On An Encounter With Fundamentalism. And On The Wonders Of The Human Race.

I chatted with some preachers in Sunderland yesterday.  I wasn't meaning to.  I was just wanting to finish my ice cream in peace.  Damn you preachers, you thwarted my quiet ice cream enjoyment.

But once they began talking at me, and because I am still utterly obsessed about God things and think about them a heck of a lot, and because I wasn't at that point falling to pieces mentally, I talked back.  It's still a novelty to me to be so far on this side of the dogmatic fence.

We talked about a lot of things.  All of them may bore you.  Some of them you may find strange.  Some of them will make you wonder why Christians sometimes don't even love each other let alone non-believers.

I am no longer a Christian.  I'm not.  But I am still fascinated by it all.  It's a special interest.

So as someone with a deep fascination, I've done the talking.  So you don't have to!  There.  Aren't you pleased?  You will know, when you encounter such people, the kinds of things you are happy to be missing by not having a conversation with them.

I have to give this disclaimer:  Not all Christians are like the ones I chatted with.  Quite a lot are very different indeed.  My plans for the day had fallen apart due to my own absent-mindedness, confusion and panic.  But those plans had been to meet with, sit with and relate with a group of Christians.  To talk, share and learn about theology with them.  I'd been looking forward to it too and am sad to have missed out on the experience.  I believe it would have been great.  And I believe that the Christians I didn't manage to meet with would have had nearly as many disagreements with the fundamentalists as I did.

If you did choose to engage a fundamentalist of this variety, a strange choice, what might you talk about?

Image from https://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/is-fundamentalism-destroying-christianity/

I'll start with the more boring bits (history and doctrine) and will end with the most interesting bits (humans and my thoughts about the people I met).  Skip through to the end.  Most of this is not exciting stuff for most people, only strange obsessives like me.  Seriously.  This is long.  And it doesn't even cover the full encounter.  Skip through to the part about people.  Because that's the important thing.

We talked a little of church history.

They said there was a church existing sometimes in secret and sometimes in persecuted groups from the time of Constantine until the Protestant Reformation began.  Theodore Beza, the successor of Calvin, wrote about this history.  That's not an uncommon claim among Protestant fundamentalists but it's a laughable one.  Plus Beza, a man who wrote in defense of burning heretics alive, didn't have the information available to write a reliable church history - which might be why he didn't write one!



They gave some examples of the secret church that upheld the "one true faith."

The Cathars

I was informed that this group were Christians with a beautiful Christian faith, part of the true church. They were persecuted because they held the way of salvation hated by Rome.  This is something I find very funny.  Because the Cathars were dualists - they believed in two Gods.  And they believed in reincarnation.  The Cathars were also gnostics and believed in the ultimate salvation of all people.

In all honesty I don't think the Cathar faith was quite the same as that of these preachers!  I tried to tell them that - because I looked into the Cathars years ago when, as a Catholic, I had the same claims thrown at me.  But no.  Everything I had read and learned was a lie.  Propaganda.  Invented by the Catholic Church.

The Albigensians

I was told that this group were also just like beautiful Protestants.  Bearers of the one true faith.  In fact they were a Cathar sect.  Where most Cathars were pretty ascetic, the Albigensians were more extreme than most.  They also believed that Jesus was just human, not God.  For these people to be held up as models of the true Protestant gospel - the proper Jesus - is crazy.

The Waldensians

This is the funniest of all.  I'll say why a little later.

We talked of other historical documents from the early church.  Reputable ones.  The ones for which we know who wrote them.  And when.  Such as the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch to seven churches, written on his journey to Rome where he was martyred in about AD107.  Such as the two Apologia of Justin Martyr, written to the Roman Emperor around AD150 in the hopes of stopping a persecution.  Those documents contain much that wouldn't fit into the Beza history or the preachers' ideas of the early church.  I know.  I read them a lot before becoming a Catholic for a while.  But no.  All of those documents were fabrications, forgeries from much later, many centuries later, written to prop up a false church.  All such documents that the preachers disagreed with were deemed to be completely non-existent or fake.  I urged them to read these early church documents.  See what was believed by these men of faith and see, especially in Justin, how the early church functioned and how the mid-2nd century Christians worshiped.  I didn't say to follow the way of Justin - just to see for themselves that such a way had been followed by early Christians.

The preacher kept on talking about what Beza is meant to have said and how we have to believe Beza and how all the other things were just false and shouldn't be touched at all.  I could see that historically, there wasn't really any wiggle room for a rational conversation.

We talked a little of doctrine.

The Catholics invented Transubstantiation in AD999.  And believes we're saved by works.  And rejects the Bible.  And has a false Jesus.  And a false priesthood.  And Constantine invented it.  And so on and so on.  These preachers don't like Catholics!

I found it strange.  Two days previously I had laid into some of the teachings of the Catholic Church - with full acceptance that I was giving one side of the teaching far over and above the other.  Now I found myself defending Catholicism.  Of course I'm not Catholic now.  But the accusations fundy Protestants throw at Catholics are ludicrous and hateful.

On a personal note, I am condemned for my Catholic ways and if I don't repent of them I will be judged and burn for eternity.  As a non-Catholic learning this came as something of a surprise.

The New Testament was in its final form by the end of the first century because the apostle John made it so.  Er, no.  Just no.

The gospel was preached across the world by the first generation of Christians - because the Bible says so.

This does not include Australia or the Americas because there wasn't anyone there to tell about Jesus then.  I was told that we know there can't have been people in Australia 2000 years ago because the apostolic church didn't go and preach to them.  Honest.  I was told that.

But the gospel was preached in the British Isles in the first century AD.  Oh yes, I was told that.  And I was told who by.  Apparently the Waldensians came here and told the natives about Jesus.  Oh yes, they did.  Now, unlike the Cathars, the Waldensians did have a faith similar to that seen in the ideas that can be seen in the Protestant Reformation.  Some of their ideas and major criticisms of the Western church of their day are not only valid, they are very praiseworthy.

