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.

Coming Clean: An Unconventional Book Review of a Christian Book By a Non-Christian Reader

Dear Readers,

This is a little early. Normally I save my book reviews for the Reading Challenge monthly round-up, but I feel this particular book deserves its own post. Excerpted from the draft of the upcoming November book reviews, I bring you less of a book review and more of a personal response to Coming Clean.


Coming Clean by Seth Haines (A book that scares you)

Okay. So I'm really having to stretch here. Really. I've struggled with which book to read for this category all year. I don't want to read anything scary. Why would I do that to myself? I haven't enjoyed scaring myself since I was a teenager. I tried to pick up some truly scary books and had to put them down. I'm all for expanding my horizons, but I'm simply not the least bit interested in reading something scary.

So I'm doing a little creative interpretation.

This book wasn't one that scared me, but the thought of reading it did fill me with something close to dread. Maybe it was a little scary in that I wasn't sure I wanted to read it. Yet, I did want to read it, knowing what I know of the background.

I went to college with Seth's wife Amber (also an author). We were in multiple creative writing classes together. I've studied for tests and eaten meals in her house. I've met Seth, even though it was a long time ago. During the time I was in Scotland, I kept up with Amber's blog, so I remember a lot of this happening (from Amber's point of view). Their infant son was failing to thrive, and I wept with them from a million miles away, I prayed for her baby boy who was slipping away. When I heard that Seth had written this memoir - a diary of his first ninety days of sobriety from alcohol - I wanted to read it. I wanted to know his side.

But I also dreaded reading it, and I couldn't figure out why.

I knew I wasn't looking forward to the God slant of it all. Christianese still rubs me the wrong way. But why would that fill me with dread? Was I worried that this book might wrinkle the bedclothes of my finally comfortable atheism? Was I worried that after all this time, God would speak to me? (Too little, too late?) Was I afraid the fear of hell might rise up within me again, threatening me with its red flames and pitchforks, the laughter of Satan as his claws close around my wrists, and the crossed arms of God looking down, head shaking but not moving to rescue me?

As I started reading the book, several realizations took place. The first explanation for my dread came up almost immediately.  It was "too soon". I'm not as far removed from Christianity as I sometimes think I am. Sometimes, it's just too much, too soon, like a horrible break up. You think you're over it until you re-read your old love letters. I'm not far enough away from it yet to give it the disconnected but respectful deference I can give to other religions. If it were a book by a Muslim or a Jew or even a Mormon, I'd be okay. But this was too close to an almost-healed wound that appears scarred over on the surface but is still tender when pressed.

Very early in, I pinpointed another source of my dread. The fear of jealousy. The prickling feeling of "this guy experienced the silence of God, yet by the end of this book, I'm willing to bet God makes himself known to him." Would this book be a re-visitation of the old Why him and not me? Might there be a jealousy lingering deep down that this guy's faith did not get shaken beyond its breaking point? (To it, yes. But not beyond.)

Despite all these reservations I read the entire book and shared a few tears with him as one who's felt similar darkness. I know the silence of God. I know the doubt, the disillusionment, the pain, the need to numb. I've met the same cast of characters - played by different actors but reading from the same script - the "faith-healers" who make promises they can't keep, the churchgoers who place the fault on your faith (or lack thereof), the trite and glib assertions of "sovereignty" and "God's glory" and "never give you more than you can bear". I know the same theologies that grind against simple faith like tectonic plates and the systematic studies that box up life's complexities (sufferings, dichotomies, mysteries) with pretty Scriptural exegesis ribbons.

We are not that different, this Christian writer and this atheist writer. Not that different at all.

I'll admit here that nestled up with the potential jealousy and the dread and the still-tender wounds was a second-guessing, a head cocked to the other side, a furrowed brow. What I really didn't expect to get from this book was a genuine reconsideration of my own experience. Had I given up too soon? Did I commit the ultimate fail - the Give-Up that scores an F and detention in hell, instead of the Keep Going Despite Everything Rational that warrants an A and heavenly applause?

I wondered that with utmost sincerity - and again, dread. I've been through this before. I've gone there. I've questioned all these things to death and back. Is there something to this, after all this time?

I kept reading. I kept wondering. I questioned my (un)faith along with him questioning his (unsure)faith. The story went on, through the first month, second month, third month of his abstinence from alcohol and his doubt and his desperation to hear God and the silence and the anger and the needing to forgive and the "cave" as he called it where all the darkness hides, and I just couldn't help but think:  Why?

If there is a God and he is this God of the Bible, why on earth does he constantly make faith in him so bloody difficult? When Sunday School tells you to "just believe" and you will be saved, and Gospel preachers say, "you only need faith to be saved" and even the theologians insist "it is by grace and nothing of yourselves", then why would God make faith so impossible to achieve? If it's this gift that only God can give, why does he give it so freely to children and then withhold it so tightly from adults?

Why would he make this simple believing such an impossible mountain to climb, one we have to write books about to even remotely comprehend?

What good does it do to make climbing the mountain of faith so utterly difficult that so many of us eventually lose our grip and crash to the rocks below? What is the truth then, that it is by faith we are saved but by surmounting the insurmountable (the silence of God, the problem of pain, the inconsistencies of Scripture) that we finish the race, make the grade? Does that mean we must do more than just believe to be saved, that there is something we must do of ourselves - a desperate striving, perhaps, while a silent God stands back and observes, clipboard and checklist in hand?

I applaud Seth's journey, and I applaud his resolution. I truly mean that. I loved this book; I loved his writing style, his beautiful imagery, his perfect rendering of the ache of the faith crisis. If I'd read this book two or three years ago, would it have changed the direction of my journey? Maybe, maybe not. My dilemma came from the inconsistencies of Scripture, his from the problem of pain. Our dilemmas might not have crossed paths closely enough for his to affect mine. His denoument, though, is beautiful and enlightening, and I am so happy for him that his faith did not ultimately waiver, and that it is getting him through his struggle with alcohol.

I fear that might come across as patronizing, coming from one who decided that faith is an illusion and God a figment of our imagination. How do I explain that my joy for him is not patronizing at all but genuine?

For I believe he is on the right path. I also believe I am on the right path. I believe all of us who are doing our utmost to find truth and goodness and light and love in this brokenest of worlds are on the right path. I'd have dismissed that kind of talk once as highly new-agey and relativistic; I'd have called myself "deceived" with a sunken heart and a sorrowful sigh. I feel almost Buddhist saying it now. Om. 

I truly mean it though. I never rooted for atheism while reading this story. I hoped the truth would set him free. And unexpectedly with each turn of the page, as he baked bread to satisfy the hunger of his readers' doubts, tiny crumbs of respectful deference dropped onto my plate of cynicism towards Christianity. While the loaf in the end was not for me, the crumbs have given me a warm reminder of what it tasted like to live off that bread.

I remember that a person who lives off that bread is not delusional, any more than a person who does not live off it is deceived.

We are all on the same path.  We are all approaching truth, just from different angles. Call it Eastern and new-agey, call it whatever you want, but this is the truth that I found - most surprisingly - in this book.

It is a little scary. Going from an all-or-nothing faith (or unfaith) to something left of center is new to me. It's easy to say "you're wrong and I'm right"; to say "we all have fingers touching on the truth here" is harder and often more easily dismissed by everyone from all sides.

I made a good choice on a book that scared me. It did wrinkle the bedclothes of comfortable atheism, it did briefly rekindle the fear of hellfire, it did spark a moment or two of jealousy, it did reopen the wounds of once perceived silence and abandonment. In the end, however, after tearing through so many layers of doubt and pain and forgiveness and disappointment alongside the author, I kept returning to the conclusion that if God were real - and loving - he wouldn't make it next to impossible to believe in him. He wouldn't make it so difficult that only a select few - the strongest of the strong, the most emotionally intelligent - make it to the end. For people like Seth have emotional intelligence overflowing in buckets, but it's not only people like Seth whose sons fail to thrive or who suffer the silence of God or who question the childhood experiences of faith. Not everyone has the depth of introspection required to dig far enough into their own caves of darkness to find that one tiny seed of doubt and to root it out like a deeply embedded wart. "Childlike faith" shouldn't take a PhD to achieve. Faith shouldn't require books upon books to explain.

