Spirituality
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Sorry, no grace!
I have been encouraged by “moderate” and supposedly progressive Christians to “have grace” and “give the benefit of doubt” for Christian Trump voters. Let me take a minute to explain why that’s ridiculous and enables the problem.
I’ve been told “Yes, Trump and right-wing policies are opposed to Christ, but most of his Christian voters meant well. They felt stuck choosing between the lesser of two evils or were unaware of some of Trump’s plans. They were doing their best with the misinformation and community pressure they’ve received.” My disagreement with this led to my being accused of seeing things through a rigid binary. Let me be clear: I value nuance, AND I see absolutely no excuse for this behavior. The world is complex, AND there is no moral gray area in supporting Trump, especially as a Christian. Excusing an antichrist agenda woven into Christendom because “they are one of us” and “didn’t mean it” is exactly how we got to where we are today.
Project 2025 is a full-scale attack on the humanity of its victims. It is the American Holocaust and I can only hope it is stopped before the history books have to call it that.
I understand a lot of Trump voters are stuck in an insular church bubble that feeds them a very narrow worldview. I grew up in that, so I get it. I understand that there is extreme pressure to conform and if you don’t, you lose everything. It happened to me, and it’s extremely traumatic and the cost is so high that sometimes our brains don’t let us even consider going against the grain because of how much damage we would take in the process. It’s self-preservation, I suppose.
But isn’t that the very message we are taught in church? To take a stand even when it’s hard? To swim upstream? To be willing to sacrifice everything to do what’s right? To even give up our lives to defend what is good and true?
I appreciate how extremely difficult it is to access accurate information in high-control religious communities. I experienced firsthand the rules aimed at prohibiting meaningful engagement in the outside world. I remember the brainwashing and fear-mongering that anyone different is trying to destroy us; the stories that I was in danger and only the church was safe. It mirrors the narrative pushed by Republicans (“The radical left is trying to destroy our country! Take America back!”).
The similarities are no surprise when 81% of Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. I can have compassion for the challenges that abused and isolated Christians face. But the same time, I believe there are no excuses for evil (and that’s a Christian message, if I ever heard one). We are all responsible for our own actions. Casting blame on church culture or peer pressure just kicks the pebble further down the road. Culture and peers are made up of individuals, and at some point, somebody needs to take responsibility for what is happening. Actually, all of us do. We need to be willing to pay the very high cost to do the right thing. We must humbly admit the ways we have participated in and contributed to toxic church culture even under duress, and then do what we can to make it right. I think we need to ask the hard question of why church culture is often (roughly 81% of the time) so insular, misinformed and controlling in the first place.
I’ve been reassured that it’s “not all Christians” and those who are mature in their faith can see through Trump’s rhetoric. That’s great, but it’s curious that such a small percentage of Christians have this maturity (19%) and anyone who cares about furthering the Kingdom of God should find that worth investigating.
Call me rigid, but I believe it is a hard-to-swallow truth that no matter how well-meaning or misinformed, anyone who votes for Trump or stands idly by is directly responsible for the deaths, imprisonment, poverty, and sicknesses that will come about and I’m including my own family members in this. Without the voters this literally wouldn’t be happening right now. So yes, they’re responsible. This isn’t about right or left, but about right and wrong.
Hold up, you say. That’s a little extreme! Responsible for deaths?
If I’m applying Evangelicals’ own standards, yes. Binary thinking is exactly how these types of Christians view salvation. Their theology says that even though not everyone has equal access to the gospel, every person is still personally responsible for accepting what little they know about it. If they don’t, they go to hell. The “unsaved” are not afforded the excuse of misinformation or community pressure, so why should Christians be granted this leniency?
It’s a double standard to say that Christians supporting the American Holocaust because of how they were influenced are well-meaning and God-fearing, while someone raised Muslim or Hindu with little opportunity to question it, is still wrong enough to go to hell. You can’t have it both ways. We are either responsible for our actions or we’re not.
