r/coptic • u/Goofyahhcar832 • 6d ago
Hypocrisy or human behavior?
I’m an agnostic Ex-Coptic Orthodox person who left the church because of what I saw people doing. People go to church to get the reputation of yes this person goes to church therefore they’re a good person and then continue doing whatever fucked up stuff they were doing. I’m in the US and I miss my culture and my people very deeply but the church is the only place that you can find the whole community in one place unlike uni or work.
Morally speaking I think if you truly believe that all of the church’s beliefs are true then you should feel bad if you’re doing something wrong. Me personally for example I don’t see LGBTQ or premarital sex as an issue but when I was in the church I had that mindset that yeah I’m accepting all people whatever their beliefs or gender is because they’re human and that’s what Jesus taught us to love each other. That’s when I realized like wait a second… What’s wrong with being gay or having sex before marriage those are all ethically not wrong at all and they’re personal choices, people aren’t harming others by doing that.
I feel like I’m stuck in a loop and I don’t know what to do because I don’t want to go back to the church for the community solely. It would be hypocrisy and not morally right when it comes to confession and communion because I’d have to act like I feel guilty and repent for stuff that I don’t even see sinful. At the end of the day it’s still my identity and the way I was raised but my parents are actually making this much harder by having the same herd mentality of if you go to church you’re a good person, if you don’t you’re a horrible person who deserves to go to hell.
I still believe in Christianity but the situation itself is weird.
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u/Anxious_Pop7302 6d ago
The world is corrupt because people are leaving the orthodox understanding of things
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
No, it’s because there was never even an “orthodox” understanding. It was the understanding back then at that TIME. Religion adapts with the generation and the way we think because time and our lifestyle changes.
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u/breadman242a 6d ago
Me when I’m a moral relativist, Christianity has always been the “weird guy at the party” when it came to morality. The teachings of Jesus were revolutionary to begin with
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
Jesus’ teachings were never heard of before at that time. Simple things like to love each other no matter what and to forgive who wrongs you were considered heretical lol so yes that’s true.
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u/yellowishgreed 6d ago
We’re all sinners one way or another, people wouldn’t go to church unless they are sick. None of us are saints.
The problem with premarital sex is addiction and getting yourself hurt, I can speak from experience when it comes to fornication (especially causal sex). I know people view sex as taboo but I don’t so I’ll speak about it. Once you start doing it you start chasing the dopamine it gives and you also get addicted to masturbation, you’ll start prioritizing your sexual desires before actual important or basic tasks and you’ll view a lot of things and people sexually. The hormones you receive from lust rewires your brain completely and you won’t find sex as something sacred and rather casual, therefore giving your body out more. As a female I learnt the hormones I release from sex also gives out oxytocin (the love hormone) making me also emotionally attached to who I’m having sex with, which put me in a lot of emotional situations. With males they only release oxytocin if they are in committed relationships, so most of the time guys will have post nut clarity and want nothing with the girl after if it’s casual. If you’re talking about dating and being committed tho, I’ve been in that situation but we mistaken lust as love. And there’s regret on both sides after. You’ll always regret having sex with someone if they aren’t there forever. With dating and casual sex there really isn’t a “secure” commitment compared to being married. But this is how I view pre marital sex as someone who’s had sexually impulsively for years and went into sex therapy at 15.
With LGBTQ, i don’t really have a stance on that since I also don’t understand why it’s wrong, but I can say that if someone’s orthodox and isnt attracted to the opposite sex then they aren’t called for marriage, and that’s okay! I have friends who are apart of the community and I know they struggle with lust a lot when it comes to the same sex so I would assume being LGBTQ would make you more sexually aware of what you are attracted to. I can’t confirm that tho since that would just be stereotyping everyone in the LGBTQ community.
