tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-309326162024-03-05T04:58:57.599-05:00The Slapdash Godliness of a Good GirlLife isn't turning out how I thought it would. But this could be related to the fact that I was convinced the Second Coming of Christ was going to occur before I hit college. (And you think I'm kidding!)Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-42031101101688368482014-02-12T00:04:00.001-05:002014-02-12T01:13:27.283-05:00Ethics, Unmoored<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My husband and I have been trying to give our son a sibling for nine months. So far, no luck. So we did what many others in our predicament do: seek help from infertility experts.<br />
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It looks like we are going to be embarking on an IVF journey soon, something I'd never pondered doing before. Which in turn means I've never given much thought to the sticky ethical issues that can crop up in the course of building a family via medical science.<br />
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I now find myself feeling torn and uncertain about where to draw lines about what's morally and ethically OK, and what's not. When I was a practicing Christian, the lines were clear: artificial insemination, creating "petrie dish babies," was an abhorrent concept. Wrong. Evil, even. Treading on God's ground as creator of life. If you were meant to have children, you would have gotten pregnant. In other words, take the hint already. If you want kids, adopt.<br />
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Yet here we are. As much as I may believe that adoption is a wonderful way to build a family, I love seeing my husband's features reflected in my son's face, my husband's temperament in his actions. I love seeing the strong resemblance our son has to his cousins. The genetic pull is strong and since I've let go of God, I don't feel divinely judged for taking advantage of medical advances.<br />
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So, as a result, we want to try to give our son a biological sibling via IVF. But even if I'm generally cool with using assisted reproductive technologies, IVF in particular presents at least two thorny decisions: <br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>How many embryos to create from a single IVF cycle.</b> The argument for "as many as possible": some huge percentage of fertilized eggs from women my age become abnormal embryos (I think up to 80% have chromosomal abnormalities?). More fertilized eggs = higher chance of healthy embryos. And extra unused embryos can be frozen and used in a future cycle if the first one doesn't take. The argument against: creating excess embryos means we have to decide what to do with those ultimately not used / not needed. Are these our unborn children?</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Whether to do pre-implantation genetic screening.</b> Pro: Can help identify which embryos have chromosomal abnormalities. Such unhealthy embryos are a leading cause of miscarriage, so identifying which embryos are unhealthy means that only healthy ones are selected for transfer, thus increasing my chances of a successful pregnancy. Downside: is this not creating designer babies at some level, and again leaving unused (unhealthy) embryos in limbo?</li>
</ul>
I had always identified as pro-life and was never interested in drawing distinctions about when life begins: at conception seemed like an obvious and easy answer. (Easy because it eliminated a lot of gray areas that seemed too hard to parse.) Post-God, I didn't sit down and consciously re-examine my pro-life stance. But when Paul Ryan's Personhood legislation of 2011 was in the headlines (which proposed to give fetuses full personhood from the moment of fertilization), it did not take me long to reject that proposition on its face. Taken to its logical end, <i>any</i> woman who had suffered a pregnancy loss was at risk of being accused of murdering a person. This struck me as patently ridiculous, because at the margins it meant that a woman who had experienced a chemical pregnancy - where an egg is fertilized and implants on the uterine wall briefly, but doesn't "stick," and thus no pregnancy develops - was theoretically at risk of a murder charge. Considering that 50-75% of miscarriages are caused by chemical pregnancies, if such embryos are "persons" then humankind is well and truly overrun with murderous women. As I said, patently ridiculous.<br />
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As a few people have explained to me, some (many? most?) chemical pregnancies are the result of chromosomal abnormalities in the embryo - the miscarriage being nature's protective system kicking in. If you believe in God, and further believe that personhood begins at fertilization, don't you then have to grapple with the question of why God is killing babies left and right, not even giving them a chance at life? Is not God himself creating "designer babies" in womens' uteri by virtue of the fact that this biological process of rejecting embryos is occurring <i>every day</i>?<br />
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I don't care that much about getting answers to the above - let the believers sort themselves out in whatever way makes sense to them. The real question is - how does this all sit with me, someone now unmoored from that great Christian Morality Play, and having to make decisions about IVF?<br />
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It feels like some part of my answer could come from the above: nature is selecting and de-selecting embryos <i>all the time </i>for healthy development in the womb. But it just doesn't compute for me to imagine that actual people are dying every time a chemical pregnancy occurs. This in turn might suggest that my ideas about when 'personhood' begins have started to shift. But to what? I don't know yet; I still squirm at the idea of creating excess embryos and I'm unsure about where the right lines are for deeming an embryo "too" unhealthy to transfer. I know I'm not alone in these discomforts, as even a rudimentary google search will show.<br />
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So there's lots more to ponder. Sometimes I really wish for the good ole black-and-white days.<br />
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Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-52535720380897746592013-05-07T13:23:00.000-04:002013-05-07T13:47:34.254-04:00A Believer's Vindication?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Two-plus years since my last post, and I'm still happily married with a chunky, happy, walking-almost-running 1 year old son. My work is going well: I'm teaching at a local university in addition to managing my client consulting practice, my health is stable (i.e. no new cancer scares), my husband and I consider each other our favorite people in the world, and we have lots of local friends and family who keep our social calendars full.<br />
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But something's "off." I'm not quite myself, feeling like on any given day I'm only about 75% present. I'm not depressed, exactly - I still wake up with a smile and laugh plenty throughout the day. <br />
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...but I am <i>adrift</i>. What am I doing with my life? Why don't I feel any of that old deep passion I used to have for my work, my hobbies, my relationships, my causes? Why do I struggle to get things done most days, feeling apathetic and procrastinate-y about everything? Did I lose the thread when I lost the grand narrative that animated most of my being for so long?<br />