I get it that some Trump voters don’t like him and think they have to choose between the lesser of two evils. I personally know people who feel that way. But it should be terrifying that the majority of the American church is able to convince their followers that welcoming immigrants, providing healthcare and housing assistance, protecting the environment, and granting equal opportunity is a greater evil than the belligerent racism, sexism and classism Trump very publicly espouses. It wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t cleverly disguised; Trump’s entire platform ran on the promotion of very blatant and graphic hate. And 81% of Evangelicals, regardless of why, saw that and said “yep! That’s my leader!”
In many ways Evangelicalism has become a political cult using religion to manipulate and control people. Religion is a very effective tool of coercion, and I do wonder how many of these leaders and influencers don’t care about Jesus and are just playing the long game for power. Billionaires know their goals are more palatable draped in “good ol’ fashioned family values”. I recommend looking up Project Russia and its relationship with religion and the similar trajectory in the US with Project 2025.
Even if Trump is somehow stopped tomorrow, I believe there needs to be a very deep look taken at the mainstream American church and what it has become and how we have gotten here. Looking up James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and The Heritage Foundation and their political lobbying for the last 40-50 years is a good but terrifying place to start.
I won’t give grace to Trump voters because of the gravity of consequences of those extreme right-wing ideologies. They are antithetical to Christ, they get people killed, they are fueled by hate and control and power and punishment. The pursuit of Truth is a core Christian tenet, and we don’t get to downplay our actions when we don’t do that.
The Christian calling is to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular and traumatic. We can’t explain away our support of oppression as being a result of manipulation from community pressure and propaganda. It’s the job of Christians to see through that. We expect it from non-Christians when we ask them to go against their families, cultures, communities and everything they have ever known to follow Christ. You can’t put individual responsibility on non-believers to secure “salvation” no matter their context, and at the same time think it’s justifiable for Christians to support evil if their church tells them to.
Besides, by Christian rhetoric access to the Holy Spirit should be more than enough of a resource to point Christians in the right direction. Because “the Holy Spirit is our conscience”, right? That’s what makes Christians morally superior to non-Christians, is “we have the Holy Spirit and they don’t”? And that’s why “we can discern the truth and they’re hopelessly lost without Christ”? Sound familiar? Yep, no excuses!
The furthest, most extreme and controversial left-wing ideology that I can personally think of is redistribution of wealth. And it’s controversial because people would rather hoard resources than help others like Jesus tells us to do. But it’s directly Biblical with the Old Testament concept of Jubilee and Chapters 1-2 of Acts. And yet somehow it’s the radical left that endangers Christian values and the American lifestyle?
Many Christians put politics before faith. My parents are always talking shit about Mormons. But my dad voted for Romney, who is a Mormon and my dad knew that. I asked him why he could vote for a Mormon and he said It’s because they had similar values. But then he refused to vote for Obama or Biden, both of whom are Christians and attend church regularly. Clearly, my dad and a lot of Christians like him, have greater allegiance to the Republican party than to their faith. It’s become about politics and control instead of allegiance to Christ. The latter is a justification to keep people voting for these conservative power grabs and destruction of the vulnerable.
The way I see it, there are true Christians in the margins of American evangelicalism, but the movement as a whole is so far warped beyond its original intent. It’s a political cult now and honestly has been for a long time.
If the American Church received one of the “Letters to the Churches” like those in Revelation, I believe it would be VERY strongly worded to the point where we’d be envious of the those who only received “will spit you out of my mouth.”
Just look at our American “Christian Heritage”:
See how many of our American Christian leaders endorsed the KKK or received funding from it (Billy Sunday and Bob Jones Sr did, for example).
Bob Jones University, one of the most well-known Christian universities in our country, didn’t lift their ban on interracial relationships until they lost accreditation for it. It wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts.
The Southern Baptist Convention only exists because they split off from the Northern Baptists over support of slavery.
Billy Graham, the father of Evangelicalism and responsible for roughly 90% of Baby Boomers coming to Christ, told Nixon to finish Hitler’s job and said the Civil Rights Movement had gone too far.
