I had a reverse finding religion moment when I said "wait, this is all hot bullshit" and I immediately felt a weight lift off me. I didn't have to hate or be afraid of people anymore! What joy!
Now everything sucks for actual, quantifiable reasons like climate change, our current president trying to drop a Third Riech remix and youtube influencers.
I totally feel you. I’m glad you had that revelation.
Now if we can just fix the country...
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
My total experience of the church was in school at Christmas we would sometimes go to a church to sing some carols and for some reason we each had an orange with a candle stuffed in it.
Meeting an actual practicing Christian in the wild is novel enough that I never quite know how to handle it. Like meeting a person traveling from an exotic realm. I wanna ask loads of questions but they would probably be rude.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
My total experience of the church was in school at Christmas we would sometimes go to a church to sing some carols and for some reason we each had an orange with a candle stuffed in it.
Meeting an actual practicing Christian in the wild is novel enough that I never quite know how to handle it. Like meeting a person traveling from an exotic realm. I wanna ask loads of questions but they would probably be rude.
Our Canadian is like that. She is deeply freaked by religion. Which is generally a helpful reflex for a librarian to have in this country!
But she'll bring me a flyer for the free summer feeding program down the street and be like "So it's free food for our kids, but it appears to be run by the Baptist church. We can't post this can we?"
And it's like dawg, we are a poor red state in the Bible belt, pretty much all the food pantries are going to be one brand of church or another.
She also hasn't built up the native Oklahoman resistance to random strangers telling you to have "a blessed day" or randomly proselytizing at you while you're helping them with the copier.
I have had to try to untangle my faith from American Christian Culture. I think American Christian Culture has a pretty wide spectrum, from ok to really toxic, but that it's more bad than good at this point and I don't really want to have anything to do with it. At the same time I'm not really interested in a church that's so unmoored that it doesn't really have any doctrinal stance at all because there are things I believe and things I want to be clear about not believing.
I grew up in a very evangelical family, my dad was an assistant pastor for a while, and I saw firsthand how petty and awful people were to my mom when she wouldn't conform to their idea of what a pastor's wife should be. Likewise I saw how they treated their pastors as disposable and how their human needs were treated as inconvenient, and all of that pretty well convinced me to steer clear of The Church.
I dunno man, working through it all is a Real Thing.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
My total experience of the church was in school at Christmas we would sometimes go to a church to sing some carols and for some reason we each had an orange with a candle stuffed in it.
Meeting an actual practicing Christian in the wild is novel enough that I never quite know how to handle it. Like meeting a person traveling from an exotic realm. I wanna ask loads of questions but they would probably be rude.
Our Canadian is like that. She is deeply freaked by religion. Which is generally a helpful reflex for a librarian to have in this country!
But she'll bring me a flyer for the free summer feeding program down the street and be like "So it's free food for our kids, but it appears to be run by the Baptist church. We can't post this can we?"
And it's like dawg, we are a poor red state in the Bible belt, pretty much all the food pantries are going to be one brand of church or another.
She also hasn't built up the native Oklahoman resistance to random strangers telling you to have "a blessed day" or randomly proselytizing at you while you're helping them with the copier.
I have had to try to untangle my faith from American Christian Culture. I think American Christian Culture has a pretty wide spectrum, from ok to really toxic, but that it's more bad than good at this point and I don't really want to have anything to do with it. At the same time I'm not really interested in a church that's so unmoored that it doesn't really have any doctrinal stance at all because there are things I believe and things I want to be clear about not believing.
I grew up in a very evangelical family, my dad was an assistant pastor for a while, and I saw firsthand how petty and awful people were to my mom when she wouldn't conform to their idea of what a pastor's wife should be. Likewise I saw how they treated their pastors as disposable and how their human needs were treated as inconvenient, and all of that pretty well convinced me to steer clear of The Church.
I dunno man, working through it all is a Real Thing.
The two denominations that I'd point you towards are the Episcopalians or the entirely inaccurately named Evangelical Lutherans (who are not Evangelical in the American sense not are they particularly apt to proselytize)
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Based solely on congregants I have known and without ever having attended any of their services, my favorite denominations are the Unitarians and the Quakers.
One of my former librarians is a Quaker about my age, and just being in the same room with her was like having a little bit of a comforting hug all the time.
