Omnipotent Lite

Honestly, I don’t think I ever worshiped an all-powerful god. Oh sure, I had faith and I believed, but fact of the matter was, there were times God didn’t protect us, no matter how faithfully we adhered to his word. Bad things happen to good people. Needless suffering – children being raped, abused, enslaved, or else starving to death – happens on such a grand scale it’s no wonder we do our best to block it out and not think about it. Of course, I can’t seem to do that.

The Problem of Pain has always, always, always been the seed of my doubt. I see that now. I wanted a god who was loving and awesome (in the old school sense) and kept his word. And hey, since my dad walked out on us before my earliest memories, I liked the idea of having a daddy who was always there looking out for me. But I didn’t think he was all-powerful.

I "knew" any number of demonic forces, generational curses, soul ties, unconfessed sins, etc (ad nauseum) could “shorten God’s arm” as my Giggy said, and could be a hindrance to Him, or could stop His blessing from being received. It’s funny, I think I had an answer to Euthyphro’s dilemma when I was six. God stopped as much evil as he could, and he was still more powerful than anyone or anything else, just not 100% powerful. In the black-and-white world of my grandmother's teachings, I had to make my god a little gray to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever really did believe God was ALL powerful. Pretty powerful, sure. Creator of the universe? Absolutely. Infinite deity? You betcha. Capable of overcoming the logical paradoxes created by an omnibenevolent omnipresent omniscient and omnipotent god existing alongside observable reality? Nope.

My god was never that cool.

Read more!

Prologue

Image by rhino neal via Flickr

Anteaters, the book *is* coming along. I went and looked at just how much this morning, and I'm encouraged once again that writing a book is a task I can accomplish. Especially now that we've settled into more of a routine.

I am going to need to pull back on a few things. As fun as they are, I'm probably only going to do one more Messin' with Mormons for the next few months, and I'm going to put a hiatus on counter-apologetics, too. I'll finish up the "E" from woman's role in the home, but I don't know how soon I'll move onto any others.

I think I needed the time to heal my head up a bit. I seem to be doing better now that I've gone back off the meds so fuck it. I'm not gonna kill myself trying to get a doctor to see me only to have to go on and then off meds again, due to a shitty insurance situation. (I got dropped from Medicaid for honestly reporting my unemployment earnings. Apparently in Florida, if your income is above $250/month, you do not qualify.)

So in the spirit of getting back into the book, here's the prologue I wrote a while ago.

Read more!

Bible Study

One summer when Esther and I were at the trail park and mom was up in Iowa, Gig left us with our Aunt Sharon for two weeks while she went on a speaking tour in Australia. I had so wanted to go with her, to be the one who sold her books and teaching tapes and carry the suitcases. But I was nine and I had no passport (or ticket) so I stayed.

Our cousin Jason would spent the night with us often for sleepers or just so his mom wouldn't be driving him back and forth. School was out and the trailer park held diversions: the woods, the creek, the pool, the basketball hoop, and even a pool table. Esther and I were close enough in age that we frequently had mutual friends. This was a source of great antipathy between us, and we fought often over which of us had "stolen" the friend of the other.

Sharon had just come back from a year in France, teaching English in a prestigious secondary school. At the moment she didn't have an apartment of her own, so she was staying in the front bedroom of the trailer. Gig was in the back bedroom, so Jason, Esther, and I shared the living room floor. On one of her first days in the country, a week or so earlier, she gave each of the three of us a chocolate liquor. They were disgusting! We liked chocolate but that middle stuff just tasted bad. No one asked for seconds, and none were offered.

Sharon was the epitome of "not a morning person". I believe her exact salutation was, "I haven't had my coffee yet. Don't talk to me." We were young and hyper and allowed to eat whatever we wanted, so we had diets mainly consisting of flavored sugar. Strawberry was my favorite flavor, and I would drink strawberry Juicy-Juice and bagels with strawberry cream cheese, or else strawberry toaster strudels. Esther ate a lot of microwave baked potatoes loaded with cheese and ice cream. Jason went for the ice cream, the popcorn, and the potato chips. We all drank as much soda as we wanted from the stash of 2-liters in the kitchen island.

One afternoon about a week into Gig's trip, Sharon strode out to the living room, angrily yielding her box of French chocolates. "One of you stole candy. Who did it?" Bewildered, my cousin, sister, and I each professed we did not know what had happened to her foul-tasting boozy chocolate. For whatever reason, Sharon believed Jason when he said he didn't do it. But she was convinced my sister or I had. So she punished us for not coming forward and admitting who had done it.

"Esther, I want you to look up verses on gluttony and write them down for me. Angie, I want you to look up verses on being a liar and a thief, and write those down, too." Then she locked us up - me in my grandmother's bathroom with a KJV, notebook, and a pen, and my sister in my grandmother's adjoining bedroom, with the same equipment. After a while, she took Jason down to the clubhouse to shoot pool, and left us locked in. It was but the work of a moment for me to at least open the bathroom door, and come into the bedroom where Esther sat. We questioned each other seriously, but also believed each other readily. To this day, we still both deny it.

We were both horribly offended by the punishment, both that it was done without evidence of either of us having done anything wrong, and that it was tailored to insult each of us in specific ways. I did not yet have trouble with kleptomania or shoplifting, but I have wondered since if her actions that day didn't contribute to my perception of myself as a thief. My mom was already telling me on a near daily basis that I was a liar and couldn't be trusted. My sister was an emotional eater, and had just begun to fill out that year. Sharon could scarcely have picked greater weaknesses to exploit, but she held is in contempt, and we had no motivation to please her.

So we carefully went through the Bible and found times where banquets or feasts were praised, and wrote those down for Esther. Then we found times when "thief" was used poetically or metaphorically, and wrote those down for me. We found verses where "lie" referred to sex, not dishonesty. It was legalism at its finest. We followed the absolute letter of the law, and wrote out our 75 assigned verses each, while intentionally not learning any sort of moral lesson from the experience. We won.

Read more!

Gig's Stroke

Found this while sifting through old diaries and blog posts.


May 7th, 2006 (community post) "life & death"
So, a bunch of family went to my grandmother's this morning, to do some home repair and other chores for a Mother's Day gift. When my Aunt B and Uncle D got there this morning, however, my Giggy was barely coherent, couldn't get out of bed, and had soiled herself. We think she had a stroke. It took a lot to get her to the hospital (she hates doctors), but she's there now getting a CT scan and a spinal tap.

Now, here's the scary (to me) part: All the responsible people can't help. My Aunt S, brother, and mom are all in Mossouri, where my grandfather is dying (in the next day or so) of Stage 4 Lung Cancer. My sister is at work. My Aunt Z, oldest of my grandmother's children and usually the one to do these things, is bringing home her newly adopted baby boy today, who was born Friday. So, she's a bit busy. Uncle D has to leave town for a week-long business trip. That leaves my Aunt B, who is a lot like me in that we pretty much suck at being the people to make the decisions. We call our older siblings and leave them with the burden of responsibility, of choice. This sucks.

Please pray. Love you all.

Read more!

Glitter Girl

Great-aunt Katherine was small-boned and petite. She radiated sweetness, and when she had something to add to a conversation, she'd get so excited about it she would bounce on the balls of her feet till it was her turn to speak. She was Giggy's older sister, and to this day I think Gig is still jealous of her for receiving so much of their mother's affection.

Our church, New Creation, was participating in an inter-church festival, and Katherine was in charge of preperations. My aunt Brenda and family-friend Christy Hall were both in the women's dance troupe that would be performing. They wore white dresses with big, inch-high colored jewels on the fronts, representing the twelve tribes of Israel and the priestly robes of Levi. My brother and sister and all their Sunday School classmates were in the flag twirlers troupe that Katherine led and choreographed, and their big red flags furled in the air as they practiced. In a big, busy, and poor family, it was easy for a youngest child to get left out. But Katherine thought of me, and she gave me the most important role in the entire New Creation procession: I was to be the Glitter Girl.

Like the flower girl at a wedding, as glitter girl I would lead the column of flag twirlers and dancers. Instead of scattering petals before me, I would shower the aisle with flecks of gold. Two weeks before the big day Katherine came to the house with a basket full of silver glitter. She told me that we would practice with silver, and work our way up to gold for the night of the performance. I put on my lavender bathing suit with silver flecks sewn in, so that any glitter that stuck to me during practice would be camoflouged by my outfit (until the next time I went swimming when, I'm sure, the glitter got sucked into the pool filter). We stood in the backyard and she taught me how to sprinkle the glitter in wide and sparkling arcs.

