On Homeschooling: I Will Control your Soul

One of my guilty pleasures, a major one, is that I kinda heart Traci Lords. Yeah, she's a campy actress (I think she's even been in a couple of Asylum movies) but...Yeah, there's a real soft space in my cold lil heart for Ms. Lords. And I found this song to be...appropriate.



The group I call the Homeschool Hijackers fall into three major groups: Bill Gothard and ATI, Vision Forum and its support system, and the Pearls. While there are many, many other sub groups--authors, magazines, religious movements--these three groups enter into every single homeschooling story I've ever heard of. Their ideology taints every aspect of homeschooling. Even if your family didn't enroll in ATI, use Doug Phillips' materials, or use the Pearls (terrible. horrible. disgusting.) books, the odds were that people in your homeschooling group did, and it was very likely that the people offering your parents advice were, in effect, offering water from a poisoned well.

Religion has two uses, one positive, one negative. The positive use is the support that it offers the individual. It creates a common ground between individuals. It provides comfort in times of stress. It gives people a common, simplified language for offering complex advice. And, if you believe in the spiritual dimension, as I do, it connects you with something bigger than yourself. In this context the heart of religion isn't about its rules, its regulations and its structure, but rather the individual's relationship first with the divine and second with the general population.

The negative version of religion is a structure of control. The structure works independent of religion, and can be employed in a secular thought system, but works best inside of a pre-existing group with structure already in place. Controlling people requires a great deal of manipulation and momentum; it's easiest to do that by hijacking something that already exists. If you look at the history of abusive cults, the theme that repeats over and over is the Leader coming to a pre-existing group and progressively taking it over.

(As a side note I believe this makes the notion of removing religion to solve the issue of cults pretty meaningless. Religion provides an easy in, but removing the obvious targets simply points the predator at the next level up. Cult-like groups will always exist regardless of religion. The issue is not the groups. It's the predatory thinkers targeting the groups)

The most dangerous thing we do when we discuss manipulative groups is underestimate the intelligence of the manipulated. We imply that if you are well read enough, with enough innate intelligence and mental flexibility, you can recognize an abusive group before you become involved. We say this because we only begin to see these groups once the abuse is so great, it's begun to self-destruct. But there is a long, slow, complicated process manipulative leaders use to attract and then retain their audience, and it very, VERY rarely varies from group to group. It's a pattern utilized by Jim Jones, David Koresh, Scientology and even Nazi Germany. Insulting the intelligence of people involved in abusive groups is not only unfair to them, it is very dangerous for the rest of us. All of us are vulnerable to this kind of thing. If not through a Christian group, then through a group focused on another religion. If not through a religious group, than through a secular one. Manipulative people prey not on human stupidity or gullibility, but on human nature. It is our very best qualities that leave us open to manipulation and damage.

In other words, this is not a problem that you can easily fight.

So if a person, say, a homeschooling parent, is smart enough to see through this shit, why do they fall for it? How does a genuinely good parent fall for the controlling, manipulative and unbelievably toxic materials pushed by mainline homeschoolers? And once they see the sickness for what it is, what keeps them there?

There's a lot of tools, and I'm going to try to address most of them. But the biggest one, the one that runs across the entire thing, is the rules.

The version of Christianity most homeschooling materials promote is very, very strict, with rules including how one may dress, what kind of music one may listen to, what sort of materials one may read, even what kind of food you can eat. Most of these restrictions have absolutely no basis in the Bible. None. Full stop. You will not find "Thou shalt not Dance" or "Stone anyone who listens to Rock Music" anywhere in the Bible. You will find "thou shalt not intermarry with other nations"...buuuuut you'll also find episodes like Paul and the Ethopian and the time Mariam, Moses's sister, poked fun at Moses's dark-skinned wife for her dark skin and got motherfucking cursed with fucking leperosy. (If you're not a Bible-person, OT God has three "pissed" settings: gentle talking to, your kids are dead, and Leprosy. After that you hit fire and brimstone and you don't usually come back from that one) and how absolutely nobody paid attention to that rule. (Seriously. Kings and Chronicles, both halves, spend more time dwelling on the marital habits of Israel and Judah's kings than most tabloids--and IMHO are much nastier about it.)

But the rules. The restrictions.  The things that make life for homeschooled families borderline endurable at best and laughably horrible most of the time. Once you realize that none of it is Bible-based it becomes intensely confusing as to why, for example, girls have to wear floor length skirts when the bible seems more concerned about what the thread composition is (as blends are kinda verboten) than how low it goes. There are no restrictions on music. At all. Ever. (In fact, most of the times music is mentioned in the bible it's less Dances from Terpsichore and more that rave scene from Matrix Reloaded. There's one story where David got so into dancing before God's altar that his wife said "UH, DIGNITY MUCH" and Samuel AKA Voice-of-God for the generation said "Will you please shut up? Oh, and no kids for you.") It's just not there.

(Also: I bring up Dances for a specific reason: It's music written in honor of a classical greek goddess AND it was pushed very strongly by the "Matthews" AKA the high-profile Homeschooling family I worked for back on 05-06. So Rock music is flat out, but music straight up dedicated to a pagan goddess can be recommended AND sold for profit! RIGHT.)

And yet by putting problematic behavior into arbitrary, non-biblical rules, the people behind those rules--all of whom are terrible, by anyone's definition of behavior--manage to cement an attitude and outlook receptive to their version of control. For example, many of the arbitrary rules against music are rooted in a deeply racist perspective, one so repellant that most parents would refuse to comply. Instead of stating that Black People are bad because they're Black, the leaders state that Black culture is bad because it's devil worship and you could go to hell just by association. The emphasis here is not on "black culture is bad" but rather on "hell by association", which means the audience only hears "If I do this, I die." By doing this, the leader has actually prevented the audience from ever questioning his racist attitudes, because this is no longer an issue of race or Other, but of self-preservation. A bonus is if the audience members even start to question the line of thinking--ie why are we saying aspects of Black Culture are devil worship--they either get pitched out of the group or threatened back into compliance. See, by questioning, they're going to hell, which means anyone listening to them may go to hell by association. It's a downward spiral that is very, very ugly.

Dressing up the attitudes you want your group to have under the guise of "right living" nets abusive systems an audience five times larger than they would have had, were they open and honest about their goals. An incredibly good modern example of this is GamerGate--the goal is to hurt people, but by dressing it up in terms most people can agree with (ETHICS! IN JOURNALISM!) they prevent anyone from uncovering what those goals really are. And Homeschooling Culture is a far, far more attractive demographic for this nonsense because it means the leaders can hijack an entire generation of children and indoctrinate them without anyone realizing what the hell is going on.

The thing is? If you look at the Bible, and I mean really look at it, put it in cultural and historical context, not just of the age it was written but of the ages of its translation (something that absolutely no one does, and something that ought to be just as critical a history period, given the MASSIVE number of biases the KJV cemented into stone), you'll see that not only is all this shit completely unbiblical, it's the perfect antithesis to what the religion was intended to be. 

If you ask your average homeschooler/conservative Christian type why they follow these arbitrary and exhausting rules, they'll have a quick, pat answer for you. It's one that gets drilled into your skulls from very early on in your time in the faith: 1st Thessalonians 5:22.

Are you ready for this shattering, human-breaking, awful burden of a bible verse?

You sure?

Here it is:

²² Abstain from all appearance of evil 

Yeah. It's one of the short ones. Which makes it very easy to take out of context. Most verses used like this, you have to cut them into smaller pieces. This one is nice, short, sweet, easy to memorize, and even easier to twist into a pretzel. And as a bonus, it's one of the ones where the immediate context is still obscure enough to make deception possible.

⁴ Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.
¹⁵ See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.
¹⁶ Rejoice evermore.
¹⁷ Pray without ceasing.
¹⁸ In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
¹⁹ Quench not the Spirit.
²⁰ Despise not prophesyings.
²¹ Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
²² Abstain from all appearance of evil.
²³ And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 Even there, it's kinda hard to see the context. It looks like a list of rules and instructions for the individual to follow to the letter without any wriggle room. And there's also a couple really problematic things in there (Despise not prophesyings is troubling when you realize that David Koresh styled himself as a prophet and he was about as biblical a leader as I am a bird.)

