Misguided: The Soundtrack To My Life

Chapter 19 – Losing My ReligionMusic featured in this chapter:Life Is a Highway – Tom CochraneThe River, Mother Nature & Me – Jenny LesterOrdinary World – Duran DuranOn the Road to Find Out – Cat StevensRedemption Song – Bob MarleyLosing My Religion – R.E.M.It took me many years to write my memoir. The manuscript underwent many major changes until I finally had a draft I was satisfied enough with to send to publishers. And the contract I eventually signed with an independent publisher required me to cut 50,000 words from my manuscript. So, quite a few anecdotes didn’t make the cut. One of those anecdotes happened a few days after I returned to Port Alberni for good. In hindsight, I think it would’ve been better if I had kept that particular story, as yet again another song had a profound effect on me.This chapter in my memoir opens with me dazed and confused after my plan to rescue Wings in Japan failed, and I made my escape back to Port Alberni. I had a secret past and an unknown future.My family was as surprised as I was that I had returned to Canada just two weeks after leaving. They knew almost nothing about my life in the Family, so I didn’t explain the real reason I had flown across the Pacific three times in less than a month. Still dazed by this development, I just told them that Japanese border agents denied me entry for trying to smuggle Bibles into the country. I ignored or deflected any questions about my past or why I left the group. They soon stopped asking.I was staying with my mum, and my sister Crystal was living there too with her two young boys. A few days after arriving there to stay I borrowed Crystal’s car and went to visit my uncle, who I refer to as uncle G. in my memoir. It had been over 11 years since I had last smoked cannabis, so I got very high that evening. On the short drive home a song came on the radio that stopped me in my tracks, literally.Just as I had done the first time I heard Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody while driving, I pulled over and stopped to listen to Tom Cochrane’s Life Is A Highway. But that song had the opposite effect of Dylan’s song, which had led me back to the cult, a story told in chapters 1and Chapter 11 in this series:My indoctrinated cult world view had been all about the destination: the end of the world, then heaven. Everything was aimed at that, nothing else mattered. Now having left the cult I was aimless, unsure of what came next, but Cochrane’s song enlightened me with the concept that life is a journey, not a destination. I still get chills every time I hear this song.Life Is a Highway – Tom CochraneLife's like a road that you travel on When there's one day here and the next day gone Sometimes you bend and sometimes you stand Sometimes you turn your back to the wind There's a world outside every darkened door Where blues won't haunt you anymore Where brave are free and lovers soar Come ride with me to the distant shore We won't hesitate To break down the garden gate There's not much time left today Life is a highway I wanna ride it all night long If you're going my way I wanna drive it all night long Through all these cities and all these towns It's in my blood, and it's all around I love you now like I loved you then This is the road, and these are the hands From Mozambique to those Memphis nights The Khyber Pass to Vancouver's lights Knock me down and back up again You're in my blood; I'm not a lonely man There's no load I can't hold A road so rough this I know I'll be there when the light comes in Tell 'em we're survivorsAnother anecdote I had to cut described how during that year in Port Alberni before starting university, I spent countless hours sitting on the bank of a river contemplating my past and trying to imagine my future. It was very soothing to sit by a stream and allow a stream of consciousness to flow through my mind.The River, Mother Nature & Me – Jenny LesterSitting on rocks down by the river Feeling the powers that be You can howl at the moon, wade the deep water There's no place that I'd rather be Just the river, Mother Nature and me If your heart needs healing go down to the river And quietly sit on the shore You'll feel her run through you to mend and renew you You'll feel life like never beforeMy old life and persona was gone. I was no longer one of God’s elite endtime soldiers who would rule heaven on earth (or in the moon? see chapter 17)with Jesus for a thousand years. I had to create an entirely new life for myself from scratch, and it was a scary prospect. I would have to learn how to survive in the ordinary world as an ordinary man.Finding a job in Port Alberni was very difficult in the midst of a recession and high unemployment rate. To account for the past twelve years since my last job in Canada, I padded my thin resume by claiming I spent those years in Asia as an English teacher and staff member at an international boarding school for children of missionaries. But without higher education and credentials it was difficult to find a job where those experiences were useful....... I thought I could simply start my life over from scratch with a clean slate, so had tried to move on by focusing on my education and ignoring issues related to my life in the Family. I learned the hard way it doesn’t work like that. The past doesn’t stay buried. Certain memories haunted me, so I knew I had to eventually acknowledge and deal with my old life. I was too busy trying to overcome 20 lost years and create a new life to do that, though. Putting it off inevitably led to my breakdown.Ordinary World – Duran DuranWhat has happened to it all? Crazy, some'd say Where is the life that I recognize? (Gone away) But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world Somehow, I have to find And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world I will learn to survive What is happening to me? Crazy, some'd say Where is my friend when I need you most? (Gone away) Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed Fear today, forgot tomorrow Ooh, here beside the news of holy war and holy need Ours is just a little sorrowed talk And I don't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world Somehow, I have to find And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world I will learn to survive Most of this chapter in my memoir is about my university education that I began exactly a year after I escaped the cult, which helped me deconstruct the dogma I was indoctrinated with, and eventually led to losing my religion completely. Through a series of fortunate incidents I realized a university education would be the best thing I could do at that point.On the Road to Find Out – Cat StevensWell I left my happy home To see what I could find out I left my folk and friends With the aim to clear my mind out Well, I hit the rowdy road