Something that should probably be discussed more: compulsory Christianity, specifically from the Western lens.
^^^^^^^^^^ I have SOOOOOOO much to say about this, but mostly about compulsory when it comes to someone’s parents; Teaching your very young children that hell exists and is a never ending place of torture and pain and everything not good imaginable, where there is no end or exit, is child abuse especially when you tell them they are already on track to end up there when they die unless they do everything that you tell them to. Gaslighting, controlling, absolutely abusive, and no one thinks a second thought about 3-5 y.o. children who have to consider eternal torture when making any action.
Let alone being told that sinful thoughts are not /actually/ their thoughts, that the worst being in existence has a foothold on them and is brainwashing them, and they better stop thinking the bad sinful thoughts and think what you are supposed to think, what is righteous and holy.
this gaslighting really fucked me up
im sorry, im just curious, is this actually taught in christian households?
this was literally my childhood.
also having to sit 2-3 hours every sunday in a dark cold church listening to chants and stories about how sinful we all are and how much we hope that god will forgive us and not send us to hell.
when praying (every night) we had to say some prayers that we learned by heart, and guess what the main theme was? how huge sinners we are and how we need to do everything we can not to burn in hell.oh my god im so sorry man i had no idea, all my christian friends just said church was boring or full of old ppl dancin
Not all forms of Christianity are as harsh on certain elements as others. Where as my mother never did this exact thing to me, my grandmother did and she took me to church every Sunday, where in the Sunday School I would learn cute stories about how God was vindictive and murderous, weird creepy songs of devotion to Jesus, and that I was going to hell for homosexuality. Not fun.
This this this this this! I’m nearly 33 and still have huuuge mental scars from being raised this way.
Being taught from birth that everything about you that doesn’t fit into the framework of absolute obedience and shame is utterly evil, and that you and everyone you’ve ever known are going to suffer eternally by default unless you live rigidly by those structures, is an incredibly terrifying and destructive thing.
It’s even worse when the representatives and advocates of that Ultimate Authority are themselves negative and abusive authority figures. And worse yet when they see something about you that is Abnormal and not only target you for abuse themselves, but point you out to other children for abuse because you are Insufficiently Normal And Obedient.
I knew as a kid that it was fucked up, and got the hell out of the church as soon as I was confirmed (I grew up Polish Catholic) and had fulfilled the religious expectations of my family. And my negative relationships with masculinity and authority directly tie into my negative relationship with religious conditioning and normalization, because all of those factors were elements of the bullying and emotional abuse I experienced as a kid.
Because what is God other than the Ultimate Authority Figure, and what can your relationship with Him be if your experience with authority primarily consists of abuse or neglect? And when both condemn you for being Different in some way, Hell becomes much more than just a hypothetical place.
Wow you all went to terrible churches! My church was more of the God is loving, merciful, kind, and forgiving sort of thing. Even at an early age we were taught of the approachability of God; that many sins are natural and understandable and pretty much every sin is forgivable so long as you are sincere. And while yes there was emphasis placed on children respecting their parents, there was even greater emphasis placed on parents being respectable and approachable.
Here’s another snarl in the Gordian Knot, though: Churches that teach “God is Love” and “God is Vengeful” are not mutually exclusive, and many if not most Christian churches teach both messages. And that double-messaging is harmful in its own way.
Growing up Catholic, I got lots of the “God is all-benevolent, God is Love” messaging at the same time as I got “God punishes disobedience and divergence”. So not only was I dealing with the concept of eternal suffering for failing to live up to a particular normalcy, but… I’m going to be tortured not in spite of God’s love, but BECAUSE of God’s love?
And when you live your childhood as somebody who’s Different in any way, and deal with the bullying and abuse that come with the Vengeful God narrative, the “God is Love” message adds an extra layer of shame and fear to your world. Because if God truly IS the embodiment of Love, what He’s doing must be right, correct? And therefore you deserve to suffer for your differences and imaginary transgressions, and the bullies and abusive authorities who deal out that suffering must be doing so under his aegis. And trying to reconcile the idea of an empathetic, compassionate God being the same entity as the destructive, petty Authority that tells you that everything about you is wrong is baffling and ultimately impossible to process.
Make no mistake: The “God is Love” narrative is a tool to justify the behavioral control and obeisance to authority that “God is Vengeance” demands in the first place, and ensnarls those who are Different – the queer, the disobedient, the neurodivergent, any difference that the social majority wants to subjugate – in further shackles of shame and self-hatred. It removes accountability from the Church and puts it entirely on the individual who, in some way or another, can’t live up to God’s Love.