But did the Waldensians bring the story of Jesus to our shores in the first century?  Well, no.  It would have been difficult for them to do so.  Peter Waldo didn't start that movement until the late twelfth century.  It's an interesting story.  But his followers were not time travelers.

On a personal note, I am the antichrist and an abomination.  That didn't come as a surprise to me.  Old news.

We talked a little about ethics and morality.

I was asked if lying is wrong.  I agree, it usually is.  But to me it wasn't a yes/no question.  I posited an extreme situation.  Sometimes extreme cases disprove a rule.  I was in Germany in 1943 harboring a family of Jews under my floorboards.  The Gestapo paid me a visit and asked whether I was harboring any Jews.  I said I would lie.  He said he wouldn't lie and that God would judge me for my sin in lying.  I tried to explain situational ethics 101.  For the preacher the way of righteousness would have been to give those Jews up to the Gestapo - and myself too, I suppose, for protecting them.

We talked about the verses in the Old Testament in which God commands genocide.  He said that he didn't believe God would command his people to commit genocide now because God does things differently now Jesus has risen.  He said that God is holy and commanding genocide was holy.  He said that if God did command genocide now he would take part in it and kill people because it was better to obey God.  I pointed out a group of children who were passing at that moment and asked, "Would you kill those children?"  He replied that he would, if God told him to.

We talked of the times when it's written that God hardened pharaoh's heart after some of the plagues - and so pharaoh didn't let the Israelites like he had planned.  That's in the story.  But that means that the killing of all the first born children of Egypt wasn't necessary.  Which kinda means all that horror is God's fault.  It's there in the text.  If you, like the preacher, want to believe the text.  The preacher didn't like that.  He couldn't accept it was there because it didn't fit into his dogma. Others say God did it so his power could be seen.  Which rather makes God out to be an egotistical monster.

Yes.  The preacher would slaughter the children of Sunderland under some circumstances.  

Holy crap!

We talked of science.

The preachers believe that the universe is 6000 years old.  I asked about the light coming from a supernova 50,000 light years away.  I was being kind to the man giving this number because it's hardly any distance at all in terms of the universe.  Of all the galaxies in this astonishing universe, less than 100 of them are closer than ten-million light years and we have detected supernovae in galaxies far further away than that.   Wouldn't we thus be seeing the light from a star exploding thousands of years before they would say the universe began?  I got the reply that I didn't know what I was talking about because (a) the universe is expanding so the star would have been much closer 6000 years ago, (b) the speed of light is very different in space to what it is here, and (c) there is no time once you leave planet Earth.  Time doesn't exist anywhere else.  I was told that's what science says.

Evolution is of course a lie.  Anything a scientist says that doesn't fit in with the preachers' brand of dogma is a lie given by Satan.

We talked about other Christians.

Because there are Christians I love who have a faith that's attractive.  They said that these people aren't Christians at all and certainly haven't got the right Jesus.  They said that these other Christians need to repent or burn.

The Protestant Church was going well because it had the Authorised Bible.  But then people started making non-authorised translations from the wrong Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.  And then the Protestant Church went wrong.  Any church using the false Bibles hasn't got Jesus.  Any Christian with a false Bible probably isn't a Christian at all and if they are they desparately need to repent and find the true Jesus in the King James Bible.

On a personal level, I am a fool.

We talked of judgement - and inevitably talked of sexuality.

Please note that I didn't bring this up.  They did.

God has judged and condemned nations in the past.  And he's going to judge this one and condemn it if it doesn't repent, especially from the sin of homosexuality.

On a personal level, I am condemned for my sexuality.

And we talked about other human beings.

They told me this of the human race:  All people, from birth, deserve to burn painfully in Hell for all eternity.  All people are at root evil because of sin.  There is no light in them.  Nothing of God.  Nothing of hope.  Unless they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (and exactly the right version).

I have a confession to make.  I used to believe that kind of thing.  I thought the Bible said so.  And I wanted to believe the Bible.  I wasn't as extreme as the preachers I met yesterday.  But I believed quite a lot of things that I now find either embarrassing, shockingly reprehensible, or both.  I don't blame myself.  I know the reasons why I came to believe as I did.  But I regret many things.  I accepted Christ in a fucked up state.  And in many ways was fucked up further by my Christianity.

As I talked with those preachers I felt myself more filled with light than I possibly ever have been before.  I did.  And why?  Because when I looked at all the people around me, ordinary people from Sunderland, I saw light.  I saw beauty.  I saw magnificence.  If God is light then I saw God shining from each and every person on that shopping street and saw it as plainly as I could see their physical forms.  It was an amazing experience to have that clarity.

Now, I believe that humans are basically good.  No matter what they do, what they've suffered, what they've been taught to repress or embrace.  No matter what they're going through.  They're basically good.  All humans.  Every single one.

We all make mistakes.  We're all imperfect - or perfectly imperfect.  And sometimes we muck up bigtime or embrace views and beliefs that we later may look back on with a sense of regret or shame.  We all hurt other people sometimes.  We let each other down sometimes.  And all of us may become people who say or do horrible things.

All of that is admitted.  We screw up!  We hurt.  We may be in need of healing.  We may be hungry.  We may be scared.  We may be lonely.  We may act badly out of insecurity.  We may get raised in an environment in which we are taught racism or homophobia or some other prejudice.

But.  We are all basically good.  I believe that.  I know I can be rubbish at social skills at times.  I know I can fail to act in love and light - out of laziness or out of my own woundedness or out of lack of resources.  But I do believe all human beings are wonderful.  Yes, even the suicide bomber.  Even the preacher!

I looked yesterday at the people of Sunderland and I saw shining lights.  And it was wonderful.

And I was being told that all those shining lights were evil.  Dead.  Deserving of eternal torment.

And that for me, beyond history and dogma and science and all the rest of it, is the saddest thing about those preachers.  The saddest by far.

