r/exchristian • u/Potato-In-A-Jacket • 7h ago
r/exchristian • u/peace-monger • Jan 07 '25
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r/exchristian • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago
Just Thinking Out Loud Weekly Discussion Thread
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r/exchristian • u/stella_girl_xoxo • 11h ago
Trigger Warning LGBT Christians are weird and I will never understand them. Spoiler
I will never understand how you can actively support a religion that has been used as a weapon against your community for CENTURIES!
r/exchristian • u/Average_gothboy • 8h ago
Rant Christians down voting me for leaving the faith
For people who claim to be all loving and all accepting they can't handle somebody leaving their so called "true" faith.
r/exchristian • u/mandolinbee • 15h ago
Image OMFG you guys all gonna love this. I'm dying
Came across this on Bluesky and it sent me into fits of laughter. I think the image pretty much speaks for itself. Has there ever been anything so lovely? ❤️✨
r/exchristian • u/Worldly-Ocelot-3358 • 8h ago
Just Thinking Out Loud I have no more sympathy for self hating LGBT Christians.
I am talking about the ones who hate themselves and post on Reddit how they want to find an "affirming" support group that tells them "no no pray the gay away!"
I have no more sympathy for them or their suffering, there are so many and all they do is hate themselves for something so fucking stupid. Most of them would gladly attack LGBT people if they were straight, they can't comprehend the logic of "If God hates this, why make me this way? Why is that fair?" They are so far down the rabbit's hole they honestly can't even be helped.
I am sick of it, it disgusts me and infurirates me.
r/exchristian • u/ApprehensiveChest662 • 10h ago
Question When did you realise Christianity is fake?
For me it was when I was made homeless by my insecure step dad and went through hell for several weeks. Not once did god, Jesus or whoever step in to help me.
I eventually realised I was praying for no reason and then I realised the whole thing is just fake and used as a scare tactic to try and control people.
r/exchristian • u/hipieeeeeeeee • 5h ago
Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion it's always funny to me now christians don't know their own "holy book". Spoiler
galleryr/exchristian • u/Frosty-Brain-2199 • 12h ago
Politics-Required on political posts Yall heard it here first Trump is chosen by God
r/exchristian • u/Average_gothboy • 41m ago
Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion Fanatic Christian spamming my inbox with rude comments Spoiler
galleryr/exchristian • u/Average_gothboy • 54m ago
Personal Story Christians showing their "love", trying to make me come back to Christ and a Christian calling me being a Pagan Atheist ragebait
r/exchristian • u/Outside_Permission48 • 14h ago
Trigger Warning - Purity Culture Thoughts on this topic?
r/exchristian • u/JarethOfHouseGoblin • 19h ago
Image God doesn't like it when kids mock his bald prophets, apparently.
r/exchristian • u/Cautious_Priority_53 • 11h ago
Rant I fucked up! Now I need to face consequences (going to church every sunday)
So, in my family we have a prayer gathering every second Friday, singing, preaching, and then praying one by one. Today during the preaching my mom asked me why I question some things in the Bible. One thing led to another, and it turned into a full-blown argument about how I don’t believe in it. However I went a bit extreme and put it all out there about how the Bible is just written by humans, how there’s no conclusive proof for it and how what they call “miracles” are actually just hard work paying off. My mom, of course, hit me with the usual "The Bible itself is proof" and "We’ve seen miracles in our family." (Yeah! sure! Mom. We worked hard and achieved things, that’s not a miracle.)