James Dobson has proven ties with Paul Popenoe and promoted Eugenics and Conversion Therapy. Not to mention The Heritage Foundation and how it was a conservation political power grab under the guise of family values. They’ve been weakening our democracy for decades. Dobson also advocated for beating children and made millions off his classes and books such as “The Strong-Willed Child” which is a manual on child abuse.
Focus on the Family knowingly interviewed fake “Ex-Muslim terrorists” to “prove” horrible things about Muslims to get Christians angry and afraid. They went out of their way to intentionally create racial tension and racially-motivated hate, for no other reason than increasing the hold they had over their followers and increase support for their evil plans.
Moody Bible Institute was built with funds gifted from the wealthy anti-union activist Cyrus McCormick Jr., well-known for his employees being killed when striking. Yet Dwight Moody praised Cyrus’ wealth as a “gift from God”. When Reverend Fielden said it was actually a gift of unjust capitalism at the expense of the workers, he was sentenced to death while Moody continued to receive large donations from the wealthy. This is one of our most prestigious Christian Universities in our country.
Gary Ezzo advocated for beating babies starting at 7 months, and made millions from his classes and curriculums.
After his death, it came to light that the popular preacher and theologian Ravi Zacharias was a sexual predator and had potentially hundreds of sexual assault victims.
John Piper, an extremely influential Evangelical theologian and author of many well-known Christian books, publicly teaches that women should submit to beatings from their husbands. The clip is readily available on YouTube if you can stomach it.
This recap doesn’t even touch on huge sweeping Christian movements like the IBLP (watch the documentary “Shiny Happy People”) or the more contemporary Hillsong (watch the documentaries “The Secrets of Hillsong” and “Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed”). Hillsong is sung in Evangelical churches more than any other “songwriter” and is involved in multiple ongoing sexual abuse scandals and is well-known for using their tax-exempt status to make real estate investments for their wealthy leaders.
This is just a shallow skimming of the surface of the American Evangelical movement. This is why I believe that at best, a minority of true Christians are in the margins of this movement. Unless the core of Christianity is evil, which at this point I could definitely be convinced of, then this is about power and oppression, not religion. Religion is the means to the end and anyone who cares even a little bit about Christ’s message should flee from and fight against the American Church.
When I started taking Jesus’ teachings seriously, the church put a target on my back. When I started learning about biblical nonviolence, my best friends started distancing themselves from my “extremism”. The church can’t have “The Lord’s Army” going soft. When I started studying the first chapters of Acts and reading about intentional and sustainable community, I was screamed at for being a liberal commie. Nothing enrages Christians more than the Bible.
This is the foundation this country is built on.
Our history is very dark.
There is not even the smallest amount of ethical wiggle room allowable for people who use their religion to terrorize others. So no, I do not give the benefit of doubt to Christians who voted for Trump. I hold them to their own theology. Sorry, no grace!
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Be Present for Joy
Joy isn’t always in the present. But it isn’t anywhere else, either.
Joy doesn’t live in the past, or the future. This little millisecond sliding through time, splitting the future from the past is all we have. Trying to fight that kills any possibility of joy.
I say this in the middle of extremely dark and terrifying times. It’s because of those very times that I say this.
I would love to be in another timeline as much as the next person, but we need to stay present and try not to dissociate or long for the past or mentally speed ahead to a better future.
I am not advocating for toxic positivity. Injustice is infuriating and rightly so. Grief and rage are warranted and needed. But we can’t live on rage alone. Without any joy, we die.
During these dangerous and evil days, finding joy in the present often requires zooming way in, up close and looking at our day under a microscope. Zoom in on the building blocks of life that are easily missed. Zoom in to feel the warm sun on your face. Zoom in to enjoy the dew drops on a blade of grass. Zoom in to relish the tickle of curly toddler hair against your neck, their little heartbeat against your chest. Zoom in to the buzz of crickets on a still night. Zoom in to a loved one’s laugh. Zoom in to meditate on the smell of muffins in the oven or the takeout on your counter. Breathe.
