How I Got Religion, And Then Lost It
The Fundamentalist Mindset
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Planada Community Church was nondenominational. Most of the members were evangelicals, and under the Rev. Wantland's tutelage, I joined the subset of evangelicals called fundamentalists.
I knew none of that terminology at the time, and it would be years before I became familiar with it.
Many Christian fundamentalists won(t call themselves fundamentalists. Many are not familiar with the term or, having heard it only on television news, think it refers to the kind of fanaticism exhibited by Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists. Others understand the term to refer to Christians whom they consider excessively legalistic or dogmatic.
The way Christianity was explained to me when I first joined it was along these lines.
He Who Must Be Obeyed
There was a war between God and Satan. God wanted people to do three things: (1) believe he is real, (2) believe no other god is real, and (3) serve him. Satan did not care whether anyone believed in him or in any god, so long as they did not obey God. So far as God was concerned, if you were not for him, you were against him. Satan cared nothing about whether you were for God, against him, indifferent to him, or ignorant of him. All he cared about was that you did not obey God.
What kind of service does God want? Here, according to Jesus, is the First Commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Implicitly, if one so loves God, one worships God regularly and obeys God(s every instruction to the letter. To fail in this is to sin.
However, because of Adam's transgression, none of us can avoid failing. Because of Adam, it was written, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
Adam and Eve were created, like the rest of the world, perfect. They differed from all other living creatures in that they could choose not to be perfect. They could disobey God's instructions if they wished to. God gave them free will because he wanted to be served by creatures who had the option of not serving him. This would be in contrast to the angels, whom he had created without free will. Like good robots, they were incapable of disobedience.
(Where did Satan come from? He was an angel who had rebelled against God. How could this have happened if angels had no free will? The question never crossed my mind. None of my mentors, so far as I know, ever wondered about it, either.)
Here, according to the Genesis story as I learned it, is how sin entered the perfect world that God had created:
In the first five days, God created the heavens and the Earth, including all life on the Earth except for human beings. On the sixth day he created the first man and woman, named Adam and Eve, and he gave them certain instructions. On the seventh day, God rested.
At that point, the world was perfect, and it remained so for and unknown length of time. Genesis gives us no details of life in this paradise, beyond two facts: Adam and Eve had all they could eat without having to work for it, and they required no clothing. We are given to understand that if they had followed their instructions, they and their descendants would have lived forever in perfect contentment. It was God's intention that they do so.
Their instructions included one prohibition. They were told not to eat the fruit from a certain plant called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they did, God told them, they would die.
One day Eve encountered a serpent who told her that this was not true. The truth, he said, was that eating the fruit would make them wise -- as wise as God himself. Eve took a taste, found it pleasant, and persuaded Adam to do likewise. The only immediate result was that they suddenly felt embarrassed by their nudity.
Shortly afterward, God came to visit. Adam and Eve, hearing his approach, tried to hide from him. Failing that, and being asked to explain why they tried to hide, Adam told God about eating the fruit and feeling ashamed about his nakedness. He blamed the woman for tempting him. Eve in turn told God about her conversation with the serpent.
Caring nothing for their excuses, God announced their punishment. Because they had disobeyed him, their lives would be hard and of limited duration. For the woman, childbirth would be difficult and painful, and she would be subservient to the man, dependent on his support. The man, in turn, would have to work hard all his life to feed himself and his family. Everyone would live lives of pain and sorrow, and then they would die.
The serpent, having started it all, was condemned to lose its legs and to become an object of fear and loathing.
That, according to fundamentalist doctrine, is why there is evil in a world that was created perfect by an omnipotent and loving God. It is also, as explained by fundamentalists but not in so many words by the author of Genesis, the reason for certain other facts.
Next: The Fundamentalist Mindset - Consequences of Disobedience
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