Ask An Atheist: Managing Relationships With Religious Loved Ones

A couple of days ago, I received this private message from a friend:

Remember the part of your blog "Ask an Atheist"? We have a question. [My husband] and I are skeptical, but my daughter is a full blown atheist. How did you keep your deeply religious parents from torturing you? My mother is relentless and cruel! Help!

Not an easy question to tackle sensitively. Immediately three or four ways to respond popped into my head, and I asked if I could answer her question via blog post, since there was no way I'd be able to squeeze it all into a text. It's not officially National Ask An Atheist Day, but I'll answer the question regardless.

Finding a photo for this topic was tough, so here's a religious family.

The first thing I have to do is set an understanding. I did not come from a secular background. I wasn't raised to be an atheist. I was raised in the church, and I devoted the vast majority of my life to faith in Christ. For anyone reading this, it's important to know that I intimately understand the perspective of our religious family members. As a devout believer myself, I used to lie in bed at night and plead to God with all my strength that all three of my children would be saved. The possibility that any one of them might grow up to reject our faith was so overwhelming and terrifying to me, that those prayers were often wet with tears. The threat of hell was so real that I simply could not bear imagining it for my children. In fact, just the thought that any of them might not be saved was sheer agony; it made my chest ache with anguish and fear.

So understand that everything I say from here on comes from a place of personally knowing how some religious parents feel.

Notice I said "some parents", because this is not necessarily the sole reason parents (and other loved ones) can be so upset when children or grandchildren question or even reject the family faith. There are other reasons for negative reactions from religious family members, such as bringing shame on the family, feeling their "tribe" has been rejected, feeling they are being rebelled against, or even feeling judged for their beliefs by the unbelieving individual. I don't want to go too deeply into all the reasons believing family members might be so bothered by unbelieving ones, but if you want to analyze this topic more deeply, there are others who have explored this subject in greater depth.

Let me also add a disclaimer - not all believers hound unbelieving loved ones. Many are live-and-let-live or simply keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. Some do not stress about hell or care about family pride or feel a person's rejection of their faith is a rejection of them. So for those people, this post isn't about them. They're doing it right already. Thank you.

So assuming that the push back we atheists, agnostics and skeptics receive is based on any of those reasons above, we automatically are at a disadvantage. If it comes from a place of fear for our souls, there is nothing we can do to take that fear away. If it comes from a place of shaming the family by not towing the line, we cannot take that embarrassment away. In a society where religion (particularly Christianity) is not just the norm but the expectation, the onus ends up being on us to manage and mitigate these negative feelings that our unbelief produces in our loved ones, because somehow we are the ones who have done something "wrong".

For me personally, my parents are deeply religious, but I'd never say they "torture" me or are "cruel" to me. They can, however, feel relentless. My parents genuinely believe I'm going to hell, and this is a source of extreme anguish for them. Once again, let me reiterate that I really do get it. Yet, as firmly as they know I'm going to hell, I just as firmly know that there is no such place. Therefore it feels like the responsibility of managing their emotions always falls on me, because I'm the one who isn't emotionally distressed. Having been on both sides of the matter, I can see it from their perspective. They, however, cannot see it from mine. In fact, never at all does it seem they stop to think how their relentless proselytizing might affect my emotions or our relationship, because they cannot see that far. They see only my eternity in hell, and that clouds out every other possible perspective. Therefore, it's up to me, who has been on both sides, to respond in one of two ways - I can either scoff at their constant attempts at drawing me back in or I can empathize with them. I always choose the latter, but believe me, it's not fun and it's not fair.

It's not fair, because it drives a wedge between us, every single time, and they can't see it. They can't see that every comment, every dig, every attempt at making me see it their way is another brick laid in the wall that separates us. Christians (and others) in general don't seem to see how much we nonbelievers are expected to consider their feelings first, show respect for their beliefs and walk on eggshells to avoid hurting or offending them, when none of that consideration or respect is given to us. For family members who are embarrassed by what we've done to their reputation, it might be even more difficult. It's one thing for me to empathize with their fear of my going to hell, but it's a lot harder to empathize with those who just wish we'd shut up and stop bruising the family pride. Every time we sense that their disapproval of us is based on the disapproval they receive (or perceive to receive) from others, another brick is laid in that wall between us.

Nevertheless, that's where most of us are, so what can we do to handle it?

I can only speak from experience, and my answers aren't great. They aren't all what I'd call healthy solutions, but in the lose-lose situation that many of us find ourselves in, we sometimes can only make do with the best options we have.

First, I avoid the subject like the plague. Normally, avoidance is not what I'd recommend, but in this case, if it's necessary to keep that wall from getting too tall or wide, I will hold my tongue. It pains me to keep feelings to myself and avoid honest discussions, but it pains me more to feel rejection, especially from the people I love the most. I hate superficiality, but I hate disapproval more. For in every "you need to come back to the Lord" or "God is trying to get your attention" or "you know, if you just turned to Jesus ...", what I hear is rejection and disapproval. I have to sort through those feelings each time to remember they are being said with some kind of good intentions (usually). That these kinds of comments inadvertently (or deliberately) imply a dismissal of my well-thought and hard-fought conclusions about the world is never, seemingly, a concern for the other party. But that's what they are, so to avoid facing their disapproval of my (lack of) beliefs, I resort to steering clear of the subject at all costs.

However, there are times when I have to put my foot down and ask them to stop. At the end of the day, I'm a grown-ass woman, and I do not have to be put down for what I believe or don't believe. (And neither should they, for that matter). There have been a small handful of times when the attacks have been out of order and beyond what I am willing to tolerate, and I've had to tell people to stop. If your religious family members are taking it to a level that you do not feel you (or your child) ought to be subjected to, then put your foot down and don't tolerate it anymore. If people are truly being relentless and cruel, you have every right to draw the line and set some boundaries. And you have every right to demand that the boundaries be respected. Trust me, this is also something I don't like to do. Talk about building a wall! But if a wall is needed to protect yourself, then build it.

If you're in a situation where open conversation is encouraged and you don't need to avoid the subject, then you are in an enviable situation. Where appropriate, openly discuss your differences in beliefs. Trying to get them to see things from your perspective might do wonders. A thought experiment I used to practice as a Christian was to put myself in the shoes of someone who believed something completely opposite to my beliefs in order to empathize with them as people who believed just as strongly in their faith as I believed in mine. I had ulterior motives of course; this is how I imagined trying to save the souls of people in other countries where I went on mission trips to. It was a good experiment though; to fully understand how to relate to people with different beliefs, I had to first understand that undervaluing, diminishing or dismissing their beliefs would only drive a wedge between us. If Christians and members of other faiths could first recognize that by dismissing or mischaracterizing atheists, agnostics and skeptics they are driving a wedge further between us, the lines of communication would open up so much wider and our relationships would be much more satisfying and meaningful.

I'll say it again though - it's almost always been my experience that in handling religious family members' feelings and remarks, it's up to us to be the relationship managers. Though we're put at a disadvantage, though we're the ones who have to defend our positions, though the burden of proof is placed on us, though our feelings aren't part of the equation, we are the ones who have to manage the conversations and relationships to keep them on a level we are comfortable and satisfied with. We have to decide when to speak and when to be silent, when to defend and when to ignore, and when and where we draw the lines. We have to decide how much empathy we extend and how much criticism we tolerate, and conversely, we have to decide when enough's enough and what we will not put up with.

I hate the way that previous paragraph sounds. It may come across as egregiously pompous and self-righteous to say that, but it is the truth. (Unless, of course, you are the one putting them on the defensive all the time, telling them that they are wrong and foolish, in which case stop or at least change tactics, because that's exactly what we don't want others doing to us.)

*To my friend specifically*
If your parents are being cruel to your daughter, then put a stop to it. If it comes to it, give them an ultimatum. Let them know that she has a right to her own beliefs and that you both as her parents will defend her autonomy. Furthermore, remind them that you have the right to question things also and they need to respect your autonomy as well. If their concerns come from a place of good intentions, acknowledge that you realize this and that you appreciate their concern but that hounding you or your daughter will only drive a wedge between you and hinder your relationship. If they truly want to see her or you return to their brand of the faith, they need to lay off and simply love you both unconditionally. If what they believe is true in the end, then it would be God, not them, that would convince you of it. The nagging, the condescension, the disapproval, even the well-intended remarks will not do it. They only strain the relationship, and I'm willing to assume that that is not what any of you want. Stay strong, my friend. And tell that daughter of yours I'm always looking for a babysitter.

Choose Your Own Title

There were numerous things I could've titled this blog post.

The $25k Nose Ring
The Post That Poses the Risk of My Parents Not Talking to Me For the Next Six Months
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight
My Cosmic Boyfriend

I feel like I should take a vote on which title works best.

