Fundamentally Yours: Chapter 1
A deeply personal story of growing up in a fundamentalist family. Told in chapters. I’ve decided to skip the traditional publishing process and finish the book on Medium, revealing chapters in order.
I’ll start at the end. It would be the last time I would need to carry this weight publicly. The last time I would need to split myself. The last time I would have to wear the mask I learned to wear when I was young.
My father’s wake, memorial and burial.
People knew our family through the lens of my father’s missionary work. There were ministries, extended family members, and peers who stood in awe of his work as someone who could ‘wrangle any soul from the clutches of Hell’. My father was a legend — but as in all legendary stories, there was a price to pay for this reputation. No one was ever allowed past the family walls. What happened behind closed doors was never discussed. Personal tragedies were scrubbed clean to fit the family story. The clear delineation in life between public and private empowered our family to project the image my father demanded, but also isolated and left us unprepared in ways we wouldn’t understand until later in life.
The perpetual focus on presenting the right image that best conveyed the positive impact of family living under fundamentalism gave birth to some other unexpected traits. A deep appreciation for life’s subtext, and an elevated understanding of how to best craft an impression of any kind, less for genuine connection, more for effect. A certain kind of ambivalence takes hold of one’s mind. A detached view of the world sets in, a perspective of reality as a set of clothes, or a collection of seasonal wear that can be put on or removed at any point. The ease in which we could slip on the facade for Sunday service lead to a distinct type of chameleonic ability to sense out how best to slide in and ‘be’ whatever the moment required us to be.
While the above may sound like a player’s handbook for hypocrisy, there’s an upside to this ambivalence. Being able to look out into the kaleidoscope of humanity’s disparate world views without judgement is an absolute joy, and this ability to see all these world views as flavors one can choose and pick from.
At some point, me and my two brothers had come to the very same realization — that our parents’ livelihoods depended on us acting out the stories they told the church and the people they tried to reach. What made it difficult and perhaps more damaging than we knew, was that life at home was a polarity at the opposite of the spectrum from the public persona. We experienced the polarities on a daily basis — public life was about conveying an exquisitely crafted image that, behind closed doors, seemed to have little impact. At some level, we just didn’t want to invoke the demons inside my father — but at some other level, we simply didn’t want to hurt the family. That sense of obligation to the family tale started early.
The time had come to go to the Wake. It was bittersweet to see my brothers and mother again after so long, and without any prompts, we all slipped back into the roles we knew would be required.
It was the first time in decades that my younger brother I sat together in a church. We knew every last ceremonial church ritual, but ironically, neither of us were familiar with funeral protocol. We fell back to our childhood protocol and placed ourselves in seats on a row uninhabited by others, close to the exits.
There’s an art form to it. As missionary’s kids, we were being watched. We knew that if we sat too close to the back, we’d seem rebellious and resistant to the cause. But if we sat too close, the quick exit would be compromised, and we’d be caught in a mire of hugs and unspoken expectations that would leave both us and our pew-peers feeling obligated to chat.
The music began — instrumentals or those old hymns we’d grown up with. I found myself humming along, mouthing the words, then stopping myself abruptly — feeling a flood of emotions, ranging from warm nostalgia — a freshly served church casserole, to cold disgust, the kind you have when you realize you’ve been tricked into doing something you know is wrong. “Onward Christian Soldiers” was the kind of tune I’d been trying to wipe from my memory for years.
The memorial service was about to begin when we noticed the funeral director in a muted panic, walking as fast as would be allowed during a funeral. Almost acrobatic, he’d found that thin line between a quick walk and slow run — perfecting the art of somber, respectful but efficient movement. I felt a small grin appear on my face as I imagined all the near-calamities that had forced him to learn to almost levitate as he glanced from one place to another, never losing his posture, never breaking the respectful, empathic-without-assuming-intimacy look only funeral directors can give.
We watched him for a bit, wondering what the urgency might be, when he locked eyes with us. That instant brought a rush of memory. Church misbehavior had been my specialty in years past, and for a fleeting moment, the child in me wondered if I’d been caught.
He floated over to my brother and I, somberly, but urgently whispering, “Both of you are family! You’re supposed to be sitting with everyone else in the front!”
