The notion of God is absent from Free Solo. With a movie like this, the audience might expect a scene where everyone is praying for your safety. But you’re not into that?
No, I’m very anti-religion. I think it’s all just medieval superstition. Religion relies on some desire for a spiritual connection and I do get that from just being out in Yosemite. I get that feeling of grandeur and awe in the world sitting on a cliff at sunset, watching the mountains glow pink, that a lot of people get through religious faith.
Do you think that your being an atheist is linked to your attitude about death?
I’ve certainly thought about my mortality more than most. I think some people turn to faith as a crutch, to avoid thinking about mortality — you know, “Well, I’ll carry on forever in some eternal kingdom.” But the harder thing is to stare into the abyss and understand that when it’s over, it’s over.
What does it feels like to stare into that abyss?
Being on big granite walls is a constant reminder that nature just does not care. You’re just another animal that slipped off something. I’ve seen animals fall off cliffs. I saw a mountain goat bite it in Mexico, which was crazy because you think of them as being so majestic and sure-footed. He survived, actually, and just got back up. I saw a squirrel fall off a cliff once. I was like, “Holy shit, even squirrels!” That’s nature, you know.
I see it [the Bible] the same way as I see all kinds of other ancient texts — indications of what people centuries ago believed. Some of it is very beautiful, some of it contains genuine wisdom, some of it is rather alien and some of it is repugnant. I could say the same about the corpus of Old Norse texts as well. Or texts from Sumeria. It’s hard to have much more than a very general perspective on “the Bible as a whole”, because – as I often have to remind my more emotional fellow atheists — it isn’t a book, it’s a library of texts of different kinds, dates, genres, languages and intentions. The traditional Christian conception of “the Bible” as a coherent instruction manual from God has clear “historical, cultural significance” and certain translations (the Vulgate, the King James) have “aesthetic significance”. But the dismissal of it as “worthless fairy tales written by desert sheep-herders and savages” is just anti-theistic reaction against the way it has been and still is used and interpreted by many Christians. A rationalist can mentally separate the ancient texts from the way they have been interpreted and look at them for what they are.
Are you angry over how Donald Trump treats women and how he denigrates them publicly? Do you have passionate opinions about the sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump or Brett Kavanaugh? Do you support the #metoo movement? Do you have a personal story to share about being sexually abused, raped, or sexually harassed? Are you appalled by Evangelical support for President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the idea that what happened in high school — even sexual assault — shouldn’t disqualify a man from public office? Are you sickened by how Evangelicals abandoned any sense of moral authority, choosing instead to be shills for the Republican Party? If so, I want to hear from you.
If you are a woman and have something you want or need to say on these matters, I want to extend to you an invitation to write a guest post (or multiple posts) for this site. I think it is important for readers to hear from women on these issues. Guest posts can be any length, and can either be written anonymously or under your own name. If you are interested in writing a post but fear your writing/English skills are lacking, please don’t let that hinder your participation. I have a first-rate editor who will edit your post, making sure the grammar and structure is correct. Your point of view will not be changed in any way. My editor is a progressive woman, so you can rest assure that she will do all she can to help you. You may have noticed frequent guest posts by ObstacleChick. OC is also a woman. Her recent letter to Evangelical women was posted as written with only a few minor grammatical corrections. She will tell you that I don’t alter content. It’s your story, and I want to provide a forum for you to tell it. You don’t have to be an atheist or agree with me to write a guest post.
Interested? Please email me expressing your interest via the Contact Form. I will then provide you with my private email address to which you can send me your post. All correspondence between us will be held in the strictest of confidence.
This is the one hundred and eighty-sixth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Liz Crokin spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories.
Conservatives often blame liberals for the breakdown in society today. After all, liberals challenged an order that existed and replaced it with a situation that is now unraveling.
This unraveling can be traced to the efforts of liberal activists to influence legislation and elections and to liberal control of the media that shape the debate.
….
One characteristic of the liberal mind is its gradualist progression away from the objective truth. In its early stages, the liberal mind does not deny the existence of objective truth outright. Instead, liberals deplore its rigidity. Instead, they offer half-truths that mitigate the hard-hearted attitudes of conservatives, smoothing the slide into error. The liberal mind likewise does not initially embrace error but is drawn toward and harbors sympathy for it.
….
A second characteristic of the liberal mind is that it does not seek objective and external truths that explain reality. Liberals seek instead only those conclusions that please them. They search for perspectives that fit their temperaments, lifestyles and ways of being. These are the thoughts that guide their lives.
