r/OpenChristian

I have my own place and pay my own bills. I’m also 29 years old.

As a teenage girl I was heavily influenced by purity culture, going as far as promising to not kiss anyone until my wedding day.

That all changed for me when I got with my boyfriend at 27. But I don’t know how to talk about it with my parents, especially my mom.

We started having sleepovers at my place a few weeks ago. His car broke down and I live very close to his workplace, so it makes sense for him to just stay with me until it’s fixed.

Well today my mom asked where he sleeps while staying here. I said a bed. Then she asked where. And I said in my bedroom, with me.

It felt really invasive. As if she was trying to get me to admit or confess something.

I think she thought I was going to say he was on the couch. And I just feel so awkward now. Which is ridiculous considering I’m turning 30 next year.

I feel like a 16 year old who just got busted for rebelling. Two adults in a relationship of 18 months having a sleepover is normal. Sharing a bed with your loving partner is normal. But 16 year old me is still in the back of my head telling me I should be ashamed.

Is it insane for her to have asked me that? I don’t even know if she really cared, maybe she was just curious. I do remember her telling me to wait until marriage because of it being a “sin” but maybe her views have changed since then. I don’t know.

Why do I feel like I’m in trouble somehow? I feel insecure talking to her now, even though that’s silly and I have nothing to be ashamed of. I’m an adult in love with another adult. It’s normal. It’s healthy. But teenage me still feels weird. And I don’t know what to say if she asks for more details. I love her but sometimes she doesn’t understand boundaries.

I have a friend of mine that invited me to go to an Adventist church (she is an Adventist), she told me that they're liberal and affirming (she knows I'm trans and accept me) and they're not like evangelicals. But I've read that they're neither accepting nor affirming so I don't know if she is just or I'm confused.

our Bible isn't going anywhere. AI doesn't replace it — he helps you go deeper into it.

Got a verse you don't understand? A passage that's been sitting with you all week? properly positioned AI tools walk you through it, share what Scripture says, and point you right back to the Word.

Think of it like having a pastor in your pocket — not to read the Bible for you, but to read it with you.

I see a lot of subreddits with concerns around AI, and some are legit, but some are misplaced. Generic AI is only good at generic tasks, and pulls from generic sources. purpose build AI, focused on scripture, bound by the word, can be very powerful. This technology is already here and being widely developed.

Finally, its just a technology, made by man, similar to the printing press known for changing the story-based repetition and hand written scrolls into the bible we hold today - AI is just another man made technology, composed of calculations and equations. responsible development and responsible use will be a major contributing factor, but even for the naysayers - what the world may mean for evil, the Lord can still use for good...just a thought... I would love to hear your thoughts.

Hi all, I am 18m and beginning my journey with Christianity. I have been raised non religious and have recently been thinking about Christianity. I have had some experiences that kick started my belief and am looking for ways to strengthen my faith. Any advice is greatly appreciated :).

I’ve been diagnosed with almost every mental condition there is and have been praying to god that he ends my suffering and just let me pass. I recently was admitted to inpatient hospitalization for 6 days and while marginally beneficial it made my suffering worse. I know god loves us but why can’t I just be done and be at peace?

Hello

I might be a stranger here

I might be a stranger here, but I really need a fellow Christian to talk to. I can no longer handle these dark days, and I feel like ending my life. Can I talk to someone please? 🙏 I feel so overwhelmed and alone right now. I need someone who can listen, pray with me, and remind me that God has not forgotten me

I’ve felt a calling and anxiety over Islam. It’s trying to convince me to convert and I don’t know if that is Allah trying to save me or Satan trying to tempt me. I don’t like Islam and its heaven seems full of lust full desires. It also seems unconvincing but this voice in my head keeps telling me “convert” and “what if you’re wrong and you get tortured” it got so bad that through tears I cried into a bean bag begging for Jesus. I’ve never done that. I’ve never chose Jesus when I cried before, I’ve never screamed for him full of pain and longing, begging for him to take away the pain. It did go away but what if that was Satan trying to keep me in his clutches. What if he’s trying to stop me from going to the true God? I love Jesus more than ever right now but I’m scared. I’m so scared that I’m gonna die and Jesus will stand next to Muhammad, is gonna shake his head and cast me into eternal fire to experience unimaginable pain forever.

