the head.
Hit you in the head? Yeah, _____ threw it at D____ and it bounced off his head and landed in my lap.
Well, that's irrelevant. Why is that?
Because I didn't see ____ throw it. Yes, but you'll notice it's a profane letter to D signed by _____.
I know, and that's why I'm disappointed in you both for reading notes in Mass. Do you have no respect for Jesus Christ Your Lord And Savior? Wait, wait, wait. How is it my fault that someone wrote this down and threw it at me?
I asked you a question. Do you have no respect for Jesus Christ Your Lord And Savior? It should be noted that the composing party was a Christian, and that neither D____ or I stayed close to the faith. It was a lesson in justice among Christians:
We do no wrong, even when we do wrong.
There was the time the young, faithful Christian chap who had argued with me the day before in Theology class (an unsupportable thesis) accused me of arson. The sad thing was that yes, he was standing right there when the flame-spurting smoke bomb was dropped into the trash can near my locker, but telling the truth would have meant pointing the finger at one of his mates from CYO, or whatever that group was called (Catholic Youth Organization?)
Or how about the time horses were slaughtered in a mountain town about an hour from the school? Four girls went to the priests and told them that a friend and I listened to "Satanic" music. I had an interesting conversation with the priests about my whereabouts on the evening in question.
Or the girl I worked with who told me (around '94, while I was still in Oregon) that it "hurt her heart" to think of all the faggots sinning against God. Yeah, it hurts my cock to think that she doesn't give head, but you don't see me waving it on a political banner, do you?
Maybe the Mennonite boss, with whom I got along reasonably well except for one disagreement we agreed to never broach again. Simply, he tried to fire me once for being unable to perform the physically impossible. Rhetoric aside, I can say that other aspects of his personality taught me a couple of things about how he regarded his faith. He was, simply, right in all things.
And here's the thing: people are people, no matter what they choose to call themselves. Christians, however, put certain conditions on their humanity that ring false when given scrutiny.
One need not be a Christian in order to be deceptive, ruthless, hateful, or stupid. But, statistically, it
does seem to help one along the way to duplicity. After all, this capsule is the short list of personal experiences. Should I tell you how many times I counseled girls abused by their fathers who never said anything because the Bible says you're not supposed to talk bad about your parents? Should I dredge up the protest vigil I attended in 1992 after a Christian firebombed a house to punish the two suspected gay people inside, and this in the middle of election season with a measure on the ballot to exscind the civil rights of people based on the genders of their sexual partners?
Should we, then, consider second grade, when a girl in my class spent a good period frightened out of her mind because her sister had fallen gravely ill and her parents told her that God did it because the girl had lied?
Or, perhaps, my neighbors when I was five, whose youngest daughter suffered brain damage after the parents refused medical treatment for fever and infection in accordance with their (pseudo) Christian faith.
How about the unusually high number of associates and friends (who, incidentally, are quite unusually high these days) who call themselves "escapees" of the Seventh-Day Adventist church? A quick perusal through an SDA bookstore is a frightening experience. The Pope is the Devil, the UN will put all Sabbatarians (Saturday-worshippers) to the electric chair,
ad nauseam (I won't revisit the stupidity about bicycles.) What about the fact that
none of them are "normal" in the commonly-regarded sense? All of them have sexual hangups or obsessions that have the power to derail relationships; all of them have an attention complex that compels them to interrupt
any conversation in order to relate something mundane, irrelevant, and about themselves.
Understand, please, that it's not like one has to go out and dig up dirt on Christianity in practice. Rather, the adherents seem to sling that dirt and mud around as if it was the holy spirit itself.
Might we turn introspective, for a moment, then, and look at our fellow posters at Sciforums?
Blonde Cupid and I had a disagreement, recently, about such issues. But certain Christian advocates come out swinging, with cruelty and condemnation on their tongues; we would like to be able to say, as an infidel community, that such occasions are deviations, apostasies, or machinations of provocateurs. But among those Christians are the occasional reminders that, despite the Bible, they have no obligation to be forgiving, understanding, or anything less than combative. Of course, we might also point out that the removal of forgiveness, empathy, and necessity of peace under given conditions is exactly what some of our Christian posters complain about in, say, Islam. So it's a bad thing when the holy book of Islam says to defend yourself, but a good thing when a Christian sacks the Bible and goes off on a personal rampage.
A lot of people of integrity have put down the Bible and walked away because it is impossible to abide. When
Blonde Cupid and I were arguing the subject, we had a row going on where a number of people were irritated at one or two of our Christian posters for their incessant need to interrupt topics and prevent their progress. There are some incredible diversions in some of these topics. But as to those points, we might note that what we see in Sciforums rhetoric is, quite often, accurately microcosmic of reality. There is nothing about diversionary tactics, manipulative citation, or outright condemnation going on at this site that is unfamiliar to any infidel examining the Christian menagerie. One of my frequent notions here is that Christians should clean up their own damn house before bugging the rest of us. You'll note the number of disparaging comments at Sciforums about the "Christian intellect", and, yes, I'm one of the chief proponents of that phalanx. Of course, I get my phrase, that faith is a sacrifice of the intellect, from the Christians, so I have no difficulty bandying it with reckless disregard.
