by Vyckie Garrison “The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.” ― Oswald Chambers E ven though I'm 99.9% sure that December 21, 2012 is not the Last Day, I'm having an End of the World party at my house tomorrow night. To tell the truth, I am a little afraid - not that the world will end, but that life goes on and I have relatively little control over whatever the future might hold for me and my family. As most readers at No Longer Quivering know, I no longer count myself among the God-fearing faithful. When I was a Believer, I honestly thought that I was fearless - not that there was nothing to be afraid of - to the contrary, as a Christian, I had all the usual anxiety of living in an uncertain modern-world-gone-mad compounded by the added terrors particular to Evangelical culture ; namely, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil - all of which, I believed, were aligned against...

Christian woman’s advice to abused wives reads like a handbook for  ascetic self-mortification . How to Use a Woman’s Faith & Trust to Make Her a Willing Accomplice to Her Own Abuse Can you say, "Stockholm Syndrome'? by Vyckie Garrison A fter stumbling across yet another piece of alarmingly dangerous advice for abused women of faith titled,  Surviving Emotional Abuse Six Steps  by Christian author, Darcy Ingraham, I am wishing I had more middle fingers with which to express my extreme irritation. Ack! I will to try to calm down long enough to use my words rather than profane gestures to talk about spiritual abuse. To begin with the author assumes that only those husbands who abandon their faith become angry, bitter, and abusive – and she offers no help for women whose abusive husbands are fully committed Christians acting in accordance with patriarchal teachings derived from the bible; she quotes random bible verses out of context to convince abused women that...

by Vyckie Garrison, No Longer Quivering W hen I was a believer, I was aware that not all Christians believe the same regarding matters of doctrine and practice, but that was no problem for me as I reasoned that it is only necessary that Christians agree on the very basics. Like Augustine said, "In essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty - in all things, charity." However, when I finally allowed myself the freedom to follow the questions nagging in the back of my mind, I realized that even in the very basics, there is much interpretation and little agreement - even among Jesus and His followers. Take the basic matter of salvation for example: When asked directly, "What must I do to have eternal life?" Jesus responded, "If you want to have eternal life, you must obey his commandments." "Which ones?" the man asked. Jesus answered, "Do not murder. Be faithful in marriage. Do not steal. Do not tell lies about others. Respect your...

From Vyckie Garrison ~ M y dad is in the ICU in a small town in the deep South - seriously ill, not expected to make it :( He is a True Believer - he and his wife of 35 years attend a fundamental Baptist church. The church has organized a prayer chain for my dad - they're visiting and bringing casseroles - and of course, lifting him up in prayer. He and his wife know I am an atheist - we have a strained, awkward relationship which isn't helped (or maybe it is - LOL) by the fact that I live about 15 hours away. The thing is - it seems so mean and ungracious to respond to my step-mother's updates on FB with, "Hope" he gets better, or I'm "thinking" of you both ... "wishing" you all the best, etc. As a former Christian, it just doesn't feel nearly so supportive to express my love and concern in terms that seem dry and reserved and pathetically hopeless in comparison to "I'm praying for you" and "God be with you...

By Jane Douglas ~ P eople coming out of a life of faith face a whole lot of challenges. Often our leaving costs us all or at least most of our friends. Our support networks vanish overnight and we have to learn how to build new relationships from scratch. Without a written moral code, we find ourselves dropping long-held beliefs and values on the table, picking each up in turn for examination as we decide which deserves a place in our new lives, which are due for revision, and which we will discard. The victims of spiritual and psychological abuse so prevalent (some would say inherent) in Christianity, we – and our poor children – often have to navigate a prolonged period of fragility as we begin the slow journey to recovery and wholeness. Unbelievers tend not to understand us. For those who have never been susceptible to religious sentiment, it’s almost impossible to comprehend its appeal. When we finally find the courage to reach out to non-believers and seek new relationships,...

