I made a new friend over lunch today. He’s a lifelong Seventh-Day Adventist.<\/p>\n
Our lives have many parallels. Our fathers were SDA ministers who were ejected from church ministry for preaching heresy.<\/p>\n
I feel light-headed. I feel like I am back in childhood. I feel like I am in my parents home. I feel like I’m in Avondale College or Pacific Union College. I feel like I’m in Sabbath school.<\/p>\n
As I extol the virtues of Orthodox Judaism, I look at this Orthodox Jewish kid in the next table who’s devotedly picking his nose and then eating what he finds up there.<\/p>\n
"That’s Orthodox Jews for you," says a friend later. "They’re always embarrassing you. You’re never sure if they are retarded or not."<\/p>\n
I can’t wait for the food to come. We ordered vegie burgers. I devour everything. Normally that stretches my stomach but today it is no problem. I can’t stop stuffing the food down my throat because I feel so empty inside. I feel light. I feel naked. I feel like a child. I feel like someone with no accomplishments. I feel like my father’s son.<\/p>\n
I explain my changes. I’m asked how Jews interpret the story of Abraham offering up Isaac. I note that we say it at prayer every morning. That the story rings true for Jews because every time we bring a child into the world, there’s a strong likelihood the child will be murdered for being Jewish. That Jews must offer up all their children to their awful God.<\/p>\n
I’m so shaken up by lunch, I’m seven minutes late for therapy. I’m never late for therapy. This was the first time I’ve been late for this therapist.<\/p>\n
I stretch out on the couch and my back causes me great pain and I start talking about my family.<\/p>\n
Growing up, I never knew what uncles and cousins and nieces were. We were so disconnected from our relatives — due to my parents converting to Seventh-Day Adventism — that they had little reality to me. When I met them as a child, I did not know how to relate to them because they were not Seventh-Day Adventists.<\/p>\n
I’m offered a book on Christian theology by a mutual friend. I return it. "I’m sorry," I say. "I have an allergy to Christian theology. I hate it. I have an irrational hatred for it. I will never read this book. I heard so much about God’s love as a child, and had so many punishments in the name of God’s love, that I despise God’s love and never want to hear about it. I got this punishment as a kid where I had to read 40 pages of dense Christian apologetics every day and type out a one-page summary. I learned to type and I learned to hate Christianity."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I made a new friend over lunch today. He’s a lifelong Seventh-Day Adventist. Our lives have many parallels. Our fathers were SDA ministers who were ejected from church ministry for preaching heresy. I feel light-headed. I feel like I am … Continue reading