u/cezal

Just wondering if anyone feels like talking about what they do in the morning as a routine for their mental health. I’m still searching for a routine that fits me best. My wife started doing this daily planner thing that asks her questions to spark gratitude etc. she calls it her “devotional”, lol.

How do you all consume your…”daily bread”?

I recently cut off my family after having an intense breakthrough that I have been severely damaged by Evangelicalism, specifically how my father used it as a tool for control and manipulation over his entire family in lieu of being an actual father.

Let me back up a bit and give some context: My father is a die hard “entrepreneur” who has never worked a real job in his life (and prided himself on that fact his entire life). He had some early success in real estate in the 80s which led to prosperity in my family, but shortly after I was born (I’m the youngest of 3 by a big gap) he suffered a major loss when his business was “stolen from him” by his business partner. Instead of looking inward, grieving his loss, and moving forward, perhaps by pivoting to a new industry (they created an MLM btw…it’s called Market America, you can look it up) he entered a narcissist psychosis. Think how delusional Trump is. This is where his villain origin story begins.

He decided the problem was that he was “unequally yolked” with non-believers. That’s why his friend betrayed him and stole his business. So he now must work harder, never trusting anybody else.

And that’s when he converted to Evangelicalism. He disappeared behind a desktop computer for the next 30 years, pouring himself into his “work” that never came to fruition. Not one project. Essentially he was a deadbeat unemployed father for 30 years, but instead of drinking beer on the couch, he was dragging my mom and I to church every Sunday and draining her teacher salary in the collection plate. We never went on vacation, we never did anything fun. As a result, my mother became severely depressed and too tired to cook a family meal for me. When my father wasn’t doing that, he was busy neglecting me as he “worked from home” (he was ahead of his time really), his desk only a few feet away from me when I’d come home from school and turn on the N64. Even though he never made a dime, there was always a billion dollar project right around the corner, so he was always simply too busy for me. In the 30+ years I’ve been playing video games, my father never once picked up a video game controller.

That’s when I had my breakthrough realization.

This may be just my personal trauma speaking, but I wonder if there’s an element of truth to it.

This is for everyone who has ever turned toward Christianity or felt a need for a “God” to worship in their life…

You don’t need God. You don’t need Jesus. You’re just a little kid crying out for a real dad.

Every time I’ve ever felt overwhelmed by emotion for God and Jesus while emotionally manipulative worship songs played, as I cried out to God while listening to Jars of Clay that my parents would simply “see the art in me…”

…it was just my inner child crying out for a good father figure.

You don’t need religion if you have loving parents.

Christianity is for people who don’t have loving parents.

That’s all that is. That’s all “shout to the Lord” is. I would beg and plead to my God to love me and accept me when I felt scared or ashamed for something that wasn’t really a sin at all (in fact super natural aka “sexual sin” aka being exposed to internet porn as a teenager in the early 2000s with completely unsupervised access to a fire hose of “temptation” that spiraled me into a cycle of porn use and guilt and self mental flagellation that has tortured me for half my life) and wanted forgiveness. That was my relationship with Christianity. I was trying to invent a father who was never there. I was trying to have a relationship with a guy who would never respond. Prayer? That’s just one way communication. God never listened to me, because he can’t respond in real time. He responds through a Bible, a list of rules repeated over and over and again. It’s the same as my dad in the car on the way home from baseball games. Talking AT ME, never listening to how I felt when we lost. The same old shit, over and over, with no ability to change or listen. He might as well have died before I was born and left me some bullshit book to read in leui of actual fatherly advice.

That’s what the Bible is. It’s (mostly bad) parental advice for lazy parents. Coward parents. Naive parents. Idiot parents. Parents who are just little children themselves. Parents who need to hide behind a 2000 year old book for advice. Dr. Becky ain’t perfect, but I’d rather take advice from an influencer than men who lived thousands of years ago. The Bible is just Dr. Becky for parents who don’t know how to actually parent, who just then default to the Bible when anything hard comes up.

Fucking boomers man, they sucked so bad at being parents that they tried weaponizing an entire religion to take over and parent their kids and look how it turned out…

Christianity didn’t teach me to love. It taught me to hate. I now hate the Christian God for neglecting me just like my sperm donor did.

I originally posted this in the exvangelical sub, but I’ve yet to receive a good counter argument to my intentionally controversial claim, specifically, a counter argument to a safe place many progressive ex-Christians float to as peacemakers. When I see candidates like James Tallarico try to reclaim Christ for the left, us ex-Christians applaud…

But I’ve been deep into deconstructing Christianity the past few days, going through a lot of heavy emotions. One conclusion I’ve come to is that, Jesus is the figurehead for the most successful cult ever created, the mascot, the Trump, so to speak, of the first MAGA movement…

…but way more effective, and way more evil.

Jesus is the greatest piece of shit who ever lived.

I was talking to my very atheist friend, who was also an exvie, and somehow my perspective was even too extreme for him. He said, “well I think Paul was worse than Jesus, because Paul really preached the hellfire and brimstone and Jesus not so much. I agree with about 80% of what Jesus said.” and I asked him, so you think 80% is enough? If someone is 80% good but the 20% diddles children, it really doesn’t matter what the 80% was. In fact, someone who is 80% good and does 20% evil is actually more dangerous than someone who’s obviously evil. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jesus gave us the image of him as the Shepherd, but he is the wolf, make no mistake.