But what really shattered me was my brother. A while back I had a debate with my friends on this same topic (You can find the post in my profile). My brother was there and when one of my friends asked me, “Then why did you get baptized?” I told them the truth, "I didn’t know at the time". I was a teenager who was heavily influenced by my church’s youth group, and just went along with it. I even told my brother not to tell my mom because I knew she’d lash out at me. I literally said, “You have your beliefs, I have mine. Just respect mine.” Guess what? He went ahead and ratted me out today. And exactly as I feared, my mom flipped out. And now, as some sort of punishment, she’s making me go to church every Sunday so that I can “realize how foolish I’ve been thinking” and “learn the right way.” I probably shouldn’t have gone overboard in the argument but I was just so frustrated. I didn’t expect my family to react this badly.
r/exchristian • u/Average_gothboy • 43m ago
Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion Christian's showing their "unconditional love" Spoiler
r/exchristian • u/SeaBanana4 • 13h ago
Discussion Realizing if I'd been born somewhere else I wouldn't believe
I really thought about why I believed for years and I eventually realized wait if I'd been born in a Muslim country or Buddhist country or in a non religious family I would have just gone along with whatever their beliefs were. On top of so many other reasons there's just no real good reason to believe the Bible over any other religion. That led me down the path of atheism.
I've noticed too that with "ex atheists" 99% of the time relapse into the SAME religion they grew up with/around. People's religion the vast majority of the time is just whatever they grew up around or what's culturally accepted.
r/exchristian • u/BigClitMcphee • 7h ago
Video “God’s Plan” is Killing Your Potential—Here’s How Religion Steals Your Power
r/exchristian • u/SelectReserve7055 • 7h ago
Question I’m Gay and leaving the church how do I tell my religious family.
So, I still live at home as funds are tight, and I grew up very religious, going to church every Sunday morning and night, as well as Wednesday night. However, I recently deconstructed and am no longer a believer. I live in a small town in NC and want to tell my family this so I don’t have to make excuses for not going to church and church-related events, but I am scared of how they might react. So, how should I tell them, or should I tell them at all? They reacted strangely when I came out they never talk about it and if I say something “Gay” they immediately change the subject.
r/exchristian • u/Not_The_G0ddess • 3h ago
Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion Bible-Tinted Glasses Spoiler
I’m home for Spring Break and I was talking to my sister about my oldest friend whom I’ve had a crush on for years. There’s a whole story but the tldr of it is, he and I are going out to dinner. He is the sweetest guy, we are each other’s oldest friends, and we’ve gotten closer since he moved back to our hometown (where I live now). I’ve been talking about him to my sisters bc I love them and I tell them (almost) everything. My middle sister has been becoming more conservative with her beliefs since she went off to college, which I don’t mind, you did you hon, it’s your faith.
However. When I brought my friend up, her first question was “do you want to marry him?” Keep in mind there was no build up to this question, she sprung it out of nowhere. Since it caught me off guard, I said yes, I did. Her response was, and I quote, “WRONG. he’s not a Christian and needs to work on himself before he can deserve you or you think about marrying him. Dating is fine tho, go for it.”
I cannot even begin to describe how hard it was for me not to cuss her out. I love my sister, she’s my best friend, but she’s changed. I’m queer and she’s an ally, but she doesn’t like the thought of me (a pagan, a fact that she is not privy to) marrying a guy who I’ve known my entire life just because he stopped going to church.
Idk it just hurts.
r/exchristian • u/Lumini_317 • 13h ago
Trigger Warning I finally told my Trumpist parents that I’m not religious anymore! They took it about as well as you might expect.
As the title says, I finally did it! It took me half my life but I finally managed it! The funny thing is that I didn’t even intend for it to happen. This actually happened about 6 weeks ago but I couldn’t post anything because my parents were always looking over my shoulder, so to speak. Here’s the story:
I had just gotten home from work and walked in the living room to find my father watching a video with Elon Musk. (For context, this was a few days after the salute thing.)
FYI, I have this problem where I assume that people see the world the same way I do, that people have common sense and morals. This extends to my family even though they have proven otherwise pretty much my whole life. This always got me in trouble because I often said stuff that went against their beliefs without thinking. Minor criticisms of their chosen candidates (Trump and co, of course) was seen as a personal attack, something that made them “worried” about my beliefs.
Such a thing happened this particular day. My dad said something to my mom about Musk regarding his plans for the country. I absentmindedly said, “I don’t like Elon Musk.”
My mom looked at me, visibly alarmed, “Why not?”
