Trigger warning/disclaimer: This is a story of my experience with the Christian religion and its (primarily negative) effect on my life and values. It is categorically NOT any kind of indictment against Christians. Since the transition described in this post, I have come to develop great respect and affection for Christianity and its adherents which was oddly lacking during the years I spent as one of them.
When I was seven years old, my dad and I had a conversation about the Book of Life.
Much of the conversation has since been lost in the holes of my notorious Swiss-cheese memory, but I distinctly remember one comment of my dad’s. It has never left me.
"When you were born, God wrote down your name in the Book of Life. God wants everyone to be in his book. But some people reject God. If you were to ever reject God, then he would sadly erase your name from the Book of Life.”
It sounds harsh now, but it was neither intended nor taken as such at the time. As a child, I had a deep desire to be known by God. I liked the idea that he had my name in his book, that he had always loved me, that he had designed every hair on my head and planned my life out.
It made sense that I would go to church and Sunday school right from the start.* That tends to make sense when some form of Christianity is the norm in your school, your community, even your nation. It also makes it easy to lose yourself in the echo chamber. I do not recall salient meetings with anyone of a different religious persuasion until I was in my late teens. Some people were more Christian than others, granted, but that was about the only variation I saw. (I suspect this is a fairly devastating description of religious norming, and I am sorry to report it.)
For me, it felt like I wore my Christianity as a mask (mind you, a mask that showcased my true identity rather than hiding it – an important distinction), and a lot of other people around me wore a similar mask so we could easily identify each other. And if I met anyone who wasn’t wearing one, they didn’t make a big point about it.
My childhood was steady and predictable to the point of being boring. For the most part, I had no major obstacles in the early part of my life. To say I was privileged is putting it mildly. So perhaps it is not so strange that I accepted the existence of God without question until I was a teenager. From my limited viewpoint, the world looked pretty good. Why not believe in the presence of a loving deity who arranged it to be that way? Why not believe that ultimately, I had been given a birthright of protection and guidance from Someone Up There? And especially, why not believe in something I had every reason to take for granted when rejecting it would put me in hell for eternity?
When the choice presented to a child is that binary, the answer seems obvious.
Fortunately, it didn’t last. I first started to doubt my religion, as so many do, once bad things began happening in my life and I received a very loud silence from God in response to my cries. My specific experiences aren’t important for the purposes of this story; they are only important in the sense that they woke me up, opened the door to the possibility that my religion might not hold all the answers I thought it did, and drove me to ask some questions. My perspective was still so myopic, however, that I considered those questions settled after reading Christian responses to them.** Such responses served to sustain, if not fully satisfy, and I was able to move on with my life and my faith.
But I was more cautious after that. It was as though my Christian mask had slipped, temporarily allowing me access to peripheral vision and the troubling ideas to be found there. Of course, the mask went back on immediately – I still thought it was my true face at the time.
When I was twenty years old, I made a pivotal decision in my life – one which, while significant in its own right, also foreshadowed my eventual decision to leave Christianity. In order to distinguish the two, I’ll call this decision the Radical Decision.
The Radical Decision itself, like the trauma to which I alluded above, is not relevant here. (I chose to leave out such details to avoid confusion and to spare you all from an even longer post, not because I do not wish to disclose them.) But two things about it are worth highlighting, because they were the same key elements of my decision to leave my faith. Had I not worked through these elements when I made the Radical Decision, I am not at all sure I could have later left Christianity:
- Fear of rejection. The Radical Decision hurt my family greatly. I rejected one of their most important values (or so it seemed at the time) and I was very afraid of the consequences – I thought they would reject me in turn. They didn’t (although it caused problems for awhile) but that fear was one of the main reasons it was so difficult to make the Radical Decision.
- Personal responsibility. The Radical Decision was the first I ever made completely on my own, and the first over which I took full responsibility. Even with the knowledge of #1 at the forefront of my mind, I chose to do it anyway because I knew that it was the right thing.
When I later left Christianity, I struggled with the same two points and precisely the same corresponding emotions. It was spooky.
That conversation with my dad when I was a child was only the beginning of my internalization of the idea that God turns his back on those that reject him. In my experience, this was not typically presented as a terrible thing but rather as something Unbelievers brought upon themselves (which apparently made it okay) and as something that didn’t apply to any of us anyway. Why should it, when we knew the self-evident truth of Christianity? That truth was expected to carry us through any doubts we might have, any logical inconsistencies we might discover, any skeptics we might encounter.
The Unbelievers (for us, that term referred solely to people who had heard The Truth and chosen to reject it knowingly) were not part of us. They were the Other, and the matter of their fates did not appear to cause significant distress to anyone I knew, including me. We just figured that the fate of the Unbelievers was perfectly just and merciful because God is perfectly just and merciful.
Shockingly, that wasn’t quite so reassuring once I began to contemplate becoming one of that nameless, faceless mass of Unbelievers. The prospect of defecting literally scared the hell out of me. Much of the fear has since left me, but not all. It may never leave me completely, because it was not meant to leave me completely. It was the final safeguard of my faith, a reason to stay if all others should fail.
Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts school for wizards in the Harry Potter series, said that it is the unknown we fear when we look on death and darkness. The Christianity I grew up with enhances that unknown with an even scarier prospect – the idea that by rejecting Christ, we will not only be left behind in the unknown but that we will become part of the unknown. We will cease to be remembered, to be loved, to exist. We will be erased.
That fear was extremely effective – for me, at least. Overcoming a similar (if slightly less intense) fear when I made the Radical Decision for the sake of the second reason was no small matter. It caused a psychological shift in my beliefs and my personhood that is still having surprising effects five years later.
As a Christian, I believed that God was in control of my life, and I always let him guide me. If I attempted something and it didn’t work out, God must not have wanted it to work out. If something went well, I took no credit because all things work to the glory of God. I never made significant choices without feeling that I had God’s approval (or convincing myself that I did), and as a result I never had to own the consequences. In short, I never had reason to think about what sort of person I was, what sort of choices I would make if I wasn’t trying to please God. My lifelong attempt to do what God wanted had quite effectively prevented me from internalizing a sense of ownership over my choices.
No one could see under my mask, so it didn’t matter what it looked like under there.
The Radical Decision was the first I’d ever made without my family’s approval. It was, therefore, the first decision I’d ever made without one of the two key influences which had run my life up to that point. It was a decision that in some ways cost me their influence. It was a decision that would alter the vision they had for my life – after this, I would have to figure out things on my own. And I would have to live with it if the Radical Decision turned out to be a disaster.
