Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

This book won the International Booker Prize in 2025, which is when I added it to the list. 

 

The author and the book warrant some explanation. 

 

The stories were originally written in Kannada, a language mostly spoken in southern India. It is one of the Dravidian languages, related to Tamil, but not close to the best-known Indian languages of Hindi and Urdu. It is spoken by around 65 million people worldwide, according to the translator. It also was used as the official court language for dynasties of the past. 

 

So, it is a significant and important language, even though it isn’t that well known in the United States. I mention this in part because it is the first work I have read translated from Kannada, and also because there are a number of untranslated words in the book that you just have to figure out from context. 

 

Banu Mushtaq isn’t just a writer, although she has written quite a number of short stories and poems, a novel, and essays. She is also a lawyer and feminist activist. Both of these inform her writing, and the stories in this collection often involve the failures of the legal system to protect vulnerable women. 

 

Mushtaq’s personal life is also fascinating. She apparently has a great facility in languages, speaking a half dozen fluently. She was born into a devout Muslim family, but defied expectations by waiting until age 26 to marry, and then doing so for love, not as an arranged marriage. 

 

She has been involved in feminist activism for decades. In one case, she was boycotted and threatened for advocating for the admission of women to mosques. On the other side, she has also advocated for the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab in schools, in response to the Hindu majority in India suppressing minority rights. 

 

So, quite the character, and an interesting writer. 

 

Heart Lamp is a collection of twelve short stories, mostly about everyday life for working and middle class Muslim women in India. Many of them have feminist themes, but that undersells the richness of the stories. They are all about ordinary people, ordinary situations, family dynamics, social problems, the sort of things that all of us humans around the world have experienced and can understand. 

 

The stories were selected by the translator from across the author’s career. Thus, they feel very much like a “greatest hits,” rather than an album, if that makes sense. 

 

I also want to note at the outset that if you read them from the wrong perspective, you will miss the nuance that religion plays in this book. It is all too easy to lapse into islamophobia, and smugness about the supposed superiority of Western views of women. 

 

This is problematic for a few reasons. First, and one that struck me immediately, the patriarchal attitudes of the men in this book are all too familiar to those of us who grew up in the Christian Patriarchy subculture. The idea that women are essentially property, to be owned by men, is endemic to that subculture as much as it is to conservative Islam. I noted so many direct parallels between the things said in this book and things I have heard over the years from the various theobros within our modern White Christian Nationalism movement. 

 

Thus, if you aren’t paying attention, you will miss what this book has to say about our own version of patriarchy. 

 

Second, and this was fascinating to me as well, Mushtaq pushes back against patriarchy by showing that the patriarchal power structures, legal realities, and social culture are actually in violation of the official teachings of Islam. It isn’t that Islam doesn’t protect the rights of women to be supported and not abandoned, it is that the mosques, the courts, and society refuse to enforce the rights granted to women in the Koran. 

 

This is very much like the work of various feminist Christian advocates, who point out the many ways that patriarchy ignores everything from the teachings of Christ to the history of the early church, which had full leadership by women. The issue isn’t religion per se, but the way that patriarchy - and indeed hierarchies of power in general - have co-opted religion for its own ends.

 

Third, what this book brings out is the connection between power and oppression. In a society where, for a variety of cultural, legal, structural, economic, and religious reasons, one gender is denied meaningful power - social, economic, and political - that gender (or ethnicity, or religion, or other classification) will inevitably be oppressed. The power feeds the oppression, which then reinforces the power. 

 

So, the better lesson is one that history has taught us, which is that power structures need to be changed. It isn’t enough to “fix” theology to be more “kind” to the powerless. You need to actually eliminate the power differential, and change will follow. 

 

Just one way this works is that trying to change the theology of gender will never actually happen until you give women and gender/sexual minorities equal power in determining what that theology will be. And that goes equally for Christianity as for Islam. 

 

Finally, if these stories show anything, it is that the power structures themselves determine what thought is even possible. Many of the men in these stories aren’t monsters per se, but they do monstrous things because of the culture that envelopes them: the expectation of what women are and how they should act, the beliefs about what men are entitled to have and do, how both fit into the social structure. 

 

I should also add that while there are some definite villains, there are a lot more complicated people. Some of the women are pretty horrible too, some of the men are caught in situations where there is no good answer, most of the men are feckless and thoughtless, not intentionally cruel. 

 

I should also mention that the audiobook has two narrators - a woman for the stories from the female perspective, a man for the ones from the male perspective. Mushtaq doesn’t write from a single perspective - the stories are from a variety of points of view, male and female, rich(ish) and poor. 

 

With that, I want to look at each of the stories briefly. 

 

“Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal”

 

This story is narrated by a young, educated woman - perhaps much like the author in her youth - newly married. Her husband gets a job out in the sticks, and she finds herself lonely, until she meets another, slightly older couple. 

 

The husband, Iftikhar, seems devoted to his wife, Shaista, particularly by the standards of the culture. However, he seems to envision his daughters getting married off early, without any education. 

 

Shaista already has six children, and the eldest daughter is tasked with helping to raise them, despite her obvious aptitude for academics.

