tumultuous.

I once had a dream that I was standing near a dock with girls I had grown up with in the church.

As we stood there, chatting idly, the sun began to set. Instead of changing to night, however, the sky became more and more blood red.

Then, purple and white lightning ripped through the sky. We could feel the static in the air as the wind picked up and the waves crashed against the dock.

Finally, a thousand voices rang out, “I AM.”

And I woke up.

And I’m still afraid of lightning sometimes.

Because I’m afraid that on the other end of it is God.

Much like a child thinks that the boogeyman is squatting at the far end of their bed.

it’s not real.

gingerhaze:

Damn right, I am.

So, I’m aware that I rant incessantly about the dismissive attitude of Christians, but I want to address a particular phenomenon that falls ignorantly from people’s lips every single day.

“I’m sorry you met bad Christians.”

A few things.

First, you are that Christian. Every Christian is the Christian for which others must make that excuse. While you are saying it to one person, someone else is saying it to another. Probably because that person met you. So, do us all a favor, and remove the idea from your head that you are somehow the ‘good Christian’. You are not the exception. Ten minutes beneath anyone’s carefully constructed motives will reveal who we really are, and it’s rarely who we say we are. 

Second, if Christianity doesn’t transform the material, it’s fiction. 

Last, there are millions of stories of people who have been hurt and abused by the Church. By Christianity. In the history of humanity? Probably billions. If any other institution carried such a marring reputation, would you still defend them? If millions of people, from wildly different backgrounds and Christian experiences, all professed that they had been psychologically, physically and/or emotionally damaged by the same thing, would you dismiss all of their stories? 

I get that it’s easy to do on a person-by-person basis. You meet one individual one day, you dismiss their pain. Sure, you were hurt, but Christianity is more than that. I can’t prove it, granted, because I’m going to do exactly what everyone else has done to you, but you need to buck up and stop hating.

You see another individual later on. Same story. It’s not that hard to see it as one irrational individual out of millions of miraculous, incredible stories. 

I’d kind of like to see you handle a million stories. All at once. My guess? Many would still dismiss them. All of them. All at once. Our selfish need to remain atop the spiritual food chain does crazy shit to our humanity, my friends. 

Getting hurt once is never an indicator of the whole. Getting hurt multiple times…well, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. The system blesses some and condemns others. To demand the condemned to look past your privileged position and the way they are consistently shit on, is to think of yourself first. Suddenly, God is real only because you need him to be.

I’m reading The Antichrist by Nietzsche. Growing up, the people around me, all Christians, would usually react with disgust and/or wariness when someone would say his name. You know what I’ve found? I’ve met very few of these disgusted or wary Christians who actually know what he had to say about Christianity. They just know he critiqued it harshly. Seriously? You know, I think that says something. People invest their egos in Christianity. When they find out that someone doesn’t agree with them, they react negatively, and will hardly listen to an opposing opinion, no matter how reasonable. Even if they do listen, they are only half listening - seeking endlessly for a way to poke a hole in it.

Even the calm, collected Christians half-listen. There are some things you simply cannot dismiss, but when faced with them, they usually put on a ‘kind’ voice that is actually infuriatingly demeaning. The voice of, “Oh, let me explain that to you…” There’s nothing to explain. You are simply of the belief that you are spiritually superior. Perhaps your conscious doesn’t think so, but I would guarantee that your subconscious does. No one of any actual spiritual significance answers another’s pain with such certainty. No one. 

Investing our egos in Christianity…that, my friends, is all the evidence I need to be suspicious. If we have sewn our egos so intricately into a mystical idea, we’re clearly in it for something else.