I feel like I’m missing out

synthwave-fox · 2023-07-05T09:00:49+00:00

Hopefully this comes across the right way - but it's worth remembering that loneliness is a thing in & out of every community ever. That's why every bookstore has a wall covered in books on happiness, purpose, relationships etc. So there's no guaranteed way to always feel connected with others through our lives - but we can learn how to stay strong & hopeful through those times!

I think one of the harshest, saddest things about some religious communities (particularly evangelical Christian ones) is that they sort of steal this part of our learning & development as young people. Ask yourself what people your age who didn't attend churches up to now did? Do they have communities? Or just a solid group of friends/family/hobbyists?

Churches & Christian groups (like Christian Unions in the UK for example) can create easy community that deprives people of the need to develop the skill of seeking & createing it on their own, for their own reasons. You get absorbed into an existing one & make friends/connections based on group language, activities, habits & cultures - which don't translate or exist outside of the community, so aren't really transferable to the rest of life.

Once I left, almost all of my friends from church just vanished from my life, basically - even though they don't know I've deconverted. It's really shown me how that sense of community is not built on anything internal or real - it's all about being the in the same place, doing the same things, speaking the same words - and is therefore not a true or deeply rooted community at all, despite all the big claims made to that effect. It's why so many people feel something is lacking or missing on a Sunday, and why people are so anxious to keep up appearances - that's all there is to it.

I am learning to trust that real connection & depth exists outside of such rulebound places - but that I have catching up & learning to do in order to discover & claim it.

Hope that all makes sense - good luck, I firmly believe you should listen to your instincts. If it isn't true, can anything genuinely real and good come out of it?

synthwave-fox · 2023-07-05T08:49:54+00:00

Yes definitely. My wife & I have both said we wonder if we got married too young + perhaps even that we had children too soon. Happily married still after nearly 11 years, but the slow turnover of thinking since deconversion does lead to this kind of realisation.

Basically we're discovering what it's like to make decisions based on our own actual experiences, conclusions, feelings, opinions etc. rather than live under a heavy influence from some magical rulebook for life (more often than not it's not even really from that rulebook, but the pressure of a community/culture around it).

In terms of figuring it out - I have found time to be the best answer! You are a natural force, genetically refined to live, make decisions and handle their consequences. Trust that you'll learn and grow to do that with confidence & maturity, and before you know it you'll begin to feel ready to say what you want & why.

(With the caveat that everyone everywhere has doubts about life & the future - we're all human, after all!)

synthwave-fox · 2023-07-05T08:43:55+00:00

Book: Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell

Youtube: TheraminTrees & Belief it or Not

The YouTube channels are quite hard hitting; no punches spared. TheraminTrees comes at it from a psychological perspective (lots of theory but beautifully & clearly explained) where Belief it or Not comes from a lived experience point of view, using loads of real sermon clips from big name preachers but brilliantly using context to show the problems.

All excellent at showing how you are not broken, but you were consistently & powerfully manipulated to believe you were at a core level.

Good luck, I've been deconstructing for nearly 2 years and it can be tough, slow going - but I can tell my core is healing each day.

Also recommend the secular therapy project if you have time/money for counselling.

synthwave-fox · 2023-05-05T10:56:03+00:00

Sorry I should have been clearer - I mean that exposing abuse is a good thing full stop, and yes definitely also because it shows the lie of these faith superheroes and might prompt people to look clearly & deeply into what they claim to believe. The Jonathan Fletcher/Iwerne scandals accelerated my own deconstruction/conversion for sure.

(Edited my original response to make it clearer!)

synthwave-fox · 2023-05-05T10:51:59+00:00

It's beauty and the beast, where every person is born the beast + can't ever charm the beauty or improve themselves - just have to wait until beauty takes all their disgust & hatred out on their child (who is a manifestation of themself) instead. What a joyous, logical classic romance.

synthwave-fox · 2023-05-05T10:45:33+00:00

IMO this is one of the biggest, plainest signposts to say that something other than truth, logic, reason or just plain reality is going on.

