Mon 02 December 2024

Content warning: This post deals with religion and politics

This is in response to my fedifriend's toot:

Sit down next to the fireplace my friend, as I spin my yarn...

In January 2016, after over two years of searching, I finally found a church home. I loved where I was: I loved the people, I loved the atmosphere, I felt truly connected and "fed." It was a life-changing and life-giving place. In the summer of that year, I went through the internship at that church called the "Encounter Jesus School", and it was one of the highlights of my life, and I developed some really deep friendships at that time. Fast forward a couple years, and things are going pretty well. I'm serving with the media team and enjoying myself. We just moved into a new-to-us building earlier that year, and there was more breathing room, physically speaking.

But... not all things were perfect. I remember one of the last guest speakers I heard while I was there was just... bad. Very loud, very stereotypically pentecostal-sounding lady. I couldn't connect with what she was saying, and it just felt like the kind of sermon that got surface-level people riled up and excited, but I just couldn't see the substance of it. But I'm not going to judge anyone based on one sermon. I could have just been off that day.

There was however, a single, hideous orange thread running across the tapestry of my stay there, and that was Trumpism. The pastors of my church were gung-ho on Trump, even supporting the "Trump Prophecy" that Trump was to be a kind of King Cyrus to "open the gates" to Christians, which is total nonsense. Christians aren't a persecuted minority in the United States.

I really didn't believe the Trump stuff, but it didn't bother me all that much (that's privilege, I know). I figured that Trump would be another Bush II or another Reagan at worst, and it would be embarrassing to watch, but that we'd get past it, like all the other terrible Republican presidents we've had since Nixon.

When I saw Trump's baffling insistence that he had the biggest inauguration of all time, and the way he behaved like an absolute ass in Europe, pushing his way to the front of a crowd of leaders, I knew we were in for four years of rocky weather. Still, I kept my head down and my mouth shut and discussed politics as little as possible. But I could tell that my friends at church were totally drinking the kool-aid.

This all came to a head during the child separation crisis of late June 2018. I reached my absolute boiling point, and couldn't keep it in anymore. I messaged the wonderful team leader of the sound and media team that I was leaving, and I wrote a five-paged letter to the associate pastor (who I'm still fond of).

What followed was... four years of gut-wrenching awfulness. At the time, I took to Twitter (long before the Elon Musk awfulness) and sought other voices that were saying what I was feeling. At first, I was soothed by the digital screaming of the "Exvangelical" community on Twitter, but that only helped so long. My heart missed the community and fellowship I felt at church.

Four years and a lot of therapy later, I felt confident enough to go back and visit my old church. I had just started going back to church regularly earlier in 2022, and things were going well. At first, I just went to one of the prayer sets on a weekday evening, but then I started going on Sunday mornings. What happened was that I had a dream about the pastor of that church which was... kind of odd, but very symbolic (as dreams go), and made me hopeful for some kind of homecoming. So, with hope, I started attending regularly there. A lot of the people I had known from 2016-18 were gone, but one of the pastors greeted me warmly and even welcomed me "home." I didn't quite know what to expect, but with hope, I attended...

It was... difficult. I had some moments where despite by best efforts, I physically facepalmed. I remember the pastor talked about getting Covid, "but I took Ivermectin, and I was fine." They started talking about the covid vaccine (which I've taken at least four times with minimal side-effects) as being some kind of really evil thing.

I stayed in this uneasy place for a few months, but it all came to a head one morning as the pastor called people to come forward to the front to "repent for taking the Covid vaccine."

Yeah. I had had enough. I walked out that day. AGAIN.

And that's how I came to understand...

You really can't go home.

Category: Life Tagged: Christianity Content Warning Ethics Life Non-technical post Philosophy