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Meet the Invisibles
"Faith is seeing something that’s not there." My lady friend
This is a combination of things: an article about a woman I unfortunately find myself in love with: an account of her church I went to, a letter I wrote to that woman, and finally a summation of my experiences with that woman, which is this file.
Some years ago, I coined a term for people who prefer the intangible, the untestable, the unseeable, to the real world around them. I called them the Invisibles. I dealt with them on local bulletin board systems (this was years before the internet), but I had never met more than one or two of them at a time. Until...
What do you do when you find yourself drawn to someone? Even under the best of circumstances, you have to deal with doubt. What if this is the wrong person? Even scarier, what if this is the right person?
When you are in a relationship, you realize that you have to deal with the other person’s flaws. As you learn more about that person, you find out more and more what their deficiencies are. With each new discovery, you have to look at the crossroad in front of you: is this something I can overlook, or is thi the last straw? It’s fight or flight.
I first realized something was wrong from the very beginning. As an atheist, I have long realized that strong religious beliefs can be a sign of mental illness. But, as an open minded person, I also have doubts about that idea. I realize that I can’t use rules of thumb to guide my views about people.
She was beautiful. She was decent. She had a wonderful personality, more like that of a little girl than that of a woman. And she was religious. Hyper religious. Hyper religious to the tenth power.
And there was something else. I would be talking to her, and at some point she would stop, as if listening to someone. "Jesus is talking to me," she would explain. At other times, she would get up and move somewhere else. "Jesus told me to move here," she would say. She also claimed to see Jesus.
In the real world, seeing and hearing things that are not there is called schizophrenia, which is a serious mental illness. The quote at the top of this article is from her. The implication for me is that faith equals schizophrenia.
I would ask her how she felt about me. She never answered. She would always come up with "Jesus is more important." At one time, I felt like pointing out to her that she seems to be using her faith to keep people away from her. I needn’t have bothered. She told me that was the case, in so many words. "Whenever I have strong feelings for a man, I pray to Jesus and he takes them away."
I went to a church with her. I had gone to church with her previously. Suffice it to say that the church was a white bread and mayonnaise mass market televangelist type greed church. The experience was empty, and left me feeling more than a little dirty.
This new church was something else again. It was a Pentecostal church. Within less than a minute, I realized something was wrong. Some people were face down, facing away from the altar, praying. The pastor was mumbling along, like a streetcorner screamer. After a couple of minutes, I started picking out the mental illnesses I saw, much like Miss Lois on "Romper Room" would pick up her magic mirror and talk about the children she saw. Well, look: here’s schizophrenia. Here’s psychosis. Here’s dementia. Here’s bipolar disorder.
The sheer perversity of the place amazed me. Here were people who needed psychiatric help. They were never going to get that help, because they were in a situation that actively encouraged their sickness. It was like alcoholics going to a bar to get help.
I talked with my friend about this. Apparently, this was a sign of the holy spirit. Speaking in tongues, another sign of the holy spirit, is, coincidentally, also a sign of schizophrenia..
I do wonder about those gifts of the holy spirit. They appear to come in two flavors: actions that can be easily faked, and actions that are indistinguishable from the symptoms of mental illness.
The people at the church were cookie cutter people. The women all had long hair and wore long dresses. The men all wore suits. That is one thing I have noted about fundamentalists: their complete and total interchangability. There is not the slightest ounce of uniqueness among them. Apparently, to these people, individuality, and even personality, is a bad thing.
The service went on in bizarre ways. While the previous church was both twisted and greed driven, this one was dementia driven. Picture the late comic Sam Kinnison delivering a sermon. There is no other way to describe the strangeness before me (I was waiting for him to eventually say "It was hell! Aggghhh!" but he never did). The pastor could shut off and turn off his emotions at will. I wished I had a tape recorder at that point: I suspect that if I had transcribed what he said, the words would come up as ordinary and forgettable. In other words, he was substituting manic screaming for substance.
At one point, I was sorely tempted to stand up, put my right arm up, and shout "Sieg heil!" This was no minor impulse: it was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping up.
The whole thing reminded me of a Nazi party rally. That pastor could switch back and forth from Sam Kinnison to Rudolph Hess. In fact, I bet you could translate one of Hess’ speeches, extolling the virtues of Hitler, merely substituting "Jesus" for Hitler, and the speech would be accepted by the congrewgation.
People were reacting, putting forth the stereotypical "praise the lawd" and such. One reprobate could not contain himself, and started running back and forth in front of the altar.
My friend was compelled to go to the front of the church (this is apparently a part of the ritual, when they find something the pastor rants about to be particularly demented, I mean inspiring).
A lot of these rituals are seen as being spontaneous, but nothing could be further from the truth. People do what is expected of them. Thus, when you have a faith healing service, people fall on their backs when touched, not out of spontaneity, but because they know they are expected to.
I had been trying to get the hell out of that place for several minutes. Just my luck, a woman was seated next to me, blocking my escape. She was finally drawn to the front of the church. Finally, I made my escape.
I spent the rest of the service by myself. It lasted about two hours. There was a not inconsiderable group of people waiting outside Apparently they had all they could take too.
I resolved a few things. For one, I felt that I had to be honest with my friend. As a responsible person, I could not let things go on. She needed help. Biting my tongue and not saying anything while she spouted off her deluded meanderings was not helping either her or me.
She was rather surprised to see me outside in the lobby.
