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I've been trying to figure out why it is so difficult to get believers to even listen to why we left Christianity. Even though some of us experienced decades of solid Christian belief, we are dismissed as having never believed, or never "truly" believed. No matter what evidence we bring, no matter if we are aggressive or kind, there always seems to be an invisible wall of condescending resistance to any criticism or evidence against Christianity.
This may not be a new concept to some of you, but it all fell together for me today. The pattern so clearly fits with another relationship pattern among humans that it startled me. Christianity is a form of abuser/victim codependency.
I know the word codependent seems way overused, but hear me out. Codependency is the perpetuation of an abusive relationship by two or more people, each of whom derives enough emotional support from the relationship that it outweighs the strife. In fact the strife itself fuels the emotional intensity of the relationship. Sure there are good times of singing, music, friends, and even an intense feeling of God’s presence. This is what kept us coming back and enduring the abusive side of the religion.
I think many of you believed or truly believed. If you want everyone to stop believing you're basically full of yourself though and are asking for a bit of hostility.
It's like I know there are Catholics who "really believed" and then became Pentecostals. Them telling me how great Pentecostalism, and how co-dependent or wrong Catholicism is, isn't going to make me think better of them. When it occurs in real life it's just going to make me think of some place I'd rather be and go there. Same if, instead of Pentecostalism, it's Mormonism or Islam or no religion.
Being irreligious or non-theist in itself does not make you brilliant or mean everyone should follow you. It is foolish to assume you're liars or were never Christian, but it's also foolish to try to dismiss everyone disinterested/unconvinced by you as codependent or crazy or ignorant.
Nightflight wants to make God out to be abusive. OK. John the Baptist was jailed and beheaded for teaching and doing his thing, and Jesus knew the trouble he was getting into to speak the truth about himself and God. God knows what it's like to suffer. ANd a lot of what Nightfall says in that article are examples of God getting angry and hating rightiously, for the sake of us. And when he does, it gets twisted by people like Nightfall that show no mercy or compassion for him.
Nightflight wants to make God out to be abusive. OK. John the Baptist was jailed and beheaded for teaching and doing his thing, and Jesus knew the trouble he was getting into to speak the truth about himself and God. God knows what it's like to suffer. ANd a lot of what Nightfall says in that article are examples of God getting angry and hating rightiously, for the sake of us. And when he does, it gets twisted by people like Nightfall that show no mercy or compassion for him.
Ahem! Again...What did he (Jesus) [allegedly] go through?
ANd a lot of what Nightfall says in that article are examples of God getting angry and hating rightiously, for the sake of us.
As a former believer turned non-believer, this strange concept is one of a million reasons I no longer believe.
From what I understand, God is omniscient. He knows (and has always known) what we were going to do. Why does God get "righteously angry" when he already knows (and has always known) what we do.
I mean, is God "righteously angry" at the anti-christ even though the anti-christ has to do what he does in order for God's "plan" to occur and for God's "prophecies" to come to pass?
The idea of "co-dependency" as a religious concept is interesting and may have some merit. It may explain to some degree why people respond to religious dogma, but the real reason believers don't want to listen to non believers is that they would rather be comforted by fairy tales than to face the cold hard facts of life and the finality of death.
If you look around you all you see is people denying Jesus ever suffered. He was beaten, whipped, nailed to a cross, stabbed, and left for dead. Then years later people deny it ever happened. Jesus is shown no pity, no compassion. People pass judgement on God, and crap all over him and all that he has ever loved, more than anybody that has ever lived. They treat him like he is the "God of abuse", and made to look like he's the evil one. That is the world today.
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