 

Shaista intends to get sterilized after her pregnancy finishes, even though her husband doesn’t agree. This is a factor in multiple stories, by the way - the connection of contraception to women’s rights, particularly the right to their own bodies. 

 

“Fire Rain”

 

This is a law-oriented story, from the perspective of the local mutawalli, who seems to be a civic functionary connected to the mosque. He apparently lends money and resolves minor disputes. 

 

There are several interconnected issues of justice that arise. First of all, his sister has demanded that she receive her lawful share of the inheritance. Under Sharia Law, she is entitled to it (something islamophobes don’t realize about their favorite bogeyman), but “tradition” has tended to let the oldest son manage the money for everyone else. 

 

The story, even with its heavy themes, turns humorous when the central issue ends up being a ne’r-do-well who goes missing, and it appears his body was buried in the Hindu cemetery, without the proper rights. This becomes a whole case, an exhumation, and the embarrassment when the “dead” man turns up. Oh well… 

 

But throughout this story (which I thought was a particularly good one) is the question of how to do justice. There is always a tension between community expectations, the letter of the law, and what true justice would be, particularly for women. 

 

Something to think about.

 

“Black Cobras”

 

Another law-related story, and one that is pretty heart-rending and infuriating. A young woman is abandoned with her three daughters when her husband decides to take a second wife. Because she only gave birth to daughters, of course.

 

Sharia Law is clear here: the first wife is to receive exactly the same as any subsequent wife, to the very letter of each item. 

 

But the husband has no intention of providing anything. He totally abandons his wife and children to starvation, despite what Sharia actually says. And the local mosque leader looks the other way, claiming that the wife should have worked harder to satisfy her husband. 

 

This one had so many trigger points from my own fundamentalist background, including that admonition that the woman bears the responsibility when she is abandoned, abused, or cheated on. 

 

Another trigger was this: the first wife was raised in a super-devout family, deprived of sex education, and taught to repress her sexuality. So naturally, after three daughters in a short time, when her body shows signs of age and neglect, the husband trades her in on a younger, more sexually open woman. Yeah, this is pretty much what Fundie religious leaders do. 

 

A fascinating result of the horrible events of this story is that the women themselves take action, including getting sterilized. 

 

“A Decision of the Heart”

 

This is one of the more subtle stories, and involves two women, both of which have some issues, and a man caught in the middle. 

 

Yusef was raised by his widowed mother, Mehaboob Bi, who he now cares for. His wife, Akhila, is absurdly jealous of this, and starts a fight over it. To be fair, mommy isn’t great at defusing things either, and poor Yusef can’t seem to do anything right.

 

Finally, fed up, he is baited into arranging a marriage for his mother, so that she will have a husband to care for her. 

 

Ultimately, the situation is resolved in a reasonable manner, but one does have to wonder why the women - particularly the wife - had to be so horrible about it. 

 

But here too, society plays a problematic role. Without a social safety net, all widows have is their sons to support them. And if there is only one son…

 

But likewise, a wife loses social status if she isn’t taken care of in style, and people talk when the mother looks like number one. 

 

And Yusef, having little in the way of resources himself, has to balance the demands of his wife with the needs of his mother. There is no real way to win for him.

 

“Red Lungi”

 

This is another story with a certain amount of humor. Razia, a relatively wealthy woman, gets stressed out when relatives - including a LOT of young boy cousins - descend on her house for an event, decides to sponsor a mass circumcision ceremony - bankrolling the cost for a lot of poor residents of the town. 

 

This story is a bit graphic, though, so be warned, particularly since in the Islamic tradition, this is done when boys are older, not infants. 

 

In addition to the humor and the interesting slice of culture, there is also a subplot regarding wealth and privilege, and the duty we owe to the poorer members of our communities. 

 

“Heart Lamp”

 

This story is openly feminist, with a look at the impossible pressures placed on women in a patriarchal society. I wonder if it is based on one of the author’s cases.

 

Yet again, you have a man who has largely abandoned his family for a new wife. In this case, the first wife attempts to flee back to her family, but they reject her. Again, it is her fault that she has been abandoned for a younger woman. 

 

In this case, one feels particularly sympathy for the first wife, because she was forced to give up her education by her family, in favor of an arranged marriage that has clearly not worked out for her. And, as in the earlier story, her own family refuses to confront the man and demand what their own sister and daughter is entitled to under Sharia Law. 

 

The ending is very nearly tragic, and in fact is still somewhat tragic, even if not as horrid as it threatens to be. 

 

The thing here, once again, is that what is needed is no so much a religious change as a legal one. If an abandoned wife could get instant child support and spousal support, she wouldn’t be in this awful situation. 

 

I should also mention that we Westerners shouldn’t be smug about this. It wasn’t that long ago - my parents’ lifetime - that marital rape was legal, that men could take the children from a woman who left an abusive marriage, and when a woman couldn’t even file for divorce on the grounds of mental abuse. 

 

As I pointed out years ago in a post (that got me on the bad side of my former pastor), it wasn’t “Christianity” that made the difference - it was Feminism. It was the demand by women that the law and society change. 

