The subject of prayer has been widely debated over the years. We’ve discussed this topic on several occasions including Simen’s What’s the Point with Prayer?, MysteryOfIniquity’s Prayer: Communion with yourself, and LeoPardus’ Praying my way to losing faith.

Slapdash recently made this comment on one of our posts:

For me, the issue of (unanswered) prayer was the first, primary, and most important thing that unraveled my faith.

Christianity is completely schizophrenic when it comes to prayer. On the one hand you have loads of scriptures inviting us to pray - to pray about everything, to pray without ceasing, to pray boldly, to pray specifically, to pray with the faith of a mustard seed - and our prayers will be answered.

On the other hand, based as far as I can tell only on the Lord’s prayer, Christians insist that you add “not my will be done, but yours” to every prayer, thus effectively giving God an ‘out’ any and every time your original desire doesn’t come to pass.

Therefore Christians can always claim that God answered their prayer - just sometimes not in the way they wanted! heh heh, God’s so much wiser, he didn’t give me any of the jobs I prayed for, instead he had me on unemployment for five months so I could learn more reliance on him. Praise God for answering prayer!!!

The more sophisticated Christians I’ve known have started saying that prayer is primarily a discipline for our own edification/learning - prayer’s not for God, it’s for us, and the outcomes of our prayers are much less important than the fact that it brings us into communion with God.

That’s an elegant way to explain away the many scriptures in the new testament that command us to pray, and promise that we can move mountains if we do.

The chorus to Martina McBride’s hit single “Anyway” states:

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway

My question is why?

- Roopster

As I cruised the atheosphere this morning, I came across Possummomma’s 400th post (congratulations, Pmomma!). It includes a segment in which she discusses the effects of her acceptance of atheism on her marriage:

I know your husband is an agnostic-Catholic. How is that working in your home? Was he unhappy about your change in beliefs? If my girl friend came home and said she’d stopped believing in God, I don’t know if I would be happy with it.

Pdaddy took it well. We’d both voiced criticisms and doubts…I was just the first of the two of us to put time into researching those doubts. And, it didn’t change the basis for our relationship. I know some theist couples base their relationship on serving god or putting God first, but we were never like that. And, our children and friendship (between p-daddy and I) has always been the foundation of our marriage so atheism wasn’t a deal breaker.

That passage took me back nearly 30 years, to the time when the deacon and I were engaged and envisioning a lifetime together as faithful servants of God. In our conversations, we always affirmed that God/Jesus had to be our first love. He would be the hub of our marriage. It sounded ideal to two conservative evangelical Christians attending a Christian college. Even after we had married and were serving side-by-side as pastors and teachers, this was the ideal that we taught to many couples in our flocks.

The thing is, Jesus never actually participated in our marriage. Oh, sure, we prayed before making major decisions and we prayed for fellow believers who were experiencing difficult circumstances; we prayed before meals and in church; but we certainly didn’t pray before doing the routine things that married couples do every day: buying groceries, getting the car fixed, making love….

I think, for the deacon and me, our religious faith was primarily individual on one level, and social on another. We shared church-going and other religious experiences side-by-side, but we never felt Jesus sitting between us. Besides, it’s supposed to be a personal relationship with Jesus, right? Jesus and me, happy as can be. Which brings me to another point: I never really understood how I was supposed to relate to Jesus as my lover and confidante, yet make the commitments required to sustain a viable, thriving marriage with my husband (maybe polyamory isn’t my thing). And, to be honest, I never gave it much thought. The deacon is flesh and blood, here and now; he’s the one who stayed by my side through a miscarriage, the death of my father, the births of two children…. Jesus certainly wasn’t holding me in his arms or changing diapers. I never felt Jesus’ presence in my marriage and, to be honest, I never missed it. The deacon was all I ever needed.

Even though the deacon and I were sincere Christian believers, the reality is that our relationship has always been a lot more like Pmomma and Pdaddy’s. The deacon and I are friends, lovers, parents, children of our parents, and siblings among other things. Until a few months ago, Christianity was a feature in our lives, but it was not the center of our relationship (even though we probably would have told you it was). I honestly can’t tell you what it means to have a Christ-centered marriage, because I haven’t got a clue what one looks like. I suspect, however, that if either the deacon or I had taken the Christ-centered ideal more seriously than we did, my renunciation of Christianity would have been a major impediment to our continuance as a married couple. It wasn’t. To the contrary; my coming out ignited a new stage of openness and acceptance in our relationship. For the first time in our adult lives, neither of us fears that we won’t be able to live up to each other’s lofty religious ideals (if that was Jesus’ contribution, it hindered rather than enriched the relationship). Instead, since we now relate to each other entirely on an earthly plain, we are much more prepared to accept and work with each other’s imperfections and to appreciate and nurture our strengths. Our marriage is, and always has been (it’s only now that I can recognize it) founded on human connection rather than divine intervention.

Jesus will just have to find himself another bride - this one’s taken.

– the chaplain

Pilgrim’s Further Progress

(nod to LeoPardus for the suggestion)

There once was a girl who was looking for love. She was tired of the same old surface relationships; ones that never truly satisfied her heart as well as her intellect. She tried dating off and on. She found a lovely peaceful man named Buddha, but to her, he was too passive. She ended up always having to make the decisions or sit calmly watching him meditate. She needed more excitement than that. She dated a guy named Aristotle and even his best friend Plato, but they were too much “into hanging out with the guys” and didn’t want to commit to romance. Her friends kept trying to set her up with a new guy named Jesus. He was perfect for her and would love her until the end of time. He was manly and heroic. His relationship with his Mother wasn’t so hot, but his dad and he were very close. He sounded wonderful, almost too wonderful, but after a series of failed dating experiences, she agreed to go on a blind date and see for herself.