But that idea of "HERE ARE RULES YOU MUST FOLLOW" just doesn't cut the mustard. This is not an Old Testament book. This is New Testament, which is really light on rules given the whole "Jesus Died so we don't have to" theme. AND it's a Letter. Again, if you're not a Bible person, The New Testament has your History books (The Gospels+Acts) your Letters (everything between Acts and Revelation) and your "What is this I don't even John are you Okay?" book (The Revelation of John) And like most of Paul's letters, the Thessalonian letters were written to a beleaguered and persecuted religious body from a leader who was in prison awaiting trial and execution, and that prison was also Rome's sewer system. Not too long after this, the Roman Emperor started using Christians (Nero=white guy, Christians=Middle eastern brown people) as torches to light up his garden parties. The church at Thessalonica, like most of the churches Paul was writing to, weren't worried about pot lucks and cotillions. They were kind of preoccupied with not dying at the hands of their neighbors. And what does Paul write about while he's waiting to be beheaded and also ankle deep in literal shit?

Faith. Hope. Unconditional Love.

 Believe, have hope, and love one another. Again: He's ankle deep in shit and he's waiting to be executed (and FYI the only reason Paul was alive to write these letters is that he was a Roman citizen and thus privileged enough to rate a trial before he got dragged out and murdered. Yes, standing in shit for months on end was a privilege) and he's talking about how important it is to believe. To hope for things to get better. To take care of one another without condition (agape, remember?) and above all to endure until the end.

That list up there isn't a list of by-the-book formula instructions. They are the closing wishes from one man in the process of dying to a group of people being actively hunted down and murdered by their neighbors.

The mindset one has when one is going through a trial, be it IRL persecution or online harassment, determines how well one can weather the crisis-es one goes through. Maintaining a positive outlook when things are only moderately awful creates the margin you need to make it through the incredibly shitty low points. The whole focus of Thessalonians is "Hold on, it'll be okay." And when he closes it, Paul re-enforces the message with a list of ideas and touchstones the church can hold onto. Anchors so that when they try to climb up the mountain of horror and persecution and anguish they all faced and the world falls out from under them, they'll have something to cling to.

Do these things, because they'll keep you happy. Do these things, because they'll give you hope. Do these things, because they'll keep you sane when the world loses its mind.

Abstain from all appearance of evil, in this context of hold on, is about not burdening yourself with bad behavior. A guilty conscience adds to stress and overwhelm. There's also the aspect of witness, which is one of Christianity's more loaded phrases. It means, basically, that you behave in a way that brings merit to your belief system. And while that interpretation of 1Thess 5:22 is valid, and should be followed, it doesn't fit the letter's message of Hold on, one day it'll be okay. This letter is not about evangelism and witness--the Thessalonians were already doing that. All the early churches were. And they were dying for doing that. They really didn't need to be told "Oh, that thing that's getting so many of you killed? Go do more of that." They needed to be told hold on, one day it'll be okay. This letter is about taking steps to build the endurance of the individual and the group--tell the negative voices to shut up (not the critics, just the gloom and doom types) and the toxic people to stop abusing each other, have the mentally able support the disabled, and to try, whenever they can, to find joy. It's not asking the early Christians to be content with their lot or to be generally happy, but to find joy. It's almost legit to call it an instruction to find joy in spite of the circumstances.

It's a controversial idea, and sometimes difficult to understand (and a thousand times more difficult to do) But Speaking from personal experience...when you are in a situation that you cannot escape from, if you rejoice in your suffering, if you tell God "I'm going through this for your glory, thank you for this", you diminish the power suffering can have over you. "Grave, where is your victory, Death, where is your sting" doesn't negate the fact of death, only the depth of the agony it causes. It's not about making the suffering an obligation, it's about taking the victory away from the people who are hurting you and turning it into your own. You cannot change the suffering. You cannot change the pain. What you can change is how you and others look at it. You can take control of the narrative. But that attitude takes a lot of discipline and a lot of endurance. This letter, and most of the other letters in the New Testament, was correspondence between individuals and groups on the edge of survival, who wanted to tell their tormentors to get fucked without losing the essential spirit that made their system of belief worthwhile. Fighting back with violence would destroy those beliefs, turn the message of Christ into another violent, toxic cult doomed to horrific self destruction, not because Rome would respond with more violence, but because the violence would destroy the believers from the inside out and make them into the very thing they despised. Christ said It's not what goes in, but what comes out that defiles a man. Violent defense was not an option. Their only alternative was to make their endurance a victory in and of itself. To let the events and the hell they were going through pass through them like light through a stained glass window--to color the events and the horror and the pain with the triumph of enduring until the end, no matter how it ended.To make sure that no matter what came into their lives, all that came out was joy, peace, beauty and love. That was how they lived, and that was how they won.

In other words: They weren't worried about following a whole bunch of rules.

It seems rather silly to have spent so much time on one verse, but Abstain from all appearance of evil is the linchpin for all the rules that conservative Christians have to follow. The attitude is literally one of "Yes, we're forgiven and yes it's from God and not something we can earn, and yes it happened so that we could live without the terror of restriction, but we're  gonna do all that old shit anyway because REASONS." This cognitive dissonance between what the Bible actually says and what Christians practice is actually a major reason why many Christians leave the faith--they realize that they put a great deal of energy and guilt and emotional unpleasantness into absolutely nothing. This is an attitude that breaks people, and an interpretation that allows manipulators and abusers to acquire an audience that deserves so very much better. And of the few verses that support this attitude really doesn't support it at all.

This attitude of "RULES! Follow the RULES!" negates everything the early Christians went through. One attraction to the early church was that they didn't have to follow religious systems that had become political tools for oppression and yet could still have the benefits of religion, faith-based community and connection to God. The two major systems in place at the time, the Roman Empire's pantheism and the Jewish traditions of sacrifice and ritual cleanliness, were no longer things that worked for members of the Early Church.

It wasn't the pantheism that a great many of the Gentile Christians disliked, but it was the politics attached. Offering incense to the Roman Emperor--a major point of dispute between Roman authorities and the Early church, and one that got an awful lot of people killed--acknowledged that the Emperor and Rome were better than you. No, you didn't have to lose your gods. You just had to acknowledge that Rome's gods were better than your gods. The Jews got away with cultural monotheism because they had a long history of saying "fuck that shit" and Rome didn't want to deal with a freshly conquered people exploding. Other cultures did not get the same exemption and gaining access to meaningful Jewish practices were so difficult the religion was, to all intents and purposes, closed. Christians, thanks to their Jewish roots, had taken a stand that made monotheism as much a political statement as it was a religious one. Early Christians were telling an oppressive conqueror "We no longer respect your religion. We no longer respect your 'benevolent' oppression. We are taking back our lives."

 Electing to leave the rules of Jewish ritual cleanliness and sacrifice for Christian practice had the same motive; it wasn't the ritual itself that Christ objected to, it was how the rituals and practices had come to be a form of oppression within Hebrew society. The leadership could, and did, use the rules of ritual cleanliness and the cycle of sacrifice to oppress those who were unable to adhere to it. The law of ritual cleanliness was intensely ablest, excluding those who had deformities, defects and illnesses from the right to fully worship God. Christ's attempts to rectify this--to point out how the entire point of the Jewish law was to support the disabled and vulnerable population--were met with scorn by the leadership but with overwhelming support by the community. Choosing not to adhere to these laws, to accept everyone regardless of how "clean" they were, was stating that everyone counted and everyone mattered.

What marked Christ as different was how inclusive his teachings were, and also how subversive. He prioritized the lower classes--the tax collectors, prostitutes, beggers and lepers--over the upper, the ritualistically unclean over the priesthood. He chose a lone woman, Mary Magdalene, to be the first evangelist and carry the news of his resurrection to the world when he knew that no one would believe her, because it validated the witness of women. He advocated a form of non-violent resistance that emphasized equality and forced abusers to either acknowledge their victim as equal, or stop being abusive. When you realize that a lot of the early martyrs weren't just making a religious statement, but a political one as well--in essence, Fuck you Rome--you realize why so many people chose to die. Yes, it was for Christianity, but Christianity was the tool they could use to get back their lives. The established system was no longer doing what it was meant to do, and Christ came to fix it. The established system put people down, and Christ built them back up. The established system was the method of oppression, and Jesus threw it out of the temple in his one, sole, singular fit of utter fucking rage.

So why, then, do Christians do this? Why do we choose to redefine a faith that was about holding on and inclusive bodies into a faith that is all about rules and oppression?

Because when you follow Christianity the way it was back in the early church, those who would have power lose control. The only way to regain it is to establish themselves as teachers. With that authority, they can act. They erect rules like fences to keep out the people they can't benefit from, as well as the people they can't control. Christianity from its inception was intended to break the methods of control, and for the first several centuries of its existence proved that its adherents could not be shouted down, pushed into violence, or erased. And since the Powers that Be couldn't make it go away, they moved into the leadership instead and started chipping away at what made the religion inclusive and effective. And now, 2000 years later, the manipulation and control is literally written into the blueprints. Even the words of the bible are suspect, because the approved translations came, not from the oppressed who needed it, but by the kings and leaders and abusers who needed control.