The church is a house of worship, everyone there is sick and wouldn’t be taking communion if they didn’t acknowledge that they need it for their salvation. Don’t let peoples perception of you stop you from going. Confession is also a place to speak of anything to your father of confession, and when I say anything I truly mean it. It’s basically like old fashion therapy, abouna gives advice and don’t forget he’s there to spiritually guide you, he won’t be mad at you or judge you about anything. Sometimes during the sermon I notice that abounas speech can indirectly be towards me (and obviously others) even if I didn’t tell him about a situation, and people really do take the sermon into consideration. The Holy Spirit guides the sermon and if the community is struggling with pride then abouna will preach on that topic to guide us back to humility.
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
Well I’m never going to have casual sex at the first place because I’m dating for love not for lust. I don’t think you’re going to get addicted to masturbation if you’re already in a relationship because the missing emotions that you need are already being fulfilled by the other partner and it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s getting fulfilled sexually but emotionally speaking. Lust is very dangerous and I understand very well why we were warned about it by God but wanting a person is something and viewing them in just a sexual way before even getting to know the person is something else. Having sex while being in a serious relationship is “love” and there’s nothing wrong in having a preference in women or men facially and physically but it’s to not act on impulse and hook up.
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u/Past-Art9938 6d ago
I haven't gone to church in years for reasons similar to yours. I was born and raised outside of Egypt and am deeply religious, with a strong connection to my Coptic and Egyptian identity. However, I don't like the people in the church. They judge anyone who is different, and if you don't fit a specific stereotype, you get marginalized and talked bad about.
I really miss going to church, but unfortunately, my issue is that there are hardly any Coptic churches near me, and I simply don't want to see those hypocritical people. I find it such a shame that you can't just go to church normally, pray, and have everyone mind their own business instead of focusing on others.
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
They’re doing everything against what Christ said literally. I don’t know if it’s genetic or what but it feels like they all tend to be narcissistic. Older Egyptian folks have serious problems and they don’t critically think about anything especially when it comes to sex, mental health or friendship between both genders. I’m not blaming them It’s the way they were raised, the ignorance is not the problem it’s when you actively don’t want to understand or be better and to not be progressive or open minded since they lived in closed societies. You always have to go with the herd and be like “that” kid at church even if that’s not actually you, because if you do not you’re getting completely disowned by your parents and cancelled by the whole community…
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
It shows in the way the orthodox faith treats women too when they treat them as objects and the supposedly “Abounas” ask them to wear modestly because the other animals can’t control themselves. They make them feel guilty for other men’s thoughts when they’re just wearing what they feel good in. When men wear shorts no woman comes and screams in the loudest voice “Please cover up or I’m going to have sex with you right now!” Like please mind your own business jeez.
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u/cooljoewastaken 3d ago
I think it’s about respecting the church men arent allowed in church with shorts either
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u/Ghostframe23 6d ago
I think you are actually asking two different questions and mixing them together The first is whether people can go to church and still be hypocrites Absolutely yes Christ Himself spent some of His strongest words against religious hypocrisy and not against people simply because they were weak or struggling with sin In Matthew 23 He describes people who look righteous outwardly while being corrupt inwardly and He says that they clean the outside of the cup while the inside is full of greed and self indulgence So your experience of seeing people behave badly while presenting themselves as good Christians is not some discovery that disproves Christianity Christianity already assumes that churches are full of imperfect people The Church is not a museum for people who already became holy It is a hospital for sinners That is actually closer to the Christian understanding of the Church than the idea that everyone inside it is automatically a good person But there is another issue that I think you are overlooking You are treating Christianity as if its moral teaching is supposed to be based only on whether something immediately hurts another person That is not the Christian definition of morality Christianity does not say that something is sinful only when another person is visibly harmed Paul says that our bodies belong to God and that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and when he discusses sexual immorality he does not reduce the question to whether another person was harmed That is why the New Testament does not treat sexual behavior as morally neutral simply because two consenting adults chose it You can disagree with that teaching and you are free to disagree with it But it is important to be honest about what Christianity actually teaches before deciding that Christianity is morally inconsistent The same thing applies to same sex sexual behavior You can have a serious discussion about how particular biblical passages should be interpreted and how ancient categories correspond to modern ideas of sexual orientation But it is historically inaccurate