winged-thinged

[winged-thinged]

Why did I hold Him to such a low standard?

I ask this about the Christian god when I think back on my time as a believer. As my faith matured, I began to have more questions. Some were easily dealt with. Sure answers set me back on the path.

Some questions were harder and took study. I buried myself in apologetics and hoped to rise again enlightened. (This is a joke I would not have made as a believer. The blasphemy!!!)

I did get my answers, but they weren't so sure anymore. Apologetics begged the question and left me begging for something else: an answer to a new question. Why was I making so many excuses for Him?

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[winged-thinged]

I went to a Christian liberal arts college and majored in english & theology.

at the time, I really loved being there. it was a kinder and more accepting space than I had ever been in before. I didn’t have to talk to my parents every day. I could be openly bi. I met my wife there, and my best friend—two people who continue to be the most important people in my life. my theology advisor was a wonderful person, too. she taught peace studies and liberation theology, and all of her classes centered on gender and sexuality and racial justice. she walked the walk. she was involved in advocacy, in healing and reform. I know of no better story to illustrate what she was like, than to tell you that I helped her lead a tiny protestant service on our Catholic campus, and one time, she stopped in the middle of her sermon to answer questions because somebody in the group raised their hand. it was a place that held me, that took a small, terrified, closeted Catholic queer and made me feel safe to reexamine my own values.

it also taught me a lot of deeply fucked-up stuff. bad frameworks, bad academics, information that wasn’t remotely true, taught like it was fact. I was passionate about ministry and justice work. instead of being taught evidence-based best practices for how to make change, I was encouraged to read one holy book from thousands of years ago, to cherrypick from that or just to do whatever felt right to me, to listen for the “ongoing revelation” of God speaking in my heart. to follow my biases and baseless beliefs, basically. and when I felt lost, instead of turning to real research, I was told to return to God. I was taught to regurgitate bullshit circular arguments that began with “I believe in God” and ended with “God is a mystery.” to maintain a state of holy unknowing. ignorance. apostolic, epistemological silence.

sometimes I chafed against what I was taught, because it felt groundless and ineffectual, and I wanted to make real change. I watched my mentors read poetry by the lake and call it “praxis.” I watched even my theology advisor, someone who I really trusted and respected, go haring off on projects that I could obviously see weren’t serving the values that she shared with me, because of her faith. she was a part of an organization that sheltered sexual abusers, for example—there was a monastery on campus, and several of the monks there had been accused of sexual crimes, but the Church worked out a deal where they were allowed to live on campus, provided that they didn’t leave the monastery or interact with the students (except at Mass). that same Church paid her bills.

it wasn’t honest. I was rarely honest when I was in that space, because my grade and standing in my major depended on me practicing and maintaining my faith. I wasn’t taught to be skeptical, I wasn't taught to look for evidence, and where I was taught critical thinking skills, I wasn't taught to apply them evenly. it was all in service of furthering the same circular rhetoric.

it's strange and sad. how we outgrow our teachers. how a place that once felt like home can turn hostile, when you cease to be the person who you were when you belonged there. there was a time when I was afraid that college would be the best time of my life, and that nothing else would ever make me feel a sense of community like that campus did. I live and work in the secular world full-time now, and it's better?? I'm still accepted? valued for who I am, and not just for how well I can spin an argument in support of Jesus Christ.

[winged-thinged]

not made by me, just was saved in my gallery from insta 3 years ago

[winged-thinged]

Re: the good place, someone I went to college with (and am therefore Facebook friends with) made a long post after finishing season 1 about how disappointed she was that the heartwarming good show was no longer heartwarming and good due to [spoilers]. So she would therefore no longer be watching it.

She was exactly that type of person in college too; sometimes I wonder if she ever went back and watched more of the good place

That's hilarious because most other people I've talked to about the matter agree that season 1 is kind of depressing.

(spoilers under the cut)

A "heaven" where you can only interact with 322 preselected people forever, where you're essentially in an arranged marriage with someone the system picked out for you as a "soul mate" (there is NO WAY that, given the exclusivity of actually getting into heaven, everyone works out with the right point totals that all heaven-goers are coincidentally perfectly paired up with an ideal mate who will be ideal forever), the major emphasis is on "harmony" in a "perfect system", and nothing you do will ever really matter in any way. The system's already ideal, there's someone there who can magically provide anything on request, you have eternity to just kind of sit around trying to entertain yourself knowing that any actual impact you can have on the community must be perfect or is making everything worse.