However. Just because it is not the path I am on does not mean it is the wrong path. There are many trails to the top of the mountain. To everyone trying to get there, I recommend exploring all of them. Including Seth's.


Love,
an atheist author and reader


P.S. Yes, I capitalize the G in God, just as I do the A in Allah or the Z in Zeus. This is grammatically correct, religiously respectful, and also incurably habitual.

The Four Gift Rule

There's a meme going around about buying only four presents for your kids at Christmas: Something to wear, something to read, something they want and something they need.

My first response to this meme was, "Great. Another source of mompetition." I could imagine moms boasting about how little they spend on their kids at Christmas, how unmaterialistic their families are, how their kids don't EXPECT tons of presents like all the other spoiled brats in the Western Hemisphere.

I also recognized how this could be a great system for families on a budget or for families who genuinely and un-boastfully do practice simplicity and minimalism.

But it still annoyed me.

I even saw one comment that added to the mompetition wars that flaunted how incredibly goodly (and godly) she in particular is:  "We actually add one more category - something spiritual." I could practically hear the slot machine ding-ding-ding as she won that round of supermoming the rest of her opponents.

However.

After my initial annoyance, I started thinking about the basic concept of the meme, and I kind of have to admit - I didn't hate it. In a self-loathing kind of way, I actually sort of liked it. I started thinking a lot about it and dang it, it wasn't a bad idea at all.

And even more self-loathingly, I also didn't hate the concept, albeit fairly pretentious, of "something spiritual". In fact - as I control the gagging - I was a little inspired.

Ugh. I know.

But true.

Since losing all faith in a supreme being, I have definitely "shut down" any spirituality that might have been lurking. For me, religion and spirituality have always been all or nothing. As an evangelical Christian, I believed in One God, One Jesus, One Faith (One Baptism, etc). It was all or nothing. You either believe whole-heartedly that Jesus is the only way to salvation or you are lost. (Hellbound.) God isn't interested in lukewarm believers! He'd rather you be hot or cold.  (Revelation 3:16 - "So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." ESV) Evangelicalism leaves no room for wishy-washy, fluffy-wuffy, when-it's-convenient faith. So when I went from being hot (a devout follower of Christ), I bypassed the lukewarm and went straight to cold. None of that "I'm spiritual but not religious" mumbo-jumbo could suffice for me.

You're either hot or cold. It's all or nothing. You're one or the other. That's how I was brought up. I became the other. The cold. The nothing.

And truth be told, I'm cool with that. ("Cold" with that, perhaps?) I don't really miss "spirituality". I don't really feel I need it. Right now anyway. I will concede that perhaps that may change in the future.  A belief in a god is unlikely, but a yearning for spirituality, I suppose is within the realm of possibility. Just not any time soon.

My friend Devon asked me about this. If instead of settling into a sort of "liberal" Christianity, one that perhaps doesn't believe in hell or who accepts gays, I retaliated against my faith and went as far to the other extreme as possible. In answer to that, yes. Probably. Christianity has always been all or nothing for me. If one takes the Scriptures literally, those two are the only options. To take Scripture non-literally seems to devalue and discredit the whole thing. (Where does the literal end and the metaphorical begin? At creation? At the virgin birth? At Christ's diety?)  Perhaps if I'd never been so hot about my faith, I might have settled for lukewarm. But that's not really a viable option. (And it hardly matters at this point when I have zero belief in any god anymore anyway.)

But back to Christmas presents. (I kind of chased after a rabbit there for a minute.)

While I personally do not feel a pressing need to reconnect with my spiritual side, that does not mean my kids should be deprived of it. Perhaps "something spiritual" isn't all that pretentious after all.

(No. It's still pretentious.)

The question then is, what is "spiritual"?

If you do a quick Google search for "spiritual", the first several pages gives you all kinds of Christian links. A search for "spiritual gifts", once you sort out the quizzes to find out if you are discerning or a peacemaker, brings up hundreds of Bible retailers, Precious Moments figurines, inspirational Bible verse calendars, Christian jewelry, and home decor crosses.

I just have a hard time understanding what decorative crosses and Precious Moments actually do to bolster one's spirituality.

Spirituality has been very much equated with Christianity in the West, and to buy someone a spiritual gift is basically synonymous with kitschy ornaments and wall hangings that have some sort of vague Biblical reference. Even when I was a Christian, I wanted to know exactly how a pack of Testamints was going to do anything to improve my life other than promise me fresher breath. (In fact, those sort of things deeply offended me, as they should any devout believer. Chocolate crosses at Easter? Seriously?!)

To me, spirituality is about connecting with ones deepest self or connecting with nature or the universe or even a supreme being. If I want to give my kids an opportunity to connect with their spirituality (whether I believe in such a thing or not), I need to first pinpoint what that even looks like.

Choosing something to wear, something to read, something they want and something they need is easy.  A new outfit, a new book (or several - I'm not committed to just four gifts), a glance at their letters to Santa, and new packs of underwear doesn't take a whole lot of contemplation. But something spiritual requires a lot more thought. A lot more introspection too.

What would I consider spiritual? Putting aside my own skepticism, I have to wonder what I think would allow them to connect with themselves or with nature or with the universe or with a supreme being.

Not being a super spiritual person now, that's hard.

But I can think of a few things that could open one up to spirituality.

Art (and the opportunity to create art)
Music (and the opportunity to create music)
Gardening
Nature walks and hikes
A telescope (for exploring the stars and planets)
Poetry
Meditation

Admittedly, packing "poetry" or "meditation" into a cardboard box and wrapping it in festive paper isn't really very practical. And trying to excite a six year old into spiritual rapture with a Mozart sonata or the works of John Donne would probably fail miserably.

But all children can start exploring spirituality with creation. Creating their own art, their own poetry, their own music, their own homegrown nature.

The tools for creation - paints, paper, an instrument - are things one can wrap up and put under the tree. These are a "something spiritual" that can be given to children as a holiday gift. And if choosing something that relates to a supreme being is important to you as well, encouraging your children to use these tools as a means of worship must be more spiritually satisfying to them than buying a white and pink Bible (that they are too young to read) or a gold cross necklace that is simply worn as an accessory.

I mean, if we're going to be so pretentious as to add a "something spiritual" to our list of Christmas presents, let's go all out then, shall we?

READERS: What do YOU consider spirituality to consist of, and what would a "something spiritual" look like under your Christmas tree?

No Fear In Love

Once upon a time, my Papaw and Mamaw took me to their Assembly of God church’s production of Heaven’s Gates Hell’s Flames©. This is a play that Christian production companies take on tour to churches all over the world, using the members of the local congregations as the actors, which tells the stories of various people in their last moments of life and their subsequent first moments of eternity. Will they end up at Heaven’s Gates or will they succumb to Hell’s Flames?

The good people, and perhaps one bad person who at the end of his life begged for salvation, all met a meek, white-robbed, shaggy- haired Jesus who graciously and lovingly drew them to the shining bright light on Stage Left where they would spend eternity in peace, comfort and eternal bliss. The bad people, however, and maybe one person who “thought” he was good, were dragged kicking and screaming by demons to the red satin streamers flapping onto the stage by the fan of the flickering red lights of Hell’s Flames, Stage Right. The moral of the story: You never know when your last moment will be (car crash, falling to your death from work scaffolding, gunshot, or if you’re simply lucky, old age), so get prepared now. Ask Jesus into your heart now (there will be an altar call at the end of this production to assist you as you make your lifelong commitment now) or risk dying on the way home and being dragged to your eternal doom by the scariest red Spandex-wearing, black goatee-sporting Satan you could ever imagine.

