BC RELIGION
Saved by @ThomassRichards

“Don’t leave the church because of the people who hurt you. Nobody is perfect, only God”

I’ll explain why this comment is not only not helpful at all, but also very harmful.

1/

 The comment assumes we can’t tell the difference between people and toxic theology, it assumes our issues are with a few people who are outliers and misrepresented God, and we just seem to think that’s the totality of divinity. Which makes us appear unintelligent and petty.

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But, that’s not the case at all. I didn’t leave because a few people hurt me in the name of God, in fact I stayed long enough to get hurt again, and again, and again, and again. Because it’s not a few bad apples hurting people in the name of God what we are dealing with.

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Instead we are talking about systemic abuse due to toxic theology that is taught as righteousness.

Go to any white evangelical church today and conduct all the tests you must to ensure only those who are “good Christians,” remain. I guarantee you people will be harmed there.
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Not because people just hurt people, not because Christians have good intentions but sometimes make mistakes; instead because the harm is caused due to indoctrination into toxic theology and a belief that their social and theological framework is not only good,

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but also the only way to have a better world and be a decent human being (which is a superiority complex that isn’t based on facts but bias).

Assuming we left because some people caused harm is minimizing our commitment to our own faith too.

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Most of the people I know who left their religion, did so after years of prayer, studying, and grappling with the really hard questions christianity fails to answer. They did because they couldn’t reconcile their commitment to this faith and maintain their integrity,

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not because the faith is inherently good and some people are bad. Instead because being in it made us harm people too. We didn’t want to be complicit in harmful, abusive behavior toward ourselves and others. We didn’t leave because our faith was weak, or because we didn’t

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spend enough time with Jesus. Instead because we took the whole faith thing so seriously that we saw the inconsistencies and abuses embedded in it, and we refused to continue to betray ourselves and others to please a good god that isn’t really good at all.

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The phrase also infantilizes us, making it seem like we don’t understand the very obvious reality that nobody is perfect and makes it seem like our expectations of Christians are just too high and we are unreasonable. Like a young child expecting too much of parents.

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Except nobody ever asked Christians to be perfect, but to stop causing harm. That’s a logical standard to have. However, it is also an impossible ask when your theological framework and moral standard call what’s harmful righteousness and love.

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When bigotry is institutionalized in the church as god’s word and god’s way, the most perfect Christians will be the most harmful and abusive. Not because we expected them to be perfect and they failed, instead because they were indeed perfect in the eyes of their theology.

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Lastly, this comment minimizes our choice to leave our religion as just an inability to forgive, or an unwillingness to extend grace. Neither is true. Not only do we not owe forgiveness to our abusers, but most all of us have actually forgiven, forgiveness simply doesn’t

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equate with reconciliation. I can forgive people and still set strict boundaries and not want a relationship with them or their theology. And grace cannot override accountability, and consequences. That accountability is not just for the people but also the theology.

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Consequences are grace, impunity doesn’t help anybody, silence to maintain a faux sense of harmony ensures more people are harmed. It is gracious and kind to hold a mirror and explain how something is harmful and abusive. Shrugging your shoulders is apathy, not grace.

More from Jo Luehmann

Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
I am going to say something very uncomfortable. Read before you react please.

Purity culture encourages pedophilia, a thread:

Purity culture encourages pedophilia.

Some of the standards of purity culture are innocence (pretty much ignorance about sex), submission (for women), virginity as the ultimate standard, and “modesty” (for women that is wearing clothes that don’t reveal their adult curves)*
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Purity culture makes the desirable standard a child. It makes child likeness desirable in regards to sexuality. It makes virginity, and innocence, and submission; what the male brain should want most in a partner. And your brain doesn’t rewire just because you get married.
2/

This doesn’t mean every man raised in purity culture is a pedophile, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that purity culture wires the brain of men to desire child likeness, which encourages pedophilia. After all desire and objectification happen in our brain.

3/

Now if you are a pedophile who wants to act on those desires, purity culture does a lot of the grooming for you. Purity culture discourages comprehensive sex education leaving children without the ability to know what’s appropriate and what’s not.

4/
CULTURE
Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
When I say that so long as nobody is being harmed people’s decisions, choices, and actions are always acceptable and should be respected; conservative Christians often ask me: but who decides what harm is?

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They do this to invalidate ‘harm,’ because if we can obscure the notion of harm, and they can decide that people going to hell is really the harm we should be worried about; then they are justified in crossing every possible boundary to keep people from hell.

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They are “helping,” “saving,” not really harming.

That’s one of the main ways in which the concept of sin is weaponized against people; because they decide what sin is, which is what will send us to hell (except not because all we have to do is repent and then we are safe).

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It doesn’t matter how we define harm, how much logic we apply to explaining that when people say they are being harmed we should believe them; or how much evidence we have of harm caused. It doesn’t matter that people are literally and metaphorically bleeding. It’s not harm.

4/

I mean they justified the genocide of Native people, the forceful taking of our land, the abduction of children with sayings like “kill the Indian, save the man.” By their logic they haven’t caused harm, they have “saved” us. There is no evidence of this, but they say so 🙃.