But it says a lot that even with the biases of kings and leaders, even with the obscured history and abuse and control, the message is still there. In a world so focused on merit-based individual value, the fact that love your neighbor as yourself made it through the centuries relatively un-scathed says a great deal for how good the truth is at enduring. The Bible is still a valid source for believers. It even still explains how it can be used--be discerning, and pay attention to what kind of effect your doctrine, teachings and behaviors have on both your life and in the lives of others. AKA "By their fruit shall you know them." 

As an example, one relevant story is Peter's vision about the animals. There were two big divisions in the Early Church--one group, headed by Peter, wanted Christianity to be a Jewish thing, because Jesus was a Jew and so were all his disciples and there was this whole "Chosen people" thing.  Paul headed a group that wanted to evangelize to all people, pointing out that Jesus might have been Jewish, but he wasn't exactly checking credentials of the crowd before he preached (Given that the credential was circumcision, that'd be kinda icky if he had) A guy named Cornelius wanted Peter to explain things to him. Cornelius was not a Jew. Peter did not want to go.

And then this happened:

⁹ About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹ He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹² It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. ¹³ Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
¹⁴ “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
¹⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
¹⁶ This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

And Peter interpreted this as God going "I want these people. I say they're mine. Stop being a moron and go talk to Cornelius, his people are downstairs," and Peter made Cornelius the first Gentile of many.

This, my dear readers, is one of those stories that I NEVER WANT TO EVER READ AGAIN. It gets covered A LOT in bible studies, sermons, pamphlets, pictures, you name it. If you hear this story five times a year you're probably slacking off in your reading and attendance. It gets repeated a lot because we Gentile Christians use it to justify how a message given by a Jew in front of other Jews can apply to the rest of us. But by narrowing our focus to our own justification, we lose the entire fucking point of this passage, which is verse 15:

 ⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Not clear enough? 

Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.

And yet that is exactly what we do. Every time we meet something we don't understand, something out of our culture's frame of reference, something that doesn't follow the rules we define as "good", we demonize them, call it evil, and do our best to either exclude the Other, or to erase all the differences that make the Other who they are. The sheer fucking wrongness of all these restrictive rules should become obvious once you factor in that, within the context of these beliefs, this is what Christ died to end. Not just the rules, but the oppressive nature of them. The rules that, through compliance, erase the differences that give humanity its fullness. It's these small statements--wear your skirt this long, your hair like this, wear these colors only, listen to just this music and nothing else--that blot out culture far more effectively than an absolute ban would. You can say with absolute honesty that you're not against, say, African culture--better stated as Masai, Zulu, or one of the many other ethnic groups--while you simultaneously attack every single thing that culture actually has on the basis that it's evil. You can say you support women while you confine them in a cage. You can say you support the weak, and then accuse the mentally ill of housing demons. Because the rules have divorced the religion from your life so effectively, you might as well not follow it at all.

It is a system that is absolutely manufactured and artificial. And while some of it absolutely IS the fault of the individual, a great deal more is the fault of the teacher. The individual's choice is to accept the rule and be a shit to others, or reject the rule and risk hell and damnation. The teacher's choice is to first verify that their information is correct, to pass on what is verified truth, and to correct inaccurate information their students may have. 

The history of ATI, Vision Forum and the Pearls is one of exclusion, repression and misery. By any biblical standard, it is a form of invalid doctrine. By the most basic of human standards, it is the ultimate definition of failure.By anyone's definition, it is not something that should ever be followed.

And just because I'm in the mood for awesome music: 
  

The Rewards of Unmonitored Reading

My favorite scene in Lord of the Rings is probably Gandalf confronting the Balrog. More specificially, it is the scene on the bridge. One old, lone man standing on a narrow bridge against a monster two or three times his size. Something he knows he cannot fight, something that he knows will kill him. And to protect his friends--and the whole world--he doesn't run. Each time I watch that movie I become transfixed by the climactic line, You shall not pass. There is an idea there, something that runs much, much deeper than just an old wizard fighting an imaginary demon. It's an idea that gets repeated throughout the entire trilogy. It appears in the form of Helm's Deep, the final retreat of Rohan. It is spoken by Aragorn at the gates to Mordor: This far, no further. It's the idea that, at a certain point, the last stand stops being an option and becomes a necessity. And it's something that is needful to the soul of every human being. For our own protection and well being, we all need something that, when threatened, causes us to rise up in response and fight.

Mine are books.

I've been relatively open about this on the blog, but I'm also pretty sure I've snagged a few new readers since February, so I'm going to head this with a quick bit of backstory. I have a very long, very nasty history with depression and self-injury. This winter (2013/14) it got unmanageable, and I decided to seek help. I am on medication, and I have a WONDERFUL councilor who has managed to help me figure out a few things.

At the same time, my friend Tiger Gray (Hi Tiger!) pointed me to a blog called No Longer Quivering, where the stories of former homeschooled students were posted. I became interested. Not, of course, because there was anything wrong with how I was raised. Oh goodness no. I was one of the lucky homeschooled kiddos. No, I became interested because one of the posts was a story about a family I've been calling the "Matthews." I worked for them nearly ten years ago, and was rather stunned to see that 1. They were still around and famous and 2. had become, if this is possible, even more repressive and IMHO wrong-headed in the years since I'd been their employee.

But the thing about reading is, our brains are smarter than we are. MUCH smarter. And little bits and pieces of whatever we are reading tends to get into the cracks, no matter how carefully we try to keep it out. We are driven, in a way, by a web of subconscious, even unconscious, instincts, thoughts and feelings that our minds do not even allow us to know. Many of these things are things that, if we dared to be aware of them, would change our entire lives. For most of us, I have to assume that internal web is mostly benign. For me, it was toxic, restrictive, and confining. My life has been ruled, not by what I think, but by what I am not allowed to think.

Probably the biggest problem with Conservative Christian homeschool programs is that the programs are built around what they aren't teaching. It starts, not with a basis of inclusion but with one of exclusion. The fabric of the modern curriculum is taken, examined, and the disagreeable portions are amputated wholesale. Evolution. Sex education. Chunks of science, history, the arts. This is done in the belief that by restricting the information given to a child to the "wholesome", you are somehow limiting the damage life will do to said child. The problem, however, is that by basing teaching on the exclusion of ideas, rather than the inclusion, you are teaching the child that there are things they must not think about, things they must not have in their heads. They must not consider the idea of evolution before accepting or dismissing it, but rather must ignore it from the start and reject it wholesale (For the record, I am not a seven-day creation believer. Evolution is too elegant a mechanism, IMHO, for it to be either false or anti-God). Sexuality must be rejected, art that fits certain criteria must be removed. And the underlying message--the thing we weave into the children's mental web--is that our thoughts are something dangerous, something that has to be kept manicured and pruned, and anything distasteful must be hidden, ignored and unacknowledged. The first thing we do when we base teaching in the exclusion of ideas is educate children in the art of being afraid of their own minds.

This was something I did learn, but only halfway. Evolution was vilified, sex was shamed, everything educational must be kept as straight and narrow as possible...but my parents never bothered to monitor my recreational reading. They would sometimes question me to make sure that I knew such-and-such was false--reguardless of actual truth, I must always agree with EVERYTHING they thought--and then allow me to continue reading whatever and whenever I wanted to. It must have seemed like a gift to my mom, who didn't have to stress so much about my education. She was just glad I was reading. And if you wish to teach a child that ideas and learning are something to be afraid of, this is the worst possible thing you can do.

I still grew up ashamed of my reading choices--surely it was against God for me to prefer Lewis, Tolkien, Brooks, Donaldson, et al to the Bible--but this did not matter enough to me to give it up. I couldn't give it up if I wanted to. Every time I tried--praying on my knees for God to take this longing away from me--I was met with silence and a big fat failure. (This lasted until I was sixteen, at which point I think God got sick of it and came in with the clue-by-four to inform me that it was fine, he had made me that way, so would I PLEASE stop trying to amputate parts of my psyche?) And so I'd spend eight hours a day learning bible verses by rote, and studying facts that "disproved" the theory of evolution, and then spend the rest of my time reading McCaffrey, Weber, Verne and Wells. Madeline L'Engle was a very special favorite, though eight-year-old me did not understand that the ant diagrams explaining "wrinkling" were actually concepts and ideas most adults had trouble understanding. (I do think that if I hadn't read A Wrinkle in Time I would not have understood very much of The Time Machine when I finally got my hands on a copy, but fortunately those books were read in that precisely that order)

Naturally, I tried to separate these books from anything resembling actual thought. Not because I disagreed with these ideas, but because I knew if I dared to think, say, that evolution might possibly be a working concept, my parents would be highly displeased. Displeasure meant a withdrawl of love in my mind. My entire purpose was, after all, to support and please my parents. There was also a long-running theme of loss in my young life that I'm only just beginning to understand. Displeasing my parents meant that I would lose more things. I didn't want to lose my books. Books and ideas, and my vibrant internal life, were things no one could take away from me, if I were very careful about shepharding what I did and did not do. What I could permit to be conscious, so to speak, and what had to stay safely tucked away in the very bottom of my mind, had to be very, very carefully regulated. Otherwise I would lose the last defensive wall between myself and the world. I had to protect them. I really couldn't afford to lose anything else.