Anxieties are high. My own is through the roof. But I try my best not to let it take any more from me than is necessary. So I ground myself and try to focus on what I can control and what I love and not give up my joy voluntarily.
There will be moment where joy is impossible or inappropriate, but don’t let them take over more than their rightful space.
What can you find in your microscope today that could bring you a little joy?
Sometimes joy is all we have.
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The Meaning of Christmas
Is Christmas meaningless without Christ?
Some of my most cherished childhood memories are with my family at Christmastime. Baking cookies, decorating the tree, putting up lights, singing songs by the fire, attempting to create the longest paper chain, attending the candlelight service… It was a magical time full of fun, togetherness and deep spiritual meaning. My parents worked hard to make the Christmas season special and they succeeded. Their only crime was their misguided sincerity and loyalty to a high-control religion that sprinkled the season (and our entire lives) with toxicity.
Christmas is meaningless without Christ, I was reminded over and over.
It is silly for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas, I learned. Non-Christians only celebrate Christmas for the gifts or as an attempt to co-opt and sabotage sacred traditions that don’t belong to them. Non-Christians are lost, confused, and attempting to distract themselves from their own emptiness.
Intended or not, the message many Christian children receive is that there is no value in celebrating friendships and family or warmth and light during a cold, dark season, because nothing matters except Jesus. The implication was that happiness and pleasure and love and generosity are not worth appreciating on their own; you need to tack Jesus onto everything to make it worthwhile.
Fearful outcries warned that any celebration of Christmas not within the confines of Christianity was an attack on Christian values and truth itself.
A narrow meaning of Christmas was drilled into my head from an early age, and I now argue it is a shallow one.
“Apart from Christ, what’s the point of Christmas?”
Now I can confidently say that sometimes just celebrating being alive is enough. Life and love and being together is plenty to commemorate and set aside as sacred and holy.
The relationships that warm our hearts throughout the cold winter bring meaning and purpose I never felt while in the church. Dedicating time in our busy schedules for those who have our backs fosters a hope we only talked about in Christianity. The carefree bliss of the holidays spark a happiness I never knew when burdened with religious obligation and shame.
The holidays are ripe with meaning for me. We too, are celebrating light in the darkness. The only difference is where we believe that light comes from – oppressive rules or warm relationships? Pious duty or radical hospitality?
I believe the simple beauty of life is worth noticing and focusing on. That’s what makes ordinary things transcendent and extraordinary. Bright red holly berries against sparkly white snow, children’s faces lit up with glee, tasty food crackling over a fire, lending a helping hand to those in need – our response to the call to pay attention determines whether or not miracles exist.
There is so much to love about life even in dark and uncertain times; there is always hope if we are willing to nurture it. Isn’t that what the Christmas Story is all about? Choosing to seek out, interact with and celebrate the existence of light and love and hope no matter the circumstances. This is innately human and sacred and good.
And to me, that is the beautiful meaning of Christmas.
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To Believe or Not to Believe…
I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity.
Though I didn’t possess the self-awareness at the time, I no longer believed God was good, or that God believed in me.
It wasn’t a choice as much as a natural consequence of what I experienced, and it came to fruition some years before I fully left.
To believe, or not to believe… honestly, it’s an easy question.
Safety in the church had only ever been possible through extreme hypervigilance and precise showmanship.
It had been consistently demonstrated to me that God was someone to fear, to appease, to flatter even, in hopes of being spared.
After all, the very foundation of Christianity is built on the idea of being undeservingly saved from the wrath of God.
For two and a half decades my prayers were carefully crafted and recrafted, fervently offered and recanted. My prayer life was ruled by the terror of having said the wrong thing, or the right thing the wrong way. Or maybe I said it too many times or not enough.
