"But she gave birth to you, you owe her!"

My mother wanted to be a mother. It was her dream to be a mother. She poured all her energy into being a Good Christian Mother.

She did not want me. She wanted motherhood. I was a side effect of her dream. Once I was old enough to disagree with her, she hated me. I wasn't making her look like a Good Christian Mother. I was loud, disobedient, needy... almost like a child. Not quiet and pretty and grateful for crumbs.

Yes, she birthed me. For herself and her partner. For the people who were already born. Not for me. As all mothers have for all of time. It's not the birthing that makes a mother worth honoring, it's the parenting.

Things I would prefer to be called rather than “culturally christian”

+ Raised christian

+ Has a christian background

+ Exchristian

These still acknowledge a person’s history with christianity while also respecting the fact that they have left it. Hope this helps!

i dont want god’s forgiveness. i want HIM to apologize to ME.

I’m tired of healing I’m tired of waiting to heal I’m tired of researching what’s wrong with me I’m tired of feeling pathologized im tired of pathologizing myself im tired of not feeling safe im tired of overanalyzing everything im tired of not being able to make a decision im

I think one of the most healing things about decision from Christianity is being able to answer "I never asked him to" when people try to guilt me with "but he died for you!" Yeah well, I never asked. If God is truly all-powerful and all-knowing, then why did he need to sacrifice his son? Why not clap his hands and say "you're all forgiven"?

Oh that's right.

Cause then they couldn't control you with guilt. If he had just forgiven anyone, there would be no emotional blackmail, no way to make you feel like you owed it to someone who did something for you without asking.

Well that doesn't work on me anymore. The guilt is gone and I can breathe again.

Religious conservatives love talking about trans people “mutilating their genitals” and then go off to circumcise their children without their consent 😇

For we so loved the world we started living in it!

I'd been told that God so loved the world that he sent his son to be sacrificed for it, for us. But in that love was an inescapable judgment. It was love with an asterisk. In order to accept God's love I had to accept that I was fallen and worthless and that the world was empty.

Letting go of that kind of love was a prerequisite for me understanding and embracing real love. I learned that love didn't have to come with an apocalyptic asterisk. Love didn't demand that I empty myself or comply with ancient rules. In fact, it was much the opposite. Real love supported me and encouraged me to be the best version of myself, not an empty vessel.

I didn't have to earn someone's love by completely obliterating myself and letting them remake me in their image. When I say it like that, it doesn't sound like love at all. It sounds like control.

I might not be a girl or a woman anymore, but I will never forget the way that 8 year old me had to wear a t-shirt under her summer sundress. She was told that it would be her fault if a man saw her shoulders and was tempted to sin.

I have seen little kids out in “immodest” clothing: tank tops with dinos, polkadotted short shorts, unicorn crop tops. You know how many of those children I’ve had sinful thoughts about?

None.

Imagine being such a spineless fucking pedophile that you blame the child for daring to have a body.

Remember when the men said to Christ, “the scantily-clad woman is causing us to have impure thoughts!”

They waited to hear “she must cover her body.”

Instead, Christ replied “if your hand betrays you, cut it off; and if your eyes cause you to sin, gouge them out.”

It’s high time to bring that back.

Anyways its a lie that people will become greedy, ignorant, or violent if they build their life on humanity and community instead of submission to a deity

When I was growing up, I remember wanting to die.

Not even in a depressive way- it was just part of being Christian to me. Our pastor spoke with tears of joy at the idea of the End Times finally wiping out the sinful Earth. In Sunday School, we were constantly told about how great heaven would be after we died (and told fiery, terrifying stories about how awful hell would be for non-christians). On the radio, there were Christian songs constantly talking about how great heaven would be, and how awful our world was in comparison.

I was seven years old. And I couldn't wait to die.

I fantasized about finally flatlining and walking into the light. I sincerely, dearly hoped that the end of the world would come, with all of its fire and brimstone, so I could be carried into heaven.

I was a child.

To this day, stories about heaven-like afterlives still provoke a very uncomfortable reaction from me. It brings me back to that feeling- of that pragmatic, eager yearning for death.

It's horrible. It can take over my mind for days until the rational part of me manages to shove it back down and remind me that dying is a bad thing, actually.

So, no. I'm not going to respect Christianity. Groups that make kids want to die don't deserve respect.

Me: maybe I'm being too harsh on christians

Conservative christians: Genocide is morally ok when god does or commands it and you cannot comprehend why because you're an unknowing human. Also you can't call anything immoral if you're not christian because god is the arbiter of morality. You only have personal preference, not morals. So there!

Progressive christians: the antichrist is real and the rapture is coming so please become a christian before you go to hell! Unless you already have the mark of the beast and then it's too late for you :( Jesus loves you!

Me: ... I'm not harsh enough.

My biggest problem with God and having a 'personal' relationship with him has always been the idea that we are to love and respect this 'being' more than we love and respect those we are surrounded by.

Its like hearing about stories you have never met and being expected to love this person more than you love your family or those that you interact with on a regular basis. I dont KNOW you. Why should I feel indebted to you when we have never spoken before, we have never interacted or held hands. I have never felt your warmth, nothing tangible has been felt from you. I, of course, when I participated in the church would feel the 'presence of god' while praying. But at the end of the day, I was alone in the room. It was just me crying and praying to myself. There was no god in the room with me.

