#xtian

[seraphimfall]

ex-christians with religious trauma picking their music taste be like:

#|| the disciple || #nine inch nails #hozier #ex catholic #xtian #ex christian #exvangelical #religious trauma #apostate #deconversion #catholic guilt #ex mormon #exmo #deconstruction #ex fundie #deconstructing christianity #extian #nin #religious guilt #ex religious #losing my religion #fuck the church #leaving the church

[apostatement]

Your body is not your enemy. It isn't a shell that you inhabit or an empty temple. Your mind is not a separate entity, your soul is not an inhabitant. Its desires and needs are not the devil trying to trick your soul. The 'natural man' is you. Your body is you. That's YOU.

It's okay to treat yourself with love and respect.

#deconstruction #deconstructing christianity #xtian #exmo #exmormon #apostate #apostake #exvangelical #ex jw #ex christian #exlds #pimo #religious trauma

[im-just-an-angel]

i cannot describe how much purity culture hurt.

#this is my attempt at being articulate #like yes that did sm damage to my developing brain that even now i cannot conceptualize it without feeling a full body ache down to my bones #religious trauma #ex catholic #apostate #xtian

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Spectacle équestre 31

By Xtian

#xtian #photographer #flickr #horses #animal #mammal #nature #beach #equestrian

[exvangelicalrage]

It's Not Technically Gaslighting

Recently, in my travels, I came across this church sign: 

Back in my younger years, I would've seen this, nodded sagely, and said, "Yes. Putting jesus first, others second, and myself last is sure to bring joy. What a clever and profound statement." 

Not anymore. Now when I see a sign like this, at best, I roll my eyes. At worst, I go off on a tirade and end up turning around my car to take a picture of the sign so I can rant about it later online lol. 

So yeah, here we are.

This message communicates a belief that is so, so essential to modern christianity—which is that you should always put others first. Always. And it is especially emphasized for women, whose entire role in life is supposed to be that of service. 

Give, give, give, and never, ever take, they say. You don't want to be a burden, you want to be a blessing. jesus gave everything to save you, so you too should give everything in service to his "great plan." And they use jesus's words to emphasize the point as well: 

"Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all." mark something or other. "Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of christ." galatians. "Now that I, your lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet." john. "...whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." matthew.

It goes on and on and on. And it's not just the gospels and paul (I fucking hate paul) who harp on it, but practically the entire old testament as well.

But there's a basic logical fallacy inherent in this idea of being the lowest of the low, of being the last of the last, which is this: if everyone is successfully "the last," then doesn't that technically make everyone first? And if everyone is trying to be a slave or a servant or at the bottom of the pile, who exactly is at the top? Maybe the people who want to be at the top? Aren’t the people who don't give a shit about being at the bottom going to slide into leadership roles? The people who are least qualified to be role models? The people who are the worst candidates for leadership? 

This creates societal pockets rife with abuse. This system is the perfect opportunity for predators to hunt. And there are so many prey. Everyone who is actually a humble person, who is actually trying to live a good life, everyone who wants to embody the servitude of christ—guess what? Simply because they are trying to be good and live life right, they are going to have to put up with a lot of shit from predators who want power and control. And those predators who benefit from their servitude? They’re going to milk it for all its worth.

That's how you end up with brian houstons and bill gothards.

When I was 17, I was part of the youth group band at my church. It was a mini-mega-church, as I like to call it. We had on average 800+ attendees every weekend, and the church functioned with a sort of corporate hierarchy, with a head pastor and sub pastors, and had the fancy lights and loud music and charismatic sermons you'd expect at a mega church. 

Sunday night was youth group, which operated like a full-fledged church service. Kids would come into the sanctuary and us, the band, would play popular christian music. We had a pianist (me), a drummer (my little brother), guitarists, a bassist, and singers. Sometimes we even had brass or woodwinds. They even had a light designer who would do impromptu light shows. And a haze machine. 

It was basically a weekly live music concert for teens that lasted anywhere from twenty to forty minutes. Then the youth pastor would get up and preach a youth-directed sermon. Usually the message was something along the lines of, "be christian in school!" "don't mouth off to your parents!" "don't masturbate!" 

My little brother also played in the adult band, because he was the best drummer in the county, despite only being 15. My family would arrive at church at 7 AM on Sunday mornings, sit through a rehearsal and three church services, and then go home for an hour or two, before returning by 3 PM for youth group rehearsal. We would rehearse until 5 PM, and then had to be performing the "welcome music" (just the musicians, not the singers) at 5:30. Then we played until 6:30, got a "break" for the sermon (during which we were required to sit in the audience), and then played again until 7:30 or 8 PM. At that point, we were responsible for tearing down our equipment, loading out, and shutting down the sanctuary.

