The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
Discovered that the real opiate of the masses is opiates
Speaking as a recovering Catholic, I think the whole child molestation thing is what put the final nail in the coffin for me. They prioritized not embarrassing the church over bringing child predators to justice. Absolutely disgusting.
Just got struck by the thought that I’ve never really processed how much I was probably affected by the very real terror at spending an eternity in Hell that defined my relationship to sin (making mistakes) as a child. No wonder I’m afflicted with this counterproductive perfectionism.
I wrestled with the concept of hell when I was in college, and it caused me to go nuts for a little while. I really, genuinely contemplated hell and what it actually was like and the implications of that for so many people I knew. Real Lovecraftian “horrors beyond human comprehension” kind of stuff. Christians don’t like to talk about it (outside of the church), but they actually believe 99.9% of humanity will spend eternity being tormented in ways we cannot imagine. And I think losing my mind a bit over it was a totally normal and rational reaction to that sort of thing.
The reality is that no Christians actually bother to think about hell much at all. It gives them satisfaction knowing the people they don’t like will suffer there but I don’t think hardly any Christians actually spend more than like 15 minutes of their lives thinking about hell. Because if they did, and they have even an ounce of empathy, they probably wouldn’t be Christians anymore.
IMO teaching kids about eternal torment in hell is child abuse and legally should be treated as such.
that defined my relationship to sin (making mistakes) as a child
that’s a messed up definition of sin to tell a child. It’s wrong and insane
Nobody understands, when God says wash your hands, God says wash your hands (CW: ableism, edgy humor from 14 years ago)
It worked for centuries or millenia before, those pesky people with their new modes of communication and materialism did a lot to bring the church down.
Yea, same reason no one who works 40 hours a week has friends past a certain age.
This is an underrated idea. The 40+ hour work has really sandblasted our ability to form consistent habits outside the home. Everyone’s schedule it utterly borked for reasons outside their control. They cant create those meaningful social bonds without being able to consistently show up to things.
I once griped to my parents and their friends about how the majority of our waking hours revolve around enriching somebody else’s private company, about how most of our lifespan is spent forgoing our own ambitions for the sake of shareholders - and the Boomers just went wide-eyed in horror and said I’m too young to be talking like that.
I was 28 at the time.
They didn’t deny anything I was saying. They just said I shouldn’t think about it for a few decades.
My parents and their friends - their best nearly lifelong friends whom they love like family - are lucky if they can find the time off to see each other once a year.
For me, growing up from semi regular church attendance as a kid to going to college to today what turned me off was the attitude towards lgbtq and increasingly right wing political stances but also that the pews were increasingly just the blue-silver haired crowd and I kept moving from community to community. Plus I never got Sunday off. Churches rarely did anything for me, we would sing, hear a sermon, take communion, and give money to a plate and then nothing else happened. It was frustrating hearing that Jesus told us as his followers that we should take care of the hungry and refugees and then get a political sermon on how welfare is evil and we should close the borders. One time a dad tried to set me up with his 16 year old daughter (this was pre transition lol). It just wasn’t for me.
I am really happy I grew up in the Church in a certain narrow sense. I at least saw my neighbors and people in my area in a place of equality and community regularly. It had a lot of issues and bad gross stuff as I am sure we all know about (morally, physically, spiritually, you name it), but I think it was a fundamental part of my leftist philosophy forming.
Idea that America has turned Church as social status and “luxury” social club is bonkers. Modern life is incompatible with Christian values and principles as well as being incompatible with just living. Capital turns everything an economic unit, even God and community
It’s disgusting. I went to my grandma’s church a year ago or so and the pastor literally told us all to pray for: The fucking military… the fucking police… and the fucking politicians… yet we didn’t pray for the poor or the war-torn or the suffering homeless population… Like wtf. This isn’t Christianity, this is unironic Satanism lol. Everyone worships the capitalist state. I jut don’t know what is to be done about the state of the church. We need a reformation or something smh…
I feel that 100% man. I remember even as a boy that hearing to send prayers up for the “warriors” in the military and not for some sort of amorphous “peace” hit me weird. It was right during the invasion of Iraq and my youth pastor was telling us to pray that soldiers and such would return safely. I remember asking him one-on-one after we why we didn’t pray for peace and he didn’t really answer. I remember that just being something I couldn’t grapple with for a while. Fast-forward to now with all my leftist understanding and better understanding, I see just how the seeds of todays Christo-fash were planted and bare vile fruit today. It’s real bad man.
Everyone worships the capitalist state
They worship it see it’s harsh punishment to the poor as “divine” justice. It sucks so much.
This. And you cannot convince these Evangelicals and mega-church people that what they’re supporting is wrong. It’s even impossible for me to relate to my Christian family members, one of my cousins listens to fucking Joel Osteen vomits profusely. And as you say, these people see the suffering of the poor as divine justice for irresponsibility or whatever is evil and cruel. They have forgotten the lesson of the Good Samaritan. They are like the Rabbis who just walked on past the man dying in the street. What’s also wild is how capitalism literally promotes the same values the Bible describes the devil having, and our whole society and fabricated pop culture pushes neoliberal propaganda on kids. Meanwhile, in school we tell the kids to be kind, courteous, honest, etc. but when they grow up and realize the world doesn’t work that way, they get cynical and decide to take what they can in this dog-eat-dog system. I just wish Christians like us had a real voice in society so people would know we don’t stand for injustice, bigotry, and war like the fundamentalists do. Anyway, sorry for rambling but I get really passionate about this lol
incompatible? (sorry not trying to be correction jerk, just want to make sure of meaning since used twice)
