J oy Hopper, a well respected contributor here, submitted 24 articles under the pseudonym " Undercover Agnostic ." After making peace with her new atheist reality, she moved on from Ex-C and wrote a  memoir about her deconstruction of faith. The faith Joy inherited at the age of three worked for almost fifty years. She believed it, preached it, wrote songs about it, lived it. Jesus was the center of her universe, literally and metaphorically. Hence, one can only imagine the tsunami that followed when her ironclad theological foundation unexpectedly and involuntarily collapsed with a deafening thud. Joy's narrative chronicles her experiences of indoctrination from a young child to the present, as viewed through her rose-colored glasses. From early neglect to domestic violence, she shares how her distorted lens of faith turned every obstacle into an object lesson and every injustice into a refining tool. She exposes the toxicity of a religion that promises unspeakable...

By undercover agnostic ~ I promise I will move on in my story, but I need to still lay some foundational groundwork so that future excerpts make sense. This chapter introduces the theme of domestic violence and how my rose colored glasses distorted reality such that I viewed it simply as another tool god was using to shape my character and teach me submission. I hope the message conveyed is how Christianity interferes with our own sense of right and wrong, causing us to mistrust our most natural instincts. I t doesn’t take long to hit rock bottom when one’s highest pinnacle is not a mountain top, but rather a stepladder. Still we teetered on the bottom wrung for several months until we finally hit the ground with a dull, throbbing thud. The pastoral counselor gave us little hope, pronouncing our marriage practically dead on arrival and explaining that if our relationship was to be resuscitated, it needed a radical overhaul. The remedy? Bible studies. Homework assignments. Accou...

undercover agnostic ~ W hen I was 16 the real me died. I was dunked under water and symbolically buried in a sacrament called baptism. Why? Because I was born sinful , broken, and evil, like every other homo sapien who had gone before me. The real me, so I was told, hated God, and could never please him because my heart was stony and cold. Every part of my natural flesh, from my first cry out of my mother’s womb, was tainted with transgressions, inherited from humanity’s first parents. I wasn’t a sinner because I had sinned. I sinned because I was inherently a sinner. At the age of five, the indoctrination began. It was drilled into me that I needed a new nature. I needed to be born again. The new me was conceived once I accepted Jesus into my heart at Bible camp. The proof of my new birth happened a few years later, when I obeyed the scriptures and decided to get immersed. While my dirty rotten carcass was left in her watery grave, just as the bloody, broken Jesus was dead in ...

By undercover agnostic ~ O ur honeymoon was awful, even with my rose colored glasses. All of my sexual thoughts, desires, and fantasies that had been bottled up so tightly since puberty, continued to retain their shape of captivity even after the lock box had been removed and my inhibitions had been set free. I was nervous and self-conscious about my body, and about as rigid as an ironing board , partly because I had yet to hear that I was beautiful or sexy by any man, let alone my new husband. And like a budding flower, I couldn’t just open up and blossom without first being swaddled in warm sunlight and doused with gentle rain. But nurturing wasn’t one of Troy’s selling points and his attempt at “watering” my garden often felt like a high compression gardening hose in the face. Just to be clear, this is not a graphic blow job reference, but merely a metaphor to describe my feelings. We never even attempted oral sex until our 29th year of marriage! Anyway, point being, g...

By undercover agnostic ~ The same twisted faith that utterly screwed up my youth with “the end of the world” preoccupation, became even more destructive as I became an adult. The stakes were higher with choices to be made regarding marriage and vocation. I couldn’t see clearly, the things that were important because my god goggles distorted everything. W hen introducing ourselves in front of a group, my favorite opener was, “Hi! My name is Joy, my husband’s name is Troy, and my Father’s name is Roy.” By then everyone would be laughing, and Troy would pipe in, “And my father’s name is… Fred!” It was a perfect icebreaker and one we used for many years. With rhyming names and similar passions for ministry, it seemed that our relationship was an obvious match made in Heaven. We started at Trinity on the same day in 1980 and graduated together four years later. Troy was the only guy I ever kissed and my virginity was the gift I gave him on our wedding day. By the Bible’s standards ...

undercover agnostic ~ This excerpt paints a rather bizarre picture of life at Bible College . If you attended one, you will surely be able to relate, and if you had the good fortune of missing such an experience, sit back and enjoy, vicariously, my world of "crazy!" I t was 1980 and Jesus was supposed to return to claim his spotless bride, “the church” (the Pentecostals that is; not the Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Catholics). It was also the year Jill and I graduated from High School . I had desperately hoped that the celestial wedding would be delayed long enough for me to go to college, get married and even have a kid or two, but the signs of the times were clearly pointing to my imminent exit into the clouds, sadly with my virginity still in tact. In the spring, our school auditorium had been converted to a College Fair, where venders from all of the higher institutions of learning, in the area set up booths to recruit students. ...

