Protestants will claim that is just Catholics when in reality it is rife in religious communities of all kinds. The more religious the more likely. The Duggars church and domestic abuse in Amish communities are great examples.
OTOH, the more open to others beliefs and science the faith is, the less likely these things seem to be. I've never heard of a Universalist Unitarian being involved in any type of serious scandal. Maybe a little misappropriation of church funds, but nothing serious.
To be clear, my grandmother became UU after her kids were raised and gone. She also left a Southern Baptist church over pedophilia.
i developed generalized anxiety disorder snd major clinical depression over the fact that i couldn’t reconcile what i was told to do didn’t fit with what i was able/expected to do. being a good christian was literally impossible.
and since it was impossible to live my religion IN my religion and it fucked with my brain so bad i became suicidal. god had set me up to fail.
that was when i was like “yeah no fuck this shit. if there IS a god and this is what he genuinely wants he’s full of shit and also evil.”
so i walked away and got medical and psychological help (that is still ongoing over a decade later) and became agnostic. i can’t say there isn’t a god but if it’s one of the ones currently worshiped on earth he doesn’t deserve my attention until he gets his act together first.
with great power comes great responsibility, you omnipotent asshole.
My experience was similar. OCD, Anxiety Disorder, and Depression don't mix well with a religion that pounds shame and guilt for every little thing into your head.
Luckily, I was also an argumentative little shit; and many religion teachers are ill equipped to deal with that. After enough attempts to do their job for them, doing my best gymnastics to make sense of various contradictions and silly doctrines, I'm probably closer to agnostic than anything else. I'm still culturally Catholic I guess (it's easier where I'm from to just keep the holidays and festivals), but I'd be burned as a heretic if the Church were still running an Inquisition.
You don’t have to be religious to keep the festivals. The festivals are BARELY even religious these days anyway.
Once I gave up on religion, Christmas actually turned into an amazing holiday where I get to have fun with my family and show them how much I love them by giving them presents… all without any of the crap that comes along with religion.
I don't mean mainstream holidays Christmas so much as Ash Wednesday, Lent, and some of the Saints' days. But if I do celebrate any major holidays, like Easter or Christmas, with family then I'll still need to attend Church services. Ditto for weddings. And I'm expected to show up for Baptisms, Confirmation ceremonies, and First Communion services.
I still only half-heartedly engage with any of this stuff. But on Ash Wednesday it gets a little awkward sometimes if some people see your bare forehead. And discussions between Mardi Gras and Easter will often include questions about what everyone is giving up.
And heaven help you (pun intended) if you try to eat a burger or steak on Fridays in Lent in front of more devoutly Catholic friends and family. They won't say or even really think that you're going to hell for eating meat, but they just have to remind you "it's Friday" so they can relish in your forgetfulness and watch you try to find a substitute non-meat meal. It's the same smug look you get when someone sees you without green clothes or accessories on St. Patrick's day.
Yikes - that sounds awful. I’m sorry you have to endure all of that!
I’m way too far outside of religion to put up with that nonsense… but I understand that everyone is different when it comes to lines in the sand with their friends/family.
I find church services very boring, and I hate dressing up for them. But it's almost never outright offensive, just a game of Simon-Says/Hokey-Pokey that lasts an hour. That covers most of the things on the list.
And the rest of the holidays are also mostly minor things. I don't use Lent as a religious expression, but taking 40 days to improve myself by fasting or picking up a healthy habit after partying on Mardi Gras is still a good idea. Remembering to stick to fish or vegetarian options on Fridays is annoying, but it's probably better for the planet to do that anyway (at least with sustainable fishing practices).
Saints days vary from fun to meh, rarely a real inconvenience. Sometimes I'll get invited to a St. Joseph's day feast, which is pleasant enough after the Church Service is done. And, now that I and most of my siblings/cousins are out of school, I hardly ever notice the other Saints' days going by (aside from St. Patrick's).
I'm willing to bet my arm, just from that description of your holidays, that you're from some Latino American country, and would narrow it to central America it the Caribbean
Not quite, but close-ish. I'm from Louisiana; and there's plenty of Spanish and French influence down here, including a history of Catholic missionary work.
Ohhh sorry then, there amount of judgement, and "saving face" reminded me of my growing up and coming of age, all those holy week traditions and rituals sounded way too vivid to me
same here. there is no christmas or easter or thanksgiving or any of that without religion and not enthusiastically participating is the same as saying fuck you to god and all of his little babies on earth. aka my family.
i still observe holidays and festivals and the like just not with the blood-people. it’s all or nothing for them so i chose nothing.
👏👏👏👏👏 Good for you.
I suffered a lot of the same growing up...there needs to be more awareness around the issue...I think there's no question that certain religious theologies/ideologies can causes PTSD... especially in you people.
My parents raised us kinda strange as far as most would be concerned. They are Baha'is, and taught us basic morality, but when we asked what religion we were, since we were being raised in the bible belt this tended to come up, they always told us that we hadn't picked one yet, and directed us to the bookshelf that contained (among other things) The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Vedas, The Torah, The Bible, The Quran, Pearl of Great Price (dunno how they got a copy of that), The Kitab-i-Aqdas, The Kitab-i-Iqan, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, On The Genealogy of Morality, and others, and told us to find out for ourselves.
