Al-Anon pt 3: Fertile Ground

And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: a sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.
- Luke 8:4-7

Al-Anon's self defeatist message found fertile ground with me. There were so many of this cult's ideas I'd already absorbed from mainstream and fundamentalist Christianity.

Inherently Defective
Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, that I am inherently flawed and defective, and only my Higher Power can fix this. No amount of effort, learning, therapy, wisdom, or charity I do can make up for the flaws I was born with - a sinful nature or codependency. However, confessing my powerlessness, my sinfulness is only the first step. In the case of both religions, this creates the need for the group or church to fill. I must attend meetings (or services) at least once a week if I expect God to fix me. After all, I must do my own part of my salvation too, even though my part will never be sufficient. I am fallen and I am powerless. It's up to God (as I understand him) to come save me now.

Learned Helplessness
"All have fallen short of the glory of God" and "We admitted we were powerless." Both of these messages, from Christianity and Al-Anon, take away our impetus to create positive change in our own lives. In Al-Anon I was told repeatedly to "Let go and let God" and to just leave other people to their own devices and character defects. I needed to keep "my side of the street clean" and not worry about that mote in my brother's eye (or bottle in my husband's hand.) At a time when I needed help and empowerment the most, I had my legs kicked out from under me by a bunch of bitter people who probably would have been far happier if they'd just left their alcoholic spouses and bypassed the Steps completely.

Acceptable Abuse

They had stayed, so I should stay. I "shouldn't make any major decisions for the first six months" - really the first year, but I had it wrong at the time. I found out, after telling my sponsor I'd finally broken things off with my husband who belittled, raped, and abused me, that I was really supposed to stick in there another six months before making that choice, since I hadn't yet completed the steps or attained Serenity. I remember feeling profound relief that no one had told me that before hand, because i didn't think I could take another six months of torture, but I was glad I didn't have to knowingly choose to go against one of Al-Anon's principles in order to escape it.

As a Christian child, I knew it was right and godly of my parents to abuse me physically and emotionally. After all, they were following the Bible and Focus on the Family, so they must be right. It simply wasn't safe enough to question authority for me to even consider it. My brother tried that, and he'd been kicked out of the house at 12. But the idea that I should take a certain amount of abuse as my lot in life, and what's more that I'd somehow earned the abuse through my own actions, was an idea I learned early and it took decades to break. My family treated me horribly, and I was fighting an uphill battle to become a person and not just a cult clone. I married badly.

But Al-Anon would have me believe that my fledgling, ill-conceived and frankly never willingly consummated marriage (spousal rape doesn't count) held the weight of my entire integrity, my word, my vow. They made it more serious than it was. I mean yes, I wanted to have a family with him. I married him. But I quickly learned that he was an absolutely horrible human being. He got so drunk one night, he peed out the living room window screen because he thought it was the bathroom toilet. And that wasn't the first time he'd made an error of that kind. (There was also, for instance, his ex-roommate's vacuum cleaner.)

Al-Anon told me I needed to take the focus off of him and his actions, and instead I needed to look for my part in his drinking. Bear in mind, we'd been married all of 10 weeks when I separated from him, taking my son and moving into my mother's. That's when I started going to Al-Anon. I wasn't even with him for three months before leaving, but because I thought Al-Anon told me to wait six months (really a year), I spent twice as long separated from him and trying to work things out as I did living with him as man and wife.

God Micro-Manages

I had been taught to believe in the power of prayer before I'd been taught to read. I believed that I had both free will and a sinful nature, and that the god who gave me free will would intervene in my life and others. Even though God had some overarching multi-millenial Divine Plan, he would fiddle around with the daily minutiae like lost keys, insufficient funds, or bad traffic, if I asked him to.

Bill Wilson's Higher Power is a meddling god. Free will is talked about much less often in 12 Step programs than traditional Sunday morning churches (sorry Adventists.) "Self will" is considered a sin in Al-Anon, the way that the "Adam nature" or "flesh" was sinful in my childhood brand of learned helplessness.

Perpetual Confession
In Christianity I was taught that when I "sinned", the real problem wasn't the people I may have hurt. No, no. The great offense of course was that I'd sinned against God. He was the one who I had hurt the most. Remember, he died for my sins, so the least I could do is make his death meaningless by never sinning again. Since that was bound to be impossible (as Christianity generally is), my only alternative was confession for each and every offense.

