I used to talk about freedom in Jesus a lot when I was Christian, but I really wasn’t free at all. It was more a case of Christian doublespeak–freedom is slavery/slavery is freedom and the like. I engaged in this doublespeak out of fear, mostly, and wild hope.
I’m very glad that I was in and out of Christianity before this current rush to sterilize everything fun and desirable. My Halloweens were wild, fun, even dangerous at times.
Free speech is the new favorite rallying cry used by Christians whenever they are not allowed to trample over others or are reined in in any way whatsoever. We’re going to talk briefly here about what it is, and why misunderstanding it is going to hasten the decline of a religion that deserves to decline.
Our dear friend Charles at Skeptic Journey has brought something up that I wanted to talk about today: the growing sense of flailing that I get from modern Christian organizations as they try to stem the tide of apostates and attract new members to their groups. A long time ago, Read more
Given the demonization done of ex-Christians and atheists, given how little most folks–especially fundagelical parents–know about either group, given how poorly most Christian denominations understand real love, I can totally get why parents might worry about the state of their kids’ spiritual health. It’s misplaced, but it’s still there.
(CN: Domestic violence, abuse, gaslighting.) Hi and welcome back! We’re cruising right into the weekend, aren’t we? Last time we talked, I touched briefly on the way that Christians often insist on adjudicating and judging people’s lives and personal decisions. In response to a blogger who wrote that Christians’ hypocrisy Read more
I saw this interview on Religion News Service with Scot McKnight, who argues that Christians talk a big game about this idea of “kingdom,” but don’t really understand what it means in the Bible or how it should play out in their everyday lives. I admit, I was a little Read more
(CN: The right to die; death with dignity; my mother’s death of cancer. This is going to be heavy. Also, fuck cancer.) You could guess I do support the right to die, right? But not everybody does. Death with dignity is one of the causes that Christians tend to oppose Read more
Last time we talked about how church leaders and teachers have been pushing the false idea for years that marriages must be “based on Jesus” or else terrible things will happen to the couples involved. Today we’ll talk about some of those terrible things, and then we’ll talk about the Read more
I wanted to briefly discuss something I talked about last time, about couples “basing their marriage on Jesus.” I was talking about how Christians tend to have very unclear ideas of exactly what they’re basing their relationship on, namely: The simple truth is that I don’t think even most Christians Read more