christianity

the past few weeks, i’ve experienced and witnessed an annoying amount of bullying, disrespect, condescension, and hate, poorly masked in ungenuine “love.” and every time, the christian religion has been the excuse.

it’s made me think about religion more than I have in a while. christianity brought a lot of good things to my life…i attribute many of the positive things I learned growing up to being raised in a christian family. christianity gave me a community. it gave me structure. it gave me spirituality.

but christianity brought me a lot of pain too. pain i have largely shoved down and ignored. after taking a much needed break from religious spaces and healing from other traumas, i’ve begun to think more about how the evangelical church affected me.

they claimed unconditional love, but what they meant was unconditional pity and judgement. love was, in fact, conditional.

they claimed acceptance no matter what you’d done, but you only got it if you were now doing what they wanted. only if you’d “changed.”

i remember being so jealous of the older kids/adults who had such great, dramatic testimonies to share. i remember wishing i would go through some horrible trial or suffering so that i could have a cool testimony too.

then i fell in love with a girl. and i wished god had given me ANY other trial.

 i was the girl who didn’t really fuck up, the one who could be counted on and looked up to, the one who always gave good advice. no one would trust me anymore if they knew who i really was.

i so desperately wanted to be fully known and accepted by my community, but i knew i never could. so instead, i masked who I was. i masked it so well that even i didn’t know what was really me anymore, and what was just who everyone else told me i was or should be.

christianity is so often a barrier. a protection. a middleman between the hatred and the hated, so the haters don’t have to take accountability. they mold it to what they want it to be. to be what makes them feel the most validated, sure, and safe. granted, that’s how we all want to feel. But—it becomes unacceptable when they believe they are entitled to use this barrier to refuse to see the person on the other side. to pop up for just enough time to throw a few stones their way, and then squat back down to continue hiding. blaming the religion for their actions instead of their own pride. instead of their own discomfort, laziness, anger, fear, and selfishness.

christianity is a safeguard. for some, this is so welcome and needed at times in their lives when everything else is falling apart. it provides answers to existential questions. consistency and predictability when the rest of the world is chaos. comfort in times of turmoil. i know how safe it can feel. i’ve been there. but this almost always (if not 100% of the time) becomes problematic at some point. when the complacency sets in. when the critical thinking ceases. when learning and growing become the enemy. when sticking to what you already “know” is the only choice.

one of my close friends in college once told me she needed to write a book called,” fuck religion: thoughts from a girl who loves jesus,” and i wish she had so i could force all these mfers to read it. because I spent almost my whole life learning about jesus, and i really think most christians need to take a good long look at how he lived his life and then take a good long look at their own.

so there it is. no nice wrap up. no “what can we do about it?” because i’ve tried to be a bridge, i’ve tried to engage in productive conversation, and i’ve tried to call out the hypocrisy. but none of it works if folks are committed to misunderstanding and refuse to listen. that doesn’t mean i’ll stop trying, but i am learning when it’s not worthwhile or healthy to continue engaging.

what i can say, is that i am sorry. as someone who once contributed to this system of harm and abuse, i truly and sincerely apologize to all that have suffered pain and trauma because of it. myself included. i wish i could make it stop, but i can’t. so instead, i will stand with those who have been hurt by the church, and i will stand up against bullying disguised as love. because this shit is unacceptable.