Confessions Of A Heretic Husband

Request for guest posts, and housekeeping

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Here's a riddle:

Who has less time for blogging than the parent of two young children?

Answer:

A parent of three young children.

My wife and I are expecting our third child any day now. I haven't had any time to blog, and I don't see that trend changing in the near future.

I've been writing this blog for over a year now, and I would like to continue it.
So I'm asking for your help, in the form of guest posts!

I've got a few lined up already. If you're interested, guidelines are here. The topic is not limited to spiritual abuse, but if you have a story about that subject which you would like to share, I would love to post it. No story is too big or too small.

If I were still an Evangelical, I would say that I feel called by God to share stories of spiritual abuse and that it's his will for my life. Since I'm not, I'm just going to say that I really, really want to share stories of spiritual abuse and I think it would be a good idea.

I have managed to get back on Twitter. I've also started an account called Fake Piper which I've been told is pretty funny. 140 characters is about all I have time for lately.

I've also started a tumblr. It's sort of a side blog in the spirit of When In Comments.

There's not much new to report other than the new baby. No new developments with my in-laws, still attending the same Episcopal church with semi-regularity, and no spiritual epiphanies.

Thanks to the readers who noticed my absence and contacted me to see if everything was OK.

Peace out,
HH

Confessions of a Male Feminist

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:48:00 +0000

This was my introduction to feminism:

That’s Marcy D’arcy (played by Amanda Bearse) from the American T.V show Married... With Children.

Now, I’ve never been one to blame the media for things, whether it be school shootings or the inexplicable popularity of Crocs (seriously, it looks like you’re wearing cut up wiffle balls on your feet. Just stop.) But I’ve come to realize that in many ways, media has shaped my view of many things, including feminism.

In case you can’t tell from the picture, Marcy is a typical straw feminist. She’s anti-male, a hypocrite, and generally just unpleasant. I seem to remember many characters like her on 90’s sitcoms.

I didn’t have many other examples of feminists in my life. I had no sisters. My mother doesn’t identify as a feminist (though she holds many feminist beliefs). And of the few female friends I had, none really talked about feminism.

The first feminist I met was my wife. I was shocked to hear her say that sexism was still a problem in America. Surely, I said, these problems had been solved in the sixties? Gloria Steinem? Women’s suffrage? Any of this ringing a bell?

I held the all too typical view that sexism in America was a problem of the past, and anyone still complaining about it was living in that past.

Then, I entered the Bizarro World of American Evangelical Christianity. I heard all kinds of sexist claptrap about how women couldn’t be leaders, that they should submit to their husbands...yet it didn’t occur to me that sexism sexism was a problem. In fact, since I believed that the Bible was the Word of God, I started to think that maybe I was the one with the problem, since I didn’t consider myself to be the head of my household, and I didn’t see a problem with women being pastors.

When I started this blog a year ago, I also started a Twitter account. I talked with other feminists. Some of them were Christian, some weren’t. I listened to their stories instead of listening to sermons. And I started reconsidering my views on feminism (funny how stories have a way of doing that). I realized that the root of many of those views were still based on Marcy D’arcy.

Have you ever bought a new car, and then started seeing other cars of the same model everywhere? It’s not that everyone suddenly purchased that car. There’s a part of your brain responsible for filtering out unimportant information. Now that you own one of those cars, it stops filtering other cars of the same type. This is how my brain reacted when I read the stories of people affected by sexism. And it kept going when I became a father to two girls (with a third on the way).

I started thinking that maybe I was a feminist too. But I didn’t label myself with the word, because, let’s be honest, it has a great deal of baggage. I didn’t want people assuming things about me because of that. I didn’t want to be judged.

You know what? Fuck it, I’m a feminist.

So what does that mean? Well, readers of this blog should know by now where that discussion is going to start.

fem·i·nist [fem-uh-nist]

adjective Sometimes, fem·i·nis·tic.

1. advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.

noun

2. an advocate of such rights.

That’s what it means to me so far. I’m still working it out, to be honest. It’s a bit new to me. I know the names of a few famous feminists but I don’t know much about them, and I haven’t read anything by them (with two children, graphic novels are pretty much all I have time for. Have feminists written any of those?)

Feminism, for me, means that when I talk to my daughters, I will say “firefighter” instead of “fireman”, and “police officer” instead of “policeman”, though I won’t be offended if someone else uses those words.

(I’m still undecided about “manhole cover”. Maintenance hatch? Sewer access tunnel? “Person-hole cover” sounds dumb.)

It means that when I read my daughter Fantastic Four comics from the sixties, I will edit the dialogue on the fly when Sue Storm falls in love with the villainous Sub-Mariner instead of kicking his sorry ass back to Atlantis.

It means I will play My Little Pony with them, and will buy them Transformers too if they want them.

It means I’m distrustful of almost anything with the ‘Princess’ label on it.

It means I will never limit them by saying “You’re a girl, so you can’t do that.”

Of course, there will be others who say that.

I will tell them that those people are not to be listened to.

And I will tell them that those people are the ones living in the past.

Dear Mom Judging the Mom on Her Iphone

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:12:00 +0000

When I read your post , my first thought was that it must have been written by an elderly grandmother type. But before I launched into an expletive laced rant, I figured I should find out a little bit about you. Hey, there’s a first time for everything, right?.

I was surprised to find your blog and see you were younger than me.

I was not surprised to find that you were a Christian.

I read your blog. I read your followup to the Iphone post, your similar post about Dads, and I read some of your series on how you survived adultery. As I learned more about you, I began mentally editing my post. It’s easier to rant against an unnamed person, or a celebrity like Mark Driscoll or John Piper, but putting a face( and, more importantly, a story) to you made me want to be a bit kinder. Of course, since you’re a Christian, this post will probably still seem expletive laced to you if you read it.

Sorry, there’s not a fucking thing I can do about that.

I mentioned that I was not surprised you were a Christian. Actually, I deduced this before finding your blog. I’m no detective, but I ran in Evangelical circles long enough to recognize the signs. Mainly it was your mention of The Creator, and your egregious use of gender roles. I couldn’t help but notice that the hypothetical boy in your post was much more assertive than the hypothetical girl. Also, the general shaming tone of the post was a dead giveaway.

I saw the note at the end of the post, about how you are guilty of the same thing. I suspect it was added later as an afterthought, because the re-post of the story I initially saw didn’t include it.
But even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was always there, the problem is, that doesn’t change what it is: an afterthought.

When I was an evangelical Christian, I usually forgot to look at the plank in my own eye first. It seems that in the midst of all that Jesus talk, you did the same (see what I did there?).

Like me, you probably also forgot the whole “judge not lest you be judged” thing, but I don’t think you’ll need another reminder since a whoooooollle lot of people are judging you for the post.

Like me, you probably forgot Matthew 23:4

“They [the teachers of the law and the Pharisees] tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”

In your follow up post, you said:

Isn’t it our job to encourage and lift each other up?

Isn’t it also our jobs to point out hard truths?

Here’s the thing: most people don’t actually need hard truths pointed out. They already know them. Most parents already know that they should be giving their kids attention. The ones who don’t care about that won’t give a rip about anything you have to say anyway.

I think what most parents our age need is encouragement.

Parents our age have more demands than ever before. They can see parents on Pinterest doing it better than them. They can see the article of the week about the latest food or common household item that will give their child autism, toe cancer, or Gulf War Syndrome. They have access to a dizzying array of parenting books and blogs, all with wildly differing ideas on the best way to do it. They fear being carted off to jail for leaving their kid unattended in the car while they go in to pay for gas. They fear that they will be just like their parents. Or they fear they won’t be as good as their parents.

What they probably need is someone to tell them to CHILL. THE FUCK. OUT and just enjoy their kids. Which, strangely, is the message I think you were trying to communicate.

But they don’t need someone adding more stress, someone saying OMG PAY ATTENTION YOU’RE MISSING SOMETHING IMPORTANT!

Trust me, they already know that. Anyone who’s been a parent for more than a year or so is all too aware of how quickly time flies. This is not news. Every parent has missed important moments. Today it might be because of an Iphone. Two hundred years ago, parents were probably too busy busting their asses on the farm to enjoy much time with their kids. And the kids were probably too busy helping them.

PARENTS MISS THINGS. Guess what? This gets kids ready for disappointment later in life. Their teachers will miss things. Their friends will miss things. Their bosses will miss things. Because people aren’t perfect.

AND BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE GODDAMN UNIVERSE.

See, that’s the other thing I sense in your post: the addiction to child worship that seems to infect many Christian circles. I’m sure your kids are awesome (I mean, obviously not as awesome as mine, but hey, no one’s perfect).

But every kid needs the occasional reminder that the world doesn’t revolve around them. They need to see parents engaging in self care, and having healthy adult relationships.

They need to see parents who are not constantly beating themselves up. Because some day, they might be parents themselves. And if we stop this cycle of parent shaming, they will thank us for it some day.

And that thank you just might come via text message.

Forgiveness: A Three Headed Beast

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:18:00 +0000

Forgiveness is touted as a route to healing, but I didn’t think much about it until I had been dealt the emotional equivalent of a gunshot to the chest. The best time to search for a doctor is not when you’re lying on the ground bleeding, but like everyone else, I had to play the hand I was dealt.

Two years ago, we learned that my wife’s father was guilty of molesting his son, and her mother had kept it hidden from us. My wife and I reacted to this onslaught in opposite ways: she made a strategic withdrawal into her faith to regroup, but when I tried to do the same, I found that my faith had fled the scene of the crime. I was forced to come up with another strategy on the spot. So it goes.

When I’m emotionally wounded, my mind produces bitterness, snark, and sarcasm as antibodies, and it rose to the task. Rather than risk having these feelings poison my family, I instead directed it anonymously at the Internet, and the result was this blog. It helped, although I was left with a nagging question:

What is forgiveness? And more specifically, what does it look like for me in this situation?
Well, when we talk about a word as loaded with baggage as forgiveness, we must first turn to the source of all Truth on these matters.

I’m referring, of course, to dictionary.com. After looking at definitions for forgive, pardon, and absolve, I came up with three definitions that I’d like to take a look at.

1. to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
2. to cease to feel resentment against
3. to free from guilt or blame or their consequences.

Remitting a Debt

It’s interesting that forgiveness applies to debts, because I’ve viewed it this way before. In the past, when friends have wronged me, I’ve looked at it from a point of view of credit and debt. Over the course of our friendship, how much “credit” has the person earned by being a good friend? How much debt have they incurred by wronging me? I’m not talking about actual numbers, just a rough idea of a ratio. If the person exhausts their credit, it might be time to cut them loose (lest you think me heartless, this has happened precisely once in my entire life. The last straw was when the person in question took advantage of one of my wife’s friends).

Can this be applied to my in-laws? They’ve helped us financially in the past. They’ve helped us move. They let us live with them free of charge once. They rented us a house for only the cost of the mortgage.

