Ex-Christian: Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater

I've just finished reading Tanya Levin's memoir, People in Glass Houses - an Insider's Story of a Life In and Out of Hillsong. What a powerful account written by a courageous individual. Tanya is a woman the same age as me, that grew up in a small pentecostal AoG church that became Hillsong - a megachurch - a multi-million dollar tax-free enterprise.

Like Tanya, I grew up in the pentecostal movement - I shared many of her observations, her pain, her unanswered questions. Like her, I felt more crazy the longer I tried to stay in it, and suffered depression while still in church and for many years outside of it. Our lives in church were living in a bubble separated from the rest of the world. Our rational minds overridden by indoctrination - any doubting and belief was of Satan, not of God, so we were told.

Tanya found the practices within pentecostalism, like demon exorcism scary and disturbing. So did I. She was appalled that "huge moral failings" of senior pastors/evangelists were swept under the carpet. There was no accountability for the ones at the top. The leaders were charasmatic personalities who mesmerised the masses . I'd noticed those things too.

Like Tanya, I grew up with pentecostal christianity - I didn't have a horrible life to convert from - I hadn't taken drugs, been promiscious, been drunk etc. We were taught we were disgusting sinners, paying for Eve stuffing up in the garden - we were destined for hell if we didn't believe. A forced choice - damned if you do, damned if you don't. Like Tanya, I cried out to God and there was no answer. God got all the credit when things went well; we were to blame for things that didn't.

Like her, I've been accused of "throwing the baby out of the bathwater" and being bitter, hurt, negative for sharing my experiences. Her writing wasn't bitter and vindictive. I applaud her for researching so well and being honest yet witty. It was a riviting read - how did this woman know my thoughts growing up? How did she know my confusion, my pain, my questioning?

During my teen years, like Tanya - the boys weren't interested in me either. We were both "good" girls whose lives revolved around schoolwork and church.

We also both felt like we were going insane.

Tanya:

Not believing eats away at you like a long, slow death. Maybe it's like finding out your adopted. Only Satan is your birthmother. All I know is that no one, no one, no one was there, when I prayed and I pleaded and I beseeched the Lord to hear my cry and make me feel like I could believe.

I committed everything to the Lord. I never went over the speed limit. Any slight lapse in character and I prayed for hours. Since boys didn't like me at school, or at church, I didn't have all that much temptation to fight off. Why would I care whether stupid, unsaved boys liked me - after all, I couldn't be unequally yoked with these unbelievers. Pagans, pagans everywhere, and some of them really hot, but pagans nonetheless.

So I floated around highschool, knowing that nothing really mattered. Why be afraid of those who can kill the body by cannot kill the soul? Rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul in hell. So mainly I walked around doctrinally convinced that I was going to heaven whenever this exercise called life was over, which was undoubtedly soon. We were in the end times. Jesus was coming back by 2000, if we even had that long.

Testimonies of the old life from new Christians were always fun. The more depraved the story, the sweeter the salvation. It was the only time we got to hear about the big bad world with its sex and drugs and rock'n'roll lifestyle. Demon manisfestations always got a good response. While the others turned away from stories of perversity and good middle-class horror, I wanted to know more. Why did all the recounting of the horror of sin make me empathise and envy all at once?

I prayed to God to keep me straight. I did everything I could think of, and I was the most sinless, boring (if smart-mouthed and irritating) kid you could know. My life was as close to without sin as I could possibly make it and I was going as close to insane as I had ever feared.

Tanya discussed many practices that are accepted as "normal" within the pentecostal movement. Her story was about Hillsong, but what she raised applies to other pentecostal churches/cults. My experiences/observations were gained manly from Assemblies of God (AoG), Apostolic and New Life churches, although I had occasionally visited mainstream churches and I'd been involved in an interdenominational christian group at university.

Hillsong grew from an AoG church that embraced prosperity doctrine. Destiny grew from Apostolic roots. Ironically, protestant fundamentalist christianity separated out of catholism centuries ago because they didn't like how the catholic church was materialistic. The fundamentalists, who take the bible literally, also take verses out of context and claim them as their own. If it was good enough for people in the bible to have something, it was good enough for us.

Those burnt by Hillsong claim the back door is as big as the front door. People get sucked in by the music, ripped off and spat out when they realised the honeymoon phase is over.

You can read Tanya's book to read her views on questionable practices within pentecostalism, particularly a mega-church that preaches a prosperity doctrine and relies on contemporary music to draw the masses. She's talked to many broken people, including former music leader Geoff Bullock (whose music I enjoyed singing and playing on piano in my late teens). Geoff was later diagnosed bipolar (any mental illness is seen as demonic possession by the pentecostals, as I was to discover when I suffered from depression).

