Read an Excerpt
Women Beyond Belief
Discovering Life without Religion
By Karen L. Garst Pitchstone Publishing
Copyright © 2016 Karen L. Garst, PhD
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63431-082-6
CHAPTER 1
A PERSONAL EXODUS
Ann Wilcox
We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?
— Natalie Angier, The Canon
I remember the morning I woke up and could not believe in God anymore. It was February 2005, and losing my faith was the absolute last thing I ever thought would happen to me (except maybe being abducted by space aliens — maybe). I had known there was a God from the time I was a child. Even though I had stopped attending church almost thirty years before that morning, that belief had permeated all of my assumptions about life. It was like the ultimate computer program that ran in the background, assuring me that everything was going to be okay, no matter what happened.
In fact, for several months before my sudden loss of faith, I had been thinking more about God and wondering who he really was. What if I could find out? What if I could connect with him? I decided I would try. But no sooner had I decided this than I got the news in late January of 2005 that my father had passed away unexpectedly. Although we hadn't talked to each other in years, I was still upset, maybe more so because there was a rift between us that I had never been able to mend. I flew out to be with my family.
It's hard to describe what happened next. I returned home, settled in, and began to think again about the question of God — except that he was gone. My faith had evaporated. I could not believe there was a God anymore, much less figure out who he was. I was flummoxed, to put it mildly. I depended on my belief for certainty and comfort, and I wanted it back, now. But I couldn't even pray for it to come back. I could not believe.
I felt as though someone had picked me up and flung me into the ether, and I was falling with nothing to hold on to. I had no idea how to think about my life or my future. I kept trying to find solid ground, but everything in my frame of reference included God. I began to feel like a wind-up toy that kept going around in a circle and running smack dab into a brick wall. Months went by, and then several years, and I was becoming angry and bitter. I had to do something, but I didn't know what.
One day I was browsing through my online movie account, and up popped The God Who Wasn't There. Ha! I thought. There's the title of my life! I'd better check this out. The film is a documentary that questions the existence of Christ, and although I don't remember all of the particulars, I do remember being provoked by its messages. While I doubted some of the beliefs I had grown up with, I had never considered actively disbelieving them.
I went online and began looking at a few atheist sites. I had never been here before, and I kept looking over my shoulder to see if you-know-who was watching — even though I couldn't believe in him anymore. Some web authors were thoughtful; some of them were careless, and I argued with them, talking to my computer. I tried to avoid authors that sounded dogmatic or arrogant — I didn't trust them. I read John Loftus, Valerie Tarico, Marlene Winell, Ed Babinski, Robert Green Ingersoll, and more. I read other people's stories of leaving their faith. They were brave and moving, and I felt for the writers.
Ultimately, though, I read the Bible. As I was reading the skeptics, sometimes they would refer to a verse or a story in the Bible, and I would think, Wait a minute — is that what it actually says? Is that being taken out of context? And so I picked up the old family Bible that I had brought home from my father's house, with the white cover, gilt-edged pages, and color illustrations I remembered from my childhood. I opened the Book and began reading. And that's when everything I had been taught to believe as a child completely came apart.
* * *
My parents were devout Fundamentalist Christians who were committed to seeing their children were thoroughly instructed in their true faith, which they were certain was the only way to God. They knew that outside of it lay a miserable life and a horrific afterlife. Their children would not suffer that fate if they could do a single thing to prevent it.
Fundamentalist has become a dirty word in our culture, but originally, the founders of Fundamentalist Christianity were simply trying to return to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity — thus the name. It's a form of Evangelical Christianity, sharing the same doctrine but more conservative in its approach. There are many denominations in Christianity that have fundamentalist churches, but in some cases not all of the churches in that denomination are fundamentalist.
My parents took us to church three times a week. In addition, my father was determined to send his children to Christian schools so we could be educated in an all-encompassing environment of faith. My parents did not have a lot of money, but to them it was worth the price. At school, we went to Bible class daily and chapel twice a week.
What did we learn? While most people are probably familiar with the basic doctrines of Fundamentalist Christianity, they probably don't realize how nonnegotiable they are. In my education, if anyone doubted these doctrines, they were slipping close to hellfire, whether they believed in hellfire or not. Here are the basics.
