Oblivious To Bad Words

[content note: offensive language]

I saw a link to an opinion piece by Ruben Navarrette at CNN.com in which he decries the use of the w-word. What? There's a w-word now? I am so behind! and so I clicked on it to find out what it was. After the first few lines, though, my desire to be aware of offensiveness was momentarily thwarted when he stated that he would not be writing the word out because it is so offensive. Instead he wrote out the first half and censored the last with hyphens. I had to search the comment section for someone who was brave enough (offensive enough?) to write the whole word out.

This self-imposed censorship made me think of Louis C.K., who gets angry when people refer to any vulgarity or slur as "the [insert letter here]-word," because it immediately puts the actual word into his head, letting the speaker off the hook for taking responsibility for their language. (You can watch his rant here, if you like, but first know that he is far mor liberal with his language than I plan on being in this post.) A friend of mine once made a similar case for the use of words like "gosh" and "darn" as a stand-in for "god" and "damn," saying that these are likewise abdicating personal responsibility. I suppose he has a point.

And that reminded me of my first exposure to the biggest, baddest vulgarity of them all (or at least it used to be - it may have since been eclipsed by others).

I was in the fourth grade, and had either never heard this particular word or, as the title of this post and my genetic legacy as seen in a particular child of mine seem to suggest, had heard it but was simply oblivious to it.

One morning, I arrived to find a group of third and fourth graders huddled around Matthew, gazing at him in stunned silence.

"What's going on?" I asked Kelly.

She pulled me aside, a look of awe on her face, and whispered, "Matthew said the f-word."

I, a fourth grade student not yet laden with that adolescent quality which seeks to appear more knowledgeable and worldly than one is, asked her what this f-word was.

She, slightly startled, spelled it out for me, again in a whisper. "F, U, C, K."

"Fuck!?"

And pretty soon I had my own congregation of quiet students, staring, shocked that I would have the audacity to utter a word of such power. But I wasn't trying to be audacious. I was simply demonstrating to Kelly that I was literate.

Aw, fourth-grade Mark. How fond I am of you.

The Times I Got Mugged, Part 2

I spent fourteen years of my childhood living in Bogotá, Colombia. And during this time, there were several instances of attempted mugging, only one of which was successful - the first.

I think that this first attempt was the only successful one because it was the only one in which the muggers just took what they wanted without any sort of request accompanied by threats of violence. They just took it. There's a lesson to be learned here for would-be muggers - asking for the cash will get you nowhere. You need to just take it and run. I do not endorse this lifestyle, by the way.

But I get ahead of myself. Later, once-and-if I've shared all of my mugging stories with you, you can let me know if you have a better explanation for why the first one succeeded where the rest failed.

The second attempt to take what was mine happened about a block or two from the location of the first. You'd think I'd want to stay away from these places, but they were also a block or two from where I lived, and a guy needs to walk home every now and then.

So it was dark outside, and I was on my way home, from the mall or youth group or both, along the sidewalk of a busy avenue with a tree lined median. I was by myself, and it was a bit cold out, so my pace was brisk. Not brisk enough, I guess, because I soon became aware that another pedestrian was slowly catching up to me. I picked up the pace a little, but so did he, and he was soon speed-walking right next to me. I bet we looked hilarious to anyone who could see us. He was carrying a folder or a purse or a man-bag in front of him. I may have been shouldering a back-pack. Have I ever mentioned how spotty my memory is?

"Do you have any money?" or "What have you got in that back-pack?" he may have asked.

It's not important what his question was, because my answer, whatever it was, did not please him at all. Or maybe we had a short exchange and that didn't please him, because at some point his words were along the lines of, "Do you know what I have in this folder/purse/man-bag? A knife! You don't want me cut you, do you?" I do remember the threat of being cut.

I'm fairly certain that I didn't answer him. "Yes" would have been a silly and untruthful thing to say. And "No" would have been, somehow, negotiating with a terrorist.

I sped up slightly, not so that he would think I was trying to out-speed-walk him, but in a manner that would demonstrate how nervous I was. Then, suddenly, I stopped, ran a few yards back, and then, seeing a hole in oncoming traffic, darted across the street and onto the median.

You may think that my judgment is as spotty as my memory. You are probably right.

I turned and saw he had not been able to find an additional hole through which to pursue me. I yelled at him, and here's the part I'm ashamed to type, but, in the interests of getting as much as I remember out there: "¡Colombiano estúpido!"

I stayed on the median and jogged in the direction of home, after noticing him turn around and begin walking back the way he had come. And that was that.

When I got home, my family and future brother-in-law were waiting for me. Maybe it was taco night. I told them the story. They were horrified and then laughed at my awkward rebuke of a would-be mugger.