At the end of that production, when the pastor asked the non-believers in the crowd to raise their hands to be saved – and requested the rest of the audience bow their heads so they wouldn’t see whose hands were raised – I nervously lifted my hand. I had already asked Jesus into my heart a couple of times before, but now I had to be sure, doubly sure, triply sure that I was saved, just in case. I did not want to be dragged Stage Right. I was terrified of being dragged Stage Right, for all of forever, never to be released. My Mamaw next to me gently tugged my arm back down. I was so confused. Was she ashamed that I wasn’t already saved? I was afraid of disappointing her so I put my hand down and stayed in my seat. I remembered that I could just as easily get saved from my seat as from the altar, so there in my chair, I begged God to please save me from going to hell, but I was still afraid that by not actually getting out of my seat and going forward, that my pride had kept me from actually being heard by God.

I was eight years old.

Image courtesy of Photorack.net

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18, NIV) This is what we are taught. We are told that it is God’s love that draws us to him, not fear. Yet at the very end of it all, the threat of hell dangles ahead of us, always warning us, always keeping us in check. When we doubt our faith, when we doubt God, when we are tempted to do wrong or go our own way, images of hell flicker in our minds. Eternal separation from God, misery, agony, death that never lets you die, the arrogant, maniacal laughter of Satan – though he too is burning – drives us from taking steps too far from God. The closer we tiptoe to the edge, the more real hell becomes. The flames lick our feet, the smoke singes our hair, and we run full force back into the arms of Jesus. Once we are there, we claim it was Jesus’ love that brought us back, but really, it was the proximity to hell that drove us home.

Fear is a motivator. Parents, teachers, police officers, judges and madmen use it all the time.

Do that again and you’ll get a spanking.
Study harder or you will fail.
Break the law and you will go to prison.
Use protection or you will get pregnant or an STD.
If you ever turn gay, boy, I will beat your ass.
Scream, bitch, and I’ll kill you.

Consequences are directly linked to fear, for better or for worse, and we use consequences and fear constantly to assure cooperation. Some consequences are logical, natural consequences: throw that toy out of anger and it will break, rob that liquor store and you will get arrested, cheat on your spouse and you could lose your marriage. Others, however, are illogical and unnatural: hit your sister and you will get spanked (e.g., hit by me), forget your homework once and fail the class, talk back to an officer and get shot. Fear is a factor anytime consequences are considered, and some fear is helpful in making positive decisions. But when fear is taken to an unnatural extreme, it can be abused as manipulation.

I know already what the Christian wants to say: “But hell IS a natural, real consequence, and the worst consequence, and it would be wrong of us not to warn you!” Putting aside, for just a moment, the fact that there is no actual evidence that hell is a real, natural consequence other than an ancient book sort of, kind of, if you read it a certain way, says so, I have to wonder just what kind of all loving, Heavenly Father would actually choose eternal torture as a reasonable punishment.

Parents discipline their kids in various ways. Time-outs, loss of privileges, rectification, smacks. The purpose of discipline is supposed to be character building. We teach children about natural consequences so they will understand how to make better decisions in the future. We explain right from wrong. We try to show them how wrong decisions affect and hurt others, and why right decisions are always right, even when they are hard. We fill our box of parenting tools with the tools we believe will be best suited to these purposes. In general, we all try to do our best to reach the same common goal of bringing up children who are good. This is what God the Father is supposed to be doing too. Teaching us lessons that will make us stronger, better, more righteous people.

When we hear of parents who have beat their children to a pulp or who have kicked their children onto the streets, very few of us agree these parents have done right. A boy who is beaten by his father for being gay or the girl who is kicked out on the streets for getting pregnant are examples to us all of how not to parent our kids. Yet even in the worst possible way, those parents are in some dim, misguided, heartless way trying to teach their kids a lesson. Trying to “improve” them, in most cruel and irrational ways. These are what we call “bad parents”. Yet when we look at hell, we see something crueller than even that.

We see a loving Heavenly Father who gives his children hardships to strengthen them, who allows horrible things to happen to them to bring them even closer to him. Abusive relationship parallels aside, the most innocent and well-intentioned view of this is that God just wants us to be the best we can be, making us more like his Son Jesus, which is the goal. But that is only one side of him. The other side looks at those who are not his children (even though they are his creation) with total disregard, or worse, with vengeance. He gives salvation freely but not to these people. And for his creation that he disregarded, he has a plan for ultimate punishment – eternal torture in a fiery furnace of misery, agony, complete separation from all good things like love and companionship and holiness, forever and ever and ever with no chance for redemption. No chance of redemption. No chance to learn from their mistakes and become better.

Even the worst parent who beats his child does it with some kind of sick belief it will do the child some good.

Unless God the Father is like the father who beats his child for his own sick pleasure and nothing else, God is no Father at all. The God of the Bible that Christians taut as all-loving, who Christians insist to your face loves you has designed a place for you where you will suffer for eternity for absolutely no reason other than not believing in him. He withholds his grace from you (remember, faith is a gift that only God can give) and will punish you for it. Unless you want to spend your eternal afterlife in this miserable place, you better get yourself right with this all-loving, all-compassionate Heavenly Father who has the power to make you burn. Fear of hell is the ultimate motivator.


A few weeks ago I went back to see a production of Heaven’s Gates Hell’s Flames©; I wanted to know if it was really as frightening as I remembered. It was. Everything was exactly as I remembered it, except Satan wasn’t wearing red Spandex as he did in my mind’s eye, but instead a black cloak, a menacing white and black mask with evil facial features and had reverb in his loud, booming voice. Hell was still Stage Right, with smoke and satin flames and flickering red lights. He still dragged both bad and good (though all of course always pre-warned, because that’s how the world really works) people into his lair, begging and screaming their bloodcurdling pleas for forgiveness all too late. Even as a thirty-something year old post-Christian, I watched in horror, as my chest tightened with memories of that childhood terror, the childhood dreams of demons dragging me to hell, the fear I was never really saved and would one day die to hear my supposed Savior shout, “Depart from me, I never knew you!” Unchecked, I myself would’ve been swayed by the naked fear it instilled in me; that primal fear of hell may never go away.

It was a sad realization. The trauma we go through as children will always be with us. It will always be there, hidden in somewhere in our psyches, long after rationalization and logic take over our conscious thoughts.

There were several children in the audience, some who looked too young to even be in school. To their credit, the production staff did warn at the start that the program was not suitable for children under ten and encouraged parents to send their kids to a children’s program located elsewhere in the building. Many kids went to that, but many stayed. I wondered how many parents who kept their kids with them had actually seen the play themselves previously. I wondered if they had, if they would still insist on keeping their children in to watch teen suicides, domestic violence, murders, car and plane crashes, school shootings and of course the Devil Himself unfold right before their baby eyes.

My heart ached when I saw a tiny little girl, no older than six, lift her own skinny arm at the altar call at the end, seeing myself in her tiny blond bob, seeing her future before her, one of fear, even if also mixed with love. Fear will be with her as she grows into a woman.

After the final scene, where a screaming unsaved mother is dragged away from her screaming, begging Christian teenage daughter by the billowy, echoey hooded Satan and his demons at the gates of heaven, and the girl is hugged by Jesus then sent on her own to enter the pearly gates looking forlorn but okay, the production director came on stage and began the obligatory altar call. At first, he asked that all would bow their heads and close their eyes, just as the director did twenty-five years ago. He asked that anyone who wanted to invite Jesus into their lives slip a hand in the air. He then asked them to stand, and anyone else who was too afraid to lift their hands the first time to also stand. Then he requested that all the backslidden Christians also stand. Even with my head bowed, I could sense all the bodies around me standing. He then invited them to come forward to the altar at the front. Bodies filed past me, many crying, many looking guilt-ridden, a few looking relieved. As the director kept insisting there were more backsliders who hadn’t yet come forward, and more “backsliders” filed past me to the front, I felt the same familiar rage build inside of me. These are good people! You are all good people! I wanted to scream. I was burdened and angry at the guilt heaped upon guilt being laid on thick on all the spiritual masochists in the room – and all the normal people too – who were all searching their hearts and determining that he – no, God – was speaking to them. I waited. I wanted to stay to the end if I could.

