#religious baggage

[castingmysilver]

....I keep being surprised and distressed and disappointed by how many people not only have access to information which could undermine their views but *have* accessed it, *know* it, at some level even *believe* it, and seem to make a conscious choice to interpret it in such a way as to make themselves feel superior and the other guy (gender neutral) look bad.

I was raised *without access.* I literally did not have opportunities to learn things which weren't spoon fed to me ideologically, much less incentives to try. Everyone I knew and trusted was from inside the same insular community, all my school curricula; ideologically compatible radio only, internet usage watched and sometimes directly controlled, visual media vetted, *library books* vetted individually before I checked them out until my mid-teens. Even books my fundie homeschooled peers were allowed to read sometimes didn't pass inspection. Even if they were for sale on the shelves of bloody Lifeway.

And for me... there are many things I have been initially confused, but also *relieved* to discover in the wild! It's so cool to me that the world outside the greenhouse is a more complicated and less unmitigatedly terrible place than I had been led to believe! That many people are in fact working from different data and interpretations than I was rather than denying "the truth" for the evil lolz or whatever, and that many, many people whether they love my God or not are doing their very best to love their neighbor and help their fellow-man.

And then I keep finding that the people who tried to keep me in the dark were not perpetuating a *mistaken* belief and too invested to look outside, and they weren't unaware, even, that their take on the data could be actively harmful. Sometimes maybe they convinced themselves there would be *worse* harm from another course of action, but...

They still knew. They knew. Sometimes they even developed the ideas I was taught as an intentional hostile reaction to the ideas I was relieved to discover. There are so many powerful people who demonize their neighbor and terrorize their own children *willfully*, with the full ability to have chosen otherwise.......

I was a *child* for fuck's sake, everyone who was supposed to teach me was teaching me badly, many of them were *originating* bad teachings rather than just passing it down the grapevine, and I *trusted* them.

I trusted them.

#personal #vent #silver processes bs #religious baggage #indoctrination #homeschool graduate #exvangelical #us politics #choosing how to live

[archivingheartbeats]

Kindred Spirits

[4/15/23]

We were just children,

Sunburn on our shoulders,

Seeking connection

With someone our age.

Two hearts on fire

In a hotbed of zealots,

Debating books and music

After a sudden embrace.

Oh, we were children,

Thought we were so grown-up;

Heads frothing with thinking

Denied and dismissed.

Sand-castle dreams,

Hoped or feared predestination;

Eager to be authors,

Brief island of bliss.

We both wore such shadows

Over those shoulders,

One-pieces, camp tee shirts,

And struggles at home. 

Our sisters conspired

And inspired a chance meeting,

The spark struck at greeting

Came aflame as we roamed.

#poetry #archivingheartbeats #castingmysilver #friendship #love #memories #Fox-Spark #youth camp #religious baggage #summertime #napowrimo2023

[ignasiuslepusculus]

oo really good post about fantasy swearing and making it not too much like christianity — mehercule is a good example, or even di immortales. but yeah i do agree that oh my gods is kind of awkward

so how would ignasius swear? i think he would not invoke iubaris as much as some people, because that is his dad. lol. so i think honestly he’d probably swear on dermica and lucellus or a minor god that he feels a little closer to?

i think it’d be interesting to have ignasius question how religious he is, even though he has the cognomen pius to some. he doesn’t know who to worship because he doesn’t know if he’s divine or not. i really wanna work out if he’s had any sort of contact with his father or if he’s had to rely on priests of iubaris

omggggg hes totally had to rely on priests of iubaris for communication thats so.

so thats why he becomes so attached to the one priest(ess?) that sits with him at Events - they’re legit his stand in father

i think it’d be super interesting too if the priests were just like. yeah iubaris likes u :) but that’s it. like the general vibe ignasius gets is that iubaris doesn’t *mind* him being called his son - just a weird uncertain approval that doesnt really explain his parentage

#religious baggage

[sealrock]

are you there, O 'lone? it's me, your most wretched daughter.

#ffxivsnaps #gposers #ffxiv oc #hyur #ffxiv gpose #i noticed too late the flowers clipping through hhhhhngngh #but anyway. :] #i edited in the sunbeam because why not #the vault is soooo red but i couldn't decide between the original or the psd version #posing inspired by john everett millais' painting of joan of arc #i threw in the halo because i thought it'd be neat #tauvane has a lot of religious baggage to unpack #sidenote: i made her voiceclaim malenia from elden ring and this outfit reminds me of her even more #mygposes.

