Wednesday, 31 January 2007

Why Leave Church?

When I read John Loftus' comment about how no one joins or leaves the faith on epistemic reasons only, I remembered a story I heard a preacher tell once. It may or may not have been a true story, you know how easy anecdotes get passed around in sermons, but he said that a debate was held sometime in the 1800s concerning the legitimacy of Christianity. The convener was a Christian and he opened the platform up for critics to come forward and tell of their objections to, and problems with, the Church. Many came forward, so the story goes, to voice their criticisms for a few hours. After a time the convener then asked all those who had problems with Jesus Christ to come forward. Apparently no one came forward. The clock ticked on for some time and a silence gripped the hall. This, said the preacher I heard that day, is where people fall down in their faith. They focus on the imperfections of the church and take their eyes of the perfection of Jesus. Of course, were this story to happen today and were some of the more vocal critics of the faith invited, I expect it would have ended differently and I doubt the point the preacher was trying to make would have been so well illustrated. Nevertheless, I remember being quite impressed with the point he made that day and somewhere in that bought into what is a common idea amongst Christians: leaving the faith because of the Church, or because of our experiences with the Church, are not legitimate reasons to leave.

OK, so who says we can't leave the faith because of the misdeeds of the Church?
It seems to me that the Church, both past and present, is a fairly good reason to leave. You can search online for a list of historical misdeeds of the Church. Christians and their institutions have most certainly been involved in gross acts of racism, torture, murder, and other heinous crimes.

On a more personal level, I can honestly and accurately say that I have never felt, both before joining or since leaving, that I have ever been treated as badly as I was while in the Church. I think it has something to do with the Christian idealism that I was indoctrinated with that caused me to put aside a healthy amount of suspicion toward those who were supposedly my brothers and sisters. Perhaps this made me more vulnerable than I would have been otherwise. But I was told that these people were filled with God's Holy Spirit and were truly seeking to imitate Jesus. Was I wrong to let my guard down around them? It appears so.

We all know of the televangelists who fleece the flock, but what of that which is has now been termed spiritual abuse? What of those who have their self esteem crushed, their decision making skills diminished, their critical reasoning skills stunted? We're not talking here about cults. No, spiritual abuse is something Evangelicals admit goes on in their churches all the time. Authoritarianism, manipulation, guilt and shame, are, and have always been, rife in the Church. So is the Church really such a good place for anyone to be? More than that, where is the Christian God in all this? If the Church is truly his body, then why are so many people so badly damaged by it? Where' does the Christian God's responsibility lie in all this?

I think disillusionment with the Church was the starting point for many of us who have walked away. Why? Because the Church is where the gospel is supposedly lived and worked out. The Church is where the gospel rubber hits the road. For many of us, it was when we admitted how broken, defective and beyond repair the Church was that we began to question the basic tenets of the faith itself. It was then that we went on to explore why the Christian message doesn't work.

I would say that those who say, 'one cannot leave the faith because of the Church,' have found a convenient way to ignore that which is blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to look: the Church is one of the main reasons why Christianity should be debunked.

Tuesday, 30 January 2007

My Beloved's Garden

I remember a friend of mine in ministry once confessed to me that his youth pastor wife liked to talk dirty in bed. I was shocked! She what? Wasn't she in full-time ministry?


Well, it seems my friends were not alone in their need to play it up in bed. Yes, the Jesus merchandising industry has finally gone porno! Thank God for the Internet huh? Now all those Christian deviants like my friends can finally get all their kinky shit online from Christian Adult Bookstores.

My Beloved's Garden describes itself as:
Providing a safe, non-pornographic place to shop. For all your Christian Sex
and Romance needs,. While keeping Christ at the center of your marriage.
Now Christians can get Christian books about sex, Christian lingerie, oils and lubes, sex toys and for those disciples of Christ who like it up the ass, anal beads, the anal pleaser and something called the Purple Tush Teaser (shown here). No more having to walk shyly into an Adult Bookstore. You can now get all you desire with not an ounce of guilt.

And no, I swear I am not making any of this up.

Sex? Who Had sex? a.k.a. The First Time I Met Pastor Tom

Pastor Tom (not his real name) was easily the most screwed up individual I met during my time as a Christian. That guy had more issues than anyone else I knew both in and out of the church. Let me tell you about the day I first met him.

Not long after I joined Richmond AOG, I started dating a girl who was very shortly after to leave the church. I was trying to be a good Christian but she wasn't. She had just come out of a sexually active relationship with another guy in the church and was looking, I suppose, for someone to continue exploring her sexuality with. We ended up sleeping together twice. I was racked with guilt but she wasn't. To be honest, I was really surprised by her lack of remorse and, realising she wasn't the kind of girl I should be with if I wanted to try and live some semblance of 'holiness', we broke up.