"You want the glitter to reach all the way to the first person sitting on either side of the aisle," she told me, and I stretched my arm as wide and high as I could as I carefully slipped the glitter pieces between my forefinger and thumb. The week of the festival, Gig took me to K-Mart for my first-ever brand new dress. I remember that she was feeling harried that day; Gig was always running late or running behind, so most days she was short-tempered and quick-tongued. But this day I didn't care if I was taking too long; I wanted to look at every dress they had and choose the one that was just right. I settled on a navy blue dress with white polka dots and a white lace collar with a single rose sewn in the center.

The big night came and I put on my brand new dress, stockings, and black Mary Janes. We loaded up into the station wagon and headed for the festival. I remember the practie and anticipation better than I remember the actual event. My memory of going their or coming home is fuzzy, but the memories of walking down the aisle, of stretching my limbs to get glitter to the farthest edges of my path, and of my pride in wearing that brand new dress - those memories are crystal clear.

Image credit goes to =Fallen-Stock of Deviant Art. That's not me, but it's pretty close to what I looked like at the time.

Read more!

Squinch & Oral Surgery

My first nicknames as a child were "Squinch" and "Nuke". Giggy gave them both to me. She would take our first names and extend them past reason, adding funny sounding morphemes. Then she'd take one of these random extended pieces, and use that as a nickname. For example, a guy we knew named Jared was called "Root", short for "Jaredarooter." A Sara was known as "Sponder", short for "Sarasponder". Nuke came about the same way, (with "nucleosis" added after my given name) but Squinch was a nickname I got for being small.

I remember helping my ballerina aunt move her cigarette-smoke scented scarves and mirors and exotic tropical fish and several persian cats from one apartment to another. I sat in the backseat, over the hump, holding stacks of boxes steady on either side, and a cat carrier on my lap. "Look at her," Giggy commented happily from the driver's seat. "You can just squinch her on in anywhere and she'll fit."

I've been trying to decide when my eating disorders really started. Was it the first time I threw up in 5th grade, when I just wanted to get out of class and wasn't yet concerned with thinness? Was it the first time I specifically took an action - a diet pill, an exercise class, a skipped meal - towards weight control? Or did it start earlier, in my formative years, when I decided the way I was, scabby kneed, tow-headed with bangs I'd cut myself, energetic and smiling, was inherently sinful, evil, and wrong? I think Squinch has something to do with it, but I haven't had the major "click" insight yet that makes it all fall into place neatly in an autobiographical timeline (which would really help make organizing the book easier, if it did.)

I'm about to go have a pudding cup for breakfast, because the thought of chewing after yesterday's dental assault (7 cavities filled and 2 bad teeth extracted - in two hours) makes me want to cry. Plus, I'm not sure if it's a side-effect of the novacaine or the antibiotics, but I woke up puking for about an hour last night. No fun. :( I always feel really odd about throwing up now that I've decided not to be bulimic anymore. For awhile, a few years ago during a prior attempt at health and recovery, I started accidentally-on-purpose giving myself food poisoning, so that I could purge the calories without having to admit to myself that's what I was doing. So now, even though I *really* didn't do a damn thing to make myself throw up, I feel guilty for it. I feel like I benefited from something destructive. Granted, I didn't really eat anything yesterday because my mouth was still bleeding for several hours and the sleeping pills let me knock out for awhile, so it's not like there are any food calories I expelled. I just feel guilty that part of me likes throwing up. (The rest of me is much wiser and recognizes that stomach acid hurts like a mother, and it's what screwed up my teeth in the first place.)

I want to sit down the two overweight women who convinced me I was fat and tell them to fuck off. And I wish I had eggs this morning so I could make soft scrambled eggs with cheese for a gentle-chewing breakfast, instead of jello pudding (yummy though.) I'll try to organize my thoughts for a better post later today. I think the Tylenol PMs are still making my brain all fuzzy. Oh well. I'm going to the doctor's this afternoon to talk about my trouble sleeping. (Boyfriend Dave is concerned I never actually reach REM sleep, with all the trashing about and making funny noises I apparently do in the middle of the night.) Good day, good luck, and I'll do a better post later. Cheers, Anteaters - soon I'll be all better, with healthy teeth, a healthy head, and maybe even 8 hours of sleep in the same night!

Read more!

Salvation's Kiss

Michael had long dark hair and shockingly blue eyes, and he looked like a colder version of Jesus. I sat on the bench with him, on the side of the mountain in Tennessee, and I told him everything, without once crying. I was 15 and a half and already the stories I told awed and amazed him. He had no idea life could hurt so much.

I think that naivete was part of what made him so beautiful to me. Originally I approached him because, in the whole lame Bible camp I was gonna be stuck in for the next 5 days, he was the kid that looked the most like my friends. "He looks like he listens to Marilyn Manson" I thought, and approached him. He was my best friend from that day until five years later when his new wife told him he couldn't ever talk to me again. That still hurts, and it was years and years ago.

He told me once that talking to me was like getting hit by a Mac truck - my feelings were just too strong, too negative, too much for him. Too much for everyone, I kept being told. I told him my life's story over four hours the day we met, before sloppy joes off trays in the camp's cafeteria. We went whitewater rafting together, splashed in a swimming hole together, and read the Bible together. Over the course of the week I felt more and more the quickened emotional intensity that I'd come to associate with a moving of the Holy Spirit, during each night's worship service - a three hour mini-concert of talented guitarists, pianists, drummers, and singers; each song glorifying God.

That last night, I broke down completely. Standing in the midst of the music hall - a building with wood floors, roof, stage, and wrap-around benches, but open to the starry expanse and the mountain view on two sides - I was brought to my knees with an overwhelming sense of shame and a desperate need for repentance. I cried my heart out into the floor, as my fellow youth group members - a group of teenagers who had barely tolerated each other a week ago - laid hands on me, to comfort me and pray for me.

I asked Jesus to come back into my heart. It was the last of my series of altar call conversions, on July 28, 1998, and it is still the one I take most seriously. I knew then that I was a Christian in my own right, and not just as the child of Christians. This was when I picked Jesus for myself, when I decided I wanted nothing more in this world than to be close to Him. I had always felt a certain sense of inferiority to other Christians, like Michael, who had two-parent homes. Because so much of Christianity is based on the metaphor of a fatherly god, and because I was 15 and had only met my father a handful of times, I felt like verses about "God the Father" were almost an attack on my bastard child state.

That night Michael, and a few others from his North Carolina youth group joined mine to pray for me that I would feel God's love in my life, like a father. I never really did, but less than two years after that my dad took me in when my mom kicked me out, and I got to feel my real dad's love, such as he knew how to give. And how it came about that my mom told me I had to find somewhere else to live, midway through my junior of high school, all ties back to Michael and that night.

That night worship lasted not three hours, but five, and I was still one of the last to be there, sobbing on the wood floor. On the walk back to my cabin with Michael after, I was on the greatest endorphin high of my life. The closest I've felt to it in the years since was the amazing rush of love and joy that came over me at the birth of my son, after four solid days of labor. Michael and I knew we probably wouldn't see each other again - we lived 1200 miles away and were both 15. He had already told me he was going to save his first real kiss for the altar - a kind of supreme premarital celibacy. I was about equal parts impressed and incredulous. I was already having sex.

But that night, standing outside my cabin, my white shoes scuffed with the red clay earth, Michael kissed my cheek. It planted an instaneous and almost insatiable need for him to actually kiss me. It was like a spell, that kiss. and I think some part of me thought that if I could earn the kiss of someone so pure, maybe I wasn't all bad.


... (I'm gonna write stuff here some other day! Thanks for bearing with me, Anteaters. Writing a book is hard.)...


I tortured myself with a false image of Michael for years. He was supposed to be this perfect, passionate, evangelical, beautiful poet, who never sinned or looked at other girls. But of course he wasn't perfect. Although he was a beautiful, passionate, and evangelical poet, he also looked at other girls. He got girlfriends. He kissed a girl named Venus and I felt hollow inside.

Nineteen months after I met him, I hopped in the red '88 Ford Escort hatchback and drove twelve hours to see Michael, and to get him to kiss me. He did, but it wasn't enough to save me. By the time I arrived, my mom had already torn through my phone book and figured out where I was heading. Michael's mom knew I was coming before he did. I didn't understand how my mom knew where I was going, since I hadn't even come up with the idea myself. My ex-boyfriend Ron had suggested it, because I told him I had to get away from my mom and my life, I was going absolutely crazy.