• indoctrination of children - poisoning their minds with fear. This is psychological abuse. Marilyn Manson was so traumatised by hell doctrine in his christian school, he set about trying to get himself expelled. He credited these experiences for becoming a shock musician.
• speaking in tongues - when I was a young child, I thought people speaking in tongues was silly nonsense. By the time I was a teenager, I was speaking in tongues too. I was conditioned to accept it as normal. I actually can still speak in tongues, even though I know longer believe in it. I can easily flick over to a right-brained "trance-like" state, when I'm improvising on the piano or doing an abstract painting - the "right-brained" state is relaxing and enjoyable. Tongues is easy to do in this same state - just babble in syllables from one's mother language, imitated from others.
• mystical displays- including "slain in the spirit" (people falling over) and deliverance (casting out demons), people rolling around on the floor, screaming in the middle of services, ranting and raving, faith healings that weren't really healings etc. These phenomenons can just as easily be explained by hypnotism. People are in their "right-brain" relaxed states (often induced by hypnotic music and lights) and are open to suggestion.
• being pressured to tithe - giving 10% of pre-tax income to the church. The leaders in the mega-churches have a bling lifestyle - expensive cars and motorbikes, luxury cruises, multimillion dollar houses all thanks to the money donated by their congregation. I totally disagree with donated money being used to give the leader an extravagant lifestyle. Many have been conned into parting with their life savings as well.
• being pressured to volunteer - While at university, in addition to studying full-time for a science degree, I was attending Sunday church services twice a day, bible study group each week, weekly christian fellowship group at university, extra prayer meetings plus being pressured into donating my talents and time leading bible study group and playing piano. Any spare time was socialising with believers. The straw that broke the camels back was reluctantly accepting an exec role in christian fellowship - I fell apart from exhaustion. I didn't see much of my mother growing up - she was constantly involved in church activities.
• ex-communicating people- that are wounded and/or ask tricky questions. During my burnout and the depression that followed, it was said I was a bad christian and possessed by the devil. Christians think I am the anti-christ and that Satan has got me. Tanya was physically removed from Hillsong after she told them she was researching a book. I wrote about my deconversion - how I was treated was a big factor.
• "Amway" evangelism- I got sucked into doing Amway by some pentecostal christians. I really didn't want to do it (I'm not the sales type). My new "best friends" took me to conferences and convinced me to part with money to buy motivational resources, products and attend meetings and conferences. It was shockingly similar to pentecostal christianity - people pretending to be nice to convert other people. The conferences were hyped up with loud music, lights, inspirational speakers, just like the mega-churches.

My experiences affected me for years. Gradually, as I've been brave enough to let go of the fear doctrines, I feel more free. Untangling from the web of pentecostal christianity was no easy process, particularly when my whole family still believe. I'm the backslider that rebelled against my parents and God. I'm the one with the unforgiving heart and the stinking thinking - apparently.

Tanya became a social worker and worked for five years with the Salvation Army. She observed they were focused on gospel and charity, whereas Hillsong was focused on recruitment and fundraising. She found working with christians of a different kind detoxifying.

Still, Tanya threw the baby out with the bathwater. So did I. Like Tanya, I don't go to church anymore. I don't subscribe to any organised religion/superstitions - I've been turned off them all. Neither do I follow the teachings of a single person. I was betrayed by people I trusted - I believed what I was told. I won't be making that same mistake. If the baby's dead, why keep it?

I still have many unanswered questions. The glib answers offered by believers just raise more questions. Followers of any religion all think they have the truth and they all disagree with each other. Even christians disagree with other christians. Surely they can't all be right?

God never answered me. I believed in an invisible being for years, that I really can't prove wasn't more than a figment of my imagination. I still can't understand how people can smile all the time and give thanks to a God that seems to "speak" to some and not others.

Frank Houston was an AoG boss, charismatic preacher and father of Brian Houston, Hillsong's leader. He had psychotic episodes and it was revealed that he sexually abused boys trying to "cast the spirit of homosexuality out of them." It was swept under the carpet, and Frank's crime was kept hidden from authorities.

Many leaders of megachurches hypocrites, by preaching against certain lifestyles, and then engaging in those lifestyles secretely. They might get exposed, then there is a bit of fallout, and a few years later, they are back evangelising again. Are they narcissist attention whores? Or just in it for the money?

Some start off seeming genuine and seem trustworthy, before their egos spin out of control and they metamorphise into an autocratic monster. Cult and moral scandals follow these leaders like haemorrhoids. After "huge moral failings", they disappear from the limelight temporarily only to reappear restored and ready to sell their slick message.

Most christians are sincere people - frighteningly so. Few christians are balanced people that still think for themselves rather than be lead by emotions. I find it scary how masses of people follow the leader, because they are a persuasive convincing personality. Tony Robbins, life coach and NLP guru is the same style of charasmatic personality, with the same kind of hype.

Tanya became agnostic and found it liberating accepting a position of uncertainty. She didn't have to have all the answers or try to make strange doctrines fit the bible. She didn't have to blindly accept what a flawed person in the church had dictated how others should live their lives.

Several years after leaving pentecostal christianity, I became brave enough to ask some hard questions on the religious forums. I got the same old, same old. Except now there's even more crazy theories and doctrines to try and explain all the things that don't make sense - faith is a powerful thing.

I now accept myself, flaws and all, more than I ever did while trying to live my life for God. Free from how someone else tells me how to life my life. Free from cultish doctrines that create fear and induce mental illness. More tolerance of flawed people. Compassion for the people that are condemned by the church (like homosexuals) while leaders secretly abuse children and visit prostitutes (often of same sex).

Pentecostal christianity shaped who I am. I'm not completely free of it - it still upsets me how people get conned and manipulated. Children, teens and those in a vulnerable state (eg undiagnosed mental illness, after a relationship breakup) are easy targets. It saddens me to see children exploited.

I'm fortunate to be married to a man that accepts me as an equal. He wasn't sucked in by "god botherers." He's supported me through my battle with depression (and was appalled at how I was treated). I'm not subserviant to my husband - fortunately I had enough sense to marry a man that treats me with respect. We raise our child according to our values.

I accept myself as a woman, a flawed human being, but not a worthless one. I can't serve a despot superbeing that demands I worship him or he will throw me into hell.

The psychological scars are fading. Sometimes, I feel unjustified guilt and shame. I can't trust any institution that tries to tell me what to do, in the guise of love. Pentecostal christianity has tentacles that won't let go. I've been reading about religion, trying to make sense of what was a large part of my life.

I'm finding my own purpose and meaning without a god delusion. I don't have all the answers. I'm enjoying more peace and freedom. It's a good place to be.