by Vyckie
There have been several Christian readers of this blog recently who are leaving comments to the affect that Laura and I were “following” ~ a cultic movement ~ “interpretations of man” ~ a false understanding of God.
Their message is this, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water! If only you REALLY KNEW Jesus ~ you would understand that He loves you and seeks your good.” One comment reads, “There’s a big difference between following a cause and following the living Christ.”
I will admit that such comments are seriously aggravating to me because one point we’d really like to make in all of this is that Laura and I were genuine Christians.
While Laura admittedly did “turn off” her brain and blindly accept whatever she was told (mainly by her ex-husband) about authentic Christian living ~ she still did have a conversion experience which changed her heart, mind and way of living. She sincerely desired to please the Lord in every aspect of her life ~ she prayed to God and heard from Him, was led by the Holy Spirit, experienced the joy of the Lord, and felt His peace many, many times in her life as a dedicated Believer.
For myself, I don’t believe I could have been more “sold-out” and wholly devoted ~ not to a “system of belief,” a particular dogma or bible teacher ~ but to Jesus Christ, my Savior and LORD.
The whole reason I posted the long ol’ story of my first marriage which I wrote for my uncle is because it included the testimony of my conversion. Since I wrote it when I still believed it, I’ve included it here for others to read and know that I HAVE experienced an authentic relationship with God ~ by grace, through faith. It was always about HIM.
Here’s how I explained it to my uncle early on in our correspondence:
“Let me say this: The exchange of ideas, delving into the meaning and purpose of life, comparing, contrasting, seeking compatibility ~ all of this is excellent and I look forward to the particulars of whatever we may unfold. But I don’t think I have misrepresented myself to you and that being so, you must know that for my part, the bottom line will always be Jesus. And not some ambiguous Jesus-as-I-perceive-him ~ but the Word become Flesh as He has revealed Himself in history through the Holy Scriptures.
“If all I have to offer you is the very best of myself, I am sure to disappoint you ~ it is only a matter of time. But if I can somehow convey even a glimmer of the precious treasure which the Lord has wrought in my heart through the trials which are His refining and purifying fire ~ a treasure of faith, peace, hope, patience, love (and, yes ~ words are trite and inadequate) ~ that would indeed be a God-send.”
Unlike Laura ~ as a Believer, I never stopped thinking. It was through listening to a radio program, “The Bible Answerman” that I came to the Lord in the first place ~ and apologetics was always my passion. This is why I was not the least bit concerned when my atheist uncle began writing to me ~ no way was I in any danger that Ron might talk me out of my faith because I had spent years studying my bible ~ I believed because I had REASONS to believe that Jesus is the One True God and I was ever ready to “give a defense” for the hope which was in me. Not only could I prove the Truth of my Christian faith through facts and reasoning, but I had the experience of KNOWING it was true because I had Jesus in my heart and life ~ I could feel it, I could see it evidenced over and over again as He worked in my life.
I have dozens of written testimonies of genuine encounters with the Living God ~ He was real to me and THAT is what I was living my life for. This is what I wanted my uncle to understand when I wrote the following:
When I say that I have a strong faith, I am usually not referring to the stubborn ability to maintain my beliefs in the absence of any convincing evidence (though I do admit to possessing a fair amount of that sort of faith ~ as we all do). My faith is not mere belief or wishful thinking ~ it is grounded in evidence and the longer I live, the more that evidence stacks up to the point that it’s become second-nature ~ I have every confidence.
Of course, all of this begs the question: What do I accept as “evidence” for my Christian faith? For me, it’s a combination of (in no particular order) reason, experience (which, I will admit, is weighted pretty heavily), intuition, general revelation (as in nature, scientific method) ~ and, yes, I do accept scriptural revelation as far as I am satisfied that I understand the original intent of the text (and I’m not so naive as to think that I do understand great portions of the Bible in its truest meaning).
