420 thoughts on “Friday Challenge: Crime and Punishment”

  1. I did my best to fly under the radar at my fundy HS and college. I broke rules all the time but I didn’t get caught. I didn’t care for either of the schools I attended but never really talked about it. However, this did result in many meetings with the principal for my apathy of fundy life. “An apathetic attitude is a pathetic attitude.”

  2. 😯 This guy! I was an impressionable fundy teen. I had forgotten his name. Wow, these are some uncomfortable memories.

    I hope he rots in hell.

  3. My parents got married over Christmas break while attending Fundy U. But a couple weeks before the wedding, they were accused of sitting too close to each other and got “socialed”. Kind of hard to plan a wedding without speaking to each other.

    1. Oh I know several couples that happened to. They get punished for PDA on campus even if they are married!

  4. In 1980, I was 15 and I went to France with Teen Missions International. They are fundies who take American teenagers all over the world and make sure that they don’t see any of it. I was a kid with undiagnosed ADD. It was against the rules to leave your bible in your room when it was time for personal devotions. It was also against the rules to fall asleep during personal devotions. I was on extra work detail for most of the summer. They made you perform this detail during the one hour of free time that you might have to bathe. I suppose that no one was worried about my health and hygeine. I was just another rebellious teenager and I smelled bad.

  5. F*&*ing retarded Fundies.. The more I learn about grace and love and liberty in Christ, the more I can’t believe these people are reading the same book that I am reading. Can they not see themselves in the gospels when they read about the pharisees? I am reading your stories and I’m like Gob Bluth over here: COME ON!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP_9zH9Q44o

    Thankfully, I was stealthy and a good liar growing up. My old man only beat me with his belt a couple of times and it was usually because we had pissed him off not because of sin. My mom usually meeted out justice with her shoes or a switch of our choosing or she’d hit us in the mouth with her backhand. As for the “this will hurt you more than me”, I understand that. I hate disciplining my kid. It hurts my heart. but she’s too little and stupid to understand that. So little and precious and stupid.

    1. There are definitely other ways to teach kids besides spanking or punitively disciplining! I think fundies often want children to act like adults, and not go through normal developmental stages. It ends up that they will discipline children for age-appropriate behavior, rather than just controlling themselves to be more patient and kind. I don’t think disciplining (in the sense of teaching) children is supposed to be hurting you as the parent… What do you think? Maybe it’s a topic for the forums?

      1. Invectives, expletives and just plain cussin’ are the most appropriate response to being abused, lied to, and being manipulated.

        It impresses me just how little there is on this blog.

        1. That doesn’t seem to stop or even slow the accusations of bitterness! Which I still delight to hear being tossed about as if just saying it wins an argument! LOL

  6. I went to an ACE school for a few months in 4th grade. My mom took me out of it because she thought the education was sub-standard (it was too easy for me; I was always working in PACE booklets one to two (and in one case three) grade levels ahead of me).

  7. I was regularly “called down” in chapel and church by the pastor for: talking, passing notes, not paying attention, being a distraction….etc. It didn’t matter if you actually were. Once I was just bending down to get something from my purse and got yelled at from the preacher in the middle of his sermon (not that THAT is a distraction). Public humiliation is a favorite of fundy preachers.

  8. I remember one of the old ladies in the church (one more fundy church rule, there will always be at least two little old ladies who just sit in the front of the church and pass judgement on everyone else) bless me out for putting on lipstick (I was about 10 at the time). It was just Chapstick but when I complained to my mom, she said I needed to learn to respect my elders.
    In all fairness, this is the same woman who, with my dad, took a fair amount of heat from the other parents in church when I decided to join my school’s drama club.

    1. Ah ha ha, this reminds me of my own nasty little old lady. I was the oldest of seven and my younger sibs would play quietly on the floor during the service before children’s church started. She always sat right behind us and one day after service she told my dad, “Your children are an abomination!” He (this is classically dad) wasn’t entirely sure what the word meant but figured he’d be polite and assume she was giving him a compliment, smiled big and said, “Thank you!!!”

      It was the best response EVER!!!!

  9. Someone outed a guy at my college who was doing gay porn on the side. He was summarily expelled, but mysteriously no one ever figured out how he was discovered.

    1. GCC. I think that was a legit expulsion, gay or not. I still get laughs out of that story.

      1. I’m not quite sure if it was legit or not. He was doing it off campus and on his own time. Not that it really matters here.

    2. It must have been a divine revelation, since nobody at that college ever looked a porn … 🙄

    3. Funniest thing ever, the guy tried to spin it as gay discrimination, which I’m sure they expel for just being gay, and I don’t think they are right to do that, but actively involved in making porn of any kind and wanted to claim gay discrimination. It’s enough to make you fall out of your chair.

  10. A married man in the church was making advances to one of my married friends. His wife took me off the nursery worker list. 🙄
    When I asked about it, she said that she would not put me back on because she found out that I had told someone about it and she was going to make sure I said nothing to anyone else. “It is all under the blood now,” she said. So, I guess gossip = no nursery duty. 🙂

  11. Right, let’s see – the time I got spanked in 6th grade for coming to school in boy’s sandals – I’d broken two toes playing softball and couldn’t get girls’ shoes on.

    The time I got spanked in 3rd grade for pointing out the teacher had spelled traveller wrong.

    The time I got spanked at home – dang I’d forgotten this one – we were driving past a billboard about deodorant and one of my brothers asked “What’s BO?” and I answered “Bottom odor” instead of “Body Odor” – I truly thought that was what it meant.

    1. … I’m really speechless. The people at your school should be charged with child abuse. Along with so many other stories people have written here. I know some of us probably still feel conflicted about what our parents did to us, depending on a lot of things, but how could anyone not see this as physical abuse? Beating teenagers and pre-teens capriciously for very minor mistakes? People got serious, serious issues in the IFB.