As I think about those preachers I feel this:

Sadness for the years of my life in which I would have gone along with at least part of what they believe, including that view of a fundamentally evil human race in need of salvation from Hell.  Sadness for the relationships I missed out on because of my faith.  Sadness for the times I hurt people because of my faith.

Gladness that the rest of my life will not be spent following such a path.  Gladness for all the things that happened in the last five years - some of them very painful and difficult - which have brought me to this point in my life.  Gladness that I have been "set free from the law of sin and death" which I lived under as an evangelical Christian.

And as for those preachers, I pity them.  And I feel deep sorrow for people in their lives who become affected by the results of their dogma.  I won't be leading the preachers out of the darkness in which they now unwittingly stand.  I hope that they find their way, just as I have been learning to find mine.

My other sadness was that the woman I talked to - because she was answering back to a preacher and had really cool hair and seemed nice - didn't have time to come for a drink with me.  And she really didn't.  Lots of shopping to do before a six hour Megabus journey this morning.  She says if I see her again, to ask again.  I think it would have been quite fun to drink tea with this stranger whose life I completely butted into.  It wouldn't be the first time I've done something like that.

Days Of Gratitude - Happy Times in Salford - Reservoirs, Religion and Relaxation

October has begun.  At the end of last year the challenge was set by the Sunday Assembly Newcastle to post something for which you are grateful.  Every day.  Nine months later and I have missed a total of nine days.  The group description reads:

Sunday Assembly Newcastle is all about finding ways to #livebetter, so our 2016 challenge to you is to photograph something every day that makes you feel grateful and share it to this group. 

Every day.  Every day.  The group currently has 129 members some of whom joined recently.  Sharing every day?  Well, no.  Not every day.  Some days there will be three posts.  Including mine.  Some days a couple more.  Sometimes there will be just two posts.  And on a couple of days I have been the only person to follow the challenge.  Even the person who set the challenge only posts sometimes.

But this is me.  It says every day.  And I want to post every day.  It's good for me.  On the days that feel rubbish I can find something.  And on the days that feel good I can find some amazingly, wonderfully, spectularly, beautifully positive things to be grateful for.

Cases in point.  The six days below.  After a couple of weeks of real struggles it was very good to have days like these.

September 30^th

Grateful to be able to hear great talks at an autism event before leaving for Manchester. I hope people listened and will act.

Grateful that the coach driver let me sit in the quiet seats behind him when I was struggling and getting melty while waiting.

Grateful that a side effect of being so delayed was that we detoured across the Saddleworth road which is gorgeous.

And very grateful to be back here in Salford with Amanda.

October 1^st


Grateful for a great day out with Amanda.

We enjoyed Glossop and my lunch was massive. I will go back and find walking routes.

And then we rowed across and around a reservoir.

They just gave us a boat and pushed us away from the jetty without checking to see whether we had ever rowed before.

In the evening we were at the theatre and managed to get two tickets for five pounds - a student and a carer.

October 2^nd


Grateful for a good morning with Amanda before she went to work.

Grateful for some car boot sale and charity shop bargains.

Grateful to have decided to explore a sign I have passed on the bus here quite a few times: Schoenstatt Shrine.

Loved it. I will go back one day just to sit in the peace of the shrine and the community garden.

Sorry. (A lie!). There are far too many pictures.  [There were many more posted in the gratitude group.] And they're all of a Catholic place where they do God quite a lot. But I really was very pleased to have explored.

October 3^rd

Grateful for a lovely day out with Amanda. We played crazy golf, went on everything in the playground, and ate too much ice cream. Happy times.

I only took one photo all day. Here it is. You get quality graffiti in the toilets of amusement arcades in Southport. Or at least in one cubicle.

October 4^th

Grateful for time spent with Amanda.

Grateful for getting some ideas at an autism event in Manchester in the evening.

Grateful for a pretty walk in the day that ended with buying Amanda a unicorn.

October 5^th


Grateful for the days away.

Grateful to be home and to have life here to look forward to.

Grateful to have been greeted by family and my trusted warthog friend.

Also grateful that Blob Thing managed to post on his blog today.

Days Of Gratitude - Hoop Dancing, Cardinals, Cafes, Art And A Little Revelation

The gratitude diary continues into the ninth month of the year.  Two-thirds of the way through.

These were four days in Newcastle between a time away that was wanted and a time away that in so many ways isn't wanted.  As I write this I am still away for that time away and look forward to being home.  It's a necessary time away but a sad and difficult one and it got more sad than expected.  It's all part of life, and I am now gaining a life that I want to live and live to the full.  That's not something I could have said not too many years ago.

Four days.  A lull.  A time that felt a bit unreal.  And a time that demonstrates my current zeal to live.  Days of trying new things and going to new places.  Some of them got listed in the diary.

The day after this I left home for Sussex to help with the final clearing and selling of what was the home of my parents and which was my home too - my only childhood home.  On the day that this post is published I will be leaving that house for the last time.  It's pretty empty now and doesn't feel like my parents' house now.  Contents have gone to the tip, to family, to charity shops, and some to refugees.  More will be taken for family and refugees very soon and the remainder will be cleared by a house clearance firm.

I hope that the new owners and/or residents love it there.  My parents moved there just a few years after getting married and never moved even though they considered it several times and there were a couple of periods of looking at lots of other houses.  We came quite close to moving once but the house we wanted was taken off the market.  My mother said it was good that we didn't move.  Finances wouldn't have worked out well if there was any larger mortgage to pay off.  So they stayed in that house and made it a good home, filled with the things they loved.

So.  Four days, between the joy of Greenbelt and the non-joy of the job-nobody-really-wants-to-do-but-most-people-have-to-at-some-point.

September 1st

Grateful to have taken the plunge.

Grateful to have tried something new.

At Greenbelt I stood and watched a guy play with a hoop. Returning home I find notice of a hoop dance workshop once more.

I have heard of these workshops since they began. I wanted to try. I couldn't.

This time I went for it in full knowledge of my unfitness, lack of balance, stiffness, and of having not really played with a hoop since I was six and was pretty ridiculed at school for being so crap at it.

