What Sticks Around When You Leave Your Faith
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- čas přidán 3. 12. 2021
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When you leave your faith you don’t leave everything behind. Some things like to stick around, like trauma, guilt, Christian rock, and the fear of hell.
But they don’t have to stick around forever. Not all of it anyway.
Hosted by Trevor Poelman
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Podcast Ep. 39 - Hell • The Belief It Or Not P...
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The group haircut: Your bodily autonomy and consent were violated and a person who had authority over you coerced you into compliance; that absolutely is valid trauma and you don't have to say "it's not the worst thing." I had to look away from all the footage and just listen, feeling triggered even though I've not had that particular hair-related experience.
@@carpetbeetle8349 that’s awful I’m sorry they cut your hair off, that also happened to one of my friends, his hair wasn’t as long as yours though
My mother used to cut off my hair and make it ugly to desex me, degrade me. It's absolutely traumatic, now I have a real problem even just trimming my hair 🙃
@@victoriastephens7441 That's awful! Sorry she put you through that. 💕😢
Abuse isn’t just about physical pain. Abuse of pride, forcing public shame or discomfort is abuse too
In Japan, a lot of schools will forcibly have students dye their hair black, if their natural color happens to be something other than black.
The reasoning is that Japanese people have black hair (which is obviously not always true, in Okinawa brown hair is very common) and if you refuse to change your hair color to match the majority, you’re displaying “anti-social” tendencies. In some cases they even say it’s doing the students a favor as it prepares them for the workplace.
This is already awful as it is but it becomes so much worse when we realize that a lot of these kids are biracial and already have to deal with heaps of discrimination.
A few years ago a high school girl from Osaka was forced to dye her hair black, from her natural brown. She had an allergic reaction to the dye and became bald. Last I heard about it, she was suing the school.
Forcibly cutting long hair also happens. It tends to happen to boys but even girls will go through this. At times, teachers will actually grab the student’s hair and hacking at it.
I always wondered why some atheists are so passionate about their atheism. It makes total sense now.
atheist are less passionate about their atheism than religious people are 'bout their religion
@@hasanmuttaqin464 you've ever been on youtube atheism and just get blasted with how absolutely obnoxious the big personalities tend to be? i get it's supposed to be a mirror version - "if they can display execution devices everywhere, then i can say 'there's no god' as loud as i can" - that's meant to fight back against christian cultural hegemony (specifically conservative christian cultural hegemony - semler's only internet famous and kevin max is still considered the bad boy in dc talk, plus most tooth and nail acts tend to be guys who went to a church that happened to run a band that sang about otherwise different things) and how much of a strangehold it has on our politics...
but i don't know how many times i can hear gutsick gibbon say "hello my fellow apes" at the beginning of every video she does or big atheism channels demanding an end to religion (either immediate or gradual) in very blatant terms before i grow sick and tired of the movement. yes, i know we're apes - i moved on from youth-earth creationism when i was like seven when i got into dinosaurs and mostly read genesis as kind of a fairy tale for the israelites (and i didn't get into a church until i was 9), plus research into hominids is actually one of my minor hyperfixations (i want to know where in the hell i came from and not just rely on "god did it" apologetics) - but it's like what marge simpson said: "it's true, but she shouldn't say it." it's more tone and an injoke that's not really communicating all that well to me. and i've been in the process of deconstructing whatever bit of faith i've had for 13 years now. i'm more into spinoza's god - like god being more an abstract concept to refer to the grand unified theory as opposed to a tangible judgmental being outside of the confines of the universe - but i wouldn't personally consider myself an atheist because i've just had really bad problems with them. dana simpson blaming progressive and liberal christians for being too stupid to stop conservative christians, the massive uptick in skeptic channels digging deep into anti-SJW/anti-feminism rhetoric to the point where thunderf00t began whining about anita sarkeesian in between his science experiments and series on making fun of how utterly asinine YECs are, the big flood of videos critiquing islam (itself full of problems as with all abrahamic faiths) as the second big wave of islamophobia began poisoning popular culture AGAIN in the wake of ISIS killing a lot of people - those turned me off from the community.
i'd say they're equally obnoxiously passionate based on my experiences.
@@Malkmusianful that's a passionate paragraph there
@@hasanmuttaqin464 I just have this habit of overexplaining everything
@@Malkmusianful affirmative
I was horrified by the hair cutting story. That's straight up assault. I once walked through the woods for two hours to escape a canoe trip, where everyone decided mid trip that since I was the only one who hadn't gotten wet they were going to dunk me under water whether I wanted to or not. I never went to that youth group ever again. If anyone has an experience like either of these, GET. OUT. You are not safe with these people. They do not respect your bodily autonomy.
Agreed. If you're in a place, or with people, who don't respect your bodily autonomy - leave! If they don't respect wishes for the small things, what makes you think they'll do so for the bigger things?
What a chad move honestly. I respect the hell out of you for walking away like that.
@@roseinskyrim I had worse happen and I still think your experience is valid. Those people don't understand that we don't want to carry these things around.
@@roseinskyrim other people's suffering doesn't make your own ok. What you went through is hard and I'm sorry you have to deal with that betrayal.
Thank you both. ❤️
There was a lot of other stuff involved in why I went to therapy/my upbringing, but that’s just like the first moment I can remember someone so viscerally disregarding my personal space and autonomy and putting their hands on me like that. Although I didn’t realize all the reasons/didn’t have the words for why it felt so horrible to me at that time.
When I see the clips of pastors, instead of the holy spirit I used to see, I see the utter unhinged lunacy of a cult. Its unbelievable to me still that I grew up this way. Appreciate your channel.
That makes 2 of us
I’m with you. One of the pastors in this video was mine for over 5 years and I always thought he was a moderate pastor (whatever that means) but his couple of clips in here made me cringe pretty bad.
I don't see lunacy there - I see money-grubbing.
I was never inside (in my childhood God was about as real as Santa Claus) so I see no goodness, empathy or good intentions in any of this dissembling.
What I see is a perverse, immoral scam, honed over centuries with the singular goal of manipulating the whole lives of any who are sucked in to giving money to the hucksters. It is a pyramid scheme to perpetuate the scam into succeeding generations to ensure the gravy train never halts.
I do not believe for a second that those who are smart enough to generate these 'arguments' believe that there is any truth behind them - though I suppose that there are plenty of unthinking pastor-types who parrot the words and collect the cash and the influence and respect while guarding against any thoughts beyond their fixed belief i their own self-worth.
I had not heard of the press-gang volunteerism before, but it fits perfectly into the operating model.
Right!? I remember this feeling and view when I was a believer that RC Sproul was this wise intellectual tiitan of Christian theology. Watching him now, it's like watching the most self-satisfied used car salesman
Jelly beans
Hey, look I'll give that retrospectively even Veggie Tales has problematic elements of indoctrinating kids into dogmatic blind faith, but the humor was all ages and usually pretty on point and some of those songs are bangers.
Agreed, but I still think I liked the Veggie Fables on Drawn Together a lot better.
🎶 Oh no, what we gonna do?
The king likes Daniel more than me and you 🎶
The animation was spectacular for its time too 👌
Just remember it's ok to like things with elements you rather don't like. It's up to you wether they make the thing bad or not. But as long as you awknolege them then you're usually doing fine
I’m starting an Atheists for Veggie Tales club
When I left Christianity, I purposefully wrote down all the things that were fear inducing, that way I could better understand them, and process them, it worked, I ended up laughing at how stupid some of the things I was taught were. I seriously lifted a weight off my shoulders. I still catch myself praying, that’s been a hard holdover to drop.
That shows great self-awareness.
I still like prayer too sometimes. These days I start with, “I speak these words out into the universe, of which I am a part.” Then I talk through my thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears. I find it soothing.
That's actually a fantastic idea, it's been a while since I left but it might help me out too
You've just gotta keep catching yourself. It'll go away eventually. But not soon. Just keep catching yourself. Remind yourself that you know better.