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I feel smaller and more petty than I used to be. I have circled the wagons into a protective cocoon (is this still fallout from my Slapdash Journey to Agnosticism?) and have become less generous, more cynical, more isolated. I've stopped reflecting: I haven't journaled regularly in over three years. I've stopped reading actual books. I've developed Media ADD and have lost untold hours toggling between news websites and Facebook, Big Bang Theory, Private Practice, and House. And I have absolutely nothing to show for any of it. <br />
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In short, I've stopped <i>growing.</i><br />
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I know, of course, that mine is an individual path, post-religion, and that others who have tread this ground before me have continued to experience that delicious freedom from the unbearable weight of (incoherent) dogma, judgment, and expectation.<br />
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There is some part of me, however, that imagines the just-under-the-surface glee that some believers might feel at seeing an agnostic stumble. <i>See?</i> I can hear them saying. <i>This is the god-shaped vacuum you've heard about your whole life. You're experiencing the absence of God. How does it feel?</i><br />
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<i>Wanna come back? </i><br />
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Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-55765848781632944022011-02-04T13:55:00.005-05:002011-02-04T14:58:57.853-05:00Answered Prayers?I suppose I will pick up where my last post left off: I was newly engaged and starting to build a life (and home!) with my future husband. At the time, my biggest stress was whether and how to tell my mom about our impending cohabitation.<br /><br />Fast forward a few months: it's late September and I go in for my annual "womanly" exam. This exam kicks off a series of events that culminates in me learning, three days before our wedding, that I have breast cancer. At this point, we don't really know how bad it is: it's ductal carcinoma in situ (which, as far as cancer goes, that's good), but it's big (9.5 cm) and the cells are aggressive (that's bad).<br /><br />Mr. Slapdash and I keep this to ourselves over the wedding weekend because we don't want to dampen the celebration. It's a fabulous wedding and we have a great time (and I'm now <span style="font-style: italic;">Mrs.</span> Slapdash, thanks!). We tell family and friends our cancer news upon return from our honeymoon in Hawaii (which I spent wondering whether I was going to die like my sister's sister-in-law who died of BC at age 39). A couple of weeks later, I go under the knife. Mastectomy.<br /><br />Then we get some great news with the pathology report: despite its size and despite the nefarious aggressiveness of the cells, it hasn't spread anywhere and they got it all out. No chemo, no radiation, no hormonal therapies needed. Whew!!! Even my surgeon was surprised that there was no invasive disease found.<br /><br />My family, friends, and colleagues have been just great, support-wise, and of course Mr. Slap has been incredible. And today, I am recovering nicely from surgery and recently went back to work, where it is as though none of this happened.<br /><br />So here is where this is all getting funky for me: I can't tell you how many of these supportive people who love me have commented on how God has "answered their prayers"; how "blessed" I was to have found Mr. Slap when I did; how almost-miraculous it was that no invasive cells were found. A lot of these people seem to have a narrative going in their heads about what a grand miracle of timing this all was: God brought my life partner around just in time to help me through this trial as my husband.<br /><br />The snarky side of me thinks that "God's providence" would have been a more compelling argument if God had clearly prevented me from getting cancer to begin with. Yes, I'm going to live, but I became a one-boobed wonder at age 36 -- not exactly a dream-come-true. I am at risk of lymphedema in my right arm - if I ever develop it, there's no cure. And despite being cancer-free today, I am still at risk for a recurrence and I have a greater-than-average risk of getting another primary cancer in my lifetime. So yeah, things could have been way worse, but damn. It's not like I escaped it unscathed.<br /><br />BUT, there is a bigger side of me that is like "whoa - that <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> pretty crazy timing" and I am very thankful for it - like I feel a general "Thanks, Universe!" sentiment quite frequently and am very aware that things really could have been much, much, much worse. It was also very awesome to have Mr. Slap by my side; I really could not have asked for more, partner-wise.<br /><br />Still. I'm skeptical of any God role in any of it, particularly because merely having good things happen is no kind of proof of God. It was a lot of bad stuff happening in the world that made me start questioning God in the first place...and I'm pretty sure that a series of good, even seemingly divine, events in my life still can't undo all of that doubt. Right?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-43280879390271985062010-07-27T09:27:00.003-04:002010-07-27T10:05:31.719-04:00Updates!Oh, my poor, dormant blog...!<br /><br />What an eventful year-plus it has been since my last entry. The headlines:<br /><ul><li>I am engaged to a fantastic man and we're getting married in October. :)</li><li>I am still, well, I suppose "agnostic" is the best description. </li><li>My fiance is not agnostic, though he would say he's a "deist" more than a Christian.</li><li>We are having a Jewish chaplain friend of his marry us. We haven't told our parents yet (mine: Protestant; his: Catholic).</li><li>We are trying to figure out how to tell my mom that we are moving into our newly-purchased condo together next month - before the wedding.</li><li>Five weeks ago, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, which sucks of course, and also makes telling her about our impending "living in sin" that much harder.<br /></li></ul>I still occasionally check out the de-Conversion blog, but it doesn't hold the same interest that it did a couple of years ago. For the most part, I have settled into a pleasant way of "being" that is not concerned with the existence or nature of god. To be sure, I get irritable and grouchy when I feel pressured by people of faith to think, do, or "be" differently, but those episodes are few and far between these days.<br /><br />That said, when my fiance and I start a family, we will have to think through what we want to teach our children, and how we will handle it when one or both sets of grandparents wishes to impart their faith systems to their grandkids. But...one thing at a time!Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-5526386545074929722009-04-12T13:33:00.004-04:002009-04-12T13:54:23.979-04:00Christ is risen indeedThere are no less than 15 "Happy Easter" and "Hallelujah! Christ is risen!" greetings on my Facebook homepage today.<br /><br />Today also marks the first time in my life I have not celebrated Easter in any way. For the last two years I have nominally celebrated it by going to church and having a big Easter meal with family or friends. And before that? Easter was one of my favorite holidays, ushering in spring, bringing with it a sense of renewal, life, <span style="font-style: italic;">resurrection</span> (duh). Today? Nothing. Nada. I have not done a single thing to mark the occasion.<br /><br />Granted, this is partly because I am sick with some bronchial crapitis that has had me laid out for almost a week. If I weren't sick, I suppose the question is: <span style="font-style: italic;">would </span>I have done something?