People feel it is common knowledge that when you are stressed, you do not act like your true self. This view is incorrect.

Every choice we make is a reflection of ourselves, even when we are out of control. Such an understanding is biblical and it is the reason the Bible condemns impure thoughts, however benign. We are animals with the will to transcend our animal nature. The price of Sin is pain we don't understand, and it becomes all too real when our stress overwhelms us. Sin is spiritual poverty.

Naturally, my mother's righteous daddy issues meant she had unreasonable expectations of the men in her life.

Some years ago, Iowa had a hurricane-like storm we called "The Derecho". My mother's city was hit very hard. My older brother called me and asked for me to check on her since I lived the closest. Out of concern for my mother, I agreed. I packed provisions and got on the road to travel, when I got a call back. My mother eventually got cell reception and called the family to report she was okay. I was relieved and went back to my normal routine.

The next day, I got a call from my mother, and she chewed me out. She criticized me for not having a good plan, saying that the roads were demolished, many trees were felled, that there was no way I could have gotten to her and done anything about her situation… This boggled my mind.

How could a mother who presents herself as magnanimous be so upset that her son made an effort to help her? She was clearly not concerned for my safety. Worst case scenario, I would've been stuck in a traffic jam. Rather, she was stressed for her own safety, and the core message of her complaint was "I'm scared. Why aren't you doing more for me?"

This was her true self – as needy and unreasonable as a child. It was the same true self she showed me during the divorce and every other moment of her life where she was overhwhelmed by stress. And she was stressed a lot. The honeymoon phase of becoming a born-again Christian clearly ran its course with her. She was extremely depressed, and her religion made her powerless to change.

My father was conspicuously absent when my mother dragged us children to church. And to my mother's credit, she never said anything along the lines of "Your father needs to be a Christian." However, I knew my father to be a very intelligent and open minded man, even if he was stubborn at times. His indifference told me a lot about the overbearing personality of my mother. He had clearly just given up.

Eventually, when I was a teenager, I told my mother I rejected Christianity and didn't want to be part of the church anymore. Her response was extremely bitter. She became witholding and passive aggressive, her same strategy of choice during the divorce.

In reality, I was not rejecting God. I was rejecting my unhinged mother. I had an already forming image of myself and my spirit and the divorce destroyed that. I am not exaggerating when I say I was poisoned by my mother's poor character. My relationship with God was accordingly stunted.

God is an abstract concept, and abstract thinking is naturally frusturating to many people.

I was a smart kid, and often times smarter than the adults in my life. I had a chip on my shoulder, but that is to be expected of any quick-witted teenager with a volatile home life. My worst childhood experiences with adults were the ones made insecure by my intelligence. The Christians in my life met many of my questions with agitation and contempt. Many things they said were meant to put me down.

For my last year of high school, my mother moved out of our town due to poor money management. This was a problem for me, as I had just enrolled in college classes that would put me far ahead in my studies. I ended up living with Christians we knew from the church, even though they knew I was atheist. One of my buddies cleverly referred to them as my "rental parents".

They probably saw it as a chance to show me the kindness that Christians are known for, but in reality, it was an awkward and stressful living situation for both of us. It was made worse by the fact that they felt I should just know how to meet their untold expectations.

I remember the gift the rental mother gave me before I left. It was a book called "God Doesn't Believe In Atheists" by Ray Comfort. Though I obviously disagreed, I read the book anyway (I was a big reader) and it was incredibly insulting to my intelligence. The contents of the book are best described with the playground taunt "neener neener pumpkin eater". It was an immature reflection of a man's anger that the people around him did not believe what he believed. This woman probably saw the cover, didn't read it at all, and gave it to me as a final jab of her disapproval.

I saw this theme far too often in my life. At one point, I was deliberately bullied by a Bible camp counselor for my atheistic views. He belittled and demeaned me with little regard for the fact that he was 4 times my age. He was a low quality Christian, much like my "rental parents".

But it wasn't all bad. Another counselor saw me for who I was. I had attended that camp for years, and he remembered me vivdly for the questions I would ask. He did not judge. He told me simply about his life. He said, "When I was in my 20s, I believed as you believe, and eventually I found my truth in Jesus Christ. Should you die and be condemned, I would take your place in Hell for you." He gave me his contact information and told me to seek him out if life become too much. His kindness was real. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary glimpse of true grace.

My mother bounced between churches (which is not a bad thing in and of itself). The church she eventually settled with was filled with Christians that had tragic life stories. She was more than happy to join the pity party, but looking back, her problems were not nearly as bad as her peers. I imagine they resented her dramatic personality.

The reality is simple. My mother was a tragic Christian and sought out other tragic Christians. They were Christians that were barely clinging to their faith and sense of self. Every single kid I knew in my youth group ended drinking and doing drugs in their teens – except the kid in the wheelchair (go figure). To me, that fact is a sign of deeper spiritual poverty.

My mother often set an example of gullibly trusting other Christians and our meager household suffered for it. Such people are depressed and on auto-pilot.

It is okay to think better of someone because they hold themselves accountable to God. It is better than holding yourself accountable to yourself, which could mean anything in this day and age. But the core message of the Bible is "things are more than what they appear," so be prudent. My mother believed that by blindly accepting other Christians, others would give her the same credit and not look too closely. Of course, she was wrong. She has few friends and her own children do not trust her.