It's reassuring to see that others have a thing with prayer, too. Sometimes " I ask the "All-that-is..." a different thing I do more significantly is light candles for people a la Catholicism I say "I may not always believe in Jesus but ALWAYS believe in fire."
Prayer was the easiest part for me to drop
I remember how many times when I prayed during times of suffering, such as being homeless and seeing my mother abused by my father
It made me realize that prayer does nothing
That story about them cutting your hair against your will makes me so angry. Awful people will often downplay how much of a violation of bodily autonomy this sort of thing really is.
I grew up in a very moderate Christian church (as is normal in my country), so there weren't that many things I had to unlearn, but it took me a while to not always feel watched. I used to feel that even my thoughts could condemn me as a person, when in reality, most of them will never be known by anyone else, and the thing that actually matters is what of an effect I have on the world.
I agree! My blood is boiling about the hair thing..
Same! Yes many of them don't seem to understand it; they view it like as long as they 'love' you and they're not doing xyz to be 'mean' to you +if they believe whatever it is its something god calls them/wants them to do/part of their mission, then that makes it okay. Which is not how that works...
exactly! no matter what it is, from a haircut to an abortion, bodily autonomy is bodily autonomy. the fact that it’s normalised in this way is disgusting :(
It made me want to cry
I probably shouldn't make this comparison, but I've been sexually assaulted, and I think the hair story is a BIG deal. Not having control over your body when you already said no, especially that he said anyone (in a community of people he is supposed to trust!) who wanted to could cut his hair and clearly no one intervened or seemed to care what he was experiencing... It gave me serious shivers. I had to stop and see other people validating that this is NOT okay before I could keep watching
Not to mention, telling young kids that there are demons everywhere, infecting everyone who is out from the protection of Christ.
I still freak out sometimes, it just hits me.
I remember once when i was a child, there were people soliciting our apartment building for the church (maybe Jehovah's witnesses? Can't remember) and I answered the door while my parents were in the shower. Instead of leaving because i was a child (i was probably like 6 or 7), they gave me their spiel about how i was going to hell and handed me a pamphlet. My mom told me that she chased them down after she got out lol.
We even went to a church around that time, but i never ever remember having any fear about anything related to Christianity. I think we just went more for the community experience.
Lol this one fxcked me up for a lonnnng time 😂, im glad im not so scared all the time anymore
@@donatehilltop I even had this period of time where I thought lighters were little demon portals, and depending on the colour lighter was what type of demon was potentially infecting the person. The only OK lighters were white ones. 😂😂😅😭. It is definitely easier to just flick it off with only half a thought now. But it also still just hits me, like my sweet little kid hissed at me because I said no more chocolate. My immediate half a second thought was "demons in the chocolate" It was SO weird. I just started laughing. I'm am immensely relieved to be free of that thinking.
@@jaegrant6441 lol
I still can't watch supernatural movies because demons are still real for me. I worked in a prison for a year and doing graveyard shift was terrifying sometimes. On the mental health unit, hearing people muttering to themselves and my religious side going, "they are possessed by demons." just made my skin crawl. But they were just people that needed professional help, not demons.
I doubted my faith starting in 8th grade, and privately renounced it in 9th. Now I'm a senior in high school, and since I've been an atheist I've seen life in an entirely different way. My parents (who are very devout Christians) suspected my loss of faith and moved me to a Christian private school right before my senior year, which I still havent really forgiven them for. I'm miserable here - now I have to hide what I believe from absolutely everyone. It's so ironic that the public school i went to before, when all of my friends were agnostic or Buddhist or Muslim, ect., was such a happier place than where I am now. Everyone was more accepting of new ideas, academically motivated, ect. Now it feels like every girl in my class just wants to graduate and get married - because that's "God's purpose" for them. I just feel sad for them; they dont recognize themselves as equals to men. This is one of the main reasons I stopped believing a long time ago.
Sorry for the long rant. It's been a really tough year, haha.
I'm sorry that sucks, I've been in Christian private schools since like 4 years old. Since my schools were all connected so I've been surrounded by the same thing. Honestly I've never met a Buddhist or Muslim and I only know like one other Atheist. I'm kinda excited about the day I can go find other like minded people or different individuals, I love philosophy, Mythology, history, art, psychology, biology but I feel like I'm expected to pursue a job get married have kids before I get to truly explore myself out side of religion or see what I like.
You're almost there!! You can do it!!! I went to a Catholic school from K-12, and lemme tell you that first college semester was like opening my eyes for the first time
I grew up on a Christian Bible College campus (which included a private Christian high school) and I lost my faith personally around the same time, although I got to move to public schooling for the last two years of high school. I really relate to your experiences. I also remember the joy I felt when I could leave. When people ask me what it was like, I say it was like living in the Truman Show, where he slowly realizes that his world is dysfunctional and fake before he breaks free. Hope you can get out of there swiftly and take care until then.
@@indigopines thank u for the nice comment 💖 I am SO looking forward to college 😄
@@christinar379 thanks so much! Lol I love that movie and I get what ur saying. It definitely feels like another world.
When I was in the military, we called being forced to volunteer being "voluntold". I always thought that was accurate and funny in an ironic sort of way.
Well in school same, but english wasn't my first language, and i thought it was voluntor and i thought that was an actual word.
I tired to look for antonym to "a volunteer" and first site said "party pooper" and "stick in the mud"
My church would do this, they acknowledge this and raised the kids that this is ok; that this is a gift from your leaders. I’ve burned out several times and still went to volunteer.
I’m on vacation, and I’m so guilty. I have to remind myself, “I need this. I need a break.” But I’m still guilty. I am counting the days til I get out.
One of my coworkers taught me the word "voluntold", it hits the nail on the head.
In the military we were also forced to have our hair cut.
@@korlreefe5734 I'm sorry you feel guilty because you have nothing to be guilty about. Religions are very good at manipulation and guilt is one of their tools. They are controlling you and taking away your right to make your own decisions about living your life. Do you gave any anger also?
As an Atheist who spends a lot of time in musical theatre dressing rooms I can assure you that annoying your friends with Veggie Tales songs does not just happen within the church
Oh where is my hairbrush?
@@darkninjafirefox oh where is my hair brush
@@leigh7816 Oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where
Oh, where, oh, where, oh, where, oh, where oh, where
Is my hairbrush?
As an atheist with an atheist sister, I can confirm. Something, Something, hairbrush
No one escapes VeggieTales
The us vs them mentality is hard to drop. When I quit believing; I didn't feel guilty or fear. But to this day I struggle with us vs them; I'm just on the other side. The best we can do is seek the humanity side of all of us.
That's a great way to put that mindset, "us vs them, just on the other side". It's something I'm aware of in myself a lot but don't criticize enough, thanks for the reminder.
True, we all living this life together it'd better we help
I have issues with being really hateful towards evangelicals and conservatives. I totally get you on the "us vs them but on the other side". Since before I was an atheist I had problems with being really hateful towards atheists, LGBT people, and even catholics.
Yeah I think this is the biggest thing for me as well, the "us vs them" mentality is just so hard to drop. It's not something I can just use logic to reason away, it's the way I think in the first place. I'm getting better at realizing that everyone has a whole lifetime of experience and, well, life. But it's harder to do that for people I see as "them."
I got blamed for being molested by my Christian grandfather at 13. Just recently (I’m 23 now) I couldn’t rationalize God forgiving my abuser and that it was MY responsibility to forgive him because I was a sinner. I didn’t want to be in heaven with my grandfather. I begged and pleaded with God to show me he loved me and when I never heard anything back I began my journey of deconstruction. Hearing all of y’all’s stories breaks my heart sending love to all of you❤ remember your worth it and valued
Any belief system that allows a child rapist into heaven but sends the 6 million jews killed in the holocaust to hell is an abhorrent belief system that I want no part in.
love you too girl I went through some similar shit but we both deserve much better best of luck to you 😘
I’m so sorry that happened to you
I’m so sorry that happened to you
That is fucked up.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope you can continue to heal and live a happy life.