[the-song-of-avernus]

picking an aasimar Guardian (and depicting him as an old 6f guy with white hair and a beard) is SUCH an inspired choice for this cambion tav run (esp given the end of act 2 and squidward being absolutely full of shit)

#working through my religious baggage a tiny bit #angels and demons #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 tav #cambion #aasimar #dnd #emperor bg3 #emperor #astral plane #angel #demon #tiefling

[forgetful-river]

To be an apostle to a cruel god, a divinity long-dead who left festering wounds to the devout, is a righteous mission of self-destruction.

#having Mindfang thoughts. #she's such a hashtag girlboss #she's also my poor little meow meow #it's also weird how strongly I associate Vriska with religious imagery #I guess it's just another result of the Religious Baggage I've got hanging around #anyway. I'm still working on the ask game requests I just had to get this out of my system first #vriska serket #marquise spinneret mindfang #mindfang #aranea serket #I hate spelling her name SO MUCH #homestuck #hs #my art

[noritaro]

the Bible got some bangers from it, like for example Moses? love it- Prince of Egypt one of my favourite movies ever made

but those types of Christians need to stfu

#rambles #btw I'm an Atheist with religious trauma baggage

[teeth-in-a-mason-jar]

y'all I'm brainrotting too hard on the silt verses to NOT write a song or some poetry or paint something or idk

I'll update y'all if I do anything

Please listen to the silt verses

#the silt verses #It genuinely helped me work through my religious baggage #Y'all the soundscaping is insane I love it so much #Faulkner is my silly #Carpenter is my friend #I want to put Hayward in a jar and shake it (lovingly I promise) #And I just wanna squish Paige couldn't tell you why #I just love her and I want to squish her out of love

[palominocorn]

I was raised atheist. My father was atheist, my mother agnostic, and neither of them bothered to teach me what religion even was, much less anything ABOUT religion except that involved some dude named "god" whose name we used in a lot of phrases.

(This led to some hilarious situations, such as when I thought the Bible was a poorly written fairy tale and also the time I tried to found my own religion, but those are stories for a different day.)

A thing I've noticed a lot is that Christians and especially ex-Christian atheists assume that my childhood was Just Like Theirs, Minus God.

They assume that OF COURSE I celebrated Christmas, in fact, I probably love Christmas more than they do because I never got dragged to church.

They assume that OF COURSE I grew up with Christian neuroses about gender roles, relationships, and sex! When they find out I'm queer and trans, they automatically assume that the process of accepting myself involved a lot of messy reckoning with my entire upbringing and worldview.

They assume that OF COURSE I was raised to never question things and to be seen rather than heard and to defer to authority, and that the process of becoming the loudmouthed nonconforming scientist I am now was one of rebellion.

But none of these are true! While my childhood was deeply authoritarian and bigoted, it was not in a Christian way. My experiences are fundamentally different from those of someone raised Christian.

And the idea that all of these Christian things are just default childrearing practices, as opposed to specific manifestations of a particular cultural and religious context, is one of the hard to combat ways that Christian supremacy works. By convincing people that these things are not Christian, they're ubiquitous, they assimilate people into a Christian context even if the victims don't necessarily convert.

#I'm so FRUSTRATED #Atheist spaces are dominated by ex-Christians #many of whom stopped believing in god but did absolutely nothing about the rest of their religious baggage #Like at this point I get more non-theistic but distinctly Christian evangelizing from atheists than from Christians #Which sounds like nonsense but it's true! #Anyway posting this with the full understanding that once ex-Christian circles get ahold of this they'll clutter my notes with junk #Just more proof of my point I guess #Before you ask YES if you're from a minority religion feel free to add your thoughts

[parachutingkitten]

what does LDS mean?

It refers to my church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You may know us better by our old nickname "Mormons" ;)

#lds #mormon #i am christian #like most everyone with religious beliefs #my personal relationship to my faith #my church #and my god #are complex #but i feel it's worth putting in my bio #as a way to reach out to other members #and to give full disclosure to those who may have church baggage #it pretty much never comes up #cuz i mainly just talk about ninjago #but you know #thanks anon! #asks

[castingmysilver]

Not hijacking a post which clearly was for a different audience than me. But.

