Tall Poppy Syndrome, or A Pilgrim's Regress

(Warning: here's where I'm going to get a little controversial.  I'm also going to seem like I'm tooting my own horn, but it's to make a point.)

I have been a Christian since I was 14 years old (just after my 14th birthday, in fact).  That, in itself, is not the problem.  The voice of Christ has guided me through some really hard times--sometimes literally the point of death--over the years.  I would never, ever betray His teachings or His sacrifice, and I am forever grateful for the many wonderful brothers and sisters in the Lord I've known over the years.

Fundamentalism, however, is a different story.

Consider this verse, perhaps one of the most abused passages in Scripture if one stops to think about it:

"For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think." (Romans 12:3)

A responsible reading of this text (and I've had some good pastors over the past couple of years set me right) is that Paul is cautioning the Roman church against arrogance.  No one is better than anyone else in the eyes of God, and all are to be treated equally.  This is a key part of Jesus' teachings--He even smacks down two of His disciples for such arrogance (Mark 10:35-40).

Unfortunately there are a lot of irresponsible teachers out there.  A lot!

Paul's simple admonition against arrogance has been twisted by many Fundamentalist teachers to something akin to "Don't think you're better than anyone else because you're smarter/faster/stronger/etc.  Don't even try to improve yourself, because that's putting yourself above your fellow Christians and in fact it's in direct disobedience to God's Will.  Who are you to say that what God has already given you isn't good enough?"  I've seen this time and time again.  My grandmother, God rest her soul, used to warn my mother and me about thinking we could better ourselves: "You keep thinking that way and something's going to happen to you!"

Of course, this sort of teaching flatly contradicts Scripture: Paul himself was an incredibly learned man for his time, as was Luke. Paul also said, "Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." (Colossians 3:23).  God wants our very best physically, mentally, and spiritually.  He will not settle for mediocrity.(Mark 12:30 is pretty plain on that one).

I had it very, very rough in church for a while.  It's well that many non-Christians have a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus Save Me From Your Followers".  Fundamentalists take the Tall Poppy Syndrome to an extreme.  Anti-intellectualism is not only an outcome, it's a basic requirement to join the club.  This is not news; it's something many churches proudly advertise.

(This isn't exclusive to academically-inclined people, either.  I was inspired in part to write this by the experience of a high school friend of mine who was a star athlete with real potential, but told by his pastor to drop sports because they were 'worldly'--while that same pastor's son went on to wrestling scholarships. Any attempt to raise oneself above the norm gets punished harshly!  These pastors probably didn't read Harrison Bergeron, as Kurt Vonnegut is about as far away from their usual reading material as one could get, but they definitely got the idea behind it.)

Now here's where I'm going to sound like I'm bragging, but I'm really not--I'm just giving background.  I tested as gifted very early in life.  In the 1970s not much was known about learning disabilities and almost nothing was known about autism spectrum disorders.  I was just a really bright kid who couldn't navigate social situations, and as a result I underperformed in the lower grades because I couldn't handle the other kids and the teachers couldn't handle me.  The situation was compounded by moving frequently from school to school (consequence of growing up in a military family, which leads to a whole different set of prejudices on the part of the public school system).  The new school would, inevitably, fail to look at the previous school's records, and any progress I may have made had to be repeated all over again.  In 4th grade I was in a gifted program where I did well; the following year we moved to where I would eventually complete grades 5-12.  Because of the disconnect, I was slotted into the special ed program.

Then the test scores came in: Stanford-Binet IQ score of 150.  I was probably the only student in that school district to date that had moved from the special ed program to the gifted program inside of a month!  I suffered the usual isolation one gets from that sort of thing, but managed to navigate through the bullying. Karate classes helped.  A father who was a Marine DI and who taught me a few things sensei didn't helped even more.  It also helped that Dad wasn't afraid to tell the principal to go to hell six different ways when that principal wanted to suspend me for sending a bully to the hospital once.  Not that we hadn't tried dealing with things according to the rules first, but rules only work when they're enforced!

(I never got that suspension, probably because the principal was too busy changing his underwear after my father got through with him.  If I didn't thank you before, Dad, thank you!)

But I digress.  Flash-forward to college where I fell in with my first genuine crop of honest-to-goodness Fundamentalists.  Something about the college environment makes one's beliefs more extreme no matter what they are.  I ended up going to an extremely charismatic church that taught such things as the influence of demons on un-Biblical political and social opinions (read: everything the pastor personally disapproved of) and emphatically believed that time not spent focusing on furthering the agenda of the church was time wasted.  Note that I said furthering the agenda of the church, not necessarily God's agenda.  I was being told in church that the world was 6,000 years old while learning and demonstrating to myself that the world is considerably older than that.  Cognitive dissonance?  You betcha!

