Got this in yesterday:
Hello Mr. Shore. Thanks for your writing—I find your ideas inspirational. I have what is probably an obvious question, but I have yet to truly understand the answer. I’m curious how fundamentalists, who take the Bible as the literal word of God, are able to rationalize only adhering to certain of the Bible’s tenants. For instance, how did they become so focused on the rules around sexuality, but not around slavery, clothing, etc.? What is the rhetorical mechanism/rationalization that allows them to justify living by only some of the rules, yet get a free pass on the others? I mean no disrespect; what one chooses to believe is their right. I’m just wondering how a literalist would justify and defend against charges of hypocrisy. If it makes any difference, I’m a secular humanist Jew living in Boston, and am trying to understand all this. Many thanks for any insights, observations or resources. Best, T.
Dear T:
What a great question.
Here’s what I think it’s like inside the mind of a guy who’s a fundamentalist:
Hey, who turned out the lights?
Wait. Sorry. Lemme try again.
My sister is hot.
Sorry. Unforgivable joke. Sorry.
One more time.
I like my children’s Bible just fine. Lookit all the pictures!
Wait. This is getting ridiculous.
Check it out! If I get naked, I can count to twenty-one!
Okay, this failed.
Let me just try the more normal approach to answering this.
Obviously, for fundamentalists it’s not really about critical thinking. It’s about a very conditional emotional security. Mainly of course through the influence of his culture and upbringing, the fundamentalist has ultimately surrendered himself to the considerable seductive powers of the simplistic.
It’s so easy not to think. It hurts to read, concentrate, analyze, logically process—especially if your education has left you without a lot of the tools for engaging in that sort of endeavor. No one enjoys riding in a car with flat tires and lousy steering. Better just to stay where you are.
Venturing outside the neighborhood in which you are comfortable can also take a bit more courage than most people are inclined to muster. It’s scary to wander away from everything you’ve known and been taught.
The fundamentalist goes: “Any fool can question and doubt. But you start using questions to punch holes in the house that is your belief, and pretty soon you might as well be outside. Others may not know what they believe, but I do. I know what I believe; I know what my family believes; I know what my pastor believes; I know what everybody at my church believes. Let others pick God apart, whittling Him down till He’s no bigger than they are. Let them set sail on waters so choppy they can’t do anything but get tossed this way and that, and go nowhere. My boat is sturdy; my waters are calm.
“Keep your endless questions; I’ll take God. And the Bible is the pure and uncomplicated word of God. Believe that—believe in the simple, righteous message of the Bible—and be saved. Doubt it, and good luck staying off that slippery slope straight down to hell.”
The Christian true fundamentalist denies any hypocrisy inherent in his belief system by simply refusing to acknowledge that there is anything inherently contradictory in the Bible. Asking the fundamentalist to apply logic to his or her belief system is like asking a cat to fetch your slippers. Not going to happen. Not in the nature of the beast.
To the Christian fundamentalist, questions pointing to any kind of inherent problems with taking the Bible literally reveal but one thing: the person doing the questioning doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. If they did, they’d be so full of knowledge and certainty they’d have no reason to ask any questions at all.
* * *
Lest anyone think I’m too harshly anti-fundamentalists: A bit o’ fundy love, to name just one such piece.
Additional Reading in Christian Issues...
- From hell to Crazy Town
- They’re here; they’re queer; they’ve plenty to fear: LGBT students form secret club at conservative Christian university [now including updates]
- When evil is serious, it reaches for a Bible and cross
- Guest post: “A Good Week to Hate Christians”
- From gay-hating fundie to righteously angry lesbian. Now what?
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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I grew up in a progressive Catholic family deep in the Bible Belt and eventually married a man whose family is fundamentalist (though he is not). It has been a long, painful process to come to the realization that fundies, though well intentioned and often generous, are fundamentally fearful and are not just mean and/or ignorant.
I remember getting dragged to the First Baptist Church’s production of “Heaven’s Gates & Hell’s Flames” – two solid hours of people either following The Rules exactly and getting welcomed into Heaven or not and literally getting dragged kicking and screaming into the (not literal) flames of Hell. There were several people who responded to the alter call after the show, I found it repulsive. Though I was no sexual libertine, I had a really hard time believing that having premarital sex would win you a place beside Hitler and Pol Pot in Hell for eternity. Plus The Rule followers were exceedingly boring and sanctimonious.
