#xtianity tw

[nonegenderleftpain]

"Abrahamic" this, "Judeo-Christian" that, JUST SAY XTIAN MY GD YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOURE TALKING ABOUT

The xtian god and the Gd that I (maybe) believe in as a Jew are not the same thing. Judaism and xtianity are not the same religion with a different skin. In all the antitheist and atheist ranting about religion, I have never seen one person with anything educated to say about Judaism. Y'all base your anger on xtianity and make it our problem, shit on our beliefs while conflating them with the very people who have tried to kill us for two thousand years, and then have the gall to mock us when we tell you you're wrong about what we believe. Fuck off.

[toudensremade]

I can’t get over how funny it was watching a stream last night and the guy was debating mormon topics and some random chat member just commented “foolish!”

[nonegenderleftpain]

I genuinely was about to ask you if your director's name was Jennifer, because this is exactly what happened to us, except they never got banned from campus. That's so fucking terrifying, I'm sorry that happened to you /gen

something that rly creeps me out…..occasionally ill see videos or articles for christians or christian missionaries that say something like “what you need to do is make friends with non christians and really get them to trust you and THEN you start preaching to them and bringing them to jesus” and that is….man how much would it hurt to know that the only reason someone’s hanging out with you is to convert you to a religion you were never interested in. maybe this is a real friend, someone you really really feel like you connect to, and all of a sudden you cant hang out with them without being scared they’ll bring out the jesus stuff.

[wildfeather5002]

Indigenous folks, ex-christians & anyone who's knowledgeable on social issues, I have two questions that have bothered me for a long while and I believe y'all might know how to answer them.

The question: I read a webcomic about community A living on an island along with another community B with different culture & beliefs from them. Community A believes that their culture & religion are the correct ones and that members of community B are dooming themselves to eternal damnation (in a religious sense) if they don't adopt the beliefs & practices of community A.

I saw someone talking about the comic in its comment section, saying that one of the characters who's a member of community B is selfish for not adopting the burial practices from community A's religion, because according to that someone, not burying their loved one like community A believes is correct is " potentially dooming their loved one to eternal damnation".

If you're indigenous, has rhetoric / talking points like this been used against your own religious / cultural practices? Could you give any concrete examples?

If you have religious trauma / are ex christian of any kind, have people used talking points like this to guilt trip, to frighten, or to shame you into obeying religious rules? (People belonging to other religions than christianity are welcome to give their perspectives as well!)

[shalom-iamcominghome]

being born and raised jewish i've never really experienced other mourning practices first hand, but i truly feel lucky to have the jewish traditions because i think judaism does mourning right. how quickly we bury because we believe mourning can't start until then but also that we never leave the body alone and treat the person who passed with such respect. there is so much structure in jewish mourning practices (the periods of time i broke down in my previous reply) that i find so much comfort in because it gives guidance from immediate mourning to long term healing and mourning and missing. and mourning in judaism is so so communal, such as the reading of the names but also shiva needs to have a minyan which means for the first 7 days after someone passes the family is guaranteed to not be alone... i just think judaism does it right.

I feel the exact same way... There's something comforting in knowing that, should something happen to you or a loved one, they/you will have people surrounding them. The respect, concern, and, ultimately, faith is something I admire and find deeply important.

I know for many, the idea of including the dead seems unnecessary (especially if you believe in an eternal afterlife), but to include them, to include people affected by death? There's something meaningful and kind about it, something deeply human and raw and powerful. Life is preferable, of course, but we can't ignore the dead, ignore the people who have been affected, and I appreciate that judaism prefers life but also gives space for death.

[just-xtian-thoughts]

Thinking about that whichever-irate-right-wingnut whobwas complaining that it was considered "hate speech" to go around saying that "the Jews killed Jesus."

And how, the very same bibble-thumping peoples are even quicker to cry out to the government for bloodshed for righteousness' sake, than the mobs who lobbied for crucifying a Jew, millennia ago.

It truly seems that the mightiest hand in the devil's arsenal, is playing the card of "righteous indignation."

Though giving out "bad-faith" intrepations seems to be his M.O, but that's for another post...