I agonized over finding the sweet spot between praying faithfully with the persistence of the widow, and babbling on like the pagan. Pray without ceasing – I had better intercede once more. But what if I seemed desperate and cynical? What if my motives were wrong? Did I have to want something purely out of selfless altruism? Did I have to prove my request a noble cause? Or was it okay to want something just because it made me happy? What if a fleeting thought angered God and I was given the opposite of what I asked for, as a punishment?
Spiraling into panic became a spiritual rite, a holy ritual.
My faith mentor in college once asked me during a season of particular desperation: “Do you believe God wants to give you good things?”
I think she meant it more as a rhetorical question, an attempt to help ground me in a place of trust.
Praying fervently through a vulnerable housing situation with terrifying potential outcomes had worked me into quite the frenzy.
“Do you believe God wants to give you a good things?”
Suddenly, that’s when I knew.
“No. I don’t believe God wants to give me good things. At least not reliably.”
Why would he? Out of some cosmic goodwill? On a whim? Feeling particularly chummy today? Why would I believe God wants to give me good things, when I don’t have the track record to show for it? Why would God want to give me good things when his people were stingy users who made me earn my right to exist? Why would I believe God wants to give me a safe, stable and affordable housing situation where I can thrive, if I’m so sinful, bad and broken that I don’t even deserve love?
If I’m just filthy rags, why would I deserve anything more than mere survival? Actually, why would I even deserve that? Apparently I am entitled to only death and torture in hell. Why should God give me good things while turning a deaf ear to the grieving mother whose child is dying? Why should God give me a nice place to live but ignore the pleas of families who are starving? No, I really don’t believe God wants to give me good things. I think the best I can do is hope my prayers somehow hit the magic combination, because as an evangelical that’s all I know how to do.
My mentor seemed very surprised by my response, but thankfully gracious. She urged me to choose to trust that God wants to give good gifts to his children and to rest in that reassurance.
But it was too late at that point. I couldn’t undo my epiphany. However, in obedience I mustered up my courage to believe anyway. Interestingly, my prayed-over housing situation ended very poorly despite my due diligence in every place I had agency, and the consequences still negatively affect me financially today – a decade later.
I was beaten down by the adversity, but not shocked. As a faithful congregant I learned long ago I don’t deserve good things. God gives and God takes away – seemingly nonsensically – and I need to be grateful regardless. God uses extreme suffering to make us more submissive and loyal, so logically good gifts aren’t in line with that goal. “Blessings” make a lot more sense as a result of chance and privilege than divine favor, unless God is an asshole playing favorites.
As a good Christian girl I dutifully accepted I am nothing apart from God. I’m damaged and worthless, I don’t deserve love or mercy or to live in ease. God chooses my fate based on my holiness not my happiness. This was drilled into me incessantly since infancy.
If I don’t deserve heaven, why should I have an abundant life on earth? If I don’t deserve God’s love why would I deserve a person’s love? Why would I expect to be adored by a partner or valued as a friend? Abuse makes way more sense. Why should I expect to receive respect in the workplace? Standing up for myself seems silly in that context. If God brings hard times to make us more like him, why would I ever expect to be given joy and good things? Wouldn’t that undermine the cause? With so many millions of people suffering and dying in the world, why would I expect God to hear my prayers and not theirs? And if God did, is that something I could really feel good about?
Oh wait, that’s right, “God works in mysterious ways” and supposedly that solves everything.
In the 10 years that have passed since that fateful conversation with my mentor, I have been seriously abused by a partner, gone through a devastating divorce, been abandoned by the community I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, been used and then tossed aside when my volunteer labor was no longer needed. I fell in love with the most amazing person only to have him snatched away from me shortly after when he was killed in a tragic accident. I have been harassed and mistreated by the church yet again during the vulnerability of my grief, I was refused help when newly widowed because I wasn’t the “right” kind of Christian, large sums of money were stolen from me by Christians, I’ve experienced multiple serious health scares, slogged through anxiety and depression and PTSD. I was illegally retaliated against at my job, sexually harassed by another boss, betrayed by my closest friends one after another… After so much heartbreak I found a beautiful partnership with a fellow widow but we’ve had to work hard for our happiness, fought for survival in an unfair economy, lost our first child due to miscarriage… Oh, but God wants to give me good things! Great news! What’s the hold up, I wonder?!
