Wayward And Down

The problem with being a pastor for too long is you start to view people as sheep.

No wait. Perhaps I'm viewing this all wrong. Maybe I should be flattered. Yes, that's it. I should be flattered. After all, my pastor now considers my loss of faith important enough to merit special attention.

Not special attention to the extent that he would want to listen to me, mind you, or give serious consideration to my reasons for leaving Christianity. But being willing to manipulate me behind the scenes? Well, hell yeah! Which is why he offered my husband guidance, during a private meeting last week, in stealth-counseling me back toward a reconversion.

I...wait, no. Just let that sink in. Let yourself feel the full impact of all the wrong in that statement.

It seems I need to clarify with people that I'm in no way surprised by the reconversion effort itself. That's just standard evangelical practice. I get that. Hell, I expect that. I am, however, surprised at the creepy underhanded tactics, because it seems so uncharacteristic of this pastor. I'm equally surprised that he thought my husband would actually take him up on the offer. My husband, for whatever reason, seems to view me as an independent human being with the ability to think and choose...like I'm a person. He seems to think that coercing me back into the faith wouldn't be very respectful. Pfft, I say. Doesn't he know that it's men that God designed with a need for respect? Women need love, and that love is best expressed in stern spiritual guidance from Them That Have Penises.

You've gotta love the overweening confidence of a pastor who, while unable to give me satisfactory answers back when I was grasping about for any reason to keep believing, is somehow certain that he'll magically win me back now that I'm comfortably godless. Also, let's ignore the assumption that the only possible way I could have left the faith is through ignorance of what the Bible teaches. Even my husband laughed at that one. "I may be the one they ordained, but you know the Bible a helluva lot better than I do."

I expected better of this pastor. For the past eight years, he's been like family, and throughout my deconversion---even though I grew to disagree with him, and became uncomfortable with his growing emphasis on authority---I continued to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I'd never seen him use his authority to bully people around. He seemed content to let people make their own decisions, and he'd always treated me with kindness and at least an outward show of respect. Because of that, I was naive enough to think he actually respected me.

Oh well. Ain't the first time I've been wrong.

"If your wife isn't on board with you 100%, it's going to hold you back in ministry."* And the sad thing is, he's right. Most of the fundie faithful won't give you any credibility if you can't convince your own spouse of the truth of the Gospel. After all, if God were really working in your life, there'd be no room for doubt. It's a big reason why, as my faith began to falter, I kept my damn mouth shut. Not because anybody asked me to---I knew that my husband would defend me if it ever came down to it---but because I didn't want him to catch any flack. It's not right, but it's how the evangelical church operates.

That's the thing, though: before this, I'd never known this pastor to keep himself bound to "that's just the way things are". He's always had this "fight the system" attitude to things he saw as flawed, especially within the church. He's gone against his denomination to ordain women. He's put his neck on the line for people---my husband being one---because he believes in them. And he's always treated me like a person in my own right, rather than some doe-eyed accessory to my husband's career in ministry. So it's that much more of a shame to see him behave this way now.

Even as we grew apart in our beliefs, my husband and I were determined to support each other in the searches and choices we were making. Of course this would all be easier if I could make myself believe again, but I can't, and furthermore, I don't want to, so we make it work. We're very careful with each other, because each of us values the other person more than we value any ideological stance. And then this asshole, this self-styled apostle** who presumes to speak for God, feels qualified to come around and dismiss it all as not enough. The only thing that will be enough, apparently, is my total mindless compliance. At any cost, apparently, even at the cost of the love and respect within the relationship. If he's going to play Mephistopheles in this dirty Faustian bargain, then I feel pretty comfortable with writing him off completely.

I don't care who I married, I'm nobody's fucking pawn, and I object to being written out of the equation of my own life. But then, why am I surprised? That's You Suck Christianity all over again, isn't it? You've died, and it's Christ living in you. You have no thoughts, feelings or desires of your own. You have laid down your rights. You were bought at a price.

You are a sheep---a fluffy, brainless animal with a numbered tag on your ear. And they claim you in the name of Jesus.