Carlos, if you read this, do you remember any additional details?

The Times I Got Mugged, Part 1

I spent fourteen years of my childhood living in Bogotá, Colombia.

Quick side note: That's right, it's Colombia, not Columbia. The places that most often misspell the country's name are, infuriatingly, establishments that sell coffee. Know your product, people! Also, do you think it is socially acceptable to point out that your sign may mislead geographically literate people to assume you got your beans from South Carolina?

Yes, fourteen years in Colombia. And during this time, there were several instances of attempted mugging, only one of which was successful - the first.

I think that this first attempt was the only successful one because it was the only one in which the muggers just took what they wanted without any sort of request accompanied by threats of violence. They just took it. There's a lesson to be learned here for would-be muggers - asking for the cash will get you nowhere. You need to just take it and run. I do not endorse this lifestyle, by the way.

But I get ahead of myself. Later, once-and-if I've shared all of my mugging stories with you, you can let me know if you have a better explanation for why the first one succeeded where the rest failed.

I must have been around sixteen or seventeen. I had recently purchased a ball cap. It was purple. It had some team's logo emblazoned on the front, but I can't remember which team it was, which is interesting to me - why did I buy it? Purple was not my favorite color. The team can't have been one I was a fan of, as none of my favorite teams' colors are purple. And, if I remember correctly, it didn't fit me all that well, either. Perhaps it was very cheap.

I was riding a bike (my brain won't commit to whether it was mine or my sister's) from my house to an unremembered location that had to have been several blocks away, judging from where the mugging took place. Could have been church, or youth group, or my mother's work place. Or maybe I was just out for a ride. Jeez, I feel a little bit bad for you! Here I am trying to tell you this story, and I sound like a rambling old man who can't get half his facts straight.

Right, so I remember riding my bike on a street that was on the north side of a pretty big mall. And there were a couple of hot girls walking towards me on the opposite sidewalk.

I heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle behind me and steered the bike so I was closer to the curb - better safe than dead. As the driver passed within inches of me, his passenger reached out and *yoink* grabbed my hat off my head.

My head was jerked to the side as they drove off. I lost my balance, turned my handlebar too sharply, and flipped over the front of the bike, beautifully scraping both palms on the asphalt. Fueled by rage and probably the unconscious desire to appear manly before the approaching ladies, I quickly got to my feet and began to run after the motorcycle, but it was too fast, and had already rounded the corner at the intersection, my purple hat with it; gone for good.

The two hot girls crossed the street to me, wringing their hands and speaking words of pity to me. I believe the word pobresito (which pretty much means "poor little guy") was used.

For some reason, this added humiliation to my boiling anger.

And that's all I remember about this first and only successful mugging attempt.

Mr. Rogers and Tragedy

I don't know if this would comfort me, were I in the position of the loved ones of 27 people in Connecticut tonight. But for what it's worth:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
- Mr. Rogers

Same-Sex Marriage

There was a time in my life where I believed that homosexuality was against God's plan. While I don't remember ever using such strong language as "abomination," I'm pretty sure I blanket-ridiculed homosexuals. And I am ashamed of that.

Back in high school, gay marriage was not even on my radar. I lived in a very Catholic country and went to a school run by Evangelical Americans. If homosexuality was discussed, it was the lifestyle and the act - I'm not sure gay marriage was even conceivable to me back then.

Then I moved to Canada, and was here for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and of course that forced me to start thinking about it.

Still calling myself an Evangelical Christian, I began to wonder what right any of us had to be against it. While still believing "active homosexuality" to be a sin, I realized that this was a religious opinion that a majority of Canadians didn't hold, and so my opinion became that it should indeed be legalized, as long as the religious freedoms of those who disagreed were not threatened (i.e. - no pastor would ever be sued for refusing to perform a same-sex ceremony).

So now the debate is happening in America. I no longer believe homosexuality to be "sinful," but even if I did, I think (and hope) I would be appalled at this:

Catholic blogger Lisa Graas said in an exchange with Jeremy Hooper that when the reverent in the video says "worthy of death," he is speaking of spiritual death, not calling for the death penalty. And yet the specific passage he is referring to (Leviticus 20:13) literally calls for the death penalty for homosexual acts.

Zinnia Jones, I think, has a good reply to Lisa:

Especially this:

Because whatever someone's religion says about the afterlife, this is only their own concern, and it's never grounds for telling the entire population what they can and can't do. The only reason they're able to practice their own faith without interference is because of this fundamental principle of individual religious freedom, and disregarding that freedom jeopardizes everyone's rights. If the government ever told them they needed to stop being who they are for the sake of their own "salvation", they would be outraged at the total lack of respect for their freedom of conscience and self-determination. And you know what? So am I! We don't need a nanny state in the name of a nanny god. If your god really exists and wants to send me to hell after I die, then that will be between me and your god. But right now, we all live on earth, where there are things like basic human rights and secular governments that do not endorse religions. 

