Undoing years of Fundamentalist Christian teaching
| By Elroy | ||||
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You may also go directly to any one of these related articles. Losing My Religion Answers to a good friend who is concerned for my soul
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A full listing of articles can be found in the Even Horizon Rider listed below The Event Horizon Rider
Elroy's poetry on love, loss, and sorrow can be found in Mental Equations listed below Mental Equations |
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His embarrassment was almost too much for me to handle.
As I walked the last fifty feet that would put us face-to-face again, after so many years and so many changes, his eyes caught mine, then quickly escaped - searching for anything to look at other than my face. But once I was within hugging distance his eyes had nowhere else to go but into mine. And they broke my heart. This was Don, my former youth pastor from the church of my upbringing. This was the man who taught me so much about the Bible, and God, and why I should believe it all. This was the man who dedicated endless hours of his life to making sure young teenagers, such as myself, learned to follow God rather than our more base instincts. To me he had been like a demigod, perhaps not on the same level as Jesus, but only barely less important. And he was about to tell me he had lost his faith. He was about to tell me that everything he'd convinced me to believe had all been a big lie. Of course, I didn't believe him. I thought he was just backsliding, as we called it in the Fundamentalist Christian church where I was raised. A friend and I spent the next hour trying to convince Don of all the good he had done in our lives, and, of course, of his need to regain the faith - to trust in God to make it all right once again. We encouraged him. And he turned more pale. We prayed for him. And he got more embarrassed. We implored him not to give up the good fight, the race to the goal of Christian perfection through a life dedicated to Christ. But with each fanatical word from our mouths, his eyes lost their color and his face lost its texture, and he disappeared into his own painful hell as he listened to his prodigies spewing forth all the platitudes he taught us so long ago. I was angry with him that day - not because he had lied to me, but because he was giving up his faith. It took another ten years for me to realize the depth of the lie that haunted him. How many words had he spoken that he now wished he could withdraw and never speak again? How many hours had he spent in study, memorizing those words so they would come out easily in a time of need? How many kids had he led down the path of self-righteous judgmental thinking with his Sunday morning Bible studies and his Wednesday night youth groups, and his many extended retreats with those of us who responded more readily to his teachings? It took me ten years to realize that indeed that painful reunion was the only time he had ever told me the truth - it was the only time he had tried so desperately to undo the damage his lies had done. It took me ten years to realize that I, too, could no longer believe in the faith he once taught - that I, too, had been living in and spreading the same lie to anyone who would listen. I've tried to find him, to tell him it's okay, to tell him how much I appreciated that he tried to confess his big lie to me - even though I wasn't ready to hear it at the time. I've tried to find him, but his ex-wife doesn't know where he is, and his son won't return my messages. His son now sees me the same way I saw Don at that reunion so long ago. And the last thing the son wants, so it seems, is someone like me telling his Dad that I agree with him - that indeed it was just a Big Lie after all.
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Copyright © 1995-2005 Brian Elroy McKinley