The Unitarians weird me out because their politics are pretty solid but they formally lack doctrine
I should also point out here that I'm not actively a Christian, in the sense that while I hang out with Episcopalians a lot and totally jive with them, I don't personally uphold the Nicene Creed as a core belief set woops
If anything I label myself as Buddhist but the only temple I have active ties to is literally on the wrong side of the planet
All of my family in the maritimes are religious, like go to church at least once a week religious. I grew up going to church every week but now only go for midnight mass at christmas because partly it's tradition that we get to open one present after midnight mass before needing to go to bed.
I think the only thing that hasn't put me super off it is that I can't remember a time where they talked about religious outside of church, and the churches we've gone to haven't been the (at least as far as I saw), the super judgmental and hateful, it's all just been "love your family and friends". Like these are go to church every week people, and my grandmother was go to church multiple times a week, and watch mass on tv on days when she couldn't go to church, and I didn't lose a single family member over being trans.
Based solely on congregants I have known and without ever having attended any of their services, my favorite denominations are the Unitarians and the Quakers.
One of my former librarians is a Quaker about my age, and just being in the same room with her was like having a little bit of a comforting hug all the time.
my partner was raised unitarian; she's not religious, but her parents are good people and everything I hear about it makes it sound pretty good, as far as these things go
I have a lot of respect for Quakers--they've actually taken the moral stands I'd expect most other organized religions to
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2019
It's not that I identify with Unitarian philosophy so much, but it seems to be a community that manufactures fantastic people. There's a brand of Gen-X antiauthoritarian goodness in the world that I can't imagine being fully expressed via any philosophical path other than "It feels like we ought to go to church and talk about big questions, but it feels weird to lay down concrete answers. Let's meet up every week and just kind of noodle on that for a while."
Every time I check Facebook they're advertising their dating functionalities, and I can't really explain why I don't want my fb profile and dating profile combined, but I really really don't
I know a bunch of Unitarian Universalist folks from my book club and they're all good people. Also mostly aggressively leftist but that may just be a product of which of them I've been introduced to.
I’ve heard nothing but good about UU places/people
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
also re: sleeptalking
i never remember talking in my sleep, so my wife also has to tell me what the hell I was talking about the day after, and I'm always mystified as to what I was actually thinking about
religion in general is something that is so not present in any of my daily life or interactions
which is interesting
life in nyc as a college educated millennial i guess
i think the big questions / purpose of life / philosophy of living / finding meaning stuff is interesting though, and is something that maybe isn't talked about in as organized a way in its absence
i had a big phase the other year of listening to a lot of On Being / reading a lot of Brain Pickings; conversations with authors / religious people of different sorts / philosophers and reading various books on the subjects
perhaps i should get back into that kind of thinking
i never remember talking in my sleep, so my wife also has to tell me what the hell I was talking about the day after, and I'm always mystified as to what I was actually thinking about
i never remember talking in my sleep, so my wife also has to tell me what the hell I was talking about the day after, and I'm always mystified as to what I was actually thinking about
I go with my in-laws on let's see: Easter, mother's day, Father's day, their birthdays, near Christmas although not on Christmas, and I think that is it. As an atheist this is less then ideal but for my wife's sake I go and behave. They are deeply religious in a way that pretty old southern people tend to be. My brother and parents are religious but I have been an atheist my entire life. My wife was religious but as she became more educated she is more agnostic now.
Since some of you are not from the US, and most of you from here are not from the South, you can't really understand the reach of Christianity in the area. There are at least 7 churches I know of within a 10 mile radius of my house. Probably more I am forgetting. It is strange to me to drive through a town and not see a church every two or three miles.
Edit: I should have added I live in a relatively small town as well. In one of the bigger towns you could triple that number no problem.
I listened to a woman interviewing for an insurance position while at the coffee shop today and they were talking about God's calling and their ministries.
For a job interview.
Maybe it was a Christian based insurance company. That's still weird as hell.
I listened to a woman interviewing for an insurance position while at the coffee shop today and they were talking about God's calling and their ministries.
For a job interview.
Maybe it was a Christian based insurance company. That's still weird as hell.
How do they handle Acts of God?
obviously you did something super wrong to risk god's wrath
Every time I check Facebook they're advertising their dating functionalities, and I can't really explain why I don't want my fb profile and dating profile combined, but I really really don't
My facebook was a fake name till they made me change it because I refused to show they a id saying it was my real name
Other than that my facebook has no friends I refuse to friend people on it and generally use it to talk to Games workshop
I just find it odd when various things like Amazon my battlenet account and other things have a log in with facebook thing
Why? Why would I do that? that seems lazy
Brainleech on
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Posts
You know what’s bizarre? The word bizarre after reading this post!