A few weeks later, Pastor Tom , who was then one of the youth pastors, called me and said he wanted to meet, get to know me and have a chat. He came by in his car and picked me up and we went for a drive. For a few minutes we talked about my Christian conversion, my background, and a few other things of a similar topic. He then asked me about the girl and if I had been seeing her. I said that I had but that we had broken up. He then asked a few benign questions before finally getting the crux of the matter, the real reason why we were on that drive. He asked me if I had slept with her. Now I was new to the church and didn't know this pastor at all. I also didn't understand how it was any of his business and figured it was a moot point anyway as she and I had stopped seeing each other. So I lied and told him we had never had sex. He asked me if I was sure. I said I was. He then headed the car back to my house and the drive was over only a few minutes later. I got out of the car a little shaken having not expected the interrogation. Sure I was upset with myself on one hand for having lied, but at the same time I glad to have deflected whatever would have come had I admitted to the sexual realtionship.

Many years later I reflected on this episode and realised that Pastor Tom was not interested in me as a parishioner or getting to know me as a new member of his youth group. Rather, he was solely interested in the sexual nature of my relationship with the girl. Who knows how he had even heard about me having had sex with this girl. I guess the rumour finally reached his ears, or maybe some well meaning parishioner reported the rumour to him. However he found out, he took it upon himself to get to the bottom of it. Pastor Tom made an appointment with me, drove to my house, feigned interest in my story...all to find out where my penis had been.

All this makes me wonder, why did he need to know or even ask any questions? Was he trying to keep his youth group 'clean' of sexual immorality and thus preventing Satan from getting a 'foothold' in his group? This doesn't make too much sense as he already knew the relationship was over. Was he somehow titillated by thinking about a young girl (or boy) in his youth group 'doing the do'? Was he concerned about someone in his flock having broken the rules? After all, nothing is of greater importance than the breaking of the rules, and nothing is of greater importance than the breaking of the sexual rules.

I was only 20 years old when this happened and I handled it the best I could at the time. I now wish I had simply said, "That is defintiely none of your business. Thanks for the drive Tom but how about you drop me home now and piss off!"

Thursday, 25 January 2007

Creation Ex Nihilo

At Ed Babinski's recommendation, I got on to some of The Teaching Company's excellent Religion courses. They have a host of courses on some wonderful topics. I figured I would start at the start and so downloaded Dr Gary Rendsberg's (Rutgers) Book of Genesis 24 lecture course.

In this course, Rendsberg recommends and uses the New JPS Translation of Genesis. The text of this newer translation is not available online (although the older 1917 version is) so forgive me if I refer to it but do not quote from it as I am in China and it isn't easy to come by here.

Rendsberg notes that,

The first thing we notice about Genesis 1 is that, contrary to what most people might assume or believe, the world is not created ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing.”
By using the JPS translation, he makes the assertion that according to the syntax of the Hebrew text, Genesis 1:1 is actually a dependant clause, dependant on Gen 1:2-3. That is the earth is in a state of preexistent matter and then God creates the world. He asserts that creation ex nihilo is a later theological development that was then read back into the Hebrew text, but which is not supported by the Hebrew text.

Of course he said a lot more, but I thought this is of note to those of the Christian faith.

Monday, 22 January 2007

Reading: The Battle for God

I read this book while still calling myself a Xian but also seeing fundamentalism and Evangelicalism as things that restricted me and that I wanted to be free of. I think I suspected shaking fundamentalism was the first step toward being totally free of the faith, but I had to take things one step at a time. To be honest, I would recommend anything by Karen Armstrong. She has a style of writing that draws me in. Reading her books is like sitting at the feet of someone wise and informed.

Amazon.com review: About 40 years ago popular opinion assumed that religion would become a weaker force and people would certainly become less zealous as the world became more modern and morals more relaxed. But the opposite has proven true, according to theologian and author Karen Armstrong, who documents how fundamentalism has taken root and grown in many of the world's major religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Even Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism have developed fundamentalist factions. Reacting to a technologically driven world with liberal Western values, fundamentalists have not only increased in numbers, they have become more desperate, claims Armstrong, who points to the Oklahoma City bombing, violent anti-abortion crusades, and the assassination of President Yitzak Rabin as evidence of dangerous extremes. Yet she also acknowledges the irony of how fundamentalism and Western materialism seem to urge each other on to greater excesses. To "prevent an escalation of the conflict, we must try and understand the pain and perception of the other side," she pleads. With her gift for clear, engaging writing and her integrity as a thorough researcher, Armstrong delivers a powerful discussion of a globally heated issue. Part history lesson, part wake-up call, and mostly a plea for healing, Armstrong's writing continues to offer a religious mirror and a cultural vision. --Gail Hudson --

