Thread by @mcjulie

I became aware of this ?guy? because everyone in my feed was dunking on the first tweet, but I got curious -- how the heck is a "Kiss Army General" also a religious fanatic? -- Looked at his feed & spotted the second, the "Jesus lends you a hand" tweet --

Which, coming up just after this tweet, gave me Thoughts.

https://twitter.com/inchorinfinity/status/1386762808981852164

Like, having been raised in the evangelical church I'm extremely familiar with the mem that Jesus is there to help you out but I'm still not exactly sure what he's supposed to do for you.

"Mem" = "meme"
Anyway, long before leaving the church entirely I was really cynical about that "reach out to Jesus!" stuff because it seemed pretty obvious that there was absolutely no correlation between being a Christian &, for example, dying/not dying of cancer.

Even as a kid -- with no conscious intention of leaving the family religion -- I rolled my eyes at the favorite evangelical narrative of the "lost" person who "finds" Christ & turns their life around because I didn't actually know anybody like that.

Everyone I knew who was a Christian, it was because their parents or their spouse or somebody was a Christian already and brought them into it. Or, they were raised in a DIFFERENT Christian religion & converted to the evangelical church as adults.

So, the first thought I had was this: ex-evangelicals who leave & tell the story "you know, actually, the church really messed me up" are a terrible threat to the evangelical story.

Because if what WE say is true (and, uh, it is) then the evangelical faith is exposed as a lie, because it doesn't work at all the way they say it does. It's not a guaranteed path to meaning, comfort, happiness, success in this life and blessed assurance of bliss in the next life

Which is correct, because there is no guaranteed path to any of those things. Everyone has to find their own way. The fact that evangelical Christianity is that path for some -- I mean, good for you? But it means nothing to me. I was ALREADY there, I ALREADY tried it.

But, for evangelicals, who hard-sell their faith as the Best-EVER Product For Life, it's devastating to the brand to have a bunch of unhappy customers leaving no-star reviews on the website.

As in yesterday's "Jesus is chocolate ice cream" thread

https://twitter.com/mcjulie/status/1387074631366955010

But the second thought I had was about how Christianity itself is another "if you need help just ask for it" lie. Like, you're having trouble in life? Oh, sorry to here it, try this imaginary friend!

And it struck me as really weird how normal we seem to think that is. To look at people who are hurting in life and our solution is to try to get them to start talking to our imaginary friend.

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