VerdantSporeSeasoning @ VerdantSporeSeasoning @lemmy.ca

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Oh friend, what a ride you've been on. I grew up LCMS, and so lemme just say thanks for not doing that to your kids. I noticed what you said about immigrants trying to assimilate in LCMS as well. Particularly when I would visit family in the Midwest, there was a Chinese buffet that we would always visit, and my anti-immigrant (in general) family would proudly say how he went to their church, that the church wrote on his behalf to help get him citizenship, etc. I saw that less in my own community, but LCMS is not the biggest fish in that pond. Baptist is. I'm sorry you had that experience. Bad theology hurts people, and I'm glad you're making it out on the other side.

Wait till they demand contractor rates!

Yeah, black kids don't need the help of white kids to succeed. They need their schools funded as if rich white children went to them though.

Also, school isn't just about success, it's about learning to live in a society, one which isn't just a monoculture. Hard to learn to live together (for all kinds of races & identities) spending entire childhoods separated.

Our Albertson's (including most Safeway brands) in my region want to merge with the Kroger brand stores. They say it'll be good for customers. 🙄

And I'm sittin here on Capitol Hill

Because future generations have to safehold and not misuse extremely destructive knowledge. We have a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but do they have the ethics to use them responsibly, understanding their full potential? Do the other countries with nuclear bombs have that ethical responsibility, especially over generations? Cuz that big red button is going to be around for a while.

What people identifying as Christian do and act doesn't represent Christianity as a whole.

I mean, religions are what people define them as, use them as. If two million people use the Christian Bible to prop up child abuse, slavery, and sexual, then that is part of the tradition of that faith. Perhaps you didn't ascribe to faith that seeks to sever people from God via thoughtcrimes. Perhaps the church you attend works to alleviate those injustices, and that seeks conservation of the planet we were gifted. But I know when I asked about racism at church, when I asked about what we as a congregation were doing about it, I was told that was a heart issue that we just had to pray people would resolve on their own. Women, again, could not hold positions of authority because that was against God's will, gay people were sent away, but racists, what can you do? Again, my experience isn't unique. There was never any talk of care taking the planet. Fair bit of talk about the dude who buried his Talent vs the one who invested it, though.

I think you identify a lot of real evils in this world, and people really do create a lot of problems. I fundamentally don't believe we are overwhelmingly evil, and I think teaching people they are evil is more likely to create people who grow up to be evil. People live up to what those around them believe them to be. When people believe to their core that they are truly evil and cannot trust themselves, that they instead must trust the human layers between themselves and God., that's gonna come up as trauma and/or abuse somewhere down the line.

And while any environment can become abusive, churches preach truth and morality; tied in with that is a strong sense of community and family. Trying to call out abuse from an elder or a pastor often results in the pastor getting moved and 'prayed for' and the victim pressured to forgive before is appropriate. They're bullied to say they forgive when they are not actually ok. And the abuser gets to move on and find new victims. We've all seen the scandals about the Catholic Church over the last couple decades. The Southern Baptist Convention had a list of 700 abusers they covered for. But still don't be a loud lady, that's against God. The SBC is one of the biggest evangelical denominations in the United States. I don't think they're what Christianity is supposed to be. But they are Christians and this is how they express their faith, so this is how I understand Christianity.

Bad theology hurts people. And to pretend there isn't bad is to be unable to fix.

I do think that there are a lot of good branches of Christianity out there, where the main focus is on loving thy neighbor and opening the way to God to all people, not being exclusionary.

My experience of religion, like so many others though, hinged (more and more strongly over the years) on a literal interpretation of Genesis. One in which eating a bad piece of fruit causes inseparable rifts between parent and child; one in which the creator of all, the knower of all, created rules that unless I grovel and beg and pledge constant devotion, I deserved eternal conscious torment for existing. That's an abusive belief. Especially to teach children.

That's before the curse of Eve, for eating the bad fruit first, causing the pain of childbirth, hereditarily (the biggest cause of death in women throughout history), as well as god-sanctioned subjugation of women. (For example, a woman doing everything right knows not to try to teach a high school group--those are men that she's not qualified to minister to. She knows it's better not to vote in church matters, even if she's allowed, because the head of household, her husband does that). This creates social structures that disempower women as a point of culture, another abusive trait.

