#but.... lemme just vent first 🤬

[syn0vial]

yesterday, i learned that one of my acquaintances from church is like, gleefully and unreservedly supportive of the gazan genocide despite going to a church where every sermon for the past few weeks has been about the horrors and tragedy of said genocide. like, i could not fucking believe how hilarious he seemed to think it is that innocent palestinians are dying, just grinning and laughing and shaking his head and rolling his eyes when my pastor and i expressed horror at the innocent people being killed. just remembering it makes me choke up with anger.

anyway, i'm going to be very stupid and try to talk to him about it this coming sunday. i'll use all my teacherly tricks to try and gently lead him to feel one single scrap of empathy for the victims of israel's civilian massacre, but lbr: he'll probably respond with the same amount of glee and condescension as last night and it's going to end with me making me a scene at church.

but i know i shouldn't. so here are some things i should NOT say, no matter how angry he makes me:

i've always hated the sound of your voice, even before you said such horrible things. you say everything with such condescension. when you read the gospels in church, i have to hide my face behind my program to hide my grimacing. you make the words of christ himself sound like a grift of some oily used car dealer who thinks he's smarter than he actually is. i pity you for going through life with such a voice, and pity you even more for thinking it charming.

it baffles me that you'd allow something as basically human as compassion for the suffering of others to be so utterly sanded away by propaganda. it's pathetic that you could laugh at innocents dying. you've let yourself be lobotomized by a clumsy surgeon and style yourself wise with the icepick still sticking from your skull.

i've always thought your face looks like an easter island head sculpted from a raw chicken breast.

see? none of those would be productive, no matter how truly they express my feelings about this person.

thus: people of faith, pray that god grants me the wisdom and restraint to not light this motherfucker up in the middle of coffee hour. amen.

#vent post #personal post #this happened last night and i thought i'd feel less angry in the morning but NOPE #still incandescent about it #sometimes i think i'm a very self-righteous and unforgiving person #bc i can't seem to do the thing other people do where they can just chalk things like this up to a difference in opinion and remain friends #when someone is cruel‚ it feels like it completely deranges me #suddenly they're a monster in my eyes #buuuut none of the philosophies i subscribe to endorse this kind of black-and-white thinking. quite the opposite actually. #so. i've gotta work on seeing people as works-in-progress rather than writing them off as incorrigible monsters #but.... lemme just vent first 🤬 #love my pastor though. i was raised jewish‚ and he was adopted by a jewish family when he was 13 and almost became jewish himself #so i feel like we have similar spiritual backgrounds and see eye-to-eye on a lot of things #after my argument with the above asshole‚ my pastor and i spoke at length about what was happening in gaza and how horrible it all is #as well as topics like zionism‚ antisemitism‚ and the torah #he's such a good guy. i'm sad he's retiring :( #i feel like we need him now more than ever to keep speaking out about the genocide #and to make sure views like the one mentioned above don't take hold in our church #cw: genocide #cw: racism