Lord's Justice = nonsense

What the heck, Jehovah? Your rules on sin make no sense.

David starts dancing naked in front of the ark, but it's his woman who gets put down? Apparently it's better to dance around naked then it is to talk back to a man. But just seeing his dad (drunk and passed out) naked, caused Ham to get a generational curse on his whole family line! I've heard that Ham's real sin was that seeing his dad naked aroused him, the biggie sins of homosexuality and incest. But it didn't seem to bug you much, Alpha, when Jonathan loved David. And when Lot drunkenly impregnated both of his daughters, you had nary a word to say to him, but his daughters were written as the wicked ones.

Lot's wife gets turned into a pillar of freaking kosher salt for just looking back at the fireworks as her city burned to the ground, yet David kills a man just because he covets that man's wife (Commandment #10, at least in the Deuteronomy list.) and you call him "a man after God"?

And then there's that whole "sin blind" thing, where all sins are considered equal in your eyes. Did your followers make that one up out of whole cloth, because in the Bible it pretty much seems to me like you punish women for being women, and like you're highly inconsistent. You have favorite children and the rules don't apply to them. Solomon and David raped and pillaged and killed and conquered and supposedly you endorsed this. Yet Lot's wife, who doesn't even get the respect of her name appearing in the Bible, is killed by extreme sodium chloride overdose? It makes no sense.

I'll let the well-spoken and unreasonably good-looking Theoretical Bullshit close this out.

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Fifth Grade: part one

Fifth grade was the first time in my life I was actively aware of so many people disliking me. It wasn't necessarily daily torment; they might leave me alone if I could just shut up and stop being overtly weird for a while. But like a puppy that doesn't know how to avoid a kick, I kept trying to make friends with them. I wanted them to like me. I had had a good set of friends, or at least girls I got along with and could be part of a group with, back at Christian school, and I'd been especially close to two of those girls, Brook and Trisha. And in my neighborhood I'd lost Pam as a friend earlier that year, before we moved, when I told the police what her dad liked to do to me. Lindsay had stayed my friend to the end, but our parents didn't like us hanging out, after the time her married dad hit on my mom, or when Lindsay yelled at my grandma. I'd lost my best friend in the world, my cousin Jason, and I'd lost all my aunts and my two baby cousins and my Giggy.

My mom was working a full-time day job now, and I was in public school for the first time. Instead of my mom dropping me off in the morning and my grandmother picking me up in the afternoon, I had to stand in the snow for twenty minutes at the bus stop at the top of the hill. In negative twenty degrees. With a wind chill of negative fifty. I was a latch-key kid now for the first time, and I was cooped up indoors for the afternoon, because my chest always hurt after sledding, and it was just too damn cold all the time. The snow falls were never very thick, but there were months of freezing rain. In Florida the daily afternoon rains cleared all the dust from the air, and left all the flowers shining and aromatic. In Iowa the rain pounded into the ground, soaked the earth, and drowned the worms. The stench of bloated earthworms would last for days after one of these rains.

As the school year went on, I withdrew more and more. Recess was torture - all the kids would stand around me and the boys would taunt me, calling me ugly and "big nose". Once they spotted the skin-colored mole on my forehead, I was known as "wart girl" as well. I started to read books during lunch, since I'd given up on anyone talking to me. At recess I'd take my book off to a corner of the big yard, beyond the blacktop where kids played four square and the swings were kids laughed and jumped, to sit beneath a tree and escape into other worlds. I loved "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" and Patricia Wrede's "Dealing With Dragons" series. I fell in love with Edgar Eager, and through him, with E. Nesbit.

If it wasn't for the library, I don't know how I would have survived. It was a big, beautiful, two story library with huge windows on the open second floor streaming down to the first. We weren't allowed up there, as it was the adult book section, but there was a fabulous, glassed in children's library room. Rather than the tilted library reference desks we'd gotten used to from our beloved public library back home, this room had a book shelf mountain of carpeted square crates. Each cube was open on one side to reveal a cache of books, and my sister and I would climb up and around, gathering good books and playing Queen of the Mountain till my mother told us it was time to check out.

I'd always liked books. I started reading young and grew up in a house with floor to ceiling bookshelves lining the house. But I didn't start to rely on books till Iowa. I started fantastizing and day dreaming all the time - if only I could go to Fantasia, Narnia, Pern. If only I could play piano like "Libby Johnson" or wear a magic ring like in "The Enchanted Castle". If only I could find a magical library book on the shelves one day, and go off on exciting adventures far from here, .like in "Seven Day Magic". If only I could be some storybook hero and go on a knight's quest to slay dragons and save ladies fair. If only I could be anyone, anywhere but here.

