deservedgrace

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being an ex christian is so stupid because the guilt follows u in such weird ways. screwed up at work today, guess i should be shot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I keep circling back trying to understand how it is that so-called Christian "unconditional love" is at once both extremely conditional and also extremely mandatory.

Christian love is not unconditional in the sense that there are no conditions placed on you by God when you are loved. There are, quite famously, a whole book's worth of conditions that you are expected to follow in order to prove your devotion, signs of God's loving presence moving through you. Depending on your denomination, those conditions might be enforced by the threat of hell or just plain social ostracization or Bible study cliques or elaborate rituals of penance and forgiveness. But consistently and across many denominations, once you are Christian, you are expected to comply with these conditions. You must conform. You are not free to be as you once were.

But neither are you free to reject their love. It is universal, and therefore definitionally boundaryless, all-encompassing, and heavily enforced. Welcoming in the lost sheep is not a passive process. It is an active process of going out and hunting for the sinner, of teaching them the example of Jesus's life, of bringing them into the fold. And once they are fully indoctrinated, they are expected to continue to actively practice, to abstain from "sin," and to show a high degree of conformity to the group standard, whatever that means for the particular community. If you don't—you get hunted down and re-educated, pestered and threatened, shunted back into rituals of sin and repentance. There is no saying, "no I'm not interested" that the loving Christian can accept, because Christian love is for everybody. There is no opt out. There is no consent.

It comes of viewing the whole world as sinful, I think—human beings as not worthwhile in their own right but only in so far as they are potential conduits for God's grace—potential converts—everybody a broken people needing to be saved. The Great Commission ("go make of all disciplines") means that everyone must be converted—not welcomed, converted—and this is mandatory for everyone forever.

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Whoever is praying for my downfall has got to stop because shit is working

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Kill the concept of a seizure immediately and with passion

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the ex-Christian desire to speedrun the seven cardinal sins in like, a sample platter.

like start by jacking off, then do your makeup for an hour, then be angry at the world and jealous of those in power, eat a big and greedy lunch and boast about yourself online, all while being a lazy ass.

Sounds like an awesome Sunday tbh

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#this and also the fact that 90% of the time when i see ppl do this they are actually trying to communicate something extremely ableist#like. when you use a broad statement of judgment and then go “wait no i didnt mean disabled people!” maybe consider#why disabled people get to be the exception to the rule? bc most of the time the answer is actually incredibly ableist.#it's not just that no one can tell the difference. it's also that even if you didn't mean to be ableist you are still being ableist.#if the ideas someone is communicating are coming from a place of viewing disabled people as inherently lesser in any way then that's ableis#even if they didn't think about how that was what they were doing. you don't have to thing about upholding harmful systems of power to#uphold them. they're actually specifically designed so that upholding them is easier than dismantling them.#like “the only value you hold as a human being comes from what you contribute to society” is an ableist sentiment on its own.#it's not just ableist because when other people say it it's ableist. isn't not just ableist because it has a history of ableism.#it's also just ableist because it comes from a place of ableism. it's ableist because it causes harm to disabled people.#this is a great post op and i completely agree with you#im just expanding in my tag rambles bc you touched on something that's been bothering me a lot recently.#sorry if this is a vent post and i'm just ranting in the tags lol (via @ab0masum)

this goes on the post actually

Hot take maybe, but I hate when people are like "[xyz] is bad/disgusting/etc" and follow up with "obviously I don't mean for people with actual disorders/actually disabled people xoxo!!!" when they're called out for it. I think people should either backtrack and apologize or double down on their ableism if they're going to use ableist language.

I saw a video a while back where someone was like "I reject the notion that we all have inherent value just by being human, we all have to contribute to society and if you're not contributing anything then you don't have value." And after people gently were like "hey, that's ableist language used against disabled people to justify abuse against us and justify killing us/letting us die," the person made a video response going "well obviously I didn't mean disabled people!!!"

And like I'm sorry, but no, it isn't obvious you didn't mean disabled people. When you're actively using ableist language, it's not obvious that disabled people are exempt from that. At least in the circles of the internet I'm involved with, someone using white supremacist language doesn't get to be offended when people call them out on it, they don't get to go "well obviously I didn't mean it in a white supremacist way!" We recognize that that language is harmful and, regardless of intent, spreading that language is best case normalizing those horrific ideas.

I just really wish that people were less okay with normalizing ableist language instead of justifying it with "I didn't mean it that way!" No one can tell the difference from the outside.

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has anyone figured out how to be a real person yet

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Yep, that's me in the corner. You're probably wondering how I ended up in the spotlight losing my religion.

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Yet again thinking about how I sometimes hear people say things along the lines of, “Well if they followed through to the logical conclusions of their beliefs, they would understand and turn away,” and it’s like… yeah that’s true for many, but there are in fact people that have done that and embrace those conclusions, because they think that’s the only option

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We want you here, but we don't want you. We love you, but we don't love you. Die to yourself. You are nothing. Become nothing. God is love!

All are welcome! All are wretched. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Everything you are is sin. Everything good comes from God. Empty yourself of your own being. Be filled by God. Take up your cross, deny yourself. Come, follow. Come, die. We love you!

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allodynia my BELOATHED

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Fucking hate being raised Christian what the fuck you mean men and women actually have the same amount of ribs FYM I JUST FIND THAT OUT TODAY!!!

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I am honored to walk beside so many lovely people making their way out of Christianity. Y'all are better walking companions than any poem about footprints could brag about.

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Having religious trauma is wild, I'm getting overwhelmed because I don't understand some college stuff, and my choice in topics to engage in to calm down and recenter include videos debunking religious things I was taught growing up

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I am going to personally bring back New Atheism out of sheer fucking spite at every asshole who's still whining about how it's okay to hate atheists because some of them are mean online

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i worry when people follow me after only seeing a single post. where's your inquisitive nature? what if i suck?