WHITE EVANGLICALS HAVE A DELUSIONAL PERSECUTION COMPLEX

From Fred Clark, the Slacktivist over at Patheos:

Do white evangelicals have a delusional persecution complex? Barna says yes, and provides quantifiable proof.

January 28, 2013 By Fred Clark 217 Comments

 

After discussing the limits of the survey research and data supplied by the Barna Group, let’s turn to the merits of it, and what such research can tell us.

 

Barna surveys may not always help to tell us about how behavior actually corresponds to attitudes or perceptions, but they can be quite helpful in telling us how widespread particular attitudes or perceptions actually are.

 

For example, a friend of mine dislikes Brussels sprouts and says, “No one likes Brussels sprouts.” That’s quite a sweeping claim, but to what extent is it true? A survey is a useful way of finding out. We can measure what percentage of people share my friend’s dislike,* and thereby see whether her opinion is broadly representative or if she is an outlier — whether she is an exception to the norm or an accurate reflection of the majority view. It might be even better to find measurements of actual behavior — sales and consumption figures, for example, but a survey can still be a valuable tool for putting her comments in context.

 

Here’s a more concrete example relating to an actual bit of recent research reported by the Barna Group. Libby Anne recently highlighted a comment on her blog that seems to epitomize what many of us have observed as a widespread, delusional sense of persecution on the part of many members of America’s privileged religious majority. The comment provides a remarkable specimen of what I call the “persecuted hegemon” — a person enjoying the rewards of cultural dominance while simultaneously insisting that they are aggrieved and suffering an injustice at the hands of people who are, in fact, marginalized minorities.

 

Here’s that comment:

As a matter of fact, it is [Christians'] rights that are being limited and we are becoming the minority in this nation. In many countries to even hint at being a Christian is the same as signing a death warrant. In our country they have taken away our right to pray in school, in some states we cannot even have private Bible study groups in our homes because it constitutes an illegal gathering, our organizations are being required to make the “abortion pill” a covered product on our insurance or be fined an absurd amount of money, our Christian doctors are being forced to consider if they even want to be doctors anymore or not because of a mandate that they must perform abortions……..and gay people are saying they don’t have rights?

As Libby Anne correctly notes, none of this person’s complaints correspond with reality. The examples of her perceived persecution are all imaginary and false. All of them.

 

Most of these false examples are, in fact, perversions and inversions of the actual facts of the matter. The comment is contradicted by the daily lived experience of the commenter.

 

This is delusional, and the delusion is doubly cruel. It is cruel, foremost, to the people who are actually marginalized and disenfranchised — who are being denied full and equal participation in society because they do not conform to the majority beliefs that this commenter insists must be mandatory for everyone else, and who are then, on top of that, being scapegoated and blamed as the supposed cause of the non-existent “persecution” being suffered by the privileged majority.

But it is also cruel to the commenter herself, fabricating a causeless source of misery and aggrievement, unnecessarily introducing stress where no such stress actually exists.

 

Now, both Libby Anne and I regard this comment as broadly representative of an attitude that we both see as widespread throughout the white evangelical subculture in America. But is that true? It’s possible, after all, that we’re simply cherry-picking data to support our thesis. Perhaps this one comment is not representative of anything other than the views of this lone commenter.

 

We can certainly demonstrate that this commenter is not unique. Scroll back through the archives of Libby Anne’s blog, or of this one, and you’ll see we both can provide dozens more examples of evangelical Christians exhibiting the same delusional persecution complex. But all of those examples put together still don’t prove that we’ve done anything more than identified what might still be only a small fringe sub-set of deluded white evangelicals. It may be that all of the anecdotes and examples we’ve collected and reported over the years are still just cherry-picked data selected only because they support our thesis of a broader evangelical persecution complex.

 

Another indicator of support for that thesis comes from the public statements of prominent white evangelical leaders. A single blog comment may reflect nothing more than the opinions of a lone commenter, but if the sentiments it expresses are repeated by a host of prominent white evangelicals in leadership positions, that would seem to indicate that such sentiments are more widely held.

That’s one thing that can be gleaned from a recent post at Homebrewed Christianity titled “On Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Society,” which cites several such prominent evangelical luminaries echoing the persecution complex described by Libby Anne’s commenter.

 

Christian at Homebrewed Theology mentions the “Manhattan Declaration,” a 2009 manifesto embodying this same persecution complex which was endorsed by a who’s who of white evangelical leaders. And then he points to a recent column by three of those Manhattan declarers, Robert George, Timothy George and Eric “Call Me Dietrich” Metaxas, in which they lament the supposed persecution of the Christian majority:

They say there are numerous examples, and then pick three:

1. The brouhaha over Louie Giglio and the Inaguration.

2. The contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

3. The demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. 

Of these three, exactly none are “religious freedom” issues.
None.
They are, without exception, religious primacy issues.
None of these impact, in any measurable way, the ability of the Conservative Christian community to practice their faith openly and without fear of persecution in the United States.
In a pluralistic society, there’s a general rule. Your right to swing your fist ends at the other guy’s nose. That means, in a pluralistic society, for the health of the society, there’s a give and take. It’s the essence of the social contract that we live under when we decide to become a society.
When people like the authors above, or the creators of the Manhattan Declaration, complain that, not faith, but that their particular embodiment of faith isn’t given supremacy above all others and cries of “persecution” are heard, it is rightfully interpreted as an innate hatred of the rest of society and disdain for the social contract we all live under.
There’s a name for people who believe they, and their beliefs, should always be kowtowed to no matter what …
… they’re called sociopaths.

Well, yes. But it’s one thing to say that Metaxas and the Georges and the commenter at Libby Anne’s blog are delusional sociopaths who hate the rest of society — that much is obvious. It’s quite another thing to demonstrate that this hate-fueled delusion is more widely present within the broader white evangelical subculture.

 

And that’s where the latest survey from the Barna Group comes in. Because that survey provides what all those anecdotal examples cannot provide: Quantifiable proof that a majority of white evangelical Americans are hate-fueled sociopaths making themselves and others miserable with a perverse and delusional persecution complex.

 

Barna doesn’t quite put it as strongly as that, but the implication is identical. A majority of white evangelicals “want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,” said David Kinnamon, president of the Barna Group.

 

“Dominate.” Or, as Christian said, it’s not about religious liberty, it’s about religious primacy.

The findings of a poll published Wednesday (Jan. 23), reveal a “double standard” among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture.
While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, “they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,” said Kinnamon.
“They cannot have it both ways,” he said. “This does not mean putting Judeo-Christian values aside, but it will require a renegotiation of those values in the public square as America increasingly becomes a multi-faith nation.”

Barna’s survey also found white evangelicals enthusiastically eager to lay blame to others for their perceived “persecution.” Nearly three-fourths of white evangelicals, “72 percent … agreed that gays and lesbians were the group ‘most active in trying to remove Christian values from the country.’”

 

Again, that’s a direct inversion and deliberate perversion of the daily, felt, known and experienced reality for those very same evangelicals. They cannot be unaware that evangelicals are the group most active in trying to remove LGBT people from the country. In a sense, I suppose, this survey response is an expression of that same desire to rid society of all such unwanted people — a way of restating the emphatic belief that their presence and very existence is a threat to the majority’s “values.”

