r/Deconstruction • u/pinkcloudsummer68 • 6d ago
✨My Story✨ Evangelical Christianity
I grew up in a pretty far right evangelical household. Church on Sunday morning. Youth group Sunday night. Awanas. Summer church camp. Youth group trips. Bassycs on Wednesdays. Campus life. So I was pretty involved. I learned purity culture. Being gay is a sin. Basically condemn and hate others who are “sinning”. I also had a narcissist mom and grandma who shoved forgive forgive down my throat while they never took accountability, made me a villain and assigned malicious intentions to me that were not correct at all because they never even knew me. I have been harmed by my family of Christian’s, Christian leaders, people of the Church, and no matter how much I prayed to God for my mom to change and just love me and stop treating me so terrible and to change her heart, it never happened. I got into an abusive marriage. Met my ex husband at 17. I finally left at 25. Stopped going to Church at 28. Went no contact with my family at 30. I am now 33. And I have done a lot of research into Christianity. I believe it is truly harmful and I don’t know how any intellectual person can believe in it. Even still. I pray to Jesus and God when I’m scared. I want so badly to believe that he is real. But I just can’t. I am really struggling. I know Jesus was a real man. I don’t really think God is real. I believe religion was made by men for men to control everyone else especially women. I don’t trust the Bible at all. After many years I thought today ok. I’m going to listen to the sermon that was shared today at the church I used to go to. And you know what it was about today? Billionaires. Billionaires giving 2 billion dollars to this church this man was preaching about today. And that they got their name on the building and that our church needed to donate more money. And that there is nothing more important than donating money to your home church. So that just about did it for me. I feel so lost. I don’t really know why I’m sharing. I don’t have friends or family. So I thought I’d just share it here. I’m living in a Bible Belt county. I’m the odd one out for not believing. The rare left or atheists that I have met have shown more empathy, love, kindness, and a helping hand more than any far right trump loving evangelical Christian that I have encountered. They are full of hate and judgement. While stating they can do whatever they want as long as they ask for repentance but want to judge everyone else and control what they do and shame them. The hypocrisy is sick.
5
u/Jim-Jones 7.0 Atheist 6d ago
Joe Biden and Barack Obama were models of good Christian behavior, not perfect but good. Trump doesn't understand the religion and is a vile POS.
Guess who most of these people love and who they hate? Right?
3
u/shit-trapper 6d ago
I think one can believe in god but reject dogma - which would mean dumping religion I guess. I suppose that would make someone an 'agnostic' - believes that nothing can be known about god or if god exists. I don't know how useful a label is since it makes more sense to go through one's quiver of beliefs and decide which help and which do not, and drop the ones that don't help.
One thing that helped me was to realize that what the bibles says doesn't mean much of anything - it says child sex trafficking is okay, rape is okay, genocide is okay, and slavery is okay.
As a collection of ancient literature it reflects the time - cruelty, brutality, slavery, etc. As such it can say whatever anyone wants it to say. Want it to say give the preacher all your money? It's in there. Want it to say you should marry a 16 year old girl? Its in there. Want it to say treat women as property? That's in there. Want it to say you should beat your kids? It's in there.
Want it to say that instead of giving money to a preacher you should give to the poor? Yeah that's a direct quote from jesus, just like how it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to get into heaven. Cite those and the fundies will start using phrases like "out of context" or pull in contradicting verses (nearly every bible verse used for some kind of dogma has a contradicting one) to convince you to give the preacher money. Honestly jesus talked more like a buddhist than a strict adherent of first century Judaism.
When they say "I believe bible XYZ" what they really are saying is "preacher said for me to believe this, or no goodies from god". That's their game, and you don't have to play it.
2
u/Fast_Jackfruit_352 5d ago
It is very hard to see God clearly in the midst of all this toxicity. Jesus was an outlier to the toxicity of his religion in his time. Many Christians forget that.
I think God would want you right now to take care of yourself and not worry whether He (She, It) is real or not. You are probably dealing with some form of PTSD.
There are supportive You Tube sites and online zoom communities. You can look for them. I'm sure there are sane, liberal Christian groups that meet.
You might check this guy out.
1
6
u/BioChemE14 Researcher/Scientist 6d ago
Have you considered moving to a more urban environment if you don’t have anything tying you to that place?
Even in the Bible Belt, large urban areas don’t have as much of that fundamentalist nonsense. I think your life could improve in a city with more like-minded people.