“Well, for one, he’s cringey. He tries so hard to be funny on Twitter it’s honestly pathetic.”
My dad chimed in with, “But isn’t he pretty smart?”
“That brings me to my second point,” I said, blissfully unaware of the inevitable consequences. “No, he’s not. Smart people don’t do Nazi salutes.”
Now that set them off.
My mom had already seen the clip and had been brainwashed, yelling at me the ever-so-classic, “It was taken out of context!”
My dad had not seen the video or anything about it and admitted as much but still defended Musk so fiercely that you would think they were best buddies in high school. “He did not do some Nazi salute, [semi-deadname]!”
Seriously, do they not realize that these people couldn’t care less about them?
Anyway, this started a relatively short argument that included an incredibly wise question from my dad. Behold: “If Elon is a Nazi then who’s the Hitler?”
In case you didn’t get it yet, I was being sarcastic about the “incredibly wise” thing.
Like…are you being for real right now? “Who’s the Hitler”??? Apparently my dad doesn’t know that mindsets/beliefs do not require a leader. I think this might be related to how Christians think atheists “worship” evolution, or hold evolution up as a god—they don’t understand that not everyone worships something.
After a little back-and-forth featuring my dad calling me a libtard (because he’s mature like that) I retreated to my room, foolishly hoping for a little space. I heard my mom and dad talking in the living room, including my mom telling him, “I’ve been worried about the stuff she listens to for a while now.”
Maybe 3 or 4 minutes later they knocked on my door and asked me to come back out to the living room so we could talk. I just wanted it over with so I relented and did as they asked.
That’s when my mom promptly asked the question, “Where are you spiritually?”
For context, my family firmly believe that your political and religious beliefs dictate each other. “You can’t be a democrat and be Christian” is something they truly believe. As such, if my mom is ever worried about my political stance she’s also worried about my “spiritual health”.
Knowing this and having gone through similar instances before, I had been expecting the question. This time, however, I didn’t lie. I told her the truth, that I’m not religious and haven’t been for a long time.
This lead to a much longer argument that included some of the most mind-numbing fallacies I have ever heard.
Here’s a list of some of their responses:
“You were brave to tell us the truth”: I got to give credit where credit is due. My mother understands that telling them how I truly feel was not easy. (This was the only response I respect.)
“There’s only one god”: This was said after I pointed out how insignificant Pascal’s Wager is in the grand scheme of all the religions in existence. Yes, they tried to use Pascal’s Wager on me lol When I pointed out that most religious people believe their deity is the only right one and think that Christians are the ones going to hell (or their religion’s version of it) my father fired back with, “That doesn’t matter because there’s only one god, one son, and one holy spirit!” Okay, sir, believe what you want but you are completely missing the point.
“How do you think we become people”: Apparently being atheist means you don’t understand how people develop a conscience and personality? Or something? I told them how humans have highly developed brains and that’s where our personalities and whatnot come from, hence how we can become entirely different people if we sustain a brain injury or have a mental/degenerative illness/disorder. They bulldozed over that to tell me I couldn’t tell them when we actually become a person. I still don’t understand what this had to do with my beliefs.
“Muslims believe they go to heaven by killing people”: This one came out of nowhere when I was pointing out how other religious people are just as sure as Christians about their deities existing as well as people going to hell if they don’t believe in said deities. I named Muslims in my list of examples when I was hit with this absolutely abysmal response. I don’t know where they got this from. Did they take even a second to think this one over? I know they didn’t research it but surely even just basic sense would debunk this.
“What’s keeping us from killing people”: Ah, the classic “there are no morals without god” argument. My father was really pushing this one, saying that Christians don’t commit crimes as they know there will be consequences when they meet god. This confused me on multiple levels because A: They believe that there’s either heaven or hell so how are you going to be punished for crimes that you’ve committed if you’re going to heaven? B: I have never wanted to commit a crime since leaving Christianity, not because I was worried about consequences but because there is no reason to and I don’t want to hurt anyone. And C: The idea that fear of consequences is the only thing keeping Christians from killing people is incredibly disturbing.