 

That survey finding cannot be explained other than, in Christian’s words again, as evidence of “an innate hatred of the rest of society and disdain for the social contract we all live under.”

 

And it’s not just the attitude of a few outliers nut-picked from comment sections or of a few of the more outrageous pseudo-intellectual posers like Metaxas or the Georges. This delusional sociopathy is the majority view.

 

An old professor of mine used to say that social science sometimes amounted only to “the statistical approximation of the known,” and this survey may seem like that to many of us who have long observed what it quantifies. But that quantification also serves as evidence, as proof, of what we have been saying.

 

A great many white evangelicals have a delusional persecution complex. That delusion is an expression of a desire to dominate others and to scapegoat any others who refuse to be dominated.

Thanks to Barna’s survey, we know that’s not just a theory or just an argument, it’s a fact.

 

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* I suspect those who agree with her are thinking mainly of boiled Brussels sprouts, which is unfair. Nothing is very appealing if you insist on cooking all the flavor out of it.

Brussels sprouts should be broiled — cut in half, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper or lemon, then cooked in an oven, not boiled on a stove. Just saying.

EVANS AND ENNS ON THE EVANGELICAL HEART & MIND

The blogosphere has been humming with a recent post by Rachel Held Evans entitled "The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart."  Held Evans has quite a following, and at the moment there are 537 comments on the piece [copied below in its entirety].  Pete Enns, my most favorite biblical scholar, mentioned Evans post here.  Enns points out that in addition to the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind a la Mark Noll, and the Scandal of the Evangelical Heart, a la Evans, there is another scandal, "The Deeper Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: We Are Not Allowed To Use It."  Pete's post has generated 90 responses, mainly supporting his contentions, summarized as follows:

Biblical scholarship is the recurring focal point of this type of scandal.

*Sure, dig into evolution and the ancient context of Genesis, but by golly you’d better give me an Adam when you’re done.

*Knock yourself out with scholarship on the Pentateuch, but make sure at the end of it all you affirm that Moses basically wrote it.

*Be part of cutting edge archaeological studies, but when you’re done we want to see you affirm the historicity of the exodus and conquest of Canaan pretty much as the Bible describes them, regardless of what others say.

*Do whatever work you need to do, but when the dust settles, explain how your conclusions fit with inerrancy.

 

Enns, John Schneider, Bruce Waltke and a host of others who have been derided because they did not conform to the above rules know what it's like if you stray from this format - "released" "retired" "pursuing new opportunities" are the euphemisms for being shoved out the door.

I like the observation that a 3rd grade understanding of the bible is just fine - as long as you are in the 3rd grade.  Conservative evangelical biblical scholarship appears to be an oxymoron, and as Ken Ham would say, "a plain reading of the bible" is what I would say is the main reason that there are over 30,000 xian denominations and sects.  So much for unity in Christ.



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“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.”

– John Piper

 

“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

– Thomas Paine

 

It’s strange to think that doubt has been a part of my life for more than ten years now.

 

I remember when it first showed up—a dark grotesque with a terrifying smile that took up so much space, catching every payer in its gravitational pull. That I could grow accustomed to its presence seemed impossible at the time, and yet I have. It hasn’t changed in size, but somehow it occupies less space. I smile back at it now.

A lot of people, when they catch pieces of my story, assume my doubts are of the intellectual variety. They assume I’m just a smart girl stuck in the Bible Belt asking pesky questions about science, history and politics that my conservative evangelical culture, with a bent toward anti-intellectualism, simply cannot answer.

This is true to an extent. I’ve wrestled with a lot of questions related to science and faith, especially given my location a mere two miles from the famous Rhea County Courthouse where John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in a public school. While I no longer believe the earth is just 6,000 years old, I still live in the tension of unanswered questions about the universe, and death, and brains, and Neanderthals, and whatever Neil deGrasse Tyson’s got to say on public television about the earth getting burned up by the sun or our species going extinct after an asteroid hits. I have questions too about history and Christianity’s emergence from it, questions about the Bible, questions about miracles.

But the questions that have weighed most heavily on me these past ten years have been questions not of the mind but of the heart, questions of conscience and empathy. It was not the so-called “scandal of the evangelical mind” that rocked my faith; it was the scandal of the evangelical heart.

If you’ve read Evolving in Monkey Town, you know that the public execution of a woman named Zarmina in Afghanistan marked a turning point in my faith journey. The injustice of the situation was troublesome enough, but when my friends insisted that Zarmina went to hell because she was a Muslim, I began wrestling with some serious questions about heaven, hell, predestination, free will, God’s goodness, and religious pluralism.

 

Evangelical apologists were quick to respond. And while their answers made enough sense in my head; they never sat right with my soul.

 

Why would God fashion a person in her mother’ s womb, number the hairs on her head, and then leave her without any hope of salvation? Can salvation be boiled down to luck of the draw? How is that just? Shouldn't God be more loving and compassionate than I?

 

Oh, the Calvinists could make perfect sense of it all with a wave of a hand and a swift, confident explanation about how Zarmina had been born in sin and likely predestined to spend eternity in hell to the glory of an angry God (they called her a “vessel of destruction”); about how I should just be thankful to be spared the same fate since it’s what I deserve anyway; about how the Asian tsunami was just another one of God’s temper tantrums sent to remind us all of His rage at our sin; about how I need not worry because “there is not one maverick molecule in the universe” so every hurricane, every earthquake, every war, every execution, every transaction in the slave trade, every rape of a child is part of God’s sovereign plan, even God’s idea; about how my objections to this paradigm represented unrepentant pride and a capitulation to humanism that placed too much inherent value on my fellow human beings; about how my intuitive sense of love and morality and right and wrong is so corrupted by my sin nature I cannot trust it.

 

They said all of this without so much of a glimmer of a tear, and it scared me to death. It nearly scared me out of the Church.

 

For what makes the Church any different from a cult if it demands we sacrifice our conscience in exchange for unquestioned allegiance to authority? What sort of God would call himself love and then ask that I betray everything I know in my bones to be love in order to worship him? Did following Jesus mean becoming some shadow of myself, drained of empathy and compassion and revulsion to injustice?

 

Perhaps in reaction to the “scandal of the evangelical mind,” evangelicalism of late has developed a general distrust of emotion when it comes to theology.

 

So long as an idea seems logical, so long as it fits consistently with the favored theological paradigm, it seems to matter not whether it is morally reprehensible at an intuitive level. I suspect this is why this new breed of rigid Calvinism that follows the “five points” to their most logical conclusion, without regard to the moral implications of them, has flourished in the past twenty years. (I heard a theology professor explain the other day that he had no problem whatsoever with God orchestrating evil acts to accomplish God’s will, for that is what is required for God to be fully sovereign! When asked if this does not make God something of a monster, he responded that it didn’t matter; God is God—end of story.) And I suspect this explains why, in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, so many evangelical leaders responded like Job’s friends, eager to offer theological explanations for what happened instead of simply sitting down in the ashes and weeping with their brothers and sisters.

 

Richard Beck has also observed this phenomenon and refers to it as “orthodox alexithymia”:

When theology and doctrine become separated from emotion we end up with something dysfunctional and even monstrous.