They didn't provide food for us. Or drinks. If we wanted something, we had to buy it from the church kitchens. My mom was so upset by this, she started making a meal every sunday for all the kids who were in the band (there were usually 7 of us). 

There weren't volunteers to help us set up and take down our equipment. We didn't get money for maintaining our instruments or for gas, for driving back and forth from the church. We weren't allowed to take breaks.

I remember once during my senior year, I was exhausted. I hadn't gone home that day; I'd been at the church since 7 AM, and it was my fourth performance that week, between high school band/jazz band/church stuff. I just wanted to be alone for a few minutes. So during the sermon, I told my friends I was going to sit in the lawn outside the church and pray. 

I had been outside for less than five minutes when an adult volunteer came out and told me I wasn't allowed to be out there. I explained I was exhausted. That I was in the band. That I'd been there since 7 AM. That I just needed a few minutes to breathe. 

She told me it was against the rules, and that as a member of the band, it was my responsibility to sit in the audience and set a good example for the other teens. She made me go back inside.

I didn't know how to be angry back then, but I was just a little bit rebellious. I told her I had to grab my stuff from backstage. I found a dark corner and hid. One of my friends' dads, another adult volunteer, found me, gave me a little smile, and left me alone.

We were the first people to show up, and the last people to leave. We did manual labor. Emotional labor. We were on display as examples of "good christian youth." We were expected to be perfect, without blame.

We were servants.

There to obey. To do the bidding of the church. Not to obey god, but to obey the leaders who decided what god's bidding was. After all, we were only teens. How could we possibly claim to understand god's will?

And those humans, who claimed to know the will of god, exploited children for their own gain. They exploited us.

I know how to be angry now. But I can't deny there is a complex amalgamation of feelings whenever I think about this time of my life. Some anger, yes—rage, even. Sorrow too. And confusion, cognitive dissonance.

Because while yes, they exploited me, I also can’t deny that I liked being there. I liked playing the piano and performing. I liked spending time with my friends. I liked feeling like I was doing good work, like I was serving god, like I was needed and important.

But, it turned out, I wasn't important. I was a cog in an exploitative machine. 

As soon as I graduated, they brought in a younger pianist who was much more skilled than I. Most of my friends, I never heard from again. I never again heard from the youth pastor who I served so willingly. Nor the music pastor. Nor my sunday school teacher. Nor the adult volunteers whom I worked alongside every week. Even my friendships with the teens I played alongside lasted less than a year after I left.

They made me feel important, necessary, and needed. So that I would keep serving. So that I would continue to provide unpaid labor ranging from performing to cleaning to setting a good example for kids my own age. 

They exploited me.

That ever-present message of service and submission—it's not exactly gaslighting. They weren't trying to sow confusion, necessarily. They weren’t outright lying. But they were trying to get me to believe without question. To serve without question. To obey without question.

And it worked. For a time, at least.

As much as it hurt me, I'm lucky they abandoned me. If they hadn't, I might still be there. Sacrificing my health and well-being and happiness in the service of lies.

Here, I fixed the sign:

#ex christian #ex fundamentalist #exvangelical #ex religious #xtian #religious trauma #iblp #hillsong #brian houston #bill gothard #youth group #exploitation #christianity sucks #atheist #agnostic #christianity lies

[eljayetc]

“… being punished meant I wouldn’t be abandoned.”

When Religion Hurts You by Laura E. Anderson, PhD

#when religion hurts you #religious trauma #religious deconstruction #exvangelical #xtian #xtianity #Geezus #Laura e Anderson #quotes #book quotes #religion cw #christianity cw

[leslie-redirects-here]

#Capela dos Ossos #Évora #evora #portugal #xtian #xtianity #skulls #femurs #bones #human bones #human remains #architecture #death #rot #decay #death decay disintegration desiccation #and even in this there is beauty #and even in this there is life #aesthetic #op