On the other hand, they refuse to tell the church my father-in-law pastors about the molestation. They refuse to get professional counseling (they had some brief “biblical counseling” with a pastor a couple of years ago when all this came to light, but that’s it). And my mother-in-law insists that she prayed about whether she should tell us what happened and God totally gave her a thumbs up.

Let’s look back further: my wife grew up in an abusive home. She witnessed her parents inflict physical violence on each other. Her and her siblings experienced physical and verbal abuse. And since she grew up as a pastor’s kid, she had the additional trauma of knowing her father would always pick his ministry before his family.

Hmm... so a pretty generous amount of credit, but a truckload of toxic debt. But, of course, the situation is complicated by the fact that these are my wife’s parents, and my children’s grandparents. They’re not some deadbeat friend who can be cut from our lives with few consequences.

To No Longer Feel Resentment

I haven’t ceased to feel resentment against my in-laws. Why should I? They blame my brother-in-law for the sexual abuse. They’ve said they’re sorry, of course, but with no substantive change in their lives, this rings hollow. It’s lip service to repentance without any real intention of change.

It could be argued that I should cease to feel resentment for my own good. This is a fair point, but we’re not talking about some simple binary switch that can be flipped. It’s a process, and to be honest, it’s not a process that I would have much interest in, except that I know that my feelings of resentment hurt my wife.

If I think about it rationally, I know that my father-in-law was molested when he was younger. I know that talking about such things, let alone getting counseling about it, wasn’t encouraged in those days. I know that he’s been in a legalistic, toxic church environment most of his life, and can’t get it out of it because he’s so dependent on it for his identity, and probably because of the sense of forgiveness and redemption it gives him. I know that he’s a broken, messed up person, just like I am.

The thing is, I don’t really feel resentment for what he did to his son any more. I resent the fact that he doesn’t see the need for change. I resent his pride and arrogance. I resent that he thinks a few half hearted apologies should mean that everything should just go back to normal, and that my wife is the one with the problem because she’s making a big deal out of this. I resent how he and his wife use the Bible to defend his actions. I resent that they see no value in professional counseling.

And I won’t apologize for that. But for the sake of my family, I’ll try to work through it.

To Free From Guilt

Here’s the problem I’m facing (and I suspect it’s the problem in many situations involving forgiveness). The wronged party (us) is looking for the kind of forgiveness I already mentioned: ceasing to feel resentment. The party in the wrong (my in-laws) wants that too, but is more interested in being released from guilt.

That’s the kind of forgiveness that is easy to give in less traumatic situations: we forgive people for being late, for forgetting things, for losing their temper, for any number of things.

But I can’t release them from any guilt that they feel, and wouldn’t even if I could, because they should feel guilty.

And I won’t apologize for that either.

Confessions of a Spiritual Wanderer

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:42:00 +0000

I want you to know, I've tried. I've really tried. I've tried Catholicism. I've tried Evangelical. I've tried Episcopal. They don't work for me. It's not the people. The people are fine for the most part. There are some bad apples in every barrel, of course, but I'm beginning to think the problem is me.

I'm like one of those people who is in failed relationship after failed relationship, desperate to find The One to spend the rest of their life with. One day, after another agonizing breakup, they realize that the only common denominator in every relationship is...them.

Except, of course, that's not true when you're talking about spirituality. There's another common denominator: God. The real analogy is this: You're in a relationship, and the other person refuses to communicate. So you read one relationship book after another, trying to get them to open up. But they won't.

That's the 800 pound gorilla in the room that you're not supposed to talk about, right? Whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon... you're not supposed to blame God. It's always your fault.

I'd rather be an atheist, and just say fuck the whole thing, but I can't. Atheist arguments make a great deal of sense to me, but to me, the existence of the universe and humanity is enough circumstantial evidence for some kind of creator.

I'd rather be Rachel Held Evans, who wrote this fabulous post about how she will always chase after Jesus in spite of her doubts. I've got the doubt part down, but the Jesus part...not so much.

I'm tired of asking questions that have no answer. I'm tired of asking questions that other people don't seem interested in. I'm tired of people telling me I sound angry.

And most of all, I'm tired of pretending that I'm lost in the "spiritual wilderness" and that somewhere out there is "spiritual civilization". That's a lie. The wilderness is the only reality. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The real problem with the wilderness is the loneliness. I understand why people like church - it's a group of (mostly) like minded people that you can go on the journey with. Misery loves company.

My wife is not at the same point in her journey. My friends aren't at the same point in their journey. Most of the people I interact with online aren't at the same point in their journey's.

I'm alone. But aren't we all? Aren't we all on a different journey? Aren't the people in churches/temples/mosques just pretending they're all the same?

Well, maybe some of them are. But maybe they're just choosing to emphasize the sameness and de-emphasize the differences, at least for the length of the service. Maybe that's a good thing.

(As long as it doesn't lead to hatred, attempts to deny others their rights, or The Crusades).

Wackjob Wednesday 1/16/2013

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:02:00 +0000

Welcome to another edition of Wackjob Wednesday! There's some weapons grade crazy this week, so proceed with caution! We've got secular stories, religous stories, and of course, it wouldn't be Wackjob Wednesday without His Holiness Mark Driscoll.

Can I buy "shot by NRA member who thought I was a burglar" insurance?

If you are an NRA member, this company allows you to buy "extra protection not found in most homeowners' policies...Criminal Defense Reimbursement is provided for alleged criminal actions involving self-defense when you are acquitted of such criminal charges or the charges are dropped."

http://www.locktonrisk.com/nrains/defense.htm

I'd imagine that "taking up arms against the government" insurance will soon follow. And in Texas, "he needed killin'" insurance.

You mean the same government that can barely deliver the mail on time?

The people in the "Sandy Hook Truther movement" think the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax by the government. You know, so they can TAKE AWAY ALL THE GUNS. So were all the OTHER gun massacres over the past year hoaxes too? Or was it just this one? I'm just curious.

Now these truth lovers are harassing a man who aided a group of children who fled the school on the day of the massacre. I can only assume they're using the same PR company as Westboro Baptist "Church".

This man helped save six children and is now getting harassed for it

Famous blogger Mark Driscoll disses other, less famous bloggers

For God so loved the world he did not send a blogger to pontificate about what others were doing. He sent his Son to get stuff done!
— Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) January 9, 2013

So Mark Driscoll (who blogs here) thinks that bloggers don't get stuff done? That they just pontificate? Well then Mark, what exactly do you think you're doing when you're yammering on from the pulpit every Sunday? Or when you write a book?

Perhaps he has a specific problem with bloggers blogging about what others (in other words, Mark Driscoll) are doing. Mark, this is called 'criticism'. I would think you would be used to it by now.

Is This Modest? I don't know, but it sure is creepy

Note: this site has been taken down. This link is from the wayback machine. The snapshot of the site was taken on 10/21/12.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120715224523/http://isthismodest.com/

This site (which was run by a thirty six year old man) was a blog about modesty. Ok, that's a little weird, but hey, it's just a blog, right?

But the blog also featured a quick review section, who published publicly available pictures of women and men (without their consent), in which the author commented in detail on whether they were 'modest' or not.

These photos included senior photos of teenage girls.

*shivers*

When bloggers Rachel Held Evans and Dianna Anderson got wind of this site, they tweeted the author with some questions as to the legality of posting these pictures without the women's consent. The author assured them there were no issues, but the site (along with it's Twitter feed and Facebook page) disappeared soon after.

See Mark? That's an example of bloggers getting things done.

Yes, but do you take Blue Cross?

They also wrote this book.

This group offers support to grieving families. Cool!

In addition, they will also pray over your deceased love one and offer "prayers of resurrection".

They claim to have nine actual resurrections under their belt. They also offer training in how to raise the dead.

Ok, so if this is a scam...these people need to die in a fire. End of story.

If they really believe this...well, if you're going to take part of the Bible literally (in this case Matthew 10:8), there are worse verses to pick.

I mean, I'm not saying I believe them, but hey, if you're gonna dream, dream big, right?

John Piper and the No True Complementarian Fallacy

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:28:00 +0000

It's hard out there for a complementarian. No one understands them. Whenever an argument erupts between complementarians and egalitarians in a comment section, complementarians are quick to say "What you're describing isn't true complementarianism!"

Well, then, what IS true complementarianism?

Complementarianism is the belief, held by many conservative Christians, that men and women are created by God to be fundamentally equal but different, and that their differences complement each other.

Oh! Well that sounds relatively harmless, I guess. I don't believe that myself, but to each their own, different strokes for different folks, etc. etc.

Furthermore, they believe that these differences preclude women from holding positions of leadership in the church or in their home. One of the differences between men and women, you see, is that women don't make good leaders. So men should lead the church (as pastors and deacons) and lead in the home (as husbands and fathers), and women should submit themselves to this leadership.

Oh. So they believe in a hierarchical relationship between men and women, with men as leaders? Isn't that oppressive?

At this point, John Piper, King of the Complementarians, would probably give an avuncular chuckle and shake his head. Because, you see, the men are actually supposed to be servant leaders. So there's no problem.

Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

Certainly not! says Piper, probably while waving his hands dramatically. You see, Jesus was a servant leader too! If the man leads like Christ, there's no problem!

I see. Well here's the thing: conservative Christians like Piper generally agree that Christ was perfect. So in saying this, they are essentially saying that in order for complementarianism to function properly, it requires a perfect husband.

Or, to put it another way, the more Christlike a husband is, the better a complementarian relationship will function.

This gives them a great deal of leverage when arguing with egalitarians. Any concerns that egalitarians raise about abuse of leadership by men can easily be dismissed. That's not true complementarianism!

A true complementarian would never abuse their wife, either physically or verbally, because Jesus never did that. A true complementarian would never abuse their authority in any way, because Jesus never did that. A true complementarian would never oppress a woman in any capacity, because Jesus never did that.

Right. Just like a pastor would never abuse their authority, right? Why I bet if I go ahead and google "pastor abuse authority" I wouldn't even get a single---

Oh. Well, obviously, those aren't REAL pastors!

This line of "reasoning" is called the No True Scotsman fallacy. You make a statement, such as "All Scotsmen put honey on their porridge." The unfortunate consequence of this is that in order to disprove your statement, all I have to do is find one Scotsman that doesn't put honey on his porridge. When I find him and triumphantly show him to you, you simply shake your head and say "That's not a true Scotsman."

That's the problem with the complementarian philosophy (and with the conservative Christian philosophy in general). It's not enough to have a belief about how men and women relate. That belief has to be true for everyone. Everyone alive today, everyone who has lived, and everyone yet to be born.

The problem arises because humans are a diverse bunch. They can't all be fit into the same mold. So questions arise. Like what to do if a complementarian husband abuses his wife.

Piper's original line of reasoning is that the wife should involve the church authorities if this happens. Recently (four years after the statement in the previous link) he clarifies his position to say that women can involve the police if the church authorities can't resolve the situation.