She was enraptured! Never before had she felt like someone knew her very soul. He would gaze into her eyes, listen to her conversation for hours, and she just KNEW that he was the one. Apparently, he did too, because instantly he professed his love for her and wooed her with all his might. Sure, there were some warning signals. He wanted her to completely renounce all her old friends and even her family. He said she would have a new family now and if she really loved him, she’d do this for him. He was extremely jealous of the possibility that she might have been intimate with anyone else. He wanted to know every single detail of her previous relationships. This worried her a little. He seemed so intense sometimes. She was hesitant to renounce her family because her family had always been supportive of her and loved her, but she reluctantly agreed. He was every thing she was looking for after all. She even met his family and they were all so very nice to her. She couldn’t believe her luck!

Her fiance did not want a long engagement, nor did any of his family and friends. “You’d best snag him now, while you still can! You never know when it might be too late!” they’d tell her. Her family was concerned she was moving too fast and advised caution. But she didn’t listen. So within a few days she and Jesus were married. The ritual was of water and wine and much joy. She felt so spiritually attuned to him and seemingly he to her. She didn’t even notice much that her family was treated by her new husband’s family as less than neighborly at the wedding. She was too thrilled. The honeymoon lasted for almost a year as she and Jesus got to be on more intimate terms.

Only one thing marred her happiness. The day after her wedding a couple of members of Jesus’ family showed up at her door after he had gone to work one day. They handed her the “family book” with great reverence and awe. “Here,” they said, “you MUST memorize this and follow everything you read here. It’s very important. Your husband’s father wrote the book and we all must follow it.” “Does my husband have to follow it?” she asked. “Oh, no!” they cried, “he wrote it with his father, so he doesn’t have to follow it, but we do. It’s for our own good. Everyone will be happier if you just accept it and do it without question. Read it EVERY day and you’ll be alright.” they counseled. So, she took the book reluctantly from them and began to read it and try to follow it. It wasn’t easy because it was a mishmash of family history and stories that seemed not to have much to do with anything. But there were some parts that seemed beautiful and she wanted so much to be beautiful for her new husband.

But soon, the honeymoon excitement began to wane and things started to turn sour quickly. She knew it was her fault. Her new family kept telling her that it was her responsibility to keep the relationship exciting for Jesus. Perhaps if she didn’t talk so much or ask questions at family gatherings. Jesus’ family was pretty rowdy themselves and were always fighting and squabbling over trivial things. She didn’t know why she was always singled out as the troublemaker. There were more than enough! Pretty soon, Jesus was hinting that she’d gotten to gawdy in her attire and was putting on weight. This hurt her feelings, but she tried desperately to keep him interested. He and her family kept pointing to examples in the book which described how they wanted her to be, but it just felt false to her. It didn’t help that Jesus was off most of the time, working. He had many jobs to oversee because he worked for his father’s business. He was slated to take over the company and very soon at that. His family kept promising that soon all would be perfect and they would all be rich and move into larger quarters. Just be paitient.

However the new bride began to wonder if perhaps Jesus’ father’s business wasn’t more important than his relationship with her. He stayed out later and came home exhausted. His father was a stern unapproachable man who demanded perfection of everyone. He had no problem sacrificing his son’s health to be a success in the business he ran. It began to take a toll on her and Jesus’ marriage. Where before Jesus would listen to her talk for hours, now she knew he barely listened. She would get monosyllables for responses and he never initiated romance any longer. Their times of intimacy disappeared. She blamed herself and tried harder to adorn herself with the clothes the family manual told her to. But Jesus neither noticed or cared what she did. He was only concerned with the company. She even spent more time on her knees in front of him because he seemed to perk up when she did that. But even that wasn’t enough.

Finally, she could take no more of Jesus or his family. Nothing she did was right. She wasn’t trying hard enough, they all told her. Jesus was even contemplating new relationships with other women and seemed enraptured anew by them. He spent all his time wooing them and promising them things that never materialized for her. She was devastated and then angry. Jesus had promised her unconditional love, but she realized there were all sorts of hidden conditions attached to those promises. She tried to warn the new women he was wooing, but they were too enraptured themselves and wouldn’t listen. Other people who had been wooed by Jesus but who refused him came by to give her comfort and she was grateful for that. She also missed her family very much. Jesus’ family kept insisting that her old family had to marry members of Jesus’ family or they couldn’t be truly accepted by them. She thought this was absurd. She was at her wit’s end.

She had met some new friends while Jesus was away all the time. One friend she met, named Reason, kept telling her that it wasn’t normal for one’s husband to make her do all the work in the relationship. “Why,” Reason asked, “do you have to follow the manual to the letter, but your husband and father-in-law don’t have to?” “Ummm, because they wrote it, they know best?” she countered. Reason was aghast, “Well, why should you believe them? I know of another family who has a similar book and they say their’s is truer than yours. How do you know their book doesn’t have the best way?” That was a good point, and she didn’t know how to answer. Reason brought up lots of good points, many answers to which she could not find in her book. She began to question the veracity of the family book for the first time. She asked Jesus about it, but he told her to keep reading…it would come to her in time.