Then he said, “Christians, I want you to turn to the person next to you, even if you don’t know them. Maybe put your arm around them. I want you to ask them, ‘Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?’"

I couldn’t take any more.

Before the sweet looking teenager next to me whose friend had just gone forward could turn to me, I turned to the aisle and marched not forward to the altar but backwards to the back of the room and out the back door. Eyes followed me, but I did not care. I had no intention of making a scene, but I’d seen and heard enough. Frustrated, I knew that many people interpreted that in their own Christianese as me hardening my heart to the Spirit, but it was far from being that. It was like having to leave a scene of abuse that you have no way of stopping. Like having to walk away from something that is so wrong and out of your control that you cannot bear witnessing it any longer. Like turning your head away from a car crash on the freeway instead of rubbernecking. I had seen enough of my past and these strangers’ futures to watch any longer. The anger bubbling up inside me was too explosive. I’m afraid of what I would’ve said to that sweet teen next to me. Afraid of what would have come out of my mouth. My purpose in life is not to insult other people’s sincerely held faiths. But it is also not my purpose to condone psychological abuse.

Luckily no one followed me outside, though I was worried someone might.


Reflecting later that night, one more sad realization struck me. Fear is the overarching theme of this play. The scenes of people going to hell dominate not only my recollections of last night, but my memories of the play from twenty-five years ago. I remembered so distinctly the damned being dragged to hell Stage Right. But how is it that I did not remember that the saved walked up a huge flight of stairs center stage to enter heaven through a shiny curtain at the top where they were greeted by Jesus? I realized, I only concluded that the Christians went to heaven Stage Left because actually, I couldn’t remember at all what happened to the saved. That was never the point of the play. How did I recall every detail of hell in the wings twenty-five years later but forgot that the entire stage was decorated in gold and silver, with sparkling steps running up the center, surrounded by angels who stood on stage the entire time, with a humble Jesus waiting at top, arms outstretched?

Jesus is not the point of this play, that’s why.

Jesus never speaks a word. Not one word throughout the whole production. He never makes a single active motion aside from hugs to the people who climb the steps towards him. In only one scene does he seem to intervene in a situation, the one in which a troubled teen commits (accidental) suicide. Both Jesus and Satan approach her silently, then Satan flees when she calls out to Christ. Even then, Jesus only stands there smiling gently. He does not actually do anything for her until she is in heaven and he silently wipes his hand across her arm, removing the scars from years of cutting, before sending her through the curtain.

Conversely, Satan has lots to say. In his booming, echoing voice, he taunts the sinners, laughs at the arrogant fools who thought being a good person was good enough, and then addresses the audience with one-liners about how he loves to watch anger CONSUME people’s hearts and how pornography is his SPECIALTY. Then he flaps back to hell with guffaws that echo through the room after blackout.

Jesus is entirely forgettable. I do not recall anything that Jesus did twenty-five years ago on that stage. But Satan was everything I remembered. It could have been the same actor, the memories are so exact.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Ashes Of Yesteryear

February 26, 2006
I want to observe these symbolic practices because I need help. I am so fallen and so far from God and the queen of All Things Hypocritical. I want to repent. I want to contemplate my humanity and be humbled – humiliated even! I think so often of how righteous I am, how good my theology is, how wise I am – I am a fool! I am filthy, my theology is nothing, and I don’t love. Yet I am forgiven. I am loved by God. I am counted righteous by Jesus blood. What a reason to celebrate!

February 19, 2007
Looking at my daughter, it's hard to see anything beyond a perfect, innocent being. But the truth is, she isn't perfect and innocent. Though she's done no right or wrong of own, she is still born into sin and with a sinful nature. She is the daughter of Eve. It's hard to look at such a beautiful person and acknowledge that she is impure and deserves no good but by the grace of God. It seems morbid and nasty to imagine that cross of ashes placed on her forehead as well, but the truth still remains: she, like all of us, is dust and to dust will return.

February 24, 2009
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. The last year or two I felt too busy to think much on Lent. That hasn't changed this year except I feel a real burden to do so. To repent of my busyness and lack of time spent with the Lord. I don't know how I'll do it. I don't know how a mother stays on top of everything earthly and material as well as things eternal. Is it just a matter of being near God, in His presence, or is there more? Should I wake up even earlier to pray and read Scripture? And if so, how do I do that without waking up the baby and then spending that time feeding her back to sleep?

March 8, 2011
May this season of Lent be not one of mere dieting and exercising self-control, nor one of empty religiosity, but one of heart-felt contrition and repentance. God, please mould me into your image. I don't know if I even resemble you at all anymore.

*********

February 17, 2015
Out of the ashes rises the phoenix. This year, as we enter the season of Lent, I enter it with a light heart, with freedom from guilt (masquerading as conviction) and self-degradation. I enter it like a soft spring breeze pirouetting through the trees and over the tall grass, bending the dandelions with fingertips, splashing in the giggling streams, joyful to have this gift of life returned to me while I'm still so young, young enough to enjoy the splendor of nature, the wonder of the cosmos, and the sweetness of my family and friends. Life is good. My soul is still.

The Origins of Christianity and the Early Church: Books by Bart Ehrman

You are officially a 'grown-up' when you start preferring news radio over music. Back in Scotland, BBC Radio 4 became my station of choice. I enjoyed Book of the Week and Woman's Hour and the occasional drama series. I liked keeping up with world news through radio. Now that I'm in the US, I am an avid NPR listener, who makes an effort to catch Science Friday, and will sit in the car to finish hearing the discussions on The Takeaway and All Things Considered and the Diane Rehm Show.

Just before Easter this year, I heard an interview on Fresh Air with historian Bart Ehrman on his latest book, How Jesus Became God. It was a fascinating interview, which piqued my interest in early Christian history.

As an evangelical, I always felt a bit hazy on early church history. I tried to learn more about it, about what the earliest Christians were like and believed, but finding useful information seemed difficult. I couldn't find very much beyond legend in Christian media, and secular historians seemed hell-bent on destroying any evidence of legitimacy. Aside from the Acts in the Bible, I didn't really know much at all about early Christianity or how the Bible was put together.

I remember sharing this concern with a pastor friend of mine. I wanted to know how the Bible as we know it today became the canon, and why it happened so late after Jesus' life. I knew it was roughly the fourth century, but I was hazy on who and how. To be honest, it really bothered me that a bunch of Roman Catholics (pre-Martin Luther, which meant to my Protestant mind, a very dubious group of church leaders indeed) seemingly sat down and picked and chose which books "fit" and which ones didn't. I could believe that the Holy Spirit directed them to decide which to choose, but I also could conceive of men "misinterpreting" the Holy Spirit and making mistakes. My pastor friend gave me a book he assured me would help me understand how the books of the Bible were chosen.

I read a chapter of the book and put it down. It made no sense to me, was overly academic and really wasn't assuaging my doubts. From then on, I just sort of allowed myself to forget about it. I allowed it to be one of the few intellectual things I'd simply not pursue and let faith in past knowledge and expertise reign. I wasn't one to do that generally; I like to understand how things work and how things came to be and form my own opinions. But this subject was just too deep - and too treacherous - for me to delve any further into.