A theology or doctrinal system that has become decoupled from emotion is going to look emotionally stunted and even inhuman. What I'm describing here might be captured by the tag "orthodox alexithymia." By "orthodox" I mean the intellectual pursuit of right belief. And by "alexithymia" I mean someone who is, theologically speaking, emotionally and socially deaf and dumb. Even theologically sociopathic.

Alexithymia--etymologically "without words for emotions"--is a symptom characteristic of individuals who have difficulty understanding their own and others' emotions. You can think of alexithymia as being the opposite of what is called emotional intelligence.

Orthodox alexithymia is produced when the intellectual facets of Christian theology, in the pursuit of correct and right belief, become decoupled from emotion, empathy, and fellow-feeling. Orthodox alexithymics are like patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex brain damage. Their reasoning may be sophisticated and internally consistent but it is disconnected from human emotion. And without Christ-shaped caring to guide the chain of calculation we wind up with the theological equivalent of preferring to scratch a doctrinal finger over preventing destruction of the whole world. Logically and doctrinally such preferences can be justified. They are not "contrary to reason." But they are inhuman and monstrous. Emotion, not reason, is what has gone missing. Read the entire post.

I encountered this recently after I spoke to a group of youth about doubt. In the presentation, I mentioned that upon reading the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho for myself, I realized it was a story about genocide, with God commanding Joshua to kill every man, woman, and child in the city for the sole purpose of acquiring land. I explained that this seemed contrary to what Jesus taught about loving our enemies.

 

Afterwards, a youth leader informed me that when it came to Joshua and Jericho, I had nothing to worry about…and had no business getting his students worried either.

 

“I don’t know why you had to bring up the Jericho thing,” he said.

 

“Doesn’t that story bother you?” I asked. “Don’t you find the slaughter of men, women, and children horrific?”

 

“Not if it’s in the Bible.”

 

“Genocide doesn’t bother you if it’s in the Bible?”

 

“Nope.”

 

He crossed his arms and a self-satisfied smile spread across his face. He was proud of his detachment, I realized. He seemed to think it represented some kind of spiritual strength.

 

“But genocide always bothers me,” I finally said, “especiallywhen it’s in the Bible. And I get the idea that maybe it’s supposed to. I get the idea that maybe God created me to be bothered by evil like that, even when it’s said to have been orchestrated by God.”

 

I’m not sure he and I will ever understand one another, but I’ve decided to quit apologizing for my questions. It’s not enough for me to maintain my intellectual integrity as a Christian; I also want to maintain my emotional integrity as a Christian. And I don’t need answers to all of my questions to do that. I need only the courage to be honest about my questions and doubts, and the patience to keep exploring and trusting in spite of them.

 

The bravest decision I’ll ever make is the decision to follow Jesus with both my head and heart engaged—no checking out, no pretending.

It’s a decision I make every day, and it’s a decision that’s made my faith journey a heck of a lot more hazardous and a heck of a lot more fun. It means that grinning monster, doubt, is likely to stick around for a while, for I know now that closing my eyes won’t make him go away. It means each day is a risk, a gamble, an adventure in vulnerability and trust, as I figure out what it means to follow Jesus as me, Rachel Grace—the girl who cried for Zarmina, the girl who inherited her mama’s bleeding heart and her daddy’s stubborn grace, the girl who digs in her heels, the girl who makes mistakes, the girl who is intent on breaking up patriarchy, the girl who thought to raise her hand in Sunday school at age five and ask why God would drown innocent animals in Noah’s flood, the girl who could be wrong.

 

It means I’ve got a long race ahead of me, but I’m going to run it with abandon. I’m going to run it as me. Because I think that’s what God wants—all of me, surrendered and transformed, head and heart engaged.

 

I’m growing more confident in my stride, and I am running faster now, breathless, kicking up dust, tripping over roots and skinning my knees, cursing now and then, but always getting up and gaining ground on that bend in the path where I think I can see Jesus up ahead.

AN INTERESTING EXCHANGE

This exchange took place a while back at Why Evolution Is True, and I was very impressed with Joandenoo's response to Anonymous - first Anon and then J's response - and the bottom line is, how does one respond to J's testimonial?

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This discussion is frightening – look to the anti-clericalism of the USSR – the state took many of the trappings of Christianity and the Tartars and used them to create the cult of personality. The tomb of Lenin was to show that he was incorruptible as a saint. That is your secular inquisition. Seriously. Remove religion entirely and you will leave a vacuum for the state or some kind of snake oil to fill. Look at the Al Gore fanaticism for climate change. Smart people like yourselves should be looking to support the good that religion does – to protect us from the evil that can come from it – not look to its destruction. Homo Sapiens has always had religion and superstition – it is part of us as language. You have it as well. You think you are immune but you are not – you have irrational beliefs you have to struggle to overcome pre-conceived conclusions every day. You would go crazy if your brain did not try to fool you somehow – leave things out

Sweden!? why always Sweden? They are the land of Goldfrapp and ABBA – That place is a utopia compared to the southern United states. I mean I chafe under the yolk of Christianity I see hypocritical actions and liars every day but I would rather Christianity than so many other things that would fill that would fill the vacuum. We should, if you want, work to establish a kinder more secular version of our better religions.

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States throughout history have linked with religious institutions in order to gain power and control over uneducated, naïve populations who often were unable to read or write or do calculations. With the use of physical and psychological means, state and church controlled populations with violence and fear and false hope.

Remove religion entirely and you leave a king or landlord or slave owner without the aid of religious superstitions to do their dastardly deeds.
If one looks only at the “good” religion does without awareness or consideration of unhealthy, manipulative, exploitive, and oppressive actions in the name of some god/s, then one makes ill informed assessments, not only of history, but also of today’s church.

I, nor my children, nor my mother, nor my grandmothers were spared beatings by prayers or interventions of religious leaders or followers. Prayers didn’t stop or prevent sexual abuse of children or in the Penn State sex abuse scandal.

Yes, Homo sapiens have histories of spiritual beliefs and practices as demonstrated by archeological and anthropological studies from the Neolithic Age (New Stone Age), starting in about 9,500 BCE to 2,500 BCE. During this time, women played a powerful role in their religious practices because of the mystery of women bleeding every month and not dying, of bearing children and nursing them. Some call this the Age of the Goddess, i.e. “This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment” edited by Roger Gottlieb, 1996; “Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” by Rosemary Radford Ruether; “Messages from the Past: The World of the Goddess” by Riane Eisler.

I don’t want to bore anyone with a litany of violations of human and nature’s wellbeing by religious doctrine, but to just remind you of The Crusades when illiterate Europeans invaded the Holy Lands to take away Muslim control and to remind you of the advanced culture of Islam that Christians wanted to displace.

Christians murdered, tortured, and mutilated, human beings and destroyed communities, farms, water supplies and industry in the name of their god. Priests and preachers murdered men and women for being witches and some cut off noses of those of another “Christian” faith.

Don’t insult me with pleadings of the “good” religion has done throughout history. Your claims merely reveal your lack of education and failure to recognize atrocities that occur, even today, in the name of some god.

Yes, Sweden is able to maintain a humane and decent culture without interference from religions. They understand morality and ethical behavior without bowing to an un-seeable, un-knowable, un-responding superstition.

Perhaps you “would rather Christianity than so many other things that would fill the vacuum.” You have every right to believe as you do … don’t stuff your faith and beliefs down my throat and get out of my way when teaching children fairy tales instead of science. Keep your god off my money, out of my government, away from my laws.