I remember taking bioanthropology in college and realizing that there are, in fact, no non-transitional fossils. Every one of them represents incremental, sometimes infinitesimal change.
That's what I always say - every fossil is transitional!
They just want a fossil that looks like its in a middle of shapeshifting.
Left arm is long and hairy, right one is short and more human like.
They're waiting to dig up someone who died animorphing
that is just extrapolation. transitional is relative to how far it is away from others.
@@jeffersonclippership2588 lmao
When I was leaving my abuser, therapy helped me realize that a lot of what kept me in that horrible relationship were things that were indoctrinated into me at church. I hadn't gone to church for over a decade but they had so warped my sense of what is "normal" and "good" and what "love" feels like that it took me almost another decade to find my way to real peace and safety.
Y'all, love is not control, it is respecting other people's autonomy and agency. Love doesn't require you to sacrifice yourself to the point of losing yourself. You can be with as many people as you are drawn to, and it doesn't make you a slut. You can leave because your relationship is over, and it is not a failure. It is not your responsibility to save your partner or endure their abuse in the name of love. ❤❤❤ Make yourself happy, find peace. You don't have to earn this.
It really is unfortunate that the excuses people use for staying in church are almost identical to the ones used by victims of abuse when they're in denial about what's happening to them. That's how it feels every time I interact with a Christian nowadays.
So well-said!
Well said, the True essence of LOVE♥️ is not controlling or no Fear not Abusive and not manipulates the other person .
Thank you for this
A pro-poly comment? In my CZcams comments section?
I like it ^.^
All jokes aside, I really liked that bit about not being a slut. We're only human, and sometimes people like lots of people. I have an especially blurry line for this because my past traumas mean my partner talking to *anyone* who isn't me is intensely stressful if I don't feel I have equal or greater attention than them, especially if it's another AFAB.
I know this is toxic and I'm working on it, but as I'm unraveling why I feel this way, I keep wondering why I feel entitled to so much. I like the idea of multiple partners, it makes me happy. And I know that having more partners won't make me love my current fiance any less, so why would she like me any less?
i can't take these people seriously when they sing "sacrificing all you have for the church" like it's a positive
They want you to do the Christ - die for the church's sins
bUt HaVe YoU eVeR sEeN a RaiNbOw?
Right? I just sat there like "do you hear yourself right now?" when I heard that verse 😂
we were taught it is that if you didn't you were going against gods will.
If hell is a punishment for the devil, why can he leave whenever he wants and "tempt" people. My parents told me that if I'm questioning God, that must be the devil trying to manipulate my thoughts, but how can he do that if he's in prison? If I go to hell, can I just leave to "tempt" others?
Through psychokinesis. In Dantes inferno the lowest circle of hell is ice in which the devil is trapped eternal, but he rules through thought and has his minions carry out his wishes by mental projection to his underlings. I admit this is assumed, and not canonical. Another explanation is that Beelzebub the prince of hell (a bastardization of the God Ba'al) rules in his stead. A novel way of reconciling his imprisonment with his ability to influence, but in essence it's just a creative fabrication constructed to explain away contradiction....just like all other apologetics.
I think, at least according to some denominations' interpretation of the bible, the devil is actually present in this world and ruling, but he'll suffer the torments of the lake of fire at the final judgement. Or is something like that, I don't really remember
@@andredunbar3773 it truly does depend on denomination, all of which exist primarily due to the different ways they choose to reconcile contradictions. I've always found it interesting when they try to reconcile the text in Revelation where Hell (current prison) is cast into the Lake of Fire (post second coming prison). The afterlife is fire prisons all the way down. Lol
@@SatanasExMachina Yeah, that's very confusing. How can fire be thrown into fire.
The great theologian C.S. Lewis said that "the gates of Hell are locked from the inside", implying that it is not God who sends you there, it's you who chooses to be there.
When I read that, a light went off in my head. If the gates of Hell are locked from the inside, then it doesn't matter whether I go there instead of Heaven. I'll prefer it to Heaven. If people prefer staying in Hell, I can't imagine how awful the other option must be.
Thank you, C.S. Lewis, for curing me of my fear of eternal damnation.
I can’t watch it right now but I’ll check it out later.
But I can definitely tell you what stuck around after I left my religion, I found out I’m trans, and got a boyfriend, at some point I made the mistake of telling my mom that I had a boyfriend (she doesn’t know I’m trans so she thinks I’m gay) and basically the first thing she tried to do was undermine my feelings and invalidate them, I spent the rest of the day in my bed in shambles, I felt terrible, like my family will never accept who I was, especially since they didn’t know I was trans yet, all I could think about was that I felt like a monster, because I was born wrong, my body was wrong, and I realized that the reason I felt this way is because my church had conditioned me to se LGBT people like this, my pastor would constantly and repeatedly say “the Bible calls gay people an abomination, did you know that?”
I didn’t get left with a fear of hell or sin or anything, but I was left with a deep rooted hatred of who I was, i struggle to see myself as anything other than a disguising abomination, my boyfriend never once saw me like that though, and he’s been a huge help in comforting me.
Religion permanently harms children like me.
Virtual hugs! 🌹
I had the exact same experience. I am trans and when I tried to come out to my mom she had the same strategy. She didn't consider anything I said and just told me it was all Satan deceiving me and to this day, whenever I do anything that upsets her, I feel this overwhelming guilt when all I wanted was to be happy. Hang in there and I hope you know you have value and are not the abomination we were always told we are.
Assuming the Bible actually says "gay people are an abomination,' which it doesn't, but assuming it does- did your asshole pastor consider that the Bible also says:
"Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you-who are you to judge your neighbor?" - James 4:11-12
Maybe your former pastor should also open up his Bible to Matthew 22:36-40:
" 'Master, which is the great commandment in the law?'
Jesus said unto him,
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, *Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.*
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' "
It's so frustrating when Christians are discriminatory towards LGBT people. It's naked bigotry is what it is, because their anti-LGBT garbage has no basis in their religious text, and said religious text explicitly forbids them from judging others for their sins in multiple passages- ding ding double jeopardy. If you ever encounter anti-LGBT sentiment from a Christian, point out these two passages and watch them squirm.
Trans rights are human rights. The adults in your life have failed you, and that hurts. I'm just some rando, but I give you full permission to cut off contact with your family if you feel you need to for the sake of your health. You can choose a new family. You're allowed.
Same story here. My family wasn’t all that religious, but my grandma is, and she has said some truly awful things to me, and constantly deadnames me, even though I’ve been out for quite some time now. But hey, my mother accepts me, I don’t speak to my father, and my friends love me just the way I am. Things get better with time, and you aren’t alone.
I’m proud of u 💕💕
For me it's sadness at the realization that i don't have any rights to say that i am faithless, living in a majority muslim country. I just try to enjoy my life as best as i can 👍
Stay safe and don't do anything that could endanger your welfare. It really is no one else's business what you think. Religions want to control our minds and some will even kill you to protect their dogma in case you infect any others with your doubts.
Faith is a fact. It's a feature of who I am. I can and could and did, in some contexts, deny that I was atheist. The fact is, I don't believe in gods or souls. I used to display some sort of faith when I'd go home to visit my parents for Xmas and go to services - that doesn't cost me anything and it's just not a fight I ever wanted to fight. I can lie and profess faith. I know I'm not going to hell.
@@tomtrask_YT for many reasons I still live with my Catholic parents and I just play lip service when it comes to some rituals and prayers, they don’t force me to go to church because they were already used to me going to another parish community before I left the Church. I don’t mind many of these rituals and I just try my best to not blow my cover. I was born in a majority Catholic country and perhaps my situation wouldn’t have been much better had we stayed there.
I really hate theocracies
@@cyborgbob1017 I love them. "Theo"=God. cracy=Power.
Im a man who stayed in an abusive relationship because Christianity told me marriage was forever. I dealt with IMMESNSE guilt over the divorce even 10 years after leaving the church.
