Prisoner of Belief

John Van Dixhorn

Description

Prisoner of Belief by John Van Dixhorn is the tale of a man who fights for his soul against the crushing power of religious orthodoxy and evangelical zealotry to become a modern man in the modern world. Raised by rigid Calvinists, Van Dixhorn became an evangelical minister, a successful pastor with prosperous churches. But intellectual honesty and emotional longing led him to challenge his faith, his church, his family, his friends and his vocation...and to eventually leave the ministry and become a secular psychologist. To live this life and write this book takes courage. Prisoner of Belief, then, is a memoir of a courageous man. Through the numerous sharp and painful (and sometimes very funny) anecdotes we begin to realize what it means to confront all the significant figures and forces in one's life, from self to mom, to brother, church, faith, ideology, Jesus, and finally to God...and the world-view that holds all this together in one neat theological package. Van Dixhorn provides enough historical background so that otherwise obscure theology may be understood. As a psychologist, Van Dixhorn takes us deeper to see how doctrine affects emotional life, how belief affects our psyche, our sexuality, and our sense of self. As Van Dixhorn leads us through his life, we learn so much from this honest and courageous story. Geoffrey Sarkissian, Graduate of Fuller Seminary

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Biography
• Personal Memoirs

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 07 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781478746881
• Langue: English

Extrait

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

Prisoner of Belief
One Man’s Odyessey to Reclaim His Soul - From Evangelical Minister to Searching Psychologist
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2015 John Van Dixhorn, PhD
v2.0

Cover Photo © 2015 thinkstockphotos.com. All rights reserved - used with permission.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 9781478746881

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To Jana:
I have not suffered the sorrows of Goethe’s poor young Werther. Each night I climb in bed with the fairest of women, the dearest of companions, and the best of hearts.

To Becky, Debbie, Johnny, Beth, and Jimmy:
Blessed is the man who receives the loving affection of his children. I first conceived of this book “for your eyes only.” You are so close to my heart: Your pain brings me pain and your joy brings me joy. You have traveled much of this story with me while being protected from my private anguish. I knew one day I would want to tell you, but it could wait until you became the beautiful adults you have become.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter1
Goodbye, Mother
Chapter 2
The Erotic Struggles of a“Born Again” Teenager
Chapter 3
Seminary or Cemetery
Chapter 4
Family or God
Chapter 5
Our God Doesn’t Kill Babies
Chapter 6
The Night I Committed the Unforgivable Sin
Chapter 7
A Secular Minister of the Soul
Chapter 8
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time
Chapter 9
Goodbye, My Brother
Chapter 10
De-conversion–A Developmental Achievement
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Foreword
The Bible is a wonderful book until you read it carefully; few ever do. The God of the Bible is a bully and an advocate; is narcissistic and selfless; frightening and comforting; forgiving and punitive. He murders, abandons children, is misogynous, racist, jealous and revengeful. Parts of the Bible should never be read to a child; you will see and be convinced. On one hand God promotes slavery and genocide; on the other hand He embodies some of the highest ideals of love and justice ever envisioned. This is not an attack on God. He has nothing to do with it. It is an appeal to self reflection. The person who knows his own instinctual heart soon realizes that God did not create us in His image; we created God in our image. The Bible is a very human book and it is a human tragedy to be imprisoned by the God created after our own schizophrenic realities.
Introduction
Soren Kierkegaard nailed a reality of human existence long before any of us were born: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
The year is 2014. I am 76 years old and I’d like to show you what I learned as a child, experienced as a youth, and suffered as a young adult. Only now as an older man do I realize the significance of what I bring to you.
If you want a religion that brings comfort to your fears and peace to your soul, become a true believer and don’t question it. If you want a religion that is true, become a questioner and let unfold what must.
This is often how people part ways, isn’t it? True believers tend to be uncomfortable with doubt and questioners tend to be irritated with religious certainty. Friends and family and colleagues become divided over these differences. But sometimes this parting of ways takes place within an individual psyche, as it did with me. It left me with a soul in conflict, a divided self. A tumultuous journey for wholeness became my fate.
This is the most important story I could ever tell and I could not bear the thought of going to my grave with it left untold. Yes, it’s my telling, but I know it is a story that’s not unique to me. It’s a story replete with fear, shame, and anger, but also of yearning, striving, and longing. It’s a story of millions whose very DNA becomes embedded in an ideology that blinds them to important realities, stunts their development, and imprisons their minds. Importantly, it’s a story that’s still being lived as new every day. Your own kids may have been given major roles.
As a child in the late 1930s and 40s, little did I know that I was sharing a common experience, not only with my American Christian peers, but also with most of the children of devout Jewish parents in Europe and the children of devout Muslims in Asia. We were taught that the existence of God was obvious—beyond demonstration—though we were shown demonstrations everywhere. We had our Holy Books, the direct revelations from the one true God. It was beyond belief; it was fact. Unquestionably true.
Those who denied these “truths” were not just mistaken or misguided. Oh no, it was much worse and more disastrous, and unbelievably so. Our forefathers killed and were killed for it. For Christians and Muslims, at least, there would be a literal Hell to pay if we did not submit. At best, we’d be permanently separated from our loved ones and from God. We could not imagine it being any other way. We were Fundamentalists. We were Orthodox. The details of our religions were somewhat different, but we shared the same psychological makeup. We were of the same spirit, the same essence in spite of outward appearances and linguistic and cultural differences.
As we aged, those early beliefs continued to have a desperate hold on our lives. The things we learned first were the hardest to unlearn.
Loyalty to our early absolutist thinking was primary to all other knowledge and had the force of a life-sustaining attachment. It often came with the pleasure and prison of an addictive drug. Welcome to the Hotel California. We were brought there in innocence, but we found out we could never leave.
When new phenomena or evidence or relationships forced us to challenge our beliefs, we fought back and attacked the source of the challenge. But sooner or later we met with new experiences that forced us to reckon with the realities of our beliefs. People we respected contradicted them, or, in a reflective moment, we discovered that our beliefs contradicted each other. We heard facts and other “truths” with which our truths were incompatible. Or, in some cases, desires and sensitivities we developed revealed them as distasteful. The result was an intense, inner distress from which we could only escape by tweaking our ideologies. We held on to as much as we could, for, in the matter of belief, we were all extremely conservative. And I’m only speaking for the few of us that began to feel and even take steps to escape the prison of our beliefs. The rest, the vast majority of believers, the ones who never questioned, just dug in their heels all the more and hated us, punished us, and treated us as traitors.
I should know. I was one of the punishers and I was one of the betrayers. As I trace my spiritual travels I am aware of the words of Benjamin Disraeli:
Like all great travelers,
I have seen more than I remember,
And remember more than I have seen.