The Vacuum Cleaner and the Fish Tank

When I was a kid, I had a bunk bed. I remember sharing it with my little sister for a while, but at some point I got my own room and still had the bunk bed, which was awesome for forts and having friends over.

My room had a sloped, wooden ceiling, and if I carefully leaned out from the top bunk, I could just touch it.

One morning, my sister was in my room for some reason I’ve forgotten, and I was on the top bunk, because I had noticed something odd about the ceiling and wanted to get a closer look.

About six square inches of the ceiling was afflicted with hundreds of tiny holes. I couldn’t get close enough with my face to really get a good look at it, so I would have to rely on my sense of touch to explore this anomaly.

Of course, the second my finger touched the punctured ceiling, a significant portion of it crumbled to dust and fell to the floor. I couldn’t see it, but I imagined the resulting hole had hundreds of terrified termites clinging for dear life to its sides.

My sister made a remark about the trouble I would be in when Mom saw the hole and the mess on the floor, and I knew she was right.

But like any kid, I had a wonderful sense of self preservation, and hoped that by cleaning up the obvious mess on the floor, she would never think to look up. So I scrambled off the bed, ran downstairs, and lugged the machine back up to my room.

After sucking away all of the debris (and possibly a large population of termites), I bent to turn off what I hoped was a life-saving device, when out of the corner of my eye I saw my fish tank.

Here were Freddy, Angela, and Sputnik swimming peacefully in their sheltered ecosystem of bubbly water, brightly covered gravel, and (real!) seaweed.

Ah, curiosity! Lover of discovery and flattened noses!

“I wonder,” I said aloud.

“Wonder what?” said Em.

“What would happen if I did this,” I said, as I plunged the still-sucking vacuum nozzle into the fish tank.

The fact that I did this proves to me that children can be thoughtful and thoughtless simultaneously.

There’s a Calvin & Hobbes anthology entitled Scientific Progress Goes “Boink”. Not in this case.

The slurping noise caused by this action was terrific. A little too terrific for my own good, I thought, and quickly jerked the hose from the tank and turned the power off. My lucky fish seemed none the wiser.

At this moment, my sister made a remark about my stupidity.

Still possessing a healthy sense of self preservation, I knew that I had better get that vacuum cleaner back to its closet downstairs as soon as possible, so I retracted the cord and began to haul it back downstairs.

While on the landing half way down, my sister looked over the banister from above and drew my attention to the puddle of black water forming at the vacuum’s back side.

Panicking, I raced down the stairs and put the vacuum away, hoping against all hope that somehow this situation would rectify itself before my mother discover any of my wrong-doing.

As with so many other crimes committed in my childhood, my hopes were not realized, and I was corrected by a mother who no doubt wished for me to find more positive outlets for burgeoning sense of curiosity.

My "Testimony" (Condensed Version)

My parents were very keen on their children being followers of Jesus. Dad often told me that he didn’t care what career I held, as long as I was following Jesus. I remember praying the “sinner’s prayer” at an early age. It seemed like the right thing to do.

It’s an interesting thing, growing up in a Christian home. On one hand, there’s the standard held up for all to follow - try to be like Jesus. Jesus doesn’t want you to hit your sister. Jesus wants you to try your best at school. On the other hand, I was a human child, and like every other kid I’ve met, I was pretty self-absorbed. Somehow I retained the Christian label for myself in my mind, while externally I expect I was pretty normal. I did hit my sister. I didn’t try my best at school.

At around 17, I realized my life felt empty and seemed to be going nowhere with myself in control. I also realized that if this Christianity thing was any good, it needed to be my faith in God, not my parents’ faith as a proxy. And so I gave my life over to Jesus, calling him Lord and Savior. I spent the next decade dedicating myself to serving God, and to learning to be more like him. This included 4 years studying the Bible at a Bible college, 2 years studying music at a different Bible college, and then 4 more years teaching at the first Bible college.

I enjoyed this time, for the most part. I don’t feel like I was ever “spiritually abused” like some of the “deconverted” have reported.

A turning point in a faith I considered strong and unshakeable was the friendship with strong Christian friends at the second Bible college who were theistic evolutionists. That this was even possible went against everything I had come to expect in a real Christianity, but I had to admit that they did not fit with my expectations. As far as I could tell, they had a strong faith in God through Jesus Christ, despite their rejection of a literal interpretation of Genesis. I decided to investigate for myself, and read a lot of literature on evolution and creationism, from both sides of the argument.