Reading: The Case Against Christianity

I wouldn't have absorbed the material in this book had I read it while still a Xian. I expect most of it would have either gone over my head or I would have shut a lot of the arguments out. Nevertheless, I read it on 'the other side' of faith and found a lot of it quite convincing. I especially liked his arguments against the possibility of the incarnation. Where Xians call it 'paradoxical' and 'a mystery', Martin calls it 'irrational', 'illogical' and 'impossible'.

From the publisher: In this systematic philosophical critique of the major tenets of Christianity, Michael Martin examines the semantic and epistemological bases of religious claims and beliefs. Beginning with a comparison and evaluation of the Apostles’ Creed, the Niceno-Chalcedonian Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, Martin discusses the principal theological, historical, and eschatological assumptions of Christianity. These include the historicity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the Second Coming, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Salvation through faith in Jesus, and Jesus as a model of ethical behavior. Until now, an adequately convincing criticism of Christianity did not exist. Martin’s use of historical evidence, textual analysis, and interpretations by philosophers and theologians provides the strongest case made to date against the rational justification of Christian doctrines.

Sunday, 21 January 2007

The Road I Could Have Travelled.

I don't know why i am doing this to myself, but I have been trawling (not trolling) another blog written by a guy who was a very dear friend back in my Xian days. The interesting thing about reading his blog is to see a possible path I could have taken. We were very similar and on very similar paths at one stage. We were both Pentecostals with stars in our eyes. By that I mean we were both 'on the road to ministry' and both held not so well hidden secret ambitions to be 'big name preachers'.

I don't say this to patronise him as I am not saying this was necessarily a good thing, but I was always one step ahead of him in waking up to the bullshit of the last Xian fad and hitching my wagon to the next one. Maybe it was because I was a little older or maybe it was because I was existing in the Mecca of our AOG culture while he was usually holding jobs and stuff. Either way, it seemed that he would come to similar conclusions to me and we would eventually be able to talk together and rip the shit out of the Pentecostal illusion around us.

And then one day, my marriage broke down and so did our friendship.

It seemed that he couldn't deal with the fact that I had walked out on my (then) wife. In our church circles, marriage was a sacrament, although we would never have used that word. Quite simply, divorce was never an option, ever! One simply did not divorce. As a matter of fact, I don't know if I even knew anyone who had divorced and remained in the Pentecostal scene. I guess most people knew instinctively that to divorce means you really must leave the AOG, even though this is not a written rule of course. I had left the AOG years before I separated from my ex-wife, but my friend was still in the AOG.

He has long since left the AOG of course and is working for Christian charity, runs his own faith community (i.e. house church) and has his wagon hitched to the postmodern emerging church fad. In fact, one of his mentors now was my mentor back in the day. (That was my last stop before taking the plunge and leaving church and eventually the faith.) Anyway, to his benefit, I am sure he could well handle my divorce were it to happen now.

But reading his blog, getting a feel for where he's at now, I cannot help but see what might have been for me had things gone differently. He is teaching part-time at a local Bible College, working for a charity, speaking at conferences, etc...doing all the things that I would have given my right arm to do at one stage in my life. He has 'arrived' although I am sure he wouldn't see it that way. He is still reading all the latest books, quoting the latest postmodern Xian dude, hanging around the right 'mentors', taking a devotional slant on the things going on around him. As I read his blog I felt a twinge of...I dunno how to define it. I guess this stuff was such a part of my identity for so long, to see someone living it, doing it, stirred old emotions in me.

Does this mean I am jealous for his life? No, of course not. But I sometimes think it must be nice to still believe it all. You know, like that guy in The Matrix who wants to go back into the illusion to escape the hardships of reality? I have said it before and I will say it again, I miss the sense of purpose, the sense of meaning that being a religious zealot gave me. I know it was a false sense of meaning, but it seemed oh so real to me then. But I could never go back even if I wanted to. I simply don't believe it anymore.

I see a lot of what my old friend does as misspent energy (not the charity work of course). All that he does is hinged on a faith in a first century Jew and his band of merry men. For sure, this isn't the only motivation for all he does, but without the Jesus myth his whole world, all he has built and lived for, would come crashing down...as mine did. You know, having gone through it, I wouldn't wish that kind of pain on anyone.

I know my friend would say that he took the better road and I obviously think I did. Our lives are very different now, so perhaps we weren't so similar after all.