      1. I don’t know about now, but in the 80’s and 90’s, it was VERY common practice for the fundy powers that be to mete out spankings in school. . .for what?? Just about anything, really.

        1. One of the public schools I attended in the early 90s used spanking. I was never spanked, but unfortunately that had more to do with me being white than me being good. 🙁

      2. I grew up in a Christian school, and got spanked more times than I can count. The problem is, I deserved it even more times. 🙂

  12. My teen crush (now husband of 16 years) got caught holding hands at teen camp one summer . We were publicly used as examples at the next tent service. Names and all. When I got home I was forbidden to even speak to him, so in out senior year of “prison” we ran away together and have been happily married for 16 years and going strong. We rarely speak of growing up in that “church” together to our kids, and their interaction with our parents (who still go to the same church) is VERY guarded. Almost like supervised visits.

    1. hmm. Something similar happened to me. Except we were talking outside of church when the service started my dad came out and told me I could never talk to this boy again. And we were such good kids, we didn’t run off and get married, we just never talked to each other again because that was our punishment.

      1. And yeah, If my parents ever want to see my kids, so far they haven’t, I would never let them alone with my kids.

        1. I feel the same. I would never let my mother be alone with my children. Heaven only knows what crazy things she’d tell them or how she’d treat them.

          She already told me she hopes I never have children because I’ll be a terrible mother. (all because I said I didn’t want to homeschool)

          So if she has the nerve to say messed up stuff to me, I can’t imagine what crap she’s tell my children.

        2. We struggle with that. I let my dad see me kids now, while they’re young but as they get older things will have to be different. For now he likes to see them, because my dad loves kids but when they get to be teenagers he won’t be as active in their lives, so at least it’s not going to have to be an awkward conversation… like the one we’re going to have to have this summer when I tell my dad that my kids aren’t allowed to go to church with him anymore. We let them when they weren’t paying attention but now that my older one can understand what’s going on, he can forget it. I’m not going to let them sit and watch the Gospel be used and twisted like that.

          I do have a little fun though when they go, like only sending the boys shorts for church, sending their nRSV Bibles with them or their Presbyterian church shirts, and both my boys have shoulder length hair. Good times! If anything comes up ( LIke the time I watched my little boy cry in the mirror because my dad said something about his hair looking like a girl’s) we just combat it with a torrent of love from not just us, but many other adults too.

  13. I went to public school, so I was lucky in that respect.

    The main problems were because my mom was the fundy convert and my dad wasn’t. But if she heard that I’d done something with my dad (like going with him to his brother’s birthday party and dancing), she’d tell the pastor. Sermons which hinted at you were embarrasing.

    1. Public school or not, even 1 year @ HAC irrevocably inundates you with fundy street cred in my book! PCC really was like going to a secular college compared to what they seem to be doing up there. 🙂

      1. Yeah. Spent 4.5 years there. The first year was like heaven, because I was used to dysfunction and actually could go to sleep without hearing arguments in the background. The second year I began to realize that I secretely didn’t agree. I prayed and tried to cure my heard heart. It didn’t work. The third year? I think I came back more for social reasons, but my attitude worsened. By then end of that year, I knew I’d probably leave fundyland eventually. However, I came back because I was close to finishing and my credits wouldn’t transfer.

        Fat lot of good coming back did. Not a single HAC credit was accepted by the Air Force. However, I have been able to test out of a lot of the core classes and should have my Associate’s by fall.

        1. Dude. Live vicariously through your children much?

          Lol. Hope it balmbs your wounds, and I hope it doesn’t affect them too much. I’m NOT judging, and I hope it teaches your kids valuable lessons about fundy land, but I also hope they don’t sink their claws too deep into their developing egos.

        2. I’m thinking you meant to reply to someone else. Last I checked, I don’t have children.

  14. Man, days like today make me think Fundamentalism isn’t just stupid, it’s a moral blight on our country & all of humanity. How long, Oh Lord?

    1. The moral issues are what bothers me about it all. I don’t much care if other people believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever, unless it supports a behavior system that unbalances them and makes them mistreat other people.

      This Friday Challenge has been an eye-opener for me. It’s easy to see why some people would believe that God is “a mean tyrant” (to borrow Pastor’s Wife’s phrase) when the parents, pastors, teaches, principals, and other people with power and authority in their lives did, in fact, act like mean tyrants.

  15. I stopped going at the age of 13. My punishment? The withholding of my mother’s love. 29 years and counting!

    1. That is appalling, and I’m so sorry for you. I find that one of the most shocking things about fundamentalism- that fundy parents will put legalism above loving their own children.

      1. I appreciate it. I rarely talk about it with people in my day to day. That kind of estrangement is socially taboo (to not talk with an aging parent.) Few understand the psychological abuse.

        1. You’re right, it is socially taboo, but sometimes we judge too quickly. My dad works in the nursing home business, and people are always lamenting that some little old people have no visitors. Yes, some have deadbeat families that abandoned them, but my daddy always says, “Don’t assume that just because somebody looks feeble and harmless now that they have always been a good person.” Abusers get old and feeble too, and we are often too quick to judge a situation when we think children should be spending time with aging parents. I sympathize with your pain, but you’ll get no judgment from me!

    2. Man, I am so sorry. My heart is heavy for you and your mother both. In our fundy church there is a mother who refuses to speak to her daughter because she married a “hand waver” pastor. She won’t see her grandchildren etc. . . . but she is married to a incestuous pedophile who only shows up to church a couple of times a year, and that is ok with her. I want to cry every time I see her. To think she is so lost in her confusion and good intentions!! Not to mention the pain her daughter is going through.

  16. No, they all had great big buns on their heads, but they didn’t cover their hair. Also there was something about jumpers not being okay, only separate shirts and skirts–nobody explained why. And not tights, only hose, but only certain kinds of hose. And so on.