 

“High Heeled Shoe”

 

Another humorous story. Nayez has inferiority issues with his younger brother, who has become wealthy, while Nayez is stuck in a low bureaucratic position. At the same time, his brother is unhappy that Nayez has managed their modest inheritance without consulting him. 

 

At the center of the story is a ridiculous pair of high heeled shoes that the younger brother’s wife wears, that Nayez has become obsessed with, despite the fact that his own wife is pregnant and doesn’t like that kind of shoe. 

 

There are some echoes of Mma Makutsi in Alexander McCall Smith’s books in this story. 

 

“Soft Whispers”

 

This story is both a present-day story, and a nostalgic look back at childhood events in the life of a young girl. There is also the question as to whether a childhood nemesis has grown into a decent man - and if he even remembers the past. 

 

This one has careful detail, and memorable incidents. A very well-written story. 

 

“A Taste of Heaven”

 

Probably the most hilarious of the stories. It contains an edge of social commentary inside - the problem of a woman widowed at a young age, who never had children, and whose family has essentially failed to facilitate a remarriage. 

 

But the woman in question, Bi Dadi, also has some, well, issues. The inciting incident is one where a young and feckless nephew uses her ancient and frayed prayer mat to wipe off his motorcycle, causing her to essentially go on hunger strike no matter how many apologies she receives.

 

Oh, and she probably is in the early stages of dementia, which doesn’t help at all. After several failed attempts to get her out of her funk fail, including a change of residence, what ends up working is unexpected and indeed accidental. 

 

The children give her a drink of Pepsi, and claim it is aab-e-kausar, the sacred water of heaven. Believing that she has died, and that her late husband is there with her (even though she cannot see him), she suddenly has a zest for life again. As long as the Pepsi keeps on flowing…

 

“The Shroud”

 

This story is a commentary on class, on promises, and on carelessness. When an old servant requests that Shaziya bring back a burial shroud for her when she goes on her Haj pilgrimage, Shaziya starts off with good intentions. But then she gets distracted, and ends up with too much luggage for the return journey, and the shroud is forgotten. 

 

Shaziya’s guilt will haunt her after her servant’s death. 

 

“The Arabic Teacher and Gobi Manchuri”

 

Another humorous story, but also rather weird. Because the narrator is a lawyer much like the author, I wonder if there is a personal connection. 

 

Because of social norms, despite having the better job, the lawyer is expected to do all the childrearing. And that includes finding an Arabic teacher for the children. 

 

The one the narrator ends up with though, has a bizarre obsession with Gobi Manchuri, an Indo-Chinese food commonly sold from street stalls - and perhaps an analogue to french fries here in the US. 

 

Anyway, total junk food, and not something a self-respecting Indian wife would cook. 

 

But he teacher is obsessed, leading to a compromising situation with the daughters he is supposed to be teaching. Not that he was doing anything bad - they were trying to cook Gobi Manchuri. 

 

Things spiral out of control from there, leading the poor lawyer trying to figure out if she can save a marriage….with a simple recipe. 

 

“Be A Woman Once, Oh Lord”

 

This isn’t so much a story as a prayer. A prayer from an abandoned and abused woman to Allah, which ends with the title as the final line. 

 

And it really is a tour-de-force of the toxic combination of theology, power, and dehumanization. 

 

This is the inherent problem when the Divine is envisioned as being male. Women are inevitably seen and treated as sub-human. 

 

The specifics of the events in this story/prayer may be rooted in the culture described, but they are a sad refrain wherever women are seen as less-than men, where power is vested in males, and where the Divine itself is seen as phallic. 

 

***

 

Heart Lamp is an interesting collection, and worth the Booker prize. 

 

I want to note that the translator, Deepa Bhasthi, includes an extensive note at the end, which is also very good. In it, she talks about everything from her conversations with the author - they grew up fairly close together, although the translator is Hindu - to why words in various languages are left untranslated. It’s quite fascinating. 

 

The narrators of the audiobook are Deepti Gupta and Vikas Adam, and they did a good job of capturing the nuances of the untranslated words, as well as a certain cadence that (in my experience) captures a certain region of India - we have a lot of Indian immigrants and their descendants where I live. 

 

Toxic Religious Teachings that Harm Children

This post was inspired by a facebook post from Jim Palmer, whose musings on post-religious spirituality have been helpful to me as I navigate the aftermath of leaving Evangelicalism and deconstructing from a religion that seems indistinguishable from a white supremacist political movement, and, as I have come to realize with some distance, mostly unconnected with historical Christianity.  

 

Likewise, the aftermath of estrangement from my birth parents, due to a poisonous combination of religious authoritarian parenting, supremacist theopolitical ideology, fascist politics, and sibling favoritism has meant a lot of reckoning with the way that the theology I was taught continues to impact my life even though I mostly do not believe it anymore. It is a kind of emotional muscle memory that may never entirely go away. 

 

Before I get into Palmer’s eleven ways that toxic religion damages children, I want to note why I wanted to write this post, and also why I have rejected each and every one of these toxic teachings.

 I love this James Tissot painting.

