Every Sunday and Wednesday until about age fourteen we went to church. That was when it started waning down to every other week, then once a month, then barely at all by the end of high school. The church we attended was part of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination of Christianity that can be particularly conservative even if the pastor is a little more liberal (like ours was until he retired.) We weren’t fundamentalist or particularly evangelical, by any means. We were what I’ve come to think of as “Christian by default” or “American shorthair Christian.” So, though we might not have been the MOST religious, we did all the church “extracurricular” activities: Bible builders, choir, Girls in Action, Acteens, youth group, vacation bible school, etc. All in all, we spent about ten hours a week, on average, at church. I “learned” a lot about life there.
Some of these things I “learned,” however, I found to be lacking a certain veracity when I reached adulthood and started to know better. It’s not a question of faith or belief in a higher power or Biblical Truth. That’s subjective and will never have an empirical answer to debate. It’s more like there were little nuggets of information that were passed off as hard, irrevocable truths that life experience showed me to be generally inaccurate. Things like..
- The first time always hurts because you’re breaking the hymen.
This is just patently wrong and sort of summarizes all the not that awesome sexual education you tend to glean from religious educational settings.
Other gems include:
- Virginity/chastity has inherent value (especially for girls) and makes you a better person
- As a girl, you’re somehow more responsible for not going “all the way” because boys are worse at controlling their hormones
- There is such a thing as “evil” copulation (e.g. homosexual, non-procreative, pre-marital, multi-partner, etc.)
- Girls shouldn’t “tempt boys to sin” by wearing “sexual” clothing (yeah, this was totally a thing)
- Condoms don’t “actually work,” hormonal contraceptives are pretty much abortions in pill form, and SO MUCH other dangerous misinformation about STD and pregnancy prevention.
Even if there are things you never explicitly believe to be true, you can internalize a lot of sexual and romantic dysfunction if you take that kind of advice at face value. And it all traces back to the underlying belief that sex is icky and evil…unless you’re doing it for God.
- Atheists are literally the worst human beings on the planet and will actively try to pull you from the righteous path.
I have a distinct memory of a conversation I had one time with a guy two years older than me in youth group. Under the guidance of the youth minister, he was prepping himself for “Christian arguments against atheism.” Basically, this consisted of memorizing a list of common atheist arguments against Christianity and the scriptures you should use as rebuttal. He was an apologetic in training. I was raised up with the notion that atheists weren’t just amoral, spiritually defunct, pseudo-humans that would always try to test your faith, but they could, also, be swayed back towards the arms of Christ with proper application of the gospel. Supposedly this would work with any and all non-Christians.
That’s totally not how any of that works, obviously. I’ve never met a true gnostic atheist who “went back.” When I still identified as Christian, neither I nor anyone I knew was ever specifically targeted by a non-believer for any kind of religious dissuasion even when we, ourselves, were on evangelical errands. Then, considering morality doesn’t break down in the absence of Christian sacred texts, it seems straight up wrong, and dare I say un-Christian, to demonize people with different belief structures. Or maybe it’s the most Christian thing ever to do that. I don’t know anymore.
- Anyone who isn’t Christian just hasn’t read or doesn’t understand the Bible.
Yeah, because the Bible is such a perfect piece of literature in every aspect, that there is literally no way someone who has ever read it could conceivably deny it’s truth for even an instant. We can just ignore the fact that it frequently contradicts itself, has a number of translation errors and ambiguities, and, at one point, had canonical issues worse than the Star Wars Extended Universe. These things don’t necessarily diminish the overall message and poetry of the Bible, but it does make it strikingly clear that the text itself is a construct of man and, therefore, limited to the same constraints of imperfection that man is famous for. Reading the Bible extremely closely is generally how a lot of intellectuals, in particular, turn AWAY from Christianity. They read it, go “wow, totally not completely okay with all this,” then go about their merry way.
Funnily enough, I don’t recall any Sunday School lessons on why writings from other religions were less Truth-y than the Bible. Either no one felt the need to defend the Bible against other holy books, or someone realized that if they ever showed young people how similar the Quran and the Bible can be they might, heaven forbid, start questioning their absolute divinity.
- You can be the harbinger of someone’s salvation literally anywhere: in line at the bank, at a carwash, outside an abortion clinic….wherever.
I coined a word for this in college: Chick-fil-A evangelicals. One of the hallmarks of big youth gatherings were testimonies about how “teenagers just like us” were leading people to the Lord on a daily basis. Because, you know, there’s a quota to fill. A solid half of these stories started with “I was in line at Chick-fil-A when…” And it was always Chick-fil-A, for some reason . I was taught that a “good Christian” was always ready to teach the word of Christ. The purpose of Bible builders was so that you knew the scriptures well enough to spread the Word verbatim. Asking the person behind you in line in the cafeteria at school whether they’ve accepted Jesus into their hearts was considered a legitimate tactic for bringing someone into the flock.
Here’s the thing. 31% of the world population identifies as Christian. It’s the majority religion in 2/3 of the world’s countries. A fat lot of people are already familiar with at least the basic concepts of Christianity. As a kid, my question grew into: who the hell are these people actually saving? I know we’re supposed to be “fishers of men,” but I think the nets are full. I’ve always found it hard to feature someone raised in Islam or Buddhism or Shinto being flash converted at a bus stop by a sweaty kid with a dog eared version of The Teen Action Bible. The neo-pagans, non-theists, and Wiccans I would eventually meet already fell out of Christianity with nary a regret, so there’s no way those folks are going back. So who’s left? I sort of figured it out after listening to enough of these stories of successful proselytizing. The people they’re saving with one conversation are probably those that were DCAB (Designated Christian at Birth) and either never really strictly adhered to the tenants of the faith to begin with or degenerated into a “life of sin.” Having at one point been a young Christian that got baptized because you were “supposed to,” I feel confident in broadly presuming that pretty much all of these speed date salvations aren’t the result of the glowy love of Jesus pouring into someone’s heart all at once. It’s guilt, a desire to conform, or a desperate need to feel divine forgiveness that leads the people in these kind of situations to allow themselves to be “saved.”
I always thought the stories of people brought into the fold through extended witnessing and carful study were a lot more effective.
- You will be persecuted and reviled for being a good Christian and face struggles defending your faith.
This was one of the first things I realized was probably not quite all right, and it still irks me the most.
Yes, there is a history of Christians facing persecution. Yes, there are parts of the modern world where Christian churches are burned down and missionaries are killed. Indeed, Christians, as a group, have faced death and despair just for practicing their religion. So have Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Serers, Baha’is, Atheists, Druids, and a great multitude of other formal and informal religions in different regions and points in history. Catholics and Protestants have killed each other. Shia and Sunni have killed each other. People, as a whole, have an exceedingly hard time being civil to those that disagree with them. Every religious, racial, and/or ethnic group has suffered and/or been enslaved at the hands of another at some point somewhere. Pretty much no one group has historically clean hands.
And yet, there’s this huge, pervasive persecution complex among certain groups Christians in the U.S., in particular. When eighty-three percent of your countrymen and your leader share your core beliefs, major religious holidays are also federal holidays, and some levels of government will gladly fund public displays of your faith you can’t claim your country is part of some kind of systematic persecution of your religion.
I was told growing up that I would be mocked for praying in public and ridiculed for fasting. That going to See You at the Pole was a brave thing. That I might feel the desire to hide my church involvement from my peers for fear of incurring their disdain. But I had to be strong! For God! For faith! For Christ!
Bullshit. I think the girl I knew in college whose car was tagged with anti-terrorist graffiti because she wore a hijab might have a different perspective on things.
Ashe Etc... 