At no point is the complementarian position violated. The abused woman is always under an authority - her husband, her pastor, or the civil authorities. In Piper's world, two out of the three are guaranteed to be male, and there's a good chance the third will probably be a man as well.

Well, what if the police can't resolve it either? Can the woman get a divorce?

I mean, I know it's next to impossible that the situation wouldn't be resolved by this point - we've involved not one, not two, but three men and their massive male brains! But, hey, humor me.

Hmmm...nothing about that in his "clarification". I don't believe he mentions it in the original video either. I'm sure it's just an oversight. I'll just pop over to desiringgod.org and take a look...

Nope. I couldn't find anything in which Piper said that an abused spouse could get a divorce. (If someone can find me a link to such a document, I will gladly post it.)

This is the problem with making blanket statements such as "women must always submit to an authority" - what happens when all the authorities fail?

God, of course, is the final authority in Piper's mind. And God never fails, right?.

But no worries! John Piper believes that every bad thing that happens is God's will. For instance, when the Newtown massacre occurred, he said it was a warning from God.

So if you're a victim of abuse, take heart! In John Piper's mind, you're just doing God's work.

Note: I know abuse happens in all kinds of relationships and that it's not just husbands abusing wives. But Piper always talks about this kind of relationship, so that's why I framed my discussion in the same way.

Wackjob Wednesday 1/9/13

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:34:00 +0000

It's time for another edition of Wackjob Wednesday! Once again, there's a lot of crazy floating around, and I'm feeling the need to make snarky comments about it. Because if I don't, my head might just explode.

Let's get started, shall we?

Add some style to your adult baptism

This link comes to us from @iantgreer. Want to add some style to your adult baptism? Look no further!

"Truly, I am not fit to loosen the straps of her $800 Prada sandles."

Free will makes Mark Driscoll sad

Shockingly, this is the first time Mark Driscoll has been featured on Wackjob Wednesday:

God did not give us a mind so that we could use it to deny or question his existence.
— Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) January 3, 2013

Then... why did he make our minds capable of denying or questioning his existence? Oh, and way to shame people who are having doubts about God's existence! That's super helpful.

John Piper makes a creepy comment about cleavage

"Deep calls to deep" is true of her necklines and his knowing. The problem is, Jesus is not a fertility god.
— John Piper (@JohnPiper) January 9, 2013

I'm...not even sure what to make of this one. I'm just going to back away slowly.

Profile in wackjobbery: Mark Minnick

This was submitted by Dani Kelley. Note that in this case, the story I'm linking to is not the actual wackjobbery, it's a description of Mark Minnick (in other words, I'm too lazy to do my own profile).

BJU's man at Mount Calvary, Mark Minnick

A choice quote from Mr. Minnick regarding child abuse:

"In this day and age we do have to be careful about...you know, bruising, or causing huge welts when our children have to be in nurseries and go to the doctor and things like that...and you know there are ways you can work around those things, but at the same time don't compromise biblical principles."

John Piper "clarifies" his stand on domestic abuse

Previously on Wackjob Wednesday I posted a video in which John Piper talks about how domestic abuse should be handled. Recently he posted some "clarifications" in which he makes allowances for involving the civil authorities (how magnanimous of him).

Of course, divorcing the abusive spouse is never mentioned.

Strange that the original video is four years old? Why the sudden need for clarification? I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the recent lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries alleging they covered up child abuse. Nope, John Piper would NEVER engage in such Cover Your Ass tactics...I'm sure he would agreed that if his church were sued, the lawsuit must have been preordained by God, and he should just roll with it.

Here are his clarifications

Here's an excellent analysis of them by Dianna Anderson

How I Found Peace at the Bottom of a Bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:19:00 +0000

I stood there, holding the toothbrush in my hand and holding within me the sea of anxiety that had always been a part of me. Once again, the question haunted me:

Is it God’s will that I do this?

What was the question that was haunting me? Which church to join? Who to marry? Should I have the Come To Jesus talk with my non-Christian friends?

Nope. The question was Should I brush my teeth?

I mean, I’m all for good dental hygiene. I knew I had to brush my teeth at some point. But was this the time God had ordained time for it today?

On some level, I knew all the reasons why this was a ridiculous question. On another level: Yeah, but is this the time God has ordained for me to brush my teeth?

I mean, he has a detailed plan for my life. What if he wants me to be doing something else right now?

Such was my life as an Evangelical Christian with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder

God had a plan for my life, I was told, and I had better follow it, or else there would be consequences. But no worries! I could tell when I was following God’s will because I would feel a sense of peace about my decision!

Yeah, that’s what a person with near constant severe anxiety needs to hear.

I was anxious before I became a Christian, and I’m still anxious now that I’m...whatever it is that I am. Christianity was not the root cause of my anxiety. But it did make it worse. The ever present specter of violating God’s will followed me everywhere. It was what the military refers to as a force multiplier.

I did get to a point where I could brush my teeth anxiety free. But with big decisions, the specter remained. Should I buy this house? Should I take this job? Should we join this church?

I know, I know...I needed to pray more, right? And pray I did, dear readers. Praying was a relief, because it shifted the anxiety from the actual question to the new questions of Am I praying enough? Am I praying the right way? Is that brief feeling of peace from God or from me?

Ah, but what about the Bible? Surely I would find peace within it’s pages? Well, let’s see what the Bible has to say about anxiety:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” -- Philippians 4:6-7

Hmm, I tried that, and it didn’t work. What else have you got?

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?’” -- Luke 12:22-26, NIV

Thanks Jesus, great advice. Birds don’t sow or reap, because THEY DON’T HAVE HANDS. And last time I checked, squirrels store food for the winter. And are we really more valuable than birds when God allows quite a few of us to starve to death every day? And allows quite a few birds to become roadkill?

I will say that I found comfort in this verse:

…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” -- Romans 8:26-28

I liked the idea of the Holy Spirit praying for me without me even knowing about it. I also liked the idea of God taking every decision I made and somehow using it for good, like life was a cosmic game of Dungeons and Dragons with God as the Dungeon Master. The problem was, I didn’t see any evidence of this actually happening when I checked Google News.

The other problem was that the Bible’s biggest piece of advice when it comes to anxiety is: Hey, just stop doing it! This is like telling an alcoholic, “Hey, have you considered not drinking an entire bottle of vodka every day?”

Ok, but surely I could get comfort at church, right? Well, some of the music did the trick for a while. But most sermons in conservative circles are designed to do the exact opposite of creating peace. Conservative pastors scorn feel good sermons that just make people feel good about themselves. Their sermons portray a war between the forces of Satan, The Evil World, Our Sinful Flesh, and the forces of God, with us as God’s cannon fodder. So on top of everything else, I have to worry about demons too? Wow, I feel better already!

I found some peace when I went to counselling. But true peace came when I started taking Prozac. The funny thing was, the longer I was on Prozac, the less I needed God. I realized that the reason I hadn’t been able to find peace wasn’t due to lack of prayer or faith - my brain just needed more serotonin. I had always rolled my eyes at Christians who refused medical treatment and relied on prayer, but I had been doing the exact same thing.

It’s a strange thing to realize that your brain is a meat based computer, and the terrifying thougts that seemed so real were, in actuality, caused by a chemical imbalance. Balance things out, and the thoughts go away as if by magic.

This was what Christianity promised but never delivered. And don’t tell me that Prozac comes from God, because it didn’t go on the market in the U.S until 1987, so if it’s from God, God sure took his sweet fucking time getting it to us, so I’m not impressed.

I’ve heard Christians who are dealing with severe illness say they just can’t understand how people get through these things without Jesus. Jesus gives them so much peace!

Yet people do it every day, don’t they? It’s not as if every non-Christian falls to pieces at the first sign of hardship in their lives.

I don’t know how people go through trials believing that there is an omnipotent being who could take it all away, but chooses not to. My peace comes from a bottle of pills, and I’m fine with that.

Guest Post: Naming the Nameless

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:37:00 +0000

By Melanie Cobb

I sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, trying to follow along with the Hindi chants in the laminated booklet in my hands. Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, sat fiercely and orange-ly in front of me. He was decked out with marigolds and gold bling, and sitting upon an altar of candles and incense. Soon, the priest would sprinkle water on all of us that Hanuman had supposedly blessed . Then we would each ring a bell and eat a bit of prashad – ceremonial food – and the Ayarti service would come to an end.

The altar at the Mount Madonna Center Hanuman Temple, Watsonville, CA

As a point of reference, here is my spiritual memoir in three sentences:

1. I was raised in a conservative, evangelical Christian home.

2. In college, I left the church and my entire upbringing and entered a ten-year period of bitterness and searching.

3. Now, at age 30, I have taken what served me most from both stages and am re-discovering the world of spirit in my life.

As part of my spiritual journey, I have visited the services of many religions – most recently, Hinduism. At first blush, most Christians of the flavor that I grew up with would likely turn their noses at the “pagan” god before me. There was a time when I would have done the same.

Now, after humbly learning that I don’t actually know anything, I was more open to seeing the similarities between the many faiths rather than the differences. Didn’t other religions also have holy water? Candles? Incense? Singing? Ceremonial food?

I was taught growing up that god created humans in his image, but after learning so much about other belief systems – both current and ancient - it seems rather clear to me that we also create god in our image.

What if we and god are constantly co-creating each other, like the M.C. Escher hands that draw each other forever, frozen in an infinite act of co-creation?


"Drawing Hands," M.C. Escher

I personally believe that there is a beneficent force in the universe that had a part in creating the stars that exploded and became everything we see, including us. I also believe that this force continues to have a huge part in how things flow and turn out down here on this watery planet.

So, sentient life created in god’s image – check. I got that one. I’ve had a lifetime to get comfortable with that idea. But the notion of us creating god in our image as well – that’s still just a seedling of a thought in my brain.

For example, of course the ancient Egyptians had gods that were alligators, hippos, and falcons, because they looked around and that’s what they saw. That was their only experience of life, and they knew that there was something behind all of this, so they called it Horus and put a falcon head on it.

And the Hindus called it Hanuman and put a monkey head on it.

And the Christians saw the same, unnamable thing in the simple man who traveled around preaching love and equality. As did the Buddhists in the fat man who sat under a tree until he reached enlightenment.

So they all called it by different names and painted it with different bodies. So what? That doesn’t mean they weren’t all talking about the same thing. The first line of the Tao de Ching says, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” What if this thing has no name, and so we have no choice but to get as close as we can by making one up for it, and then making it look like something with which we are already quite comfortable?

Athiests have used a similar argument to then declare, “Well that means god doesn’t exist then because, see, we just made him up.” On the contrary, I am starting to believe that means that god does exist because we made him/her up, because – holla – we have the power to do that, because god gave it to us.

Mindfuck paradox, I know. Take your time.

So if god can create, and we can create, that sort of means that – hold on to your seats – we are god. Right? I mean even deeper than the “holy spirit” living in our hearts like the Christians say, or each of us having “that of god” in us like the Quakers say. I don’t mean god is a part of us, I mean, what if god is us?

