• Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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    13 days ago

    My guess is that you have countless times but just never knew it. The good Christians are people who believe what they believe, take those lessons to heart and try to help other people to just help people. They don’t do it looking for praise or for people to join their Church. They do it because they want to be a good person. Because they care about other people. They may have learned that lesson differently or adapt the lesson plan to their own life but they’re just people who want to be good people. That’s it. They don’t normally wear a badge on their sleeve that says “I’m a Christian!”

    One of my best friends is a Christian. I’m not, I’d call myself more of an apatheist. I’ll find out what happens when I die but until then there isn’t a point worrying about it. I’m just going to try to live a life I can be proud of. Doesn’t mean I’ll get it right all the time and I might fuck up a lot but i’m trying. Christians just do the same thing, they just have an extra boost in their life. Me and my friend have never really talked about religion because we don’t need to. I’m aware of the fact that he’s religious just like he’s aware of the fact that I’m not. Same way I know he doesn’t care for curling but that I enjoy it.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Yea, don’t lecture me on my experience as a neurodivergent gay man in Texas. Even the more low key Christians still get heinous when you hold hands with your boyfriend.

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        13 days ago

        Southern evangelicals are definitely the worst of the bunch, but up north there are some pretty cool Christian organizations. My fav is the Moravian church, which sprouted from an internal crisis in catholicism once they started printing the Bible in languages other than Latin.

        The Moravians basically came to the realization that what the church said and what the Bible said weren’t congruent. So they decided to reinterpret the Bible, but couldn’t agree on anything but Jesus prob wanted people to help others. So the whole church is based around disregarding theological conflict and instead just focusing on serving the community.

      • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Don’t equate your limited geographical experience to a far reaching universal trend. Could be a vocal minority, could be just your region, could be recency bias.

        • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          I literally said in my original comment that “Maybe it’s just Texas.” Which acknowledged my limited geographical experience. I was literally making a comment on my own personal experience, not a universal truth. Please read.

          • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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            13 days ago

            We have read what you had to say. The problem is that you’re making sweeping generalizations based off of personal experience and leaning heavily into some confirmation bias to try and prove your point. Even in saying that it is just Texas, you’re basing it off of faulty logic. You are judging the actions of a group at large by the experiences that you have had with a minority. That is, unless you want to claim that you’ve met the majority of Christians in Texas and they were all actively showing unprovoked homophobia, which isn’t a claim you can reasonably make.

      • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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        13 days ago

        And, like I said, there are still going to be plenty of people who don’t say a thing and just are kind/polite throughout their lives to you. Do they not count?

        The loud ones are noticable because they’re loud. The good ones just don’t make noise because there isn’t noise to be made. They just go about their lives.

        I’m also not ‘lecturing you on your experience’ as anyone living anywhere. I’m simply saying that judging an entire group of people by the loud ones who are negative isn’t helping anyone. The bad Christians gonna get angy because they angy little creatures no matter what they believe in and the good Christians are getting slapped for no reason and then you’re frustrated because you feel like everyone from that group hates you so you’re always up on edge. I speak on that last part being from experience.

        For the record, I’m an autistic gay man who is from rural Newfoundland (religious as fuck), lived in Alberta (even more religious as fuck and often called Canada’s Texas) and was openly outed by my mother as being gay before someone stabbed me over it. Just because you’ve gone through shit doesn’t mean that other people haven’t either.

    • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I appreciate this rational take. As a Christian, I disagree with the “persecuted Christianity” narrative that the Roman Catholic Church aggressively pushes. Just like the above commenter is likely focusing on the vocal minority and ignoring everything else, I think the Catholic Church is focusing on the vocal minority and pushing this narrative for their own gain. And statements like the above commenter serve to reinforce that.

      • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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        13 days ago

        Yeah exactly. There are shitty people on all sides. Some shitty people are gonna capitalize on what they can. That doesn’t devalue the ton of good people who are just trying to live their lives as good people. It’s unfair to judge them by the actions of others within that group. It is just outright discrimination and just… is shitty. I’m not about to sit here as a gay man and scream about being unfairly judged while doing the same thing to another entire group. I’ll pass.