Men who wanted to do something other than become missionaries or blue collar workers?  Arrogant.  Women who dared to have an original thought of their own not related to child care or housekeeping? Against the natural state of womanhood!  Black or Hispanic?  We love you--now go to your own churches, thank you very much.  Gay? Don't even think about mentioning it!  And of course everyone votes Republican, because they're the party of God--"There is no God but Reagan and Bush is His Prophet" could have been their motto.  Thank you Richard Nixon for screwing both the church and a respectable political party with the same strategy!

Groupthink in action, in other words.  Very rigid, very linear thinking.  Thinking outside the box was not only impossible, but feared: outside the box lay damnation itself.

I spent ten years of my life in this maelstrom, going from one Fundamentalist church to another.  I sacrificed my academic career in the pursuit of mediocrity.  Why? you may ask.  That's easy.  For the first time in my life I had friends I felt I could count on! The sacrifice, at the time, seemed worth it.

As someone on the autism spectrum I have a very difficult time making close connections with people.  I've had no more than five people at any one time I've felt really, really close to.  And dating?  That was always a nightmare! (There's another interesting feature of these churches: if you're a man and not married or dating after the age of 18, and remain single for an arbitrarily long period of time, you're presumed to be gay and treated accordingly.  I've been on the receiving end of it, which is why I'm a staunch supporter of gay rights today: nobody, gay or straight, should have to endure that sort of treatment!  They forget that Jesus was single, I think.)  In the Fundamentalist environment, it's easier: as long as you can hack the algorithm you can make all the friends you want, and even get to date at some point (although if you're not 'spiritually mature' in the eyes of the woman, good luck! The two best relationships I had during that period were with women not of the tribe--yet another taboo--and though all three of us have moved on to better things I'm still in touch with them today and on good terms.  I don't even know where those other women are. I didn't know it at the time, but I was actually being shown more genuine friendship by them than by my supposed 'equally yoked' brethren!  God does move in mysterious ways!)

And remember what I said about actually enforcing the rules?  Yep.  All are equal in the eyes of God, but some are more equal than others.  That's why you treat your pastor like a king and your wife like a slave (and I've seen some horrible treatment of women!)  Even outside the marriage context men were encouraged to mistreat women.  I remember one conversation I had with a former friend of mine who was complaining that his girlfriend wouldn't do what he says (and rightfully so; this guy wasn't exactly on the far right end of the bell curve, or even close to the middle).  "The Bible says that women must submit to men!" he told me.

"No, it doesn't," I answered.  "It says that a wife should submit to her husband, not any woman to any man.  Otherwise I could make your mother submit to me, and how would you like that?"

We never spoke again after that conversation.  No loss.  I figured out later just what he was trying to get his girlfriend to 'submit' to, which I guess is why my comment set him off.

I finally got fed up right after the 9/11 attacks and a sermon I heard at a church not far from here.  Roughly 3/4 of the sermon was in praise of the President.  I could count on one hand the number of times Jesus was mentioned.  Idolatry much?  I approached the pastor of this church after the service with some questions I had.  His response: "I think there are some guys out in the parking lot who'd like to have a word with you!"

I couldn't believe it!  This supposed man of God was threatening me!  Fortunately I was in much better shape then than I am now (although not at my peak by any means).  "Good--I could use some karate practice!" I told him as I turned away from him, shook the dust from my feet, and never entered that church or any other from that franchise again.

I went to a smaller church instead, one with barely three dozen people and a pastor struggling to heal a church split from the previous year.  He and I saw eye to eye on lots of things; were it not for him I may have fallen away completely.  He helped me through some of what I experienced and to this day even though he's no longer active in ministry I still count him as one of the best spiritual teachers I've ever had.  It was he who presided over our wedding (and who brought Sandy back into the fold after some similar experiences of hers).  When we moved to Lake Elsinore we found another small, local church with an equally gifted teacher who helped us through some very rough spots.  He, too, I miss greatly.

The church I'm attending now I selected after very careful consideration and so far none of these extremist tendencies have shown their head officially (although, being in Orange County, I probably couldn't swing a dead cat in the middle of Sunday service without hitting at least five Fundamentalists).  In fact, they seek to do the will of God by (wait for it!) actually reaching out to the community around them and providing meaningful material help, rather than a tract and an empty promise of prayer! I praise God for finding me such a strong, sound family (even if it's quite a bit bigger than I've gotten used to).

So, that's how I was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see. At least out of my good eye!