She finally decided that she’d had enough and told Jesus she wanted a divorce. He didn’t respond at all really because he was too busy, but he did leave it to his family to take care of the problem. Jesus’ father was furious and insisted that she stop this nonsense or he would cut her out of their will and inheritance. She would be left without a dime! The rest of the family were furious as well. Some tried to make her get an annulment, insisting that the marriage was never consummated. She however, KNEW differently. Others who were happily married themselves begged her to give it another try; to become more compliant and willing and do everything Jesus told her to do. She had to learn to compromise, they told her. She knew, though, that she had compromised her own self respect and integrity enough.

She moved out of Jesus’ family compound and back in with her old family, who welcomed her with loving arms. “We’ve missed you and hoped you would come to your senses, but could never contact you!” they cried. She felt ashamed for the way she had treated them and apologized. Her new friend Reason helped her to get over the relationship with Jesus, but a couple of times she ran back to Jesus and his family and tried to make amends. It would be great at first, but then the same old frustrations and coldness would creep back in. The family would let her back in, but always hoping to teach her a lesson. They didn’t allow her the same freedom as they used to and began to gossip behind her back about her new friends, even hinting that she practiced “weird rituals” and contacted unsavory characters. She tried to ignore them, but the stony silence from Jesus and his family became too much for her and she decided to move away completely; to sever the relationship for good.

She was sad, but at the same time she was excited about her new friends, her reunion with her family, and the prospect of a new life. She was elated to be free from the dark, dusty family manual that was foisted on her when she married. She soon discovered that other families had similar books, which they either took too seriously or not seriously at all. She began to read these books and found them to contain the same obscure stories and ancient homilies all designed to keep everyone believing the same things. Some of the books contained wonderful tales with new concepts and vivid images. Those she kept on her library shelf. She didn’t have to worry anymore that every book she owned had to meet Jesus’ and his family’s approval. She had less and less contact with them and more and more confidence in herself. She was finally free!

She finally settled down and married Reason, who had always been her faithful companion; from the very first time she had met him. He never lied to her and always insisted she find out things for herself rather than accept everything he said. Their relationship was effortless and loving and in their intimacy they bore several children together; Charity, Love, and Patience. Their marriage was a marriage of equals. She wished she had met him sooner, but knew that her first marriage prepared her for the maturity she needed to live a confident, free life with Reason later. And for that she was most grateful.

- Mysteryofiniquity

Maybe you were one of those snobby rich kids that had everything they ever wanted growing up, or maybe you were the kid who saved up every dollar and bought your own pair of designer jeans twice a year and took exquisite care of them. I was neither. I had nice things but Levi’s were the extent of my brand loyalties. Aside from the trendy things we all focus on as teenagers, there are a myriad of other mundane everyday things in our adolescent lives that we use because they are available to us. Toothpaste, ketchup, shaving cream, etc.

When you leave home for the first time, whether for college, marriage, or the working world, you are suddenly faced with more choices than you ever thought possible. You take for granted all the common utilitarian things your parents provided for you. Do you remember the first time you went out to buy toothpaste for yourself? What do you get? Do you buy what your mom had always bought for you? Do you stretch your rebellious wings in protest and go for something new? As simple and foolish as it sounds, it is a microcosm of the process we go through into adulthood. How much do we cling to? How far do we run away?

I still remember vividly walking into my first dorm room at La Tech and finding a nicely packaged shoe-sized box on my bed. Inside were Edge shaving cream, Coast soap, Crest toothpaste and several other necessities and loads of marketing flyers and coupons. Thirteen years later I’m still using those same brands. I did not consciously choose to try something different. Had I wandered down to Wal-Mart after running out of whatever I brought from home, I very well may have bought Aquafresh toothpaste because I had used it all my life, but I was given the opportunity to consider an alternative.

My trips down to the food court and cafeteria in the student center were just as life-altering. They had Bullseye BBQ sauce and Log Cabin syrup. I never had that before, and I really liked them. We always used Kraft BBQ sauce and Blackburn syrup at home. I don’t know how many kids ask their parents to try a different BBQ sauce. You just use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. To this day I still buy those brand at the grocery store. It was a conscious minute rebellious stand on my part. “This is different. I am on my own.”

The religions we grow up with are not all that different than the foods and everyday items we are comfortable with from our childhood. We all know (and you may have been) one of teens who ran away from the church of your childhood as fast and hard as you could the moment you were out the door. I wasn’t. I went deeper. I changed schools, switched my major to religion, married my high school sweetheart, and began pastoring churches by my sophomore year in college.

[Can we take an aside for just a moment and address something here? Who the hell lets a 19 year old kid pastor a church? For crying out loud, I don't care how mature or intelligent you are. It borders on child abuse. I know now that I was no where near mentally and emotionally mature enough to be in that situation. There is a lot to be said for the Methodist system that requires training, accountability, and assignment. This Baptist free-for-all independent streak can be detremental to the emotional well being of all concerned. Okay, just had to get that off my chest.]

It was later after several years of pastoral ministry, graduating college, and lots of life experiences that I began to move away from the comfortable religion of my childhood and seriously question the tenets and methods intensively. Once I stopped going to church every Sunday, it became easier to think clearly. While we may enjoy the fellowship and worship, there is an enormous amount of direct and indirect conditioning taking place. Whenever you remove yourself from that environment and begin to think independently, you may come up with different answers than those you were taught in Sunday School.

I don’t know which label is most appropriate to describe my theological quandry. It’s like trying to hit a moving target because I’m in a constant state of evolution. Maybe I’m a very liberal Christian, but there’s more that I disagree with in the church than I agree with, so it seems disingenuous to consider myself a Christian. I personally feel somewhere in the middle of agnosticism and atheism. My simple understanding of those terms is that one says we can’t know whether or not God is and the other says he is not.

