Brainwashing

Growing up I was raised in a Christian home.  Not a home where we went to church for the sake of church, no we went to worship the Lord to live out our Christianity by doing what was right.  For our denomination what was right was being at church during Sunday School, Church, Sunday night church and Wednesday night church.  My whole life I waffled between believing everything I was told to sneaking underground so I could live my life the way I wanted to without getting caught by my parents and all the people I went to church with.

My parents didn't really approve of my many friends in high school.  Quite literally if they didn't believe what we believed in then they really couldn't be real friends.  In fact, they were my real friends. Oh, yes, I judged them because I was brainwashed to do so, but I still loved them.

Don't get me wrong.  Today I still consider myself a Christian but I reject the shame and guilt I felt if I had a thought that was mine.  I reject the weight that was put on my shoulders to be a certain way without any respect for my individuality or my own conscience.

After breaking free from all the rules and regulations and finding a church which I agree with, I feel so much freedom and joy.  However, I still deal with a little angst when I hear one of my family or friends say something that takes all responsibility off their backs and puts it on an all knowing God who will bless the righteous and curse those that don't believe like them.

Recently I googled cult.  I know which religions are considered cults but I really wanted to throw a few more denominations and their need to rule people with their take on the gospel on to the "cult" pile.  Churches who scare you into submission with the fear of going to hell.  Those who condemn drinking alcohol because some people become alcoholics, so therefore, no one gets a drink even though the Bible talks about drinking wine.  Those that pick and choose what is and is not relevant in today's society.

For the people who have known me for years, it won't seem like much of a stretch for me to publicly announce my distain for the strict religious upbringing I had.  After all, so many knew the crazy, party girl Kelly.  This girl was a straight laced Christian girl??  The fact is, I was.  All my younger years I lived with a tremendous amount of guilt for what I was doing.  The more drunken escapades I was a part of the more I felt I needed to be forgiven.  My life was a series of ups and downs and saved and backsliding.  Yes, every time I was partying I considered myself backslidden and every time I'd hear a sermon I'd ask for forgiveness.

Now as I look back, I was a kid who was trying to find myself outside of church.  I was trying to be me in a world that revolved around my very successful mother whose job was with a Christian organization and church.  Period.  Everything was Christian.  Except my life at school was not.  I went to school in a very diverse military town and school was my space.  So I had this push to be a perfect Christian girl who wanted to seem normal in a very non-Christian environment.  The end of the 70s in a huge high school.

I don't really blame my parents for the religious "brainwashing."  No, they were a part of the same denomination I was but were happy to follow the rules and regulations.  Both of them had messed up as young people and found comfort in the love and forgiveness of their Christian faith.  They lived their lives as Christians so it wasn't a stretch for them.  They had many like minded friends in the church and they had already decided that was how they were going to live.  I also don't blame them for raising me in the church.  I think it's healthy for a family to go to church together.

As I got older and became a parent myself, I vowed to myself that if my kids made mistakes, I wasn't going to condemn them.  I was going to love them despite themselves.  I was going to stick up for them when well meaning "brainwashed" people started leaning on them to conform to a bunch of rules and regulations.  Yes, my kids went to a Christian school and so like me, they were exposed to so many people who had an idea of how they should live.  Did I send them to a Christian school?  No, but I allowed my parents to send them.  I figured with as much trouble as I got in as a young person, I could at least protect them a little bit from the pressures they would find in a large public high school.  I went to a school where my sophomore class was close to 1000.  I learned early on how the cast system worked and I decided my cast was going to be the cheerleading clan.  I worked hard to get good and followed all the rules.  I was very involved in school and absolutely loved it.  It was MY world outside the church and I had found my place.  Then I was subjected to some school politics which directly affected me and since the public school was outside the Christian realm in which my parents lived, they did not stick up for me.  Because of the betrayal by the school and by my parents not defending me publicly, I went into a tailspin from which I didn't land until I had my first child.

I'm a woman who is asking all the questions.  Was that denomination a cult??  Was it me being a sinner?  Was it my base human nature to tell anyone who tried to control me to take a long walk off a short plank?  Is it my cancer diagnosis that made me wonder about this all?  Why do I cringe when people use "church speak"??  Why am I not surprised when the televangelists look like they do and act like they do and say what they do?  Why did I walk out of a revival meeting in 1979 when people were being slain in the spirit and I prayed, "Lord, if this is real, then I want to be slain," only to have the evangelist touch me and nothing happened.  Then he pushed me.  Nothing.  Pushed me again.  Nothing.  Turn, walk out the door.

That wasn't the end.  I'm 55 years old.  I can order off the senior menu at many restaurants.  I guess I qualify as a senior citizen and yet I still have people in my life who want to put me back in that box.  Those who truly believe that life has to be lived in a church shaped realm with pews and programs and "church speak" and rules and regulations.  Those who sin just like the rest of us but loudly proclaim they notice the speck in my eye.  They that are blind from the plank in their own eye.

Thank God I can talk to him and He will embrace my questions.  He'll ask me if I like the wine that was made out of the grapes he created and I will politely say I don't know because I don't drink alcohol anymore and it's not because of a rule or regulation it's because I don't want to!

Amen!!!  :-)

*Disclaimer*  A lot of what I post is me looking back and trying to grasp what my experiences were growing up.  I think things were a bit different back then and even the people I considered very judgmental and more worried about what people thought then what was real have really changed over the years and seem a little more tolerant than they did way back then.  I also want to point out that my mother and father did not attend that denomination in over 30 years after moving to Des Moines.  I also want to point out that a lot of what happens within a denomination is a "cult of personality" meaning each church is different.  If you have a great preacher/teacher who preaches grace from the pulpit, there is less abuse in any church.  But for me, the push/pull I experienced was real and because of that I choose to talk about my experiences.  I don't mean to blame anyone or make anyone feel accused.

Preach it!!

So today I get a call from my high school friend, Bill Flott.  He has been in the hospital fighting an infection that could have killed him.  He told me he couldn't think of anyone who could relate to what he was going through except me.  He knows I've been fighting like crazy for 5 1/2 years trying to beat this LMS cancer.  It doesn't matter what I do, it seems the cancer always pops back up.  I'm weary.  I'm fed up.  Why can't it just go away?

Our group has lost several in the past week.  Warriors that succumbed to this ugly beast.  The dragon they call it.  It makes you want to throw up your hands and scream, "WHY BOTHER?"

Then I'm walking blocks to get to the parking garage.  The good news is Mayo has constructed a subway level.  No, there are no trains to ride in, you have to walk but at least you get to walk in warmth in the winter or in air conditioning in the summer.  This gives me a lot of time to think.  There are so many people using walkers or wheelchairs.  This is the place people go to get fixed.  Sometimes it's a last ditch effort to save themselves.  Why?  Why do people wait until they can't walk or can't breathe before they do something?  It has always bugged me.

What I would like to do is this.  I'd like to make a smoker not be able to breathe for a day.  I'd like for them to walk up the stairs and gasp for breath.  I'd like the drug addict to have to sleep under a bridge for a week.  I'd like for them to know what it feels like to lose their job, their family, their friends.  I'd like for the person who is just getting a hint of dementia to have full blown Alzheimer's for a day.  I want people to realize that you cannot stick your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen to you.  How many more women who refuse to have a mammogram have to die before the denial will be stopped?  How many people have to lose all their teeth before the "it won't happen to me" syndrome will keep people from going to the dentist?

Rant over!