Interview with me (Helen)

Posted by Helen on: 11.28.2006 /

I thought it was time I interviewed myself. It seems only fair, since here I am hoping other people will complete the interview. (You can read all our online interviews here).

If you want to discuss whether any of my views are correct, you’re welcome to do so here on the discussion board.

I’d like to post more online interviews. If you’d like to send one in, you can find the instructions and questions here.

Please share a little about yourself with us

What screen name do you post under — so we know you when we see you?

Helen, or Ir (on the eBay atheist blog and the discussion board).

I used Ir when I first started posting comments on here because I wanted to be anonymous. It’s the first two letters of my middle name “Irene”. People here assumed “Ir” was male. That amused me and I watched with interest to see how long it took until someone guessed otherwise. When Florence assumed I was female, that led to someone asking me what my gender actually is and then I confirmed Florence was correct.

Would you like to share any of the following so we can know you better: your age range, whether you’re married or single, have children, what kind of work you do, what area of the U.S. (or other country) you live in?

There’s some information about me on my personal website.

I’m 42, married (for almost 20 years), with a 13 year old son and 11 year old daughter. I was born and and raised in England and so was my husband. We met in college there, graduated, moved to Chicago and are still are here (in Chicagoland).

I worked full-time for the first six years we were here, for an employee benefits consulting firm. I took the exams to qualify as an actuary, then quit work when my son was born, to look after him. (The actuarial exams did not turn out to be much help with that) I’ve been a “stay at home Mom’ since then.

What do you like to do when you have some time to yourself?

I like going for walks with my husband and doing things as a family.

I like interacting with people online (that was hard to guess, huh? ;-))

I like to get together with people one-on-one, to talk about life, the universe and everything.

I like to write my thoughts down.

Please share with us something you really enjoy about your life.

I love that I have an awesome family
My husband and children are amazing
I love being outside, around natural things
I love the noise gentle rain makes
I love the deep blue sky that goes with sunny winter days
I love the way snow softens all the outside sounds
I love that I have time to host CatE
I love that we can afford to get together with extended family who live far away
I love meeting new people — people are fascinating!

Those are a few of the things I love on the days when I am not too irritated or self-obsessed to remember what I love.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about you or your life, what would it be?

I’d create a quick, easy and inexpensive way of travelling long distances (and getting over jetlag), so it would be easy to get together with people who live thousands of miles from me. Most of my family of origin lives a transatlantic flight away from us. My mother is closer but still hundreds of miles away.

You and Conversation at the Edge

How did you find Conversation at the Edge (or, the eBay atheist blog) and what drew you to post in the comments section?

I read about the eBay atheist auction on someone’s blog, when the auction was underway. About a week later I checked back to see who won and found out it was “Off The Map”, an organization I’d never heard of, but whose website seemed interesting. As an “almost atheist” I was very pleased to see the respect with which Off The Map was treating Hemant, the eBay atheist.

I started reading the eBay atheist blog. I enjoyed the interactions and decided to join in. I wanted to be honest about my almost atheism but hadn’t told anyone online that I’d moved away from conservative Christianity, so I used “Ir” instead of my own name.

Is this the first time you’ve participated in any online discussions on the internet? If not, could you share with us what other sorts of online discussions you like to participate in?

I’ve been involved in online discussions for about ten years.

I first got involved because I was looking for resources that might help me deal with my recently diagnosed mental illness (there is more about that on my personal website). I found an active support forum for people with mental health diagnoses and got quite involved in the interactions there. That was a helpful learning experience. The time came when it wasn’t especially helpful to me anymore and then I ended my involvement.

About six years ago, I got very involved in another discussion board, this time one for atheists: the Internet Infidels Discussion Board (IIDB). I posted there a lot for a few years. One of my main reasons for joining was, I had started to have doubts about my faith and I wanted to learn how atheists could live and be happy without God in case I was going to end up being one.