[feral-cockroach]

warnings: mentions of christianity, trauma, religious trauma

living in the south and also in the path of totality of this eclipse AND being susceptible to religion-based psychosis has been fucking hell

the eclipse is in 2 days and i work customer service and an old fucking woman sat in the drive thru at my job and proseletized to me for literally ten fucking minutes about how the eclipse is a result of the stupid fucking queers and how the world is goijg to shit ad jesus is getting mad and how she hopes im ready for the rapture bc she is and the whole time shes keeping the Most Intense eye contact and im not allowed to shut the window on customers and ive had unfathomable amounts of sleepless nights being afraid that xtianity is true and im going to hell or that the rapture IS upon us and everyone i love is going to die and ive spent even more nights CONVINCED that the rapture was abt to happen or was actively happening and if i left my room/looked out a window i would see corpses stumbling past my house toward jesus and my mom would also go to jesus and jesus would look at me with so much scorn that he would literally melt my skin from my bones and condemn me to be alone for eternity

and it has taken YEARS to get over that trauma and fear and move on from those beliefs and i havet had an episode like that in ages but thats because i have made it a huge point of my lifw to avoid xtianity despite how prevalent it is here but if ever there was a trigger for it its this shit.

and she started the fuckinf conversation so innocently too she was like "are u ready for the eclipse? :) " ajd i was like "well i work that day so honestky not really" and then she launches into a speech ab how theyre letting kids out of school early and tons of places are shutting down early and how its for the best bc this is a sign of the rapture and its been so long since ive been around that kind of stuff that it took me aback so hard i literally took a half step away from the window and i felt like i was in church again.

fucking hate this place. and even when i get those intrusive tjoughts of how god or jesus hate me or think im unworthy and even if i did everything else right i would be condemned just for being queer i remind myself that thats not the teachings of jesus christ, thats the teachings of frauds who dont even know the book they use to beat others with. and if god would look at me, whos worst crimes are being queer and shoplifting from major corporations to help those that i love, and if he looks at me and decides i am less worthy of love and light and paradise than someone who was not queer and did not shoplift but did cause countless peoppe severe trauma and hoarded wealth and looked down on those different from him, and if he compares us and decides me to be worse by basis of queerness, then that is not a god that is worth worshipping. that is not a god worthy of godliness, of status, of power. that is just another man.

#tw christianity #christianity mention #cw christianity #xtianity #xtian #ex christian #religious trauma #trauma mention #religious trauma mention #tw religious trauma #madpunk

[guy60660]

Xtian | Giuseppe Ducrot | © Stefan Giftthaler | Financial Times

#portugal #giuseppe ducrot #xtian #stefan giftthaler #design #financial times

[seraphimfall]

excuse me????

#|| the disciple || #ex catholic #ex christian #religious trauma #exvangelical #deconversion #apostate #apostasy #xtian #catholic guilt #ex religious #leaving the church #religious deconstruction #deconstructing christianity #fuck the church

[apostatement]

I think about my dad a lot these days.

Like many mormons, he believes that in order for Second Coming of Christ to begin the gathering of Judah must commence. He believes that the Mormon church must proselytize in Israel and build a temple in Israel with a throne. This is church doctrine. I believed this shit until I was like 16.

The Mormon Church is not neutral about the state of Israel. They are antisemitic. They are Zionists for their own ends.

When I see all these Americans supporting Israel all I can hear is my father, my ward bishop, my Sunday school teacher. They believe any atrocity is justified if it is enacted for God. My dad has a fucking doctorate degree.

My dad and people like him have poisoned this country. When you see the US and Canada support this genocide remember the Christian Right.

#exmormon #exmo #apostake #apostate #ex cult #ex christian #exvangelical #xtian #palestine #palestinian genocide #antisemitism tw #zionism tw #vent

[im-just-an-angel]

love doesn't ask you to emtpy yourself. love doesn't ask you to shrink. it pulls another chair up to the table so there's room for everyone.

#religious trauma #ex catholic #apostate #xtian

[sgftxtinajb]

#xtina icons #xtina aguilera #xtina #xtian #xtina gif #xtianity #team xtina #xtinaedit #celebrity #woman #make up #christina aguilera #caguilera #caguileraedit #paris hilton #madonna #britney spears #cher #justin timberlake #alicia keys #whitneyhouston #style #ariana grande #my edits #edits #adam levigne #demi lovato #miley cyrus #kelly clarkson #la luz

[exvangelicalrage]

Apocalypse Anxiety

6/30/23

When I was a kid, one of the excellent decisions my parents made was not letting us read the Left Behind books, even though everyone at church swore the books were the best thing they'd ever read (after the bible, of course). 