I've experience that. Trust me, if you haven't already, it will lose its sting.
Recently, a religious family friend came over. I mentioned that I don't like Christmas. I find the culture annoying, personally, and don't practice it much in my personal life. This friend IMMEDIATELY jumped to me not caring about Jesus. I just kinda blinked and explained myself. She was like, "you're not religious anymore?" And I was like, "yeah. I'm that way for a bunch of reasons. If God truly understands and loves everyone, he should be able to understand that." And she was just like, "no." And I sat there feeling like shit. And now it just frustrates me. The fact that they never stop to think that God gets so butthurt at a lack of TOATAL SUBSERVIENCE he'll damn you to hell for it is not moral or pure or perfect. They never acknowledge that God has an EGO - which is a sin. I am SO glad that I left, and I'm glad that a lot more modern (millennial / zoomer) Christians are far less toxic than those that came before them.
I have no idea currently how God has an ego, this rings true to me regardless. I shall ponder it.
Yeah my mom broke out of the capitalistic mindset of buying gifts due to money problems and realized that it’s better to spend time with family. But like taking them out so we’re going out to eat with our cousins for Chrismas
yeah there are some cool christians my age who actually take jesus’s teachings seriously and use them to support causes like mutual aid and lgbtq+ rights but it definitely seems like in the states this isn’t the primary mode of understanding jesus’s way of thinking which is super unfortunate
Exactly!
that's terrible evangelical brainwashing is a h3ll of a drug.
Just finished the video. When you’re out of this system looking in, it’s amazing how crazy this sounds.
Love your channel banner
Hope you've got good energi in your life now :) (sorry for the cheesy joke, just like your name and hope you're doing well)
I felt that too. I've been away from christianity maybe 4 decades (!) To hear these folks spout off scripture like it's a thing that validates itself is kind of funny (and sad at the same time).
Mate! The story about your hair, I had a tear in my eye! Then you say "that's not the most traumatic thing I've had happen in church." That institution is so vile. I feel very lucky, but I've even had an incident or two.
Your hair cutting story, while also being horrible, reminded me of so many incidents in my youth group. This one time, a group of girls chased me down and hugged me extremely tightly after I explicitly told them I hated being hugged (because apparently, everyone loves hugs, even if they don’t know it yet). When I went to youth group Summer camp, I was constantly pressured into using the high ropes even though I’m terrified of heights. Everyone else at camp called me a coward and tried to force me to go up high, to the point where I eventually went up the rock wall and had a panic attack. There was this other girl who got chased around until she finally hid in the woods because she didn’t want to do the rock wall either. There were so many times when people- children- had their explicitly wishes ignored and blatantly trampled on.
@JERKSIMULATOR I mean, there's probably people who don't like hugs period. For example, people that are hypersensitive to touch. There's also cultures where hugging between adults is seen as extremely weird.
I'm reminded of a story on reddit about how they saw someone fired quite quickly after forcibly hugging someone and using the same "everyone likes hugs" line when the target freaked out.
And, while I am not one, don't get me started on those who surprise hug fursuiters...
@@Dragonmoon98lolll the surprise fursuit huggers, a very niche but also very recognizable plight
Geez, whatever happened to overcoming your fears by facing them? It's not as if you were going cliff jumping
@@linagreenlyfe6705 dude I was nine.
Prior to, during, and after my deconversion, my depression hit a major low. My anxiety went through the roof one day and I decided to take all my pills to end my life. The only reason I did not go through with it was a remaining fear of hell. So in a sense, I was "saved" by Christianity lol. I am 100% only still alive because of a remaining fear of hell. All that to say, Christianity was a major reason for my suicidality, so if Christianity had not been in the picture I might have already gotten medication for my depression.
I'm doing much better now though, not in any danger at the moment and am navigating life's up and downs as best I can manage.
Good to hear!
I’m glad to hear you’re doing better! I also felt really depressed and anxious before, during, and after my deconversion last April, but with therapy and soon enough medicine, I’m slowly returning back to normal. Keep pushing!!
Please keep taking care of yourself.
I’m a disabled person. When you have anxiety those feelings of guilt can come from almost anything. From every little slight to looking at someone wrong my mind had developed the perfect inner bully.
Stuff like that makes it so easy to accept you’re the worse. It isn’t till others say otherwise that you start to doubt those fears. The narrative of humans sinful nature amplifies those feelings. Making you feel justified in hating yourself. ‘Of course everyone hates you. You where born sinful.’ Stuff like that.
While it took ages to start healing and well doubting my self doubt. I just came to the conclusion that I refuse to feel guilt for what I love. And who I love. And now I just don’t.
I feel sorry for your situation of your past. Good that you found a constructive path. Guilt is probably more common that you think. As you know intimately, is a force that manipulates and is perverse to it's core. For me I keep coming around to the scripture in Romans (can't remember the verse) 'where there is no law, there is no sin'. I know I'm taking it out of context, but manipulation is a specialty that most christians are nimble at. While I left the church I felt a huge sense of freedom, but it took decades to extinguish the ghosts of some of those relationships. Stay well. Be happy.
He thought existence was for one life only!! He MAD!!!
You do feel guilt internally, you are hiding it deep inside to not face the consequences, that's actually what I'm doing now to be honest.
@@boopbeepbop154this is a very weird and invasive thing to project onto a random person on the internet, maybe don't!
@@GenesisTheKitty I have no memory of writing that. I was probably high. Apologies.
I grew up in a family that was only vaguely Christian. We had a bible and my father's mother read it to us occasionally when we were kids, but none of the adults went to church except on Easter and maybe Christmas eve. I was sent to Sunday school every Sunday, however.
I stopped going to church when I was 14 after I confronted the Sunday school teacher about all of the contradictions in the Bible. He said you must accept every word in the Bible as absolute truth or you do not really believe any of it. He did not know it but he gave me permission to leave Christianity. I stopped going to church and very little was said about it. I think my mother said, "if you believe in god, you don't need a church." I looked into other religions, but never really found anything that I could actually accept as true. Eventually I just accepted that I was an Atheist.
I like Tolstoy's Christianity. He was an anarchist and believed in the divinity of Jesus, but that the church was an aberration of his word. Tolstoy considered the church an idol, with all of its oppressive and violent institutions.
I was raised in a similar family-at the time, my mom was a Presbyterian agnostic and my dad was a lapsed Episcopalian (they’re now both secular humanist), but it was mandatory that my sister and I both attend Episcopal Sunday school (that was the religion my parents had us baptized into as babies, which I declare invalid because we were too young to give informed consent). Even as a kid, i dreaded Sundays because it meant being dragged to a church basement classroom where I would regularly get into hot water with the teachers for questioning that day’s lesson or disagreeing with something in it. When I started reading other cultures’ myths and legends and discovering that they had Goddesses as well as Gods and learning about respect for nature and that every living thing had a spirit, women were equal to men (among other ideas), cracks began forming that eventually shattered the wall of Christianity and its teachings. I was finally allowed to “quituate” at 14 and found Wicca in college. It was like having the missing pieces of a puzzle I’d been trying to solve all my life suddenly land in my lap when I found out about Wicca, and I’ve been following the Eclectic tradition ever since. It caused some friction in my family when I first came out of the broom closet, but most of them came around eventually. Oh, and my sister is now an atheist!
@@dragondancer1814 Interesting post. What was it about Wicca that made it feel like the missing puzzle pieces fell into your lap? I don't want to get into a debate at all, I'm genuinely curious.
@@JoelCarli Quite a few reasons, actually-the idea of a Goddess as well as a God, equality for women as well as men, the holidays centering around the seasons of the year, respect for Earth and all life on it, every living thing being interconnected and having a spirit (the Circle of Life), no proselytizing/evangelizing/“spreading the Word,” reincarnation, consequences for one’s actions in the lifetime rather than in the afterlife, direct communication with the Divine rather than through a middleMAN like a priest or pastor-the list goes on. Not to mention that Wicca just “felt” right to me-that “click” when all the missing pieces fell into place was unmistakable. I NEVER felt that with Christianity at all-that religion or any other patriarchal monotheistic religion to me would feel like a hat three sizes too small-it’s constricting as hell, it gives you more headaches than you ever thought possible, and you can’t wait to get the blasted thing off!