IIDB also turned out to be a place of support at a time where my “real life’ relationships were mostly difficult. Many Christians did not respond with the grace and support I needed when I was ill. And the reality of my illness is that the people in the closest relationship to the ill person who is ill tend to find it hard to be very supportive because it is such a stressful situation for them. So I was looking for support and acceptance. It does seem unfortunately ironic to me that a Christian could feel more supported on an atheist board than by many Christians they knew.

When I ran across Off The Map I wasn’t involved in much online interaction. I had deliberately cut down on online interaction because I wanted to prioritize other things in my life.

Has posting on Conversation at the Edge (or the eBay atheist blog) changed you in any way?

Yes, definitely. I found the eBay atheist blog soon after I had left church. Looking back, I was somewhat withdrawn, for me, at that time. The support and encouragement and affirmation which being involved has brought me has helped me get back to being engaged with people again. I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to say that at that time I was lost — and Off The Map found me. Not just Off The Map but Jim in particular, who has been very kind to me.

If I still talked about my life as something God was orchestrating I would have to say “God did this”. Because it has been a surprising and amazing thing I couldn’t have anticipated.

Off The Map is also helping me realize how detrimental it is to everything to be a control-freak. I still am one but hopefully I am going in the direction of learning to be less of one. (Unfortunately I think some Christian teaching can have the effect of encouraging and affirming control-freak behavior rather than confronting it as unhelpful).

You and church/other groups

Were you raised going to church and are you currently a church attender?

I stopped attending church in October 2005, a little over a year ago.

My family was not religious. I made my own choice to go to church a little bit as a child, after hearing it was “good for me’. Then I went to an Anglican high school (because it had a good academic reputation, not because it was Anglican), where I became familiar with what Anglican services are like.

When I was 20 I heard and understood the evangelical gospel, “gave my life to Christ’ and immediately started attending an evangelical church. I continued to attend and be involved in church and Bible studies until a little over a year ago. (for more information about my conversion you can read what I wrote about it for my local MOPS group newsletter in 1999 when I was still a conservative Christian)

What is your main reason for choosing to be a church attender/not to be a church attender at present?

I stopped going to church when I didn’t seem to be getting enough out of it that it was a better choice than spending Sunday morning with my family. (My husband isn’t an atheist and didn’t go with me. My children generally did but it was more something they put up with than something they actually enjoyed).

You can read more about why I stopped going to church here:

• Why I don’t go to church anymore
• Almost an Atheist
• My story: The questions which didn’t have the ‘right’ answer

Apart from church are there any groups you participate in regularly for faith-based, social and/or self-improvement reasons?

I might be interested in to participating in groups which meet during the day on weekdays, so it didn’t cut into “family time’. In the past I enjoyed being in some Moms groups and womens Bible studies that met at those times. I was in those for all three of the above reasons. But I’m not in any daytime groups at the moment.

I enjoy being with people but on the whole I prefer unstructured opportunities to chat one-on-one, so I like having coffee with people. That would be a group of two, I suppose :-)

I joined a health club in the fall of 2005 as part of my ongoing, only partially successful, attempt to be physically healthier.

Is there anything else (outside work and family) which you devote significant time to? Or used to, or hope to in the future? (We understand that for some of you, work and family takes up almost all your time at present)

Ummm….yeah, I think you all know what that is…

Labels people might use behind your back (and sometimes to your face): “fundy” or “fundamentalist”

Please answer the following questions if this is true of you: “I have beliefs about Jesus, God (as I understand God to be) and/or the Bible which are important and beneficial to me and which I try to share with others because I believe these beliefs would be important and beneficial for them also”

Has anyone ever called you a “fundy” or “fundamentalist”? Have you heard or read anything which tells you that some people talk about you like that behind your back?

When I used to post frequently on IIDB, people who didn’t know me would sometimes call me that or respond showing that’s how they thought of me. I didn’t want to admit my doubts to them (since I had barely told anyone on or offline), so I didn’t deny what they said. On the whole people who had come to know me there understood that even though I seemed to have weird beliefs I also seemed interested in and respectful of them, and so they afforded me the same respect.

