some things that so many people get wrong about Christianity (even practicing Christians)
- EVERYONE sins. it does not make you a bad or evil person. shame makes sin worse. the idea that you are "too far gone" for Jesus to ever love you IS the devil talking. any Christian that tells you God doesn't love you is NOT following the word of God. they are actively working against Him, and this is deeply blasphemous. my fellow Christians, please take this into account if you have not already. who are you to deny your neighbor God's love?
- (about Catholics and i think Orthodoxy denominations? idk all the denominations that honor the saints tbh, i mainly know abt Catholicism) praying to the saints, and especially to Mary, is not worshipping false idols. it's the same as asking a friend to pray for you. you pray for Jesus to accept their intercession on your behalf. it is believed that God has worked through the saints to perform miracles before.
- we must TRY to forgive others as Jesus forgives all. forgiveness is not reconciling or bringing others back into your life. sometimes the best way to "love our enemies" is to firmly tell them you believe they're wrong for what they've done. to accept a person is not to accept their hurtful actions or to let them into your life.
- the people you look up to in the church will make mistakes, as too will we. we cannot put anyone on a pedestal or covet their virtue, because it will always lead us to sin. your priests and nuns are people just like you, they have faults just like yours.
- Christian denominations will have WILDLY different beliefs and ways of interpreting the Bible. one size does not fit all. a lot of people think Christians = Catholics and that the vatican speaks for all Christians. this is NOT true. the vatican only applies to the Roman Catholic Church. a lot of Catholics don't even fully believe everything the vatican says. i can't speak for all denominations but Catholics vary wildly depending on where they're from tbh. US east coast Catholics are a lot more progressive than you'd believe. "Bible belt" Catholics are practically Evangelical. usually when people talk about the kinds of Christians that fear monger, they mean Evangelicals, Baptists, or Mormons. but this is an oversimplification for non-Christians because this stuff can be very confusing from the outside. there's 45,000 different denominations apparently??? (but there's like 30? big ones, i think lol) we even disagree on some HUGE/foundational things.
- some Christians are Bible heavy, and others don't care much for it. some believe in the Bible's "infallibility/inerrancy," meaning that it is the literal word of God and is without flaw; but polls show that a lot of us don't. i want to say now that even if the Bible were once inerrant, it has been translated, edited, and taken very much out of context. to use a singular lineâoften one that contains gray areasâto say hateful things to someone, goes against the biggest message Jesus consistently tried to give us: love. thy. neighbor.
- there are a lot more Christians in the world that are progressive than there are that act like #Thatâbut you don't know much about them, because it's understood by MOST of us that God wanted us to love and accept each other above all. and to judge others harshly is possibly one of the greatest sins. we tend to not push our religions in people's faces because we're not trying to be assholes who attack everyone, but also because we're sorry that a decent amount of us act like #That.