At deliverance camp the pastor had us write down a detailed list of all our sins, past and present, great and small. In Al-Anon this would be known as a "fearless and searching moral inventory" or the 4th Step. Christianity had already taught me that I have been judged, and found wanting in the balance. Al-Anon just continued the lesson.

Christianity was fundamentally destructive to my self-esteem as a child, teenager, and young woman. Original sin is a terrible weight to assign every newborn on the planet, and I don't see how I worshiped a god for so long who I believed did exactly that.

Marriage is Sacred (Except When it's Not)

My mother was divorced. My father was not a good husband so, well and good. He was feckless and unfaithful and on one occasion - and one only - he struck her. I could understand and at least some other Christians could as well. My mother had to write a letter to the Christian school we attended, justifying her divorce, in order to get a job teaching computer classes to the high school students. But they had given her the position, and treated her well once she was hired.

My grandmother had been divorced twice. She absolutely should have left her second husband, a darker version of my father's same sins, much sooner than she did. But my grandfather, her first husband, was a good man. She left him because their daughter died at 10 weeks old of a congenital heart defect, and she couldn't be in that house a day longer. Marriage is sacred, unless you've got a good excuse.

In Al-Anon it was the same. The pressure to stay was subtle but constant. The greatest success story couple at my home meeting had been married for 50 years - 27 of them abusive, 23 in 12 step groups. These were the role models of everyone in the room, and so all advice I got was tinged with this poison of the mind - that if you just followed the steps, even the worst marriage could become enviable. Yet if an old-timer, automatically respected for their longevity in the cult, had been divorced three times or more, it was none of my concern and I needed to focus on my self, and work a selfish program, and not try to control people and situations in my life. (Because after all, doing that makes your life unmanageable.)

Some Feelings are Wrong

As a child, I was taught it was a sin to fear, since fear meant not trusting God. Al-Anon told me the same thing. FEAR was nothing more than "false evidence appearing real" and I really needed to just focus on working my Steps and turning my will over to my Higher Power. There was no sense in recognizing fear as a useful warning emotion, and investigating why I had the fears I did (including fears of my husband's possible behavior.)

I was also told "in the rooms" that resentment was always, always, without exception or fail WRONG. The "defilements" of my demon-haunted childhood were replaced with the "resentments" of my 20s. These were the things (almost without fail, just as in Christianity, done by others or merely by environment) holding me back from my "spiritual awakening" and serenity. Resentments were so bad and so inherently self-destructive that I should not only get rid of all current ones, but should do everything in my (powerless) power to prevent them. I remember the day I first heard this sentence and thought it was brilliant.

"Expectations are premeditated resentments."

If I didn't place expectations on people, like the alcoholic, then I wouldn't be so disappointed. Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, to lower my standards for how well I should be treated. After all, I was a sinner. I was sick - just as sick as the alcoholic, even though my "disease" of codependency had no physical effects at all.

It Will Never Get Better

Even though I was saved by the grace of Jesus (and certainly not by works, so that no man may boast!) I would still always struggle with sin. Being a Christian doesn't make you perfect, just forgiven, and so I would constantly fail at perfection. Al-Anon told me that I had a spiritual disease of codependency, that I was sick and that I would always be sick, and that the best I could hope for was to let go and let god, and hope he did a better job of running my life than I did. After all, my "best thinking got me here" so it was obvious I was not an empowered person capable of making good decisions for myself.

Al-Anon is not a self-help group. It is a self-annihilation group. And it needs to be stopped.

More soon. This post took a lot out of me. Writing about my ex-husband is always extremely difficult. I have a whole mixture of emotions like betrayal, and fear, and humiliation (what the fuck was I thinking marrying that creep?) But I know writing will make me feel better, and I'm at least more emotionally capable of approaching those dark and scary stories now than I was a few months ago. Hopefully the writing flow continues and improves. Much love to all my Anteaters!

* Throughout the 12 Step posts I'll use certain slogans and phrases that were spoken a lot "in the rooms" (like "in the rooms" which refers to 12 Step meetings collectively.) Sometimes I'll remember to put air quotes around them, but sometimes I won't. Cults use buzzwords and slogans as thought-stopping devices, and it's only by recognizing them as such that we can strip them of power over us. So I will use the cult-speak of those days, in the hopes that current and former 12 Steppers who find these posts will be able to recognize in their own meetings and literature the things I'm saying.

