#religious deconstruction

[seraphimfall]

i’ve read so much tradcath bullshit the last two years. i can confidently say tradcath men fit into one of two categories:

“protestant-raised and converted to catholicism because of his crippling porn addiction and racist tendencies. reposts crusader and conquistador memes. is hated in his local parish.” tradcath

“catholic-raised band kid who ate his lunches with the religion teacher. smells like mildew. cut off all his friends that came out as gay after high school. now larps as an aquinian scholar and cries after jerking off.” tradcath

[azuremist]

I made a uQuiz to figure out how you would fall if you were an angel. My credentials are that I am gay and my mom was a pastor.

[ardent-apostasy]

forceful reminder as we come up to easter weekend that you were not born bad. that it is good that you are alive. that you were not born to be evil, or born to die for the cause, or born to be broken.

[pretentious-librarian]

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

[apostateoverrubies]

It's funny how certain religious people act like accepting LGBTQ rights will lead to paedophilia being normalized when they've already let that shit slide for centuries.

Then again, what else do you expect from people who value religion over the rights of children?

Don't let them trick you into thinking they care.

[takeme-totheworld]

You Can't Go Home Again

I'm someone who walked away from my childhood religion almost twenty years ago, and I'm very firmly at a place in my life now where I am very happy to be through with it and have zero lingering desire to go back. I've also been out as some kind of queer person for the same almost-twenty years, and I've been out as trans for almost fifteen of those years.

If you knew absolutely nothing else about me or my life except for those major plot points, and the fact that I'm a Good Omens fan, it would be reasonable to assume that I would identify with Crowley far more than Aziraphale. At least at this point in my life. And in fact, I've seen many fans with backgrounds similar to mine say that they used to be much more like Aziraphale when they were younger, but nowadays they see far more of themself in Crowley. Which makes sense, as a trajectory for people who grew up in controlling religions and then left!

I've been trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me so automatically take Aziraphale's perspective when watching this show, even though the most aggressively Aziraphale time of my life was literal decades ago now. And I think that's probably a very complicated answer, but I realized today that I see an emotional struggle happening in him that I still wrestled with for years and years after leaving the church before I was finally able to completely put it to rest—the struggle to accept that some things can never go back to the way they were.

I seriously suffered so much over this for so long after I left the church. Despite all the damage it had done to me, my entire life had been intertwined with the church and a lot of things that were good—or at least deeply comforting in their familiarity—had also been a part of that. I had plenty of genuinely happy memories all mixed together with the harmful ones (which, in case you were wondering, is confusing as hell). There were fundamental human needs that I had only ever gotten met through the church, and as double-edged as what the church provided was, it was all I knew. Learning to get those needs met in new ways was much healthier, but it wasn't what I had always known growing up and it was a loss.

And I spent a long time refusing to fully accept that going back to any version of Christianity or the church just...wasn't ever going to be in the cards for me.

That is in the cards for some people, I know. Some folks who leave or get kicked out of ultra-dogmatic and controlling churches eventually find new homes in much more progressive and nurturing ones. And that's great! But that was never going to be my path. The process of seeing my childhood religion for what it truly was, losing my beliefs, leaving everything the church was to me further and further behind, and gradually learning who I was without it, changed me too much for me to ever be able to go back again.

I am fine with that now. More than fine. I'm healthier and happier now than I've ever been. Over time I grew into a version of myself that no longer has a church/religion/faith-shaped gaping wound in my life I'm trying to fill. But it was hard and painful and it took a really long time for me to get there. I spent a lot of my twenties and even a bit of my early thirties trying to find something...some new church community that I could be connected to in some way, that would give me back some of what I'd lost when I left my childhood church. But none of them ever did. I was never going to get the same things out of belonging to a church again, because I wasn't the same.

You can't go home again.

I see Aziraphale on that same journey and that's part of what makes my heart automatically go out to him and hurt for him, over and over again. He's still desperately holding onto the idea of a hypothetical version of Heaven and being an angel that can be home again one day. One where all the good things he remembers are still there, and still every bit as good, and all the bad parts have been fixed or gotten rid of, so that being there will be like the old times, only even nicer.

Except that even if he actually succeeded at somehow making Heaven the exact flavor of like-the-old-times-only-even-nicer that he is imagining, it wouldn't matter. Heaven is not his home anymore. He's already changed too much to be able to go back. He just hasn't accepted that yet.