When I left Christianity, it felt remarkably similar. In both cases, I risked consequences that horrified me. In both cases, I rejected good things from people that I loved. In both cases, the catalyst for the decision occurred when my desire to take responsibility for myself grew greater than my desire to stay on a path which had been so clearly marked for me with love in mind. In both cases, the desire to stop doing something that was harming me became stronger than the fear of leaving.
In both cases, I lost significant pieces of myself.
By the time I left Christianity, the mask I wore was much more than a mask – it was an inexorable part of my identity. I believed that by removing my Christian mask I was removing the face that God would recognize. I was renouncing my claim to the identity he had written in his book all those years ago.
[Sidebar: Before I go on, I must stress that I had other reasons for leaving. Taking personal responsibility for my choices was not something I was able to do effectively within the context of Christianity, but I know others who have come to terms with the same issue without leaving the faith. When I made the Radical Decision and began to think in terms of who I was and why I wanted the things I wanted, it highlighted other areas of Christianity which were irreconcilable with the person I wanted to be, and those factored into my decision as well. So I do not mean to suggest that it is impossible to live a personally responsible life as a Christian just because it wasn’t possible for me.]
When I made the Radical Decision without my parents’ approval, I realized that I could never authentically take responsibility for my choices as long as I was living for someone else. And the former added so much significance to my life that it eventually outweighed my commitment to Christianity (along with other things – see sidebar above). I decided that I would rather live my own life, even if I lived it badly and went to hell afterward, than live the life that someone had chosen for me. It didn’t matter if “someone” was God or my parents or anyone else – no one but me should choose the person I am, and was, and will become.
“All right, then I’ll go to hell!” When the cost is that high, there is no easy choice. It is possible to make the right choice and feel horribly about it. I do not regret my decision to leave Christianity because I know that it was right, for this and many other reasons. But doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a terrible choice to make. It took a long time to let go of my resentment toward the deity that forced me to make it. Who wants to choose between being recognized as a loved one, a child of the king, a resident of the heavenly empire where there are no more tears… and being recognized for who you really are?***
If the Christian God exists, I believe that he no longer knows me – because I have chosen to depart from the identity he chose for me in favor of my own. My life is a gift, yes, but in the giving it became mine. I will not live it to please anyone else, or in fear of what will happen if I don’t. No one but me will be responsible for what I bring to the world or leave behind when I go, and to me that’s as it should be. I am my own. I am learning to know myself. And for me that has made all the difference
--Phoenix
__________
* We were a Protestant family. My father was raised Catholic, but by the time he met my mother (a lifelong Protestant), he was not overly religious and certainly not looking for a Catholic woman. Both of my parents later converted to Catholicism, something that happened roughly in tandem with my own breaking-away process. Observing their journey has added an extra dimension to my own. It ‘s been fascinating, illuminating, and restorative in some ways. But that is another story.
**One of my favorite books as a kid was Letters From A Skeptic. I recommended it to my fellow Christian friends who were struggling with doubts, and it never occurred to me that great whacks of that particular book make zero sense if one hasn’t accepted the essence of a particular monotheist worldview. It was recently recommended to me by an older Christian with whom I’d spent the greater part of a night debating theology, and who very much wanted to see me rejoin the faith. He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him that I had already read it.
*** It is, of course, possible that God could still accept me for who I really am despite my renunciation of the Christian faith. I do not take comfort in that possibility, partially because I don’t think it’s likely and partially because depending on that possibility would feel too much like lying to myself. The fear of probably I’ll go to hell for this was an inextricable part of why this decision was so difficult, and so important.
Alternatively, it’s also possible that he created me to rebel against him, and in so doing I actually have become the person he created me to be. A troubling possibility from an equally troubling God.
The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.
Yay, Phoenix writed a post and we can haz!
Posted by: Lonespark | Jun 27, 2011 at 12:17 PM
Oh Phoenix. Your story mirrors my own. Here are virtual hugs, if you like such things: {{Phoenix))
This is a central conflict for me as well, and I know well the fear that if I really do take my own responsibility that I will make a mess of it, and face Hell for it. But for me, the Radical Decision hinged on the existence of Hell, in part; and that has been a big help in telling the fear to go away.
The whole idea that, when given the precious gift of a life, the best thing one can do is give it back strikes me, any more, as profoundly wrong. The argument that we humans are not responsible enough to handle our own lives, which is what I've usually seen as justification for that idea, also strikes me as profoundly wrong. We have them. We are the only ones who -do- have them (I don't get to live your life, for instance) and so to say, no thanks for this incredible independence, thought and free will, I'd rather be a sockpuppet, rubs me all the wrong ways. And for the possibility of my, and your, departure from that way of thinking being what was intended all along.. troubling indeed.
I am not being very coherent here, but.. yes, this. What you said.
Posted by: Sixwing | Jun 27, 2011 at 12:18 PM
I'm going to double-post because I just realized that in talking about Phoenix's post and my own reactions, I've left a bunch of people out.
I admire people who can find a middle ground here, between sockpuppet and going unrecognized. I wasn't able to do it, last time I tried. Other people can and do; I've seen it in their essays, and in their actions, and in their lives. How they walk that tightrope is not something I understand.
The possibility that by rejecting the sockpuppet end of the spectrum, I am fulfilling my own covenant promises in a way I never expected to, is at once thrilling and disturbing. Thrilling because how awesome would it be for someone to plan in something -other- than being a sockpuppet. Disturbing because was all that really necessary? Is all this?
I'm still not being coherent, but I think I'm at least getting closer to the heart of it. Now to go write something for work instead.
Posted by: Sixwing | Jun 27, 2011 at 12:22 PM
I love getting to see the world through other perspectives through these posts.
I am very uncomfortable with uncertainty when it comes to some types of personal decision-making. (Financial, especially. Aaaarrgh!) But in general I'm fairly comfortable uncertainty, doubt, paradox, and the unknown. What disturbs me about death isn't the unknown bit; it's the certainty of separation, pain, and loss. Especially lost potential, interrupted relationships...
And although I was a devout (liberal, and I'm sure that makes some difference) Christian for almost two decades, and prayed a lot, I never had a feeling of God guiding my life or my decisions. My beliefs and values did lead to closing off some avenues (for instance, I wasn't going to join the military, and I was conflicted about the idea of working for a place like Los Alamos that was involved with making weapons), but I was still left with a bewildering array of choices.