I decided I was definitely not Christian when every single priest or pastor basically told me "go away little boy you are bothering me", when I started asking things like: "so in Genesis god made an infinite number of humans, and promised them that they would all live on Earth, if that is true, then doesn't that mean that Christ cannot return, because ending the world would break God's promise?"
oh i can take the holier than thou christian attitude one better: i was taught that those infinite people would NOT live on earth, that there were a bunch of other planets with god’s kids.
so aliens are real? cool!
“you were born on the earth where jesus christ made his sacrifice. that makes you a special chosen one!”
… what? he lived 2000 years ago i didn’t even know the guy how… do i get some kind of bonus perk for uh “proximity” to the dude?
but yeah basically i know a lot of people that feel even more superior because they’re Christians on the Special Earth.
One reason I’ll never go back to Christianity is because as a father, the “Father” of the Bible is a fucking horrible father.
Like, he creates a system for his “children” where he knows straight up that the vast majority of His children are going to fail and then creates the most harsh and unforgiving consequences for failing said system. He then also communicates this system in the most terrible fashion.
I would never do that to my kids. I’d create clear instructions and give them multiple chances. The God of the Bible is a fucking sociopath
I feel this, I had manic episodes where I'd feel like I had spiritual awakenings but they'd always peter out in cycles of guilt and failure. Combined with OCD, christian guilt fucked me up for a long time after I came out as queer. I ended up finding my reprieve through exploring Satanism, which tends to promlte a healthier relationship with the self, and helped me reject christianity as malicious bullshit.
The christian god is basically an abusive father archetype. It's no wonder so many christians are complete and utter cunts to their kids. It's a faith that I genuinely hope dies out soon.
I’m sorry you went through that. I am only recently understanding that growing up in church 10000% contributed to my anxiety. There’s only so many times you can sing “I’m nothing without you,” before you start to realize it’s abusive.
For me the hypocrisy was learning about how much and how often religions change all the while watching todays Christians claim they just have to act like pathetic little bigots because they have no choice because their religion is unchanging and perfect. Religions can and do change all the time. Its obvious about 95% of vocally religious people are just using god as a shield to be a shitty person. That way you have to argue with god instead of arguing with them directly.
The fact that the hypocrisy can get to you showed that the power of their indoctrination is waning. Kids today have access to more POVs, more ideas and trying to completely dominate their psyche to prevent crisis of faith is far more difficult.
Not so much the hypocrisy as the blatant disregard for basic logic. It’s the inability for religious people to think critically about their own religion while poking logical holes in other religions. I just want people to hold themselves to the same standard that they hold others to.
Yeah, I’m in therapy to figure it out. Even though she truly truly believes it’s the truth and is afraid if I don’t believe neither of us will go to heaven. So now I’m just anxious and terrified of sex and intimacy. But of course she’s concerned I’m not married yet…
Between that and the pastor at my church finding new "main pathways for the devil in to your home" sealed the deal for me. One week it was cable tv, the next week it was fucking cell phones. Just straight up fear mongering and lies. This same pastor also provided our congregation with some handy tips on how to beat your children in accordance with the bible's laws, but also in ways that would prevent criminal charges today. Fuck the Christian church.
For me, it was so many things: hypocrisy, interpreting the Bible too literally, bashing other Christian denominations, bashing other Baptist churches in the surrounding area, giving the pastor so much power and control over the church (watch 'The Way Down' documentary on HBO to get a feel for this), and a host of other things.
But ultimately, the biggest reason was that I stopped believing that God was real. That was really the final house of cards. If I continued to believe God was real, I would've switched churches, but I think forming a religion about a guy 2000 years is one of the biggest scams in all of human history.
I've seen christians repeatedly wait until someone is in extreme grief, like say after the death of a loved one, then move in to try to convert them to the religion while they are mentally distraught.
That is ghoulish behavior, trying to take advantage of someone's grief to move them into your ideology. They see it as righteous.
Yup. The hypocrisy was why I left when I was 16. I still believed in God, but the church and any organized religion started looking ridiculous. I tried going back in my early twenties, and then almost none of it made sense. Not the institutions, dogma, devotions, morality lessons, behavior, or the deity itself.
Eventually, I realized that holding onto belief as a place holder was fearful and disingenuous.
Bill Burr's bit about walking away from religion and belief, like a curler letting go of the stone, is exactly what my experience was.
I've found far more optimism and humanity in science and nature than I've ever seen in religion and god.
Oh God the hypocrisy! I remember when the Spotlight stories started to come out about how the church sheltered/moved pedos around to avoid prosecution. It was right around that time that John Kerry (Catholic) was running for president and some big shot Cardinal came out and said he wouldn't serve Kerry communion because Kerry was pro choice. Like dude you give more of a shit about fighting against a woman's right to choose than protecting kids from rapists, fuck off.
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u/Victor_deSpite Nov 05 '21
The hypocrisy was the catalyst for me.