Your brain may have told you a god made you and everything that is. Well that explains you. Too bad! My brain tells me to look, listen, discuss, learn, explore, experiment, and pay attention to cause and effect. From such observations, develop a hypothesis and test the principle, always keeping in mind that I am not here to control or oppress or dominate or make you happy. I am here to participate in life, with all my faculties, loving and caring for others and myself while being able and willing to stand up to fascism.

The institutions of family, church, community, education, laws, law enforcement, and health care, have interfered with good mental and physical health for far too long.

Homo sapiens did not move out the Stone Age because they ran out of stones; they learned healthy, effective, efficient ways of solving problems, resolving conflict, and creating a just society. God had nothing to do with it.

CLOBBERING "BIBLICAL" GAY BASHING

By Mark Sandlin

 

This is a bit long for a blog post, but some may find it to be a helpful resource. I wrote the piece for another project and it just wasn't a good fit. Honestly, if you are well read on the issue of the Bible and its take on homosexuality (or lack thereof), there is little new in here. For you, I hope this can be a quick reference. If you are not well read on such things, this may be a bit of a bumpy ride, but bumpy rides can be a lot of fun. Either way, I hope I was able to take what is sometimes thick reading, albeit important reading, and make it at least bearable and mostly straight forward.

Christianity and “Biblical” Hatefulness

We Christians are good at a lot of things. Helping others. Dressing up on Sunday.  Quoting scripture. Pot luck meals. Taking care of church members. Weddings. Funerals. Worship. But perhaps the thing at which we are the most persistently exceptional is misinterpreting the Bible then running amuck in the world because of it. Honestly, mad skills. And history backs me up on this one.

We have used the Bible to support, promote and act upon some pretty un-Christian things: slavery, holocaust, segregation, subjugation of women, apartheid, the Spanish Inquisition (which, no one ever expects), domestic violence, all sorts of exploitation and the list could go on and on. Oddly, if you ask theologians to pick one biblical theme to rule them all, most of them would say “love”... well, love and grace. Okay, love, grace and forgiveness. Fine. They probably would not specifically agree on a single term, but they would most likely name something that is, in every way, the opposite of the oppression, belittlement, hatred and marginalization represented by the numerous atrocities committed by the Christian Church.

More times than not, these atrocities are the result of trying to play God, pretending as if one group of people has complete knowledge of God's will and is more blessed or chosen by God. Not surprisingly, the people who see the world this way are always exactly the people who also happen to belong in the group they believe to be the uber-blessed. Lucky them.

Time and time again, Jesus made it clear that we should not put ourselves in the place of playing God and that, unlike far too many humans, God welcomes and loves us all equally. Period.

But we keep doing it. We keep doing it even though each time after we argue, name-call, suppress others and fight for centuries, falsely playing the role of heavenly judge and jury, we slowly realize that we got it wrong. We realize that, in fact, Paul was not promoting slavery. We learn to contextualize his statements and letters. We become more skilled at interpreting the original Greek and, over time, we decide to stop quoting the Bible to support slavery (or the subjugation of women, or racism, etc.) because we finally come around to realizing that, as Rob Bell's book points out, biblically love wins. Always.

And so we find ourselves here again. Doing the thing we do best: misinterpreting the Bible and ruining lives with it. We are, once again, ignoring the biblical bias for those who are marginalized, abused, belittled and negatively judged. Ignoring the biblical directive to show all the children of God love (and grace... and forgiveness).


Hate By Any Other Name

Oh sure, this time around we have “softened” our approach, saying things like “hate the sin, love the sinner,” but we fail to recognize that what we are calling a “sin” and the person we are calling a “sinner” are one and the same. A person whose sexual orientation is homosexual, or bi-sexual, or queer can no more separate themselves from their sexuality than a heterosexual person can. It's like saying “hate the toppings, love the pizza.” It's just not the pizza without the toppings. We just aren't loving the person if we don't love the whole person.

I suspect the “softening” of the language we use has everything to do with making us feel better and very little with making LGBTQ folk feel better, because it certainly doesn't make them feel any better. As a matter of fact, the love/hate (emphasis on hate) relationship that the Church continues to push on this group of people only serves to push them into closets and into even darker places, which sometimes leads to suicide. The Church and its approach to this issue are at fault for most of the hurt, anguish, self-doubt, abuse and death associated with being LGBTQ. Not very loving. Not very grace filled. But it certainly leaves us in need of forgiveness.

Many Christians have lost their way in this twisty, turny maze of how to practice our faith. We would much rather reinforce the things we want to believe than believe the sometimes difficult teachings of Jesus. Who, on a side note, never said a word about homosexuality but did tell us to gouge out our lustful eyes. Which seems to me is more likely to leave us all blind than the “eye for and eye” thing.

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The Bible As A Sex Manual

So, as others have pointed out before, we use the Bible as if it is a sex manual, telling us what is and isn't acceptable in the eyes of the Lord your God. Thereby delineating out those whom it is okay for us to judge, and toward whom it is okay to direct all kinds of nastiness and holier-than-thouisms.

The reality is that the Bible is not a sex manual. I know, shocker. Right? Actually, it's a good thing (depending on your particular level of sexual prudishness – personally, compared to the Bible, mine is pretty high). You see, the Bible not only promotes marriage between a man and a woman, but it insist that that marriage be within the same faith. Not only should a wife be subordinate (Ephesians 5:22), but she should also prove her virginity... lest she be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). Oh, and the whole thing would probably be much better if it were arranged (Genesis 24:37-38). And that's just the warm up act.

According to the Bible, if a woman's husband dies and she hasn't had a son, she must marry his brother and have intercourse with him until she has a son (Mark 12:18-27). Sometimes, biblically wives are good, but concubines are better. Many of the “men of God” were not only married, but at least three of them had more than one concubine (Abraham, Caleb, Solomon) and they remained “men of God.” But like I said, “biblically wives are good” and there's no such thing as too much of a good thing. Right? So, why not have may wives? God frequently blessed polygamists (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, Belshazzar).

As far as sexuality and the Bible's perspective on woman as property and as slaves... well, as you can imagine, it does not get any better.


Making Choices

The point is this: most of us have matured enough theologically to recognize that we need to contextualize the writings of the Bible, and because of it we have moved passed using these examples as the end-all-be-all on acceptable practices of sexuality.  However, somehow, we have not managed to apply the very same understanding to the Bible verses that have become known as the “clobber verses” in the Bible. “Clobber" because they are the verses most used to clobber people who are gay or who support gay rights.

That is really interesting when you consider that, of all the topics I just mentioned, sexual orientation is the only one that is not a choice. Polygamy, concubines, marrying your brother's widow? All choices, and we have decided to “get over” the biblical directives for them. Sexual orientation? Not a choice. (There are those who still argue otherwise, but the science is clear, so I'm not even having that discussion). So many Christians just aren't able to get past that one. Equally interesting to consider: it is actually more of a choice to judge and marginalize people over being homosexual, or, bi-sexual, or queer; than it is a choice to be homosexual, or, bi-sexual, or queer. Yet we judge them and not ourselves.