....(on the way back my car broke and i hitch hiked with all my stuff the rest of the way home, including a night spent in a 7-11 bathroom because it was indoors and i could lock it to sleep for a couple hours)...

By the time I made it home, it wasn't home anymore. Mom had gone past livid in the days I'd been gone, and moved on to an almost austere serenity. She was not touched by my plight; it was the consequence of my actions. I had brought this on myself, and she'd now say she never even kicked me out, that I left voluntarily. (Yeah, right.)

---
This is all really rough, y'all. I'll fill it in and smooth it out. Damn, I forgot how "in love" with that boy I really was. Huh. In the end he married a preacher's daughter, one who fell into the "good preacher's kid" model, instead of the bad one I fell into.

I am (really) glad it didn't work out though, because I'd be very surprised if he's not still evangelical, and I love being an atheist. (Love it, you hear?!)

The picture at the top is of the actual swimming hole in Ducktown, Tennessee where I spent a fun afternoon with my youth group. :) I have pictures of all us girls wearing our one-piece bathing suits with shorts over them. Ah, Bible camp.

This was the first time I ever went to camp. My brother and sister both went with our choir before he got sent away and we moved to Iowa, but mom says I was too young to go. Oh, and I originally didn't want to go to camp, because I was pretty much convinced that church and Christians were lame at this point, but Giggy told me that she would pay for it and that there was whitewater rafting. Yes, I got sucked back into Christianity for another ten years over whitewater rafting.

Read more!

God of the Gas Tank

I remember the night I Googled "Carol Balizet" and found cults. I read about the Attleboro sect, and this one strange incident where they ran out of gas and spent three days "laying hands" on the car, praying the Lord would fill their tank. This was at the beginning of my process, and I was still in a lot of denial about how bad my grandma's teachings really were. Then a couple weeks ago, during my first bout of "no internet", I read this in her book "Born in Zion":

There was really no gas at all. The needle was way down past the "E" and even with the great milage the van gets, there was no way we could make it to Lakeland. Bertha closed her eyes and put her hand on the dashboard.

"We're your servants, Lord, and we want to go where you send us, but we can't make it without a miracle. We ask you to meet our need now. In the name of Jesus, let there be gas," she prayed and the needle on the gas gauge jumped up past the quarter-full mark. Glory! Then she put a paper napkin over the gauge so we couldn't see it, and we started out. We drove all the way, singing and laughing, both of us absolutely positive we'd make it to Lakeland without a problem. We did.

The Attleboro followers were no crazier than my grandma, and in fact they were basing most of their lives on her teachings. I just hadn't realized she'd taught "God will fill your gas tank" so explicitly. She also promises that labor will be painless (throughout the book, she refuses to refer to a laboring woman as in "pain"; she prefers the word "discomfort"), that having a homebirth will strengthen your marriage (despite half the people mentioned in the book going through divorces by the time the second and third editions were printed), and that - as long as you are in a "blessable" position - God will give you absolutely everything you need, right down to gas in your tank.

In many ways, fictional god was the most loving parent I had, or thought I had. My mother was extremely detached during my early childhood, and I barely have any memories of her at all prior to moving away from Gig when I was 9. She swears she was around more, but I don't remember it. I remember her being busy writing her dissertation, and I remember standing outside her bedroom, staring at the closed door.

Gig was insane. She was also a lot of fun, and I enjoyed running errands with her and just sort of basking in her presence. She was so charming and disarming, she could insult you and get you to laugh right along with her.* She would hold me in her rocking chair and sing "Peace, Peace" to me when I had nightmares or was upset. Yet I know she didn't love me, or anyone else. She made a deal with God to kill my mother during her labor with my brother (he reneged). Just as my mom watched me struggle to walk with a limp and a cane, so did she. Just as my mother ignored all my emotional, mental health, and physical needs, so did Gig. The difference was that Gig drank her own Koolaid, but my mother didn't; she just served it to us.

No one made sure my teeth had been brushed, or my homework had been done. I could scarcely get the adults to notice me, but they told me that God loved me, that he was always with me, and that he knew me intimately. The illusion of god was more loving than the reality of either of the women raising me. God was supposed to do everything for me that they didn't - care for me, heal me, comfort me, love me. I can't be the only one that held onto God because he was better than the alternatives I'd been given.

A lot of times people make comments about religion being for the poor, but for me religion was for the poor in spirit.** "A broken heart and a contrite spirit, you have yet to deny" I sang in church and "He's got the whole world in his hands". So I believed and I prayed for the things I needed, instead of finding them some other way. I prayed for money, for a boyfriend, for a better car and better job. I prayed for my hip to get better, for my suicidalism to fade, for god to take my freewill away from me, so I wouldn't offend or disappoint him further. And when god failed to do those things for me, I turned the blame inward and sought out - How am I not blessable? What am I doing wrong that is preventing God from moving in my life?

I thought if I just got right with God, I'd have enough gas to make it home.

* Example: Gig told an African-American nurse she worked with during the 60s "Well, they say black is beautiful but you're kind of brown, so I guess you're just pretty."

**There are atheists in foxholes and below the poverty line.

Read more!

Confirmation and Strawberries

I had just turned 6 and it was time for the annual Strawberry Festival, which is almost exactly like the Florida State Fair, only with lots and lots of winter strawberries (yum!) That year it was Giggy, my sister Esther*, my cousin Jason*, and me. After watching the pig races and eating elephant ears, we walked through one of the giant flea-market style aluminum buildings to look at displays people had made out of, or inspired by, strawberries.

I came to one display I didn't understand. I stood and conetmplated for several minutes, trying to understand what a wax sculpture of an African-American baseball player had to do with strawberries**. After a while I looked up and around me and realized I was alone. My family had moved on and left me behind.

I stayed calm,and I prayed as I walked through the galley, for the Lord to help me find my family. Once outside, I spotted a policewoman and I quickly approached her. "Excuse me, my family has lost me."

"You're lost?"

"No, I'm not lost. I know where I am," I explained, "but they don't."

Lost or not, she took me to the locomotive caboose car being used for the Lost and Found at the festival. It was boring, but it didn't last long. While I waited inside, amongst boxes of wallets of sunglasses, she put a call out across the loudspeakers that I'd been found. I started singing "Amazing Grace" to myself, now especially pleased with the line about "I once was lost but now am found." Giggy poked her head through the train car door and came to retrieve me. I was scolded for not keeping up and for dawdling, and then we went to join my cousin and sister at the make-your-own strawberry shortcake tent.

That night, I told my mom I had met an angel. I had prayed and God had sent that angel disguised as a policewoman to come bring me back to my family, like a lost sheep (in reality, a neglected sheep.) And for years I was convinced she was an angel. I obviously don't think that now, but my mother didn't correct my labeling. After all, how can you judge the validity of someone else's supernatural experience or their conversation with an angel, if you accept that these things do occur at least some of the time? My angel wasn't more or less credible than anyone else's.

I'd always thought of the man who saved Giggy from the canal when she was a teenager was something of an angel. Both he and the policewoman were African-American, and so for the rest of the time that I believed in Angels, I thought they were all black. Maybe Gabriel was a blonde white guy, but surely the non-arch angels were all black. After all, the only people I knew of who had been nice just to be nice, and not for some gain, were black. So obviously angels were black.

Confirmation bias is simply starting by believing something, and then making new data twist out of shape to hold onto that beleif. I believed that god was required to answer my prayers, and I beleived that he never worked through people, only through direct intervention. So when I found the policewoman, I thught it was because "god had led me to her". I probably just learned from Seasame sTREET that a police officer is a good person to find if you're lost or need help. (I certainy woul not have learned that from my parents, who taught me to fear all authority that wasn't "godly".)

I wouldn't have concluded, "She's an angel" if I'd never been told about angels and how they're messengers of god who come interact with and talk to people. (My son has no idea what an "angel" means but at 4 he knows the names of a half dozen bones in the human body.) Once your ideas are already biased in a direction, it is human nature to cling to ideas which support your primary belief, and to reject those that seem to contradict it. That's because it's unpleasant to hold conflicting views or ideas at hte same time. That's called cognitive dissonance and it is that unpleasant sensation that, I think, leads to a quest for truth for some and compartmentalized thinking for others. It's not a sustainable place to stay in the long-run.

