Living in an 80s commercial

Do you remember that one commercial from the 80s that went something like this?

"[Guy in kitchen holding an egg] This is your brain. [Points to a frying pan on a burner] This is drugs. [Cracks egg into hot frying pan] This is your brain on drugs. [Sizzling] Any questions?"

I'm definitely not making fun of that commercial or minimalizing how devastating it is to have a drug addiction. I was just thinking that that metaphor from the commercial is probably the coolest one for me to borrow so that I can describe what it's like to leave a religious/Pharisaical/hypocritical environment, because...

...my brain isn't sizzling anymore. Hallelujah! Perhaps a more descriptive title for this blog post would be "What it's like to grow up in a Pharisee's house." Unfortunately, I won't consider breaking my no-cooking record for a photo opp. Reader, I hope you don't mind using your imagination:

"[Tirzah in kitchen holding an egg] This is my brain. [Points to a frying pan on a burner] This is a Pharisee's house. [Cracks egg into hot frying pan] This is my brain in a Pharisee's house. [Sizzling]"

Technically, I think I grew up in a house with two Pharisees, but I'll only elaborate on one of them here. And I think Jesus probably had the best metaphor to describe what a Pharisee can do to a person, but, well... I was just thinking about my brain. And that 80s commercial with the egg was always cool.

"In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples first of all, 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.' " (Luke 12:1)

When you're born into a Pharisee's house, you will live in an extremely unhealthily competitive environment. It will always be understood that the Pharisee will always be better than everyone else in the house. Unless you can oppress your sibling and strangle your way to the top of the heap, you will always remain at the bottom. The fear of man will motivate you to slap on a fresh coat of whitewash every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. The fear of failure will drive you to perfection. The fear of rejection will drive you to isolation. The fear of dying will drive you to feed your infirmities until you have developed an all-you-can-eat buffet of health problems. Fear will rule almost everything you touch.

When you live in a Pharisee's house, he will recite the books of the Bible while he drives you to school in the mornings, so you'll be forced to memorize them. When you get older, you'll be forced to participate in family devotionals at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night only because the Pharisee heard James Dobson say that families are supposed to do this.

When your home is a Pharisee's home, he'll be waiting for you when you come home from college. But it won't be to find out how you're doing. He'll want to show off his new cantillation skills. He won't care how exhausted you are from your road trip. He'll just sit next to you, open up a book, and begin to cantillate as if you were at a synagogue service, not a living room.

When the head of your house is a Pharisee, he'll be in charge of the TV, even though he won't have any concept of entertainment. If you try to watch a movie with a Pharisee in the room, he'll punctuate the film with a running commentary to define the obvious innuendos and to make sure you caught every single cuss word. Every time a character says "God" or "Oh, my God," and they aren't praying, the Pharisee will declare, "Blasphemer!" Even when he is exhausted and watching TV with his eyes closed, he'll declare groggily, "Blasphemer." Every time President Clinton shows up on the news, the Pharisee will yell, "Baby killer!" at the screen.

When you grow up in a Pharisee's house, you will learn quickly how to lie, because the Pharisee won't do anything to develop any kind of relationship with you. Why should you tell the truth to somebody who doesn't bother getting to know you? It's not like he would ever do anything to find out the truth. Knowing how to lie and deceive will especially come in handy during your high-school years when you want something so badly that you'll develop a secret life on the side to get it. When you're in junior high and you don't want to eat your dinner, he'll think you've become anorexic like Karen Carpenter, even though the truth is that you're not hungry because you snacked all afternoon, and if he had kept an eye on you, he might have seen it. When you're in college and you really become anorexic, he'll smile and tell you that you look like a model. The main thing that the Pharisee wants is for you to show up for church on Sundays and Wednesdays and to vote Republican. If you do anything to voice a political opinion that doesn't 100% mirror his -- even if it's a simple admiration for an actor's creativity, even though you disagree with the actor politically -- the Pharisee will bark at you, "I believe the Bible."

When you're in a Pharisee's home, you will live in a constant blanket of shame, partly because the Pharisee won't always acknowledge your presence as a human being. When you arrive in the kitchen in the mornings to eat breakfast -- because you are a morning person just like he is -- he may or may not greet you. All the times he briefly grinned and waved at you while he was eating his breakfast and silently reading his Bible would be overshadowed after he would be given more authority as a teacher. In time, all you will remember is those silent breakfasts when you would serve yourself some cereal and coffee and not get any eye contact whatsoever from the Pharisee, even though you were the only other human being in the room, until he would launch into his lecture about Israel. Without so much as a "Hi" or "How are you," the Pharisee would begin speaking about the landmarks in Israel, as if you were a university student who was taking notes for a test... instead of a valued member of the family who has interests, dreams, desires, and personalities that are different than his.

