May 9, 2018
Welcome everyone to episode 202 of the Everyone’s Agnostic podcast. I’m Cass Midgley. Today, Bob Pondillo and I interview Elisa. Elisa was one of four women featured on Episode 200, the Sexpisode as she called it. We taped both conversations on April 15th, 2018.
We interview people you don’t know, about a subject no one wants to talk about. We hope to encourage people in the process of deconstructing their faith and help curb the loneliness that accompanies it. We think the world is a better place when more people live by sight, not by faith. Please subscribe to our podcast, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, we offer these podcasts freely. And your support truly makes a difference. You can support us monetarily in two easy ways: you can pledge a monthly donation through Patreon. that’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast, or leave a lump-sum donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com.
Credits:
"Towering Mountain of Ignorance" intro by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU
Intro background music is "Never Know" by Jack Johnson
The bumper music on this episode is a jam on the end of "Closure"
by Maroon 5
Thanks for listening, and be a yes-sayer to what is.
Elisa was raised in the Gulf Coast of South Texas in a large Hispanic Catholic family. As a runaway teen, troubled about treatment at home, she became involved with the Praise Chapel/Potters House evangelical church and became born again at 17. She found herself in the Southern Baptist Church when she fell in love with a Baptist boy and remained there until she met her husband. They married nearly 19 years ago and have two children. Elisa was a teacher but remained home after having children and she homeschooled for many years. Elisa almost left her husband when he came out as an atheist 8 years ago. She had been struggling with her own doubts but was holding on tightly to her faith. When the black lives movement came on the scene she had a hard time understanding the hate from Christians. This opened her eyes to the Christian political machine that actively oppressed minorities, immigrants, women, and the lgbtq communities. When Trump became the Republican presidential nominee with huge evangelical support, she finally felt comfortable calling herself an atheist. Her life has changed from a life of fear to a life of peace, a life of homeschooling to a life of pole dancing. She has let go of god and has embraced herself and is having the time of her life.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow
first developed his famous theory of individual development and
motivation in the 1940’s. He suggested that human beings have a
hierarchy of needs. That all humans act in a way which will address
basic needs, before moving on to satisfy other, so-called higher
level needs. Maslow represented this theory as a hierarchical
triangle. It shows how basic needs are met before one can “climb”
the hierarchy, to address more complex
needs.
The
Maslow motivation theory is typically represented by 5
steps:
Physiological
needs – such as hunger, thirst and sleep
Safety needs – such as security, protection
from danger and freedom from pain.
Social needs – sometimes also referred to as
love needs such as friendship, giving and receiving love, engaging
in social activities and group membership.
Esteem needs – these include both self-respect
and the esteem of others. For example, the desire for
self-confidence and achievement, and recognition and
appreciation.
Self-actualization – This is about the desire
to develop and realize your full potential. To become everything
you can be.
Maslow’s contention was that one’s sense of
well-being. i.e. the ‘feelgood factor’ increases as the higher
level needs are met.
I want to merge this needs study with a few of David Richo's declarations of healthy adulthood. Keep in mind that one of the things that fundamental Christianity did to us was stunt our growth. Even Maslo's needs reveal that within Christianity, we weren't responsible for meeting our needs! God was! We were to ignore our needs. It would be selfish to think of our own needs--the very self we were trying to die to.
But in this deconversion
process, along with acknowledging our own needs, the absence of a
supernatural being to meet them, and resurrecting our own agency to
meet them, we might do well to combine this line of thinking with
our arrested maturation development. Richo teaches that a healthy
adult can say the following things:
I
accept full responsibility for the shape my life has
taken.
I
accept that I may never feel I am receiving – or have received –
all the attention I seek.
I
acknowledge that reality is not obligated to me; it remains
unaffected by my wishes or rights.
One
by one, I drop every expectation of people and
things.
I
reconcile myself to the limits on others’ giving to me and on my
giving to them.
In these declarations, we can hear a powerful agent taking responsibility for ourselves. So there's two very important things going on here, especially for us ex-Christians:
- we discover our selves, our power, our voice, our thoughts and feelings. Self-awareness, or as Maslo puts it, self actualization is a big first step once we acknowledge the delusion of an imaginary god to whom we had surrendered our selves, power and voice.
- we acknowledge that we can't just transfer our dependence on god to another person in our lives. It's up to us to secure our place in this world, our footing, our grounding, our needs.
I would think that the intent, or at least the hope, would be that we could be fully present, fully engaged in our relationships because we're bringing our full selves, un-needy, and interdependent. Feeling neither inferiority nor superiority to those in our lives. Comfortable in our own skin, no delighted in our skin, AND responsible for the emotional health of the soul encased in our own skin, that we might find ourselves, ideally, in community with others exercising the same level of power and agency, and thus fully free to enjoy and be enjoyed by one another. Delivered from the insecurity, fear, and competition fostered by Christian gatherings where we're all trying impress each other with how advanced we are in our devotion to and relations with Abba.
Because we've been trained co-depency by and with God, we have our work cut out for us to find what must be a wonderful balance between wanting other's company, yet not needing it. Wouldn't that be something?