Since we clearly have a difficult time letting go of the clobber verses, let's take them one by one and very briefly consider what is really going on in them. It should help us arrive at a clearer picture of what the writers of these scriptures were trying to tell us. What we will find is this: as we get caught up in judging others over what we want the verses to say, we miss the opportunity to understand how to be the people God is calling us to be.

As we get started, we all need to be on the same page on one thing. When the Bible was written, the earth was flat, the sun orbited the earth and the idea of a person having a sexual 'orientation' was completely foreign. There is some debate about who actually kick-started the understanding of sexual orientation (Heinrich Hoessli or Karl Heinrich Ulrich - personally, I am on Team Heinrich), but it is clear that the concept of people having a sexual orientation was first introduced in the 1800's making it a thoroughly modern construct.

Clearly, there are a few Bible verses that involve same-sex acts (and of those, almost all of them are male-male sex), but given the modern advent of recognizing the existence of sexual orientation, we must accept the reality that the writers of those verses were in no way trying to, let alone capable of, acknowledging, understanding and addressing homosexual orientation. What then, might they have been trying to tell us in the clobber verses? Let's take a look.


The Clobber Verses

Let me just say right off the top, three of the verses that are sometimes considered clobber verses have nothing to do with the question of homosexuality. Putting Genesis 2:21-25, Deuteronomy 23:17 and Jude 1:6-7 in the category of anti-gay verses is nothing more than an attempt to beef up the number of verses that are supposedly “against” homosexuality. They have nothing to do with it. So, I am simply going to ignore them. If someone attempts to use them as proof of the “abomination” of homosexuality, I suggest you simply ignore them as well.

Genesis 19:1-11

The great thing about defending the Bible against people who want to use Genesis 19:1-11 to gay bash is that you really don't have to do any work. The Bible does it for you. For better or for worse, this is also the verse with which the general population is probably most familiar in terms of what they think of as verses about homosexuality. Even the term “sodomy” is linked to this Bible passage.

It is the story of two travelers (messengers from God) being given shelter by Lot and his family. Hospitality was a very big deal in those days. In this story, the men of Sodom decided to approach Lot's home and to make less than hospitable demands on him and his guest. To get a sense of how important hospitality was, when the men of the town say they want to force themselves (most likely sexually) on Lot's guest, Lot actually offers up his daughters instead. Despicable, deplorable, a great way to permanently damage your relationship with your daughters and the rest of your family (to say the least), but a sure sign that hospitality was a big deal.

In the end, the men of the town did not get what they wanted. They wanted to exert their dominance of the guests. They wanted to humiliate them, as warriors after conquering a foe might do in those days, sexually putting another male into the position of a woman (who after all was thought of as property, as weak, and as soft and therefore less than a man).

Even though the men never actually exerted their power over Lot's guests in a male-male sex act, people still insist on using this text as proof that homosexuality is an “abomination.” Well, like I said, “the great thing about defending the Bible against people who want to use Genesis 19:1-5 to gay bash is that you really don't have to do any work. The Bible does it for you.”

Sodom is referenced multiple times in the Bible as an example of great sinning. And what might that sin be?

In Isaiah 1:10-17 it is thought to be injustice, not rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, pleading for the widow. In Jeremiah 23:14 it is adultery. In Ezekiel 16:48-49 it is the sin of not aiding the “poor and needy.” In Zephaniah 2:8-11 the sin is bullying, boasting and pride. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is “the bitter hatred of strangers.”

The sin is not about being gay. It is not about non-straight sexual orientation. The sin of Sodom was lacking hospitality, not being just, bullying, hating strangers, not caring for those marginalized.  Funny, they are all things Churches (and individuals for that matter) sorely need to keep in mind and be better at practicing when it comes to how we do or do not welcome LGBTQ folk into our lives. After all, in today's society, who is more marginalized, more bullied, more treated like a “stranger,” than them? Come to think of it, not so funny.

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13

If someone were to canonize a buzz-kill, it would look remarkably, and uncomfortably, like the book of Leviticus. Honestly, this three-thousand plus year old holiness code is not exactly a big ball of fun. For starters, just try reading it. On second thought, I like you, so don't. Fortunately for you, I've done it for you. (I know, nice. Right? I'm just that kind of guy).

Among the jewels you'll find in it are a mandate to kill disobedient children, a dietary restriction to not eat shellfish (God Hates Shrimp!), a law that would prevent bowl-cuts (or “rounding off the side-growth of your heads” – and to think I liked the Beatles), direction to not touch or eat the flesh of a pig (no bacon and cheddar soup for you!), and a prohibition on the rhythm method of birth control (you know who you are!). Oh, and presumably, gay sex (which, of course, is why I bring it up).

The section of Leviticus where we find the clobber verses is often called the Purity Code. “Purity” was mostly about two things. First, it was about keeping things the way they “should” be. “Should” is in quotes because the guidelines they used for what should and shouldn't be were mostly made up. Said differently, they arrived at their conclusions in a time that didn't have any science or at least not science like we have today. Which is to say, they didn't have any science.

What they had was mostly superstition based on observation. A big part of this purity code was the idea that the world is consistent or follows particular preset rules. For the Israelites this meant things like: all fish have fins, animals with divided hooves chew cud, and male sperm contains the whole of life (women provided the incubation chamber). When things didn't adhere to this particular three-thousand year old way of understanding the world, they were considered an abomination or more precisely impure.

The second thing the purity code did was define the Israelites as purely not Canaanites. That is, much like many Christians receive the mark of a cross on their forehead on Ash Wednesday or give something up for Lent, the codes in Leviticus helped define the people of Israel as the people of Israel. For the Israelites it was particularly meant to define them as not Canaanites. Basically, it's a way of showing “we are not them.”

It is true that there are other reasons for many of the laws (just like there are many other reasons to give something up for Lent), but these are two of the larger ones, and they are ones that most directly apply to these clobber verses.

So what do we, presumably enlightened Christians of a scientific age, do with this code? Clearly shrimp are good to eat (for most of us).  For that matter, as far as I'm concerned, to borrow from an old Benjamin Franklin quote, they are proof that God loves us* – that's just how darned delicious they are.

What we do is recognize Leviticus for what it was: a good thing for the people of God based on how they understood the world some three-thousand years ago. Interestingly enough, when it comes to things like shellfish, eating and touching pigs, cutting our sideburns and beards, and stoning children who mouth off to their parents, we have already managed to do exactly that. Why? Because we understand that they are just flat out silly laws. Not all “fish” have fins. Some come in the shape of pink commas and are delicious with a nice Riesling. Because not all split hooved animals chew cud. Some roll around in the mud and make breakfast just that much better. For that matter, wrap them around a shrimp, throw them on the grill. I promise you, God will not smite you and once you bite into them you'll agree, they are not an abomination (they might, however taste slightly “impure” if you do not devein them well).

What many people have not been able to do is extend that simple understanding to these clobber verses. We have already established that it would have been impossible for these texts, or any biblical text, to be about sexual orientation. However, they do clearly describe a male-male sex act (sorry ladies, this one's just for the guys). But what we have to begin to understand is that the issues which these specific laws presumed to address within their society, much like the other laws I've mentioned here, are no longer recognized as true.