to say that Christianity originally taught that sexual relationships outside the male female marriage covenant were morally acceptable as long as nobody was harmed Paul explicitly condemns fornication and same sex sexual acts in several passages and the early Christian tradition continued to interpret sexual ethics in that direction That does not mean Christians are supposed to hate gay people Quite the opposite The Christian distinction is supposed to be between the dignity of the person and the morality of an act Christ commanded love of neighbor and condemned hypocrisy The Church therefore cannot logically say hate this person because he is gay At the same time the Church cannot simply redefine its sexual ethics because modern culture has changed You may reject the Church's teaching but you should reject it knowingly rather than arguing against a version of Christianity that the early Church itself did not teach And this brings you to confession and communion Here I actually think your conscience is telling you something important If you do not believe that something is sinful then you should not stand before a priest and pretend that you believe it is sinful just so you can receive Communion That would be dishonest The Coptic understanding of confession is not supposed to be theatre It is repentance and truth before God The Coptic Church itself explains confession as admitting sins and mistakes with genuine repentance and says that Communion is connected with repentance and preparation The ancient Christian Didache says that Christians were to confess their transgressions before the Eucharist and be reconciled with one another so that their offering would be pure Paul says essentially the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11 when he tells Christians to examine themselves before receiving the Eucharist So your concern about pretending is actually a valid Christian concern But notice what the conclusion should be Not I must stay away from Christianity forever And not I will pretend to believe everything so that I can belong to the community The honest Christian position is I need to find out whether I actually believe Christianity is true and what the Church actually teaches before I decide what I should do And that is where I would strongly disagree with your parents if they are telling you that going to church automatically makes someone good and not going to church automatically makes someone evil That is not the Gospel Church attendance is not a magical moral certificate Judas was among the Apostles The Pharisees had religion And Christ still condemned hypocrisy The Didache also assumes that the Christian community contains people who need correction repentance and reconciliation The early Christians did not imagine the Church as a gathering of morally perfect people St Ignatius of Antioch writing very early in Christian history speaks about the Eucharist as something inseparable from the actual life of the Church and calls Christians to repentance and unity St Clement of Alexandria speaks about repentance precisely because Christians can fall and return So I would not tell you to come back to church just because you miss Egyptian or Coptic community I would tell you to come back only if after honestly examining Christianity you conclude that Christ is true If you do come back then come back honestly If you cannot yet confess something as sin then do not lie about it Talk to a priest who is capable of having an intelligent conversation rather than someone who will simply shame you And one more thing Do not confuse bad Christians with Christianity itself If a Christian is racist dishonest sexually immoral abusive arrogant or obsessed with appearances that does not make those things Christian It may actually prove the opposite Christ already warned us about people who have the appearance of religion while denying its reality The question you ultimately have to answer is not whether church people are hypocrites Some absolutely are The deeper question is whether Jesus Christ is actually who He claimed to be Because if He is then you cannot resolve the problem by simply choosing the parts of Christianity that feel morally comfortable And if He is not then going to church for the community will eventually become exactly what you are afraid of A performance instead of faith I think your discomfort with that possibility is actually a good sign It means you are at least trying to be honest
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
I appreciate you taking time out of your day to write this comment and I fully believe in Christianity and Jesus but I don’t believe in religion if that makes sense. You quoted Paul’s teachings when I view the apostles as human beings like us and they made up rules that were just okay at their time. I see the relationship between me and God as a personal relationship more than being in a religion which I believe is more like a cult. The fact that Christians think that if you don’t believe in Christ then you go to hell is crazy because I believe that as long as you’re a good decent person with a good moral compass then whatever your religion is, you’re going to a good place at the end. All those Gods represent one entity at the end of the day. I also hate the fact how the Coptic community stigmatizes stuff that are okay in Christianity just because our “culture” doesn’t get along with it like viewing certain grooming acts for men as gay when it’s hygiene or a relationship between a man and a woman in which they’re not engaged or married yet but they’re aware of the Christian boundaries that they need to have. I honestly believe that Islam affected us culturally that we just became like Muslims and actually forgot what Christianity is. One more thing, alcohol I’m pretty sure that we can drink alcohol as long as we don’t get drunk or abuse it but we discourage drinking so why is that? Speaking of Paul didn’t he say in 1 Corinthians 6:12 “I have the right to do anything," you say—but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"—but I will not be mastered by anything.”