So, no ~ I didn’t shut off my brain. It’s just that I CONFINED it to the very narrow, rigid structure of the biblical worldview of a born-again Christian. It is not because I didn’t really study my bible that I ended up in this impossible lifestyle. Quite the opposite actually ~ because I was very diligent to search these things out ~ because I was determined to live a life most true to scripture ~ THAT is how I ended up leading our family into the misogynistic world of patriarchy.
What Laura and I are sharing here is not the story of how we left a movement. I never made a decision to reject the Quiverfull/patriarchy teachings which I had ascribed to UNTIL I realized that I no longer believed in the Bible and Jesus Christ. Once I lost my “firm foundation” ~ the entire structure (which I will admit had become quite elaborate) that I had built upon the “Solid Rock” on which I stood ~ EVERYTHING ELSE (Quiverfull, patriarchy, my abusive marriage, all of it) came tumbling down when that foundation crumbled beneath me.
I have known many, many women living the Quiverfull/patriarchy lifestyle ~ these wives and mothers KNOW and LOVE Jesus Christ ~ they are “passionate housewives, desperate for God.”
To those readers who feel so strongly about defending the Lord and a genuine relationship with Him ~ consider how close you feel to God, how real He is to you ~ THAT was us too. We were totally and absolutely THERE.
I know it is incomprehensible that someone could really and truly be a Christian ~ know the Truth, be born-again ~ a new creation, etc. ~ and then walk away from it all. That IS our story. We didn’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” No ~ what we did was throw out the BABY. Without the baby, there’s really no point to keeping the bath water.
Keep reading because we’re going to tell you exactly how we got from there to here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NLQ Recommends ...
'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich
‘Quivering Daughters‘ by Hillary McFarland
‘Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement‘ by Kathryn Joyce
Michelle says, Never enough babies!
“I will admit that such comments are seriously aggravating to me…”
THANK YOU for saying it. Here’s the thing: I too have been the target of “witnessing,” and I hate it. It’s condescending and annoying, and, seriously, if *one more person* tells me they’re going to pray for me… So, yeah, it’s really… Yeah, I’ve been finding it aggravating too, and I’m glad you said this. Your narrative is important because of how it speaks to people–and not because it’s an open door to “witnesses” on behalf of a “better” Christianity.
Kristin
The freedom of being a Christian is the freedom of walking in the Spirit rather than under laws, rules and regulations. It’s supposed be freedom from all those external rules like “homeschool your kids, don’t use birth control, live apart from everyone who doesn’t agree with you.” Walking in the Spirit is walking in communion with God, Who is Love– and the love of God in us inspiring us to walk in love towards others.
I experienced true freedom in Christ when I left fundamentalism and began to simply walk with Him. Fundamentalism is doing the very thing the New Testament continually teaches against: as in “you foolish Galatians! You follow all these rules– do not handle, do not taste, do not touch! Having begun in the Spirit, are you now going to be perfected by living according to the flesh?”
Walking in the Spirit is true freedom, because walking in love frees us. If we love others, we won’t want to do harm to them; if we love ourselves and love God, we won’t let others do harm to ourselves either– because we are worth more than that.
Love isn’t supposed to be about laws, rules and regulations. When we forsake all those things and simply trust and love God and love others, we are free. It’s funny how Christians have so often turned the New Testament to say the opposite of that– but that really is what it’s all about.
KR Wordgazer
I’m a newcomer here, but I found KR Wordgazer’s response incredibly moving. I agree completely. I went through a period of spiritual doubt, and very nearly lost my Christianity. During that time, I considered the tenets of Fundamentalism. But, it just seemed so antithetical to the Gospel. It promised freedom, but in the end I felt hollow. Then, I did as you did, and simply followed Him in the way of love. I felt liberated. No longer would I hate my neighbor, no matter how cruel he was. Instead, I would empathize. And then, seek to share the life of love with him, to make this world what Christ wanted it to be.