<br /><br />A big part of me thinks <span style="font-style: italic;">yes</span>. It's always been a great excuse to spend a day with people you love. I would probably have skipped churchiness but would have joined in to any big banquets I might have been invited to (ahem, not that I was...) or might have organized myself.<br /><br />But maybe I wouldn't have skipped churchiness: recently I have been contemplating dropping in on a local Friends meeting. Friends of mine go there and have really enjoyed its non-preachy, non-doctrinal liberalism (apparently there are Jews, Buddhists, and atheists who attend and nobody's trying to push anything on anybody). I think I do miss some kind of spiritualism in my life. I don't want God back, in particular, but I would like to find a way to nurture and attend to the values that always felt valuable and important. In recent years I've become a lot more open to meditative practices, thanks in part to yoga, so I'm thinking that spending an hour in a Quaker meeting might be a way to feed that little part of me that still wants nurturing in some way.<br /><br />Oh well - time will tell.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-23822947664639047072009-03-29T21:46:00.003-04:002009-03-29T21:51:01.756-04:00Neither Here Nor There, But...I encourage you to watch a documentary called Arusi Persian Wedding, airing these days on PBS's Independent Lens show. Check listings to see if it's playing again in your area. It follows the visit of an Iranian-American man and his American wife to Iran to meet/visit his family.<br /><br />I know one of the writers/producers, and it reminds me of my own trips to Iran, now 9 and 10 years ago. (!) The scenes from Esfahan strike such a nostalgic chord with me - I've been to every place they have filmed there.<br /><br />In a subtle way, my own visits to Iran played a role in my de-conversion, if only in the exposure to a people largely unfamiliar with Christian tenets. Subconsciously, it became harder to hew to a conservative theology after spending time with warm, hospitable people considered heathens (at best) and terrorists (at worst) by certain Christian groups.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-16328013995828457752009-02-22T09:29:00.003-05:002009-02-22T09:45:58.288-05:00Things that make you go hmmm.Through the wonders of Facebook, last night I found my 2004 ex-boyfriend's now-wife. He got married about two years after we broke up and they've since had a child. By all appearances (on FB and her linked blog) they seem very happy.<br /><br />I was madly in love with this guy, and crushed when he broke up with me for no discernable reason. The failure of that relationship was a major triggering event in my de-conversion, because I spent months afterward praying for reconciliation, and 100% convinced (for a number of reasons) that God was leading me to pray for reconciliation. When it didn't happen, I couldn't help but question the entire prayer experience. Et voila, my de-conversion kicked into high gear.<br /><br />So what would have happened had we not broken up? Would my faith have remained intact? If so, I sure wonder why God would just sit back, not answer my prayers, and watch my faith implode.<br /><br />But maybe if we hadn't broken up, some other disappointing event would have led to my de-conversion. In that case, it was surely better for my ex (and for me) that we didn't wind up together; in fact, it was almost...providential that we broke up. Except, wait, I don't think I believe in that stuff anymore.<br /><br />It's an odd thing to ponder.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-31710861956030220852009-01-14T19:17:00.002-05:002009-01-14T19:22:19.487-05:00Maybe I'm Wrong: Part TwoI had two conversations over the holidays that made me really, really wistful for that good old time religion.<br /><br />The first was with an old friend that I had lost track of about six years ago. About eight years ago we lived in the same city and were in the same large circle of people involved with a local church’s young adult group. At the time, we were both contemplating Catholicism. Like me, he had an evangelical type of upbringing but was finding the theology to be lacking in some ways. So we would sometimes trade notes and talk about various Catholic-Protestant topics.<br /><br />When we caught up again last month, I learned that he had indeed converted to Catholicism. I asked him why, and he paused for a moment, looked off toward the ceiling thoughtfully, then said, “Beauty and truth. I could say more, but that’s pretty much it. Beauty and truth.” We proceeded to have a longer conversation about it, which left me ultimately envying the sense of certainty he had. Of safety, almost. He said he ultimately decided that he didn’t want to keep fighting Rome and while he wasn’t on board with everything, he had ultimately decided to put aside his pride and choose to trust the authority of the church. And he seemed confident, sure, and at peace.<br /><br />The second conversation was with my high school friend who has remained quite evangelical and conservative over the years. Somehow, our friendship has survived my de-conversion even if we have had some difficult conversations along the way. This year over Christmas we spent an afternoon together, and in her typical way, she cut straight to the heart of things. We started talking about my breakup (which I am still really struggling to get past, to be quite honest about it) and wound our way around to what it was that really caused my crisis of faith. She then described her own crisis of faith, which happened a couple of years ago when her husband was plucked out of his National Guard unit and sent to Iraq. It was a scary time for them given the danger he was in, and she fought with God for a very long time about why he would allow this to happen. She grew up in a broken home and her entire life’s dream was to have an intact, loving family. She had it - happily married with two young kids - but then God seemed to take her husband away, possibly permanently. <br /><br />She said at that moment of crisis, she faced a fork in the road: either God wasn’t at all who she had thought him to be, and perhaps he didn’t exist at all; or God wasn’t at all who she had thought him to be, and she needed to be open to a new, deeper understanding of who God is. She said as she faced down those two decision paths, she couldn’t fathom her life making sense without God in it. Her life would have no meaning whatsoever, and ultimately, she couldn’t face that life. So she decided that she just didn’t understand God’s purposes well enough and that this was a window to draw even closer to Him. [Conveniently, her story has a happy ending because her hubby is back safe and sound and is retired from the military now. I wonder what would have happened to her faith if he had been killed in action.]<br /><br />My friend started asking me what meaning life holds for me now. And I couldn’t answer her. I had to be honest: it’s a huge loss in my life that I no longer have this narrative, this story, this Great Commission style purpose that directs and orders everything. I’m struggling to cobble something together that feels as coherent, as moving, as inspiring, as that once was to me.<br /><br />Yet it’s not like I can simply back up the train and hop back on. If it makes me feel good, but isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">true</span>, what's the point? I almost feel like a cursed person for asking so many questions and not being content with simple answers. It’s led me to this place that might well be impossible to recover any kind of faith from. At this point, I truly doubt the existence of <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> divine presence. And I’m not even sure it’s faith that I want back, so much as a sense of purpose in life – something bigger than myself that I can grab hold of with gusto – and a community within which to live out that purpose.