Baptist Anatomy

When my younger son was still in elementary school, years into my exceedingly strange life, my pastor decided that the best time to have a series of Wednesday night services devoted to the topic of spiritual warfare was during the summer time, when the elementary school age kids did not have their own classes to attend but instead were sitting in the main auditorium with the grown ups. Just when my younger son had gotten comfortable being home alone for short periods of time, along came these Wednesday nights filled with lectures about the supposed demonic activity that the true believers need to watch out for. This was not a call to pray about the pride, greed, or selfishness in your life, to strive to become a better person - instead the foe was Satan and his manifestations not unlike those found in popular Hollywood folklore. In fact, it now makes me wonder how much of this material was gleaned from those very Hollywood movies that were often mentioned in unfavorable ways as something worldly to avoid. All of a sudden bad dreams weren't just bad dreams anymore, but rather the dark side working in the believer's mind.  Sinful thoughts were put there by a cheerful little demon who had been watching a particular Christian and now was making his attack chess move to destroy this person along with his or her godly testimony. There were voices to be heard and lies to be believed, dark motives and supernatural events. Reading your horoscope in a magazine became equal to opening the door for Satan, along with countless many other equally ludicrous ideas about Yugioh cards, Pokemon, Harry Potter and other equally harmless things. This  went on summer week after week. One particular Wednesday night the holy man of God went so far as to tell his captivated audience (after all, when you can't endulge in Hollywood movies, hearing these stories had to make up for lost entertainment value) that he once witnessed how a possessed human being's head spun around on his neck in a complete 360 degree circle. "Yes, it doesn't seem possible but I saw it with my own eyes, you can believe it or not." We sat there and took it in. Sure, I was upset about the timing of this topic, as my son no longer was willing to stay home alone or even spend time in the basement by himself any longer. I felt it was inappropriate to speak of these things with children present, but we took it in without questioning. I now look back on this particular episode and I cannot explain why we did not simply walk out at this point. The impossibility of a head doing a complete turnaround was not awakening us to the fact that we were wasting our lives on a bunch of nonsense. I have since mentioned this instance to a few of my former fellow church members and one responded by pointing out that most of what was said made sense though, so as to simply overlook this ludicrous statement. I take issue with that. A preposterous statement as this is an indicator of the level of insanity found in the teachings of this man. I would not entrust myself to the care of a doctor who makes one severe, obvious, outrageous mistake because he doesn't make them all the time. Here we were, taking our kids to church on a summer evening we could have spent on recreation, instead making an effort to "be where we need to be" - to expose them and us to a lie? During a message that warned us of the lies of Satan?? Another member just pointed out that she was going there because she loved the people. Again, I don't love anyone so much as to expose my children to this lunacy. So why were we not walking out? I know it wasn't for love or mercy towards a pastor with bad ideas. Why didn't we walk out when our first pastor said from the pulpit that the gays needed to be put into the closet and a match be struck? A match be struck?! Then I still had the sense to question the man after the message, but he refused to back down from his remark and I stayed. His church is no longer open, thankfully, and we left there eventually, but I was very fearful of what might happen to us until we found another place of equal insanity where we could raise our family away from the perceived dangers of the world. The pastor of the spinning heads also recommended we subscribe to the "Revival Fires", a monthly publication of sermons in print. One of their articles pointed how AIDS could be caught from a toilet seat! That ended my subscription to that particular publication. Later on, after Matt Jarrell, one of the preachers within the circle of Revival Fires committed suicide in a jail cell where he was held for rape, the paper published a eulogy that only mentioned him as a worthy man of God (see below for the text of the eulogy). I believe Matt Jarrell to have been a serial rapist. He carried a rape kit in his truck. I have forgone including a link to news articles about the man as you can easily google them by yourself. The more I read about Matt, the more I became aware of a long pattern of deceit. We had met him once years earlier at Mt. Salem Revival Grounds where he preached a message. My husband talked to him after the preaching and walked away from the short conversation stunned, realizing there was something deeply wrong with the man. This never seemed to have become obvious to those that invited him to preach and spent more time around him. When we heard about Matt's death and the situation he had been caught in, we had already left the independent fundamental Baptist teachings behind.
In short, there were indicators that we were not in good hands. I mentioned only a few of them yet. They should have been enough to send as running. My mother who for years visited us yearly had no problems spotting them and pointing them out. I would not listen. I had bought into the fear of the world, the belief that we needed the church's protection from it. It was very much a lifestyle of fear we had come to accept as the right way.