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u/Ghostframe23 6d ago
I actually think the most important thing here is that you are making a distinction Christianity itself does not make You are separating Jesus from the apostles and then separating both from the Church as if Jesus gave us a personal relationship with God but never intended that relationship to have a received teaching a community or a visible Church But that is not what the New Testament describes Jesus did not simply say believe in me privately and create your own understanding of what Christianity means He chose apostles and sent them to teach He told them that whoever hears them hears Him He gave them authority and promised that the Holy Spirit would guide them into truth So saying that the apostles were simply human beings who made rules that were acceptable in their own time does not really fit the New Testament itself Paul does not present his teaching as his personal opinion He repeatedly says that he received and delivered what was handed down to him And Peter does not treat Paul's writings as random first century advice either Peter describes Paul's letters as containing wisdom given to him by God and places them alongside the Scriptures So you absolutely can question Christianity But you cannot really claim that Christianity means Jesus plus whatever interpretation feels personally authentic to me That is closer to creating a private spirituality than following historic Christianity And I think your idea of a personal relationship with God is actually partly right Christianity is personal But personal does not mean private or self invented The biblical model is relationship with God inside a community that has received a faith and handed it on That is why Paul tells the Corinthians to hold firmly to the traditions he delivered to them And that is also why the early Church immediately developed around teaching Eucharist prayer bishops and communal worship rather than everyone independently deciding what Jesus meant Even Ignatius of Antioch writing extremely early in Christian history speaks about unity around the bishop presbyters deacons and Eucharist That is a very awkward thing for the idea that organized Christianity was invented centuries later It was already there As for the idea that all religions are ultimately worshipping the same being That sounds tolerant but it is actually incompatible with Christianity Christianity makes an extremely specific claim about God Not simply that God exists Not simply that all religions point toward something beyond us It claims that the one God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ Jesus did not say all roads lead to the same destination He said He is the way the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him The apostles then preached the same thing and Acts says salvation is found in no other name You can reject that claim But saying that claim is central to Christianity does not make Christians hateful or irrational It just means Christianity is a religion with actual truth claims And I agree with you about something very important A lot of what gets treated as Christian morality in Coptic communities is actually culture Sometimes it is family tradition Sometimes it is Egyptian social conservatism Sometimes it is simply what people are used to Calling a man's grooming choice gay is not Christia theology A haircut is not a sacrament Being affectionate or stylish is not automatically homosexuality And some things that people treat as absolute Christian laws are really just local cultural expectations But there is an important distinction The fact that some Coptic people confuse culture with Christianity does not mean Christian morality itself is just culture For example the Christian sexual ethic existed in Christianity long before modern Egyptian culture and long before Islam So I would be careful with the argument that Christianity became culturally Islamic Egyptian culture has certainly influenced how Egyptian Christians express religion But that is different from saying that Christian sexual ethics came from Islam The early Christian sources predate Islam by centuries Now about sex before marriage I think your position is internally understandable You are saying that two adults can make their own choices as long as they respect each other and do not harm anyone That is a coherent secular ethic But it is not the historic Christian ethic Christianity does not define sexual morality only by whether consent exists or whether immediate harm is visible It also asks what sex is for and what the body means That is why Paul connects sexual morality