Let’s Clarify, Shall We?

I have been accused of many things by my old fundie cohorts. Among those are placing myself under demonic influence, rebellion, promiscuity, masturbation (guilty!), changing my opinions out of spite, talking to the Devil himself (usually over mimosas), alcoholism, drug abuse, and (my favorite) intolerance.

All of the above have little connection to my version of reality save intolerance.

“Why do you hate Christians?” my mother asks. There is no answer to that question. In it is an already developed determination about my feelings, complete with a judgment as to their validity.

But here, in this forum, there’s no injured mother blinking tears back and blocking out my words even as they are formed. Here, you are my anonymous friends, and to you I will offer my answer - shocking as it may be.

I do NOT hate Christians.

I don’t hate anybody, really. Give me a second to search my soul… Yup. No hatred. Not for anyone. I see the world as a collection of hapless beings mucking their way through the best they can. Sometimes they hurt each other in the process. It’s an illusion of perspective that we have created this idea of right and wrong. Everyone is the hero of his own journey. Even the worst bad guys tend to think they’re somehow good or misunderstood. For the record, I want to note my belief that there are very good people who are Christians, fundies even. Just like there are very good formers and very good muslims and very good buddhists and very good atheists. Shall I go on?

What I take issue with is ANY belief structure that values ignorance over knowledge, that offers people an excuse to act out on their darker inclinations carte blanche - without the stark light of reason to guide them, that does not allow for criticism, evaluation, or evolution of doctrine. In short, I take issue with fundamentalism itself.

The formers I’ve met through the years of my reincarnation fall along a continuum, from intellectually amused by their foray into fundamentalist evangelical Christianity to deeply damaged by the abuses they have endured at the hands of their brothers and sisters in Christ. Like anyone else, I fall somewhere in that continuum. Like all of us, I have heartwarming stories about how my relationship with Jesus Christ helped me hurdle this or that life trauma. I have fond memories of the wonderful people I met and times I shared with them. But, I also bear the scars of not having developed healthy coping mechanisms for issues that exist outside the scope of the tiny evangelical box.

That last part is something a lot of us have in common. A moment in which the neatly packaged box of fundamentalist Christianity failed.

Perhaps it was in crisis. Perhaps during study. But at some point, the facade crumbled, and we were left with a giant conflict between our faith and our reality. We also had a choice: to ignore the problem, will it away through some wild circular logic OR to bravely acknowledge its existence and dig deeper.

We chose to dig.

Keep in mind, if you’re a fundie and you’re reading this - We don’t hate you. We’re not persecuting you. This isn’t about YOU. Keep playing your games with your imaginary friends and pretend spiritual battles. We’re just trying to recover and get on with our lives. With this life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:56 and is filed under Faith, About Us, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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