Here is the text of said eulogy:
My heart is heavy today in the loss of a dear friend, Pastor Matt Jarrell. There is a lot of unsolved mystery concerning the last few days of his life. Rather than try to solve mysteries, let me mention what I know to be facts. He was a preacher whose messages were greatly used of God to encourage, challenge and inspire folks to serve the Lord and keep on keeping on, even when times are tough. He loved his wife and children dearly and spoke almost non-stop about them when we were together. He was one of the most generous and compassionate men that I have ever known and went the extra mile to be a blessing to me, as well as many other people, more times than I can count. He had a tremendous burden for church planting and was actively involved in the establishment of several local churches. Every place that he served he built something rather than tearing something down. He labored to win souls, to salvage marriages, to recover backsliders, to grow new converts to maturity, to build a great work with high standards, and he took a very strong stand against sin and corruption at every level of society, including government. Everything I have seen and known to be true only elevate my respect and deepened my friendship with him. I, along with many others, will miss his friendship and fellowship, and the cause of Christ will feel the impact of his absence. Please join me in prayer for his precious family, which includes his wife and four children, all of whom I know well and love dearly. They are a godly, close-knit family. Please also pray for his parents and other family members who will feel his loss keenly. If you would like to be a blessing to the family, please contact me through our office. Revival Fires! P.O. Box 245, Claysburg, PA 16625 (814)239-2813″ 

Papa

My first eleven years we spent in an idyllic, small village in Southern Germany, only a few miles away from the Switzerland border. My parents liked to shop in Switzerland, things like coffee and cigarettes - both my parents were smokers at the time - were less expensive there. My brother, 4 years older than me, sometimes crossed the border on his bicycle in the woods after exceeding the limit on cigarettes for my Dad. We tried to please my Dad, or my Papa as we referred to him, but it wasn't easy. He was always busy. He had his little workshop upstairs, above the apartment we were renting in a two-story building where the landlord and his wife lived downstairs from us. My Dad would climb a retractable steep wooden ladder to the attic, and he would work there. He often fixed TV's or radios for the neighbors and others from the village. He would sit there among his little cabinets that had small compartments and held everything from electrical resistors to nails and bolts. He would often solder, cigarette dangling from his lips. He also recently told me that sometimes he had our pet parakeet sitting on his shoulder when he was up there, although I have no memory of that. In later years he would bring home work in the evenings, large white plastic-like sheets with black lines, wiring diagrams they were, and he was working on them, with his glasses on plus another set of square magnifiying lenses he wore on top, like a miner wearing a flashlight. It was work that required concentration and we could not be a distraction. I learned much later that during those years he worked for Telefunken, he participated in building the first large computers there. He sometimes talked about working for the son of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer. He told us that the son who was his supervisor did not share his Dad's political views and was a pleasant man.

So for me and my brother there was not much time to spend with my Dad, we ate meals as a family, and on Sunday afternoons we would go for a walk as a family, otherwise Dad was working, although sometimes he would go for a run by himself or play the accordion. He was self-taught, and he recorded some of the music he was playing. Papa was always present, but I did not perceive him as being accessible. Especially as I got older I became painfully aware of the emotional distance he kept. He was a man of logic, the world was black and white, like the TV pictures of those TV's he fixed. There was a right way to do things and a wrong way, and he had neither time nor patience for anything but the correct way. Hugs, kisses, loving encouragement and support were not a part of his logical mindset. It also seemed too easy to upset him, and he would make a quick and hurtful remark, so I learned to be careful and quiet. Any question I might have might be misconstrued as a weakness, a lack of knowledge. I might get an answer, but I was very sensitive to the tone in which that answer might be made, and preferred not to take the risk. I don't really know what he ever thought of my brother making his bike trips to smuggle cigarettes, I assume he must have allowed it. Growing up after the war might have shaped his views on that, I am not sure. It wasn't the only time smuggling played a part in our family, we would later sneak vinyl pop music records into Communist Germany, for my cousin who was a devoted fan of the Swedish pop quartet ABBA. My brother at the time was probably just trying to win my Dad's approval. It was not easy for him; while I have no memory of it my Mom has told me that when my brother was struggling with his school work and my Dad became impatient with him, he would grab him by the neck and slam his forehead on the table.  My Mom who was working 3 nights a week as a nurse at the local hospital - where I was born - must have experienced her marriage as being somewhat stressful. I remember one instance, where my Dad was out for a run after dark, when she remarked "I hope he gets hit by a car", due to her feeling that he was being careless. I remember feeling quite bad for him when she said it, a rather new experience for me with regards to my Dad. We had exciting, fun times as well. We took our first family vacation with our Volkswagen Beetle to Lago di Garda, a lake in the mountains of northern Italy. My parents had bought an inflatable small boat, and we stayed in a tiny "bungalow", a small metal hut.  We would swim (Dad taught me to swim), paddle the boat around, and play with the other vacationer's kids, and even with my parents. We had brought a game of wooden Boccia and couldn't get enough of it. I believe in our village we were the only family to take a trip like that. In the coming years we would also go to Yugoslavia (now Croatia) twice and stay there in a waterfront house with a local lady.