Just saw an obviously well-intended Christian-audience post addressing using devotions/worship as a calmdown cycle from anxiety, essentially? And even though I am Christian (if sometimes complicatedly) I feel like that would often be a really poor decision for me, while I am in the throes of it!

My mom seems to do that fairly routinely, and thinks it's the cure-all. And when she stress-sings hymns and children's praise choruses I find it *terrifying.*

A lot of my anxiety triggers *are religious in nature.* Tied to poor perceptions of God fed me by past churches, scrupulosity about how literally every aspect of my existence can potentially be "sinful" in some way, hate of hellfire theology which then feeds into either fear of actual hellfire or guilt at doubting God and ascribing hellfire to Them, the list goes on. And I know I'm not anywhere near alone in this. In being someone for whom praying it away, no matter how well-intended, would be feeding myself to the beast in me.

#personal #vent #religious baggage

[archivingheartbeats]

We believed we were broken from the beginning.

The shards of this soul remember

Nothing but shame for the mildest midnight mischief,

Begging for mercy in closed closets 

With a useless tract in hand,

"Steps to Assurance" that could not reassure.

We hid playtime oddities with the fervor of a secret murder.

We refused to take all hope on offer,

Tore out the page of heretical childhood innocence.

For what prize?

If I bottomed out in ultimate unworthiness,

Could you cradle me back to holy ecstacy?

Was believing my peccadillos drove the bloody nails

An accurate measure for the cost of heaven?

#poetry #archivingheartbeats #castingmysilver #vent #religion #religious baggage

[url-is-url]

FCG: I just found out that I’ve got a soul, and then [gesturing at Pate] this thing is alive now too, so like...

Imogen: Does Pate have a soul?

FCG: I DON’T KNOW, but the fact that he is alive and sentient makes me question whether my soul is worth anything??? Like am I just that with metal?

The Bell’s Hells: We’re all that with meat

#pate de rolo #fcg #no but really fcg FASCINATES ME #as a person with religious baggage fcg is an extremely compelling character and i really wanna talk about the feelings journey #that they're going on vis a vis having a soul #critical role #campaign 3

[kaleidoscopexsighs]

sunday snippet / last line tag

thank you @fruity-individual @kaaaaaaarf and @behaveddestroyerrating for the tags 🫂

from this is my body:

Sirius watches the last bits of sunlight sink past the windowsill as she works the string of ebony beads through her fingers, noticing idly where her nail polish is chipped.

Hail Mary, full of grace

The lord is with thee

The words are so familiar, so ingrained (so meaningless, Sirius almost thinks). She mutters each solemn verse, playing at piety in the hopes of feeling something, never mind redemption; her thoughts drift back to brown eyes and bonfire smoke. A laugh like running water.

Blessed art thou among women

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus

Her uniform socks provide some relief against the rough concrete of the unfinished floor, but Sirius can already tell that her knees will be bruised for at least a week. She makes a mental note to wear tights next time.

Her dinner is cold when she finally emerges from the basement.

no pressure tags: @worldenough-and-time @lemndrps

#fic: this is my body #lesbian wolfstar #take your religious baggage and make it sapphic #wolfstar #ao3 #kels writes

[aintgonnahauntitself]

Doctor: well, usually autism is something that gets caught and diagnosed in childhood...

Me: diagnosed by the same people who forced me to switch from lefthanded to righthand in the 21st century?

Doctor: well-

Me: the same people who lost me my reproductive organs by misdiagnosing my tumors as hernias multiple times despite what I told them about growing lumps and severe pain?

Doctor: but-

Me: the same people that never caught my bad heart and connective tissue disorder, even when I kept asking for help, because they assumed I just wanted attention?

Doctor:...

Me: the same people that told me gay people are an unfortunate but natural phenomena but asexuality is a mental illness?

Doctor:...

Me: the same people that told a suicidal 14 year old to stop being so dramatic about problems that are just childsplay and hormones?

Doctor: ...

Me: the same people that told me that the fossil record is a scientific hoax and that Hurricane Katrina was sent as divine punishment upon the Blacks and gays?

Doctor: ...

Me: ...

Doctor: rural America?

Me: rural America.

#American medicine #rural america #autism evaluation #chronic pain #chronic illness #religious trauma #asexuality #impotent rage #literally more baggage than I can afford to sort through on medicaid #the kingdom of god is at hand

[sawthefaeriequeen]

what the hell, man

#i like ONE text post about a bible story and i get this #my religious baggage just ran screaming #text post