The thing of it is, books and stories soon became my castle, my very special form of Helm's Deep. The defenses for other parts of my life--my appearance, sexuality, behavior, speech patterns, creativity, spirituality--were minimal. These things could be breeched and broken at will by anyone. But my books had walls around them, had armies guarding them. Spikes and boiling pitch, and archers at every murder hole just waiting for someone to dare, dare try to take one of these books away. It was the one thing in my world that I had been allowed to grow unmolested, that I did not have to answer to. No one got to touch these.

I personally believe that this was a God thing. A big God thing. I started out protecting my books, but very quickly my books became the thing that protected me. If, for example, I had developed knitting or sexuality as my "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" bridge, I probably would have been vulnerable for a lot of nastiness. But the thing about abusive systems is, information is the very first thing they go for. It isn't by choice. One unregulated idea can shatter their whole system. It's like a beam of light in a darkroom: it destroys the picture they are trying to build. If they want to have any hope of controlling a person, they have to regulate the reading habits. And fiction is the biggest Trojan horse, the thing that must, under every circumstance, be fully inspected to ensure there aren't any Greeks hiding in the wings. The introduction of that unwelcome truth to the inner thought-web will set fire to the whole thing. And as I said, the one limit I had, the sole, unshakable boundary, was that NOBODY got to touch my books. If you even dared to try to limit my reading, or suggest that I remove one book from my bookcase, it meant that you were not to be trusted and that I needed to limit my contact with you.

When I worked for the "Matthews", I looked up to them. They were, I thought, everything I'd ever been told I had to be. Perfect, pure, spiritual, responsible, virtuous. I needed to listen to them, accept and internalize their instructions, conform to their model of good, because it looked very good. Much better than my life at the time. But the "Matthews" were not, and are not, good people. They and their teachings are unbelievably toxic. I've heard of very few systems as controlling, ugly, and destructive as the items they've pushed over the years. But at the time, this was not something I would have understood. All I saw was a beautiful family that was together and whole when my own family was not. By all rights, I should have swallowed every part of their world, internalized the whole toxic thing. I came very, very close to doing so.

And then I brought a Stephen King novel into their back room. Needful Things, I think. A story about the Devil dressing junk up to be beautiful, and using that junk to buy people's souls. Not a bad metaphore, I think, for the Matthews and their teachings. But Mrs. Matthews told me with an absolutely straight face that King was influienced by demons, and that I would likely commit suicide from reading him.

It took all my strength not to flat out laugh in her face. I knew this was bullshit. King had introduced an idea (that Divine love and perceived Divine cruelty can sometimes exist side by side, and that just because we're going through awful shit doesn't mean that God is angry with us, or that He has abandoned us) that I absolutely needed to have. My parents divorced shortly after I had processed that idea, and things went from tolerably bad to extremely fucking bad. I probably would have walked away from faith entirely, or else assumed that God hated me, given the events around my parents' divorce. Instead, I had something to hold onto: Yes, God is sometimes cruel, and sometimes he makes us walk through the Valley of Death without our understanding why, but that doesn't mean that you are alone, and that doesn't mean that you are unloved. Your circumstances have nothing to do with how much God loves you.

Looking back, I see how dangerous that idea would have been to the "Matthews" version of theology. One of the underlying ideas is that success means you are Godly, and failure means you have displeased God and are being punished. But even then, I might have still listened to her. I needed, desperately, to have something to explain why our lives had gone so badly wrong. And Mrs. Matthews was, well, Mrs. Matthews, and I was a very fucked up eighteen year old girl. But she had made an assault on my books, and that was unacceptable. Immediate rejection.

Fast forward a few months, and I'd brought another book to work. This time I was told if I brought another book like that to work with me, I'd be fired.

I left their employ not too long after. I would like to say it was because I'd realized their bullshit, but it was because my homelife had gotten unlivable. I was very sad to leave them behind, because I thought that place was a positive place. It was certainly a refuge I was, both then and now, glad to have had. But I was also much, much more careful around Mrs. Matthews than I would have been otherwise. She had made an assault on my books, after all, and might make another. Therefore every message from that quarter had to be regarded as suspect. And so where I'd begun internalizing a lot of VERY unhealthy attitudes and ideas, I now began to examine and reject them. The foundation was the threat to my books...but the benefactor was me as a human being.

Another assault came here recently, about a year ago. I'd developed a friendship with a pair of neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses. I was very lonely at the time, in a nasty job, and I was just dying to have someone, anyone, give me positive feedback. It was very, very tempting to take the plunge, buy into their theology, and accept the resulting friendship and support my life was so sorely lacking. But they sharply criticized my choices in reading material, in movies, in books, in theology. And the walls went up. Divisions drawn, protections in place, and all input carefully scrutinized for further attacks...and in the process, I figured out a lot of things about the JWs that make me despise most of that organization.

So read, my darlings. Read. Everything. Anything. Good books, trashy books, uplifting books, depressing books, politically correct works and stuff that should be burned because damn. It doesn't matter. These are the bricks in your wall, the lifeline you may need one day. And teach yourself that, whatever else happens, you will stop anyone who tries to take your books away. Our brains are smarter than we are. They are good at sorting the value from the trash. If you have a healthy foundation, you can protect yourself...and if your foundation isn't healthy, books may be the only way you'll ever find that out. But the first thing a potential abuser will reach for will be the books on your nightstand. The best thing we can learn is how to clutch them to our chests and say "No. Not this. This one's mine."

City of Bones chapter 5

I can see auras. And if it were the fun, mystical kind of aura, I'd be on cloud nine right now. Aura, however, doesn't just mean the neon neatness that happens when you drop acid. It also describes the bizzare visual phenominon your body sends out when a migrane is imminent. I went for a bike ride today and was ten minutes out when my vision began flashing red and blue with electric tingles, and just made it home before a large portion of my vision up and disappeared. The headache that followed, I am sorry to say, was spectacular.

My point? I'd rather still have the migrane and aura than be reviewing this chapter. Is it a Gor revisit? No. Is it Hubbard level logic fail? Not really. Is it Lakes Sex WTF? No. And I'd rather have it be one of those things because this chapter is boring. 

Clary overhears several conversations between Isabelle and Alec. While she's unconsious.

This is something I don't get. Being unfamiliar with Blue Laws? I can give somebody a pass for it. Unless you actually work for a restaurant in a state with Blue Laws (I just spelled that "Blew laws" which would be awesome.) you probably wouldn't know, for example, that it is illegal to sell booze, peroid, before 10am on Sundays (and even then you have to order food). Defining "all ages" as "Allows unsupervised 15 year olds into an alcohol-selling club"...you're an idiot, but I'll still cut you a pass because it wasn't something I thought about until I was threatened with possible arrest for serving a minor alcohol. But I see this trope crop up all the time. Whenever a writer has information they want one character to know about that the other characters would NEVER tell them, they have the character fall asleep and overhear the information while in a dream state.

Let me explain how stupid this is. How many of you have fallen asleep in front of the TV? How many of you remember more than a few minutes of the show after you closed your eyes? This is something that EVERYBODY does. The only way I'd give this stupid a pass is if the main character dreamed this conversation were happening between two dinosaurs. Because that would be awesome.

And Clary isn't just hearing this stuff while sleeping. She's been unconsious for three days. Do you know what unconsious means? It means not consious. And given that it's poison keeping her under, this sounds like a freaking coma.

So what is so important that the main character MUST overhear it while in a three day coma? 

“Yeah. I thought she was a pixie the first time we saw her. She’s not pretty enough to be a pixie, though.”

Seriously. She has to hear what the other characters think about her. Because we would be completely without meaning if we didn't know this, and there will never be circumstances where the other characters could express this otherwise.


Then Clary starts dreaming. And among such dreams as "Jace is an Angel" (GAG) and foreshadowing re: Simon, we get this little gem:

 Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings,

One: Why? Why would a straight girl dream this?