On the way back, she was all afire about how wonderful the church was. I told her the truth: that it reminded me of a Nazi party rally. "This is nothing like the Nazis," she said. True enough: at least the Nazis had the decency of being dead.
She was silent for a while. She mentioned something else. "These people need help, " I said. "I don’t know that this is doing them any good." She was pretty much silent for the rest of the trip.
I kept wondering to myself: is she worth it? Is it worth it, getting the girl but being an enabler, allowing her mental illness to run her life unchecked? What would that say about me? Wouldn’t actual love mean being direct with her?
I called her up. I spoke to her of my concerns. I needn’t have bothered. She had a cookie cutter answer for everything I said. Yes, it seems like these people are severely mentally ill, but they have the holy spirit, but that makes their strange actions OK. Yes, the words seem obtuse, but only to an outsider. Once you believe, you will see. And on and on and on and on and on and on.
So, let me get this straight. You have to have faith. In order to get faith, you must first believe, because what is presented to you will be complete nonsense otherwise. Wonderful circular logic, clear as mud.
Such things as falsifiabilty, the burden of proof, causation versus correlation, and indeed all rules of logic, are foreign to this person, as they are to many other believers.
Talking with her went like thois:
ME: Facts about my reaction to that church, facts about the symptoms of mental illness.
HERR: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. (repeat ad nauseum)
The above is an exaggeration, but unfortunately it's a slight exagerration.
To me, the conversation was about as interactive as having two different radios playhing on two different stations. Well, that's not entirely true: I got her point, but everything I said rolled off like water off of a duck's back.
But still, in the back of my mind I am hoping she will change. She won’t, of course. But there is still that moronic voice, that bit f hope, telling me she might get better.
Often I picture hypothetical conversations with her. In one, I picture talking with her about the novel "1984."
"I don't get it," she would say.
"It's a sort of love story about how the state controls people, even to the point where they control what relationships they have."
"That's terrible," she would say. "They should follow Jesus."
"Isn't it just as bad when you say that your own relationships must also be dictated by the whims of Jesus?"
"No, that's completely different." She would then not bother to offer why that was different.
Similar conversations have occurred between us in the past. When presented with a contradiction on her part, her brain would just skip over that, kind of how the computers on the old "Star Trek" could be made to malfunction by presenting them with faulty logic.
I had another friend (now dead) who suffered from another mental illness: depression. She had a unique view of the legend of Pandora’s box. Pandora opened a box that contained all of the troubles of the world. Realizing what she had done, she closed the box as soon as she could. But there was one thing left in the box: hope.
Pandora opened the box, and let loose hope. And my depressed friend declared that hope was the worst curse in the box, far worse than any other curse. I see her point.
Finally, I know where this woman is headed. Here is what will happen to her in the next few years. This is not a prediction: this is fact
Slowly, almost unnoticeably, she will find that people will avoid her. Eventually she will realize that she has no friends outside of that church. That won’t bother her, because she will see it as a good thing: the bible says not to be around the ungodly, after all.
She will not realize that people are staying away from her because they realize something is very, very wrong. Her constant religious proselytizing, which will get worse over time, will also be a factor.
As her mental illness progresses, she will notice that a few people in her church will avoid her. No big deal, they are not godly. No loss.
At first, her schizophrenia will manifest itself in ways that are Christian-correct. But eventually, as it progresses, she will say things that will start to alienate even those people in that church.
No big deal. As she pointed out, there are other churches, even more extreme. She’ll just go there. And when they start avoiding her there, she can always move on.
And then one day, her mind will be gone to the point that she won’t be able to hold her job any more.
At that point will she realize something is wrong? I hope so, but I rather doubt it. Hopefully, someone will intervene, and she will get the help she needs.
I can see her point completely: the voices in her head must be quite comforting. I am sure that she feels quite special, having Jesus pop in and tell her to sit down three feet to the left. If she seeks treatment, she will lose that feeling of specialness. It will be a hard path to take, but growing up always is.
As a footnote, I presented this essay to a group of christians online. I figured that their reaction would be something along the lines of "We're not all like that," acknowledging the sickness of those people. Nope, not hardly.
The fact that I am an atheist stuck in their craw. They saw my essay as an atgtack on all of christianity. Apparently, no matter how mentally sick a person is, they're all right if they insert "Praise Jesus" among their mutterings.
Really, what is behind this mentality? Do they see all of psychiatry as being wrong? Do they believe that all strange behavior is bad, unless it's in Jesus' name, and in that case the behavior is good?
Thesed people didn't see what I saw. They did not experience the feelings I did. And yet at the same time, they passed judgment.
OPh well. It was an interesting exercise.
On local bulletin board systems in the 80s (and really, on usenet today), I remember debating believers in psychic juju. I am sure that some of them must have approached the subject with something like "OK, astrology is bunk, but UFOlogy is valid," and so on. When a skeptic came in, they would go on the attack, defending every psychic idea, no matter how unbased in fact.
So I do wonder if deep down, those people didn't realize I had a valid point. Maybe I should have been dishonest and claimed to be a christian myself. I suspect the reaction would have been completely different.
Or maybe this is part of a bigger picture. I remember debating with christians. They often trot out the old bromide that christians are more moral than nonchristians. "But what about Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, the numerous pedophile priests..."
"Well, those people aren't real christians." Apparently a real christian is defined as someone who is a christian and who does right, and when they do wrong, they aren't a christian any more.
No matter what, I bite my tongue no longer.
An Unsent Letter
A Pearl Before the Swine