Twenty-two year old Lori wearing a really expensive nose ring

Tonight, I'd like to start with a little story. Follow me on this journey back to 1997, when I was 15 years old.

I wanted a nose ring so bad, but I was 15 so my parents justifiably said Not A Chance, You Have Enough Holes In Your Head, that sort of thing. So I bought myself a little magnetic nose ring that looked like a stud on the outside and had a magnetic backing that went inside the nostril. I looked hip AF, y'all.

Until that fateful afternoon, while taking a test in Mrs Norman's AP English class, when I sniffed too hard and sucked the magnetic backing all the way up my nostril. I began to snort and sputter in the middle of a silent testing classroom atmosphere and became the sudden object of everyone's delighted interest. It was certainly more interesting to watch me hyperventilate than to answer essay question's about Young Goodman Brown, but I did not look very hip that day.

I still wanted a nose ring though. I went away to college and met the coolest girl ever one Sunday at church. Her name was (and still is, presumably) Kanyon. She was a year or two older than me and had the most adorable silver hoop in her nose. I knew then that it wasn't a stud I wanted in my nose but a hoop like Kanyon's. (I'm willing to bet Kanyon is probably still one of the coolest girls alive, wherever she is.)

But I was 18 or 19, and my parents said No Way, You'll Look Like a Bull, And Besides, If You Pierce Your Nose We'll Stop Paying For Your College, that sort of thing.

But I still wanted that nose ring. One afternoon, my college BFF Amanda and my roommate Jonathan decided they were going to get pierced. Amanda wanted an eyebrow ring and Jonathan wanted a double helix. I accompanied them to get their piercings and was green with envy. I wanted my nose done so badly!

A few days later, just around my 20th birthday, I got to chatting about wanting a nose ring with my friend Amber after our poetry class. (I'll always remember her beautiful poem about artichoke hearts. No seriously, it was beautiful.) She was like, "Let's go do it for your birthday!" and I was like, "Okay let's go do it!" So Amber and I went to get my nose pierced.

I LOVED it.

Guess who didn't love it though? My parents. They said You Look Like a You Got A Fish Hook Stuck In Your Nose and By the Way We Are Going To Stop Paying For Your College Because We Warned You And Now We Have To Be Consistent Because That's What Good Parents Do.

And y'all, they did.

(Are you starting to catch on to some of my potential titles now? The $25k Nose Ring.)

That was my sophomore year of college. The following two years were suddenly entirely up to me to finance. So I did. I increased my student loans to the max. I got two jobs, one working at JR's Lightbulb Club and Dickson Theater as the door girl and one working for the University of Arkansas Development Office.  (It was while working in development that I had my first experience with the professional implications of having a body piercing. I was originally asked to take it out since I'd be interfacing with major gift donors, but after sharing my story with the Vice Chancellor of Development, she agreed that it was indeed a pricey piece of jewelry and settled with me changing it out for a stud.)

Let's journey through the remainder of my 20s and into my mid 30s, back to the present. I've been paying off these student loans for fifteen years, which by the way, is nothing compared to what students only five or so years after me began looking at. The kids who came up behind me have gotten royally screwed on college tuition. Anyway, here I am, 35 years old, still wearing my nose ring and still paying off my student debt.  But there's a happy ending to this story. I looked up my loan repayment plan a few weeks ago and discovered that I only have THREE months left before my student loan is entirely paid off!

By the end of 2017, I will have officially paid off this nose ring. And you know what? I'm still going to wear it. Because I LOVE it. Even if I do Look Like a Bull or a Hooked Fish or a Jezebel or Oh I Don't Know, Rebekah By the Well?

Thirty-five year old Lori still wearing a really expensive nose ring

Okay now. I'm going to get a little more serious now. In telling that nose ring story I had another purpose. One less jovial.

I'll tell another story briefly. Journey with me back to the end of August 2017. (Yeah, like two weeks ago.) On August 29th, I got in a car accident, a hit and run, and my brand new car, only purchased two weeks prior, got smashed on the driver's side, and though I was mostly uninjured, it has caused me a lot of pain and angst over the past week. Meanwhile, Hurricane Harvey was in the process of devastating Houston, Beaumont and many other parts of Texas. I was in the process of raising money for the Red Cross's response to the hurricane, which was the worst hurricane to hit landfall in over a decade, and the largest natural disaster the Red Cross has ever responded to. The car accident was really bad timing, meaning for the week that followed, I was unable to do my job effectively during an extremely crucial time. Yesterday was the first day I felt fairly normal again, despite the pain.

Today, barely a month later, Hurricane Irma swirls and heads for the continental US (and has already decimated small Caribbean islands in its path), and many of us at the Red Cross are gearing up for more disaster deployments, including myself. I've been doing everything possible to get my pain under control and get my work taken care of so I can be ready to go if or when they give me my 24 hour notice. Being a single mom now, that's no easy uncertainty to plan for. (Giving a shout out to Scott and my mom right now for both being extremely flexible with me right now regarding the children!) Amidst all of this though, and after an extremely draining day of work, I witnessed a car accident on my way home this evening right in front of me on the same freeway my accident occurred on just last week. I was one car behind the accident, and the thought of almost being in a second accident within ten days of each other has left me terrified to get behind the wheel again. What is this, Final Destination? Is death following me now?

That's the joke I made to my mom on the phone tonight. But her response wasn't so flippant. "No, this is God trying to get your attention. He's saying, 'I've been wrapping on your door for a long time, and you haven't been listening!'"

Of course I know where she's coming from, and I know she made this comment with the purest of intentions. I know she's only concerned for my eternal security. (And let me say again, she's being so helpful with childcare! This is The Post That Poses the Risk of My Parents Not Talking to Me For Six Months. I'm treading on thin ice here by posting this. I'm cruisin' for a bruisin', I'm itchin' for a switchin'.) But if she's right, does God really have such terrible timing? I mean, car accidents and deployments and devastating natural disasters, oh my! Is all of this necessary to just get my attention?

I mean, I guess he could he have just revealed himself to me six years ago when I begged and pleaded and cried out to him for faith. But maybe that wasn't part of his divine plan.

It's past 1pm now. Hence Nothing Good Happens After Midnight. I have this theory that nothing good happens after midnight, and that goes for blogging. I tend to lose my filter after midnight, tend to make less than prudent decisions, sometimes say or do things I wouldn't do before midnight. So I need to be careful what I say here. I used to feel more free to talk about my lack of faith in any religion or gods, but that was before I realized just how badly being an atheist can damage my credibility or even my career. (However, I continue to be open about my beliefs, or lack thereof, because I just don't see why anyone should have to hide who they are, particularly because of what religion they are or aren't. If other people are allowed to speak freely about their faith, surely the faithless should have the same opportunity to speak freely? But now I've just chased a squirrel. Coming back now.)

Back to the divine plan. I just don't understand this logic at all, of why God would need to send bad things my way in order to get my attention. I don't think I really understood it as a Christian either. Why would God need to use grandiose overtures to entice me back into the fold? Can't he just do it the normal way? I spent three years begging him to restore my faith. Was there any reason he couldn't have done it back then? Maybe there is some kind of super special glory he'll get from refusing to answer my cries for three years, leave me to become an atheist for three years, then suddenly hit me with a car accident (and the threat of another) in order to bring me back to him. In the midst of hurricanes, no less.

I just don't get it. This accident kept me from being able to really do my job well during the most critical week of my professional career thus far, and more importantly, during a time when thousands of people are hurting and really need as much relief and support as possible and would benefit from me and all the rest of the Red Cross family being at our best for them. Just seems kind of --- mean.


So I'll assume for a moment the existence of God - the Christian God - is a given. And that he is trying to get my attention so he can save my soul. Because he loves me, right?

But wait, did he not love me six years ago? When I was in a place of being open and receptive to his existence and influence? Why wait until now? For whatever reason though, he loves me now and only wants to save my soul from eternal damnation.

Which he designed.

As punishment for not having faith in him.

Faith which he alone gives or withholds.

He wants to put me in dangerous and precarious situations in order to scare me into faith so he can save me from the punishment he designed for me should I not get scared enough to find faith in him that only he can give anyway. I just don't get it.

Let me take you on one last journey. This is into a hypothetical, nonexistent time in my past. Maybe it's an alternate reality. Anyway, in this parallel, not-real universe, I was dating this guy who really, really loved me. But he had this propensity for constantly testing my love for him in return. He would tell me bad things about myself but remind me that he loved me so much, he could fix those bad things and make me better. I knew he was right; I was pretty shitty, but wow, the way he could fix all those shitty things about me was inspiring! He would also sometimes put me in danger - but never real danger, because he was looking after me the whole time - to see if I could really trust him enough to take care of me. And every time he did that, I really did come out safe in the end, and he really did use that to prove how much he loved me and would always save me from harm.  I was so in love with this guy, and he was so in love with me back.

