Tongue Twisters

👀👀 hey, u up? 👀👀

Usually, because I’m not a monster, I’d apologize for the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated here these past one-and-a-half years before launching into the post. But I wouldn’t even have been back clearing them out if my friend hadn’t approached me with something HUGE.

My friend and I met at ground zero for the story they’ll be sharing anonymously today, and have since gone on similar journeys of disillusionment with the church. As a result, we don’t see each other, or even talk, as often as we used to, since a lot of our rendezvous were at our shared place of worship. So when they CALLED me last night, I was kinda scared at first, only for those jitters to devolve into excited butterflies.

They’d attended a sermon that left them seething, and thought a fellow sailor at sea would be a useful venting avenue. But the more they talked, the more I was like, “Girl (non-gendered), this needs to reach a larger audience than you, me, and the government spies on the line.” 

To maintain their anonymity (there are serious ramifications to their coming out as unbelieving - heck, they still go to church every week - but that’s something they’re in a better position to explore later), I agreed to host their thoughts on Kessentials under Anonymous Atheist.

Enough of a preamble from me. Say hello to AA, and see you (unabashedly) in another two years. 🙂

I’m not the greatest writer, so I don’t really know how to get the believers who saw my byline to stick around past it. But they say not starting can be a start in itself, so here we are.

I’ll also alienate more readers when I admit that part of this post was codified by ChatGPT, but possibly win them back when I mention it was also 100% fact-checked by me (like, I opened my Bible [eek] and verified Chat’s citations.)

It’s just that I’m a rambler, and before calling Hope, I used my trusty gen-AI’s speech-to-text feature to sanity check my thoughts on the sermon. I even went so far as taking the preacher’s side, careful not to infect the model with my biases. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Chat to take his side (It’s not a great side, tbh. So that was inevitable).

Back to the me taking out my Bible thing - TANGENT ALERT - this for me meant my virtual Bible. I moved out of my childhood home early this year and left my heavily-highlighted physical copy there. One of the reasons I left was that I hoped it’d put some healthy distance between my Christ-4-Lyf parents and me; another was to eke out some inkling of independence as the mid-twenties they/them that I am. 

I love my parents wholeheartedly, but I couldn’t bear to wither under the glare of their watchful eyes anymore, pretending I shared their beliefs 34/9/399, nor can I cop to my backsliding into the dark goo of the world, as I know it’d shatter their middle-aged hearts to smithereens. I’m a people-pleaser like that - blame it on my religious upbringing. So moving out seemed the best solution for everyone… until my mother came up with the brilliant idea that the family (them, my younger sister, and me) could make a get-together day of Sundays… starting with the early morning service.

If you’ve read anything of the pre-paragraph, you’ll know I had to acquiesce.

So we spend Sundays together, starting with a visit to my home church, “ground zero” of today’s events, participating in the song and dance therein, and later congregating at whatever restaurant tickles our fancy, having a parting prayer (like, all four of us take turns to, like, command our week as a family and as individuals in Jesus’ name - it’s a whole to-do), then going our separate ways till next Sunday, God willing of course.

I’ve resigned myself to this being my life till I or they die. That’s how averse I am to causing them any anguish over the damnation of my soul.

My partner wants me to yank my head out of the sand, but unlike me, they (sorry, partner) are a believer. Their relationship with God is strictly “transactional” (their word), though - i.e., they believe in a higher power purely for “the world is big and scary and out of my control, and reassuring myself of the existence of some omnipotent, otherworldly presence helps me not lose my mind over it” (my words) reasons. 

You’d think I’d be repulsed by any form of belief in God, but Partner and I get along great. I understand the utility of what they’re doing, so I’m all for it. But I draw the line at them projecting their happy-middle ideology to my situation with my folks. Normally, they relent, but I know it hurts them to see me living a lie to keep the peace. It’s our lone long-standing disagreement. I digress.

Now that we’re all familiar with one another, let me let ChatGPT (and my fact-checks + light edits + annotations) take it from here. For today’s breakdown, our source sermon is handily available at the YouTube link below. Praise be, 21st-century technology.

(I’ve set it to start at that point specifically so you can hear the cringey way he refers to his daughters.)

(Potential skivers: A lot of this post won't make sense if you don't watch the sermon, so, you know… eat your vegetables - dessert is coming later.)

Anyway, here's Chat's Examination - For the nerds, a step-by-step analysis of the counter-Biblical claims made by today’s preacher, an elder and highly respected member of my home church, as he’s sure to remind listeners from time to time.

I’ll give you a couple minutes to chew on those

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Aaaaand we’re back

While this Fred guy has always sort of rubbed me the wrong way because of the larger-than-life airs with which he carries himself (there are several of his past sermons where he pronounces Adam [phonetic] as Ey-dam [eek eek]), I still know enough about the Bible from nearly three decades living and breathing this stuff (often against my will) to know that the bulk of his presentation regarding the Holy Spirit’s gift of speaking in tongues was utter BS.

