I have received a lot of emails from people wondering why I seem so forgiving and stating that they would be very angry if they were going through what I am going through. So the question might be, "Am I angry?" That depends. I will try to express what I feel as well as what I am going through in this article.
If you have read My Story or the original articles on this blog, then you know I spent 50+ days in jail. Was I angry then? Yes! Most certainly! My first few days in jail I was frightened in so many ways. I had never been in jail before and I did not know what to expect. Also, the entire ordeal was just so unreal! One day I was celebrating my freedom of mind via my de-conversion and five days later I am being arrested!
After a few days, fear gave way to anger. I was angry that my wife had done this to me! I was angry at the pastor of that church! Several of us in jail would talk about what women had done to us and we would all get angry (and, no, I don't hate women)! But when I finally got out of jail on bond, I realized that I no longer really knew who I was!
You see, almost two decades as a Christian had formed me into who I was. My character (for the most part) and what I deemed "right" and "wrong" were all controlled by the Bible and by the standards of the church. Now that I was no longer under that authority, I was free, but I was also something new. I had to decide what I was and what I wanted to be. I decided that I didn't want to be an angry person. I decided that I did want people to treat me fairly and that I should treat them fairly. I wanted people to give me the benefit of the doubt and so I decided to give others that same benefit.
Now, I don't always succeed. All of this is still very fresh to me ... I am still going through it. And so, from time to time, I do get quite upset. At other times I simply break down, sob and loose it. I feel quite betrayed. However, I bet my wife does, too. Her reasons for feeling betrayed, I believe, are based on her understanding of the Bible and her desire that our entire family would faithfully serve God all our days. My reasons are obvious to most people who read this blog.
All in all, I am not angry ... not at the moment ;) . That could change. I get hate mail (via email) and things like this. I get people who don't know the accusation against me who speak about this case and use words like "rape". This all has the potential to make me angry. But I want to be the better person.
You know, now that I think about it. As a Christian I had a bit of anger. I would yell in my house from time to time when things weren't going well. But, since leaving the faith, I have not been tempted to yell at all. It is amazing to me that I found peace as I have, despite my circumstances, OUTSIDE of the Christian faith.
6 comments:
That is very admirable - good for you. I hope you can beat this ridiculous legal battle.
I believe you, because I've heard this talk from very sweet people, the talk that you can't have morals if you don't believe in God. A pastor I knew who is so darling, she told me when I pointed out that I had been a good person my whole non-believing life, "Well, you believe and you don't know it!" The thought that she couldn't picture me simply being good because I feel compassion and a sense of fairness blew my mind.
I believe you, and hope you get through this, and that your children will be well, and that your wife finds her way.
Keep up the good faith.
I used to be Christian. I was raised Baptist and ended up Marrying Catholic. Both sides of our extended families admonish the others for stupid petty things... One side worries that my kids haven't dropped to their knees and the other side is worried when they don't eat Jesus often enough!
I discovered a deeper philosophy. I still am very much in the search for God. But I have decided the the Bible is pretty much the Jews justifications for their atrocities in the OT and I believe the NT to be very symbolic and taken widely out of context. For example, I do not believe that Isaiah was ever supposed to be compared to Revelations. Using widely reaching thought processes, a Darbyist or Scofieldite can make the Bible say just about anything he or she wishes.
I look for deeper meanings. Its obvious that the world is much more than 6000 years old and the Jews are just plain ignorant and wrong. We have to find a way to allow God to be an omnipotent being rather than always making God in our image.
I found some books and readings I encourage you to read with an open mind. #1 "Otherwhere, A Fieldguide to Nonphysical Reality" by Kurt Leland - http://www.amazon.com/Otherwhere-Nonphysical-Out-Body-Traveler/dp/1571742417 and #2 "The Dissapearance of the Universe" by Gary Renard - http://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Universe-Straight-Illusions-Forgiveness/dp/1401905668/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230760150&sr=1-1
Both are rather newage, but they made a huge difference in the life of this ex religious nut.
Staying as calm as possible is the exact right attitude in a situation as crazy-making as yours. Having someone who is pugnacious, vindictive and scary on your behalf is what you pay lawyers for.