I cannot imagine how scary it is to live in fear of a vengeful god who requires strict obedience but it is clear how necessary it would be to cling to very clear – if not well supported – rules about how to be obedient. While you often hear “hate the sin, love the sinner”, what happens in reality is good ol’ fashioned shunning — driven by fear that whatever sinful activity or attribute will rub off, endangering one’s own immortal soul.
Fearful…yes indeed they are. This fear can lead to meanness…and certainly tends to breed ignorance due to the fear of considering any question considered out of bounds by the church, but the root motive I believe is exactly as you state…fear.
I remember my former church’s production of “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames” vividly. In fact I portrayed the Satan character in it. (Since I am bald they had me made up into a type of Darth Maul image…lol) I can tell you what it is like to live in the fear you describe…it is terrifying. It also completely distorts one’s understanding of the nature of God. I could never reconcile that God could be good if He was willing to torture for all eternity (an unending and unquenchable need for vengeance) those who messed up…or were simply born into the “wrong religion”. I could never understand it…so out of fear I simply accepted the perversion of the gospel I was raised to believe. (For a while…I even preached it)
My faith has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. In fact I have presently left the church all together. Nearly a year ago I walked away from yet another very fundamental bible believing Baptist church. I am in my time in the wilderness…and it has been incredible. My awakening began several years ago…and it finally lead to my departure when the disconnect between what I now knew and what I heard preached every week became too great.
I will likely return to a church fellowship at some point…though it will NOT resemble the type of church I left behind.
And it could be the answer is to “add this thing I’m sending to you that is NOT as threatening as you’ve been told to your arsenal of what makes you feel safe”. And then, after a lifetime of adding new things, one will find that the WHOLE WORLD – created and ordered by God – belongs to God and is not to be feared. The entirety of creation is “safe”. I’m getting there, myself! I freeze up at the thought of going into space, for example….
All joking aside, I have seen several articles recently that indicate political affiliation is linked to a person’s hard wired mental functioning. Conservatives are more cautious and react fearfully to perceived threats. Progressives are more adventurous and comfortable with ambiguity. So it seems to me John writes about the same mechanism applied to religion instead of politics. And this sure explains a lot about this election !
It’s much easier to be charitable to those who use religion to oppress me when I remember they can’t help themselves!
How did some believers become adament about rules to do with sex the authore asks? Let the word of God answer that for you:
1 Corinthians 6:18
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
Sinning against one’s own body through sex outside marriage is described as being especially destructive to oneself (and the other person involved as well) according to this verse. That is born out when you consider the results–herpes, gonorrhea, aids, unwanted pregnancies/children and/or abortions, broken hearts, etc. etc….
Redio: The verse you’ve quoted doesn’t define sexual immorality; it simply says to avoid it. Whole world of difference there, sport.
I love that verse redlo…wish you understood it though. A lot of abuse has been propagated on people by those who would twist it to their own purposes.
Stop doing it. You are wrong. You are hurting people.
Just stop it.
Hmmm. Let us see. Popular people in the bible were anything but monogamous keeping “sex in the marriage” concept. Abraham? nope. Jacob? no as well. David? Oh hell no. Samson? Believe he holds some kind of record.
No one seems to accusing them of sexual immorality.
A-freaking-men, sdgalloway!!!
I am a reader, and have had horrible nightmares where hell was, literally, a Fundamentalist’s Library – the dictionary only held definitions of worlds in the bible, the children’s books were all illustrated verses, there were large print editions, and the book on tape, there were copy machines…but no pens, no pencils, and no erasers.
I’ve always had a hard time reconciling what I knew in my heart that Jesus, as an ancestor and a scholar HAD to be, and whole concept of ‘following’ someone who had very clearly asked people to walk with him, to do as he had done, and seek their own questions.
John – you help. knowing that you’re just the most visible of many, really helps : )
Bless you for your inspired snarkiness….I really needed a chuckle.
It seems to me you crawled right into the mind of a fundie……hope you recover soon…
^^^^^^oh snap~
I will never stop laughing about ““Check it out! If I get naked, I can count to twenty-one!””
OK…..I don’t get it. Somebody please clue me in about counting to 21.
It’s a dick joke.
Dude, the joke about counting to 21 made me snort coffee out my nose.