I am not blinded to the obvious: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. I am aware that men are often unreliable narrators of their own stories, showing what we’re willing to show and telling only that which fits our chosen narratives. This is my inner truth, my subjective experience. Those I encountered on the way have their own stories. I do not want to tell their stories—they are for them to tell. It is not unusual that other people become props for one’s inner theater without knowing it. I tried to be faithful to the external events that took me deeply into my own experience. But time passes and plays its tricks and the focus was to capture my psychological truth. Truth is grasped but not solely possessed. And there’s very little that’s new under the sun. Case in point: I’m still confused as to how my best insights were stolen by the ancients!

John Van Dixhorn, PhD
Palm Springs, California
Chapter 1
Goodbye, Mother
“ Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised .” (Proverbs 31:30)

“ The more I tried to get away from my mother the closer we got .”

I traveled two thousand miles to see my mother, now blind and in her nineties. For some time her heart had been failing, but now it had the added burden of a fall and some broken bones. I was sure this would be the last time I’d see her alive.
A clean, antiseptic smell greeted me as I passed through the automatic double doors of the skilled nursing facility run by the Lutheran Church. There was a faint smell of urine as I passed the rooms of old people struggling to finish out their lives, seemingly long devoid of the dignity one hangs on to for dear life.
As I rounded the corner and saw my mother’s room number, I noticed my heart beating faster and my steps slowing down. I hadn’t seen her for over two years. This was more an act of duty than desire. When I had last seen her, there were still signs of a robust five-foot-nine-inch, strong Dutch woman who brought nine children into the world without a fuss. What would I be walking into? Was I ready to face what I might have to see?
The door was open and a frail woman with thinning grey hair was sitting bent over in a wheel chair at a desk with her back to me. A hospital bed with a night stand was the only other furniture in the room. There were bottles of medicine on the night stand along with a lamp. She had a worn, black