….
The liberal mind gives rise to a mode of action which is easily defined. The foundation of liberal action is a distorted vision of freedom that consists of doing only what one wants to do.
Thus, liberal action tends to be relativistic and subjective, following the whims of the individual. It can be imaginative and fantasy-driven when a person takes the action to its final consequences.
Liberal action is also characterized by a spirit of doubt toward that which does not correspond to personal whims. Such doubt, however, is never directed toward that which does not please liberal whims.
The final characteristic of the liberal mind is a dislike of rules and laws. Law by definition is restrictive.
Law consists of those reasonable precepts coming from a competent authority to which all must conform for the sake of the common good. Rules and laws upset the liberal mind, which feels attacked by them.
Thus, liberals dislike anything that imposes restraint such as laws, manners or morals. In more advanced stages, even the restrictive nature of clothing or grammar can irritate the sensibilities of the liberal mindset.
This explains the liberal hostility to the Church and traditional notions of religion. God is the First Lawgiver and punishes those who sin against His Commandments. The liberal mind prefers a god for whom nothing is a sin. This god is one of the liberals own making. In their view, he radiates compassion, not justice.
While these four psychological characteristics differ, they do have a common trait. They all are self-centered.
What governs liberal minds and actions are the dictates of each individual’s ideas, tastes and desires. The individual is the center of everything. Each person determines right and wrong, truth and error.
….
The problem today is that half-truths now dominate and error is pushing the envelope ever closer to chaos. The liberal mind naturally leads to anarchy when taken to its final consequences. It admits no authority other than its own. It will accept no law nor respect any institution that encroaches upon the individual “right” to do whatever one wants.
The Gerencser Family Headed for Church, Circa 1961-1962. I am the sharply dressed boy with a massive comb-over.
I was born in June 1957. My parents had me baptized in a mainline Protestant church (Lutheran or Episcopalian), but they moved to San Diego, California in the early 1960s, and I became a saved, baptized member of a Fundamentalist Baptist congregation — Scott Memorial Baptist Church, Tim LaHaye, pastor. From that time to my exit from Christianity in 2008, I was to some degree or another an Evangelical Christian. I say to some degree or another, because towards the end of my sojourn in Egypt I escaped Evangelicalism for a time. My wife and I visited numerous mainline churches, ranging from Greek Orthodox to United Methodist and from Roman Catholic to Lutheran. (Please read But Our Church is DIFFERENT!) The last church we attended before exiting out the back door never to return was a United Methodist church pastored by an Evangelical man who received his seminary education at Ohio Christian University. So while I have visited and attended for a short while non-Evangelical churches, my pedigree is solidly Evangelical.
The question, then, is this: did I choose to become an Evangelical? The short answer is no. My religion (and politics) was chosen for me by my parents. From the 1960s to 2008, I was very much a part of the Evangelical church, its politics, and its subculture. Early on, the churches I attended were on the far right of the Evangelical spectrum. In the mid-1990s I abandoned the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement and embraced generic Evangelicalism with a Calvinistic twist. Towards the end of time in the ministry, I found myself on the other end of the Evangelical spectrum. If I had continued on the leftward path, I have no doubt that I would have left Evangelicalism altogether. I suspect the only thing that stopped me from doing so was my lack of education. Leaving Evangelicalism to pastor liberal/progressive Christian churches was of interest to me, but having three years of Bible college education with no post-college seminary training barred me from walking that path. And just as well, I suppose, because the more I studied and learned the more I doubted the central claims of Christianity. It was only a matter of time before I came to the conclusion that Christianity no longer made sense. (Please read The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
My parents were attend-church-three-times-a-week Evangelical Christians. From the age of five through the age of fifty, I attended Sunday worship services at the Evangelical churches our family called home. As a fifteen-year-old boy, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, was baptized, and called into the ministry. For the next thirty-five years, I considered myself a God-called preacher. When I was a teenager, most of my friends were Evangelicals, and those who weren’t I tried to evangelize. Every girl I dated was an Evangelical. The college I attended was Evangelical. The girl I married was an Evangelical. Her parents and extended family were Evangelical. The six churches I pastored were Evangelical — IFB, Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, Non-denominational, Southern Baptist. All of my ministerial colleagues were Evangelical. In other words, I was, in every way, an Evangelical.
