Listen, i dont mean to sound like a reddit atheist, but... You ever think about how evangelical Chriatians very literally believe that there will be a genocide in which billions of humans, mostly just innocent everyday people, are condemned to suffer in hell?

And, like, that's the end. That's the finale. Of everything they believe. That's their solution for the world. A final one, if you will.

And they don't rebel. They don't say "hey, wait, that's a bit much" and appeal to their God to maybe reconsider. They don't even seem to really mind.

Instead, they worship. They conjure up an image of a genocidal maniac, and they worship it. The word "praise" is bandied about a lot. Praise. For a leader whose endgoal, very transparently, is genocide.

Suddenly a lot of history makes a little more sense.

It's really fucked up how Christianity teaches that some people can only be reached for Christ when they hit rock bottom. Christians will pray for people to endure tremendous suffering simply so that the non-believers can hear the voice of god. Truly an abysmal failure in imagining a loving god.

"he's so loving because he caused me to experience the greatest pain of my life so that I could finally listen to him"

Absolutely insane move on the part of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving deity. You're telling me the ONLY WAY was the road of agony? Unrelenting love, kindness, and divine revelation weren't options?

It is very bizarre to me but I assume it's like anything else that gets adopted by people who exist within religious cultures. Like non-religious folks in the USA are probably going to have very Christian ideas about the afterlife (if they believe), forgiveness, know the "golden rule" etc. so I think it makes sense that there are some with very Christian ideas about homosexuality even if they don't subscribe to the theology that undergirds the beliefs. It just feels like it makes less intuitive sense for this belief to be one of the ones that gets absorbed.

I think it combines too with the queasiness some people have over sexual expression that they personally wouldn't enjoy. And there's a natural impulse I think within us to say that which disgusts us is wrong. So I think the ppl who get squicked out by gay sex are more likely to think homosexuality is wrong in general and then they also have the hateful religious culture basically saying that they're right to trust that feeling of disgust.

among weirdest things i learned when I was younger was that theres non-religious homophobes

what do you MEAN theres people that just Decide "people shouldn't be gay thats bad" without any kind of established rationalization or rigid authoritarian framework for what "bad" is.

if you're like "god disapproves of gay" it's like okay your god has weird definition of what is important but at least in your head you have a Reason. If you don't care about a god or a spiritual teaching and you are like "gay is bad" that seemed much weirder to me. Like okay? What the hell are you going to do about it

"Good Luck, Babe!" hits me so hard because even when I was young, even when I was drenched deep in Christianity, I never pictured myself marrying a man. I didn't picture myself marrying a woman because I didn't know that was an option until I was older but I also wasn't able to picture myself getting married to a man. Even when all my friends seemed to be imagining and planning for their weddings it was just... not something I put a lot of thought into or even wanted to put thought into. And marriage wasn't something that interested me until i was able to imagine it with a woman. But in another universe I'm still deep in the religion. I'm married to a man and anxious, on edge all the time and so, so unhappy. Because I am a lesbian. And I can't talk about it because I'm not allowed to have negative emotions and am especially not allowed to have gay ones. And I have to perform "wifely duties" because it's my job to submit to my husband. And I can't divorce because divorce isn't allowed. I am trapped. This song hits me a lot in a lesbian way but also in a religious trauma way. And it probably seems weird to outsiders to be so distressed about a scenario that never happened to me. But I think the thing I am really distressed about is that I went through the trauma that was meant to break me for that life. I try to be grateful that I didn't end up with that life, that I got out when I did, but it doesn't feel like I dodged a bullet when I already went through the thing that was supposed to break me. That broke so many others. This song really hits me in both the comphet and fundamentalist xtianity specific heteronormativity. I got out but not before they broke me down with the intention of rebuilding me for my future husband. And it's really hard not to feel crushed about that.

there’s something uniquely fucked up about the way christianity actively encourages martyrdom.

both judaism and islam do not encourage their followers to be honest about being a member of the faith if it puts their lives at risk. the latter religion even has a word for it— taqiyyah.

the christian view on martyrdom claims that followers cannot “actively seek out” dying for the faith. but, because of the rewards christianity promises to martyrs (i.e. guaranteed access to literal heaven) there is always a subliminal push towards getting yourself killed.

not to mention, it’s a core tenet of christianity to not deny christ, even if you’re at risk of harm (peter denying christ three times the night before the crucifixion, etc.)

the damage these teachings can cause vary due to circumstance. in countries like the united states, it means children being told they need to say “yes” if a shooter puts a gun to their head and asks them “are you christian?”. in countries like libya, it means oppressed people being pushed to put their lives on the line because they feel like they’re betraying the faith otherwise.

at it’s worst, christian martyrdom encourages groups of people—living under forces that are actively oppressing them— to sacrifice their lives to make a point. if they don’t, they risk the salvation of their souls.

Cried my eyes out over midnight mass but the concept is so funny if I think about it. Priest saw a nosferatu vampire and went "omg an angel... I'm bringing it home" and then the horrors

Horniness is not intrinsically less pure than any other human motivation

I'm not an antitheist, but the more I untangle Christianity, the more I believe that society should view certain religious ideas as morally wrong. We absolutely let cruelty, bigotry, and abuse go unchallenged as long as someone cites a holy book as reason for it and that's not right or fair to anyone.

A Little Bit Culty

By Amy Northrop

"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.

Content Warning: religion and transphobia⚠️

Happy Trans Day of Visibility 🏳️‍⚧️ I made a comic reflecting on my church upbringing as an eXvangelical trans person. The Jesus conservative Christians claim to represent looked lot more like many of the LGBTQ+ friends I know and love. Just some food for thought 💖

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.

and is your shame helpful? is it inspiring goodness and change? or is it keeping you frozen in time unable to move on and be everything you have expanded to be?

One of the things I'm super grateful for is that after I had gay sex for the first time, I knew that they were wrong, that I had been wrong. There wasn't anything unholy about gay love. It was resplendent with beauty. I felt my lover's arms around me and I knew the wrong thing, the terrible thing, would be to continue to deny myself the joy of being held. I still had a lot of work to do to change my views and deconstruct Christianity, but it became completely and utterly untenable to believe that any justifiable moral code would prohibit gay love.

And I had been so afraid to go that far for so long, convinced that god would punish me in some way. I thought that if I ever had sex with a man I would be lost entirely and sink deep into a horrible misery. I thought it would destroy me, but instead it gave me what I needed to build a whole new life entirely, outside of the grip of what actually was destroying me.

When Everything Everywhere All at Once said “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind, especially when we don’t know what’s going on" 

When the Good Place said “Why choose to be good every day when there is no guaranteed reward now or in the afterlife… I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.” 

When Jean-Paul Sartre said ”‘Hell is other people’ is only one side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also ‘Heaven is each other’. Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings.“

A lot of sentiments I see online about "just standing up for yourself" fall apart when considering that a common consequence of "standing up for yourself" is losing a key part of your current support network. It's hard to tell someone to stop being transphobic to you when you carpool with them to work, and it'll get a lot more expensive without them. Can your budget tolerate that cost, or is it the expense that stretches you too far? It's hard to tell someone that they need to be more polite to you when they're the one who helps walk you through legalese. Can you find someone else to do it for you, or are you left floundering? It's hard to tell someone to stop being sexist to you when they're the one writing your reference letter. Do you have someone else who can be your reference, or are they the only one whose letter would be accepted?

In order to be able to stand up for yourself, you need to be able to bear the potential consequence of that person leaving. You need to either have redundancy in your network, or be able to pay for what they did for you. Safety is about more than if someone will hit you.