***

 

Why I wrote this post:

 

First and foremost, my writing about religion is all about solidarity with other survivors of a particular moment in American religion, where a pro-segregation political movement made a highly successful play to capture white protestant religion in America for the Republican Party. 

 

A key to this movement was religious authoritarian parenting, pushed by false teachers like James Dobson, John MacArthur, and Bill Gothard. It is nearly impossible to state strongly enough how these evil men continue to affect the lives of my generation of Evangelical children, even as we pass the midpoint of our lives. 

 

A shockingly high percentage are estranged from our parents, and even more have difficult relationships. Many of us have struggled with self-confidence, doubting our own intuition, denying our own legitimate human needs, and finding that our parents’ words still affect our relationships with our partners and our children. 

 

As a result of this blog, I have actually made friends online and in real life, and our shared experience has been a commonality that brings us together. We are here for each other, to offer connection, comfort, affirmation, and solidarity. 

 

Second, I want to warn any current parents who are tempted by the false promises that there is a formula for raising compliant kids who will be a carbon copy of their parents in the areas of religion, culture, and especially politics. 

 

There is no formula.

 

There is only a formula guaranteed to cause heartache, conflict, trauma, and all too often estrangement. 

 

So I write as a warning. 

 

I also want to be clear here: I have no formula either. Other than, I guess, love your kids. Listen to your kids. Treat them like fellow humans. 

 

And, I guess, if you really want a few specific bits of parenting wisdom, here is all I got: (1) always pee first (2) kids will only go as far as their snack supply. 

 

That’s it. That’s the list. 

 

So I write in the hope that other children that come after me will be able to be raised in less toxic environments, and avoid the estrangement and trauma. 

 

***

 

Why I have rejected these teachings:

 

First, because they are emotionally damaging to children. 

 

That by itself should be sufficient. I do not believe that Truth™ is in conflict with reality, or that it will ever be a source of damage. If it doesn’t match with reality, it isn’t truth, and if it harms others, it isn’t truth either. It is a lie. 

 

Second, the more I studied the Bible from childhood on, and the more I learned of historical church teaching, history, and philosophy, the more I realized that most of the theology I was taught was just a bunch of shit made up centuries after Christ. 

 

In many cases, the teachings were “discovered” in 19th Century America by white males who either enslaved black people or defended those who did. 

 

Even the oldest ones seemed to have been invented by male theologians with serious psychological and social issues. I’m going to call out two specific men here: Augustine, with his mommy and daddy issues and his discomfort with his own body; and John Calvin, whose influence on American religion is often underrated. 

 

At least for these two, I believe that they were misguided in certain ways, helpful in others, and tried in good faith to explore their beliefs.

 

Not so much for the most influential American theologian, Confederate Robert Lewis Dabney, whose entire theological project was to justify the enslavement of Black people and the subordination of women. Oh, and also to promote the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. I don’t think most people realize just how much of Evangelical theology and culture - and of course politics - come directly from this evil man. 

 

Third, these teachings aren’t in the Bible, at least not the way that they are taught now. And they are fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Christ. 

 

The oldest ones, at best, derive from Augustine’s beliefs about what was meant by Saint Paul’s stream-of-consciousness attempt to find a meaning in Christ’s death. In this case, while Augustine’s interpretation is at least plausible, it is only one of many such plausible interpretations. 

 

Thus, it should be examined in light of whether it fits reality, and whether it harms or helps. And also in light of other passages in the Bible. Which, after all, isn’t a book of systematic theology, but an argument across centuries by humans trying to understand the Divine, ethics, and the best life to live. 

 

As I will note throughout this post, you can find just about anything in the Bible if you squint hard enough, but these teachings generally require a lot of squinting, plus a lot of ignoring conflicting texts. 

 

Fourth, dogma has a way of running roughshod over humans, which is something Christ spent his life fighting against. The problem of the Pharisees wasn’t that they didn’t get their theology right per se, but that they ignored the harm they were causing to people - including children. 

 

Fifth, most of these toxic teachings are, at their core, about control. It is about powerful people - usually male - justifying their control of those they see as beneath them. It is about religious and political institutions maintaining power and wealth and privilege. By teaching children these things, they hope to maintain that power and wealth and privilege. 

 

Finally, I think Christ’s teaching about children and millstones is helpful. We should be careful about how we treat children, about the things we say to them, the things we do to them, and the things we demand of them. 

 

Children are uniquely vulnerable. They are establishing the way they will interact with other humans, learning where - and whether - they are safe and loved and accepted. They are learning how to treat others too, and bad theology will lead to bad behavior if it is believed. 

 

What we do to children will affect them for good or evil for the rest of their lives, and trauma inflicted reverberates down the generations. (I believe this is the meaning of that Hebrew Scriptures warning that the “sins of the fathers” affect the third and fourth generations.) 

 

So when Christ says that it would be better for us to have millstones hung around our necks and for us to be cast into the sea rather than that we should cause harm to children, I take that very seriously. 

 

This is also why I have said that there are not enough millstones in the universe for false teachers like Dobson and MacArthur and Gothard. The millions of children they harmed - myself included - have been damaged by the filth they taught our parents. 

 

[For more on this, I recommend my page on false prophets, and the Authoritarian Parenting section of my Christian Patriarchy index.] 