There were some hard times. He often gave me the silent treatment. I was never entirely sure if it was because of something I'd done wrong or if he was just trying to test my love again. Most of the time he'd eventually break the silence, but not until after I'd begged and cried and pleaded with him with all my might. Then he would soften, lift me up off my knees, and hold me. It made everything okay again when he did that. I knew he loved me. This guy, y'all, was the most loving, perfect boyfriend I've ever had. His name was Jesus, and he was My Cosmic Boyfriend.

Oh, did I say this was a nonexistent, hypothetical scenario? I apologize. It wasn't.

My Cosmic Boyfriend ultimately wanted to save me from eternal ruin. He always knew what was best for me, despite my own petty desires. Kind of like when I was 15, and my parents understandably felt that getting a nose ring was not appropriate for me at that time. My Cosmic Boyfriend threatened me with hell if I didn't obey him. My parents threatened me with no more college tuition. My Cosmic Boyfriend needed to be consistent with his word, just like my good old mom and dad. He had threatened me with hell, so he kind of had to go through with it at that point, since he'd already said it and all. Consistency is key.

The story of my nose ring and my parents is kind of funny to me, in a OMG I Still Can't Believe They Actually Went Through With It kind of way. It's funny to me in a This Is A Great Story To Tell At Parties kind of way. And though it had some long-standing, less than humorous ramifications - fifteen years of student loan repayment during the brokest years of this millennial's life - it's really in the grand scheme of things not the worst a child should have to endure. A punishment, yes, but nothing serious.

Not like the eternal punishment of hell for not being able to force myself to believe in something I simply could no longer believe in, no matter how hard I tried. We aren't talking fifteen years of faith repayment, but an eternity. In hell of all places.

For all the joking about my parents and the nose ring, I know how much my parents love me. They have always protected me and wanted what's best for me. They went over and above to make things happen for me all through my childhood that they certainly were not required to do, just because they loved me. They provided for me, they kept me out of danger, they played the tricky tightrope of letting me learn from my own mistakes while always being ready to catch my fall. They never tested my love for them, because that would never have even occurred to them. They loved me unconditionally. They have always loved me without reserve, even now, as the atheist daughter, the One That Turned Away, the one that breaks their hearts daily as they fear for my soul. I don't fault my mom at all for how she perceives the events of the past few weeks; she loves me and wants me to see the God she sees and at the end of the day, she only wants to see me there.

My earthly parents get what love is. My Cosmic Boyfriend, not so much. If My Cosmic Boyfriend was a regular human boyfriend, everyone I know would be begging me to leave him and escape our abusive relationship. But since he's Cosmic, his ways are higher than my ways, and trying to get my attention with car accidents and hurricanes is no different than pulling my ponytail and tying my shoe laces together. Harmless boys-will-be-boys pranks. It's all just meant to show me he likes me after all. And it's all just meant to save me from the eternal ruin he has planned for me if I don't return his phone calls or agree to wear his ring. True love, right? The stuff of Disney princesses.

I just don't think that's the kind of love I deserve. I think I deserve better. If my parents know it would be cruel to orchestrate a car accident or a hurricane in order to get me to answer the door, surely an omnipotent, loving God would see the cruelty in that too. It might have been a cute story if he just made me take out a few loans to pay for the sin of disobedience, but the story becomes not quite so cute when you realize the wages of sin is death and his punishment of choice is eternal damnation.

Self-Esteem: The S Word

I remember hearing once when I was a child - in a sermon or a Sunday school lesson or maybe a home group Bible study - that self-esteem should never be a focus in raising children. Making a point to raise a child's self-esteem was teaching them to look inside themselves for worth instead of finding it the Lord. Teach children to find their worth in Jesus, and they will instead develop a sense of value far greater than any "self-esteem" or "self help" book ever could.

I don't think this a mainstream Christian teaching, but that message stuck with me for a very long time. It's incredible how one little message, as off base as it may be, can shape the way you view yourself. The term "self-esteem" was a bit of a dirty word to me growing up, and I avoided it. In fact, any "self" word, unless it was self-denial or self-control, carried bad connotations for me. In all my formative years, I shunned the concept of self-esteem as New Age hocus pocus. As I grew older, I rarely talked about my self-esteem but couched the concept in euphemisms like "worth" or "significance" found in Christ. Mentioning any problems with my self-esteem felt too focused on me and not focused enough on the Savior in whom my worth was found. If I had a "self-esteem" problem, it was more likely that what I really had was a pride and sin problem.

I think even the healthiest of us struggle with self-esteem. We have all received messages through our lives that have told us we are not good enough at this or not important enough for that. Too fat, too skinny, too stupid, too nerdy, too bossy, too sensitive. How can anyone deflect all the messages that are thrown at us all the time by everyone and everything around us? But even more so, when the very foundation of your belief system is based on the message that you are inherently wicked, how can you possibly develop any kind of self-love? 

For years, I believed my worth was entirely found in Christ. Without Christ, I was worthless and depraved, my good deeds were like filthy rags. These were the more sophisticated messages I absorbed as I grew into an adult. As a child, I just knew I was a sinner that needed to be saved. As I grew in my faith and in my study of Scripture, I internalized these foundational messages about my origins to immunize myself against pride and any truly self-centered esteem I may have for myself. The term "self-esteem" no longer seemed a dirty word, just a very worldly way of trying to fill the hole of depravity in ourselves that only Christ could fill.

My "self" esteem was actually "salvation" esteem. So when I lost my faith, I also lost my source of value. 

When your self-esteem is built upon a strong foundation of self-denial, self-deprecation, or even self-loathing, and is designed by materials that come from a source outside yourself, you are at risk of collapse. If your self-worth is built from someone else's view of you - a significant other, a parent, a deity - and that external source of worth falters or disappears from your life, you will be lost. When I my source of esteem disintegrated, I had no idea who I was or where my value came from. Without Christ, I believed I was nothing! I went through a period of time feeling very lost and purposeless. I had faced the fact that I didn't believe in God anymore, but even though I could see my past worth had been based on something unreal, I was still left with an emptiness I could not fill. It still seemed so self-centered and arrogant to assume I could find worth from within myself, but if it wasn't in God either, could I possibly be worth anything at all?

I no longer found worth in Christ but still saw myself as intensely wicked. I wanted to explore aspects of myself that had always been deemed sinful and displeasing to God, but I couldn't do so without hating myself for having those feelings or questions. Without the Bible telling me these things were wrong, I was able to evaluate so many things through a different, more objective lens, but not without guilt and shame. 

I've talked about it before, because it was such a liberating moment, but things began to change with the simple lyrics to a song* I had been listening to:

But luckily I held out long enough to see

everybody really makes their own destiny.

It's a beautiful thing.

It's just you and me, exactly where we belong,

and there's nothing inherently wrong with us.

Suddenly it all fell into place. Not only could I put away the judgment and guilt I'd heaped upon myself for all those years, but I could put away the very notion that I was born depraved and sinful. I had the capacity to make decisions for myself, good or bad. I had the sense to figure out what made something good or bad. I began to redefine all "good and evil" in very basic terms - is it harmful to others or myself? Are there negative consequences that will outweight the benefits? Realizing that I was capable in and of myself to make good choices and be a good human being were the first seeds of true self-esteem building for me.

I look at my children now. I see myself in them, different parts of me in different ones. I see the lack of self-esteem in one child in particular. How could I look at this little human being that I've brought into a harsh world full of harsh messages that will tear her down and try to destroy her and not put intense focus on building her self-esteem? I see the seeds of self-loathing already sprouting, and there's nothing I want more than to choke those seeds out and plant new seeds of self-love in their place. I want to teach my kids to take care of themselves, something I struggle to do myself. I can't imagine anything more important to focus on than a healthy self-esteem that comes from believing they are inherently good and are the masters of the decisions they make. They may make bad choices and do bad things, but that does not make them bad people. 

Not all people of faith believe themselves to be so inherently wicked, but that is the message of the Bible - that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. That's the bad news that has to be accepted before the good news of Jesus on the cross can be needed. Some people are far better at not internalizing that message as deeply as I did, but I can't take that chance with my own kids. I can see which ones would internalize that message and define themselves by it, the way I did. So I must - it's my responsibility as a parent - fight against not only the messages the world will send my children that they are too much of this or not enough of that, but also the message they are not inherently good. I must put positive self-esteem at the top of things to develop in them, so that they can easily tap into the good they recognize in themselves when choosing between right and wrong. And when they inevitably must forgive themselves for taking the wrong path, their genuine sense of self-worth must be intact. 