    My sister was well out of high school, but her prospective fiance was referred to as a boy and had a curfew, so I thought he was still in high school, which would make him a boy marrying a woman, which would have been weird. No, actually, he was older than she was–more what my circle called the beginning of marrying age.

  18. I am taller than most girls. In seventh grade, I grew about five inches in one year. My parents had bought me skirts for the school year, but I was just out of public school and into fundy school so I didn’t have a lot of fundy-ish clothes. I remember keenly the day I got a demerit because my skirt was about a half inch too short. I was devastated. The skirt itself was supposed to hit totally below the knee. I never got another demerit from that time on. It was embarrassing enough to be called out of Math class and sent down to the office. I cried on the way home.

      1. But not unusual. I had something like that happen to me as well. Puberty + female + Fundyland = Hell on earth.

      1. There’s a count each post that’s kept. Yours is the next sequentially assuming no one else puts it in between your check & post. I’m sure was just having some fun, not actually targeting 277.

  20. This wasn’t a “punishment” per se, but it felt like it. At the end of my sophomore year at BJU, I was called into the DOW’s office and told that I would not be an APC the near year. The reason? I did not make my hair look nice enough. It was flat, and it was supposed to look better than that. Which was weird, considering the woman speaking to me had hair that was even flatter right at that moment. It wasn’t meant as a punishment, but it felt like one, because not being an APC by your junior year meant there was something “wrong” with you. My parents had held BJU up as the be-all, end-all of spirituality, and all my life I had been so eager to go there and be the super-duper Christian student they wanted me to be. And now I had failed in that simple task of becoming an APC. It seems strange now, but at the time it really, really hurt.

    1. Don’t feel too bad. After 5 semesters in the dorm I never achieved APC either…and my dad was on staff (but not in town). 😎

      I’d rather be real and messy in my faith and how I live it out than a fake robot who just knows all the right things to do and say.

    3. When I was at PCC, the girls in ensemble were picked for their looks esp, their hairstlyes.

    4. Flat hair? Really? Some of us pay good money for irons to make our hair flat. It’s preferable to the half-afro, half-stringy mess it would be naturally.

      1. The funny part was that I was made APC in the middle of my junior year, no hair style change required. My senior year I made PC in the middle of the year, when another PC got socialled and it was considered a “difficult” prayer group to handle. It didn’t seem very difficult to me. My hair style must have seemed better and better, because I was also asked to pray for Bible Conference that year. I knew then that I had NO CLUE what they were really looking for in APC’s or PC’s.

    5. Your hair, flat? Who was smoking crack? Dang, I never had any hope even with all my perms. My mop is stick-straight. I should go back on campus now that I’m done with the chemical hair torture and really hack them off. 😉

      FTR, g2l’s hair is naturally wavy. 😆

  21. ….Last One

    When giving the obligatory “testimony” before going back to college, I made a comment that “I hate the South”. Being a Northern/Midwestern boy (depending on how Pittsburgh is classified), the southern culture was different for me and too laid back for my taste.

    Anyway, a lady in my church was offended by my hating of the south and parents told me that I should apologize to her. I laughed and never apologized. This is one thing that just irks the s**t out of me, people in fundyland are so easily offended. Jeez, get over yourself already. It’s not like I spit in your face or anything!

    1. Since there’s apparently some confusion let me just clear that up for you. “Not South of the Mason-Dixon line”, even if it’s California= Damn Yankee
      😀

    2. I’m offended.
      I live south of almost everybody here (26 degrees N latitutde). I want fundyvangelicalcatholic and donb123 to apologize to me. I’m holding my breath until they do. 😯

      1. Latitude, I mean. Is there a name for the moment right after you push the “submit” button, when you see all the typos you made, but can’t change them before the comment posts?

      2. At least you didn’t tell my dad how offended you were 😛

        I’m…..uhh…..sor…..nah, cant do it :mrgreen:

    3. At my fundy church (in the South, bless their little hearts) they don’t really like us Northerners. They don’t out and say it to your face, but they do talk about “Yankees” and their ways [of playing chess maybe?]. Yankees can be saved by grace just like a true, inbred Southerner! It just took less grace.

  22. I was pulled into the youth pastors office and rebuked for going to movies. Hollywood = evil, therefore do not go to movies. This was pre-VCR, DVD, cable TV, etc. I was labeled a “backslider”. No “secular music” either. Oh the bruhaha Amy Grant caused when she sang a song with Chicago frontman Peter Cetera! Crazy times. I think I have recovered now but it has taken decades for me to process what I went through and why 20th century evangelicalism was so fundy.

  23. What sort of punishment would someone like me be dealt, for having tattoos? I recently got tattoo no. 30 (“Ephesians 6 : 10-18!” on my ribcase. It hurt)

      1. Actually I was thinking of getting something that has a lot of meaning for me, a broken chain on my right ankle. 🙂

    2. I’m surprised it bothered you at all, you got through the worst of it, Putting those ribs in a case. 😀

    3. Do you have any on your feet? The minute he put the gun to my skin on my foot, I thought I wasn’t going to make it!! I was wondering which hurt worse between ribcage and foot. My wrist tat hurt, but not like the foot!!

    4. Everybody says that outside of the “No-No Zone”, the rib-cage is the probably the most painful place to get a tattoo. I believe it. Maybe the pain of getting a rib-cage tattoo is enough punishment…

  24. I got in trouble constantly when I taught at a Fundy school. Some highlights:

    I had to appear before the school board to explain why I knew the exact date when a student asked “when did Bill Clinton become president?” I actually had to show them the 20th Amendment of the Constitution which set the date of all inaugurations as January 20. Their interpretation of my knowing the date was that I was secretly in love with Bill Clinton and therefore an evil influence on their children.