My BS radar lit up when I remembered learning in high school CRE or whatever that the tongues the apostles spoke on the day of Pentecost were, like, actual languages of the time (Acts 2:6–8), not the unintelligible drivel that characterizes the tongues Fred and his cohorts advocate for. So my first question to Chat (with YouVersion patched on my lap) was:

“Citing biblical sources only, weren't the tongues on the day of pentecost described as different existing languages, not gibberish?”

And surprise, surprise, Anonymous Atheist had one up on this man of God on Biblical accuracy.

But the sweater unraveled further as I kept pulling at that thread.

Like I mentioned, I was trying to give Fred the benefit of the doubt, so I asked Chat if maybe things were different by the time Paul (another man of God who rubs me the wrong way, but keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?) came around. And ho ho ho did my jaw DROP.

Turns out, 1 Corinthians 14:4 (Fred’s anchor verse) is part of the broader 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul’s whole point is basically “My dudes, this whole speaking in tongues thing is pretty sick, but at the risk of it going to anyone’s heads, let’s keep it on the DL, shall we?” If MOG had moved on to the literal next verse 5, Paul’s larger point would’ve become apparent. But nooo, he went with the “this gift is pretty much the best thing before sliced bread, and you and I are better-than for having it” angle instead - a view which, again, Paul spends a good chunk of chapter 14 cautioning against.

But, honestly, what else did we expect from Mr. Ey-dam here?

In times like these, I reflect on Christianity’s implicit duality. 

On one hand, we are irretrievably tainted by something someone in our (if the Bible is to be taken literally) incestuous bloodline did millennia ago, so we needed the precious blood of Jesus to make us whole again. We’ll defer to and revere this Jesus, his Father God, and the Holy 👻 because we’re mere mortals only saved at the behest of His grace.

✨BUT ALSO✨

Once we do establish that relationship with the triad, we’re pretty much untouchable “co-heirs with Christ”, in league with angels and destined for the heavenly places, but while we await our final paradisic destination, we can bend mortal reality to our whim because God’s on our side now.

Suck it, evil world.

This dissonant complex only crystallized in my mind recently. The superiority bit in particular is a theme pastors of all races and creeds (my home church is a big deal, yo, didn’t you hear Fred say everyone wants to come chill at our Monday prayers) have extolled in one way or another over the years.

Besides the church not necessarily being big on debate, MoG’s posture in the community is unlikely to invite any pushback, even from pastors higher in rank than him, some of whom are close personal friends of my parents. 

Despite the fact that he willfully (gloves are off now, folks) misled three services and thousands of online viewers to make his misguided “here’s how to activate your super power” point, I can bet a pretty penny that NO ONE will call him out on it, either to his face or by, like, preparing a “This is what Paul actually taught on tongues” sermon.

No one but this little inferior non-believer, anyway.

I kinda feel sorry for Christians at times for these reasons. Critical thought is heavily discouraged… which, you know, no longer my monkey, no longer my circus. But then it spills into my view again when in the car, my mother puts on another sermon on tongues to “edify” my sister because she found out after the service that she can’t speak in tongues (😱), so that’s obviously an urgent matter that we must rectify in time for the ever-impending rapture. I wouldn’t be shocked to overhear her praying and - to cover all her bases - fasting about it. I kinda wish my sister had just lied like me to save her the trouble of the prayer point.

(Lying to them at will is my tongue of choice, no Holy Spirit required.)

In closing, let me remark on something I know more about than I do the Bible:

Believers aren’t “getting lost” because gifts of the Spirit aren’t evident enough in the church today as they were in the days of yore (as Fred claimed, with dubious authority because I doubt he spends much time chatting with scum like me). 

Believers are be-leaving (🤣) the church because of little consistent falsehoods like this, gradually conflicting with what they know and have experienced out in the world, and eventually landing once Bible-beating evangelists in an all-too-familiar place: desperate disenchantment. Or, like Partner, happy to meditate on various religious texts alone and with select like-minded brethren, but vowing never to step through the doors of a church again. Organized religion has yet to find a coherent response to this phenomenon.

However, religious practice has real, undeniable benefits to humanity. And I know many people (for the not-wanting-people-to-go-to-hell thing or just good ol’ Biblical obedience) are compelled to spread the Gospel far and wide.

Totally fine by me (Growth!).

But, FWIW, to those people, I say - get out of your insulated echo-chambers and address non-believers’ actual objections (as best you can, anyway - some of this stuff constitutes “irreconcilable differences”) - NOT the ones you make up to lend credence to your grand-standing. Works even better than coaxing the angels for a favor by speaking in their particular brand of nonsense.

(Gloves back on)

I want to believe that Fred isn’t a malicious actor, that he actually wants to lead Christ’s flock to the light. In which case, I hope some version of this rant reaches him so he can offer the congregation an official correction/redaction. Or at the very least, for the sake of his soul, I hope he repents for bearing false witness. Preferably during his late-night Spirit-filled ramblings. I hear those work great for stuff like this.