I hope this helps, and thank you for asking. May the holiday season give you joy!
@@dragondancer1814 Much thanks :) that's pretty cool! Neopaganism is really interesting to me, and I find it interesting how it's become so popular.
I really think my fear of abandonment and anxiety issues stems from the fear of the Rapture. I still remember being at my grandparents house and I couldn't find them, and thought I was left behind because I was starting to think I might be gay. I finally did find them outback and after a 20+ yrs journey finally decided to embrace being gay, but unfortunately I still have depression/abandonment/anxiety issues... Yeah church 😕
Sounds familiar.... I was terrified of the rapture, because I felt that I was never good enough.
I remember i used to volunteer at the church for years. My dad made us help even though literally no one wanted to. It was cool at first, then over the years became so unenjoyable. We had to do it. We had no choice. It was our duty Or else “people wouldn’t hear god” and it was our fault.
I quickly felt taken advantage of. They even told us that they would pay us (as a tactic to keep us volunteering) every Sunday i looked forward to getting paid ... they never did. It was just manipulation. Looking back i see how exploitative that was.
Oh and my former pastor even went to jail for scamming an elderly man in the congregation out of his home. 🤭
Isn't outright lying... like... a sin? Sorry you went through that. I hope you've found a better community that truly values your time.
i was fairly involved with a fairly progressive local protestant church in my youth but broke off from the church after a traumatic event as a teen, so i never thought the religious slant in my upbringing still affected me as an adult. and then you mentioned the binary thinking and volunteering (though my issue was giving too much of myself to work) and, well... it's been over ten years since i've stepped foot in that church, but they really do still stick around, huh?
Similar to my experience. Hope you are doing better in the present my friend 💜
leaving religion is the beginning to understand why you really left, you will find out what it really did to you and the damage it made
I feel good. I've worked through a lot of these issues.
The "I'm a wretched person" is my current struggle. It feels so good when I remember, that idea is a lie told to me to maintain control. I'm not inherently evil. I'm not broken. I'm not dysfunctional. I AM good enough.
I don’t have this issue as I long ago accepted moral Nihilism - if all morals are products of social consensus, then one is only as “good” or “bad” as the social order you live in perceives you as being: change society’s perception and you change how “good” or “bad” you are.
You ARE good enough. In fact, you're amazing! What could be broken or dysfunctional about a collection of matter in the most complex pattern imaginable that has evolved to the point where it can be aware of itself and others?
I hope you can overcome the lies you were told. Wishing you the best ❤️
Surprisingly there is a verse in the bible that says 'where there is no law, there is no sin'. Law is just a guilt trip used to make your life crappy. Don't accept it. You have the power to create a new reality. In the end when you are free, you'll see that this new person has ALWAYS been in you.
You are much better than good enough. You are the only you in the whole world, and that's wonderful!
Oooof… this SO hit home for me. After 50+ years in the Catholic Church, having sent all three of my kids to 12 years of Catholic school, and I have read out bingo numbers, set up bouncy castles, sewn curtains, redecorated the school library, and ran multiple silent auctions, pancake breakfasts and raffles. I called around, begged for and picked up donations for each of those events. I threw parties for teachers, classrooms, and clergy. I taught catechism to adults and was a lector at Mass. I served on PTA councils, school boards and parish advisory boards. I taught art classes, coached sports and supplied and operated sports concessions. Now I’ve left all that behind, but the giant multinational corporation I work for constantly wants me to volunteer at all the events they want to plaster their name on, and I just don’t have anything left in my volunteer tank…so now I look like the uncaring, selfish person. All I can say is I want my time and money back!
It’s funny that the one guy said “If it’s true, it’s going to bring life. If it’s not, then it won’t” Bc I never struggled with mental health UNTIL I became Christian. I had 2 suicidal episodes while I was Christian after never having any history of mental health issues. So does this mean that since the “truth” did not bring life, that’s it’s not..the truth?
Just a funny coincidence with my brief experience in Christianity. (I’m much better now btw!)
That whole long chunk about truth and untruth really resonates with me as someone raised Christian.
Especially for me, as a transgender person. The truth, as it stands, is that my brain operates demonstratively better when I replace testosterone with estrogen, and I am healthier when I am not pretending to be a male. But to my mom, a cultist fundamentalist, the truth is 100% black and white as regards what the doctor saw swinging between my legs when I was born. And to her, that is unalterable, and a reflection of my soul.
Science and physical proof has shown that I perform better, am healthier, and am more outgoing and able to share when I'm not being forced to conform to a role that doesn't fit me.
“You will be singing Jesus freak on your death bed” haha unfortunately yes! Another great video Trevor! Really good points made. Leaving Christianity or fundamentalism isn’t just changing your belief on a proposition, especially if you were raised it in. Our braid were wired together in way that will instinctively go through the same pathways unless we unlearn it. The black and white thinking is a perfect example. Learning about the different cognitive distortions has helped me with that. Cognitive Behavioral therapy is great too! I’m still constantly uncovering ways in which my religious thinking still affects me.
same.
I’m actually so grateful that I had some video games that deliberately had things with characters questioning their religious and other fundamental beliefs and where there’s not actually an objective right/wrong or those things are really hard to find. It seriously saved me from developing black and white thinking.
Cool about the CBT, did you do it solo or with a professional? I'd be worried that the pro might be religious too lol
The Church of the Algorithm officially certifies this video in the ones and zeroes of The Recommending Holiness.
Praise Be
Ra-men
The holy eyes of the algorithm looked fondly on us this day
I have one. I married my first wife pretty young. After a few years we tried having kids. She miscarried and when she broke that news to me my reaction was "where's the baby?" Her response was " it died, I miscarried. " I said "but the body, what happened to it?" She looked at me confused, " there was no body. " I had been raised to believe that abortion was breaking apart a living baby. That there was a heart at 6 weeks. This isn't true. All there was was some clotted blood. No baby. I hated how I reacted for years. I needed to comfort her but I was confused because of my upbringing and was more concerned over the missing baby than her feelings. I hadn't been a Christian for years at that point but the ideas stuck.
It's a shame. As a kid I believed that infinite punishment for finite crime was okay because people chose it for themselves.
Then I realized that all it does is water down the gospel, right? If Jesus is literally God and God's redemption is exclusive to Christians then his batting average for saving is pretty horrendous.
A parent would want to save all their children. God only wants about 1/3rd of his children saved, Max, at any given point in time and starting with only a few hundred for centuries? That's simply illogical. Any Christian who isnt a universalist at the very least has insurmountable logical odds to conquer.
Grew up with a very Christian mom and she would guilt me over wanting to have my childish fun and not be her personal servant. At almost 30 years old, I still feel guilt for taking care of myself and not putting others first.
It's taken plenty of therapy to bring it down.
PIMO here (physically in, mentally out). I was adopted into religion from birth, and have, and still do, serve on the praise team since I was 10 (almost 21 now). I can say honestly, my feelings of needing to help others regardless of how I am have truly ruined me. Having been bullied my whole life, in 6th grade my parents sent me to biblical therapy due to suicidal talk and depression. I'm not kidding, they literally blamed me for being selfish and saying that helping others is what I need to do to feel better. This is only part of my walk away from Chirstianity. It's terrifying that biblical therapy is allowed to persist. I hope you guys end up making a video on therapy and it's dangerous practices. Thank you for helping me deconstruct and understand who I can be.
That's just awful. I hope you are doing much better now. ❤
@@katherineg9396 hey, thanks for replying to my comment 🙂 I'm doing alright, still living with them and still struggling, but I'm doing better than I ever have. I'm happy I'm walking away, I'm making my own self.
@@M_tchOfficial I'm so glad you are doing better! Best wishes as you find your own way.