It falls into the same category as the abusive parent or teacher saying “This is for your own good”, and “I’m just doing this because I love you.” It’s an attempt at self-justification and removing accountability from the abuser. And when you get both of these things as a child, it’s horribly traumatic and destructive.
“God is Love” is nothing but Cosmic Gaslighting.
oh my god everyone read this
thank you for writing all this up holy shit
this absolutely my experience
holy shit I never realized
“God is love/God is vengeance” literally teaches you to equate love and pain/fear.
that’s a huge priming tool for abuse. like equating those two things is probably the biggest common factor among cases of abuse I’ve seen
and it’s baked right into the fucking religion
Also sometimes it isn’t even that particular denomination of Christianity that is preaching the fire and brimstone, but the preacher. So in some cases these churches get these whacky fanatical preachers that spout this stuff.
All of the above is just a small portion of the reason I am not a Christian.
I was forcibly converted to Catholicism because my mother was marrying a Catholic man. I’m 32 and being in that abusive household where all the abuse was excused with bible passages really screwed up my view of organized Christianity as a whole.
Dutch Calvinist upbringing here. Christian Supremacy is literally a trigger for me, not of the ‘freak the fuck out’ type, but of the “anxiety goes through the roof and I can no longer sleep for several days and when i catch snatches of sleep I have horrible nightmares related to my religious upbringing and church experiences” type and I STILL jump in the pot when it’s being stirred because I feel strongly about people who are growing up in the kind of harmful environment I was, who are living every day like I was, being constantly told to die to self and subsume their identities to God/Jesus. When you grow up being told to give everything of yourself to others, that you’re supposed to be a servant of all, that you should never seek your own good or advantage… it really fucks with you. [TW suicide, abuse]
When I was nineteen, I was ready to kill myself because I believed that all I was doing by being on earth was making other people unhappy, and if I wasn’t making other people happy, then I didn’t deserve to keep breathing. Combine this with a narcissistic stepfather who would become verbally abusive when he felt I wasn’t paying him enough attention (I’m another one of those kids who was threatened with having their bedroom door taken off the hinges because I ‘spent too much time in there’), and a lifelong obsession with witchcraft and the call of Pagan deities I heard persistently through my life, and I was a fucking WRECK. I was constantly at odds with myself, fighting my true heart and my true callings, trying to force myself to be what my parents wanted me to be. Every ecstatic religious experience I hunted down was a temporary high, an instant of traction before I fell on my face again and had to wonder why I was so unholy by nature that I couldn’t manage something as theoretically simple as being a goddamn Christian. Some of the mission and worship groups I got involved with have since been exposed for abuse, or as cults. I spent months of my life with them trying to hear God calling me, only to go home starving for magic.
I will readily admit that, due to a number of factors including ADD and severe depression, I am not a very good Hellenic Polytheist. But, that being said? I am a million times more at peace being a mess at Hekate’s feet.
Religious indoctrination of children who aren’t old enough to form informed opinions is child abuse. It’s brainwashing. It’s a cycle of violence we overlook every fucking day.
Not a moment goes by that I’m not grateful that all the countless attempts to indoctrinate me from the time I was a toddler on failed.
I almost didn’t reblog this because I have followers and friends that are Christian and I didn’t want them to feel attacked.
At the same time there is this huge thing (in my area of the US idk about other places) where just the act of talking about the problems you have with Christianity is The Worst Thing and that you are being So Mean yet I have been to church services where I have been told that God will send me to the worst place he and his followers can imagine unless I change everything right now for them. When I point out that this behavior is what makes me uneasy/uncomfortable with them I am made to feel as bad about myself as they possibly can make me. I am the one being prejudiced and intolerant and Bad. Also, Not All Christians. Or maybe it’s Not Real Christians. Because that is supposed to make me feel better.
So yeah… I don’t mean to attack you but like you make me feel very very anxious and forgive me but there is not “christian who believes in trans rights and respects paganism as legitimate personal choice” stamped on your forehead and even if there was I’ve met Christians that claim that but still say awful things.
This!
I have been trying to unlearn some of the terrible terrible things growing up like that teached me and it’s fucking hard
It has been put into words at last
Can we add the “offer up your suffering” bit to this, please? Because damned if that wasn’t the answer I got for any complaint from physical to mental to emotional pain. I hurt? Well, why am I not offering that pain up to God right now for the souls in Purgatory?! Why am I being so selfish that I’d rather have the pain go away than be able to use it to help the helpless who are relying on you don’t you know they only have you to help them get out of Purgatory?
Published
The Carving Witch 