Reply #27: Having grown up around people who attend fundamentalist churches

[TalkingDog]

I've gotten used to the intensity and purity of their passion. That doesn't make it healthy. People can be purely intense about crack cocaine too.

In grad school I became friends with an instructor. She had two teenage boys. The eldest was always getting into trouble. Busted for pot, underage drinking, etc. Then he "found" Jesus. Went super-straight, attending church twice a week, talking constantly about the bible, the church and so on.

She kept telling me about it and how great it was. I don't think I gave her the proper strokes because eventually she asked: "Isn't it great?" I said: "Well, in my opinion, addictive behavior is still addictive behavior. Whether it's liquor or belief."

She looked at me like I had punched a baby kitten. I said: " Mary, you know that if you actually ask for my opinion, I'll give it to you. I think this church is taking advantage of his addictive personality."

She saw my point a couple of weeks later when the pastor came to visit. He told her that women should not work outside the home (she was the breadwinner in the family, supporting a husband and two children) nor should they wear pants.

These are people who need lots of rules and structure because they don't have any idea how to set boundaries for themselves. That makes the world (both the internal world and the external world) extremely dangerous and unknowable.

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