@@M_tchOfficial How are you doing Ludwig?
I just got called selfish by my religious brother yesterday. We used to do everything together. He was my only friend as a kid after he found his own way reborn again christian in life he completely forgoes my existence other than when he is judgemental. I tried to join him in the church but the more I actually studied the bible the more the flaws became more clear as well as the existential guilt all the time beating on my mind so much I was gonna die meself. I lost 2 important things to me in the last couple years my brother being my only friend and my childhood faith. My anxiety has since quadrupled if not more.
This reminds me of a scene in a Jane Eyre movie, where they cut a little girl's long red hair short because they thought it was a "stumbling block" and It is as disgusting as it comes,
what that man did to you was abuse.
Just found your channel recently, been binging all the videos~ I grew up in a Southern Baptist home and went to church for 20+ years but after being shunned for coming out as trans I decided to take a serious look at my faith and determined i didn't believe it anymore. Since then it's been a breath of fresh air getting to be myself and living my best life. Very happy to be out of both the church and the closet 💜
Congrats on the breakthrough! Even if it was spurred by a terrible situation, I'm glad you're moving on
Totally admire your courage. Amazing!!
"What do you do with guilt?" I sit with it, interrogate it, ask where that guilt came from. Did I do something wrong, or does someone else want me to feel guilty about something?
"Why do you feel guilt if there's no objective moral truth?" Empathy. The product of mirror neurons. I see the suffering of others, and that suffering is reflected in my brain. I don't want others to suffer just as I don't want to suffer. If I'm the cause of that suffering, well, feels bad, man.
Thank you for another great video.
When I deconstructed, I kept the mindset for many years. All of my Christian friends and family thought that I was a rude a-hole for telling people what I believed (or didn't believe). And I was. They trained me to be a horrible person and disassociated from me when I used it on them. I would like to think I've outgrown the black and white thinking, now.
Boycotting is really REALLY tough when every last food item in the grocery store that my autistic self can prepare and eat belongs to a mere handful of big companies. I did manage to cut out Frito-Lay and Kellogs during their worker strikes. I had to give up a few treats but it was doable.
However, Nestle is the parent company to a much more substantial chunk of my diet. They own so many brands it's crazy.
i feel called out by the "i'm missing gaps of pop culture bc i was sheltered" line
That "haircut" sounded a little bit like assault Trevor. I don't think it was just a silly haircut. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
I feel optically assaulted by a lot of youth pastor haircuts, so there's that.
@@rickc2102 hahahahaha wasn't what I meant but I feel your pain 😂
i've had the fear of anything horror related or even just the dark for all my life. i'm still cripplingly terrified of the dark now. why? because my church decided "hey, it's okay for kids to watch very graphic, violent, and horrific plays about hell and why people go there. oh, the blood is fake and the fire is fake so SURELY it won't emotionally scar any kid!!" i've had my first anxiety attacks around 6 because of nightmares of hell and just sound of a deep evil laughter would make me curl up in a ball for a good long while. now, i can manage it but there's still the instinct there.
church has damaged me in too many ways. i'm glad i don't believe anymore and i can't wait to escape out of this hellhole, move to an entire new country, and start to heal. i am healing now but being forced to go to church kinda feels like poking a stab wound over and over again. i just hope everyone who is hurt finds peace and comfort and happiness in themselves and people who actually love them.
Growing up learning about the torment of hell, it stuck with me for a while after I left. I thought it would never leave, but it did and finally I can joke about it now.
I was a born again christian WAYYY back in the 60s. Think religious hippies :) I had many great experiences to be honest. But I tried not to give a whole lot of attention to the idea of hell. It just didn't seem like it could be in anyway part of the loving god I thought I knew. In some way I kinda felt sorry for the folks that talked about hell as a thing for none believers. To me, it represents a dark place in those 'believers' hearts.
While I was questioning I happened to go into a (very good) haunted house where the theme was hell/demons. I ended up having a panic attack inside. 🙃
Your videos really help me. Especially now with me just the other month figuring out that I don’t believe in God anymore. It’s been a very hard process. The hardest being telling my youth minister and his wife I don’t believe in God anymore. They’re both like parents to me and I don’t wanna lose them. But your videos give me hope that I have a future despite not believing in God.
I really struggled with it as well. You'll get through this.
Maybe tell them that you can't come to church for few days so you can think about life for few days. And then when you have fortified your decision, tell him how you feel exactly, don't mince words
I feel this. Haven't told my family. Probably never will
I felt this way too. I was in SDA at the time, and my whole community was Christian at the time. It was scary, but I eventually made it through. It can be difficult, but make sure you are building community in other places. This helped me a lot in the long run.
oh, man. i feel this so much. you are definitely not alone. i've had to reject friends' offers because it feels weird and odd and forced to join youth group stuff when there's no point to it. people started to pay me no mind ever since i was forced to get out of ministry for dating a baptist (the church was pentecostal). it felt really scary and lonely for a bit but it didn't last. eventually, you will meet people like you, share your experiences, and bare that burden with you. it's scary but you yourself would know what will make you most fulfilled in life and the most happiest. wish you well on your journey and deconstruction. you got this 😄
As a person who never grew up with religion I love your insight to the mind of someone who was indoctrinated. It helps me empathize with people who were. I try, but sometimes it's hard to understand the way their mind works, I like your candid way of telling us your experience and strange thoughts. We all have weird thoughts, thank you for letting us in.
The Guilt is so pervasive. I told my parents I was feeling guilt for everything all the time. My mom told me I should go to confession🤦♀️. I told her I needed therapy. I was a grown adult when I finally figured this out.
TLDR: There are too many contradictions and too much suffering of good people just to be told to 'have faith'
Edit: I didn't realise I wrote so much, sorry, I just feel like I needed to share .
I know I'm late to the party but I've waited for this moment.
I was born into a Christian family, my grandfather (dad's side) was a church minister at an evangelical church and my granny would help out. It was very honest and they didn't take profits ect. My gran now runs a food bank from the church and backs up the church funding via a charity shop. My mom's side all raised Methodist. For the most part, as a child, I was happy to go to church, it was fairly normal to see my family members up front doing talks ect, everyone knew me. My family moved to the UK from SA before I was born, my dad convinced my mom to move with my older brother when she was 21, leaving her family and everything so they could join his parents. A few years later after I was born, my mom found out that my dad cheated on her. They were married. Very Christian wedding. My grandfather married them. My dad told me mom and everyone else that God told him to do it.
That was where it started.
My parents got a divorce, moved a few miles away with my brother and mom. My aunt moved to the UK at that point so we lived near her. My mom kept her Christianity. My aunt and her (then) husband worked at a local church so we started going there. It was evangelical again but felt less cult/ flags and horns, and more, massive stage, bands and a big show. Very impersonal and different to what I had seen. It went from a group of like 30 people in a small church to a massive hall with like 300 with professional lighting sound and music. My cousin got close to one if the pastors daughters, they got married/ had kids. It is when I learned that none of them worked. They got all of their money from the church. Pastor drove a Harley/ always went on holiday to America ect.
This was a very questionable thing to me. Why is it hundreds of people are donating money for religious reasons, just for it to go in someone's pocket so they can take their kids to Disney land every year?
We stopped going after a few years when my aunt moved away. My mom met my stepdad who wasn't remotely religious so it was always my mom kinda nudging him to try go.
Few years later my mom grew to not really like the idea of these huge super churches. She wanted something more personal (but not traditional, cold, boring church).
When I became a teenager I started looking why some people ignore the old testament, despite it all supposedly being messages from god ect so I slowly broke away from what I knew because I did more and more research. I was very curious of other religions too because all I knew was Christianity.
I started learning how similar most religions are and how some even acknowledge Jesus in their scriptures. That was a real eye opener for me. What made Christianity right and everyone else wrong? Why can't we just uphold the moral values of Christianity without having to go to church?