 

***

 

Throughout this discussion, Jim Palmer’s original will be in green. My own thoughts will be in black. 

 

11 Ways Toxic Religion Damages Kids

 

Children depend on the adults around them to help them understand who they are and whether the world is a safe place. When religion is used to teach children to fear themselves, distrust their questions, or submit to harmful authority, those lessons can follow them long after childhood.

 

Here, I think Palmer nails it: toxic teachings make the world feel unsafe to children. It prevents them from understanding themselves, but makes them fear their own emotions and intuition. It shames children for having questions. It demands that they submit unquestioningly to approved authority. 

 

Here are 11 ways toxic religion harms children:

 

 Teaching them they are fundamentally bad. Telling children they are born sinful, unworthy, and rejected by God can make shame feel like the truth about who they are.

 

I think we can blame Augustine and Calvin for this one. “Total Depravity” isn’t actually in the Bible, and it seems to completely contradict most of what is in there, particularly the teachings of Christ.

 

And also, this lie is contradicted by what we observe in reality. Humans are complicated. The overwhelming majority of us contain a mix of good and bad, admirable and embarrassing, and so on. We as a species are capable of great good, and also of great evil. But most of us are just in the middle, muddling along as best we can.

 

In the right circumstances, we tend mostly to do the right thing. Given too much stress, insecurity, trauma, poverty, and so on, we often fail. (Yep, I know, reality skews liberal…)

 

But think about how horrible this teaching is to children. They are just trying to figure out life, and telling them that they are fundamentally evil inside? How awful is that? 

 

For me personally, this is one of the muscle memory things that still affects me at age 50. Combine the teaching with my mom’s telling me I was unattractive and would never get a woman unless I changed my defective personality, and you get the self-doubt that has haunted me my entire life. 

 

It has always been difficult for me to believe I was good enough. And, unfortunately, I still struggle with the fear of rejection, even after 25 years of marriage to a good woman who loves me. 

 

Far better to tell children that they are human. That they will fail, that others will fail, that perfection is neither a possibility nor a goal. Instead, we should all treat each other with grace and kindness and do the best we can. 

 

We are all capable of loving our neighbor, and we don’t need to say a magic prayer or believe in magical theology to do so. 

 

I should also note that, contrary to the teachings of the religious authoritarian parenting gurus, who claimed that children were little terrors, evil incarnate, and needed that beaten out of them, Christ taught that we needed to become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

 

[Political note: I think this toxic teaching is a factor in why the MAGA right can’t handle the truth of our history and present systemic racism. There is too much emotional baggage from the belief that we are inherently bad to face the fact that we have done bad things and should make changes.]

 

 Making them responsible for Jesus’ suffering. Telling children that their sin left God no choice but to have his own son tortured and killed can burden them with guilt they are too young to understand or carry.

 

I remember I cried when I first understood Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I was about as tall as a certain side table that is part of this memory, so I must have been very young. I think my parents misunderstood me. I felt even then that this was a horrible idea. Why couldn’t God have just forgiven without a bloody human sacrifice? 

 

This is a belief that hasn’t sat well with me since childhood. And indeed, it really isn’t a biblical idea. It comes from Calvin and others about 500 years ago. Before that, other beliefs dominated. 

 

I wrote about this more extensively a few years ago. I still think PSA requires a psychopathic, violent god, and is fundamentally incompatible with the character of Christ and the idea of a loving god. 

 

It also inevitably leads to personal cruelty. If you want to imitate your cruel and psychopathic god, you will become cruel and psychopathic yourself. 

 

Far better to teach children the truth, even though it is uncomfortable: those with political and religious power often murder those who advocate for the marginalized. This is a pattern throughout history. 

 

[Political note: even a cursory examination of white evangelical politics reveals that they are the cruelest people among us, disdaining empathy, and wishing violence and suffering on those different from them. Psychopathic theology leads to psychopathic behavior.] 

 

 Teaching them to distrust themselves. When children are told their thoughts, feelings, and natural inclinations are deceitful, they can lose confidence in their ability to recognize what they need and make judgments of their own.

 

Man, this is one I have struggled with all my life. I am naturally an introspective person, and have always - yes, as a little kid - thought deeply about what I think and believe. I am also an emotional person, something I have had to come to peace with as an adult. 

 

To put this burden on a child like me was beyond cruel. I already tended to doubt myself, to go in circles in my own head, and to try to please my parents. So I still fight the feeling that I cannot trust myself. 

 

Even more than that, I have had a hard time standing up for my own needs. In no small part because I was punished for doing so. I’ll have to write a post sometime on the all the things I sacrificed to my parents over the years, because they have affected my life profoundly, and not in a good way.

 

Ironically, in retrospect, even as a child, I had better judgment than my parents. I saw through Gothard long before they did. I saw through the alternative “medicine” my mom foisted on our family. I recognized the lies and the bullshit in theology and politics, and they hated that in me. 

 

Part of growing up has been embracing the fact that I do have an active bullshit detector, and that I should trust it. Not blindly, of course - and I have always been one to verify things, doubt myself, and seek better information - but when it goes off, I have been nearly always correct.

