Where do you want me, God?

Obviously I haven't been writing much lately. I blame insomnia, and adjusting to living with someone, and - in a Palinesque maneuver - the media. Last night I went through my old journals to try to get in touch with how I felt and what I was going through in my past, and I stumbled across a journal I don't think I've even seen since I wrote it 7 years ago. Here's an entry written July 27th, 2003. A little background information: I was considering joining the National Guard to fund college, debating moving to St. Augustine, FL or around the globe to Africa to be a missionary, reeling from the loss of my favorite pastor and despising his new replacement Tim, struggling with drugs, working for a guy named Frank who used to pay me in 100 dollar bills and eight balls, and (looking back) I was suicidally depressed. So I turned to God for guidance.

God,

Where do you want me? Do you want me in the military? Do you want me working for Frank? Should I go to St. Augustine or Africa? Should I go to USF or New College or Bible school? Will I work in ministry and if so, which one? Should I be with Josh or should I be alone? I need direction. I don't know if you want me to live without a lot of money and without a car or a motorcycle. I wanna do what you want me to do, but it's so hard.

I'm still waiting for your anointing. I want more of you and I'm not sure how to get it. I know I can't do coke or boys and I really don't even want to, but when there's nothing else better here for me - I just reach out for something to feel. I'm so hollow. I can't stand all this crying.

So God, I'll give you two weeks. I won't drink. I won't kiss. If Frank's partying, I'll leave. I'll read your Word everyday. I'll ask Tim for counseling. I'll try to smoke less or just quit altogether. I'll clear all my junk out of the way. But in two weeks, I need to know where you want me. I don't want to waste my life like I was my money - on little things that disappear. I don't want my life to be like my diet - beer and pizza and fast food. I need something real and I need you now. I'm so alone I can't stand it. And nothing I could ever do will change that, so I need you to just change me.

I don't think words can adequately express how much better life is now that I'm not waiting on some god to fix me.

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My Two Faiths

I grew up in a Bible-based faith healing cult led by my grandmother, Carol Balizet, who I know as "Giggy." As I got older and started attending more liberal Christian churches, I struggled to rectify my beliefs in an almighty god with the tenants of grace and atonement and freewill. Today I'd like to take on both my faiths: the name-it-and-claim-it teachings of my childhood, and the liberal Christian beliefs of my teen years.


If I mentioned that we lived in a trailer park, Gig would correct me and say that it was a "mobile home community," but when she was being falsely modest, she would describe herself as "a little old woman living in a trailer park." All words were her domain, and at her discretion.

We were never allowed to admit to being afraid. Gig taught us and her followers that fear was a sin, and that it was an attack from the Devil. "The Bible says in 365 places, 'Fear not,'" she told us. "Are you really going to go against that?" So we learned to talk about fear in different ways. I could admit to being "startled" by something, or "worried" (though even that was treacherous ground, since we were supposed to live our lives in total faith.)

In her book on home birth, Carol Balizet, self-proclaimed spiritual midwife, would never describe the birth mothers as being in "pain." Instead, she would talk about them experiencing "some discomfort." Any woman who's had a baby naturally should recognize that "discomfort" hardly describes the experience of live birth, especially when no epidural or other pain medication is used. Yet Carol promised painless births, and what's more the experience of having your baby at home, under her supervision and with God's endorsement (according to her) would strengthen your marriage, and give the Lord an opportunity to tell you what else he wanted to fix in your life.

Gig despised people who complained - about fear or pain or her terrible spending habits. (No matter how much money came in, she spent just over it.) So much of her teaching was centered on never admitting things were wrong, and on avoiding "negative confessions." I remember being taught that wearing a medical alert bracelet was just inviting demons in to attack you with illness, and that getting a diagnosis from a doctor was some form of witchcraft or sorcery that actually gave you the disease. In her theology, Christians were supposed to be exempt from disease, and it was only in areas where we aren't in alignment with God's will that we could be made ill by demons.

The one negative criticism of my grandmother that I read while still working for the cult was "The Zion Birth Heresy" written by a Christian homebirth advocate named Jill Barrett. I remember how offended I was, and how hurt. Then I read the same article, years later, at the dissolution of my faith. It's long and it centers primarily on how Carol Balizet's teachings are heretical (which I've come to believe mostly means "Not what MY church believes.") Here are some of the best parts, which I think pretty accurately describe the religious tenants I grew up with.

Like [Kenneth] Copeland, she teaches that our words have inherent spiritual power. Not only everything in heaven and on earth, but even God Himself is a slave to our words. Our positive confessions force God to move in our favor, and our negative confessions render Him powerless to help us. Balizet is constantly praising the power of God, but the god who emerges from her book is all but powerless-- hemmed in on every side by faithless Christians, the wrong kinds of prayers, sin, and most of all, Satan.

Pretty much. Words were.. vital. "There is power and death in the tongue," my grandmother used to tell us*. I think one of the reasons words were so important was becase there were something she excelled it. Perfect grammar was considered practically a cardinal virtue for us, and my grandmother was an effective writer and speaker. She sounded good, especially if you didn't think too much about what she was saying.

Balizet's deity is not sovereign. He is only in control of what Christians forcibly wrest from Satan and his minions. Limits are "imposed [on him] by our unbelief or by our failure to ask" (97). He is also limited by our sin (32). He does as much in childbirth as "He is allowed to do" (156). His will and power "are ESTABLISHED [sic] by our prayer" (102). "God is honorable never to breach the sovereignty of a human will" (43). Indeed, Balizet's "God" wants to bless us. It is "not His will" for us to suffer complications, problems, and pain (130). But the sin in our lives just won't let him take our pain and problems from us. Everywhere there is sin, which Balizet calls "leaven," Satan has a "ground" and "legal right" (38) to make bad things happen to us.

If we do not take control of a situation--if we do not move by "our choice" from "the flesh realm into the realm of the spirit" (151) and onto "miracle territory" (32)--then Satan has control by default. God hopes that Balizet and other spirit-filled warriors will take sovereignty from Satan, but at no time is He Himself sovereign over anything or anybody. Christian will and faith duke it out with demons, and "God" sits in the stands cheering for the Christians... Balizet does not worship an Almighty God. Satan is almighty in Balizet's theology, unless she decides to be almighty instead.

Would it be wrong to say ROFL? Of course, Barrett has it right. It's amazing how clearly she saw my grandmother for what she was - a shyster, conwoman, and dangerous as hell, when nobody in my family could. (Also? I'm mildly perturbed that "conman" is a word and "conwoman" triggers my spell check.)

Here's where I'd have to say Barrett gets it wrong (or at least, earns a new problem if she's right.) In response to my grandmother's heretical teachings, Jill writes,

No one resists His will (Rom. 9:19). His plans cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2). He does whatever He pleases (Ps. 115:3). Ho one can stay His hand (Dan. 4:35) or turn back His outstretched hand (Isa. 14:27). His mercy does not depend on any will or work of man (Rom. 9:16)... Satan had to ask God's permission to hurt Job, for God had a hedge of protection around Job (Job 1:10-12; 2:6). Satan had to ask Jesus's permission to sift Peter like wheat (Luke 22:31). Without God's say-so, Satan can do nothing!"