Posted by: Lonespark | Jun 27, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Hooray! Phoenix-post!
I'm with you when it comes to living life to know oneself is fulfilling and valuable. It's certainly what I've been trying to do with my own. Although my head went all a-spinny as I pulled into the end stretch. There's the contradiction, if you turn from God, isn't his love infinite? That's the assumption I've always operated under! So is He just following you around anyway, like a metaphysical creepy stalker? So here you (theoretical "you") are off, uh... fornicating and sleeping in on Sundays and voting Democrat, or whatever, and God's still chillin', knocking on your door every so often, going "It's okay, man, do what you gotta do, invite's still open, oh and hey, nice compassion for your fellow man there, and I like what you've done with the curtains!"
That'd be frustrating. Sort of like having Ceiling Cat watching you all the time. (It only gets more and more absurd the more I try to describe it. I'm sorry. This are serious post, this should be serious response.)
The idea of God still loving you no matter what you've done can be a comfort if you still believe in Him and wish to be in His good graces. We're imperfect creatures, ever able to screw up and thus ever in need of a hand back up and a nod of forgiveness. Even if we may not want or need or believe that we have to obtain this forgiveness and help from a deity, it can at least come from someone else. Or from within ourselves. I don't perceive my name as having been written in any book. That metaphor doesn't work for me, personally, not for my conception of the divine. I was just outright threatened with Hell for potential misbehavior, rather than any particular being abandoned. Not much better, but I was still accounted for and I'd be judged on overall behavior rather than renewing my metaphorical metaphysical membership card.
...I find it funny that I have a "conception of the divine", a fairly solid idea of how things should work, but I don't really believe in it. Is that normal? To have this image of Good And Decent Christianity held in your head, but to not actually want to have much to do with it? This is forcing me to, again, hash out just what it is that I'm claiming to un-believe. I know where I've been, but I'm a little befuddled as to where I am. I think I need to type up a post, if just because the act of typing up a post will help me get my thoughts together much more clearly.
Posted by: Lampdevil | Jun 27, 2011 at 01:04 PM
Phoenix, you said you didn't mind disclosing the details - if that's really the case, I'm desperately curious whether the Radical Decision involved tossing off an ethos interlinked with the Christianity you were taught (e.g. a decision regarding sexual ethics) or something completely unrelated (e.g. choosing Harvard over Yale). Was it independent moral thinking or simply significant independent thinking that made the difference?
Or, you know, if the story's too long or ultimately too personal, I can direct my curiosity elsewhere.
Anyway, hurrah for independent thought. I'm glad to see a former Christian atheist who can speak so charitably and respectfully about my faith - most seem to have been burned too hard to spare much more than courtesy.
May you always be fully yourself as you ought to be!
Posted by: Kirala | Jun 27, 2011 at 01:19 PM
Oh, I must echo what others said here, this mirrors a lot of my own experience, but if I'm reading you right, in just a few short years, you've understood what took me at least a decade to become clear about--20 years later, I can still be surprised by noticing someone else has been on this path. *Applause*
Posted by: Thalia | Jun 27, 2011 at 01:23 PM
Wow, just wow. Thank you for your honesty.
Posted by: Recovering Alumni | Jun 27, 2011 at 01:52 PM
@Lonespark, you made my day with the very first comment. Thank you!
Lost potential and interrupted relationships - what a succinct way of putting everything else I fear about ending this life. That fear is not as intense for me, though, because I'm getting better at living to the fullest. There are things that, lacking a better phrase, are on my bucket list and I feel like I would be upset if I died before I got to do them, but I do feel like I'm living the best life I can now and that's all we can really do.
@Sixwing, I love virtual hugs. And I have often identified strongly with your comments, so I'm not surprised to hear that our journeys have been similar! {{Sixwing}}
And I completely agree with and understand what you said. Life is given for you to live, not anyone else. For me, figuring that out was very key. Like you, I've not been able to find a middle ground. I would be very interested to hear from people who have.
@Lampdevil, I like the humor in your response :-) Comic relief is often an enormous relief. I'm not sure where I stand on predestination, but if there's anything to it then it's possible that all this soul-wrangling is for naught, that I was never meant to be going to heaven. But in that case, I don't think I want to be in heaven anyway.
@Kirala, I'm more than happy to disclose the details. I just didn't want to muddy up the post with them. The Radical Decision was my choice to leave university at the end of my sophomore year, very very much against my family's wishes and values. I think a college education was, at the time, either a close second or a close third on the list of things they wanted for my life. They didn't think I would ever go back, and it was bad times all around.
I did eventually go back, though, which was almost as difficult a decision as leaving had been! And I have to say, I think those two decisions were among the best I ever made.
So no, it wasn't to do with Christian ethos. But in my house, education was neck-and-neck in importance.
@Thalia, thank you very much.
@Recovering Alumni, thank you very much also.
Posted by: Phoenix, who is humbled | Jun 27, 2011 at 03:33 PM
following Lampdevil: "So is He just following you around anyway, like a metaphysical creepy stalker?...The idea of God still loving you no matter what you've done can be a comfort if you still believe in Him and wish to be in His good graces."
It is a great, comforting idea if you LIKE the deity that you think is going to follow you forever. If you want nothing to do with it, if you actively disagree with some of its commandments and moral sittings, it's really quite terrifying. I remember having similar thoughts as I was leaving Judaism - the idea that there's just no choice, that since I was born from a Jewish mom, I could never, ever escape the community, no matter how little I wanted to do with them (and having actually cut ties, I don't feel the need to escape nearly as much). It's not a good thought to know that your community will never, ever leave your side no matter how far away you want to go.
Posted by: Samantha C | Jun 27, 2011 at 04:55 PM
Wow. Good post.
This, in particular, sounds horrifying:
As a Christian, I believed that God was in control of my life, and I always let him guide me. If I attempted something and it didn’t work out, God must not have wanted it to work out. If something went well, I took no credit because all things work to the glory of God. I never made significant choices without feeling that I had God’s approval (or convincing myself that I did), and as a result I never had to own the consequences. In short, I never had reason to think about what sort of person I was, what sort of choices I would make if I wasn’t trying to please God. My lifelong attempt to do what God wanted had quite effectively prevented me from internalizing a sense of ownership over my choices.
