#reasons i left christianity

[luckylucariosblog]

One of the things that woke up me.

I was at an Wednesday Youth Group. The pastor said that some people come here just to cause problems and distrupt everyone else. Then told us to ask our selves why we where really coming to events.

​​It made me think about why I was actually going. I wasn't going for the right reasons. So that is when I started thinking for myself more.

I had been thinking about why I was going to youth church for a long time. Ironically that Pastor who was trying to discourage people from acting out. It gave me a big push to look inward as to why I was really going.

I was also getting to the age. Where the cutesy stories aren't told anymore. The harshness of the church's doctrine was starting to show.

I was also at the age of figuring myself out. Coming to terms with the fact that I might not be straight. That my understanding of the social parts of life was low. There where other things that happened around that time. Things that deserve there own post.

[leroibobo]

the paradesi synagogue in kochi, kerala, india. the first synagogue on the site, built by the city's longstanding malabari jewish community, was destroyed by portugese who'd colonized the area in their persecution of locals. it was rebuilt in 1568 by spanish and portugese jews who fled persecution and later expulsion, hence the name "paradesi" ("foreign" in malayalam).

these sephardic jews and a community of jews of mixed african and european descent who were formerly enslaved ("meshuchrarim", "freedmen" in hebrew) joined the malabari jewish community of kochi and somewhat integrated. they were later joined by some iraqi, persian, yemenite, afghan, and dutch sephardic jews. the middle eastern and european jews were considered "white jews" and permitted malabari jews and meshuchrarim to worship in the synagogue. however, in what seems like a combination of local caste dynamics and racism, malabari jews were not allowed full membership. meshuchrarim weren't allowed in at all, but were instead made to sit outside during services and not allowed their own place of worship or other communal rights.

as the "white jews" tended to be rather wealthy from trade, this synagogue contains multiple antiquities. they include belgian glass chandeliers on its walls, hand-painted porcelain tiles from china on its floors, and an oriental rug that was gifted by ethiopian emperor haile selassie.

[deservedgrace]

i took sermons of self-sacrifice and putting god and others above yourself and not being "selfish" really seriously and when that burned me out and i learned it's not sustainable to pour from an empty cup all the time i brought it up to this highly respected xtian couple in the church and the first (and pretty much only) response i got was "the verse is 'love your neighbor AS YOURSELF'" as if it was my fault for not "reading the verse properly" when the reason i was like this in the first place is because the church puts so much fucking emphasis on not being "selfish" and viewing others as above you and taking care of others above yourself and glorification of self-sacrifice while never having a single sermon that even says "it's okay to take care of yourself too" and the people who told me that don't know it but their response (and noticing how others respond the same) helped me realize how much this is all just bullshit and is one of the reasons i left

[radarchives]

mind your own business queen

[ace-and-ranty]

Looking a bit more into the Dinaledi story, looks like the team excavating the site is vehemently defending that Homo Naledi did ritualistic burials, and it's a big deal because it challenges the idea of "human exceptionalism" and I understand that that's a big sticking point for Religious ReasonsTM, but oh my God, I personally find the idea so so so so ssssoooo stupid

Like, who CARES if humans aren't the only ones to do X? Or do Y? Who cares if humans are not nature's most special-est little guys? I can't imagine being so invested in wanting humans to be UNIQUE(TM). I for one would fucking love if we had evolved on a planet where we weren't the only fully sentient species. Can you imagine the kind of comparative studies we could do if there was even one other species as intelligent as us??

[defendglobe]

i have observed that there are two divergent species of lotr fans: mentally unwell gay people and Goddamn Fucking Catholics.

[saspitite]

im actually disappointed christians ARENT socialist on average considering the ideals of their religion. like. how do you follow the words of jesus, a guy who i feel would VERY much hate today's capitalist society, and still be like "those commies are going to hell i hate poor people we shouldnt help them its their fault"

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Radfems and Alt-right'ers aligning with each other is one of the most incredible things to come out of the 21st century lmao

[wings-of-flying]

could i, an eighteen year old with zero experience running a d&d podcast and a patreon for said podcast, do better than the council who've had several years of experience and amassed a fan base who so willingly offer (sometimes constructive) criticism on all that's not working? well i don't know, because i don't have the resources or time or energy for a project like that, but i do still understand that their current system isn't working

[losttranslator]

listening to a bunch of arguments against the gospel rn and I'm kinda astonished by the fact that one of the main taking points that keeps coming up could be lifted verbatim from Kaamelott.