Vyckie, your story is a powerful one, and it sheds light on the effects of the man-made religious patriarchy systems. I hope that many other women like yourself become free from bondage. As a man, I would never seek a wife who would be submissive to me. I want someone whole, fully and utterly equal. Nothing less than a full human being. If you don’t mind, may I share your story with others I have met?
This is for Vyckie…
I read this original post (without the comments) quickly and then went to take a shower. I thought about what you posted
“because one point we’d really like to make in all of this is that Laura and I were genuine Christians.”
Then later you say ” I never made a decision to reject the Quiverfull/patriarchy teachings which I had ascribed to UNTIL I realized that I no longer believed in the Bible and Jesus Christ. Once I lost my “firm foundation” ~ the entire structure (which I will admit had become quite elaborate) that I had built upon the “Solid Rock” on which I stood ~ EVERYTHING ELSE (Quiverfull, patriarchy, my abusive marriage, all of it) came tumbling down when that foundation crumbled beneath me.”
Obviously if what you believe “now” is true (no longer believe in Jesus Christ), then whatever you experienced earlier (I believe you used the word “conversion” can’t have been a conversion if Jesus Christ either doesn’t exist (atheism) or you can’t know him (agnosticism).
So, really, in order to be true to yourself, I believe you should say, “We believed ourselves to be true Christians.” To say that you were truly converted and then to say that that Jesus Christ doesn’t exist (or that He cannot help you) cannot be. You should admit that you just thought you were truly converted. Then, it would make sense.
Paul tells us to “make our calling and election sure”. This implies that many people who really think they are Christians aren’t and it has nothing to do with how many kids you have or how the husband rules the house.
I’ll keep reading, but I do hope this blog doesn’t turn into a “bash Christianity” blog.
Becky, that’s annoying.
Yannow, Becky,
Not believing in Jesus Christ doesn’t equate to “atheism.” There are plenty of other gods out there, and some darned good ones. And as for hoping that “this blog doesn’t turn into a bash christianity blog” I can’t speak for the other atheists and agnostics on the blog but for good old fashioned christian bashing you might want to limit your reading to officially christian blogs. Some of the things you believing christians, sure of your calling and election, say about each other would curl my liver.
There’s something very shroedinger’s cat about the insistence that a person who had a sincere conversion experience and lived an exemplary and devoted life as a Christian somehow, retrospectively, has all that annulled by their realization that they believed in a non existent entity. To say that someone *is not now* a Christian doesn’t mean that they weren’t *then* a Christian anymore than to say that someone is *now* divorced means that they weren’t married, or because they aren’t now married that they don’t now have the children physically born of that marriage.
The belief state of Vyckie and Laura is well exemplified in the fact that they both lived within an extremely oppressive christianist movement for love, as they saw it, of god. You don’t get to tell them that their original motivations and beliefs were insincere or not real just because having tried your porridge they decided they didn’t like it. Its like telling a sailor that they “never were a sailor” because they’ve retired to land.
aimai
To say that you were truly converted and then to say that that Jesus Christ doesn’t exist (or that He cannot help you) cannot be.
*Kaderin after falling of her chair*
I’m sorry, I just had a laughing fit. Becky, maybe you should have read the comments that came before because they predicted your behaviour.
Quote from one of my earlier comments:
You see? The fallacy is used to discard evidence to the contrary of a first-established claim (or really, the claim doesn’t have to be stated explicitly, but it has to be an unchallenged presupposition in the theist’s mind), by making it not count.
A: Faith is permanent. Once a Christian, you cannot lose your faith.
B: But Mark used to go to church, and then lost faith in Jesus.
A: Yes, but Mark was never a true Christian in the first place.
Clearly, I am an all-knowing seer. Bow before me, mere mortals!
ROTFL
Kaderin ~ you crack me up!
Indeed I do. I also expect the traditional goat sacrifice to be delivered to my doorsteps. Chop chop, people, this whorship thing isn’t going to do itself!