I don’t really know whether God exists or not. If there is a God, he cannot possibly be anything like the Judeo-Christian version we’ve all been brought up to believe in. I’m much more inclined to believe in a unifying field or consciousness than a divine deity. Science and theoretical physics have given me answers to who we are, how we came to be, and what we’re doing here more than any sermon I’ve ever heard. It’s not really important to me which label fits me best, but I’ve felt more and more pressure to have a “coming out.”

I have no desire to diminish the faith of others or make a spectacle of myself. I just don’t believe the same way anymore. There are reasons why I turn down invitations to preach, why I don’t read the Bible the same way as others expect me to, why I don’t care about going to church, etc. I think it’s only a matter of time before family members, friends, or peers force the issue. I’d rather avoid the shock waves and the fallout, because I know that people get angry, they get hurt, they feel the need to put your name on the prayer list. I’m not interested. I may be called an atheist, an agnostic, or a liberal, but I’m happiest just being me. In fact I’m happier being me than I have ever been in my entire life, and for the first time in my entire life I chose to be me.

- Lyndon

I struggled as a youngster to unite Christianity and Science. I wanted the two things to agree. I wanted these two aspects of my life to gain consistency. I did silly things, like conscientiously objecting to the teaching of evolution in my 10th grade science class, and instead did a self-study courtesy of the Institute for Creation Research which makes me blush to this day. As an older, college-age Christian, I was enthralled with Hugh Ross and hoped that it was all starting to fall into place. But in the end, the dichotomy crumbled and my de-conversion took place. I managed to escape before Intelligent Design took over as the creationist model of choice, although my poor parents keep buying me books on the subject.

I am a scientist first and foremost, and my life is defined by the concept of falsifiable hypotheses. Religion is not falsifiable, and therefore it can never be consistent with science. We can try to explain things, either in a Christian sense or an Atheist sense, but they will never be proven. I disagree with Dawkins in some aspects of this, as I don’t believe we can claim the non-existance of God any more than we can prove it. I am not interested in fundamental research trying to “prove” the origins of life are purely biological any more than I try to prove that they are not. I am mystified by the fuss over “Expelled” right now since anything designed to preach to the converted is destined to do only that. I don’t believe that scientific evidence is the key in the religious debate.

In some ways I fall into a distinct minority within atheist and agnostic circles, in that I have no interest in an emphasis of proof. I concur with the concept that the relationship between belief and knowledge is impossible. My goals as a scientist and a de-convert do not include trying to “prove” anyone right or wrong, but only to open a discourse about what may or may not be felt as part of the human experience. I am interested in epistemology but there are few concrete answers, few defined intersections between truth and belief. The range of truth is narrow, the range of belief is large. Therefore the range of knowledge is indefinable.

As a scientist, I wonder if we try too hard. If we are too concerned with general relativity or the origins of life to see the fine details exploding right in front of our faces. A classic “missing the trees for the forest” problem. My own branch of science concerns human suffering, and I worry that we don’t know why babies are born prematurely or why cancer kills people in the prime of their lives. We get distracted with the grand problems and miss the opportunities to solve the local ones. We miss the opportunities that we have to influence local human suffering, in the hopes of achieving fame and fortune in developing a theory of everything.

The theory of everything that we try to develop includes either God or the Lack-Thereof, depending on the philosophical bent of the “scientist” in question. We want to prove God exists or doesn’t exist, we want to prove life originates with God or independently of God. We therefore are biased before ever entering the problem, and it takes away the best part of science (not to mention the fundamental tenet). We miss surprise. We miss the opportunity for discovery. For shock. For the joy in the unexpected. This is my greatest criticism of both the confirmed Christians and the devout atheists. We do not leave ourselves open to possibility, we think we know it all a priori.

My de-conversion story includes a realization that I could leave the fold and find greater happiness than when I behaved in a “Christian” manner, at least according to my Evangelical family and friends. The surprise element of this was fantastic. The ability to question everything was fundamental. Certain aspects of my Christian upbringing have stayed with me–I do indeed enjoy watching the service from the Vatican on Christmas Eve, I find great peace in singing in Evensong in an Anglican service, but I do not restrict my life to the “commandments 11-102″ mentality that dominated my early Christian existence. Contrary to popular Christian belief, this “liberation” has not involved debauchery or a lot of “sin”, just more a freedom to enjoy the windy road of life as it comes. And that is particularly related to the bliss associated with the element of surprise. When life throws you lemons, make lemonade. Or lemon cheesecake. Or hollandaise sauce. The possibilities are endless. The problem with Christianity is the lack of creativity and unexpected results. Dictation of behavioral norms ruins the ride that is life. Instead, enjoy the ride. And don’t be scared to be surprised by the results. Humans can live as scientists do, with theories but open minds about the outcome of the study. A negative result is still a result. We have still learned something. You only lose when you try to force the outcome.

- ExEvangel

I was motivated to re-post something from my blog of last August after seeing the discussion of earlier this week. I think it’s a different take on a similar upbringing but perhaps with a different message! –ExEvangel

One of my biggest mistakes as young uber-Christian, although clearly not my only one, was in misunderstanding the role of sex in a happy romantic relationship. I don’t think it’s that unusual for this crowd: frankly the irony is that abstinence-based sex-ed seems to translate into “we never talk about sex except to say ‘don’t do it!’ Well, don’t do it until you’re married.” My only parental guidance on the subject was a Josh MacDowell book from the “Why Wait” series. My youth pastor at church referred to losing one’s virginity as analogous to a baseball crashing through a plate-glass window: you were left to pick up the pieces and you could never reclaim what you once had.

