About a month or so ago, a distant acquaintance of mine died of cancer.

I didn't know Peter personally, but a few of my good friends had known him for years via a Christian message board that I used to frequent. For the past three years, Peter had fought cancer -- cheering when doctors saw improvement, grappling with his future when things took turns for the worse. For those years, he kept the other posters on the board updated on how things were going, what he was up to, and how he was handling living with cancer.

"Did you see her? I'm glad my girls don't dress slutty."

She'd been wearing short-shorts and a tanktop as she entered the coffee shop, if memory serves. My friend had watched her come in, eyes narrowed, and made her thoughts clear. I was a single guy, so perhaps my bar for unacceptably provocative clothing was self-servingly high, but I didn't see what was so slutty. My friend, a twenty-something woman who ran a Bible study group for high school girls, thought otherwise.

The strange lyrical overlap between modern worship music and pop love songs has always been a subject of fascination for me. The themes of devotion, idealization, and euphoria are equally suited to religious and romantic ecstasy: when I was a young teenager, it was exciting! Lots of classic rock songs could be enjoyed, after all, if you framed them as long songs about God!

As popular Christian bands went mainstream, it was also pretty common for crossover worship/love songs to be treated as "stealth" evangelism. That let us ignore unsettling contemplation of unrealistic idealization, unhealthy obsession, and emotional addiction, fortunately. What's fascinating to me is that that few artists seem to explore the flip side of these deus entendres: the sting and burn of betrayal, loss, and separation. In short, breakup songs.

It's not quite the same as fresh, provocative new content, but it is an announcement: a couple of new faces should be arriving soon on Growing Up Goddy! Do not be alarmed, all is proceeding according to plan.

I've spent some time lately thinking about the differences between theology and the scientific process. In particular, I've been questioning why my views on theology have changed considerably over the years. While evangelism is religion's marketing department, principled theology seems much closer to the rigor and discipline of scientific inquiry. At least on the surface, beliefs are evaluated with a lot more ruthlessness than one experiences in a casual gathering of like-minded religious believers.

While I have a bone or two to pick with the God of the Old Testament, I've always found it interesting that threads of startlingly progressive ideas weave their way through the otherwise harsh world of ancient monotheism. Yes, Yahweh told His followers to slaughter the men, women, and children of cities standing in their way. Yes, kids were eaten by bears for making fun of His prophet's hairstyle. Yes, He winked and nudged His way to condoning mass rape and sexual slavery, as long as the victims were pagans.

On the other hand, there was one group that Yahweh really, really seemed to look out for: poor people. Time and time again in the Old Testament, Israel got smacked down for ignoring the plight of its poor and disenfranchised. Even back in the time of Abraham, the theme of smiting proud, rich people for their callousness was well established. Witness the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, traditionally remembered as a cautionary tale about gay rights:

Now this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. —Ezekiel 16:49-50

Over the past few months, I've been involved in quite a few conversations about the tangly overlaps between feminism, popular culture, and the evangelical/fundamentalist faith I grew up with. A couple of events in particular triggered some long (and sometimes heated) discussions: the wrenching story of a woman's rapist friending her on Facebook, a community drama explosion centered around a clumsy/creepy proposition, and the ensuing MetaFilter discussions about both.

No matter how conversations about these issues started, they inevitably passed through the same checkpoint: What IS rape?

If you take the legal definition seriously, the answer is simple: if you have sex with someone and they haven't given explicit consent, congratulations! You're a rapist. "Consent" isn't a terribly hard concept to understand, and when we apply it to things like entering someone's house or borrowing someone's car, nobody seems to get confused. When the issue is sex, though, a percentage of the population suddenly gets confused, even baffled.

Hypotheticals came out: What if someone was super drunk? Were they able to give consent if they just had impaired judgement? What if they wanted to have sex, but woke up later, changed their mind and said that they didn't? Or -- and this one is the kicker -- What if they protested, but they actually did want it? If consensual sex required explicit consent, how would shy people or people with conflicted feelings ever get laid?

The tragedy of this final objection (raised more times than I could count) was the transparency of its rationalization. "She may have said stop, but she really wanted it -- I could tell" was so monstrously cliche, so absurdly delusional, that it begged to be dismissed out of hand. No one would accept that excuse if we were discussing any other topic. Even the menwho claim that "women are too subtle" when rejecting their advances are lying -- men can understand "polite refusal" as well as anyone else. Yet... Yet, in the back of my mind, a nagging discomfort remained through these discussions. I'd grown up with good friends -- both male and female -- whose lives were evidence of something more complex. I had male and female friends who, though conflicted about their own sexual volition, wanted to have sex and were happy when it happened, even though they had not consented and in some cases protested. Of course, I knew close friends who'd been sexually assaulted and raped as well -- some by people they'd trusted, often in situations that were externally indistinguishable from my conflicted-but-pleased friends.

Needless to say, this conflict bothered me. A lot.

Did you get raptured? I didn't get raptured.

Earlier this week, God answered my question.

Specifically, he (or she) posted a comment here on Growing Up Goddy offering words of encouragement in my exploration and noted that there are many paths, not just one, that lead to "God." I'm a bit skeptical, though, as God left a home page URL that wouldn't resolve correctly. I suspect it might have been a friend making a point rather than the Deity Eirself, though to be fair it that might just be IP6 transition issues.

What was going to be a relatively simple reply -- a genuine thank you for the encouragement -- grew into something more as I tried to explain where I'm at right now, and why I'm not simply adopting a "lighter" form of the Christian faith that I grew up with. In a lot of ways, the answer is simple: I took Christianity really, really seriously.

A little over a year ago I noted that Growing Up Goddy had been silent. Sadly, not too much changed in that time. With the exception of a few posts (and a magnum opus on the psychology of altar calls that grew too unwieldy to post) things didn't change much. The problem isn't a lack of material; it's a lack of clarity on the direction.

As I mentioned before, I started this blog as a exercise in bridge building. Caught between the world of enthusiastic believers and skeptical critics, I wanted to try to create a place where both perspectives were shared honestly. Believers, I thought, could hear legitimate questions and grow to understand the perspectives of those outside the bubble. Those outside the fold could learn to understand the idiosyncratic ways of those who were raised inside the Church subculture. Over time, though, my position drifted from conflicted belief to Pascal's Wager Gone Horribly Wrong. I no longer consider myself a Christian, and while I don't rule out the possibility of returning to the faith in the future, it becomes less imaginable each day.

But.

Aren't there enough blogs out there full of ex-Christians venting about their experiences? Does the world need another snarky former evangelical taking potshots? Probably not. And personally, I've felt myself experience more and more anger as I've grown farther from the Church. In a way, I feel like I'm getting over the tangled aftermath of Stockholm Syndrome, working through my feelings about a lifetime of hypocrisy and outright deception that I experienced and willingly participated in. On the other hand, I'm often simply fighty with few useful insights. I don't want to be that guy.

I'll keep posting. I'll keep snarking. If you're still out there reading this, feel free to weigh in. I don't know where this blog is going, but I like where I am.