Best of luck.
Molly, NYC
I'm an atheist/former preacher, and I experienced similar persecution when I left the fold - "God will kill your children!"
It's been over 20 years now (I'm 42), but I still remember the terrible way I was treated after I left the church. It was so harsh and cruel that I was suicidal at one point.
Some of my experience is detailed below...
Florida, 1985
“It’s not the heat—it’s the humidity.” If you ever visit Florida, you’re bound to hear that phrase more often than you might care to… usually after you’ve made a passing remark about how walking out of your front door is much like walking into an oven. Should you make such a complaint, nine times out of ten you’re going to hear the echoed refrain, “It’s not the heat—it’s the humidity.” If there’s no one around at the time, someone will pop up out of nowhere just to say it. It’s Florida’s state motto. It should be emblazoned on the back of their currency—right below an image of tourists spontaneously combusting.
I’m a native New Yorker, so Florida represented quite a change for me. I was accustomed to mild summers and snowy winters that took months to dig out of. The Florida winters were like New York summers, and the Florida summers were like… chestnuts roasting on an open fire, only I was the chestnut.
The flora and fauna were also very different. Florida’s landscape is rife with palm trees, flamingos, lizards and alligators. And the insects… the insects in Florida are large. Remember those black-and-white sci-fi movies from the 1950s—where pesky nuclear radiation was always mutating bugs into tank-sized people-eating-machines? The insects in Florida are about that size, only I didn’t need blue and red glasses to see them coming at me in 3D. As it would turn out, though, the weather and wildlife were among the least radical of the changes I was about to encounter.
I was 18 when I made the move down south. The year was 1985. I had left New York to attend a college in central Florida. It wasn’t your typical school. It was small—maybe 30 students attended that year. It was strict. There were no televisions allowed in the dorms, and no popular music. Dating had to be chaperoned, and even then, the “six-inch” rule was always in effect; people of the opposite sex were prohibited from ever being closer than six inches to each other.
There was a strict dress code. Women had to wear skirts or culottes, no pants allowed. Men had to have short haircuts. There were rigid curfews. There were many rules, both written and unwritten, that had to be strictly followed.
So, why was I there in the first place? Well, I had become a “born again” Christian in 1983. I was 16. It was a very private, very intimate thing… becoming a Christian. For me, it was personal; it all began with a one-on-one dialogue with God. The notion that I had just joined a community, a brotherhood, eluded me at first.
I decided that I wanted to become a missionary, or more precisely, I believed that God had called me to be a missionary. After graduating from high school, I sought my pastor’s recommendation regarding which college I should attend. He recommended a school in Haines City, Florida. The college was a ministry of a fairly large fundamentalist church with a membership that measured in the thousands.
And so off I went. I wasn’t going to fit in right away. I remember being invited to dinner at a deacon’s house before the school year had officially commenced. The deacon was a large, somber man. His daughter was there; she too was a first-year student. A few male students were also in attendance.
The dinner was somewhat awkward and quiet. I tried to break the silence with some small talk, “Can one of you point me toward the nearest arcade?” One of my favorite pastimes was playing videogames, and 1985 was a golden year for the arcade industry. Arcades simply littered the American landscape. The deacon’s eyes narrowed as he solemnly intoned, “Videogames are a form of gambling. We don’t believe in gambling.”
After a few moments came my reply, “I’m sorry - Can anyone point me to the nearest casino?” I remember the looks of shock on the faces around me—some of the other students literally had their forks frozen in mid-air between their plates and their open mouths. Things weren’t off to such a great start.
Nonetheless, I did my best to meet the school’s expectations, and I wound up fitting in quite well. I obeyed all of the rules (and there were many.) It’s true that I sometimes had difficulty resisting the urge to question inconsistencies in some of the dogma taught in class. Irresistible, obvious questions would occasionally breach my lips, and would always garner puzzled looks from my professors. (No matter the question, the answer was always either, “I don’t know. Let me get back to you,” or “Because God said so. That’s why.”) Apart from making the occasional irascible remark, on the whole, I was a model student.