    I was reprimanded by the principal and had a notation put on my employee file for having a James Taylor CD on the front seat of my car. Why the principal was roaming the parking lot peering in the windows of the faculty’s cars, I do not know.

    I had to appear before the school board when I requested and received information about the federal budget for teaching a government class from one of our state’s U.S. Senator’s offices. The Senator was a Democrat. I was told I should have requested the information from their favorite Republican Rep. instead. I had called that Rep’s office and the intern who answered the phone did not know what I meant by “federal budget”.

    2. As we were saying the other day, ignorance and arrogance make a bad combination.

      Why somebody would be working in a Congressional office who doesn’t know what the Federal budget is makes a whole other topic …

    3. A teacher… being reprimanded… for answering (correctly!) a morally neutral question of a student regarding a historical fact. The absurdity of that has left me unable to even think of a word to describe it.

    4. I too knew right away when Clinton became President. I cannot believe the ignorance that it was talked about, circulated and escalated to a school board meeting and all the people who talked about you did not know the date, the same date that happens every 4 years of their life!

      1. Every Presdent in living memory has been inaugurated on the same date (January 20) and at the same time (noon in the Eastern time zone).

        I guess I should know better by know, but I’m surprised that Baptists would hate their brother Baptist Bill Clinton so much, and prefer George H.W. Bush (Episcopalian), Dole (Methodist), or George W. Bush (Methodist).

    5. So if you had said, “Who’s Bill Clinton?”, they would have given you a promotion?

  25. I can relate to so many of these stories. I was an easy target in grade school in a very abusive environment. My grandpa disagreed with the previous pastor about some of the abuse then went and started his own church. That left us as the primary target.
    The principle’s niece could do no wrong. She told the teacher I stole a pencil from the junior church podium when I didn’t. They couldn’t find it on me seeing my dress didn’t have pockets. I had no where to put a stolen pencil but they believed her over me and I got spanked. In fact I got spanked every year I went to that school. I tried so hard to be good enough.
    Let’s see I was spanked because my shoulder brushed the wall wakinging down the hallway in line, I got spanked for turning around in my seat when in reality I was putting my books away in the side pocket on my desk. Again they didn’t believe me. I got a math text book and a chalk board eraser thrown at me because I was a daydreamer and my third grade teacher hated daydreamers. I could go on.
    Then you have HAC that has a whole other level of punishment over stupid stuff. Fundies just can’t let kids be kids.

    1. Yep. At HAC you could be deemed unspiritual for sitting too far back at chapel, not wearing dressy enough clothes, not wearing the right amount of jewelry.

      1. What about colors? I was told once at the Fundy school that I wore too many colors. My wardrobe over the years there became exceedingly neutral colored to fit in and avoid the questions.

        I also got in trouble when I had my shoulder length hair cut to chin length. Several hardcore fundy parents complained about the bad influence on their daughters.

        1. Too many colors? Never heard that one before! Didn’t know being colorful was wrong.

        2. You too? I refused to tone down the colors. If anything, I got louder just to hack them off.

          Emily: Yes, daring to wear colors means we’re evil. My former school staff can officially bite me 😈

    2. A lot of the “fundy spankings” seem to the result of a “bad attitude” on poor kid’s part.

      If I acted wrong, had “bad” body language, or just plain wasn’t happy to do something, I was spanked because I had a bad attitude and was in rebellion. More of that “break the will” bulljive. I personally think my parents used the “bad attitude” spanking just to let their anger out.

      And I never understood the unwillingness to trust and eagerness to blame. If someone said you did something wrong, then it must be set in stone. No questions, no checking to see if maybe, just maybe that other person was making something up or covering their own butt.

      All these stories you guys have about being spanked for pretty much no reason as children greatly pains me and makes me so angry. How could our parents/ other adults be so brainwashed and so blind as not see it was physical/psychological abuse?

      When I have children, I will only use spanking as a last resort and try my best not to spank in anger. I’ll encourage questions and encourage expression. I want to make sure that my children know I love them and support them no matter what they do. Never ever EVER will I attempt to break my child’s will. “Break their will not their spirit” is a load of crap. Once you break someone’s will, the breaking of their spirit comes not long after.

      1. You basically mirror our spanking philosophy. We found for each child, a different technique worked best. As for spanking when angry, I let some of the children get away with something rather than spank when angry. I was on the recieving end of some of those and swore not me.

        1. I can relate, I made up my mind not to whip when angry, I was 99% successful. How right you are about the children being different and needing different dicipline. I can count on one hand how many spankings my son got, my daughter, however was an entirely different story, I remember asking my wife one day, does she really deserve this many whippings, and her mother and I concluded, yep she needed em. When I talk about spankings, I’m not at all talking about the severe “beatings” me and my brothers got when we were kids.

          I don’t think alot of folks whip anymore, its not politically correct, but please let me caution all of you young parents that do,please never touch a child until you are calmed down, send the child to his room and take a walk around the block if you need to, so that you are under control when you go to dicipline. Do not dicipline when angry. I personally would have a short talk with the child about why I felt the need to correct him/her before spanking.

          If you are trying to spank a 13 yr old, you’re too late, also from my police days, if a cop brings your kid home drunk, don’t try to correct or even talk to them, put them to bed with a trash can beside their bed and talk to them in the morning.

          Ok class dismissed. 😕

        3. And if your child seems defiant and refuses to follow the most basic commands, take a moment and ask yourself if they actually understand what you are asking them to do. I spanked my daughter numerous times because she didn’t follow my instructions, not realizing for a long time that she was autistic and really did not understand what I was asking her to do.

  26. My dad was on a traveling singing group at Fundy U, and they would often miss classes on Monday because of vehicle trouble or bad weather (northern WI). But they would all get demerits for missing classes. And you know what happens when the demerits start adding up – letters are sent to the parents etc. So they basically were punished for serving and promoting the college.