In my late teens, my granny moved over from India (we are all nomads) - we hadn't seen her in person in years, she came to live with us. A couple months later she told us she has breast cancer. She was mostly fine for months til about a 2 weeks before she passed. The first week she just became very tired and didn't have much energy, the second week it all went downhill, she ended up in hospital and the last couple days, she suffered horribly, didn't even have the strength to hold one of those little cups of juice. She had several strokes in the night and couldn't talk, move or anything. She seemed to pass peacefully. But, why must someone who honestly devoted her whole life to Christianity suffer so much? Why did 'god' let this happen?
A couple years later, my grandfathers turn (to clarify, he was the minister who would travel to India every year to help build an orphanage). Again, cancer (in the bone marrow - can't think of the correct term). He was a large man - 6ft3 - slightly overweight - spent years in the navy when he was young so still had a larger muscle mass then what you'd expect. I watched this large, kind man, lose most of his muscle mass, half his body weight and become very weak. Similarly, he turned for the worse very quickly and suffered. The last day or so, it was hard to know wether he was awake or not, he would quietly mumble at most. We only knew he passed because he stopped breathing. My granny read the Bible the exact minute he passed "for as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil" the whole time I was in an absolute daze because I couldn't help but think - again, someone who had devoted so much of their life to Christianity in such a way, suffer so greatly?
The final straw for me is my brother, I have been very close to him for years and we've both always just gone along with what were told, however, as we both got older, we realised how similar our views are. We thought it might of been because we were both raised the same? But the more we talked about it the more we realised how fundamentally wrong Christianity is in so many ways. From how modern churches are funded, how medieval English churches had more of a political position which forced the religion to be important and the Bible being an absolute fever dream.
Every time we asked our family about any of this, we got the typical answer of "you need to have faith and trust in God" (what Christians tell you when they can't give you an answer to anything serious).
We had both been left with more questions then answers. Why, despite being in the Vatican, are so many ancient Bible scriptures hidden in vaults? What is to hide? What is so crazy and contradictory, that we can't see it? What scriptures have been lost already due to paper of that time being so fragile? What actually is god? How do we know if the people who wrong the Bible ~2000 years ago wasn't just misinterpreting things? What are we not told?
This is a bit 'tin foil hat' - but, we live in a 3 dimensional plain, if we stuck out hand into a 2d world, it would look insane, like a weird, morphing, live MRI - to us we could comprehend what were looking at - to a 2d creature it would be fucking insane - this crazy weird morphing creature that just popped into the sky and left just as quickly. Would the 2d guy see our hand as a god? So taking this further, what if a higher dimensional being briefly popped it's hand into our universe? That being could be the most damned, hated and disgusting being in their plane of existence, yet, because we couldn't previeve this higher power properly, would we consider this as god?
I know this is a seriously long read, if you've genuinely mad eit this far, it is appreciated.
One final thing:
Why are we told to 'love thy neighbor' yet, to hate and kill anyone who disagrees with Christianity?
What the fuck is going on?
Today, I'm still not sure about my faith, I believe that yes, there could be something, a higher power. Do I believe it is god? I'm not sure. Do I believe in Christianity? To some degree, I still uphold the values of respect and kindness to others. The idea that I have been brought to this earth, just to kneel down and be thankful my whole life to something or else I'll go to hell - it plain narcissistic.
Well, the second I clicked on this video, I got an ad for "yes he is", which is a CZcams channel dedicated to spreading the good word of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. The joys of irony.
I really enjoy these videos and even my mum, who is a pretty devout Christian, agrees with some of your points. Thank you for another great video :)
I got that exact ad at the end of the video.
"It is blind faith to believe humans came from apes" no it is a fact humans are apes.
"That makes you totally immoral" ... Why?
Lovers of hierarchy just can't grok the idea of grassroots morality.
You're a smart dude, but don't ever say that your trauma was less than someone else's. When I heard that story about then forcefully cutting your hair, I was shocked. It was an invasion of your autonomy. That's fucked up.
As a kid, I got ambush-baptized at a friend's church at a picnic she invited me to one summer. As in grabbed from behind, dagged to the river by a group of people while I struggled, and dunked like it was all wholesome fun, adults and children all ignoring my confused terror, singing and clapping and assuring 9-year old me this was normal and good. I had kind of forgotten that experience, mixed in with everything else from growing up, but the hair-cutting story brought it back. Now to me as an adult, if anyone ever did that to my kid, you'd have a hard time convincing me that destroying them legally and locking them away would be enough. I'd be rabid about it, but my parents didn't seem to see why it was a big deal to me at the time at all. But that day I lost any trust in groups of people all following the same group/think narrative, even though I didn't have the right words to articulate that experience for years after.
“Guilty feelings,” “fear of hell,” “DC Talk”-yeah I’d say those are about equally terrible
dc talk is my worst...................god jesus freaks was so bad i just want to forget it!
What is a DC talk? My brain shuts off at acronyms sometimes.
"you will be sing Jesus Freak on your deathbed" ...guess i really am damned
@@ddjsoyenby No, it wasn't.
I’m kinda glad my ADHD makes it night impossible to think about the far future. Even when I was in the faith I just couldn’t conceive the idea of an afterlife. So I never really developed a fear of Hell nor a longing for Heaven.
Wait ...that is a ADHD thing ......😶 that explains things
I’m Christian and had a argument with a friend who is also Christian, because he couldn’t understand his hypocrisy when I pointed out that everyone’s “truth” is different and others can accuse him of living a false “truth” like he accuses others.
That ending made me feel warm inside, thank you! My family's church was very fire and brimstone, and I butted heads early on by asking if how heaven could be perfect if you knew that others were suffering in hell.
the reason why i love this channel is because it talks about issues that us ex evangelicals/atheists go through, especially religious trauma.i grew up in the church and i have a very religious family. for many years i’ve battled with depression and suicidal thoughts because of how much religion is forced into me. this channel has really helped me with my mental health because now i know I’m not alone and that other people go through the same experiences that i do.
As a former Pentacostal I often catch myself defaulting to a certain way of thinking and I call it church brain.
Same man
Same
You wanna hear somethin funny? If I was never taken to a church, like a physical church with people and pastors and all that, I might still be a Christian.
You would be worshipping in a manner more consistent with the Bible in that case, too.
Personnally I was growing up in a very secular environment so I never considered seriously the whole "but what if you're wrong" though the more I see the way Hell is used by pastors and apologists the more I realise what it essentially is : a threat.
The 30 rock skit hit very close to home. I was atheist for some of my teen years, when I had a friend who was an evangelical Christian. I would even argue that she was one of the better apologists I've ever met. She invited me to her church on Sunday, and I agreed to go along, and while I was never really close to joining her religion, just that one visit kind of clinched it for me. I kept glancing over at her to check that the reverend hadn't gone way off the rails, and this was just how it normally was.
(A few years later, at her wedding, the same pastor married them, and I swear he basically gave the same Hell-awaits-thee thing at the wedding pulpit. The bride was radiant.🤷🏻♂️)
My mother is a protestant christian. I slept with both my father well into my teenage years, because I'm autistic and was afraid of sleeping alone. I remember one night when my mother woke up crying, very anxious and afraid, and my father asked her what was wrong. And she said: "I can't go to Hell, I don't want to go to Hell!" And that really haunted me, it still does. Just imagining the abusive relationship with God that people develop and how hurtful it ends up being. I love my mother, I don't want her to be this afraid.
“heaven and hell - a history of the afterlife” by Bart D Ehrman helped me a lot with deconstructing hell
Oh
During my time in the church I remember crying myself to sleep every night out of guilt over sin terrified of retribution over me just being myself. Once I left and washed my hands clean I felt free and happy and later came out as pansexual to my family and spouse and now feel free to act as myself and feel proud of that. If there's anything that I left the faith with it's the lessons I will leave to my two children about the dangers of faith and religion and what can happen to you as well as all the stories of horrific corruption I only learned about later in life because so much was deliberately hidden from me.