In the end, I had to admit that evolution was the best explanation for the diversity of life on Earth. Still considering myself an Evangelical Christian, I nonetheless wondered that if I had been so wrong on the subject of Creation, was it possible to be wrong in other areas as well? A host of all the skeptical questions from my past came flooding into memory. They were questions I had rationalized away. Or ignored. Now I wondered if it was time to sincerely address them.

I waffled for quite some time with this question, but finally decided that truth was important to me, and that if I were wrong in my beliefs, I wanted to know. And so I embarked on another quest - one that I hoped would strengthen my faith and make me a better follower of Christ, as well as an example to other Christians struggling with doubt. Once again I read a lot of literature - apologetics, books on atheism, etc. - from both sides of the argument.

At the end of this, I no longer had any faith (around May 2010). My life was shaken in several ways.

The place where I worked was very Evangelical, and I knew I could not continue to teach there in good conscience, so I resigned.

My wife and I had gotten married in part because of a mutual faith (that is, marrying a Christian was on both of our lists of “musts”). This loss of faith was a blow to me, but it was a very big blow to her as well. It felt as if all our dreams for the future had just blown away.

We have three kids. How now to raise them?

Almost every one of my friends is an Evangelical Christian. I had fellowship with these people. We would pray together. We would discuss topics within the Christian system. Now that I was an outsider, there was a shift in friendship. I never felt abandoned by my friends, but the friendships changed a little - through no fault of theirs.


I made several unsuccessful attempts to reclaim my faith (the quote “Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?” comes to mind). It’s been a hard couple years, but I’ve adjusted. My wife has adjusted. My family has adjusted. I guess we’re all still adjusting, here and there.

Change happens. I suppose adjusting is part of what it means to be alive.

Early Questions

As I write this blog, I intend a slow autobiography as I recall events from my life. Some of them will be related directly to the way I see the world now, and some will be memories - both fond and shudder-inducing. Perhaps at some point I'll be able to piece the sections of my life together into something that is cohesive and evaluable.

I have no intention of embarrassing anyone I know if they ever come across this. I hope to portray people's beliefs and opinions as accurately as possible. So I guess I'm leaving the door open to possible edits when I write posts like this.

Okay.

Early Questions.

I grew up in an Evangelical missionary home. My parents were (and still are, as far as I know) Young Earth Creationists - taking Genesis 1-3 very literally. I was taught to do the same. Adam and Eve were always regarded as real history in our house, as was the historicity of the creation account, the conniving serpent, the fall of humanity, the world wide flood, the Tower of Babel, and so on down through Genesis.

This is what we believed.

But I remember having questions as a kid about these stories. Seeds of skepticism, perhaps?

At some point I learned about the Andromeda Galaxy in school, and that it was 2.5 million light years away, give or take a few thousand.

I remember asking Dad how the Earth could be a few thousand years old if the light from Andromeda was a few hundred times older than that. The fact that Andromeda is (barely) visible in our night sky means that we are seeing it as it was a couple million years ago!

I don't remember how long it took Dad to respond. But I'm pretty sure his response was something like, "Mark, God can do anything. If he can create Adam as a fully formed adult human, he can just as easily create the light of a galaxy on its way to Earth." (Let me know if you remember it differently, Dad.)

That answer satisfied me at first. Of course God can do that.

After a while, though, I began to wonder what kind of God would create things that only seemed ancient, but in reality were very young. And even worse, it wasn't just that these things only seemed ancient, but they tested to be ancient.

Assume, for a moment, that the Adam and Eve story is factual, and that we somehow got into a time machine and flew back to moments after Adam's whole breathe-into-his-nostrils-the-breath-of-life experience. Here is Adam, a few minutes old. He certainly appears to be a full grown man. But let's take a swab of his saliva, and run some tests.

How old would the tests reveal Adam to be? What was the shape of his methylation? I imagine that, since all of Adam's organic material was completely new, his age would have been revealed to be quite a lot younger than he looked.

The problem with modern examples like light from Andromeda and the geological strata is that these things don't just appear to be old. Scientific tests reveal that they are old.

If God created light en route to Earth so that scientists - people using the brains God gave them - would come to the conclusion that the universe had to be at least as old as the farthest galaxy was lightyears away, then Science is an illusion. Nothing more than a hoax. A forgery. Evidence deliberately planted to make us believe a lie. Like the Piltdown man.

If the world is indeed only ten thousand or so years old, God invented modern Cosmology. Biology. Geology.


So my question eventually was this:

Why?