here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!
Can my Indigenous ass say the progressive christian impulse to no-true-scotsman their entire religion, appealing to "what jesus actually taught", *specifically* in a way that points to "modern" christianity as deviating from this, implying it used to be better, is completely fucking bonkers. You can't RETVRN your way out of genocide. Christianity has been about pillaging for the last 2000 years & if you sincerely want to change this I can respect that but be so fucking fr when you talk about how "modern christianity" isn't what jesus taught. Neither was the roman empire innit
I've said this before but it's all so....... "this isn't what jesus taught" is like, step 1 of recognizing the hypocrisy. But then nobody wants to keep thinking about it past that point. It's been lies justifying unfathomable violence this whole time
& if you want to play that game the christian bible also says to convert the entire world so. It's not looking great. The pillaging is kind of a central pillar of the ideology. Or did you just think the problem with christianity was homophobia, or some nebulous concept of racism that's simply "hate" and doesn't include robbing people of their cultures
this also counts for all those times you kept your mouth shut and didn't complain because you were being polite, and people would gladly have changed things if you had just asked. your suffering was not noble. you do not get a cookie for it, you do not get a tally mark next to your soul's score for grinning and bearing it. your suffering serves no purpose. break free of it. you deserve comfort.
evangelicals being like "god made men to do This and be like This and women to do That and be like That that's just how it is" and it's just a picture of a white man and woman following traditional gender norms makes me so insane like you boring fascist fucks. god made 2 million species of beetles. god made whales, ducks, humans, and 1500 other species capable of same sex behavior. god made fish and amphibians that change sexes. god made more than 30 different intersex variations in human beings. god, in his infinite curiosity. wake up!!! fuck!!
"god wants women to have perfect no-makeup makeup looks and stay at home not talking back and upholding capitalism" god??? that guy who made lizards that shoot blood out of their eyes?? that guy who made salmon do whatever the fuck that is?? are you fucking crazy???
The other thing about discussing harmful things about the christian church and getting "that's not what that verse really means/that's not how that doctrine should be applied/that's not actually supported biblically/etc" back is that... at a certain point it doesn't matter. Yes there are varying beliefs within christianity (understatement with 45,000 different denominations lmao), but you don't get to claim that christianity is separate from any harmful beliefs when a lot of harmful beliefs are the majority.
You can say "the bible wasn't ever talking about gay relationships in [xyz] verses" but that doesn't make the average church actually safe and affirming for queer people. You can say "actually hell doesn't have any biblical backing" but that doesn't mean very much when like 75-80% of christians believe in hell. You can say "men and women are equal in the eyes of the Lord" but it doesn't erase the rampant misogyny in christian culture.
If the members make up the church, if members are the church, then at a certain point the cultural beliefs or majority beliefs have precedence over what was intended. You can't say "oh just ignore [belief/doctrine/interpretation/etc]" when that would be dismissing the church's most predominant collective beliefs. You don't get to just disregard harm because that "wasn't the intention". You don't get to look at the result of said harm and decide it doesn't matter because it makes you look bad.
this is about my personal experience in leaving the Mormon church and trying to share my pain with people close to me but realizing they will never be able to understand me the way I need them to
"The House," a parable I drew about leaving the Mormon church that I originally made for exmo Reddit. As people on the internet have pointed out, you can also see it as representative of plenty of other institutions people have contact with (various high control religions, yoga cults, the united states government, etc) so take your pick
For those curious as to what religion, I grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, aka Mormon.
I was IN IT. I'm not exaggerating when I say that religion was apart of my life almost everyday single day up until I left at 23 yrs old.
I sketched this comic a year ago before I came out to my parents. I hadn't yet processed why simply thinking of doing so upset me so much, despite knowing my parents would be supportive.
I did end up telling them soon after sketching this. It went better than I thought it would. They told me all that matters is that I'm happy 😭
I'm almost 30 now. Left the church 5+ yrs ago. It's been wild seeing how 'the world' is, how normal people are. Everyone isn't a degenerate like the Church made non-members seem. There's a lot of de-programing I've had to do and boy does it make me realize how weird I grew up, how odd some of the teachings and mindsets are.
Like I said in the comic, the faith taught me good stuff too ... but I'm glad I left ... I never felt like I truly belonged in it. There was always this part of me that never meshed, no matter how long I'd been in it.
Thank you to anyone who read this far. I could go on and on about this topic but I'll leave it at this. Let me know if this resonated with any of you. I'm curious how common it is.
Happy pride month. Not so friendly reminder that you do NOT truly support the queer community if you still identify as Mormon, but DEFINITELY NOT if you still pay tithing.
something that's really been bothering me lately is how the church i was a part of would like... repackage doctrine to make it sound nicer and more acceptable. like, the belief that all humans are evil by nature and deserve eternal torture for the crime of existing is inherently violent and cruel. but my church didn't frame it like that. they framed it as "yes we're ALL evil and wicked and we ALL deserve hell to atone for our sin (being human) BUT god loves you despite you not deserving love or happiness or anything good at all and all you have to do to avoid the pits of hell is accept jesus as your savior isn't that so amazing????" and they framed the crucifixion as this beautiful, selfless act of god by taking our place on the cross instead of "this all-powerful being who created all the rules decided that he required torture, death, and human sacrifice to be able to tolerate us". and it's not "women will be viewed as lesser than men" it's "women must submit to their husbands the same way we all must submit to god it's not dehumanizing it's holy and yes women have different roles but that doesn't make them lesser than and sure we don't have any women in leadership positions in the church and we would never even consider it, come on now that's ridiculous, but that's just because men are supposed to lead because men and women are different and created for different purposes it's just biology". and there are plenty others! i know that the reframing of everything is part of how they can even get people to accept the doctrine in the first place, but being on the outside of it is kind of horrifying. when you get down to the actual beliefs that are held without the distortions and manipulation, so many are violent, cruel, dehumanizing, abusive. but they distort and manipulate these beliefs to make them seem acceptable, morally correct, and redefine what love is and should look like.
Why yes I do think I’m better than god. Because I’m able to process my emotions and forgive people and be empathetic towards them. God can only forgive if he tortures and murders his own son and if everyone begs for forgiveness their entire life and serves him. We are not the same.
It is also very convenient how they put "withholding forgiveness" from your abuser as equivalently sinful to the actions of the abuser. It doesn't matter what they did, you're just as bad as them unless you pretend like it doesn't matter.
Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people
exmo posting @distantmountaingoat - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