(Seriously though I just had to double-check the spelling of bizarre because it looked so odd after seeing it written down so many times, hehe)
I totally feel you. I’m glad you had that revelation.
Now if we can just fix the country...
because i am Too Online
I say we go do that. Kill the Internet.
I have no clue what's going on I came in after the edit I just want to kill the Internet.
but where else can I get a chef's apron that says "kiss the ninja" I ask you!
Meeting an actual practicing Christian in the wild is novel enough that I never quite know how to handle it. Like meeting a person traveling from an exotic realm. I wanna ask loads of questions but they would probably be rude.
Our Canadian is like that. She is deeply freaked by religion. Which is generally a helpful reflex for a librarian to have in this country!
But she'll bring me a flyer for the free summer feeding program down the street and be like "So it's free food for our kids, but it appears to be run by the Baptist church. We can't post this can we?"
And it's like dawg, we are a poor red state in the Bible belt, pretty much all the food pantries are going to be one brand of church or another.
She also hasn't built up the native Oklahoman resistance to random strangers telling you to have "a blessed day" or randomly proselytizing at you while you're helping them with the copier.
Canada must be nice.
I grew up in a very evangelical family, my dad was an assistant pastor for a while, and I saw firsthand how petty and awful people were to my mom when she wouldn't conform to their idea of what a pastor's wife should be. Likewise I saw how they treated their pastors as disposable and how their human needs were treated as inconvenient, and all of that pretty well convinced me to steer clear of The Church.
I dunno man, working through it all is a Real Thing.
That would be so weird.
The two denominations that I'd point you towards are the Episcopalians or the entirely inaccurately named Evangelical Lutherans (who are not Evangelical in the American sense not are they particularly apt to proselytize)
Formal doctrine, progressive politics, boom
One of my former librarians is a Quaker about my age, and just being in the same room with her was like having a little bit of a comforting hug all the time.
I should also point out here that I'm not actively a Christian, in the sense that while I hang out with Episcopalians a lot and totally jive with them, I don't personally uphold the Nicene Creed as a core belief set woops
If anything I label myself as Buddhist but the only temple I have active ties to is literally on the wrong side of the planet
I think the only thing that hasn't put me super off it is that I can't remember a time where they talked about religious outside of church, and the churches we've gone to haven't been the (at least as far as I saw), the super judgmental and hateful, it's all just been "love your family and friends". Like these are go to church every week people, and my grandmother was go to church multiple times a week, and watch mass on tv on days when she couldn't go to church, and I didn't lose a single family member over being trans.
my partner was raised unitarian; she's not religious, but her parents are good people and everything I hear about it makes it sound pretty good, as far as these things go
I have a lot of respect for Quakers--they've actually taken the moral stands I'd expect most other organized religions to
i never remember talking in my sleep, so my wife also has to tell me what the hell I was talking about the day after, and I'm always mystified as to what I was actually thinking about
which is interesting
life in nyc as a college educated millennial i guess
i think the big questions / purpose of life / philosophy of living / finding meaning stuff is interesting though, and is something that maybe isn't talked about in as organized a way in its absence
i had a big phase the other year of listening to a lot of On Being / reading a lot of Brain Pickings; conversations with authors / religious people of different sorts / philosophers and reading various books on the subjects
perhaps i should get back into that kind of thinking
Oh man you talked to the vacation dinosaur?
Since some of you are not from the US, and most of you from here are not from the South, you can't really understand the reach of Christianity in the area. There are at least 7 churches I know of within a 10 mile radius of my house. Probably more I am forgetting. It is strange to me to drive through a town and not see a church every two or three miles.
Edit: I should have added I live in a relatively small town as well. In one of the bigger towns you could triple that number no problem.
PSN:Furlion
I listened to a woman interviewing for an insurance position while at the coffee shop today and they were talking about God's calling and their ministries.
For a job interview.
Maybe it was a Christian based insurance company. That's still weird as hell.
How do they handle Acts of God?
obviously you did something super wrong to risk god's wrath
so that flood is on you
You uh, you didn't have any Sodom and Gamorah-ing going on, did you? That's not covered under your deductible.
My facebook was a fake name till they made me change it because I refused to show they a id saying it was my real name
Other than that my facebook has no friends I refuse to friend people on it and generally use it to talk to Games workshop
I just find it odd when various things like Amazon my battlenet account and other things have a log in with facebook thing
Why? Why would I do that? that seems lazy
love thread what would this even taste like
It's so off the rails they made chicken and Waffles cereal
That's just the surface you don't want to go any further down that path
dude you know what that cereal would have been like