What if the god of the bible is just one of billions of gods, just like you and me? And when he said "Let there be light" it was a mighty act of creation, just like the ones we perform each day when we speak things into being.

Let there be a child in my womb.

Let there be a new job in my life.

Let us have spaghetti for dinner.

We manifest things every day, all the time. Anything that is not naturally occurring around us (like trees and squirrels and such) came into being because some human, at some point, had the idea that it should be there and then made it so.

We have the power to create and destroy, just like the being we refer to as god. What are we doing with that power? What are we creating with our words - more community and love between the many faces of the divine - from monkeys and falcons to fat men meditating under trees to skinny men hanging bloody on a cross? Or divisiveness that keeps us focused on our differences?

That contentious energy sidetracks us from what truly matters, sort of like how the Pepsi vs. Coke debate makes both companies richer. As long as we're distracted by the conflict, we are not engaging in the miraculous acts of creation of which we are all capable.

Because I don’t think I can ever really know the answers to my questions about religions and gods, I have decided to focus instead on using my own goddess power to do as much good in this world as I can while I’m here.

I will start by forgiving myself for not having it all figured out, and loving myself exactly as I am. Just like god would do.

Bio:

Melanie is a writer, an adventurer, a barista, and a professional wild woman. She divides her time between Santa Cruz, California and life on the road. You can find more of her musings on spirituality, shoestring travel, wildness, and the overall humor in life on her blog: Journey to Wildness

The Blind Leading the Blind

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:01:00 +0000

What would you do if, out of the blue, someone offered to clean your bathroom? A friend of ours was faced with this unusual dilemma last week.

She was outside when she noticed a large van parked across the street. She thought she recognized it as the church van from our former church. Sure enough it was, and the youth pastor popped out to say hello.

It turns out that he was driving around with a bunch of junior high kids from the youth group offering to clean people’s bathrooms. He asked our friend if she needed her bathroom cleaned. She politely declined, and the van departed.

Now, it’s great that he was trying to help people. I’m not sure if people at the church were signing up to have their bathrooms cleaned, or if all the requests were unsolicited, but in either case I can think of some problems with his plan:

A bathroom is a very personal space. Many people (our friend included) wouldn’t feel comfortable having strangers clean it for them.
A bathroom can contain any and all bodily fluids. For that reason it’s probably best not to have untrained junior high kids doing this sort of work.
A bathroom can contain prescription narcotics. Kids stealing prescription narcotics is a growing problem (I’m not implying this is an issue at our former church, but surely it’s something to consider?)
Who among us has ever thought, “I’m at the end of my rope, and my life is completely out of control. But if someone would just offer to clean my bathroom, everything would be O.K!”

Add to that the fact that this is an oddly specific request. “Hi, can we serve you in a specific narrowly defined way of our own choosing? No? O.K then, toodles.”

Now, let me be fair:

I know for a fact that our former church (including the youth pastor) serves the community in many other, less puzzling ways.
I’m sure the desire to do this came from a good place.
I’m sure that no actual harm was done in offering to clean people’s bathrooms. I’m sure some people were delighted to have their bathroom cleaned.
Maybe there’s an epidemic of dirty bathrooms in our area that I’m unaware of **

** Probably not.

I don’t know the precise thought process that went into this, but since I used to run in Evangelical circles, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that someone was probably reading about Jesus washing the disciples feet (a very intimate, personal task) and thought, “How can we serve our community in an equivalent way?”.

Here's the thing: if you’re going to drive around to people’s houses and offer to serve them, why not say, “Hey, we’re from ---- Church, is there anyway a group of our unskilled fourteen year olds can serve you today?”

Yardwork, washing dishes, fence painting...any number of tasks come to mind.

In other news, our former church had a meeting in which the pastors apologized for the way they’ve been handling things over the past couple of years. I did not attend (the head pastor is aware of my blog, so...yeah), but I heard it went pretty well. During the meeting, the topic of the churches purchase of land for a new building came up.

At the time, the congregation had been assured that the leadership had been praying and seeking God’s will about this purchase, and that God had definitely given the green light. Then, after the purchase, we found out that we couldn’t actually build on the land.

Red light.

At the meeting, the head pastor confessed that, in retrospect, he thinks they might have just been barreling ahead with the purchase rather than seeking God’s will. I say this with the utmost sincerity: I applaud him for his honesty. That was a very hard thing to admit.

I said all that to say this: there is a pervasive way of thinking in many religious circles that God is in control, and that humble meat popsicles such as ourselves don’t need to worry our pretty little heads about the details.

Of course God doesn’t talk to Christians directly. The most people will admit to is a vague warm fuzzy feeling of peace in regards to a decision that needs to be made. Or, perhaps an unexpected event will be credited to God, especially if it occurs in the form of an obstacle being removed.

In reality, how can anyone “give” a problem to God? If, while at my day job, I give a problem to my boss that’s too big for me to handle, I get verbal assurance that it will be taken care of, or am given concrete help in doing it myself. The Christian equivalent of this is praying about a problem.

But if a pastor with years of experience can pray about a land purchase (I don’t doubt they were telling the truth about the amount of prayer that went into this decision), only to find out later that they were “just barreling ahead”, what, may I ask, is the point of all this praying? If you believe that God created you, surely he gave you a meat based computer between your ears for a reason? Why not take the time spent praying and instead use it to figure out what the best way forward is? Heck, why not network a few of them together and crunch the numbers for a while?

But no no...that would be relying on our wisdom. God doesn’t help those who help themselves! Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding! The problem is that “our own understanding” is all that we have. No one can agree on what God says or what the Bible says. No matter how confident you are, you’re making it up as you go along.

If you’re just going to pray and wait for a case of the warm fuzzies, or look at each event and try to determine if it’s a sign from God, you might as well examine bird entrails. Or consult a tarot deck, read tea leaves, or flip a coin.

Some Christians go even further. Birth control? No thanks, God won’t give me more kids than I can handle. Anti-depressants? Nope, I’ll give my depression/anxiety/whatever to God. Cancer? Pray about it! Insurance? That’s gambling, friend.

Some of them will even, in the same breath, bemoan the lack of personal responsibility in our society! Or, when I tell them I don’t feel the same way about God that I used to, they will quickly point out that “Faith isn’t a feeling!” In that case, the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you think about an important life decision isn’t faith either.

They’re right, though - faith isn’t a feeling. It’s more of a thought. It can be reinforced by feelings, but faith itself is not a feeling. Specifically, it’s a belief in something that can’t be proven. A person of faith cannot prove that God is giving them the proverbial green light to go ahead with a decision.

Therefore, if someone says, “This is God’s will”, what they are actually saying is “I have faith that this is God’s will.” Which is equivalent to saying “I don’t know for sure if this is God’s will.”

Which you could have told me without praying at all.

Enough rambling - what do you think?

Chapter 14 - In which I accidentally become an Episcopalian.

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in a parallel universe. I wonder if there’s another universe where I still go to the same church and believe the same things, because the universe I’m currently inhabiting feels like it’s story was scribbled on the back of a napkin by a writer hopped up on caffeine and sleep deprivation.

It’s the end of the world as I knew it, readers. And I feel fine. My wife, unfortunately, does not feel fine. Which means that I don’t feel fine either. Not really. My wife has always complained that I don’t want to do anything outdoorsy, but when I invite her on a thousand mile trek through the spiritual wilderness, she balked.

She’s been very patient with me during my spiritual downsizing, but my agnostic tendencies frustrate her. I would be quite content to remain in the spiritual wilderness, throwing up my hands and saying “Who knows?” in regards to the whole God/Jesus thing. But the life of a spiritual hillbilly doesn’t appeal to her.

Instead, she suggested, why not try something different? I pointed out that writing a snarky anonymous blog counted as something different, but the resulting glare indicated she wasn’t buying it. She suggested we try attending a Catholic church. She loves the liturgy and the fact that they took Communion every week, and ever since leaving our former church, she has been thinking about becoming a Catholic.

I was doubtful that my staunchly feminist wife would really be happy as a Catholic. I suggested we try an Episcopal church, which I had heard was similar. She was skeptical, but then one of her friends agreed that it was a good idea, so of course that clinched it (married people will know what I’m talking about). We attended a smallish Episcopal church down the street from our former church. She was immediately sold: it had female deacons, liturgy, Communion every week and a plethora of Obama bumper stickers in the parking lot.

Well, it turns out that the membership policy at this church is a bit more lax than our last one. After a month of attendance and a casual meeting with the priest, I got a phone call from him saying that they would be introducing new members at coffee hour next week, which to my surprise included us.

What’s a heretic to do? When we met with the priest, I mentioned that I considered myself more of an agnostic than anything else, but I guess that’s not a deal breaker. So I’m left with two choices: attend and make my wife happy, or not attend and make her sad.

So I’m compromising the best that I can: I attend but don’t really participate. I sit, stand, and kneel at the appropriate times, but that’s pretty much it.

I feel like a fraud.

My wife tells me that having a relationship with God is like being married: you don’t always feel warm fuzzy feelings about the other party, but that doesn’t mean that you just check out. Sometimes you perform the action even if the feelings are present; in a marriage, this means you say “I love you” even if you don’t have butterflies in your stomach at that exact moment. In spiritual matters, she told me, you go to church even if you don’t feel like you love God at that moment.

It’s a good analogy. But the problem is, I’ve gone beyond the point of not having warm fuzzy feelings for God. I’ve progressed/regressed to the point that I doubt God’s existence, and if it does exist, I don’t believe that he loves us in the same way that I love my wife.

If God exists, I think it loves us in the same way I love my cat. I love my cat, but if it needed a $10,000 operation to save it’s life...well, tough luck, cat. Also, I had it’s testicles removed so it wouldn’t pee all over everything. Come to think of it, my cat probably thinks I’m an asshole.

To make matters worse, there’s the issue of our children. My wife wants to have them baptized. I don’t, but I figured it wasn’t a big deal. Then another couple had their child baptized and I heard what the parents are expected to say during the baptism. Needless to say, they were not written with agnostics in mind.

I feel terrible about the whole situation. My doubts and cynicism are hurting her, but I can’t just shut them off (even if I could, she wouldn’t want me to). The only thing to do is press on through the wilderness, and hope I come out the other side. That’s a journey my wife can’t take with me.

So I will come in from the wilderness every Sunday, shave, shower, put on clean clothes, and join my family at church.

Not for me. Not for God. For them.

Wackjob Wednesday 11/21/12: Featuring Sean Connery.

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:38:00 +0000

Douglas Wilson on why the presidential election is God's judgement on America

Seven Post Mortem Principles

If Obama is God's judgement...I have to say God's judgement is pretty freaking sweet. What would his mercy be? A million dollars and a pony for everyone?

