The following are a few of my experiences, not data for or against any belief system. I do not delude myself by believing my story is presenting evidence.
I was born and raised in the 1960’s at Immanuel Mission in NE Arizona. A Plymouth Brethren mission to the Navajo People. I returned with my family as an adult and worked there for five years, continuing the promotion of white Jesus colonialism.
I’m inspired to make a try at telling some of my story because I have told it to very few people. I’ve “outed” myself to my wife, to two of my brothers and to my good friend, and a therapist, but that’s it. The rest of my family know little of this. When I’ve tried to bring it up but they respond with conventional christian comments such as my mother did when I was a child: “you just aren’t right with the Lord. You just want to sin. You were never a True Christiantm.” Or, more often, they are silent and expect me to be as well.
At age seven I was admitted to the Denver Children’s Hospital for an angiogram to look at a congenital heart defect. When the iodinated contrast medium hit my system I went into severe anaphylaxis. Ma said in a letter to her sister that the doctors came out and told her that I wasn’t going to survive. When my doctor here in Oregon heard the story he said that my subsequent mental health issues could easily be traced to brain damage caused by the anoxia resulting from the anaphylaxis.
What I remember most about growing up at the mission was the constant threat of violence and having to be on guard all the time. I had to be on guard against the Navajo students who were much older than I was at the same grade level. They lived in two dorms on the compound and went home every six weeks. I know it was very difficult for them, losing their families, their culture, their language; to say nothing of the generational trauma they were suffering. I remember being choked till I passed out. I was held down and had my genitals probed. I was hit with a bat, breaking my nose and necessitating stitches. When I regained consciousness my dad said it couldn’t have been that student because she was on the other side of the field. I know he wanted to prevent me from retaliating but it made me feel crazy. If I fought back and my parents found out I was beaten (called spanking in our house and carried out with a slotted metal spoon or spatula) when I got home for not “turning the other cheek.” I once hit a tormentor with a steel pipe, and threatened another with a knife.
I also had to be on guard against the staff, all of whom, I know, considered me a dirty, nasty boy. I know because we used to eavesdrop on their coffee breaks. My aunty who was on staff for a little while slugged me in the stomach when she thought I had stolen a candy from a classmate–I hadn’t. Tom O’Malley, who later married my cousin, was another. He was often emotionally abusive and once hit me in the face with my BB gun because I was too near his truck (It was a beautiful truck). Laverne Dyck was another tormentor, constantly emotionally abusive. At night, even as a young child, my last prayer would be: “God please just take me.” I learned only this week that such prayers are a classic characteristic of trauma and complex PTSD.
At age thirteen, in January, I came to realize that my depression and auditory hallucinations (Not my words at the time, of course) were not normal, that there was something really wrong with me. I told my mom who said I wasn’t right with the Lord. I don’t blame her. I know all of us parents have said things to our children that were just throw away lines at the time, not knowing really what the child was asking. I began to think of myself as demon possessed because of the auditory hallucinations. I knew my mother heard voices, because she was always saying “…this morning God said to me…” I knew the voices I was hearing were not God so that left demons. For the next twenty years or so I tried my best to live a christian life. The only sermons I ever preached were always on the theme of: “keep doing what you know to do, be faithful in the face of all circumstances.” But with my understanding of myself as demon possessed I was hopeless, all the exhortations from the pulpit to live a victorious life in Christ, to fully surrender to Christ notwithstanding.
So I kept quiet about my demon-possession. Towards the end of my tenure on staff at Immanuel Mission, my marriage began to fall apart. My wife had partnered with a woman before we were married and was questioning whether she wanted to continue in a relationship with just a man. As my stress increased, so did the hallucinations and depression. One day I left for town intending to drive my car off the road at an appropriate location for a sure death. In town, I ran into my doctor (a christian) in the grocery store. He asked how I was doing and I laughingly said I was going to run my car off the road on the way home. He didn’t laugh and took me up to his office. I told him about the demon possession, the depression, the suicidal ideation. He listened and explained what it was that I was experiencing in a way that finally made sense. He showed me the DSM-IV and first brought up the terms bi-polar and depression. He started me on meds and I felt immediately better for having some hope finally. It took years of trying many meds to land on the cocktail I take now. My depression and hallucinations are very manageable now, something I also attribute to retirement!
(You may be curious to know: I have had two voices, a child who encourages destructive tendencies toward myself and others. And an older voice who merely narrates everything that is going on. “Now we’re talking to Bart. He’s saying…” And I sometimes experience a roaring which can make me feel faint).
I finally gave up on my marriage about four years after leaving the mission. My wife wanted us to live a polyamorous lifestyle and I wasn’t able to do that. We had a good friend, who worked at one of the schools in my district where I was superintendent at the time. We worked closely together and became good friends and eventually more. I tried to tell my siblings about the dissolution of my marriage but I wanted to protect my ex-wife who wasn’t out yet and had her own fundamental/evangelical friends and family to manage, so I didn’t go into detail. I feel completely estranged from three of my siblings over this and the mental health issues (I understand that my feeling of estrangement may be another result of the mental illness). One brother recently told me, however, that it would be the best gift ever, if I never contacted him again.
About twenty years ago, right when I was going through my marriage crisis, my cousin told me about her daughter who was transitioning. “It would be amazing,” she said, “if we would talk openly about what many of us are going through. Somehow we think that putting on a christian front is being a Christian.” I really like that. Lately if people ask me if I believe in God, I say “it depends on how you define your terms.” If they press me, I say “the scriptures say, by their fruits you shall know them.” I still use that “fruits of the spirit” list to look at noisy christians.
I think there are some things I have learned from this aspect of my life, and that I will put down to remind myself.
- Experiencing this does help inform my response to people in need in my town. Perhaps they are mentally ill themselves, perhaps houseless, perhaps traveling, perhaps marginalized as so many POC, women and LGBTQ+ are in the US and our churches. I can give them a great gift by looking at them, by greeting them as a person, not an illness, not an assumed set of politics. Not with the ulterior motive of winning them for Christ but because this is what Jesus would have done. At least the Jesus I know.
- I need to remember to listen to everyone. I think I’m right of course. We all do, we aren’t stupid; if we thought we were wrong we would change. But I don’t need to prove I’m right. I know that evangelism in some traditions requires one to convince everyone else that they are wrong, that they are fools. Rethink this, all this does is make you a bully.
- Ask people about what they believe, what gives their lives meaning, then really listen. Maybe don’t say anything at all. Often the most loving thing we can do is to really listen to others. People need genuine relationships, not ultimate truth.
- Jesus was not a True Christiantm. There are many ways to read the bible; the evangelical way is quite new.
- I know I will burn in PB hell for all eternity. I also know that all or most of us will burn in Muslim hell, and Mormon hell, and JW hell, and the hell of the 4000 other religions I can’t remember right now. This should remind us that we don’t have the corner on truth. Everything is colored by our interpretation of truth, or the bible, or our religion. (I’ve always thought it amazing that we are all christians, that the religion I was born into just happens to be the correct one. I asked Ma about this once when I was little).
- And finally, my motto, adopted when I was coming out of PBism: Strive to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.