[feral-cockroach]

warnings: mentions of christianity, trauma, religious trauma

living in the south and also in the path of totality of this eclipse AND being susceptible to religion-based psychosis has been fucking hell

the eclipse is in 2 days and i work customer service and an old fucking woman sat in the drive thru at my job and proseletized to me for literally ten fucking minutes about how the eclipse is a result of the stupid fucking queers and how the world is goijg to shit ad jesus is getting mad and how she hopes im ready for the rapture bc she is and the whole time shes keeping the Most Intense eye contact and im not allowed to shut the window on customers and ive had unfathomable amounts of sleepless nights being afraid that xtianity is true and im going to hell or that the rapture IS upon us and everyone i love is going to die and ive spent even more nights CONVINCED that the rapture was abt to happen or was actively happening and if i left my room/looked out a window i would see corpses stumbling past my house toward jesus and my mom would also go to jesus and jesus would look at me with so much scorn that he would literally melt my skin from my bones and condemn me to be alone for eternity

and it has taken YEARS to get over that trauma and fear and move on from those beliefs and i havet had an episode like that in ages but thats because i have made it a huge point of my lifw to avoid xtianity despite how prevalent it is here but if ever there was a trigger for it its this shit.

and she started the fuckinf conversation so innocently too she was like "are u ready for the eclipse? :) " ajd i was like "well i work that day so honestky not really" and then she launches into a speech ab how theyre letting kids out of school early and tons of places are shutting down early and how its for the best bc this is a sign of the rapture and its been so long since ive been around that kind of stuff that it took me aback so hard i literally took a half step away from the window and i felt like i was in church again.

fucking hate this place. and even when i get those intrusive tjoughts of how god or jesus hate me or think im unworthy and even if i did everything else right i would be condemned just for being queer i remind myself that thats not the teachings of jesus christ, thats the teachings of frauds who dont even know the book they use to beat others with. and if god would look at me, whos worst crimes are being queer and shoplifting from major corporations to help those that i love, and if he looks at me and decides i am less worthy of love and light and paradise than someone who was not queer and did not shoplift but did cause countless peoppe severe trauma and hoarded wealth and looked down on those different from him, and if he compares us and decides me to be worse by basis of queerness, then that is not a god that is worth worshipping. that is not a god worthy of godliness, of status, of power. that is just another man.

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Almost certain that post with the comic about how 'witches rule' is real. Look up Chick Tracts, the art and dialogue are consistent. Also cloaks are badass.

Ah yes, thank you! (I think so, too. I have four of them!)

Presuming this page by Chick Publishing is indeed the real thing, I even found the whole comic.

https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=5012&gclid=Cj0KCQiAtvSdBhD0ARIsAPf8oNkcEgPqXgMQLIbytzQPXg4tH6nx7EGbIhCJAHcWzDdbZUR3VQ9_H84aAhXlEALw_wcB

Don't read it if seeing xtian rhetoric vented through a lens of hatred bothers you, this one's heavy on "God hates you". Religious abuse ahoy, but the comic is so bad and wrong I think it's hilarious.

I gotta say, equating all witchcraft with "iniquity" is hilarious in the "shows what you know" way. A hefty portion of witches I know follow a guideline that says "harm none".

And saying all witches work with demons? Now THAT'S a dated criteria! Sure, some do, but like... They're pretty few and far between. Most witches try to steer clear. In fact: The witches I know who work with spirits actively seek out The Good Kind.

Also amused that the guy literally just says "Spirit, in Jesus' name, come out of her" and a demon comes out screaming. Now, I've never witnessed an exorcism firsthand, but I know people who have, and I know other people who've studied them. The general consensus is it that takes more than a single command to get it done.

(I would add a cut here, but unfortunately I don't know how to do that on mobile after the update.)

And this? Oh sweet stars. "Tell me, how did you two get into the craft?" "Through Harry Potter books!" DJFIEHEBGOEOWHD There's no one-size-fits-all backstory for witches, but I was drawn to magic well before Rowling ever got published in the US.

Ooh, I've never seen witchcraft referred to as "curious arts"! I like the mystique of "occult arts" better, but sometimes the xtian bible does have some neat descriptors.

I literally laughed aloud at this, too: "...a king James bible. It's the only English version Satan hasn't messed with." And I suppose all the additions and deletions King James himself edited weren't "messing with it", hmm? He was in fact the one to edit in "Though shalt not suffer a witch to live". From what I've read, he messed with it PLENTY.

[nonegenderleftpain]

So I was raised Catholic and am a Jew now, and I can't speak for xtian adults, but as a child I very much was taught that the bible - the entirety of it - is meant to be taken literally. When it contradicted itself, the more conservative reading had to be used. I didn't even hear the word Torah until I was an adult. I wasn't even in a particularly observant Catholic family, but this biblical literalism flavored the whole town. I'm not sure what conservatively xtian adults are taught/believe, but many of them are very much teaching their children that all of the xtian bible is Gd's word, and must be taken at face value even if it contradicts. Any contradiction is a human failure to understand. For me and the people I was close to, biblical literalism was used as a tool to control and silence developing minds. You couldn't ask questions because there were no questions to be asked - the bible is literal and questioning it is a sin.