Two: A whip...is like a net...of gold rings. You know, I knew in a kind of sub consious way that the descriptions in this book were bad, but this kind of blew my mind, hard. Let me illustrate the fail here. This:

when wrapped around Isabelle, looks like this:

Incidentally, if I ever become queen of the universe, chain mail neckties will become part of the uniform

That's what she's describing. A net of gold rings is fucking chain mail. Isabelle's whip turns into clothing. Freaking wow.

Then she wakes up in Hogwarts.

She saw clear blue sky above her, white puffy clouds and chubby angels with gilded ribbons trailing from their wrists. Am I dead? she wondered. Could heaven actually look like this? She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again: This time she realized that what she was staring at was an arched wooden ceiling, painted with a rococo motif of clouds and cherubs.

Yep. Hogwarts. Also, Clary, honey? I have read this book. No way are you getting a toe through the pearly gates.

Hogwarts is also called "The Institute" (...=school=Hogwarts) and Isabelle is there to make Clary feel like a small and plain little flower. Clary has a stomach ache, so Isabelle gives her a magic potion to drink.

Allow me to lay out what has happened so far, mkay?

Clary either went to an alcohol-free club in a church basement, or snuck in using her mom's ID. She watched three kids her own age murder a fourth boy in cold blood, while the Murder Trio raged about demons and hunters and killing. No one else can see these people. The next day a member of the Murder Trio, Jace, stalks her to a poetry slam and tries to kidnap her, only to let her leave because her mother is in trouble. Mom is attacked by a demon, which Jace knows all about. She passes out and wakes up in a strange place, where another member of the Murder Trio gives her something strange to drink.

Clary Frey is too stupid to live. Sadly, she will.

Then we have Expository Conversation B, where Clary finds out all about Isabelle (Last name, Lightwood, brother Alec, absent parents) and Jace (Dad died when he was young, never met Mom. Hey, Clary never met her Dad! Look! They've got something in common!) Then Isabelle tells Clary she stinks and needs to go take a bath.

Riveting.

Something that bugs me is how old-fashioned everything is in the Institute. Everything here is like 1800s era. There are glass lamps that are either kerosine or gas, and Clary smells candle wax as she wanders around the hall. However, outside, there are cars speeding by. She's still in New York City. The house just isn't on a power grid.

I kind of got the whole "no modern tech" in Harry Potter, in that I understood why the Malfoys and Hogwarts might not have radios and computers (the story takes place in the late nineties, the Malfoys have their collective heads jammed up their racist asses, and Hogwarts has to accomodate students whose parents see muggle tech as the peanuts in the cafeteria of life) but I didn't get why Ron's family or Sirius's manor wasn't wired for sound, given that in the former's case, Daddy has a serious crush on muggle tech and the latter is square in the middle of London. It makes even less sense here, especially when technology is the great equalizer. There is very little a wizard could do that modern tech can't. Magic would have been a HUGE advantage in every other era, but in this one, whenever I imagine myself imagining magic in a real life setting, part of my brain goes "Hey, I just sent an e-mail to somebody in Japan in less than three seconds! Why are you still using an owl?"

So she wanders around this mint Victorian mansion and finds Jace playing a piano, expertly. And we get this:

Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Clary remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, his arms holding her up and the stars hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel.

One, they are totally going to be fucking by the end of this book, and two...that bolded part. What the fuck does it have to do with the price of tea in China?

IDK. He greets her with this:

Piano keys jangled as he got to his feet. “Our own Sleeping Beauty. Who finally kissed you awake?”

They go find Dumbledore Hodge. And continue through the Institute, which...oh, for fuck's sake. 

(The Institute looked) like it had been naturally hollowed out of rock by the passage of water and years.

No, it doesn't. It looks like a building because that's what it is. I get what she's saying. People added to the institute over the years until it looked something like the Winchester building. But a building doesn't get to look like a cave unless it has actual stretches of exposed rock. And on the way, they have Expository Conversation C, where Clary finds out no one is in the Institute, that it's where Shadowhunters go when the world gets too hot for her, and they have their own special little country, Idris, which is a small country between Germany and France. Clary responds thusly:

“But there isn’t anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland.”

I googled this. I found a map:

...That is not what I'd call "Between". That's more "Stapled onto the join". And this one I won't let fly. Cassandra Clare is from the UK. This is like ME saying Navada is between California and Arizona. FRANCE AND GERMANY ARE TOUCHING. NOTHING IS BETWEEN THEM.

Fuck. I'm not even halfway through this chapter yet. And I am skipping SO MANY THINGS to try to make this breif as possible.

Then he takes her to the library, where the books are all bound with leather and velvet.

Leather. And Velvet.

Seriously. Velvet is a book binding material here. I've owned several velvet-bound novelty books and let me tell you, they do NOT age well. It's something you put on Baby's First Journal. it's not something you use to record the Deep Secret of the Universe.

And then Alec appears and is revealed to be a total ass, Clary calls her uncle and finds out that he is a total ass, Hodge shows he'll be the Gandalf for this book, and I'm speeding through this chapter suddenly because I'm having a HUGE bout of religious rage and I have to vent about it.

A frequently occuring motif here is angels. Angels and demons, angels and demons, and...okay, I have to address this. I was going to wait until it got worse, but it's getting fucking annoying and I need to get it over with. Every book of magic draws on some kind of mythology. I'm trying to draw on modified Celtic/British with a seasoning of Greek, which is what C.S. Lewis and Rowling drew on. Tolkien did European mythos.

Cassandra Clare is drawing on Christian mythology for this novel.

My faith, in other words.

The problem with writing in any mythology is you tend to treat it like a buffet. You take what you like and you leave the rest. Thus, it is a lot safer to draw upon a more or less "dead" faith than it is to draw on one that's still alive. First, because you piss fewer people off. Second, because the odds of running into somebody who actually understands the theology you're working with are relatively small.

Cassandra Clare? Has managed to pull full research fail on the biggest religion in the world. 

See, the Shadowhunters, that hunt demons, are the Nephilium. She gets exactly one part right: The Nephilum were the offspring of humans and Angels. Yes, boys and girls. The Bible does say that humans and angels got it on and had a whole bunch of kids. And then Clare basically says "But the bible got it wrong, and Shadowhunters were really created by people drinking angel blood out of the Mortal Cup."

No.

Nephilum were the product of angels getting it on with human women. Something that God disliked so much that he freaking drowned the human race. The Nephilum are one of the reasons for the biblical flood. Noah's ark is a thing due to the Nephilum. And they were considered very, very evil in the Bible. One of the fun theological debates you could have is if Goliath, as in David and Goliath, was a Nephilum or just a very big man.

It is possible to take Christian theology and fuse it to magical elements. C.S. Lewis did it beautifully, a couple of other Christian writers did it, and Neil Gaiman fucking nailed it. But there's one thing all those writers have in common: They respected the source material. Even if they didn't believe in it, they took the time to research the things they're drawing on and present them in a manner that stands up to casual theological scrutiany. (See Good Omens) 

Cassandra Clare grabbed all the shiny objects and left the rest of it sitting in the box. The biggest sign that this is so? There are a lot of angels, and a lot of demons, but nobody ever brings up God. And I don't mean goes "this is the One True God of Cosmos, fall on your knees in respect and love" I mean nobody mentions the posibility of deity. In a book about angels and demons. Written by an author who did enough research to find something as awesome as the Nephilum.

There's a factual connection between Christianity and the other elements Clare employs, but there isn't a spiritual one. At no point does Clare take time to connect the dots between the pixies, the Shadowhunters, and the Christian theology. And I know this isn't a bullshit thing. American Gods has a deep spiritual/emotional connection between the gods of every pagan religion ever and America itself. It's a story about a battle between Odin and the spirit of talk shows. And it WORKS.

City of Bones does not work. It's all fluff and bubblegum, and its drawing upon sources that are deep and pretty damn dark at times.

To sum up the rest of the chapter, we find out that Valentine has all the same goals as Voldemort, and that Clary is going back to her house to get clothes and see if maybe her Mom came back. Hodge writes a letter. The rest of us go to sleep.

End of chapter.  

In Which A Dedicated Pro-Lifer Jumps Ship.

So today I found out that Mississippi state House, on Nov. 8th, is voting on a bill that would grant “personhood” to human embryos. And I realized that despite years and years of education in Why Abortion is Bad and When Life Starts and a gazillion other things my good Christian parents have educated me about, despite being a dedicated Christian (with kinks) and a Republican (technically) I really don't like this. Having this pass and set precedent for other states would be a really bad thing for me. You know, because I'm one of those “woman” things with ovaries and a uterus.