The problem is, and I’m far from the first person to notice this, that it is then hard to turn overnight from an angel to a vixen. The whole thing is tainted–and I don’t buy the Born Agains who claim that they can get the guidance they need to make this transition through prayer and study of the gospels. Yes, you need to study. No, I don’t think the information you need is in the words of Paul. Nor is it in pornography, another Christian favorite (for reasons that boggle the mind).

I know this one far too well and from painful personal experience. I was the good girl who got married too young as a dressed-in-white virgin, in a wedding doomed for failure involving another (technical) virgin. I was then harshly mistreated by said husband, who seemed to think sexual intercourse was an inalienable right and my participation was optional. I blame him but I don’t–his problems were the result of his own Christian upbringing. Yes, he should have known better or learned better, but then again, I should have worked at this one too. I was frigid and scared and unwilling to do what is required in the context of really great sex: to get messy, to laugh together, to revel in sharing the things that you keep from other people.

When I finally escaped the marriage and began the slow recovery from Evangelical Christian-ness, I learned about sex the way normal (non-Evangelical) women do. I watched every episode of Sex and the City at least three times. I read “Glamour” and “Cosmo” every month to recalibrate my ideas about normal. I bought books–manuals, you could say–about how to please a man. I bought every chick-lit novel I could afford and re-read them until the pages were worn. What I did not do was become promiscuous: the legacy of being sexually mistreated by a spouse is that you have to work really hard on the trust issue. But at least now, in my middle thirties and continuing the long recovery from this particular brand of Christianity, I have learned how to have a normal adult relationship including intimacy of both the sexual and non-sexual sorts.

The thing that really confuses me is the group of “Born Again Virgins.” I truly don’t know what to make of it. Was the effort never made by these people to have truly great sex when it was on the “allowed” list? That’s the only logical explanation I can think of, that the people who advocate this movement never really enjoyed it in the first place. Or perhaps they were in unfulfilling relationships that otherwise lacked intimacy. Perhaps by very nature of their backgrounds, they too were wracked with guilt or other negative feelings. Surely not all BAVs had religious upbringings, but maybe the very nature of the personality type that joins this sort of ‘club’ predisposes them to have had unfulfilling sexual experiences and struggles with sexual guilt.

This seems to be a uniquely Evangelical thing. Although I try to stay away from anyone who professes a Born Again mentality, I do in fact still feel stirrings of Christian faith in my soul. Shockingly, I attend church on a regular basis, although it’s one of those churches where they chant things and follow a rigorous and long-established service order (no rock bands, choruses that don’t rhyme, or dramas). In other Christian crowds, while promiscuity is discouraged, there is no condemnation for thoughtful sexual relationships between consenting adults trying to establish the partnership.

From all I’ve seen, the bottom line is simple. The only cure for abstinence is education. And that means raunchy, explicit education, both of the book-learning variety and of the “laboratory experiment” type. With a lot of education, and a lot of effort, you too can recover from a puritanical upbringing and learn to have a healthy attitude towards lawful carnal knowledge.

- ExEvangel

When I was 15, I fell in love with J— and with Jesus. One stole my heart, the other my soul. Neither love would last, but both haunt me to this day.

In the ‘60s, while I was jumping rope and playing hop scotch, Jesus got down off of the heavy cross at the altar of the Catholic church and turned into a cool, hippie dude who loved everyone. It was quite a change of image for a guy who’d been King of Kings and Lord of Lords for almost 2,000 years to start chumming around with the regular folks as good ole boy, JC. The Jesus Movement, started in California by hippies who got high on Jesus instead of LSD, knew Jesus not as the stern, Father-God sorting out the sinners and the saints on Judgment Day, but as an earthy, loving brother accepting all humanity with open arms.

By the time the Jesus Movement reached Long Island at the end of the decade, it had lost most of its hippie accoutrements and had become quite suburban. Its evangelists looked more like Ozzie and Harriet than like Peter, Paul, and Mary. My parents were too old to be hippies and I was too young, but both of our generations succumbed to the hippie mantras of the Jesus Movement: Peace, Love, and Joy.

The further Jesus moved from the cross, the closer he moved to my heart. From Almighty Son-of-God to Personal Savior to friend. When his sandal-shod feet finally hit the dusty ground, I was ready to fall in love with him forever. At church, I was right in the middle, sitting in the front row, raising my hands to praise God, dancing in the aisles, speaking in tongues, playing worship songs on my guitar, reading the Bible over and over again, the way I’d read The Lord of the Rings the year before. (In the end, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam stuck with me. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not.)

My view of romantic love came out of my relationship to God. We sang, “Jesus I love you. Jesus I praise you. Jesus I worship you,”as we gathered together in impromptu basement churches filled with metal folding chairs. Not a pattern of mutual respect and adoration, but of master and slave, lord and liege, creator and creation. I loved J— from afar, too, with the same fervor, longing, and unfulfilled desire.

I made up my own ten commandments for the single Christian girl to explain the rules I lived by:

• Thou shalt not have premarital sex.
• Thou shalt save thyself for thine husband.
• Thou shalt not have a baby out of wedlock.
• Thou shalt not kiss a boy (or a girl!).
• Thou shalt be a good girl at parties.
• Thou shalt be chaste, your body is a temple.
• Thou shalt not get drunk or stoned.
• Thou shalt not be a glutton.
• Thou shalt be a good wife, because it is better to marry than to burn.
• Thou shalt not have an abortion.