5/
ALL
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Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
TW: suicidal ideation.

At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
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I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...

2/

survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.

Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.

3/

She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.

4/

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
5/
LIFE
Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
Christianity has been a weapon used by systems of oppression to call that which is harmful and abusive; good and God’s will. It has been a weapon to normalize hegemonic power, and keep people from questioning it or challenging it because “it comes from God.”

1/

Gender “norms,” harmful ideas about sexuality, social hierarchy, the construct of race, notions of nuclear family, toxic ideologies of work, bodies, finances, government, relationships, parenting, or criminal justice; are all rooted in Christianity and...

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backed up by verses of the Christian Bible taken out of context, to assert that this isn’t just normal, but what God desires. And who dares challenge God?

Christianity has allowed for people w/power to use the idea of god, and *his* “word,” to pass their ideas as God ideas.
3/

This is one of the reasons why people react so violently when we say the Bible is not the word of God, they can’t accept that everything they’ve been given as normal, good, ideal, God’s will... may just not be so.

4/

Their nervous systems tells them it is better to maintain the certainty of what is in their hands; even though it causes harm; than to give into the uncertainty of imagining a different world where equity is possible.

And then their ego gets involved, and admitting they’ve

5/
FOR LATER READ
Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
We live in a society that misunderstands boundaries and consent. Most people think the former is about just saying no, and the latter is about sex. And while that’s a part of it, they are about agency, autonomy, respect and interpersonal relationships.

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Unsolicited advice without consent is crossing a person’s boundaries. Even if the advice is good advice, even if the person giving the advice is a pastor or a parent, even if the advice is important. Most people aren’t talking about their life so that we may solve it.

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It is an honor to be trusted with someone’s life story*, with their thoughts and their challenges, with their struggles and their musings. But it is not an open invitation to try and solve their problems, control their behavior, tell them what to do.

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For a group of people that speak often of free will and claim to follow Jesus, Christians are some of the worst at boundaries and consent in general, and advice giving in particular. Think about how many sermons are not sharing spiritual truths, but just giving advice.

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Think about how much pastoral counseling is just advice giving. Think about the many books that tell you how to parent, how to be a good wife, how to be a good Christian, how to... and how much of it is general advice as though our lives were interchangeable?

5/
SOCIETY

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Beautiful story of Shri Krishna, Mata Rukmini & Satyabhama which teaches the importance of Bhakthi.
Devotion is important than anything.
#bhakthi
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Satyabhama, royal princess was very proud of herself. Rukmini was very humble, her devotion was pure to Shri Krishna.


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Dua is the core (or bone marrow) of worship because unlike other acts of worship, people’s hearts are always present when they want something. Wanting things, along with the process of receiving it, is one of the best ways for iman, character, and love for Allah to grow.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “Love Allah for the blessings He showers upon you.”

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You see-saw between wanting/seeking and sufficing without. When you fail once, you can’t always try again right away. There’s a recovery period in which you lick your wounds and regroup.

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Villain Gaon
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I want to do a brief deep dive into my frequent assertion that Messianic "Jews" are, in fact, Christians and that Christians cannot be Jews. Every time this comes up a bunch of people - mostly Messianic "Jews" and appropriative Christians - show up to argue with me.

They assert that if a Jew converts to Christianity, they remain a Jew and therefore Jewish Christians are a thing. And *technically* this is true - "once a Jew, always a Jew" is a thing. *Technically* it would be more accurate to say that "Jewish Christians" are apostates.

But while it's more *technically* accurate, it's more misleading. Because unless you know that apostasy is a complicated thing in Judaism, and that there are different classes of apostate, and what the legal restrictions and status are for them, it creates a false impression.

Converts from Judaism to Christianity are meshumadim, as distinct from apikoros and koferim. There's ambiguity in the status of meshumadim going back at least as far as 100 CE, but there is a general consensus that they are treated as non-Jews in all aspects *except* familial.

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Kiki \u0627
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I had written this thread in refutation to your false claims which you had made from your previous account and you had even quoted it from your old account and now you are lying that you didn't know about this thread?
Are you trying to say the Verse of Quran i had mentioned


in the thread is false? If that's your claim then say it clearly that all the verses of Quran and hadiths are false which talks about equality and your propaganda is the ultimate truth and hidden secret of Islam.
a) If you are trying to say that just being born in a Quraysh tribe

makes one superior than others then let me remind you that the first oppressors of the Prophet pbuh were Quraysh, the first battle of Muslims happened with Quraysh, the guy who was cursed by Allah in Quran was a Quraysh (ever read Quran?). And if you want to show that being from

the lineage of Prophets makes you superior than others then let me remind you that the son of Prophet Adam will be in hell (as informed to us by the narrations), the son of Prophet Noah will be in hell, the wife of Prophet Noah will be in hell, the wife of Prophet Lut will be in

hell. And if you are trying to say that only Quraysh had the right to rule and not others then let me remind you from history that the Messenger of Allah pbuh appointed leaders Abdullah bin Ruwaha, Zaid bin Haritha, and Usama bin Zaid, and all of them were not from Quraish.
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