The NPR interview with Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, re-sparked my interest. His newest book, the one he was being interview about, explained how the earliest followers of Jesus likely viewed him as the Messiah in an earthly sense - the literal human king of the Jews prophesied in Scripture  - but upon believing he had risen from the dead, began to believe he was greater than that. This isn't in and of itself entirely foreign to a Christian believer, but what was fascinating is how the early Christians developed their theology of Jesus. From believing he had been adopted as Son by God upon his death and resurrection (or at his baptism) to believing he'd been God incarnate in Mary's womb, to believing he was God before time, the belief in who Jesus was grew and morphed and became increasingly more sophisticated as time - and the educational levels of believers - went on. He uses the New Testament as his primary evidence of these theological changes, using the Gospels and Paul's letters to show the chronological changes in these beliefs through the NT books themselves. I'd read the Gospels countless times, but never realized until he pointed them out, how different each Gospel is - and particularly how different the Gospel of John is, the latest Gospel authored.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After listening to the interview, I went to order the book. However, it was not yet released at that time, so I ordered one of his older books first, Misquoting Jesus. This book turned out to be the perfect starting point for my studies. It explained how the manuscript we call the Bible today came to be - the very question I'd been wanting answered for years. While it didn't go as late as the Council of Nicaea who eventually formed the canon, it did explain where all the earliest manuscripts came from, and how those manuscripts got copied and distributed. What struck me the most was the fact - one I'd never even heard before - that we don't actually have any of the original manuscripts. Not one. All we have are copies, which were likely copies of copies, if not copies of copies of copies. And of all the copies of each book or letter of the New Testament that are available to scholars today, most of them don't even match each other. Some bear only slight mistakes - spelling, a changed word - but some actually have entirely different sections added or subtracted. Since there is no way of knowing which copies were copied from the originals and which were copied from changed copies, we have no way of knowing what the originals even said.

Furthermore, the originals were not even penned until, at the earliest, twenty years after Jesus' death. The earliest letters of Paul were written twenty years later, and the Gospels were written even later than that, the earliest Gospel Mark being written approximately forty years later and John near the end of the first century, about sixty years later. And they were not penned by the authors the books are named for, but extremely literate foreigners, in Greek no less.  The disciples and early followers were uneducated, illiterate Aramaic speakers. These were things I'd never known or considered before.

Misquoting Jesus was a good precursor to How Jesus Became God. It laid the foundation of textual criticism which gets touched on in HJBG. Both books were incredibly enlightening. I know I'd never have been able to read them as a Christian; they'd have come across as more secular Christian history bashing. Except for one thing. One thing that would have bothered me deeply.

Bart Ehrman was once an evangelical himself. He attended Moody Bible Institute and all.

It was through his study of early church manuscripts and texts that he developed a more "liberal" view of the Bible, seeing it as a very "human" book instead of the inspired word of God. It wasn't this by itself that eventually led to his agnosticism (this is covered in another book, God's Problem, which I've also ordered, though haven't read yet), but it played a large part. Knowing this about his personal history gave these books more credibility to me. He is not a "militant atheist" out to destroy any chance that the Bible might be true. He's a man who once believed in Biblical inerrancy and divine inspiration and who himself once had a "personal relationship with Jesus". He didn't go into the field of textual criticism to debunk Christianity; he went into it to strengthen it.

Bart Ehrman has written several books, and I'd like to get my hands on all of them eventually. So far, I've read the above mentioned two, as well as Did Jesus Exist? (he ardently and scholastically argues yes, he did, even if the other claims about his life are less easy to prove), and have God's Problem and Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament waiting on my shelves.   The haze of early church beliefs has finally started to lift for me, as I see Christianity for what it really is - an intriguing history of religion and culture, a religion that expanded in nuance and theology through time and gained popularity through Roman politics and power.  While I now don't believe in Christianity's claims to be truth anymore, I'm am still interested in it from an historical viewpoint and have become fascinated by its origins.

I Met A Mormon

Where do I start with this subject...

This has been on my mind for some time, but I have no idea how to start it or exactly where I want to go with it.

It's about Mormons.

........

Art by Amanda Rogers

Rather, not so much about 'Mormons' as Mormons vs Christians, or even more accurately Christians vs Mormons.

(For the record, I know that Mormons self-identify as Christians. For the sake of this post, I have separated the two, using the term "Christian" to represent mainstream Christianity to differentiate between the two.)

I became really interested in what the LDS Church believes back in college when a couple of Mormon missionaries came to our house. My best friend/roommate and I were happy to invite them in and have a good 'debate'. They had been 'sent' to us from another friend of ours they had visited who didn't know much about religion in general and suggested we might be interested in talking to them. So we did.

We spoke to them for weeks. We really liked them. They were lovely girls and really kind, but we were determined they weren't going to sway our friend. I began reading books about Mormon beliefs, reading up on the internet about them and of course, talking to the missionaries themselves about what I'd learned. At the end of the day, neither we as Christians nor they as Mormons were ever going to come to an agreement, but it was an interesting few weeks. The conversations were friendly and frank on both sides, but we still believed they were wrong and they believed we were.

Then our mutual friend decided she was going to be baptised into the LDS Church.

This is where I feel deep regret. I didn't go. She invited us, but I didn't go. I don't remember if I had other plans that day or if I simply didn't want to support her 'wrong' decision. Either way, I should have been there. Not to agree with her decision, but to support her. The Person. Our friend. Our friend who was looking for answers and found them in LDS.

This is the point I want to reflect on right now. Not the rightness or wrongness of Mormon vs Christian beliefs, not the rightness or wrongness of evangelism, but the rightness of supporting actual people.

Mormons and Christians have a joint history of antagonism. From my point of view, Christians seem to be the worse of the two (though I'm not in the inner-Mormon circles, so I don't know exactly what is said or thought of Christians by Mormons). We (and I'm using 'we' as a social group not what a true Christian ought to be), at worst, persecute and abuse Mormons for their beliefs, and at best, ridicule them for them. During the elections, I saw a Facebook photo getting shared that said 'I'll take the Mormon over the Moron'. What exactly is that saying?! That being a Mormon is only slightly better than being a moron? Is that really what we want to say to our Mormon friends, co-workers and neighbours? We as Christians are deeply offended when we are persecuted, abused or ridiculed, but we seem to think it's perfectly okay to publicly ridicule others.

As people of faith, we should be supporting each other. We are all real people behind our beliefs, real people with feelings, hearts, and things we hold sacred. That doesn't mean we have to agree with one another or that we stop having the conversations that both groups believe are essential for eternal salvation, but we need to support one another in love as fellow humans trying to find the truth. 

We live in a post-religious society where having a faith is seen as unintelligent and foolish. We have enough people in the atheist circles giving us hell; do we really need to be giving each other hell too?

I recently learned that some of the LDS Temple rituals had been secretly filmed and put on YouTube. Interested as always in Mormonism, I watched a few. Yes, I was surprised. Yes, I had my own personal opinions about what was going on. Yes, I have trouble understanding how some of these things can be believed. But what I didn't expect to feel was indignation on behalf of people who's genuine and sincere faith and sacred secrets were being broadcast to the world and ridiculed. There's the argument that if you have nothing to hide then why hide it (which is one of the intentions of the person who made the videos), and perhaps there is merit to that, but the bigger picture is this: People are being genuinely hurt by this.

Just reading the comments section shows there is no respect for people who believe differently than we do. Comments from atheists ridiculed all people who believe in any kind of God, and Christians declared all hell and fiery damnation to the Mormons. Is this the kind of image of Christianity we want to broadcast to the world? Do we want the world to think Christ is anything like mainstream Christians? I don't. It's for this reason I'm not even sure what I believe anymore. I certainly don't believe that the way most Christians behave is anything like what I want to be associated with. I certainly don't think Christ meant for us to act like that, sending people to hell via the internet.

Both Christians and Mormons believe their way is the only way. I also believe that if there is a God, then there is a Truth. Maybe the truth is that God says 'whatever' and accepts everyone, but maybe he has only one way to get to him. If it's the latter, then of course we are going to try to find that truth and spread it around. I am not anti-evangelism. But I am also pro-respect and pro-love. We must first learn to love and respect each other if we want any kind of meaningful conversations to pass between us.

