Dear My Twin

 I don't believe God is omnipotent - at least not the way it's generally talked about.  The way in most Evangelical circles, the ones I've been in anyway, God's omnipotence is talked about as a kind of causal  machine. Everything that happens is directly because God makes  it happen, even evil.  For example, this understanding of omnipotence means that God caused  my rape to happen. That God caused  Adam and Eve to take the apple.  That every evil that has happened, will happen, is caused at it's root, by God's omnipotent power at work, maybe in the background, but absolutely caused  by God.  This belief stems from John Calvin, one of the reformers contemporary to Martin Luther. Calvinism had a resurgence in the American church in the 1950's and again in the 80's with the "Young, Restless and Reformed" movement. (Which IMO, is about as stupid as it sounds.) God being the root cause of all evil is excused theologically with two arguments:...

 Dear My Twin,  I was going to write about something entirely different today, because I feel like I've explained enough of what led me to tear everything down, that I could start showing you how and why I built things back up.  And then somebody posted a meme on social media, and I simply MUST address it.  Here is the meme: I hate this line of thinking. I hate it so much.  I used to be slightly more comfortable with it, but at this point, it just makes me FURIOUS.  Despite the "proof verse" from Isaiah 43:7, this is just a gross line of thinking.  Proof texting is taking a verse from the Bible, and using it to justify an entire theological point, or support an interpretation (usually claimed as the "literal" translation). You recite the verse, and BOOM, you proved your point, no more need for critical thinking.  It is an incredibly self-serving, and ignorant way to read and interpret the Bible. You cherry pick for the verses that say what you wan...

 Dear My Twin, The heart of abuse, is control. And the methods of abuse, build up a co-dependent relationship between abuser and victim, in very specific ways. It is a complex, and on-going series of reward and punishment behaviors that undermines the victim's ability to think independently, experience their own emotions, believe their own experiences, and entwines them completely around the abuser for any sense of self, and survival in the world. Abuse follows specific patterns, to produce specific outcomes. As I studied abuse, to figure out what had happened to me, and my relationship with Shannon, I was horrified as the same abusive patterns I was learning became clearly reveled in the practices and theology of the Church I grew up in.  N.B.: Not all abusers are deliberate and calculated in their abuse. Many ARE, but many are also just repeating the patterns they learned from their families of origin, patterns that effectively got their physical, emotional, and relational n...

Dear My Twin,  I'm not the only person who has started radical deconstruction lately. I think the American church has been careening wildly towards this since 2016. Things sped up after the 2020 election, and the insurrection at the capitol on January 6, 2021. (Can you believe that was only slightly more than a year ago?)  The pandemic has contributed too. The reactionary way the church has responded, the long amounts of time at home to just think, and yes, not gathering every Sunday to mitigate or quiet uneasy thoughts has led to a LARGE group of people who are questioning and deconstructing evangelical christianity.  At this point, I'd say it's about time.  There are many voices in the evangelical church who are condemning the deconstruction movement. Saying "People just want to sin!" "They don't believe the Bible!" "They're just upset that someone hurt them!" (Note: not the church hurt them; not the system of church worship and theol...

 Dear My Twin,    After the the weird evangelical dichotomy of a "loving" God who does terribly abusive things, the horrible, abusive misogyny is what drove me to question things.  The misogyny in the church is ... it's overwhelming. At the extreme ends, women are not only barred from any  type of leadership position, their married lives make them less than human, simultaneously removing all power from them by order of "submission," diminishing the Imagi Deo in them by defining them as "help meet" alone, removing them as co-heirs, inheritors, children of God, humans made in the image of God, and while they are powerless in marriage to even speak up (as that would be disrespecting their husband's position as the mini-Christ in the home), they are simultaneously blamed for everything that goes wrong in the marriage, even in extreme abuse, sexual, physical and marital affairs. She either wasn't being submissive enough, or not giving enough sex.  W...

 Dear My Twin,  So much has changed in the last year, it's really hard to know where to start. So I'll start with the thing that didn't change: I believe God is love. I'm not sure why this is the one thing that I can't escape, and when things were very dark and unclear, it got very hazy what "God" even meant or could mean. But even though things were really awful and hard, I couldn't escape this annoying, nagging certainty, that there was a Force in the universe, that made good, intended good, and ultimately, would bring total good to pass.  Maybe it's because I'm an optimist, at heart. But even though I was really going through difficult things, and I've endured so much abuse, survived so much trauma ... There's also so much beauty in the world.  There's you, for example. Jordan. Cats. Cats are wonderful. Sunrises. Butterflies. The ocean.  Platypuses. Those are hilarious. How can you not laugh when you think of them?! And laughter ...