Okay, well than I guess that's her answer to the problem of pain: God allows it. After all, if Satan can do nothing without God's say so (which I recognize is not a universally held Christian belief), then God is ultimately responsible for anything Satan does or tempts a human to do. Either God is not omnipotent and that's why bad thing happen (my grandmother's teachings) or else God *is* omnipotent (Jill's) and he's a dick. (Why won't god heal amputees? Because he doesn't give a shit about you! But don't worry - he's all-powerful.)

There are two ways to pray, Balizet says: "You can stand on earth and pray up to heaven, asking God to do something. Or, you can take your rightful position in heaven and pray DOWN TO EARTH [sic], commanding things to happen" (163).
Born in Zion is full of folks deciding what God's will ought to be (invariably what is easiest and most pleasurable for them) and "commanding" it to happen as if they were God Himself. Why prostrate yourself before a mysterious and majestic God? Why yield; why trust? Enthrone yourself in "God"'s place and "God" will yield to you!

Well, yes and no. Yes, Gig most certainly did command God and demons to do what she wanted, but it was never what was easiest or most pleasurable for the people around her! People lost their kids because they had faith in a majestic God, not because they were so cocky they thought God would do what they wanted. Gig may have been a raging narcissist, but most of her followers were meek sheep.

But the Bible says: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?" (Rom. 11:33-35).

Okay, Jill, then on what grounds do you deem that God is good? If he's such a mystery, and his ways aren't our ways, how do you know he's any good? (Hint: Might does not make right.)

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of *Born in Zion* is the subjective revelation--what Balizet calls a "word from the Lord," a prophecy, or a Rhema. I counted 34 claims in Born in Zion that people heard directly from God. Virtually none of these claims are verified except by another "Spirit-baptized" person agreeing with them. "God almost always confirms things in this way" [by believers agreeing together], says Balizet (88). In another instance, Balizet says that one Rhema must be valid because God would not allow it to be "brought forth" otherwise

Well, why do you think God does allow false prophecy to be brought forth? If you say "free will," then you're in agreement with my grandmother when she says God never violates the sovereignty of free will (which he totally does in the Bible, multiple times.) I have to admit, thinking that God was "good" helped me to continue believing what my grandmother taught - that God would give you what you needed, as long as you had faith in him and tried to be obedient to his word.

Now that the canon of Scripture is closed, God is not giving new, special revelation. The Word of God is the *whole* counsel of God and contains all that we need (1 Tim. 3:15-17). If God was still manifesting Himself as a little voice in our heads, the Bible would become only supplementary to what we are hearing directly from Him. The Old Holy Word given to someone else eons ago, is trumped by the New Holy Word which is specifically for you in your present situation.

Sorry, Jill, but this is just bunk. Nowhere in the Bible does God say, "Put together this book for me." (Likewise, while the Bible warns us about false prophets, it doesn't say anything about how to tell who is false and who is "really" of God.)

Balizet also claims that God told her: "It is never my will to move those I love away from Life and Light and Love. It is My will to heal, to restore and to perfect. . ." (45). Whoever said this, it certainly was not the God of the Bible. Tell this balderdash to Paul, who gloried in his infirmities (2 Cor. 12:7-10). Tell it to Jeremiah the author of Lamentations. Tell it to all the saints who have been martyred for the cross: that none of their pain and suffering was ever God's will for their lives, but that their lack of faith left them at the mercy of Satan.

Right, so, your rebuttal to my grandmother's God of the Big Promises is to say that it is His will for people to suffer? Wow. I guess it's "honest" at least.

If it is dangerous to have a so-called midwife attending you in childbirth who believes that Satan is controlling your birth unless she takes control, and who believes that at any moment God could tell her to walk out on you, it is more dangerous still to have a birth attendant who believes that reality is whatever she decides it is.

It wasn't really safe to have a mother-figure who believed reality was whatever she decided, either. But people rarely seem to think about that aspect. After the births, I was still there, being exposed to her insanity day after day after day, and no one stopped it.

If Balizet is your "childbirth minister" and you suffer a complication of childbirth, she will deny it and rebuke Satan, whom she thinks is trying to manipulate her senses into believing that you are having a problem (80). She will also "rebuke the spirit of child-death" (93) if your baby is born not breathing--she has waited nearly half an hour for a newborn to begin breathing (153).

This was also the response I got for being rebellious, being bisexual, being in pain, being in terrible pain, being suicidal - She and my mother would absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there was pain going on, that our family had serious problems, and that God really wasn't meeting all of our needs.

Since Balizet worships a god who never wants anything unpleasant to happen to Christians, nothing bad *does* happen to Christians as long as they remain in the "spirit realm." But if they confess, or even secretly fear, that what they are seeing in the "sight realm" (14, 80) is real, then Satan has been empowered to make it really, really real (79)

Yes, this is how she gets to still claim her God is good (which, I suppose, isn't a necessary quality in a god for Jill Barrett.) And of course, it isn't true. My good friend and Anteater, Larry C. is writing his own memoirs now about his Zion Birth experience, and the permanent brain damage his son was left with as a result of my grandmother's medical negligence and refusal to admit that the birth was going horribly wrong.

As if all this weren't bad enough, Balizet believes that to receive any medical care whatsoever is a sin. It is yielding to the "world system" (167) and to the "arm of flesh." (84). Furthermore, taking any drug for any reason is sorcery according to Balizet (171)... Balizet believes that getting a Caesarean Section is a particularly abominable sin. All women who have had Caesareans have "the same spirit," the "spirit of Caesar," who is one and the same with "the Strong Man, the Satanic high prince over the organization and sphere of humanism" because they have "rendered their babies unto Caesar" rather than to God (48). In other words, women with Caesarean scars are idol-worshipers who are demon possessed.

The interesting thing to point out here is that Carol Balizet had 4 Caesareans with her last 4 out of 5 daughters. In fact, when she was carrying my youngest aunt, my grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and was advised to have an abortion. She tells the story that everyone but her father Papa told her to have it, but that she refused. At 7 months pregnant, my grandmother had an emergency C-section and hysterectomy. Aunt Kelly* spent her first three months of life in an incubator. My fierce love of my youngest aunt played a major role in my extreme pro-life views as a child and teen.

Balizet's superstition about who the Caesarean Section is named for does not overrule the testimony of Christ. Jesus Himself said that sick people have need of a doctor (Matt. 9:12), and women with placental problems and pelvic abnormalities are not sinning by seeing a gynecologist and having Caesarean surgery. "Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil!" (Isa. 5:20).

You mean like calling the Bible good? Or how about that God of yours who allows Satan to do harm and who wants sickness and suffering to be part of people's lives?

Balizet is not completely true to her own beliefs in attending births, and I am grateful for that. She resorts to the "arm of flesh" and uses a bulb syringe to suction out a baby's airways after birth (66), instead of casting out the Mucus Demon or some other such foolishness.