Your experience of Christianity has been very different from mine. I'm not surprised you wanted to get out.
Posted by: Deird, who never felt like this | Jun 27, 2011 at 05:16 PM
It's not a good thought to know that your community will never, ever leave your side no matter how far away you want to go.
@Samantha C, Fred is always comparing evangelism to romantic wooing so I see this sort of "community entanglement" almost like a marriage. If it's a good marriage, then it's a good thing to know that your partner/community will always be there for you and is never leaving your side no matter what.
But if it's a bad marriage... you're hiding in a shelter hoping that zie/they don't find you.
@Deird, would you care to say a little more? Like I said, I'm always intrigued at how other Christians are able to settle this problem. To me, being a good Christian does mean giving up one's right to one's own life in favor of whatever Christ might want. (Generic) you might want to be a teacher, and God might want you to be a missionary... so you become a missionary.
And going along with that, I'd consider the primary decision maker the person with the most amount of responsibility for the way that decision turns out. If I tell my kid to go rob a candy store, and zie does it out of obedience, isn't it pretty much my fault when zie gets arrested?
If you feel like saying, I'd love to hear more about how you reconcile all of that without ever feeling the way I did.
Posted by: Phoenix, who didn't like feeling that way at all | Jun 27, 2011 at 05:31 PM
...I find it funny that I have a "conception of the divine", a fairly solid idea of how things should work, but I don't really believe in it. Is that normal?
In a word, I'd say "yes."
I certainly do. It mirrors those virtues I hold in the highest esteem: love, compassion, coherence, justice (not in the "Build a fence around Superfund sites and put anyone convicted of a crime in there, fallibility of the courts be damned" sense of "justice" though; and yes, that IS an actual suggestion I've heard made in earnest, sans the point about fallibility of course), etc.
On the other hand, the sort we've been discussing over at Patheos holds order, tradition, and authority in the highest regard, so their conception of how the divine should be follows suit.
And it seems to me that many if not most of those who leave their faiths do so because what they are taught to believe about the divine doesn't square with those values. For instance, I left my faith at a young age because it seemed to me to be incoherent, selfish, and petty.
Thank you Phoenix for sharing your story.
Posted by: Choir of Shades | Jun 27, 2011 at 05:40 PM
Phoenix, while I'd be happy to elaborate, I'm not entirely sure how to.
What you're describing is so far out of my experience that it's...
um...
...kind of like saying "but you're a fan of murder mysteries and your favourite colour isn't green? Could you tell me some more about that?"
It's so much not something I've experienced as a Christian that the idea of doing so is baffling me. I'm not sure if I can say how I avoided a mindset when that mindset is so far removed from where I am.
Posted by: Deird, who isn't good at words right now | Jun 27, 2011 at 05:57 PM
...kind of like saying "but you're a fan of murder mysteries and your favourite colour isn't green? Could you tell me some more about that?"
Got it. More than acceptable answer! And one that made me laugh, at that.
I'm really glad your experience was/is more positive :-) That makes me happy.
Posted by: Phoenix, who is giggling | Jun 27, 2011 at 06:11 PM
@Choir of Shade, all kinds of "QFT" at your second-to-last paragraph.
You're welcome, and I hope it was meaningful.
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 06:16 PM
I ended up saying something fairly similar to what Phoenix was saying, about ownership of my own decisions, to my Fundamentalist initiator. He appealed to a mystical Christian whom we both respected to help him out, because he didn't know what to say.
She said something--I wish I still had it written down--roughly along the lines of "It is not possible to give yourself to God until you *have* yourself."
In my observation some religious traditions want to take this choice away by making it a default: you always had to be given up to God, there is never a time you have hold of yourself and can choose. I certainly felt this, and it was part of why I had to leave the Christianity I was raised in.
If someone comes to you and says "Here's my pencil--hang onto it until I get back, will you?" you don't really have a pencil. You might have the use of a pencil for a bit but it clearly isn't yours. You might venture to write with it but you wouldn't want to sharpen it, much less break it. And of course when they come back and reclaim it, you're not giving them any kind of gift. It's just their pencil, that's all.
It is not satisfactory, for a lot of us, to treat souls that way--to suppose that we are not given souls that are ours, but only souls on loan from their real owner, with instructions to return them promptly on demand. If I understood her rightly (I am not much of a mystic and what she said may have been beyond me) she was saying that no true gift can be given nor true sacrifice made of what you don't actually *have*.
I was sick last night and sitting in the bathtub at 1 am thinking about _Jesus Christ Superstar_, which my husband had been watching downstairs; and I realized that I had never allowed myself to approach that myth as I would approach, say, Inanna and Ereshkigal. I was raised with the idea that one approach was permitted and all others were heretical. I don't feel that way about Inanna and Ereshkigal; in the absence of a Sumerian priesthood to crack down, I can think about whether Ereshkigal is a good presence in this myth or a bad one, and why.
And what I realized is that if I approach the Christian myth as myth, I am going to end up with a seriously heretical interpretation of it, because for me-as-Pagan-myth-interpreter there is no way Jesus being God makes sense of "Why have you forsaken me?" and "This is my beloved son" and "Why do you call me good?" and "Into your hands I commend my spirit." That is just not, for me, the way that this story can work as myth. But I *never knew this*. I wasn't allowed to. I didn't own my own spirituality; if my religious authorities had had their way I wouldn't have owned my own self. I wriggled out on the self but not on the spirituality until fairly late in life.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Jun 27, 2011 at 06:19 PM
If someone comes to you and says "Here's my pencil--hang onto it until I get back, will you?" you don't really have a pencil. You might have the use of a pencil for a bit but it clearly isn't yours. You might venture to write with it but you wouldn't want to sharpen it, much less break it. And of course when they come back and reclaim it, you're not giving them any kind of gift. It's just their pencil, that's all.
@MaryKaye, this particularly resonates with me since I recently heard a Christian refer to hir own child in a very similar manner. Zie described hir as being "on loan" from God, not really hirs. That really... bothered me.
Anyway, you said all that quite artfully. Thank you.
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 06:44 PM
Thank you for your heartfelt post, Phoenix. I see myself in your experience, especially in the bit about not taking responsibility for my own decisions until I made Big Decisions in ways that greatly differed from the way my parents, church communities, friends and family would have recommended or desired.
Fortunately for me, I had never really internalized the whole fear of hell thing. I think I was never able to really believe it.