My husband recently pointed out to me that whenever we go hiking together, I always walk on the side of the trail, almost in the bushes or rocks or whatever obstacles are there. When he asked me about it, I just shrugged and said it was natural for me to try to get out of the way so I didn’t block the view. After we processed it together, I realized that my opinion of myself is so low I don’t even believe I deserve the physical space my body takes up. Walking on the side of the trail is just a subtle manifestation of the mindset the church has trained into me, one that seemed so normal I didn’t even notice. I’m always stepping out of the way and making myself small and quiet and compliant. I’ve been trained to always anticipate other people’s needs and be quick to meet them and make them happy. I am very unfamiliar with my own needs, let alone confident in meeting them. It’s my purpose in life to always be grateful even if my prayers are met with stubborn silence or “NO” or I receive something dreadful. My duty is to praise God and be thankful and smile even when I am worn down over and over and slowly dying inside.
The short of it is I don’t matter.
Oh, but have you heard? God wants to give me good things! And apparently he is all-powerful and nothing is stopping him. So I guess he is just choosing not to. Apparently this merciful God turned a blind eye when my soulmate lost his life. Apparently the Great Gift-Giver took a vacation day when a pandemic swept our world killing millions and destroying the livelihoods of millions more. Apparently the Almighty Heavenly Father felt ambivalent about whether or not my baby ever got to see the light of day or meet her father.
So yes, while the indoctrination took a while to fully unravel, the first tug of a string was the shift to believing in God’s existence but not in his goodness.
I realize now I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity, and giving up the latter was more about coming to terms with the former.
To believe, or not to believe… Unfortunately, to me that’s an easy question.
Can you blame me?
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Following Christ got me Kicked Out of Christianity
The more serious I got about my faith and the more I let it change my life, the more the church hated me.
I was taught to follow Christ no matter the cost – turns out the highest cost was betrayal from Christians.
On Sundays we sang “I have decided to follow Jesus … though none go with me, still I will follow… no turning back, no turning back”. Yet when I went alone I was accused of going rogue.When Acts 2 and Acts 4 inspired me to give up an individualistic and consumerist lifestyle and pursue interdependent community living – I got called a socialist.
When I decided my faith should shape my life, I was accused of relying on works to save me.As I let God’s love break down my prejudices and biases, I saw the Image of God in all people – so I got labeled a universalist.
I couldn’t deny anymore the non-violent message of Christ and the pacifist lives of the earliest Christians – and was told I was getting too wrapped up in “non-essentials”, and getting my faith mixed up with hippie politics.
Studying American history, I came to the difficult conclusion that the US had never been a Christian nation, and that it could never be, as empires are always in direct opposition to Christ. I was attacked and called anti-American.
Christ said to love everyone – so I put people before doctrines. But I quickly found I could only love Church-approved people – white people, straight people, able-bodied people and wealthy people – without being reprimanded for following popular trends.
Humbly I decided I need to be a truth-seeker more than a truth-preacher, but now they said I was losing my way.
When I noticed the church pledges allegiance to politics more than Christ, I was called a libtard and snowflake.
I took Jesus seriously when he said to take in the stranger and help those in need – but Christians cared more about protecting borders than protecting lives and apparently if I didn’t like it here, I should move.
When I expanded my definition of family and did life with the people God put in my path, I was accused of breaking down family values.I asked hard questions like Jesus did in his parables, but I was shunned for going astray.
When I emulated Christ the most closely, I was accosted with “We don’t recognize you anymore! You’re not one of us!”
The more I sacrificed to do the right thing, the more I was called selfish.
The less popular my convictions became, the more convinced they were I was taking the “easy path”.
The more fervently I followed the Spirit’s leading, the louder the doors slammed behind me.
Following Christ got me kicked out of Christianity.