Scholars have pointed to various reasons for ancient Israel's seeing male-male sex as taboo in Leviticus. It may be the same reason the rhythm method was thought to be wrong in the eyes of God, which presumably is that, as I have mentioned, they thought sperm contained the whole of life (how typically male-dominated-society of them). Therefore, in their way of seeing it, “Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm gets wasted, God gets quite irate.” On the other hand, it may be that they thought it was taboo because it went against their understanding that mixing of kinds, just like the mixing of two kinds of cloth was taboo. Male-male sexual relationships, in that way of seeing things, mixes up their understanding of gender roles.

Whatever the reason, the perspective in these clobber verses were based on an understanding of sex and sexuality that was just as misinformed as their understanding of the earth in relationship to the sun, of fish, of pork and of reasons for stoning children. In our scientific age, it is time to let go of archaic perspectives and start recognizing the things that are truly an abomination in the eyes of God: lacking in compassion and love, exercising judgment against others, and practicing and encouraging hate.

(*The actual quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Sadly, while Ben most probably enjoyed a mug of beer from time to time, the actual quote is, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” In a happy coincidence, the same rains nourish the barley and hops that are changed into beer. In an even happier coincidence, wine and beer both pair exceptionally well with shrimp. God is good).


Romans 1:26-28

Good news ladies! Up until now, all of this clobbering has been about the guys. In Romans, you get to join in. Lucky you.

Romans is the one place the Bible speaks specifically about a female-female sex act. If you listen to Bible Thumpin' Gay Bashers, you'd be surprised to learn that, while the counts vary on how many places the Bible directly address heterosexual relationships, it is a lot. Then again, compared to the precisely one verse the Bible has about female-female sex, even two is one hundred percent more.

The number of heterosexually oriented verses isn't exactly clear. One thing is really clear, there's plenty of them and, much like the Levitical purity code, we've managed to ignore many of them. So, if you aren't also denouncing the divorced, then get off your lesbian judging high-horse, because otherwise you are just picking and choosing who to judge out of your own accord, and then quoting the one Bible verse that seems to support your choice. And even then, as we will see, it doesn't actually support your argument. It actually does just the opposite.

In Romans, we have the most extensive discussion of same-sex intercourse in the Bible, a whole two seemingly specific verses – astounding.

There are plenty of approaches to understanding what Paul is trying to teach us in these texts. Any good exegesis ultimately points to the reality that what Paul is talking about and what people who use these verses as clobber verses want Paul to be talking about aren't the same thing. That is, this is not about homosexual people having consenting homosexual relationships.

One convincing analysis of these texts looks at the fact that one of the most prevalent forms of same-sex sex in the Greco-Roman world was male prostitution which frequently involved boys. In that analysis, the texts become a condemnation of pederasty and prostitution, things of which most Christians (conservative to liberal) disapprove even today. There is also the perspective that Paul's pointing to same sex intercourse as being idolatrous could be referring to the practices of priests and priestesses of Mediterranean fertility gods who regularly practiced that type of prostitution but elevated it, within a religious context, to the state of idolatry. Those approaches are valid and mostly convincing perspectives, but they do require a small leap of logic to arrive at their conclusions. Much less of a leap of logic, mind you, than believing that these texts are about something of which people at that time had absolutely no comprehension, but slight conjecture all the same.

The analysis that I find the most convincing concerns itself with the word “natural.” It is the word that has led many to speak of LGBTQ behavior as “unnatural” acts even though they occur throughout nature (in one study they were found in more than fifteen-hundred species).

As it turns out, the word is actually not “natural.” Not surprisingly, Paul did not speak English. While Paul performed a number of miraculous things, speaking English (which wasn't around even in its earliest Prehistoric Old English form yet) was not one of them. Not to bore you too much, but the word Paul used was the Greek word, physikos. (Now that didn't hurt too much, did it?).

It's important to know the word in Greek because when it is translated into English, it loses a little of its original meaning. Without even knowing it, Lady GaGa has provided a better modern and contextual translation of physikos than the frequently used translation of “normal.” We will get to that in a minute. It doesn't mean “natural” or “nature” so much as it means “produced by nature.” Those who use these verses as clobber verses tend to understand “natural” to mean something closer to “normal” than “produced by nature.” Not surprisingly, they also then define what is and isn't “normal” based on their personal biases rather than on science or the reality of the world around them (e.g.: “I think gay people make me feel creepy, so I  henceforth do hereby dub it as an act of not-natural.”).

In reality, physikos has more to do with how things naturally occur in God's Creation.  At this point, you may have begun to guess that physikos is based on the same root word from which we get the word “physics” which is, of course, the study of the realities of nature. Conveniently, the way Paul uses physikos here in Romans, it also means something very similar to “the realities of nature.” It is concerned with what is of our nature and not with what is defined as acceptable. That is to say, Paul is concerned with how God created something or someone to be. He is concerned with people going against their nature or in the words of Lady GaGa herself, if they are “born that way” he's concerned with them behaving as if they were not.

That is the sin here in Romans, acting against the very nature of who God created you to be. In this case he seems to be addressing the idea of a same-sex sex act in which at least one of the two are not attracted to someone of the same sex; they just are not born that way.

Understood this way, it would be equally sinful for someone who is only attracted to someone of the same sex to have sex with someone of the opposite sex. It goes against their nature; they just weren't born that way. Ironically, those telling LGBTQ folk that these verses mean they have to stop being LGBTQ folk are actually telling them to commit the very sin against which these verses warn, going against their nature. God has a wicked sense of humor.

Because these texts have been used so much to address homosexuality, it was important to address the issue directly, but the worst thing we could do is to think it is primarily about homosexuality. It is not.

Immediately following verse 28, Paul provides an extensive list of sins. It is so extensive that we all fall into at least one of the categories. “So there you have it,” says Paul, “we all sin. Don't try to deny it.” And let's face it, we all go against who we know we were created to be. How many times have you done something, felt guilt or shame, and then said, “I shouldn't have done that. That's not who I am.”?

As Paul says in the very next chapter, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” As he also says to start that chapter, “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”


1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10

So, remember back a few paragraphs ago when we talked about a Greek word? And remember how it didn't even hurt one little bit? Good. We are going to do it again.

I have put the 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy clobber verses together because they both use a particular Greek word in a particularly similar way. The word is arsenokoitēs and it means “male prostitute.” (Behold the Greek scholarship. See that it is good and rejoice).  Actually, it could also mean “the customer of a male prostitute,” or  “boy molester” or  “someone who abuses themselves with a man” or  “using sexual manipulation to acquire money” or … (eh hem, “Behold the great and powerful Greek Interpretation!” <insert flashing light and crashing thunder>).

So, the word in these two verses, that is frequently interpreted as “homosexual” (which is absurd because, in Greek, it is clearly only a word referring to men) or “sodomite” (which is absurd, among other reasons, because that was not the sin of Sodom, as we have already discussed), is really difficult to translate. Why? In part, because it is only found in these two places and also, in part, because it is entirely possible that it is a made up word. It is very likely that Greek speaking Jews created this word to port a Hebrew word to Greek and over time the meaning has been lost. So, it is just hard to translate. So difficult, in fact, that scholars can't agree on a single best translation. What most biblical Greek scholars can agree on is that it is not meant to be a blanket statement about a male-male sex act. Moving on.

