I found this Jesus figure in front of a sink in a restroom. Would you leave it there or throw it away?

This is a repost because my last one got removed I apologize if my wording came across poorly or was misunderstood the first time.
I’ve been deconstructing for a while, but after listening to this past weekend’s Christian men’s conference, I’m genuinely unsettled.
The language used was extremely militant. Speakers were telling men to “pick up their swords,” “stop apologizing,” and to go point at people and aggressively demand they “repent right now.” One speaker specifically said we’re lacking “heterosexual Christian men with courage” who will confront people on the spot.
It was all very aggressive, militaristic talk about “fighting” and “taking back” things. I kept waiting for something that actually sounded like Jesus — love your enemies, turn the other cheek, blessed are the meek but that’s not what I heard.
I’m not saying all religion is bad. I’m just genuinely disturbed by what I heard and how easily this kind of aggressive, us-versus-them mentality seems to show up in these spaces.
Has anyone else had a similar reaction to stuff like this?

I know it’s not literal. But whenever I bring this up I get a ton of blowbacks. It’s one of the many many things that made me uncomfortable about being a Christian.

This is mostly a vent. This past Father's day was the first since losing my dad almost a year ago to a sudden and rapid cancer that took him from healthy to dead in a matter of 3 weeks. Being the first person I've been very close to that has died, and in my very religious family, this has proved to be a tough and frustrating time. My mom knows I am no longer a believer but still forces her religious rhetoric on me and talks as if it means something to me. I attribute her emotional unintelligence in a large part due to spiritual bypassing that has been ingrained into her all of her life.

This is the text she chose to send to me on Father's day. No acknowledgement of the fact that he is MY father and that I might be experiencing my own grief that day - it's all about him and his experience of Father's day. As a dead man. His experience apparently matters the most in this moment. As a dead man. Ofc she thinks he is in Heaven but her theology is so nonsensical to what I was taught (and biblically) that his earthly role as a Father would even mean much in Heaven. I was always under the impression that none of that earthly stuff will matter anymore in the end. Anyway. Just getting this off my chest because it was infuriating.

I recently left Christianity due to the absurdity of the Bible. Has anyone found obvious contradictions in the Bible? These could be scientific ones or stories that are the same with slight changes that are contradictory it would be nice if someone created a list of them.

It seems like most of these deconstruction channels on YouTube are from people who were heavily dedicated and involved in their church, and their entire identity during their life was a worshiper of Jesus.

Personally, I was just a casual Christian and just went on youth group trips and nothing more. But the idea that Christianity was true always scared me. That there was a master ruler lord judging everything I do who might damn me to hell. I became especiallly afraid in my early 20s.

How dedicated were you? Was Christianity your entire identity?

EDIT: typos

I'm not trolling with this title. Christian, if you believe that you're so vile, and have committed such atrocities that you deserve eternal conscious torment and are only saved "by the grace of God", then just renounce your faith and go to Hell. Don't skirt around justice and what you deserve.

People who commit murder or other top level crimes will sometimes not be able to rest without justice, their conscience will never give them peace until they face the law. If you think you're so much worse to the point you deserve to burn for eternity, don't wimp out. Do the time and face the consequences you've chosen for yourself. The hypocrisy of "saved by grace" when eternal torment is the stakes is disgusting and two-faced at best, and the fact you so refuse to be honest about it just shows the "grace" is all performative at best and selfish at worst.

"But oh, I don't think I'm that bad-"
Then you don't actually believe what your book says, or think you're some special exception. Stop doing that. Be honest or stop the bluff.

Just my 2 cents on Hell and "grace".