    1. There’s only one FUN-D college in N. WI. That’s where I did my time – I mean, got my degree. 🙄

  27. A friend is a special-ed preschool teacher. The director of the school where she used to work told her she should start each morning by spanking the children. Why? Because “a good cry helps children relax.”
    As I said, my friend used to work there. Not now.

    2. Someone needs to report that place to the local department of social services, or whatever it is called in that state. That is abusive, pure and simple. My blood is boiling just reading about all these instances of people hurting innocent children, and then HIDING behind the name of Jesus. Despicable!

    4. What??? That’s just…ugh!! First of all…special-needs kids need to be hit just because? Wow…I sure hope that school was shut down, or they get in some serious trouble. It’s just evil…

    5. Our pastor would spank his kids before they went somewhere to “remind” them of what they’d get when they got home if they misbehaved. 😯

  28. #1: Remember when wearing a belt was more than just good taste but also a required part of daily Christian life? When I was 7, a belt was not high on my priority list and I was always in trouble since I forgot to wear one to school. It all culminated one day when I was sent to the principal’s office who promptly removed his belt, spanked me and made me wear the same belt for the rest of the day. It wrapped around me twice and was definitely noticed by everyone at school. NOT COOL.

    #2: After several major blow outs over my sister’s clothes, my dad took her shopping to help her find more appropriate clothes and they actually agreed on a pair of jeans! (Further remarkable as pants were taboo for the first 10 years of her life.) Two days later, she wore them downstairs and was immediately reprimanded and told to change before going out. The look on her face was priceless!

    #3: The third time I was campused at BJU started a little something like this…
    act 1-Me and two friends (in suit and tie no less!) eating ice cream downtown at 9pm Sunday night when 3 girls stop to talk for a few minutes before moving on. no phone numbers exchanged or anything. just random conversation.
    act 2-someone observed act 1 go down in all its triviality and out of deep, deep concern for my soul, they anonymously call the Dean of Men at BJU who then spends an hour accusing us of breaking various rules despite our protests and all separately telling him exactly what happened.
    act 3-My friends? No demerits or punishment. Me? No demerits but I was campused for two months and even though my name wouldn’t be put on the black list, if I left campus, I would receive 50 demerits which would bump my total to more than 100 and be campused all over again…all for talking to a girl for a few minutes in a public setting. Oh, I forget to mention I was 23 and in my second semester of senior year.

    1. The BJU social rules are WEIRD and their set of spies that turn people in for trivial things is creepy in the extreme. It’s sick.

    2. My mother always taught me to be nice, and even nicer to people I know. So if I say hello to a person of the opposite sex (read: girl) while I am out shopping, I will be reprimanded? So now for the entirety of my four years I should not crack a smile and I should say nothing to them? A frowning person turns me away; can it turn a girl away in a public shopping place to keep me “righteous”?

  29. I don’t get the whole break their will but not their spirit. Maybe God gave a child that will for a reason. Maybe they will go through something in their lives that requires a strong will.
    My mom was all about breaking our will. Mainly she just spanked to release her own anger which resulted in a good 13-14 licks sometimes.
    My dad on the other hand was abused as a child so he rarely spanked and never in anger. I can remember my dad crying as he spanked us. I would have rather taken a bullet than to see my dad hurt like that.
    I recently asked her why they allowed these things to happen and she said they were being told they were bad parents didn’t spank us right etc….. She was just trying to do the right thing. As a mother myself I would rather be wrong than to put my kids through that.

    1. My mom thought people should be given 39 swats because somewhere in the Bible people were given 40 minus 1. No idea where that was, though. I didn’t know there could be a magic spank number.

      1. Wasn’t Jesus given 39 lashes before He was crucified?
        Good thing Mom didn’t act out the rest of the Passion story on you, I guess.

      2. Forty was the maximum amount of lashes that could be given to an adult male criminal. From Deut. 25, “If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, 3but he must not give him more than forty lashes.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:24, “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.” This has nothing to do with spanking children. 🙁

        1. Ann Landers used to sentence readers who wouldn’t “wake up and smell the coffee” to “forty lashes with a wet noodle.”

      3. My first instict is to totally threaten my kids with swats. In the rarity that they do get any, we never give more than their age. This guarantees that even if we are angry, their punishment won’t be excessive. But usually, they get one swat. 😐

    2. The idea of breaking the will but not the spirit is to stop the rebellion and disobedience, but not turning them into a ‘whipped dog’ type of a person. (Can’t think of a better way of phrasing this right now 😳 )

  30. This is something I struggle to correct in parenting my own kids. I was ruled by fear–I probably never had it in me to be a complete hellion, but I feared doing ANYTHING wrong lest the wrath of my parents fall upon me. One thing I have NEVER said to my children and refuse to say…”this hurts me more than it hurts you”. I NEVER understood that phrase as a child and I still don’t as an adult. 😕

    (Totally off topic…there SO needs to be a “things I got away with at Fundy U post!!)

  31. I remember getting yelled at by a Bible Quiz coach for not being quiet for the “5-count.” Only problem was, I didn’t grow up in Awana, so I had not a blessed clue what he was doing, or what the big deal was. I had never heard it until that day. If he had used human language (by that time, I would have understood him in English, Spanish, and French) and said “Please be quiet,” I would have know what he wanted. Stuff fundies like: Secret languages and codes unknown to outsiders.

  32. “Attending a college called Bob Jones University is like putting your money in Nick & Tony’s Bank” True quote out of a George Carlin book.

  33. I was an APC the first semester of my sophomore year at BJU. I was on the inside track to hall leader because I knew the right people.

