The Teenage Dreamer

I listened to the series but came back to episode 1 to comment. Retelling stories causes them to be modified, even unconsciously, revealing the story teller's beliefs, but not necessarily retelling the facts. "Once upon a time" should probably be put in front of anything that wasn't written down at the time by a witness. In that same kind of thinking, the moral of the story is up to you when you retell it. The story of Joseph could be about how charisma rules the world and how authority plants evidence to make an innocent person guilty.

Thank you for sharing your story, it is empowering and relatable as someone who also left evangelical Christianity in my adult life. When you spoke about looking ahead in life as an almost ‘what now’ moment, it speaks to a very strange and somewhat scary crossroads of identity and morality. I came to the same conclusion in my own life that throwing out all of the teachings and ideals was not the answer, and it’s ok to examine and hold on to the good things. Your description of this pivot, and even taking it further to examine these biblical examples of the human struggle, is so beautiful. I find myself teary eyed on my commute while listening to both your testimony and the examination of biblical passages. It would be easy to leave the bible and its teachings in the rear view mirror but your podcast has really opened a door for me. It’s worth processing these stories again..through a new (and more liberated) looking glass. Thank you Megan <3

Megan — thank you for this. I grew up in a different kind of high-demand religious world — Church of Christ, not Westboro — but the air was thick with Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. You were never quite sure you were right enough, clean enough, careful enough. It wasn’t the same level of public cruelty, but it still shaped a person. Leaving took a long time. Untangling the fear took even longer. I’m still in the middle of deciding which parts of that inheritance I want to carry and which parts I’m willing to set down. The Joseph story lands hard for me because it doesn’t erase the pit or the betrayal. It just refuses to let them have the final word. I’m grateful you’re doing this work out loud.

You're an incredibly good storyteller. I love the Joseph story and you've captured the heart of it beautifully. I'm so sorry that your childhood church and your family have seemingly become so fixated on one aspect of the nature of God that they've lost sight of all the other aspects and the fact that his love and mercy always supercede his judgment. (Just ask Jonah. He didn't really appreciate that about God, especially not when it was extended to the villainous Assyrians.) I pray that both you and your family (and myself too!) will one day be able to see him clearly and truly for who he is and that that knowledge will lead to reconciliation. We've been in the Joseph narrative at my church, CATC Grapevine, the past few weeks as well and last week's message Time Under Tension was another incredible look at some of the lessons that can be drawn from Joseph's life and experiences. I assume I shouldn't post a link here, but it's available on YouTube for anyone who cares to listen.

Megan, this is an incredible set of coincidences for me. Not a podcast listener at all, I read your story on Tangle. Intrigued, I listened to this first podcast. I cried. For hope, I guess. Struggling with family. Struggling with faith and religion. Alone. Determined not to give in,... yet, you reassured me that the chaos may have a purpose. The 'long middle' really resonated with me. Thank you! I'll greatly look forward to more.

I can see why you would feel resistant to the idea of someone "suffering well" but I appreciate you seeing that there's actually a lot of power in there as I see so much wisdom in that phrase. We seem to think that so much of our lives are in our control, but in reality, we are not. Most things happen to us outside our control. Once we accept that and focus on controlling what we can control, which is the life right in front of us, we then begin to be "suffering well" in that sense. Dedicating any substantial amount of time and energy to things we can't control is essentially flushing our greatest currency right down the toilet with nothing in return. I love in this story how Joseph never lets these outside circumstances dictate how he chooses to live or be. He chooses not to let that affect his spirit. He finds ways to work with what's in front of him, because that's what he has to do. I am inspired by how no matter what happens to him, Joseph does not let that change his character and bring down his spirit. In life, it's easy to give in to wronging other people because you were wronged. It's much more difficult to continue moving in a way that you see as right. I believe if you let other people's actions corrupt your own self, then you have gave them power over your life, and you have succumb to their energy. I very much appreciate you sharing this story and willingness to be honest about your beliefs, and how its been a struggle battling who were and who you are becoming. It's admirable that you do not let your past define you, yet you realize that it will always be apart of you. I'm glad I have stumbled upon your page and am looking forward to continuing to read your work!

