Again, I’m sorry that this has been your experience. This hasn’t been mine.
I came to Christianity at an age when most people leave religion. I went from having nothing and no one to having a steady family who love and support me and give me others to love and support in kind. My church family is open and welcoming. We just removed a minister who began an opening prayer admonishing gays because when he was told “we don’t do that here” he got mad about it.
I wholly recognize that there is a set of people who scream about un-Christian things in the name of Christianity, but I reject the notion that these people are representative of the majority of Christians.
There is a benefit in considering that all beings have more to us than dust and electricity. There is nothing wrong with teaching spirituality. It can provide comfort, camaraderie, strength, or just peace.
Whether you find peace in the chanting and meditation that can help you possibly achieve nirvana, or you find strength praying in a specific direction several times a day to show your worthiness, there is value in faith and spirituality.
There is absolutely nothing that prevents any spiritual person from learning, understanding, or advocating the sciences.
Looking at the Genesis of the Abrahamic religions, no rational person will say that the “world” and everything in it was created in a 7-day period of time when that which we currently use to measure time wasn’t even part of the structure used to describe the creation of the world. The “day” and “night” were separated before the sun and moon were “created”, so clearly the world wasn’t created in 167 hours. And yet, we can still appreciate what is intended by the scripture without running around and insisting on an impractical interpretation of a text.
You don’t like the Bible? You do you. The Bible says a lot of things. It describes the histories of the things people did, the good, the bad, and the ugly; it also teaches hope and love. It’s a complex set of texts and there’s a reason it’s been analyzed for so many centuries.
It’s great that you don’t need anything other than yourself to drag you out of times of despair. It’s great that you’ve naturally learned to be nice to everyone and treat animals and the earth well. Not everyone is like you, however. Some of us need a little help, and some of us get that help from our spirituality.
My grandmother wasn’t a Christian, and when she was dying, she said she was going to the Ancestors, and she would live on in the winds of the universe. I love this, and I love just thinking about this and thinking that Nana is still within me always in this way. Spirituality has a place. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you, but for some of us, it’s about moving forward with the good that can come out of it.
I went from having nothing and no one to having a steady family who love and support me
So. Let me tell you a little not-so-secret. That is precisely how I used to get people to convert to Mormonism, when I was a Mormon missionary. The people most vulnerable to conversion were people that were in the middle of shitty life circumstances, and had no social support network. We would love-carpet-bomb them shit out of them; we would talk to them several times a week, we would make sure that member in the local ward–which is the basic congregation for Mormons is called–reached out to them, invite them to church activities to meet people, and would inundate them with religious nonsense. All the while, we were implying that if they were just willing to believe the nonsense, then this large, ready-made family-slash-social-support-network could be theirs. But if they didn’t convert, we were going to leave them, and they’d be alone again. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work for shit with people that had large networks and strong families, because they didn’t have any need for what we could offer. The people without support would mistake the good feelings about the community for being god telling them that the religious nonsense was true.
And it goes the other way too; the Mormon church keeps people so busy doing church things that Mormons probably won’t have any non-Mormon confidants. That, in turn, makes leaving very, very hard.
So, ask yourself, and be honest: would you have converted if you had had strong friends that already loved and supported you? If you had met similarly supportive people that were Muslim, Jewish, or members of the Satanic Temple (and my local TST groups has some pretty great people that are genuinely kind, loving, and open), would you have chosen to convert to Christianity?
For the sake of brevity, I summarized my experience in joining the church, but to answer your question, yes, I would have still joined regardless.
When I said I have “no one”, I was at a place where I felt alone despite being in a “room full of people”. I wasn’t a loner with no friends, but I was spiritually empty and something was missing; I just wasn’t fulfilled.
No one converted me to Christianity, though. No one even asked me to join the church. I felt a “pull”, for lack of a better word and I made the decision to join.
