After Biff figured out that I was quite serious about having deconverted, the bargaining phase of his grief cycle began. It took a little while for me to realize that his goal was nothing less than to get me to step foot back inside a church, with the assumption that Read more
This’ll be a brief post about assumptions I operated under when I was a Christian. These assumptions were a sort of mental voicemail message that played all the time in my head, in the background, under my radar. They were unquestioned and unexamined–just there. I think a lot of the Read more
The most powerful thing two people can do is really communicate. When there’s a veil in between them, it’s much harder to do that. Not impossible, but a lot harder. I discovered that truth in the early days of my membership in the Unequally Yoked Club (UYC). There’s a reason Read more
Remember what I mentioned last time about promises? We’re going to talk about that a little more today. There’s something about promises that I need to show you.
Before we can really get into the meat of this post, I need to say a few words first about the fundamentalist view of promises, because I don’t think most people outside that mindset will understand fully until this stuff’s on the table. I’ve talked before about the things that Read more
It always makes me boggle when I hear Christians comparing themselves to sheep. It’s like they have no idea why shepherds keep sheep: for their fleece, their milk, and their meat. There’s a fundamental disconnect there between fantasy and reality, but the disconnect is hardly new. And that disconnect richly serves the interests of the people benefiting from all that fleece.
One of my earliest blog entries, A Cult of “Before” Stories, remains one of the most-often-viewed pages on the entire blog (thanks, RationalWiki readers!). It was about how my preacher ex-husband Biff, as well as other Christians including the very well-known-at-the-time Mike Warnke, lied constantly while telling his “testimony” (for Read more
I needed answers, and I needed them quickly.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people were praying for Daniel’s recovery from brain cancer. He was one of the Big Name Fans in our denomination; we had ties to mission churches all over the world as well. I was one of the people who spent quite some time on her knees praying for Daniel’s recovery. Even Biff, who very rarely prayed anywhere but in church, prayed for him. We were absolutely convinced that God would heal him. Why wouldn’t he?
Communities get these ideas sometimes to live together and re-enact their ideals. It’s part of being human. But things can go hideously wrong in authoritarian groups, and I’ll show you how today.