Book Review: You Lied to Me about God

Title: You Lied to Me About God 

Author: Jamie Marich

Christians should read this book. It tells us so much about what not to do. 

Jamie Marich, Ph.D., is a multitalented success story you can look up online. Go ahead--read the long list of her achievements now. But don't envy her; in this memoir she tells us she's also a recovering addict. And also, she says, "Queer," self-identifying as plural in this book because sometimes she's writing for her wounded inner children. And they were wounded, she says, by spiritual abuse when her father quarrelled with her mother's church. The acrimony only seemed to increase through the messy divorce and the years of split custody. 

Spiritual abuse? What's that? Many little things, Marich says, but most memorably, it's the toxic sermon her father preached at her when her favorite teacher died. (She cried more loudly, rousing her younger brother to come out of his room and order their father to "leave my sister alone.") Their mother was Catholic; their father had become a Protestant and looked for Catholic-influenced behavior to correct when the children were with him. He even subjected them to Jimmy Swaggart's sermons and Rush Limbaugh's radio show. (Little Jamie still seems to think Limbaugh used "feminazi" to mean "feminist." In The Way Things Ought to Be Limbaugh defined "feminazi" as a woman who is glad when abortions are performed, and estimated that there were fewer than two dozen feminazis on Earth.) The brother, Paul, became a Catholic priest. 

The ill-timed sermon was unforgivable, indeed...in merely human terms. When we presume to tell people how God is going to judge other people, that misfortunes are punishments, that their lives are sure to get worse than they are now, we're lying to them about God--claiming that we know something about God that we don't know. This is a great and terrible sin. Jesus said that a man who does it to children would be better off "having a millstone round his neck, to be cast into the sea." But Christians can ask God for help to forgive such things, when God makes forgiveness possible by leading the offender to repent. Marich's father was active in his new church, and his faith seemed to bear fruit; his children had enjoyed spending time with him, mostly, and their friends enthused that they had "the best dad." And then one night in a moment of hubris "the best dad" said a few stupid words that made his children reconsider and distrust everything else he said. Had he really shared little Jamie's body image concerns as a loving parent, or used toxic body-shaming for more Freudian reasons? Had his "dates" with his children really been as wholesome as, at the time, they'd seemed?

(Tip for those who used to have "dates" or "play dates" with adults in your family: If it felt wholesome and sweet at the time, it was--at least as wholesome as fallible mortals could make it. Elders will probably always seem to the young to have defective senses of humor; that does not make us pedophiles.)

But funnily enough, Marich's symptoms of "spiritual abuse" sound exactly like the symptoms of which so many of Generation X complain. They are or feel fat. They feel depressed. They self-medicate with drugs and sex. Especially and tediously sex, because they want to believe that "sexuality" is the most important thing in their lives. They want to believe that any attempt to control their bodily urges just might kill them, that the only reason why anyone should ever fail to act on a physical attraction would be rejection, for which they'd probably need lots of expensive, addictive prescription pills to make sure they didn't (oh, the horror!) become "sexual anorexics," such as Marich claims to think St. Paul was. 

When I was young I used to think it came from being teenagers, and they'd outgrow it. Now that some of Generation X have grandchildren, I confess, friends, I am puzzled. They could outgrow it any time now, but when?

I think one of the worst abuses that was practiced on Generation X, generally, as a demographic, was allowing them to believe that "sexuality" controls people as they seem to think it does. People are meant to control their sexuality, just as we do the other body functions that are essential to our own individual survival and not merely the survival of the species. You have no control over whom and what you're attracted to, but you have full control of what you do about that attraction. Nobody has a right to blame anybody for having an appetite for food, but people can and do blame those who display bad table manners. Nobody has a right to blame anybody for feeling attracted to an act or a person, but people can and do blame those who voluntarily behave unchastely or indiscreetly.

And so...when people insist on talking about their sexual behavior, some behavior is judged more harshly than others. Marich tells us she's "Queer." Not in the sense that some woman thought she looked like a man and she responded favorably to that woman; in the sense that people carrying around resentment of their opposite-sex parents don't show the "body language" that attracts the opposite sex, and they want to blame their body shape or color or clothes when the fact is that their reactions to the opposite sex are off-putting, so things go on and on and get worse and worse unless, until, someone offers a homosexual experience. The offer might reflect the fact that an individual looks like a "boi" or simply that the person does not show all that emotional conflict every time person looks at someone of the same sex. Anyway, they accept the offer, and then they let that experience define them. They were not "born gay"; they're settling for a same-sex relationship because they're letting their damaged emotions spoil the heterosexual relationships they actually want. 

Emotional healing, like physical healing, happens at its own pace. God loves people who are seeking healing. But it would be very hard to make a case that God's will for anyone's best life is to stay stuck in this quagmire of anger, pride, and lust. 