If I could go back, I'd go back to my friend's baptism. I'd show her that I cared about her as a person and supported her search for answers, and regardless of her coming to a different conclusion than we hoped for her, we would still be friends.

Have something to say about this post? Leave your comments below. (Instead of on Facebook!)

Ante-Natal Depression

Sometimes things come up to write about that you never even considered writing about, whether because you didn't think people would be interested or you didn't even think of it as something to expound upon. We have experiences every single day; some of them are significant, some are insignificant, but most things can be related to, and many things can be valuable to others.

One of my friends asked me a question about an answer I gave on my 40 Questions. I mentioned that I experienced depression while pregnant with Jaguar and also with Lolly. I never thought much about it when I mentioned it, but actually this might be something worth talking about.

People are becoming very aware of post-natal depression, and it's about time. It's a very real and debilitating condition, requiring various levels of treatment from counselling to medication to lifestyle changes. Yet there's this other condition, very similar and closely related that receives little to no attention at all: ante-natal or pre-natal depression.

According to patient.co.uk, 10% of women experience post-natal depression. 10-15% experience depression ante-natally (and it goes up to 19-25% in poorer countries). But I had never heard of it, and I'm willing to assume most of you haven't either.

My pregnancy with Fifi was great, in large part thanks to my independent midwife Allison Ewing. But hiring a midwife is expensive, so come round 2 with Lolly, I knew I'd have to use the NHS (whose midwives in my area are thankfully really great, pro-natural birth and homebirth-friendly). Still, I worried. I was attempting a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and wanting it at home at that.

I thought my original sadness related to these concerns, but as the pregnancy progressed past seven or eight weeks, I became distraught. I didn't know what was wrong with me, except I knew the thoughts and feelings and wishes I had didn't make sense, weren't rational and most certainly weren't acceptable. I had feelings and thoughts I couldn't even share with Scott, I was so ashamed of them. Wishing for a miscarriage, envisioning doing harm to my toddler and hating myself and believing I was the wrong mother for this baby inside of me were some of the feelings that even now I'm ashamed to speak about.

I didn't know where to turn or who to talk to. I spoke to Allison on the phone but couldn't bring myself to tell her what I was really going through. I called a suicide hotline, but the woman had no idea what I was talking about and said frankly, 'It's just hormones, it'll pass.'

Incidentally, what a uninformed thing to say. 'It's just hormones.' Hormones are a (generally-speaking) uncontrollable aspect of our biology. Whether it's hormones, a virus or a deficiency, it's all serious.

After that, I couldn't speak to anyone, so I kept it all to myself. I tried positive thinking. I tried ignoring my feelings. I tried deriding myself into never thinking such awful things again. And after a few months, as I merged into my third trimester, the depression subsided. I was left thinking what an idiot I had been, how it had been 'just hormones' and what was I being so dramatic about?

I never really dealt with any of those feelings until I got pregnant again with Jaguar. Suddenly, around the same time, the same thoughts and feelings started trickling back in. But this time I was prepared. I realised this must be how my body works and this time I would work with my feelings, not condemn them.

This time, when thoughts of miscarriage came into mind, I knew I didn't really mean it and I didn't beat myself up over it. When I felt angry towards my children and worried I'd do something I regretted, I asked for help or removed myself from the situation or held them in a tight bear hug instead while I cried out all the anger. I let Scott in this time, and he helped tremendously, putting me to bed early every night, running hot baths for me every day, giving me lots of time away from the children to cope with my feelings.

This time around, my depression turned into an awful fear that I was damaging or even going to lose my child with my negative stress hormones pulsing through me. I was having a difficult time beyond the pregnancy with some things, and those things left me in tears most days. I asked for a referral by the midwives for SNIP (Special Needs In Pregnancy) but never actually got an appointment until I was almost full term. I knew I ought to chase it up, but part of depression is not wanting to burden other people, feeling like you are overreacting and need to get a grip of yourself but are unable to, and not having the energy or motivation to make yourself get better.

I worried this time it would last into the post-natal period, especially if I didn't succeed in getting my homebirth or if I ended up with an induction or section. Luckily, the depression lifted again at the end of my pregnancy, and even though my homebirth didn't work out again, I felt content that I'd birthed naturally at least without any assistance.

Even though I 'coped' better the second time around, it didn't mean those months were easy. They were stressful, upsetting, painful and isolating.

I have no miracle words of wisdom or any solutions for how to cope with depression during or after pregnancy; I only have my story, and I hope it helps someone else feel less alone in their struggles.

40 Questions

For the 8th year in a row, I present to you my...

40 Questions

Wait, this needs a logo...

For the 8th year in a row, I present to you my...


1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?
Gave birth completely naturally (to a son!) with no augmentation or assistance. :D

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions and will you make more for next year?
My goal last year was to blog more. I didn't manage to succeed until October for the October Dress Project, but at least I got there in the end!

This year, I just want to resolve to live simply, unmaterialistically,and give myself a break from taking on too many responsibilities.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My friends Catriona and Sharon both gave birth to little girls this year, alongside me.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully no one this year died, though my grandmother was touch and go for a while.

5. What countries did you visit?
We didn't really travel at all this year. I rang in the New Year in America, but I'd travelled there in the year before, so I don't think it counts.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
A simplified, uncluttered wardrobe, house and life.

7. What date from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory?
The eleventh of July - the day my perfect son was born. Though I keep getting mixed up with the 7/11 or 11/7 part. I'm not good with numbers as it is; give me a rhyming pair and I'm hopeless. I'll forever get it confused.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I already said it, but giving birth totally naturally meant the world to me. After a C-section with Fifi and an induction with Lolly, I was sort of convinced my body didn't know how to bear children. Going into labour spontaneously and birthing with no assistance or painkillers (except gas and air) meant so much to me. It was my biggest achievement for certain.

9. What was your biggest failure?
On the same topic, I didn't get my homebirth. Again. Three times I've attempted a homebirth and three times it just wasn't in the cards. I suppose it's wrong to think of it as a failure, but at the time it sure felt like it.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I went through a period of depression during my pregnancy, which also happened when I was pregnant with Lolly, so I think maybe that's just how my hormones work. But it wasn't terribly serious in hindsight, though going through it was very difficult.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Let's see... my Samsung Galaxy III, my EasiYo maker and my Booby Tubes.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
This year I'm going to give credit to my daughter Fifi. She has really grown up this year, and her maturity really shows. She is very loving, mostly obedient, and a great kid to have around. She is helpful and smart, and I'm really proud of how grown up she's become.

13. What regrets do you have about the past year?
I can't say I have any regrets. Not everything was perfect, but I wouldn't call anything a regret.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Necessities. Last year I had money to spend, because I'd been childminding. But I went on maternity leave this year in June, so we've been living on a budget again. And most of my spare money went into starting my new company IntoBento.co.uk.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Starting my new company and lunch blog!

16. What song/album will always remind you of 2012?
It's not a song/album per se, but the theme tune to How I Met Your Mother will always bring back strong feelings and memories of me hibernating in my bedroom for weeks, preparing for my intended homebirth with Jaguar and watching six seasons straight of this show.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
happier or sadder? I have been so much happier this year.
thinner or fatter? Fatter, thanks to baby weight. Need to get that sorted in the new year!
richer or poorer? Poorer, thanks to maternity leave!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercise.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eat cake.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
We spent Christmas this year at Scott's mum and dad's new house. It was a really lovely, cosy Christmas with our family of five, Kate and Faisal's family of three and Scott's parents. The kids had a great time, and it just felt really nice.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
My mom, I suppose. Having a new baby means needing lots of support from your mommy!