One God. Sort Of. There was only one God, the God of the Bible, the Creator of the universe. He was omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipresent (everywhere at once all the time), and eternal. He was perfect, merciful, just, and loving. Christians believe God is manifested in three persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit, who is, well, a Spirit that directs and enlightens believers. If this seems a little perplexing, that's because it is. As a child, I didn't worry about the explanation but accepted it on faith, as one of the Divine Mysteries of God. I did that a lot.
Satan Is Real. We were warned that he was cunning, was ruthless, and would do his best to deceive us in every way. He was our unimaginably powerful enemy, and he was like a roaring lion, walking the earth, seeking to devour us. We were assured that God was more powerful than Satan and could protect us from the Evil One, but I was still afraid. People referred to Satan routinely, blaming him for ordinary events. Flat tire on the way to church? That's Satan trying to keep you away from the Word of God. Want to date a non-Christian? That's Satan trying to take your eyes off the Lord. Feeling down? That's Satan oppressing you (yes, really). If Satan could affect my everyday world like that, how could I be sure he wouldn't harm me?
Adam and Eve, Paradise Lost. In Fundamentalist belief, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden explains not only the origin of humans but also of sin and death. Here's the nutshell version: God created the first two humans and put them in a garden paradise. God also put a dangerous tree in the garden, made it attractive, and warned Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. (I know, I don't get it either. Probably a Divine Mystery.) Along came Satan, disguised as a serpent, and tempted Eve to eat the fruit. She did and shared it with Adam, so that both of them disobeyed God. In our faith, sin was defined as disobedience to God, and this was how sin and death had entered the world. This story has been used to blame women for the fall of the entire human race and to justify their second-class status. More than two millennia after this story was written, I still paid dearly for that interpretation.
Sin, the Abridged Version. In Fundamentalist theology, people don't just commit sin — they are sin. Because Adam sinned, every person born after him was born with a sinful nature and is inherently corrupt. As if that weren't enough, there were sins of commission (when you did something you shouldn't) and sins of omission (when you didn't do something you should). If there is another religion that vilifies humans more than Fundamentalist Christianity, then I feel sorry for its adherents.
We were also taught that God was so holy, he could not have sin or sinful beings in his presence. (No one ever explained to me how this worked. Was it like kryptonite? I wondered.) In addition, God's innate justice demanded that sin and sinners should be punished. So God was permanently ticked off at all humans, unless they were reconciled to him through salvation. The beauty of this system is that by merely being born — and who hasn't been?! — humans are now in desperate need of salvation, which can only happen if they become Christians.
As a child, I felt guilty for small transgressions, even things that were normal childhood behavior, such as wishing I could stay home from church on Sunday night to watch Disney or snitching an extra cookie when mom wasn't looking. I wanted to be pretty, but I worried that I might be committing the sin of vanity, and I felt conflicted about trying to look nice. As I grew older, I struggled to be good so I could stop feeling flawed and wrong, and I developed a debilitating perfectionism.
Heaven. The Good Place. Heaven was the eternal home of Christians, and what made heaven Heaven was the presence of God. But it had pretty impressive fringe benefits too. There was no death, no sorrow, no pain, and no tears. Everyone you ever loved and lost who was a Christian would be there, and you would never be separated from them again. I felt a secure comfort knowing that I would spend eternity there.
Hell. The Other Place. Hell was a real lake of fire, a place of weeping, gnashing of teeth, and torment day and night forever, created by God for the punishment of Satan and his demons (oh, did I forget to mention them?). Anyone who wasn't saved would also be cast into this everlasting inferno as a punishment for his or her disbelief. While my family never attended hellfire-and-brimstone churches, hell was a cornerstone of Fundamentalist theology. At church, my sixth-grade Sunday school teacher read disturbing accounts of unrepentant sinners in the last moments of their lives, who experienced visions of hell before slipping into the horrific Beyond (the book was called Voices from the Edge of Eternity, in case you want to rush right out and buy it). The terror of these "first-person" accounts persuaded us of the horrors of hell. Who would do this to children?!