*The Black Sheep & the Shepherd by Quiet Company

The Power of (the Unbeliever's) Prayer

Prayer used to be as natural to me as breathing. My inner monologue often included Jesus in its conversations. I prayed about everything. Prayers were not mere request forms for things I needed or hoped for. Sure, I asked for health when loved ones were ill, I asked for safety when I was scared, I asked for help when I was in need. I certainly prayed most fervently for salvation of those who were lost. But it was so much more than that. I had long conversations with God, sharing my thoughts, my dreams, my sorrows, my desires. I thanked him for beautiful sunsets and small victories. I analyzed questions and dilemmas with him. I included him in my mental decision-making process. I walked and talked with him on a regular basis.

I never felt I was a good "prayer warrior," but prayer was a normal, natural part of my daily life.

And I believed in the power of prayer. I believed that my prayers were heard and that God would answer them each, though not always in the way I wished. I believed that there was a genuine power in prayer, and that they could move mountains. Without getting too theological, I believed my prayers could make things happen (if they were in line with the preordained ... another topic for another time.)

Losing that belief in prayer, and the belief in a god to address them to, left a hole in my heart. In the early days of my newfound faithlessness, I often felt empty. I had no one to talk to. No one but myself to address in my inner dialogue. No one to call on for help. I was lonely without prayer.

I recalled a conversation I'd had with some friends in a school cafeteria while living in Scotland. It was a charity bake sale at my children's school, and we mothers were sitting around a tiny table with tiny chairs talking about the supernatural - ghosts and what not. I was still a Christian at the time but very ardently a searching one. One of the mothers referred to herself as "spiritual but not religious" and mentioned that she often prayed to the universe.

At the time, that seemed ludicrous. Why would anyone pray to the universe? What can the universe do to answer your prayers? For I believed that the power that lay in prayer was actually the power that lay in God to do something about those prayers.

Now I began to imagine that power differently. What if the power is actually in the prayer itself? What if the power is in ourselves and in the act of praying?

In those lonely days after losing my faith, I recalled the idea of praying to the universe. It still felt wickedly sacrilegious, as I was still adjusting from a lifetime of believing in a God who would strike me from the Book of Life for committing the unforgivable sin of blasphemy. But since I no longer believed in gods, I tried it one day. I had the familiar urge to address God about something, so I went ahead and did it - but I addressed the Universe instead.

I wasn't struck by lightening. But I felt oddly comforted.

A few days later I had a dream. In the dream, I'd been in a terrible car accident with my children. In the dream I found myself starting to cry out to God to save my children, then at the last second, I cried out to the Universe instead. I partly feared this blasphemy would mean death to my kids but even in the dream, I realized that the prayer itself was not going to save them, it was only going to comfort me through the terror of the situation.

I woke up from that dream shaking yet amazed by the epiphany.

I've been praying to the Universe ever since.

Yes, to faithful ears it sounds either despicable or foolish. It's not without pause that I share this. To those who find praying to anyone other than God sheer sacrilege, I understand. To those who believe that my need to pray is a hidden desire placed in my heart by God, I understand. I used to think those things too.

But really, it's just this. Prayer was always my way of sorting through my thoughts. Rather than simply monologuing with myself, I had someone to address those thoughts to. That made it like a real conversation, one that required an aspect of reason, introspection, story arc and conflict resolution. It was an audience for my innermost thoughts. Prayer also gave me a way to thank someone for the good things in my life, the things for which no one on earth could be responsible for. Prayer was my way of figuring things out, working through issues and finding comfort in pain.

Prayer was a powerful tool for me. But the power was in the act of praying itself, not in the one to whom I prayed.

Prayer is still as natural to me as breathing. I don't pray as often as I once did, but perhaps my life is noisier now, with three growing kids, a demanding job, and very little time to reflect in silence. But I still pray often. When I hike, I find myself praying in glowing rapture to the Universe (who now gets a capital letter too) over the beauty of nature. When I am lonely or depressed, I share my painful feelings with the Universe. When I have a tough decision to make, I include the Universe in my inner monologue.

It's not because I believe some nebulous concept of a omnipotent "universe" has replaced a concrete concept of an omnipotent God, but because the act of praying itself is so powerful to me, no matter who it's addressed to, that I feel disoriented without it.

So there you have it. I am an atheist who prays. Fervently even, sometimes. Just another way I'm rationally irrational, I guess. Maybe just way I'm a little "spiritual but not religious" too.

What I'm Really, Really Bad At

I'd say I'm good at a lot of things: writing, baking, eating said baking, sleeping, cleaning, coloring in the lines, making small talk, avoiding unnecessary conflict, attacking necessary conflict, making impulsive decisions that do not usually backfire, crying at the drop of a hat.

I'm also bad at a lot of things: math, making rational decisions, not burning cookies in the oven, getting my oil changed, rejecting conspiracy theories, taking care of myself and making healthy choices, showing affection to my pets, keeping my phone charged.

Two things I'm exceedingly bad at though are forgiving myself and being alone.

Those two things together create a powerfully bad situation.

I am a guiltaholic. When I'm not feeling copious amounts of guilt over something, I feel guilty for not feeling guilty enough. When I'm alone, I dwell on that guilt and rather than getting sick satisfaction from wallowing in guilt, I get more and more depressed and feel more and more guilty. And then I isolate myself because why would anyone want to have anything to do with me, this awful, horrible person who doesn't deserve anyone's love and affection? And isolation makes me dwell on the negative more and more.

It's a fantastically bad never-ending cycle.

So I usually avoid being alone. If I can be with others, I can feel okay about myself and say fuck guilt like I totes mean it.

Then I realize that I'm avoiding being alone and I'm depending on others for my own happiness and since that can't be healthy, I go back to trying to find alone time and know thyself. Which leads me to thinking of all the bad things I've done in my life, and the cycle continues.

Being a single mom now is hard for all the obvious reasons, but the hardest is all the time I spend alone now. Time to dwell on past mistakes, things that led me to where I am now, analyzing every mistake made from the moment we met until this moment, wondering at which point things turned down the wrong path, and punishing myself for all I ought to feel regret over. And when I'm alone long enough, I can come up with zillions of things to feel regret over.

I'm isolated already as a single mom, but this penchant for shame and guilt isolates me further. It simultaneously makes me want to curl up in a corner to shut off the entire world and run outside looking for someone, anyone, to talk to and share happiness with.

Supposedly being alone is good for us and getting to know yourself is important for loving yourself. So what do you do when being alone is bad for you and getting to know yourself only involves discovering all your faults?

I wonder if this is an extrovert-meets-former-evangelical issue.  As an extrovert, I need people. I get my energy from people, I get joy from people, I get my bucket filled from people. There are times when I do genuinely enjoy solitude but not for long, and even while I'm basking in solitude, I'm usually doing something communicative... writing a blog, texting a friend, scrolling through Facebook. I am really bad at being alone.

Other extroverts, is this your experience too?

And as a former evangelical, I have yet to toss aside the deep shame of "sin". I was taught that Jesus forgives, etc etc etc, but regardless, he wants you to be pure and blameless and more like him, and the only way to do that is to confess your sins and get yourself right already. And it's not just outward "sins" we're talking about; every proud, lustful, hateful thought must be purged if you want to truly be like Jesus. If you are still okay with your proud, lustful, hateful, fill-in-the-blank thoughts, then you are not truly wanting to be like Jesus.

So when your very thoughts are sinful, how much more should you feel guilt over your actual actions?

I don't believe in "sin" anymore, but I haven't shaken guilt. Other former evangelicals, is this your experience too?

So I'm in the process of learning some hard and unpleasant lessons right now. How to be alone and not berate yourself. How to not berate yourself into wanting to be totally alone. How to let people in without assuming they will despise the person they see. How to not let in people who will just be harmful to you. How to get to know yourself and like your own company. How to forgive yourself and move on.

How to remember to turn the timer on so you don't burn the cookies. I'm the sole adult now, and not burning down the house is all on me.

Brokenness: I Write My Way Out

Brokenness, brokenness is what I long for

Brokenness is what I need

Brokenness, brokenness is what you want for me.*

That praise and worship song was usually played with the lights of the sanctuary low, the guitar soft, eyes closed and hands raised. It was often accompanied by tears, salty drops catching in the corner of my mouth, tears of either pain, longing or shame. Either I was broken as I sang or I wasn't broken and I wanted to be. To be broken meant the Lord could work in me, change me, "take my heart and mold it, take my mind and transform it, take my will and conform it" to his. This was my desire.

This is the desire of so many evangelical Christians, and this was my desire my whole life, most specifically through my 20s. Certainly from college to 30, I set my mind hard on Christ, set my heart steadily on loving and serving him and set my will solidly to do whatever he asked of me. I did not always succeed though, so in those times of selfishness and sinfulness, I longed and pleaded for brokenness. 