Yep. Ridiculed. And wounded.

One more kick towards the darkness.

I am grateful that tonight I played again.

One more caress back into the light.

Yeah. I can't do it. Or much of it. I could begin to do a couple of things.

But I can't set a hoop spinning round my middle without it falling to the floor.

Yet.

Yet is a word I didn't used to use of my lack of a skill.

Yet.

I will play with a hoop again. And see what happens.

Does anyone have nice hoops they don't want? I think regular play would be excellent for me physically and mentally.

So Clare had a good time. And if she hadn't? Well that would have been okay too.

September 2^nd

Grateful for the meeting in Broadacre this morning. It may lead to good things.

Grateful for a free evening of meditation even though it all felt a bit cultish possibly. I enjoyed it but my inner siren said "Danger, Will Robinson."

Before the evening, Blob met this priest. A man from Ampleforth, a place currently embroiled in further accusations of sexual abuse and of cover ups, this time unrelated to Basil Cardinal Hume.
Grateful for another priest today - the Anglican Bishop of Grantham. He has publicly stated that he is in a gay relationship. A brave thing for a bishop to do.

Hopeful for a church future - if the church has any worthy future at all - in which neither sexual abuse nor loving sexual relationships are ever covered up.

A future in which churches aren't so twisted in doctrine or practice.

September 3^rd

Grateful for street logos and art.

Grateful too for cheap clothes in Byker and a superb toastie in a Byker cafe.

Also grateful for a moment of revelation in a discussion with one of the evangelical praying people in town.

September 4^th

Grateful to be able to buy just the right kind of liquorice for Amanda. I went to Tynemouth just to buy it.

Grateful to have got the best seat on the Metro.

You'll Be Amazed At This Woman Who Can't Love Someone More Than They Deserve

Recently I attended a meeting of a not-church. I call it a not-church anyway. It's a meeting for people who are “guided by the life and teachings of Jesus” and who meet “in the presence of a God whose love is freedom, whose touch is healing, whose voice is calm.”

The people at the meeting are good people, seeking their God and I find it less difficult than most meetings. It's still hard though because every word in the little bit of the liturgy prepared for each meeting is phrased with theism in mind. It's a language that takes theism as a presupposition of a shared belief in an interventionist deity. I don't believe in that deity. I'm not sure that everyone there believes in the deity either. But the language, like the language of a church, is theistic.

It's not exclusive though and it's not evangelistic so usually I've been able to cope with it and just miss out what I couldn't say at all and translate the rest into my own meaning. That day I couldn't participate at all. Just as the meeting began my brain decided it had had enough of things and I spent the whole time wanting to walk out and sit in the sunshine. Perhaps that's what I should have done. Afterwards I left very quickly and couldn't speak even when grabbed for conversations, including one with a person who offered to buy me a ticket for an event in October.

The subject of the not-church this month was kindness. As always, the liturgy includes some quotations about the subject and after they are read there is an open group discussion – something that I can't participate in at all vocally because I can't deal with group discussions. My head just doesn't know the rules and can't process everything quickly enough. By the time it has something worthwhile to say the topic has moved on and even if I have something to say at what might be the right time I don't know how to break into the group and say it. Never mind. That's just how things are and they're not likely to change. The diagnostic criteria for autism still mention a triad of impairments. My inability in group situations is part of one of those impairments. It truly isn't my favourite part of my autism and it's one in which this so-called very high functioning autistic person is pretty severely impaired.

One of the quotations struck me:

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

Joubert was a French moralist who died nearly 200 years ago. His Pensees were published after his death. I haven't read them – I hadn't heard of Joubert at all. Then again I never managed to finish the Pensees of Blaise Pascal either. I guess I will probably never read Joubert. But I guessed I would never read a lot of things that I have since read.

One of the members of the not-church discussion really liked that Joubert quotation. She talked about it. I wasn't able to speak and was rapidly sinking into a state in which it's quite difficult to even get myself home. If I had been able to speak I might have talked about this quotation too. Because I didn't like it. I still don't like it.

Joubert says “loving people more than they deserve.”

I take issue with that and ask a question:

How much love does a person deserve?

I believe that every single person on this planet deserves more love than they give themselves. They deserve more love than other people give them.

Basically, whatever is happening, whatever the situation, whatever a person has or hasn't done, a person deserves more love not less.

However they feel, however they dress. Whatever their gender or sexuality or race or height. Whether they are disabled or not disabled. Whatever their politics. Whatever their religion. They deserve more love not less.

Even if they treat us badly or treat others badly they deserve more love not less.

And for ourselves. We deserve more love not less. Always and at every moment.

My belief is not an original idea. I've inherited from others, most especially from a spiritual teacher who has been known to use “more love not less” as a kind of mantra and as part of a liturgy. It's pretty powerful to look at a person we don't like and tell ourselves that they deserve more love not less. It's even more powerful to look at ourselves when we unfairly criticise ourselves and say “I deserve more love, not less.”

More love, not less. In fact I would say that we deserve total love. All of us. Total love. Constantly.

Joubert said “loving people more than they deserve” and I sit here typing about it two hundred years later. And I type this: Joubert's thought was nonsensical.

You cannot love any person more than they deserve.

You just can't. It's impossible.

What we need to aim to do is to love each person as much as they deserve. Total love. Always. If anyone lived according to that aim it was Jesus, a teacher of the way of love.

Unpacking that is hard. It raises many questions of how to love people as much as they deserve. It raises questions for what to do when we fail to love people that much. It raises questions of how best to love ourselves, and how to keep loving ourselves when we fall short of the aim of a life of total love. I am not even going to begin to attempt grappling with those questions in this post.

I think Joubert is not to blame for getting it wrong. He was living in a society with a Christian based morality. Even those Frenchmen who killed priests in various revolutions were really only removing a Christian establishment and morality and replacing it with what, beyond story, was just another Christian establishment and morality.