I’m a gay nonbinary Buddhist currently and I’m considering Christianity. I’ve mostly been looking at Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism because there is an Episcopal church near me and also a Presbyterian one. I don’t understand why so many conservatives try to prove the existence of God when faith, by definition means believing something without concrete proof.

Granted, I’ve not read either in depth, but the bits I’ve encountered make me think Calvin and Augustine were both MASSIVE misanthropists who needed therapy in a big way

Hi! I had this thought and wanted to put it out into the world somewhere. I 27f work in a demanding and difficult job. I am an in home social worker for kids and families in the child welfare system. I have had two thoughts heavy on my mind with my faith lately.

1. I am starting to understand why God ruled the Old Testament the way he did.

- if someone is raised completely backwards from what a typical healthy home looks like, they may need discipline combined with the unconditional love to heal.
- Rules are not a bad thing, they are a protective thing. They aren’t here to hurt us or make us sad.

? What is your favorite example of God ruling the Old Testament in this frame?

I as a child /teenager never liked to think of God in this way. I felt it was unnecessary but that’s just it. It wasn’t :(

2. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

- again louder for those in the back!!!!!!📣

- if you have no idea what you’re doing, even with good intentions, you could be doing harm in the mental health field/child welfare field.

- if you are a passive communicator you are doing harm by attempting to “spare others feelings” or spare yourself the uncomfortable part of having to say it.

? If anyone has good scripture around this send it my way. I know it to be true in my heart but I am still working on articulating it.

In my area there are several churches of various denominations that advertise being welcoming communities for LGBTQ+ folks, but their actual church experiences don't feel that way. Like they post about it online and sometimes have denominational certifications for being a safe space that are prominently displayed on their website, etc. And my city is lucky to have these options -- I'm just tired of trying out a church only to feel like a sideshow exhibit, or that there's no place for me because so much of their congregation socializes in strictly gendered ways. I'm an androgynous cis woman who is often mistaken for a guy until people hear my voice and even then sometimes people just get more confused. I'm bisexual and don't personally use the label of butch, but it's how other people usually describe me.

Most of these churches don't have queer members (as far as I'm aware), just relatively progressive theology. Almost everyone seems uncomfortable or awkward interacting with me. Outside of the actual services there are often women's and men's groups. Or groups that aren't technically gendered but are the same group of men or women that have been meeting for XYZ purpose for decades (hobby groups, charitable efforts, organizing coffee/snacks etc). It feels like a huge intrusion when I attend the women's groups. To be fair, these issues might be partially an age thing, since a lot of the congregants are at least ~60yo and I'm in my 20s. But in my area all the churches with a solid group of younger folks are *very* conservative.

Idk, it's just a weird place to be in where I have all these options on paper but none of them actually feel welcoming IRL. So far I've ended up frozen out of every church I've seriously tried. Like sometimes people will politely say hi once I've been there enough to be known but people avoid sitting near me even when it's a packed room. During the socializing time before/after church I end up drinking my coffee alone because people avoid me even when I try to be included. I try so hard to be friendly and don't understand what I could be doing better. At one where I attended for the longest amount of time, I looked into volunteer options and one of them was Sunday school, which they were desperately seeking help with. When I spoke with the coordinator and said I'd be available she said maybe I could help out with something else because "kids might be confused" by me. She said it in a super apologetic way and tried to make it better by suggesting other ideas but my feelings were really hurt. I used to put a ton of effort into looking more feminine but have been embracing myself, but interactions like this make me tempted to grow out my hair and go back to makeup even though I don't want to. Idk, I'm just exhausted.

When I started writing about the emergence of early Christianity from within Judaism, my goal was to try to freeze ‘truth’ in time.

I assumed that there was some sort of gravitational field of ‘truth’ that orbited around the first century and radiated outward, losing signal the further it extended through time.

I believed that the ‘true’ meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth had dissipated into the future like fumes into an empty space, and if only they could be re-collected and forced back into the cultural container to which they belong, truth could be recovered.

