2023.05.03
I had read "the blood of the martyrs is seed" coming from a time when Christians were a persecuted minority, but it seemed that now, living easily as the majority in society, we were maybe too comfortable and too self-indulgent. The conclusion of the essay was like "...so maybe we should says 'and the comfort of Christians is weed'"
My loss of faith was partially fueled by seeing fellow young churchmates having a more fun time than I was, doing the normal teen experimenting with booze (a big no-no in The Salvation Army) and parties and sex, in contrast to my own "Sunday School" lifestyle. I mean, I was making out a bit, but at least I had the decency to feel guilty about it.
Admittedly 'other folk expressing more whole-hearted belief while leaning into the verboten stuff' was only the lesser third cause of my straying from the fold, along with A. how my religion with its message of universal Truth for everyone (admittedly better than religions with an elitist 'elect') needed an answer for why God let there be so many other religions in the world and B. my growing awareness of a kind of social engineering aspect of The Salvation Army's Musicamp setup, where the spirit weirdly never seemed to move on the opening Sunday of the week but ALWAYS did on the closing Sunday. Like, looking back maybe my faith was too brittle and puritanical and too naive about the relationship between God and societal constructs, but that's where I was then.
I'm not sure if I ever did a second draft of that essay and I never sent it in. And "the comfort of Christians is weed" sounds a bit too much like a pro-stoner message, now that I think about it.
I like Yuval Robichek's illustrations