And many kinds I met there Many stories told me Of the way to get there So on and on I go The seconds tick the time out There’s so much left to know And I’m on the road to find out Well in the end I’ll know But on the way I wonder Through descending snow And through the frost and thunder I listen to the wind come howl Telling me I have to hurry I listen to the Robin’s song Saying not to worry Then I found myself alone Hoping someone would miss me Thinking about my home And the last woman to kiss me (kiss me) But sometimes you have to moan When nothing seems to suit ya' But nevertheless, you know You’re locked towards the future Then I found my head one day When I wasn’t even trying And here I have to say ’Cause there is no use in lying (Lying) Yes the answer lies within So why not take a look now? Kick out the devil’s sin, pick up Pick up a good book now So on and on I go The seconds tick the time out There’s so much left to know And I’m on the road to find outA note about that Cat Stevens song, where he says “pick up a good book now”. Many of his songs have references to God and spirituality, even before his conversion to Islam. The lyrics I found for this song refer to “a good book”, but in that music video he appears to sing “the good book”, which would be an obvious reference to the Bible and perhaps the Koran. Since my rejection of David Berg and his cult, I no longer read “the good book”, the Bible, but I was reading many good books that helped me deconstruct my indoctrination and eventually lose my religion completely.For the first six months before I finally got a job, I spent many hours in the library scanning the shelves and selecting any title, on any subject, that grabbed my attention. After years of reading only the Bible and Berg’s letters, the library was a banquet of books feeding my intellectually malnourished mind. I wrote in a diary entry: “reading Plato for the first time in my life and it is immensely enlightening.”I discovered Plato in the 54 volume Great Books of the Western World. The first volume, The Great Conversation, included a ten-year reading list, which I photocopied and began reading. Exposure to knowledge and ideas in different disciplines was exactly what I needed to overcome the religious dogma I was indoctrinated with since childhood. I didn’t realize it yet, but the recommendations were also excellent preparation for university.Although I had stopped praying and reading the Bible, I didn’t immediately reject the fundamentalist Christian worldview. It would take awhile to change my perspective and fully open my closed mind, but it was ajar enough to realize that Berg’s dogma against education, rooted in Adam and Eve’s original sin of disobeying God by eating fruit from the tree of knowledge, helped him control his unquestioning followers. I was questioning now, though, and the very knowledge I needed to overcome my indoctrination was the forbidden fruit I was inculcated to reject.A couple of coincidences a few months after returning to Canada led me to apply to university, which I started exactly a year after escaping the cult. While reading Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species I had another profound “aha moment” reading his elegant explanation of evolution, which made far more sense to me than the young earth creationist dogma David Berg infected me with.Believing in biblical literalism requires faith that is blind to reality. Squelching doubts becomes essential to maintaining that faith. I quickly learned to ignore, reinterpret or rationalize any facts that didn’t fit my faith. Throughout my life in the Family, pushing doctrines I doubted or disagreed with to the back of my mind became an habitual way of dealing with the psychological stress of cognitive dissonance I experienced when trying to reconcile religious dogma with reality.Berg was wrong when he wrote: “it takes more faith to believe this incredible, fictitious, fairy tale of man’s origins than it does to accept God’s simple, beautiful, inspired explanation in His Word!”i To believe the Bible is literally true requires the kind of irrational faith expressed in the oxymoronic scripture that preposterously claims faith is evidence (Hebrews 11:1). On the other hand, accepting evolution doesn’t require blind faith, just a basic understanding of the self-correcting scientific method, which counters criticism and dispels doubt with real, reliable evidence that confirms it as fact.1 Corinthians 13:11 states: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Now that I was no longer a Child of God, and understood as a man, evolution seemed far more reasonable and wonderful than creationism. As Darwin wrote in the final sentence of On the Origin of Species: “There is grandeur in this view of life ... that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.iiIt was a tremendous psychological relief to realize while in university that it isn’t evolution, but creationism that is an “incredible, fictitious fairy tale”. Having reached that conclusion, I didn’t go on to consider the question of God’s existence. By that time, I had shed all other aspects of my former Christian life, so I consciously decided to put aside that ultimate question. For the next several years I suspended my belief, neither believing nor disbelieving God existed.Religion was irrelevant in my new life, interesting intellectually, but not spiritually. In my former worldview I always filtered everything through my indoctrinated understanding of the Bible. Now clear-eyed, I was able to confront and critique my beliefs from a new perspective. It helped that I could examine biblical and religious themes I encountered in some of my classes, and include my new views in various essays. I had successfully deprogrammed myself from Biblical bondage. Although words attributed to Jesus promised his truth would set me free,iii that dogma bound me in chains. It was the truth I discovered through education that gave me genuine freedom.Redemption Song – Bob MarleyWon't you help to sing These songs of freedom? 'Cause all I ever have Redemption songs Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our mindsSee: Henrietta Davis. “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery: The origin and meaning behind Bob Marley’s Redemption song.” https://henriettavintondavis.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/redemption-song/This chapter of my memoir describes in detail my educational experiences and subsequent academic readings that ultimately led me to completely reject all religious beliefs. So, R.E.M.’s song makes its third appearance in this soundtrack series, because of its special relevance to my story.Losing My Religion – R.E.M.That's me in the corner That's me in the spotlight Losin' my religion This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit perrybulwer344598.substack.com