Yes, I wish the Attleboro cult had been more aware of this before their "Zion baby" Joshua died of asphyxiation.

Should God need to audibly tell us to give physical assistance to someone who is physically suffering or in danger, when we have agreed to help that person? What is the difference between dismissing the needy with "be warmed and be filled" (James 2:16) and telling a woman having a baby that she isn't really hurting, isn't really bleeding, isn't really at risk--and that she should examine her life carefully for sin that might be keeping God from intervening in her birth? What a Job's comforter Balizet turns out to be! How uncharitable her charity!

Yes, my grandmother was callous and cruel. She was and is a monster (though now with Alzheimers, and in a nursing home.) Yet, Christian readers and Anteaters, who was the one who harmed Job the most - God or his friends? If you believe God is real, why does he let my grandmother get away with multiple deaths, and why does he allow so many women all over the globe to die in childbirth?

* Oddly enough, we had a cat named Jessie Bell (Jezebel). I've never understood why that was okay, and since I'm not talking to my mom anymore, I don't think I'm going to find out the answer anytime soon.

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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.

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DIM: Did It Myself

For all that I tell you the deepest fears I have in the middle of the night, and the strange and terrible things that happened in my childhood, I don't actually talk much about my day-t0-day life as it is now. Which is sort of odd, that I feel that this stuff is either too personal or uninteresting, yet I post intimate details of my past and my psyche. All that's to say, here's what happened yesterday:

I had a kitchen fire, a cockroach, and a flooded bathroom. And I kicked ass dealing with it.

There's a classic family story of a time when I was in second grade. It was approaching time for us to get in the car for Christian school, when my mom came in the kitchen to find me sitting on a stool, still in my pajamas and still hungry.

"What are you doing?" she asked, frazzled and annoyed.
"I'm waiting for Dave to make me breakfast," I replied. My brother David, who I hadn't asked to make me breakfast, was quick to point this out to my mom, lest he be blamed for my bed-clothed and unfed state.

That story was used to make fun of me (supposedly in a good-natured way) for being irresponsible and for being the baby of the family. But I wasn't "the baby" in the traditional spoiled and adored youngest child way. I was low man on the totem pole - more like the new hire on the job than like a beloved and precious little girl. I was told I was a child of God, but I felt like a burden to my family.

What that story really shows, though, is learned helplessness. I was taught to rely on others, primarily God but also my family, for everything. I know my own religious upbringing was extreme, but I do think even mainstream religious faith has this effect. You're taught that humans are dependent on God for existence, for their afterlife, and for a lot in between (in some faiths, everything in between.) So why try to make your life better through effort and hard work and risk and investment, when you can just pray and sky daddy will make it all better? Of course, sky daddy doesn't, but that's in the post I did just before this one.

If God has a plan for your life, has picked out your future spouse, and knows what career path He wants you to follow, then it makes sense that you should focus on prayer and becoming close to God, and trying your best to emulate his will and his example in the life of Jesus (or at least the version of that example presented in church each Sunday). Your whole goal would be getting on His good side, doing what He wanted, and hoping to get rewarded. And if you want to change God's plan - you want that prettier wife or that better paying non-ministry job or that new secular CD - then the usual secular life approaches, like hitting the dating sites and making up a new resume or just heading to the store and buying a copy of whatever godless music you want - doesn't seem likely to work. (Although it does, just fine.) So instead of trying something tangible and real that would increase your odds of getting what you want, you pray. You ask God to do something that you want, even when it doesn't seem to be what He wants. (And after all, if He's got this Master Plan, what use is your free will or your prayer anyway?)

So let me tell you what my day without prayer was like yesterday. I was planning on making some apple danishes, and set the oven to preheat. I forgot, a week ago, that I put a bowl of popcorn in there to keep it from attracting bugs, but then never went back and ate it. It was a plastic bowl, of course. Fortunately, I've got a really good sense of smell and noticed the problem long before the oven reached 375 or the bowl had melted completed. I turned off the oven, removed the rack - bowl and all, and took it outside to cool. A couple hours later, once everything had stopped being molten lava to the touch, I was able to hammer and knife off all the melted plastic from both oven racks and the heating coil itself, and make my danishes after all. (They were yummy goodness.)

Then, while watching the new episode of Dollhouse (yay!), I spotted a bug. I promise, I'm not actually a gross person, but I live in a relatively low-income apartment complex with 7 other units in my building, paper thin walls, and the Florida bug-loving climate. So, every two weeks like clockwork I spot another roach and call to have the apartment complex pest guys come again. This one was particularly bad though, because it was one of the little cockroaches (which means it has a colony somewhere nearby. A big one might just wander in during the rain but isn't necessarily a sign of more). I spotted it on my desk - on my keyboard tray. Just as I was getting ready to smash that sucker with an overdue phone bill, it crawled into my keyboard. Eeeeeek! So, one vacuum cleaner hose, five minutes of beating my keyboard, one can of duster, and five Lysol wipes later, I'm typing again without my OCD going bonkers.

Last and actually kind of least, my son flooded the bathtub. I was on the phone with my mom and straightening the living room, washing dishes, etc. and forgot to back and check after a couple minutes. My son came out to let me know, after the water was already over the lip of the tub. But I just grabbed a mop and bucket and some Mr. Clean and used it as a chance to scrub up the place.

As a Christian, any one of these small life things would have floored me for a day. I've had a near phobic fear of hot ovens for most of my life. I started baking several years ago as a teen, but would only do it when my mom or sister was home, because I was too afraid of being burned to take the hot tray of cookies or brownies out of the fiery box of heat coiled death. Two Christmases ago an atheist friend of mine, who knew about this fear, gave me a pair of oven mitts. I'd never owned a set. Now I'm still cautious, and I lock my son out of the room or in his high chair while opening and closing it, but I can take things out of the oven myself, which is a really big deal considering I wouldn't for the past twenty years.

And dealing with a bug, instead of freaking out and crying and taking a bath in 1 part bleach to 8 parts water (such a bad idea), I made absolutely sure that sucker was dead, and that there weren't any crumbs in my keyboard to attract any of its buddies. My grandmother had this whole thing about how bugs were a physical symptom of a spiritual, demonic infestation, so when my poorly insulated mobile home used to get bugs a lot, I thought it meant I needed yet another exorcism. (Again, Florida? Is heaven for bugs - and ours are waaaaaay bigger than your Yankee bugs. But they don't give you Lyme disease like deer ticks, so I can deal.) Just killing the damn thing and calling pest control is a lot more effective than crying and praying. I have fewer bugs now than when I thought they were demons, but I think most Christians would agree, I'm a better candidate for demon possession these days than I used to be as a God-fearing church-going Christian.