“Check it out! If I get naked, I can count to twenty-one!”
That only works for males.
Girls can count to 22
The Quakers believe there is no possible way of correctly reading the Bible without the Holy Spirits guidance, because the intellect can twist anything to it’s own devices.
So do you raise that as a legitimate point or simply to provide context?
I would posit that you have to use the Holy Spirit to guide your intellect, but I’m not sure that abandoning intellect is necessary wise.
I would agree with them. So many in the church worship their bibles as if on the same plane with God Himself (bilioletry) and they are far more divided and confused than when there was no bible.
Well said and well done. Since my friend Monte signed up, I will too. As I write on these topics, it’s always interesting to hear fellow/different perspectives. Here’s one on What the bible really says about nature and knowledge.
http://genesisfix.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/161/
Bookmarked! Thanks for turning me on to this cool blog thru your share, Cathy.
Exactly, Brena. “They were told differently”. Reading, w/out comprehension, *is* functional illiteracy. When someone believes w/out questioning, or w/out *reading* for themselves, they’re willing to follow blindly, despite if and when their heart (? the holy spirit) tells them differently.
This is why we’re warned about false teaching and wolves in sheep’s clothes, and told to test the spirits. It’s our responsibility to not be deceived.
Wow. That is great. I wish I could write like that. That is exactly how I feel but usually try to express it with caveman language like: “Fundamentalists are so darn stupid.”
Okay, here’s a sequence that should get you hooked and you’ll find the time:
An address from the Pastor President always did that to her, making her feel righteous, and Bob knew what was coming.
“We’ve got to fornicate again tonight, Bob.”
“So soon?”
It is so much more than illiteracy. Too many bright people read the same thing I do. Hear the same evidence and say, “That’s interesting. I will think about it.” Only to later say that they were told differently so they do not see what I see. They really are more afraid of people judging them to be on the wrong side than they are of their own conscience or of God’s judgement.
And it could also be simple biblical illiteracy. Too much time spent listening to other people tell them what the Bible says, without ever questioning which passages might really say *that* at all.
Especially if they only ever use one translation, and MORE especially if that is the KJV.
Fundamentalists are people who NEED the safety and security of knowing to the exclusion of thinking. Faith, by definition, is not knowing. It is a mindset that has gone beyond hoping to having talked oneself into believing without knowing. It is a cover for fear and it is so much easier than thinking, or introspection or honoring God with the use of the intellect he gave you. It is a mindset that fears being wrong and that comes from being taught that the individual intellect cannot be trusted. But something MUST be. Thus, the clinging to that “something” that provides all the answers, never mind that all those answers came, ultimately, from individual intellects. That is a reality that simply must not be confronted because then one is back to the hard work of finding “God” within oneself instead of from what someone else says….or writes, which strikes me as the antithesis of having a personal relationship with God or Christ or whoever. Having a “faith” based upon what others think is precisely NOT personal.
Growing up gay in a conservative Lutheran farm family was lonely and painful but I’m so glad it happened to me. It forced me to think; to find my own way thru the complexities, especially because my childhood religion was telling me every Sunday how unworthy I was. I forced me to dare to question. There simply were only two other alternatives; become a religious robot or kill myself. Neither option, tho not consciously considered, occurred to me, thankfully. My family farm was surrounded by wooded hills that became my second home. I looked to the hills from whence came my “faith”. Nature became my cathedral and that space it gave me for introspection became my strength. Critical thinking became my survival mechanism. It nurtured and prompted my need to learn and I became an independent thinker not subject to the peer pressures that are causing the young suicides today.
Thus, I survived to come to a “faith” stronger by far than the false certainty of a fundamentalist bunker mentality that threatens to implode when real “truth” that sets one free gets confrontational.
John, I’ve been gone for almost a month, and this post is what I come home to? Hot sisters and a new-found ability to count to 21? LMAO, AWESOME. Totally missed you while gone.
Also, in light of this post, I have to tell you about my journey home last Friday.
Not long after take-off from Salt Lake City, from a few seats behind me, I overheard an older preacher dude tell his seat mate, with a bit of that southern brimstone drawl, that his church took the King Jame’s Bible “literally and seriously.” Crazy with curiosity, I quickly made an excuse to get into the overhead compartment, and then I could see he had his Bible open (to the OT … man, they love the OT, don’t they?) and appeared to be working on a sermon.