After my first comment on the eBay atheist blog I think Jim maybe thought I was a fundamentalist. LOL. He took my first comment, which was a response to one of Hemant’s church reviews, and interpreted it as a series of warnings posted by a Christian:

Christian advises Hemant - What Say You…

I wasn’t feeling at all like a Christian by then so that was somewhat of a shock. In subsequent interaction I was able to clarify I wasn’t a fundy, but I didn’t manage to convince Jim I was an atheist. So he settled for calling me “almost an atheist’.

How would you/do you feel about being called a “fundy” or “fundamentalist”?

I don’t like labels of any sort; if people use them then I try to explore what that means with them and get beyond the label to who I really am. If they don’t seem interested/able in listening to that then I excuse myself from the conversation as soon as I can since it’s evidently a waste of time for both of us.

Are you aware of any assumptions or associations people make about “fundies” which don’t apply to you?

I did used to hold the theological beliefs associated with being a “fundy’. I’d like to hope I was never as mean as some people think “fundies’ are.

How do you like to describe yourself regarding your beliefs?

On the whole I’d rather talk about other things. I wish we would move away from being so defined by ‘belief’.

What (else) would you like to tell the people who call you a “fundy” if you thought they were listening?

I don’t think it is meaningful to assert “I’m not mean!” — but when I was assumed to be a “fundy’ in my beliefs, I would try to demonstrate through consistent caring and interest in others on IIDB that I was not mean. Ironically I felt like in that environment maybe I could do some good by showing that it’s possible to be a ‘fundy’ and not be mean. Although I wasn’t really a fundy anymore.

It recently occurred to me that (imo) atheists are in much greater need of having people doing their best to undo unfair stereotypes of them. So maybe it would have been better if I had been an atheist trying to undo stereotypes rather than a fundy. Oh well — live and learn!

Labels people might use behind your back (and sometimes to your face): “lost”

Please answer the following questions if your beliefs differ in any significant way from this: “Every human being has a “sin’ problem separating him/her from God and the only way to resolve my own sin problem is to believe that Jesus is God and Jesus took care of it for me”.

(There are some of you who may find yourselves answering this and the above section because — ironically — you get labelled both ways, depending who is doing the labeling.)

Has anyone ever called you “lost”? Have you heard or read anything which tells you that some people talk about you like that behind your back?

It’s been interesting to see how conservative Christians have responded to my move away from their beliefs.

At first I was seen as “struggling with my faith’ and shown compassion. But when I got brave enough to be honest and say “no, I’m not really struggling; I’m happy where I am, not praying, not reading the Bible, setting my own values and priorities” etc then I started to get other responses such as “You’re making a grave mistake!”

On the whole the conservative Christians I know don’t believe a person who is truly a Christian could lose their salvation. And they know me enough not to think “She was never saved in the first place” so they don’t call me “lost”. The term they would use is “backslidden”.

However, once I started posting on the eBay atheist blog I did find some Christians asking me questions which I’m pretty sure were to ascertain whether I was “lost” (i.e. had never been saved in the first place). And so I defended my Christian experience a few times. It’s a challenge not to feel insulted when people wonder if you’re “lost” i.e. never understood and accepted their definition of ‘Christian’, after having spent 20 years involved in evangelical churches and Bible studies and for 15 or so of those years having believed the same way as the other people involved (as best I could tell).

How would you/do you feel about being called “lost”?

My response would be pretty much the same as if I were called a “fundy’ — so, see what I wrote for that.

Do you feel “lost” in any way — is there anything you’re trying to find, or is anyone trying to find you, as best you can tell?

I think it’s possible to be lost and not know it — I wrote above about how looking back, I think I was lost, in the sense of, had got discouraged to the point I wasn’t out there engaging with people like I would normally enjoy doing, and Off The Map found me.

I feel like I’m working on many things in my life, that I could do better at.

It’s not so much I’m lost as, when am I going to get focused and follow the maps I have to where I claim I want to go?