Since I thought everything good from God and there was no such thing as human goodness, I had to warp the data in front of me - a woman who appeared in every respect to be mortal and human - to fit with my primary beliefs about the nature and behavior of God. Magical thinking, sloppy thinking, uncritical thinking - you don't have to try hard at all to be completely and utterly wrong. Just go with what seems to fit with what you already believe, and you'll never have to change or be confronted by disquieting ideas. It's like Valium for the psyche. "Yeah, that fits. Therefore, it must be true."




* Names changed
**It was Darryl. I get it now.

Read more!

You look like God!

Yes, I could go on and on about how much I missed all of you, Hulu and even my stupid farm. I could tell you I actually cried Wednesday night because I missed the internet (my main intellectual/creative/social outlet.) I could tell you that I've already ready every Rowling, Pratchett, and Bujold in my house at least a dozen times, and that I've spent the last four days up to my eyeballs in the dead tree copy of my grandmother's cult hit "Born in Zion." Or I could just jump right into new materials.

From "Born in Zion" Chapter 9: Rhema (a personal revelation or word from God.) Gig wrote a whole chapter of little stories about people (mostly ｈer) getting *exact quotes* from God. Now, she quotes God and Satan both a lot in this book (and not from the Bible, just her own thoughts) but this one really takes the cake.

I was with Lucia and Tony Padrone, very early in their labor, just the three of us sitting around the table in their kitchen. They're gorgeous people, typically Italian and strikingly alike in appearance: medium build, straight noses, full lips, dark eyes, curly brown hair and smooth olive skin.

At one point the conversation lulled, and I made the comment: "Which ever one of you the baby resembles, he'll look like you both. You look enough alike to be twins."

Lucia laughed. "Of course. I'm Tony's rib, so we have the same genetic code, and it's no wonder we look alike."

*facepalm!* That's not how genetics works. (And fyi, men and women have the same number of ribs.)

"Most married people grow to resemble each other, don't you think?" Tony asked.

"Well, maybe they kind of match," I agreed.

We discussed several couples we knew in common, trying to see where they had physical trait alike, coloring or body type or even more often, mannerisms and gestures.

It's important to note here that my grandmother, and most of the people she associated with at the time she wrote this, did not condone interracial marriage. So when she says people had similar coloring, what she means is that she approves of Italian marrying Italians and Jews marrying Jews and African-American marrying African-Americans. True to her form, she did treat individuals and individual couples differently from her broad general view: when a red-headed Irish woman and an African-American man in her congregation married, she didn't cut ties with them or anything like that. She even accepted the black guy I was dating a few years ago, because she knew him as an individual (a pretty cool one at that) and not as a (racist) stereotype.

Also, seeking confirmation bias, much? "trying to see where they had physical trait alike." That just sounds like her approach to everything. Make a generalization or non-scientific observation, decide it's true, and quickly gather data points or ideas to support it. (Can you see yet why I love critical thinking so much?)

Then I left the room for some reason, and as I walked down the hall I wa speaking to the Lord on the same subject. I commented, "I never did look like either one of my husbands."

"True," the Lord replied. "But every now and then, just a little bit, you're beginning to look like Me."

Why am I guessing most Christians wouldn't agree that a self-centered, gluttinous, irresponsible, (twice divorced) baby-killing WOMAN is really all that godly? And yet, they didn't. Over and over again, I saw pastors deferring to her, and men submitting their wives' health to her - all because they thought she had some special pipeline to the almighty, and her ramblings were really revelation.

Oh, what a glory!

She throws in Glory! in this book a lot, and it's incredibly fake. It just sticks out like a sore thumb as this thing she never ever said in real life.

Every unmarried Christian woman knows the wonderful Scripture in Isaiah 54:5, "For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is His name." This principle of married couples looking alike was beginning to apply to me and my present Husband. Isn't that wonderful?

Look at me, I'm so godly. Look, I have the Lord's Seal of Approval (that I just invented!) Let's just ignore all who don't know that verse. Also, it is not a "principle" that married couples look alike. Woody Allen does not look like Soon-Yi Previn. And even though they're much closer in age, both in Hollywood, an both gorgeous, Brad and Angelina don't actually look that much like each other. (Your bone structure does not magically change when you say "I do.")

Of course, in age, gender, racial characteristics, coloring and physique I'm almost nothing like a thirty-three-year old Semitic man who lived an active, outdoor life in a desert country. But that's not what He meant.　He meant on the inside; He looks on the heart. Maybe nobody else can see it, but when He looks into my heart, He can once in a while, somehow see a little something of Himself.

Galloping narcissism folks, let me tell you it is not fun to grow up with. How can you argue with someone who so clearly has God her side, right? Of course, this is why second hand revelation is necessarily hearsay. As a child I found it compelling, and the people who read her books and came away from it with a sense that this woman was really godly probably didn't realize that she just gave herself God's endorsement. *It doesn't make it true.* Not for her, or Pope Been-a-dick or Joseph Smith or Mohammad. This is why evidence matters, folks, and not just what some prophet claims God told them.

And now, without any justification other than the fact that I've missed posting funny videos the past few days, Ninja Cat.



p.s. I'll be responding to comments on earlier posts over the next couple of days. I *will* continue the Mercy Ministries posts and other series. I just have to get this garbage from my grandmother out of my system.


p.p.s. I've read so many amazing Bujold quotes the past several days I decided I need to close every post with them until whatever need to express myself through her words is sated. Today's quote is from "Memory."

Harrah was silent for long enough for Lem to paass around the stone jug one last time, in the dim moonlight and shadows. Then she said, "You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."

"What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"

She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?"

Read more!

More of my grandmother

Holy crap. I found new sites with my grandmother's books by doing an image search of her name. (I was trying to find a picture of her, for my last post. It's not like I could do a funny comic strip with that one.)

Three copies of her book "Healing in Zion" (which is waaaaaaay craizer than the other two "non-fiction" books: it's a blueprint for disaster) are being shared around with various Quiverfull and homeschool families through the Victory Christian School lending library. *facepalm* There are only so many copies of her books out there, and (on top of the new cult survivors social network, this blog, my book, and raising my kid) I'm trying to round up as many of them as possible. (Donations to ATAT for this purpose would be greatly appreciated!) But here these three copies are doing damage to far more than three families. And unlike a lot of the midwives who sell her books on their websites (and who should therefore be stripped of ever working with women again), this group isn't selling their only copies. They're keeping her toxic view of the world in circulation, poisoning large families.

So I wrote the absolutely most Christian sounding email I could, and sent it from my other email address, the one that doesn't have "antitheist" in the name. It took a little creativity to portray myself as being onboard with their vision in every other respect, and just wanting this one book removed, without actually lying. I just don't think they'll take the advice of an atheist - even one with facts and court cases and dead babies on her side - on the issue of what books Christian families devoted to faith should read. Gig's teachings will find fertile ground in this community, and that sickens me and worries me. It's like that painful scene in a movie, when you know everything is going to come crashing down on your protagonist, but there's nothing that can be done to stop it. But I'll still try to stop it.

Hello and good day,

I am Carol Balizet's granddaughter; she is the author of "Healing in Zion" which I see you offer in your lending library. I myself was homeschooled, and have very fond memories of the experience. I think the idea of a lending library between homeschool families is fantastic, and an excellent way of sharing resources.

I am sure you are unaware that Carol's teachings have led to the deaths of several children, and that she is now classified as a "cult leader" for some of her heretical teachings. I would ask you to please read the links I've provided below, and prayerfully consider removing her teachings from your library. I am quite concerned about the damage these books have already done to God-fearing, loving, and well-meaning families.

The majority of these links are from Christian cult-watch organizations.
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/b17.html
http://www.rickross.com/reference/zion/zion2.html
http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/Articles/ARTICLE-0007.htm

These are testimonies from a pro-homebirth site, explaining why Carol's teachings are unbilical and dangerous.
http://www.birthjunkie.com/ZBHarticle.html
http://www.birthjunkie.com/testimony2.html


I can provide more links if you like. If you have more questions, please feel free to email me or call me at home at (813) 421-2641*. I would be more than happy to explain my concerns to you.

I wish you all the best.
Sincerely,

Angie Jackson

* p.s. to my readers - That's my new Google Voice line, so it is open for anybody that needs to talk about this stuff - cults and faith and children and nonsense and getting better. It's really great connecting with you and knowing that you're out there. :)

Read more!