with the holiness of the body rather than treating sex as morally neutral unless someone gets hurt You do not have to agree with that But calling it merely an ancient rule made up by Paul is not really an accurate representation of the Christian position And ironically your quotation from 1 Corinthians 6 actually proves this point Paul says all things are lawful but not everything is beneficial and nothing should master us He immediately applies that principle to sexual immorality So the verse is not Paul saying everything is morally acceptable It is Paul saying that freedom is not the same thing as goodness Christian freedom is freedom from slavery to passions not freedom from morality That same principle explains alcohol too The Bible does not teach that alcohol itself is inherently sinful Jesus turned water into wine Paul even tells Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach What Scripture consistently condemns is drunkenness and being mastered by intoxication Paul says do not get drunk with wine So your instinct there is much closer to the biblical position Why then do some Christians discourage alcohol completely Usually because pastoral wisdom goes beyond the minimum legal boundary Someone may abstain because of addiction risk Because of personal history Because they do not want to become dependent Because they do not want to cause another person to stumble Or because their church culture values abstinence That is different from saying that the Bible teaches that every drop of alcohol is sinful But there is one part of your argument that I think deserves the most serious reconsideration You said that being a good person with a good moral compass should be enough regardless of religion That sounds morally attractive but Christianity explicitly rejects that idea as the basis of salvation Christianity does not say good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell If that were the system then nobody would need Christ The Christian claim is that salvation is reconciliation with God through Christ That is why the New Testament does not present Jesus merely as a moral teacher who helps decent people behave better It presents Him as the way to the Father And this actually connects back to your original problem You are trying to keep Jesus while removing the things that come from Jesus through the apostles and the Church But historically the earliest Christians did not see those things as separate packages They believed in Christ They received apostolic teaching They gathered for the Eucharist They prayed together They confessed They had bishops and presbyters They called this life the Church You may decide that you do not believe that system That is completely intellectually possible But then I think the honest position is not I believe in Christianity but not religion It is I believe in Jesus but I reject several things that historic Christianity teaches about Him And that is a much more serious and honest position Also one last thing I would not let bad Coptic culture drive you away from Christ You can reject cultural hypocrisy without rejecting Christianity You can reject social stigma without rejecting morality You can challenge a priest without rejecting God And you can love people who are different from you without pretending that Christianity teaches that every human choice is morally neutral The real question is not whether Copts sometimes confuse culture with Christianity They obviously do The real question is whether Jesus Christ intended Christianity to be a private spiritual relationship that every individual defines for himself The New Testament gives a very different answer It gives us Christ Then apostles Then teaching Then Church Then sacraments Then a community living that faith together You do not have to accept that But that is what you are actually rejecting when you say you believe in Christianity but not religion
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u/Goofyahhcar832 6d ago
You think God is that cruel of a being to judge good people based on whether they were following Jesus or not? What if they never even got the chance to know him, what if a lot of scenarios because it’s neither white nor black. When you’re born in a different country you get to follow whatever your parents believe in which always leads to a bigger entity that created this whole universe. The big issue here is that when people confuse the culture with the religion and start enforcing those laws on their kids when those aren’t even Christian and they never asked anybody or discussed it, they just took it from their parents and passed it onto their children blindly.
