Imma be totally honest. Shit like this is why it's really hard for me not to hate christianity. This man makes beautiful music. I grew up with this man as a regular part of my musical diet. I'll never be able to listen to his music the same way again
So much of christianity is based on what effectively amounts to self hate. A perpetual state of guilt that is used to prevent people from actually embracing themselves in favor of some narrow idea of acceptable behavior.
A lot of christianity is based on the rejection of self worth. After all, human righteousness is as filthy rags, and our own hearts are deceitful. It's the perfect environment to incubate self hatred, victim blaming, and guilt.
Christianity is particularly perfect for this goal, since you don't even need an external source for that self hatred. It is in and of itself a religion of guilt and self renunciation, that, if fully absorbed, can very easily lead to people victim blaming and hating themselves.
Straight, cis people who are comfortable with a conservative lifestyle are unlikely to be able to relate to this. But I can say with some degree of confidence that much of my development growing up was stunted by religious internalization.
Constantly felt guilty over doing completely normal things people do as a teenagers. Over experiencing the wrong kinds of feelings. The very action of doubt in and of itself was something to feel guilty about.
One of my best friends is a tomboy of sorts who I watched have her individuality gradually crushed so she could live up to some ideal standard of the christian lady.
I was lucky enough to remove my mind from that internal prison by my late teens, but I still was unpacking aspects of that self hatred and fear of eternal punishment for a few years after I gave up the beliefs.
That's probably why I'm not as harsh on the standard new atheist types as many others are. They were a big part of helping to remind me of how silly those beliefs were when I initially left the faith.
I remember when I was brought to my pastor a few months or so after I told my parents I was an atheist. And he told me "you're not an atheist, you've just made yourself your own god". When I first heard that it really hurt me
Overtime, this pain has subsided. There's a quote from Stirner that I always think of now that goes:
I love it. I don't need an excuse to embrace who I am. I won't let the chains of the god that were given to me prevent me from actually being myself anymore.
It pains me to see so many people who still will not take up their own cause, instead constantly taking up the cross of christ, not out of joy, but out of fear, guilt, and self renunciation.
I really have trouble envisioning a modern version of christianity that does not still have this problem of fetishizing humanity's fundamental unworthiness. I hope it happens, but my perspective is just too poisoned by self hating, bigoted, guilt ridden christians.
that's the end of the vent
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I'm going to initiate some Christianity discourse, because I've always found the way leftists talk about Christianity uncomfortable, and I'd like to cease that discomfort.
I'm especially curious to hear the thoughts of some of my christian anarchist and socialist comrades such as @VoluntaryDom on this because y'all are actually still in the faith and have found a way to reconcile it with your liberatory outlooks.
To start off, I'll detail what I see as the main stream enlightened leftoid view on christianity is, do some speculation on why that position is popular, then I will contrast it with my own based on my personal experiences with the christian faith and scripture.
the Soc dem left lexi discourse confirms one of my fears about the ways we have generally argued for queer liberation.
Historically, the argument has revolved around whether or not being gay or trans is a choice. This rhetorical device made it easy to compare queer liberation to the civil rights movement, which likely played a central role in increasing queer acceptance.
Despite its effectiveness, this argument in some ways obscures the full purpose of queer liberation and largely to the detriment of certain kinds of queer people.
The history of marginalized people's struggle for liberation is the history of those marginalized groups being internally divided into the good one's and the bad one's by those in power.
This history manages to do harm to both the said "good ones" and their "bad" counterparts.
For the bad one's, it obviously makes them an easy scapegoat and often makes members of their community turn on them. For an example of this, look at how some straight passing/masculine gay men talk about more effeminate or flamboyant gay men.