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Why is there Evil? pt. 2

Once again, my heathen horde, we're tackling the Problem of Evil as excused by EveryStudent.com. (You can read Part 1 here.)

We've all tried to make life work without God. Why do we do that? Probably because we've all bought the notion that there's something more valuable, more important, than God. For different people it's different things, but the mindset is the same: God isn't what's most important in life. In fact, I'd just as soon do it without him altogether.

Once again, the author is trying to make independence into a value judgment - that something is more important than God. (And since the God of the Bible is a jerk, even if such a being did exist, I'd tend to agree.) But when I was a Christian and perhaps, oh I don't know, studied for a test, rather than relying on prayer to get me an A in class, that wasn't because I'd analyzed the situation and decided that studying was more important than God - it was more that prayer didn't tend to yield the same grades as studying. Perhaps the real reason so many believers don't "cast their cares on Him" is because doing so often leaves someone in a precarious and undesirable situation. (Y'know, like having a two year old die because God doesn't magically remove yellow jacket venom.) If prayer actually worked, I'm sure Christians would rely on it more to this author's liking.

What is God's response to that? He allows it. Many people experience the painful results of others' or their own choices that run contrary to God's ways...murder, sexual abuse, greed, lying/fraud, slander, adultery, kidnapping, etc. All of these can be explained by people who have refused to give God access and influence over their lives. They are going about their lives as they see fit, and they and others suffer.

I'm with you on the idea that much of human suffering is caused by other humans (although I do have to wonder how opposed to God's will this list of actions is, when you consider King David was called "a man after God's own heart" and did, um, ALL of them.) However, God's not really off the hook for allowing these things - He is, after all, supposed to be ALL powerful and ALL loving. surely whether or not somone "allowed" God to have access into their lives wouldn't have such an impact?

Tell me, how DO Protestant Christians deal reconcile such a God with the Catholic pedophilia and cover-up scandal? I mean, they can obviously claim Catholics aren't "real" Christians, but that doesn't absolve God of his guilt, his complicity. If He exists, God is an accomplice to every rape, theft, kidnapping, and murder (and not just the ones He ordered in the Bible.) And please, don't give me that nonsense about "free will." The free will of a victim is violated in the instance of every rape; if God is okay with that person's free will being suborned, why not the rapist's? What kind of God cares more about the free will of a repeat offender priest raping children than about the free will of the children who do not wish to be raped? (An evil god, or an imaginary one.)

What's God view on all of this? He's not smug. In fact, God could rightly be viewed as leaning forward, compassionate, hoping we will turn to him so that he can bring real life to us. Jesus said, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." But not all are willing to go to him. Jesus commented on this when he said: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

Not all who turn to Jesus, weary and heavy-laden, GET the promised rest. In fact, I usually felt despair, loneliness, guilt, persecution, and rejection from God when I believed in such a megalomaniacal being. And again, the situation is being turned to humanity's unwillingness, as if what we were willing to do or not do ever had anything to do withe capabilities of an ALL powerful god. It also blames the victim and ignores child victims. I was a completely devoted Christian at age 7 when that dirty septuagenarian man first took off my panties and licked between my prepubescent lips. Where was God then? Was it my "unwillingness" to turn to Jesus that allowed me to be so harmed? No. I turned to Jesus in all I did, but he was fictional and unable to help me, no more useful than any other imaginary friend a child of that age may have.

Again, Jesus brings the issue back to our relationship with him. "I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Again, following Jesus did not keep me in any kind of light - my life was in shambles from the time I was born into an intensely religious and highly dysfunctional family till I was homeless at 25, the month before I became an atheist. My entire career following Jesus is marked by pain, abandonment, and lack of protection; it's only been as an atheist, as I've learned to protect, heal, and care for myself that my life has improved and I've come out of the darkness Christianity kept me trapped in.

But what about when life is unfair? What about those horrible circumstances that hit us in life, caused by someone other than ourselves? When we are feeling victimized, it's useful to realize that God himself endured horrendous treatment from others. God more than understands what you are going through.

So, since God designed a plan where He'd be crucified (or, y'know, His son who is also Him) that means He understands what it's like to be molested as a little girl in a religious culture that treats female virginity as purity? He knows what it's like to lose a child to crib death, or cancer, or a fatal car accident (one who will not rise again in three two days time?) He knows what it's like to live a life in constant pain, like a person with Tay Sachs disease, or what it's like to have your heart broken by an unfaithful lover, or what a lifelong disability feels like? Because I doubt it.