Some choice quotes:

Every unprincipled vote, offerred to the bitch goddess of the state on the left, or the bitch goddess of pragmatism on the soft right, or the bitch goddess of ideology on the libertarian right, was simply thrown away. Professing Christians who voted for Obama were either confusedly or rebelliously heaping up judgment for all of us. Christians on the right who voted for Romney for no other reason than that he was "electable" found out that he was not as electable as all that. And Christians who voted for absolute ideological purity (which is, remember, a form of impurity) found out that that kind of purity wasn't in the running.

......

Over the next four years our energies should be focused on getting all Christian kids out of the government schools. If your kids are educated by people who are soft in the head, why would you expect them to grow up and not vote for people who are soft in the head? Students become like their teachers (Luke 6:40). Don't lament the fact that Obama won if over 90% of your children's teachers voted for him.

Chuck Norris' dire prediction of what will happen if Obama wins

I can't wait to revisit that one in 10 years or so. Here's a little known Chuck Norris fact: he's a loon.

A woman writing about why she's going to fight feminism with everything she's got

The poison of vipers is on their lips

If you wonder where my passion to fight feminism with everything I've got comes from, here's your chance to read some of my inspiration:

Her justification? A hand picked set of out of context thirty year old quotes from radical feminists. I could come up with a similar list of Christian quotes in about fifteen minutes without even using Westboro Baptist "Church".

Sean Connery explaining why it's OK to hit women

See? I don't just pick on religous wackjobs!

John Piper on domestic abuse

What would Wackjob Wednesday be without John Piper? And what the fuck does "for a season" mean? And does it make me a bad person if I admit that I would be just a little happy if Piper died in a fire?

Guest Post - Exposing the Independent Fundamental Baptist Denomination

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:49:00 +0000

Today's guest post comes to us from Sheldon Cooper, a 23 year old former fundamentalist, and an agnostic blogger from the St. Louis area. When he is not blogging, he is working full time in the warehouse industry, read more about him, and his views on life and religion at his blog, Ramblings of Sheldon.

As a child, I was part of a group known as the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) denomination. I attended one of their affiliated schools until the 5th grade, and then was homeschooled from then on with their curriculum.

Though my school background was in this group, the churches I attended were of different denominations, so for many years I had largely forgotten about this group and their teachings, and what I did know about them was only a fraction of what I know now, even though my sister was part of the organization until about 3 years ago.

I went on with my life, in the years following my firsthand experience with the IFB, and had a wild ride along the way that eventually led me from being a far-right Christian to an agnostic blogger.

When I became a blogger at the encouragement one of of my favorite bloggers, I didn't necessarily know what I would write about, or if anyone would read my blog, Ramblings of Sheldon. One day, in September, I found out that my sister's former pastor, Jack Schaap, pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, had been arrested, and then plead guilty to federal charges of sexual abuse. This renewed my interest in the group.

I started researching the IFB denomination, and I found far more than what I expected. It was like an onion: the more you peel it, the worse it stinks. I knew I couldn't remain silent about what I had discovered about this group, and about my sister's personal experiences with them.

Once I started writing about the IFB in my blog's Exposing the IFB series, my readers responded with quite a bit of shock and anger. None of my readers had ever heard of this group before, and my Exposing the IFB series posts became the most popular in my blog, by reader count.

Here is why you should know more about the IFB:

Rampant pedophilia among their clergy and retaliation against victims and those oppose it

As I mentioned earlier, my sister's own former pastor Jack Schaap plead guilty to sexual abuse. He molested a 16 year old follower who had come to him and the church for counseling for previous sexual abuse.

What is more shocking than his actions are those of a New Hampshire IFB pastor named Chuck Phelps. When a teen girl in his congregation was raped by a deacon, Chuck Phelps not only forced her to apologize to her congregation for being raped, but made arrangements along with her parents to send her off to live with a family in Colorado so that she could quietly have the baby that resulted from the rape.

Was he rejected by the IFB for his deplorable actions? No, he was promoted to the board of Bob Jones University, a well respected college in the IFB world. Many students were furious when it came out what Chuck Phelps had done as a pastor, and organized a student protest called Do Right BJU, but their student leader was expelled only days before his graduation, with some rather questionable excuses given by the administration as to why.

Isolation from the outside world, and their belief that they are the one true branch of Christianity:

Any church that is not part of their IFB network is not a "Bible believing" church, as I was personally told by one of their ministers when I went to visit my sister as a teen. Even fellow fundamentalist churches don't make the cut. Not only are other churches deemed too corrupt, but the entire outside world and it's culture as well.

As I talk about my sister's personal experiences with the IFB in part 2 of my post on First Baptist Hammond, extreme measures are taken to protect teens and young adults (in the IFB, someone is not truly considered an adult until they are married) from what they believe is the evil outside world. In the case of my sister, at First Baptist Hammond's Hyles-Anderson College, dorm rooms were regularly searched, and staff members would listen to all recorded media, and any music that was considered "worldly", (translation: anything from the modern culture), would be confiscated and the student would result in disciplinary action. This happened to adult college students, mind you, not teens living at home.

College students also could not go on dates by themselves, only in groups, and only with staff members accompanying them. Also, when the college would find work for the students, they were often given their own division in a company, with a follower of the church as a manager. The level of control they influenced upon students by isolation was astounding.

Hatred towards women, and treatment of them as second class citizens

In this video by Jack Schaap, you learn all you need to know about the IFB's sexist views, and how they often try to justify them, even stooping as low as he did in blaming the world's problems on Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Married women are not allowed to work outside the home, unless it is in ministry or a family business. Birth control is not permitted, and it is not unusual for them to have up to 6 children per family.Though they don't use the term Quiverfull, they are identical to that movement in regards to their views on family, and regard many children as a sign of divine blessing.

Hephzibah House

Read the full article [trigger warning for abuse survivors -HH] that I wrote on Hephizbah House - this is the most shocking, most horrific of all their secrets, the one they most definitely do not want you to know about (even though when challenged, they will deny it all). Hephizbah House is a home for teen girls in Indiana that IFB families have been known to send their daughters to if they judge them to be too disobedient to them. The pastor who runs the house, Ron Williams, has been responsible for acts of physical and psychological abuse for decades according for former residents who are now bravely publishing their stories on various blogs. Everything from forced labor under deplorable conditions, to girls being forced to wear diapers/being refused permission to go to the bathroom as a form of punishment, and brutal beatings that had physical effects decades later.

The Independent Fundamental Baptists are in my opinion, one of the most dangerous religious groups in the US, and a very powerful one with churches all across the country, and according to a Pew Research study, they make up about 2.5 % of the US population!. (Look at the statistic for Independent Baptists)

The time is now to expose this dangerous group.
Read my archive of posts and resources for more information on the IFB.

I used to be jealous of suicide bombers

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:34:00 +0000

I’ll tell you a secret: I used to be a little jealous of suicide bombers.

Not because I thought they were right, or because I wanted to blow myself up, but because I wanted the same amount of faith that they had.

When people think they have The Truth, nothing they do really surprises me. Take the Puritans. People are frequently amazed that the Puritans fled persecution in England only to persecute others when they reached America. They point to this as an example of hypocrisy. In reality, the Puritans behavior doesn’t surprise me either. I bet the Puritans believed in persecution as much as their oppressors did. They simply disagreed on who should be persecuted. They had The Truth. They had no interest in letting others practice what they considered heresy.

I’m guilty of it too. For the past few weeks, I’ve been attending an Episcopal church with my family (I’ll probably write more about this in the future. It’s a nice group of people but I won’t be dropping ‘Heretic’ from my name any time soon). It’s down the street from the church we used to attend. According to our former pastor, the Episcopal does not make the short list of “Bible believing churches” in the area (there are four in our small corner of the state according to him).

Because, you know...the other churches aren’t the right kind of churches.

I used to believe this too. When I “got saved” all churches that did not trumpet the idea that salvation was by faith and faith alone were automatically suspect to me. The Catholic Church had led everyone astray, and only the heroics of Martin Luther had prevented total disaster.

Now, I like to think I’m not crazy. What made me think this way? I graduated from college with a black belt in open minded, liberal thinking. Evolution, homosexuality, Bill Clinton...these were all fine with me.

Well, if you had asked me, I would have vehemently denied being close minded. I had simply found THE TRUUUUUUUTH. After all, I would have pointed out, you don’t get upset when someone says that two plus two equals four, do you? You don’t get upset when someone says that the Earth goes around the sun, DO YOU? HUH? WELL DO YOU???

Behavior like this leads some to call the uber-religous ‘crazy’. I seriously doubt whether most of these people are crazy. They simply believe things that are anywhere from charmingly quirky to outright dangerous.

Some of them will turn on their friends and tell them they’re going to hell. Others will blow up abortion clinics. Or fly planes into skyscrapers, picket the funerals of soldiers, or deny others their rights. All in the name of truth.

Think about it: if you truly believed that a human fetus was no different than a fully grown person, why wouldn’t you try to blow up an abortion clinic (or at least protest outside of one)?

If you truly believed that your friend is going to be condemned to eternal conscious torment in hell for not believing in Jesus, why wouldn’t you confront them about this?

If you really believed the world was going to an end, why wouldn’t you spend your life savings trying to warn people about it?

In fact, if you believed these things and DIDN’T follow through on them, that would almost be crazy.

Or, some would say, it would indicate that maybe, just maybe, you don’t believe what you say you believe.

From time to time, I ask myself: did I really believe what I said I believed when I was an Evangelical Christian? I certainly didn’t act as if I did.

As an Evangelical Christian, you’re frequently told that you need to be Talking to People About Jesus. In eleven years of Evangelical Christianity, I can count on one hand the number of times that I did this. Those who know me might say because it’s because I’m an introvert and talking to strangers makes me anxious (this is true). Fair enough. Why didn’t I talk to the non-Christians I knew, then? Why didn’t I start a blog? Why didn’t I donate as much money as I could to evangelical organizations?

After all, I believed non-Christians were going to hell. I believed that the world could end at literally any second. But if you look at my life now, there’s precious little difference between it and the life I had when I was a Christian.

I’m sure there will be Christians who will read this and, with some satisfaction, say that I was never a real Christian. Let’s examine that a bit, shall we?

One of the main selling points of some Protestant flavors of Christianity is that it’s just so dang easy. No rules. No legalism. Just say you believe, and PRESTO CHANGO! Jesus waves his magic wand, and you’re a NEW CREATION! (Except when you do the same stupid crap you did before you were a Christian. If asked about this, most Christians will mumble something about “the process of sanctification” and quickly change the subject).

In fact, if you talk to a Christian who believes this sort of thing, and you try to give them credit for something they’ve done, there’s a decent chance they will say something like, “It wasn’t me. It was God.” (but if they do something bad, they’ll take all the blame).

This, of course, is not true. They are the ones who planned and executed whatever good deed you are attempting to praise them for. God didn’t do it by putting them on autopilot and operating them like a meat Hazmat suit.

So, I said I believed in Jesus. I wasn’t lying. If there wasn’t “real change”, what else was I supposed to do? I had done the only thing required to be a Christian. Supposedly all I had to do was sit back and wait for God to change me. “God most certainly DOES NOT help those who help themselves!” I was told. “He helps those who rely on HIM!”