While I certainly made numerous choices as far as my theological beliefs and practices were concerned, I never strayed far, if at all, from the confines of the broad Evangelical tent. I may have thrown off the strictness of my IFB youth and early years in the ministry, but theologically I remained an Evangelical. Till the end, I believed the Bible was the Word of God. Till the end, I believed Jesus was the virgin-born, miracle-working, resurrected-from-the-dead son of the one true God. Till the end, I believed that Jesus was the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE. Till the end, I worshiped the triune God of Christianity. Till the end, I tried my best to live according to the commands, precepts, and laws of the Bible. Till the end, I modeled Christian faith to my children. Till the end, I was not ashamed to call myself a Christian.
As I look back over my life from a psychological and sociological perspective, it is evident that my religion was chosen for me; first by my parents and later by the pastors, teachers, church members, and friends I looked up to. No one ever suggested that faith might exist outside of Evangelicalism. No one ever recommended that I read the religious writings of other religions or consider whether Christianity was true. My life, in every way, was one long presupposition. Outlandish, irrational beliefs were accepted as facts because, well, everyone I knew believed these things. When your family, friends, pastors, and teachers all have the same beliefs (in a broad sense), it is unlikely that you are going to believe differently. At least, that was the case for me. As a true-blue believer, I was all-in. Even after my parents divorced and my entire family stopped attending church, I held on to the family God. In fact, I became more devoted to Jesus and his church. Is it any surprise that I was saved and called into the ministry the same year my parents divorced (and remarried)? I think not. In the church, I found a familial connection. In the church, I found purpose, meaning, and direction. No matter how much turmoil there was in my life, the church was always there for me. Well — until I said I was an atheist, anyway. THAT was a bridge too far, even for more “enlightened” Evangelicals.
Evangelicalism is bubble, the bubble where I found love and safety for many years. The beliefs and practices that now seem irrational, delusional, and psychologically harmful, made perfect sense to me as long as I remained in the bubble. When you grow up in and spend most of your life in a monoculture, it is hard to imagine life outside of the bubble. Danger, damnation, and hell await those who stray from the fold, I was told countless times, and I warned others of the same when I was a pastor. It was only when I dared to consider that the Bible might not be an inspired, inerrant, infallible text that I had thoughts of life outside of the bubble. I could be wrong, I thought. What if Christianity is not what I believed it to be all these years? What if all paths lead to God? What if no paths lead to God because there is no God? Questions pushed opened the door, and once it was open, I was free to wander and roam; free to read whatever I wanted; free to have non-Christian friends; free to love the world and the things of the world; free to finally, for myself, choose whether I wanted to be an Evangelical or whether I wanted to be a Christian. And the choice I made, of course, was NO, I don’t want to be an Evangelical; I don’t want to be a Christian. But even here I have to admit that, to some degree, this choice was forced upon me. I could have ignored the voices in my head and remained a Christian, but I chose, instead, to listen to questions and challenges percolating in my mind as I, for the first time, looked at Christianity with a skeptical, critical eye. And once I dared to accept the full weight of the implications of what I learned, my house of faith came tumbling down.
I have spent the last decade building a new house, one that sits on a foundation of reason, freethought, and the humanistic ideal. I didn’t choose to become an Evangelical. But I have now chosen to become a humanist. I feel liberated from the bondage of past beliefs, and while humanism is not the end-all Christianity professes to be, it does provide me a solid moral and ethical foundation by which to live my life. And here’s the good news, I am free to change and adapt as my thinking evolves, and no one is going to threaten me with humanist hell if I do. I can’t begin to express how wonderful it is to to ponder and think about what we call the big issues of life without fearing that I have offended the God or one of his earthly messengers. Simply put, I am free to be me.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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When I was growing up in a Southern Baptist church and attending Evangelical Christian school, we were told that we should strive to be like Jesus. The pastors and teachers taught us that Jesus was the perfect Son of God, that he was part of the Trinity so therefore God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit were one but separate all at the same time (for the life of me, I could never grasp the concept). Jesus was God’s Son but also God come to earth in human form to live amongst us, to suffer and die for us, to be resurrected and to ascend to heaven with his Father (and the Holy Spirit, but he isn’t talked about as much — he’s just the voice in our head…or heart). Jesus was considered to be born of a virgin, sinless, perfect, and therefore the perfect blood sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind for those who accepted his sacrifice. We were taught that Jesus was a teacher and a miracle worker. According to the Gospel of John, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus was the Word. (And here I was thinking Grease was the word according to the musical Grease).