 

Even now, when I am a half century old, my parents still try to use this as a means of control. I can’t trust myself, but I am supposed to trust them - and more accurately the political and religious charlatans they follow. 

 

[Political note: This belief reduces morality to “obeying approved authorities.” It removes a person’s responsibility to follow their conscience and intellect and take actual responsibility for their behavior. Instead, morality is outsourced. And we can all tell who it is outsourced to these days.] 

 

 Using fear and shame to secure obedience. Threats of punishment, divine rejection, or eternal torment can make conformity feel necessary for safety and belonging.

 

Ah yes, my mother taking the opportunity of my 48th birthday to threaten me with hell because I don’t do things her way. 

 

It should be obvious that this is all about maintaining power and control. It replaces “because I said so,” which stops working early in childhood with “because God says so.” And don’t think too hard about exactly how they know what God wants…

 

It really is all about maintaining power. Without hell and separation from God, most churches would lose their ability to control. If people truly embraced the idea of a loving God, and love of neighbors - all of them - as what it meant to commune with the divine, religious authorities would lose their power of control and conformity. 

 

I am thankful that I discovered C. S. Lewis’ book, The Great Divorce, in Jr. High, and stopped believing in Scary Evangelical Hell™ - I couldn’t square the idea of being eternally “happy” while those I loved suffered forever. But I could definitely see how people put themselves in hell during their lifetimes. (I think in a significant way, my parents have done this to themselves.) 

 

I think we would be better off teaching our children that this life matters. We should do what we can to avoid making life hell for others, and we should choose not to live there ourselves. 

 

In fact, the Kingdom of Heaven is literally here, right now, among us - that is a core teaching of Christ! We can either choose to participate in it, through love of neighbor and embrace of our common humanity, or we can reject it and create hells for ourselves. 

 

[Political note: One can only wonder how much better American religious people would be if they knew that they would be spending their afterlife with all the people they hate. Assuming you believe in a heaven, there is no doubt that it will contain more brown people than white, a lot of strong women, people who were immigrants and refugees in this life, and yes, a whole bunch of LGBTQ people. Maybe we can start loving our neighbors now, rather than assume God is going to fry them all because they are different from us…] 

 

 Teaching them to diminish people who believe differently. Children learn prejudice when they are taught that rejecting, fearing, or looking down on others is proof of loyalty to God.

 

This one took time to deprogram from, but I am glad I made the effort. Unfortunately, one reason I was motivated to do so was seeing my mother build her entire identity around looking down on everyone different from her. Which included my wife. 

 

Again, here C. S. Lewis was a childhood influence, with the character of Emeth in the last Narnia book. Like G. K. Chesterton and others of his time and place, Lewis was more anti-Muslim than I think was warranted. Perhaps a hangover from the Crusades. 

 

But he did make an important leap in acknowledging that actions matter more than theology. As Aslan points out to Emeth, the devout follower of “Tash” (the stand-in for Allah), all good actions are done in service of God, and all evil actions cannot, by definition, be done in service of God - they are done in service of evil. 

 

This really stuck with me, and is the reason that today I firmly believe that beliefs matter only insofar as they inform action. Whether I believe in one of the doctrines of Christianity versus the doctrines of other belief systems is ultimately unimportant compared to whether I act in a way that follows Christ. 

 

To quote the one pastor of my childhood that I still greatly admire: Love God, Love Your Neighbor, Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously. 

 

Or perhaps: Do Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly. 

 

It is inevitable that all of us will misunderstand things about god/the universe/reality - however you want to see it. And so what? We will not be judged by whether we got the theological superstructure exactly correct, but by whether we acted out of love for neighbor the best we could given our knowledge and ability. 

 

Far better to teach our children that the world is a diverse place, that people see things differently based on a whole range of factors. And that is okay. Difference is beautiful, not something to fear, reject, and persecute. 

 

If we approach difference with curiosity and grace, we might experience that beauty and connection. 

 

[Political note: Trump. No further comment needed. That vile man was able to get full worship and loyalty from evangelicals precisely because he embodied their fear and hate of people different from them.] 

 

 Making authority unquestionable. Telling children that questioning parents, pastors, or religious teachers is an offense against God leaves them vulnerable to manipulation and less able to recognize or speak up about harm.

 

If you want the story of my teen years. And really, my adult years too. I have never been able to avoid questioning authority. And especially my parents and religious authorities. 

 

But this, of course, was the core of Gothard’s teaching. God only speaks to you through your authorities. So shut up and do what you are told. 

 

This is, as I have discussed in other posts, exactly how you raise children to be concentration camp guards, capable of casual murder. “I was just following orders.” 

 

 Treating sexuality as dirty or dangerous. Shame about bodies, sexual thoughts, and desires can interfere with a child’s ability to develop a healthy relationship with their body, boundaries, and sexuality.

 

I pretty much had to deprogram everything Evangelicalism taught me about sexuality in order to have a healthy marriage and sex life. Everything. 

 

Here, I am going to again blame Augustine and his mental health issues. Yep, he had a weird, creepy relationship with his mommy. Yep, he had a distant father who was secular and kind of a bro when it came to sex. Yeah, there was that awkward thing with the erection in the bathhouse. 