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I <3 Rachel Maddow

I could try to explain why this is, or I could simply suggest you watch the three clips below. This is the totality of Rachel Maddow's on-air interview of former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge (R). He defends the Iraq war, attempts to blame the decision to go in on intelligence agents (rather than executives and legislators), and shocks Rachel into making obvious facial disbelief. It's educating and worth watching.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here's her follow up reflections from last night's episode.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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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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Troubled Teen Programs Kill

So I've finally gotten around to putting together the latest petition (It's in the box and right here.) This is one is being sent to Senators and the POTUS. From the CHILD (the agency responsible for getting this bill through the House, and an awesome advocacy group) website

At this moment, I feel the need to let my readers know, cults aren't always religious. It's easy for us to look at the Moonies, Heaven's Gate, and the FLDS Mormons and say, "Yup, that's a cult." What I find a lot of people have difficulty with is recognizing the non-religious (or psuedo-non-religious, like Alcoholics Anonymous) cults in their midst.

Teen "rehab" boot camps, wilderness camps, and other residential facilities, are by and large cults. They follow the model, techniques, and even buzz words of Synanon (which eventually changed its name to the Church of Synanon and is listed as a cult by the reliable Apologetics Index. Oh, and they did church-wide wife swapping.)

Reason Online and Mother Jones each did stories on the teen correctional industry in 2007, following the well publicized torturing death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. Anderson was placed in a wilderness camp in Florida, following a trespassing violation. Within three hours of arriving, he had stopped breathing. He was pronounced dead by hospital staff early the following morning. He was kicked, punched, and beaten to death in an effor to "break him" of his "defiance".

Looking at this list of groups classified as cults, it's strange how many I recognize, and how the name of a group will bring up a full catalog of facts, back story, and death toll in my head. It's like seeing old enemies in your high school yearbook - you never liked them, but you share a history. Sure, I expect to

I think, in part, I study cults because I'm still llloking for the place I belong. I had that need - to be part of the group, the family - instilled so strongly as a child, but I was and still am weird, and I have gaps in my pop culture memory, and I was taught how to control sheep rather than how to love friends. I have a greater need to belong and less capabaility. So I look for other cult survivors, and I find them. From the eastern transcendental cults to the Bible based fringes of non-denominationalism to tough love teen boot camps. And once I find them, I try to help them. I try to raise awareness, raise funds, and raise outrage. Once you're pissed, you're motivated.

So sign my damn petition. Call your Senator, or hey, call mine. Let them know you object to non-evidence based treatment protocols being used in sentencing or diversionary programs (the "instead of jail" route), and that you want stricter oversight for residential facilities housing teens. Ask them to sponsor or co-sponsor HR 911, which is currently languishing in the HELP committee. Tell them you think it's wrong for teenagers to be beat to death by cult members.

Also, check out Kids of El Paso, about one particular Synanon clone and what went on there. The front page advises former program teens who are contemplating suicide to contact the national Suicide Hotline. Sometimes, when I feel like nobody else knows what it's like to grow up in a cult, I remember that I'm an idiot, and that a lot of us are struggling in secret - hidden in plain sight.

To any of my readers who are fellow survivors, hello. I'm glad you're here. I hope this blog helps and I always answer private emails. Let me know what you'd like me to add to the blog or any questions you have. We're not alone.

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Second Grade; part one

I liked Christian school. On my first day, all the kids gathered on the playground as their parents dropped them off, and played on the giant wooden roundabout, the long swing set, and the many slides. As we gathered into lines by grade, and I lined up with the second grade class, the petite dark skinned girl in front of me turned around and said, "Hi, our moms are friends. I'm Brooke. We should be best friends, too!" And so we were. And it really was that easy to join the social workings of the group. My cousin and I were instantly accepted, although Jason had a lot more shyness to contend with than I did.

I was friends with most with of the girls, and he was friends with most of the boys, and so we were the only two kids in class exempt from cooties. My friend Natalia might say, "Boys have cooties" and then, at a look from me she'd add, "except Jason." Likewise, he kept my reputation unsullied by the dreaded gender germ.

My teacher Mrs. Dempsey was married to the pastor of the church that owned the school. We went to a different church, so I only saw him as he lead Wednesday chapel services during school, but I thought she was wonderful. I've run into her over the years and over a decade a later she still recognizes me from the 8 year old girl I once was, and is happy to greet me in a grocery store or library. A few years after we left, we learned that Mr. Dempsey had been having an affair with - who else? - the church secretary.

Of all the philandering pastors, I'm maddest at him, because there are few people as genuinely loving as Mrs. Dempsey, and he blew it. Their two boys had graduated from the school's high school by then, so there was no pretense of staying for the kids. She stayed here in town with her head held high, and he was the one who left in shame.

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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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