The Hell Of Self-Awareness

Leftist religionists like yours truly tend to place near-exclusive emphasis on God's Love, leaving the image of a judgey God to our fundamentalist cousins.

Well, this is why I believe in God's judgment.

In brief: cute little gay kid loves Lady Gaga, has posse of girl buddies, makes It Gets Better video, continues to be horribly bullied, takes own life. On the day of his wake, big sister attends school dance with her friends and his; when a Lady Gaga song is played, they start to cheer and chant his name – whereupon the bullies shout in response that they're glad he's dead.

People do evil stuff. People do evil stuff, and, so far from regretting it, they do more evil stuff. That can't be the end of the story.

If hell exists, it's self-awareness. It's having the conscience, maturity, and self-reflectiveness to comprehend just what a piece of shit you are. It's losing sleep to the roiling in your gut as you remember the time fifteen years ago when somebody made fun of the fat kid and you laughed. It's the agonizing remembrance of every cruel or thoughtless thing you ever said, knowing bone-deep how much it hurt the other person.

“If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

It might happen when they grow up a little, or it might not happen in this lifetime; but one day the children who hounded and persecuted little Jamey Rodemeyer to death and beyond it will know what it feels like to truly love and truly be loved. When they do, the full magnitude of the evil they have done will hit them like burning coals on their heads. They will know themselves, and they will be in hell.

God's justice is God's love. God's love is the very judgment that sends evildoers to the hell of self-awareness.

This hell is a necessary step on the road to redemption. No matter what you've done, there is no true redemption without experiencing the hell of self-awareness. For their own sakes, I want Jamey Rodemeyer's tormentors to know hell.

Razing Ruth: Escape From Hierarchalism

The past few days, I’ve been glued to the archives of Razing Ruth. Ruth is a survivor of an abusive upbringing in a Christian cult; on her therapist’s advice, she has been blogging about it for the past eighteen months or so.

You might know about the Quiverfull movement through the Duggars. If you are less obsessed with American pop culture than I am (which, trust me, you are), you might not have even heard of the Duggars, in which case you are in for a voyeuristic, Schadenfreude-filled treat. These fundies believe that God decides how many children they have; apparently God’s decision is “lots” – at the moment, 19 and Counting. The name Quiverfull (QF) derives from Psalm 127:

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!

Ruth has ten siblings. Her parents are members of the personality cult of Bill Gothard, whom you can read about in this AlterNet article. They brought up Ruth and her siblings to believe that girls and women should obey the family patriarch in everything. They must never wear pants or cut their hair. They must never question the father’s/husband’s authority. If a man had inappropriate or lustful thoughts about them, it was their fault for being immodest and provocative. Ruth ran away when her father betrothed her to a young man she barely knew and didn’t like, who considered her his “property”.

This rape culture within a rape culture (rape culture squared, if you like) is a prime example of the evils of religious authoritarianism. In the name of ever-loving God, the tyrannical patriarch rules over his wife and children with an iron fist by brainwashing them with lies that take the hallowed name in vain. This is called hierarchalism. The chain of command is God --> man --> wife --> children. Abuse is handed down from a false conception of God through a totalitarian construction of family life. It is poisonous, despotic, unchristian, and wrong wrong wrong.

Sadly, Ruth’s is not a isolated case. This is how the Westboro Baptist Church (absit omen) operates. It’s how all cults operate; and, on a lesser scale, it’s how conservative religious communities operate. Ruth is an astoundingly courageous (and, judging from her writing, a truly good) person, whose escape from terrible oppression is both heartbreaking and affirming.

All people of faith who recognize the toxic evil of this false notion of God need to speak out. We need to openly deplore the appalling abuses committed in the name of Love. We need to join communities like ThruWay Christians and Christians for Biblical Equality. We need to make it known that these tyrants and cult leaders do not speak or act for God or for God’s people. For the sake of all the Ruths in the world, in every country and in every faith, we need to stand up for the truth. It will set us free.