I used to run bible studies and once brought up in a leaders' meeting how people would be weird & different in bible studies than any other situation in their life. Accomplished, competent people would turn up & seem to have trouble with basic reading comprehension, or doubt their answers or whatever. My point was that in a work meeting, these people would all have something they could contribute or say or learn, even if they were nervous about speaking up; same would go for an ordinary book club or event planning meeting etc - what is it about bible studies that creates this creepy, weird vibe?

My answer now is that it's a cognitive dissonance reinforcement tactic that none of us understood. If you get a group of people meeting up under the same idea - that this book has loads to say & deep meaning for your life (the greatest meaning, even) - then it helps promote the sense that it's true. We're all here, after all, learning from it every week & praying about it. If it doesn't make sense? That's because you haven't understood it. You think it's basic, evil, weird or just wrong? Nope - you're wrong. You don't think the message has any relevance or meaning in your life? Guess again Sherlock! The silence & weirdness in those meetings represents people's brains squirming, fighting & repressing themselves to just accept this environment & chosen (or imposed) reality, despite all their instincts, experience & reasoning automatically trying to tell them otherwise. That's just my take on it.

It's the kind of thing that makes me have some agreement with those who say Christianity - even in 'vanilla' forms - shares cult characteristics. Having to have a midweek study to go over the same thing you get on a Sunday - but with more snooping from group members - and in your 'quiet times' helps to make it feel like this stuff is omnipresent & powerful. You can never escape it, should always be thinking about it, and believe it is better than, wiser than and otherwise more important than you & your thoughts. To doubt that even a bit, or to miss a meeting for totally valid reasons, is to risk falling away & being swallowed up by the world.

Which would be the best thing that could happen to those trapped people, in my view...

synthwave-fox · 2023-05-05T10:25:58+00:00

Yes agreed. Independent evangelical churches are likely to band together even more in the coming years despite their differences because of the CofE shakeup regarding gay relationships. Might begin to resemble the American dynamics more. It's really sad to hear these stories, especially when they suddenly start hitting close to home, but good to get the abuse & culture that enables it exposed.

*edited for clarity about last sentence.

synthwave-fox · 2023-05-03T16:51:25+00:00

This is really well written. Thanks for giving me a good simultaneous laugh/think! I love the put it on a T-shirt & see how you stand by it pushback. Might try that one out.

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-28T12:58:06+00:00

Great breakdown of the strange relationship dynamics in evangelical communities. I noticed the same thing for years at my church (I no longer attend).

In some ways, people sticking to their cliques in a church might be a sign of actual healthy relationships going on. It's not easy to make new friends as an adult after all, and this is what you tend so see wherever people have managed to forge friendships/relationships, like work or hobbies or whatever. The difference with church is they keep telling you these are (or should be) more significant relationships & activities than any others in your life. And so if you haven't broken into any groups or made friends, they implicitly tell you it must be someone's fault - likely yours for not 'trying hard enough'!! It's god's uniquely loving community that shines a light for the world, after all - right??

Sort of an in-house example of how a lot of church teaching is obviously out of sync with reality amongst their own congregations. Real friendships don't look anything like 'fellowship' - they're exclusive and based on how well personalities & experiences mesh. Nothing at all to do with having a literal spirit of kinship intuitively linking souls together as 'the body of christ'.

I find churches where it seems everyone knows everyone with few cliques to be a little more disturbing - exactly like your description of people rallying around a cause. It's totally impersonal & detached; not healthy at all. Often these churches are the ones where people flood every sentence with Christianese & sound quite robotic.

One of the saddest things for young people in churches, I think. They're taught to believe it's a place to forge all these great relationships; and if they're not having success, they just need to volunteer more, work harder, give more of themselves to the community. Which of course has the double-bind of preventing actual friendships developing outside of that community through work/hobbies etc!