And no. I’m not saying this because limitations on birth control, which is what this group is advocating, would limit my happy fun sexy times. I don’t have happy fun sexy times. I have not had sex. Ever. And I don’t plan on having sex in the immediate future, partially because me having a baby right now would be a really bad thing. Even if I were on birth control I probably wouldn’t be having sex, because I have some really good evidence that the pill doesn’t always work.

Me.

Yep. I’m a pill baby, folks. Not only that, but Mom was on the pill because her doctor told her it’d be a really BAD idea for her to ever get pregnant again. She’d lost two babies before she had me, and when she did get pregnant with me, the first time she went in for a checkup the doctor could feel my head.

And you know, maybe it’s me shoving my head up my own ass here, but that tells me that God really wanted me here. Enough to bypass every safety mechanism my parents put in place because Mom having babies was Not A Good Thing according to everyone. And this leads me to why this bill pisses me off.

Point the First: I am poor. Anyone I marry is likely to be poor. Therefore, if within the next ten years or so I decide to get married, it probably will not be “right” for me to have a baby. Note that I am considering this in the relm of “marry” because, religious leanings aside, given how often birth control has failed in my family if you want to get in my pants you’d better fucking be ready to marry me before you cross the finish line, so to speak,  because I cannot afford to have a baby if and when I get married right now, let alone if I’m on my own. In fact, every other consideration off the table, under every conceivable set of probable circumstances shows me that I probably will not ever be able to afford a baby and provide the level of care and life the child would need.


With "good of the child" as my primary concern, it's a bad idea for me to have kids. So who the hell are you to take this decision away from me? To tell me that if I want to have a relationship with someone I’d better have a baby plan in place first? I’m already paranoid about having a kid, in or out of wedlock, before I’m ready to raise and care for that kid. And I want to have a kid! I just know me having babies right now is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. This is a decision I’ve made carefully and soberly, and to have somebody tell me “tough luck” and take the few, unreliable tools I DO have for managing my future away from me is not fair. If I can’t afford a fucking CAR, sir, I can’t afford a baby. And you’re telling me that I also can’t afford to have a relationship, MARRIED OR NOT, because I can’t even have birth control?

And hey? Pro-life people? Did you see that place above where I said “Even if I’m on the pill, I probably wouldn’t have sex”? Does it not occur to you that some people use hormonal birth control for something OTHER than not making babies? That maybe us women people need to be able to function and not be incapacitated with cramps? Or deal with the anemia that comes with excessively heavy periods? That being able to predict when the monthly gift deposits itself on our door might be a good thing? Oh, and you know the mood swings that come with? Do you want to combine brittle emotional states with chronic depression? You want to know what a fucking funhouse it is to have S/I issues and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that once a month I get to hold on to my sanity by the skin of my teeth? Because I sure as fuck didn't, and I got to anyway.

You want to control crime? Make sure you don’t have poor families with sixteen mouths to feed. Make sure women don’t have to fucking sterilize themselves to ensure that “woopsie daisy, there’s a baby” doesn’t get in the way of feeding their other children. Make sure that the family a person has is the family they can afford to feed. Want to prevent abortions? See above.

And that brings me to Point number two. This is aimed at the religious people. The people who want to do God’s will in life, who think that preventing abortions is it.

Who the BLAZING BLUE FUCK do you think you are? How DARE you shove your head so far up your own ass that you think anyone can abort something God wants to have happen? Do you see that part above me? The part where I said I’m a pill baby? Do you think that one single person God wants in this world hasn’t been born? Do you think we really have that much power? Really? You really want to think that human beings have more power than God?

Do you think God is so weak that a surgeon with a scalpel and a vacuum can undo something he wants done? Is your God so powerless that he can’t secure the birth of every child he desires?

Judge not, lest you be judged, sir. And you’re judging. You’ve decided that every teenager who gets pregnant is a careless sex fiend. You’ve decided that every career woman who decides to go on the pill is a feminazi ice bitch. Every poor person who visits planned parenthood is someone getting an abortion, and every woman who gets an abortion is a whore.

In your world, there are no rape victims.

In your world, biology is perfect.

In your world, everyone can scrape together the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to bring a single healthy baby into the world.

You don’t see the pain.

You don’t see the desperation.

You have the compassion of a jar of mayonnaise.

You know that part in the bible? Splinter in your friend’s eye? BIG FUCKING LOG in yours? Abortion is a splinter. Abortion is a matter between the individual WOMAN faced with that choice and God. So is birth control. So is everything else in a WOMAN’S life. May I emphasize that again? If I decide that I am neither financially nor emotionally nor physically stable enough to have a baby it should be my fucking choice. You cannot tell me what I am capable of. It is my body, and I’d rather become a nun than bring a child into the world when I cannot provide a stable, healthy home for it. Children, marriage and sex are decisions that are between ME and GOD, and not some rich politician who probably spends twice my monthly rent on BOOZE, or gas, or electricity for his air conditioning, who doesn’t see things from my perspective, who has never seen things from my perspective, who, if he did see me, would see me as a waitress and would ogle my boobs and cut my tip in half if I protested.

In short, sir:

And yes, that’s me judging too. And I’ll apologize to both you and God for it when I’m less pissed off.

C.S. Lewis, the great theologian and fantasy writer, said two things in passing that apply here. The first was in his biography, where he discusses the massive amount of pediastry that happened in his prep school (aka boys screwing other boys). He said that he never felt it his place to judge because he never experienced that particular temptation. Then, in The Horse and his Boy, there is a place where Aslan tells a character why it was necessary for him to scar the character across the back: the girl needed to know what she had carelessly done to her faithful servant. When the girl, now humble, asks what happened to the servant, Aslan replies that that is not the girl’s story. We each may only know our own stories.

You might believe that birth, not abortion is the morally right choice. This is great. I believe that too. But, and this is the key, you will never have to make that choice. I will. You will never have to decide between buying food and buying diapers. Between having a romantic life and having stability. And constricting my freedom just so that you  can sleep at night is not and cannot be God’s will. And to think that you have any control over God’s will, in a positive or negative sense?

Look up megalomania in the dictionary. I think you’ll see your picture right next to it.

WTF Christian ramblings AHOY!!!

(Yeah. If you're a non-religious type I recommend putting on a hard hat. I don't usually let the Christian drive but today I want to.)


    Can God make a rock he can’t lift?

    The answer from the Christian perspective (given the flavor in which I was raised) is of course, yes. Which immediately makes your brain throw cogs. It’s a kind of double negative. Can God, who can do everything and in whom all things may be done, make something that he cannot then do anything with? I remember having a debate with an atheist (this was the ‘net and the kid was a troll, but it technically counts as a debate with an atheist) where they brought up this question, and that wasn’t the last time, either. It seems to be a proof of the inherent idiotcy of belief in an omnipotent being of infinite power, the rock that can’t be lifted. If it is infinite, it should be able to make the rock, but also, if it is infinite, it ought to be able to lift it.  A chicken-or-the-egg kind of question, intended to make the recipient realize their belief system is not true due to the failure of logic.

    Well, there’s a lot of assumptions one has to make about God before the question both disproves His existence (and/or nature) and becomes anything other than utter nonsense, and when asked in the spirit of “Then how can God exist?” every one of these assumptions are made. I have sorted them into three major points:

    -That the perception of a celestial or higher being are identical to the perceptions of a human, and that the infinite is, therefore, like a human only bigger.
    -That the limitations of such a being would be imposed by something outside of itself
    -That God has never done anything of the sort before.

    We’ll start with the first one. And I will probably give a physicist conniption fits, so please forgive me if I completely mangle hyperspacial theory. There’s a thought exercise intended to help a layperson understand what a fourth-dimensional square would look like. Take the surface of a table or a piece of paper, and imagine that there is an entire civilization living in it. Not the whole table or the whole piece of paper, but the mathematical two dimensional plane of its surface. It has leingth, and it has width. If you want to think of it in terms of direction, it has forward, back, right and left. It has no up or down. Any creature living in this two dimensional world would not only not have access to up, it would have no concept of the direction up. If you were to insert a cube into Flatland and drop it all the way through, a Flatlander would only see a single, unchanging square. If you dropped a pyramid, it would see a slowly shrinking square. To a Flatlander a pyramid is a square that shrinks. Because we have access to the third dimension—not merely perception of it but the ability to move in it and manipulate objects in it—we understand what a pyramid is, and by the same measure, cannot fully undersand what it is to not understand, to not know what up is.