If you're unfamiliar, the whole series revolves around a futuristic interpretation of christian eschatology, particularly the rapture and the tribulation. The series starts with a good chunk of the world population getting "raptured" suddenly, or taken to heaven by god, and then follows a group of people who didn't disappear. These folks try to figure out what happened and navigate the wild post-rapture world, and everything wraps up with the second coming of christ. The characters that survived the tribulation witness the millennial kingdom, where christ reigns for a thousand years, and then the final judgment day, and eventually, a new heaven and a new earth are created.

Obviously it's complete bullshit. It's not even biblical, as 11-year-old me wrote extensively about in her journal (I even included citations!). But the thing is, a lot of christians still believed it. And I think it formed a lot of mental images about what the "end times" would look like for people, which, as a result, meant there was a lot of conversation about prepping.

If you got left behind, what would you do? How would you survive? People talked about learning to grow stuff and sew. They bought generators and came up with secondary heat sources for their house. They talked about how prepared they already were compared to everyone else. 

Keep in mind, we lived in a rural area where people already had to be quite self-sufficient. So it was more of a bragging contest than anything, with a few people beefing up the systems they already had in place. 

The year 2000 brought with it a lot of apocalypse panic, fueled in part by that stupid book series (though I'm sure the Cold War, recent in so many memories, didn't help either). The Y2K bug was going to take down systems all over the world! We could be without power, without computers, without clean water!!! Our local morning show guys even did a parody of the YMCK song, where they sang, "Yyyy-2-K! What's the big deal about Yyyy-2-K! It's a real big deal / no it's not even real—" etc. Luckily for me I do not remember most of the lyrics.

Fast forward to 2016. By then, I was well and truly Exited from christianity. I'd made it through Y2K, 9/11, the recession, and college. I had a full time job and friends who weren't christian. I hardly ever thought about apocalypses, other than admitting that I occasionally enjoyed reading a good post-apocalyptic book series. 

But the day after the 2016 election, I found myself crying under a tree in the cemetery near my condo. I was terrified that trump would bring about the apocalypse, even though I didn't even believe in the fucking apocalypse anymore! At least, not the christian version of it.

Someone made a meme that said "the end comes with trump-pence (instead of 'trumpets')" and it was all I could think of. Like a giant neon sign to my trauma-bent brain.

Fast forward again to 2020. You probably remember that fucked-up year. 

It started with fires in Australia. And murder hornets. Remember those? Weird "signs and omens" of an impending apocalypse. Then came the plague and pestilence. 

Truth be told, it feels like we've basically been mid-apocalypse my entire life. Y2K. 9/11. The recession. trump being elected. fires. famine. plague. pestilence. war. death. 

And now, there are more fires. So many fires. I'm in an area with bad air. The canadian wildfires are filling the atmosphere with smoke and it's drifted down into my region of the northeast USA. Again. A couple weeks ago, we had air that had me and my spouse coughing and with sore throats, even indoors. Today, the outside is hazy and smells, and the new outlets are warning us all to stay indoors. 

I know it's just smoke. I know it'll blow away. I understand what's happening. Not to mention, we're fine. We are safe indoors. We have an air purifier. We don't have to work outside or even leave the house if we don't want to. Though the dog might get annoyed if he doesn't get his daily adventure.

We have enough food to last us weeks, if we're careful. We have a tank full of gas. I have a boatload of back-up plans for what to do in a variety of catastrophic scenarios. 

But I still feel the overwhelming desire to curl up in a hole and hide. My anxiety is sky high. It's a visceral reaction—not to the smoke itself, or to the knowledge of climate change, or even to a rational fear that one day, the fires might reach us. 

No. It's fear of the christian apocalypse. Fear of the rapture. Fear of getting left behind.

I know it's all fake. I just can't quite shake it.

#xtian #exchristian #exvangelical #atheist #apocalypse #left behind #y2k #end times #anxiety #apocalypse anxiety #agnostic #indoctrination #exreligious #ex religious #ex christian #tribulation #revelations

[sheltiechicago]

Nîmes Street Art - 12

Street Art à NîmesLa baleine de Nubian quartier Richelieu.

Photographer: Xtian

#xtian #photographer #street art #mural #nimes street art #france #whale #flickr

[the-pimo-saboteur]

A friendly reminder that continually arguing about beliefs and making detailed explanations to justify yourself all the time are stressful and detrimental to your health. Complaining on the internet may raise awareness about something, but it is not activism and you should not dedicate your life to it as if it were.

Take breaks. Do something with your hands that doesn’t involve a screen. Do something for fun. Or do nothing at all. Rest.

Then come back and argue.

#ex cult #exjw #exmormon #xtian #religious trauma #apostate #pimo #This is partially directed toward myself