    I was taking English 102 that semester and was really wanting a good grade on one of my final papers. I had finished the paper and was going to print it out the morning of the due date. However, my printer decided to stop working and I wasn’t computer savvy enough at the time to realize I could copy email my paper to myself and access it via my friends computer. So I ended up skipping two classes to finish typing my paper on a friends computer so I could print it off of his printer (which wasn’t compatible with mine). I wasn’t about to get a bad grade on that paper because of technology.

    Eventually I was called to the discipline committee to testify on why I missed two classes. I explained that I had to in order to have my paper ready to go since I had already finished it and wanted to get a good grade on it. John Dalton then proceeded to tell me that purposely skipping two classes was 25 demerits EACH! I said that it was all because my printer died. He wouldn’t hear it. I reminded him that people come to the discipline committee and lie all the time why they missed class and only get 15 demerits. (The rule for “accidentally” missing a class was only 15 demerits compared to 25 for purposely missing, no matter the situation.)

    A few nights later my Dorm supervisor informed me that I was losing my job as an APC and would be kicked out of my room! I explained how silly it was to be kicked out of my room for skipping two classes to finish a paper! He said I would be moved 5 doors down the hallway.(?) I was “campused” (which means i can’t leave campus (except for extension ministry) also “socialed” (which means no talking to women, except for extension ministry) because skipping both classes totaled 50 demerits in one fell swoop.

    Needless to say, that semester was my last at Bob Jones University.

    1. If it is the same John Dalton I had a very similar experience and so did one of my roommates (different reasons). I don’t wish him any ill will but, man, if it was written in a rule book he could not vary from it at all for any reason.

  34. Ok, this was fun and all (except for the heartbreaking parts), but I almost feel guilty because I broke just about every rule at PCC (and a few they didn’t have rules for), without caring in the least. And I was never caught ever. I was called to the dean’s office once for writing a letter to Big O reprimanding his stupidity for disallowing sleeveless shirts on East field. I left his office with no punishment at all, and his kindly rhetorical question if “I was the biggest guy in the gym.”

    So…when do we have a post where we talk about all the things we got away with? 😀

  35. We were on a youth group trip to a park and there was a very sweet stray dog. It was obvious that he was at one time someone’s beloved pet that had been abandoned or gotten lost. He was so hungry and loving. I snuck him home on the bus, under the nose of the youth leader. I was the “good kid” the one who never did anything wrong. And of course I had no hope of not getting caught. I was grounded, “spanked” which is code word for beaten in my book, and banned from future youth group meetings. Worst part is, I am still not sorry. To be honest, youth group meetings sort of sucked anyway and the dog got to a real shelter rather than starving to death in the Texas wilderness.

  37. I’ve blocked out a good portion of my childhood and school years; I attended the same fundy church from the time I was in diapers until graduation. Incidentally, my church also housed my fundy school. I really did try hard to be perfect in every way during those years but I had a few “slip ups”…

    1. There was the time in 6th grade English that I got an “F” on a story I had written. I was an avid writer and I loved creating characters. My teacher accused me of being “too creative” and insisted that creativity leads to demonic possession. I wasn’t able to run track that semester due to my average in that class.

    2. Once I got in trouble for kneeling down whilst in line for lunch. I was in 4th grade at the time. My teacher wanted my class to stand in line and wait our turn for the cafeteria. I started feeling sick and thought I might pass out, so I knelt down on the floor. I remember my teacher grabbing my shoulder and trying to force me to stand whilst yelling. I later found out that I had a 103 degree fever at the time.

    3. In 10th grade, my best friend (and classmate) died. To honor him, I drew a symbol from Star Trek on my inner arm (we were both extreme Trekkers and nerds) in black ink. One of the pastors saw it and told me that marking my skin would send me to hell.

    I managed to escape attending a fundy college by joining the military. Several of my classmates and friends, though, wound up at Liberty, BJU, ORU, Grove City, L.I.F.E. East, and Messiah. I became the evil one in most circles (not just for being tattooed and, *gasp* pierced). I’m a female-Jezebel-slut who works outside the home and makes very good money (and wears pants). 😯 The horror!!!

    1. I wonder how many ex-fundies used the military as their excape route. I know I did.

      1. Darn it. I spelled like my head sounded the word.

        ‘escape’, no ‘excape’

        GEORGE!

        1. For me it really did come down to the Air Force or Fundy U. My parents were leaning towards Liberty. I wanted to go to Carnegie Mellon. (sarcasm alert) Did you know that there are gay people at non-fundy schools? OMG, I might be exposed to evil out there in the scary, real world!

          I am very glad I went active duty. I’m a civilian now, but the military trained me well and I now work with a company doing the same thing I did in uniform. As far as being exposed to sin, the military checked most of my boxes for me :mrgreen:

        2. Lol I’m in the Air Force right now. Unfortunately, I did go to Fundy U first. Not a single credit I got there counts for anything.

      2. What, the military is easier on its recruits than Fundy schools? Should that be funny?

      3. How sad it is that some people join the military because it is actually LESS restrictive then their home/church? You’d think that it would give some of these fundy-cults a moment of pause…

  38. I was such a goody at my FU 😛

    I was very quiet, didn’t gossip, didn’t tattle on other people, etc and never got called into a staff meeting. Only got demerits for silly stuff, but never got “campused.” Not that I talked to guys anyway. I got like 75 my first semester, and worked them off by helping in the kitchen a few days 🙂 That was fun, actually.

    But actually got away with a bit more 😀 I kept my evil CD’s in my glovebox, trusty mp3 in my pillowcase (kept me sane my last semester), wore pants to my evening fast food job, and changed out of them in my car on the way back to school. Some college guys stopped by to see me one night, but didn’t turn me in 🙂 I’d wash them in the dorm washers and be paranoid someone would take my clothes out and see them 😛 But since they were already a bit too short, I was afraid to dry them, so laid them out in the back seat of my car XD Oh, good times.