By undercover agnostic ~ M y added zeal for the Lord, prompted by rapture-mania, manifested itself in peculiar ways, especially at the High School, a.k.a. my “harvest field” where I was commanded to fulfill the great commission. So, what do you call a kid who wears “Jesus” paraphernalia to school, attends a weekly Bible study during lunch, stuffs gospel tracts in lockers and coat pockets, owns no secular albums, and has a Gideon New Testament peeking out of her backpack? Take your pick: weirdo, nerd, fruitcake, Jesus Freak-- that was me. I was the clumsy misfit whom the jocks and cheerleaders mocked and patronized. Even Mr. Osmond, my Social Studies teacher, would roll his eyes in mild disgust when reading aloud, my fake Coca cola button, “JESUS CHRIST He’s the real thing,” or the sticker on my binder that said, “My God is not dead. Sorry about yours.” I took to heart the message I had heard repeatedly at church, “If you’re ashamed of God, He will be ashamed of you.” Lord knows ...

By undercover agnostic ~ Alien Invasion A couple of months after my mountain top experience at Bible camp, I entered Sixth grade , on fire for Jesus and ready to change the world. Sixth grade can be a tumultuous time for many kids, and my experience was no different. With the onset of puberty, raging hormones, acne and the insatiable need for social acceptance, it’s no wonder I have no desire to revisit 1974 even if my time machine could take me back with just the simple push of a button. To compound, an already difficult stage of development, my Christian zeal only added to the awkwardness. During Bible camp, I was warned that there was a cost to taking up my cross and following Jesus. I was told that I would be hated, ridiculed, alienated and rejected for being a Christian but the payoff in Heaven would be worth it all. When I threw my stick in the huge purging bonfire, on the last evening, I was essentially saying that I accepted the challenge. From that decision, emerged a ...

By undercover agnostic ~ Part 4 of my saga deals with my child-like faith in miracles and the disappointment when "God said, no." This little Piggy cried Wah, wah, wah W hen I was six, my sister and I were playing chase in the yard while Mama was cutting the grass. Jill ran directly in front of the push mower as I followed close behind in hot pursuit. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with both feet caught in the blades and screaming in terror as Mama immediately killed the motor, pulled the machine away and scooped me in her arms. Jill ran into the house to alert my brothers, who brought out towels to wrap my mangled feet, dripping with blood. My heavy-duty, leather Buster Brown shoes, tenderized from the blades, like a dog’s old chew toy, saved the day as they protected my toes from becoming ground meat. Daddy, with his grease stained coveralls, came running from the repair shop, diagonal from the house, clearly in a panic, growling at Mama and b...

By undercover agnostic ~ These next few sections from my memoir, Joy Unspeakable ( Part 1 ; Part II ), help describe the shaping of my theology very early on. The pillars on which my Christian foundation rested, were formed between the ages of 5-12. I'm sure many of you can relate. The B-I-B-L-E M y beliefs were starting to take root as I attended Sunday school each week and learned about God and his son Jesus. My teacher, parents and pastor informed me that the Bible contained the very words of God to mankind. They said that He authored this holy book by telling different people what to write down and they obeyed. So, my very first presupposition, installed by age five, was the notion that absolutely everything in the Bible was true. I would sing confidently each week, “The B-I-B-LE, yes that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, The B-I-B-L-E!” I don’t remember even once, questioning or challenging this idea. People in authority said it and I had no reason...

By undercover agnostic ~ Here's a continuation of my story of early indoctrination to Christianity . It was at this juncture (age 5) that I discovered my rose-colored glasses. Adoption W hen Jill and I were five, the adoption process was complete and I distinctly remember Mama crossing out the name Hopper that was inscribed in ink on a hardback story book we owned and replacing it with our new last name Zimmerman. And though the courts had granted to us all of the rights and privileges of natural born children, our insecurities weren’t easily absolved. The abrupt way in which we had been displaced from everything and everyone we knew left us anxious and fearful. The people to whom we had formed attachments, from birth, Matt, Steve, Chris and old daddy were gone and the emotional ties were irreparably severed without any process of closure. Social workers now understand that by helping children keep their existing attachments they are better able to form healthy new ones....

By undercover agnostic ~ Here is an excerpt from my personal memoir, which sets the stage for my childhood indoctrination. Riding Pink Flamingos M y twin sister and I were only three when the social worker showed up and whisked us away. We were too young and oblivious to understand what was happening, but our world, as we knew it, with three big brothers and a daddy named Dean, dissolved into nothing more than fragmented snippets of memory that we would try to piece together as we grew older. We had been transported to a little farm on North Pleasant Valley Road, about 40 miles from our home in Pocatello, Idaho . Our only earthly belongings, accompanying us, consisted of a small cardboard box of tattered clothing, matching yellow polk-a-dot rompers with elastic-gathered bloomers that we were wearing, and a small plastic rocking horse. When the social worker pulled up to the house, dust settling behind us from the gravel on the country road, our new mama and daddy, and gra...