The Catholics of Joubert's day believed in original sin. They believed that God loved them but that loving them was in itself an act of mercy because they didn't really deserve the love of God, let alone to have God as a friend. The Church taught that each person deserves to go to Hell and suffer for eternity, separated from God in fire and torment and damnation. That's what humans deserve. Anything about that is mercy. It's true that the mercy story was rich – the loving, merciful God finding a “just” way to rescue the fallen, sinful humans from hell if they followed him and his son. But it's also true that the Church had a very negative view of human beings. Gee, thanks Augustine for developing that doctrine so well.

Every now and again you might have heard that we're all fearfully and wonderfully made or heard about the dignity of human beings. But the Catholic liturgy was based on the idea that we need to repent – and that one sin of the wrong type leads to Hell without that repentance and reliance on mercy. The Protestants of the day weren't much better and sometimes were much worse. Thanks Calvin, for outdoing Augustine – the very first point Calvinism makes is that every single one of us is totally depraved. It's not a good starting point for developing a healthy, loving view of the human race.

I confess that I used to go along with all this. Original sin. The fallen nature of human beings thanks to Adam and Eve eating some fruit. There was a time I even believed in the literal truth of that story, that there really were two people wandering around a pretty garden being tempted by a wily serpent. I believed that we were fully reliant on God for salvation, hope and anything that might be nice. I believed in a literal Hell once. And in literal human souls burning for eternity. I believed that the Bible taught it so it must be true. The preachers in my churches taught it too, straight from Scripture and you wouldn't want to go against what God wrote in his book, would you? Yeah, I believed people were fundamentally sinful. I believed I was fundamentally very sinful. I was a worm – as Scripture puts it. I was a wretch – as John Newton said in the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

I don't believe any of that now. It's been a long journey to get from there to where I am now, which is a much more free place. And I don't like that hymn any more because I am not a wretch. I was not a wretch. I just believed in my own wretchedness and acted accordingly.

Now I believe that humans are fundamentally good. It's a statement of faith. It would be easy to look at newspaper headlines and see the suffering we inflict on each other and to despair, to see the obvious faults – and let's face it, the way humans act is sometimes particularly awful and the way I act falls short of the way of love. But we're fundamentally good. And we're fundamentally deserving of more love not less. Yes, even those of us we see as monsters. To prove Godwin's law because it's fun to prove Godwin's law: Even Hitler!

Human beings deserve total love.

So. A rewrite of Joubert's thought is in order, removing all the nonsensical stuff about deserving or not deserving love.

“A part of kindness consists in loving people.”

But hey, that's not right either.

It's backwards.

I want to rewrite it again:

“A part of loving people is showing kindness.”

Yeah, that's better.

Love people. And in that love, show kindness.

Here endeth the lesson!

Those final words could have come from Jesus who said to “love one another.” He didn't say anything about deserve did he? Just “love one another.”

Sometimes it's good to be like the people at not-church. And as an ex-Christian I can say this too: Sometimes it's good to be “guided by the life and teachings of Jesus.”

[1694 words and a clickbait style title!]

Cardinal Sarah and The Ugly Face of Intolerance

Before I start.  This is not a post to attack Jesus.  This is not a post to attack following Jesus.  This is not a post attacking the followers of Jesus.  Many of his followers are pretty wonderful.  I am privileged that some of them are my friends.  This is a post that looks at some others of his followers and says

And a disclaimer:  For many years I would have been one of those Christians who Gandhi would not have liked.  I couldn't see it at the time.  But it's the truth.  My Christianity and Christ were in some important respects divorced from one another.  My views were not far from those of the Cardinal in this post.  Even though that involved an unhealthy dose of self-rejection and self-hatred and despair.  Mea Maxima Culpa.  I sorted that in the last few years and hoped I moved a long way towards being the kind of Christian of the sort Gandhi would have enjoyed drinking tea with.  And then I left the church!

Pink News has reported on a speech by Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C.

Lots of people have been getting annoyed by the things reported.  I'm not sure that he's worth getting too annoyed about even though he is a powerful man in a powerful organisation.  But it's fair to say that he won't be finding too many converts among the people who have learned that it's okay to accept themselves and live more fully in the truth of their own being.

I've read the speech and I try to be fair.  I know that speeches by Catholic Cardinals have to be interpreted and decoded firmly within the context of Catholic thought and that sometimes what they mean will be something very different to that reported.  I've seen articles in which what is reported is pretty much the opposite of what was said.  And in my Catholic years when I was wanting to robustly defend my faith I sometimes saw Protestants totally twist the words of Catholics into something that implied Catholicism was a false version of Christianity.  To balance that, I have to say that I also saw Catholics do exactly the same with the words of Protestants.  Yay, Christianity, it's all one big, unhappy family where rejection can often triumph over love.  Sometimes.

Pink News overstates things.  I have to say that.  Pink News often overstates things and takes words out of context.  Cardinal Sarah didn't quite say what he is said to have said.  However, his speech is not good at all. Not good at all.  Or if you're a traditional Catholic reading this, it's a wonderful speech, you'll love it! I don't want to comment too much on it because there's such a lot to comment on.  I would end up picking apart every paragraph of the speech for the good and the bad points because my brain would obsess about it until the task was complete.

Yes, Pink News didn't quite get it right.  He didn't call transgender people demonic.  Not quite.  But. There's a lot of but. A heck of a lot of but. It's not a speech to bring hope that the Catholic Church is going to officially embrace the equal rights and the equal dignity of all people any time soon.  It may claim to do so but while it still calls some of us intrinsically disordered just for existing - and the official Catechism of the Catholic Church still uses such language - its claims are obviously far from the truth at this time.


I guess that his views on many matters are totally opposed to those of the good, faithful Christians I was with yesterday and to many other Christians including many Catholics.  No, I don't guess it.  I know it.  Without any doubt.
 
When the Cardinal says that the move for trans people to change their gender identities shows that “God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated” I don't suppose that the faithful transgender Christians I know would agree. They would say almost the opposite. If God is truth (as the Bible says) then the move is an embracing of God.  God is being revealed and increased in their lives through the liberation and freedom they have found in loving themselves as being, as they see it, beautifully and wonderfully made by their God.