The flooded bathroom? I don't know. Maybe that one never would have been a big deal. I've long ago given up the fantasy of getting back the deposit on any apartment I have with my son. He's rambunctious and sometimes sloppy. I am too. We're high energy, poor precision kind of people, so the carpet is trashed and he's drawn on every wall and my couch, and it's not like this is the first time this year he's flooded that bathroom. (Once it was by flushing an entire roll of toilet paper. That was much worse than the clean bathwater overflow.) I will say I'm relieved that I became an atheist so early in my son's life. Now when he does something that's against the rules, I don't have to search for some deeper meaning or generational curse or soul tie. I can just, ya know, give him the extra attention or affection he might be needing, or provide safe physical and mental challenges for him. (While I was getting the mop yesterday, he got out and tried to jump into the bathtub from the top of the toilet, so I guess I'll be sitting in with him for the next several baths till we find a better outlet for that beserker dare-devil streak. My ex-husband used to skateboard off rooftops into cardboard dumpsters for fun...)

So, all that is to say: Humanism is right! We are capable of dealing with our lives without divine intervention. Human intervention might be necessary, but God's got nothing to do with my life or my apartment or how I deal with my challenges. Apparently, I deal with them with skill and grace, so I feel much better about myself now than I ever did as a helpless and dependent believer. Whoever says faith gives them strength doesn't know how strong they could feel on their own.

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Idea for Prayer Test

We all know the study results on intercessory prayer (epic FAIL), but what about other prayers? Since theists are likely to count the hits and ignore the misses, and to interpret all kinds of normal incidents or events as divine intervention, their reported experiences aren't a terribly reliable measure.

But has anyone studied prayer cards? I went to several different denominations and non-denominations over my two decades of Christianity. A lot of these churches collected prayer cards or prayer requests, often picked up in the offering plate, or else submitted into a prayer request box near the sanctuary door. At several of these churches, the preacher or another parishioner would read these entreaties aloud, or else read the names of the individuals asking for prayer. Then the congregation as a whole would pray that these requests be answered (sometimes with and sometimes without the "thy will be done" stipulation).

Do churches save prayer cards? Would it possible to, say, gather up the prayer cards from one particular congregation for the past few calendar years, and to investigate how many of these requests were answered or fulfilled? Even these would not account for the total number of prayers that congregation may have offered individually, at home or in traffic or at grace over dinner at Olive Garden. But it would be the most important prayers. I know that when I dialed the prayer line or filled out a prayer request card at a church, it was for those things I felt the most anguish over or that I was most concerned with. (And everyone of them was selfish. I'm ashamed to admit I never submitted a prayer request for starving children or rape victims or amputees - when I believed I actually had an inside line to the man who could solve those problems, I instead asked him to help me pay my rent or to get my husband into Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. That first prayer was "answered" in the form of my priest cutting me a check, and the second one went unanswered - hence my singleness.)

So, preacher's kids out there reading this, or former clergy (I love you guys! Atheists priests are the best), please let me know. What happens to prayer cards, and could they be produced for the kind of survey I'm describing. I think even if they credited every "hit" to their god, the sheer number of misses might have a doubting effect. When I look back and realize how many prayers I answered myself, and how the rest largely went unanswered, it makes me realize how biased towards confirmation my thinking really was.

Ha! I just found an online Prayer Request Book, which is sad and pathetic and so anti-humanist. Religion makes people useless. The prayers are obviously uploaded with editing or spell-check, and some include names. One woman made a "name it and claim it" prayer, telling God and the world that "Gary Collier" is going to be her husband. I can't help but wonder how Gary feels about that! There's also a mother praying that her daughter would be freed of witchcraft and demon possession, which terrifies me. There's another mom praying for her atheist son to become a Christian again (lol). There are horribly misspelled entreaties for jobs or money for bills, and the whole book speaks to the unanswered problems in our society: You can't live on minimum wage; being a single mom is really tough; it can be hard to find the right partner or mate. Everyone of us wants to have enough money to pay our bills (at least), have loving family relationships, and have romance and companionship. Because the church promises "God can do it!" people fall into learned helplessness or trained dependency. (More on that in another post later today.)

Now if someone could figure out a way to verify which of these have been "answered" and which haven't, we could have a really cool study on our hands.





Today's image was found on ChristianChallenge.com. It recommends having personal petitions as the smallest aspect of a prayer life, with listening as the largest. I suppose, since no one divine is hearing these prayers, it doesn't matter how a Christian allots his prayer time. Yet, I worry about the concentrated focus on listening, since that's only a half-step away from receiving "Rhema" or personal revelation from God (which leads to the infallible pope and Jonestown.)

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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".

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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?

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Prayer Bugs Me

My mother never pried. She had faults as a mother, but invasion of privacy was never one of them. She knew the importance of private thoughts. While I think her unwillingness to pry into my feelings left her unaware of the pain and mental confusion I was in for a long time, I have to say I value and respect the choice she made to let me be my own person, with my own thoughts and feelings. I could leave my diary open on the coffee table and know that she'd never read it.

Yet, I always felt better writing outside of the house, somewhere secret and quasi-magical. It was down by the blackberry patch at the creek when I was a small child, then onto a copse of trees beside a frozen golf course waterfall at the first place in Iowa, and either in a tree at the edge of a cornfield or on top of a wall holding back a hill from a parking lot at the second place in Iowa. When we first moved back to Florida, in to the apartments, I would sit beneath the willow tree on the bank of the man-made lake; once we moved into the house in the suburbs, I sat at on the dock at the riverfront park down the road.

So it shouldn't have surprised me, at 20 years old and living in my own place, that I still might feel the need to leave to write in peace. I remember crying, gasping in big tantruming toddler gulps of air, sobbing out loud to Jesus. "They say you won't give me more than I handle, but I'm telling you, I can't handle this! It's too hard. It never gets any easier and it never gets any better. Every time I think it's gonna get better, it just gets worse, and I'm tired of fighting all the damn time!" At the time, I was crying about money and how there just didn't seem to be enough of it. At other times, I cried nearly the exact same script, at the end of my rope, utterly desperate, crying heavenward and begging for mercy. Sometimes things would seem to get a little bit better following one of these break downs, but I didn't seem to be getting spiritual fruit or reaping any benefit for the trials I was going through. I was under the impression that when God tested you, when He gave you all that you could handle, when you survived it, you were rewarded for remaining faithful. Wasn't that the whole point of Job?

I feel sad and betrayed when I look back on those times. I knew that I needed help to carry life's burdens, but because I thought God was going to do that - and when there were only one set of footprints in the sand, that meant He was carrying me - I didn't look hard enough at the resources around me. Two weeks later, one night instead of calling on God, I called the suicide hotline. I'm typing this today because that was the right choice. It would still be another year till I got my first mental health diagnosis, and another five years till I found the right combination of diet, exercise, sleep, and medication, but it was a start. I was beginning to deal with my problems, instead of waiting on God to fix my breakfast.

Because God was nothing more than a voice in a head, He could never offer any comfort I wasn't capable of giving myself, or any insight I was incapable of having. Reliance on God, in mental and emotional anguish as in all things, caused me more pain. When I depend on God, when I say "It's all in His hands", I stop taking positive actions in my own life.