And I usually found it. As it turns out, I spent at least a decade, a good third of my life, being broken. This was something I believed was good and right and pure. This is something the church, nay, the Bible, taught me.

A Sunday morning in brokenness meant I was truly finding God. I left those services for a Sunday afternoon of renewal, as if leaving those lowered lights into the sunshine was clarity and a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, powering through me to give me strength needed for the rest of the week. If I could live in a state of brokenness before the Lord, I would be living in the light, becoming more like Jesus, the most broken of us all. 

I spent most of my life in brokenness and wearing it as a heavenly and meek badge of honor. I lived most of my life seeking weakness, for it is in our weakness that he is strong. When I did not feel weak or broken, I was ashamed and cried out to God for it. I could only feel strength if it was Christ's strength in me, not my own. Nothing good could come of me, a depraved human being undeserving of Christ's love and sacrifice. I had nothing of myself to be proud of or to find strength in. Only the strength given to me by God could count as strength I could depend on. These principles were clear in Scripture, and I took them deeply to heart.

And I was happy. I truly felt happy. I was not a sad, pathetic, depressed woman moping around, feeling broken and weak. No, I was clothed in the robes of righteousness, I was empowered by the Holy Spirit, I was made whole by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross! When I did find myself in bouts of depression, I cried out for deliverance, begged for the Holy Spirit to make me whole again. I never believed Marilla's line that to be in the "depths of despair is to turn your back on God" (Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery). Rather it was an opportunity to rely on his strength and accept my weakness and turn something bad into something that would make me grow.  Growth is painful, I believed. The growing pains of becoming more like Christ and shedding my earthly flesh is uncomfortable but will be eternally worth it when I approach those pearly gates at the end of my time on this earth.

All of this was the mysterious paradox of Christianity. In our weakness we are made strong. When we empty ourselves, he fills us up.  There is no condemnation, even though we are evil in our innermost being and deserve eternal damnation. In our brokenness, we will be made whole. If we submit ourselves to Christ, we will be free. 

I've been separated from Christianity for about three years now. As the scales fall from my eyes and I dig deeper into who I am, I am finding that a lifetime of brokenness has, well, broken me.

A lifetime of trying to be weak has made me now despise any sign of weakness.

The way I made my religion the sole focus and purpose of my life, with all other things bowing down to it, was not, as I had always believed, a healthy way to live. It was damaging.

Striving so hard for brokenness did not lead to health; it led to illness.

Believing so strongly that I was worthless and my only worth was found in a spiritual being was not salvation; it was destruction.

I am only just beginning to discover my own worth and my own strength. I am only just starting my journey towards healing and wholeness out of brokenness.

And when my prayers to God were met with indifference

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance.**

I only know how to take this journey through writing.  My words may hurt, sting, offend, break hearts. They may stir the longing in many to correct my understanding, to tell me I went about my faith all wrong, but I didn't. If in your church you sing that brokenness is what you long for, then you know all of this is true. If you have read Scripture, you know that we are considered unworthy, sinful, evil in our hearts, and the only way to find salvation is to submit everything we are and have to God. We are to completely discard our flesh and live in the spirit. We are not of us this world, just living in it. Following the Lord with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength is what is required of us. 

It's taken me years to realize just how much it required of me. It required too much. For too long I surrendered "all of my ambitions, hopes and plans...all I am and ever hope to be"*** to a belief system.  So I write my way out.

Running on empty, there was nothing left in me but doubt

I picked up a pen

And I wrote my way out.****

It won't be all I write about this year, but there is a lot of psychological, emotional and mental unpacking I plan on doing this year. For the first time in my life, I am looking at myself and my own needs and desires to figure out the right way to handle them. I am discovering that having my own ambitions, hopes and plans, finding strength in myself, sometimes putting my needs first, and trusting that I am good in my innermost being is actually a healthy way of seeing myself. And the only way I know how to uncover these truths is through the written word.  So as 2017 unfolds, I plan to write my way out of a broken and damaged spirit. I apologize in advance to anyone who may be hurt or offended. And I reach out now to anyone struggling with the same issues. I believe we can be made whole.

* "Take My Life" - Micah Stampley
** "Hurricane" - Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
*** "All For Jesus" - Robin Mark

**** "Wrote My Way Out" - Nas, Dave East, Lin-Manuel Miranda & Aloe Blacc, The Hamilton Mixtape

Letters to My Past Self - Part 2

In 2013, I wrote letters to my past self, giving myself the advice I wish I'd been able to give myself when I was 16, 18, 20 (but certainly would have ignored). Mostly it was regarding boys, though some pertained to studying harder and making better financial choices . (Was getting a nose ring and losing your college tuition money from Mom and Dad worth it?) (Yes, kind of.)

I have some more things I'd like to tell past me.

Dear Lori (24),

Don't let anyone tell you to put that baby down more or stop being so obsessive over organic homemade baby food or that using cloth nappies is a waste of your time. This is your time to figure out motherhood on your own, and even though two babies later you will find that putting that baby down more will make life easier and that your baby will still be healthy and thrive if you feed her baby food from a jar* and that cloth nappies are fantastic for the environment and your wallet but holy hell they are a lot of smelly work and it's okay to sometimes reach for the disposable, right now you do exactly what you feel is right and be proud of each decision you make. I stand behind you and all first time mums in all your idealistic and ambitious plans. I'm proud of you.

Love,

Lori (34, mother of three)
*That is, when you don't have time to do baby led weaning, of course. I know you'd hate it if I didn't make that distinction.

******

Dear Lori (29),

Speaking of ambition, let's get one thing straight. You never stopped being ambitious. You never lost yourself. Your brain never turned to mush. You must not keep thinking this about yourself.

You left college with a fantastic job for a recent grad, and at the ripe young age of 22 you went through the entire process of immigration all on your own. You moved abroad. You managed to blag your way into another great job in a field you had no experience in. You kicked serious ass at that job (though your work ethic could probably have been a little better).  You were ambitious, and you knew it.

Then you got pregnant and decided with Scott to become a stay at home mum. And that's where your confidence began to shake.

You stayed out of the traditional workforce for nine years. You believed you had nothing to offer the world other than being a good mum. You believed you were only marginally smart. You stopped believing in yourself. You looked at your friends and saw them as successful, while viewing yourself as barely contributing to society.

STOP THAT.

Girl, let's look at it from my perspective now.

You left the traditional workforce to become the most kick ass mother you could possibly be. You researched every single mothering topic known to womankind. You made conscientious decisions about everything. You did things very differently from what was expected of you, but you did it with confidence, because you were informed and ambitious about mothering.

You were AMBITIOUS about mothering. If you were going to be a stay at home mum, you were going to be the best damn stay at home mum you could be. Ambition isn't just for the workplace. (Shout out to all the ambitious stay at home mums out there. I know for a fact how hard y'all work your asses off.)

Here's something else you may not be realizing.  You weren't just a stay at home mum. You were an entrepreneur, a fundraiser and an active volunteer in your community.

You started four businesses while you were "just a mum". One was successful enough to make a living off of (Wee Honey Bee Childminding), one was as successful as you intended it to be (IntoBento), one scraped by but at least kept breaking even and gave you a lot of joy (TinyTalk), and the one that didn't work (Lori Borealis), you had the sense to drop early.  Ambitious! 

You trained as a breastfeeding peer helper with a national breastfeeding charity. You and your fellow peer helpers started your own local charity and did some really awesome things, including designing a campaign that the NHS of Greater Glasgow and Clyde still uses. You girls started a texting support service for breastfeeding mothers. You had annual general meetings, because you were a real non-profit. You got real speakers in to talk at your AGMs, because you were a real non-profit. You had a non-profit status bank account, because you were a real non-profit. Stop minimizing what you're doing. You and your friends were AMAZING and AMBITIOUS. Mummy brain? Not you ladies. So stop putting yourself down and thinking what you are doing is "nothing special".  Stop thinking you aren't really contributing much to society other than being a pretty good mum. I'd like to retroactively send all of you women a medal of honor. (Honour, rather.)

Um, also, don't forget you wrote and published a book?

Basically, what I'm saying is, stop putting yourself down and thinking you've "lost yourself" and you have "no ambition" and you "aren't smart".  You have always been ambitious in everything you've ever done.  Your priorities changed (and rightly so), but your drive didn't.

And I only JUST realized this very recently myself, so no fault to you for not seeing it whilst in the thick of it.

Love,

Lori (34 and still ambitious)

******

Dear Lori (31),

Your life is about to change in every way. I think you know this. I mean, obviously you know you are leaving your home in Scotland to go back to your home in Arkansas. That's going to change your life drastically. (And I should really go ahead and prep you for this - you won't be moving to Fayetteville when you get there. Scott's going to find a job in Little Rock in a matter of weeks, and you're going to live in Nowheresville for two years. I think it's best I just tell you this now.)  But things are about to change so much more.  Who you are, who you've always seen yourself as, is about to do a complete 180.  You sense this, but you aren't ready to accept it.

