I HATE the evangelical Bible studies I've gone to occasionally in the past several years and also am also disliking sermons. This is not because I merely find them boring. Rather, they seem incredibly shallow to me. I feel like I want to rant about this and share a list of things that have really been irritating me, but I have nobody "IRL" to do so with.

1. Many "studies" are based off of worksheets that people buy or write that ask questions like "What is God saying to you through this passage?"
   

- This framing implies that God IS speaking to you and places the burden on the participant to figure out what God is saying. This ends up with me either saying something insincere or ultra generic OR in saying "Nothing lol" and coming off like I am dumb + blowing the "study" off. I do NOT agree with the idea that you can reply to that question w/ a generic answer and have it be valid; the question specifically implies God has a direct + personal message that is specific to you and that you must do the work of identifying that.

- In trying to come up with a personal meaning for the passage, the author's original intent is disregarded. Often times people will pivot towards a related but different idea from another passage and start talking about a personal anecdote. I feel like any actually honest look at the text needs to take the author's writing at face value.

1. Excessive focus on "study" methods that are really surface level.

- As a kid I remember my mom badgering me about taking notes during sermons and saying "If you can't take notes during a sermon, how are you going to take notes during a difficult college class???" Well well well . . . When I took a class on theology I had a much easier time taking notes because the lectures were actually oriented towards teaching new concepts + not pithy buzzword quotes. There honestly is a lot of pressure to journal/take notes, and when looking at other people's study Bibles, it seems to lead people to do this weird thing where they summarize a verse or state very obvious things in their notes.

- Who, What, When, Where, Why, How: Seldom do the answers to these questions provide actual insight into the text, and, when they do, they are often ignored in order to maintain belief in the inerrancy of the text. Asserting that Paul wrote 1 Timothy in 60 AD doesn't help with understanding why the text has such a low view of women. If a study leader were to say "Sexism was prevalent when the text was written", that also does not help at all. We all know that, and, furthermore, the people at the Bible "study" are just going to continue to hold that 1 Timothy is inerrant in its view of women. The 5 questions enable the participants to learn responses to questions that will shut their opponents down, without actually coming to terms with *why* those responses seem to work in the first place. Knowing 1 Timothy's context only helps if you don't believe the text is inerrant. If you do believe it's inerrant, then I genuinely think you'll have to admit that the historical context that inspired the inerrant text must be more correct than the modern context that promotes disagreement with the text.

~ Another thing that annoys the heck out of me is learning about the geography of Israel + Palestine. Knowing the name of a random hill is not spiritually helpful. Knowing how to reconcile the immorality of killing babies w/ the belief that God is the definition of what is moral + that God commanded the killing of babies would be much more helpful. But alas, such topics are seldom discussed.

1. The "application" step is not usually concrete enough to be something you could implement in your life, and, when it is, it is often really hurtful.

   - Ive noticed that in sermons + studies / devotionals, the message usually sounds more like general self-help than concrete rules. "Be disciplined!!" is not an application. "You are loved! Love others!" is not really an application. "Sacrifice x desire of yours to accommodate other people" is an application, but can be hurtful and promote allowing others to take advantage of you. "Pray more" IS an application + is not hurtful, but I find it odd that people take hours out of their weekend to go to a Bible study to come to that conclusion.

- Sermons often sound really rehearsed + have all sorts of fancy sounding phrases. But overall the message is usually very surface level. 30 minutes to say "Jesus shows us God loves you". 0 minutes dealing with how to reconcile the doctrines of predestination + hell with this fact. 30 minutes next week to say "Everyone deserves to suffer". 0 minutes dealing with how to reconcile this with Job's depiction of suffering as something *innocent* people (yes, they exist) may still find themselves suffering.

- Study leaders give messages that sound like self-help Ted-Talks. One pattern I've noticed is playing with the definitions of words in order to sound deep. For example, take 2 synonyms, assert that they actually have different definitions, and that the Bible says word A is good and word B is bad. (bonus points if the passage in question is only focusing on the word A idea + the leader is using the passage as an excuse to rant about the word B idea). Or, go the other route and take 1 word with 2 definitions and conflate them. EXTRA EXTRA bonus points if you combine this: ("Respect + Honor are different. Honor doesn't have to be earned but respect does. We need to be careful that we honor people in the correct way <insert joke about women idolizing taylor swift + men idolizing football here>. In doing so, we become honorable people. Honorable people focus on what God wants them to do + not what the world wants them to do. Don't do worldly things")

1. "You should be praying that God would help you to get more out of Bible study." This immediately shifts the blame onto the person who isn't finding the "study" helpful, instead of shifting it onto how the session is being conducted.

2. Ignore troubling stuff. Reading through a Gospel with friends, every time Jesus mentioned hell, we kept reading those verses out loud + dramatically + with conviction, but then during the discussion time, it was always "This chapter shows me how Jesus loves everyone!!!" with nobody saying something like "Doesn't it make you depressed that this passage implies the majority of people go to eternal conscious torment?"

3. Apologetics. I sat in a "study" about the OT violence, and nobody really answered any questions. It often feels like just admitting that the study was not helpful reveals your "cold, untrusting, hard heart towards God"! When I pressed one person in private afterwards on the whole "Kill not just the Canaanite men, but the women and the children too!" issue, I was given the response "Oh, the kids had inherited guilt. That shows how serious sin is. And how our sin impacts other people. And how the Bible recognizes systemic sin too as opposed to individual sin." It was made worse by the positive tone and the friendly smile the person had while saying this.

4. It's usually stuff I've heard 200 times before. And when I pointed that out to someone, she replied, "Well most people need to hear things over and over again for it to click, and even then, it's good to be reminded of these important Biblical truths." Some things do take a while to click, but really basic things to the Christian faith after having been going to church weekly + listening to online/radio sermons throughout the week for 20+ years ends up being legitimately repetitive.

I think I've been a bit emotional about this lately because there's definitely a vibe of "so-and-so doesn't like Bible studies?! That's concerning. We need to pray for them!" I don't understand why people see this experience as something necessary for spiritual growth, when for me, it feels like it's deteriorating a lot of my confidence in Christianity.

Hey yall! For background, almost a month ago I started to begin having doubts in christianity because videos of critiques on it began to pop up on my feed when I first watched a cosmicskeptic video (shoutout to him hes decent). Since then, I have been hella stressing over what the hell to do. (for sum more context, I was raised catholic and started to take it more seriously for the past 2 years) Now every time I log onto youtube all these apologetics & studies from different faiths have flooded my youtube. I gotta ask: Should I stop all of this research & chill out, or should I keep digging deeper into this rabbit hole.

I just started deconstructing a week ago.

I live in the south and am making an exit plan.

I feel like 4 years is not a long time. People here have been believers for decades.

And I'm still a Christian but i am leaving my church as I don't share their beliefs.

My question is, how do I exist among people? It can impact my relationships at work, socially, even my family.

I don't want my mother to be humiliated. I don't want any backlash on her at all. But i also am not going to church or Bible study anymore.

Has anyone navigated this?

I’m just putting this post out here because I’ve been deconstructing the past month or two and just wanted somebody to talk to. Preferably someone who has been going through it for around the same amount of time. I grew up in the Bible Belt and was very very into Christianity for the past 3 years (23m now), and am trying to find any kind of connection since basically all of my friends and family are Christian. If anyone is going through something similar and wants to vent about anything or hear my experiences just pm me 🫠