I'm not sure how much this has changed between me leaving the church and today, but I can speak to the way I was raised, and very little of it seemed to have to do with sanctity, even within the most observant circle.

I may regret asking this, but I have an interdenominational, interfaith question about the literalness of the Bible for folks who are familiar with the doctrine of the more conservative denominations of Christianity.

So in the more traditional branches of Judaism, it is generally held that the Torah was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, word-for-word. However, the other two sections of the Tanakh are not literally the Word of God, but rather the words of the prophets and important sacred writings (poems, histories, etc.) Now, obviously there is a spectrum of beliefs and more liberal Jews will attribute the five books of Moses to more earthly sources, while still holding them as very sacred. However, even the strictest of orthodox Jews still interpret the Torah and base their understanding of halacha on the Talmud and commentaries. Bottom line: in Judaism, the absolute *most* amount of sacred texts that form the Hebrew Bible that are attributable to God as God's direct words are the books of Torah, which are still interpreted by human beings to be able to be put into practice.

However, I have come across an alarming amount of Christians who say they take the [whole?] Bible literally. I genuinely don't understand what is meant by this, as only the first five books were ever attributed to God as direct revelation, and so even if you assume that the New Testament is also 100% verbatim word-of-God revelation (which I don't know for certain if these Christians do assume that) you're still missing the vast chunk of the Prophets and Writings from the Old Testament.

So I guess my questions are: When Christians say they 'take the [whole] Bible literally,' what do they actually mean by this in practice, since even the Hebrew Bible (never mind the whole Christian Bible) has tons of apparent contradictions that can only be resolved through interpretation? Is this actually common and/or historical doctrine? Or is this American Christianity being bizarre, especially in the last 50 years?

Do Christians who hold by this concept make a distinction between the books of Torah and the rest of the Bible? If not, how do they get around the fact that the other books were not verbatim revelation?

[wildfeather5002]

Right-wing conservatives keep saying that telling a nonbeliever they're going to hell if they don't 'repent' is totally okay, because "religious people have the right to express their opinions and beliefs even if it offends others".

But if you have the nerve to say eternal damnation is manipulative, abusive and a morally bankrupt concept, conservatives will freak out and accuse you of "going against their freedom of speech".

The amount of hypocrisy among right-wing religious conservatives is fucking nauseating.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Okay, I promise I'll stop ranting so much about my family and interfaith things, but my dad was talking about how he doesn't believe in coincidences because yesterday, his pastor spoke about anti-antisemitism (the sermon was recorded and he made me watch part of it, lol), about how it's the job of xtians to not perpetuate antisemitism. She talked about how she was friends with a jewish woman who was apprehensive about sharing to her (the pastor) about how she was a jew because as a kid, people would come up to her and accuse her of killing jesus. And, of course, the pastor expressed... a sense of anger, I think, about how that woman feels unsafe because of the way people who share the same faith expressed antisemitism.

I always prefer there to be interfaith solidarity, of course, but it's nice to know that there are complete non-jews who are interested in making the world safer for jews.

[just-xtian-thoughts]

I've yet to hear any preacher, theologian, touch upon the accounts of Satan's temptations of Jesus, as a framework for handling bible quote VS bible quote debates…

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

(religion discussion tw, probably inferrable as negative to xtianity but mostly just me being BAFFLED.)

tl;dr I am SO glad the gods I follow don't blackmail me for their forgiveness. And so very grateful my goddess doesn't demand repayment for making mistakes.

I didn't realize it until recent years, but one of the things about xtianity that bothers me at this age is the whole thing that's like... "sin must be paid for in blood to be forgiven."

That doesn't feel like forgiveness.

That feels like PAYBACK.

"Eye for an eye, blood for blood."

Is that really what you want to base your morality on? You know that phrase that goes, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"?

"You made this deity mad, so now you have to sacrifice something (or have something sacrificed for you / indulgences / etc.) to be able to have the eternal life this deity promised you."

Like?

???????

I don't have good words for this and I'm not writing a collegiate essay here, I'm just kind of venting New Thoughts. Reblogs are off because I don't want bad-faith engagement with this.