There is nothing in life that could be more painful than what Jesus endured on our behalf, when he was deserted by his friends, ridiculed by those who would not believe in him, beaten and tortured before his crucifixion, then nailed to a cross, in shameful public display, dying of slow suffocation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, passion of the Christ, crucifixion is bad, yadda yadda - freaking Holy Week! We get it. But it is categorically false and absolutely ridiculous to say "There is nothing in life that could be more painful" than that. Besides all the things I listed above, there's Cystic Fibrosis - a lifetime of slow suffocation. There's debilitating mental illness, like schizophrenia. There's post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis. And of course, there's God's preferred method of execution - stoning. (WARNING: That link takes you to a graphic and painful video of a woman being stoned to death. If you're more merciful than God, it will probably tear you up to watch it. Yet He, supposedly, continually sits idly by - when He's not ordering it Himself, that is.) Apologist, please, the crucifixion just wasn't that big of a sacrifice and on some level, you know it as well as I do.

He created us, yet allowed humanity the freedom to do this, to fulfill Scripture and to set us free from our sin. This was no surprise to Jesus. He was aware of what was coming, foreknowing all the details, all the pain, all the humiliation. "And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day."

Of course, the author glosses over the idea that Jesus knew this would happen because it was His/daddy's idea and not merely because he was psychic. Those Scriptures He wanted fulfilled? Yeah, He was supposedly behind them. Sounds more like a masochist than a martyr to me.

Imagine knowing something that awful was going to happen to you. Jesus understands emotional and psychological anguish. The night that Jesus knew they would arrest him, he went to pray, but took some friends with him. "And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch [keep awake] with me. And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, 'My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wills." Though Jesus confided in his three friends, they didn't understand the depth of his torment, and when Jesus returned from prayer he found them asleep. Jesus understands what it's like going through pain and extreme sadness alone.

Expectant mothers can make it through the torments of labor and childbirth, because they know it's coming and they know something good will come as a result of it. Anyone who has ever made a sacrifice to a cause did so because they believed some good would come of it. Chemo patients withstand that particular hell because, again, they *hope* something good will come of it. Your Jesus was not the only one to ever suffer knowingly, and He had the benefit of knowing He'd be god afterwards, worshipped forever, and that His "sacrifice" would have the power to save millions of souls for eternity.

Again, where's your point in all this? Oh, it's by ignoring the very real suffering of very real people and focusing on the single bad day of a deity. Huh, what a crappy way to make a point! As for Jesus going through all this alone, was Jesus ever really alone? I mean, He was god right? Or God's son, or gee, it's so hard to keep straight. Regardless, He was a man constantly surrounded by followers and disciples, and while he may have suffered a bout of loneliness, it just doesn't compare to the lifetimes of it some people endure.

Here it is summarized, as John describes in his gospel: "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Oh Christian, I know you love John 3:16, but why oh why don't you apologists EVER include John 3:18? Ahem, *throat clearing* He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Ah, so loving! Why do I bring this up? As a reminder that your god is not loving nor merciful; He cares only for belief - for praise. He doesn't seem to care one way or another if someone is moral, merciful, helpful, or good - only if they pay him the proper lip service.

There is no question that there is pain and intense suffering in this world. Some of it is explained by selfish, hateful actions on the part of others. Some of it defies an explanation in this life.

Defies explanation - is that how you're gonna brush aside natural disasters, disease, and global poverty? You know, those questions you used to open this passage up?

But God offers us himself. God gives us the knowledge that he has endured also, and is aware of our pain and needs. Jesus said to his disciples, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."

My friend had two daughters born with a rare form of brain cancer; one has already passed away (she was four at the time.) Go ask my friend (a Christian woman) if she'd rather have "peace" about her daughter's death, or have her daughter alive, and she will tear you a new one, or else start crying. Peace through suffering is not what people desire, and is often the least we can do; alleviating suffering, working to make life more fair than it is, trying to prevent suffering - this is far kinder and vastly superior.

There is ample reason to be afraid, troubled, but God can give us his peace, which is greater than the problem before us. He is after all, God, the Creator. The one who has always existed. The one who created a universe on the backstroke.

The one who created a universe, but isn't moved to stop crib death.