And that’s where sex didn’t come into the picture.

J— and I never had sex, never went on a date, never went “steady.” We should have been making out in the basement, instead we were holding hands in church. We should have been exploring our sexuality, instead we were following outdated rules. We should have been studying for our SATs, instead we were poring over the Bible. We should have been stoned at a rock concert, instead we were singing “Amazing Grace.” I remember sitting next to J— at a quaint old-fashioned church we visited, wanting to hold his hand, but too shy. Did he want to sit closer, put his arm around me, as if we were in a movie theater instead of a sanctuary? I imagined saying “I love you,” but I never did. Neither did he. We sang, “I love you with the love of the Lord,” when they told us to greet one-another in church. I think we both saw in each other’s eyes, that wasn’t what we meant.

Looking back, I see that I used my “personal relationship with Jesus” as a cop out that allowed me to I could hold onto the black-and-white morality that had been comfortable to me when I was 5, 8, and 11 years old. By the time I was 15 I should have been outgrowing that and learning how to emotionally and physically deal with adult issues and moral ambiguity, but I was afraid to. Jesus gave me the perfect excuse to hold onto a juvenile morality. I thought I was being chaste, but I was just being childish.

My own experiences make me wonder how many teens who are making chastity pledges are doing it because they are afraid to grow up. Now, I don’t think teens should have sex before they are ready, and no one should never do anything sexual that makes them uncomfortable. But you can’t avoid puberty and hiding in a cave of piety will not help you mature emotionally or spiritually. This type of behavior simply stunts growth and development. Looking back, I am sad for my younger self–sad that she missed out on so many wonderful experiences and that she was so afraid of everything. I am also sad that so many teens today are falling into the same trap, and that they are being encouraged to do so by their parents, pastors, and peers.

Eventually, I realized that my romantic visions of J— and Jesus were illusions. I had made them up in my head. They didn’t exist in the real world. I wasn’t in love with either of them as much as I was in love with my own imagination. Eventually, I had to say goodbye to both of my imaginary friends and move on with my life. Eventually, I grew up. But it took me a lot longer than it should have.

- writerdd

I had the pleasure of sharing a leisurely lunch recently with a Christian friend whom I had not seen in a couple of months. The lengthy interval between our meetings was a radical change from the time, not very long ago, when we saw each other twice a week: at Wednesday evening choir rehearsals and Sunday morning worship services. The responsibility for this lack of contact does not lie solely with me: Joanne quit the church about six weeks before I quit the choir.

As we exchanged emails and phone calls over the past several months, it became clear that both of us have been thinking about similar issues. The first, which I discussed in a recent post, was burnout. Church musicians, many of whom are volunteers, typically sacrifice a lot of time and energy to keep up their involvement with their musical groups. It’s not unusual for them to burnout. No doubt, our pastors felt blindsided when Joanne and I announced, within six weeks of each other and with absolutely no collusion, that we needed to step out of the church and/or choir. This may explain, partially, the pastors’ less-than-supportive response when my resignation letter arrived less than two months after Joanne’s.

The second set of issues best falls under the heading of beliefs. Regular readers here know that I settled most, if not all, of these issues when I embraced atheism last summer. Joanne’s journey has not been, thus far, this clear-cut. Nevertheless, she has come quite a long way in her personal growth.

Some background: Joanne and I both hail from old Salvation Army families and are both descendants of several generations of Salvation Army officers (ministers). In fact, we recently discovered that, if we go back a few generations, we are something like sixth cousins four times removed by marriage or something weird like that. Our veins run thick with evangelical, red-yellow-and-blue (the colors of The Salvation Army flag) blood. I (along with the deacon) was an officer for nearly a decade and, at one time, Joanne gave serious consideration to becoming an officer.

Looking back now, it’s clear that Joanne and I both had the same idea regarding the best way to start the conversation: be the first one to put the other on the spot; ask the first question and find out where the other one is before offering too much information oneself. Joanne beat me to it and, before we had even settled comfortably into our seats, opened with the first question.

Joanne: So, tell me, what are some of the issues you have with The Salvation Army?

Chaplain: Should I start with social issues or doctrines?

Joanne: Either one. It sounds like you have quite a few.

Chaplain: More than a few.

Joanne: Okay, how about one of each.

Chaplain: Okay. Two issues first. The Salvation Army’s position on alcohol is out to lunch. There’s nothing wrong with drinking. They’re also out to lunch about homosexuality. There’s nothing wrong with it. They’re wrong on both issues. Now, for a doctrine: I’ll start with the infallibility of scripture. I don’t believe the Bible is any more inspired than the hymns of Charles Wesley or John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The fact that the canon was decided by a vote -

Joanne: By a bunch of men-

Chaplain: Exactly, a bunch of men sat around in the fourth century and voted about which scriptures made the cut and which didn’t. You know there was a lot of politics involved in that decision.

Joanne: Of course.

Chaplain: They also decided that nothing written after that time could be added to the canon. Do you really think that nothing written within the past 1,600 years could supplement or supersede the 27 approved books of the New Testament?

That little exchange kicked off a discussion that lasted 2½ hours. Another brief exchange:

Joanne: Why are you still going to church at all? For the kids?

Chaplain: Partly for the kids. It’s our heritage and we wanted to connect them with that. But J2 will be going college next year, so that won’t be much of a factor soon. J1 is going to [another Salvation Army church]. He’s seriously dating a Catholic girl now, so I won’t be surprised if he ends up going there with her. He’ll have to make his own decisions about what church, if any, he will go to in the future. The biggest reason we’re staying connected now is [the deacon's] job. In light of some of the tasks he’s had in the past, as long as he’s in that position he feels obligated to keep a connection. Once we move away from this area, which will be within a couple of years, it’s unlikely that we will go to The Salvation Army.