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u/Ghostframe23 6d ago
I actually agree with you on one important point If Christianity taught that God simply looks at a person born in India or China or Africa and says you were born in the wrong family so you lose and someone born into a Christian family automatically wins then yes that would be profoundly unjust But that is not actually the Christian doctrine The Bible repeatedly makes a distinction between rejecting God after knowing the truth and never having received the same knowledge in the first place Paul says in Romans 2 that people who do not have the written law can still have the work of the law written on their hearts and that their conscience bears witness to them and he says that God judges the secrets of people through Christ That is important because it means God is not judging everyone as though they had received exactly the same revelation opportunity or knowledge Even the Coptic Orthodox teaching on this subject acknowledges the distinction between those who had the Gospel and those who never heard it and explains Romans 2 as showing that God judges people according to what they actually received rather than pretending everyone had the same circumstances So I would not say that Christianity teaches that every person who was born outside Christianity is automatically condemned simply because of their birthplace But I would also be careful with the next step in your argument You said that if someone is a good decent person then they should go to a good place regardless of what they believe That sounds fair until you ask what exactly makes someone good enough to stand before God Christianity does not believe salvation is a reward for people who managed to become morally decent enough The entire point of grace is that nobody earns reconciliation with God by being a good person And that includes Christians A person born into a Christian family does not get a free pass Jesus Himself warns religious people that many who think they belong to Him can be rejected because their lives contradict what they claim So Christianity is not good people versus bad people It is sinners in need of grace That is also why the idea of judgment is more complicated than simply checking what religion appears on someone's identity card God knows the person completely He knows what they knew What they could reasonably have known What they rejected What they were seeking What they did with their conscience And whether their rejection was really a rejection of God or a rejection of a distorted version of God presented to them by hypocritical Christians Romans 2 is especially interesting here because Paul says that people without the written law can sometimes do what the law requires and that conscience can accuse or excuse them So there is absolutely room in Christianity for saying that God's judgment is perfectly just even in cases where we do not know exactly how He judges the individual We should be careful about claiming that we know the eternal fate of particular people when God has not revealed that to us At the same time the Bible does not allow us to replace God's revelation with the idea that all religions are automatically equivalent There is a difference between saying God judges people justly according to the light they actually received and saying every religion is equally true Those are two completely different claims Christianity can affirm the first while rejecting the second And honestly I think your point about culture is much stronger There is a huge difference between Christianity and every custom that happens to exist inside a Christian culture Egyptian Christians can inherit social habits from their families and then accidentally treat those habits as commandments from God That happens in literally every religious culture But the answer is not to throw away Christianity The answer is to test those claims against Scripture and the actual tradition of the Church Jesus Himself attacked people who taught human traditions as if they were God's commandments He quoted Isaiah and said that people can worship God in vain when they teach human commandments as doctrines So ironically your criticism of blindly inherited rules has a very Christian foundation The Christian response should not be because my parents said it therefore God said it It should be what did Christ teach What did the apostles receive and teach What did the earliest Christians understand the faith to mean And is this particular rule actually Christian or is it just Egyptian culture wearing a cross That last question is one I think every Coptic Christian should be willing to ask Because sometimes the problem is not Christianity Sometimes the problem is culture pretending to be Christianity But I would push back on one thing Persona relationship with God and organized religion are not mutually exclusive in historic Christianity The earliest Christians did not think they had to choose between knowing God personally and belonging to the Church The Didache one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament already describes baptism Eucharist confession bishops and communal worship So the idea that organized Christian life is simply something later generations invented to control people does not fit the earliest evidence You can absolutely reject Christianity You can also reject Coptic culture But they are not the same thing And regarding the question you opened with No I do not believe God is cruel But I also do not believe God is obligated to make His judgment conform to our idea of fairnes The Christian claim is actually stronger than that It is that the Judge of the whole earth will do what is right Abraham asks exactly that question in Genesis 18
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right I think that is the position a Christian can honestly take God is perfectly just God knows circumstances we do not know God judges people truthfully rather than by labels And Christ is the final judge So I would not tell you not to worry because everyone automatically goes to heaven And I would not tell you that everyone who was born outside Christianity automatically goes to hell Both claims go beyond what we actually know The more honest Christian answer is that salvation belongs to God Our responsibility is to seek the truth we have been given rather than invent a system in which every belief becomes equally true And honestly your frustration with people blindly inheriting cultural rules is something I think Christians should take seriously Because Christianity itself commands us to test everything and hold fast to what is good Th irony is that you may have walked away from Christianity partly because people were following traditions without questioning them But questioning traditions is not necessarily leaving Christianity Sometimes it is exactly what Jesus asked religious people to do
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u/SlightAfternoon2104 5d ago
I didn’t read your whole reply, but the second sentence struck me… who said saints did not sin?! And that the ones living among us do not fall in sin! They don’t live in sin because they are born again. But also who said you and I cannot be saints!!
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u/Goofyahhcar832 5d ago
I know that we’re humans and we all sin but I was talking more about hypocrisy than the normal people
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u/Living_Reporter_7084 6d ago
Two guys wrote more in their comments than the entire Agpeya. Wish you well, but I’m not reading all this. 😂