Posted by: Adrenalin Tim | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:13 PM
there is no way Jesus being God makes sense of "Why have you forsaken me?"
According to my NT prof, when Jesus said this he's not actually asking God why he's been forsaken but making a statement of God's ultimate triumph. "My god my god, why have you forsaken me" is the opening line of Psalm 22; reciting the first line of a psalm was the way it was referred to in ancient times. Paraphrasing my prof, "When Jesus says that one line, it's as if he's reciting the whole of the psalm."
Posted by: Leum | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:25 PM
Leum writes:
That's illuminating but it doesn't change the reaction. If I read that Psalm I see a story that goes like this: "God, I'm in terrible trouble, and I'm going to die. Please rescue me! If you do, I will praise your name before all peoples." It is still a very strange thing for God-incarnate to be saying. If this death was ordained before all worlds and it is *not* going to be avoided...why that Psalm?
I am not going to argue that I interpret this myth right, or better than other people do. I am just somewhat shocked by the fact that I am 47 years old and I had never attempted to think about it that way--the way I have thought about other myths since I was a young teen--before last night. That is one persistent set of mental blinders.
Posted by: Mary Kaye | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:39 PM
I'm not a Christian, and am confused by most Christology, but my sense is that it's important to remember that Jesus is God-the-Son not God-the-Father. He's an aspect (or person) of the same great Being, but he's also separate, in some way, from the rest of that Being. He's fundamentally human as well as divine. Being human means he necessarily has to have doubt and uncertainty because doubt and uncertainty are so central to what it means to be human. How to reconcile that to his fundamentally divine nature is something that confuses me, were I a theologian I'd slip into heresy and say his divine nature only surfaces post-resurrection. My NT prof is inclined to think of any passage where Jesus predicts his death and resurrection as him speaking as the Risen Lord to the readers of the Gospel, not a legitimate saying of Jesus during his time on Earth as a mortal.
That said, interpreting Jesus as a separate being from God, divine but not equal to God, is completely justified in the synoptic gospels.
Posted by: Leum | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:46 PM
The (Christian) God that I believe in wants us to be happy and joyful and content with our lives.
My life is wholly my own, my responsibility, but at the same time, I have turned it over completely, irrevokably, to Him/Her/It/Them...
I do not think that God wants us to be unhappy, and in the missionary/teacher example, if being a missionary would make (generic) you unhappy, than I believe you ought not do it. Or only do it if you can be a missionary-teacher, and be happy with the teacher part of it.
God wants me to grow and be the best me I can be. Best redheaded engineer I can be. Best friend to my friends I can be. Best knitter I can be. Best at being the unique combination of capabilities, talents, and flaws that make up me - the person that no one else can be because they are not me.
Posted by: syfr | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:46 PM
@MaryKaye, my own interpretation would suggest something like Jesus' "human side" (for lack of a better term) taking the fore there. He also asked for the cup to pass from his lips - obviously, a deity who knew it was inevitable wouldn't bother "praying" like that - indeed, probably wouldn't be praying much of anything at all, given that it was *him* making all this happen in this way.
But if we see Jesus as both man and god, it makes perfect sense (to me, at least) that his human part would be angry, crying out, making whatever promises to God if God would make the pain stop - while his god side let him(self) wail without saving him(self), since he knew it had to be that way.
When I was a kid, that was always one of the most compelling parts to the crucifixion story for me. I couldn't imagine any human being having the strength to endure that kind of pain if zie had the ability to make it stop. Of course, now I know that plenty of people have been tortured to death over beliefs they refused to surrender even though to do so would mean a swift end to the torture. Humans are wicked strong.
@Adrenalin Tim, you're welcome, and I'm glad you didn't internalize the fear of hell. I love your icon!
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:49 PM
I'll add to the chorus of appreciation for this post. Thank you, Phoenix.
This evoked a vivid memory. When I was in third grade, I attended a fundamentalist independent Baptist school. (Fundamentalist/independent = These guys thought the mid-1990s Southern Baptist Convention was liberal.) I had a wonderful third grade teacher that I loved, and I hung on her every word. She had attended Pensacola Christian College and didn't own a single pair of pants, only skirts. She made us say "Yes ma'am" and "Yes sir" and wouldn't let our class put our Bibles on the floor under our seats in chapel, because it was disrespectful. (Makes you wonder why I was so crazy about her--but I was. She was a kind and beautiful person.)
One day our class had queued up to walk somewhere--we may have been just coming back from chapel or recess--and one of my classmates asked her, "How can we be happy in Heaven if we know people who aren't there?" (This reminds me that I shouldn't underestimate the ability of third-graders to ask key theological questions.) I remember how our teacher's eyes shone--with sadness? or pure sincerity?--as she answered. "The Bible says that 'God will wipe every tear from our eyes,'" she said. "That means we can no longer be sad in heaven, only happy. If it makes us sad to remember people who aren't in Heaven, I don't think we will be able to remember them once we're there."
I don't remember how my classmates received that answer, but it has haunted me. As a kid, I was stung by the bitterness of the concept itself. As an adult, I wonder what it was like for my third-grade teacher to share this with a group of children--9- and 10-year olds. Then, she was probably the age I am now (mid-twenties). Did she doubt herself as she said it? Did she ever come to doubt it? Has it ever disturbed her like it has disturbed me--the idea itself, and the idea of saying it--for years?
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 07:57 PM
Oops, I basically repeated what Leum said.
My life is wholly my own, my responsibility, but at the same time, I have turned it over completely, irrevokably, to Him/Her/It/Them...
@syfr, since I struck out with Deird, I'll ask you as well. How can you reconcile this statement in your mind? How can your life be "wholly your own" and yet turned completely over to someone else? Is is the mere fact that you *chose* to turn it completely over to God?
The way I see it, if you turn your life over to someone else it stops being wholly your own. This is kind of a stupid example, but if I'm painting a picture and I ask someone else to come over and finish it for me... it's not really still my picture, is it? It's their picture.
I don't mean any disrespect by asking this - I'm really interested in your answer :-)
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:04 PM
Phoenix: I recently heard a Christian refer to hir own child in a very similar manner. Zie described hir as being "on loan" from God, not really hirs. That really... bothered me.
Yeah, I couldn't quite find the words until now to explain how utterly strange that seems to me, even as a Christian. Maybe it's because while my upbringing was Christian it was super secular in some ways - evolution, genetics, modern psychiatry were all fiercely defended - and as a result, God the "creator" wasn't really... around. Today I really can't wrap my head around the idea of some force ("God") existing outside of time and rubberstamping his mark on reality. Just about the only way I can think of a creating God is one that's woven seamlessly into nature or reality or the human experience or something. There has to be give and take for it to make any sense to me.