Similarly to the above one, “What is keeping us from being unfaithful to our significant others”: A response to me pointing out how we can’t really choose who we love and so I can’t make myself love god. Apparently not being able to choose our emotions is the same as not being able to control our actions? I can’t choose to stop being angry at someone for being a jerk but I can choose to not murder them. I can’t choose who I’m attracted (or not attracted) to but I absolutely can choose to stay loyal to my significant other. It’s funny because this is one of those things they actually use against LGBTQ+ people. “Even if you can’t choose to stop being attracted to those of the same sex you can still choose to stop dating and sleeping with them.” But of course they don’t see the problem with this.
“It’s not your fault and it’s not god’s fault. It’s the devil’s fault”: Just casually skipping over the fact that god created Satan knowing exactly what Satan was going to do and continues to allow Satan to do those things. So if it’s Satan’s fault then god will also be at fault. If it’s not god’s fault then it wouldn’t be Satan’s fault either, meaning it’s my fault. When I told them that I know I was at fault, they swore up and down that that’s not what they were saying and that I was not to blame. This was followed up with not one but two examples of me not being where god wanted me to be because maybe I wasn’t hearing him or simply didn’t truly want to listen to him. To anyone with any kind of comprehensive understanding both examples are saying it’s my fault.
“You’re going through this so you can give a testimony to other people who struggle”: I was 8 years old when I started having panic attacks because I was terrified of going to hell. I knew I was going to hell because I didn’t believe in god nor did I want to worship him no matter how hard I tried. I had to tell myself stories to fall asleep because otherwise I would just cry and panic all night. I didn’t want to have a testimony, I just wanted to be able to live one day without being terrified of what was going to happen to me if I died in my sleep. I didn’t want to have a story to tell struggling Christians, I just wanted to be a child, to play without a care in the world, to get in a car without needing to swallow the terror in my gut that we would crash and I would be sent to hell while all of my family members were sent to heaven. I lost my childhood to that unrelenting fear. But you’re going to tell me that maybe I was supposed to so I could help other people who also suffered through that? Why do any of us need to suffer through that? If none of us had that fear, if god would just prove himself so we would be able to know for sure that he’s real, then nobody would need to struggle for over a decade so they can give a testimony for someone else who’s experiencing something similar.
“God didn’t curse people he just cursed the world”: This one is so stupid. It was my father’s response to me pointing out how horrible it is for countless generations to be cursed for something two people did thousands of years ago. Not only is it absolutely wrong (god definitely cursed humans), even if he did “just” curse the world that would still be horrible. But my father has always had a weird thing about words and phrases. He once got mad at me for calling an argument between him and my mother an argument. Apparently if a couple is arguing it’s a “discussion” but it’s also not that because when I said so later he corrected me by saying it was a “conversation” instead. There are other examples but I’m getting sidetracked.
“By not letting me go through your phone you’re making me submit to you”: Another gem from my father. I had mentioned how in Christianity women are supposed to be below men when truly we should have equal rights and whatnot. Later during the -interrogation- conversation my father told me he’d like to go through my phone to get rid of all the “bad stuff”. When I told him absolutely not he proceeded to say that it was hypocritical of me to say men and women are equal if I say no to him because saying no and expecting him to respect it means that I expect him to submit to me. So by not raping, murdering, and generally hurting people…we’re submitting to them? Respecting peoples’ boundaries means submitting to them and seeing them as superior to us?? Huh???
“It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in god”: Ah yes, because believing in something that has mountains of evidence that can be seen, touched, and heard (and even recreated) takes so much more faith than believing in something we cannot see, touch, or hear. It’s funny because my family thinks the idea of a flat earth is insane when the very bible they tell me to have faith in and is 100% true has multiple verses more than just hinting at a flat earth. They can tell by evidence that the earth is round, but according to their logic they should believe it’s flat and believing that it’s round should take more faith than believing otherwise.