A former member of the church in which I grew up became a pastor. I’m connected to him on social media, and he frequently posts thoughts that he posts on his church’s social media each week. Each post is intended to be instructive to Evangelical Christians. This one was interesting:
One dangerous temptation we all face is the powerful tendency to build our own Jesus. I meet the real Jesus in the Christian faith and He reveals Himself in the Bible. He convicts me to turn from sinful habits or attitudes or relationships I’m not sure I want to give up. He keeps leading me out past my comfort zone and calling me to grow in Him. So, I just take the words and the qualities of Jesus that I agree with, that seem to confirm what I already think and do, and I ignore and leave out the rest. Voila: my own Jesus, who thinks like me! My Jesus condemns your sins but isn’t too concerned about mine. My Jesus doesn’t care whether I’m faithful to his church, etc. J.D. Greear: “What we must avoid at all costs is editing Jesus, forcing Him into a mold where He answers our questions the way we like. This is not worship of God; it’s worship of ourselves. And it’s the greatest substitute for true faith.” The problem with following your Jesus is that you miss the life and joy of following the real one. Plus, the one you stand before in judgment will not be the one you created for yourself. Make sure you’re growing to look like Jesus, not just trying to make Jesus look like you.
Modern Christians’ concept of Jesus is taken from the books of the New Testament, mostly from the canonized gospels (I had never heard of the non-canonized gospels until I took a religion course in college – I was stunned that there were writings that weren’t canonized). Most modern biblical scholars believe that these gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus. Certainly there are no surviving accounts that were written in Jesus’ lifetime by eyewitnesses. Most likely the stories about Jesus were passed along by word of mouth from one person to another. Have you ever played the game “telephone” at a party? Here is how it works. A player whispers a sentence or phrase to the next player, who then must whisper the phrase to the next player, and so on, until the last player says out loud what he or she heard. It is rare for the message to arrive completely intact. In fact, this is part of the fun — to see how the sentence or phrase morphs as it is passed along from one player to another. Some players will intentionally change the phrase to make it funnier. Others just don’t hear it properly so they try to say what is closest to whatever they think they heard. If people at a party have a difficult time repeating a single phrase accurately, how much more difficult must it be to repeat an entire story accurately? So how do we know that the stories told in the Gospels reflected the “real” Jesus? And we’re not even taking into account the different ways each gospel writer presented Jesus.
Additionally, as twenty-first century citizens of a (mostly) free country enjoying creature comforts of indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and immediate access to information through technology, how can we understand what it was like to be a first century Middle Eastern man who was most likely illiterate and who didn’t even know that the world was not flat or that we live in a heliocentric solar system or even what a solar system is? Archaeological finds have shown what architecture was like, and what types of implements people used, and surviving ancient writings can give us an indication of what the educated and literate may have known, but it is difficult for us to comprehend what first century lives of ordinary people must have been like.
So, don’t we all create our own personal Jesus? We listen to what our pastors and teachers say about him. We read about him in the canonized gospels. We read cute memes on social media about Jesus – Jesus as a lamb, Jesus loving all the little children of the world, Jesus as the one who carries us across the sand when we’re too weak to carry ourselves, etc. Some people are drawn to the sweet, wise, meek teacher. Others are drawn to the miracle worker. Yet others like the badass Jesus, the one who got angry and ran the money-changers out of the Temple.
Let me conclude this post with the lyrics from the song Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode:
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out reach out
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
This is the one hundred eighty-ninth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Jesus Christ by Brand New.
[Verse 1]
Jesus Christ, that’s a pretty face
The kind you’d find on someone that could save
If they don’t put me away
Well, it’ll be a miracle
Do you believe you’re missing out?
That everything good is happening somewhere else
With nobody in your bed
The night is hard to get through
[Chorus 1]
And I will die all alone
And when I arrive I won’t know anyone
[Verse 2]
Jesus Christ, I’m alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Because this problem is gonna last
More than the weekend
Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die
But I’m a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot
Do I float through the ceiling
[Chorus 2]
Or do I divide and pull apart
Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark
This ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?