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-66643777610612418862009-01-01T19:59:00.001-05:002009-01-01T20:01:44.052-05:00Maybe I'm Wrong!Recently, I’ve had flashes of “I wonder if I’m just wrong. Prideful. Just angry at God that my life hasn’t gone how I wanted it to.” Maybe all my blogging is just that of an exceptionally angry person who is rebelling against God in an elaborate and drawn out way.<br /><br />Two things have triggered this kind of thinking.<br /><br />One is the general sense of aimlessness I’ve had over the last year or two. Life used to make so much sense – my (divine) purpose in life was clear, and it was the touchstone by which I measured everything I said and did. Obviously there were some big down sides to that (it didn’t necessarily bear a close relationship to truth, and there was a lot of guilt/fear involved)… but there were some up-sides that I miss. Namely, I am a much more selfish person these days. Maybe some of that is simple backlash after not having paid much attention to my own needs and wants for so long. All the same, I don’t have the same sense of altruism (for lack of a better word) or “others-focus” that I once had. That feels like a huge loss and I’m not sure how to recapture it without also taking back on board the unhelpful theological baggage I’ve been trying to get rid of. I don’t have much of a concept of God at all anymore – not just a Christian god. ANY god. Or a benevolent, loving one, anyway. Yet how do you cultivate deep care for your fellow man without some overarching bigger “story” about what life is all about? Maybe I’d be better off trying to cobble some kind of faith back together. Or maybe I’ve been really wrong about all of this de-conversion stuff, and this is my conscience (or “the holy spirit” as some might say) telling me so? I don’t know. I just know I feel restless and not-yet-settled in my theological thoughts and views.<br /><br />I’ll write about the second one in the coming days… I am still trying to sort it out and put it into words.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-74322317636888143822008-10-28T23:56:00.001-04:002008-10-29T00:01:13.321-04:00Forgive.<span style="font-style: italic;">To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was YOU. (Lewis B. Smedes)</span><br /><br />I think I am living the above. It may be why I feel so bleak about things – I am carrying around these heavy chains of pain and upset that keep dragging my thoughts and feelings backward, ruminating on the months-ago breakup – it hums as background noise when it's not occupying my conscious thoughts. I’m a prisoner to this relationship gone bad.<br /><br />I need to forgive him… and it is damn hard to contemplate it when he isn’t remorseful, isn’t asking for forgiveness, isn’t sorry. But I also need to forgive myself, for making the decision to date him in the first place. There were red flags waving from the first day we met - I <span style="font-style: italic;">knew</span> better than to get involved. But I did anyway – scorching hot chemistry – and, ultimately, got scorched. I pride myself on my ability to make good decisions. And I utterly failed to in this case. For nearly six months now, my head has been stuck looping around these parallel stories – of the pain he caused me, and of the pain I inflicted on myself.<br /><br />So. I could use some inspiration, some wisdom, some quotes, some stories, some advice, about forgiveness. Anyone?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-6724269039300910372008-10-19T21:22:00.002-04:002008-10-19T21:32:10.185-04:00Happenings and UpdatesMy sisters and I ran a half-marathon last weekend… which turned out to be both a bonding event and a fundraising one. (We raised almost $6000 for cancer research!)<br /><br />To cheer us on, my parents came to town too. Now I am still seeing a counselor, something I started doing after the breakup, and in which I am untangling my family history and patterns. My dad came to one of my sessions in May.<br /><br />And last week, my mom came.<br /><br />It was a shocking, intense, upsetting, and relieving experience all at once. The highlights:<br /><br />My mom unknowingly confirmed my counselor’s theory that she had leaned on me religiously and treated me differently than my older sisters, like a spiritual twin/sister/support instead of a daughter. Mom said I was her “prayer baby” and that she did come to rely on me in some ways instead of Dad… that I provided her with spiritual intimacy that is totally missing between the two of them. She said she always believed I was destined for something special, that because of <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> faith she knew God had forgiven <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> for marrying my dad (a non-christian). She said she had ‘given up’ on my sisters as far as their faith went (basically channeling all her energy and hopes on me) and that it was hard on her when I left for college.<br /><br />So it’s no wonder I felt so much pressure not to go astray when I was growing up. None of these messages was explicit when I was a kid, but at some level I think I knew I was my mom’s ‘salvation’ and that to step outside the Christian lines would be to disappoint her tremendously, at an almost existential level. I think that’s why it has taken me until my late twenties and thirties to openly question my faith – I’ve been terrified of letting her down. For her part, I don't think she realized the burden she was placing on me. But she did. It's like I've been carrying my mom's cross for the last 30+ years.<br /><br />At one point in the session I said that I couldn’t talk to her about religion anymore. That it was an impossible conversation because she wasn’t the least bit open to, or curious about, how I’ve gotten to where I am. I didn’t choose to lose my faith and I never imagined I would be on this side of the “us-them” faith divide, but now that I was I knew everything she was thinking, all the answers she was stockpiling, and all the explanations she would use to comfort herself as to what had happened to me. And none of them would fit or actually be true.<br /><br />At that point she admitted that she was afraid to hear what happened or what I now believe, and that’s why she doesn’t ask. She also said that she thought I was too smart for my own good, and that I took after my dad in that respect. (To which I wanted to pull my hair out – the anti-intellectualism of evangelicalism makes me c r a z y. If God didn’t want me to think, he shouldn’t have created me with the capacity to do so. I can no more stop my brain from asking questions than I can instruct my heart to stop beating.)<br /><br />BUT. I should add that she was tearful at various times, and she very much tried to assure me that she and Dad love me and she didn’t mean to hurt me along the way. For my part, I hate that the path my life has taken is upsetting to her, and that she worries for my eternal salvation. I hate to be the cause of that angst. But the toothpaste is out of the tube now and I can't go back. Nor should I, just to make her life more comfortable. In all events, I am not sure I <span style="font-style: italic;">want</span> to have a longer sit-down conversation with her where I pour out all the reasons I came to doubt Christianity. I don’t actually want to cause a crisis of faith for her. She would probably wind up feeling she had to choose between me and (her evangelical) God and the stress of that might be too much to bear.