Children also deserve subjection. They are to be obedient at all times, it's literally one of the commandments. Our denomination taught that "Obey thy father and thy mother" also applied to all earthly authority over us. Authority and structure mattered more as a culture than understanding and insight.

And the social culture of church can feel toxic or stifling. Often outright sinning, even as a repetitive behavior is tolerated in church spaces (especially in cases of child or domestic abuse), but someone who has reason to think a little differently (like believing in Jesus without believing in Genesis, being queer, being progressive) is shunned or made to be quiet. They know from a young age that their voices can never be respected in those spaces, the number of sermons I heard about how evil/misguided/ other awful stereotype that non believers were supposed to be... It teaches othering, it teaches people to reduce other people to stereotypes of what the pastor says instead of what the person's lived experience is.

This isn't unusual for Christianity, especially in the States. My experience with abuse patterns in Christianity may truly not apply to you. But I think they apply to many.

And I'm not even going to touch on the abuse that happens to homeschooled children, often strongly correlated with religion.

Friendly reminder to everyone that the rest of the world has signed on the United Nation's Connvention on the Rights of the Child; the US doesn't like that it could prevent children from being spanked, because God wants us to spank our children (spare the rod, spoil the child).

Religion is often a basis for the suffering of children.

The organization that invited him, it says above, is the local chapter of Turning Point USA; TPUSA nationally is run by a fellow called Charlie Kirk. It's overt 'goal' is to 'promote freedom', and it does this by making lists of professors who are liberal. These professors often then get death threats. Charlie Kirk is a christofascist, and if you're not familiar with the organization or the person, you're missing someone who reliably pushes Trump and culture war on the rest of us.

And that skipping KILLED the batteries.

I've had female relatives mad when the churches they attended started letting women vote in church matters. So I'm guessing about like that. Self hate is such a warm little cocoon once you cut off the parts of yourself that it demands.

But if everyone is naked, the poor boys will be distracted. I mean, they already veer off course when shoulders are out. I guess the only appropriate solution is to not have the girls at (naked) school. /s

Probably something like this

Yeah, conveniently that's about the time that it got real offensive to be openly racist. Closet racists hated abortions as the new code. Then kids grew up learning AbOrTiOn StOpS a BeAtInG hEaRt and that it's always murder. And here we are.

For people who love Bad news 🎶

Sorry, kinda had that feel

Yeah, a real "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" situation there (for all the If Books Could Kill listeners)

Being in a liberal city in a horribly red state doesn't protect residents from the cruelty of said state. It doesn't stop the racial profiling intended to terrorize immigrant/mixed stays families, it doesn't re-attract healthcare workers, it doesn't prevent kids getting harassed for their pronouns in schools. In many places, Texas makes laws that takes away power from it's more liberal areas, like how Houston schools have been taken over by the state, or how Denton can't ban fracking in its city limits. Also, Texas doesn't have a ton of public lands (state/national parks) for people to use. But what people lose by moving to a state like Texas, they gain in so many new experiences: being sued by anyone and everyone for abortions, waiting for hours to vote, the glorification of guns, legislators arguing to put the 10 commandments in every classroom in the state, $7.25 minimum wage (hell, again, the state doesn't even allow cities to set higher minimum wages within their limits), right to work/get fired, an electric grid not up to federal standards, and so much more. But yeah, the BBQ is really fucking good. And the fresh flour tortillas, those are amazing. I wish I had a Chuy's nearby...

There's a Venn diagram somewhere of the states denying food aid for children and states rolling back child labor protections. From the linked article "State child labor law changes are part of a broader, troubling agenda to boost corporate profits and increase economic desperation of low-income families and children" and "While FGA lobbies for the erosion of child labor protections in states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri, they are simultaneously working to limit access to anti-poverty programs like SNAP and Medicaid, block expansion of Medicaid eligibility, and promote the defunding of public education through expansion of school vouchers in the same states. Taken together, FGA’s priorities represent a radical, multilayered assault on the same low-income families whose economically desperate children are most vulnerable to recruitment by unscrupulous employers for jobs involving long hours, low wages, and hazardous conditions that harm their education, health, and well-being."

So literally the plan is: Make em super hungry, exploit them for cheap labor while they're young, tell em anyone who's still hungry is a lazy leach who deserves to starve.