Why I Write

Google knows about my blog. My entire "omg that wuzza cult?" fall from grace into anti-theism began with a Google search of my grandmother's name. Now when you Google her, page three of the results leads you to my blog.

A man who knew my grandmother back in the 1980s, when the baby ministry was just getting off the ground, contacted me yesterday. My Giggy delivered his son two years before I was born and two years before she wrote her woman-and-child-hating homebirth manifesto. His son needed an emergency cesarean but my grandmother taught that having a c-section (like she did - four times) is in actuality witchcraft and sorcery (as all surgery was to her) and that your baby delivered in this fashion would be "offered unto Caesar" and the devil, not you and the Lord. (Caesar was considered an evil spirit of, essentially, humanism.)

My grandmother and the two other burnt-out nurses who ran the baby ministry in the early days talked on and on at baby meetings they held for pregnant couples, telling them how dangerous hospitals were. My grandmother had a filing cabinet filled with newspaper clippings of medical malpractice. One story I remember vividly is of a man who had the wrong leg amputated at a hospital just a few miles away. Of course, like creationists, psychics, and "prayer warriors", my grandmother focused on the exception rather than the rule. I honestly thought as a child that going to a hospital was akin to a death sentence, so terribly inept were these doctors. In that light, it made perfect sense to trust God (who loved us, promised to heal us and provide for us, and was certainly not incompetent) over doctors (who secretly worshiped demons, when they weren't killing their patients through malpractice). (Yes, I was an early deather.)

For a moment, put yourself in this man's shoes: In a time of struggle, and no real self-confidence, his pastor and this nurse were both telling him the same things - that God would always heal, that birth was natural and "not a medical emergency", that we had been promised provision, and that doctors were evil. Other people were having Gig at their births and she had probably already attended several dozen before his. Home birth and midwifery were on the cultural rise (as they still are - unfortunately) and within the context of his life and beliefs, it wasn't crazy for him to believe what my grandmother said. He blamed an early foundation in Christian fundamentalism for laying the fertile ground for her ideas to take root.

My grandmother didn't take his wife to the hospital; there was no c-section. He son was born gray and pale, and didn't suck to nurse for two days. He's 28 now, just a couple years older than I am, and living in a group home. He'll never be an independent adult - and my grandmother did that to him. I didn't get a chance to ask last night, although I meant to, if he and his wife were the ones who took my grandmother to court for practicing medicine without a license and damaging their child, or if that's yet another life she negatively impacted.

This is why I run this blog, and this is why I'm writing my book. To a religious historian a hundred years from now, the children (and adults) she harmed may be no more than a statistic. To me, each one is a story and a child and a life. Oh, to have a time machine right now. If I could just go back to 1980 and kill her or cure her or stop her - before Baby Number 15 died; before this boy's life and his mother's life were put at risk, and he suffered permanent disability as a result; before Harrison's parents had been brainwashed into believing that prayer was the best possible treatment for his several hundred yellow jacket stings; before Roland Robidoux ever got a copy of one of her books. Before she'd written the books.

Or if I had to go back farther in time to stop her, had to go all the way back so that she was never born, I'd take my own retroactive annihiliation and nonexistence, if it kept messages like hers and like the others she parroted (stole from, shamelessly) away from loving and well-meaning people who would never intentionally put their families at risk. Sadly, I don't have a time machine. All I have is my story and my voice.

As Carol Balizet's granddaughter, as the one-time chief acolyte and head cheerleader of Home in Zion Ministries, at the once-future healer/prophet/leader of the group, I can tell the story of each of these children better. I can bring more focus, and I can get people to start talking about these issues - about cults and cult leaders, and about faith and faith healing. Hopefully, together with your help, I can start a national dialogue on the issue of childrens' rights vs. parents' rights, and we can stop acting like the denomination of your parents should determine what constitutes as abuse or neglect for you. This is our Sharia law - religious exemptions that infringe on the human rights of American citizens. For all my US readers who (like me) are getting really annoyed with UK's Labor party for courting the Muslim vote with Sharia-pandering, here's the "beam" in our own eye. (And here's a petition you can sign to help change that. And here's another.)

I think when people read stories of children who die of medical neglect, they imagine the parents as unfeeling or cruel. I want to write this story because I need to explain how fundamentalism can warp a person, and how people can do the worst actions from the most motives. I want to preach the gospel of critical thinking, so that people can protect themselves from the people like my grandmother - cunning, charming, confident, and crazy - who are out there, waiting to prey on their next victim.

Thank you to everyone who's contacted me, either through a comment or an email or a phone call. It really means a lot to me, and I'm glad of anyway that my blog is helping people to process their own backgrounds. That's kind of what I look at secular humanism as being all about - people helping people be better people. You help me. Thanks.

Read more!

Rough Draft

Hi Aunt Z,

Let me start off by saying that I love you and your family as well. You covered a lot of different ground in your email. As I see it, you brought up
1) Your perception of me as "wounded" and in pain
2) Me calling Gig a cult leader and holding her responsible for dead babies
3) Atheism and anti-theism
4) The history between Gig and Asshat (I'm not using my ex husband's real name)
5) How I raise my son
6) Peter and the prodigal son idea
7) The role of mental health

Let me get the shorter responses out of the way. I'm sorry Asshat stole from Gig. He stole from everyone, even cashing in Little Man's change jar when he was a month old to buy drugs. He had serious substance abuse problems and was not a nice person. Last year I had to file a restraining order, after he threatened to kidnap my son and kill me. How I raise my son, in a single parent home and outside of a church, is not up for discussion. I haven't provided any insights or suggestions on what I think would be best for your children, and you will do the same for me.

Lumping together points 1, 3, and 6: I'm touched by your concern I suppose, but I'm not in pain and I'm not blogging because I'm "wounded". Atheism has been a huge positive in my life, and is the second greatest thing to happen to me (after Little Man, of course). I did not become an atheist because I'm angry with God or with Gig, or in reaction to any of the aspects of religion I decry on my blog. If you'd like to talk about it, there are three scenarios I can work with.

1. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer them. A lot of people don't have a clear understanding of what "atheist" means, but it just describes the fact that I don't believe that any gods exist. It doesn't say anything about my outlook or my values, which in many respects are the same as yours.
2. You and I can exchange books and talk about the issues that way. I'll read a Christian apologist book of your choosing, if you'll read something I choose on atheism in exchange.
3. We can agree to never directly converse with each other on the issue of god, religion, and religious education/indoctrination of children.

Now that I've set those issues aside, let me get to what I think was your main purpose in writing me. Gig was a cult leader. I know that this is hard to hear and painful to discover, but it's factually true. Just google "Carol Balizet" and "cult" and you'll be amazed at what you find, and not just on my blog. The International Cultic Studies Association, Apologetics Index, Childrens Healthcare is a Legal Duty, Concerned Christian Growth Ministries, and the Rick Ross Institute (all groups specializing in cults) recognize Gig as a cult leader and Home in Zion Ministries as a cult. (Which sort of answers your question of why I kept working for her even as an adult. Brainwashing takes time to reverse and I was still very much under her spell at that time.)

You didn't live with her during those years, so you may not be aware how crazy and controlling she really was. I don't know if you've read her books anytime in the last twenty years, but my mom and I have. She knows that Gig is a cult leader, too, and she's still a committed Christian. The atheism and the recognition of Gig as a cult leader aren't at all related. (In fact, Rick Ross Institute, CCGM, and Apologetics Index are all Christian cult-watch organizations).

I'm sorry if this wounds you or causes you pain. That's not my intention. It's just a fact, and in part because I did work for her and promote her crazed ideas for so long, I want to make amends to the world. I want to debunk the dangerous lies she told. Children have died, Z. And, sorry, but the facts say they *would* have lived if they'd gotten medical care. I know Gig always said each death she spoke of was unavoidable, but I've read about them now in news articles and cult watch websites. She brainwashed people into putting "faith" above all else, and told them it was blasphemous to respond "in the sight realm" to actual physical problems people were having, and that it was a sin to go to a doctor. In the end, when she was the one in pain, she did go to a doctor. By that point six children had already died as a direct result of her books and her dogma.

I don't know if you remember the story of Harrison Johnson, the little boy who was stung by all those yellow jackets and died from medical neglect in the HIZM office, but I used to babysit him. Gig was with his family that day, and advised them not to get medical care. He would be 16 now, if his parents had never read Gig's books. She killed him. It's taken me 14 years to get to the point where I can recognize that for what really happened.