On fundamentalist counterculture & juvenile black market adoption fantasies ... by Vyckie Garrison @ No Longer Quivering D o you remember when it first dawned on you that your relatives are all a bunch of crackpots and weirdos? Seems like I was around 8 or 9 — my mother worked all night in the casinos and slept most of the day, leaving me alone to protect my naïve older sister from the depraved advances of Mom's alcoholic boyfriends and worry about my big brother's drug addiction. I couldn't count on my grandparents to help — they were too preoccupied with their own divorce, dating, and remarriage dramas. "Holy sugar," I thought to myself, "these people are seriously messed up!" That's about the time the fantasies began. My home, I imagined, was a three-ring circus — and my relatives were the freaks and the clowns. In my daydreams, I was not really one of them. No — surely, I was of aristocratic origin. My REAL family were ro...

By Vyckie @ No Longer Quivering ~ I t had already been the longest Thursday of my life ~ way too much to do, not nearly enough time to do it in, constant interruptions, crisis & drama from the kids, the phone, my email inbox ~ all of this conspired to distract me from getting the bills paid ~ a job which I'd procrastinated on much too long. "Enough!" I told myself ~ "If I don't get this finished, I'll be drowning in late fees and disconnect notices." I sent the kids to their rooms, shut off the ringer on my cell phone, and closed all but one window on the computer so that I could focus, balance the checkbook, and finally pay the darned bills! The doorbell rang. Thinking it was one of the kids' friends, I jumped up quickly to shoo the visitor away before all the kids came streaming out of their rooms and chaos erupted again. "Hello, Vyckie" ~ it was Al, my old friend from bible college ~ whom I hadn't seen in ages. He to...

No Longer offering MY blood for God's binge drinking ~ I've sobered up! by Vyckie @ No Longer Quivering ~ T hen my daughter saw the cover of my copy of " Drunk With Blood: God's Killings in the Bible ," she asked, "So are you becoming a Satanist now?" Drunk With Blood really is a horrible book ~ and what makes it such a horror is that it enumerates the sheer number of people whom God either killed Himself or else approved of their deaths ~ straight from the Bible! From the back cover: Who has killed more, Satan or God? (Biblical numbers only, no estimates.) Satan 10 God 2,476,633 That's slightly less than 2.5 MILLION people killed by God in the bible, folks. In the introduction, author Steve Wells, explains how he came up with the numbers ~ he only uses the actual #s from the bible. For instance, in the story of Job ~ God gave Satan permission to kill all of Job's children & servants. The bible says he had 10 children. Since...

By Vyckie @ No Longer Quivering -- 1) Worldly parents only have one kid ~ two at the most (and sometimes none at all ~ gasp!) Image by Shopping Diva via Flickr because they are selfish and lazy and cannot be bothered with the responsibilities of parenthood. 2) Worldly parents send their kids to public school because they have been duped into turning their kids over to be brainwashed by secular humanism in Satan’s government-run indoctrination centers. 3) Worldly women only care about chasing after Mammon and earthly glory so they waste their lives making greedy men (to whom they are not even married) rich by their labor ~ which technically makes them whores. 4) Worldly parents indulge their kids and refuse to train them to be “instantly, joyously obedient” and to honor their fathers because they are guilt-ridden for not caring enough about their kids to spend a quantity of quality time with them. 5) Worldly mothers are eager to hand their kids over to minimum wage-earnin...

by Vyckie @ No Longer Quiverin -- T he twenty-five years I lived as a born-again Christian was not just about living out the Quiverfull philosophy of welcoming all of the babies which the Lord chose to bless me with ~ it wasn't only about homeschooling, home fellowship, modest dress, sheltering our children from worldly influences and faithfully serving as a submissive helpmeet to my husband. When I first experienced the Lord's grace and forgiveness ~ when new life in Christ became my reality ~ I was overwhelmed by His love for me and His mercy toward me ~ an undeserving sinner. I read the story about Mary, the harlot who anointed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume and wiped them with her hair ~ His praise for this unworthy woman touched me deeply, "Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." (Luke 7:47) Given my mixed-up background and all the guilt and sham...