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. 

 

The Frogs by Aristophanes (CSUB 2026)

I read The Frogs a dozen years ago, and ever since, I have hoped to see a live production of it. When CSUB announced they would be performing it, you bet I was eager to attend. 

 

Putting on any of the ancient Greek plays is always a challenge. The whole genre is different from our current cultural expectations, and even from older modern eras such as that of Shakespeare. 

 

A significant percentage of the lines in a Greek play aren’t dialogue at all, but the commentary by the Chorus. The action starts and stops, and momentum is inconsistent for our taste. 

 

That said, it is often surprising how fresh and modern other aspects of the old Greeks are. Breaking the fourth wall? Definitely. Adding a silly phrase to every serious statement? Oh yes. Slapstick? Yup. 

 

And of course, all the things that never get old, from toilet humor to satire of politics. 

 

I already discussed a good bit about the play in my prior post, including my favorite lines. (Which you bet I listened for.) Thus, I will mostly talk about the particularities of the production. 

 

I am not sure which translation was used, but it sounded similar to the one I read. It was probably one of the public domain versions from the early 20th Century, I imagine.

 

There were things I loved about the production, and a few things I didn’t like as much. In general, it was a creative and interesting take on the drama. The various scenes were done well - I’ll talk about them more specifically below. 

 

There really were only a few things that I wasn’t as thrilled with. The first, and indeed the main one, was that a lot of the lines felt rushed. Looking at the bios in the program, most of those involved in this production are relatively inexperienced, and I think that is probably a significant factor. Pacing takes practice, and nerves make us all talk fast (myself very much included in that!)

 

This led also to a feeling the lines were well memorized, but the meaning hadn’t entirely gelled, for lack of a better term. The lines were recited, not meant. This wasn’t constant, but there were a few moments here and there that felt like that. I would have preferred a slower speed, and an adjustment of the cadence to bring out the important parts of the meaning. 

 

Again, I am going to put this down to inexperience - these are kids getting their first experiences on stage, doing a difficult Greek play. Experience matters, which is why many of my favorite local actors are well seasoned. 

 

The final thing I want to mention is that this particular group didn’t have that one command performance that took my breath away. I am thinking of the last Greek play I saw at CSUB, Antigone, with Avery Gibson’s stunning performance in the title role. The leads were good in this one, just not at that transcendent level. 

 

Now, about the things I really liked. Dionysus with his ludicrous Heracles costume - the stuffed lion - was perfectly attired. And Aydan Starman was quite ludicrous in the part. It was very enjoyable. 

 

Opposite him was Jose G. Cruz Jr. as the servant, Xanthias. Then as now, the servants get the best snarky lines. His long-suffering complaints about having to carry all the stuff never gets old. 

 

With the exception of Starman, all the other actors had to cover multiple roles (I count the chorus as multiple because of all the different costumes and characters.) 

 

Cayelyn Smith was hilarious in parts such as the corpse (who just wants a fair wage), Charon (who expects Dionysus to row himself) and a few others. 

 

The scene crossing the lake was my favorite. The small boat, propelled by the actors, spun and spun as the frogs drove Dionysus mad. Between the lighting, the spinning, and the increasingly truculent croaking of the frog chorus, it was most excellent. Coax coax! 

 

The poet battle was also a highlight. It is arguably the climax of the play, two luminaries talking smack about each other’s writing. I loved the incorporation of the Chorus as fans of Aeschylus and Euripides respectively. 

 

In fact, I appreciated the way the production centered the Chorus, making it the focal point throughout much of the play. 

 

Kudos to CSUB for continuing to find underperformed works of art to put on the stage, rather than being content to do the same warhorses every year. 

 

As a final thought, there are a few people listed for art and graphics, so I am not sure who to credit. But the contemplative cyclops frog used on the program and in promotional materials is excellent. I can’t say I am sure of the intended meaning, but as an eye-catching visual, it’s brilliant. 

 

The Wine of Solitude by Irene Nemirovsky

Source of book: I own this

 

This is the second of Nemirovsky’s novels that I have read - the other was her debut, David Golder. 

 

Because her personal story is relevant to this book as well, here is the summary, largely borrowed from my previous post:

 

She was Jewish, born in what is now Ukraine, but then part of the Russian empire. When she was a teen, the family fled Russia ahead of the Bolsheviks, who were none too fond of either Jews or wealthy bankers. Eventually, the family settled in Paris. 

 

Irene married Michael Epstein, another banker, and they had two daughters. She started writing at a young age, and by age 26 had won acclaim for David Golder, her first novel. 

 

More success followed, but then catastrophe. She had always walked a bit of a fine line, having some of her works published by a far-right and antisemitic magazine, and cultivating relationships with people who were prejudiced against her ethnicity. She, like many other Jewish people in Europe over the centuries, formally converted to Catholicism in the 1930s. 

 

Unfortunately, none of this saved her. She and her husband were denied French citizenship because they were Jewish, and they were left as essentially citizens of no place.