Yet even in his power, he's also the one who knows us intimately, even the smallest, insignificant details. And if we will trust him with our lives, relying on him, though we encounter difficulties, he will hold us securely. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

If he's overcome it, why let us continue to suffer in it? Oh that's right, because we "asked for it." (Just like rape victims, eh?)

He went through our ultimate threat -- death -- and overcame it. He can take us through the difficult circumstances of this life, and then bring us into eternal life, if we will trust him.

Death isn't even in my Top Ten list of fears or threats I worry about - suffering is. And not by any means just my own suffering; I am moved to tears by the suffering of others - victims of human trafficking, rape, and medical neglect, or simply children who are not adequately loved by their parents. The difference between me and God (other than the fact that I am verifiably real) is that I am moved by this pain in others to do something about it. Yes, to help people through their pain, but also to prevent future pain.

We raised over $1,200 together towards building a well in the developing world, during a time of pretty serious financial distress for many of us, yet God - infinite in knowledge and love and ability - won't provide all the people of the world with clean water. He's either imaginary or he's a douche.

We can either go through this life with God or without him. Jesus prayed, "O righteous Father, although the world has not known you, yet I have known you; and these have known that you sent me; and I have made your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them."

The kind of love that watches from the sidelines as children are raped, cut up for witchcraft sacrifices, belittled, lied to, and told they are sinful, dirty creatures? The kind of love that does nothing to stop the rampant spousal abuse within the evangelical community, supported by His supposed Word? The kind of love that sends his son/self to go through crucifixion? Yeah, I think I'll pass. That sounds too much like hate to me.

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Why is there Evil?

Hello my faithless Anteaters! Sorry I've been so sporadic as of late. (I'm still working with BF on understanding what I mean by "Please don't talk to me before 2 pm so I can work." to wit, Don't talk to me before 2 pm so I can work.) But hey, the weather is beautiful here in Florida and I'm out in my backyard "office" with a fresh new counterapologetic on the Problem of Evil or PoE. This was one of the hardest issues for me to reconcile as a Christian, and with good reason. Obviously an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god cannot exist within the framework of the world we live in. Here's Why.

Why do people get cancer? Why are there earthquakes that destroy entire cities? Why do people have to work so hard just to have enough money to barely feed their families?

Because the universe is cold and uncaring, resources aren't evenly distributed, we haven't yet conquered disease, and because people aren't paid a living wage perhaps?

Subconsciously, we probably ask ourselves questions like these quite often. But consciously we rarely do. We're so busy living our lives we rarely stop and wonder WHY?

Uh, speak for yourself, please. I have *always* asked myself these questions, subconsciously and consciously.

But then something happens to wake us up. Our parents get divorced. The girl down the street gets abducted. A relative gets cancer. That wakes us up for awhile. But then we can often sink back into the denial. That is, until another tragedy hits, another incongruence. Then we're likely to think, Something isn't right here. Something is really, really wrong. This isn't how life's supposed to be!

Again, I never required something to happen within my own life or immediate circle to wonder these questions. Simply turning on the evening news is more than enough to trigger such questions, or passing by a homeless woman on the street, or simply being aware of how people around the world live (often on less than $1 a day, and in sever malnutrition.)

Also the statement "This isn't how life's supposed to be" suggests there is some proper way for life to be, and that the life we have doesn't match it. I don't buy that, because I don't see the evidence. Who says life is "supposed to be" any particular way? Obviously I'd prefer that life were more fair, that no one went to bed hungry, that every person had opportunities for work, education, and self-improvement. But when has what I would prefer been what was "supposed to be" in any global sense?

So, WHY do bad things happen? WHY isn't this world a better place? There is an answer to the WHY question, found in the Bible. But it's not an answer that most people like to hear: the world is the way it is because it's the world that we, in a sense, have asked for.

Screw you! I didn't ask for my aunt to die of a congenital heart defect at 10 weeks old, or for my godmother to succumb to her third bout with breast cancer, or to live in a world where pedophiles are protected by religious institutions. The people of Haiti did not ask to lose their children, parents, homes, and limbs in a devastating earthquake.

Sound strange?

"Strange" isn't the word I'd go with. Maybe heartless, cruel, or victim-blaming.

What or who could make this world different than the way it is? What or who could guarantee that life is pain-free, for everyone, all the time?

