The Irreverent Mr Black
20th June 2009, 12:15 AM
I was reading the Salon Magazine site (http://www.salon.com/) when I came across the following article in Cary Tennis's advice column. (I'm only quoting the letter: if you want Cary's reply, go to the article itself (http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2009/06/17/end_times_trauma/index.html).)
Dear Cary,
I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home. When I was 5 years old, the church showed us a movie about End Times that really impacted me. There were things like fire and brimstone, the Antichrist, the Mark of the Beast, Armageddon and decapitation. The images terrified me, so much so that I went home and immediately got "saved" (e.g., became a Christian). But the fear never went away. I remember, as a small child, spending sleepless nights worrying about my unsaved relatives. I could picture them either burning in hell or being decapitated. One night, I remember waking my parents up late at night and telling them my worry. They tried to make me feel better, but the bottom line was that I was right. My uncle was not saved, so he was going to hell. I asked why he would refuse to get saved. They couldn't tell me. We stayed up and talked about it for hours. I was so worried that I couldn't sleep. Finally, they decided to let me make a long-distance call to my uncle to tell him I was worried for his soul. It was a pretty traumatic experience for a little boy.
Now I'm in my early 30s and my beliefs have drastically changed. After high school, I went away to college and was exposed to many different people, beliefs and ways of thinking. Right now, my beliefs are starkly different from my parents'. I no longer believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and do not subscribe to any organized religion.
There was a time when this caused tension between my folks and me. But we have gotten past that stage and are now very close. The problem is that I still get this weird feeling every time a family member mentions the End Times. It's like a tightness in my chest. Is it guilt? Is there a part of me that is really worried that I'll spend eternity in hell? I don't know.
All I know is that I can't get over it. And it's starting to really bother me. I tried to think about why it is bothering me and I think it's because I feel like I will never be fully accepted by them. No matter what, they will always want me to rededicate my life to Christ. It is who they are. It is how they fervently believe.
I have to admit, this makes me a little upset. I mean, I accept them for who they are. I don't judge them for being Evangelical Christians. Why can't they reciprocate?
But, honestly, I can't be too mad. At its core, their non-acceptance is rooted in love. They believe that I am going to hell if I don't change my ways, so they can never fully accept me. If they quit praying for me and fully accept me for who I am, they will be resigned to the fact that their son is going to spend eternity in hell. This would mean that they are not only failing as parents but also as Christians. So, what should I do? Should I talk to them and tell them how I feel? Should I accept the fact that they will never fully accept me? I'd appreciate any advice you can give.
John the (Former) Baptist
It made me think... I know this tactic too well.
I've seen it as a primary schooler, at those weird camps they'd shunt us troublesome boys off to, where, apart from frightening us with the lake of fire and the sheer size of eternity, the camp counsellors spent too much time watching their little charges in the showers, and on the third day you'd get The Talk, all about Bits Getting Bigger, and (I'm not making this up: it happened two years in a row!) especial care was made in telling all of us pre-pubescent tykes that We Must Not Shave Our Balls. But I digress....
After the usual "divide the kids up, find some token victims and pick on them with the involvement of the rest of the kids, then rip round in a frenzy before Message Time" that was par for the course with the Youth For Christ meetings run at a house in our neigbourhood, apart from the usual amount of YFC members and helpers setting themselves up sexually with kids (jings, I almost detect a pattern here!) there was the dose of End Times warning, generally related to the warblings of Hal Lindsey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Lindsey), and his book The Late Great Planet Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late,_Great_Planet_Earth)....
"the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it." - Hal Lindsey, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon (1980) And there was a walloping big dose of Stan Deyo's Cosmic Conspiracy (http://standeyo.com/Our_Books/Cosmic_Conspiracy.html). It was... well...here's Deyo's own website's synopsis for the book:
Recruited by the Illuminati, Stan Deyo was taken secretly to Australia in 1971 to design "flying saucer" propulsion systems with them. Deyo reveals years later why "they" keep the alien/UFO agenda from the public. Many have investigated this huge conspiracy from the outside looking in - BUT, only one has come forward from an insider's perspective. Stan Deyo's The Cosmic Conspiracy is his testimony to you who would know the truth....Deyo is apparently still going (http://www.computernewbie.info/wheatdogg/2006/02/09/reality-1-stan-deyo-0/). Let me share a comment from the (2006) post in that link:
I came across Stan Deyo when a friend who is a conservative, Pentecostal Christian, tried to tell me that Einstein’s theories of relativity had been proven wrong. I asked him for the reference and he handed me a book called “The Cosmic Conspiracy.”