 

Since the Bolsheviks had taken over Russia and it was now the USSR, her family and many other Jews from the Eastern Bloc were unwelcome and unable to return. With France denying them citizenship, they had no civil rights anywhere. 

 

After Hitler invaded France, and put the Vichy (puppet) government in place, the Jews were rounded up. Irene was arrested in front of her young daughters, on the grounds of being a “stateless person of Jewish descent,” and sent to Auschwitz, where she would die a month later. 

 

If this sounds more than a little like what the ICE gestapo is doing to people of color here in the United States, you have been paying attention and know your history. 

 

This is exactly the sort of shit that is being done by masked thugs under the Trump Regime, and the brutality is being carried out now, as it was then, against people denied citizenship because of the “rules” of the place they live, rules then and now which are deeply rooted in racism.

 

The devastating additional factor for me is that the very people who taught me my history - and read me books like The Hiding Place - are now cheering on the mass deportations. I simply cannot fathom how this happened. How do people just abandon their moral values like that? 

 

Anyway, Nemirovsky’s story is tragic and horrifying and a reminder that we cannot allow ourselves to demonize people based on race or national origin. To do so is to lose our humanity and become lower than the beasts. 

 

With all of Nemirovsky’s books, it is always difficult to be sure how much is autobiographical. She writes about the people she knows, and they find their way into her books. 

 

In a way, David Golder is about people like her father: rich bankers and investors who lose the chance to actually live because of their relentless pursuit of money. But not just money. There is something of the thrill of gambling and the feeling of worth because of one’s skill. 

 

This theme is developed in a slightly different direction in The Wine of Solitude, which is Nemirovsky’s most autobiographical novel, from what I can tell. 

 

It involves a little girl who grows into a woman - a girl who greatly resembles Irene. 

 

Helene’s memories start in Ukraine, where she lives with her often-absent gambler (and banker and businessman) father, Boris; her vain and cold mother, Bella; and her beloved governess, Mademoiselle Rose. Oh, and also her mother’s lover, Max, who she hates with a fury. 

 

Between being raised by Rose and summers spent in Paris, Helene is fluent in French and in French culture - and indeed, Paris is where she wants to spend her life. 

 

As World War One shudders to a close, Russia is embroiled in civil war. The family flees, dismissing Rose, who dies of something on the exposure/insanity/suicide spectrum - we never know all the details. But Max comes with them.

 

They settle in Finland, then eventually make their way to Paris. 

 

There is a lot that goes on, of course, and a lot of growing for Helene. The book starts off very much from the perspective of a little girl, but as Helene grows, so does the perspective, so that it really does feel like a true coming of age.

 

I will say that this is not a particularly pleasant book. Nobody in it is particularly good, even Helene, who is at least a child who is much neglected by her parents. She is sympathetic at first, and retains some of that, but good lord the last third of the book is a trip. 

 

I am not sure how much to reveal, other than to say that Helene as a teen takes revenge on her mother in a way that destroys the family, and almost destroys Helene. Her mother deserves it. Her father deserves it. And by everything that is holy, Max deserves a million times worse than he gets. 

 

But it is at least a relief that Helene pulls herself back from the precipice rather than commit all the way. 

 

It is hard to escape the feeling that this book is a hate letter to Nemirovsky’s mother. And if her mother was even half as horrible as she is in the book, she deserved every bit of venom. Some people should not have children. 

 

The thing is, though, Bella is thoroughly believable. She is recognizable. She is exactly the kind of woman who marries for money, spends it lavishly, devotes her life to preserving her youthful looks, and gets off on seducing younger men. Of course women like this see their children not merely as inconveniences, but as threats. 

 

Men in general in this book do not look good. Boris is addicted to the adrenaline of gambling. He may be good at it, but it takes him away from his family. He is at best neglectful of Helene, being gone for months at a time, and seeing himself primarily as a paycheck. 

 

Max is horrid too, in the way that young men (or women) who enjoy being kept by richer, older lovers tend to be. If only Helene would go away, then he and Bella wouldn’t have to sneak. And of course Helene knows anyway. 

 

Max and Bella are a match, though, both of them shallow and selfish and petty. It’s life in the fast lane for them, and you know they are eventually going to crash. Maybe it isn’t just being rich that corrodes your soul, maybe just being around riches will do it. Either way, Helene’s hatred for both of them is perfectly understandable. 

 

Later, in Finland, there is the young couple with kids, the husband of which (Fred) is both devoted and sleeping around all the time. His pursuit of the 14-year-old Helene is totally gross, and her naivety makes it all the worse. But it does give her the confidence to pursue her revenge. 

 

I don’t want to create the idea this book is unpleasant. It’s actually a good bit of a page turner, and a compelling story. The characters may be unpleasant, but they are well drawn. They aren’t stick figure villains either, but just a certain kind of selfish, reckless, and casually cruel person that we all have met in real life. 

 

One kind of feels that they would have been hangers-on at Epstein Island in our own day. Maybe not doing the rape thing, but drinking the booze and coke and ignoring the signs of worse. 

