I feel like ever since I deconverted four years ago I have more and more been seeing not only how prevalent Christianity is in the depths of our society but just how much evil it is actually causing.

I used to be just like them. I was raised Christian and up until I was 15 I bought into all of it. I was homophobic, didn’t believe in evolution, was staunchly anti-choice, etc. It all began to change around the time I was 14-15. First I began to be around more of my peers who were apart of the LGBT community, and even befriended some of them. I began to think “why do I hate these people again?” But at the time I believed that it wasn’t Christianity that was the problem, but that I was just not being a “good Christian”. Some months later, I went through a phase of doubting and while researching my doubts I came across pieces of evidence that quite clearly destroyed the worldview that I had grown up with. I could no longer believe. This was in late 2019, so all of 2020 was spent with me witnessing with my own eyes why Christianity wasn’t only not true but was in fact actually causing a lot more problems than I had originally realized.

In American society at least I feel like there’s a strong idea on what you should be like based on your gender identity and other personal factors. If you don’t live up to these ideals, then you’re called weak, a sissy, and you have people spouting off shit such as “if we ever get into a war imagine if you have to fight alongside this guy”. And that’s just from the guys perspective. Women who decide to not be submissive baby machines receive similar vitriol from this crowd. And it’s not just coming from a fringe evangelical crowd. It’s embedded into society, almost everybody I know holds these deep-seated ideas of how people should act and what roles they have, largely based on gender. But the people who keep on perpetuating it and keeping the vicious cycle alive are almost always without fail Christians. And that’s what I believe I’ve come to realize. Christianity isn’t behind every problem in this country but it’s behind a lot of them, I’d even say most of them. We are taking away the reproductive rights of women in the name of good ole Christian values. We are trying to take away the rights of same-sex couples in the name of good ole Christian values. We are burning books and ripping children away from their families in the name of good ole Christian values.

What finally triggered this post was me scrolling across Instagram Reels this morning. I came across a video of a guy, who was just acting a little goofy and making weird faces into the camera. It was a little weird, sure, but perfectly harmless, a little cute even. Then I made the mistake of going to the comments section. Oh boy. Comment after comment of “this guy has to be gay” or “imagine if there’s a war and you have to fight alongside this guy” (these people seem to be actively cheering on war just to see people who don’t conform to their values get what they deserve in their eyes, which just makes me sick), “I want to kill myself because of this man”, etc. Also a lot of Homelander GIFs (a character who seems to be very popular among these types of men). I don’t even have to imagine what these guys are like behind the screen. 90 % of them are probably god-fearing, hunting, fishing, MAGA-obsessed conservative Christians. I didn’t actually click on any of their profiles but I GUARANTEE you most of them probably have a Bible verse in them.

And while this whole incident made me angry at the state of our world and especially American society, it also made me feel guilty. Most of my friends are still Christian. I have a large friend group at my college who are a bunch of sports nuts (as am I, which explains our friendship), and they are all conservative Christians. None of them know that I am an atheist, and I guess that if they did my friendships with them would forever be changed, because all we talk about is sports. We don’t really talk about social issues, and even when they try to bring it up I switch the topic because I know that they are full-on MAGA conservatives, and deep down I know what they believe, and I just don’t want to have to confront it. I think I may now be faced with the fact that I am no better than they are, because I associate with them.

I don’t even know if this made any sense, I just wanted to get this all off my chest. I see the toxic trail of Christianity everywhere around me and it’s actually driving me crazy. Our society is sick.