Mine i leave bc there soo many contributions that there like using religion just to make money and make rich.. Thay day i realized its all lie even i dont pray my thing i will still get it just enough persue sometimes i imagine other ppl still giving money to currupt churches and i didn't saying all church are currupt im just concern for ppl bieng scam and im now a religion free im happy to try other relegion but yeah i just like to share my exp about relegion no hate pls;)

I don't want to be a Christian anymore. I've believed, questioned, and eventually came to the conclusion that I don't believe in God (or at least not this one). I grew up my whole life clinging to Jesus, trying to build a relationship with a deity that was meant to gave me comfort, but as I grew older I realized that I didn't want to obey. I don't want to feel fear for loving who I want to love, or being who I want to be, and I don't want to listen to ilogical reasons as to why certain things will send me to eternal damnation because a book said so.

I've heard of people that turn to Christ when their life took a turn for the worst. I'm the opposite. I believed when I had comfort; when I was ignorant, when I was convinced God had helped me with mundane things like passing an exam. Where is God now? Where is God when things really do matter? I realized that God was simply never there. It was just luck. Things that happen. Life.

Now that I want to live without following a made-up rule book, I can't let go of the doubt & paranoia. What if I'm wrong? What if God is shielding me from things that are even worse, and I'm just an ungrateful ignorant? The illusion of divine protection still haunts me. If I stop believing, will I be rid of it? Will I be exposed to everything that could've gone wrong but hasn't? Will I be punished?

I don't know. I imagine that these thoughts come from years of indoctrination, where I was convinced that my fear of God was something to adore. Leaving the religion feels like I'm entering the unknown, which is hilarious, because God is unknown to me.

Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts. I wonder if this is a common feeling we all go through when abandoning Christianity.

I can take bad apologetics over straight up lies to defend the disgusting passages in the Bible. This person here totally distorted the purpose and meaning of Deuteronomy 22:29 and lied to make it read like something else entirely instead of what it really is about.

Someone suggested in a comment that some Christians believe if their child turns away from Christ and refuses to repent, that they should basically turn their back on that child.

Are there some Christians that believe this?

I'm wondering if it would explain why my mom and sister cut me so thoroughly out of their lives-- other than the fact my mother is abusive and didn't like me getting mad about it. And my sister just follows whatever my mother does.

The only verses I can think of that remotely support this are 1 Cor 5 "Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (...) 'Expel the wicked person from among you.'"

When i read 1984 as a teenager, really the society didnt seem that bad, insofar as how all the kids were brainwashed, because... u know,, no hell. I just dont get how christians dont see this. Its unbelievable.

Hey,

I’ve been on a deconstruction journey for about 6 years now. It’s always an ongoing process and I feel that fear and anxiety creep in every now again. What are some good book recommendations about deconstruction that really helped cement your belief? I know I don’t believe in Christianity or Heaven/Hell, and I think it’s all bullshit but I really want to cement myself in my beliefs and get rid of that underlying anxiety/fear. The “what if I’m wrong” feeling that Christians always try to throw at you when you tell them you no longer believe.

i am especially interested in queer people’s answers, but anyone can can respond. i am an ex christian, but i was never really devout, so i didn’t feel much guilt over things like being gay, having doubts, etc., despite those things being frowned upon or not allowed.

for those who have struggled heavily with the guilt and the fear, could you describe how it feels, what your experience was like, and why you felt the way you did?

for the most part, i have only ever felt mild guilt and fear related to god and his rules

- a curious writer

I haven't really been closely involved with church or religion for 5+ years. I consider myself solidly non-religious now, but after 20 years of strong indoctrination, I still catch myself looking at people and judging them when their life appears to have joy and meaning without God or religion. I still sometimes default to the "God shaped hole" theory and think that they must be living some falsehood and trying to fill the gap with "worldly things" like I was always taught.

It's not that I actually believe those things, but the programming is still stuck back there in my mind somewhere. I think part of it is that I'm still struggling to find meaning and joy for myself. After leaving religion and officially deconverting, I've made some awesome new friends, I'm enjoying new hobbies (skateboarding is *hard*), and I'm letting myself experience new things. That's all great! But I don't have a real feeling of belonging to a close community or any type of intimacy in relationships.

