zealotry

umar farouk abdulmutallab was lonely and depressed. he was an adolescent and a religious zealot. his posts to an islamic message board reveal a zealous child who is ill-equipped to reconcile the mixed messages of the world. on christmas he set out from amsterdam on a flight bound for detroit intent on killing hundreds of people and himself.

here is something we should all agree on. a child with fundamentalist beliefs is dangerous.

i was a fundamentalist child once upon a time. i feel lucky to have emerged from that time with my sanity.

i accepted jesus into my heart on february 23rd of 1976. i was 10. it was a sunday evening and i was visiting bethany baptist church in west covina to see an end times preacher who my aunt and uncle (guardians,) were excited to see. (dr howard estep's organization lives on.) i had attended calvary baptist church in la puente at that time but when my family moved to covina we switched to what i would call a more actively fundamentalist denomination of crazy which was the assemblies of god.

in the covina assembly of god church i was exposed to, (and embraced,) not only the literal interpretation of the bible, (contradictions be damned,) but also the practices of speaking in and interpretation of tongues and anointing with oil. yes, we believed the literal words of the bible. jesus really was the son of god. along with the holy spirit the three comprised the holy trinity, an entity separate but apart, wholly beyond human understanding, (yet expounded on often on sunday mornings,) and god. yes miracles happened. yes, jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. yes, gay was evil and worthy of damnation. yes, women were weaker vessels.

in addition to 1-3 visits to church weekly and the camps and outings and all that, i attended a christian high school my junior and senior years and i attended an assemblies of god college for a year, too. i was a young zealot. i led peers of mine to the lord even kneeling with a friend on his porch to lead him through the sinners prayer at the tender age of 11 or 12.

i had no need of literature that was not the bible or not somehow related to the bible. i needed little policing in those days. in my mid-20s my girlfriend worked for the wycliffe bible translators-we went to church weekly and practiced abstinence. (for both of the years we were together!?!) i suppose that relationship ended because she was attuned to the fact that i was questioning my faith, which of course is anathema to fundamentalism, and thus ended those years for me even if it was gradual.

the point is; i was in those days of such severe belief in something so utterly devoid of any proof or basis in reality, i was dangerous. i truly was dangerous. in those days, when i was a young republican, when ronald reagan's dishonesty was pointed out to me, i thought the end justified the means. that is dangerous.

i read an article today in which a columnist pointed out the absurdity of some people believing in god sans any proof or evidence while also denying global warming in the face of melting glaciers of evidence. isn't that poignant?

i can relate to abdulmutallab's zealotry too, because i was critical of those less zealous or less committed than myself. when i started drinking beer, (or wine coolers more likely,) i woke up on saturday or sunday mornings with major guilt. when on the following friday night my friends suggested we drink alcohol again, something inside of me raged. it was this hypocrisy that ultimately drove me from christianity. my best friend rationalized his drunkeness by conjuring the hebrew word for sin and saying that it was essentially an archery term meaning, 'missing the mark.' the idea was that i should not be so bothered, god hated the sin but no the sinner. for my part i went into the act, (in this case of drinking,) knowing full well what i was doing and even how i would feel the next morning. in short, i felt like i had no excuse and the rationale that god was cool with it because hey, i was merely missing the mark. no big deal. my arrow was still on the board-it just wasn't a bullseye. well, that did not work for me. in retrospect, it is kind of funny how hypercritical i was of myself considering how opposite i am to that now and how forgiving i am of humanity at large.

this is where my ascent from christianity began. at some point i realized how wrong-headed it was to decry my nature, or more precisely to feel guilty based simply on my nature. it was not wrong of me to want to seek an altered state of being through alcohol. that was as natural as growing up. i could go on and on about how and why i got out, (and i certainly have in my own journals,) but i won't bore you with all those details right now.

the thing is society needs to get together on this idea. we need to recognize that fundamentalists of all stripes are certainly crazy, if only temporarily. (in fact i question the veracity of any fundamentalist over 40. anyone over 40 has lived long enough to where they should have enough life experience to have recognized the foolishness of their youth and turned from it. my friends who adhere to their fundamentalism post 40 seem to me to be in denial, choosing a life ensconced in the comfort of a familiarity they have built up and nurtured for so many years. it may even be they are mentally ill in as much as they are incapable of turning from their belief system.)

"if in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. you may be dead."

-gelett burgess