Guest Post: The Problem of Satan

Today's post comes to us from my British doppelgänger (or am I his American doppelgänger?), Recovering Agnostic. Like me, he blogs anonymously about de-converting from conservative Christianity to agnosticism. He's guest posted here before.

Check out his blog, twitter feed, and Facebook page. 

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Years ago, when I was young, pious and enthusiastic, I used to think a lot - some things never change! One day, I became uncomfortable at being taught that there was not only a personal devil, but that he had genuine power over the world.

The explanation for this claim, one that was sufficiently mainstream for Michael Green to use it in I Believe in Satan's Downfall (a book I read in an attempt to understand), was that if there was no Satan with independent power to tempt, goad and commit evil acts, all evil must be God's fault. It didn't entirely satisfy me, but it made a certain amount of sense at the time, and however difficult I could be, I still felt that I should avoid too much questioning and argumentation.

For a while, this kept my disquiet under control, but not forever. One Sunday afternoon, after studying Genesis, I started to scratch that itch again. Starting from the question of why a perfect creation contained unnecessary and destructive features like an evil snake and what could be considered a "Doomsday Tree", I began to question the whole nature of what I'd been told.

I long ago settled on an interpretation of the Creation Myth that satisfies me, but that whole Satan thing was a big problem, which maybe shouldn't be a surprise given how much of the popular image is extra-Biblical. But still, this idea of an actual person who opposes God and has sufficient power to cause and promote evil is thoroughly mainstream.

The trouble I had wasn't exactly with the belief itself - that was far from the strangest thing I believed at the time - but the way it conflicted with other things I'd been taught: God is sovereign; God is good; God is omniscient. So Satan must be subservient, and God must know what he's up to. But if that's the case, why let him do it?

It's basically the problem of evil yet again, but with the only halfway-decent explanation of "free will" replaced by a malicious imp who is licenced to act like some sort of supernatural bully. He taunts, lies, screws things up, and (so I was told) can make our lives a misery, while God looks on like an overworked teacher trying to avoid the hassle and paperwork involved in actually noticing this and doing something about it.

So why the lack of interest? I concluded that either God was standing by while someone else took the blame for the sucky bits of life, or He couldn't do anything. That viewpoint got a certain amount of support from various people who were into "spiritual warfare", with the implication of a balanced struggle between good and evil. But somehow, they still claimed to believe that God was sovereign. I, on the other hand, had a lower tolerance threshold for cognitive dissonance.

Suffice to say, I completely rejected this belief before long. If God's sovereign, it doesn't matter what evil creatures you invent, as they can only do bad things as long as God allows it. You end up with exactly the same problems as if they didn't exist, and William of Ockham starts to get very irritable. To insist on the existence of Satan as a genuine opposing force, you must deny the truth of Biblical passages which portray God as omnipotent.

Even if the Bible painted a consistent, coherent picture of some sort of devil, ignoring other parts of the Bible is a strange way of dealing with that.

Request for guest posts, and housekeeping

Here's a riddle:

Who has less time for blogging than the parent of two young children?

Answer:

A parent of three young children.

My wife and I are expecting our third child any day now. I haven't had any time to blog, and I don't see that trend changing in the near future. 

I've been writing this blog for over a year now, and I would like to continue it. 
So I'm asking for your help, in the form of guest posts!

I've got a few lined up already. If you're interested, guidelines are here. The topic is not limited to spiritual abuse, but if you have a story about that subject which you would like to share, I would love to post it. No story is too big or too small.

If I were still an Evangelical, I would say that I feel called by God to share stories of spiritual abuse and that it's his will for my life. Since I'm not, I'm just going to say that I really, really want to share stories of spiritual abuse and I think it would be a good idea.

I have managed to get back on Twitter. I've also started an account called Fake Piper which I've been told is pretty funny. 140 characters is about all I have time for lately.

I've also started a tumblr. It's sort of a side blog in the spirit of When In Comments. 

There's not much new to report other than the new baby. No new developments with my in-laws, still attending the same Episcopal church with semi-regularity, and no spiritual epiphanies.

Thanks to the readers who noticed my absence and contacted me to see if everything was OK.

Peace out,
HH

Confessions of a Male Feminist

This was my introduction to feminism:

That’s Marcy D’arcy (played by Amanda Bearse) from the American T.V show Married... With Children.