I don't even want an eternal afterlife (I believe deeply in reincarnation), but if I *did*, when I did, why would I want an afterlife based on vengeance and repayment?

I had the revelation not too long ago (a year, two years ago?), while reading... something from a recommended reading list for believing in yourself, something that was written from an xtian perspective (The Dream Giver maybe?), and I realized...

My religion has NEVER used fear to control people.

My priestess doesn't make threats to coerce her people into decisions.

There's more freedom of will than xtianity has ever given me, because I am not making my decisions for fear of the consequences.

I am making my decision with true FREEDOM. With truly my OWN judgement. Truly, deeply, absolutely 100% free to make whatever decisions I want.

And she won't try to stop me!

Yes, there will be consequences, whatever I do. But I'm not staking my entire soul on them.

I can make a mistake, and I don't have to prostrate myself and beg forgiveness for it to pass by and allow me to grow.

I can make a bad decision, even one that flies directly against my creed, and I don't have to lean on blood sacrifice to promise me I'll be okay.

I am my own redemption.

It just bemuses me very deeply, the more distance I put between myself and the xtian faith, that this religion that claims to be of compassion and forgiveness is truly about blood sacrifice.

Like, that's the whole Thing with the Christ in Christian, Jesus's Blood Sacrifice.

Because your God wouldn't have forgiven us if something didn't shed blood over it. Whether animal or man or demigod.

He had to sacrifice his "only begotten son" to forgive the world for its sins.

Of being human.

Of making mistakes.

Of being a species that is forever learning and striving and toiling, and which has emotions and limited perspectives and shortsightedness built into our amygdalas, whose powers of reason and kindness can be overcome by the most basic functions of our sympathetic nervous system.

Supposedly he made us that way, and then got mad at us for it?

I could never follow a god that does that.

Granted, my "goddess" at this phase of my life has a bit of a.... hands-off approach. And I think I function best like that. Give me guidance when I seek it, but don't meddle in my affairs. I'm certain there's Something she's working in my life. I'm not entirely sure what she's trying to do, but I'm determined to figure it out! She gives me pretty free rein with the whole Life Mission thing.

I know that she's working through me, and I know that in recent years I've strayed a bit. There's been a lot to process...

But she doesn't make me "make up for it". She doesn't scold me, or smite me, or demand groveling.

Granted, I actively sought her out. (There's some Weirdness with my spirit guide kind of being the whole reason, but like. There was fondness there through her long before I was actually TAKEN there...)

Anyways, my point is, even choosing to follow her lead has been My Decision, made entirely of My Own Free Will. There was no threat upon inaction, no carrot and no stick, no call for blood to be spilled (quite the opposite, actually-- a call to AVOID it!).

And now that I have escaped the internalized Looming Threat of Disapproval From On High, I can look at it and wonder where love fits into that picture.

I never respected my parents for punishing me for making an honest mistake.

Why should I be asked to respect that from a god?

[buffporcupine]

what the fuck i saw someone saying xtianity instead of christianity ??? i tw tag religion and all but like ?

[razzafrazzle]

[image description: a page of drawings of orel from moral orel. in the biggest drawing, orel is standing politely and looking at the viewer happily. in another drawing, he is reading the bible excitedly with a thought bubble over his head that has a heart with a cross in it inside. in the last drawing, orel is sitting on his knees and playing with some action figures. next to that drawing is a blurb that says "the specialest boy in the world" with a smiling emoticon below it. the entire page is surrounded by doodles of stars. end id]

what a cute kid :o] would be a shame if his father's actions were to permanently damage his psyche

(s**th p*rk fans gargle my nuts)

[nonegenderleftpain]

YES OH MY GD. Like no, it is not some toughest fight for some big reason, my body and brain just don't work. It happens sometimes. If Hashem really did do this to me, that's my (angry) discussion to have with Them, not one you should be pushing on me, and my relationship with divinity is no one's business but mine. Thinking you can fix me by fixing my supposedly broken religious beliefs and practices is SO condescending and self-centered.

I'm going to be disabled. You will be too, one day. We are all only temporarily abled, and when you're standing where I am, I truly hope you don't believe that people are given disability from Hashem because you're gonna have a miserable rest of your life wondering what you did to deserve it, pious as you supposedly are. Abledness is not next to godliness.

I love that people can get through illnesses and disabilities with religion but I hate religious people manipulating disabled and sick people with the promise of a cure .

God won't cure me , rocks won't cure me and neither does gut diets but they can help feel better. Don't blame sick people for their pain because of their "lack of faith" or mental health.