I made friends with just about every classmate. I was especially fond of the five Bahamian guys. Funny and kind, they were always a pleasure to be around. There were times when, coming home from work late at night, the air still hot and muggy, I would occasionally bump into one of them working security detail. I remember doubling over with laughter, as invariably he would be wearing a thick winter coat, replete with hat and gloves, simply shivering in the hot Florida air (remind me never to visit the Bahamas in the summer).
As I mentioned earlier, the school had many written rules. And as troubling as some of those may have been, the unwritten rules were even more so. You see, although there was one school, there were two associated churches: the white one and the black one. The white church was quite large. The black church was much smaller.
The black students could not attend the white church and the white students could not attend the black church. I didn’t find out about this rule until I made a request to switch churches. I was, after all, training to become a missionary. I wanted to experience both churches, and besides, the white church was quite large and well-staffed; I could make more of a difference at a smaller church.
I was surprised at the immediate and fierce resistance I encountered when I presented that idea to the school administration. In the end, I found myself in a private session with the dean of the school, who thoughtfully explained to me that black people were, by nature, lazy, and that if I attended their church regularly, I would wind up doing all of the work, which would be bad for their spiritual growth. And that was that.
There were other unwritten rules pertaining to the Bahamian students. These rules were just as strictly enforced as the written ones, perhaps even more so. Interracial dating was strictly prohibited. It was explained to me that rules of this nature could not be officially recorded because of the legal liability they would engender.
And so I found out that even within the compact community of this orthodox school, there were even smaller sub-communities. The Bahamian students accepted the injustices and prejudices leveled against them with the same good will and humor they always displayed. They would even joke, “Sure, you’ll call me brother… but you won’t call me brother-in-law!”
As disillusioned as I was with the arbitrary and unfair rules enforced by the school, I tried my best to maintain a positive attitude. After all, my goals had not changed. I still wanted to be a missionary and I still had much to learn. Doing my best to be a model student, a model Christian, I eventually found myself a member of the inner circle of the school, taken under the wings of the dean, with whom I would often have long discussions.
Around that time, one of my roommates, John, had fallen out of the good graces of the school administration. He was a senior, about to graduate, but was viewed by the faculty as disrespectful and somewhat of an iconoclast.
One day, in the middle of a conversation with the dean and his assistant, the topic shifted to John. “Steve, we want to kick John out of school, but we need your help. We need a valid reason.” They became more gleeful as they continued, “If he’s one minute late for curfew, if he leaves a hair on the sink, you need to report it to us.” I remember the dean’s assistant laughing out loud at the prospect of John being homeless once he’d been ejected from school.
They both seemed shocked when I refused to help them. “Steve, what does the Bible say about this?” I quoted Proverbs 25:9, “Debate thy cause with thy neighbor himself.” The dean sternly rebutted, “No, Steve. Second Timothy 4:2 says we need to reprove, rebuke and exhort. Two of those are negative. This will build character in John.”
I took a deep breath before I replied, “You were just laughing about him being out on the street. You don’t care about his character. I can’t do this.”
Well, so much for being in the inner circle. The rest of the school year was pure misery. I was constantly in hot water. At one point, after having given my girlfriend a promise ring, I found myself facing the dean and the enormous Bible lying open on his desk. Apparently, students were not permitted to become engaged without the express consent of the college. When I explained that I was not engaged, the dean’s index finger swooped down onto a carefully-selected verse that equated a ring, any kind of ring, with the betrothal of marriage. I was forced to take back the promise ring or face expulsion. I quickly realized that, while the college had rules for just about everything, they also had the uncanny ability to conjure up new ones by pulling Bible verses out of a hat.
What I had originally thought to be an inclusive community, a community based on love and kindness, rooted in the shared hope of things eternal, turned out to be rather exclusive, especially if your skin was dark, or if you were a woman, or if you dared to follow your conscience.
I quit the school after the year was over.
It wasn’t just the heat—it was the stupidity.
I read your story and it is a VERY shocking one indeed. I believe religion is poison for the mind, poison for the individual. this shows exactly why.
it is all the more shocking that in the case you described all the court needs is a testimony. where is justice, then ?
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