    I did get asked about going on phonezoo to download a ringtone: evidently someone else was using it to chat with chicks =D We couldn’t go on youtube either, because some of the guys would watch videos ALL afternoon instead of doing something productive. i was really annoyed at them 😛

    1. Like all good Fundy U’s, I assume you had to clear your job at the fast food place with your U. I would think it’s common knowledge all fast food workers are wearing pants. You try working with grills and fryers with a skirt! How did you evade the bojos?
      Btw, it’s not moral/religious issue for me to see a woman in pants. Oh, yay. Pants. Next. 😀

  39. I ran in church once. I was told, “This is God’s house! And God doesn’t want you to run in His house!” Ahahahaha. I was the pastor’s daughter too.

    1. I remember my brothers and I getting yelled at by someone for that too. We were the wicked PK’s who someone once referred to as “the worst kids in the church!” a title which we now feel was a badge of honor, but was not true in the slightest as we had some serious competition in that dept.

      Also there was the time my sister was crawling under the pews and collecting quite a large mouthful of ABC gum…and told the lady who stopped her, “my dad’s the boss of the this place”

      HAHAHAHAH funniest ever, especially since my pastor/father was not that kind of mog

      1. I’m glad my kids haven’t been the only ones to try to use their daddy’s position for leverage. My son told a Sunday School teacher, “You can’t tell me what to do. My dad’s the pastor!” 😳 My husband’s not that kind of mog either.

  40. The first or second year I worked at PCC, I held hands with my wife while walking to church on the PCC campus, and got into trouble with Personnel for doing so.

  41. I got demerits the last day of my sophomore year in college for listening to Steve Green and Billy Joel with two other students over the weekend in my own home. (One of the girls’ conscience bothered her and she turned herself in.) I wasn’t “allowed” to be the room leader my junior year. BIG DEAL. I had to do a special Bible study and write a report over the summer.

  42. This was more about my brother, but it ended up being about me. We went to a tiny, one-room Christian school. I hated our main teacher even before this incident. I was a junior in HS (and about 4’10”). My 7 year old brother got his 15th demerit the day we buried my dad. My mother made us go back to school that afternoon. The teacher called him up to get his 5 swats. I raised my hand. “Aren’t you supposed to call my mother first?!” (My friend told me later that my face was WHITE.) The pastor was standing in the doorway as the teacher’s witness (to protect each other from abuse accusations.) The pastor nodded. The teacher called my mom at work to inform her that my brother needed to be “paddled”. I walked up and held out my hand for the phone. I stood there and told my mom (loudly) that today was not the day to allow this, and that I would paddle him if it had to be done. She told me to let “him” do it. (My actions were totally unheard of.)

    This guy was over 6 ft. tall, and gangly, and his long old arm… He hit my brother HARD – 5 times. My brother sat down at his desk and sobbed. I walked up, picked him up, and carried him into the church kitchen. I was little, but I was a farm girl, and I think it would have gone very badly for anyone who dared to stop me. I sat there and held him, and kissed away his tears.

    The pastor’s daughter told me later that her dad said I was very close to “crossing the line”. Pfft. What line? What did I have to lose?

    1. Such an example of “the letter of the law” rather than the “spirit of the law” being carried out! You would think that a teacher would be appalled at the thought of meting out such a punishment to a kid who just buried his father that very day! My goodness! I hate to think of what some of these fundie authorities are going to go through when they stand before the God of Heaven and give an account of what they have done and all the people they have hurt.

      I have a friend who committed suicide a year ago because no one would listen to him when he accused his teacher of coming onto him sexually. Broke my heart.

      God is keeping the books…

  43. One of the men in our church “taught” my widowed mom his philosophy on spanking: Spank your child until he cries, and then spank him until he stops. My mom thought this was GOLDEN. It put her in complete control of us AND our emotions. She hit me with a belt for over an hour one day because I refused to cry. (She was a large woman, but I was STUBBORN.) She finally gave up and gave me the silent treatment for DAYS. (Like that was a punishment? :mrgreen: )

    1. I don’ remember the offense that “earned” me the beating.

      I am in therapy now. And my therapist is shocked at the things that were/are considered acceptable.

  44. In kindergarten I got swats for talking in the bathroom, which was against the rules. The girl who was in there with me had also talked, but she didn’t get spanked because she lied and said she hadn’t talked in the bathroom. All we had said to each other was how dirty each toilet was. 🙄

    In high school students had been allowed to help each other with school work because we had an ACE school and there weren’t enough teachers. My friend in the “office” next to me passed a piece of paper under the divider with a math question on it that she couldn’t figure out. I’m the world’s worst at math, so I’m not sure why I even tried to help her! 😆 The principal had recently made a new rule that for the offence of passing notes, there would be swats. I did not consider it a “note”… didn’t even enter my mind that I was “passing a note” when I passed my guess at the answer to the math question. :mrgreen:

    A week or so later, my friend and I were both called into the office separately and confronted about the “note.” 😳 Apparently the principal had found the note on the floor by the coat racks when my friend had used it as a bookmark and it fell out of her book. He had investigated to figure out the handwriting on the note until he found out it was us! ❓ Then he said, “I’ve made an ultimatum and I have to keep it.” So we both got swats. It was humiliating, and I was in shock because I didn’t feel I had “passed a note.” 😯 Then when the slip when home to my parents to sign as to why I had received swats, it said it was for “passing notes and cheating”! 😯

    My parents had previously had the rule that if we got swats at school, we would get them at home. However, both times (kindergarten and high school), they felt I had had enough punishment. These were the only two times I got swats in school… I was the “good girl” who avoided spankings at all costs! I think too, deep down, my parents knew that the teachers were extreme.