Are you aware of any assumptions people make about “the lost” which don’t apply to you?

Definitely. The most annoying one is when Christians think they have some defense of the faith or some answer to my questions I haven’t heard. I have yet to find that those Christians are correct. And it bothers me when I see a Christian doing that to an atheist who I know well enough to know has probably thought way more about their lack of belief than that particular Christian has about their faith. It’s so disrespectful.

How do you like to describe yourself regarding what you believe or have no belief in?

What I said in my “Almost an atheist” talk is probably as good a description as I could give.

One thing I didn’t say there but which sums up part of my viewpoint pretty well is: I’m not against religious belief. I’m against religious beliefs which mess people up.

What (else) would you like to tell the people who call you “lost” if you thought they were listening?

Thank you for listening.

You and the Bible

Do you own a Bible? Do you ever read the Bible or look anything up in it? If so, what is your main reason for doing so?

I counted before I came to the conference and I have about 11 different print versions, and more in my Bible software. Plus various Bible study aids.

I don’t read it for its own sake at all any more. There is an “emotional wall’ that comes up for me if I try to read a passage. So on the whole it’s not worth it.

I remember a lot of it from all my Bible study and I do often refer to it in my interactions with Christians. When I do that I will look up passages in Biblegateway.com to make sure I’m remembering them right.

But the “emotional wall’ rules out me reading it for its own sake.

As best you know, has anything in the Bible influenced you in a good way (directly or indirectly)?

My values system has been heavily influenced by what I was taught “the Bible teaches”. I wouldn’t necessarily say those things are found exclusively in the Bible, but they are in there and I like them.

I have many of these: let’s see…loyalty (when Noah’s sons walked in backwards and covered up his nakedness instead of calling the media and telling them); taking the high road (if someone doesn’t eat meat and you do, don’t cause him to stumble); loving other people in practical ways that meet their real needs (the Good Samaritan story) etc.

As best you know, has anything in the Bible influenced you in a negative way (directly or indirectly)?

Not anymore. But for a while I did allow myself to be at least open to the possibility, if not fully convinced, that God didn’t want women in leadership, that people who won’t “pray the prayer’ are going to end up in eternal torment; that God is extremely unhappy with people who are sexually attracted to the same gender and act on those desires.

I suspect I have been negatively affected by the beliefs of others about men and women having different authority and roles, which they consider supported by the Bible. Because I suspect some Christian men have been less inclined to take what I say seriously due to them having such beliefs.

As I wrote about in almost an atheist, what many Christians believe the Bible teaches about marriage led them to put pressure on me not to marry my atheist boyfriend, once I became a Christian. I did marry him anyway and I’m glad I did, but it meant I struggled with guilt over it for a long time.

Has anyone expressed disapproval to you about your own personal opinion, or use, of the Bible? What would you like them to understand better about you and the Bible, were it possible?

I know that Bible-believing Christians don’t like that I ‘pick and choose’ i.e. I believe/follow only the parts I want to believe/follow.

I have recently tried to explain that I think Christians who claim to believe the whole Bible is true do in fact ‘pick and choose’ also. I’m just more aware of it than them, perhaps.

I had a difficult experience in April when I talked with a pastor of my former church and told him I have trouble reading the Bible. (I wrote about this in my first eBay atheist post: A Pastor Tries to Help Ir) He flat-out didn’t believe me and said I was making excuses. But I wasn’t. It’s true. That’s one thing I’d like people to understand.

Another thing I’d like them to understand is, I do believe I can make the Bible say pretty much anything I want to say by choosing the right verse. It’s a big book which says a lot of things. And if I can make it support whatever I want it to, that means I can’t rely on it as a ’source of truth and guidance’ any more than I can rely on a piece of paper on which I write what I want to be true.

Anything else

Is there anything I forgot to ask that you’d like to tell us?

Thanks for your support: it means a lot. I wish I could meet you all in person!

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• Online Interview Instructions
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• Mistakes interviewees made
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• Friday Video: Richard Dawkins BBC Interview

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