I remember going to a Sunday school that taught very dodgy lessons. In one lesson, the teacher offered us two different white powders. One was sugar and one was salt. Plenty of kids fell for the trick, and the lesson is that virtue and sin can look the same but taste very different. But the lesson fell flat on me because I knew sugar glows and salt does not. I didn't eat the salt because it was clear to me. That lesson is relatively benign, but the overall message to children was not to trust your own discernment (and you should be trusting God, i.e. the Christians in your life who have come to know God).

Another lesson given to us was that we should always capitalize the "G" in "God" but never capitalize the "S" in "Satan." In the teachers words, if we did that, "Satan wins." I was wise enough to know that my grammar wasn't a reflection of my spiritual worth, but imagine being a vulnerable kid and absorbing the message that you could suffer in hell for such a mistake. Years later, a high school English teacher of mine got very, very upset with the class when she found a paper where the G in God wasn't capitalized. She was on the verge of tears. I knew exactly what she had been taught.

Imagine you are speaking to a Christian from 1000 AD. You say to him, "In the future, we have made incredible leaps in medicine, and found ways to mix plants and minerals that provide incredible cures. But we discovered that bogus medicine still works if one merely thinks it will work. We highly value the truth, so we go to great lengths to remove it from our calculations."

If a Christian of antiquity heard such a description, he would say, "Ah. You speak of the healing power of Jesus Christ. I have seen it create many miracles in my life. You would be foolish to remove it entirely."

It is non-trivial that double blind studies are required to support modern medicine. Medical research is expensive precisly because belief is so powerful. To fight against placebos is to fight against God. It is a fight we seem to be winning, but we will always lose the war.

Visualizing your demons gives you a way to fight them. Consider the Bible as a precursor to the DSM-5. Your body and your mind are linked, and our modern attempts to separate them seem foolish in the bigger picture.

For example, witch hunts seem incredibly barabaric from a modern perspective. Why would people do that? The hard truth is that mental illness is contagious. And witches were executed because non-confrontational societies started to decay in ways that were hard to reverse. If you are mentally ill, hanging out with other mentally ill people is the worst thing you can do.

If it is difficult to emotionally invest in the story of Christianity, I'd encourage you to see the Bible as an ancient soap opera. The Bible was a source of entertainment for most of our culture's history. And like most modern television, it comes overall themes and lessons that are supposed to shape our lives and beliefs.

I am a big fan of anime, and I know a lot of people that have incredible skill in recognizing narrative depth. That skill can be used to extract the deeper meaning of the Bible. But like me, that understanding has been gate kept by the low quality Christians in their lives.

Yes, the Catholic church has revised the Bible over history to fit an overall message. This is not the end of the world if you see the Bible as a tool for cultural instruction.² Just like shows that are retconned to fit an overall theme or message. Think of it as patch notes from the Catholic church.

Though this is not an unconventional view, it's only when you actually surrender that you feel Jesus' love. Such an admission is a difficult given the depth of our vanity and pride. The power of Jesus' is receiving forgiveness independent of the people in your life. And even when you do surrender, those good feelings can be exhausting to maintain. Worst case scenario, you believe you are entitled to forgiveness from others because you were forgiven by Jesus.

Surrendering to a divine abstraction is not natural, until you go through some bullshit that makes you realize that you really, really need it. Then its like your body kicks in and starts to understand the bigger picture. In times of peace and prosperity, the age where that happens gets older and older. This is concerning.

I joined a mixed gender small group as part of the mega-church. The guy who was running it seemed likeable enough, but over time he was clearly more and more agitated by my presence.

Like my mother, I had naively assumed that other Christians would be like me, sharing my enjoyment of depth and insight in religious conversation. But I was sorely mistaken. I think that small group was best described as a yuppie support group that simply happened to be Christian.

Conversation was lively when talk was about furniture and new houses and dogs and family and what was airing on TV. But when it came time to speak of God and the text we studied that week, the room grew very, very quiet. I am a deep thinker (and a former yuppie) and I had plenty of things to discuss about my beliefs and how I've changed as a person. But I naturally held my tongue to fit the tone of the room.

After some months, when I felt comfortable enough to openly share my thoughts, I got little engagement. What engagement I did get was agitated and impatient dismissals from the grou p leader. I eventually noticed that when I spoke, the group leader would tense his face in disgust.

What am I to do? Say something along the lines of "You should be more patient with my ideas" which would be recieved as "I'm basically smarter than you on this"? I am not so foolish. When I pointed out to him that he was clearly agitated by the things I said, he flat out denied it.

He was plenty intelligent, but we are immersed in different worlds and he had trouble relating to my intense self-reflection and inner dialogue. What troubles me is that on the surface he appeared open-minded, but over time it was clear he was deeply stressed and fighting inner demons. I naturally left the group with some bad blood between us. His material preoccupations and blasé attitude to spiritual insight is the exact poverty I am trying to avoid.

I am not perfect and I do not expect everyone to express their faith as I do. But if I am to live a fulfilling life with Christ, I must seek Christians that seek what I seek with patience and grace. Learn from the parable of The Two Pots. Equals make the best friends because they can think and act together without fear. It is not a matter of superiority.

One of my main criticisms about the young adult mega-church is that, on the surface, they claim to be apolitical and supporting of both liberal and conservative views. Unfortunately, this is itself a liberal perspective, and I especially felt that clash in my small group. That group leader was deeply involved with the church's functions and my conservative beliefs clearly put him on edge. I doubt I would have found people like me if I continued to volunteer in that church.

So what kind of church is a natural fit for people like me? Apparently Quakers are known for their open-mindedness, so I will give that a shot. But I expect to be shopping around for a while. I have to accept that Christianity is a potent commerical product (for good reason), and I must practice frugality in my commitments to a church just as I would with my money.