You're about to lose your faith.

It's going to destroy you.

I'm not gonna lie about that.

But I swear to you, it's only temporary. That darkness you feel right now is only temporary. I know there's nothing I can say to lighten the load you carry on your shoulders right now. I know there's nothing that can soften the blows you feel every time you pray and hear nothing from God.  I know those tears are going to fall and that they have to fall. Like a mother watching her child go through her first heart break, I feel powerless for you, knowing that things are going to get better but that you can't see that right now. I know this is something you have to go through to get to the other side, but it hurts me to see it and remember it for you.  So I guess all I can say is do everything you can to keep your faith alive. Pray with all your strength. Speak to anyone you trust about this. Write about it, talk about it, paint about it, run and exercise about it.  Because you need to know later that you did everything you could to hold onto that faith, and if God couldn't do the rest, well then, that's that.

The pain of silence and abandonment will pass, and when they do, you will find joy again. Joy unspeakable. Joy in the world as it is, not as it's written to be. You will find strength in yourself you never knew you had even though it was yours all along. You will find love and trust and freedom in ways you never believed could be found in a life without a god. 

But for now, there's no sense in telling you this, because there is no way you can believe it. So just keep doing what you're doing, because you're doing everything right.

I'm sorry you're going through this. Your whole life has been one as a caterpillar, and now you are being torn apart and squished and reshaped and it hurts so incredibly bad. But just wait.

Love,
Lori (34 and you would never believe what I call myself now...)

*****

Dear Lori (32),

Don't be too bummed about the Scottish referendum.  In a couple of years, there will be this thing called "Brexit"...

Love,
Lori (34 with a Scotland tattoo)

Ask An Atheist: Identity Crisis

I was asked another question on Facebook by B.  B. and I have known each other since 9th grade, so she knew me when I was a Christian. She asked:

Why do you think that being an atheist has become such a big part of your self identity?

I think this is a really valid question, one I'm especially interested in writing about. This is something I've thought long and hard on for almost two years, so I'll give these two main reasons.

1. Because my identity HAS completely changed. "My identity is in Christ." How many times have we evangelicals heard or used this phrase? For me, I used it all the time. My significance was found in Christ. My identity was in Christ. My purpose and reason for being was Christ. My whole life, especially my adult life, was centered around Christ. If I ever felt that something else was taking that place, I repented, ashamed. I was nowhere near perfect, I counted myself as one of the worst, most unworthy people to call myself a Christian, but I longed to be like Christ in all I did and all I was. I truly wanted my identity to be in him. I wanted the world to know that I was a follower of Jesus. I normally made it known very early on in a new friendship with someone that I was a Christian. I wanted to shine my light everywhere I went.

I was never asked why my faith was such a big part of my identity.

I'm not making that point to criticize the question; it is a really great, thoughtful, important question. But there is an element in the question that implies it shouldn't be. Atheism shouldn't be that important to me, even though faith absolutely can and should be.

So why has being an atheist become such a big part of my identity? Because it literally altered my entire identity. One thing as small as believing in a god or not quite literally altered my entire sense of self.

That Christian label that I'd worn for as long as I could remember was ripped off. And it left behind almost nothing. Without my faith, I didn't know who I was or who I could even be anymore. Would I become a selfish, terrible, mean, unkind person without God?  What am I, if not a follower of Christ? What is left of me worth salvaging if I don't have my faith anymore?  It wasn't until I had a moment of clarity, when I realized that I didn't have to believe in a god to be the same person I always was, that I started to rediscover myself. I realized that I still was and always had been and always could be a good person. I hadn't been the worthless, sinful, depraved person I'd believed myself to be my whole life; that was what religion had taught me. Religion had taught me I was a sinner in need of a savior; atheism taught me that I have worth, that I create my own destiny, that I am a good person because I choose to be, not because a deity saved me from my evil instincts.  "Luckily I held out long enough to see that everybody really makes their own destiny. It's a beautiful thing, it's just you and me, exactly where we belong, and there's nothing inherently wrong with us." (Quite Company)

*I fully realize that every Christian reading that will think that is a tragically arrogant, "deceived", lie-of-the-devil, heart-breaking thing to say, and no amount of arguing will convince them otherwise. I just have to accept that is what they/you will think. I thought it once too. I know.

I could no longer go around with a lingering Christian label. It wasn't enough to just rip the label off. It had to be replaced with something new. My identity had fundamentally changed. That's a big deal.

2. Because the stigma needs to end. When I finally admitted to myself I no longer believed in God, I was uncomfortable with the term "atheist". It had always been a very negative word to me, one I acquainted with loudmouth, obnoxious jerks who just want to make religious people feel stupid all the time. I tried labeling myself something less offensive: agnostic, humanist, non-religious.  But really, atheist pretty much summed it up.

As I began meeting other atheists and started experiencing life as an atheist in a very Christian society, I began to realize just how toxic the stigma on atheists is. We are the least trusted group in America. A Gallup poll showed that more Americans would vote for a Muslim or a gay person for President than an atheist. Why? What is it about simply not believing in a religion that makes us so threatening and unlikable? All the atheists I was getting to know via a Facebook group for non-believing mothers were extremely kind, thoughtful, generous, and intelligent. So how is it that the term atheist inspires such disgust?

I decided to be one small but audible voice that would speak for atheists.  We are not all disrespectful and militant. I'm aware that my embracing atheism makes many people uncomfortable. I'm not blind to that, and I do hate that it has to be that way. But does it have to be that way? Why should it make people uncomfortable? It shouldn't. If I converted to Catholicism or Mormonism, would my speaking about it cause them the same level of discomfort? Not anywhere near to the same degree. So my atheism has become a part of my identity in part to help end the stigma that comes with the word.  I can be your token atheist friend, if that's what it takes. My generation having had that "token gay friend" is actually a huge reason why LGBT rights have come as far as they have in the past few years. Knowing someone personally is often what changes people's preconceived notions. Maybe the social tide can turn a little if everyone had a token atheist friend. In another generation, maybe just knowing a friendly atheist will bring an end to the stigma.

*I fully expect some people to think, "Well, you aren't that respectful - you sort of shove your atheism down our throats." To that I'd have to ask, "Really? Do I? Or do I just talk about atheism in the same very personal way you talk about your faith?" If simply talking about one's own faith is not shoving it down my throat, then my talking about my lack of faith is not shoving it down anyone else's. If posting Christian articles or praising God on Facebook or writing blogs about how Jesus has changed your life is acceptable, then so should anything else equally non-confrontational. I'd have to challenge the person who thinks I shove my atheism down their throat to recall a time when I've insulted anyone for their faith or tried to turn them into an atheist. (Conversely, I've had plenty of reconversion attempts made on me.) I'm just sayin'. If you don't like what I say, don't read it. I won't be offended, promise.

Final thought. I do sometimes feel uncomfortable with this "identity". I recognize it is not politically or professionally astute. I sometimes worry I could lose my job. I worry about my kids being bullied at school for not going to church and having atheist parents. There is a lot to lose to being an atheist here in the Bible Belt. Quite a staggering number of people have confided in me since my "coming out" that they are closet atheists, unafraid to tell their families, friends, or even spouses, that they do not believe. Somehow that makes it all the more important to me to keep speaking up. Maybe I'll lose my job (I hope not) or my friends or even some family members (I really hope not), but if it also results in a change of opinion or attitude in a some people, then maybe at least some good would come of it. The more of us willing to come out, the more people will accept us, because they will know us.

Ask An Atheist: Pascal's Wager

I've been asked many times before, "But what if you're wrong?" I admit, if I'm wrong, and there is a god, and he is the God of the Bible, then that would really suck.

However. The chances of that are so incredibly slim, I'd be just as safe putting my faith in Ra the sun god or Aslan the lion or the angel Moroni.

Even so, to point a fine theological point on it, if the Bible is true, then the essence of this question isn't about Pascal's Wager (if you're wrong, you lose nothing; if you're right, you gain everything) but the nature of faith. In my book, I wrote a chapter addressing this very topic. Bolding is to emphasize the point here.

Pascal’s Wager Part 2:
Esau I Have Hated

My fear of hell was diminishing. It had mostly disappeared, except that every now and then, fear still momentarily struck my heart. I am literally playing with fire, I’d think. I’d get a sense that I better repent quickly just in case it all turned out to be true after all.

What I will lose if I wager wrongly! There is an eternity of suffering waiting for me should I wager against God and be wrong. What do I lose by following God and there is no God? Very little. What do I lose by not following God should there be a God? Everything. On these little occasions, I panicked about how I had played my cards, as the fear of hell crept back up on me.