And I don't suppose that anyone at church yesterday - many of them in same-sex unions - would agree that same-sex unions are "a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love" or that the enthusiastic Christians there would say their marriages are "a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel." After all, if God is love (as the Bible says) then embracing same-sex unions is embracing God.

Only if they're prayerful God botherers!

Here's the full speech.

Read it, and then, as is said in MCC (Metropolitan Community Church) frequently, "Dismiss whatever insults your soul." Or as was said to me yesterday by Kate, a minister in MCC who had just learned I had left the church, "Go wherever feeds your soul."

I love MCC!  I may have left it but I still love it and will continue to do so.  I will keep telling people about it and hoping that the people who belong there will find their way there. I'd gladly take someone along if they wanted to go but were nervous of going alone. Because what they would find there is welcome, safety and a place of freedom in which they can be who they are no matter their sexuality or gender.

If you want to read a Catholic commentary on the speech and the event, here's one.  It notes what Cardinal Sarah said about legalising the same-sex unions that already existed in a non-legally binding form:  "It is like putting bandages on the infected wound. It will continue to poison the body until antibiotics are taken."  Yes.  He said that in a speech that saw lots of applause during and afterwards.

Speaker Paul Ryan also spoke at the event. He said "A lot of people think faith is just an odd, colorful mask for the ugly face of intolerance."

Well, no, faith isn't that.  Faith can be a beautiful thing and can lift people towards the heights of what a human being can be, towards the depths of love and the wideness of our creative spirits.

But the faith of Cardinal Sarah and those like him, as displayed in his words, is most definitely an odd, colorful mask for the ugly face of intolerance.

A Quick Pilgrimage Pt 3 - Shrines of St. Mary's Chapel and Well, Jesmond

As I said in the previous posts, people leave things at holy sites.  They may relate to Jesus and the Saints of the Church.  Or they may relate to people who were important in someone's life, to remember them or to pray for their soul.

Either way, in a sense, everything that is left, from a photograph of a friend or relative through to an intricately constructed grotto to Mary or the largest Calvary representation, is holy.  It's all holy, set apart for a purpose and set apart in terms of someone's relationship with their God.

It's tempting for people to dismiss such piety as an anachronism, a remnant of some pre-scientific day when we didn't understand the universe so well and so lived according to superstition and myth.  Maybe there is a personal God.  Maybe there isn't.  But for me that isn't the point.  All of this is part of our needs and our beings as people.  We need story.  We need remembrance.  And these things enrich our lives greatly as long as we don't become slaves to narrow dogma and a belief that our particular story is the only thing that's true.  Stories can be truth without them being true.  And the truth can enrich us greatly.  Personally I don't believe that any story is the truth.  I believe they are there as powerful symbols, pointing us towards that which is that truth.  The story is not the answer.  Story can be an image, imperfect, incomplete, of the answer.  Or it can be empty - but even then, as an entertaining tale, it has its use.

Yes, people belittle religious story, the myths that drive and drove the great religions and spiritualities of history.  And people who hold rigidly to one story, as I held to one very rigidly, will belittle all the other stories and worse, call them false or lies.  I believe all those stories, even when we might abhor the ancient moral codes in some of them, bear witness to truth.  All the stories came from people glimpsing that which is divine and grasping towards a way of relating what they saw.

The piety shown in the pictures below, from Jesmond, is simple.  It is trusting.  It is full of hope.  I don't follow the story or the belief system they demonstrate.  Not any more.  But that does not make the story any less valid for those who continue to believe and follow.  For me, the story of Jesus is not literal.  The stories told are not historical record.  But they could still point me in metaphor to great truth, to the divine that the early followers of Jesus had in their own way glimpsed.  Whether they actually happened or not does not at this point make much difference to me.

Having so recently walked away from my church I don't disrespect Christianity or the deep, personal faith shown by so many of the Christians I've worshipped with over the years.  This is their way to Spirit.  Right now it isn't mine.  But I believe that beyond story, beyond ritual, beyond doctrine, we seek the same Spirit.

From St. Mary's Chapel:

 From St. Mary's Well:

Responding to "The Toll of Our Christian Theology on the LGBT Community"

Last night I found a link to a Christian blog post about the way LGBT people have suffered at the hands of Christians.  That's not news to me but the blog post touched me greatly.  I wept about it last night.  I wept about it again this morning.

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2014/10/07/distorted-love-the-toll-of-our-christian-theology-on-the-lgbt-community/

It's worth reading.  I urge you to read it. 

John Pavlovitz hadn't expected to write this post - it's a direct response to the hundreds of people who wrote to him following another post, hundreds of people each with direct experience of suffering at the hands of Christians for their sexuality.  If I'd written the original post I wouldn't have expected that outpouring either.  But sometimes these things just happen - such as with a post elsewhere on "Post Traumatic Church Disorder".

The biggest of my tears this morning were when I read again the sentence "It certainly doesn’t look like love to the sweet, 12-year old middle school girl in your church whose been repeatedly told she’s an abomination; that God already despises her."

Now I've been told by a church minister that I am an abomination.  But I was 42.  I was totally sure of myself as a transgender woman.  I was totally sure that being transgender was not any kind of a problem for God - whether a "God of the Bible" (I'd already gone through the "relevant" verses) or any other God.  But I thought of this girl.  She was 12 not 42.  She didn't have all the adult experience or two theology degrees and the ability to research more theology.  She didn't have the wonderful support of a church like Northern Lights MCC here in Newcastle.  So I thought of her and what this perfectly "Biblical" treatment would have done to her.  And I wept.  I wept over other stories too.  I am very close to tears again now.

John Pavlovitz's post from two weeks previously is also worth reading.  It's about what he would do if he found that his son or daughter was gay.  To sum that up in a few words: He would love them.  That's what caused the outpouring of response.  Just that.  That a father would love his child.