    It stands to reason, then, that if there are other dimensions, and I believe time is more or less our limited perception of the fourth dimension—it occurred to me that if you were to pick up Flatland and move it through the third dimension, the Flatlanders would probably perceive something changing in their world, but would be unable to identify it past its two dimensional effects—that we cannot see what their nature is. If a Flatlander can see all of a square but not all of a cube, then we can see all of a cube but perhaps not all of a tesseract, the fourth dimensional cube. We can unfold a model of a tesseract into three dimensional terms, just as a cube can be unfolded into its component squares and become a two dimensional shape, but we can’t perceive what that tesseract would really look like because we cannot perceive the fourth dimension’s directions, just as the Flatlander has no concept of up. Perhaps things we identify in life, like light and gravity and time, perhaps even sin, are in reality extradimensional movements or actions that we can only identify by their effects on our three dimensional world.

    For example, if I were to insert a cube into Flatland and move it up and down, but never so far up or so far down as to make it actually leave Flatland, by a Flatlander’s perspective it wouldn’t be moving. And if I were then to have a physical presence in Flatland—say a plane of my body where it intersects with Flatland—it would probably look as if there were a cube that I were unable to shift right or left. If I were to have a shape with infinite height, but a perfectly square profile, it would be a square I could never properly remove from Flatland, and from the Flatlander’s perspective, something immobile. So if God were to create a rock, fixed in three dimensions, movable yet infinite in a fourth, fifth, sixth or some other dimension as yet undiscovered and undiscribed, it would fit the literal definition of our immovable rock, by our perspective.

    But perhaps you want a rock that can’t be moved by any definition, even God’s, which brings us to the second assumption people make when they ask that question: that any such limit must come from an outside source. That it may not and cannot not be self-imposed. And this is where the question breaks down into total nonsense and we need to examine not the nature of God or what is possible, but the nature of the infinite and of limitations.

    First, let’s assume that the rock is a physical thing, that God is infinite (otherwise the question is again, nonsense) that what we’re talking about is physical streingth, and that God has no self-imposed limitations on what he may or may not do. Thus, he could lift infinitely more material than there is in all of creation. Thus the rock would have to be infinitely more than infinite, and unless you can divide by zero, this is where logic breaks down.

    Let me put it this way. You have a mathematically infinite line, and are told that at the end of it, there is another line and you are to find it. This line has no end. You cannot have two simultaneous unlimited infinities. There is no way to get to the end of the first line in order to find the second. This second line might as well not exist. It is part of the infinite. It is part of that first line. The only way for two mathematically infinite lines to exist is side by side, paralelle to each other.

    To put it another way, by saying that this is a line, a one dimensional construct, we have put limitations on it and have given something else, the second line, a place to exist. If we were talking about two infinite planes, we’d have the same problem until we moved into the third dimension and put the two planes paralelle to each other. If it is infinite in the third dimension, we have to move up into the fourth dimension, and then keep going until we find the dimension in which our object (now indescribable in human terms) finally has a limitation. You may have one infinite thing in a defined space, but you cannot have two. They will swallow each other up and become one thing again. The only way for two things to exist is to put limitations on them, and then place them so that they interact within the confines of their limits. You could almost say that individual objects, or even individuals themselves, can only exist so long as there are limitations to protect them.

    But God, as we have established, is infinite, and that includes in all aspects and dimensions. An infinite rock would swallowed up, or else He would be swallowed up by the rock, if this is not too heretical a thing to think. If the creation of the rock insists on an infinite series of infintes there really is no point to it because it wouldn’t exist at all. God and the Rock would swallow up each other. There has to be a limit for the rock to exist as a rock.

    Which means that to create the rock that can’t be moved, God must first put a limit, not on the rock, but upon God. And that’s when the rock that can’t be moved becomes a possibility.

    Suppose that God says to himself, “I shall only be able to move this much of creation. And so I shall create a rock that is this much more than this much of creation, and I shall put it here, and it shall then not be moved.” and so he makes the rock.

    This supposes a purely physical limitation. Suppose instead that God says, “I shall make a rock no bigger than a grain of sand and I shall place it on a beach, and once it is there I may not and cannot move it again.” And so he makes the rock, a rock that a child could move, or a wave, but a rock that God cannot move because he said he cannot move it. It is a limitation of will.

    Which brings us to the third assumption: That God has never done such a thing before.

    Remember what I said about the infinite line. Suppose that there was a finite line—a line with ends—somewhere in that infinite line. Could you find it? There’s only one dimension and while there may be two lines, one has no end. How could you find the other one without first moving both into the second dimension? Suppose Flatland were swallowed by an infinite plane? Would the Flatlanders still exist? Wouldn’t you have to move them into the third dimension, where they are limited, before you could separate the flatlanders from the plane?

     In God we have an infinite Presence, infinite Substance, infinite Power and infinite Being. How could anything exist within that eternity without becoming a part of it? In our modern world a fetus, encompassed by its mother, is considered part of the mother, like a limb or a heart, and is only its own person when removed from the womb and forced to breathe and survive on its own. The only individual for whom existence does not require limitations is God, because He is the Infinite. For the rest of us, we need limitations, not only of ourselves but also of God himself. Otherwise we are a part of God, attached by some umbilical of twisting eternity, encased in a womb that continues forever, and this is not what God wants.

    Let’s play out a scenario of Creation, how it might be if the Infinite were to say, I am lonely. Oh, think of that for just a moment. One of the rules of love is that you may only feel it yourself, truly, when it is felt for someone else. Love requires an object. Demands it. It is not a sensation like sweetness or happiness, but an action, and you need something to do it to. And the Eternal, the Indivisable, the forever God, Infinite Love says to himself, I am lonely. And perhaps He decides to make something equal to Himself and divides, and the Trinity is born. But you can’t sort the eternally present from the eternally present, and while there might be three personages somewhere, there is still only one God there. Creation still has not happened.

    And then God says, “For there to be a true Object, there must first be a place where I am not. So then, let there be a place where I am not.” And a thing which has never before been has been created. Not by a twisting or a sharing or a shaping, but by a limitation. Here is a place where the Eternal ends, and where something else may be. And all else, the cosmos, earth, mankind, grows out of this first moment, when the Eternal created a place where the Eternal would end.

    Another aspect of the Rock which Can’t be Moved is its uniqueness. In all the cosmos there are rocks aplenty, but here is a new thing, a special thing. A rock that God can’t move. And I would think that God would like to look at this rock and visit it, because it is unique among all the rocks. And if he were to remove his self-imposed limitations, sure, he could move the rock and prove his eternal power by doing so, but he would also be unmaking the rock, robbing it of its special qualities and also, robbing himself of this wonderful, special thing. It’s not the Rock that Can’t be Moved anymore. It’s merely a rock, and there are rocks aplenty in cosmos.

    God limits himself and creates a place where he is not. And then he puts things into it, and I don’t pretend to understand angelology and demonology and the kinds of creatures that God might make for His joy and pleasure, but eventually one of them was Man, and in Man he decided to do a special thing and say, “Let us make Man in Our own image.” Well, God did not precisely mean identical copies of the Eternal, because that would turn everything into sameness, into Godness, and this is something God does not want, because he isn’t making more of himself. He wants things like, similar, but not same as. So he meant something else, and I and a lot of other people believe that the thing he made in Man that was like but not same as was Free Will. For Free Will to exist, God again has to say, “Here is a place where I am not.” Here is a place where His will is not, so that our will might exist.

    This might need to exist to give unconditional love a chance to truly be unconditional. As long as the loved object remains agreeable, love is not truly unconditional. It’s never had to prove it’s nature. It’s never been measured. But if there is a chance the loved object may become undesirable, then there is a chance that the love itself might prove unconditional. And of all the aspects of God that may or may not be limited by His will, His love has never been restricted.

    But for this to happen there must be a will that God, in all his might and power, cannot shift. God, who must by his very nature enter true relationships only with his inferior, wants objects that can also love in return, that can adore and worship and return to Him that which He feels for them… but this love is meaningless without the choice not to love. Without the choice, the love is bland, boring, unspirited, like oatmeal without even salt to taste. With it, though, it becomes a drama. A play. A story worth reading. It is the chance of loss, the danger of losing, the threat of irrevocable severing, that gives any story its heart and savor. When we choose to love God, having the option to choose not to, it is a thing worth having, a thing unique in all Cosmos. Love given to the Eternal by the free will of the giving soul.

    And the price of this great thing? The pain and suffering, the horrors and agonies, the very insipid nature of humanity. War, rape, genocide. We are guilty of it all, because it is by our choice that we do it, and the concequences of those actions rightly fall on our heads…but there is meat to the argument that it is God’s choice to give us choice, that he is at fault for creating a world where suffering is possible.