*To be fair, my husband insists that this statement, though spoken in the same private meeting, was not connected in any way with the reconversion offer; however, I can't imagine that the offer would have even been extended if this pastor didn't seem to view hubby as some sort of protege. It's hard not to view the whole encounter as: "Your wife has become a liability. But I can help fix that."

**Yes, he's upgraded himself from "Pastor" to "Apostle". I'm not even going to try to explain this one. Google "New Apostolic Reformation" if you want to get a taste of the crazy. But don't say I didn't warn you.


**Note: This post has been flagged for italics abuse. The author of this post shall be forced to walk all day at a diagonal slant.**

Represent

I picked up a copy of The Power of Myth from the library today. I'd been interested in reading it for a while now for a couple of reasons, the first being that I've been on a bit of a journey of self-discovery lately---who isn't, right?---which has involved me keeping a dream journal, which in turn has led to me reading up a fair bit on myth and archetype. Yeah. Whatever, it's fun. The second reason, though, is a little more complicated, and requires a little background. But before that, I think I need to explain what prompted this post.

When I opened the book, the first thing to catch my eye was that someone had written in pencil, above the Introduction:

"...the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge and mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now this I say lest anyone should decieve (sic) you through persuasive words...Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit...not according to Christ. Col. 2:2-8"

Now, I take it as a positive sign that my first thought was, "Huh. Some douchebag on a holy mission", rather than "God is sending you a warning! Turn back! Oh noes!" That was, however, my very next thought, and I had to take a moment to talk myself through the panic before I could move on...which is a pretty clear sign that I'm not all better yet. Once I got past it, though, I began to read and found that Douchebag On A Mission (DOAM) had littered the margins with smarmy little notes.

"Who defines good?"

"Never talk about truth just what seems best."

"Professing to be wise, they became fools. Rom 1:22"

"Creation tells us things about God men understand but corrupt yet God is the same."

"Those principalities went against the Gospel just like Campbell."

And much as I wanted to fling the book across the room, I had to laugh. How could I not? It was like looking at myself through a mirror into the past. If it weren't someone else's handwriting---and if I didn't have some scrupulous aversion to writing in books in the first place---I'd have guessed it was me. Which, strangely enough, leads us back to my second reason for picking up this book, which again, as I said, requires a bit of background.

See, while the Christian high school I attended was pretty solid on academics, it was equally (if not primarily) concerned with instilling the proper worldview in its students, which meant making sure we all were properly equipped to view life through the lens of their peculiar subset of Christianity, so that we could go out into the public sphere and badger others into doing the same.

Geds the Accidental Historian wrote up a great little Field Guide to The North American Evangelical some time back, which should serve as a helpful reference to any of you unfamiliar with this subculture. By my senior year, I had become #6, Answers to Everything, a particularly obnoxious little breed who, out of her own raging insecurity, seeks to amass knowledge for herself to build up a sturdy defense against all comers. I can't say for the whole staff, but a fair number of teachers there were of the Answers to Everything variety as well, and seemed to uphold it as the highest standard of Christian virtue. And I, being an obliging, codependent little wench, wanted nothing more than to give the right answer and receive a pat on the head in return.

Anyway, senior year. English class. Mrs. Jacobs. She was one of my favorite teachers, actually, and still is. She was a funny, insightful woman who, in spite of it all, genuinely challenged us to think. Looking back, actually, I notice that most of my favorite teachers were my English teachers . They seemed to have a better sense of humor and a more relaxed approach to life and human nature than did, say, the Bible teachers---but I suspect that's true of anyone who routinely deals with literature outside of a bizarre, narrow interpretation one's own holy scriptures.

But that's not to say the English teachers were entirely exempt from the little quirks of the Evangelical mindset. As we sat there one balmy May afternoon, wishing for the final bell, Mrs. Jacobs stood before us and warned us to be on our guard as we went off to college: the ideology represented in the video she was about to play for us was now standard fare at most universities, and it represented a grave danger to our faith. We spent the rest of the week watching the PBS special with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, with Mrs Jacobs piping up every so often to point out specific heresies we would no doubt encounter. I don't remember much about Campbell himself except that he said "metaphor" funny, and had really sweaty armpits. That much I remember. The embodiment of deception stood before us and he had sweaty armpits. I marveled at the banality of evil.