I would have gotten a therapist, a diagnosis, and medication sooner if I hadn't been raised in a faith healing cult, certainly. But I think I would have got them sooner still if I hadn't been raised a believer. I hate prayer now. It actively infuriates me when people bow before an imaginary construct, grovel and beg NOTHING, to fix their problems instead of working to fix them themselves.

I still struggle with money and I still struggle with a list of mental disorders. I am still crazy. But I don't have to beg any god to make me sane now - I can take medications, make alterations to my lifestyle, avoid certain foods. I can manage my life without a higher power. Believing in one hindered my drive for self-sufficiency and kept me dependent and child-like long past the time the world expected me to behave as an adult.

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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.

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Seek and Ye Shall Find

I was six years old and I really, really had to pee. My sister and I used to ride our bikes to the church about a half mile away from home, to sit on top of the big brick sign and eat kumquats stolen from a neighbor's tree and smuggled in our handle bar fanny packs.

I told my sister about my need, and we walked up the church to use their bathroom. The door was locked. I started to sing, and Esther joined in with me. "Knock and the door shall be opened unto you, Alleluia." We walked all around the church, singing this and trying out different doors, knocking (and trying very hard to hold it). Finally, as we circled back around to the front, a red-headed boy only a year or so older than I stuck his head out the front door and demanded, "What the heck you singing for?" I told him that I was praying, because I needed a bathroom so I could pee, and I didn't think I could hold it to bike all the way home.

He slammed the door close. My sister and I got our bikes and headed home, where I was finally able to relieve myself. I don't know what the story never bugged me as a kid - either that I was so deluded (and impractical because clearly I was able to make it all the way home and walking around singing took valuable time), or that God so clearly did not keep his end of the bargain. I mean, if you believe in the God who has a covenant with mankind and has made certain promises (and is omnibenevolent, sinless, perfect, and never lies or makes mistakes) shouldn't it bug you when he doesn't actually move mountains in response to your faith?

On a side note, I had a card of this picture of Jesus knocking on "the door of our hearts" (ventricles?) when I was a little girl and I remember sitting in my room, staring at this picture for hours, feeling so much love for Jesus. My parents never told me about Santa Clause, because my grandmother didn't want anyone else getting credit and because my mom didn't want to lie to us. But I think I can relate to how the kid must feel when he learns that Santa isn't real.

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Well what do you want me to say? It was my fault?

I called my grandmother last night. She's in a nursing home with Alzheimer s. It really sucks to want to have the Big Confrontation, to be at that stage in your therapy and personal growth to really tell someone "You messed me up!" ...and they're senile.

But I'm learning to turn her Alzheimer's to my advantage. If I'm pleasant, and only talk about Little Man, for four or five 10-minute phone calls, then once a month I can really, really push her for information and what memories she has of her cult leader days. And then she forgets we talked about it the next time I call! As long as I'm pleasant again a few times, she doesn't raise up her defenses and I can get to some truth.

I wanted to know whether or not Harrison Johnson's death shook her, if it changed her position on faith healing. It changed mine. I've said before, I was raised in a faith healing cult, to become the next faith healer. I started laying hands on and praying for adults when I was in Kindergarten, and by the time I was seven I had a "miracle" under my belt. So from the time I was 12 till I was 16 I ran the cult's office. I put up the website, updated the blog, maintained the data base, managed the bills and payments, and sent out her newsletter and her books.

I was 14 when Harrison died (he was 2) and my faith in faith healing took a serious toll with his preventable death. I stopped believing in faith at all costs, and at scoffing at the medical system in a time of true emergency. I still thought vaccines were dangerous, that home birth was safer than hospital birth, and that you could pray away any number of ailments. But I thought people should know that they were allowed to go to the doctor if their child was going to die. Surely God didn't really want Harrison to die?

Me: When Harrison died - Kelly and Wylie's son - how did you feel about the whole situation?
Giggy: I was just glad it didn't have anything to do with me. I wasn't there. You know there was a lot of press about it, but I managed to stay out of it, so I was glad about that."
Me: But how did it make you feel about the medical system, and about faith healing?"

(She kept getting confused and thinking I was taking about an infant death or still birth. Then a nurse came in, and she had to take a pill. She called it a "vitamin" and shuddered, but it's the medicine she takes for Alzheimer's and an SSRI for her craziness. I managed to remind her who Harrison was.)

Me: Harrison. His parents were visiting at Van and Nicole's, where the HIZM office was. He fell and got stung by 400-some yellow jackets.

Giggy: That's right. He died from the trauma of all the toxins from, some kind of stinging animal, a bee or a wasp or something.

Me: If he'd been taken to a hospital, he would still be alive today. (He'd be 14.) But his parents stayed out of the medical system, which is what you believed, and he died. Did that change how you felt about praying for healing?

(She starts quoting an incorrect 20-years out of date statistic on home births being safer than hospital births.)

Me: This isn't about home birth vs. hospital birth. Harrison was 2 - he was already born. (exasperated) Do you still believe that going to a doctor is a sin?

Giggy: (shocked) I never said going to a doctor was a sin!

Me: You just told people that the alternative was absolutely evil and unacceptable.

Giggy: Well, what do you want me to say - that I'm sorry? That it was my fault?

Me: Well, yeah. Just a little - don't you think?

Giggy: I never told anyone not to go to a doctor. Now I personally don't go to doctors, but I don't tell anyone else what to do.

Me: Do you think not going to doctors is spiritually superior?

Giggy: I, I, I...

Me: Do you remember the woman in Australia? She hemorrhaged to death over three weeks during a home birth and left five kids without a mother.

Giggy: You seem to be awfully mad at me. I'm not gonna sit here and defend myself for things that happened twenty years ago.

(Defenses up - Further conversation is futile. Wrap up with pleasantries about Little Man.)

It was intense and shocking and hard and weird. I absolutely idolized this woman for years. She was my cult leader. You really can't get bigger in someone's eyes than that. Shoot, she was bigger than God. The grace we used to do at meal times was "Thank you Giggy, thank you God." Kind of sums her up, really.

And as I age and grow and learn, she becomes more and more a monster in my eyes. A woman who cares more about keeping her name out of the papers than she does about the needless death of a young boy. I feel like I was born trapped in vines. As I grew, the vines began to strangle me tighter and tighter. Finally, as I kept learning and growing and becoming more myself, one by one the vines snap and fall off me.

Faith healing in emergencies was the first to go. But my grandmother urged complete reliance on faith for twenty some years, during which time she didn't have so much as a cold. Once she was in pain, however, it all went out the window and she went in for the works - prescription eye glasses, prescription hearing aids, and a prosthetic hip. Hypocrisy, meet your match.

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Senseless Tragedy

So my profile says that I'm a cult survivor, and that's true. My grandmother started a Word of Faith faith healing cult in the late 1970s. I was born (at home, with her as "spiritual midwife") in 1983, and grew up with her as our live-in childcare. I'm writing a book about all this and posting excerpts here. I've changed names in this posting, but real ones will appear in the final product. [EDIT: Names have now been restored. Whatever fear I still had, whatever concerns about staying anonymous, are gone by now, Jan. 2010.]