Now, I’ve never been one to blame the media for things, whether it be school shootings or the inexplicable popularity of Crocs (seriously, it looks like you’re wearing cut up wiffle balls on your feet. Just stop.) But I’ve come to realize that in many ways, media has shaped my view of many things, including feminism.

In case you can’t tell from the picture, Marcy is a typical straw feminist. She’s anti-male, a hypocrite, and generally just unpleasant. I seem to remember many characters like her on 90’s sitcoms.

I didn’t have many other examples of feminists in my life. I had no sisters. My mother doesn’t identify as a feminist (though she holds many feminist beliefs). And of the few female friends I had, none really talked about feminism.

The first feminist I met was my wife. I was shocked to hear her say that sexism was still a problem in America. Surely, I said, these problems had been solved in the sixties? Gloria Steinem? Women’s suffrage? Any of this ringing a bell?

I held the all too typical view that sexism in America was a problem of the past, and anyone still complaining about it was living in that past.

Then, I entered the Bizarro World of American Evangelical Christianity. I heard all kinds of sexist claptrap about how women couldn’t be leaders, that they should submit to their husbands...yet it didn’t occur to me that sexism sexism was a problem. In fact, since I believed that the Bible was the Word of God, I started to think that maybe I was the one with the problem, since I didn’t consider myself to be the head of my household, and I didn’t see a problem with women being pastors.

When I started this blog a year ago, I also started a Twitter account. I talked with other feminists. Some of them were Christian, some weren’t. I listened to their stories instead of listening to sermons. And I started reconsidering my views on feminism (funny how stories have a way of doing that).  I realized that the root of many of those views were still based on Marcy D’arcy.

Have you ever bought a new car, and then started seeing other cars of the same model everywhere? It’s not that everyone suddenly purchased that car. There’s a part of your brain responsible for filtering out unimportant information. Now that you own one of those cars, it stops filtering other cars of the same type.   This is how my brain reacted when I read the stories of people affected by sexism. And it kept going when I became a father to two girls (with a third on the way).

I started thinking that maybe I was a feminist too. But I didn’t label myself with the word, because, let’s be honest, it has a great deal of baggage. I didn’t want people assuming things about me because of that. I didn’t want to be judged.

You know what? Fuck it, I’m a feminist.

So what does that mean? Well, readers of this blog should know by now where that discussion is going to start.

fem·i·nist [fem-uh-nist]  

adjective Sometimes, fem·i·nis·tic.

1. advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.

noun

2. an advocate of such rights.

That’s what it means to me so far. I’m still working it out, to be honest. It’s a bit new to me. I know the names of a few famous feminists but I don’t know much about them, and I haven’t read anything by them (with two children, graphic novels are pretty much all I have time for. Have feminists written any of those?)

Feminism, for me, means that when I talk to my daughters, I will say “firefighter” instead of “fireman”, and “police officer” instead of “policeman”, though I won’t be offended if someone else uses those words.

(I’m still undecided about “manhole cover”. Maintenance hatch? Sewer access tunnel? “Person-hole cover” sounds dumb.)

It means that when I read my daughter Fantastic Four comics from the sixties, I will edit the dialogue on the fly when Sue Storm falls in love with the villainous Sub-Mariner instead of kicking his sorry ass back to Atlantis.

It means I will play My Little Pony with them, and will buy them Transformers too if they want them.

It means I’m distrustful of almost anything with the ‘Princess’ label on it.

It means I will never limit them by saying “You’re a girl, so you can’t do that.”

Of course, there will be others who say that.

I will tell them that those people are not to be listened to.

And I will tell them that those people are the ones living in the past.

Dear Mom Judging the Mom on Her Iphone

When I read your post , my first thought was that it must have been written by an elderly grandmother type. But before I launched into an expletive laced rant, I figured I should find out a little bit about you. Hey, there’s a first time for everything, right?.

I was surprised to find your blog and see you were younger than me.

I was not surprised to find that you were a Christian.

I read your blog. I read your followup to the Iphone post, your similar post about Dads, and I read some of your series on how you survived adultery.  As I learned more about you, I began mentally editing my post. It’s easier to rant against an unnamed person, or a celebrity like Mark Driscoll or John Piper, but putting a face( and, more importantly, a story) to you made me want to be a bit kinder.  Of course, since you’re a Christian, this post will probably still seem expletive laced to you if you read it.

Sorry, there’s not a fucking thing I can do about that.