Months later, while my friends had all gone off to their colleges of choice, I was taking evening courses at community college with no real aim. I rationalized, of course. Two years here, then Berkeley. It's cheaper this way. People smiled and nodded, perhaps because they sensed that I needed them to. When two years had passed and I hadn't transferred, I had, by that time, become a very active member of a Charismatic church nearby, so it was very easy to decide that God had kept me at said junior college, in spite of my plans, for His greater purpose. Praise God. Every new turn of the story brought a new spin; a new understanding of God's divine plan. But of course it was all me: I hadn't turned in the things I needed to turn in, I had procrastinated until after all the due dates, mostly because I was afraid. I'd spent a lot of time online, avoiding friends and hiding from the decisions everyone kept saying I needed to make. In the end, I decided by not deciding, and now here I was, rotting in relative obscurity and embarrassment, while my friends were all off doing something to be proud of.

But I took deep comfort in the idea of "defending my faith", which, as most of you can probably guess, mainly meant cultivating a sense of persecution and striking back at imagined foes. In those moments, I didn't feel like a failure: I felt like a warrior. If my world looked mundane, that was only the illusion: everyday life was fraught with hidden meaning and significance, and I walked by faith, not by sight.

My first fall semester, I took a course in World Mythology. I can't exactly remember why, at the time, though I remember always liking mythology. I grew up reading Greek and Roman myths---sanitized for children, but still recognizable---and on hot summer nights, when we would sleep in the front room where it was cooler, my mom would put on the cassette of Navajo legends she'd brought back with her from one of her backpacking trips. As I drifted off to sleep I would watch the four arrows--- blue, yellow, white and black---stretching out into eternity as the world was born.

Of course, that was when I was a child, and I thought as a child, and now I put childish things behind me. I had a higher purpose, and I wouldn't be swayed. I bought the books for the class, one of which---wonder of wonders---happened to be by Joseph Campbell. The warnings from high school rang anew in my mind. My Peretti Novel Spidey Sense tingled as I noticed the black snakes entwined on the cover, and I left the bookstore with a renewed sense of importance. Campbell represented some vague, looming evil---a man who had set himself up against God, daring to address Christianity as one of many myths, instead of acknowledging, like C.S. Lewis, that Christianity was the fulfillment of all previous myths. A man who was singlehandedly deceiving millions. Not knowing what else to do, I spent the rest of the evening in the cafeteria, reading, and jotting down notes that sounded a whole helluva lot like the ones I found scribbled in the margins of the book I picked up today. At the time, I'd thought them an incisive apologia for the Christian faith. I happened upon them again when I was cleaning house a couple months ago, and found them, not surprisingly, to be an embarrassing example of Completely Missing The Point. Like DOAM, I'd been so defensive of what I'd been indoctrinated to believe, that I never really got what I was reading.

I rarely ever learned for the sake of learning, in those days. I either learned for the sake of having knowledge to put on display, or I learned for the sake of building a defense against what I was being taught, in order to preserve my brittle faith. And that's why, in spite of years of hard work, I remain pretty uneducated.

And it's why I picked up that book today. It's not entirely about it being a big "fuck you" to my indoctrinators, though I'll admit, that sure doesn't hurt. It's not even about sitting at the feet of Campbell and mindlessly absorbing all he has to say---I'm not looking for a new religion. It's about dropping the defensiveness and being willing to learn. If I were still one to couch things in Christian terms, I might call that humility*. It's about dropping the battle mindset, and being willing to see someone who disagrees with you as just that: a person, who happens to disagree with you. They don't represent The Enemy, and you sure as fuck don't represent God, at least no more than any of us do. You represent you. Why can't that be enough?

It's about liking myself enough for that to be enough.

And going from there.


* D'oh! Michael Mock points out in the comments that "humility" is by no means an exclusively Christian term, and he's absolutely right. Sorry about that. Unfortunately, for me the word had always been used in a religious context, so I still reflexively think of it as Christianese. Not sure how to fix that in the original post, so I'm patching it up here with an asterisk and a disclaimer.