There is another word used in 1 Corinthians 6:9: malakos. The good news about this word is that it is found in lots of literature, so there are plenty of references about its typical intended meaning. It literally means “soft.”  Some say it means “soft” as in “effeminate, but not in terms of sexual orientation.” Others, say it is connected with being wasteful of sexual and financial resources. Still others convincingly point to it singling out a particular type of male prostitution involving young boys. Also in the list of contenders: sexual perverts, sodomites, weaklings, the self-indulgent. (“Behold the great and powerful Greek Interpretation!” <insert flashing light and crashing thunder>). Like with  arsenokoitēs there really is no expert consensus on this.

Malakos was a word that could be used to refer to things as diverse as men who were weak in battle (or who were “soft”), to men who lived extravagant and pampered lives (or who were... well, “soft”). It was not specifically about sexual relationships. If Paul was actually trying to describe something about a submissive male in a male-male relationship (which is still not the same as homosexuality as we understand it today), it's very likely that he would have used kinaedos, which was frequently used to describe that very relationship. But he didn't. So, stop acting like he was.


Clobbered 

In summary of my look at the Christian Church's use of the clobber verses, if you want to call homosexuality a sin, go ahead. But you are going to have to admit that it is not biblically a sin. Which means you are also going to have to admit that you are calling it a sin simply because that's what you want to do. Because of that, you are going to have to admit that you are a sinner for using God's name for false pretenses (it's a little thing we like to call using God's name in vain). And then, Paul has something to tell you, “...you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” (Romans 2:1).

WHY WE PAY ATTENTION TO JESUS

Professor Ted Grimsrud recently published an article by this title and it is worth reading here.  The following are some of my favorite paragraphs that fit the Gnu Xian perspective:

Certainly, the story of Jesus has been twisted and turned, exploited for evil purposes, at times corrupted almost beyond recognition—but somehow sprouts keep shooting up through the rubble, bringing forth flowers, revealing something of the beauty of the original vision of this person who history can’t let go of.

Jesus has become a metaphor for human aspirations. He symbolizes what people want. Some people want sick things. So we get images of Jesus wielding an assault rifle or a picture called “Undefeated” with Jesus the boxer, muscle-bound, leaning back against the ropes in the corner of the ring, his gloves hanging next to him, a satisfied, victorious, post-fight smirk on his face, and a banner labeled "Savior" hanging next to him.

But even skeptics recognize that this super-macho Jesus isn't right. Comedian Bill Maher, in his movie Religulous goes on a 90-minute rant against religion, especially conservative Christianity. But several times he invokes Jesus as evidence on his side in his critique. You Christians are contradicting what Jesus was about, he says.

Historian Jaroslav Pelikan states: “As respect for the organized church has declined, reverence for Jesus has grown. There is more in him than is dreamt of in the philosophy and Christology of the theologians. Now he belongs to the world.” Jesus has escaped the bounds of formal doctrine and top-down church domination.

But what is meant by "Messiah" (Hebrew) or "Christ" (Greek)? Maybe the story becomes more clear if we say that by "Christ" we mean one who truly shows us the possibilities of living as fully humans, healthy and whole. A model, a guide, an empowerer. So Christ is a character in solidarity with humanity, not one who stands over and against humanity.

We pay attention to Jesus because he embodies a lot of what we want to embody ourselves—to be truthful, kind and courageous, to say no to domination and oppression, to be in solidarity with people in need living simply with generosity sharing our resources.

TOTSE - A CHRISTIAN ATHEIST

When I'm short of time to give a full list of descriptors for my religious beliefs, I will often describe myself as a Christian atheist. An oxymoron, I know, but I will explain my reasoning behind such, and the developement of my beliefs.

First off, I was raised Christian, and hardcore Christian at that. At the young age of seven, I was already beginning to lose faith in God and the truth of the Bible. Some of this was due to contradictions in several books I was reading due to my interest in dinosaurs and geography. I was taught the Earth was young and formed by God, while another source of teaching, science, told me the earth was ancient, and that life had been here millions of years; the difference between the two...the scientific source provided reasons to believe what it stated while my Bible simply said it was God's will...a will I was beginning to defy.

Many kids are raised with the idea of Santa Claus, the jolly and kind man who rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. I was not raised with this but my brother was, so I saw the contrast in this while I was 8 and he was 6. It already seemed to me that my parents just wanted him to behave, so they told him he gets rewarded for being good. My religion seemed very similar to this; heaven for those who behave, hell for those who dissent. My father was an abusive man so I wasn't too happy with the idea of punishment. My dad told me that he hit me because he loved me and didn't want me to turn out messed up...it still hurt emotionally, and it seemed to be parallel with the idea of an all-loving god who sends the dissenting to Hell. These thoughts created an area in my mind that has forever hated the idea of punishment and set me towards rehabilitation in place of it.

While the next two years I was detatched from the faith, I was still learning a lot about beliefs and humanity in the Bible. My affinity for rehabilitation was just in line with the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. There was very little talk of punishment, but much optimistic peering into the ability of man to change for the better. I was once again hooked on Christianity, despite having little interest in the Christian god.

Then, at age ten, I considered myself a Christian because I knew the moral teachings and rules quite well and agreed nearly 100% with a great deal of them as I had seem plenty of examples of them making lives improve. The 5 of the 10 commandments dealing with social morals fit directly into life, and the teachings of Christ were so gentle and loving, and most of all forgiving. I loved the idea of forgiveness; it was faith in humanities ability to better itself. To this day, I find no action in all humanity to be more powerful than forgiveness. I found it easy to forgive people for doing things to me that hurt with immense force...mainly my father's abuse and alcoholism...it hurt, yes, but it was forgiven. Soon though, I would feel a betrayel in my mind that would take me 4 years to forgive.

At age 11, my best friend and only confidant was killed by his mother. I was told countless times in my church that God protects those who have faith and guides us through rough times. I prayed so much the next few weeks but felt so lost, I felt no guidance from God. Somehow, I was able to forgive my friend's mom, but not God. At the young age of 11, I began searching the bible for answers. I noticed that a theme of the bible was man's ability to choose. My friend's mother was able to choose this action, despite my will that my friend be safe. It was at this point that I developed the belief that God cannot interfere in our lives to even the slightest extent as it would take away our free will; however, I was scared and angry that my friend had died. I wished my free will away, I wished God had been there, and I cursed God that day and cast him from my goals. The next four years I had a slowly crumbling faith in Christianity as I delved further into science. My love of paleontology, geography, astronomy, physics, biology...it all hit me with a great force, and more and more I discovered that science answered my questions better than the Bible ever had.

I turned sixteen just about two weeks before I realized my faith in God had completely diminished. I still held onto my love for forgivenes, change, honesty, and the main foundations of Christianity...but I hated the religion and its God. I hated Christians, and from this, I hated the religions close to it: Islam and Judaism. I slowly grew to hate all religion and all belief. I became the most religiously offensive person I could. I told jokes about raping Jesus, Muhammed, Allah, God, murdering children, suicide, and generally sick shit. At this point, my count for attempted suicides was nearing 10. Everytime I got near the point of ending it my body went haywire and the vital stab wound would just hit muscle. I have a 4" scar on my stomache from a blade wound I'm guessing missed internal organs by mere fractions of an inch...I have no idea how I possibly missed with such a giant gash. I was thoroughly depressed and attempting serious suicide rather than ploys for attention. Eventually though, I made a cry for help.