Pascal’s Wager almost makes some sense, except the wager overlooks two important issues. First, it assumes that the only God worth wagering on is the Christian God, ignoring the possibility that a different religion might be the right one. Still, that issue aside, the second thing it overlooks is that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Yet faith is a gift from God, it is not of ourselves (Ephesians 2:8). Therefore, I cannot please God without faith if he does not choose to give it to me. I could wager that God was real and keep following him as I had been doing for the past three years, but I would not be saved, for anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists (Hebrews 11:6). Pascal’s Wager is useless without faith.

Anyone who believes seriously that the Bible is God's inerrant word would have to agree that "believing" in God solely on the off-chance that he is real is not true faith at all. They would also have to agree that faith cannot be faked.

But they would also have to acknowledge that faith is a gift from God - it does not come from within ourselves. To be saved one must have genuine faith, and to have genuine faith, it must be given to one by God himself. Ergo, if God does not give you faith, you cannot be saved, end of story.

Try to insert "free will" into that wherever you like, but it really can't alter the Biblical "facts". One could try to believe on one's own, but unless God grants you faith, you're up a creek without a paddle, as they say.

"You could at least try, though. God would answer a sincere request for faith." I've heard that too. I believed that once. I hoped for that outcome for three years. Oddly enough, once the innate belief in God started to diminish, God mysteriously stopped answering my sincere request for faith.

So, to conclude my thoughts on the fatal flaws Pascal's Wager, I'll give you the rest of that chapter above.

Sadly, it was fear, not love, that sporadically warned me to reconsider God. God’s love had been gone from my life for a long time. Abandonment and silence echoed in the cavern where love once dwelled. But fear could still make me draw in a sharp breath, as it sliced through my heart like a paper cut. When I paid this fear some attention, it gathered like a thundercloud inside my head and struck my conscience with forks of lightning. I asked myself, Do you really want to bet your life on this and end up languishing in excruciating damnation for your sinful pride, your worldly “wisdom”, your pitiful human understanding, for all eternity?

Fear is a powerful tool. Yet if God’s plan for restoring my faith was fear-mongering, I was even less inclined to believe he was the God of Love I once knew – or thought – him to be. If it were the love of God striking my heart, drawing me to him, there would be something in it worth carefully considering. However, the fact that only the fear remained seemed psychologically obvious. It was neither God himself, nor his Holy Spirit, calling me back, but thirty years of theological manipulation. Hell is the scariest and most effective tool for keeping the righteous in check. Heaven’s promise pales in its alluring.

The revoked love of God in my life and the dubious possibility of heaven were not enough to draw me back to faith. The fear of hell and the almost certainty of God’s wrath, however, left me quaking. With the cards of my still unfinished life lying on the table, I could still change how I placed my bets. Yet if the God of the Bible is the one true God, my bets don’t matter in the slightest. God chooses whom he loves and whom he hates. He chose Jacob but hated Esau (Malachi 1:2-3).The cards on the table were never mine to choose from.

And we call this agape.

Ask An Atheist: Where do your morals come from?

With "Ask An Atheist" day coming up (the third Thursday in April, according to the Secular Student Alliance), I'm offering to give an answer to any questions anyone might have this week about atheists. This question came from D. on Facebook:

My question. In response to statement 2 ["I have not lost my morals"]. If there is no God, where does your basis of morality come from? Why do you need to be moral other than to follow the laws of the land, and not be convicted of a crime. And where does the basis of the laws of the land come from, except from the 10 commandments which were given by God himself?

To answer this question, I must go very far back in time - approximately 40,000 - 100,000 years ago or so. The following may be hard to swallow for anyone who does not understand or accept human evolution. But if you want to know where my basis for morality comes from, you must read on.

When humans first started doing humanish things, like making tools and drawing cave paintings, we were not much different than the other animals living around us. We were, around this time, give or take a few thousand years, learning to live together in tribes and trying to create meaning and reason out of what we were experiencing and observing. We know this, because there is evidence that we were burying our dead in ceremonies. The pressure to survive was great, but our brains were developing the ability to think past survival instincts. Like many other developed mammals, we were developing characteristics that we still see today in nature - one of which was altruism.

We were beginning to understand that if we care for our young, they will grow up to be useful to our group. We were developing a tendency to pair-bond (monogamous mating). We were discovering that when you treat members of your tribe well, they won't try to kill you. We were beginning to understand that in order to survive, we must work as a team, hunting and gathering for food, and protecting each other from other bands of humans. And as survival became the tiniest bit more certain, and the constant fight to stay alive would every once in a while give way to moments of leisure, we were then able to wonder and think and notice that we felt something which would one day would be called "empathy".

While altruism and even empathy can be seen in other animals, human development of these traits was exceptional.  Through caring for our young, banding together with our tribes, and protecting our families against outside threats, relationships developed, and learning how to be better at relationships actually caused our brains to develop even further. We developed the ability to feel someone else's pain - whether it be sympathy for the cry of our offspring or the pleasure of bonding with another human or the sadness of a death within the tribe. We had no issue killing other people from other tribes, who had no relevance to us, but within our own groups, we were learning to do good to one another.

So where does the basis of our morality come from? It comes from the very empathy and altruism that brought our species alive and well into recordable history. It has become ingrained in us, it is part of our fabric, maybe even our DNA.

*Psst. If you believe humans were created by the God of the Bible, rather than evolved, you can start here, because the Bible starts here.

As our brains further developed and we began forming larger societies, we began making rules. These rules kept us alive, kept us from killing each other.  A side-effect of rule-making was increased safety and leisure. With leisure comes thinking and wondering.  We began to wonder what we are. We began to wonder why we are here.  Societies developed into cultures, and cultures developed religions.  Some societies looked at the sun, which gave both life-saving warmth and life-taking heat, which caused food to grow or could cause it to die, and those people believed the sun was the reason we are here, and they worshiped it. Other societies found other natural phenomena to be the answer for why we are here. And then some societies began thinking even more "out of the box". Perhaps there is an invisible force that put us here, and we should worship it. They called it "God".

We'd already learned that rules keep us safe, so it easily followed that those rules were actually God's rules. And if God's rules keep us safe, God must want us to be safe. We had learned that we keep our offspring and fellow tribesmen safe, because we care about them - maybe even love them - so perhaps God keeps us safe with rules because he loves us too. And so forth and so on. As we evaluated our own experiences, we personified the idea of a person-like God.

At this point, we have a basic code of morality, which consisted of basics like "don't kill people" - because killing people destroyed our chances of survival. As early as our written record can show, we had other laws and rules of morality such as "do not steal" - because stealing seemed to have bad side-effects for our society. (It often led back to that whole trying-not-to-get-killed thing.)  But we did other things that later generations would find highly immoral. We stoned people for doing bad things. We cut off people's hands for stealing. We raped and pillaged other societies in order to have their land and belongings. Because "do not steal" only really mattered within the tribe. We had no problem stealing from other tribes, because their survival meant nothing to us. So while we had a basic underlying basis of "morality", the specifics of what was considered moral was very different from what we have today. The specifics would go on to change again and again and again from generation to generation.

So, while at first we were happy mutilating, punishing, and killing people for various reasons,we continued to progress and started rethinking some of our previous behaviors. We made new laws about not raping and pillaging. We began making peace treaties with other tribes, because it actually turned out to be advantageous for both parties to do so. But if a tribe wasn't worth anything to us, we still did horrible things to them. We even wrote these things into laws. (For instance, if a tribe did not believe in the same god as you, it was okay to kill every man, woman, and child in that tribe and take all of their things.) We considered ourselves living morally.

I'm going to fast forward now out of the ancient era and into the 1700-1800s. It's easier to think of morality in real terms when we bring it into our own recent history. During this time period, we believed it was perfectly fine to steal Africans from their land and force them to work for us. We beat them, raped them, mutilated them, starved them, traded them, worked them literally to death, and felt no remorse for it. It wasn't "immoral" to us at that point. And our religions didn't stop us - in fact, our religions saw no problem with ownership of other human beings, as long as there were one or two caveats, which were conveniently ignored.  We thought ourselves quite moral and God-fearing even as we tore the flesh off other human beings.

We, however, continued to progress (slowly) and eventually, slavery was considered immoral, and we stopped owning people - at least in a literal, lawful sense. But we still refused to give those Africans we'd stolen from their homes in the first place an equal place in our society, because it wasn't advantageous to do so. Their lives were still threatened by us every single day, but we weren't concerned, because we had done the moral thing by abolishing slavery. We considered ourselves very moral people at that time.