So if I and all the other millions of people who say they’re Christians yet don’t really change much as a result aren’t really Christians, then who are the real Christians?

Is becoming a Christian as easy as Christians say it is?

"A Year of Biblical Womanhood": A pre-review

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:28:00 +0000

My wife and I are reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. We’re both big fans of her blog and her previous book, Evolving in Monkey Town, so when we she was writing this one it was a given that we would be getting a copy.

Since we have two young children, we’ll probably finish it in late 2015. This was disappointing to me, as I had hoped to write a review of it on my blog. And of course, people would judge me if I wrote a review now, when I’m only on page 37, right?

Well, normally they would. But not if other people are, by their own admission, writing about the book without having read a single page! Loooooooophooooollllle!

First things first: Rachel can write. I daresay this book would be interesting even if you weren’t very interested in what the Bible has to say about women. It’s intelligent but not dry, deep but still funny, and, above all, interesting.

Since I haven’t finished the book, I thought I would take a look at some of the criticisms being leveled against it.

1. Her “Year of Biblical Womanhood” project is a gimmick.

Well...yeah, I suppose it is. But my response is: who cares? There’s nothing wrong with a gimmick if it’s a good gimmick, and this is one of the good ones. I’ll be honest: if Rachel had written a book about women and the Bible without doing the Year of Biblical Womanhood project, I would have been less interested in it.

Authors have been using gimmicks to tell stories for a long time. Supersize Me had a gimmick: eat nothing but McDonalds for a month and stop exercising and see what happens. Black Like Me was a gimmick: in the 1960s, a white man turns his skin black to see how white people in the southern United States treat him.

There’s also The Year Of Living Like Jesus (by Ed Dobson) and The Year of Living Biblically by A.J Jacobs.

Which brings me to my next point:

2. This book is just a ripoff of A Year of Living Biblically.

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as ripping someone off if you give him a shoutout in the FAQ for your book. I’m also pretty sure she mentioned him in the beginning of the actual book too, but I couldn’t find the page (we have a primitive paper copy of the book, which is not optimized for searching).

Since most of the people criticizing Rachel’s book are probably big fans of the Bible, let’s use a quote from it, shall we? “There’s nothing new under the sun.” This was said by King Solomon, who would probably soil himself if he saw an Ipad, but it’s still a good quote.

Folks, there’s little to nothing that hasn’t been written about, filmed, or recorded. The best that most authors can hope for is to put a fresh spin on an old topic, or combine ideas in a way that hasn’t been tried yet. This is what Rachel has done: she has combined the idea of A Year of X, where X is something difficult that few people have tried, and combined it with the Bible, specifically what it has to say about women.

And for this, I commend her.

3. Rachel has a low view of Scripture.

As someone who has actually does have a low view of the Bible, I am in a unique position to disprove this. I can smell one my own from fifty paces, and let me tell you folks, Rachel is not a part of The Low View of Scripture Club. In this book (and on her blog, and in her other book), she pretty much can’t stop talking about how great the Bible is, actually.

I know this is a review of the book, not her blog (which, if you’re not reading it...shame on you.) but she actually wrote a post called I Love the Bible.

I know, I know...that’s just what someone who hates the Bible would do!

Wait, no it’s not. It is literally the exact opposite of someone who hates the Bible would do.

Unless she’s trying to fool us to sell books. But if she hated the Bible and wanted to sell books, wouldn’t she write about how much she hates the Bible? Wouldn’t that be a smarter play? The old adage “Write what you know” comes to mind.

Here’s what I think is the truth: Rachel does not have a low view of the Bible. But I’m pretty sure she does have a low view of the complementarian interpretation of the Bible. The thing is, in the mind of many complementarians and other strains of conservative Christians, there’s no difference between their interpretation of the Bible and the Bible itself. For them to admit that they’re interpreting the Bible at all would be tantamount to blasphemy.

So in their mind, when someone has a low view of their interpretation, there is literally no difference between that and “having a low view of Scripture”.

Which leads smoothly into...

4. She’s not reading the Bible correctly!

In the book, Rachel tries to follow the old Testament laws about women as well as the verses in the New Testament that have been turned into laws by many conservative Christians. This has been the cause for much criticism.

For the uninitiated, here’s a handy dandy (and shockingly incomplete) introduction to how the Old Testament relates to the New Testament:

1. The Old Testament said the Israelites should do a bunch of weird stuff (one of the laws Rachel followed was that women had to leave the camp when they were menstruating. She follows this by camping in her yard).

2. Then Jesus came.

3. Jesus coming means that Christians don’t have to follow those laws any more.
Except...for the ones many of them still follow. Like tithing and keeping the Sabbath, which aren’t mentioned in the NT. Also, most people still agree the 10 Commandments are OK. And though there are a couple of throwaway references to homosexuality in the NT, most people who hold that it’s a sin go scurrying to the OT for backup.

Critics are ignoring an important fact: even if it’s true that Christian women don’t need to follow the OT laws any more, at one point Israelite women did actually follow them! If you’re going to live like a “Biblical woman” for a year, you need to acknowledge that there are actually two kinds of Biblical women: the OT Biblical woman, and the NT Biblical woman.

Now, it’s true that some of the things she does are not actually in the Bible. For instance,
it says that women should have “a gentle and quiet spirit”. It also says that it’s better for a man to live on the roof of his house than to live with a contentious woman.

So Rachel starts putting change into a jar for every infraction of the “gentle and quiet spirit” rule. Then at the end of the month, she spends one minute on the roof of her house for every cent in the jar.

Obviously, the Bible says nothing about women having to go on the roof if they’re contentious. A more accurate experiment might have been for her husband to go on the roof at the end of the month and compare it to living with Rachel (I’m sure he would prefer living with Rachel).

Again: who cares? Rachel doesn’t say in the book that this strategy is laid out in the Bible. It’s just a plan she follows to in order to have a more gentle and quiet spirit. It also makes the story more interesting by enforcing a real, concrete consequence for her actions. Perhaps if she had written a boring book she would be getting less criticism?

I’m looking forward to finishing this book, and I highly recommend the first 37 pages of it (based on that, I’m also recommending the rest of it). That alone should really be enough to make you buy it, but if not, it’s also received negative reviews from several conservative Christians (including one on John Piper’s website!), and Lifeway books refused to carry it! Oh, yeah, and a bunch of people liked it too.

Why don't you go buy it?

Buy her other book while you're at it.

If you haven't read her blog, you can redeem yourself by clicking here.

Wackjob Wednesday 10/10/2012

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

This was on jesusneedsnewpr.net. Wow, Pat sure seems to get a lot of information out of a very short letter. He must be a prophet. Or insane. I love how the woman in the video is trying to steer Pat away from Crazytown.

Ok, this isn't really wackjobbery so much as it is asshattery. Stay classy Doug. I'm still voting for Obama even if you threaten to strip naked.

Umm...pretty sure the Puritans owned slaves, while the Smoot-Hawley bill was passed in 1929, quite a while after Mr. Henry died. So...no, it's not like that at all. In fact, it's kind of the opposite of that.

This one was found by Stuff Fundies Like. If people can hear the Gospel hundreds of times and not believe it, what does that say about your Gospel?

People are always telling me that God allows bad things to happen because "he doesn't want us to be robots". Not John Piper. God loves robots! (If you think I'm being a jerk to Piper, it's not my fault - I'm not an autonomous being).

Confessions of a heretic father

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 17:18:00 +0000

When I was about five years old, I was terrified of dying. Twenty eight years later, I still have clear memories of the fear that gripped me. I remember looking at a Lego model I had built, and thinking I wish I were like this thing. It doesn’t have to worry about dying.

I was so terrified of dying I wished I was an inanimate object.

I don’t know how I got to that point. My parents are good Catholics; by that point they had probably already started talking about God and Heaven. And yet, somehow, I had a concept of death but no concept of Heaven. Being a pretty quiet kid, I didn’t go to my parents with my concerns (at least as far as I can remember).

Is it any wonder I wound up taking Prozac to control my anxiety?

My oldest daughter is now four years old and has started asking questions about death. What’s a heretic to do?

I told her to relax: when people die, they go to heaven and live with God.

Atheist readers: please stop glaring at me.

Theist readers: please stop smirking.

Do to my ongoing spiritual crisis downsizing journey, my wife and I have been avoiding the question of what to tell our children about faith and God. I swore I wouldn’t let my children become indoctrinated with the beliefs I was indoctrinated with as a child (and again as an adult).

But I’m not talking about a belief in a God or an afterlife. I’m talking about specific beliefs like a snake tempting nudists with an apple, or God speaking infallibly through the Pope.

For lack of a better label, I’m an agnostic with trace elements of Christianity thrown into the mix. I don’t believe with certainty that there’s no God and no afterlife, so why would I tell my children they don’t exist?

Of course, I’m not certain they do exist either. So why tell my children that they do?

Because, dear readers, when I’m forced to explain to a four year old what death is (in four year old terms), I’m forced to admit that this is a pretty shitty world her mother and I have brought her into.

I told her that everyone dies, including myself, her, and her mother. I told her it won’t happen for a long, long, long, long, long, time (which is in itself a partial truth as young people die every day). I tried to explain to her what death is, and probably failed miserably.

I mean, what can you say? That you’re going to get old? Your body, and perhaps your mind, will wear out and betray you? You’ll watch those you love die one by one? And that’s if you’re lucky and don’t get hit by a car tomorrow.

Before that happens, any number of horrific things could happen to you or the ones you love.

Oh, and your mother and I brought you into this world knowing full well that this would happen. You’re welcome!

Honestly, it’s enough to make me question our decision to have kids in the first place.

(And I say all this as a middle class American. Our lives can’t be considered hard by any stretch of the imagination. We think we have it tough when the entertainment budget runs out a week before my next paycheck.)

Voltaire said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. Whether or not God exists, I believe that statement. At least when it comes to talking to four year olds about how the world works.

This post is part of the Parenthood linkup on www.joyinthisjourney.com

An open letter to Doug Wilson

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:15:00 +0000

Sarah Moon's original article can be found here.

Doug Wilson's rebuttal (which this post rebuts) can be found here.

Dear Mr. Wilson,

It's a frequent complaint of mine that conservatives such as yourself have trouble dealing with shades of grey. But no longer. Your rebuttal of Sarah Moon's post shows that conservatives can understand shades of grey when it benefits them.

Your argument seems logical at first glance. I have two daughters, and when they're old enough, i'd be very happy if they took some kind of self defense course. If someone ever attempted to rape them, I'd like them not only to avoid that fate, but to come home with a scalp or similar suitable trophy from their would be attacker. There are many other reasonable precautions that women can take to protect themselves; Dianna Anderson (also a feminist like Sarah) details some of them here.

