what the *&(%?!!!

I met not long ago with a woman who had been a member of an extremely conservative Christian church. She had the great misfortune of being married to an extremely abusive and controlling man. Mind you, I do not use the word "extremely" lightly here. We're talking about a man showing significant physical abuse, developing severe and inflexible rules about what clothes women and girls in the family were allowed to wear, and a general pattern of emotional/psychological control that rivals any I've come across.

For many, many years, this woman put up with that treatment -- believing that God called on her to do so. And when she met with me, she easily quoted a handful of scripture verses that (she had been taught) were God's word that she must do so.

Eventually she gathered up the courage and decided to leave the guy. And for the first time, she starts to feel some measure of hope, though she's no longer sure she believes in God. The children beg her regularly not to go back to her husband.

And the response of her "Christian" community? Many church members, people she considered friends, have told her that divorce is against God's will. That she should go back to her husband. That her desire to leave that situation is bad, shameful, sinful.

This, my friends, is what drives me absolutely batty about that particular form of religious belief.