[Bridge]
I know you’re coming in the night like a thief
But I’ve had some time, O Lord, to hone my lying technique
I know you think that I’m someone you can trust
But I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to nail you back up
So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I’ll know it’s you and that it’s over so I won’t even try
I know you’re coming for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine
In 2011, I started reading books about a diet (and lifestyle) called the “Paleo Diet” that was supposedly based on evolutionary and anthropological studies of ancient humans. This diet was popularized by Dr. Loren Cordain, professor emeritus in the department of health and exercise science at Colorado State University. Dr. Cordain’s research examined the nutritional values of foods within the framework of humans’ hunter-gatherer ancestor, contrasted with the foods that were cultivated as humans moved toward and into agrarianism. His main work is The Paleo Diet, if you are interested in exploring further. His work spurred a health and wellness movement carried further by Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, and a myriad others who have published cookbooks, exercise books, websites, and blogs. Many athletes for a while, particularly in CrossFit, latched onto the paleo diet hoping to improve athletic performance and lean muscle mass.
Many paleo diet proponents touted this diet as the end-all cure-all to obesity, diabetes, eczema, acne, auto-immune disorders, dementia, polycystic ovarian syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, etc. You name it, and somebody was proposing that if we only consume the foods that supposedly our ancestors ate, we would cure these modern maladies. What foods, you may ask, do followers of the paleo diet eat? Basically, people are encouraged to eat whole unprocessed foods such as fruits, berries, vegetables, seeds and nuts, meats (particularly the more highly nutritious meats like seafood and organ meats), eggs, and healthful oils like coconut and avocado oils (unsweetened teas and coffees are generally allowed, as are natural sugars in moderation like honey, molasses, agave). Everything else is technically off-limits and considered not “paleo,” Perhaps it is worthwhile to note the items which are technically excluded from the paleo diet: grains of any sort, including wheat, rice, oats, quinoa, millet, etc.; beans, including lentils, peanuts; corn; dairy (sometimes with the exception of ghee or clarified butter); refined vegetable oils; refined sugars; potatoes (some paleo proponents allow sweet potatoes and yams); processed foods; sodas, wine, beer, sweetened beverages; soy.
After having read several books on the paleo diet and lifestyle and hoping to optimize my health and athletic performance, in March, 2012, I embarked upon what I understood to be the paleo diet (much to my family’s chagrin). I eliminated pasta, bread, pizza, cereals, etc., from our household and started my paleo journey, dragging my (unwilling) family along with me. Actually, they didn’t mind so much after I allowed them to eat their bread, ice cream, etc., while I would eat my own paleo foods. As an avid runner and someone who strength trains, I struggled for quite a while to get enough carbohydrates to support my training load. Apparently, this was a big issue with people who are athletic, so Dr. Cordain wrote The Paleo Diet for Athletes to address those issues. Full disclosure – I didn’t follow the paleo diet entirely, as I still drank wine when I felt like it and would eat foods at restaurants that were probably prepared with processed oils and that may have been contaminated with wheat. In 2012, there were fewer gluten-free options available in restaurants and groceries (now there are a plethora of options available, and their quality, texture, and tastes have improved tremendously). But, I did become a “fundamentalist” about my food, a fact about which I am embarrassed now.
Early in 2014 I tried the mother of all hard-core exclusive dietary challenges — the Whole30 Challenge. For 30 days, one adheres to a strict paleo diet with additional caveats. If you slip up, you have to start over. No excuses. What are the rules for this challenge? No sweeteners of any sort are allowed — including honey, molasses, coconut sugar, etc., and one must read every single label of every single item one buys (bacon, for example — it cannot contain any sugar at all). No grains (of any sort), beans, rice, corn, soy, processed oils, processed foods, alcohol, dairy, or processed chocolate are allowed (unsweetened cocoa powder is allowed). If one does choose to eat at a restaurant, one must be “one of those” customers who grills the wait staff regarding the types of oils that are used, whether there is any cross-contamination with gluten/soy/dairy/etc. (seriously, it’s better just to eat at home when you’re on Whole30). If you go to a party and can’t pester your host about what specific foods he or she will be serving, bring your own food to ensure Whole30 compliance. You are supposed to eat 3 meals a day and ONLY 3 meals a day (unless you are an athlete, then you can add a snack). Desserts or paleo-version comfort foods are not allowed (i.e., no paleo pancakes, muffins, brownies, etc.). In fact, adherents are encouraged NOT to eat fruit at the end of their meal as substitute for a dessert. One is not to weigh oneself during the challenge as weight loss is not the only goal of the challenge. One is to examine one’s relationship to food. Do you find yourself wanting to mindlessly snack while watching TV? Do you find that you expect to finish a meal with a dessert? Do you crave chocolate? Do you get hungry at 3 pm every day? Are there certain foods that you tend to wolf down without control (foods without breaks)? Are there certain foods that are extremely pleasurable for you (SWYPO: “sex with your pants on”)? Additionally, there is a whole schedule of how you should anticipate feeling throughout the 30-day challenge — like being in a withdrawal phase “carb flu” for the first few days, how you feel mental clarity after the “carb flu” subsides, etc. Whole30 is not just a diet — it is a process that one can use to identify one’s reactions to foods and is supposed to “clear one’s gut” in order to start a controlled reintroduction after the Whole30 to determine what foods your body tolerates or doesn’t tolerate. It’s an intense experience.