22. What's your best memory from 2012?
I had a few really great memories:
-My 30th birthday party, which had a 'Music Mania' theme. It was one of the best birthdays I've ever had.
-Singing Evita's "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in the OGA Parish Players Spring Revue.
-Giving birth to Jaguar (I loved every minute of it, even if it was rather uncomfortable!)
-Going out for my friend Elaine's 40th birthday with her, Heather and Paula.
-The Enchanted Forest with Scott for our anniversary. It was incredible this year - my favourite one yet.

23. How have you seen yourself grow as a person this year?
Ohhh, for the hard questions.

This year I've come to terms with a lot of things, namely my grave uncertainty of my faith. I have spoken of this already in length here, so it's not necessary to rehash, but what I've realised is that I am okay with where I am spiritually right now. I choose to continue living a Christian life and holding on to the faith while simultaneously acknowledging that I don't know if it is true, I can't believe it completely and I will probably never be able to believe wholeheartedly again. But it's the life I'm choosing to live, and if God is truly out there, I believe he will accept me for choosing to follow despite my unbelief.

A separate thing I learned about myself is that I am far too materialistic. Through the October Dress Project (wearing the same dress for 31 days), I realised I a) don't need half the stuff I have and b) can be very creative with my clothes if I try. So I'm in the process of trying to clear out everything and getting a non-cluttered, simplistic wardrobe that allows me to experiment with creative outfits.

24. What was your favourite TV programme(s)?
I enjoyed watching How I Met Your Mother, Big Love and Misfits.

26. What was the best book(s) you read?
I did a lot of reading earlier this year before Jaguar was born but can't for the life of me remember what. A lot of re-reading old classics. I started out with Toni Morrison's Beloved, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and I can't remember what all else. I read a LOT of books though but not very many new ones. If I'm correct in thinking though that I re-read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, then that would be the best book I read. It's one of my favourites.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Scott introduced me to a few really good new songs on a mix CD he made for our trip to Pitlochry, for instance these two by Jonathan Coulton.





28. What did you want and get?
A Soda Stream!

29. What did you want and not get?
A homebirth.

30. What were your favourite films of this year?
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was really, really good.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
This year was my 30th, and I had a big party at the Masons Lodge. It was fancy dress (Music Mania theme) and karaoke, and I had an awesome cake, a DJ and a load of great friends there. It was an awesome birthday.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
It would've been really great to have had a summer. Unfortunately, it just rained and was cold all year long. It would've been much nicer if we'd had just a few months (or even one!) of sunshine to live our spirits. No wonder Scottish people are known for being dour.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
Maternity?! At least for the first half of the year! I went through a rockabilly stage with my hair and would love to still be doing it, but after Jaguar was born, there was just no longer the time to spend on my hair like that. Plus, I cut my bangs back in on a whim and that kinda kills the suicide roll thing. I've also started wearing make-up regularly. Which reminds me, I need to put some on now...

34. What kept you sane?
Having a really sweet, happy, content, easy baby who sleeps and feeds wonderfully, instead of the opposite!

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
This question is always so silly to me. Time to change it.

35b. Which holiday or special occasion meant the most to you?
Our wedding anniversary this year was really special to me. It wasn't a big year (8), but we spent it in the same place we spent last year's anniversary, and it was then and there that Jaguar became a part of our family. We went to Pitlochry to The Enchanted Forest again, had lunch in the same little bistro we'd sat in last year talking about baby names in case we were indeed to get pregnant, and stayed in a lovely hotel (not the same one) eating great food and relaxing in the pool and the spa.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
American gun control, health care and same-sex marriage. I'll keep mum about my opinions on each though! This is not a political blog. :)

37. Who did you miss?
I missed my American family and friends so much this year.

38. Who was the best new person (people) you met?
I have become friends with Lolly's best friend Eden's mum, Laura. She is a sweet, generous, honest person, and I'm so pleased to have gotten to know her and her three interesting and precious daughters this year.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
Two things:
1) I have so much more than I need. I am materialistic, and all my 'things' end up making my life harder to manage. I can get by on so much less and would probably be happier doing so.
2) As much as I can plan and organise and see to every detail, nothing in this world is totally in my hands. Maybe it's in God's, maybe it's in no one's, but it's certainly not in mine. It is okay to plan, but at the end of the day, things will happen as they will happen and not always how I thought they would.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?
This is totally embarrassing, but the lyrics from Katy Perry's 'Firework' summed up a lot of feelings for me this year.

'Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

...

Maybe your reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road.
Like a lightning bolt, your heart will blow
And when it's time, you'll know...'

Getting Real

Getting real is a pretty scary thing. Getting real on the internet is just plain ludicrous.

Getting real in front of anybody means opening yourself up for judgment, criticism, pity, unwanted advice and remarks, changed impressions and possibly isolation and desertion. Some people will appreciate you getting real; some will leave you for it.

I haven't gotten real on this blog in a long time. It's because what's real isn't pretty. It isn't what I want to expose about myself. I don't want people talking about me or talking to me about it or giving me their opinions or thinking of me differently. I don't want people's sympathy or false charity.

But on the other hand, there must be tons of people out there who are afraid to get real because they feel isolated inside and don't realise there are others feeling the same way, because no one else is getting real either. So maybe if I get real, I can speak to someone else who needs to know they are not alone.

People are always telling me I should write a book. These people are probably just really nice people who like to read my blog, so I never really take it seriously. (Besides, I have written a book, but no one is buying it!) The truth is, I may be a good writer (or maybe not) but to be a great writer, you HAVE to get real.

To grow, you have to get real. You have to confront yourself and the weakest, most vulnerable corners and nooks of your soul and shine the light on them. Seriously, who wants to do that?

I've confronted my dark shadows. I've admitted them to myself and to one or two of the closest, most trusted people in my life. But until I have aired them in the open, they will remain dark and scary. Like wet clothes, they will remain damp, mouldy and foul until they have been hung on the washing line, have flapped in the sunlight. And then those clothes can wrap people in their warmth and comfort; but not if they are lying damp in the darkness. There they cannot help anyone, or me.

*****

I don't know if I'm still a Christian.

For well over a year now I've been struggling with a rapid unraveling of my lifelong held faith in God. I'm not talking about little niggling doubts. I am talking about full-on disbelief. It started a while back when a Christian sect proclaimed that it was about to be the end of the world. They all prepared for the Second Coming and then, surprise surprise, it did not come. I felt so sorry for those people, and also felt a bit smug. I mean seriously?

Then I read a blog article, I don't even know how I came across it, that said all Christians were just as foolish, for while they didn't claim to know the exact day the Second Coming would occur, they still believed it would. It hit me like a lightning bolt. We really are stupid.

Jesus told his disciples their generation surely would not pass before the Son of Man returns (Matthew 24:34, among others). Yet their generation did pass, as did many, many more. Why are we still holding onto the belief that he is coming back?

The glib answers about 'this generation' meaning x, y or z did not answer it for me, and very, very quickly, my entire faith began to crumble. I remember distinctly working a shift at Blockbuster that day and having the heaviest heart because everything I ever believed was fast slipping through my fingers like running water. I came home and told Scott. We talked for ages and ages about it that night, and have been talking since.

That year was a classic year for such an unraveling to occur. Textbook even. People will tell me that it is because of what happened that year that my faith 'faltered'. The truth is, those things didn't cause my doubts, but they proved them. That was the year I lost a huge group of friends and endured painful betrayal, triggered by the death of another friend and her baby boy. That was the year my beautiful niece was born with Down's Syndrome unexpectedly. That was the year both of my parents remarried. (And the fact that they divorced in the first place had already ripped the foundation right out from under me a couple of years earlier.) These things were not what made me doubt God's existence, but they did help put me in a frame of mind that was already weakened and burdened with doubt.