[audhdnight]

OH MY FUCKING GOD

Seriously this has opened my eyes to something that I honestly feel like I already suspected because there is SUCH an emphasis on “teaching them while they’re young” and not turning them out into the world until they are “past the point of no return” like this is why Christian fundamentalists hate college so much, because at that age people are still capable of reversing the damage (at least, a hell of a lot easier then they are at say, fifty). The prefrontal cortex doesn’t finish developing until around 25, so if an indoctrinated teenager goes to college at 18 and begins to see reality, they are much more likely to leave the church than someone who is sheltered from the world until they’re 30.

(Side rant: This is also why it’s so frustrating to talk to Christian adults who seem to be genuinely incapable of thinking logically. It explains a phenomenon that I noticed a long time ago: when speaking to relatives, I attempted to show them that they didn’t actually agree with, let’s say for the sake of the example, capitalism. I would bring up all their complaints with our current system and demonstrate how each one is a facet of capitalism. I was able to get them to agree to each individual point, but when I tried to put them all together as a whole, the person (usually my grandpa) would revert back to “okay the system is flawed but it still works” even though we just spent an hour discussing how it doesn’t work, actually. They are incapable of putting multiple pieces together and viewing them as one whole.)

I remember so clearly growing up the sermons on Proverbs 22:6 (Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it) and the pastors stirring up panic about public school and colleges stealing our children’s faith and poisoning their minds. I remember how afterwards all the parents exclaimed how their children would never go to college, that this is why they homeschooled, that this was yet another reason why young men should go straight into the work force and young women should immediately get married and become baby making machines. I vividly remember the panic over statistics of how many people leave the faith in college and how it was so much higher than the numbers of essentially any other group.

Fundamentalists worst fear is reality. They do not want their children to have any exposure to any rhetoric besides their own, unless it is presented disingenuously by apologetics teachers. Everything is filtered and twisted and watered down to keep us “safe” from reality.

This is literally how cults operate. Fundamental Christian evangelicalism IS A CULT

This is also why they target vulnerable groups, because like the OP mentions, people who have damage to their prefrontal cortex are much more likely to fall for indoctrination. This is why you see Christian “outreach groups” in homeless shelters and rehabilitation programs and hospitals. This is targeted and it is malicious. Even the “good Christians” who really do want to actually help people are upholding this system that actively harms vulnerable groups.

[poetic-mac-n-cheese]

I am always thinking about how Cam didn’t say goodbye to her dads before becoming Paul. It’s always made me a little sad because it’s her last chance! She’s gone through and done so much to save them and then she doesn’t even see them before she dies/changes forever!! Why?? I know she said they wouldn’t understand but why not hug them one last time, give them the chance to grieve?

And then I think about “lucky them” and “I’m so relieved” and how Camilla really doesn’t seem to see this as a tragedy at all. She sees it as a necessary and wonderful transformation. She’s becoming more, not less. She’s changing, yes, but she’s changing into what she believes is more true to her identity than who she was before.

And then I think about the last few years of my life. I’ve gone through a massive faith crisis and transformation in the last 3 years. I’ve left behind the religion and by extension the culture that I loved and was raised in and changed so completely that I am for all intents and purposes a new person. I went from being a full time missionary to an apostate in less than half a decade. It breaks my parents heart. They definitely miss the old me. They almost definitely wish they could say goodbye, talk to the old me one last time. But they also could never really do that because by the time it would be the last time I would already have changed so completely that it wouldn’t really be the old me at all. (Something something change is the nature of existence something something we can’t go home again)

And I don’t think it’s a tragedy. I’ve grieved who I thought I would be, yes, but I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back. And I don’t want my parents to view me as a before and after, I want them to see me as a whole person, a person who is me no matter how much I change. If I was given the chance to say goodbye before I started changing, would I do it? Would it even mean anything? And yes my faith transformation has been a much less immediate and dramatic before and after than bursting into flames and merging completely with my bestie/soulmate, but I think the point still stands. I’m still here in the ways that matter to me so why would I say goodbye?

[beautiful-littlefool]

People who talk about how “how could you believe in the church ever, how did they talk you into getting baptized when you were 8? I NEVER would’ve fallen for that!” Did you believe in the Easter Bunny? The tooth fairy? Santa Clause? All things that are made up but you believed were true even though there were some weird and honestly creepy aspects of it if you look at it now, but you still believed in it and believed in the good parts of those things. Do not blame people for believing in something that they were fully taught was the truth because the people around them were taught it was the truth. Do not criticize a little kid for believing in Santa.