Marich tells us that she was attracted to boys. But although high school boys may admire the girl who's at the head of every class, it's a rare high school boy who thinks he can hold his own in a conversation with that girl. Later she realizes that one of the boys on whom she had a crush had a crush on her, and they act on that attraction, but he's married someone else by now so they can have only occasional...At this point I would probably have closed the book if I hadn't been reading it on a computer. Anyway, Marich goes on to say, there were two short-term marriages, and then a woman made herself available and Marich realized that she could feel attracted to women too. 

Is that a sin? It's certainly not God's perfect will. I believe our, as in most humans', physical nature is currently discouraging us from reproducing because we live in a crowded world. Still, when that complex of old anger, guilt, resentment, shame, and fear is what's coming between you and someone you want to be with, so you're settling for someone else, I don't think it's true to claim that God made you just the way you are. You also contributed something to the way you are...something you don't like, something you would do better to clean out of your life, no matter what social pressure you may feel to "join the 'gay' community." When you've rebuilt a vibrant relationship with both of your parents and with as many parent-surrogates as you still have in this world, then you have something worth telling the world about how you have really grown up, all the way, to relate to other people.

Marich correctly says that the farce of instant one-way "forgiveness" that only functions to prevent bad situations being corrected, where people are told to accept abuse and move on, is not good for anyone and has nothing to do with what Jesus taught. That's true. What her father said, probably like some things she said to him and some things the other members of the family said to one another, is unforgivable until the one who said it repents. Only then is it obligatory, or even possible, to forgive the offender. Any people, whether connected by DNA or by "choice" or by accident, will get into this situation if they spend enough time together. Lingering resentment, refusal to forgive the person when the person has repented, gives otherwise attractive people an off-putting affect. You're not to blame if the person you find attractive thinks person is only interested in a different body type than yours, or if you're not asked for dates because young people in your community can't afford to date, or for any number of other reasons, but you are partly to blame if you lose dates by radiating resentment. 

Marich has a right to resent the people who say "I'll pray for you" with a clear implication of "...to change and be like me." I'm not so sure that she has a right to claim that her "Queer" voluntary behavior is what God wants for or from her. This is not a tell-all sex memoir, but the book does make it clear that Marich has flopped into bed with men, plural, and women, plural, in the absence of any commitment to a Partnership for Life. We call that promiscuity; the KJV calls it, well, a word that's become too rude for this website to quote, or in more detailed terms selling themselves as slaves and not even having enough sense to pick up the money. It's forgivable--the Old Testament prophets portray God begging for a chance to forgive it--but it is sin.

Should Christians be able to talk to Marich without hitting her with the message that "you just published a BOOK about how you're an open and notorious sinner!"? Of course. Should Marich be able to talk to people without saying anything about her sex life? That, too. Instead of pretending that everything is okay, even sexual abuse of students--which Marich very properly calls out, in this book--we might do better to rediscover the truth that not everything needs to be publicly discussed.

We might rediscover that, when celibacy is not something people inflict on themselves by unconsciously signalling hostility toward the opposite sex, or something caused by psychotic conditions (like some of Freud's patients) or psychopharmaceuticals (like about a third of all users of serotonin boosters), but is chosen as a spiritual discipline to be followed until a person finds a Partner for Life, celibacy is good. 

We might even let ourselves ask whether the wholesale dumping of estrogen into animals being fattened for our consumption has something to do with the increasing incidence, in each generation, of that overgrown, overstuffed capon look. A capon is a male fowl who has been neutered, and these days probably fed estrogen as well, to alter his metabolism so that he grows bigger, fatter, less muscular, than normal males of his species. As the popularity of "growth hormones" has grown, genuine childhood obesity, often combined with early puberty and also early cardiovascular diseases, has become more common in each decade; the majority of graduating classes at many schools now look like what would have been the lonely fat kid at schools my generation attended. That is one known effect of unbalanced surplus estrogen; the other is that it seems to generate estrus cycles in females that may be abnormal, unhealthy, even associated with cancer as estrogen promotes abnormal growth in all types of cells. 

Estrogen-fattened meat marinated, around the time of slaughter, in antibiotics. Chemical preservatives and processing agents in food. Glyphosate in air, food, and water. Atrazine, known to aggravate and un-balance estrogens in all bodies, on suburban lawns. Motor exhaust fumes in the air. Drugs, legal or not, prescription or over-the-counter. Formaldehyde in most non-food items. Chlorine in water. Other chemicals that have not traditionally been ingested by humans popping up in places where we're not looking for them--last year the FDA allowed food companies to market foods, from main dishes to whipped "cream," made with antifreeze as an ingredient. Propylene glycol antifreeze, the kind blamed for killing an occasional pet or toddler who finds and drinks it, as food. It's no wonder that ever increasing numbers of young people grow up fat, depressed, and addicted to sex and drugs. And, because psychologists used to be consulted by parents to "cure" children's behavior, so much of traditional psychological literature has been about what those parents could do, it's no wonder that these young people blame their parents first. Some blame is due to the parents, and some to the schools and some to the doctors and therapists and so on. Still, here's the proof, a few obnoxious words seem to produce the same effect on an adult child who was never beaten, raped, or starved that beating, rape, and starvation seem to produce on those who survived them. We have to start asking how much of the blame is due to the physical effect all this pollution has on the brain and body.