I was hungry and desperate for some kind of sign from God, something to keep me going with him, because I wasn't ready to give up. Yet everything around me screamed otherwise. Christian people all around me were two-faced, back-biting, petty, callous, self-righteous, hypocritical, surfacy, mean, out to get one another, fake. If the Holy Spirit really dwells in us, where is the evidence? Where is this 'fruit' of the Spirit we are supposed to have? I could list on one hand how many Christians in my life actually exuded the fruit of the Spirit in their everyday lives. In no way am I claiming to be any different either. I can be a terrible person.

I continued to pray, almost invariably beginning with, "God, if you are even real..." Most nights I spent praying to the ceiling, but I didn't want to give up.

The Bible teaches plainly that once you have been saved through faith in Christ, no one or no thing can separate you from the love of God. (Romans 8:38-39, among others!) The only consolation I had, and have, is that if God of the Bible is real, if Jesus of the Bible is real, then I cannot be lost. Not even my lack of faith can separate me from the love of God. If it is real. This truth (if the Bible is true) is what has freed me to acknowledge fully and truthfully to myself that I do not know if I believe anymore. Because if it is true, then I MUST search for the truth as honestly as I can to find my way back home. If it isn't true, then what is lost by my searching?

I started looking for other churches who could help fill my need for truth. All I found was more and more not to believe in. From the happy-clappy charismatics that believe anything and everything, to the Sunday-only church goers who believe nothing, I found no help. I found myself getting angry at sermons preaching condemnation and our unacceptable sacrifices to God. Maybe these hard hitting challenges were meant for someone, but they weren't meant for me. More than ever I just needed assured that the pit I am living in is okay, that God can meet me there too. But this is not a popular message preached. My own church did nothing for me either. Every Sunday message was the same glib 'God is love. God is a pink and fluffy cloud in the sky who loves you, amen'. There was nothing to sink my teeth into, not to mention a safe haven where I could be totally honest about where I am. I was too afraid of the repercussions and the whispers.

I searched the internet. I found all the useless Christian-speak annoying and stupid. I tired of the way Christians talk to one another, like we are from a different hemisphere with a language all our own. (I recognise all groups of people have their own jargon, from online geeks to doctors to high schoolers at the mall. But it's still annoying.) I revisited my old online haunt Christian Guitar Resources (oddly, despite being set up for guitar tabs, it had a very active and intelligent theology forum, which I hoped still existed). Surprisingly, one of the top threads was entitled 'Why I am not a (very good) Christian'. A guy who had been a regular on the board years ago when I was a regular too had written the post, and nearly all that he said echoed what I myself was (and is) experiencing. It felt so good to be in company with someone else. Many of the responses to his post were the same well-meaning but naive responses I expected, like 'Have you tried reading your Bible?' (but what if we don't believe it is true?) or 'You need to pray about this' (but what if there is no God?) or 'Do you go to church?' (yes, and you should see how people treat each other there). But there were a few responses that spoke to me deeply and have kept me going. In particular, I'll share the premise of the one that I cling to dearly as my only hope as I feel all my support and foundation of the faith that I built my life upon crumble continually.

This guy described three stages of the Christian's journey of faith. The first stage is faith in God because of what we see. This includes evidence in our own lives or the lives of others around us. It includes any sort of 'salvic moment' we may have experienced. We believe in God because we feel him or 'see' him. As this faith matures, it becomes about what the Bible teaches. We begin to distinguish that what we feel and what the Bible teaches are often not the same, and we must rely on the Bible only as our foundation for faith.

Here is where most people live the rest of their lives (if they ever even get to this stage; many people live in the feelings stage forever). But, he said, there is a third stage. This is when we go beyond believing in God because of what we feel and beyond believing because the Bible tells us so. This is when we believe solely because we can't live without it. In the face of all the evidence stacked against it, in the face of virtually no reason to believe it, we believe anyway out of pure, blind faith. Pure, blind, baseless faith.

I have looked into other things outside of Christianity to help define and shape this fork in the road I am facing. General 'spirituality', etc. Before all this, I'd have never looked into it, because I would've automatically discounted it as false. But with an open and searching mind, I began reading. Much of what I came across struck me as true in some sense or another. I could never shake the feeling that without Jesus, it was all missing the crucial link, but it never stops occurring to me that this is because the idea of Jesus is so deeply ingrained in me I can never forget it. True or not, it's ingrained deep in my psyche. Which leads me to the utmost stumbling block to my faith in God - the psyche.

We are all aware that the brain is a powerful thing. But do we realise just how powerful? We can convince ourselves of anything. ANYTHING. We can heal ourselves from disease by the power of the mind. We can be plunged into a tub of ice and feel nothing by the power of our minds. We can be 'slain in the Spirit' or 'speak in tongues' by the power of our minds. We can believe in God by the power of our minds. Do you see why I now find it so hard to believe that what I always believed was not just all in my head?

I read several books about organ transplant recipients. It sounds like I'm about to go off on a tangent, but stay with me. These people (mostly heart transplant recipients) told their stories of discovering new tastes and preferences, using words they'd never used before, having dreams of their donors with facts that they couldn't possibly have known (and discovering these facts were indeed true) and many other things that cause one to wonder if there is something in the organ itself that is passed from donor to recipient greater than just bodily function. Most scientific-types will find this ridiculous (my husband included!), but the premise was that perhaps there is a 'heart code', a cellular energy or memory that is carried in the heart. Okay, okay, it sounds stupid and utterly unbelievable, I know. But one point from that book in particular (The Heart's Code by Paul Pearsall) stood out to me. Every religious group, and even non-religious people, refer to the heart as the centre of their being. We feel things in our hearts, we love or hate with all our hearts, we know in our hearts, we believe in our hearts. Yet our minds are stronger than our hearts and dictate what we do with our feelings and beliefs. Our minds dominate and manipulate everything, including our hearts. But what if our hearts really have something to say? The weaker organ that we cannot live without submits to the stronger organ we also cannot live without, but what if we tried listening to our hearts? Could there be something real to that?

This is where I am right now. My mind tells me not to believe. My heart tells me to believe. My heart wants to believe and needs to believe. My mind does not believe, but it kinda wants to, as well. I will not ignore my misgivings or my very rational reasons to not believe, but I am not ready to give into them entirely. If I have to go the rest of my life like this, I will. And if there is a God, I think he will honour this. I will not listen to people say that my disbelief is displeasing to God or is unacceptable to God. Maybe it is, but if he is the God I think he is (the God the New Testament makes him out to be), he is putting me here for a reason and will not cast me out for my disbelief. In fact, he is loving me and holding on to me regardless of my lack of faith. If he wanted me to believe automatically, he could make me do so. He has not done so, so I am here for a reason. Whether it be to discover the truth is elsewhere or whether it is for me to press on indefinitely by blind faith alone, I am meant to be right here, as uncomfortable as it is.

I do not know if I believe in Jesus of the Bible or God of the Bible. I know that I want to believe, and I know that is foolish. I know it is laughable to want to believe something in which all the evidence is stacked against. I also know that to deny either side of my current experience would only prolong it and would only be a farce. I may stop believing altogether, I may go on forever in this agonising half-way house or I may have a complete regeneration of faith. Whatever happens, I'm ready to be honest about it. To my family, to my friends, to the nay-sayers who will gloat over me, to everyone, because I am getting real, and we all have to get real at some point or else we go on living in a blur.

My husband and I have left our church. We have left mainly because it does not feed us spiritually or theologically. There is nothing there for us, no deep, sound teaching for us to bite hard into. We have also left, because we have had enough of the un-Christian attitudes and actions of people who are supposed to love Jesus. No one is perfect (me especially!) but the church politics are doing nothing but souring Christianity for me. I hope to find another church for my kids' sake, but for the time being, I am searching for the truth on my own and hope I will be supported by those people around me who both do and don't share my Christian roots. I hope that God will find me in this mess. I feel like Peter when Jesus asked his disciples if they too were going to leave him. "To whom shall we go?" (John 6:68)

I don't know where else to go if not to God... but I don't think he needs another pretender, so here I am. The real, confused me.