<br /><br />So I am not sure what will happen next between me and my mom. It was a terribly uncomfortable conversation and we have not had the guts to revisit any of it since. She has tried to reach out more (with phone calls and expressing being proud of me for the race), especially after I explained feeling invisible in my family--being the person who goes along and rarely asks for attention or for others to follow my agenda--and how I thought that was linked to my patterns in picking men who don’t seem to see me either.<br /><br />But I'm really not sure what the next steps are on the path to healing some of my crummy family patterns. I suppose time will tell.<br /><br />***<br />On a somewhat different note, I am still experiencing quite a lack of hope/optimism/idealism in life. I think the confluence of losing my faith moorings and then being betrayed by my ex-boyfriend has caused a certain cynicism to settle in. I wish I felt that rush of optimism that other de-converts describe – the loosening of bindings, of chains, of obligation, and a subsequent discovery of just how beautiful and meaningful life and people are without needing a religious back story to make it so.<br /><br />Instead, I feel bleak. Not depressed… but bleak. My walls are up. Sky high these days. I used to trust others easily, almost blindly, always believing the best of them and believing that God could/would/did act to bring about Good. Now I mostly feel like people act crappy toward each other all the time, you can't predict who or when or how, nobody and nothing can change that reality, and there’s certainly no big sky daddy who’s going to bring about divine change or healing.<br /><br />I’d prefer not to stay in this mental space. I don’t want to have these stupid walls or be so cynical about things, but I’m not sure how to deconstruct them and reclaim my optimism about life and people. Any ideas?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-7870180436979524812008-09-01T20:06:00.002-04:002008-09-01T20:08:55.490-04:00Sarah Palin.As a pretty-much-deconverted Christian, Sarah Palin holds absolutely no appeal to me as a candidate for elected office. I have long since moved away from traditional evangelical political views and registered as a Democrat for the first time about two years ago. I have a boatload of issues with her potentially stepping into the highest office in the United States (and arguably the most powerful position on this planet) should McCain croak. But that's not the point of my post.<br /><br />On first glance, Sarah Palin seems to be a slam dunk for McCain and the GOP in terms of shoring up the religious right vote.<br /><br />But I wonder about that, especially in light of today’s news of her 17-year old unwed daughter being preggers. Namely, Palin is a working mother of 5 children, one an infant with special needs and, now, another who is in crisis.<br /><br />Don’t most religious righters favor “family values” aka “traditional gender roles” and therefore won’t they have some kind of problem with her taking on such a high-profile 24/7 job? In any other context that same woman would be, I suspect, highly criticized from the conservative ranks for putting personal ambition above family responsibilities. More than that, that same mother would probably be blamed for the daughter’s pregnancy, for not being enough of a “hands on” mom.<br /><br />I suspect, however, that the religious right may put on the “our faith is about forgiveness” face and make a virtue out of even this aspect of Palin’s candidacy.<br /><br />Discuss.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-48641579356322767522008-07-22T10:55:00.002-04:002008-07-22T11:01:21.663-04:00An unexpected legacy of my god-beliefI think I internalized some fundamentally messed up ideas about love and relationships with men, thanks to my years of fundamentalist belief.<br /><br />Here’s what I mean: my relationship with God over the years seems to have taught me that love is a relationship in which:<br /><ul><li>I show up consistently and give it my all;<br /></li><li>I am faithful and devoted no matter what;<br /></li><li>if anything seems ‘off’ or wrong, I scour myself for flaws, sins, and shortcomings (and assume it’s my fault);<br /></li><li>I accept silence, absence, and/or general lack of tangible reciprocation from the object of my affections as normal;<br /></li><li>I thus get supremely excited over any small crumb of attention I receive (and take it as evidence of deep love on their side);<br /></li><li>I generally take an attitude of self-sacrifice and self-deprivation toward my beloved – I give, give, give and don’t worry about what I receive back.</li></ul><br />During my devout years, if I didn’t “feel” God’s love, it was clearly my fault and I needed to do more to put myself back in God’s good graces. Or I just needed to accept that sometimes God is silent or is teaching me something. My job was to hang on, keep loving Him even if He wasn't showing love toward me in any recognizable or specific or direct way. My job was to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that God really does love me. My job was to accept that a one-way relationship was okay. My job was to believe that there would ultimately be a huge payoff for hanging on when I wasn’t getting much out of it - I would be rewarded for my patience and longsuffering. My job was to interpret some vague or diffuse event or circumstance as clear evidence of God’s involvement in my life and deep care for me. And it was presumptuous and wrong of me to ask God for more. He operates on his timetable, not mine. I am puny and little; God is infinite and not obligated to do anything for me.<br /><br />But don’t doubt for a second that God is love.<br /><br />So guess what? My boyfriends have been just as aloof, inscrutable, silent, and untouchable as God seemed to be.<br /><br />I’ve chosen distant men who are inconsistent in their affections, and I have poured my love and devotion into them, never really expecting reciprocation, and being (subconsciously) terrified that if I ask or demand anything more or better, I will be chastised, rejected, abandoned. It has been normal for me to feel a consistent longing and sense of loneliness in all of my romantic relationships.<br /><br />And when things have gone to hell with these guys, I have inevitably blamed myself and scoured everything that happened in the relationship to figure out where <span style="font-style: italic;">I </span>went wrong and thus caused things to fall apart. It is incredibly difficult for me to look at these guys and see that <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span> were lacking something, that they were broken, hurting, inadequate, selfish, or whatever. Just like with God, I find it extremely difficult to critique them in any meaningful way - a residual sense of faithfulness, idealism, optimism, I guess. It’s even true with this ex, who hurt me more than anyone before him: he lied and cheated, yet I still feel as though <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> did something wrong to make him want to betray me.<br /><br />I am doing a lot of work in counseling to understand these patterns, because I have have have to change them if I am ever going to form a healthy, mutually loving, relationship with a worthy partner.<br /><br />But damn, those are some messed up ‘love lessons’ I took away, huh?