In my Algebra class, in front of my sat a person who would change my life. I had known her since seventh grade, but never really got to KNOW her. She laughed at all my jokes except the religious ones, it took me some time to figure out why. She was a devout Christian. Later in the school year we went on a field trip to a theme park...long ass bus ride on the way back. I decided to talk to her about religion. For a 3 hour bus ride, I spilled out to her my life, and her the same to me. She invited me to come to her church sometime. I said I would, and got her screen name so I could talk to her sometime. The next week, Spring Break started. I was becoming seriously depressed again, typing up a suicide letter on my computer when she logged on. I talked to her for almost two hours about completely inane shit, and it cheered me up a great deal. I shut my computer off and went to bed crying. I talked to her off and on for the last month or so of school. Summer began and contact with her pretty much went down the shitter.

About three weeks into summer, I decide to go to her church. There, I met some great people and an awesome pastor. I began to go in regular attendance and absorb a lot of the sermons, but much of it still was blocked by my mind due to my childhood and my friend's death.  Midsummer, however, my mind was fully opened and a lot of my childhood was shot away and replaced with the sermons at this church. I went on a camping trip with the youth group to Ohio, at which point I converted back to Christianity. I was happy with this for awhile, but eventually, my love of science interrupted again.

This time, my dissent from Christianity wasn't based on logic alone however; this time, I was seeing the pain of humanity in full context. My friends were all in constant distress from life, my life was shit except for my friends and this girl who always seemed to be there for me, and I saw no reason for faith. This God was not helping me, I once again reverted back to what I had realized years ago: This God could NOT interfere with our lives, it would violate his gift of free will. With this, I believed all hope for myself was lost: I had gained some of my earlier wisdom back, but not the essential love of forgiveness and change, I couldn't forgive myself.

On the night before my seventeenth birthday, I drove to a school across town and for several hours I was pondering how to commit suicide in a fashion that looked like murder so my friends wouldn't be as hurt as much as if I had given in. Eventually, the only thought that stopped me was the pain the girl who saved my life before would go through at my death. The next day, I went to church and cried a great deal. Over the next month, my attendance there slowly died off as I began to value my freedom over my obligation to appease the people there.

During this period, I lost contact with the girl who had saved my life, twice now. I was depressed for a short period but recovered with my beliefs intact. I loved forgiveness, change, and the basic beliefs of human society being the best it can all for aesthetic reasons. One part was missing though, I had no position on the idea of God. I came to the ultimatum that this God has had no effect on the outcome of my life, and despite their existence in my mind, I would do what I deem correct as it appears to me only my will matters in MY life.

In one day, I ended every one of my friendships in my mind, they were all based on responsibility. I decided which to keep and built these on the basis of respect for humans and decided to let them become responsibilities if deemed worthy of it. One friendship, I didn't deem worthy of even recreating for some time: the girl who had saved my life twice. I heard from several people how she wanted to hear from me and was really missing me. I ignored this for some time. Just recently, I made contact with her again. She's gone through so much I could have helped her with. I love her dearly, and I am in love with her; however, my mistake of letting her slip away from me has ruined my hope of there being a partnership. My only comfort is that she is once again a friend, and that humans still have the ability to change for any means...hope is not lost.

I sit and type before you with beliefs in love, kinship, honestly, fairness, empathy, sympathy, forgiveness, peace, humbleness, honor, respect, and most important of all, faith in humanity; I consider these the pillars of Christianity. My beliefs despite my defiance of the god I believe to exist are why I call myself a Christian Atheist. I claim and worship no god, not even the one I believe to exist, my pantheon consists of zero Gods, a(without)-theist(gods). By all logic, Occam's razor should have deleted this belief that a god exists...but humans aren't logical in the sense of removing emotion. We logically respond to emotion and events however, and that is what I am...a response to knowledge and betrayel. I am a Christian Atheist.

FOLLOWING YESHUA BUT NOT A CHRISTIAN II

Here a few more anecdotes about folks who would rather be known as followers of Jesus rather than as Christians - I think that they qualify as Gnu Christians!
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Labeling myself as a Christian can be dangerous.  So many so-called “Christians” have done so many things that are blatantly un-Christian.  For this reason (and many others), I’m trying to separate myself from this label.  I’m nothing but a follower of Jesus.  That’s it.  I don’t have a political agenda.  I’m not anti homosexual.  I’m not a Republican (or a Democrat for that matter).  I’m pro-choice (only because people do have the God-given right to choose).  I’m not sheltered.  I sin all the time.  I love Jesus more than anything else.  So many Christians have given Jesus a bad name.  When I talk about living like Jesus said and modeled, that doesn’t mean chastising people, judging people, criticizing people, or separating myself from people.  It means the exact opposite: loving people.  If I see someone in need, I try to help them out.  It’s that simple.  I don’t know too many people who would thing this is a bad way to live.
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I remember when one of my colleagues said, “I’m not a Christian anymore. I gave up Christianity in order to follow Jesus.”  I wondered what it would look like if we decided to really follow Jesus. In fact, I wasn’t exactly sure what a fully devoted Christian looked like, or if the world had even seen one in the last few centuries. From my desk at college, it looked like some time back we had stopped living Christianity and just started studying it. The hilarious words of 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard resonated in my thirsty soul:  “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole like will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”  Then I did a little survey, probing Christians about their (mis)conceptions of Jesus. I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be “strong followers of Jesus” whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.
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Being a Christian is about following Jesus. It seems to me, then, that a good barometer of our success would be in how well we follow him. Checking things off a list will never bring us close to Jesus, but actually following him, his teaching, and his example, will.  Jesus said, “I did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28). We are called to be followers of Jesus. A follower, well, follows! So we should be doing the same things Jesus did.  But when we treat our Christianity as a checklist rather than as a relationship we view our relationship with God not as a true relationship but as a list of things we must do or a set of requirements we need to fulfill. We wait for others to take the initiative. We don’t connect with each other away from the church building because it’s not on our list.  If Jesus did not seek to be served by others, why do many of us? Why do we criticize the minister or someone else for not visiting us when we never bothered to pick up the phone or make an appointment to spend time with someone else?  Jesus served others. He added value to the lives of others. The best question we can ask ourselves is not how we can fill a building with people, or how we can get others to do what we want them to do, or how we can make sure the minister “does his job.”  The best question we can ask ourselves, to be a true follower of Jesus, is:  Who can I love right now? And how?  That’s what it means to follow Jesus.
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I look at all that is wrong with the world, and then look at the average Christian and as a result, I want nothing to do with Christianity. It appears Christians would rather spend their time arguing and debating theology than helping the poor and homeless, and would rather drive Hummers and build huge church buildings than drill wells in Africa or feed orphans. I don't think that Jesus would be a “Christian” if Jesus were alive today.  There is a YouTube video where a secular rock artist posted his video about this very thing. The artist is very angry. The video and song lyrics show Christians going to church and pastors preaching sermons, all the while ignoring the hungry and needy that are all around them. The basic message of the song is "Christians need to stop praying and preaching and building huge cathedrals for themselves, and start doing something that actually helps!"  After I watched the video, I had to think that there is a special place in hell for Christians.
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Let's remember, Jesus/Yeshua was not a Christian then, and probably would not be one now.......