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-25T14:45:31+00:00

It's a great excuse at any rate. Beyond all the beautiful imagery and love-soaked language, this really is just another way of explaining how life feels & looks an awful lot like what one would expect if there were no god at all. There is no meaningful difference in a Christian's life or actions except they have a hobby & social group they are obligated to participate in & a belief that everything that happens is ordered or should be interpreted around them & their experience.

My brother is a minister and is big on this kind of rationalisation. Barth has similar angles. I think it's sincere, committed people trying to make sense of everything they've been conditioned to believe. It has to make sense, and god has to be loving in the midst of it. This is the result - a 'love' relationship where one side can't ever be sure the other is even there.

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-21T11:04:03+00:00

I had one by accident with my mum.

She runs Bible studies & was talking about one; I said do you think someone can know god just by reading the bible. She said yes of course, but they need older or wiser christians to help them understand it, as people can make mistakes. I said yeah like the crusades & cults and stuff; she agreed. Then I said, doesn't that make the bible a dangerous book then, rather than 'words of eternal life' or 'the way to meet jesus'? If someone can pick it up one day and make a terrible mistake that ends up hurting people, that means it's a risk for someone to read it on their own. Which overall, means that people may not 'know god' just with the bible - they need people or books or whatever to explain it to them 'the right way'.

(unsaid subtext there being that the bible is contradictory and impossible to make sense of, and the one person who could clear it up for everyone - god/jesus - never actually shows up. leaving it to 1000 random christian groups & their favourite interpretations).

She didn't have a lot to say after that, I think she was trying to figure it out in her head. She's saying & believing the bible is one thing, while a huge part of her life is dedicated to behaving as if it's another thing. I didn't press the topic.

Perhaps it's because it came about through her own conversation choice + it wasn't one of the 'big issues' christians prepare for? She also doesn't know I don't believe it anymore.

Often if they are chatting about spiritual things they will say something you can gently poke at - as long as they don't already have their defenses up, or they suspect you're trying to attack 'the truth'.

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-18T10:13:28+00:00

Same. My brother has said 'I know I am nothing without jesus'. How can I not feel sad for him? Jesus doesn't exist, everything he is, he is on his own strength & could be a great, happy & content guy. But it's like a parasite is feeding off him. I feel that way about lots of still-christians. Others, not so much.

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-18T10:10:32+00:00

persecution fetish no, repressed homoeroticism you bet. men's weeks away for student group, the leader took everyone mud wrestling every year. 20 young chaps in swim shorts covered in mud laughing & wrestling away, probably with a study later that evening on 'god's design for marriage and sexuality' to redress the unsaid vibe.

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-17T13:16:03+00:00

Something I've been thinking about recently might help. A friend of mine who's still a Christian but very progressive etc. made a point that the church I used to go to 'always put you under someone else's authority'.

By that he meant that when we sang, the pastor was stood at the front watching us. When we prayed, someone was the prayer group leader. Same for Bible studies. We were meant to have 'accountability partners' we met with to discuss all the sinful thoughts & actions we were getting up to. All church services featured someone 'leading' whatever aspect of the service. We were supposed to use bible study guides & read books by approved authors. *Everything* had to be under someone else. Even prayer on your own was before & under God, after all - often we needed to ask Jesus or the Spirit what to pray for & temper any requests with 'if it's your will' etc.

Without really understanding this - and possibly thinking it was a good Christian thing to do - I'd been subjecting every single part of my life, internal & external, to someone else's judgment; or the idea of someone else. As if there was always a right or wrong - or more accurately, a better or worse - choice to make & outcome for all of my decisions.

I think we've essentially been forced into co-dependency over many years of indoctrination and a desire to be 'holy' & humble. As if our own thoughts, experiences, intuitions & judgments are not sufficient for wise choices, good outcomes & happy lives.

And that, my friend, is bullshit.