Ty once again for making these and love the podcast
I grew up in an end-times + faith healing cult and to this day I still feel guilty going to the doctor, getting vaccinations, or even just buying cold medicine. Every time I start to feel sick, my first thought is that I need to pray for forgiveness; that I must have done something wrong to be outside of God's healing. Even though I've been out of that cult for almost 8 years, and haven't even believed in God in almost 2, the trauma of that mindset, among other things, is still so ingrained into me.
My biggest issue is the guilt. I feel guilty when i wear the clothes i enjoy even if it's in private because it's not up to christian 'modesty' standards. I feel bad when i wear a bikini and when i say no to anything.... i know it's just christian indoctination but fuck it feels bad...
A loving person wouldn't control you by guilt and your feelings is the best argument I've heard yet.
The big thing that lingered for me was feeling useless without God. Something you’re always told growing up Christian is that you’re nothing without God. I would pray every morning and night bc I thought if I didn’t I would fail at everything. Ironically I felt more like nothing when I prayed than when I didn’t lol. The effects of that cycle have messed me up, I have no motivations or aspirations bc I assumed God would lead me to them.
Catholic: "There's nothing _Catholic_ about guilt!"
Every Catholic who's ever talked to a non-Catholic: "lmao"
Doctor: "I'm sorry, you had a terrible stroke and you have only hours left to live."
Patient: **realises that that was the truth and the truth always brings life(????)**
**LIVES**
Recovering church volunteer here! I remember my dad said to me once that if someone in the church asks you to do something, that's God telling you to do something. Even as a child I thought that was messed up!
(I also just want to mention how much I appreciate your work. I am finally getting down to the roots of my religious trauma in therapy and the way that you focus on unpacking all this in such a kind and honest way has been incredibly helpful in my healing.)
That story about you being forced to shave your head. That right there, is why I never converted to Christianity. It's such a small thing, but it says so much about how those communities have always appeared to me. There is a whole lot of talk about acceptance, friendship, and family, but in the end, I (or anyone else in the group) is really just a means to an end. Whether it is "spreading the gospel", becoming another tally on the "how many I converted to christ" scoreboard, or being a part of the happy, family-like facade that pastors want their congregation to look like to outsiders. I always felt like, when a religious leader talked to me, there was an alterior motive, and they didn't really see or care about me, as a person. That's why I call all pastors, preachers, etc. "used car salesmen".
This is exactly what I am talking about. Being a Christian is such a traumatic experience for many of us, It may be more so when one comes from a cultish denomination that even when you are out, all those memories still linger and it takes so much effort to try to undo whatever messed up feelings of shame, fear, guilt you were taught to internalize so deeply as a child.
As an anxious and depressed person it felt real good thinking god thought I should feel bad for basically being alive. I literally felt guilty doing anything that MAY displease someone. Still trying to feel okay speaking my opinions and wants.
Ah, yes, I remember feeling guilty of dating a same sex partner, and remembering that I was told in church that if I felt bad it was God calling me, you know, "you know deep in your heart that you are doing something wrong".
The guilt thing is so true. I’ve be questioning the church for the last few months and I think I want leave, but I feel guilty every time I think about it. I also feel guilty whenever I don’t dress “modestly” or at least the way my parents think is modest. I feel guilty swearing. I feel guilty for realizing I’m Asexual and Bisexual. I feel guilty typing this whole thing out. I even feel guilty watching this video. . . The fear of hell is so real too! Every night I think about it, even before I started questioning things I always felt that I was never good enough and would go to hell.
I'll admit I left Christianity but I still enjoy the music. It's beautiful and a lot of the time the message can apply to more than religion
The music is a banger
Same :) Ifind myself struggling with many issues I have ignored for a couple of years. But i still love listening to Josh Garrels and Young Oceans.. and I love that beauty is appreciated.
Watching this gives me flashbacks to my Catholic school days. I remember in 6th grade we were told to describe what our hell and heaven looked like. Of course hell was the place of nightmares and heaven was the place of peace and love. The fact that you can scare children into certain beliefs and thinking so small mindedly at such a young age so easily is frightening.
I love the "we'll help you find Jesus" ads before all your videos.
I'm extremely happy that I never felt guilt, despite my Father's effort to try & drill it into me
I can't tell you how much these videos mean to me. The image I have of Christianity is broken, like Santa or the Easter Bunny, and I can't go back to believing it... I've tried. I've legitimately been terrified that I can't believe what i once did because if it's right imma suffer for eternity.
It's legit paralyzed me.
Thank you.
Yup. 10 years in I'm finally dropping the deep seated stuff. It's so worth it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen or heard R.C. Sproul before, but ngl his voice is really calming. I definitely would've preferred his sermons versus the "hellfire and brimstone" sermons yelled at me growing up.
I saw a sermon of his where he says that people in Heaven will have no problem with their loved ones being in Hell because they will be so sanctified that they will just love God's perfect justice.
His haircut is fascinating, also.
@@h.g.wellington2500 never mind then.
@@sassylittleprophet yeah, it's downright creepy
@@h.g.wellington2500 actually, that's even more terrifying, to imagine hearing him say THAT in his calm voice . . . that's even more Orwellian than it already otherwise would be.
Same product, new packaging. That's a shame. I honestly didn't expect any different (I was expecting to be corrected in the comments), but I was holding out hope for him. Damn it.
"We have never found transitional fossils, and we never will" There are transitional species alive today...
Lol hella true. I've had that "Awesome God" song stuck on my head since 1998.
Hey dude you don’t need to minimize that shit with your hair that’s a major violation it’s not a bad haircut it’s a nonconsensual haircut and yeah that’s not the worst thing someone can force onto your body but it’s still a massive violation of bodily autonomy.
Yeah that's a terribly traumatizing thing to have happen...
Thank you Trevor for your vulnerability in this video and on your channel in general. I’m a recent subscriber and your channel has been helping me deconstruct after thinking I didn’t really need to. So thank you for that as well. Also the conclusion to this video was so well put and totally resonated! I’m glad we all have each other here on this channel as we shed our old skin 🌱
That Living Waters tidbit was particularly atrocious. It's like 'Well, we flawed, meager humans use an awful system to deal with people who commit crimes, so shouldn't an all-powerful god use something infinitely worse?'
I mean...no? Not at all? I'm utterly perplexed why they'd expect _less_ from their god. For all they talk him up they sure don't paint him in a good light. Or even a competent one.
DC talk STILL haunts me... it's hard to keep "jesus freak" or "in the light" from popping into my head...
The fear of hell or any sort of life after death has stuck with me for a few years. I have only recently gotten over the fear (kinda).
Nevermind, its now worse than it ever was.
I'm always thinking about if/when I'll die, then I'll have to show all the terrible/embarrassing things I did to loved ones. And I won't lie, when I do acts like donate plasma and blood, I keep seeing a scale of deeds sometimes. Which is why I remind myself that the real reason I'm doing it is because I want to do good, because the world is shitty. And it deserves to be better. Not because I fear punishment. But I don't think it'll ever go away.
What mainly sticks around for me is nervousness and guilt with certain triggers. Too full? You're gluttonous, feel guilty. You're taking a nap instead of studying? Guilt. You thought about murdering someone? Guilt. You sweared in your mind at a neighbor's dog that's been barking nonstop since 3am? Guilt! God, why is it appropriate pedagogy for them to make little kids afraid of every little "bad thought" they might have?
The fear of hell was definitely the one thing that held me back the longest it was mostly like dawg if I'm wrong about this move I'm fucked
To this day (@ age 36), something that has stuck with me is, waking up at night to make sure that my family hasn't been taken away in the "rapture". How absolutely damaging! I could go on and on with the damage Christianity has caused me, but I imagine nearly everyone following this channel has similar experiences.
In my experience the one thing that lasts the longest is the trauma; fear of hell went first, and the guilt didn't start leaving until I spoke with my father about it--a very devout elder, he was one of the few I heavily modeled myself after as a child.
But thank to my experiences I am terrified of any sanctuary from the organization I attended at night, half of my nightmares came from that place, after all.