Regarding the role of mental health in Gig's decisions and actions. I was diagnosed with OCD at 21 and have received multiple additional diagnoses since then. I've long suspected Gig had mental health problems, probably OCD and certainly NPD. However, a high-functioning adult with mental illness is not excused for bad behavior. I have mental health issues myself, and I can be sympathetic to the additional challenges that come with living like this. But I am responsible for my actions and words, just as as she was. If someone is found not guilty of a crime like murder by reason of insanity, we don't convict them of murder but we still do lock them up for the safety of others, in an institution rather than a jail. You can believe whatever you believe, but we have rules on how crazy you're allowed to *behave*.

You seemed to suggest that by simply being an atheist and talking about it on my blog, I am doing more harm than Gig, who directly contributed to the deaths of several children. I don't see how you possibly could make this statement "gently". The sweetest words won't hide the fact that you worship a god you think will send me and my friends to hell, simply for not believing he exists, and that you think he is the source of love, comfort, and morality, and that I'm depriving my son in some way by not teaching him about this deity. Do you really want to have this conversation with me? We can, but you almost certainly won't like what I have to say.

I'm more than willing to talk about Gig's effect on the world with you - or not. I do recommend you talk to my mom about it. She has a lot of insights about Gig over the decades, and was a lot more involved in Gig's personal satellite during the baby ministry days. She's also read a lot on abusive churches and Bible-based cults, written by Christians, on how to make sure the group you belong to is healthy and not heretical. Since I think you're more likely to respect what she has to say, both because she's a Christian and because she's your sister not your niece, I think you should probably talk to her. I know you don't like this, but I'm not making it up.

A Christmas present for Little Man would be grand, as long as it's not a Bible or something like it. I'll get your children religiously neutral toys in a similar respect of your right to educate and instruct your children as you see fit. I'm glad to hear you're getting treatment plan for Lil C and testing for Lil J. I only wish I'd had access to health care and mental health care as a child. Because of Gig and her beliefs, I didn't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is what I'm thinking of sending. But on the other hand, I remember that I don't even really like her. Yes, she's my aunt and I love her in that obligatory family reflex way. But in 2006 when I was living in my car and asked her for money for diapers, she referred me to the homeless shelter for help. (She married rich, so it's not like she couldn't have spared a pack of Pampers.) She used to make sarcastic comments about me as a teenager that really enhanced some of my insecurities and certainly made my eating disorder worse. When I was a kid, in a cult, at that time being sexually abused by a neighbor, she would pinch my bottom and tickle me, after I'd scream for her to stop. And she'd laugh. (So did my favorite aunt. It's taken me a long while to realize that I'm not overly sensitive - they were just jerks.) I don't actually want to spend time with her or talk with her individually. We're not that close and I don't respect her opinion that much. Really, I just want her to recognize that her mom ran a cult, or just leave me alone about it. I don't want family guilt when this book comes out. If she never speaks to me again because of this, either because I'm an atheist or because I called a spade a freaking spade, it's not actually going to bother me.

So maybe I cut it down to simply the groups that called HIZM a cult and the recommendation to call my mom. Maybe I just pull myself out of it. Or send her an email that says, "You're a moron who believes a man lived in a freaking fish belly!" Probably not that last one.

I called my best girlfriend in the world last night to vent about all this. She's a hippie spiritual Jesus type, and dating a Satanist. She's gotten over my disbelief now, which is fantastic. I love this girl because she came up with the perfect solution to cheer me up.

"Chica, we gotta get together and stir shit up. Let's go to a bar and get in a chick brawl!" Just the thought of hitting somebody and pulling someone's hair made me perk right up. :)




The image for today's post is of the Jonestown mass suicide, which is probably what most people think of when they hear the word "cult".

Read more!

Create a Crisis: Get Close to God!

From my grandmother's book Born in Zion, Chapter 1 "Commitment". Here's what she has to say on choosing faith over evidence:

It's so EASY to believe what we see, rather than what God has said.. We have often seen what MIGHT cause trouble and have had the choice of either beoming upset and succumbing to fear, or of ignoring the sight realm, and by our will saying what God says about things.

And what He says is, "...Fear not - Let not your heart be troubled - The battle is not yours, but God's - Be not afraid of evil tidings - All things work together for your good - Whatever you ask in my name I will do - I am not a man that I should lie - I will give you the desires of your heart..." It's a crash course in trust.

...There was a preacher once who said something I really liked. He said that we're brought close to God, into real dependence on Him, during times of crisis. So, he said, if you're not in a crisis of some sort, not in a desperate strait, crying out to God, then create a crisis. That way you may grow. And I'm so blessed; I'm in a ministry where every few days I get to enter into another crisis situation where I'm thrown into a total dependence on God's mercy.

Don't you envy me?

There are several points I want to address.

1. The fact that it's easy to believe our senses is NOT evidence that our senses are wrong! (Like many fringey people, she regularly assumed that being in the minority was an indication you *were* right - the opposite of the bandwagon fallacy, but a fallacy all its own.)
   
2. Note the phrase "ignoring the sight realm". I was consistently, systematically taught not to believe the evidence of my senses. (No wonder I have a hard time some days determining what is reality and what isn't!)
3. The message is "Ignore the danger, trust God no matter what." This rarely turns out well.
4. The "crisis situation" she describes is someone else's home birth.
5. She's all giddy that she can use someone else's crisis to gain her own spiritual "growth".
6. The Bible does really say all those things she quotes (although most people provide citation!). This means that the Bible really does say "Anything you ask in my name." So, liberal Christians, why didn't your god mean it? What's wrong with the Word of Faith doctrine - it's proof texted and has scriptural support.
7. Knowing that she was consciously trying to create crises explains a LOT about my childhood.
8. Her ultimate goal in life was to be envied. As pathetic and evil as she is, she succeeded in her goal (which rather sucks for the rest of us).

It's helpful, really, to have her books around. Every time I start to think "My childhood wasn't that weird" I read another paragraph or two and I feel like screaming, or blogging, or picking a fight with an ignorant theist. It really was that weird. Instead of my parent figure doing all she could to help me learn and grow and become self-sufficient, she worked really hard on making me dependent. She filled my life with crises - death and unnecessary risks and child neglect - and created for herself a theology that said this counted as parenting. Putting me in a crisis was a good thing, if that's how I was to become closer to God. After all - here she was, building her life around a structure of multiple crises per week - for her own life. Surely it made sense to do the same for me.

She removed from my teachings the concept of actual (real) cause and effect and instead taught me that everything in this world we see is the effect of some spiritual dealing. It was sort of like being taught that right was left and left was right, only I was also taught that left was EVIL. So I made right-hand turns, and didn't learn anything new, and stayed tightly bound in her circular reasoning. It's so easy, looking back, to see the different left-hand decisions I made, and how they came together over the years to pull me out of my brainwashed faith - making friends with gay kids and Muslims, dating and having sex, smoking cigarettes and smoking pot. All those little rebellions were necessary. I would never have been given to opportunity to learn anything new, as long as I followed the rules. The rules were impossible to follow.

It's amazing how well she succeeded in teaching me that I'm a terrible person. I believed her and the rest of the Christian community on that one for far too long. I am a strong person - even without the knowledge necessary to explain myself, I knew that unquestioning belief was a bad thing. I picked middle schoolers to teach Sunday School to, because I liked watching them start to really question things and decide on their own morals and values, separate from what their parents told them. Middle school kids are *awesome* for all the reasons people complain about them: They stop doing exactly what they're told. It's that all important separation phase. Mine just happened to coincide with a couple of deaths my grandmother caused, which made things a little more intense at the time.

Believe or don't believe, but know why you do or don't. If you believe, what's your reason? Is it emotional, cultural, or have you had personal revelation I haven't? And if you don't believe, why not? Is it because the claims are too far-fetched for you, because there's no evidence, or do you just like sinning? I don't think there is a good enough reason to believe anymore. And if you're going to believe the Bible, why do you pick and choose which parts to follow?



* I have no idea what the image I picked is actually advertising, and I don't care. I can't read those tiny words and neither can you, without zoom. So yeah, I'm not endorsing anything but Angie the Anti-Theist (the coolest blog on the net!)

Read more!