I mentioned that I was not surprised you were a Christian. Actually, I deduced this before finding your blog. I’m no detective, but I ran in Evangelical circles long enough to recognize the signs. Mainly it was your mention of The Creator, and your egregious use of gender roles. I couldn’t help but notice that the hypothetical boy in your post was much more assertive than the hypothetical girl. Also, the general shaming tone of the post was a dead giveaway.

I saw the note at the end of the post, about how you are guilty of the same thing. I suspect it was added later as an afterthought, because the re-post of the story I initially saw didn’t include it.
But even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was always there, the problem is, that doesn’t change what it is: an afterthought.

When I was an evangelical Christian, I usually forgot to look at the plank in my own eye first. It seems that in the midst of all that Jesus talk, you did the same (see what I did there?).

Like me, you probably also forgot the whole “judge not lest you be judged” thing, but I don’t think you’ll need another reminder since a whoooooollle lot of people are judging you for the post.

Like me, you probably forgot Matthew 23:4

“They [the teachers of the law and the Pharisees] tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”

In your follow up post, you said:

Isn’t it our job to encourage and lift each other up?

Isn’t it also our jobs to point out hard truths?

Here’s the thing: most people don’t actually need hard truths pointed out. They already know them. Most parents already know that they should be giving their kids attention. The ones who don’t care about that won’t give a rip about anything you have to say anyway.

I think what most parents our age need is encouragement.

Parents our age have more demands than ever before. They can see parents on Pinterest doing it better than them. They can see the article of the week about the latest food or common household item that will give their child autism, toe cancer, or Gulf War Syndrome.  They have access to a dizzying array of parenting books and blogs, all with wildly differing ideas on the best way to do it. They fear being carted off to jail for leaving their kid unattended in the car while they go in to pay for gas. They fear that they will be just like their parents. Or they fear they won’t be as good as their parents.

What they probably need is someone to tell them to CHILL. THE FUCK. OUT and just enjoy their kids. Which, strangely, is the message I think you were trying to communicate.

But they don’t need someone adding more stress, someone saying OMG PAY ATTENTION YOU’RE MISSING SOMETHING IMPORTANT!

Trust me, they already know that. Anyone who’s been a parent for more than a year or so is all too aware of how quickly time flies. This is not news. Every parent has missed important moments. Today it might be because of an Iphone. Two hundred years ago, parents were probably too busy busting their asses on the farm to enjoy much time with their kids. And the kids were probably too busy helping them.

PARENTS MISS THINGS. Guess what? This gets kids ready for disappointment later in life. Their teachers will miss things. Their friends will miss things. Their bosses will miss things. Because people aren’t perfect.

AND BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE GODDAMN UNIVERSE.

See, that’s the other thing I sense in your post: the addiction to child worship that seems to infect many Christian circles. I’m sure your kids are awesome (I mean, obviously not as awesome as mine, but hey, no one’s perfect).

But every kid needs the occasional reminder that the world doesn’t revolve around them. They need to see parents engaging in self care, and having healthy adult relationships.

They need to see parents who are not constantly beating themselves up. Because some day, they might be parents themselves. And if we stop this cycle of parent shaming, they will thank us for it some day.

And that thank you just might come via text message.

Forgiveness: A Three Headed Beast

Forgiveness is touted as a route to healing, but I didn’t think much about it until I had been dealt the emotional equivalent of a gunshot to the chest. The best time to search for a doctor is not when you’re lying on the ground bleeding, but like everyone else, I had to play the hand I was dealt.


Two years ago, we learned that my wife’s father was guilty of molesting his son, and her mother had kept it hidden from us. My wife and I reacted to this onslaught in opposite ways: she made a strategic withdrawal into her faith to regroup, but when I tried to do the same, I found that my faith had fled the scene of the crime. I was forced to come up with another strategy on the spot. So it goes.

When I’m emotionally wounded, my mind produces bitterness, snark, and sarcasm as antibodies, and it rose to the task. Rather than risk having these feelings poison my family, I instead directed it anonymously at the Internet, and the result was this blog. It helped, although I was left with a nagging question:

What is forgiveness? And more specifically, what does it look like for me in this situation?
Well, when we talk about a word as loaded with baggage as forgiveness, we must first turn to the source of all Truth on these matters.

I’m referring, of course, to dictionary.com. After looking at definitions for forgive, pardon, and absolve, I came up with three definitions that I’d like to take a look at.

1. to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
2. to cease to feel resentment against
3. to free from guilt or blame or their consequences.