“The long middle, not yet able to see the moral arc” I love this idea. I’m sure it speaks to the human experience of so many people’s lives. The last time I engaged with these stories it was 1981, I would have been five years old, sat on the wooden hall floor of a UK primary school. These were the bounds of my habitation as a child. I likely retold them as a teacher and I occasionally read them to my children but it is so engaging to consider them again at almost 50 years old in a humanistic, cultural, moral and historical context and to consider how these stories have impacted the lives of those who believe. Megan’s effortless knowledge of the bible, her lived experience, humour and intellectual agility makes her the perfect guide. Thank you Megan x

I didn't grow up in Topeka. I moved here in my late 20s, in November 2011, so almost exactly a year before Megan and her sister left. One day I drove down Gage Boulevard and came across a picket line of sorts with people holding some...interesting signs. It's possible that Megan was on the sidewalk that day. My then wife, a Topeka native, explained about the Phelps family and their long history in Topeka. I was interested in their absolute certainty, which I think is one of the themes throughout these series, and likely in Megan's life, based on her writing and my conversations with her. The idea that one can be so sure of something but be wrong in so many ways. Their signs were vile to me, but because I was a Christian, and they purported to be Christians themselves, I knew that in their logic, this was a way to show love, a way to "save" people. This was their way to confront people and rouse them from their supposed spiritual slumber and wake up to what they saw as the Truth. I wasn't offended, or intimidated, because I was also convinced that they were wrong, and I knew the Truth. We both read the same book and came to stark different conclusions. Years later, after the 2015-2016 campaign and election of Trump, a lot of my certainty around faith and community was shattered. Suddenly, being an immigrant like me, seemed anathema to most of the people in my circle of trust, some whom I even considered family. I wasn't certain of anything anymore. I'm still not. It was painful to see those same people wearing that odious red hat at a rally in Topeka. But like Joseph, and like Megan mentions at the end of this episode, I'm refusing to let pain define who I'm becoming.

Thanks for telling this story, Megan. I pray that you would be able to reconcile with your family someday, just as Joseph did. I also wanted to expand on one aspect of the story you mentioned: the parts that talk about Joseph's brother Judah. Not only does Judah help save Joseph's life when the brothers have thrown him into the pit; even more strikingly, later in the story, Judah offers himself as a substitute for Benjamin. The incredible part of this is of course the foreshadowing: Judah's descendent many generations later was Jesus, who was not only perfectly long-suffering but who gave himself as a perfect substitute for his people. Judah's self-sacrifice is remarkable; Jesus's is truly amazing!

I've totally enjoyed everything else you've given us, and while not being a believer, I've missed being able to discuss religious ideas without defensiveness and judgment. Religious belief (or nonbelief) is a personal matter, not something to impose on others. Though I feel we need to share ideas, whether we agree with others or not, to help expand our thinking and clarify what we do believe. The hard part is that children get indoctrinated while they're highly susceptible by people who love them and supposedly know all. When I was about 13, I told my mother I couldn't believe that God really existed. Religion seemed made up, like some kind of weird fairy story. She said she didn't believe either - she had some serious bones to pick with Christianity ("Babies are NOT born sinful!" was one). In answer to my obvious taken-aback question, she explained that she saw taking us to church as part of our education & socialization. Christianity was so imbedded in our culture that she wanted my brother and I to know what it was all about so that when we heard others talking about it, we wouldn't feel ignorant or left out. She left us to make up our own minds. She knew that even if we weren't religious, there'd be times we'd be going to church for other people's weddings and funerals, etc., so she wanted us to know how to behave, what was expected. Respect for my mother grew even more. She was always the wiser, more mature parent. My father was a believer because he was afraid not to be. He didn't really like going to church every Sunday, either, but he felt that he was supposed to. His piety increased as he got older, and my brother tells me that Dad died fearing the devil was coming for him. I ended up going to a small liberal arts college that was affiliated with the Presbyterian church. As long as I wasn't expected to attend the on-campus chapel services or any sort of indoctrination, I didn't care about the affiliation. We did have to take two religion classes, however, one of which had to be a Bible survey. I chose the Old Testament, which I disliked very much & barely passed. The second class I chose was called "Christ in Contemporary Culture." We read novels, watched films, held class discussions about religion in general. We also had to keep and turn in a journal every Friday, which got read and commented on by Rev. Ohler, one of the most interesting and admirable people I've ever encountered. Ohler got to read all about my disbelief and the things I didn't feel I could say out loud in class. But he opened my thinking through his comments and questions asked, without judgment or defensiveness. Or trying to convert me (at least not overtly). Until I listened to this first episode about Joseph, I had nearly forgotten about the large book of Bible stories that my parents had in the house. They didn't keep it out in the living room bookcase, but in a shelf by their bed. I found it there one day when I was alone in the house and started reading some of the stories out of curiosity. I loved fairy tales. These stories seemed somewhat like the stories I was familiar with, although set in a strange desert culture in which God's power or will took the place of magic. I didn't always get the point of the stories, but I kept coming back to the book whenever my parents weren't home. I never asked them about the book or told them I'd been reading it, again being unsure whether it was something I wasn't supposed to know about. Grownups just be weird sometimes. ;-) All this is to say that I've listened to three of the episodes now, and am very much enjoying your thoughts and interpretations of them. You know, desire for vengeance, for seeing the wicked punished and the good rewarded is innate in us. But I'm seeing that it's an immature and somewhat selfish desire. Children want the bad to be punished and the good to triumph. Forgiveness is sometimes very hard, but it's healthier in the end. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as I've heard said. We CAN learn from a good story, even if it's from the Bible. Thanks!