Everyone, in fact, must take steps to protect themselves from criminals. I myself am a man, so I have the privilege of never taking precautions against rape. But I lock my doors every night before going to bed. I put my laptop in the trunk of my car where it's not visible. I choose passwords that are difficult to guess. These are reasonable precautions.

Now, you say that a woman who gets drunk a frat party and is raped must take some of the responsibility for what happens to her. Again, logical at first glance. She's made a poor choice, to be sure. Who hasn't? There are times I forget to lock my doors, times I leave my laptop in the front seat, and to be honest, I have 3 different passwords that I re-use among dozens of websites.

But if we're being honest, every crime requires a poor decision on the part of the victim.

The woman wearing what you describe as "slutwear"? Sheesh, cover up! Don't you know men can't control themselves?

The skinny guy flashing money? He should have been less flashy.

The elderly woman who is the victim of fraud? She shouldn't have been so trusting.

What about Jesus? Allegedly he knew he was going to be crucified and went to Jerusalem anyway. Surely he bears some of the responsibility for what happened to him.

Let's look at the "slutwear" example in a bit more depth, shall we? Could you define this term? If, in a country where woman wear burqas in public, a woman is raped while wearing a t-shirt and jeans, was she wearing "slutwear"?

What about an American woman who isn't showing any skin per se, but is wearing clothes that accentuate her curves? Does this count?

A bikini at the beach? A one piece bathing suit at the beach? I need details (and woman do too, if they're going to take responsibility for themselves!)

Really, any victim of a crime must take some measure of responsibility for what happened to them, right? Let's go back to my example of locking my doors at night.

The front door of my house has a standard deadbolt lock on it. It'll deter amateur thieves, but someone determined to get into my house can still do so with a bit of effort. If they do, do I bear responsibility for not buying a better lock?

What about a woman who goes to a party, consumes a responsible amount of alcohol, but has something slipped into her drink while she goes to the bathroom? Isn't she still responsible? Shouldn't she know better than to leave her drink unattended?

Let's go back to your "skinny guy" example. As a skinny guy, this hits close to home.

Let's say I'm mugged but I haven't been flashing my money. Do I need to take responsibility for not being in better shape? For not carrying a gun?

I know full well that there are criminals who would love to take my money. Buff criminals.

And yet: no gym membership. No protein shakes.

Clearly, I'm asking for it (Only in, as you put it, "the broadest metaphorical sense", of course.)

What if I do flash my money? How much money is acceptable to flash? At what point does simply paying for my drink become "flashing my money"? Do I need to always pass cash in a closed fist?

How about - stay with me here - we just show some grace for victims?

Sure, educate them if they need to be educated. But something tells me that most victims of crimes don't need any education.

The crime was most likely education enough.

Sincerely,
Heretic Husband

Confessions of a former Mark Driscoll fan

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:35:00 +0000

I used to be a Mark Driscoll fan. There, I said it.

In my defense, he wasn’t always crazy. I’ve never read any of his books, but the titles of his earlier works don’t seem too bad. Pretty typical stuff that most Evangelicals would be comfortable with.

My wife (who is a staunch feminist) used to listen to his sermons quite a bit, and I would as well. We didn’t care for his sermons on women submitting, but hey, we didn’t like the sermons on submission at our church either. What can you do? The rest of his stuff seemed OK.

Oh, and there was the talk of his encounters with demons as well. Well, most people who’ve been Christian long enough have one of those stories. One of the pastors at our former church had one, as did at least one close friend of ours.

In fact, the head pastor at our former church was quite a Mark Driscoll fan. He thought he was one of the best young preachers around and was the bees knees when it came to preaching God’s truth. This was a couple years ago, I don’t know if he’s changed his mind.

In retrospect, that should have been a warning bell about our pastor rather than a ringing endorsement of Driscoll.

I drifted away from Driscoll when he started on his macho man Cage Fighting Jesus schtick. I’ve never been a traditional “macho man”. When our church held men’s retreats my friends and I would be in the basement playing Settlers Of Catan while other guys went on hikes and played basketball.

Then in 2010, Driscoll published a book called Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe. I had not yet donned the mantle of Heretic Husband at this point. My wife and I were still going to the same church, and no bombshells about the pastors there or about her father had been revealed yet.

When I saw the title of the book, I said “Huh, I thought that’s what the Bible was for.” Driscoll had clearly gone off the deep end, I thought.

Two years have passed, and it seems like a lifetime ago. Driscoll says something crazier each month, it seems. Blogs have been started by people who have survived his church. Words like “cult” and “spiritual abuse” are thrown around more and more when people talk about him.

I keep using the word “crazy”. Mark Driscoll, is, of course, as sane as you or I. I’m sure he loves his wife and children the same that I or anyone else does. You can’t even say his beliefs are crazy - he’s certainly not the only person that holds them. Plenty of other Christians believe they have had encounters with supernatural powers. Plenty of other Christians think women should submit to their husbands.

Mark Driscoll isn’t crazy. He’s simply living proof that a little belief can be a dangerous thing.

A while ago a sermon was given at our former church in which the youth pastor described a youth event in which teenagers hung bible verses on the wall. One of them had invited a friend who wasn’t a Christian. This fellow heretic looked at what was going on and said, “Wow, you guys really believe this stuff.” (this was delivered as a compliment, not a sarcastic comment.)

I don’t remember the rest of the sermon, but looking back on this anecdote, I find myself shaking my head. People believe stuff. So what? Believing in something is, in itself, no great thing. Everyone believes in something. Even if it’s just the physical universe around them.

What distinguishes one belief from another is the actions that they bring about. Does your belief make you build people up, or tear them down? Save them, or kill them? Love them or hate them?

Of course, Mark Driscoll would say that his beliefs build people up, save them, and fill him with love. And I’m sure that Mark Driscoll’s church has done lot’s of good things for the community and the world at large.

In fact, any belief could probably be said to have good effects and bad. So, then, what’s my point?

My point is not about where Mark Driscoll is (though that’s disturbing in itself), it’s about where he’s going.

There’s an expression in the United States (possibly other places as well, I have no idea) called “drinking the Kool Aid”.

This refers to Jim Jones, leader of a movement called the People’s Temple. In 1978, 909 members of this movement committed suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. A monster, right?

In exhaustively researching Jim Jones for this post (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*) I found that Jim Jones was a staunch supporter of racial integration in the 1950’s. He and his wife adopted “several children of at least partial non-Caucasian ancestry; he referred to the clan as his "rainbow family," 1

This was no small thing in the 1950s. If Jones hadn’t gone off the deep end he would probably be remembered fondly for these actions.

There were many other steps from racial integrationist to mass suicide. You can read about them if you’re interested. I know I’m probably not the first person to draw a comparison between Driscoll and Jones, and I don’t think we’ll be reading about a mass suicide of Mars Hill members any time soon.

But let’s look at what Mark Driscoll thinks about people who disagree with him:

"Here's what I've learned. You cast vision for your mission, and if people don't sign up, you move on. You move on. There are people that are gonna die in the wilderness, and there are people that are gonna take the hill. That's just how it is. Too many guys waste too much time trying to move stiff necked, stubborn, obstinate people. I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus (chuckle), and by God's grace, it'll be a mountain by the time we're done.... ‎You either get on the bus, or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options."2

(Emphasis is my own.)

Driscoll’s defenders would probably be quick to say that he isn’t talking about REAL dead bodies. In conservative Christian circles, it’s common to talk about non-Christians as “spiritually dead”. Maybe this is what he was talking about. I don’t know.

This is what I do know: There is indeed a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus. It’s a pile of people hurt by Mark Driscoll. People who have suffered spiritual abuse at his hands and the hands of others at his church. There’s also a growing pile of crazy sounding books, tweets, and sermons.

I can hear the defenders now: “But what about all the GOOD he’s doing!”.

There are other people doing similar good things WITHOUT the spiritual abuse.

When the bad is in danger of outweighing the good, isn’t it time to reevaluate?

References:

1 Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. ISBN 0-525-24136-1. p. 65.

2 Link to article (contains audio of Driscoll saying this)

Privileged? Who, me?

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:29:00 +0000

When I was growing up, I was taught that all people are equal. This is a well intentioned but incorrect thing to teach children. People are most certainly not equal.

Children should be taught that everone should be equal, and that everyone should strive to make that a reality, but that most certainly does not mean that they are in fact equal.

I’m a member of a group that is at worst the second most privileged group in human history. I’m a white, American, straight, cis gendered, middle class male. You could argue that a white, American, straight, cis gendered rich male is more privileged than I am, but let’s be honest: even though I’m “middle class” I’m probably richer than most of the world’s population (I’m far too lazy to research an actual statistic).

I didn’t hear the term privileged used to describe me until I joined Twitter and found myself following a number of people who talked about the subject a great deal. Privileged? Surely you’re talking about someone else!

The term ‘privileged’ has certain connotations for me. It makes me think of rich kids who went to private schools and got into Harvard because their parents went there. They probably got a car on their sixteenth birthday and threw a temper tantrum because it wasn’t the right color.

But that’s not what the word means. The word privileged simply means that a person has special rights or immunities that other people don’t have.

The problem is, it’s easy for people in my privilege group to think that all Americans are equal (This post is U.S centric, because honestly, American culture is the only culture I’m qualified to speak about).

I grew up hearing about slavery, mass murder of Native Americans, segregation, and women having to fight to earn the right to vote. These are all things that American children should learn about.

But the problem is, they’re all in the past.

I looked around, and saw none of those things happening any more. So I assumed everyone was equal now, and when people complained about inequality, I thought it was a bit silly. Hadn't these people heard that everyone was equal now?

Well, everyone except for rich people. Those jerks got all the breaks. I assumed that any remaining inequality was due to class, not race, gender, or anything else.

Then I started to read about privilege, and realized something important. Some of the privileges I have are invisible.

For instance, if I get pulled over by a police officer, I can’t get out of the ticket because by saying “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” (the response to which would be, “I have no fucking idea”, or “You’re a huge douchebag who is now definitely getting a ticket”). That’s a privilege others have, but not me.

But I would not for a second think that the police officer would treat me differently because I’m white.

If I’m walking by myself at night, I generally have no concern for my safety. This is partly because I’m a male and the thought that I could be raped has never once entered my mind. It’s also because I can afford to live in a low crime area.

When you realize you are privileged, the next question that will probably enter your mind is, “So what? Everyone is privileged in some way.”

This is certainly true. Just google “black privilege” or “female privilege”, and you will find plenty of white males going on at great length about this.

For instance: a man with children has the privilege of pursuing their career without being made to feel guilty about it.

The counter argument being, “A woman with children who has a working spouse and doesn’t have a job outside the home has the privilege of not being considered lazy.”

This argument can go round and round. All the arguments I listed are sometimes true, and sometimes not true. Men with high powered jobs are sometimes accused of being poor fathers because they’re always at work. Stay at home men are sometimes praised for being progressive and giving their wives the chance to pursue their careers. Some people think stay at home moms are lazy and just sit on the couch eating chocolate and watching soap operas.