[powerlineprincess]

Jesus Camp 2006 screenshots.

[beauspot]

*Good Omens 2 Spoilers*

I want to share my thoughts on the way I’ve seen some people talking about Aziraphale since the season dropped(cliff notes: i don’t like it)

i understand being upset with aziraphale i am too. i wish everything could be tied up in a neat bow all the time and all of the characters i liked got their happy endings right away, but that’s not realistic. aziraphale has been under heaven’s thumb since before the earth was even created. and you might say “well crowley figured out heaven was the worst and couldn’t be fixed just like hell way early on” and yeah that’s true but guess what?

aziraphale isn’t crowley. shockingly they are two different characters who react to things differently. whatever thoughts or questions aziraphale had he kept to himself because he didn’t want to be thrown from heaven into a “pool of boiling sulfur” and be eternally damned. how strange 😒

i see people saying unironically that they hate aziraphale and will never forgive him for hurting crowley which is so mind boggling to me because aziraphale’s first thought when he’s offered the job is to bring crowley with him. it’s his top priority. no demon has ever been reinstated as an angel, that has never ever happened ever. So yeah in aziraphales warped perspective he is trying to save crowley. he loves crowley too he just can’t admit that to himself yet because he has been told it’s wrong his entire existence (think of it like internalized homophobia. is it clicking now?)

he goes about it the wrong way entirely and he should have turned the job down and went after crowley but did you forget who we’re dealing with? aziraphale who in the 3rd episode thought he deserved eternal damnation in hell for lying to save the lives of 3 innocent children. he’s been so indoctrinated and he’s not going to unlearn that in a matter of 4 years. and yes i say 4 years because in 2019 aziraphale very much still saw himself entirely on heavens side (with a few exceptions).

like leave him alone? and if you hate him don’t come back next season seriously, we don’t need you here with us.

and also happy endings all the time are boring.

[seraphimfall]

excuse me????

[hippeasantwitch]

This is like an Ozzy Osbourne concert for men who don’t know what a clitoris is

[ardent-apostasy]

people in the comments of posts about religious trauma will be like "what trauma?? from sitting in a pew once a week??" and i'm like, first of all, many of us did a helluva lot more than just sitting in a pew once a week, m-kay? and second of all, sitting in a pew once a week gave me PLENTY to work through as an adult so kindly shut it.

like i'm sorry that you can't understand that sitting in a pew breaking out in hives but not allowed to leave because "I SEE YOU WALKING OUT!! THE TRUTH IS UNCOMFORTABLE!! THE WEAK WILL LEAVE BECAUSE THEY WON'T LET JESUS INTO THEIR HEARTS!!" and other such bullshit, or being told that you are INHERENTLY sinful and going to HELL to be BURNED for all eternity, or being told that NOTHING you do will ever be good enough, or being told that "YOU ARE LIKE THE LUKEWARM CHURCH THAT JESUS WILL VOMIT OUT" because of something like not volunteering often enough (or, of course, for not donating enough to the church), or hearing sermons about how JUSTIFIED genocide is as long as the people you're killing don't believe in the One True God (but then again don't worry about those True Believers because they shall survive with the Power of The Holy Spirit anyways), or being often reminded that you MUST be willing to BURN IN A FURNACE or be EATEN ALIVE BY LIONS over not being EXTREMELY PUBLIC about your faith, or...

you get my drift. you put a child through all that and i think they're allowed to have some fucking trauma.

so yeah. kindly shove your "it's just church once a week!" up your ass.

[pretentious-librarian]

“lean not on your own understanding” fucked. me. up. yes, i understand the context in which it was written thousands of years ago but i’m not talking about that. i’m talking about how that verse has been weaponized by modern evangelical christianity to abuse and maintain control over people. to smother any critical thinking, resistance, independence, individualism, and more. this post doesn’t have a point. i am just pissed about my religious trauma and all the fighting i had to do just to trust my gut, my instincts, and my own critical thinking. i’m angry about all the years of loving, growing, and discovering myself that i lost to the spiritual abuse from the church.

[apostateoverrubies]

Children don't need religion to develop good morals. I'd argue that certain religions get in the way of that because they encourage you to do things because a deity approves and it will lead to you having a good afterlife or whatever. And I don't know about you but I find that to be self-serving.

Not to mention, the fact that religion can advocate for immoral things.

Let's just teach children to be good just because.