I so appreciate the open minded and soulful approach on all the podcasts on here, and I especially resonate with a non-denominational look at faith, meaning and humanity. The Bible is wild as a historical document, it always defies one specific interpretation, and you always find out something new on how this one book isn't actually written by its supposed author, or stems from a completely different time. So as a merely historical text it's interesting how unreliable it is and how it seems to deny us a coherent truth. But I found it rather corresponds with our present being, not so much as an ancient text but more of a reflection of where my needs are, of how I am hungering for a deeper understanding of things. I wanted to share my perspective because the focus on spirituality (for me not so much in an esoteric but more of a metaphysical sense) has helped me a lot in finding resonance in the Bible. I have been raised with a definition of God as Soul, Spirit, Mind, Principle, Life, Truth and Love, those being synonymous to each other, and God as purely good, without an element of evil, revenge or punishment or even "testing" man. God being goodness itself and man - as it says in Genesis 1 - as the image and likeness of exactly this definition, the immediate reflection of that original Principle of being. So, God being Spirit, man must be purely spiritual in substance, not physical, not material, not good and evil. I realize how this brings out the question of evil and how evil would find its place and meaning when God is omnipotent and omnipresent and has no knowledge of His supposed adversary. Can we even feel seen and acknowledged in our pain, our worries and trauma? Reading the Bible through an intellectual lens makes it easy to dismiss it as an eclectic historical collection full of contradictions but reading or engaging with it with an illumined sense reveals how grace always supersedes the despair, the hatred, the destruction, it moves us deeper and connects us to spirit, it enables us to love people and to forgive ourselves. And all those stories reveal how there can be water in the wilderness, a well in the desert, abundant supply where the seemed to be a vast lack of food, healing and aliveness where people seemed to suffer and die, light and love in the face of resentment, and literal tangible help in dire situations of need. I am just all for shedding our educated beliefs about man being a sinner, all institutional rituals and set in stone definitions of truth and I'm all for fostering an individual sense for what feels inherently true and natural. For me, it just seems irrefutable that man is good. To me, that is true. Not because someone dogmatically taught me this but because people are free to account as truth what they know in their heart. As a person with a lot of childhood trauma, I have gained insight from Daniel in the lion's den and from the three men in the fiery furnace. Both speak volumes about how your soul is preserved and continually restored, Isaiah talks about my soul being a well watered garden whose waters fail not. There seems to be this space of holiness in man where he feels he is truly and utterly intact and is given and compensated all that seems to have been taken away. After Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego were released from the fires, the king looked at the three "whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them." Letting the Bible tell me about my natural wholeness has brought a lot of healing to my soul, today there is not even the smell of fire on it. Soo looking forward to more episodes of this podcast!