Jesus and Paul are still feeding you the same toxic bullshit. In Jesus‘s theology, hell exists, and he is the only way to salvation. Jesus is literally quoted saying that you have to forsake your own children for him. Think about it. This is just some random fucking bearded, unwashed, homeless, white guy…the ultimate cult leader, the ultimate lazy, fucking asshole who is blessed with the power of manipulation, who knows how to say the right things to trick vulnerable people into giving him what he wants, always making it about himself…

….the first narcissist. The greatest narcissist.

(Matthew 10:37 NIV): "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me"….

Guys. A homeless guy said that. Someone actually wrote it down. Not only did they write it down. They believed it, and they spread it to every inch of the world, and they still believe it for over 2000 years.

The reason, my trans sister committed suicide in 2018 was because my father refused to accept her because of his faith in Christianity. He chose Jesus over his son. He obeyed Jesus’s teaching.

Imagine that kind of power? To be a homeless guy from the desert, wander in, say some dumb shit, and 2000+ years later an innocent trans girl kills herself.

Think about all the pain caused in between.

It’s unimaginable.

Jesus H. Christ is the most successful and damaging cult leader, perhaps human being, that has ever lived on earth.

If I was an alien coming to examine all of human history, I would look at it and say, “Well, who did the most damage? Near the top of the list people like Hitler, Genghis Khan, but they all pale in comparison to Jesus, who fucked with people’s minds for 2000 years and counting, billions and billions and billions of people abused by one narcissistic dipshit with a good story.

Trump will never be an ounce of the villian that Jesus was…

…but what about the next guy?
All the next fucking narcissist who applies for the job needs to do is take a page out of Jesus’s playbook…

That person could be 10 times more dangerous than anything we’ve experienced yet…

I’ve been deep into deconstruction the past few days, going through a lot of heavy emotions. One conclusion I’ve come to is that, Jesus, the figurehead for the most successful cult ever created, the mascot, the Trump, so to speak, of the first MAGA movement…

…but way more effective, and way more evil.

Jesus is the greatest piece of shit who ever lived.

I was talking to my very atheist friend, who was also an exvie, and somehow my perspective was even too extreme for him. He said, “well I think Paul was worse than Jesus, because Paul really preached the hellfire and brimstone and Jesus not so much. I agree with about 80% of what Jesus said.” and I asked him, so you think 80% is enough? If someone is 80% good but the 20% diddles children, it really doesn’t matter what the 80% was. In fact, someone who is 80% good and does 20% evil is actually more dangerous than someone who’s obviously evil. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jesus gave us the image of him as the Shepherd, but he is the wolf, make no mistake.

Jesus and Paul are still feeding you the same toxic bullshit. In Jesus‘s theology, hell exists, and he is the only way to salvation. Jesus is literally quoted saying that you have to forsake your own children for him. Think about it. This is just some random fucking bearded, unwashed, homeless, white guy…the ultimate cult leader, the ultimate lazy, fucking asshole who is blessed with the power of manipulation, who knows how to say the right things to trick vulnerable people into giving him what he wants, always making it about himself…

….the first narcissist. The greatest narcissist.

(Matthew 10:37 NIV): "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me"….

Guys. A homeless guy said that. Someone actually wrote it down. Not only did they write it down. They believed it, and they spread it to every inch of the world, and they still believe it for over 2000 years.

The reason, my trans sister committed suicide in 2018 was because my father refused to accept her because of his faith in Christianity. He chose Jesus over his son. He obeyed Jesus’s teaching.

Imagine that kind of power? To be a homeless guy from the desert, wander in, say some dumb shit, and 2000+ years later an innocent trans girl kills herself.

Think about all the pain caused in between.

It’s unimaginable.

Jesus H. Christ is the most successful and damaging cult leader, perhaps human being, that has ever lived on earth.

If I was an alien coming to examine all of human history, I would look at it and say, “Well, who did the most damage? Near the top of the list people like Hitler, Genghis Khan, but they all pale in comparison to Jesus, who fucked with people’s minds for 2000 years and counting, billions and billions and billions of people abused by one narcissistic dipshit with a good story.

Trump will never be an ounce of the villian that Jesus was…

…but what about the next guy?
All the next fucking narcissist who applies for the job needs to do is take a page out of Jesus’s playbook…

That person could be 10 times more dangerous than anything we’ve experienced yet…

It took 8 long years after the birth of my first son for me to realize that my parents were gaslighting monsters. My body did all the deciding for me. It was slow at first, being “really overwhelmed” by my love for my children. Being moved to tears by them…but not happy tears…triggered tears. This turned into daily crying sessions when I would drop them off at school, which led to not even being able to look at their pictures because of how cute they are. I realized tonight that I’m just mourning the childhood I never had. The sentimentality I struggled with my entire life? It was always there, I was always a sensitive kid, but I put up tough walls for a long time that having kids…well, biology is an amazing thing. I sure do love them though, and even more so tonight as I watch them sleep, realizing these little nuggets unintentionally helped me finally see the psychological trauma I was being subjected to (subconsciously subjecting myself to through negative self talk and impossible self standards) on a daily basis for my entire life. It was them, and they’ll never even realize they helped me stop the cycle. Tl;dr my life as a father is just a “who rescued who” bumper sticker.

Is this a common thing that happens? Anyone out there experience similar feelings / catalysts for breakthroughs, after having children?