I will say this, however: the black American church is far different from Catholic, Protestant, Southern Baptist, and especially the Mormon church. There’s a completely different style of teaching and worship that is inherently different due to its original purpose and its history. The difference is so drastic that it doesn’t surprise me that people become agnostic or atheist after coming up in those environments because - at least from my own observations - the worship is so structured that it loses value and the teachings don’t appear to be as applicable to a modern age. Again, just my observation.
So, to reiterate, I turned from my deep agnosticism to Christianity on my own. I’m fully aware of the concept of “You are not immune to propaganda”. I’m also not ignorant of the deficiencies in the church. I happen to be relatively fortunate in my church. There are still some black churches who will make a girl who gets pregnant stand up in front of the congregation and apologize for what she’s done. There are many black churches that will outwardly admonish gays, while the pastor is having an affair with the choir director. The best I can do there is not affiliate and remain vocal about why I won’t.
My old pastor once laid out an edict that his lady ushers all had to wear skirts or dresses when they ushered. I ushered at the time and wore a nice pant suit, and so when he said that, I sat down. He eventually asked my why I stopped ushering and I told him, that he’s free to run his church how he sees fit, but I don’t have to participate where he’s laying down sexist rules that don’t align with the Word. Shortly afterward, he lifted the rule.
I provide the above story to highlight my experience with my faith. The way I see it, just because some people want to distort and misuse the Bible and Christianity, doesn’t mean that there isn’t any good within it. I’ve read the Bible; I’ve taught it, I’ve questioned it. I find the ironies fascinating, like the idea that God thought of David as a man after His own heart, when this is the same David who had an affair with his best friend and top general’s wife, and then had his friend killed when it became apparent that he wouldn’t be able to conceal the affair. This act doesn’t negate all of David’s writings, however.
Faith is complicated, and it should be adaptable, but let me reassure you that I wasn’t “taken in” by proselytizing Christians. I felt a need for more and I made the willful step to learn, to understand, and thoroughly appreciate what I accepted as my faith.
Again, I’m sorry that this has been your experience. This hasn’t been mine.
I came to Christianity at an age when most people leave religion. I went from having nothing and no one to having a steady family who love and support me and give me others to love and support in kind. My church family is open and welcoming. We just removed a minister who began an opening prayer admonishing gays because when he was told “we don’t do that here” he got mad about it.
I wholly recognize that there is a set of people who scream about un-Christian things in the name of Christianity, but I reject the notion that these people are representative of the majority of Christians.
Maybe if more good people like yourself spoke out against the hateful ones Christianity would attract more people.
deleted by creator
Whoo boy…
There is a benefit in considering that all beings have more to us than dust and electricity. There is nothing wrong with teaching spirituality. It can provide comfort, camaraderie, strength, or just peace.
Whether you find peace in the chanting and meditation that can help you possibly achieve nirvana, or you find strength praying in a specific direction several times a day to show your worthiness, there is value in faith and spirituality.
There is absolutely nothing that prevents any spiritual person from learning, understanding, or advocating the sciences.
Looking at the Genesis of the Abrahamic religions, no rational person will say that the “world” and everything in it was created in a 7-day period of time when that which we currently use to measure time wasn’t even part of the structure used to describe the creation of the world. The “day” and “night” were separated before the sun and moon were “created”, so clearly the world wasn’t created in 167 hours. And yet, we can still appreciate what is intended by the scripture without running around and insisting on an impractical interpretation of a text.
You don’t like the Bible? You do you. The Bible says a lot of things. It describes the histories of the things people did, the good, the bad, and the ugly; it also teaches hope and love. It’s a complex set of texts and there’s a reason it’s been analyzed for so many centuries.
It’s great that you don’t need anything other than yourself to drag you out of times of despair. It’s great that you’ve naturally learned to be nice to everyone and treat animals and the earth well. Not everyone is like you, however. Some of us need a little help, and some of us get that help from our spirituality.