I posted a link to the blog on a friend's facebook status asking whether she had seen it.  Part of my response to a speech by a Catholic Archbishop who said that "Homosexual relationships are destroying our human identity."

The report about the speech was posted by a good woman.  A Catholic who posts things from either side of the moral arguments currently raging in the Catholic church and expects responses and discussion - from both sides.  And she's good enough to put up with a lot of non-Catholic words from me which to be honest is quite impressive at times as I'm not exactly toeing the party line!  She's doing her best in life and seeks to walk in love of people and in devotion to her God.

Someone responded as follows:  "Hang on a second, acting on being gay and physically attacking others, are both sins in Christian Theology. So because others sin by attacking, it must be the fault of the Theology? That reasoning is beyond moronic..."

You can always tell a loving, rational person by the way they descend to calling someone's intelligent writing "moronic" within three sentences!

I responded to that.  Because yes, I believe it is the fault of the Theology.  It's a theology I once promoted too - much to my shame.  One day I'll write about that.  A post along the lines of Mea Maxima Culpa!

__________________________________________

Sorry - this is long.  A length borne of passion.  A length borne of seeing people hurt, again, again, again by Christians and so-called Biblical views and of Christians turning away again and again and saying "It's not OUR fault, our ways wouldn't hurt anyone."  I am so utterly sick of seeing LGBT people destroyed and then being blamed for their own destruction by the Christians who killed their spirits.

Acting on being gay is NOT a sin in Christian theology.  It is a sin in SOME Christian theology.  Get that right.  "Christian theology" is not a blanket term.  It's certainly not a sin in my theology.  Nor in the theology of a local minister who leads Bible studies on the subject covering every possibly connected verse in great detail, solely relying on the works of highly respected scholars.  Nor in the theology of a great many Christians and a great many skilled theologians and Biblical scholars too.

When the theology is that a dignified human being, made in the image of God, beautifully and wonderfully made is also an abomination merely because of who God has made them to be, then yes the theology is at fault.  Or to be more exact, the people who have such a theology and refuse to look beyond the preconceptions of the centuries of homophobic abuse into a more enlightened age where human beings are accepted for being who they are.

I have so many friends who know what the effects of homophobic theology are.  It's not just a matter of people attacking them but also a matter of the beliefs guiding that action.

So many scholars now have accepted that the anti-homosexual clobber verses don't in reality have anything to do with Christian homosexuals.  More will follow.  And in the end the churches will accept that this is a normal, and completely healthy, part of the range that makes up human beings (and many other species too - if like the Archbishop we want to bring in what is "natural").  

That day cannot come too soon.

A day when I as a transsexual married lesbian will never risk encountering a church where I am rejected, told to repent of being who I am, told that it is impossible even to be Christian unless I at least want to repent, told I'm abomination, told that the God of mercy will make me burn in pain for eternity if I don't stop being who I am.  I will never again encounter a Church where my very existence is said to be anti-God (such as the Catholic Church and the certain articles written on major Catholic websites as a perfectly logical result of the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI)

Jesus accepts me.  He accepts LGBTQIA people.  He loves us as we are and has called us to be who we are.  He made us this way.  Yes, God created gay people to be gay people.  He created transsexuals to be transsexuals.

It's just a shame that Christians turned the love of God for gay people into a sham.  The love they show is not love.  No matter how many flowery words are used.  No matter how much Christians try to justify themselves.  It's not love.  It's closed-minded, bigoted, hatred justified by years of doing the same thing.

And yes, I am a Christian.  And I firmly believe God called me to live the life I lead - as a happily married transsexual lesbian.  My wife would agree with that.  And I know the hell it was to believe what other Christians taught - that all these things were evil, disordered, unnatural.  That I should be someone else - and indeed I tried to do it for decades.  Misery.  And to my shame I believed the lies that my gender and sexuality were disordered, evil.  And I believed the same thing about the gender and sexuality of others.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology leads to the attacks.  The theology directly leads to a hell on earth for innocent people.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology leads to thousands and thousands of wounded, crushed lives, and not uncommonly even to suicide.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology forces people to run from Jesus because the Jesus of the theology does welcome people with open arms.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology gives a church that is not a place of safety but instead a place of death for people against whom other people have a prejudice that has no basis whatsoever in reality.

I see the results of the theology.  Regularly.  It is heart breaking.  I am so thankful for a better theology.  One taught by some of the churches here.  And I am so thankful for the MCC congregation here and for the way crushed people are healed there and enabled to find peace and fall in love with Jesus again after the pain caused by well-meaning Christians.  So, so thankful for the light and love in that place.

The Truth About Same Sex Attraction?

A priest today posted a link to an article by Joseph Prever, a gay Catholic with orthodox Catholic views on sexuality, intelligence and good taste in his reading.  I was meant to be doing other things this afternoon but allowed myself to be side-tracked by the post.

The article is titled "The Truth About Same Sex Attraction".  I looked up "transgender" on the site (Catholic Exchange).  Obviously that's a subject important to me.  The first post returned was about how evil it was for a transgender woman to challenge a school that sacked him for insubordination (she refused to dress like and act like a man).  The second repeatedly called a transgender woman, Amanda Simpson, a man.  I can't blame the site - it's Catholic teaching, as expounded at length just 18 months ago by Pope Benedict XVI, that I am a man and live in sin every moment I live as a woman.  Another article accuses people like me of "impersonation" and "deception".

So I didn't hold out too much hope that I'd be in full agreement with an article on the site about sexuality.

I can respect Joseph Prever.  He's devoutly Catholic and lives that life to the full with all the joys and challenges that entails.  He's pretty firm and steadfast in his faith.  And he's chosen, as a gay Catholic, to live that challenging life of celibacy, in obedience to the teachings of the church and in the conviction that his churches teachings on homosexual relationships are entirely correct.  I believe too that he's right that celibacy is a perfectly acceptable choice and that our society - including parts of the gay community - greatly overvalues sex.  Too often celibacy is seen as weird, cranky lunacy rather than a decent way to choose to live.  Prever has chosen celibacy and while I may not agree with the faith that aided that choice I in no way criticise him for that choice.