And -- this is the critical point, the thing that makes the whole Good Place model completely unworkable -- most people don't go there. You arrive and watch a cute intro video where Michael explains how the points work, how only people good enough to make serious social change and make it as impactful as possible end up there, and you talk to all your neighbours and they're people who dedicated their whole lives to helping others, only to arrive here and be told "oh, no, this isn't the end, it's the beginning -- and all those people you helped? Probably tortured for all eternity. Maybe you dedicated your entire life to getting shelter and counselling and medical care to homeless drug addicts, proved with every action how much you cared about helping them; they're all getting tortured forever. Don't worry about it! They weren't "good" enough, unlike you! Look how many flavours of frozen yoghurt we have!"

Season 1 was not a happy place.

[winged-thinged]

I don't think either of you understood my point, actually. First, while biblical literalism is common especially among evangelicals, there are plenty of non-Catholic denoms that take a less-than-strictly literal interpretation of the Bible. Second, just because the Bible can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, that doesn't mean we can just ignore what the text says and brush aside the harm that's being done by all the churches that do spread this sin-guilt-hell-salvation narrative.

Yes, every act of reading is, to some degree, an interpretation. But all interpretations aren't created equal. There is a "cone of light" that encompasses all possible readings, to quote Laurence Perrine's essay The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry. A rose is a rose is a rose, and is more than a rose. But a rose is not an ink blot. Nor is Scripture. You can interpret the Bible to mean a lot of different things, but different readings are going to be more or less well-supported, and the further you travel away from the textual and historical evidence, the less well-supported your reading is going to be. Any interpretation that needs to cut out huge swaths of the story in order to make sense is on shaky analytical ground. It might make a better, kinder belief system...but it's not going to be a good representation of what the Bible actually says, and it's not kind or helpful to respond to criticisms of what the Church actually teaches and what the Bible actually says by arguing that well, you can just ignore that part if you want to.

I'm glad you've found a system of meaning that works for you. I think that's great. I don't think you can fix the harm that the Catholic Church (along with a large percentage of other Christian denominations) has caused and continues to cause by saying, "oh, I don't interpret it that way." It makes it sound like you're excusing the Church for its actions, actually. I think that the Church needs to take responsibility for spreading this narrative, and for the harm it causes. Like it or not, that means reckoning with the fact that it is deeply entrenched both in Christian Scripture and in the traditional interpretations thereof.

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[winged-thinged]

Sometimes people demand you justify being an atheist with a 200 page well-sourced thesis on biblical scholarship but one of the reasons I am not a Christian anymore is so fucking simple. It made my life worse. It made me unhealthy mentally. I’ve grown one thousand times more as a person without it. If it were really the one true wisdom from an all knowing infinite god, it would make my life better. And that’s enough proof for me. And it’s a valid reason.

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I hope we get a good pope, who will stand up for refugees, victims of war, those threatened with genocide, immigrants, the poor because this is a time when we really need a light in the darkness.

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“It didn’t happen to me” is a pretty shitty way to respond to someone telling you that they were abused by your community.

So sick of people on my religious trauma posts going "wow I was never taught that, I think that was just a you problem" about foundational parts of their own religion to avoid taking responsibility for its harmful beliefs and practices. Like, I can't speak for every individual church out there, but for Catholics and mainline Protestants, I guarantee you that you were. It's not my fault if you weren't paying attention. "Oh, I always just mumbled through that part and didn't think too hard about it." Yeah, that's obvious. "PSA: Christianity CAN be a beautiful thing! Love and light!" what if I eat you.

[winged-thinged]

Undevotional - 1 Corinthians 15:31

Devaluing our lives makes it easier to convince us to throw them away or devote them wholly to someone else. It is meant to separate us from the inherent value of our lives. And it is impossibly cruel, on top of all that, to not even appreciate the sacrifice but instead demand it.

