It took us a long time after leaving to decide which of our former beliefs we still believed to be true and right, and which ones were just... crazy.
The illegitimate feelings of guilt and shame attached to all those beliefs and practices will probably plague us for life.
Although we immediately abandoned the most extreme standards we only practiced because they were required of us as leaders, plenty of them hung on for a while.
The reason it took so long probably had to do with the degree with which these regulations became a test of genuine spirituality. Why would any truly committed believer object to abiding by rules their preacher established to guard the ‘purity of his church?
This was the subject of many, many sermons.
The Preacher required all teachers and other leaders (including us) to sign a paper detailing rules we were expected to obey to continue in any leadership position. This included piano players and bus drivers.
Some of the activities not permitted (from memory) were:
Renting movies; watching TV shows that potrayed cussing, sex, drug use, alcohol use or anything not considered (by him) wholesome viewing for a ‘separated Christian’; wearing pants for the women; wearing shorts for the men; mixed swimming; going to movie theatres; consuming alcohol and/or drugs; smoking and a host of other prohibitions.
While some of these things may not seem unreasonable, being expected to put them in writing is as far as I'm concerned.
One of the more ridiculous rules for teachers was we were prohibited from eating at restaurants with bars.
And it was the first stupid rule we dumped after leaving!
The first previously prohibited restaurant we ate at was Tony Roma’s Barbeque.
Paul and I met there for lunch one day but were still so conscientious of our ‘testimony’ we parked our car in the back so no one from our former church would see it and be ‘offended’ at how we so quickly strayed from our ‘convictions’.
I mean, we were continually forewarned we would quickly wander into ‘ungodliness’ outside of the church’s zealous supervision, right?
As much care as we took to conceal our dubious deed, we were discovered... by our oldest son... no less.
He called and said he needed to pick up an item from his dad for work... meaning... he would need to come to the restaurant where we were eating.
Uh Oh...
There was no getting out of telling him where we were.
Tony Roma’s.
A trendy Barbeque place with a full-service bar!
Immediately, cortisol rushed our brains as Paul embarrassingly, hesitatingly revealed where we were.
You would think we had actually gotten drunk at that bar for the amount of shame we felt.
As it was, our son was surprised at the level of explaining his dad felt was needed. He wouldn’t even have noticed had we not made a deal of it.
Our next act of licentious behavior was to install satellite TV.
This one is particularly significant in that not too many years prior, Paul had dug a hole in our back yard, taken the only little television we possessed, and after dropping it in the hole, shot it to bits with a shot gun while all the kids watched in shock and awe.
Paul wanted this event to commemorate our fervent objection to the immorality of the material aired on television and the amount of time wasted watching it.
He eventually bought another larger television, but to stay true to our ‘conviction’, took it to a tv repairman and had it ‘neutered’ so that it could not pick up any channels.
What was left amounted to a screen that could only be used to watch family-friendly movies and movies we could edit.
Paul then purchased an attachment called “TV Guardian.” This small device could be hooked to our 'neutered' screen and could replace cuss words via closed captioning, with less offensive words.
Imagine the awkward silliness when an actor referenced a “cigarette butt” and TV Guardian substituted “rear” for “butt” making the phrase “cigarette rear” instead of “cigarette butt”!
I think if was a Clint Eastwood movie where he threw his “cigarette rear” on the ground.
Say, What??
Another undesirable effect was that the kids were always determined to figure out what the actual word being censored was, negating the whole purpose.
But the most positive reassessment we made was allowing our kids to play sports.
Before the church became a Bible-based cult, we put our oldest two sons in Little League. They both excelled in baseball and my oldest son had achieved the highest batting average on his team—an unbelievable 713!
He was also starting second baseman and was nicknamed “Golden Glove” by his coach for his skill at catching line-drive fast balls. One of his coaches even claimed he was the only one he's ever coached who had the potential to play college baseball.
My second son also demonstrated a lot of talent for baseball.
He was the starting pitcher as a nine year old, but The Preacher began preaching against being in partnership with worldly activities-particularly youth sports.
He only played for two seasons.
Since Paul was second man and youth director, it was only a matter of time before The Preacher would insist we quit Little League baseball even though we never missed a service for games.
We decided to pull them out of sports before he could tell us we HAD to. This is probably one of the costliest mistakes we made early on.
Our oldest son would never play organized sports again.
Shortly after leaving, we were informed of a homeschool athletic organization whose flagship sport was basketball.
Our younger boys loved basketball, so we immediately contacted the founders of NOAH (Northeastern Association of Homeschools) and signed up the younger three of our boys.
My youngest daughter decided she wanted to play also so after eliminating another ‘conviction’ that girls should not be participating in competitive sports, we signed her up the next season.
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| Devony photo credit, Jerry Palmer |
This marked the beginning of a ten-year happy relationship with mostly homeschooling Christian families from various denominations.
We had never been allowed to join homeschool support groups of any kind outside our own former church because they were...well... ecumenical.
Joining up with NOAH was one of the best decisions we made for our kids post exodus.
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| Dillon blocking a shot Photo credit Jerry Palmer |
We were still members of Eastland Baptist Church at the time we joined NOAH. Soon, other homeschooling families from Eastland joined NOAH as well and the void from losing friends, family and activity from the former church was filled with new friends and so much wholesome activity, we were near overwhelmed!
NOAH leaders quickly loaded us up with assignments.
I became the elementary athletic coordinator (something I knew absolutely nothing about) stretching me to a whole new sphere of learning.
The boys and one daughter excelled in basketball. One son also played baseball for a season and two of the girls played volleyball.
Later, (I am not sure how much later, maybe a year?) Paul was chosen by the board to be president of the organization. During that time, he got a vision to start a full-tackle, 11-man football team.
This was something I saw as unattainable, but what did I know?
Enough NOAH families, coaches as well as board members caught the vision as well so under Paul’s leadership and the Board’s expertise at making it all happen, tackle football became a NOAH reality even competing against 5A public school programs!
NOAH'S football program continues to thrive to this day, some players even being selected for full-ride scholarships to colleges such as OU.
Paul’s term as president was supposed be limited to two years but because NOAH had become the largest homeschool athletic organization in the nation, and because new sports were constantly being added to the program under his leadership, the board extended his term for another 2 years.
ESPN's program, "Outside the Lines" contacted Paul and arranged to do a segment on NOAH which aired on their station.
It was through our relationship and experiences with NOAH families, being the non-denominational homeschool athletic association it was, we began to realize there were caring, committed people outside of restrictive, exclusive independent fundamental Baptist faith practices, who were accomplishing ‘great things for God’ also.
We also came to realize there were many other ways we could be useful apart from the constraints of the church we thought we'd never leave.
How could we have been shackled so long by the idea that ‘no-one-else-was-doing-it-right-but-our-tiny-little-extra-fundamental-Baptist-church?’
With all these new revelations and more to come, I began to question and explore—for the first time— what role my fundamentalist upbringing played in our drifting towards such an extreme!
It all began before I was even born....
Well written!! I can remember my grandma saying she would never buy groceries at a store that sold alcohol. Of course, now we know she would never buy groceries. All of the rules and regulations never had anything to do with Jesus.
ReplyDeleteYou said, "He wouldn’t even have noticed had we not made a deal of it." I think of my own upbringing. I can hardly see a lady wearing a low-cut neck line with out it coming out front and center in my brain! All I can see are boobs! But what if my religious upbringing didn't bring attention to it, then, I probably would have never noticed it.
We surely made a big deal out of nothing! Thanks for your post!