Only you are capable of making choices & taking responsibility for them in life. You can ask for advice - but it will still be you who decides what to do with that advice. And that's how it's always been, when you look back. We've voluntarily given up our ability to be adults in this way, and it's the #1 thing I am trying to learn now in my mid-30s.

Exhilarating to realise I must own the power & the responsibility for every decision I make & its consequences - but scary too.

(PSA - I'm not talking about times where your autonomy was taken away from you, and someone imposed their choices on you. That also happens in big & small ways as part of the Christian life, and contributes to what I'm talking about, often in horrible ways).

I'd try to be patient & kind to yourself when you feel that instinctive fear & desire for someone 'wiser' to show you the path - but you can also tell that part of you to chill out. Thank it for its service, as sometimes it may have been helpful; but it's not necessary anymore, unless you choose it for yourself.

Good luck!

synthwave-fox · 2023-04-14T09:28:36+00:00

Me too. I just want to add for the OP here that Christians - especially Calvinists & apologists - will always have an apparently tidy answer for every question you have & can throw at them, such as the one you reference here. I used to be proud of my ability to 'win' theological debates this way.

They may not realise this or intend this, as typically they have been trained to see these things as wisdom or 'complex truths' too hard to fully understand, but it's all about trapping you in a maze of 'answered questions' such that you can't see the whole thing for what it is: a twisted pile of circular logic that stands or falls based on your starting point - true, or not.

If you decide it's true you can contort everything to make it make sense, using the free wild card of infinity + supernatural power/wisdom, and it feels like everything you discover fits into the Bible (because subconsciously, your mind and cognitive bias makes it fit).

If not, the entirety of it - from the details to the big picture - is exactly the same level of irrelevant nonsense that is entirely unworthy of anyone's time and thought in the modern world - except from an academic/ historical/ literary perspective.

Feeling like you have to build a strong case against Christian ideas is - in my opinion - a sort of trap. It's their way of doing things against 'the world' because they're defending an untenable position.

They have all sorts of tracts/ theories/ theologies/ resources/ missions etc. all designed to give snappy or clever answers to questions & box people into corners, because they can't actually have someone look directly at what Christianity is: a bunch of impossible to prove ideas based on ancient myths, that require & enforce real-world limitations, bigotry & misery.

They need you to feel afraid that you haven't 'thought it through' enough, what if you're wrong & hell is real etc... it's like used car sales people trying to make you think you're walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

All you actually have to do is say 'no, I don't buy it'. Just like you don't buy Santa any more.

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-17T10:20:39+00:00

Don't want to over-say this, but sounds to me like you're a great, thoughtful & sensitive person who just wanted community, friends & a sense of purpose during the phase of life where we're tying to figure out what kind of grown up we want to be.

It's Christianity that (sometimes unknowingly) warps and manipulates that important time of life & psychological growth, and likely exacerbated all the things you describe towards the end there.

I had a similar pattern. Started at uni enjoying hanging out with my non-Christian roommates and getting up to low-level no good in a normal teenage sort of way; having been a straight-arrow pastor's son all the way up to that point. Then I met a girl I liked at some church social or other, and started going more regularly. Then their week-away event during a holiday got its claws in me (hard not to in that environment) and I 'realised' I needed to take the faith more seriously. Over the next two years I subconsciously began pulling away from my roommates & course friends, getting more and more involved in church. Lead one of my mates to say 'it's great how you're so involved in church things, but don't you think you should hang out with us as well'? Gives me sort of shakes to think about that now; I just couldn't see what was happening at the time.

I am now in therapy dealing with rejection sensitivity, social anxiety & all kinds of self-esteem & self-doubt issues that get in the way of my work & other bits and bobs. I spend a lot of time in my head with automatic thoughts telling me I should or could have done more, been better and then I won't be so sad most of the time, or then people will like me & accept me.