My grandmother wasn’t a Christian, and when she was dying, she said she was going to the Ancestors, and she would live on in the winds of the universe. I love this, and I love just thinking about this and thinking that Nana is still within me always in this way. Spirituality has a place. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you, but for some of us, it’s about moving forward with the good that can come out of it.
So. Let me tell you a little not-so-secret. That is precisely how I used to get people to convert to Mormonism, when I was a Mormon missionary. The people most vulnerable to conversion were people that were in the middle of shitty life circumstances, and had no social support network. We would love-carpet-bomb them shit out of them; we would talk to them several times a week, we would make sure that member in the local ward–which is the basic congregation for Mormons is called–reached out to them, invite them to church activities to meet people, and would inundate them with religious nonsense. All the while, we were implying that if they were just willing to believe the nonsense, then this large, ready-made family-slash-social-support-network could be theirs. But if they didn’t convert, we were going to leave them, and they’d be alone again. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work for shit with people that had large networks and strong families, because they didn’t have any need for what we could offer. The people without support would mistake the good feelings about the community for being god telling them that the religious nonsense was true.
And it goes the other way too; the Mormon church keeps people so busy doing church things that Mormons probably won’t have any non-Mormon confidants. That, in turn, makes leaving very, very hard.
So, ask yourself, and be honest: would you have converted if you had had strong friends that already loved and supported you? If you had met similarly supportive people that were Muslim, Jewish, or members of the Satanic Temple (and my local TST groups has some pretty great people that are genuinely kind, loving, and open), would you have chosen to convert to Christianity?
For the sake of brevity, I summarized my experience in joining the church, but to answer your question, yes, I would have still joined regardless.
When I said I have “no one”, I was at a place where I felt alone despite being in a “room full of people”. I wasn’t a loner with no friends, but I was spiritually empty and something was missing; I just wasn’t fulfilled.
No one converted me to Christianity, though. No one even asked me to join the church. I felt a “pull”, for lack of a better word and I made the decision to join.
I will say this, however: the black American church is far different from Catholic, Protestant, Southern Baptist, and especially the Mormon church. There’s a completely different style of teaching and worship that is inherently different due to its original purpose and its history. The difference is so drastic that it doesn’t surprise me that people become agnostic or atheist after coming up in those environments because - at least from my own observations - the worship is so structured that it loses value and the teachings don’t appear to be as applicable to a modern age. Again, just my observation.
So, to reiterate, I turned from my deep agnosticism to Christianity on my own. I’m fully aware of the concept of “You are not immune to propaganda”. I’m also not ignorant of the deficiencies in the church. I happen to be relatively fortunate in my church. There are still some black churches who will make a girl who gets pregnant stand up in front of the congregation and apologize for what she’s done. There are many black churches that will outwardly admonish gays, while the pastor is having an affair with the choir director. The best I can do there is not affiliate and remain vocal about why I won’t.
My old pastor once laid out an edict that his lady ushers all had to wear skirts or dresses when they ushered. I ushered at the time and wore a nice pant suit, and so when he said that, I sat down. He eventually asked my why I stopped ushering and I told him, that he’s free to run his church how he sees fit, but I don’t have to participate where he’s laying down sexist rules that don’t align with the Word. Shortly afterward, he lifted the rule.
I provide the above story to highlight my experience with my faith. The way I see it, just because some people want to distort and misuse the Bible and Christianity, doesn’t mean that there isn’t any good within it. I’ve read the Bible; I’ve taught it, I’ve questioned it. I find the ironies fascinating, like the idea that God thought of David as a man after His own heart, when this is the same David who had an affair with his best friend and top general’s wife, and then had his friend killed when it became apparent that he wouldn’t be able to conceal the affair. This act doesn’t negate all of David’s writings, however.
Faith is complicated, and it should be adaptable, but let me reassure you that I wasn’t “taken in” by proselytizing Christians. I felt a need for more and I made the willful step to learn, to understand, and thoroughly appreciate what I accepted as my faith.