And it shows, too. Our creationist posters rely on two issues: they seem to expect that the scientific process should be as closed, fixed, and finished as the Biblical canon. Take the transitional fossil debate: yes there are transitional fossils, no there aren't, and then a bunch of nitpicking until we reach the incredibly exacting piece of evidence the Creationist seeks. And then we look at a simple point: have we found
all the fossils that there are to find?
The second issue is a matter of
a priori. As any scientist will point out, presently Creationism is not a valid scientific theory because it includes untestable demands. Furthermore, unlike other theoretic sciences, nobody has developed a working hypothesis that will enable us to address the untestable demands. Thus, to accept scientific proof that God created the world according to the Bible, one of the things we need on the table is the existence of God, currently the primary
a priori. Yet the creationists will counter that we cannot disprove the existence of God, scientifically. Well, that's the thing: there is
nothing to observe objectively. And again we see a failing of the creationist process. That we cannot presently observe God does not mean conclusively that He does not exist. However, the observable environment of scientific investigation shows that considerations of God would be arbitrary insertions of data with no foundation in the observed environment. The creationists demand that science observe what is not there and say that it is. Now, is this like bacteria and other microbes? A matter of observational technique and capability? Again, we see the creationist faction failing to put forth any theories to help us work toward observing God.
In this sense, then, I think we see a sacrifice of the intellect: the clinging to faith in lieu of observable reality. That the only support for creationism is that the scientific process doesn't finish is quite telling. I can resent Christianity for the dullardness it seems to breed, but that's a little harsh, eh? So the question becomes, then, why should Christians demand the rewriting of the scientific standard to accommodte them? It's almost as if, failing to prove their faith objectively true according to the scientific rules, they wish to rewrite the scientific process to establish God
a priori. Faith is one thing; that Christians should deign themselves worthy to legislate my life anywhere in this world is a far different issue. Much like the Christian sexual psychosis, these poitics ask me to subscribe to somehting which is demonstrably not true. Communism has failed, and Captialism is undergoing a facelift that leaves it as theoretically utopiate as the Reds, and why is it that the conceptual failure of Christianity only compels the adherents to beat themselves and everyone else against the wall even more?
Among Communism's failures, most apparent is its idealism; the failure to execute is almost foretold by the nature of Marxism. Its fundamental flaw in this sense is its optimism in human nature--we see what the failure to recognize what certain corruptions brings to Communism. Similarly, where Christianity fails is its idealism; the failure to execute is indeed foretold by the
nature of the Bible. Look around, surf the web, read the tracts you find in the phone booth or get from the Watchtower crusaders, Watch the televangelists, visit your local church and listen to the preacher; listen to your Christian friends, family, and neighbors expound on the nature of their faith in their very words and actions. Like snowflakes, no two people's faiths can be shown to be the same. To a degree, this is determined by the diversity of human experience. But the Bible leaves many places wide open to various and contradictory interpretations, as any Christian/political issue demonstrates. Unlike Communism, though, a fundamental flaw of Christianity is its gloomy perception of humanity; weak, corrupted, dependent.
And this gloomy perception has brought, frankly, hideous results. However, as you've noted, we're not here to harp on history.
The problem is that, even though we're not burning people at the stake, Christians are carrying out a certain amount of cultural extinction. I know that many Christians do not agree with the policies of other Christians. This is self-evident. Yet in this sense what are we, the infidels, the potential converts, the targets of wrath to think? In all my dealings with Christianity and Christians, I have not been compelled to willingly join the flock.
That many Christians, even those of my acquaintance and association, might advocate the ideas and notions I find so distasteful casts Christianity in a disturbing light. It should only be opposed when it attempts to govern or narrow a free society. (It should be noted here that I believe all societies should be free; I wholly support the notion of one world, save for the simple fact that my conditions for agreeing to it are, frankly, utopiate.) And of this notion of what I find tasteful:
Quite simply, Christianity claims for itself what it will not extend to others. In terms of the larger institution, this is quite nakedly obvious. But how does it become that without the (silent, perhaps?) endorsement of the many individual Chrisians. Of those I've known, of course they're not uniform in their thought and conduct. But they do display frighteningly similar traits in matters of comparison--e.g. authority--in social relations.
In fact, were it not for the Society of Friends in general, and the specific fact that human beings tend to be themselves despite all else--thus maintaining a degree of diversity--I would long ago have undertaken an active opposition to Christian growth.
I do find the philosophy damaging to the human race. I find it a hideous scourge. But that doesn't make a Christian hideous, and that doesn't mean we're seeing the true face.