Joanne: Which church would you go to?

Chaplain: Unitarian Universalist.

Joanne: Wow. You really are far left, aren’t you? What do they believe?

Chaplain: Well, they’re very open-minded. They welcome anyone - even atheists - to be part of their fellowship.

Joanne: Mmm. Maybe that’s the kind of broad-minded community I’m looking for.

So far, so good. This has been an invigorating discussion. Then, somewhere along the line, Joanne starts spouting some airy-fairy dualist theology she’d read recently about how there is no literal hell and that hell is really on earth.

Chaplain: That’s depressing. Why would anyone who believed that bother getting out of bed in the morning?

Joanne: Well, this world and this life are not real, the real things will be when our spirits, or whatever, go to heaven-

Chaplain: (remaining silent but obviously looking like I’m not buying a word of it)

Joanne: I’ll find the link and email it to you.

We moved on and I discussed some of Bart Ehrman’s work in textual criticism. She was interested in that and in some books I’ll be giving her the next time we see each other (the book list is at the end of the post, if you’re interested). We also discussed church-state separation (Mike Huckabee has the same nauseating effect on her that he has on me), evolution (I noted that if I ever again hear anyone teach about YEC or some other similar crap, I’m likely to stand up and start yelling at the person; she agreed that she also would find it difficult to restrain herself from doing the same), Biblical literalism, Christian communities, superficial Bible studies (sometimes referred to as “share-your-ignorance” sessions), pastoral care (she was appalled when I told her how the pastors’ had responded to my burnout letter) and other stuff. Like her recent trip to Las Vegas.

Why is her recent trip to Las Vegas significant? Because few, if any, evangelical Christians give any thought - I mean not even one - to visiting “Sin City.” The fact that she broke far enough out of the evangelical box to take a vacation in Las Vegas is significant. So was her report that she lost $50 on the slot machines, but her traveling companion (another evangelical Christian whom I know) won $150 at slots and the roulette wheel. Evangelical Christians do not gamble! They don’t even buy raffle tickets or play bingo! As Joanne put it, she is taking advantage of her break from church going to learn more about herself. She is not in a hurry to get involved in another church or to return to our church. Instead, she is trying new things - things that, just a few years ago, she would not have imagined herself doing.

Joanne: I’m still in recovery. I’m trying to find out more about who I am and sort through the brainwashing- well, not exactly brainwashing-

Chaplain: Indoctrination.

Joanne: Right. I’m still recovering from that…

And so it went. What I take away from this story (so far) is this:

Joanne is very liberal socially and politically. She has many good questions about the Christian indoctrination that she’s carried in her head for nearly 50 years. And yet…she doesn’t believe in a fire-and-brimstone hell, but she continues to believe in heaven and continues to hold a body-soul dichotomy. She’s not actively seeking to attach herself to a church community, but she holds out a slim hope that it may happen someday. She still believes in God and a divine-human Jesus. She’s still trying, as I did for many years, to cobble together some vestige of Christian belief that comports with her practical knowledge of the world. Will she ever be able to let it go? I don’t know. I know first-hand how hard it is to do so. The last step is terrifying and, initially, it feels like one has plummeted into Nietzsche’s abyss. I’m not out to proselytize atheism but, if Joanne ever is ready to take that last step, I will be there to lend a listening ear, give her more books (I’ve always got plenty of those), share ideas with her and reassure her that the view from the other side of the abyss is far better than the one she left behind.

– the chaplain

PS: Book list:

Politics
Molly Ivins - Bill of Wrongs
Walter Brasch - Sinking the Ship of State

Christianity
James Twitchell - Shopping for God
Hemant Mehta - I Sold My Soul on eBay
Bart Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus
Bart Ehrman - Lost Christianities

NOTE: I’ve changed Joanne’s name throughout the post and comments to protect her anonymity.

For my birthday I gave myself a HarperCollins Study Bible. It’s quite a tome of scholarly commentary running alongside the text of the Old and New Testaments. Yet I don’t actually enjoy reading the Bible; after about 16 years of intense grappling, I found the whole thing to be tiring, disjointed, and just downright difficult to grasp. Despite this, I’ve bought this thing, a book that is either highly revered or detested, considered to be either the Word of God or just another ancient religious text. So why am I choosing to torture myself in the confusing and sublime text of Christian scripture?

For me, the purpose is to unravel the text in the light of contemporary Christian and religious experience. I do this from a critical and skeptical viewpoint, taking nothing for granted. Doubt is probably the most beneficial tool here, for it seeks not merely an alternative understanding, but rather an understanding that is shaped by how I perceive and experience the world. This really puts me at odds with many Christians, who perceive that we must approach the Bible from a viewpoint of faith. It is only by faith, they say, that we can truly understand the words of scripture. By faith, we can hear the voice of God speaking through the words and directly to our heart.

It is that notion of faith that we must apply doubt first of all. For if God truly did speak through the words of the Bible to his faithful, why then do we have such multiplicity of interpretation? So many ideas have arisen from individuals who claimed that God gave them a ‘revelation’, and in many cases these ideas are in conflict. Either God is actually the centre of the conflict, or those who claim inspiration really just imagined the experience. It’s pretty obvious that a conflicting God would not be terribly popular, so that notion falls flat. So how do we then explain the multitude of individuals who truly believe that the Holy Spirit illuminates scripture, so that they receive ‘aha!’ and ‘I get it!’ moments?