My mission has been to reclaim the truth of the Gospel message, to create a textual portal into Second Temple Judaism and bring the truth back with me.

But I don’t think ‘truth’ actually works like that. It can’t be frozen in time, it can’t be owned by a specific culture or language. There’s no static, original meaning that surpasses all others. It flows through time and scatters like light through a prism, illuminating different aspects of the original beam in each culture it reflects.

Because, even the Second Temple Period is itself understood through interpretation. Jesus did not emerge into a vacuum. He entered into a historical container that was already interpreting itself through its own history.

The Pharisees affirmed resurrection; the Sadducees did not. The Sadducees rejected Oral Tradition, the Pharisees affirmed it. The Essenes thought the Temple had been corrupted, the Sadducees ran it. The Sadducees considered only the Pentateuch authoritative; the Pharisees included the Prophets within that category.

Except for some rare fundamentals, there is no “level 0” that generates an untainted, uninterpreted truth. And the search for it is a category error in itself.

So if ‘truth’ doesn’t emanate from a pure, concentrated source, how can we test for it?

For an atheist or an academic untethered from any personal applicability, the concept of recovering the ‘truth’ doesn’t even quite make sense. For them, there is only interpretation upon interpretation. None is more ‘true’ than another, but simply interpreted through a different linguistic or cultural lense.

If truth is not something that can be ‘recovered’. The question becomes not “is this interpretation the most true?”, but “is this interpretation the most authentic compared to its original time/source?”

What does this mean for believers? For people who source their meaning through ‘truth’ and gather around it to create belonging. For people who feel like they have a personal stake in finding what that absolute truth is? For people who believe that attaining Heaven (or escaping Hell) is dependent upon discovering that truth in its untainted form? Where does this leave them?

In an uncomfortable position, really.

Jesus’ divinity is called upon as a source immune to interpretation because the fact that somebody can exist outside of time to offer the most absolute or concentrated version of the truth, renders them immune to the dissolution of time’s tainting. It is compelling to have the stamp of approval of (or atleast from) God Himself.

But, the problem is that even if Jesus’ words do carry the immunity of pure truth, they still need to be accessed and interpreted through humans. And the explicit ways in which the Gospel has been exploited throughout history is evidence of the capacity for its distortion. Even the inter-denominational battles between groups as similar as Baptists and Evangelicals point towards the interpretational variability of Jesus’ words.

Some might argue that the Holy Spirit maintains the veracity of God’s absoluteness. That it carries undiluted meaning. But the authoritative identity of the Holy Spirit is unverifiable. If two people’s representative Holy Spirits are in contradiction, it isn’t possible to determine whether one person’s authority of the Holy Spirit is more authoritative or more true than another’s.

I set out to show that the truth of Christianity is recoverable from under the rubble of the past two thousand years. That the translation from Jewish culture to Greek culture can be reversed, and the the truth recovered. But I now realize that the only meaningful thing that can be recovered is not absolute truth, but relative authenticity: that is, how does an interpretation compare to its own roots? And if those roots happen to be Second Temple Judaism, it doesn’t make early Christianity more true, just more authentic.

So, does this render my project useless? I don’t think so. But it does change the energy or the valence of its purpose. I’m no longer attempting to prove truth, but to rescue authenticity.

Because, really it’s interpretation all the way down.

Hey, using a throwaway account just in case. So- I'm part of an LGBTQIA+ bible study group where I live, and it's been ongoing for a little over 18 months now. I've been around since the beginning, and it was perfectly fine at the start. We'd go out for breakfast-for-dinner, doughnuts, ice cream, drinks, etc., and study a chapter from the bible, discuss its context, meaning, and how we can apply it in our everyday lives, and so on.

Everyone has their own relationship with God and their sexuality. And the only real rule has been to let everyone have their own relationship. Again, at the start, it was fine. Some are celibate. Others are proud sluts. Everyone just went their own way with it. For some context, I am one of the "proud sluts" in the group.

Fast-forward to nowadays. Things are different. Instead of actually discussing verses and applying them to real life, it ultimately feels like every bible study boils down and comes back to the group leader and celibate members cycling through self-loathing, constantly questioning judgment, and announcing drastic life-changes. One member even goes so far as to introduce us to his new girlfriend, describing it as entering a new chapter of his homosexuality.