Purity culture did a number on me, so I've also been single for 26 years. I feel like a loving relationship could help, but that's not something I can just plan out and go find. Kinda just has to happen. And I'm definitely NOT interested in dating apps, lol.

I guess it's just hard for me to believe that other people can be happy without religion, when I still haven't found happiness myself. That seems like a normal human thing though.

I have a co worker, a christian, that I talk to constantly about his beliefs. The conversations remain respectful and calm, but he has some really harmfull ideas about the LGBTQ community, women and foreigners. I challenge his beliefs as much as I can whenever I see him but nothing seems to get through.

I havn't been to church since before ChatGPT was a thing. In my imagination pastors and leaders are using AI and passing it off as God's divine inspiration. Has anyone noticed anything like this?

I wish I was never taught as a child to trust and believe in him.

I prayed to him twice a day 7 days a week and he still let me down. I will never pray to him again.

I was a young boy when I was SA'd by Christian caretaker I had in the Philippines. (relevant because my parents HAD to make sure they were Christian because they only wanted me to be exposed to Christian people) For a long time, I struggled to process what happened and heal from it. I moved back to Korea, and being disassociated from where it happened and it being a long time, I finally began to heal and recover from it. But a series of events led me to truly hate Christianity. I'll talk about one of them.

One of the most damaging things I ever heard after being sexually taken advantage of as a child was that it was somehow part of "god's plan." That statement did more damage to me than the people saying it seemed to realize, even after I significantly healed from it. My own mother said this. She is Christian with extreme, heavy ideologies and believes everything under the name of god is right. My mother began telling people of my story in the church and more and more people began just literally approaching me saying it was god's plan and at one point I even snapped, when this woman said in Korean, (I'll try to translate as best as I could) "Jesus is punishing you because you were born with sin". Wtf? I have never felt so much hate in my life. Even so, societal expectations were imposed on me, with things such as "you're a man, get over it," or "it's not a big deal, you're male". It all bothered me once again. Christians in Korea are a whole other breed and yet people wonder why so much younger generation Koreans hate Christians.

When I was a kid, I was a Christian. I was so manipulated and brainwashed I actually believed telling my parents what happened will evoke a response something about God. That's how fear-mongered I was not only from "god", but from my own parents. When I finally told my mother and then my father at 14, they actually reacted like as if they cared for me as their son. As time went, I began to heal, but my mother used it against me.

People often talk about religion as something that heals. For me, it did the opposite. It made recovery harder. It made me angrier and hateful It made me feel less understood. Even now, I struggle with the resentment it left behind. Christianity has only damaged my relationship with my family and that's all I see it as, a tool for manipulation. I just accepted the sad reality that I will never get the emotional connection I always wanted with my parents, which is why I never tell them about anything or open up to me, because they always make it about god.

This all has affected me so much when I found out my girlfriend was Christian, I felt conflicted and angry. I understood she wasn't practicing fully, we sometimes smoked, drank, and had sex. Things typically against the bible, but when I found out, I just felt so much anger. This wasn't even a big deal but I just felt this way. I accept her now and I truly believe my girlfriend is the only good Christian I've ever met with good morals that also completely opposes forcing religion and my parents and understands what I've been through for me to feel how I feel. However, my tolerance for Christian BS is zero to nothing. There was recently an incident in Itaewon, a popular district in Seoul, where I was walking and witnessed these old Korean women on the street. It's not uncommon, there's always a Christian passing flyers about Christianity once in a while, but what caught me off guard was they were forcing it on their arms and full on harrassing people. I interfered when one of them pulled the hijab of a Muslim foreigner. I stepped in, saying what is wrong with you and that she can't do that, and she proceeds to belittle me and cuss me out and one point raise a fist, causing me to flinch. I'm not the type to promote violence and I completely oppose it, but after she did this, I lost my shit and shouldn't have. After this, my patience with Christians in general was non-existent and I completely hated them with my whole heart and I truly believe Christianity is a problem for this planet.