While we experienced the beauty of other countries together - and these are some very precious memories - I hope not to sound ungrateful in saying that I experienced both of my parents as somewhat distant and unaffected. When I was 13 I snuck out of the house one afternoon when I was grounded. My Dad knew where to find me and brought me home. I got spanked with an electrical cord for my behavior. In my memory the worst part of that was the humiliation of getting spanked, to be quite honest. The really remarkable consequence of my disobedience is that my Dad did not speak to me after this for a whole year. Here we were, living in the same apartment, and the only words from the lips of my Dad during that year are "pass the butter" on one occasion. When my fourteenth birthday rolled around he gave me a radio, signifying that he was no longer going to ignore me. Once, on New Year's Eve, we stayed up until midnight, and we formally shook hands to wish each other a happy new year. Such was life in our family. I realized over the years that this was not the norm for other families, that "home" could be a place where you felt valued, where your presence brought joy to your parents, and they would actively support and encourage you. But back in those days the writings of Dr. Asperger were not well known to the broad public, and I did not understand the underlying cause of our situation until the mid-nineties, when my son was diagnosed with Asperger's and all of a sudden all the pieces fell into place and it became clear what was shaping all three of us - my Dad, myself, and my son. The strongest revelation was for myself, after living through so many situations in which I could sense that I was thinking and responding differently from those around me, situations that branded me as an outcast and that made me wish I was someone else. I wish my mother and brother had accepted the reality of Asperger's in my Dad's life once that knowledge became available. But instead, as far as I can tell, they only continued their love-hate relationship with my Dad until my Mom passed away and my brother subsequently cut all connections to the entire family. My Mom's death was a turning point in my relationship with my Dad, his bereavement tore down the emotional distance between us and we now have a much better and open relationship. Where before I could not have pictured spending a few weeks with my Dad staying in the same apartment for fear of an angry outburst over a minor infraction, like had happened on my first visit to Germany after moving to the United States. Then I had left some light on, which my Dad found undesirable, and he called me stupid for doing so, which hurt me to the point that I left the house in tears that day. After being away for five years I felt that leaving on the wrong lights warranted being called stupid. These outbursts no longer happen in this magnitude, and when he blows his top on a milder scale I can usually recognize the context stressing him out and overlook the infraction. We now definitely have a working relationship I never did foresee or expect. But those years of emotional distance along with my being different from my peers left their mark on me and set me up for future events that would nearly destroy me.