Of course, some families need to have two incomes in order to survive. The ability for a woman OR man to choose to stay at home and raise their children is a privilege in itself.

For some, the thought of privilege ends here. Everyone is privileged in different ways, they contend, so for Pete’s sake can we stop talking about it?

No, we can’t. Just because privilege exists on both sides doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue. Imagine the following argument, which may very well have taken place when slavery existed in this country:

Argument: Slave owners are more privileged than slaves because they are free and have no master.
Counter-argument: A slave has the privilege of having all their needs cared for by their master.

Crazy, right? Yes, it is true that a slave has their needs met by their master (assuming their master doesn’t decide to mistreat them, of course), but the counter argument ignores the fact that the slave is still a slave, and is considered property.

Let’s go back to the argument about stay at home parents. Why would a man be considered lazy for staying at home with their children? Could it be because men typically earn more than women? And isn’t there a subtle discrimination there that doesn’t see parenting to be “real work”?

Women are exempt from the draft. That’s because women were (and frequently, still are ) considered physically inferior to men. Also, there hasn’t been a draft in quite a while and I would be very surprised if there ever is one again, so currently this privilege is pretty meaningless.

The bottom line is, I’ve never felt that my life has been more difficult because of other people’s privilege.

But here’s the most important thing: examining one’s privilege forces you to think of other people’s situations. It forces you to consider other people’s feelings.

This is a very, very good thing.

Examining your privilege might cause you to become aware of larger issues. It might make you an advocate for some of these issues, or to donate some of your money to a charity or advocacy organization.

In fact, I can’t think of a single negative thing that could could come out of examining one’s privilege.

Except that it might take you out of your comfort zone. Which, ultimately, is also a good thing.

If God is for us, how dare you be against us!

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Six months ago, my wife and some friends tried out a local church. They went once, it wasn’t for them, and they decided not to go again. Last week we got a letter from them asking to donate money toward their building project.

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that when my wife filled out one of their communication cards, her info somehow got slurped into a database somewhere, and they had no idea they were sending this letter to someone who had only visited once.

I’m going to go even further and say that it must be really hard to be a church (or, for that matter, any kind of non-profit/charitable organization). You HAVE to ask people for money in order to survive. There’s no way around it. That has to be difficult. People don’t like being asked for money.

In fact, I’m not really writing this post to complain about churches that ask for money. It was the phrasing of the letter that got me.

I’m not going to reproduce it here, because it was pretty long, and if you’ve hung around evangelical churches long enough, you probably know why I’m annoyed.

They played the God card.

The letter says that God wants them to build this building. The leadership of the church is absolutely positive on this. And they want the members of the church to “seek God” and see how he wants them to help. Also, it says that if you’re not already tithing to your local church, you really should, because that’s the minimum that God expects.

I wonder what would happen if one of their members approached the leadership of this church and said, “Hey, I sought God on this, and he’s totally cool with me not giving anything to your building project. Also, he says that tithing is more of an Old Testament thing, so I’m not doing that either”.

I’ve played the God card too. In my experience, that’s a common thing in evangelical/Baptist circles. People generally don’t do it to be manipulative (at least I didn’t), and I’m not saying this church is trying to be manipulative either. When you really think God is speaking to you, what other card would you play? The “I’ve got a hunch” card is notoriously ineffective and can easily be countered by the “Whatever.” card.

But it is manipulative. If you play the God card, you are stifling discussion. If you disagree with someone who is playing the God card, you are calling their spirituality into question. This is a serious charge.

Why can’t evangelicals every just say, “Hey, I think this is a good idea.”? I mean it’s not as if God appears to people in a puff of smoke and says “DO THIS”. Most people who claim to “hear God’s voice” wouldn’t say that he’s using actual words. And even if God actually is telling you to do something, what proof do we have that you’re not just a filthy liar? The only person who can hear what God is supposedly telling you is...you.

That should not be read as an accusation against the church who sent us the letter. I don’t know the pastors of that church, so I won’t comment on their sincerity.

Now, I’m not usually one to use the Bible to support my arguments. But since this church claims to use the Bible as their guide, how about we take a page from the story of Gideon? In Judges 6, Gideon is approached by an angel - an ACTUAL ANGEL - who tells him, “Yo Gideon, go kill a bunch of my enemies”.

Gideon doesn’t do as he is instructed until he sees not one, not two, but THREE miracles. First the angel uses his staff to set fire to some meat. Then Gideon puts out a fleece and asks God for there to be dew on the fleece but none on the ground the next morning. Then he asks for the opposite the next day (dew on the ground, not on the fleect).

Ok, as miracles go, they’re not great. I would have asked for a bionic arm or super strength or something. And some might say that Gideon needed three miracles because his faith was weak.

I think Gideon needed three miracles because he was a smart, smart guy. Not that I’m saying this story actually happened, but evangelicals do (in general), so I’m taking a page from their book (literally).

So here’s my challenge to everyone who says that God has spoken to you: show me a miracle. I’m not even asking for three. Show me one. And don’t tell me that God has “removed obstacles”, evangelical code for “Hey, we were having a problem getting this project done, but then it went away. God must be on our side!”

The letter included this as well. They were able to buy a building for less than it’s appraised value, so clearly this was a sign from God. Right, because no atheist has ever been able to do that.

I’m talking about a real miracle, witnessed by yours truly, that can’t be explained any other way. And don’t hand me a wet fleece and expect me to be impressed either. I’m a twenty first century guy, I expect a bit more.

God did it for Gideon. He did it for Thomas. Can he do it for me?

Personally I doubt it. But we’ll see.

The illusion of deep faith

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Have you ever been told your faith is shallow? I have.

It was New Year’s Eve. My wife and I had procured the services of a baby sitter, and we were at a friend’s house, having drinks and playing Small World (a board game I highly recommend). My wife had had several drinks, and when the discussion turned to matters of faith, she spilled the beans. Specifically, the beans related to my struggles with faith.

I tried to recover by saying that I hadn’t completely walked away from the faith, but the damage had been done. A few days later one of the people from the party sent me a message on Facebook inquiring if everything was OK, and offering a listening ear. We messaged back and forth a bit, and then he came over to talk.

I was hesitant, but my wife was hopeful that talking to this friend (let’s call him Bob) would help. Bob came over, and we discussed the situation with my in-laws (the primary catalyst in my loss of faith), and in a more general sense, why God allows horrific things to happen.

Bob probably realized the depth of my loss of faith when he commented that Satan’s influence is one of the causes of evil, and I shrugged and replied, “If you say so.”

I explained how I had always somehow known that my faith would be shattered if something horrible happened to my or someone I loved, and that I had been quite comfortable with God allowing horrific things to happen to other people.

He replied matter of factly, “Well, you probably had a shallow faith.” Now, don’t judge Bob. He’s a good guy, and this wasn’t said in a cruel or judgemental way. In fact, I replied by agreeing with him.

What choice did I have? It was the truth.

It was the first time that someone had made this observation, and the first time I had acknowledged it. As time went on, I realized just how true it was.

I went to church, attended Bible study, occasionally skimmed the Bible, prayed, and in general tried not to be an asshole.

La-dee-freaking da.

I felt really spiritual. I felt like my faith was deep. But it was a shallow pool. When bad things started happening, I dived in head first and cracked my skull on the bottom.

The result? Spiritual paralysis.

The Bible says “Seek, and you will find.” Well, duh. You’ll notice that it doesn’t say WHAT you’ll find. This was the second time I had found something. When I was in my early teens and was still Catholic, I thought I had found something too. That turned out to be not true, also. My stated goal has never changed: find God. But all I’ve found is gods that other people have constructed. Idols. Paintings in the wilderness.

I’m tired of chasing the wind. I’m tired of playing hide and seek with God.

The real question is: who’s hiding, and who’s seeking? Calvinists would say that no one seeks God, he seeks us.

Then again, Calvinists say lots of crazy shit.

Rob Bell would say that God gives us the freedom to choose, and that we’re free to seek God or ignore him.

Then again, Rob Bell says lots of crazy shit.

Yet Bell’s god is certainly less repugnant than the Calvinist god. That’s why the bookshelves in our house are full of books by Bell and none by Driscoll, Piper, and Chandler.

I like Rob Bell.

Though sometimes.

I wish he would use.

Fewer line breaks.

Was I really seeking God? Because I am, in essence, a coward. The thought of stepping out of my comfort zone and truly living a life like Jesus terrifies me. I was more comfortable playing the religion game. The problem is, the religion game never feels like the religion game. It’s always something other people are doing.

Is God really seeking me? If he’s real, he’s certainly taking his sweet time about it. I can’t help but feel that if one of my children was trying to find me, I wouldn’t jerk them around for over thirty years. And I’m not even close to omnipotent.

I used to think that God behaved the way he did in order to bring glory to himself. What a crock of bullshit. What would the Christian God need with more glory? He’s all powerful, all knowing, and he’s created at least one universe. You’re telling me he has low self esteem and needs to rescue people to make himself feel better?

Where is this deep faith that people keep talking about? I can’t tell you how many people I heard get up in church or bible study and say variations on the same theme: I thought I found God, but I hadn’t. But now I have! Are these people talking about true deep faith, or will they dive in and find out that it’s shallow?

I think it’s ironic that people get baptized in shallow water. Maybe people should be flown out to the middle of the ocean and thrown in from half a mile up. If you can claw your way to the top, you’re in.

Better to test your faith in the beginning, than to wake up ten years later and find it was all a dream.

Guest post on Dianna E. Anderson: Failing to learn from history

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Two guest posts today! This one is on Faith and Feminism, an excellent blog run by my friend Dianna Anderson.

It's called Failing to learn from history, and it's about some stuff that happened at my former church.

Enjoy!

When I saw that Dianna was asking for guest posts about women and theology, I almost didn’t respond. Not because I didn’t want to write about the subject, but because I didn’t think I had much to say.

I don’t have any interest in examining the Bible’s view on women (and even if I did, bloggers like Dianna and Rachel Held Evans have done a much better job of that). I’m not a woman, so I can’t write about personal experiences of discrimination. For crying out loud, I’m a straight, white, married, middle class, cis gendered male. I can even pass as Christian if need be. I’m about as privileged as you can get. I’ve never been discriminated against, and probably never will.

However, when I mentioned this to my wife, she thought I should definitely write a post. She told me that people like me who are in positions of privilege need to speak out for those who are not .

To continue reading, click here.

Guest Post at From Two To One: A letter to my daughters

noreply@blogger.com (Heretic Husband) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:24:00 +0000

Today I'm guest posting at From Two To One, a great blog about Christianity and Feminism.

The post is a letter written to my daughters (who are currently 4 and 18 months old). Enjoy!

To my daughters:

You are going to grow up in a world very different from the world I grew up in. Partly because the world is constantly changing, and partly because you are women and will experience the world through a different filter.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a woman. I do know what it’s like to be an adult, though, and I just want to share some of the things I’ve learned in the hopes that they will help you.

To continue reading, click here.