Yet this same person confesses to me in private after a drink or two that the idea of hooking up with a stranger in a bar bathroom sounds like "the most natural thing" to his human instinct, but wants to "learn how to be a straight top."

What bothers me the most about it all is that, like, most of the celibate gays have accepting families. They have parents who have said they don't care about their adult child being gay. They have friends and coworkers who don't care. Their entire lives are filled with people who are ready for them, openly, at all ends.

But come bible study week, the group almost always reaches a discussion point that is basically praying the gay away for the celibate members. In the end, no one asks the other non-celibate members or me to sign on to chastity. We're all left to find our own paths with God, and I let it happen...

Not to sound cruel or uncaring, but... I am just so over it at this point. The group feels suffocating and depressing now, all because 4 or 5 people can't be happy that they enjoy kissing other boys. And I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather do on a Saturday night rather than listen to them ask "are we part of the brokenness in the world?" for the 100th time.

I want to support them in what's best. But I also want to take care of myself. I don't really wanna continue going to the group study sessions anymore, but then I'm back to spiritual practice on my own.

What do?

EDIT. PART 1

So it was 1am when I first wrote. Hence the somewhat harshness. Filter off. lol. Asd far as the "proud slut" divide, I can see how that may have caused some curiosity and concern. And that's more on me. I was really annoyed/tried when I wrote this. But without getting into super specific detail, basically, the line is better described as between--

1. Members who vow celibacy.
2. People who have any sex at all, whether in a relationship or hookups.
3. The two ace people and straight allies who show up just to support everyone and worship Jesus. (They are kind of off to the side for all this).

EDIT PART 2

Okay, so I'm going to respond to things primarily here. Many suggested I should just walk away, and that would be it. Truth be told, currently I have been going a lot less and have been able to play it off as being busy for various reasons (work, birthdays, big events, etc., which in most cases have been true).

I stick around b/c I do want fellowship and b/c the bible group hangs out from time to time in non-Bible-related things, such as game nights, and those are fun. That and in the end, no one has asked me to change anything about myself. I'm left to my own life, so I give the same respect to everyone else.

Still... It's frustrating when I have to listen to them ramble about their own doubts and emotional struggles and say things like "I love my gf so much, but I still really want to be with a man. I probably will only be able to have kids with my gf if I pop Viagra. I know I'm gay. God's calling is such a struggle, but I want to do it! I'm so lucky my gf accepts me as I am!" ... And then I'm expected to support him like everyone else, or be deemed going against our 1 rule if I dared to say "Bro just be gay."

Anyway, I'm skipping study this week because I'm already loathing the idea of going... And coincidentally, work called me in to cover for someone.

I'm just tired man. I get hassled for each of those individually but it really sucks when I'm accepted for one part and rejected for the others.

Can't be religious and Schizophrenic cuz people immediately assume God's talks to me. He does, but not cuz I'm schizophrenic!

Can't be lgbt and religious cuz apparently I'm a Levite priest; or they are anti-theist (I recognize a lot of us have religious trauma so fair enough but it still hurts ;w;)

And of course reddit isn't exactly a bastion of open mindedness towards religion aside from oasis' like ours.

Hello all. I'm at my wits end. I'm a 29 year old man who is purely same sex attracted. I'm trying to follow Christ but I find that I don't have much peace, joy, or hope. When I try to commit to celibacy fully and give up hope of a romantic relationship I find myself depressed, hopeless, resentful, and angry. But if I were to pursue a relationship I'd feel shame and guilt and a constant fear of damnation. It's driving me crazy. My church members tell me to tough it out and how brave I'm being meanwhile they all constantly talk about the blessings of marriage and family. I'm just not sure how much longer I can keep going and I'm scared my faith is about to break.

why does God help those people in life do small things like"oh god helped me find my keys, or saved my baby" (stuff like that people say) but god did not help the millions of dying children and stuff at the concentrations camps and etc, its like he helped the smaller things rather than the most important? Thank you! (I'm christian btw just confused)

The difference between micro-morality and macro-morality is key here. Gandhi definitely bridged that.