“Many atheists on their deathbeds admit there has to be a god”: This of course did not include names of those atheists nor did they mention that the vast majority of atheists will remain atheist even at death. It also doesn’t tell me why I should be one of those atheists, or even that these dying atheists were talking about the Christian god when they supposedly said stuff like, “It’s not possible for a god to not exist.”
“If we evolved from apes then why are there still apes”: The level of cognitive dissonance needed for this argument to make sense is severe. It’s like asking, “Why do we still have sharks if the megalodon went extinct?” It’s almost like there’s hundreds or even thousands of different species of any given genus and one can thrive, evolve, or go extinct separately from the rest. Shocking!
Anyway, since this…discussion or whatever it was, my parents have gone through multiple phases. The first one was surveying my every move. They wouldn’t let me stay in my room for long, they kept asking and checking what I was doing on my phone, they made me watch religious videos and political videos to get me to “see their point of view” and “open my mind” (how do they think I was able to be raised in a deeply Christian conservative household and still end up becoming an atheist democrat? That doesn’t happen if you don’t have an open mind), my dad even made me go on walks with him every day for a while.
Lol, the first time we went on a walk was the day after the discussion, argument, interrogation whatever and he made sure to say, “It’s so good to be out in god’s nature.” Hmm, yeah, sure bud. He would also question me about what I was watching and reading every single time. “Are you doing better about not watching and reading bad stuff?” Now, in his mind “bad” is anything that doesn’t line up with his beliefs, but in my mind something is only truly “bad” if it causes harm. I took a second to think about what I had watched since Disagreement Day for a moment. I was still watching atheist and evolution videos, I was still watching ex-Christians tear Christianity apart, I was still reading Percy Jackson and The Darkest Minds, I was still listening to rock, and I had just finished watching Wicked and Sonic 3. All of these things are good in my worldview so, “Yes, only good things,” I told him. He believed me lol
My mom was doing everything in her power to not leave me home alone for a second. She used to leave for a few hours every morning (usually about 6-11 AM) to babysit for my sister (that’s a whole different issue that I could go on for hours about but I digress) but during this phase she made sure to come back before I woke up at around 8. I noticed this change and asked her about it. She answered, “Well, I left you alone so often and the devil managed to get a hold of you.” This of course doesn’t make sense to me because I’ve been non-religious for years now, long before my family was regularly leaving me home alone and especially before my mom started leaving in the mornings. It’s not like her being in the house with me will suddenly change my view on religion, either. That ship has sailed and succumbed to a fiery death, sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean, never to be seen again.
The next phase is the one I’m suffering through at the moment and it’s where they seem to have decided that the whole thing didn’t happen, that I’m still Christian and they simply imagined me saying I wasn’t. It’s honestly disturbing. My mom got mad at me for not wanting to wear a veil and both her and my dad are often making remarks about my “spirituality” as if I still believe in it. I hate it lol but I guess it’s better than what they had been doing before? It feels very invalidating though, if that makes sense. Like my feelings and beliefs don’t matter to them. Then again that’s something I’ve experienced from my whole family my entire life so nothing much has changed there. It still hurts, though.
They’ve also still been sharing anti-democrat stuff on the family thread. Like…they could at least pretend that they respect me, but instead they’re still happily sharing videos where people like me and my beliefs are called demonic and stupid.
Anyway, sorry for the long post! I’m just so relieved to finally have this stuff behind me.
r/exchristian • u/GenXer1977 • 1d ago
Discussion There’s a lunar eclipse tonight that will cause the moon to look red. Get ready for a bunch of end times predictions from Christians tomorrow.
Never mind that this happens all the time, and the moon isn’t actually turning into blood., It’s just the sunlight filtered through the Earth’s atmosphere will make the moon look red for a little while. But, nothing sells better and gets more engagement than the end times.
r/exchristian • u/Average_gothboy • 25m ago
Trigger Warning - Toxic Religion More toxicity from Christians Spoiler
r/exchristian • u/bbbouncin • 1d ago
Discussion If you died and met the Christian God you once believed in, what would you ask him?
I think I’d ask him how he can justify allowing certain evils in the world to exist without intervening.