Remitting a Debt

It’s interesting that forgiveness applies to debts, because I’ve viewed it this way before. In the past, when friends have wronged me, I’ve looked at it from a point of view of credit and debt. Over the course of our friendship, how much “credit” has the person earned by being a good friend? How much debt have they incurred by wronging me? I’m not talking about actual numbers, just a rough idea of a ratio. If the person exhausts their credit, it might be time to cut them loose (lest you think me heartless, this has happened precisely once in my entire life. The last straw was when the person in question took advantage of one of my wife’s friends).

Can this be applied to my in-laws? They’ve helped us financially in the past. They’ve helped us move. They let us live with them free of charge once. They rented us a house for only the cost of the mortgage.

On the other hand, they refuse to tell the church my father-in-law pastors about the molestation. They refuse to get professional counseling (they had some brief “biblical counseling” with a pastor a couple of years ago when all this came to light, but that’s it). And my mother-in-law insists that she prayed about whether she should tell us what happened and God totally gave her a thumbs up.

Let’s look back further: my wife grew up in an abusive home. She witnessed her parents inflict physical violence on each other. Her and her siblings experienced physical and verbal abuse. And since she grew up as a pastor’s kid, she had the additional trauma of knowing her father would always pick his ministry before his family.

Hmm... so a pretty generous amount of credit, but a truckload of toxic debt. But, of course, the situation is complicated by the fact that these are my wife’s parents, and my children’s grandparents. They’re not some deadbeat friend who can be cut from our lives with few consequences.

To No Longer Feel Resentment

I haven’t ceased to feel resentment against my in-laws. Why should I? They blame my brother-in-law for the sexual abuse. They’ve said they’re sorry, of course, but with no substantive change in their lives, this rings hollow. It’s lip service to repentance without any real intention of change.

It could be argued that I should cease to feel resentment for my own good. This is a fair point, but we’re not talking about some simple binary switch that can be flipped. It’s a process, and to be honest, it’s not a process that I would have much interest in, except that I know that my feelings of resentment hurt my wife.

If I think about it rationally, I know that my father-in-law was molested when he was younger. I know that talking about such things, let alone getting counseling about it, wasn’t encouraged in those days. I know that he’s been in a legalistic, toxic church environment most of his life, and can’t get it out of it because he’s so dependent on it for his identity, and probably because of the sense of forgiveness and redemption it gives him. I know that he’s a broken, messed up person, just like I am.

The thing is, I don’t really feel resentment for what he did to his son any more. I resent the fact that he doesn’t see the need for change. I resent his pride and arrogance. I resent that he thinks a few half hearted apologies should mean that everything should just go back to normal, and that my wife is the one with the problem because she’s making a big deal out of this. I resent how he and his wife use the Bible to defend his actions. I resent that they see no value in professional counseling.

And I won’t apologize for that. But for the sake of my family, I’ll try to work through it.

To Free From Guilt

Here’s the problem I’m facing (and I suspect it’s the problem in many situations involving forgiveness). The wronged party (us) is looking for the kind of forgiveness I already mentioned: ceasing to feel resentment. The party in the wrong (my in-laws) wants that too, but is more interested in being released from guilt.

That’s the kind of forgiveness that is easy to give in less traumatic situations: we forgive people for being late, for forgetting things, for losing their temper, for any number of things.

But I can’t  release them from any guilt that they feel, and wouldn’t even if I could, because they should feel guilty.

And I won’t apologize for that either.

Confessions of a Spiritual Wanderer

I want you to know, I've tried. I've really tried. I've tried Catholicism. I've tried Evangelical. I've tried Episcopal. They don't work for me. It's not the people. The people are fine for the most part. There are some bad apples in every barrel, of course, but I'm beginning to think the problem is me.

I'm like one of those people who is in failed relationship after failed relationship, desperate to find The One to spend the rest of their life with. One day, after another agonizing breakup, they realize that the only common denominator in every relationship is...them.

Except, of course, that's not true when you're talking about spirituality. There's another common denominator: God. The real analogy is this: You're in a relationship, and the other person refuses to communicate. So you read one relationship book after another, trying to get them to open up. But they won't.

That's the 800 pound gorilla in the room that you're not supposed to talk about, right? Whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon... you're not supposed to blame God. It's always your fault.

I'd rather be an atheist, and just say fuck the whole thing, but I can't. Atheist arguments make a great deal of sense to me, but to me, the existence of the universe and humanity is enough circumstantial evidence for some kind of creator.