Even though I was pretty sure I wasn't headed there, hell seared my imagination with its vivid imagery and kindled a subliminal fear that pervaded my young life. Sometimes I felt viscerally disturbed about some of my faith's teachings, such as people being stoned to death for something minor or people going to hell when they had never even had a chance to be saved. But those doubts never surfaced into my conscious awareness; I was too afraid.
Salvation. Salvation is the core doctrine of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity. Because of sin and hell, humans desperately needed forgiveness from their innate sin. In Fundamentalist theology the forgiveness of sins requires the shedding of blood (for an explanation of why this is so, I refer you to Divine Mystery). So God took mercy on us and sent Jesus to Earth, where he was born to Mary, a virgin (really Divine Mystery). He taught and performed miracles for three years, rocking the boats of the established Jewish religious order, who arrested him. They nailed him to a wooden cross and left him to die a bloody, brutal death. He allowed this to happen so that he could complete his mission of saving humankind. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead and returned to heaven. God the Father's need for judgment and punishment was now satisfied. Anyone who believed the salvation story could be saved, and they would become children of God, with Jesus as their personal friend.
My church called this story the Good News, because God was merciful enough to save us, but I struggled with feeling guilty about being so bad that Jesus had to die a horrible death for me. In spite of this, it was comforting to know that Jesus was my friend, and I talked to him daily, praying for guidance and direction.
The Bible. In my experience, arguably the most passionately defended belief in Fundamentalist Christianity was this: the Bible is the only divinely inspired, perfectly revealed and recorded words of God. The Bible was the literal, absolute Truth, and was historically, scientifically, and theologically accurate. It was sacred and unquestionable. In fact, it was so revered that we pledged allegiance to it every day in school, along with the American flag and the Christian flag (yes, there is a Christian flag, and no, I am not making this up). Moderate Christians, and even some Evangelicals, call this level of reverence for the literal Bible "bibliolatry," an idolatry of the Bible. No wonder.
Most people don't know what's in the Bible and don't fully appreciate what a perfect, literal Bible means. When the Bible says that donkeys talked, that people walked on water, that the sun stood still (meaning the earth would had to have abruptly stopped rotating!), that ninety-year-old women had babies, that people rose from the dead — and it does — that's exactly what it means.
It also meant that the frightful descriptions of a punitive God were reliable and accurate. When the Bible says that God killed people with plagues and war and poisonous snakes for failing to worship him, that he exterminated whole populations, including infants and children, that he allowed a father to butcher his daughter as a sacrifice to him, that he ordered the stoning of anyone who picked up sticks on the Sabbath — and it does — that's exactly what it means.
And when the Bible says that God is just, loving, and merciful, that's exactly what it means. Even my unquestioning mind could not wrap itself around a genocidal God that was supposed to be loving, though I contorted it terribly in trying. God didn't feel loving to me; he felt dangerous, and I felt guilty that I couldn't order my heart to follow the Bible's greatest commandment: to love him.
There was one notable exception to the literal interpretation of the Bible: the Song of Solomon. This book is an eight-chapter love poem, full of lush, evocative imagery, with descriptions of thighs like jewels, breasts like two young roe (deer), lips like scarlet, and lying between a lover's breasts. Curiously, this book was taken as a metaphor for the completely nonsexual relationship between Christ and the Church. It also didn't get much airtime in my grade school Bible class ...
Human Depravity. This is an unfortunate corollary to the doctrine of sin, and for me it was disastrous. This bit of theology holds that because all humans are corrupt, they cannot trust anything in their own hearts or minds (unless, of course, it agrees with God's Word). If something in the Bible didn't make sense to my mind or heart, then my thoughts or feelings should be dismissed and replaced with obedience. Even though there were passages in the Bible that talked about the importance of love, when it came right down to it, obedience trumped compassion. We were told that God loved us, but clearly he would punish us if we didn't follow him. Trust and obey, we were told, over and over. We were also told that we must die to our sinful selves. It was a sin to trust my own heart, to trust my own mind, to follow my own will.
The problem is, my mind, my heart, and my will were the fundamental tools I needed for knowing myself, for connecting with other humans, for making wise choices, for having empathy and showing compassion, for setting clear boundaries, for living a whole and satisfying life.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Women Beyond Belief by Karen L. Garst. Copyright © 2016 Karen L. Garst, PhD. Excerpted by permission of Pitchstone Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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