A lot of people who have trouble with Christianity are people who have suffered at the hands of Christians. I know that is the truth for me. For every well meaning Christian I have met who actually cares about Christianity as a way to make people's lives better I have met many more Christians who use their religion to shame and control those people around them. This is happening on a national level as Fundamentalists attempt to take away glbt civil rights with arguments that are based on bigotry and lies.
But on an individual level, many people have been raised in ways that have emotionally scarred them because their families felt that was required of them by their Christian faith.
There are many different ways this can happen, and I am not qualified to write any story but my own. I was raised in the Church of Christ in Missouri. They liked to preach hellfire and damnation there. I spent my childhood terrified of God, of dying, of sin. My grandfather was sexually abusing me and so I listened to the rants from the pulpit about adultering women, and I understood that I had no hope of escaping eternal damnation. As far as I could see, or can see even now, there is no place in that particular church for a child to get help or to feel a sense of hope for the future. I could list many different specific situations in which I experienced terror as a result of Christianity. I personally think it is child abuse and a form of brainwashing to force a child to believe anything about an afterlife before they are capable of understanding complexities.
Before you attempt to tell me that I was damaged by the sexual abuse instead of the Christianity, stop. I was damaged by the sexual abuse. And I was damaged additionally by the certainty that I was going to hell for being an adulteress. I was emotionally scarred listening to sermon after sermon which detailed the torments of hell in loving detail. I was raised in a world that considered children to be born sinful. That, in itself, is damaging.
I know many people who as children were thrown out of their Christian families and forced to fend for themselves on the streets because they came out as glbt. I can't imagine how a parent could live with themselves after doing such a thing. But I know for a fact that fellow members of congregations tell these parents that they are doing the right thing by taking a stand against sin.
Recently I read a suggestion by a Christian who was frustrated that people are attacking Christianity. He said if we have been hurt by Christians he hopes we will tell that to the world. I hope he will write something for this blog at some point. In the meantime, I share his hope that we who are righteously angry at Christianity will use this platform to put the blame on the church it belongs to… maybe we can show some of the well meaning Christians what Christianity means to us, and why it means what it does.
I hope that dumping the shame on the people and organizations responsible will be healing for some of us. But that isn't why I'm doing this. I write this for the children who are suffering at the hands of emotionally abusive Christians right now. Some of them won't make it to adulthood because they will believe all the shame and lies and kill themselves. Hopefully we can make a difference by telling our stories.
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