    I still believe and live by the Bible, but in recent years have learned more about GRACE and how the Bible is full of grace AND truth… Jesus is balanced. And it is the GOODNESS of God that leads to repentance, not the wrath of God. Knowing how much God loves me inspires me to want to have a relationship with God that is intimate, real, and personal… living a life FOR Him and WITH Him… not merely obey a set of rules. Yet the guidelines in the Bible are there for a reason, and I think many recovering from IFBism tend to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

    I pray for each person on this forum who has been abused in IFB circles to find out how wonderful a REAL RELATIONSHIP with God can be, and that they won’t reject God because of the misinterpretations of authorities in their past.

    1. My brother is a 35 year old man, and he still gets teary when that incident is mentioned. He’s told me I was his hero that day. It makes me sad. That teacher or pastor or even my mother should have been his “hero”.

  46. …because of Bible misinterpretations by authorities in their past… is what I meant. 😆

  47. Y’all better be careful of doing exactly what the fundies did. Seeing something that looks wrong and swinging back to the other extreme.
    But here is my incredible story.

    BJU took away the “social” and “campus” restrictions because of me.
    One night in prayer group, we pulled a prank on a couple high school visitors that we had. We all acted very serious, said the creed slowly and methodically, read a random section from the rulebook, and then said “alright guys, let’s bow down to Bob’s grave” an immediately started laughing. Great joke, the visitors thought it was funny. (a prayer group right next to us did the same joke, on yhe same night to visitors from yhe same school) Well, their sponsor (at a fundy highschool) caught wind of it and called Mr Daulton.
    I was the Room leader at the time, led the prank but was not involved in planning it. My PC and another member of our prayer group were the one that planned it all out, I found out about it right before prayer group and since it was in my room that night was told to lead it.
    We spent 2-3 hours in Daultons office. Another hour with Daulton and Steven Jones himself (who was gracious and understanding) and then had to sleep on it and find our punishment out the next day. Daulton said things like “take a break from humor to regain maturity” “your relationship with God is flippant” and threatened us with expulsion.
    We ended up being “lucky” and “only” getting 50 d’s. We had to move rooms, couldn’t play sports, and were removed from society officer positions.
    (the PC’s only had to read a book, go figure??)
    Our parents wrote letters and called, and we treated the administration with respect and a sort of penitence.
    In the end, they realized that the socializing and campusing punishments did not fit the crimes, and abolished both for good. (from the mouth of steven jones, our situation was the straw that broke the camel’s back). Daulton says that he changed his viewpoint on students based on out situation, essentially by working on not judging them based on the one snapshot of their life that he sees when they break rules.
    Honestly, God did a lot through the situation: in administrations minds, and in my own heart.
    It just is a great example of what fundamentalism can get to. Hopefully the school will keep moving away from the narrow-mindedness, and start living looking only unto Jesus!

  49. I learned alot at BJU and cherish alot of my experience there . . . but my first year there I tried so hard to obey all the rules and please everybody etc. I got in so much trouble for things I didn’t do, 1 teacher had a seating chart wrong so marked me absent for a month before he decided to change it, a class project made me late for chapel for 3 months (with permission)so more time in the discipline committee line, and getting socialed (not being able to talk to girls) the LAST 3 DAYS OF THE YEAR because i looked like I was to close to my girlfriend. Year 2 thru 4 I made a game out of seeing how many rules I could break without getting caught. I kissed girls in 5 buildings on campus without getting busted!!! However I did get socialed 2 more times and put on spiritual probation for a semester. When talking to the Dean of Men, i confessed to going on the rampage and why and he told me he didn’t understand why my first year would have affected me so. REALLY!?!! Punishing someone for trying and them reacting badly is unexpected?!?! REALLY?!?!

  50. Haha, I have so many, but here are two:

    One time in elementary school, my class went on a field trip to one of those old submarine museums — the USS Cole, I believe — up in WI. While there, having a penchant for souvenirs as a fourth grade child, I purchased a deck of playing cards. My parents, being the sensible (and independently thinking) parents they were, had never introduced me to the concept that playing cards were sinful, and since I had not been raised in the discipline of such degrees of separation from “the world”, I saw no problem. However, while on the bus, I pulled them out and began looking at them. I thought it would be neat to try to figure out some magic (read: sleight-of-hand) tricks with them. The child in front of me turned around and felt it was his obligation to notify me (and by me, I mean the teacher) of the sinfulness of what I was doing. I’m fairly certain he didn’t even know what he was saying. My teacher, who was also in all honesty a fairly gracious person, confiscated the cards for the sake of the other kid’s conscience, and returned them to me once the trip was over. I was sick to my stomach the whole time though, not knowing what I had done that was so wrong.

    More recently, I was at Fundy U (the one where the ESV is okay now, but we still advertise KJV greeting cards :D), and I was drawing a picture on my laptop for a story I’ve written. I’ve learned a bit more since my elementary days about how things work though. It was 12:45, and I was fully aware that this was against the rules, but when I’m home I never go to sleep before midnight (I am not a morning person… that’s probably just a coincidence though :p). I’m a programmer, and I’m a night person. An RA from a *different* hall, who apparently has the wonderful habit of walking past rooms at night and getting down on the floor to check for light coming from within, stepped into my room without knocking (I guess I can understand, since it was late, but still… we need locks on the doors or something…) and asked (in the nonchalant, irritatingly patronizing voice that he often uses) whether I realized I was up after midnight. My response was far more gracious than the thoughts running through my head, as I replied, with a slight twinge of intentional irritation in my voice, “Yeah, I know.” He then notified me politely that he was required to write me up for it, to which I responded unaffected with my coldest, “Yeah, ok,” ever. He then awkwardly excused himself, reminding me to go to sleep, and I stayed up another hour or so drawing 🙂 I have ceased to care 🙄 , realizing that it matters not what others or “the system” thinks of me; this has no bearing on my standing before God (which is pretty freaking sad anyway, without Christ’s righteousness).

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