When I started my Whole30, I joined a Facebook group designed to allow people a forum to discuss recipes, tips, results, and what they are going through. Most people were encouraging and supportive, but there were a good number of people who were hard-core fundamentalist Whole30 participants. These were the people who were very strict enforcers who commented on people’s posts and would get into extensive “fights.” If someone accidentally ate ketchup that contained a sugar, these enforcers would state that the person had failed Whole30 and MUST start over at day 1, regardless of whether they were on day 5 or 17 or 29. These enforcers would nitpick over every ingredient and typically had exhaustive lists of what commercial products were Whole30 compliant or not. While a lot of the enforcers had useful information, many of them were just plain MEAN. Occasionally, a comment thread would become so heated that the moderator would jump in and tell everyone to cool it, and soon thereafter she would write a blog post aimed at getting the enforcers to relax their vehemence (while still adhering to the tenets of the program). Several times, she would have to defend herself when an enforcer would see her eating a non-compliant item, and she would have to remind people that Whole30 is not WholeLife. It’s designed for shorter periods and if someone chooses to make it Whole60 or Whole90 that’s their choice, but the program wasn’t intended to be followed strictly forever.
What happened to me while I was on the Whole30? I was stressed out all the time making sure I was maintaining compliance while still trying to provide my family with non-Whole30 options as much as possible. Reading every label at the supermarket was seriously time-consuming to the point that I was freaking out over whether the pickles I bought were Whole30 compliant if they had any sort of preservatives in them (preservatives are banned too). I went through several days where I craved a piece of chocolate so intensely that I felt like the monster Grendel from Beowulf. As each day of compliance passed, the more invested I was in completing the program, demanding though it was. Some days I was hungry, though the program says you aren’t supposed to be hungry. Physically, I felt great, but emotionally, I was stressed, on alert, and after a couple of weeks of compliance I started to feel morally superior to those not on Whole30. While I detested the enforcers, I understood where they were coming from, and I hated myself for it. At the end, I weighed myself and had lost 7 pounds, but I was anxious about a party I was to attend in a few days where there would be alcohol and lots of non-compliant foods. At the party, I was anxious and stressed about eating a bite of cheese — and I wasn’t even on Whole30 at that point. I realized my thinking was MESSED UP. I was exhibiting signs of orthorexia — an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy. This was NOT a healthy relationship with food. I had become a food fundamentalist.
Food fundamentalists are not that different from religious fundamentalists. Both have strict rules of behavior and compliance. Both groups demand giving up things — “sins” in the case of religions, foods or food groups in the case of food fundamentalism. Both groups have a type of “magical thinking” in which they believe that compliance will solve their problems and absolve them from “sin” or “disease” or “obesity.” Food fundamentalists and religious fundamentalists consider themselves part of a “tribe,” a social collective of people sharing a belief system. In either group, when one is in close compliance, one may feel a sense of moral superiority over others. Both groups believe that they have the “truth” and that if only others would join their group, their problems could be solved. Neither group wants to hear any negative research or evidence regarding their “truth” claims. Additionally, there are leaders in both groups who are intent on making money from members of the tribe.
Why did I leave food fundamentalism? The process of leaving food fundamentalism was not so different from leaving religious fundamentalism. Research was the beginning. Just as I had read evidence that refuted the veracity of fundamentalist Christianity, I read evidence that brought into question many overarching claims of the Paleo Diet. I took a look at myself and realized that I was being dogmatic, moralistic about food, and was starting to proselytize about food to other people. I was the fundagelical of food.