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-72992048986099974812008-07-05T13:21:00.003-04:002008-07-05T13:51:44.249-04:00Yes, I'm still here.As you all know, I’ve been pretty quiet lately. This has been a hard time for me, particularly as I try to come to grips with the betrayal of having been cheated on. It’s made me question so many things, and at times I have wished for that old faith I used to have… somehow I feel like a cosmic hug or a divine promise that everything will be okay would help. Which is quite a reversal from the initial relief I felt at not trying to figure out why God had allowed (or caused) yet another heartbreak to occur.<br /><br />But I feel so far removed from that old faith, that old belief in god, that I am left with “only” a very human-level coming-to-grips process to help me get through this.<br /><br />Sure, I have plenty on that plane to help. In retrospect, I had been suppressing a lot of my own doubts in the relationship: namely, I had a persistent feeling of loneliness in being with someone who not only couldn’t relate to my faith struggles (my biochemist ex is an atheist and is fairly antagonistic toward religion) but made no efforts to understand or support me. I sent him the link to this blog but he never read it. I needed him for comfort when dealing with my mom and he couldn’t provide it. He saw no value or relevance in anything spiritual – the entirety of his life is in the material world, and to be honest, even though part of me is drawn to materialist/secular/scientific understandings of the world, there is simultaneously, for me, a bit of emptiness in a completely secular life. Or at least the version of it that my ex lived and represented. He saw no value or use in discussing morality and ethics – he thought it all to be “self-evident” and that people inherently know the right thing to do. He felt no drive or impetus to give back to the world, to use our tremendous material blessings to help others. He had no independent interest in connecting with others and be part of a real community. Perhaps this secular emptiness is most clearly evident in his decision to cheat on me, and subsequently cover it up and minimize it when I finally confronted him.<br /><br />Perhaps the biggest struggle I'm having is with that sense of unfairness that he is waltzing forward with his shiny, happy, new relationship. It really, deeply hurts that he could throw me away so carelessly and prance away with no repercussions, no consequences, no pain and evidently, no regret. This is when I could really use a cosmic skydaddy to comfort me, to assure me that somehow, some way, justice will be done.<br /><br />Edited to add: I know the above sounds like I am bloodthirsty or something. I don't think I'm that bad, but it really hurts to think about him "getting away" with such hurtful behavior. I do know that, in the grand scheme of things, others have suffered much greater injustices than me. But this still hurts.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-4206501237007029082008-05-26T19:19:00.003-04:002008-05-26T19:37:51.134-04:00Back to church?In the wake of my breakup I am doing some major (ahem) soul-searching. Not so much of the "who/where is God" variety as much as "whoa, I need to do some work on ME" variety.<br /><br />As part of that work, I'm digging in to some childhood issues that I never knew I had but which have deeply affected the choices I make in men. It's a scary, hard process that feels a little hopeless right now, like I've just gotten a glimpse of myself as this incredibly broken person and who knows, really, if I can be fixed. I have started to get panicky that I am 34 and my mate-picker is all screwed up. So there's that. Yuck.<br /><br />But another angle I am tackling is the hole, the gap, the existential loneliness that I have to admit I feel as I've let go of God. I miss community, I miss a sense of purpose, I miss connecting with people around questions of "how to be" in the world.<br /><br />So I started wondering today if I might enjoy going to a Unitarian Universalist church. I'm not interested in dogma or theology. I'm not interested in the trappings of religion. I *am* interested in finding people who are trying to live meaningfully, whatever their concept of God is (and even if they have none, kinda like me right now). I'm a little afraid of finding a bunch of boring duds there. But I sort of think I have nothing to lose at this point. I just don't know where else to find that kind of community in real life.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com59tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-7515899672829182272008-05-12T14:21:00.002-04:002008-05-12T14:28:17.323-04:00Back to the books!I just ordered <em>Misquoting Jesus</em> by Bart Ehrman. I'm so excited to read it!<br /><br />It's kind of weird that I haven't read any of the books one might have expected a de-convert to pick up (you know, the Dawkins etc stuff out there). I bought and started Karen Armstrong's <em>The Bible</em> but I only made it 75 or 100 pages before I got distracted by other stuff. To be sure, what I read was great and really blew away any remaining notion I might have had that there might be a 'right' interpretation of the scriptures. But mostly I've been wrasslin' this stuff out online.<br /><br />So I'm excited to see what Ehrman has to say. Has anyone read <em>Misquoting Jesus</em> and/or have other titles to recommend?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-36546464523185364722008-05-04T12:27:00.002-04:002008-05-04T12:40:34.260-04:00Breakups and GodThis morning, my boyfriend of 1 1/2 years broke up with me. It's a long story, and not really worth hashing out on my de-conversion blog.<br /><br />I'm devastated. No question. My head is swarming with the "what ifs" and "buts" and "this isn't really happening, is it?" questions. But you know what's NOT going on in my head right now? "God, where were you in all this? God, why is this incredible pain part of your plan for me? God, why are you so determined to see me fail in all my relationships?"*<br /><br />And that, in itself, makes this so much easier to cope with.<br /><br />*Folks, I realize these aren't theologically 'correct' questions to ask God so I would ask you to kindly refrain from trying to set me straight on that count. My point is that it feels incredibly freeing not to worry about what kind of eternal lesson I am supposed to learn from this, or to wonder what kind of all-loving God would continually put me through this kind of shit.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-47362455780900812562008-04-30T23:18:00.004-04:002008-04-30T23:27:26.188-04:00Geography and FaithI have been pondering a disturbing question in recent weeks.<br /><br />Have I gone through this massive transformation from devout, conservative evangelical to, well, practically an atheist because my eyes are open, I'm willing to question things I was always scared to question, etc etc, or is it simply an expected outcome given my geography?<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> My Christian years --> spent entirely in the midwest (cradle of Christianity)</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> My doubting/skeptical/agnostic years --> spent almost entirely on the eastern seaboard, esp New England (bastion of liberalism)</span></span><br /><br />Am I just really really suggestible to whatever influences are around me? If I lived somewhere else, would I eventually adopt whatever the dominant local spirituality/religion was?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-1443082352063000522008-04-28T10:25:00.002-04:002008-04-28T10:32:02.857-04:00Have I Arrived?I don't quite know what kind of turn I've taken recently, but now whenever I hear (or read, online) apologetic-type arguments from Christians, they just sound ridiculous. Sophomoric. Foolish even. And I get angry and part of me wants to peel the blinders away from their own eyes. Now, it could be that I am running into people that have a hard time articulating their thoughts, or people who aren't interested in rationally critiquing their own views, I don't know. What I do know is that I don't have a lot of respect for Christians who have never faced their own dark night of the soul and been forced to step outside their faith to try to figure out whether what they believe is really true. I don't feel like I have anything to learn from Christians who are nicely swaddled in their beliefs, and in turn I tend to tune them out pretty fast.