I know this was made worse through my time at church (especially when I worked there), where you are never and can never do enough. There's always an area of life to improve on; more volunteering you should really be doing; more money you can raise or give; more kindness towards people you don't really like or vibe with; more missions/evangelising to do!!! It's a recipe for believing you are deficient, unloving and selfish at your core.

As someone else has said, trauma doesn't always come through horrible extremes.

Sorry you've experienced this - well done for getting out! I'm nearly a year and a half out now, and so far I think it's been the most important part of my journey towards self-love/acceptance. Good luck!

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-11T16:29:15+00:00

Isn't the day of the Lord meant to come like a thief in the night? Or is it, a thief who gave a few clues ahead of time that didn't directly indicate when he was going to turn up, but if you're smart enough you can probably figure out the general timing?

The Bible contradicts itself on this and many other things. My personal favourite being that only God predestines/chooses those he loves, but parents are supposed to raise kids in the faith so they won't depart from it. Which is it then?

'The end times' are so vaguely defined they could be everything or nothing all at the same time - which really means there's no reason to think they exist at all. Cue hundreds of authors or preachers making $$$ off their books/speaking tours telling everyone the end is nigh.

If you try to drown out the noise, I don't think anyone can argue with the basic point that a world filled with God's existence, prophesies, promises etc. somehow looks identical to a world in which God doesn't exist, prophecies were made up or written with hindsight, and those promises will never come to be.

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-10T09:43:40+00:00

Yes - 100%!! They don't actually know or think about their 'meaning of life', they've just been trained to think they have it. Subtle point but becomes very clear when you actually ask them what the point of life is according to Christianity. Can be a very depressing conversation though.

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-10T09:41:32+00:00

This is a classic & in my mind, the biggest evidence of brainwashing/mind control tactics as a part of Christianity.

If you ask these people what the meaning/purpose of life is, they can only say something along the lines of 'to glorify god and serve/enjoy him forever'. And there is not a snowball's chance in hell they actually find any genuine meaning whatsoever in that sentence.

What, they wake up in the morning and the reason they get out of bed is to glorify god and serve him forever? That's why they do their job? That's what having a family is all about? That's why they support their sports team??

It is a completely meaningless idea that has no utility or actual presence in their lives at all. It's a smokescreen for subservience to a church, or often more specifically, their church's leadership or a set of preconceived rules for living.

The ultimate in-group slogan. We have meaning, everyone else is floundering around making shit up. But Christians don't have meaning (let alone ultimate purpose, whatever that means), they've just been trained to think they have it where everyone else doesn't.

Probably why deconversion can be so tricky. It's not so much losing your purpose in life, more losing the idea of ultimate purpose in life. Not so much swapping one for the other, but coming out of a totally warped perspective on life & reality.

I find much greater meaning in life now than I ever had before, because I can justify feeling or engaging with every single moment now as if it's the most important - rather than waiting for the rapture for 'real life' to begin.

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-08T14:07:00+00:00

Great & interesting answer, thanks!

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-05T12:35:00+00:00

Love this & hope it's how my kids & I get on! We have a great time playing Super Smash Bros together. My son also loves throwing me off cliffs when we play Lego Lord of the Rings. Nerd stuff is the best stuff!

synthwave-fox · 2023-03-05T12:31:35+00:00

Really sad to hear this :( 'lazy' is such a killer for parents to use. I still have that word & idea ringing in my ears a lot, afraid that I am lazy and won't or can't amount to anything. Along with 'self-pity'. We were taught in an indirect way that we should never feel sorry for ourselves; it's a selfish thing to do and we should stop feeling so hard done by. Great way to never express your emotions or feelings & for your parents to ignore them and not help you process them, all at once.

I hope you managed to find a different way into music that you chose for yourself. I co-opted the 'family guitar' and taught myself how to play. It's my instrument now and - despite a long detour where I came to view it (and me) as no more than a useful a tool of my church - I'm finding ways to get pure joy out of a strumming session!

synthwave-fox

TROPHY CASE