Grieving the illusion.
And the demoralizing aspects of these things are that I grew up believing so strongly. The idea is that God is love. And I don't see that embodied in the Christian beliefs today. Again, not all. And I've tried many times to understand from the outside now, the different perspectives, to make excuses for, to allow for understanding, allow for us to share space of all of these different beliefs and non beliefs
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:40
I feel a little tangled in it myself and have been questioning, like, does this make sense, this thing I'm feeling and trying to name. But I'm curious if that resonates with anyone else and how you've how you're managing that out in the world and in your relationship since you're going through your own grieving and unlearning process with some things
Shehla Faizi
@iamatopodcast · 4:01
Hi, Christina. I do feel for you. It is hard to really come to terms with so many things, especially when they're so contrary to what we deeply love and believe in. But here's the thing. I think a lot of people have this tendency to mix up two separate things the faith itself and how people practice that faith. I've seen that in a lot of Muslims as well. This is not unique to Christians or any faith for that matter, in and of itself
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
I will say that in my experience there was like this doorway, and leading up to it, I wanted to express how I felt about some of these beliefs that I had either internalized or been brought up or culturally expected to believe, et cetera. And the anticipation of breaking these things to other people or showing this transparency was almost petrifying. Works perfectly. It's scary, but it also froze me and I was scared to go through that doorway
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:43
And I was listening to a difference well, yesterday, and they were talking about the relationship between India and the royal family and how it's not a positive relationship based on the history and how even in the textbooks or the text material for youth in education in India, that they paint a very vivid picture of the monstrosity of how they view the royal family
I think that when it comes to the Christian faith itself there are certain verses in there that create sort of ideas on the surface but then implications as well. When there's the idea of the elect, the chosen, the set apart, they've been given a gift from God of faith. And then those who have rejected the gift of God, the ideas of having to go out and quote, unquote, save people sort of implies this hand reaching out to pull someone from the muck, right?
Shehla Faizi
@iamatopodcast · 2:07
If I may, Christina, and you'll have to excuse the noise around me. I'm not at home right now, I think. And again, when you speak of certain parts of the Scripture and certain ideologies or phrases in the Scripture, again, this is not exclusive to Christianity itself. I actually had done an episode on my own podcast in which somebody had asked me about a very particular verse from the Quran. And on the surface, the verse condones violence in a sense
I can make sense of how storytelling or the history books are really about the author's framing and seeing the flaws in that and like all of these complexities and how the stories filter out into culture and beliefs and we're even seeing people attempt to rewrite what the Civil War was all about. And yet I still want to believe individuals when they state a claim
And then you amplified our fallible humanness and we end up having all these other issues. And it's like before I was saying anything pushed to an extreme can be, in a sense, poisonous to the individual or the group or something larger, depending on how we're defining group. So I agree with you. It's not singular to Christianity. It's not singular to any particular belief. And I don't think it's singular to believers of a particular faith or non believers of a particular faith
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:57
And so it was like, from all the things that are going on in America, it was like, let me focus on something else that's easier, like low hanging fruit. But the number of posts that I saw from people that were like, yeah, we're renting airbnb in Ukraine to support their financial infrastructure and also to support and provide people who are trying to escape safely with their families a place to stay, even if it's for two nights
But knowing things in your heart to be true and right and then stepping out of them, it can hurt, it can sting. But I think what we have to do is remember who we are and know that we are love. We are pure love and settle back into that and everything kind of irons out then, yeah, we're still kind of that grief
And I wish in particular, when it came to humans, that there was just a desire for understanding, a desire to see, a desire to not compartmentalize, not to have one's nose against the glass, but just to value humans no matter where we're from, what we believe, what we look like, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you. Bye
But I'd like to think that with each time of the story crashing into reality, that bubble popping, so to speak, that perhaps I will get better at not rinse repeating right, or at least not to the same degree. And so perhaps, although slow, maybe there is growth in that. I'll be okay. It's just one of those blips. And yeah. Thank you for your comments and your thoughts and your encouragement
Eluchianna Olive
@Luchianna · 4:28
I have seen and heard Christina using Air quote really make people feel a certain type of way when God is love and it represents love. But how can you display love or show love if you don't know of God's love? I know that was a lot to swallow, but it is true. I find it fascinating and interesting to talk to people from all different walks of life and get their viewpoint. It doesn't change my opinion of them, nor does it alter my belief
And then I was realizing that we already have, in a sense, the term to describe these types of Christina who believe themselves set apart, believe themselves better. And I think when you were talking about how people expect Christians to be sort of a perfect being that isn't human, I added that there. But I think it's true. But I think to some extent the Pharisees, if I'm using this word correctly, sort of set up that dynamic, right?
Lance Watson
@lwatsonjr · 4:41
I don't know why, but when you said that it just sort of jumped through my phone and put a huge smile across my face because a lot of my vocation as a pastor and as a community servants predicated upon really sort of helping people and supporting people and encouraging people at those moments. I titled in the description Fruitful Funerals because I wanted to share a story real quick. I had the honor of funeralizing a loved one who I had no connection to the family
We've reduced what it is to be human, to sort of the quote unquote eye the individual. And yet we are not an individual being. We have a microbiome with all sorts of critters and systems going on inside of us. And that entirety is what we call quote unquote i. But we are then parts of the larger biome of this planet, right? And so all of it has this synergy happening of observing and being observed seeing and being seen and to reintegrate our understanding of the world