<br /><br />So does this mean I'm now officially a cynical agnostic? Or worse?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-79020177913637346632008-04-04T11:11:00.005-04:002008-04-04T12:18:13.552-04:00Zoroaster and the DevilDid you know that we have the Zoroastrians to thank for the good/evil polarity that most Christians now ascribe to God and Satan (i.e. God is only and all good, Satan is only and all evil)? Most of the Pentateuch was written between 900 and 540 BCE; Zoroas ter lived around 600 BCE and was influential in shaping Christian theology in later centuries.<br /><br />So here's the thing about the Pentateuch: as <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_sat2.htm">this</a> website puts it, "There are no passages within the older parts of the Hebrew Scriptures where Satan is portrayed as an evil devil - the arch enemy of God and of humanity. At most, he is described as a henchman who carries out God's evil instructions. There is no dualism here between two powerful supernatural entities: an all-good God and an all-evil Satan. God is portrayed as performing, directly and indirectly, both kind and evil deeds." (See especially Isaiah 45:6-7 and Lamentations 3:37-38.)<br /><br />Then Zoroaster came along, with remarkable similarities to Jesus' story. From the same website: "Like Jesus, he was recorded as having been tempted by Satan; he performed many miracles and healings and was considered a supernatural being by his followers. He introduced a major spiritual reform and created what is generally regarded as the first established monotheistic religion in the world."<br /><br />Zoroaster promulgated the idea that God was all good and had a twin brother who was the "God of Evil." It seems that the polarity of God and Satan developed within the Hebrew/Christian religion only <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> Zoroaster's time, and has today become a cornerstone of the Christian story.<br /><br />I find this historical arc of what is a major tenet of modern Christianity totally fascinating. And it really discredits, for me, the idea that the Bible contains "eternal truths" and shows us the "unchanging nature" of God. Think of how modern Christians bend over backwards to justify and otherwise explain how God ordering genocide in the OT is fundamentally a "good" act. Those who wrote the Hebrew scriptures apparently didn't believe the nature of God to be fundamentally or wholly good, and they were okay with it.<br /><br />So why are modern Christians trying to "rewrite" who God is? How is their version of who God is any closer to the truth when you consider that it seems to be borrowed from another religion altogether? If it's not a "rewriting" of God's character and is instead a revelation or development in our understanding of God, the obvious question to me is: why would God 'reveal' himself to one group of people as author of both good and evil, but 'reveal' himself to another group as only good?<br /><br />I used to be a huge believer in a literal Satan and for a time was into book series like <span style="font-style: italic;">Left Behind</span>. C.S. Lewis's <span style="font-style: italic;">Screwtape Letters</span> scared the bejeezus out of me. But when I experienced some mental illness (depression), it just didn't ring true to believe that it was because of sin or because Satan was trying to distract me from God. My depression had its roots in chemical and emotional problems that, once treated, disappeared.<br /><br />It seems that when Christians try to pin stuff on Satan, medical science or technology or even basic knowledge later exposes the 'thing' to not be supernatural at all. A (conservative) Christian then has to argue either that "well, Satan might have manipulated your emotions or your chemical makeup to produce the depression" or "okay, maybe Satan wasn't involved in that, but he still totally tempts or even possesses people in these other kinds of situations..." Neither of which sounds convincing to me today. If Christians weren't already invested in a specific theology of Satan and felt compelled to defend it despite evidence to the contrary, would it really hold up under their own scrutiny?<br /><br />More broadly, can Christianity stand on its own two feet without Satan as a major theological construct? What happens to the Christian story without an evil archenemy?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-33928999352382695002008-03-25T16:52:00.000-04:002008-03-25T16:53:38.729-04:00Why a blood sacrifice?Seriously. This is one question no Christian, no pastor, and no church has ever been able to satisfactorily answer for me – and it was a question on my mind even during my most devout years. Why is God so bloodthirsty?<br /><br />More and more it just seems like a reflection of dominant cultural norms at the time of the writing of the Bible. Think about it: if the Bible were penned today, would anyone write a sin/salvation story that required a blood sacrifice?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-22501122451766950802008-03-16T12:21:00.003-04:002008-03-16T12:44:26.858-04:00Maybe this is really all about... my mom.Mom, this morning: "You need to know that when you come home or come on the family vacation, <span style="font-style: italic;">you two are not sleeping together</span>."<br /><br />*****<br /><br />My mom has been in town visiting my sister and me for the last week or so. Last night, my boyfriend and I invited her to join a dinner party we were hosting with three other couples. The plan was for her to stay overnight because it was too long a drive back to my sister's.<br /><br />It occurred to me only after I extended the dinner invitation that I had a decision to make: would I sleep in my boyfriend's bedroom (as I always do), or on the couch so as not to upset my mother, who would be sleeping in the guest room? My mom, as you might know from other blog entries on here, is a conservative evangelical, i.e. very very very against premarital sex.<br /><br />Well, for better or worse I decided to go with honesty as the best policy even though it would be uncomfortable for both of us. My logic was that I shouldn't pretend to live by a moral code or set of rules that I don't actually live by, and that it was more egregious to deceive my mother than to upset her with the truth.<br /><br />I knew after the guests left and the three of us were left that she was upset with the arrangements. She kept trying to wash the dishes, which we were planning to leave til the morning. "C'mon Mom, we'll do them in the morning. You were a guest tonight - go to sleep!" To which she responded "How am I supposed to sleep?"<br /><br />Cue the daughter really and truly falling off the good-Christian-pedestal.<br /><br />This morning she left early to meet my sister for church (the "good" sister who takes all the kids to church and has basically had a nice revival of faith after her own wayward period which included sleeping with boyfriends). In the awkward quietness of her drinking cranberry juice at the dining table still covered in dishes from last night's party, Mom looked me in the eye and said: "You need to know that when you come home or come on the family vacation, <span style="font-style: italic;">you two are not sleeping together</span>."