Now carry on with this serious business of yours.
PS: I think I’m overdoing the Internet meme thing. Well this is the last, I swear, I can stop anytime…
Oh Worthy Kaderin ~ what sort of sacrifice will you accept from a humble worshipper who has no goats?
goat cheese maybe…?
A wise woman once told me, “The last time you can change a man is when he is in diapers”.
No amount of submission/making myself small made my tyranical husband happy. It made him more demanding, with a greater sense of entitlement. Finally he hit me and I left for good.
At some point all that water under the bridge washes out the bridge and the Universe runs over you with a Mac truck and your life is over as you knew it and you start over. The bath water, the baby, all gone. When you are an empty vessel you are ready to be filled.
Goat Cheese! What heresy is this?
… Well, I suppose I could be appeased with the very finest of French goat cheeses. Still, I’d prefer the actual goat. Offering cheese upon the altar of Dark Arts just does not have the same vibe to it *worldweary sigh*
I want to recommend some authors to you.
Robert Heinlein was a master writer of science fiction and spent his entire career trying to convince people to think. He was brought up fundamentalist and tossed the whole worldview out as a pack of oppressive lies, so you have something in common. You may not like the opinions he proposes — and in his later books he is undoubtedly having fun shocking people — but he always thought about his opinions and wants to make his readers think about theirs also. Reading his stuff would be good practice in independent thinking for you, and give you an entirely different perspective on many issues, whether you end up agreeing with him or not. You might especially love his Job, which is the story of a fundamentalist preacher tormented by God. It has the most wonderful ending which I will not ruin for you.
Spider Robinson not only wants to make you think, but wants us all to be happy healthy loving people. His Callahans stories are relentlessly thoughtful and upbeat, although the most recent ones get a bit silly. The Mindkiller, Time Pressure, and Lifehouse set is highly advised, and any of his one-offs.
Barry Hughart wrote three of the loveliest novels I ever read — in twenty-five years of voracious reading — about ancient China that never was, which tackle big problems about good and evil under the enchantment of fairytales.
Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles would be an excellent thing for you to read with your kids as an antidote to the patriarchy. There are four or more of them, and they start out with a princess who is bored of being proper, and goes looking for adventure.
You also might enjoy the Slacktivist’s weekly dismemberment of the Left Behind novels (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/). There is a nice big archive of posts starting from the first page of the first book.
After what you have both been through, neither of you should reasonably want to stay Christian, and the kind of experience you have had is exactly why I have always and will always refuse to become one. That kind of abuse is permitted and encouraged by the system, even when it doesn’t happen within a particular family.
So congratulations on having the guts to throw out the baby and the bathwater. Stand firm when people try to bring you back to the faith just because they can’t believe that you could possibly be a happy, moral, and fulfilled person without also being “saved”. You can be, no matter what if any faith you profess.
Live in loving kindness and believe in your ability to think for yourself, while being able to see and forgive your mistakes. Take care of your loved ones and your community and let them take care of you.
Hi Arietty, glad I checked back. I answered it over on my blog actually, and asked my mostly Christian readers to answer it as well (though so far no one has). Feel free to read it here: http://hollywood.keltscorner.com/kate/?p=714
I tend to be a bit rambley and process better in conversation so feel free to respond to it. I’m a little nervous posting the link…my blog is pretty low-key and mostly about my boring life…nothing like this one!
ALLISON: “I was EXACTLY like all the rest of you women…an ego-maniacal piece of self-righteous crap that the world revolved around.”
And you clearly haven’t changed – though, of course, you no doubt consider your comments here to be the fruit of a “meek and quiet spirit.”
I can sort of understand Becky’s argument, I think… If you assume Jesus exists and that being Christian means following him, then how can someone who doesn’t believe Jesus exists say “I used to follow Jesus” if he doesn’t exist ?