Well, in Reality Land no one could make a pain-free guarantee, and frankly pain sometimes serves a purpose (ie, telling you not to push your body further before you cause injury.) Even if we can't create a pain-free world, we can certainly lessen the suffering people go through, by providing comprehensive social services, giving all children (male and female) quality educations, by developing new medicines and medical techniques, and by removing the stigmas around mental health, counseling, and talking about painful subjects like rape survival.

God could. God could accomplish that. But he doesn't. At least not right now. And we're angry with him as a result. We say, "God can't be all-powerful and all-loving. If he were, this world wouldn't be the way it is!"

"God can't be all-powerful and all-loving?" Got it in one.

We say this hoping that God will then change his position on the matter. Our hope is that putting a guilt trip on him will make him change the way he's doing things.

Way to guess (and mis-guess) my motives. This isn't about guilt-tripping your imaginary god; it's about recognizing the logical impossibility of such a being existing, given the reality we reside in.

But he doesn't seem to budge. WHY doesn't he?

Because God is imaginary (along with all the other gods.)

God doesn't budge -- he doesn't change things right now -- because he's giving us what we asked for: a world where we get to treat him as though he is absent and unnecessary.

Quick insta-poll Anteaters: Did any of you ask for this? I didn't think so. (Can you say "victim-blaming?" Because I can!)

Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They ate the "forbidden fruit." That fruit was the idea that they could ignore what God said or gave them, and strike out on life apart from God. For Adam and Eve sort of hoped that they could become like God, without God. They consumed the notion that there was something more valuable in existence than God himself, something more valuable than having a personal relationship with God. And this world system -- with all of its faults -- came as a result of the choice they made.

*sigh* I'm gonna have to read you your own Bible, aren't I? Genesis 3:2-6 from the King James (because it's not copyrighted.)

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Okay so let's look at Eve's motivation (since Adam's isn't really given.) She "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise." That's not exactly the same as wanting to ignore God, or be apart from him, now is it? It certainly doesn't say anything in the Bible about Eve weighing the relative benefits of a relationship with god against eating the fruit. Someone's reading a whole lot into those 4 verses that simply isn't there; that's pretty typical of Christianity. After all, if they didn't do that, God's punishments would seem even more out of proportion than they do in the above re-reading.

Their story is the story of all of us, isn't it? Who hasn't said -- if not audibly at least in their hearts -- God, I think I can do this without you. I'll just go this one alone. But thanks for the offer.

I've got a couple of objections here. Obviously, Adam and Eve's story isn't any of our story. None of us were born in paradise, innocent and ignorant and set up. (The apples were monitored!*) As a mom, I have to say I despise the idea that God wouldn't want his "children" to learn how to do for themselves. I've learned to ask my son, "Do you want help?" instead of reaching out to do something for him - even if he's struggling. It's more valuable for him in the long run to learn how to zip up his own jacket (and he's mostly mastered that one by now.) Actually, Little Man is quite capable and independent for a 4-year-old, in part because I do let him figure out how to do things for himself. While he can't spread the cream cheese on a bagel, he can get out the bagel, cheese, plate, and knife - and that fills him with pride I wouldn't dream of snatching from him. I cannot grasp how this behavior from Adam and Eve, or from any of us, would be seen as "sin" by any kind of reasonable parent-god.


Part 2 coming soon! (I wrote it today but stupid Blogger lost it.)

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Latest Videos Jan 2010

I've organized the last month's videos that don't appear elsewhere on the blog here, in terms of videos about my cult vs videos about atheism or my life as an atheist or secular humanist. If you'd prefer to watch these in order of upload date, head on over to my YouTube channel and subscribe. (Actually, please go do that anyway, and maybe rate some videos while you're over there.)

On Atheism

Arguing against the assertion that atheism is "a belief in a nonbelief" (I kid you not)



I take on some atheist parenting questions I get from viewers (a less discriminating bunch than my readers, when taken as a whole.)



On My Cult

My thoughts on the Word of Faith teachings and how well those work out in real life



Anteaters, you already know how I became an atheist but if you'd like to hear the story with audio & facial expressions, this is the format for you.



So today I wanted to talk about Giggy's cult & Attleboro. (Okay, technically this one wasn't from January but consider it an early promo.)



Uh yeah, it was my birthday on the 28th so that's what these two videos reference.



(You should still totally take me up on the Baptism Challenge!)

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