A dark navy suit and rumpled white shirt covered covered his ample gut, and, I kid you not, his LAVENDER silk necktie, which hung down just below his breastbone, had an air-brushed picture of Jesus on it. And not just any old Jesus, but the classic white-as-Wonder-Bread Jesus with subtly highlighted blonde shoulder-length curly hair. Jesus’ image was, of course, back-lit, like in Charlie’s Angels.
I know there’s a joke in here somewhere, but all I could do was sit back in my seat in a daze, dumbly wondering: where in heck can I buy a tie like that?
Try the gift shop at the Tabernacle next time your in SLC.
fortunately, I was on location in eastern (read, freezing cold wilderness) Oregon, so SLC was only a stopover … plus, I think I’m on a watch-list at the Tabernacle. I’m thinking I’ll look for the tie the next time I ran across a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
Nice to know I’m not the only one on that watch list
. Then of course, there’s always Zion’s department store, if you have them.
Love it, Mike Moore.
http://www.bestchurchofgod.org/.god/uploads/Image/KidzKorner-Krafts/christian_ties.jpg
good call, LSS! zoom in, tight on face, on the Jesus on the left tie, and you’ve got it. don’t forget, lavender silk is key to bringing out Jesus’ blonde tresses.
Funny, he doesn’t LOOK Jewish!
the Gringo Jesus is one of my main pet peeves with american christian pop culture.
You guys might only be able to count to twenty-one naked, but *I* can count to twenty-TWO. I’m pretty certain that this means women are genetically superior.
I am grateful to have reached an age and mindset where I no longer have to pretend to believe things I find repulsive or confusing in order to belong to a larger group. I am my own group, my own consensus, my own culture. I think its sad when people desire so desperately to belong to a group or culture that they will consciously divest themselves of any semblance of critical thought in order to conform to the group identity. Churches offer safety to those that belong. People instinctively long for a sense of community, safety and order. They allow themselves to be penned up like cattle inside a structure just so they can live within the pretense that the world is controlled and ordered and that someone will protect them from the dangers and unpredictability of life. Christ never promised us we’d be safe and comfortable; He promised us instead His endless and eternal love and compassion through our human struggles and a life beyond this one where we are freed from all the pain and struggle that we experience because of our corporeal bonds. I believe the biblical literalist and fundamentalist mindset is simply incapable of dealing with the painful realities of life. Fortunately this mindset does not have to be a permanent one, but many churches would prefer it to be. Their power, control and financial security depend on the vulnerability of the church body.
Dunno, Barnmaven. The chubbier of us guys (myself included, sadly) can actually count to 23, then!
Oh Andrew! That made my day! HAHAHA!
I’m glad I could give you a smile. These days it’s so easy to get tied up in all that ugliness…
I’m sure I would, Randy. But, alas, I simply don’t have the time to find out.
John, you excel so much at making me think about my faith – thank you! I really believe this is what Jesus requires of us when He tells us to love God with all our MINDS.
Well expressed, and I agree, VJ.
When I was growing up, we moved around a lot. Lots of chaotic stuff happened. So, though my Mom and Grandma and her friends would sometimes tell me about God when I was 3, by the time I was 12, all I knew about God was what I saw on movies: That if you weren’t too bad, you went to heaven, but sometimes you had to do things for God last minute so you didn’t go to hell. Furthermore, God was no more real to me than Superman. In fact, Superman was portrayed the same in the several movies he showed up in. So, to me, God was -less- real than Superman.
