IN TWO MINDS:
The Anatomy of a Christian Hate Letter
Letter Two:
Webmaster's note: This is a series that should be read in sequence to be understood.
It is strongly suggested that you begin with the introduction first!
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Dear Brian, Your
experience, I’m afraid, is familiar to many former believers. Even though I
have researched some of the worst of Christian history, the Evangelical
child in me continues to marvel at things that are said in defense of
the God of Love and Truth. After
all, I believed in the fruit
of the Spirit. I believed in Jesus who told us to turn the other cheek. So, I was shocked when I first
read profanity and threats of personal violence against the stewards of
exChristian.net, losingmyreligion.com, and even the Ontario Center For
Religious Tolerance (religioustolerance.org)! Somehow, even
though 20 years had passed since I could last call myself born-again, a
part of me still believed that Christians were better than ordinary
people. It was only when I
caught myself and stepped into my adult psychologist mind that I
remembered: we all are ordinary
people—Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and non-theists alike. Being ordinary
means that we all have a tendency to become aggressive when we feel
threatened, and that is what I believe is going on here. In your brother’s email, he
interprets your prior letter as a threat—you are trying to provoke a
“hate fest.” He then
moves against you with sarcasm, distancing, and a posture of
psychological and spiritual superiority. Why is your
deconversion and that of so many others threatening? Why does even the concept of religious tolerance threaten
fundamentalist Christians? Why
would anonymous followers of Jesus, incredibly, make death threats
against former Christians who speak out?
The primary
reason is that Christianity is brittle.
You and I both spent years of our lives seeking to understand the
will of God. But sometimes even when people are working very hard
to keep the edifice of belief in place, it crumbles. That is
because it doesn’t correspond very well to what we know about
ourselves and the world around us.
At the time Christian doctrines were emerging, they were
basically consistent with the prevailing world view – one that
included hereditary dynasties, animal and human sacrifices, magic, and
supernatural beings like winged messengers and desert djinns (demons)
who meddled in human affairs. They
were also consistent with humanity’s level of moral development. But now we know better, and that
makes faith more fragile. Once
little cracks allow light to fall on the contradictions, we see that
they are legion. So the
whole thing depends on not letting those first little cracks start. The structure
of Christianity has evolved to protect itself against these threats. For one thing, it makes exclusive truth claims. It
doesn’t take the risk of assuming that other spiritual traditions
offer complementary insights. Fundamentalists
teach that “tolerance” is a code word for being indifferent to right
and wrong. It is a slippery
slope, a tool of Satan. Another
protective strategy is that Christianity seeks to isolate believers from nonbelievers. “be not unequally yoked.” Even settings like public
schools are described as havens of secular indoctrination. Another
protective mechanism is that it sneers
at the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom. “Thinking themselves
wise they become fools.” Christians are taught to mistrust and ignore
their own rational capacity when it leads them into disagreement with
Christian dogmas. Fundamentalist
Christianity is based on belief
in belief, which means that doubt, our best guardian of truth
seeking, must be relabeled as a sin or vice. In addition, because of how our
brains are wired, Christianity taps some of our deepest most yearned-for emotions:
love, peace, forgiveness, absolution, spiritual healing and
transcendent joy. Humans
can and do experience these feelings in many contexts, but Christian
practices trigger them, and then Christian beliefs offer an interpretive
framework that says “You get it here, and you won’t get it anywhere
else.” Finally, all of
this is given existential
proportions, meaning that people are taught (and then feel desperately) that this is all a matter of highest urgency—protecting
these beliefs literally feels like a matter of life and death. Your brother
is merely responding as any of us do when our very existence feels
threatened. The
fight/flight response gets triggered.
He experienced a sabre-toothed tiger outside the cave, and he
responded in the way that has helped to guarantee the survival of our
species: he bared his (verbal) fangs and used his adrenalin rush to
roll a rock across the opening. The
problem lies not in your brother. Or
rather, I might say, it is in him but not of him. He is caught by a belief system
that activates his healthy defensive structure for its own preservation. Having left the faith, you and I
both know that we lost neither our joy nor our moral core. We are as capable of love and
generosity as before. He
would be fine on the outside – still himself with many of the very
same strengths and weakness that bless and curse him now. But your brother, in the throes of faith cannot know this. Valerie Want to review another letter in this series? Just click the link below.
Introduction Letter Letter 1 Letter 3 Letter 4 Letter 5 Letter 6 Brian's note: Valerie has written in greater detail about this and other rare subject matter in her book. Please visit the following links! The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth
Valerie Tarico All rights reserved. Jan. 2008 |