I'm sorry, this is still super rambly. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm with you on how utterly horrifying that concept is and I'm really sorry for how it ran your life for at least a few years. {{{Phoenix}}}
Posted by: aravind | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:05 PM
I do not think that God wants us to be unhappy...
Perhaps my lack of understanding is rooted in the fact that I disagree with this statement, and so do many of my Christian friends. Most Overused Example A: Two Christians are in a terrible marriage, they're unhappy with each other and they really want to get divorced - but they made vows before God, for life. So they continue to stick it out instead.
(Mild trigger warning for spouse abuse - nothing graphic) I have several friends who stayed in horrible marriages (ranging from "pretty bad but I take marriage vows seriously so I'd keep trying too, for awhile" to "RUN FOR THE HILLS RIGHT THIS SECOND, YOUR SPOUSE IS GOING TO GET YOU KILLED (LITERALLY)") because they believed that being righteous was more important than being happy.
When I was a Christian, I agreed with that - there's plenty of Biblical support for the idea that God actually doesn't care too much about your personal happiness, he would much prefer that you continue to be righteous regardless of whether or not it makes you happy.
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:09 PM
(headed out to dinner; will ponder and reply later)
Posted by: syfr | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:10 PM
I don't think we will be able to remember them once we're there.
*shudders*
*is so disturbed as to have trouble forming coherent sentences*
...
...
...but that wouldn't be me, or at least much less so. I have far too little me as it is. Shouldn't memory be enhanced, if anything, that I may be more fully myself?
Posted by: Brin | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:14 PM
This is a very interesting story, Phoenix - thank you.
One of the things that interests me about it is that the story is quite different from most 'Christianity was bad for me' stories I've ever encountered - they usually involve what I regard as the worst features of organised religion (arbitrary rules which must be obeyed, various forms of not very nice means of social control to enforce them, etc.) which I can't recognise at all from my own experience of Christianity, so it's easy for me to say "well, Christianity doesn't need to be like that - sure, that Christianity is bad. But not the nice kind.". But your experience doesn't seem to involve that much of this - the way you've told it has the fundamental problem being a relationship with an external, powerful being that you can't get away from, and the implications that this has for autonomy. It doesn't matter how nice that being is, their presence means you can't be free. Does this sound right to you?
- It is true that your account does still involve a somewhat judgemental (if reluctantly so) God, which is not an idea that I encountered much myself in my youff... I wonder to what extent that affected your later experience?
- The other thing I wanted to highlight is that it seems to me that this is as much about your relationship with your parents as it is with your former religion - and the issue seems to me to be the same there. Almost everyone, I think, has issues of some kind with their parents, and for those of us whose parents are still living and involved in our lives a common big issue to have is autonomy. Again, it doesn't matter how nice they are - it's still the case that to live up to their expectations solely because those are the expectations means you can't be free, no matter how good those expectations are for you otherwise.
(it occurs to me that as far as autonomy goes, benevolent and involved parents can be more difficult than horrible or neglectful ones - perhaps it's more straightforward, (I nearly said 'easier', but that's not what I want to say), all else being equal (difficult to see how that could happen, though) to reject the later entirely, but the former requires something more complex. )
(I've got some vague thoughts going through my head about autonomy, external gods, morality, Wittgenstein, Kant and Ricœur at the moment, but I'm finding it difficult to articulate them)
Posted by: arc | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:18 PM
{{Brin}} Hugs, Brin, I didn't mean to over-disturb you. Not sure what trigger-warning would be appropriate, but TBAT, please feel free to place one on my previous comment if you think one should be there.
And Brin, I couldn't agree with you more--if the point of Heaven is to be fully ourselves in a way not possible on pre-redemption earth. ("For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." - Romans 8:20-21)
If there is a Heaven, I hope it's the inclusive, healing, end-of-all futility kind, where we are more fully, not less fully, ourselves.
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:20 PM
Brin, "we won't remember" is better than traditional Christianity's answer: "our joy will be heightened by the knowledge of their suffering and we will praise God for our salvation all the more. We will understand how their torment is perfect justice and rejoice in it."
Posted by: Leum | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:20 PM
@zigforas, thank you for your kind words.
For my money, kids have a habit of cutting right to the heart of deep theological matters. I despise that answer to that particular question. It's such a cop-out, and if God really fixes everything by Eternal Sunshining the memories of the reprobate out of our minds, well... that doesn't speak too highly of the solution that zie came up with, does it?
If it's true that we can finally get a handle on what is fair and right and perfect once we get to heaven, then we ought to be able to understand (at least a little) why God dealt with unbelievers the way zie did. If we can't be made to understand that - if God needs to vacuum their existence out of our minds for us to enjoy heaven - then I think God is... well... at best, patronizing.
I think of it this way - I want to have children one day. And I realize fully that I could someday lose a child. Do I want that to happen? Of course not! But if it did, would I want my memory of my child erased, as though zie never existed? No! Never! Sure, there would be no pain then... but neither would hir life have any meaning for me. No grieving parent I have ever spoken with would trade their little munchkin's life for anything, not even an end to the pain.
Similarly, I think most healthy people would want to have the ability to grieve their loved ones in heaven - you know, the ones who didn't believe and now it's too late. Even if they have an eternal perspective on it which somehow makes it okay, it's still a sad situation by any reasonable, human standard.
Depriving them of their ability to mourn by removing the memory of their loved ones' existence strikes me as cruel, patronizing and almost evil.
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:21 PM
I'm sorry, this is still super rambly. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm with you on how utterly horrifying that concept is and I'm really sorry for how it ran your life for at least a few years. {{{Phoenix}}}
@aravind: Thank you, that means a lot.
@Brin: Yup, I feel the same way.
It doesn't matter how nice that being is, their presence means you can't be free. Does this sound right to you?
