The death of a pet (and how it relates to religion)
07/02/09 [A draft written in some haste, so bear with me if it's not polished.]
Why is the death of a pet so hard on us animal lovers?
Today, in my home, we are facing the death of my daughter’s much beloved, 8-year-old calico cat Chip. She was my daughter’s 8th birthday present. Of course she’s much too young to die. We expected many more years with her sweet, purry, nature. Now this beautiful creature will pass from our lives before sunset. For whatever reason her kidneys have failed, and there is nothing that can be done. It quite took us by surprise. We have a photo of her walking about in the yard less than a week ago and she seemed OK then.
Today Chip is here. She’s so lethargic. We’ll take her to be put down once the summer school day is over and everyone is home. Right now we are so quiet. At various times we sit down and pet the little sweetheart and tell her how sorry we are for this, and tell her how much she is loved and always has been. We think how shocked we feel that one who so recently was wrestling with her fellow cat could now be so obviously ill and dying.
How and why does all this hurt so?…
Continue Reading July 2, 2009 at 4:17 pm LeoPardus 16 comments
A Silent Departure (my de-Converstion story)
For someone who is just now publicly “coming out” from a religious background as hopelessly fundamental and conservative as mine, it’s encouraging to find a faithless friend or two who can relate to my own experience. I hope that by sharing my own story, I can be of some encouragement to you as well, wherever you happen to be in your life.
Here we go…
The Missionary Kid
My story begins in the tropical jungle of north-central Brazil, where I was born and where I spent the majority of my childhood growing up as a missionary kid. My dad was a high school teacher, and my family lived on the campus of a boarding school that served to educate kids whose parents were off spreading the Christian Gospel. Some of these parents were Bible translators living with Indian tribes, others were support staff stationed in different cities in Brazil. Our little school was where they sent their kids to get an education. It was only a small school—during my time there, the student body probably averaged around 40 or so students every year, from first grade all the way through high school.
But I’ve gotta say, it was a pretty sweet place to grow up! Year-round tropical weather, jungle for camping and exploring as far as you could walk, and the murky Amazon River for fishing and swimming. If it sounds like a little boy’s paradise, that’s because it was…
Continue Reading June 27, 2009 at 11:51 am deconversion 29 comments
The Sky’s the Limit- a Poetic look at De-converting
The pictures I drew of my home, when I was a child, showed the typical square house and triangle roof with a thick strip of green across the bottom of the page and a similar strip of blue at the top. After all, grass is green and found under our feet, and the sky is blue and found high above our heads.
I asked no questions about whether what I drew matched what could be seen if I were to walk outside; I simply drew what everyone knew to be true.
A little older, I sat with my crayons in the back of the family station wagon and looked out the window toward the horizon. The clear, blue sky was not simply above me, but came all the way down to meet the golden, yellow fields we drove past. I drew a picture of a house, in the middle of a blank piece of paper. Then I used up half of my blue and my green crayons as I coloured ground and sky until they met each other behind the house.
I didn’t ask why I saw no blue close around me if the sky truly met the ground; I just drew what I thought I saw.
I joined Air Cadets while in high school, and I got to fly above the clouds. I looked at the patchwork pattern of fields below me, and the curious shapes of the tops of nearby clouds. I was in utter awe.
I never asked why the blue of the sky was still at a distance, even though I was above the clouds. I never thought about why there was no blue between myself and the clouds, or myself and the ground. I knew the sky was blue, and never thought about it, even while flying in the sky.
As an adult, it became my job to teach others what I knew…
Continue Reading June 19, 2009 at 11:56 pm Quester 6 comments
Irrespective of What You Think – My de-Conversion Story
I tell you this so you’ll know, I didn’t de-convert because of overbearing parents who left a bad impression of my religion. Even though I was initially “forced” into the church, when I started going back at the age of seventeen, it was entirely my decision. An easy one at that. Fear of Hell drove me into the pews. That’s the one thing Catholics (and later, I would realize, all Christians) are really good at—putting the fear of eternal damnation into you, just in case God’s love wasn’t enough. But once I came back, I was in all the way. I went to confession, received communion and prayed my Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s every single night. I met with my priest on several occasions. He was a good and saintly man, and he comforted and encouraged me in my faith while at the same time challenging me to go deeper.
I will always view that summer before college as the time when my faith was at its strongest, its most unshakeable. I read the Catechism. I stopped cursing. I received communion every week (sometimes several times) and went to confession as often as possible. As the ultimate act of devotion for a seventeen-year-old boy, I even gave up masturbation once I read it was a “mortal sin.” I had zero doubt I was on the right path and I couldn’t believe there were people in this world who didn’t believe in God…
Continue Reading June 18, 2009 at 7:52 pm deconversion 145 comments
My steps out of Christianity
[This post has been sitting in my files for a while. Finally pulled it out and "finished" it. Writing never really seems finished, does it?]
Noting that my journey out of Christianity is different from most (in fact, unique in my experience so far*), I took some time to try to recall the steps I took over the years. I list them here in no particular order (though they are roughly chronological). *For any who don’t know, my path was, very briefly: “saved” at 19; evy/fundy for many years; converted to Eastern Orthodoxy for about 3 years; left the faith entirely.
- I sought to base my morality, politics, and behaviors in more than just, “the Bible or my church says so”. After all, if something is right, it ought to be right for everyone, Bible or no Bible. I mean isn’t that what’s really meant by, “the absolute truth of God”?
Funny thing is that I did this right from the beginning of my Christian life. So maybe I was just doomed from the outset eh?
- I got sick of the shallowness. Those damn praise choruses [“Jesus I luuuuv yew. Jesus I neeeeed yew. Jesus I luuuuv yew. Yes I doooo.”] are just drivel. So is the “Jesus, my buddy” flatulence. There’s just gotta be more to a faith than lousy songs and Forest Gump level theology. This garbage was/is growing by leaps and bounds throughout Protestant churches, and was even making headway in some Catholic parishes.
- I got it through my head that young-earth creationism was WRONG. I.e. that evolution did happen, that the fossils were really old, that the flood of Noah was not global, that dinosaurs and humans never lived together, that the speed of light is in fact a constant, and so on. (I can’t tell you how humiliating it is to admit that I was idiotic enough to ever believe that crap.)…
Continue Reading June 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm LeoPardus 67 comments
Change creeps in unawares
Part 4 of My journey into and, later, out of Christianity
–
I close my bedroom door, sit on my bed, pull my knees up to my chest, and shut my eyes. In my mind, I picture a teenage girl standing at a makeshift altar at the front of a small basement arranged like a church.
Her lips move in silent prayer as tears stream down her face. Tom Shaffer, a visiting evangelist from Texas, lays hands on her, his ostrich-skin cowboy boots spread hip-width apart, firmly planted on the concrete floor, his pudgy fingers pressing down into her hair. His words are so loud, he doesn’t need a microphone in this small sanctuary. He hardly needs one when he preaches in the VFW or Oddfellow’s hall, either.
“Repeat this prayer after me,” Tom says. “Heavenly Father, I want to receive this power that Jesus spoke of. I ask you now to baptize me in the Holy Ghost.” The girl repeats, timidly at first, but getting louder with each sentence. “I say by faith that I receive Him now in all His fullness, and as the believers did on the day of Pentecost, I will speak in tongues as the Spirit gives me utterance.”…
Continue Reading June 10, 2009 at 8:43 am writerdd 22 comments
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