Actually, no that doesn’t make sense either. I can totally put something I do believe exists instead of Jesus and it works fine. “I used to be an astronomer, I studied supernovae. I have now come to the conclusion that the Earth flat and the heavens are a solid firmament with holes through which we can see the fires of Hell, and that’s stars. Supernovae don’t exist.”
I have no doubt that person used to be an astronomer. I am completely baffled as to how he could have gone from a true and sensible belief to pure craziness, but I don’t automatically doubt he used to be an astronomer and studied real supernovae.
And if I did, it would definitely be No True Scotsman.
So okay, no excuse for Becky.
— Caravelle
This is a fascinating thread and really too long and too complex to grasp easily. I just re-read through it and I wanted to bring up something, possibly tangential possibly not. KR Wordgazer’s very beautiful post about “walking in the spirit” reminded me of what I have loved, and what was attractive (to me) in some Christian writings. But I don’t think that the admonition, or the urging, to simply “walk in the spirit” and let “The law” lie where it lays really answers the question that lots of people, Christian and most assuredly not, are asking of the god thing which is *how to know* what is the most righteous, or most successful, or most happy making, or most pleasing way to “walk in the spirit.” And, of course, all those goals, which we might say are differentially distributed among religions and christianities, all demand different answers.
From the very beginning of Christianity there has been a tension between the notion that the individual believer, having already a spark of the godhead, can be trusted to make his or her own union with god and the notion that the community, study, and scriptural authority were needed to intercede between the individual believer and god. The entire Catholic approach, for example, assumes the necessity of an intercessor between the believer and god and a hierarchy of knowledge with the Pope and priests and learned folk at the top and individual believers at the bottom. Of course there were struggles between different Catholic factions from the very beginning–the Albigensians? anyone remember them?–but the big break apart came with the Protestant Reformation.
I’m only saying what all of you already know which is that when a believer states that they “know” or “believe” that one or more beautiful early texts should determine how we read all the other texts they are making a very tendentious claim vis a vis other Christians. If not also vis a vis other religions and their members who don’t acknowledge the primacy, or even the authenticity, of the referenced scriptures.
As for me, as I think I said elsewhere, I’m an atheist Jew with a tendency towards Buddhist approaches to incarnation, salvation/nirvana, the idea of “sin” and suffering. I’m personally fascinated by the role that the idea of suffering *for god* or *because of god* or because of *falling away from god* plays in the Quiverful Christianist imagination. I’d love to have a discussion with current true believers, like Allison, about “suffering” and how they think it fits in with their notions of gods plan. But its hard to have that conversation because of the very strong insistence that other religions and their ideas of suffering in this world or the next have no place in the discussion. That is, I think to have such a discussion you’d have to acknowledge a certain utilitarianism in your perspective and perhaps be willing to entertain (even if only for a second) that your solution to the problem of suffering is only one among many not the “True” one.
aimai
Had to come back and post this. Alisson’s remark:
ALLISON: “I was EXACTLY like all the rest of you women…an ego-maniacal piece of self-righteous crap that the world revolved around.”
Made me crack up. Allison, when do you think you stopped being an “ego maniacal piece of self righteous crap?” You’ve just roped god in to make yourself more comfortable and, as you imagine, make yourself more powerful. You’ve made god part of your ego by, as you pretend, being the only one who submits to his will correctly. It takes an immense amount of self love and self regard to imagine that of all the people in the universe you and you alone have figured out what god wants and is doing it. That’s the very definition of egotistical and self righteous.
aimai
Bingo.
Unfortunately, Allison also said she wasn’t posting here any more, because “Your level of self-righteousness and self-importance is nauseating.”
Meek and quiet spirit indeed.
Kaderin,
I really wasn’t posting to you, I’ll just say that you’ve not changed my mind at all, but I wasn’t trying to get a rise out of you–I wanted to ask Vyckie.
I’m saying that if Jesus Christ doesn’t matter in life (or doesn’t exist) and that is fact, then, how could that person have a “conversion” experience (with this Jesus Christ who doesn’t exist). Both can’t be true.