I loathe lukewarm fence-sitting whiners

Since discovering that my grandmother was a cult leader, in a late-night Google session just over a year ago, I've been emailing site owners on any home birth or private blog that promotes her book, asking them to stop. A few people did so immediately; several were impossible to contact. (Some of these are early geocities pages, with old aol email addresses, but they're still out there being all toxic on the internet, like the KKK's site or GodHatesFags.com.)

But some women just don't want to offend anyone. Here's the email I sent out.

I am the granddaughter of Carol Balizet, author of two of the books you recommend on your [redacted] site. I wanted to alert you that several people have died as a result of following her extremist teachings (some during child birth, and some later on.) The reliance on faith she recommends in her books is nonsensical, requiring birth attendants and laboring mothers to ignore physical symptoms of birth complications and instead merely pray and take no steps to protect the life of the mother or the child.

Carol Balizet was a hypocrite in the end, getting a hip replacement surgery after telling her followers for years to abstain from all medical care. She has been classified as a cult leader by multiple cult experts. I've provided a set of links at the end of this email with further information about Carol, her former ministry, and just a few of the deaths that have resulted from her teachings.

I have written to you previously, to ask you to please remove your endorsement of her teachings.

I am begging you - please remove her books from your list of recommendations. "Born in Zion" in particular led to death of two young boys (one who died from medical ignorance immediately after his birth, and one who was slowly starved to death) in a group which came to be known as "the Attleboro Sect".

If you have further questions or concerns, I would be happy to answer them. Please feel free to contact me. My primary concern is with halting her message wherever I find it. I understand and respect a woman's desire to have her child in whichever way seems safest and most comfortable for her. But the advice given in "Born in Zion" is considered heretical by the majority of Christians, is medically dangerous, and has proven to be deadly. Please, please, please - take her name down. Don't recommend these books any longer, or else the blood of future children is on your hands, too.

With regards,
Angela Jackson

Further information:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/zion/zion2.html
http://www.neirr.org/AttleboroHistoryNew.htm
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/b17.html
http://www.birthjunkie.com/testimony2.html
http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/Articles/ARTICLE-0007.htm
http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/articles/ARTICLE-0005.htm

If you would like more resources beyond these (including the several books on child death, child abuse, and heretical teachings that she appears in) I would be more than happy to provide them.

I'll give her tremendous credit for replying within the hour. I don't think I can give her reply much credit though.

Thanks for contacting me with your concerns. Yes, you wrote to me previously, and I answered you at some length. I told you that I’d consider modifying the statement, and I will, but in the process of thinking through exactly how to word it, your request was pushed to the back burner. (I am a very busy homeschooling mother of eight who is heavily involved with our church, my children’s ballet company, and a national writer’s group.)

It isn’t that I have no regard for what you’ve told me, but I loathe knee-jerk or hysterical reactions of any sort—either for or against a cause. I’ll definitely read the links you’ve provided and think some more on the subject

[Redacted]

Maybe it's different if you haven't read every story, and followed it all the way from tragic death announcement, back through the history of the family, of where things went wrong - following the story through the legal battle, and wondering who I hated the most in all of this, Gig for teaching dangerous nonsense, or the fools who unquestioningly believed her. (Worst. run-on. sentence. EVER.) I just can't put this "on the back burner" myself. What's more, I don't see how she can think that there could be some sort of fence-sitting middle ground between "teachings that kill people" and "NOT teachings that kill people". (Fallacy of the middle ground? Law of non-contradiction? I don't know. I'm tired and annoyed.)

Certainly I reject the notion of an absolute black and white world, but some things are binary. Either you believe in a god(s) or you're an atheist (sorry whiners! There is no "I neither believe nor disbelieve." As soon as you don't believe, you're one of us. Mwahahahhaha!) Either Hitler was a monster or you're screwed in the head. Either Obama was born in the US or he wasn't - (none of this "Gee, there are still questions" you lying scum GOP congressmen). (Obama was born here.) (It's sad I have to take a whole other parenthetical just to clearly state something that every retarded second grader should know.) (Sorry if I offended my retarded second grade readers, but kudos to you for exploring your atheist side at such a young age!)

Ahem. Sometimes I avoid the most difficult topics with lots of asides and stupid jokes. Something about humor being a defense mechanism. I don't know, I was really bad at counseling as a kid. Mostly I just played with the cool colored water toys that every school guidance counselor seems to have. (I finally asked one counselor if they all ordered them from a catalog. She said yes.)

My mom told me earlier today she had to stop and just reflect after she wrote the sentence, "Most of the deaths my mother caused were due to this book, which is actually the mildest but which had the widest distribution." I don't know how many of my readers out there can non-fictionally start a sentence with "Most of the deaths my grandmother caused" or "Most of the children my grandmother killed". It's rather odd that I can. You might think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm not sure that I ever will be. What would it be like to be Hitler's child, and to live on long enough to hate everything he'd stood for? I can imagine it, at least.

I compared Gig to Hitler in my own head for the first time in fifth grade, long before I'd ever heard of Godwin's Law. Heck, I wasn't even thinking of it in terms of death. I'm not sure any children had died yet at that point. I just remember sitting in the back of the classroom during social studies, watching a black-and-white video of a short, stiff man talking to a crowd of thousands. I remember my teacher saying the word "charisma" at some point, and thinking, "Oh that's what it's called."

How the hell can you be wishy-washy on Hitler? Or my grandmother? Both are monsters, but one is still alive. I won't be sorry when she goes, and yet I'm sure I'll cry. How can you love someone that you know has killed so many?



(Life cheers me up when I find binary "That's what she said!" comic strips for my blog.)

Read more!

Intervention and Parents Rights

I've been listening to old episodes of the Non-Prophets Radio podcast. (If you're not listening yet, it's your own fault. I've linked and embedded tons of Atheist Experience videos. Okay, okay, I forgive you. Go subscribe to the feed now and let us never speak of this unpleasantness again.)

The issue of intervention keeps coming up. When does the government, or we the people, or the US, intervene in how a family raises its children or how another nation treats its citizens? One of the four hosts, Shilling, (no longer on - I told you, these were archives) essentially takes a non-interventionist stance the majority of the time. He suggests the long-range approach of educating a culture, and essentially waiting things out for self-correction. He cites the decrease in racism and homophobia in younger generations as an example of this working in practice. And I have to say I agree with him up to that point.

Because I think the long-range plan is important and I do think it will work. I think history in a large sense shows that, our culture at least, is getting progressively more liberal and egalitarian. Neato. Swell. But in the meantime, if we use only the non-interventionist long-range approach, kids aren't getting vaccinated. Unassisted childbirth is killing mothers and babies.* Honor killings are happening in the United States. Parents treat their kids with unproven "natural" remedies rather than with FDA approved medicines. A little boy gets named Adolf Hitler (and his sister is named Aryan Nation.)

When are we gonna stop talking about parents rights and start talking about kids rights? I think part of the problem with the debate is that we act as if the two interested parties were the parents and the government. And of course, we object to the idea of a government raising its children - that falls under the domain of parenting. But the real nature of the issue is between the rights of the parents and the rights of the children. The government acts as attorney on behalf of the child, not as a direct antagonist to the parent. I get that now.

I was raised to fear HRS, so when they came to do an investigation, I lied. When my friend's mother told my mom I wanted to live with them, my mom told me she was playing arm chair psychologist, and that it was a common problem among psych students. That it didn't mean anything (like trying to get hit by a car when I was six didn't mean anything; or saying I needed therapy or I was gonna kill myself at 14 didn't mean anything; or saying that I had an eating disorder and that I was going to die if I didn't get help at 25 didn't mean anything).

I have to intervene for the kids right now. Fuck the long-range-only plan. Well-meaning high-minded secular and moderate religious people who were trying not to step on anyone's toes or interfere with anyone's parental rights let me get beaten, brainwashed, and Bible-fed. I didn't get to form my own personality and identity as a human. I was raised in a cult, like being a borg or a clone. I'm having to figure this shit out (who I am, what I value, what my own personality is) now and I'm 26 and I have a 4-year-old kid. It's kind of terrifying sometimes to realize how little I know and how far behind I am. I got cheated out of a childhood and it's seriously affecting my adulthood. And now I find out there's no afterlife, so this is the only shot I'm ever gonna get.

We can't sit by and let other kids have their psyches destroyed. I can't really express enough just how crazy I am and how uncomfortable the inside of my brain is. I have a really high IQ. (I don't remember the number; it was over ten years ago. I was in Mensa but we quit paying dues.) If I'd been raised in a healthy home, I'd probably be a doctor or a lawyer or a civil rights activist or married. Not unemployed and semi-agoraphobic. This isn't a pity party. I'm good at getting through shit - I have a lot of practice. (And hey, unemployment checks are the bomb. I consider that my salary for writing on my book.)