Did any good come out of my time in the Paleo Diet? Yes. I found that my digestive system doesn’t like certain foods so I know what the consequences will be if I choose to eat some of those foods. I found a lot of new recipes for some delicious dishes that everyone in my family can enjoy. And I learned that stressing out about what I am eating is not good for me or for my family.
Have you ever found yourself becoming a fundamentalist of something other than religion?
Most of the time when I check my social media accounts, I can be sure to find at least one post by fundamentalist evangelical Christians that either elicits an eye roll or a chuckle from me. Here are some good ones from this week, along with my comments.
“To pray ‘Thy Will be done’ I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone.” – Elisabeth Elliot
OC: Bruce has written quite a few posts concerning Christians’ interpretation of the answers to prayer. If one prays for something that doesn’t happen, then the Christian says, “It wasn’t God’s Will.” If one prays for direction between option A and option B, the Christian usually just chooses what he or she wants to do. If it works out, then Yay! the Christian successfully understood God’s Will. If it doesn’t work out, then it was a “lesson from God”.
“Don’t worry. God’s never blind to your tears, never deaf to your prayers, and never silent to your pain. He sees, he hears, and he will deliver.”
OC: Yeah, that’s what makes him such a jerk – he sees and hears but he doesn’t actually deliver . . . just ask all the victims of every natural disaster EVER. Oh, yeah, the “God’s Will” thing again . . . it’s a mystery, isn’t it?
“Christ offends men because his gospel is intolerant of sin.” – Charles Spurgeon
OC: Judgmental blowhards like Charles Spurgeon and name-your-favorite-evangelical-pastor offend me with their incessant talk of sin, hell, and damnation for everyone whose interpretation of the gospel doesn’t match theirs. They offend me with their assumption that everyone is filthy and pure evil until they say the magic words and *poof!* Jesus makes it all better. They offend me by offering me a “choice” between saying the magic words to become a slave to Jesus but escaping the eternal flames of hell, or not saying the magic words and facing an eternity of torture – just for existing. They offend me with their insistence that I must vote a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way, give money a certain way – THEIR way.
“We are sent to bless the world, but we are never told to compromise with it.” – A. W. Tozer
OC: Because Jesus needs SOMEBODY to be judgmental and to fight the culture wars. Omnipotence only goes so far with the Trinity . . .
“Drunk Lot impregnated his daughter, who bore Moab, whence came Ruth, the great-grandmother of David. Christ’s own bloodline preaches his will to save even the most messed up of families.” – Chad Bird
OC: I’ll let you guys comment on this one . . .
“Parents who know how to repent in front of their kids give them a greater gift than a Harvard education.” – Scotty Smith
OC: I’d rather have the Harvard education instead of watching my parents pray to Jesus and consider themselves (and me) worms all the time. But that’s just me, and education is what led me down the road to atheism, so there is that.
“When you realize God’s purpose for your life isn’t just about you, He will use you in a mighty way.” – Dr. Tony Evans
OC: I like to be able to make my own choices, to choose my own purpose, to have autonomy as much as possible in my life. It’s worked out pretty well so far. I guess I could just sit here and let God repurpose me. Nah . . .
“Pray, then let it go. Don’t try and manipulate or force the outcome. Just trust God to open the right doors at the right time. Amen.”
OC: The principal of our local high school tells the students every day to CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL. The point is to teach students to assess which aspects of a situation are in their control and which aspects are out of their control. Then students are encouraged to act on the aspects that are in their control. Sitting around and waiting for an invisible and silent deity to manage a situation is poor advice.
What Christian messages have you seen on social media this week? Please share with us in the comments!
I see it [the Bible] the same way as I see all kinds of other ancient texts — indications of what people centuries ago believed. Some of it is very beautiful, some of it contains genuine wisdom, some of it is rather alien and some of it is repugnant. I could say the same about the corpus of Old Norse texts as well. Or texts from Sumeria. It’s hard to have much more than a very general perspective on “the Bible as a whole”, because – as I often have to remind my more emotional fellow atheists — it isn’t a book, it’s a library of texts of different kinds, dates, genres, languages and intentions. The traditional Christian conception of “the Bible” as a coherent instruction manual from God has clear “historical, cultural significance” and certain translations (the Vulgate, the King James) have “aesthetic significance”. But the dismissal of it as “worthless fairy tales written by desert sheep-herders and savages” is just anti-theistic reaction against the way it has been and still is used and interpreted by many Christians. A rationalist can mentally separate the ancient texts from the way they have been interpreted and look at them for what they are.