How can it be?
Becky,
Caravelle and others have answered this point fairly clearly but of course because all our comments were bottled up in the “intertubes” this morning you couldn’t see them. Most of us seem to think that a “conversion” experience and a passionate attachment to the notion of Jesus could be “real” and “true” by any standards and *still* be later rejected or found to be false. In fact, such things happen all the time in real life. I was just listening to an interview on NPR with a woman who left the cult of Sri Chinmoy. People go in and out of passionately believing in various cult leaders–living and dead–and having all the marks of true belief all the time. (I’m using the word “cult” in its old sense of a “cultic religion” and not in its modern sense of something that is not a true religion.)
This whole discussion reminds me of the time a prominent public Lesbian was accused of “never having tried a man” as the source of her insistence that she wasn’t sexually attracted to men. I remember that she said, very politely that, well, no, she’d had lots of boyfriends when she was younger because of her determination to be as normal as possible and to hew to normal social mores. It was actually *because* she’d had some many unhappy experiences with men that she’d come to her decision that she was happier being a Lesbian.
In that sense on a purely experiential level Vyckie and Laura didn’t come to their conclusion that there was no Jesus, or at least no Jesus as their entire social network conceived of him, because they *didn’t* know him but because they *did* fully give themselves over to him–or the socially sanctioned version of him that they were taught.
aimai
Becky, I think you’ve got the timeline messed up here. the conversion and true belief came first. the realization that it wasn’t true came later
or to put it in different terms: just because a lot of kids really believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, doesn’t mean either really exists. Just because adults no longer believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, doesn’t mean that they didn’t once very honestly believed in them.
Becky
Well, it’s normal on a blog comment section for many people to not hold back their opinion, even if it wasn’t adressed to them ;D Hope you didn’t mind, but it was just such a magnificent set-up for a joke.
Anyways – have you read the comments that came before now? If not, a quick summary: There exists a fallacy that is called No True Scotsman. It’s used to dismiss evidence to the contrary of an assumption/claim. There original goes something like this…
A: Every Scotsman likes haggis.
B: But Evan is Scottish and he doesn’t like haggis at all.
A: Clearly, Evan is no True Scotsman.
Now your thought process goes…
A: Once you have found Jesus Christ you can never doubt his existence.
B: But Vicky lost her faith after decades of serving the Lord and Jesus.
A: Clearly, Vicky was no True Christian.
So you’re right, both can’t be true. But instead of doing the logically valid thing and discarding your assumption, you instead choose to disbelieve Vicky ever being Christian. Basically, you’re discarding evidence that would threaten your worldview.
Just because she now thinks Jesus Christ doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean she thought that back when she served him (since it would be really silly to serve someone you don’t think exists). See Caravelle’s example with the astronomer.
Okay, I’m a guy, and -I- don’t understand this. Why would anyone in his right mind want a “submissive” wife? News flash: This isn’t a one-night stand, you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life with this person, because you probably think that divorce is evil. With that said, wouldn’t you measure qualities of intelligence, personality, and the like over agreeability? Wouldn’t you want someone who, if you weren’t married to them, you could probably be very close friends?
Maybe this is a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Either way, holy crap, it’s 1:16 AM.
Okay, I’m a guy, and -I- don’t understand this. Why would anyone in his right mind want a “submissive” wife? News flash: This isn’t a one-night stand, you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life with this person, because you probably think that divorce is evil. With that said, wouldn’t you measure qualities of intelligence, personality, and the like over agreeability? Wouldn’t you want someone who, if you weren’t married to them, you could probably be very close friends?
Maybe this is a uniquely Christian phenomenon. Either way, holy crap, it’s 1:16 AM.
The discussion for this post has been moved over to our new NLQ forums: http://nolongerquivering.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=babyNo further comments on this post will be accepted here ~ please go to the forums. Thank you