If I met him I'd probably like him and happily sit and drink tea (or his beverage of choice) with him.  Prever is doing his best, and doing his best to live in love and service in the ways he believes are right.  And that's a lot better than most of us do.  There are plently of Catholics like Prever.  We can't ever forget that they're good people seeking to follow a path they believe in, and believing that path to be fully based on love.

But I'm an ex-Catholic.  And so can disagree with Prever too.  And he can disagree with me.  And probably we'll never come to any agreement on this issue.  He would continue, if we debated, to stand on the view that "the Catholic Church is right and what it says about the Bible is right and this is dogma given to the Church infallibly by the Holy Spirit."  I recognise that view - I used to share it, my Catholicism was serious!  I would continue to affirm a view that homosexuality is normal, part of the range of healthy humanity and that it's not a consequence of our being fundamentally disordered or subject to any kind of original sin.

I started to wonder whether the priest posted the blog as a recommendation or just to cause discussion.  It's hard to tell as he made no comment.  I guess he recommends it and I know he would go along with the teaching that gay people didn't choose to be gay but should always choose to be celibate.  I know too that he wouldn't call himself "anti-gay" in any way, and has been involved in gay pride celebrations.  Combining gay pride with the teaching of his church and his faith is at times a balancing act but he usually balances well with a compassionate balancing pole.

I started to wonder too whether the priest would also recommend the websites and books that Prever recommends in his blog post.  I clicked on the first of these and it claims on its front page to teach how to "resolve" homosexual feelings and lead to "our innate heterosexual masculinity".  It teaches how homosexual or same-sex attraction is an unwanted thing.  It teaches that homosexuality is caused by "a longing for a father's affirmation, perhaps, or a peer group's inclusion, or our own internal sense of just being "one of the guys"".

The site looks to people being able to talk about their "former homosexual condition."  In other words, it's a gay cure site.  Pure and simple.  Get therapy - psychological or spiritual - and find a cure.  Become a proper man with proper attractions.  The site even has a page called "Who Succeeds at Change in Therapy?" written by a "reparative therapist".

I'm sorry but this is blatant homophobia.  It's doubly sad because Catholicism - in her Catechism, many leaders, preachers, publications and a proportion of the laity - continues to teach homosexuals to be homophobic, to reject themselves rather than embrace themselves and to believe their homosexual attractions, whether physical, romantic, or emotional, are a disorder.  Being taught to be a homophobic homosexual is a terrible thing.

Joseph Prever in his writings points out a belief that homosexuality is something he HAS rather than something he IS.  It is very sad that he's been taught this and has accepted that teaching.  Our sexual attractions are part of who we are, they're not something like an ailment that we have and can fight with.  It's very sad that he refers to same sex attractions as "sexual dysfunction".  To believe that being gay means you have a dysfunction rather than that you are as fully functional as anyone else is to bear an unnatural cross placed on you by a dogmatic religion.  It's a cross Prever knows well.

The sooner the Catholic Church and other churches realise that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality and that it isn't gravely disordered the better.  I've heard Catholics talk of how the Catholic Church is "gay friendly" because it's attitudes are better than some churches.  True, some churches are far worse but that doesn't imply the Catholic Church has good answers.

Prever writes of the sufferings of gay people, "Put the sexual aspect together with the other things that homosexual men and women often experience — depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, a sense (however false) of being utterly different — and you have a heavy cross."

The question is, why are these things so often experienced?  I believe the answer does not lie with homosexuality.  It lies with the way people treat homosexuals and homosexuality - and thus with the way homosexuals are taught to treat themselves.  It is not gay people who need to change.  It is a world that makes gay people feel second class, dirty, stained, disordered, for being gay.  It is not gay people not need to deal with a "sexual dysfunction".  It is religious people who need to stop calling homosexuality dysfunctional.   A banner at church here reads "Fabulous and Beautiful", two words taken from placards from the Stonewall protests nearly 50 years ago.  It is so sad that people still need to be told today that they are beautiful, having been told by religious people that they are not.

The cross is caused by the Church, not by the individual.  It is caused by the society the Church has helped to create, not by the individual.  The individual is fine.  The individual is healthy but so often has become convinced that he is not healthy or believes herself healthy but is weary from being told that she is unhealthy.  The Church imposes the cross, imposes the suffering.  The Church is the one that needs to repent and change, not the individual.

Gay people do not need to change their sexuality, their same sex attraction.  Churches need to change.  Political parties need to change.  Anyone and anything needs to change when they tell gay people their sexuality and attractions are bad things that need to change.

It will happen.  It is happening.  But even here there in our fortunate society where LGBT people have legal protections there is much homophobia.  A survey just published showed that only 73% of UK football fans would be comfortable with their national team including an openly gay player.  The Guardian article rejoices in the worldwide support for gay players to come out.  But consider, that's over a quarter of football fans who care more about a player's sexuality than their footballing skills.  Football fans were questioned in a number of nations.  The UK came third, behind Sweden and Denmark, but in the USA only 52% of people would be comfortable with an openly gay player on the team.

There is still such homophobia and such stupidity as to care about the sexuality of a football player.  Churches should be leading the way in the journey away from such homophobia and indeed away from any prejudice - another survey today revealed that 30% of the UK population consider themselves to be racially prejudiced in some way.  Nearly a third of us here thus admit to being racists.  That's a rise.  It's doesn't take much imagination to see why that rise exists - and that white British people hold the bulk of the blame rather than people of any other race, nationality or culture.

Churches must lead the way else they deserve the fate suggested in the book title "Why Christianity Must Change or Die".  Some churches are helping lead the way.  Too many are not.  And too many are proud of not doing it, blinkered into a view of their own rightness, blinkered into a view that regarding same sex attraction and so many other things they have "The Truth".

Come on Church:   Change.   Or just die, as is inevitable and deserved.