<br /><br />She went on to say how disrespectful of <span style="font-style: italic;">her </span>values it was for me to sleep with my boyfriend (in <span style="font-style: italic;">his</span> house where <span style="font-style: italic;">she </span>was a guest), even though she has known, tacitly, that we have been sleeping together for months.<br /><br />I didn't quite know what to say except that I was sorry for being such a disappointment and that of course we would respect her rules when in her house. "I didn't want to deceive you," I said. "When you're a parent, you'll understand," she replied. "I still love you," she said on the way out the door.<br /><br />I couldn't help but start crying when she left because it feels so incredibly shitty to let down your mom. And to still feel like a child when I am 34 years old. And to feel like all she sees and thinks about now is how morally corrupt I am because I am having sex with my 36-year old boyfriend. Never mind all the other things I am; the only brush that matters now is the one that paints me as a slut in her eyes.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-66160222073515629132008-03-13T13:46:00.003-04:002008-03-13T13:52:37.901-04:00A June WeddingA good friend of mine is getting married in June. They are getting married in the church that I attended for several years (some of them happily as I “worked out my faith”, others of them miserable and struggling as my faith started to crumble).<br /><br />I’m anxious about being in that church the day of her wedding. Especially if my (atheist) boyfriend is with me. Because as much as I love my boyfriend, I still struggle with the loss of my faith community and roots.<br /><br />For many of my adult years, I saw myself getting married in that church, with a clerical blessing and community pledge to support my God-centered marriage. I won’t quite know what to do with the sadness, nostalgia, and worry that I think I’m going to experience once I walk through those doors. To wit: am I making a mistake planning a future with a man who is not spiritually wired and who can’t really relate to my faith background except in an intellectual way? Is my anticipated anxiety really a call from the Holy Spirit to turn back to God (as some will surely argue)?<br /><br />And what about my envy of my friend? If God had only answered my prayers for a mate sooner, more obviously, more directly, maybe my faith would not have unraveled as it did. My friend’s romance is one of those miraculous-sounding stories where the 30-something “old maid” Christian woman waits on God. For years God appears to be doing nothing. And then one day He delivers, like a lightning bolt, her husband-to-be.<br /><br />But me? God didn’t answer my prayers. And when I reflected on why he hadn’t answered my prayers, the foundations started to crack. I’ve documented much of that falling apart here on this blog. It has been an excruciating process in which I lost the safety and security of a faith-based world view, I lost the moorings on which my morals and values rested, I lost the “faith-kinship” closeness that had previously marked many of my friendships.<br /><br />Sometimes I wish I could put the pieces back together. But I don’t think I can. Now that I fundamentally question the whole salvation storyline, there’s no way to simply reverse the clock and settle myself back into a pew comfortably. But I feel like a part of me is missing, or empty, or nostalgic, or scared, or something. I don’t know exactly what it is or what to do with it. Agnosticism or even atheism rings more true to me intellectually, but emotionally, something in me still wants there to be a God.<br /><br />I know I will go to the wedding, and be joyful for my friend, who has wanted nothing more than to be married for as long as I’ve known her. But the whole thing begs the question: why has God been so seemingly present to her, and so glaringly absent to me?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-76778028476637190562008-01-03T21:04:00.000-05:002008-01-03T21:07:19.447-05:00Songs 4 WorshipWeird! I'm watching Forrest Gump on cable and a commercial came on for a 3-CD set of the "greatest worship songs of all time." It was so surreal - I could sing along to 90% of the titles, and I very nearly picked up the phone to order my own copy for $9.95.<br /><br />I don't know what to make of that urge.Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30932616.post-47370433099642476492008-01-03T15:34:00.000-05:002008-01-03T15:38:06.742-05:00I'm Back!Happy New Year! I have been quiet for some time now, thanks to a busy travel schedule and, honestly, not a lot of thought put toward my faith crisis.<br /><br />But I’m back, with a few musings and questions. Would love others’ input (assuming anyone still comes around to check things out here). :)<br /><br />First, I think I have really underestimated my Christian friends. My recent entries dealt with my fear of "coming out" to various people who have previously known me as a dedicated Christian. So far they have all responded much better than I expected. The most recent conversation occurred just after Christmas, with one of my oldest high school friends. She is still a very fervent, conservative Christian and last year at Christmas we had a really rough conversation in which we argued about politics and homosexuality. This time around, I dreaded filling her in on my lack-of-faith and my atheist boyfriend who I’m crazy about.<br /><br />But we got to talking, and she is one of my oldest friends so I wound up not really being able to hold it all in. I was pretty gut-level honest with where I’m at, and to my surprise she took it really well. No judgment, no criticism, some bewilderment and questions, but overall she took it in stride. My guess is that her current theology helped with that – she’s a “once-saved-always-saved” adherent so she doesn’t fear me going to hell. She just fears me missing out on a life of fellowship with Christ.<br /><br />So maybe I am learning to stop fearing the reactions of these folks. Our friendships seem to be stronger than the faith ties that bind (or once bound) us. Maybe it’s my mom’s disappointment and judgment I most fear, and am projecting that onto all the other Christians in my life. So there's that.<br /><br />Second, I have been reflecting a lot on the kind of person I have become since throwing off most of the shackles of my faith. There have been some really good things – like no longer feeling the pressure, guilt, and obligation of putting on the good Christian “show” when it no longer resonates. I am a much more relaxed person today with much less of a need to judge others for their own belief systems or world views.<br /><br />But there is also a weird darker side: the fervent idealism that drove much of my personal and professional life as a Christian has also subsided. And with it, some of my sense of obligation to serve and sacrifice for others has gone away. I am a more selfish person today: I am not guilt-ridden when I buy an iPod or new clothes. I don’t tithe 10% of my income. I live a fairly comfortable life. True, I try to do some volunteer work and I do contribute to a few causes I believe in. But that gut-level desire to really sacrifice for my fellow man has dissipated. Maybe I’ve become cynical: I no longer believe God is going to swoop down and save Darfur. It is up to us, but beyond signing a petition here and there I am powerless to stop shit like that. So I have lost the thirst, the fire, to make major sacrifices when I know that those sacrifices aren’t going to turn the tide.<br /><br />That shift in perspective feels like a real loss. I’d like to recapture the fire somehow… but how?Slapdashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09175742547306567984noreply@blogger.com8