Unfortunately, though, Christianity often works to perpetuate a blissful degree of ignorance. By relying on faith, all manner of snakes slither from the woodwork of the cross. I'm not blaming Christianity for the diet-freaks or the anti-medicine crowd; we understand ... look what happened to Communism, to
any paradigm entrusted to the human conscience. But I will damn well blame it for the institutional failures we're not going to harp on, and I will blame it for the effect it has on people, and I will blame it for the damage those people can cause, and I will blame it for the perpetuation of superstitious division in society. I hold it responsible for the crisis in my aunt's marriage, though not for the idiocy of her middle daughter. Things don't have to go the way they do. It's only out of unjustified fear that they do.
And people are free to believe what they want. And yes, to preach it as advantageous. But the spread of Christianity seems to me like the spread of disease, a malady across the land. Get rid of all the Falwells, Mabons, Tiltons, Wildmonds and others, and you still have to deal with that unruly mass of people who, in day to day life, just aren't very nice by virtue of their priorities. For instance, if it wasn't for the fact that my daily Christian experience seemed distasteful, I might never have noticed the frightening degree of social-developmental arrest among Christians and those weird American post-Christians.
A girlfriend once took me to a Carman concert; I was 18 at the time. It was scary. Terrifying, actually. I looked around at the sea of people, at least twenty-thousand of them, and thought,
You're kidding me ....
When I was in college--and this is only slightly a gay-hating story--the campus ministry ran a Jesus Week complete with its gay-bashing session, sponsored by Exodus International. Okay ... they brought in high school students from a local parochial school. Some evangelical Protestant something-or-another ... by the time they were railing through the Old Testament, I just had to ask the unkind speaker about the handicapped,
cf Leviticus 21.16-ff. One of the parochial students leapt to her feat and screamed Ephesians 6.11 at me, which apparently answered the question for that tribe.
I'm so impressed with the young lady's intellectual prowess, and the way she waved her finger in the air like Claire Huxtable and threw her hands in the air and danced around like an old-tymie revival. That is to say that she seemed about as bright as a stump.
If more Christians could consider actual answers in a Biblical context instead of rebuking ideas for even existing, many of Christianity's more active skeptics would be more inclined to let the offensive ones just pass on by like any other jabbering lunatic. But that's the problem: you'd be amazed at how many jabbering lunatics I come across. And for various reasons, the biggest problem is that they can't keep that distinctive brand of self-righteousness out of daily life. I've seen it happen before that a guy changed his afternoon break time to avoid a certain number of us. Not because we jumped down his throat, but because we didn't affirm and hurrah him. That is to say, it became obvious to him at some point that everybody was doing their best not to call him out. You know, that way subjects just seem to drop? I knew it, and I'm sure everybody knew it. Don't start or it becomes a feeding frenzy. I've also seen it where we made a conscious effort to let such things drop because we know the guy has kids and we're not about to send him packing for being just another idiot that doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. We forgive other slips, why not these?
And to me it seems like it should be simple. There are healthy ways to spread Christianity. However, it requires that Christianity be healthy in the first place and I just don't find it to be so. Not to my observation, not to my judgment, not to my experience.
I, for one, refuse to look forward to the end of the world.
Don't get me started on the Devil. Just like the idiots at the computer store up the street--Apple specialists, my ass--make the idea of a Windows box less than unattractive, so, too, do Christians give me a Devil worth giving sympathy.
Only Christians could make the Devil the Redeemer. Think about it--Christ died
once. The Devil suffers and dies daily. And you know what
really sucks about it? There doesn't appear to be any reason for it. I'll leave it at that for now because I said I shouldn't get started. But such conceptual cruelties lend much toward understanding the dark spectre of Christianity I've come to know and loathe.
People keep telling me there's something better about it out there. Show me. Bring practice up to par with the prescribed rules. Did you know, for instance, that
Jesus was gay?
What I
actually wish to point out from that is the author's focus on adultery. The gay-debate issue removed, the author still has a legitimate point. You'll notice that this
Barna Research survey differs in two respects from the gay-Jesus author: seemingly lower divorce rates and (as an explanation for) a more exacting
terminology. Cast a broad enough net--as Mr McKinley has--and I'm sure you can reach his numbers. But that specific is unimportant. (I provided the Barna survey for more ... reliable ... numbers.) He points out a certain degree of acceptability among Christians in the case of an adulterous--sinful--life, even to the point of endorsement by the churches.
And I shouldn't care if anyone chooses to live that way, but the ideas that they perpetuate in the name of a truth they do not abide do, occasionally, require open opposition.
To my personal experience, it has to do with the integrity of a force continually attempting to influence my life in some way, from the personal to the institutional. The only reason history is important is because it reminds us that this has been going on for a long time.
You'd think people would learn; of course, conservative Protestantism is at the core of the American experience, so that might go a long way toward explaining it.
thanx much,
Tiassa