 

The best part of the book, though, is Helene’s inner life. As the title suggests, she cherishes her solitude, her books, her thoughts, her intelligence, and her strength of mind. It is what saves her in a world where the adults don’t give a rat's ass about her needs. 

 

And oh man are there so many cutting observations and witty asides. Helene, like the author, has a pretty serrated edge. Here are the ones I liked best.

 

The first comes very early in the book, when Boris is still working as an employee. His Jewishness (and his ability to prosper in his side hustles) leads to suspicion that his wife’s extravagance is due to his stealing, and a warning from his boss. 

 

“He talked about your dresses, your trips abroad, which, according to him, I couldn’t possibly pay for on my salary. He told me that the money I had easy access to was a temptation he didn’t want to inflict on me. I asked him if a single penny had disappeared. ‘No,’ he said, but it was inevitable that one day it would, if your lifestyle didn’t change.” 

 

This is a pretty good foreshadowing that Boris is never going to stop gambling, and Bella is never going to stop spending through their money. 

 

Another zinger is a conversation between Helene and Rose. 

 

“But Mama’s evil, isn’t she?”

“What an idea, Helene…She’s not evil; it’s just that she has always been spoiled - by her mother, then by your father, who loves her so much, and also spoiled by life. She has never had to work or give in to anyone.”

 

Oh boy, I certainly thought of someone with that line. Not my mom, who actually has worked from time to time, although life has spoiled her to a significant extent. Nope, it’s another family member who has never had to work, and never had to give in to anyone either. Carefully protected from anything that might challenge her ego. Yep, totally recognizable. 

 

Here is a description that stood out to me:

 

In this peaceful town, where books and newspapers were always abandoned half-finished, where no one ever dared bring politics into the conversation, while private matters were as tranquil and harmless as the calm waters of a river, flowing peacefully from honest mediocrity to honest simplicity, where people gave their blessing to adultery so that time transformed love affairs into a second, honorable marriage respected by everyone, including the husband - in this world, human passions were hidden behind playing cards and bitterly disputed small winnings.

 

I also liked the pithy analysis of Fred:

 

He was one of those men who seem eternally young, who don’t know how to mature, but who will suddenly grow old, become bitter, spiteful, and tyrannical. But for now he was still young.

 

Ouch. 

 

And another one that hit home for me, because it reflects my experience with my own mother.

 

To her, Helene would be a child until the day she died. 

 

Regarding Max:

 

Men learn how to love, just as they learn everything, and the method they use never changes; it’s the same with every woman, in spite of themselves.

 

Regarding Boris’ living in delusion and denial, obviously aware his wife has a lover, but not acknowledging it to himself. 

 

For a man needs a certain amount of breathable air, a small dose of oxygen and illusion in order to live. 

A final bitter remark near the end of the book about Helene’s understanding of who her aging mother is:

 

She still had a good figure, attractive arms and shoulders, ‘a regal bearing’, a body maintained by lotions, massages, exercise, but, just as if someone had glued the head of a different woman on to a decapitated body, above her beautiful, white, plump shoulders rose the neck of a hag. It was on her neck that the forced slimming regimes took their toll; it consisted of a series of rolls of flesh, furrows, in which the strands of pearls sank. Her face bore the marks of all the beauty treatments that should have made it smoother and younger, but which had only succeeded in transforming it into a laboratory, a place to perform experiments. But most of all, what no amount of makeup could hide was the soul of this woman who Helene knew could be egotistical, harsh, and flawed, yet still human, capable of tenderness, if only towards Max, and which old age had turned to stone, transformed into a monster. Harshness and impatience were visible in her cold eyes, wide open between the little straight lines of her painted eyelashes; evil was obvious in her withered mouth; likes, duplicity, cruelty and cunning showed on her pale, tense, immobile face, even through its mask of make-up. 

 

I find I enjoy Nemirovsky’s writing a great deal, including her willingness to refuse absolution for the dead, to insist that mistreatment is mistreatment, even from a parent. 

It really is a shame that she was murdered before she turned 40, depriving the world of what could have been an important voice of the 20th Century.

 

I want to close with a bit of a word about the translation. Irene Nemirovsky gained some popularity in France during her lifetime, but her fame never really spread. The Wine of Solitude was published in 1935, but it wouldn’t be read by English readers until much later.

 

It was when Nemirovsky’s daughters realized that the notebooks they had preserved as they (aided by friends) fled France and avoided dying in the Holocaust, were not just personal diaries, but a nearly completed book, which would become Suite Francaise. When that book was published in 2004, it exploded onto the literary scene, eventually leading to the translation of many of Nemirovsky’s books into English and other languages. 

 

The Wine of Solitude was published in English in 2011. You can find most of Nemirovsky’s books from Random House’s “Vintage International” line, translated by Sandra Smith. I find the translations to be unpretentious and smooth, although obviously I cannot read the originals to compare. Definitely worth seeking out, and easy to find both new and used.