@arc: Not only does it sound right, it sounds more accurate and succinct than anything I've written about the subject in years (well done! :-)). Exactly. That's it exactly. God might have this super awesome plan for my life... but even if zie does, it's not the life that I necessarily want. It might even be BETTER than the life I want... but it's not the life I want because it's *not the life I chose.*
I mean, I think a lot of Christianity is based around the idea of a loving parent who wants the best for you. Kind of the way my parents loved me and wanted the best for me. They wanted me to stay in school, and they wanted that because they loved me and wanted the best for me and they thought that was the best thing for me. And you know what? Maybe it would have been super awesome, even more awesome than my leaving turned out to be (this would have been a little more applicable if my leaving had turned out to be the disaster we all initially thought it would be... but onward). But even if it had been... that wasn't what was best for me. Best for me was leaving school when I did. And maybe by doing that, I missed out on some incredible opportunity which would have made my life even better than it is now...
... but I like my life, and I'm glad I got here by doing things my own way. Even if it's less awesome than it could have been, had someone else made decisions for me.
Uh. Or, what you said. Did I mention it was a nice succinct summary?
More after I post this.
Posted by: Phoenix, who is feeling wordy. | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:32 PM
@ Leum/Phoenix,
I'm not sure which of you I actually agree with on this--whether "traditional Christianity's" answer is less desirable because it's crueler, or if the Eternal Sunshine God is less desirable because it's patronizing. I think the best apologetic I've heard for traditional Christianity's answer is something along the lines of "For now we see as in a mirror dimly" (i.e., "We can't understand what it will be like to be fully glorified with God after the resurrection, but once we are completely united with God, we will understand and accept even election, predestination, and ordination to punishment in the context of that which brings God glory.") But that still involves...people who aren't in Heaven.
Sigh...may I quote Carrie's last post on this one? "My links to the religion still aren't severed. I find myself defending the Church a lot, like I still owe it something." I'm emotionally disgusted by the idea of Hell, and yet my mind is still darting to dissect the thousand theological explanations for it with which I'm acquainted. An automatic and somewhat interesting exercise, but no endorsements here.
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:38 PM
- It is true that your account does still involve a somewhat judgemental (if reluctantly so) God, which is not an idea that I encountered much myself in my youff... I wonder to what extent that affected your later experience?
I'll answer with a recurring dream I used to have from the time I was five to the time I was about ten. I dreamed that I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and a huge tornado swept up toward me. The tornado would decide whether or not I had been "good" that day. If I had, it would turn around and whirl away, and I would wake up panting and sweating, deeply shaken but relieved.
If it decided that I had been bad, it would pick me up and swoop me away. I always had this idea that it would start ripping me apart but to be honest, I don't remember that happening. I just remember it taking me away - far away, somewhere I'd never be seen again.
In the latter scenario, I woke up screaming my head off and it took me hours, if not days, to calm down.
I'd say the idea of a judgmental God affected me quite deeply.
The other thing I wanted to highlight is that it seems to me that this is as much about your relationship with your parents as it is with your former religion - and the issue seems to me to be the same there.
Yes and no. The issues were similar, I'd say, because I had such a strong paradigm of "God = heavenly parent" running through my brain while I was growing up. I have to emphasize that I had terrific parents and while I had significant issues with one of them, they both did the best they could and I'm very close with them today.
So I wouldn't say that it's "just as much" about my relationship with my parents. I would say that my issues with my parents served as a preamble, perhaps, to my issues with God. But they weren't the same, i.e., I actually wasn't scared to leave the church on account of my parents (if that's what you mean). I dreaded their reaction, but I never would have seriously considered staying after I didn't believe anymore in order to please them. There were other things, other values they offered me (like education) that I was MUCH more worried about throwing in their face. Actually, now that I'm writing this, it's odd that I wasn't a little more worried about their reaction to the religion thing. But I wasn't.
(To be fair, this could be because I had already defied them and leaving religion couldn't possibly have seemed like a bigger deal than leaving school.)
Anyway, I think there is a connection between the way I related to God and the way I related to my parents, and the courage it took to defy them both. The huge difference now is that my parents still accept me. I'm fairly confident at this juncture that they will always accept me for who I am. I have no such confidence with God.
I don't know if that answered your question clearly. Feel free to let me know if it didn't.
Posted by: Phoenix, who tried to be a good kid | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:44 PM
Brin, "we won't remember" is better than traditional Christianity's answer: "our joy will be heightened by the knowledge of their suffering and we will praise God for our salvation all the more. We will understand how their torment is perfect justice and rejoice in it."
*wince*
You know, the more I think about it the less I can buy Christianity as an "invitation" and at the same time as something that one is condemned to hell for not believing. That's not an invitation; that is coercion.
And I have to wonder why the Bible devotes so much time to the discussion of penalties and the fate of sinners and the wrath of God if God *really* intended for it to be an invitation. Plenty of religions are invitations. They're there if you want to learn more about them, but they don't even broach the subject of hell.
Of course, a distinction occurs to me. Christianity is not offered as an invitation to a better, more fulfilling life - it is offered as an invitation to avoid a hellish destiny which humans innately deserve.
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:53 PM
I'm out of here for the evening - back tomorrow to answer more questions / continue discussing with anyone so inclined. Thanks for the nice responses, everyone!
Posted by: Phoenix | Jun 27, 2011 at 08:54 PM
I'm inclined to agree. When I believed in the Christian god I did so in terror and despair. I masked that by claiming love and (eventually) to not believe in Hell, but my nights were haunted by the spectre of damnation. The best thing that becoming an atheist did for me was to let me shake off (for the most part) a fear of Hell. But even now, when I read or listen to Christians discussing Hell I can't help but wonder if I'm wrong and I will go there. I know Fred likes to say that no Christian is a Christian solely out of a fear of hellfire, but based on my own experiences, I wonder if that's true.
Posted by: Leum | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:00 PM
zigforas: Hugs, Brin, I didn't mean to over-disturb you. Not sure what trigger-warning would be appropriate, but TBAT, please feel free to place one on my previous comment if you think one should be there.
Memory erasure has always disturbed me*, but I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as "triggery". Hugs are always nice, though.
*Especially starting at age fourteen, when I began to think of children's crappy long-term memory as a horrible and tragic thing, instead of (somewhat grudgingly) accepting it as The Way of Things. (You can tell it was at fourteen because the 2003 - 2007 diaries range from a few hundred to a few thousand words per year. 2008? Seventy thousand. If I can't preserve myself in my head, I'll need other ways. Speaking of which, I still have lots of camp to write about...)
Posted by: Brin | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:07 PM
Of course, a distinction occurs to me. Christianity is not offered as an invitation to a better, more fulfilling life - it is offered as an invitation to avoid a hellish destiny which humans innately deserve.