 

And yeah, he fucked around as a young man, using and discarding women. Including his long-term mistress and the mother of his child - he sent them both away and never saw them again so he could find religion and move back in with his mommy. Ewwww. 

 

(Full disclosure: I read Confessions in my early 20s. Damn was that an eye opener. Some good stuff, but also, why the hell did we ever take his writings on sex and gender remotely seriously?) 

 

Anyway, it was Augustine who decided that sex was the original sin, that we are all sinful because sin is transmitted through semen, all the way down from Adam. (See above: “we are all bad.”) 

 

To say that Augustine struggled greatly with the reality that humans have bodies - and that we are animals - is to put it mildly. 

 

One can only wonder what trajectory Christianity might have taken if not for Augustine. Ironically, we preserved all of his sexual hangups while rejecting the good: his support for science, his advocacy for the poor, his ethical approach to politics. 

 

Bottom line: teaching children that their bodies - particularly the sexual parts - are dirty is harmful. Teaching them that sexual desire has to be rigorously suppressed until the males make enough money and females attract a man desiring to own her (that’s what marriage traditionally has been) is problematic. It is a mammon and rape based view of sexuality, not one that embodies humanity, kindness, and love.

 

For all her faults, I learned a lot from Dr. Laura, back when she was still a feminist and sex-positive author. It makes me sad that she somehow ended up going down the conservative talk show host trajectory, spiraling into racism and anti-LGBTQ views as she aged. Before that, though, her views of marriage and sex as mutual were helpful to me. 

 

Unlike all the crap books people gave me from the Evangelical Industrial Complex.

 

Instead, I think we should be teaching our children that their bodies are amazing, including the sex bits. That they are part of nature, and that, while not universal, sexuality is a human experience. 

 

And, of course, that sex should be done with full and enthusiastic consent, that it should be done intelligently, taking advantage of our knowledge of contraception and disease prevention, and that it should be seen as part of how humans bond with partners. Thus, sex should never be a show of dominance (as the theobros claim) or a way of proving masculinity or femininity. It should be an expression of love and care for one’s partner, a means of mutual pleasure, and if desired, a way of producing children.

 

They also should be taught that sexuality exists in many forms, and that sex and gender aren’t binaries. They should be taught to treat others with respect and kindness regardless of sexuality or gender identity. 

 

Likewise, I believe children should not be taught to shame others. Yes, it is best to prevent undesired pregnancies, but an unexpected child should never be a shame. All are deserving of love. 

 

Shockingly, this kind of approach to human sexuality actually reduces unwanted pregnancy and abortion. It reduces domestic violence. It increases healthy relationships. 

 

[Political note: I cannot even begin to describe how fucked up evangelical teaching on sexuality is. But this is, at least, coming to light in all its ugliness. That evangelical sexual “ethics” are really just vicious misogyny and male entitlement can be seen everywhere, but certainly in their support for child rapist, sexual harasser, and general predator Donald Trump.] 

 

 Discouraging independent thought. When curiosity is treated as rebellion and predetermined answers replace honest inquiry, children lose opportunities to develop critical thinking and confidence in their own judgment.

 

This one is complicated for me. On the one hand, my parents did - at least sometimes - encourage independent thought. But this became less common as I got older, as they fell further into the morass of Gothardism and Christian Nationalism. 

 

I wrote about their moral disintegration in this post. It still is weird to me that I felt more free to think for myself as a child than I did as a teen, and more free as a teen than I have as an adult. Not in the sense of my personal freedom - I have progressively expanded my world that way - but in the sense that independent thought was less and less acceptable to my parents.

 

In fact, if you want to get to the heart of literally every disagreement I had with my parents as a teen, and the root of the eventual disintegration of our relationship, it comes back to the fact that I insisted on thinking differently from them, and they couldn’t handle that.

 

I know plenty of children, though, whose parents were even worse. In fact, keeping children from thinking independently was literally the goal of religious authoritarian parenting. 

 

I was seen as the “rebellious” child, because I questioned the religious, cultural, and political dogmas. I was expected to accept the predetermined answers, and whenever I learned about reality that contradicted those predetermined answers, I was suspected of evil. 

 

Even now, as a middle-aged adult, I am seen as going to hell because I disagree with certain dogmas. Chief among them, my affirmation of LGBTQ people and my feminist approach to gender roles. (Which, of all things, why the most culturally specific ones? Well, because the faith isn’t really religious, it is political, and genitals are a shorthand for who is dominant and who is submissive. The root of all of this is misogyny and the goal is a return to a mythical past of white male supremacy.)  

 

Since I believe, as Aquinas once said, that all truth is God’s truth, it is important that we teach children to seek truth and wisdom, rather than defend dogmas. 

 

[Political note: Um, have you talked to a right winger lately? The vast gulf between reality and the dogmas they cling to is ever larger. “Truth” is determined by whatever the Orange Fascist and Faux News is saying today…] 

 

 Threatening their loved ones with eternal punishment. Telling children that family members or friends who do not believe will suffer forever can fill their relationships with fear, grief, and a sense of responsibility for other people’s salvation.

