No wonder people hate us...

And we wonder why people see us Jesus followers as a bunch of crazies (via Brandy at Moue Magazine):

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi infiltrated the John Hagee headed Cornerstone Church and attended a three day, sleepover “Encounter Weekend”. The other (non-reporter) members of the weekend group were middle class, largely down on their luck individuals with similar histories of childhood abuse and often recent problems with substance abuse. The “head pastor” of their weekend retreat was Philip Fortenberry- who underscores his hyper-masculine military and athletics tinged persona with the self help soft center common in these types of groups. He is able to alternate between a story about a rough helicopter landing and tearing up about his father missing his ball games.

The first portion of the weekend is spent with the members split into small groups with their own private coach. Each member is supposed to identify their “wound”- which was any pain or trauma in their past that was inflicted by another person that still influenced their life. To be without a “wound” was to be “normal”. Therefore if someone had been wounded, they had “lost their normal”.

Taibbi- lacking an actual wound to share and not wanting to blow his cover- invented a past trauma that was so ridiculous that the fact that no one questioned it was more disturbing than the actual story:

“Hello,” I said, taking a deep breath. “My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.”

The group twittered noticeably. Morgan’s eyes opened to tea-saucer size.

I closed my own eyes and kept going, immediately realizing what a mistake I’d made. There was no way this story was going to fly. But there was no turning back.

“He’d be sitting there in his costume, sucking down a beer and watching television,” I heard myself saying. “And then sometimes, even if I just walked in front of the TV, he’d pull off one of those big shoes and just, you know — whap!”

I looked around the table and saw three flatlined, plainly indifferent psyches plus one mildly unnerved Morgan staring back at me. I could tell that my coach and former soldier had been briefly possessed by the fear that a terrible joke was being played on his group. But then I actually saw him dismissing the thought — after all, who would do such a thing? I managed to tie up my confession with a tale about turning into a drug addict in my mid-twenties — at least that much was true — and being startled into sobriety and religion after learning of my estranged clown father’s passing from cirrhosis.

Emboldened by his ability to get away with telling the story of an abusive circus clown father with a heavy…er, shoe… Taibbi further embellished his “wound” when it came time for the group to turn to journal, essay and letter writing (that they then had to read aloud):

I soon found myself reading aloud a passage from my “autobiography” describing a period of my father’s life when he quit clowning to hand out fliers in a Fudgie the Whale costume outside a Carvel ice cream store:

I laugh about it now, but once he chased me, drunk, in his Fudgie the Whale costume. He chased me into the bathroom, laid me across the toilet seat and hit me with his fins, which underneath were still a man’s hands.

Again no reaction from the group, aside from an affirming nod from Jos at the last part — his eyes said to me, I know what you mean about those fins.

No one found it curious that his father could only abuse the son while dressed like a cartoon character. And it isn’t surprising that no one questioned it. These types of groups (”fundamentalist religious organizations”
if you’re feeling generous, “cults” if you’re not) wouldn’t get very far if the members were prone to asking a lot of follow up questions. While all religion requires faith, the sort of belief required to belong to such a group would require facts to be crumbled up, set on fire and named after demons.

The first portion of the weekend was kept somewhat secular and was filled with generic, “says whatever you need to hear” psychobabble that is typical of self help fluff. But then the hell hit the fan. Fortenberry and the coaches informed the followers that their “wounds” were the result of a generational curse polluting their family line due to some transgression against God. The curse was, of course, caused by demons. Naturally.

Fortenberry then brought the crazy:

Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. “Take homosexuals,” he said. “Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created — by pedophiles.”

The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it’s true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off. Some weeks later, I would be at a Sunday service in which Pastor John Hagee himself would assert that the Bible predicts that Jesus Christ is going to return to Earth bearing a “rod of iron” to discipline the ACLU. It goes without saying that the ACLU was not mentioned in the passage in Ezekiel he was citing–but the audience ate it up anyway.

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Fortenberry told a story about a nephew of his who called him up one night. “Both of his kids had fallen on the ground in respiratory distress, half-conscious, writhing around, gasping for air,” Fortenberry said. “And I said to my nephew, I said, ‘It isn’t something they’ve done. It’s something you’ve done.’ “

The crowd murmured in assent.