I have degrees in engineering, law and arts. I practise as a lawyer, mainly in litigation, and I am well accustomed to rigorous technical analysis, both in civil litigation and in a research project in which I was involved several years ago. My first impression of the book was that nobody would take it seriously. It is poorly written, disjoint, made many extravagant claims on an unsatisfactory evidential basis and published what purported to be a set of equations which “proved” Einstein had made an error. I do not recall the precise details and I have long since thrown the book into the rubbish, but as I recall Deyo made a fairly obvious mistake by trying to equate a Newtonian formula with a relativistic one. As Newtonian mechanics is merely an approximation of relativity in circumstances where relativistic effects are minimal, it is hardly surprising that he found inconsistency.
I did find it odd that anyone would take this nonsense seriously and I wondered about his background. Not particularly surprising was the dearth of detail about his background and qualifications in the book. There was reference to involvement in secret projects, but no detail, and of course such claims are easily made but impossible to prove or disprove. Most significantly there were no records of qualifications from any recognised university or research institute and nothing I saw that suggested that he was qualified in any field. Anyway, I digress yet again. Deyo (does anybody else start singing "Daylight come and I wanna go home"?) and his tapes, magazines and various other hooey scared my stepfather into conversion. For over ten years my mum had been the believer, shunting us into church and anything else Jeebus-related, while the old man hung back with his characteristic quietness. I was interstate when it happened, but it was a shame. Even when I became a christian, I wondered what a conversion by deception and fear was worth: was it like an agreement signed under duress, which is null and void under international law?
And even as a christian, when Student Minister Me saw the Fear Tactic deployed, I was disgusted.
I've already written about the evening Barry Smith descended on Ipswich with his version of apocalyptic doom and gloom. You can read it here (http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/showthread.php?t=112).
What I didn't mention was that Barry built the fear and drama (as I sat down the back with Gitarzan, another cynical young theologian, picking ocean-liner-sized holes in Barry's theology and science), and he made an altar call at the end. Two dozen assorted bogans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan) and a clump of dusky youths made their way to the front, and Git and I sort of looked at each other and began a fairly cynical discussion about the validity of the call making any genuine conversion well-nigh impossible.
It still shits me. There are no polite words for the way I feel about this particular means of evangelism. I've posted this here on the Island in case any of our believers have a comment to make, but I'm just plain disgusted.
Dear Cary,
I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home. When I was 5 years old, the church showed us a movie about End Times that really impacted me. There were things like fire and brimstone, the Antichrist, the Mark of the Beast, Armageddon and decapitation. The images terrified me, so much so that I went home and immediately got "saved" (e.g., became a Christian). But the fear never went away. I remember, as a small child, spending sleepless nights worrying about my unsaved relatives. I could picture them either burning in hell or being decapitated. One night, I remember waking my parents up late at night and telling them my worry. They tried to make me feel better, but the bottom line was that I was right. My uncle was not saved, so he was going to hell. I asked why he would refuse to get saved. They couldn't tell me. We stayed up and talked about it for hours. I was so worried that I couldn't sleep. Finally, they decided to let me make a long-distance call to my uncle to tell him I was worried for his soul. It was a pretty traumatic experience for a little boy.
Now I'm in my early 30s and my beliefs have drastically changed. After high school, I went away to college and was exposed to many different people, beliefs and ways of thinking. Right now, my beliefs are starkly different from my parents'. I no longer believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and do not subscribe to any organized religion.
There was a time when this caused tension between my folks and me. But we have gotten past that stage and are now very close. The problem is that I still get this weird feeling every time a family member mentions the End Times. It's like a tightness in my chest. Is it guilt? Is there a part of me that is really worried that I'll spend eternity in hell? I don't know.
All I know is that I can't get over it. And it's starting to really bother me. I tried to think about why it is bothering me and I think it's because I feel like I will never be fully accepted by them. No matter what, they will always want me to rededicate my life to Christ. It is who they are. It is how they fervently believe.
I have to admit, this makes me a little upset. I mean, I accept them for who they are. I don't judge them for being Evangelical Christians. Why can't they reciprocate?
But, honestly, I can't be too mad. At its core, their non-acceptance is rooted in love. They believe that I am going to hell if I don't change my ways, so they can never fully accept me. If they quit praying for me and fully accept me for who I am, they will be resigned to the fact that their son is going to spend eternity in hell. This would mean that they are not only failing as parents but also as Christians. So, what should I do? Should I talk to them and tell them how I feel? Should I accept the fact that they will never fully accept me? I'd appreciate any advice you can give.