 

Good god, I am so glad I rejected hell at an early age. It has enabled me to go through life without being terrified that people I love will burn in hell forever. It has enabled me to enjoy my children rather than constantly trying to “save” them. It has enabled me to have relationships with other people without having to sell them Amway my religion. 

 

It’s pretty obvious that this whole pile of horseshit exists as a means of control. And also as a deflection. 

 

Who cares if people have enough to eat? Just get them to say the magic prayer and they will escape hell. 

 

This is literally the justification the Inquisition used for torturing people. Get a “repentance” right before they die, and you save the soul. 

 

I’m sorry, that’s evil. And it shouldn’t be taught to children. They should be free to love and be loved without obsessing over the “salvation” of other humans. 

 

I’ll also mention the destructive results of this in my birth family, where “saving” the rest of us is my mom’s obsession, and that has come at the expense of relationships. Note that, despite lip service to saying the magic prayer, and even to “following Christ,” the actual expectation is full cultural and political conformity. 

 

[Political note: This idea that forcing cultural and political conformity by government violence has become the calling card of the evangelical right wing. And no wonder. They are imitating their view of God.] 

 

 Teaching them that goodness requires self-erasure. When self-denial and sacrifice are presented as the highest virtues without regard for a child’s needs or boundaries, they may learn to equate love with abandoning themselves.

 

Ah yes, Gothard taught this as “giving up one’s rights.” But that only applied to subordinates. Those in power never had to give up anything. 

 

I can also still feel my hurt and fury and emotional turmoil surrounding this. As the oldest child, and as the child my mom projected her own daddy issues onto, I was very much expected to perform self-erasure. I was to be the child that always did what I was told without complaining, to never assert my own needs, to devote myself to managing my mom and sister’s emotions. My needs and boundaries were unimportant. 

 

I still struggle with this. And it means that in some areas, I have been plagued by a fear that my needs don’t matter, that my desires are unimportant. At times, even the normal balancing of needs between spouses triggers difficult emotions from me. This is as the result of having to fight tooth and nail and even then not have my needs matter. 

 

Because “godliness” was equated with full self-sacrifice, it was impossible to argue against this. 

 

And I will again note that those in authority never have to give this up. That’s for children and underlings and mere plebs, not the elites. This is all about power and control. 

 

[Political note: the connection to hierarchy is pretty explicit now. Poor people, brown people, immigrants - they all need to surrender their rights. The poor billionaires need more money, though.] 

 

 Neglecting their human development. Religious conformity can take precedence over helping children understand their emotions, develop healthy relationships, navigate conflict, and grow into people who trust and know themselves.

 

This one has been the hardest lesson to learn. My parents spent SO. MUCH. TIME. and effort trying to inculcate us with religion. 

 

And also, everything was spiritualized, not least of which included my parents’ struggle with mental illness - PTSD and more for my mom, depression for my dad. 

 

I really wish we had ditched most of the religious stuff and focused on what Palmer mentions: understanding our emotions (my parents really needed this), developing healthy relationships (which might have helped them see my sister’s growing personality disorders), navigating conflict (without resorting to authority and violence against us kids), and learning to grow into ourselves.

 

Instead, our family was increasingly governed by fear. Fear of hell, fear of difference, fear of demons, fear of displeasing an angry god. 

 

No, I don’t hate all the religious stuff: some of it still is a significant part of my life. It is part of who I am. But so much of it centered not around connection to the divine, love of neighbor, or other positive elements of religion, but rather around religious, cultural, and political conformity, fear of outsiders, and so on. It was about how to be “different from everyone else,” rather than loving others and accepting ourselves. 

 

[Political note: MAGA is a textbook illustration of emotional dysregulation, religious conformity, and fear of outsiders. These are people who do not understand their emotions, lack healthy relationships, cannot navigate conflict without being bullies, and neither know nor trust themselves or others.] 

 

***

 

Many children carry these lessons into adulthood. Healing involves more than changing what you believe. It can also mean learning to trust your experience, establish boundaries, develop capacities you were never taught, and build a life that belongs to you.

 

Yep, I’m a half century old and I am still trying to heal from these toxic teachings I imbibed as a child. It really is a process of building a life. My last three decades have been a process of learning to trust myself and my experience. The last decade and a half have been a process of setting boundaries with my parents and sister (which they have rejected, leading to estrangement), and developing emotional capacities I have had to learn on my own. It’s a process, and I still fight the muscle memory from my past. 

 

Sometimes people ask why I still talk so much about my parents, and this is why. It is also why I talk so much about evangelicalism and organized religion, even though I left both a decade ago. 

 

Healing is a process, and it is a process that takes place in community. My blog is part of that community, connecting many of us with similar experiences. To the extent that I can use my skill with words to further that, I will continue to do so. 

 

It’s time that we reconsidered the dogmas we were raised with, and purpose to reject ideas that damage children. Instead, we should understand that they are closest to the Kingdom of Heaven, and that we should encourage them in those traits. They should see themselves and others as agents for good, not inherently evil. And they should be encouraged to live out of love and not out of fear.