It's this idea that 'condemning people on the basis of their unbelief in the cross is really unfair' (depending on who you ask, either because God could have simply not had Jesus die on the cross and/or because eternal condamnation is a really disproportionate punishment for something as neutral as mere unbelief or belief in something else). I'm bringing up Kaamelott because at his most depressed, Arthur says something I've always found fascinating but completely wrong:

"What do you call someone who suffers and spills his blood on the ground so that everybody be found guilty? All those who commit suicide are the Christ."

To me that quote and the argument against the fairness of the gospel come from the exact same place of profound misunderstanding. We are not condemned 'just' for not believing, and God didn't send Jesus into the world as a sort of twisted test for most people to fail. The very premise of the sacrifice for redemption (not suicide, not something Jesus could just not do and then we'd have all been fine) is that we are all condemned before the cross. If there was no cross to believe in, then guess what? The message would be that we are condemned, period.

The overarching story of the Bible is that we are already deserving of punishment for all that we do (all the hate and contempt we have for one another, all the good we should be doing and don't do, all the selfishness, all the hurt we cause...) and it's not lack of belief in what Jesus did on the cross that condemns us - lack of belief is what keeps us in our state of condemnation. We are not guilty because Jesus' blood was spilled (although that too is added to our sins if we remain in them), Jesus' blood is spilled because we are guilty. People asking 'so just because I don't believe in your God he's going to punish me?' as a gotcha to try and prove that God is malevolent are getting the most utterly basic cause and effect of the Gospel reversed.

This is how Jesus himself explains it in John 3! (which, btw, I saw some people quote as 'evidence' for this weird take)

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 

Whoever does not believe stands condemned already. And of course, people who reject the light remain lost in the darkness because they 'have not believed in [the light],' but the darkness was already there before the light came (duh).

It's expected that a tragicomic take on King Arthur in a wacky show that very deliberately has myth as its essence above even internal consistancy would have some wonky theological takes (by the way, that line is not even something Arthur believes, it's something from a dream that he had in his near comatose state after a suicide attempt, and he's recounting the dream to someone - which I wouldn't take as indicative that the line was meant as a bold philosophical epiphany reached through full clarity of mind) but it's baffling that people who want to seriously deconstruct the New Testament, the cross, the gospels or the concept of a redemptive offering for sin would be satisfied with something so shallow. Criticism of a belief system should get its fundamentals right to be meaningful, not be virtually indistinguishable from the angsty musings of some French polymath's Arthurian self insert.

[skyward-floored]

WAIT ARE YOU A NINJAGO FAN

I keep up with it! I've written a few fics for it too, though they were all from a while ago so they aren't the best. I used to be more active in the fandom actually, but there were some jerks and I kinda drifted away. Still watch the show though :)

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Omg shut the fuck up and get out of the ex Christian and religious trauma tags.

[vrsmth]

being the only autistic kid in a small town school was probably the worst experience a person can ever have

[muninnhuginn]

trigun (talking original anime not stampede/manga here as I can’t comment on those yet) is actually genuinely really solid in terms of themes and repeating imagery. the way the very setting of a desert with the associated resource scarcity plays into it all. you get monopolies over water where one family holds everything whilst the surrounding areas are left to rot. but then you have small patches of greenery that could have amounted to nothing but due to years of nurturing they’ve grown up into forests. it’s about what you do with what you’re given and what you choose to pass on to others.

[gxlden-angels]

Throughout all of this, I never thought about the potential for my family members to also deconstruct/leave fundamentalist christianity, even if they remained a more progressive christian in the end

[defendglobe]

i am not fucking enjoying the recent increase in street preachers at transit centres over here.