Still, Christianity keeps leading us back to the core of our faith, which is forgiveness. Any liar can say "Your sins are" (or are not) "forgiven"; in the KJV even the apostles said "Thy sins be forgiven," using "be" as the subjunctive form. We would now say "May your sins be forgiven." We should say that, perhaps more often than we do, but we are told that God's willingness to hear this prayer depends on our willingness to forgive those who repent of their sins against us. The process of forgiveness does begin with repentance. Ongoing abuses need to be addressed and stopped even in order for repentance to have meaning. 

The best memoirs are not always happy. Some writers leave the harrowing parts in. Readers seem to find Aristotle's "catharsis" in reading about chatty little Anne Frank's having to be silent all day or Richard Wright's nightmares after having killed a stray kitten. The best memoirs do, however, leave the reader with hope. Richard Wright stopped torturing animals and grew up; Anne Frank didn't grow up, but from the fact that she volunteered to work in the prison camp we know she thought she would grow up. I don't know what God's will for Jamie Marich's life may be, whether she might be called to marriage or solitude or even a lifelong bond with a girlfriend. I do know that she's about forty years old now, maybe (books aren't usually published on the day the writing is finished) fifty by now, old enough to start preparing for the half of life that comes after the sex-ridden years. 

That's a major misconception that Marich perpetuates in her book. Even Freud recognized that voluntary celibacy could "sublimate" sex energy into better things, and St. Paul was one of the world's leading examples and exponents of this truth. Marich claims that Paul disliked women; the Bible doesn't tell us whether he did or not. Only "tradition" says that Paul's marriage was unhappy and he was glad to be widowed. Paul himself tells us that he recognized a woman as his teacher, saluted other female missionaries (at least one as a full-fledged "apostle"), proclaimed that "in Christ" race and gender didn't matter, and then warned women in the church not to push the envelope of social convention too far. Marich goes so far as to diagnose Paul as a case of "sexual anorexia," which only shows how young she is. Paul was asked to write so much because of his seniority. With seniority hormone levels subside; carnal commotion quietens down. Older couples may love each other more than ever, may still allow memory to lead to a few more moments of passion, but generally feel less need to consummate that love the way they did when they were in baby-making mode. Older widows, I know firsthand, may have been passionate in youth and may now be glad that we've "been there, done that," and don't feel compelled to play the dating game again. Sexual opportunities become ways to reminisce; lack of sexual opportunities becomes, well, just the way things go. It's not anorexia. It is satisfaction. We've done what people do when they're twenty years old and moved on to what people do when they're fifty or sixty or seventy.

I wish Marich the ability to find satisfaction, and recognize it, when sexuality stops providing it even in the short-term way it does. Generally humans get about twenty-five years to enjoy being "hot." After age fifty, if we still catch the eyes of the "hot" the resulting conversations tempt us to laugh rudely rather than to flop into bed. Age forty is a wake-up call. One may look and feel as young as ever, at forty, and many people have that one last serious infatuation that might lead to True Love in their forties, but at forty one has to start preparing for the postsexual years.

All this is not to deny the value of Marich's work with addicts, or her creative work--but this book has little to say about her work with addicts or even about her recovery experience. Those were the topics of other books. This is the book about how angry she still feels at her parents and how badly she allowed that to affect her young-adult life. 

It affected her faith, too. Though she still confesses belief in Jesus, Marich also left the Catholic church and then left a few yoga groups. She quotes an American "yogi" who taught that the spiritual truth is the part all the different religions have in common; everything else is "just details" and may or may not be true. And since the Bible doesn't claim to contain all the truth there is in this world (think about it: the Bible says nothing at all about raising tomatoes!), maybe some things the Bible plainly says are untruth, too. And so when asked to serve as a mediator between homosexuals and their conservative Christian families, she always demands that the Christians concede the demands of the homosexual lobby first...

Ah, yes. "Whatever we do not forgive, we are doomed one day to live," counsellors used to say in the 1970s. Marich probably would feel indignant if her demands that traditional Catholics celebrate homosexual behavior were compared with her father's demand that the rest of her family stop praying to Mother Mary. People with that sort of emotional complex usually do. Madeleine L'Engle had a character, though drunk, realize what she was doing and scream at her long-dead father's picture, "Pa, I'm just like you, damn you!" 

I think Marich needed to write this book, and to discuss every chapter with her family in family counselling sessions. Her parents need to express penitence to her. Based on personal experience (I had grievances with my parents, too, and know the benefits of reconciliation) I'd guess that Marich has some repentance to do, too. If Christian families sincerely ask for the grace of reconciliation and not the selfish pleasure of scoring points off one another, reconciliation will be given them. Marich should give that experience five or ten years to happen and bear fruit in her life. Then she should publish the story of how that worked. Then she'll probably recognize that this book has value...as an indicator of how far she's come, how far she's needed to come.