I'd rather be Rachel Held Evans, who wrote this fabulous post about how she will always chase after Jesus in spite of her doubts. I've got the doubt part down, but the Jesus part...not so much.

I'm tired of asking questions that have no answer. I'm tired of asking questions that other people don't seem interested in. I'm tired of people telling me I sound angry.

And most of all, I'm tired of pretending that I'm lost in the "spiritual wilderness" and that somewhere out there is "spiritual civilization". That's a lie. The wilderness is the only reality. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The real problem with the wilderness is the loneliness. I understand why people like church - it's a group of (mostly) like minded people that you can go on the journey with. Misery loves company. 

My wife is not at the same point in her journey. My friends aren't at the same point in their journey. Most of the people I interact with online aren't at the same point in their journey's. 

I'm alone. But aren't we all? Aren't we all on a different journey? Aren't the people in churches/temples/mosques just pretending they're all the same?

Well, maybe some of them are. But maybe they're just choosing to emphasize the sameness and de-emphasize the differences, at least for the length of the service. Maybe that's a good thing.

(As long as it doesn't lead to hatred, attempts to deny others their rights, or The Crusades).

Wackjob Wednesday 1/16/2013

Welcome to another edition of Wackjob Wednesday! There's some weapons grade crazy this week, so proceed with caution! We've got secular stories, religous stories, and of course, it wouldn't be Wackjob Wednesday without His Holiness Mark Driscoll.

Can I buy "shot by NRA member who thought I was a burglar" insurance?

If you are an NRA member, this company allows you to buy "extra protection not found in most homeowners' policies...Criminal Defense Reimbursement is provided for alleged criminal actions involving self-defense when you are acquitted of such criminal charges or the charges are dropped."

http://www.locktonrisk.com/nrains/defense.htm

I'd imagine that "taking up arms against the government" insurance will soon follow. And in Texas, "he needed killin'" insurance.

You mean the same government that can barely deliver the mail on time?

The people in the "Sandy Hook Truther movement" think the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax by the government. You know, so they can TAKE AWAY ALL THE GUNS.  So were all the OTHER gun massacres over the past year hoaxes too? Or was it just this one? I'm just curious.

Now these truth lovers are harassing a man who aided a group of children who fled the school on the day of the massacre. I can only assume they're using the same PR company as Westboro Baptist "Church".

This man helped save six children and is now getting harassed for it

Famous blogger Mark Driscoll disses other, less famous bloggers

For God so loved the world he did not send a blogger to pontificate about what others were doing. He sent his Son to get stuff done!
— Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) January 9, 2013

So Mark Driscoll (who blogs here) thinks that bloggers don't get stuff done? That they just pontificate? Well then Mark, what exactly do you think you're doing when you're yammering on from the pulpit every Sunday? Or when you write a book? 

Perhaps he has a specific problem with bloggers blogging about what others (in other words, Mark Driscoll) are doing. Mark, this is called 'criticism'. I would think you would be used to it by now.

Is This Modest? I don't know, but it sure is creepy

Note: this site has been taken down. This link is from the wayback machine. The snapshot of the site was taken on 10/21/12.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120715224523/http://isthismodest.com/

This site (which was run by a thirty six year old man) was a blog about modesty. Ok, that's a little weird, but hey, it's just a blog, right?

But the blog also featured a quick review section, who published publicly available pictures of women and men (without their consent), in which the author commented in detail on whether they were 'modest' or not.

These photos included senior photos of teenage girls.

*shivers*

When bloggers Rachel Held Evans and Dianna Anderson got wind of this site, they tweeted the author with some questions as to the legality of posting these pictures without the women's consent. The author assured them there were no issues, but the site (along with it's Twitter feed and Facebook page) disappeared soon after.

See Mark? That's an example of bloggers getting things done.

Yes, but do you take Blue Cross?

They also wrote this book.                                               

This group offers support to grieving families. Cool!

In addition, they will also pray over your deceased love one and offer "prayers of resurrection".

They claim to have nine actual resurrections under their belt.  They also offer training in how to raise the dead.

Ok, so if this is a scam...these people need to die in a fire. End of story.

If they really believe this...well, if you're going to take part of the Bible literally (in this case Matthew 10:8), there are worse verses to pick. 

I mean, I'm not saying I believe them, but hey, if you're gonna dream, dream big, right?