This excerpt begins with me watching 30 children for 3 days while their parents attend my grandmother's faith healing lecture, held in the clubhouse of a south Florida trailer park. This all happened in the fall of my Freshman year of high school.

Harrison Johnson was two years old, blond, quiet and sweet. He was one of the kids still in diapers, but he was the only one in cloth ones. I thought they were gross, messy, and more work; I was worried about sticking him with one of the pins.

Now that I have a young child, I know what a huge stress that weekend must have been for Harrison. He had never been left with anyone other than this grandmother before, and hadn't even gone to Sunday School with other children. He spent with 3 days in a strange mobile home, with 30 strange children, cared for by a strange teenager with purple hair who didn't understand his diapers. He did remarkably little crying for that combination.

Somehow I wasn't involved when the terms of my pay were discussed. Gig just told her followers to pay me whatever they felt was right, and these were not the kind of people who would fight over the honor of paying the check at IHOP. Left to the generosity of her followers, over the course of three days, for watching 32 children, I received a grand total of $40, or about $1.35 per kid (or an hourly per child rate of just 15¢).

Three months later Harrison's parents, Kelly and Wylie, brought him back to the trailer park, for a visit with my grandmother, and her ministry employees Van and Nicole. I wasn't there that day. I read about it the next day though, on the front page of four different newspapers. My grandmother was inside with Kelly and Nicole while Harrison, his dad, and Van were all talking outside, at the edge of the green belt - a swath of protected Florida woods running between the outer edge of the trailer park and a nearby water treatment facility. Somehow, Harrison fell onto a yellow jacket's nest in the ground. They swarmed and stung him, over 400 times.

The men took him inside Van and Nicole's red double-wide trailer, and my grandmother instructed them to give him a bath and make him comfortable. Gig later reported to police that Harrison seemed "fine", that he was watching television, and that he only asked for a glass of milk. Seven hours after Harrison Johnson was stung 432 times his parents called 9-1-1. Seven hours. Harrison wasn't allergic to stings, but the sheer volume of poison in his small body overpowered him, and his heart stopped. His parents, my grandmother, and her employees waited for over forty minutes between the time when Harrison stopped breathing, and when they called for help.

Even then, I still believed that my grandmother was good, and that she was right about medicine most of the time. A little boy I had known, a toddler with the kind of face that makes the news if he gets hurt, died a slow, painful death, in my grandmother's presence. And he didn't have to. It saddened me, and it worried me, but I wasn't ready to rewrite my programming just yet.

My son got stung by a yellow jacket recently. We were on a walk around our neighborhood and he stuck his hand into a hole in a light post. He drew it back out quickly, screaming. I carried him - running - a quarter mile home. As I did so, I called a med-student friend and left a frantic voicemail asking for help. Then I called my mother and asked her to look up yellow jacket stings online, and tell me how to treat my son's hand. The whole time he was crying in my ear, and I was panicked and running home. I got him home, cleaned his hand, removed the stinger, and put Benadryl cream and a bandaid on it. The total time between my son being stung by one yellow jacket and having that bandaid on him was less than 15 minutes.

Yet I am descended from, was raised by, and was brainwashed to follow, a woman who would sit for seven hours and watch a toddler die. Gig's own fourth daughter, my mythic aunt Natalie, died at six weeks old of a congenital heart defect. I can't help but wonder sometimes, when I think about the children she knew were dying because of her teachings, if she wanted other parents to suffer as much as she had.

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The Process of Conversion

So today I'd like to discuss another of the lovely UCG booklets - this one on "Transforming Your Life: The Process of Conversion". This lovely little pamphlet explains how you know whether or not you (or more likely your neighbor) are a "true Christian" or whether Jesus will say "I never knew you". As a once-thoroughly converted Christian and current happy apostate, I'm eager to begin.

First, readers are told that conversion is

a miraculous, lifetransforming process - a process that is impossible without the direct, active intervention and participation of God.

Then we get the "free will" argument (that God values our free will more than he values our salvation, or preventing us from spending eternity being tortured in a hell he created) presented thus:

Although He clearly encourages humans to "choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19), God does not force anyone to make the right choice. But, as we shall soon see, the consequences of our choices are enormous.

Ah, the "mercy" of Gawd is evident all around us. Now we get to the heart of the matter - an introduction to the step-by-step process of conversion, and the end result.

The process beings with God's calling, followed by the key steps of repentance, baptism, and the receiving of the Holy Spirit - finally climaxing witht he return of Jesus Christ, when the dead in Christ are resurrected to immortality and given eternal life. That is the ultimate transformation, being changed from a mortal to an immortal being! (emphasis added)

Repentance is a big favorite in Christianity, because the entire theology is based on the presupposition that we are all guilty of something which requires forgiveness (or atonement, or death, depending on your denomination's interpretation of Scripture). And of course baptism gives the clergy early inroads into the lives of their follower's children. The oddest thing about baptism to me is its early roots in death and drowning (which is why some groups still prefer a good ole fashioned dunking to the sprinkling of infant baptisms). I myself was baptized in a swimming pool when I was 7, after begging my mom to let me do it. My sister had been baptized in the lake behind a friend's house the summer before, and I was definitely jealous. Looking back, that doesn't seem to be the best of all possible motives for a baptism, but hey what can you expect from a 7 year old?

As for receiving the Holy Spirit, I gotta say I tried my hardest but the damn spook just wouldn't show up. I cried and prayed, fasted, read my Bible, yadda yadda. Basically none of my rain dancing for Yahweh yielded so much as a drop of spiritual renewal. I was quite relieved to discover that the non-existence of the Holy Spirit probably had more to do with this failure than any lack of faith or effort on my part.

But the mortal -> immortal aspect is one that wasn't taught in any denomination or church I belonged to. In fact the exact quote that was used (ad naseum) by my grandmother was, "We're all gonna live forever. Somewhere." So the idea that only converted Christians will experience immortality kind of flies in the face of the hell doctrine, don't it just? I think here's one the Mormons would really disagree on. (See Chatting with Mormons 5 for a discussion on the eternal nature of man from an LDS-persepective!)

After the introduction, we get warned that not all Christians are True Christians(TM).

Most groups that profess to be Christian represent themselves as having a "calling," as being the "chosen" of the Lord. Even many non-Christian religious groups regard themselves as divinely chosen.

I love the absolute conceit - wow even non-Christians think they're chosen by god! Of course they do. What religion would anyone take seriously that claimed to be NOT chosen by their preferred deity? Who would attend the church or mosque or synagogue that advertised "God doesn't visit here"? The authors reassure readers that we can discern which groups have it right, "If we are willing to take an honest look at the facts and accept the truth revealed in the Scriptures". sadly, accepting scripture as truth, and taking an honest look at facts, are inherently antithetical propositions. The "facts" put forth by the pamphlet are

Jesus Christ is real. He was resurrected. He is alive. And His impact on the world has exceeded that of every other man who has ever lived.