    He could choose to take that free will away from us, make us all behave and do the things that are right and good not because we choose to do them but because they are right and good. Take away the road, in other words, lay down railroad tracks and tie us into them forever. But to do so would be to remove our specialness. There are creatures in Cosmos aplenty who can do good, angels to sing praises, seraphim to worship. But it is we, lowly mortals, who may choose to do so, and who also may choose not to. We alone, by His will, may choose to be beautiful or ugly, which makes our beauty all the greater and our ugliness all the more terrible. It is we who may rise to Heaven or fall to Hell, and magnify the rise or fall by its triumph or tragety. It is we who may be wooed and won or lost, depending not only on what God wills but by what we will as well. The submission and surrender of one child is greater than that of all the angels in all of Cosmos, because it is the submission of choice and of will, freely received and freely given, something that no other creature can say. We are the Bride of Christ not merely because God chose us to be so, but because we could have said No, and by our natures had to be won rather than taken.

    In essence, We are the answer to the question. We are the Rock Which Can’t be Moved.

Book Bitch: Soul Harvest

Okay, recap of series so far: Rayford Steele fails at monogamy, Buck Williams is loaded, both men are JBJ's self inserts, Hattie is a total skank and fucking annoying, HEY STUPID THE RAPTURE HAPPENED, both Buck and Ray work for the Antichrist even though they hate it, author fails at keeping track of ages, WW2 got lost for most of book 2, Chloe Williams does ... um, what does she do? Tim LaHaye upgrades his self-insert from a black theologian to a Jewish theologian, and then ... EARTHQUAKE!!!!
 So let's find out what happened to Amanda!

...Amanda who? Oh, right. Rayford's wife. Who had like, three scenes in as many novels. Who will be Ray's primary motivation for the next three hundred pages. Right.


Anybody got an aspirin I can borrow?

*headdesk*

Dear Christian America, Of Which I Am Still Nominally A Part:

Knock this shit off please.

I'm serious. This is the kind of thing that makes my teeth bleed. Kids get "exposed" to a lot of things that parents can't control. It's better for them to become aware of them in a controlled environment (school, for example) than it is an uncontrolled one (the back of somebody's car).

Reality is an ugly, uncaring, unfeeling, horrible place. Sheltering your kids from it will not work for very long. It likes to get in through the cracks. You can either let your kids know this and arm them to fight the nasty, or you can shelter them and leave them pretty much defenseless against it. I'd rather have sex education than pregnant fourteen year olds. I'd rather have books about rape than students too scared to come forward. I'd rather show my kids everything, all the beauty and all the ugliness, as high as it can get and as low as it can get, in the safe environment of childhood rather than hide the cracked spots and let my kids become disillusioned when reality bites.

Your job as a parent is not only to keep your children pure. It's also to arm them for a life that's little more than a running fight against the dark.

Book Bitch: Nicolae

Let's get the basic stuff out of the way fast, becasue there really is no spoiler-free intro for Nicolae.

Title: Nicolae
Author: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins AKA Tim and Jerry
Readability: Better than Tribulation Force, but still pretty poor.

What you should know before you buy: DO NOT READ IF: you are athiest, gay, pregnant and/or considering an abortion, pagan/any religion other than Protestant Christian, any race other than White, liberal, or well versed in the mysteries of science. Because you will blow a blood vessel if you try.

Spoiler cut!

Book Bitch: Left Behind Pt 2

I was about halfway through my original draft for this thing when I realized that memory and wikipedia had failed me in one particular area I remember being especially heinous. So I broke my promise to myself. It seems I AM going to have to re-read the fourteen remaining books in order to do the job right.

The GOOD news is that the used bookstore had most of 'em for two bucks a pop. Nice, big hardcovers too.
Books that size are usually five bucks. They have so many of them they're trying to offload rapidly.

It made my day.

Title: Tribulation Force
Authors: Tim LaHaye (hereafter TLH) and Jerry B. Jinkens (Either JBJ or just Jerry, depending on how pissed I get)
Readability: ...don't. Just fucking don't. Okay?

What you need to do before you buy: If you are not a Christian, you will hate it. If you are a Christian and you have atheist/pagan/agnositic/catholic friends (Because CATHOLICS DON'T COUNT) you will want to light it on fire. If you like good writing, subtle characterization, romance that doesn't make you want to become asexual and politics that make fucking sense ... I don't think an atom bomb can solve the pain. Although you could stand directly beneath it. And this is book two.

Spoiler cut, though at this point, I really shouldn't bother.

Book Bitch: Left Behind pt 1

You know, there are books that need to be killed, books that just need a little bit of help to be good (and are thus annoying as hell because they won't ever get there) and then there are books so awful, bitching about them is just shooting fish in a barrel.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Left Behind series.

I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help myself. I cannot bitch about bad books without mentioning the worst bestselling series in the history of Christian fiction. It just wouldn't be right.

So without further ado, let us begin.

Title: Left Behind
Author: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Genre: Christian Fiction
Readability: Not Bad, but ... gah, just keep reading.

What You Need To Know Before You Buy: Starts off okay, gets progressively crazy. This is a REAL specific flavor of Christianity, REAL REAL specific, and if you adhere to a different branch you'll want to throw the books against the wall by the time you get to Apollyon. If you're not a Christian, you'll want to set the whole series on fire by Nicolae. LaHaye and Jenkins use the series as their personal soapbox and take unnecessary potshots at secular society every chance they get.

And now for the spoiler-rific cut.

Note to Universe

Dear Christian People, of whom I am still marginally one,

When you meet a person who was raised as a Christian and has decided to explore alternative spirituality, this is usually an indication that the flavor of Christianity they were raised in no longer meets their spiritual needs. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe their flavor of church let them down. Maybe they witnessed some illegal and/or immoral activity by members in good standing (see Peter Popoff, the Catholic Priest sexual abuse scandals, and anything involving Benny Hinn) or maybe they just aren't getting "fed" and want more, and because their flavor of Christianity said certain things are evil bad and wrong, even if the Bible makes NO MENTION OF THESE PRACTICES AT ALL, they've decided that it's better to be evil-bad than to go hungry.

You deal with these people by being as understanding as you possibly can, and by trusting that God is 1. In charge and 2. knows what he's doing. C.S. Lewis was both an occultist AND an athiest, by his own admission, because he got screwed over in his early years by. He equates his re-conversion to being "dragged kicking and screaming through the front gate". Sometimes you have to go through the wilderness, and sometimes it takes a really long time.

For God's sake, the last thing you should do is SCREAM AT THEM. They're at an extremely fragile point in their spiritual development. DO NOT KICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE DOWN. Be kind, be sweet, be understanding. Open a dialogue with them. Discuss belief systems, why they've chosen the path they're walking and the nature of prayer vs. magic. You might be surprised by what you find. Don't bash their tarot cards. If you really want to get brownie points, learn what Tarot cards are.  Talk to them about the Christian themes involved in Death, the Tower, the Sun and Judgment and the value of symbolism and Jungian psychology. Offer to play the actual game of Tarot with somebody's spare Rider-Waite. Hell, buy them the Jesus Deck. It's 52 cards, not 78, but it's awesome, and an awesome witnessing tool.

Accept that they're not going to see "witchcraft" as evil. Just accept it. I know it's hard. I know this comes as a HUGE SURPRISE to some of you, but they don't believe in the same things you do. Telling someone who no longer believes in hell that they're going to go to hell is not EVER going to be effective.

Realize that the knife they've got sitting on their alter is called an atheme, and is not the implement they're going to use to slaughter kittens.

"Wicca" is a specific religion. Do not use it as a blanket term for paganism. It just makes the pagans laugh and proves you don't know what you're talking about.

Do not get your information about their chosen path from Jack Chick tracts. In the name of Jesus God, do not get your information from Jack Chick ANYTHING. Not only is he inaccurate as FUCK, but half those tracts are based on books (books HE PUBLISHED, no less) that Christian watchdogs discredited when the Satanic Panic hit. Because these books STARTED the Satanic Panic, and the Christians who still had their brains installed realized the weight of bullshit they were wallowing under.

There's that part in the Bible that goes, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of Power and of Love and of a Sound Mind." If you are screaming at someone, and if their religious beliefs scare you worse than combat, YOU ARE NOT GETTING VISITED BY CHRIST. Because "by their fruits you shall know them" and all that jazz. Be kind, be courteous, be gentle. Show that you are Christ-like by your actions, and that means comfort, love and teaching. The only time he ever got pissed was when HIS OWN PEOPLE were screwing up.

Thank you all for completely ruining my day. God bless.

CW