John the (Former) Baptist
It made me think... I know this tactic too well.
I've seen it as a primary schooler, at those weird camps they'd shunt us troublesome boys off to, where, apart from frightening us with the lake of fire and the sheer size of eternity, the camp counsellors spent too much time watching their little charges in the showers, and on the third day you'd get The Talk, all about Bits Getting Bigger, and (I'm not making this up: it happened two years in a row!) especial care was made in telling all of us pre-pubescent tykes that We Must Not Shave Our Balls. But I digress....
After the usual "divide the kids up, find some token victims and pick on them with the involvement of the rest of the kids, then rip round in a frenzy before Message Time" that was par for the course with the Youth For Christ meetings run at a house in our neigbourhood, apart from the usual amount of YFC members and helpers setting themselves up sexually with kids (jings, I almost detect a pattern here!) there was the dose of End Times warning, generally related to the warblings of Hal Lindsey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Lindsey), and his book The Late Great Planet Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late,_Great_Planet_Earth)....
"the decade of the 1980s could very well be the last decade of history as we know it." - Hal Lindsey, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon (1980) And there was a walloping big dose of Stan Deyo's Cosmic Conspiracy (http://standeyo.com/Our_Books/Cosmic_Conspiracy.html). It was... well...here's Deyo's own website's synopsis for the book:
Recruited by the Illuminati, Stan Deyo was taken secretly to Australia in 1971 to design "flying saucer" propulsion systems with them. Deyo reveals years later why "they" keep the alien/UFO agenda from the public. Many have investigated this huge conspiracy from the outside looking in - BUT, only one has come forward from an insider's perspective. Stan Deyo's The Cosmic Conspiracy is his testimony to you who would know the truth....Deyo is apparently still going (http://www.computernewbie.info/wheatdogg/2006/02/09/reality-1-stan-deyo-0/). Let me share a comment from the (2006) post in that link:
I came across Stan Deyo when a friend who is a conservative, Pentecostal Christian, tried to tell me that Einstein’s theories of relativity had been proven wrong. I asked him for the reference and he handed me a book called “The Cosmic Conspiracy.”
I have degrees in engineering, law and arts. I practise as a lawyer, mainly in litigation, and I am well accustomed to rigorous technical analysis, both in civil litigation and in a research project in which I was involved several years ago. My first impression of the book was that nobody would take it seriously. It is poorly written, disjoint, made many extravagant claims on an unsatisfactory evidential basis and published what purported to be a set of equations which “proved” Einstein had made an error. I do not recall the precise details and I have long since thrown the book into the rubbish, but as I recall Deyo made a fairly obvious mistake by trying to equate a Newtonian formula with a relativistic one. As Newtonian mechanics is merely an approximation of relativity in circumstances where relativistic effects are minimal, it is hardly surprising that he found inconsistency.
I did find it odd that anyone would take this nonsense seriously and I wondered about his background. Not particularly surprising was the dearth of detail about his background and qualifications in the book. There was reference to involvement in secret projects, but no detail, and of course such claims are easily made but impossible to prove or disprove. Most significantly there were no records of qualifications from any recognised university or research institute and nothing I saw that suggested that he was qualified in any field. Anyway, I digress yet again. Deyo (does anybody else start singing "Daylight come and I wanna go home"?) and his tapes, magazines and various other hooey scared my stepfather into conversion. For over ten years my mum had been the believer, shunting us into church and anything else Jeebus-related, while the old man hung back with his characteristic quietness. I was interstate when it happened, but it was a shame. Even when I became a christian, I wondered what a conversion by deception and fear was worth: was it like an agreement signed under duress, which is null and void under international law?
And even as a christian, when Student Minister Me saw the Fear Tactic deployed, I was disgusted.
I've already written about the evening Barry Smith descended on Ipswich with his version of apocalyptic doom and gloom. You can read it here (http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/forums/showthread.php?t=112).
What I didn't mention was that Barry built the fear and drama (as I sat down the back with Gitarzan, another cynical young theologian, picking ocean-liner-sized holes in Barry's theology and science), and he made an altar call at the end. Two dozen assorted bogans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan) and a clump of dusky youths made their way to the front, and Git and I sort of looked at each other and began a fairly cynical discussion about the validity of the call making any genuine conversion well-nigh impossible.
It still shits me. There are no polite words for the way I feel about this particular means of evangelism. I've posted this here on the Island in case any of our believers have a comment to make, but I'm just plain disgusted.