It's just that I can't not care. I can't pretend kids aren't dying from medical negligence homicide (AKA "prayer"). I know there's this huge Quiverfull generation coming up now, and a lot of those kids are growing up in abusive homes; they're learning misogyny and rigid gender roles; and they're not getting a proper education. Let's stop that. Let's stop the people who do that. I don't want go so far as making people get a license to have a kid. I get why we can't do that (examples: majority Christian licensing board = no atheists getting baby licenses; eugenics). But we have to get these religious exemption laws off the books. We have to stop acting like it's okay for people to pray, when we know that prayer prevents positive action. We need to recognize and vocalize that faith is not a virtue. Faith is a vice.





* Both those stories are in Australia. The homebirth movement in Australia is largely due to my grandmother (and here)and Nancy Campbell. (On Nancy's Facebook she asks for money for a broken arm; yet she rolls with faith healers.)

** I have no idea what language the image captions are in. But it translates to: kids have a right to food, clean water, an education, passport or national identity (refugees), family, I think happiness?, exercise/entertainment, and to be clean; and a right to not be amputated, armed, enslaved, or abused. I think it speaks across culture and language - don't you?

Read more!

Roles: Part One

I was the perfectionist who never tried. My grandmother had almost Calvinistically predestined roles for each family member to fill; my aunt Sally was the "sick one" she could baby; my mom was the "dependable one" she could manipulate and exploit; my brother was the "disobedient one" she could take out her anger on; my sister was the "good one" she could show off as an example of her superior parenting; and I was mini-Gig.

It was fairly easy to see the damage she was doing to my brother David. He acted out in his misery and anger, and go kicked out of multiple schools for bringing weapons and building bombs. He would fight me physically sometimes, and I would lose pathetically. But at other times, he defended me from neighborhood bullies and, in his scapegoat family role, he took a lot of the abuse from Gig away from the rest of us.

Likewise, my sister Esther was clearly affected. She was an obvious people pleaser at a very young age, and I remember her crying and screaming the day she got a "B" on her report card in second grade. She vowed to never get another "B" again. She didn't. But for the matter of an odd weighting system, my sister would have been valedictorian of her high school (instead she was a straight A salutatorian). My mom saw my sister's perfectionist tendencies and recognized them as a burden she dealt with also. I think she was able to directly refute some of the messages Gig was giving my sister, and I think it probably helped.

I was the perfectionist who never tried. I was supposed to be supernaturally good like Esther, supernaturally smart like David (who was already fixing home appliances and electronics in elementary school), and be supernaturally spiritual like Gig. As a child I always felt this tremendous pressure, not to live up to my siblings, but to live up to all the adults in my life. I felt like I had accomplished nothing in my ten years on earth because I couldn't contemplate ever being as successful (or more successful) than them. So I didn't try. I could never be as good as Esther, and frankly, the effort to reward ratio looked pretty crappy. Esther didn't get grounded and spanked as often as I did, but she spent hours doing chores or making other people happy, while I largely watched TV and played in the backyard between punishments.

My Christian teen years, I felt so isolated from the other youth group members. None of them had sex, or at least not as young as I did. None of them did drugs, or at least not as often as I did. At the time they looked like prep school elitists to me - there was no way trailer park Angie would be good enough for them. So I found ways to make people like me without being good enough. I was never the friend with a lot of cash to spend in high school, but I had a car and I had big ideas. I could find something for us to do, even if it was just playing "Soup!" and confusing all the pedestrians. But like with my own family and my sister, I felt I could never impress God with my goodness, because there would always be people who wore holier, sweeter, kinder than I was, or else more maternal or domestic or womanly, or more obedient, devoted, and reverent. I was loud, sometimes extremely socially awkward, with undiagnosed mental problems, and a lot of drug use. There's no way I could get on God's good side based on my behavior compared to the ideal of Christian youth I'd been presented with for years by Focus on the Family Brio! subscriptions (the vapid and vacuous teen girl magazine).

The "Ask Holly" section never included real pertinent questions like, "Am I still a good friend if I narc on someone who looks like they might have ODed?" or "My period is two weeks late - what do I do?" The questions were always so theologically simple I could have recited responses in my sleep. "My brother is a jerk sometimes, but I know God wants us to love everyone. How can we get along?" I doubt the girl who wrote that long-ago letter (or more likely the Dobson intern who did) had a brother who karate kicked her in the head or threw her into coffee tables. If she did, then the crappy advice about praying, submitting, and talking things over with her parents probably didn't do her any good.

For all that I was "sinning" my ass off, I voluntarily went to church each week and my mom was largely willing to go with denial as her choice response to my actions. Because my rebellion appeared contained, unlike my brother's sometimes frightening pain, and because I didn't show signs of overt people pleasing, my mom believed that the close relationship I had with Gig was beneficial. But rebellious and obedient - the two roles my siblings had been assigned - were both obvious when manifested. I spent years desperately trying to figure out what my family assignment was, and finally deduced that I was chosen to be spiritual. Since being spiritual didn't involve being good, for Gig or for me, I didn't have to follow rules. I didn't have to get good grades - I wasn't the smart one. I didn't have to dress the way she likd - I wasn't the pretty one. I figured out exactly how much was required fo me, did that as perfectly as I could, and didn't even try anything outside that scope.

So I became as spiritual as I could, which really means that I believed in as many fairy tales as I could, with the most intensity I could. I believed that demons were at warfare with Christians and that I had been chosen by Gig and God to do battle against them. I believed that I had the power to heal people through my laying of hands and my words of prayer. I thought that if I could just say the right phrase, or the right trigger word, I could get God to move in amazing ways in my life. I spent hours, smoking joints and reading the Bible, trying to get as close to God, as close to Gig, as possible.

Read more!

Regina's Shoes

Gig drove like a madwoman. She was always running late and always speeding behind the wheel. Every other driver on the road was an inconvenience in her path, long before the term "road rage" had been coined. She would be incensed if another car cut her off. "Don't get in front of me and then drive slow!" she'd bellow. Without the choice of secular swear words, she would instead yell entire sentences and DOT laws out the car window. "In the state of Florida you can turn right on red unless otherwise marked!" We grandkids thought this quality entertainment.

One day when I was 10 or 11, Gig's manuscript needed to be sent out within a few hours to meet the publisher's deadline. Running to the last minute as ever, we scrambled into the car. We were about halfway to the copy shop when we hit bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. So what did my Giggy do? She drove in the breakdown lane for over two miles and pulled into the Office Depot parking lot. We had been stuck behind a paper company semi before the off-roading-in-a-compact adventure. Half an hour later, with her freshly bound manuscript in hand, we were re-entering traffic. She pulled in just in front of that same semi.

Another time when I was maybe six years old we were on our way to pick my sister up from ballet practice when the old station wagon blew a tire on the interstate. Rather than pulling over and dealing with the implications and inconvenience, she kept driving, picked my sister up, and made the return trip home, driving on the wheel rim. Once the car was back in the driveway, Gig happily dumped the problem in my mother's lap and set about making dinner.

The worst of all these must have happened just a few months later. My older sister stayed home while my grandmother and I headed out to pick up my brother from soccer practice. It was dusk and she was flying down a residential street near my brother's school when Gig hit a pedestrian. The woman's name was Regina, I learned that night. She was blind and deaf and had wandered out the front door of her sister's house, wearing dark clothes. She died instantly from the impact.

I was sitting in the front seat when she flew onto the hood of the car, and her head smashed into the windshield, leaving a circular crack in the glass. We were too poor to get the window replaced, and I refused to ride in the front seat for the rest of the time we owned that car. Someone called the police and they came to investigate the scene of the accident. I was a bit overwhelmed by it all, and while Gig was talking to the officers I walked behind the car to get away from the sight of the dead woman's body. That's when I found Regina's feet - bloody lumps of meat, still wearing brown leather sandals. I don't remember what Regina's face looked like but I have never forgotten her feet. I don't know how fast Gig was driving - fast enough to tear a woman's legs out from her ankles and leave them twenty feet behind the car before slamming on the brakes. I still have a hard time seeing abandoned shoes on the side of the road.

At the time, no one thought I needed any therapy or help dealing with shock. It happened. Nothing we can do. Move on.

Read more!