Introduction

I feel a need to write down what happened. To warn others? Definitely to capture the craziness of a life wasted on noble ideas. I don't know whether I am "a writer" or not (quite possibly the fact that I honestly do not know excludes me from this club as well). I do know that I want to read real life accounts rather than fiction, I prefer a true crime book to a crime novel any day because life is so much more outrageous and people so inhumane in their need to stroke their egos. I know because life presented me with much opportunity to get to know myself in my quest for spiritual values. I want to capture the contradictions and insanity, the lunacy of what I have experienced in an environment that begged to be trusted.
I want to be as honest as I can with myself and those I met. Nowadays I don't seem to meet people anymore, I don't seem to have anything to say to anybody that doesn't serve the appearance of normalcy. I emotionally avoid people, while hiding behind the traits of Asperger's. The only ones allowed into my life are family, a selected few among those, namely my husband, sons, and my Dad. Less than 10 years ago I would have honestly stated that I have a church family, people that know me well and look out for my well-being.  I was privileged to find out the truth about the environment I chose for myself. I would not have it any other way. It has come close to destroying me and I am far from being healed but nevertheless I much prefer the refound sanity over a life spent on policing myself and others in an attempt to find the will of a god who only exists in the minds of people. I do not get up on Sunday mornings to choose what I am going to wear to church - clothes that express a superior kind of modesty - , while grabbing the

donuts for Sunday school along with the correct, 400 year old translation of the Bible as it applies to modern life, to show up with a God-praising smile to participate in a choir that exhibits the modesty I am looking for in my clothing (albeit modesty of talent) , to be followed by unspeakable "special music" that cannot be applauded so as to not lift up the performer while in all reality it should not be applauded because if offends the ears of the audience if not the ears of god. Then there is the message, a long winded loudly proclaimed rhetoric that understands itself as a message from god to be applied throughout the week and life to come, one of 5 I take in that week - Sunday school, Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday night and Friday night Bible study, aka Reformers Unanimous Addiction Program, - along with daily Bible reading and memorization, all to be lived out in a tragic effort to be different from a world that is perceived to be exceedingly sinful and wicked. The gay agenda, the liberal agenda, the public school agenda, the colleges that lie in wait to indoctrinate us into a life of sin and misery, wordly music that lifts up Satan and is to be avoided like a White Castle hamburger, the guilt heaped on us for relatives that are burning in hell because we did not manage to convert them, a dash (a very generous one) of homophobia, intelligence wasting away because women need to be submissive to the men in their lives, a buffet of bad ideas crammed into minds - most of which manage to go home and live as if they never heard them, but not us, no, not us, we take them home and make our best effort to live by them, bad ideas with equally bad outcomes, until the pressure becomes so great that I crumble and fold emotionally and spiritually - truly, my spirit is broken in this great attempt to abide by the will of god. Those are not my Sundays anymore, it is no longer my life. The insanity lies behind me, all 15 years of it, but I do not wish to forget it, at least not yet, it needs to be captured like someone who runs amok with a gun, trying to harm innocent lives, because that is what it is doing to the gullible, it destroys relationships and lives and minds. I may well not be a writer, but maybe, hopefully, I am a capturer of insanity - a catcher in the rye of grandchildren and others about to go over the cliff.
Looking back I find myself unable to believe that I can neatly roll out what happened to me with a degree of completeness and coherence. Only a writer could do that, I suppose. I want to begin with what I am dubbing key moments, situations that occurred that I look back on and cringe to a greater extent. Moments that stand out and define. Unfortunately there are many of them. Insanity has a great many aspects, and writing about them is painful. My mind is running in two directions as a write, wanting to relive in order to capture - and wanting to go to the drug store to buy some liquor for the weekend, to drown out the reality of where I am today. Stephen Kind wrote some of my favorite books of his high on cocaine and booze, but I am no Stephen King, although, come to think of it, I can regard myself as a horror writer. Insanity truly must count as a form of horror to be shunned. The book Needful Things comes to mind. I read it a long time before "finding Jesus", and it is a fact that makes me cringe that I could read a book like this and then wander off into a cult and completely give myself to its teachings. Truly, some things were more needful to me than I realized at the time. The need to belong - how can someone like me, an outsider in so many ways thanks to the traits of Asperger's, possibly handle the appeal of acceptance by a god and its people, with the only thing ever coming close to this experience  being part of my Italian family for a while. Then, the insanity of a controlling relationship overrode the benefits found and I was able to walk away. Here, the acceptance and love found were unconditional, supposedly. What a small sacrifice to step beyond those key moments, moments that should have been a wake up call, when my own personal needful things were at stake.  Acceptance and love were my drug of choice for 15 years. Rationality, sanity were easily tossed aside for the benefits discovered.  While I cannot roll out the totality of my experience, I will begin with some of the key moments to illustrate and highlight where I am coming from along with some of the crossroads of bad decisions in my life.