Wow - all the unsupported claims you can throw a stick at! (Is this a Southern-only phrase? I happen to love it, in part because it makes so little sense.) Okay, so as my atheist readers have surely yelled at their monitors by now, yes of course, none of those are proven "factual" at all. I don't personally care if Jesus existed as a historical figure or not, but the mere fact that it is unprovable is interesting.

Now we come to an example of the inherent contradictions of the gospel message.

God's desire is to give salvation - eternal life - to all mankind. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17)

Sounds groovy, right? Eternal life seems cool (till you think it through) and a benevolent god that wants to save us all sounds rather giving as well. Oh, but wait! There's a bait-and-switch up ahead.

To become acceptable to God, all must recognize and accept God's Word as the main source of truth.

Hmmmmmm... So, he wants to save you, but only once you've become "acceptable" by taking a bunch of really outlandish supernatural and scientifically and statistically improbable stories as your main source of truth. Since the Bible gets a pretty large FAIL grade on Science, I'm gonna have to stay unsaved.

Regarding the need for repentance, our author reminds us that

Peter explained that every human being bears responsibility for Christ's death - not just the Roman soldiers or the small group of Jews who arrested and brought Jesus to trial.

Peter almost sounds like as much of a dick as Paul here, doesn't he? I've got a 3 year old. He's responsible for a lot of mayhem in my life and my landlord's - flooding the bathroom, coloring on the walls, throwing food off his high chair - but he certainly bears no responsibility in the public execution of a possibly fictitious rabbi thousands of years ago. That's a bit of a heavy burden for such a small guy, and it continues to be preposterous as we age. But hey - when did religion make sense?

Satan is credited with a whole host of accomplishments.

Satan has wielded tremendous - but not absolute - power over humanity (2 Corinthians 4:4). His role in shaping our world's entertainment, education, politics, advertising, and moral standards has been enormous.

Kind of makes God seem neutered, doesn't it? I'll never again comprehend the position of an all-powerful God getting his ass kicked on a daily basis by one of his own creations. (And then there's the whole, why doesn't he just annihilate Satan already?) Now we get into the issue of repentance.

When we repent we stop doing what is wrong and start living in harmony with God's ways and laws... Repentance should include a sense of sorrow and shame, but genuine, heart felt repentance is much more than simply an emotion. Our lives much change.

This is probably why I was such a shitty Christian. Sinning is just way too much fun! Besides, sorrow and shame are pretty crap emotions to have over the course of years. I can't tell you how many Sunday mornings I spent crying in church over the fun I'd had the night before.

The next section of the booklet, "What is Sin?" will clarify for my readers exactly why I enjoy sinning so very much. According to UCG's pamphleteers, sin is

[God] says that sin is trangressing His holy, spiritual law (Romans 7:12-14). Breaking that law - crossing that divine boundary, that limit God set for us - is sin.

God has a lot of laws, according to the Bible, including how to treat your slaves (but no prohibtion against owning other people), when to stone your children (when they don't obey you), how to treat rape victims (force them to marry their rapists!), and the penalties for working on the Sabbath (you guessed it - death, unless of course you're Jeezy Creezy).

A comment box within this section attempts to answer "What is Wrong With Our Human Nature?" by proposing

1. Our fleshly desires get us into trouble
2. We look for ways to justify our wants and actions
3. "We have a natural tendancy to resent having our fleshly desires limited by rules"

I have to say I thoroughly agree with the third point. I mean, I know I sure as heck resent when theocrats try to impose their rules on my desires, like my desire to have sex or not get stoned to death for getting a divorce or working (or sleeping in) on the Sabbath.

Next we get to baptism. Here the death-yen of Christianity becomes apparent.

[Baptism] represents death, burial and resurrection - both of Jesus and ourselves. Baptism shows that we accept the shed blood of Christ for our sins and pictures the death of our former life in the baptismal grave.

Cheery stuff, eh? Kind of thing you want to expose your children too, right? Their need to die to become acceptable? Yeah, me neither.

Finally we get to the Holy Spirit - the missing part of my own conversion. (Side note: I first said the sinner's prayer in my grandmother's bedroom at the ripe old age of 3, and after responded to at least 20 alter calls I can distinctly remember at revivals, Bible camps, youth events, and church services. Yet the spook never showed.) Now the UCG folks apparently aren't believers in the Trinity Doctrine. The booklet author points out that the word "Trinity" doesn't appear in the Bible, and states

One cannot prove something from the Bible that is not biblical. The Bible is our only reliable source of divine revelation and truth, and the Trinity concept simply is not part of God's revelation to humankind. The Holy Spirit, rather than a distinct person, is described in the Bible as being God's divine power.

Huh, so maybe I really was saved! Oh wait, duh, never mind. So, rather than being imbuing Christians with one third of God's own self (like I was taught, as a good little Pentecostal), the Spirit supposedly

• Keeps us in contact with God (and maybe the Tooth Fairy, while he's at it)
• Makes sense of the Bible (oh come now, no one can do that!)
• Makes all things possible (how about hiking the Mariana's Trench without gear?)
• Produces Godly fruit (see my thoughts on Spiritual Fruit here)
• Provides comfort (but not food for starving children in third-world countries)

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I can get by just fine without the big HG, as God's power or as one aspect of a triune godhead. Either way, I'm cool as is.

In conclusion, the author urges us to read our Bibles. Now I honestly don't know any Christians who read their Bibles as faithfully as your average atheist. And a lot of former-Christian atheists like myself will point out that reading the Bible is exactly what led them to disbelief in the first place. Bible contradictions can be found here, here, here, and here. And that was just with one Google search. If I had more time (and didn't need to pee) I'd include more.

So once again gentle readers, we find that propaganda requires no proof, and claims of "facts" go unsupported.
And here is the rest of it.

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Chatting with a Mormon Missionary: Take 6

So I've been absent the past week. I figured the best way to jump back into these conversations on religin, cults, and the weird things people say is through Part 6 of our series Chatting with a Mormon. I'm posing once again as a man, "Aaron" today. Aaron's topic of questioning is the great mystery: Death.


You are speaking live with Ben, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Information provided in this session is to provide assistance only and is not an official statement of the Church.

Ben: hello

Me: Hi Ben. A friend of mine is very ill. I'm starting to wonder what happens to us when we die.

Ben: that is a great question
here is a page that is a good place to start learning
link
there are tabs on the left hand side that you can click through and read more
let me know when you are finished

Me: Okay, I've finished.

Ben: what did you learn from it?

Me: So you believe we have spirits that go on after our bodies die, but that they get reunited with our spirits?

Ben: yes, at the resurrection our spirits will be reunited with our bodies.

Me: what's the resurrection? I thought that already happened 2000 years ago on Easter

Ben: it is defined on the page i sent you

Me: Well, it just says that it's a reuniting of body and spirit, but I've never heard of such a thing before

Ben: if you click on he word it gives you a little bit more
(No, it doesn't. It just says the same thing in a little pop-out box.)