I get the same ‘aha!’ experiences from all sorts of texts. It’s really just a paradigm shift, a different way of seeing. It’s like the demonstration in my psychology lecture of ambiguous images - you know the type, where a picture looks like a face, but if you look at it from another perspective, it becomes a head. It’s simply a matter of perception rather than any kind of spiritual revelation. I don’t mean to put a damper on anyone’s experience, but really we’ve got to understand human experience in a very logical way.

Now I could go on forever about faith and doubt, but I’m supposed to be explaining why I still study the Bible. It’s now come down to a real picking-apart of the belief system that I once took for granted. I’ve become a critic of my own experience, as well as the experience of others. In this sense, my Bible study is far more interesting, since I no longer have to try to discern certain things or worry about how different parts fit into my experience. Instead, from a critical perspective, I can read the text with an eye to the cultural and historical forces shaping the message. I mean, what makes this text so much more authoritative than all other ancient texts describing a people and their god/s?

What does make it important comes back to the influence of Christianity on our culture. What also makes it important to me is asking how it informs my experience now. What can I make of Jesus now? Is he really as important as Christians believe, or am I misinformed? I’m more concerned with existential truth than with arguments to the existence of God, and this shapes my questions and inquiry.

Just as an aside, I wonder if any of us here went through this very phase of biblical inquiry that I am describing, and if so what was your inevitable conclusion?

- Gary

I wrote this essay a few months ago and have been waiting for a sign (or wonder) that it was time to post it. Given that in recent days we have been discussing this very issue, “divine hiddenness”, and in honor of upcoming April 15^th, it seems like this would be a good time. In order to avoid excess length this article has been split into two parts.  Part I: Why doesn’t God make things clearer?

I begin by saying: if there is a God of evangelical Christianity, he would appear to be less capable than the IRS(*).

No one wants, in particular, to pay their taxes. Almost everyone would rather keep their money. Most people, however, do pay their taxes, and presumably there are a variety of reasons why. For most, it is simply the law and they are in a habit of obeying the law. For many, perhaps, there is also a conscious fear of the consequences of not doing so. A few noble souls may perhaps see that government, for all its flaws, nonetheless does some good, and requires money to run, and thus they pay taxes out of a sense of civil duty. Some attempt to cheat, a few succeed. But most everyone is highly motivated to minimize or avoid paying taxes, if possible. Most everyone would love it – love it – if the IRS just flat did not exist.

But equally, no one – and I mean no one – actually denies the existence of the IRS.

No one claims the US Tax Code is an outmoded, superstitious document, written by long-dead pre-modern farmers, which has no relevance for us. No one says IRS auditors are a myth, with no evidence to support their existence, and can be ignored. No one claims letters and phone calls to the IRS will always be unanswered “because there is no IRS”. To my knowledge, the IRS has never refused to pursue money owed it because “nothing would convince them anyway.” And no US citizen says, why yes I pay my taxes – to the One True Government, and then cheerfully sends his money to Mother India.

In short, the US government (for God’s sake) is apparently able to successfully, and rather effortlessly, convince the entire world that (a) it exists, (b) it has authority over its citizens, and (c) broadly speaking, what the rules are.

And it is noteworthy that a universal awareness of its existence does not in any way compel obedience. Many people, regularly, attempt to cheat, despite knowing the potential consequences. Moreover, there is no obvious virtue to be had in the IRS hiding its existence, making belief in it a matter of faith (or of a “sensus bureaucraticus”), and then punishing people for failure to obey the rules anyway. There is no distinction to be drawn between its past convincing people of its existence and its present convincing, because convincing people of its existence is not something it has to try to do in the first place. There is no IRS “Department of Existence-Awareness Maintenance”, so far as I know.

So for me, though I present this slightly flippantly, in the end this was an unanswerable question. There can simply be no compelling reason why the Christian God (or, at least, one who teaches damnation in Hell) would not set us all straight. He loses nothing by making the facts clear. We still would have a choice to follow him, or not to follow him. It might, perhaps, compel obedience from fear more than love, but that seems inescapable if he wishes to torture us in Hell forever for making the wrong decision. And surely, given Hell, it is more fair to be clear. And while there are no end of ways an omnipotent God could accomplish this – he could have each of us born with an organic copy of the New Testament attached to our umbilical cords (this is God we’re talking about) – in the end, how much effort would it really take? Ask yourself: how much time and energy do you spend trying to convince those around you that you exist, and what it is you want them to do? Don’t you just stand in front of them and talk?

What I have appreciated most about this question is it has formed an integral part of my ability to disengage from apologetics, even if I can’t answer their argument. I haven’t been willing to become an expert of ancient Near Eastern literature in order to refute every explanation of the Bible harmonizers, but with this argument, I don’t have to. For, in a sense, the more complex and involved an apologist’s argument is, the more it requires detailed knowledge of ancient languages, modal logic, or other highly technical disciplines, the more glaring my question becomes: why is it so complicated? Every starting burger-flipper at Dairy Queen, on his first day, very quickly gains a crystal clear and unambiguous awareness of the existence of his boss and a general understanding of the rules. He doesn’t have to get a Ph.D. in philosophy and Aramaic in order to know what happens if he’s late.

Can’t God do at least as well as that?

- Richard

*[Note: for any non-American readers, who might be unfamiliar with this term, "IRS" stands for "Internal Revenue Service" and is the federal agency responsible for tax collection. April 15^th of every year is the day person income taxes from the preceding year are due.]