Fast forward to today. What was considered moral only a few decades ago is now considered barbaric and completely unacceptable for an enlightened society. A few decades ago, we lynched black people. A few decades ago, we chemically castrated homosexuals. Today those practices are utterly deplorable. However, many currently still think that interracial marriages or same-sex marriages are immoral, and have no place in a "moral" society like ours.  Give us only a few more decades, though and stopping people from marrying for either of these reasons will seem as deplorable as Jim Crow seems to us now.

The bottom line is this: Morality simply is not consistent. Morality is relative. It just is. There are moral laws that we have been abiding by for as long as we have human record - do not kill, do not steal, do not lie - because they have helped ensure our survival and a peaceful and just society. But the nuances are forever changing. Whether you believe the world is billions of years old or only thousands, there is still more than enough evidence in human history to prove that moral laws are constantly changing. Even evangelical Christians today will admit that many of the Biblical laws are obsolete (mixed fabrics, anyone? Tattoos? Marrying outside your tribe? Long hair for women?).  The Ten Commandments itself is largely made not of actual moral laws but religious ones - do not serve false gods, do not put other gods before God, keep the Sabbath.  These are not universal moral codes, like do not murder and do not steal; they do not constitute what is universally agreed upon as morality. Let us not forget that all ancient societies had moral codes; Judaism was not unique in that. The Assyrians, the Hittites, the Greeks, the Egyptians, all had laws dictating what was moral and good. Even societies that did not worship gods had moral codes.

To sum up, God is not the reason we have morals. If anything, morals are the reason we have God. Our morals, as human beings, come from thousands and thousands of years worth of experience, empathy-building, and rule-abiding. Why do I not go around doing terrible things if I have no god to stop me? Because I have empathy and an understanding of cause-and-effect. I do not want to hurt other people. I do not want to hurt myself. And furthermore, as a 21st century human living in the developed world, I am so safe and so unconcerned with my personal survival that I get to spend copious amounts of time thinking and wondering and imagining what a world without rules and empathy would look like, and I do not want any part of a world like that.

I do not need a god-figure to scare me out of doing evil. I have figured out, thanks to the billions of humans before me, that doing good is far better for me, my loved ones, and my society than doing harm. The specifics of my morals, however, may always change - and I certainly hope they do, for the better.

Challenge Accepted! 2016 January and February Books

I had no intentions this year of doing the Reading Challenge again. I wanted to read whatever I wanted to read and not be beholden to a list.

But when I realized that the seven books I've read so far this year all check off a category in the 2016 list, I thought, "Eh, what the heck." We'll try the Reading Challenge again. The difference being that this time, it's all about balance, and if I go off-list or fudge a little or if I don't finish, I won't care. I'm not going to be a purist like last time, nor am I going to feel the same deep and personal commitment to this project.

So. Here we go.

January Books:

A Queer And Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein (An autobiography)

(Memoir, autobiography - what's the difference?)

"The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today."

How could I read that tagline and NOT read this book?

I gotta be honest; this wasn't an easy book to read, nor is it for the faint of heart (or stomach). She writes in shocking, graphic detail about BDSM, masturbation, and sex, both hetero- and homosexual. However, Bornstein's story is fascinating and sad, covering her conversion and time spent in Scientology as well as her transition to living as a woman. She talks about being separated from her children, because she has been declared an SP ("Suppressive Person", a danger to Scientology) and a pervert by the Church, and she discusses her painful relationship with her family who had a difficult time accepting her as a woman. This book is very raw, graphic, and blunt. I'm glad I read it, but it is definitely going on the no-kids shelf until they are all a fair bit older!

(DISCLAIMER.  Let me be clear, by the way, since I'm not one for censorship:  What makes it un-kid-friendly is not the fact that she is a transwoman. My kids are aware of trans issues and are being constantly taught that it's who a person is inside that matters. It is the graphic descriptions of BDSM and masturbation, among other things, that make this inappropriate for kids.)

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini (A book written by a celebrity)

Fascinated by Kate Bornstein's experience with Scientology, I next read the much talked about book by actress Leah Remini telling her story of her life in Scientology. Remini's mother joined the CoS when Remini was a young child, and Remini spent most of her life in the Church, even joining the Sea Org, the CoS clergy, which is a paramilitary organization.  Remini tells us of the conditions she lived in, the work she was required to do, and the way in which the Church manages to brainwash its members into total submission, through encouraged tattling (Knowledge Reports), regular auditing (sort of like counseling with an E-meter), and ostracism when doing something "out-ethics" or "out-PR".  She tells of her rise to stardom and her journey up the Bridge to Total Freedom, finally all culminating with being ostracized right out of the Church due to an upset at Tom Cruise's wedding. This book is truly fascinating and infuriating. There is nothing innocent about Scientology, especially when it comes to how it treats children, particularly Sea Org children. If you'd like some light reading on Scientology with a fun dose of celebrity gossip, I recommend this book.

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (A self-help book)

Self-helpish.

Scott bought me this for Christmas. We both read Freakonomics a few years ago and liked it. This one is similar but with a different slant. It encourages readers to think outside the box, asking questions that don't seem relevant or intuitive from the outset but may be the questions that hold the answers that elude us.  Some of the stories were already told in Freakonomics which was kind of annoying, but it was still an intersting read. The idea of asking unusual questions to reach new solutions to old problems is probably something I'll carry with me, particularly in the workforce. 


February Books:

Bossypants by Tina Fey (A book written by a comedian)

This was our February book club choice. I thought it was pretty funny, most of it. I disagreed with some of the things she said - about Photoshop not actually affecting how girls view their own bodies, for instance - but you know, I enjoyed it. Tina Fey is funny. Let it be known: Girls are funny.

My biggest complaint was how all over the place the book was. It just kind of jumped all around, making it kind of hard for me to sum it up here. If you asked me what it was about, my answer would be... "Lots of stuff, said with jokes."

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (A book that's more than 600 pages)

560 pages is  CLOSE ENOUGH. It's not that I can't or won't read anything longer, it's that I don't want to commit myself to do so.  I have a lot of books I'd like to read, and a 600 page book takes up too much time. I'm balancing. So sue me. (If you are Donald Trump, you probably will at least threaten to.)

Okay, so the book. I have wanted to read this for ages, being a huge fan of the musical. The musical is so witty and so cute and so fun. I love how it twists the Wizard of Oz story like a perfect green pretzel.

The book? Not so much.

I'd maybe say it's still witty, but cute and fun? Not really. It's very dark. Humorous, but dark. It's also far more convoluted than the musical. It's not as perfectly twisted as the musical, but it's certainly still twisted. If I could judge the book on its own merits in its own right, I'd say I liked it. I did, I really did. But it wasn't what I thought I'd be reading. There was no Kristin Chenoweth or Idina Menzel. No "Popular". But there was plenty of cruelty, salaciousness, and death.  

I liked it. In its own way.

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (A book with a blue cover)

This book has been built up so much, I think, that I was a little let down. I haven't seen the film yet; I've been waiting to read the book. I don't mean to say I didn't like the book, because I did. But it wasn't the tearjerker, heartbreaker I expected it to be. I called the ending pretty much from the start, so I wasn't surprised. Therefore, I wasn't wiping away tears. Sad story anyway, and a good story. I'd maybe liked it more if the hype hadn't been so great. Sorry, fans.

I do plan to watch the movie now.

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill with Lisa Pulitzer (A New York Times bestseller)

I may have developed a serious fascination with Scientology. I think Scott is worried.

This is my third escape-from-Scientology book I've read. What makes this one so interesting is that Jenna Miscavige Hill is David Miscavige's niece - David Miscavige being the current leader ("Chairman of the Board" or COB) of the Church. She was a third generation Scientologist, raised from birth as a Scientologist. Her mother was a prominent executive in the Sea Org and her father was a high up Sea Org member too.

Hill describes her life being virtually separated from her parents from the age of 2, seeing her parents on average once a week until she was 12, then only a small handful of times (3-5) after that until adulthood.  She shares her experience growing up at the Ranch, basically a child labor camp, where she signed a billion year contract with the Sea Org. Following that, she moved to the Flag base in Clearwater, FL, where she was inducted as an extremely young member of the Sea Org, despite not being prepared via the necessary courses.  She tells of all the interrogation she endured when her family members stepped out of Scientology lines, even though she was still basically a child. Her whole story borders on disbelief; one wonders how this organization has not been shut down already for its cruelty to children.

If you want to read a serious book about life inside Scientology, this is the place to start. Hill is relatable, likable, and a little bit tragic. Ultimately, though, she is a survivor, a brave young woman unafraid to tell her story without being bullied by the multi-million (multi-billion?) dollar organization she grew up in - even if it means facing off with the very top man himself, her uncle.

Join the 2016 Reading Challenge and tell me what you're reading!

POPSUGAR