#but there's still a huge portion of deconstruction in canon stuff

[asocial-skye]

i think the Jedi-Positive and Jedi-Critical stances can be summed up on whether you value authorial intent or authorial execution.

Most of the Jedi-Positive people I follow quote George Lucas and director commentaries to prove their points, as well as utilize analyses from others at LucasFilm that have to keep the general status quo. It's all based on what Lucas was trying to portray, while ignoring the product in execution.

The Jedi-Critical stance tends to look at the prequel execution, and they question the obvious uncomfortable moments that have real-life parallels to atrocities. They tend to be more Legends fans, whose writers actually delved into the terrifying implications. It's all on criticizing execution while disregarding intent.

Like, take the argument about Jedi children. A Jedi-Positive person would argue that all the children are all given up with consent from their parents; this is what I am sure Lucas was intending to portray. A Jedi-Critical person will look at this and go "wait. how much 'consent' was in this encounter? the government can legally take these kids and have a representative show up to a farmer's house and tell the farmer they can technically say no? that is some bullshit." And there is real-life evidence for this. It's more on the execution.

Or the argument about love. Jedi-Positive people turn to Lucas's interview to show that they really meant it in the Buddhist sense, and if you value intent that works. Jedi-Critical people would argue that the marketing states that the Jedi cannot love, and nothing in the movies states that the Jedi meant non-toxic love when they eschew attachments.

They're both valid positions, but I think a lot of fandom brutality comes from not understanding either view, or demeaning one view in favor of another. It's perfectly acceptable to value one over the other.

[theshoesofatiredman]

Just stopped being Christian after being “born again” for 2 years and I…feel so duped. I feel sad. Even tho I was “progressive” and believed in universalism and affirmed homosexuality, it ultimately didn’t make the religion less nonsensical.

I annotated the shit out of the New Testament and Mere Christianity by CS Lewis…I loved Jesus with all my heart. And now I know that everything is fake because my brain couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance anymore. Like the fact that we have no idea what was actually said by anyone in the NT because random men were writing about it decades after the events. And that even though progressives can look at the OT as mostly being metaphorical, ultimately they would still believe the core messages are true because it’s divinely inspired. And idk, the writers being ‘inspired’ by God doesn’t make sense to me anymore.

Just constantly seeing 99% of christians be conservative or take the bible literally was so exhausting. Progressive christianity can be nice but it’s ultimately a walking contradiction, like you trying to make christianity all about Jesus and love and you have to ignore large chunks of everything else. 

It’s so sad. I loved Christian music. I had 50 Christian nonfiction books on my to-read list. And now that’s all gone. Buddhism and Islam and greek mythology and zorioastronism and all that…it’s all humans trying to make sense of spirituality. Christianity is no different. I cant believe I thought it was different. 

On the bright side it is such a relief to feel like I am not being watched anymore. Oh my goshhhhh. Even with my super soft imaginary Jesus that was basically a light of love, I still couldn’t stand the feeling of my thoughts always being watched. I thought about the fact that I was being watched while I pooped lmao 😭

Sorry 2 dump this on you <3 I’ll also be posting on Reddit. I guess I rlly feel the need to share all this because such a huge chunk of my life is now gone. It’s weird.

As a person who started a Tumblr solely so I could share my experience deconstructing, and eventually leaving, Christianity, I absolutely get the need to share this with people!! I'm sorry you're having to deal with the pain of losing your faith, but I do want to say that life gets better. It's possible to build a rich and beautiful life after leaving religion behind and I hope that you can look forward to having that, to building that.

I can imagine how frustrating it must've been and must be to constantly reckon with conservative christians' interpretations. My faith experience was inside conservative evangelicalism and one of the things I found myself mulling over as I was deconstructing was whether or not I could find a home inside a more progressive part of the faith. And one of the things I realized was that there would likely be no escaping the homophobic conservative Christians if I stayed inside the faith. And as a gay man, I was deeply tired of being in community with them.

Yes, you can go to an incredibly welcoming and affirming church. But what if you go to a Christian conference? Or a concert for a Christian artist? If I ever wanted to create religious art, my sexuality was going to be a ? for people and put a target on my back. You're in a fandom where power is concentrated in the hands of people with very bigoted views. You can carve out your own corner, but so long as bigotry is mainstream canon you're gonna struggle to avoid it entirely.

Ultimately, I left the faith because I stopped believing. I think I would've stayed long enough to test my theories on proximity to Biblical homophobia if I had been able to keep believing.

Most modern religions take only portions of an old sacred text and call it sacred. There are so many different versions of Christianity because everyone is focusing on different bits and adding in stuff to suit them. Sometimes that's cultural and sometimes that's one gross man fucking things up for everyone. Now as a non-religious person I don't think there's much wrong with that so long as you're honest about it.

Modern Christians should reject harmful past teachings and verses that contribute to toxic theology. Even if it's just "I don't agree with that so I don't believe it", that is less harmful for the world than someone saying "well I don't like it but it's god's word so guess I have to believe in eternal conscious torment hell." That dissonance can be a really really hard place to live though which is why most religions have social technology to resolve that "that's not what it really meant", "it was a different time", "thanks to progressive revelation we know that's not how God wants us to live anymore", etc etc. But often times those are only temporarily satisfying.

I'm glad you are enjoying some of these freedoms of apostasy already. No longer having an all seeing eye watching and judging you is a tremendous weight lifted. I hope that as your journey continues, you find yourself less and less burdened and more and more free. Thank you for sharing. Wish you the best!