I flipped through my Westminster Confession briefly to see if there was some easy [Reformed] Christian counter to this statement--but no, there wasn't. "A hellish destiny which humans innately deserve" is not an unfair characterization of the stated beliefs of many Christian groups I have encountered.
Which is why some of these forms of Christianity can be particularly harmful to people suffering from negative distortions of image/self-worth or emotional disturbances, or abuse by others--"Yes, you feel like hell? You deserve hell." Honestly, it's part of why I found the gospel-as-presented-to-me compelling as an adolescent--because I was an adolescent and I was hurting. Weirdly, the doctrine connected with something very real in my experience. I stuck around for a long while in part because of this part that felt true. Not good that this kind of believing does make true believers prime targets for abuse by others, unless other, more positive beliefs serve as counterweights. (It took me a long time to find those counterweights, but I eventually did.)
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:10 PM
[On the topic of screwing with memory, so steer clear if you need to.]
Brin,
I feel exactly the same way. Hell I'm thoroughly disturbed by a scene in the new X-Men movie in which a Character loses what I think amounts to a week of her memories. (Note to everyone who may one day develop superpowers: If you do that to someone You Are Not Good. Even if you know you're evil and are fine with being evil, I recommend steering clear as well.)
Of course Professor X is routinely disturbing like that. There was an extremely creepy scene in one of the earlier movies where he threatened to completely rewrite Logan's memories to make him think he was someone else (in gender and age among other things) made all the more disturbing when you realize that Logan, suffering from amnesia due to traumatic brain injury, is someone who fully understands the impact of lost memories. Someone else might not take it as seriously, but to Logan it would be a deeply personal extremely hurtful threat.
-
On an almost entirely unrelated note, the you can't remember the unsaved while in Heaven thing would seriously screw up the plans of a character in a Right Behind idea I had.
She's saved, she tells someone who took the Mark of the Beast what she plans to do when she gets to Heaven which is, basically, to tell Jesus to let the people like him [the person she is talking to, not Jesus] out of Hell. Every. Single. Day. For eternity. Sure, Jesus will ignore her the first few million years, but can he really ignore her forever?
When the guy with the Mark tells her not to (he thinks she shouldn't risk her place in Heaven) her response was to be something like, "If my pastor was right, no matter what I do it is impossible for me to be kicked out of Heaven. If my pastor was wrong then there is hope for you."
-
By the way, wouldn't the simpler answer to the question of how it could be Heaven without those you love be that it wouldn't be without those you love?
Posted by: chris the cynic | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:16 PM
@Phoenix,
How much emphasis was put on what happens to 'bad people' in your childhood?
It sounded to me from your article that your upbringing didn't put that much focus on what would happen to you if you weren't 'good', just occasional stories like the one your dad gave, but your later comments suggest that there was a bit more fire and brimstone than that?
I'm asking because I'm wondering how much input you got to have this recurring dream. It seems to me that often parents can set up big psychological traits in their children, completely unwittingly maybe, with little more than a few remarks.
(BTW, I'm no Biblical scholar, but my understanding is that Hell is one of those many topics (along with Satan and the Trinity, interestingly enough) on which the Bible is extremely sketchy about - there's a few scattered remarks, which may or may not be talking about the same thing, and the only way you get any kind of systematic account is by taking all these scattered remarks, pulling them together, and adding a whole lot of details which just aren't in that text. It's not as if there's a whole chapter on the subject that tells you that it's in the center of the Earth, and Satan rules over it, and how you get in and whether it's possible to leave - of course, it's easy to get the opposite impression given the importance given to the topic in certain sects. )
Posted by: arc | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:17 PM
@MaryKaye: By the way, I hope you're feeling better today!
Posted by: Phoenix, who just got over a bad flu | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:18 PM
By the way, wouldn't the simpler answer to the question of how it could be Heaven without those you love be that it wouldn't be without those you love?
The Calvinists, at least, would say that is a human-centric view of Heaven. In Heaven the saved will be too busy glorifying God to notice anything save His glory. Those reunions with your loved ones? Not gonna happen because that would take away time rightfully reserved for God alone.
Posted by: Leum | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:19 PM
You can tell it was at fourteen because the 2003 - 2007 diaries range from a few hundred to a few thousand words per year. 2008? Seventy thousand. If I can't preserve myself in my head, I'll need other ways.
Wow, I can totally relate to this. I kept an extensive journal easily totaling in the thousands of words per year for a long time. And my primary reason wasn't just remembering, but the fear of important parts of me being lost. I even printed out, bound, and hid my journal at some point in the hopes that it would survive me and someone would find it and remember/understand who I was.
I always loved this piece from Walt Whitman: "When you read these I that was visible am become invisible, / Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, / Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade; / Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)"
Tying this back to the thread-conversation....maybe yet another reason Hell is offensive to me/others is because it dishonors the memory of those excluded from Heaven, forever? Either by forgetting them...or by un-doing who they are. (Reducing them to the glory which they bring God in their condemnation--forgetting all else.)
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:20 PM
And here I am typing away on my phone...
@chris the cynic, your Right Behind post idea nearly had me tearing up. It was that beautiful. WRITE IT (uh, please).
@arc, I need to come back to your most intriguing question tomorrow once I've had a chance to ponder it.
Posted by: Phoenix, who prefers a real keyboard | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:30 PM
Sort of like CZEdwards was talking about in hir post, Baptizing Dead Quakers:
Posted by: zigforas | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:31 PM
@Phoenix and Leum: I very much understand your perspectives. I've never not been an atheist, but I did become an agnostic somewhere in my late teens (as in, I moved from being certain there's no God and anyone who thinks there is one is stupid, to believing that there's no evidence either way and, from a strictly materialist/empirical perspective, there's no experiment that can distinguish the two hypotheses, so it's ultimately a normative question). But I decided to remain an atheist nonetheless, which is to say, I choose to believe, in the absence of evidence either way, that there is no God or other divine.
The main reason is that freedom is possible only when there is rule of law. A universe with divinity runs not by law but by the whims of a person or persons; freedom is not possible in such a universe, no matter how benevolent or consistent they may be. Doesn't matter if they're completely non-judgmental and non-interventionist; their presence means that my apparent freedom is an illusion they can revoke at any moment they please. I don't want to live in that universe; I will never know whether I do or don't; therefore the rational thing to do is believe I don't.
Posted by: Froborr | Jun 27, 2011 at 09:35 PM