Me: why do you need or want a physical body in the afterlife?

Ben: one of the main purposes of coming to this earth was to receive a body
we need our spirit and body to be whole
here is another page you can read
link

Me: So we're whole right now, but when we die we won't be?

Ben: we are mortal right now, when we are resurrected we will be immortal
(See? It's totally worth these little chats just to find out what's so different between Christianity as a whole and that special little faith known as Mormonism.)

Me: It says Jesus was the first to be resurrected, but he raised people from the dead during his ministry on earth
like Lazarus and the centurion's daughter

Ben: their bodies were not glorified, perfected, or immortal

Me: well everything that's physical changes and deteriorates over time, even non-living things
(I love caves.)

Ben: you know the stories about lazaurs and the centurion's daughter but don't know about the resurrection?
are bodies wont following the resurrection

Me: I know about christ's resurrection but I've never heard about us having physical bodies after we're dead, no

Ben: it is a very common theme of the bible, why don't you tell me more about your religious background
I would like to better understand where you are coming from.

Me: Christian from the time I got saved when I was 3 but now I'm not so sure what to believe. (True.) I mean, if all those miracles were happening for 2000 years, why did they suddenly stop?
Here's a link

Ben: have you stopped going to church?

Me: years ago

Ben: as to your question i would like you read a chapter in the Book of Mormon
(Only for holy texts will he find the Shift Key.)
Here it is
link

Me: It seems to be saying that miracles do still happen
but you have to admit that the stories of the bible are pretty fantastic, and nothing like that is actually happening right now.

Ben: they happen everyday

Me: I mean the sun doesn't stop in the sky and there aren't rains of frogs or antyhing happening. It'd be on the evening news if they were.
What kind of miracles happen everyday?

Ben: you have to remember the bible and the book of mormon are condensed histories so the stories in them are going to be the big ones

Me: Well yes, but what kind of big stories like that happen now? You said miracles happen everyday

Ben: link
This article answers your question exactly

Me: The things he describes as "true miracles" or "macro miracles" don't seem very miraculous.
He cites things like people paying their tithe or working in missions. (Seriously dude? Half the stuff he claims is "unexplainable" I personally can explain - the rest can be explained by other humans of non-religious persuasion. WEAK!)
That happens in all kinds of religions - are they miracles when non-mormons choose to pay for their church or mosque's work?

Ben: there are miracles in all religions

Me: But not miracles in the Biblical sense - big, noticeable, large-scale things like the sun stopping in the sky, or all the bodies in the graves of Jerusalem rising up as one
What happened to the big miracles?

(My son and I have a good natured debate on the merits of ice cream for breakfast. We compromise on an empty ice cream cone and some fruity oatmeal.)

Ben: i don't know
maybe we don't have enough faith
or there is no purpose for them at this time

Me: It just seems a shame to me that all the big miracles happened at a time when communication and science were so primitive that miracles couldn't be told to all instantly and obviously, the way such a thing could now
with 24 hour news cycles, advanced technology, science, and the internet
Did you read the article I sent?

Ben: i didn't get one

Me: Here it is (link)

Ben: ok
(Several minutes pass.)

Me: Let me know when you're done

Ben: im done
(Now my son wants to play Mr. Potato Head with me. I'm gonna have to wrap this up soon.)

Me: well how can you believe in prayer when there's not proof it works?
and no miracles?

Ben: God has answered my prayers many times

Me: People of all faiths claim that, but none can prove it
And they claim to worship different gods
(Dora the Explorer to the rescue - my son is well settled and may let me continue chatting.)

Ben: I guess you will never know for yourself until you exercise faith and pray for yourself

Me: Well I tried that for 20 some years and it was a bust. Besides, how do you explain "answered prayers" from people who don't pray to your god? Are there other gods capable of answering prayer?
It seems to me that if God wanted people to know he could work miracles, or answer prayer, he'd do it in an indisputable way, like back in the Bible

Ben: I think God still hears and answers their prayers
it isn't their fault, they have just been misguided.

Me: Even if they're praying to Vishnu or Shiva or Allah? I thought the 10 Commandments were pretty clear on the penalty for praying to false gods.

Me: How do you know you're not the one who's been misguided? (The question that eventually led to my non-belief. How do you know your god is the right one? Can X million Muslims really be wrong? What proof do I have?)

Ben: i guess we will find out in the next life

Me: If God answers prayers or people of all faiths, what is the benefit of being Mormon instead of something else? (I ask this same question of liberal Christian friends who think atheists/other faiths don't necessarily go to hell. It's awfully sweet of them, but not backed up by their doctrine or texts.)


(Loooong pause. Finally, I've found my "stump" question. Time to watch old Atheist Experience clips on YouTube!)

Ben: one for me is having the gift of the holy ghost to be constantly with me.

Me: What is that gift like in your daily life? (Technically, that's not a Mormon-specific "benefit".)

Ben: i find it serves as a source of inspiration, comfort, peace...

Me: Inspiration, comfort and peace are all fine things. People who aren't mormon or even christians or even religious experience those things
What is UNIQUE to Mormonism?

(Stepping away from the computer to deal with the smelliest diaper EVER. What did that boy eat?)

Ben: I guess the best thing for you is to experience it
come to an lds service, read the book of mormon, live all the commandments
and if you still have questions about miracles and blessings then we can talk
im not here to make a sales pitch to you. It sounds like you have already made up your mind on many issues, so the best thing for you is going to be practicing what we teach

Me: So you can't answer it
(By the time they're ready to get off the line anyway, I go whole hog and just push them.)

Ben: then you will know if it is true or not
i just did answer it.
it might not be the answer YOU are looking for

Me: There isn't any unique benefit you can come up with

Ben: but it is an answer.

Me: Okay, so the answer is "There is no reason to be Mormon instead of Muslim or atheist." Right?
So why are you Mormon, if there isn't anything special about it?
(Watched this video while waiting for his response.)

(I don't think he's coming back. This one has had more honest "I don't knows" than most.)
(I've also watched this video.)

Me: Ben?

(My personal trainer, aka, son, has put me through one mile on the treadmill, 150 reps of free weights, and squats - which are much harder, as he rides on my back while I do them. I'm pretty sure Ben ain't coming back.)

So what have I learned? Not much. This morning's chat was really just an excuse to dive back into the habit of religious dialogue. I did learn that Mormons believe we get physical bodies after we die, and that we are mortal now but will be immortal later. In protestant Christianity, I'd learned that we were immortal souls living in mortal bodies, and that once our bodies died we wouldn't need them anymore. If I'd stayed on topic I would have asked him if heaven was a physical place, and if hell was also. I don't know much at all yet about the LDS view of hell and think I'll probably cast that as my next conversation question. It's hard to keep myself on task, learning, when what I really want to do is get these kids to start asking questions of their own. You can't teach critical thinking in one single conversation, but I sure wish I could. Better, more thought out posts coming very soon.

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