“I told my nephew to look around the house,” Fortenberry continued. “I said, ‘Do you have a copy of Harry Potter?’ And he said yes. And I said, ‘That’s your problem.’ So I told him to go get that copy of that book, tear it in half and throw it out the window. So he does it, and guess what? Both of those kids stood up completely recovered, just like that.”

Yes, the proper course of action to take when children are in respiratory distress is to head to your bookshelf and start ripping up books. Don’t call for an ambulance or get them an inhaler. It’s the book about magical children that has been read by millions of children worldwide without incident. Obviously.

On the final morning of the spiritual weekend, the group gathered for “the Deliverance”.

Fortenberry began to issue instructions. He told us that under no circumstances should we pray during the Deliverance.

“When the word of God is in your mouth,” he said, “the demons can’t come out of your body. You have to keep a path clear for the demon to come up through your throat. So under no circumstances pray to God. You can’t have God in your mouth. You can cough, you might even want to vomit, but don’t pray.”

The crowd nodded along solemnly. Fortenberry then explained that he was going to read from an extremely long list of demons and cast them out individually. As he did so, we were supposed to breathe out, keep our mouths open and let the demons out.

As Fortenberry read through the list, people began to wail and convulse. It would reach the point where the coaches would bring particularly upset individuals paper bags into which they could vomit (dry heave, as far as the reporter could tell) out the demons.

And what were some of the listed demons?

Incest.

Sexual abuse.

Astrology.

Lust.

Handwriting analysis.

Intellect.

Anal Fissures.

Fortenberry continued listing demons for an impressive hour and a half. Some members of the group began speaking in tongues and Taibbi offers up the comparison that it is like paying for admission to a sideshow act, being asked “Was that the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen” on the way out and nodding in agreement rather than admit to being had. If you had arranged to have a demon cleansing, you were going to have a demon cleansing, damn it. When it finally came time for each member to walk to the front and speak in tongues while being annointed with oil, Taibbi brilliantly quoted song lyrics in Russian with his eyes rolled slightly back in his head. No one suspected a thing.

Religion in general isn’t by definition a harmful thing. But groups like the Cornerstone Church that target the downtrodden and lost with their carefully calculated messages and practices do not represent Christianity as a whole any more than those who carry out terrorist acts represent Muslims as a whole. Taibbi points out that the public image the fundamentalist Christians present through their evangelical television programs and public appearances is a carefully groomed and choreographed spectacle that barely hints at what really happens behind closed doors. It is hard to know without being a member how deep under the water that glacier goes and what might be lurking in those depths.

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I'll add my two cents here: I personally do not question people's stories, their histories, for who am I to say that those things didn't happen? I will probably think it, but I'm a cynical punk, so what can you expect? Although, if I had a pastor say something about Jesus coming back with an "iron rod" against the ACLU, I would probably laugh. And then walk out. Seriously. And homosexuals are a product of pedophiles. Sure, some actually are. But I know wonderful, well-adjusted, perfect childhood gays and guess what? No skeletons in their closets. They just would have rather played with She Ra than Garbage Pail Kids or the girls that preferred trucks over glitter.

So our challenge for the day: don't be a crazy. Don't swallow every pill you're handed without a lot of questions. For only through my doubt and questions and living things out on my own do I have faith at all.

I have a lot of work to do today with looming deadlines. I do have some other things I want to discuss. It just might not be today.

Sidenote: I saw a handwritten note from Paulo last night. Oh my. It's bad. Like, really bad. Like third grade bad. I did a Google image search on children's handwriting and I found this. Now, I don't think he's dyslexic, but this is definitely what his note looked like.




He also asked me the other night how to spell Yea (yay/yeah). I asked in what context he was using the word. He wanted to say "Yea team." So that's the spelling I gave him. So he had a memo posted to the whole crew that included the phrase "Yea team" and he ended it with "Thanx Paulo."

Handwriting like a child and using the X instead of the customary S does make me cringe. We'll let the Lord sort this one out.