With everyone else seated, we walked over to the last two open seats on the second row. My older brother already at his place beside my mother. He carried the heaviest mask — that of the pious elder. After years of missionary work, raising two sons and being married for decades, our brother had partially come out of the closet, leaving behind years of christian counseling where he’d been repeatedly told his homosexuality was the sinful temptation god had given him to bear. He’d come out only to his own gay community, but continued to live a public life in the same manner he’d lived as a child, knowing that his fully coming out would shatter the masks my father had always expected him to carry.
The service began, and the pastor informed the congregation that, at my father’s behest, the service would be not only a traditional memorial service, but also a an altar call. It didn’t go unnoticed that the pastor looked squarely at my younger brother and I. Trying hard to hide a smile, I realized my father would try to save his two lost sons one last time. A quick note — My younger brother, an atheist, and myself, a Buddhist and agnostic, had separate but similar journeys out of Christianity.
The inner smile stayed with me throughout the service — my brother and I elbowed each other, whispering sarcastically, “This is your chance, man! Take it!”. In such a somber moment, that fact that my father had left such a parting gift to my brother and I seemed like a fitting goodbye. Ironically, it was the bow in the knot marking the life of a man who lived for his cause, and reached out from beyond his death to try one last time to evangelize.
The irony was lost to anyone who didn’t understand our family. The pastor who had piously accepted the request to save us circled my brother and I throughout the post-memorial moments, and even into the burial. Expecting a tearful acceptance of the final calling, he instead seemed confused, perhaps even a little angry at the fact the we met his gaze silently, but with a slight smile.
It had already been a strangely familiar day. Even after so many years, all the family habits were coming back. We talked rapidly and in tangents, we mixed laughter in with somber revelations about misdeeds and tragedies the extended family had endured. Familiar, but never intimate — we were a nuclear group so ingrained in the art of feigned openness that even on the day of my father’s death, there was little in the way of real vulnerability to be seen. I would imagine that most, if not all missionary families experience this — growing up and growing old too soon, surrounded by others with both deep needs and deep expectations, the family is compelled to craft a veneer that appears both genuine and consistent with the aspiration of fundamentalist christianity. A family brand, so carefully manicured and cultivated that its care and feeding becomes life’s prime imperative, even above personal growth.
It was later that evening that I realized how ingrained the dedication my older brother had to our family lie, when, sitting with the extended family, he said, “My father’s only fault was that sometimes he supported us too much…” It was the perfect lie, and it would be the last time I would be willing to wear the mask we’d so masterfully crafted for so many years.
I quietly excused myself from the living room to smoke outside. To breathe. And to not lose myself in either the comfort of the masks, or the self-hatred at how comfortable it felt to wear them.
But it felt right — I was there to honor my father’s memory. Not so much who my father really was, but to honor how my father as he would have wanted to be remembered. And my older brother was leading the charge — he’d never really removed the masks.
That’s the ultimate tragedy that plays out in the lives of fundamentalists. When there are absolutes that are set as the aspiration, then the ultimate result is, well, perpetual shortcoming. Life’s results are never absolute, and believing in certain things absolutely means that when things don’t fit the black and white formula, one has to hide it, or live openly with the reality that those who are hiding their own failings will inevitably judge you based on the absolutist tenets.
In Fundamentalism, the best liar wins.
For missionaries who are tasked with preaching fundamentalism, it’s even harder, because the need to hide the personal shortcomings set forth by absolutism is both imperative, to set an example, and never-ending. Fundamentalism is ultimately very harsh on those who either don’t play the game well, or who choose to remain in the game while living in the gray. Someone who is called out publicly for a sin the rest know many others have committed, but have hidden well. The divorced — the couple unable to call upon the bible’s teachings to avoid the sin of divorce. The mother who continues to go to church even though her son is gay, but accepts him as he is — living perpetually judged by her community, not only as a failed parent but as a parent who will willingly let their children go to hell.
Fundamentalist communities are the harshest, the cruelest of places, especially if you’ve decided to live openly with your shortcomings. The ‘backslidden’ is a name one would be branded with, like climbers unfit to be able to reach the summit of true piety — but let‘s be honest about this — in truth the virtue of openness, and the conviction to live without hypocrisy is often maligned in fundamentalist communities.
But enough of the preaching. In the next chapter, I’ll take you to the beginning.
