They wanted to sear honesty into the child's core. They wanted to plant belief in a place that it could not be removed. Spanking doesn't do the word justice. The detached absence of emotion that accompanied the lessons provided a glue that anger never could have. The depression that followed was not rooted in current circumstances. Times were good and I had plenty, but a wet blanket of despair drowned me.
Like a pendulum swinging to the opposite extreme, I never taught a lesson with a belt. I excuse my parents by believing they were so young they didn't know better. My brother opened my eyes by saying, "At least he was there; he could have left us." I contemplate whether my beliefs or lack thereof are the result of my actions or simply a gut level rejection of my parents. I'm approaching forty and this seems like something I should have ironed out long ago.
I believed every animal on the earth paired up and migrated to Noah's dock. I believed Jonah was swallowed by a whale and spit up on the shore of Nineveh. I cried that they released Barabbas instead of Jesus and shocked that Peter would deny Jesus three times. It wasn't fantastical claims that initially led to a rejection of the Bible, but a preacher's actions.
There was a boy my age in our church named Phil whose father died before I was a teenager. His mother kept coming to church after that, but Phil's older sisters stopped. There was concern that he would follow their path. As we all turned thirteen, trouble started.
It was not what I would now consider trouble at all, but stuff like one kid wore in a Ministry Psalm 69 t-shirt to Prayer Meeting. On top of that, kids grumbled against having to go to Wednesday night Prayer Meeting in general. The preacher’s son told his dad I was sharing a couple of dirty jokes I'd heard at Boy Scout camp. Another threw a toy that got lodged in a lighting fixture. My friend got sick from the caffeine pill I gave him before the second half of a four hour service. "You gave him DRUGS? What else, pornography?" This is over the course of a year, but the elders saw it as the youth population taking a dangerous turn to the dark side.
To deal with it, the preacher launched a direct assault on the youth of the church, proclaiming from the pulpit that he knew our hearts. Glaring at Phil he shouted that he knew some of us didn't want to be there. Scanning over to others he told us he knew we would rather be out defiling ourselves with sin. What if a guest had seen that toy in the light, what would they think about the church's children's lack of respect? He knew that our music was full of satanic messages. He knew we were on a path toward eternal damnation.
It was the preacher’s damnation of my friends that led me to question. Perhaps because friends were so hard to come by, my care for them trumped my belief. I wondered why no one stepped in to fill the hole the death of a father had ripped. Why was this man comfortable calling out children from a pulpit but didn't instead take Phil to a ball game. This contradiction tore at me. So I rejected the preacher’s analysis as opinion but held to the Bible. Once his analysis was rejected it became a game to find fault in his messages. I looked for other ways he was misreading the Bible.
As I glared at him from my seat, I listened intently. I had always sort of phased out during the hour and a half sermons. My only duty was not to fall asleep as that would lead to a spanking at home. But now, anger and purpose kept me awake. The preacher wrote me an encouraging note commending my excellent eye contact.
Examining his analysis led to questioning the material that analysis was founded on. It became clear to me that perhaps we were dealing with misleading adults when a young girl asserted after church that dinosaurs were imaginary and the bones my brother had seen in a museum were not actually bones. Her father had told her that they were reconstructed in the museums using just one or two oversize elephant bones. My dad told me that was what some Christians believed and I shouldn't contradict them. I wanted to know what he believed. He didn't know, but perhaps they were just placed in the earth during creation.
At eighteen I left home and for the most part stopped going to churches. I just wasn't going to worry about it. I felt if there was a god, he didn't care what I did. I set about adamantly rejecting my upbringing. It led me eventually to a rehab center where they told me that never mind staying clean, I would need God to stay alive; if not God, then some higher power. Perhaps it was a unique case where the ideas they were pushing were the ones that I ran from to get there.
I eventually rejected their preaching too. There was something that didn't ring true in seeing a coffee-guzzling, chain-smoking counselor tell me that all drugs lead back to a drug of choice.
When my first daughter was born my wife wanted her baptized Catholic. I objected but she felt strongly so I went along. What harm? She had never been religious, but this was important to her now. My parents drove the four hours to attend the ceremony. I only invited them as a courtesy. They sat stone-faced through it. Everyone applauded when the priest said, "Let's welcome our newest Christian." Everyone but my parents. I asked them later why they hadn't clapped, or if they really drove four hours just to make my in-laws uncomfortable. There wasn't a straight answer.
This was around when my depression hit. I realized I was in trouble and I sought and received medical help. It made me sort of numb. But it got me through it. Before I stopped the treatment, which went on for over a year, I instinctively began seeking to firm up my beliefs and to resolve inner conflict in regards to how to raise this new girl. I think subconsciously I saw it wasn't all biology that dropped that despair on my head.
I read the Bible again, then the Apocrypha to see what was left out, then the Dhamapada a friend had given me as a joke in college. That led to the Koran, and then the Book of Mormon, just in case. When I had a good feel for what was out there besides fundamental Baptist teaching, I read Sam Harris and was blown away. Russell and Dawkins were interesting, but Harris laid it out in a manner that made me realize I wasn't agnostic, I was a reasonable atheist.
Atheism, for me, meant demanding the proof. One argument in particular stuck: If the bible were removed from our collective thought, there would be no evidence in the world to piece it back together. Using Dawkins' spectrum, I would not say that my lack of belief in a God is held to the same firmness a fundamentalist’s belief in one is. If I were presented with proof, I would no longer lack belief.
Additionally, as an atheist, I didn't feel the need to convert others to my point of view. I read the dangers of religion and heard the call to squash it with reason as fiercely as an evangelical spreads it. But I came to feel that if something helps you be a good person, then who am I to take it. Maybe my dad would have left without religion. Maybe he would have been an abusive alcoholic. Maybe he wouldn't have evolved into the caring grandfather he has become all these years later.
There was however one person I sought to sway. And it wasn't so much that I wanted her to lose the modest amount of faith she had, but rather that I didn't want my daughter's mind imprinted. My wife wanted to begin to take my daughter to church regularly. She felt it was a duty. My logic based protestations that she was never religious didn't sway her. I told her to no avail I was OK if she wanted to change who she was, but don't do it for our daughter. It was only when I let my emotions show and opened myself up to show how scared I was of what she wanted to do that I got through. Tearfully, I plead to let our daughter make her own mind, to not put seeds that would grow into oak trees of thought blocking her ability to see the world for how it is; to not take away her freedom of choice. I asked her to consider if her actions would justify the outcome. She was the only person I have swayed.
I've got three kids now. They're all smart and kind. I reward them for thinking of others. I encourage deductive reasoning. We read voraciously, together and alone. And I tell it as straight as I can. I tell what their grandparents believe. I tell what Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and Hindus believe. I tell them what I believe and that they will be able to make up their minds when they are older. I warn them against engaging others at their age in religious conversations. I push them to listen to them, but to let them go unopposed for now. I realize it all could come crashing down on me in a way I cannot foresee, but like my father before me, I do the best I can for my kids with the world as I understand it.