[winged-thinged]

Healing from being raised catholic by eating meat on Fridays and doing the opposite of fasting (baking cookies and doing things that make me HAPPY) during the time period of lent is soooo nice

[winged-thinged]

If I make a post saying, "hey the things that the Catholic Church holds as doctrine are fucked up, and believing in them hurt me" and you respond "um rude of you to assume that I actually believe in the doctrines of the church that I purport to belong to" one of us is debating in bad faith, but it isn't me.

But by all means, please get out out of my notes.

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[winged-thinged]

Catholicism is such a garbage religion. All about blood and guilt and self-sacrifice. You can say it's about love all you want, but when you define "love" as uh...more blood and guilt and self-sacrifice...that doesn't really say much for you.

Then you get one guy who says "hey maybe we should spend less time on the blood and guilt part and more on the self-sacrifice part. And follow Jesus's example and sacrifice some of our own self-importance in order to try and evangelize to the people we have previously judged to be guilty and soaked in blood?" And people hail him as the new Messiah and revile him as the literal devil in equal measure. But like, come on. This whole framework sucks.

[winged-thinged]

The death of a conspicuously humble and compassionate pope at dawn of Easter Monday, after completing his Holy Week duties (prioritizing prisoners and children) and -- one can only presume -- rebuking a member of the church who has been making himself loathed and infamous by violating or ignoring the teachings of the gospels...

It's not the first time in the last few years that I've thought "medieval chroniclers would be going wild over this," but medieval chroniclers would really be going wild over this.

[winged-thinged]

Two Earthlings (2009) by John Brosio

[winged-thinged]

if i was in jurassic park i'd be fine because the dinosaurs would love me and therefore not eat me

[winged-thinged]

I had a good day :)

I went with my wife to the natural history museum, on the notion that it should be pretty quiet today, and it was. We spent the time walking around, learning about the world (the real world! that actually exists!), saw some dinosaur bones, some really cool preserved moths and butterflies, briefly befriended another group of visibly queer folks who complimented me on my trans pride pin, and I got to look at a really cool old Chinese calligraphy set. And then we picked up food and went home and watched old episodes of Mythbusters :)

I don't know how to describe this without sounding really cheesy, but okay, so I grew up believing in evolution, alright? My community was not all anti-science (...only anti-psychiatry. and anti-reproductive healthcare. and anti-trans.) But still, I grew up believing that evolution was just the mechanism for God's own guiding hand. So the bone-deep grounding feeling of being in the middle of a bunch of models and fossils of pre-historic life, and realizing the depth of time that led to life like me, the pure scale of repetition of random chance, the understanding that the coniferous trees and the lizardlike animals of the Permian period were just as much alive, and in exactly the same way as me (my preference for my own mode of life simply a matter of perspective). Floored me. In the best possible way.

[winged-thinged]

thinking about how my faith was one of the last things to fall away after i walked away from the church

thinking about how i left with every intention of coming back, but i knew this place was killing me and would be successful if i stayed any longer

thinking about how the pain and trauma i endured in the church was never enough for the people there, how this place was in line with god which meant it must be good by default, how it couldn't be killing me, how even if it was killing me that must've been part of his grand plan

thinking about how much better it was to be dead and a christian than alive and not, how we take up our cross, how we must become martyrs, how we must sacrifice our pride, our sin, our human nature, our lives

thinking about how the church planned to bury me there

thinking about how all of them encouraged me to stay, how some of them tried to gently guide me back, how some of them told me explicitly and emphatically that i could not leave

thinking about how i left anyway

thinking about how i knew god was real but finally accepted, reluctantly, heartbroken, that i didn't want to be involved with him

thinking about how god still being real to me meant the nightmares of being dragged back were real to me, how the bone-crushing terror of knowing i'd damned myself to hell was real to me, how i failed the easiest open book test in the world, how all i had to do was accept the best gift anyone could give and i couldn't even manage to do that, how the grief and defeat and feelings of inadequacy for not being able to make it work when it was so damn easy were so deeply real to me

thinking about how i knew i could never be forgiven and daring to hope for it was pointless

thinking about how sometimes i hoped anyway

thinking about how i was convinced i'd instigated the wrath of the most powerful being in this universe and beyond, how just smiting me wasn't sufficient, how i deserved to suffer, to burn, to be tortured for all of eternity for the crime of walking away from something that was eating me alive

thinking about how i persevered anyway