When you are part of a Pharisee's home, when you are away at college, you will call home and want to speak to the other Pharisee instead. This trend would continue into adulthood when you would call home, the Pharisee would answer, and he would give the phone to the other Pharisee. He wouldn't always bother to develop a relationship or maintain a connection with you, even if you were in the same room or on the other end of the phone.

When the head of your house is a Pharisee, you will be afraid of interacting with him, because he will always be right, you will always be wrong, and he will not stop talking about it. After you begin discovering that following God is more than just following rules and attending church and whitewashing yourself, he will try to deprogram you. He will interrupt your meals or your homework, and he will launch into a tirade and/or commence a lecture that will be quite lengthy. More than likely, this will not be a conversation; this will be a monologue. If he remembers an additional point after he walks away, he will interrupt your meal or your homework again, for another 5 or 10 minutes, and pick up wherever he left off in his tirade and/or lecture.

Years later, after you begin to process your life, terms such as "spiritual abuse" or "emotional abuse" or even "mental abuse" will come to life in a way that will bring you to your knees and give you many "WTF" moments with God. You will realize that the Pharisee did not cherish you. He studied you. You will play back a tape that he recorded of you when you were 5 years old, and you will yell at the speaker something to the effect of, "SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HEBREW! SHE ISN'T INTERESTED IN LEARNING LANGUAGES! SHE WANTS TO DRAW!"

After you leave the Pharisee's house forever, you will communicate with the Pharisee to answer his question as to why you left forever, and you will briefly answer that God told you to leave and that he and the other Pharisee spiritually and emotionally abused you. Instead of acknowledging the abuse, he will reply with 3 different Bible verses that all say to honor your father and mother, and he will later add the Bible verse that says that you have brought shame and disgrace.

And as you pick up the pieces of your life, you will understand more than ever why God told you to leave, especially when you realize that your brain has stopped frying.

"For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation." (Psalm 149:4)

Yesterday, I heard my pastor preach a sermon about pride. (He didn't mean the good kind of pride like taking pride in your work or saying, "Hey, I'm proud of you." He meant the bad kind of pride like being self-righteous or believing you're better than everybody else.) After church, God took me aside, and we found a quiet little nook at a restaurant for lunch. (You'd be surprised how peaceful Jack In The Box can be at 2 p.m. on a Sunday.) While I was eating, checking out my Bible, and enjoying the tranquility, God basically told me that pride was a major stronghold in my family. (Technically, it's my ex-family.) That is, pride would blind us from seeing anything that God wanted us to see. It was a lot like a deception. If anyone would try to show us something new, we'd respond by saying something like, "We've never heard of such a thing," and we'd continue living our extremely narrow-minded little lives. (Not the good kind of narrow-minded like believing that people in Japan shouldn't marry their video games. The bad kind of narrow-minded like believing that if the Holy Spirit wants to lead you to do something, He's going to have to flex your muscles.) This kind of pride is what kept me from getting saved in the first place. When I was a little girl, I would hear a preacher at church talk about how to accept Jesus as your Savior, and I'd think something to the effect of, "They mean everybody but me. I don't need that."

So, while I was enjoying a quiet lunch yesterday with Father God, and He showed me that pride was a major stronghold in the family that I've irrevocably separated myself from, He said, "It would have killed you." He's right. He told me to leave the family back in 1998, and I didn't. And I paid for my disobedience with mental illness and several days at a psychiatric hospital. I finally obeyed Him and left the family back in 2011. And God allowed me to be tempted in the same way that I was tempted many years ago; and this time, the mental illness could have been worse, and my giving myself over to the temptation could have had excruciatingly tragic results. I more than likely would not be typing this right now.

But God helped me, because He takes care of me like a good Daddy is supposed to. Jesus helped me, because He's a conqueror, and in Him, I'm more than a conqueror. The Holy Spirit helped me, because He's a Helper, and He's a Counselor, and He's a Comforter, and yes, He most certainly does still work the same way He did before the Bible was canonized. And I know Him. And He knows me.

And that doesn't mean that I'll never struggle with anything ever again. I'm not perfect, and I still have lots to learn, and I still have a long way to go, because life has just re-begun for me. But I'm willing. God is holding my hand, and He won't let go. He's been squeezing out the leaven of hypocrisy, which was probably rising inside the dough of self-righteousness, which was probably baking in the oven of pride and narcissism.

Putting it crudely, it's hard to love other people when you're living with your head stuck up your butt.

And I'm certainly glad that my brain has stopped frying in the pan of self-righteousness, which was greased in hypocrisy, which was heated by pride. And that metaphor is definitely not perfect, but I hope I'm making sense. I think God looked inside the Pharisee's house, saw me, and said, "She and I are eloping now," pulled me out, sandblasted me off, and is now embracing me in His arms. Because He's my Family now. And I'm glad I'm His. And I'm glad He's mine.

"[Sizzling stops] Any questions?"