Then one day, my Stepmom insisted that me and my stepbrother were going to go off to church camp with two of her co-workers daughters. That got rid of us for a whole week (or was it two? I don’t remember) during the summer break. Well, it was a baptist camp, and to my 12 year old self, I was suddenly in danger of hellfire. Suddenly, things I had thought nothing about could damn me to hell. It was as if I had just been told that I really -was- breaking people’s backs every time I stepped on a crack. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had very little guidance. Once me and my stepbrother came back from church camp, I suddenly started reading first the children’s bible, then the King James Version, and between then I think I went to church maybe less than five times before my stepmother got angry. She had assured us that we’d get over our original zeal for reading the bible. My stepbrother did within the first week back, but I’d just found out that in addition to all this science stuff I was learning in school, there was a God that had to be placated. I started out very literal. I prayed in the closet…the one that contains clothes. I didn’t have a veil to wear, so I used a scarf. If I’d had access to cattle, I’d have been building an alter with stones and sacrificing animals to Him. Seriously, I was quite lost, far, far out there. As I read more, and had more life experience, I was still looked after, but I began to understand that Jesus did more than just get rid of the need for animal sacrifices. I did not need to kill all the non believers or kill witches or anything like that. He’s not that kind of God. He’s a much better, more loving God than I thought. I’m not the gate of heaven. Jesus is the gate of Heaven. And He’s a lot more fair and balanced judge than any human on this world. God is not a dictator. He’s a hero, who is going to save us, but just like any hero going to save a maiden in distress, we have to not despair, keep a watch out, and be ready to go. It’s taken me a very long time to get far removed from the 12 year old that was terrified of hell and would have done anything she was told to in order to avoid hell, and get a supernatural benefactor, who it turns out I had the whole time without even knowing it. (Yeah, I know, I could have used someone saying to me, Elizabeth, you can’t -earn- God’s grace, it’s -grace-…but hey, God loves his slow children too, right?)
So, with that context, remember that parable about the money loaning lord? The guy whose got some slaves and he gives them money to invest for him, while he’s out of country for a while…and the one slave is so terrified of him he hides his talent (the currency unit), because he’s so sure his lord reaps what he doesn’t sow and all that? Basically, he’s decided that his lord is a really big jerk, so he didn’t want to risk trading and possibly losing the talent? Yeah, that guy: me. I started out so scared that God was a horrifying, whole family slaughtering, natural disaster welding, evil dictator thing that was willing to kill people for working on the sabbath, which in classic misinformed American fashion I believed was Sunday, that I didn’t do -anything productive-. How many disturbed people were comforted by my refusal to wear makeup? In fact, I rather think I upset the mind of my stepmother quite fiercely.
So, basically, that’s what zero faith in God looks like. It’s not doubt in the words of the bible; it’s elevating the words to be more powerful than the meaning; it’s doubt in God Himself. It’s reading all that about how merciful and kind the Lord is, and dismissing all that as just flattery so that He’ll not pan sear their souls with a light sauce made of the bodies of His enemies. When I see people who have signs telling people that God hates them, this is exactly what I think of.
“So, basically, that’s what zero faith in God looks like. It’s not doubt in the words of the bible; it’s elevating the words to be more powerful than the meaning; it’s doubt in God Himself. It’s reading all that about how merciful and kind the Lord is, and dismissing all that as just flattery so that He’ll not pan sear their souls with a light sauce made of the bodies of His enemies. When I see people who have signs telling people that God hates them, this is exactly what I think of.”
Brilliant. Of course I love the light sauce analogy.
I agree, this is brilliant. And, I can’t help liking someone who has really prayed in a closet. I know she understands the good side of fundamentalism.
Right, what i want to know is how do you explain the intellectual fundamentalists? The ones that wouldn’t touch the word fundamentalist except to throw it at a baptist. That wouldn’t even admit to knowing any rednecks. The ones who feel so superior because they can drink and dance and study philosophy at quality universities. I don’t think it’s just calvinists (what i was raised as) but can’t think right now some of the othe categories. Oh well probably mormons are in there, too… I’m thinking that my college was in like the top 5 most conservative in the country, maybe top 3, and more rigorous academically than most, but BYU is probably right up there.
PS: Frank Schaeffer tries to explain them because his family was that kind. I have read like 2 of his books and i’m still not getting how it works, though… I understand what happened to us all in the sense of the political progression of it, but not entirely why we could let it.
And that’s the twuth!
Keep tellin’ you, you gonna love this book: http://www.amazon.com/Rabbletown-United-Christian-America-ebook/dp/B005DLZZTM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329792644&sr=1-1
After I laughed, I thought. Thanks, John.
You don’t know me, Jake Kampe. Below are just a couple of the many posts like it I’ve written. If you’re really interested in quelling strife, you might want to take a moment to learn a little something before you jump right into sanctimonious criticism.
http://johnshore.com/2011/07/10/remembering-the-true-love-of-christ-lived-out-by-fundamentalists/
http://johnshore.com/2010/01/26/conservative-vs-liberal-christianity-which-is-better/
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