If god is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.

If god is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.

If god is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?

If god created everything then that means he created evil. And if that is the case what does that say about god?

You know what fucking sucks? Religion, particularly Christianity and its many forms, instills in you from birth that you are inherently unworthy, flawed to the point of unlovability, and your natural state is one of sinfulness and offensiveness to God and all that is good. You are systematically taught all your life that your worth comes in your redemption, and in the way you can let shame mold you into someone more subservient, obedient, and loyal to "God's path" or "God's ways". Your worthiness (all your self-worth, that is) is contingent on how much you can make up for the badness inside you, and become a vessel for light and God's power and whatnot. In the Mormon Church, I distinctly remember a leader very beloved by myself and many others, made his personal branding all about healing from your brokenness and how our lives can be meaningfully spent stumbling and stumbling and stumbling our way toward God again, and despite losing our way or even crawling on our hands and knees in despair or frustration, we are redeemed in our consistent "trying" for the right path and to be the right person/saint/disciple.

And then you deconstruct. However that comes about for you. The world opens up more, and you harbor more genuine feelings for others. You comprehend the limits of conditional love and perhaps glimpse at something more unconditional and free in the people who do accept you, and you feel real relief in their patience with you, that now there is so much more out here, and, and, and wow who knew that there could be so much joy in owning your choices and not having to be right and there is so much you were wrong about!! And...

There is so much you were wrong about.

And you see the gate open for you-- stretched wide with newfound possibilities, but surrounding it is so many fences. You have built up conditions around yourself and others your whole life. You still have maligned ways of understanding for some things, because embedded in you is patterns and ways of being from years, and even in your truest expression of who you are, you will find that you have been touched by what you were taught. And you were terribly wrong not in thought or opinion only but in your judgment. Your controlling. Your policing. Your defensiveness. Your need to be right. Your need to correct, to fix, to "save", to convert, even when you thought you were this vessel for light and the highest expression of love was in showing others "the right way to be" under the guise of sharing this love on a mission or unrelenting invitations or even your "example" -- you were enforcing the harshest punishment on others what you received from God: that others were not enough, and broken, and flawed.

And it feels like it was true that you are inherently sinful. That you shouldn't trust yourself. That your intuition is wrong. You are a cruel and uncaring person, and you could be domineering and unempathetic and disingenous even outside of it all, even when belief no longer burdens you, and you are in need of redemption. To fix yourself...to be worthy again.

It's hard to know and feel my way through what I need to do to make things right in a way that is not self-martyrdom, like falling before a cross and admitting your sins and expecting there to be a divine judgment received that may absolve you. The truth is, is people may not forgive you. Or if they do, they might not want you in their life again, or as closely as it was before. But you can't let shame be what motivates you or tempers you into the shape of someone contrite and pure because forgiveness is only as free as your sincere apology is, unconditionally, and...recognition that you had a choice, you are responsible for it even if not responsible for the driving factor behind it in your religious indoctrination, but you have to recognize you are *NOT* inherently flawed and unworthy. It's hard to believe that you are worthy either way of having friends, having trust, having connection, having authenticity. If you are also from a dysfunctional/abusive home, your boundaries and shame are even more blurred.

I wish I had more answers, but I think the truth is in what religion perverted: love can be the solid motivator for your change. My friendships helped me get out, the ones who chose to be patient with me. It's hard for me to not view their patience as generosity, like God's, when I was inherently undeserving of it, but I try to accept that what was more likely is that they had boundaries, and maybe that's more realistic and important than any notion of perfect, 'unconditional' love. I doubt they came to me with everything, all their thoughts or fullest self. I believe they more than likely said and did certain things to assauge me or learned what was off the table and what wasn't to talk about or do. But they also saw that I was lovable despite my flaws in a non-black and white way - holding space for contradictions like that as if it didn't mean damnation. Even the friends I have grown apart with have never treated me like I wasn't enough. That's not a concept to them. They may have drawn stricter boundaries for themselves, but they were kinder than any God I knew to always treat me with respect even in their distance, and in that way, it holds me more accountable because it acknowledges that I am capable of being a good person. An open-minded, nonjudgmental, caring, accepting person, even if imperfectly. But it's up to me and my choices. Maybe it's not about redemption, but trust. I know my deconstruction is going to probably be lifelong. I know I have so much to learn and experience. But I am grateful for the patience and love of people who saw me not through the lens of religion because they were the ones who helped me get out and get free and be the best version of myself. I hope I can rid myself of my shame and rather understand that the most important work in redemption is not about fashioning myself into an un-boundaried, unassuming, self-sacrificing, or overbearing "light" for a deity that cares only about my loyalty, with a kindness that is about changing people more than getting to just be human with them and accept them, with bludgeoning myself with amorphous and nebulous values of goodness and righteousness that have me putting on a mask to diffuse what is actually authentic about connection; that it is more so my duty and my privilege to get to *earn* the *trust* of other people through being the kind of person that I know I have had within me, perhaps not always embodied, but within me, all along -- not inherently bad, but worthy of love and friendship.