Christianity has been a weapon used by systems of oppression to call that which is harmful and abusive; good and God’s will. It has been a weapon to normalize hegemonic power, and keep people from questioning it or challenging it because “it comes from God.”

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Gender “norms,” harmful ideas about sexuality, social hierarchy, the construct of race, notions of nuclear family, toxic ideologies of work, bodies, finances, government, relationships, parenting, or criminal justice; are all rooted in Christianity and...

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backed up by verses of the Christian Bible taken out of context, to assert that this isn’t just normal, but what God desires. And who dares challenge God?

Christianity has allowed for people w/power to use the idea of god, and *his* “word,” to pass their ideas as God ideas.
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This is one of the reasons why people react so violently when we say the Bible is not the word of God, they can’t accept that everything they’ve been given as normal, good, ideal, God’s will... may just not be so.

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Their nervous systems tells them it is better to maintain the certainty of what is in their hands; even though it causes harm; than to give into the uncertainty of imagining a different world where equity is possible.

And then their ego gets involved, and admitting they’ve

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been wrong all along, and their normal is anything but; it’s too bitter a drink and not one their ego can handle.
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That’s why most of us who deconstruct do so after abuse that becomes unbearable;

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because our nervous system and our ego kept us in long enough too, but the pain of the system has to be greater than the bitterness of walking away and admitting “defeat.” And in walking away we found freedom, and got to challenge “norms” that kept us restrained...

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and unable to exist, and stretch, and take space, and belong to ourselves and others.

If Christianity is supposed to be anything for anybody; then it is only acceptable as a tool of liberation, which is what many marginalized people have found in it.

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An invitation to be unbound and unconfined, to see ourselves as the image of God, with access to divine wisdom, able to be the true embodiment of love, and Shalom. Any Christianity worth examining is the one that speaks of heaven on earth for all, here and now;

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an end to oppression and abuse for the marginalized and therefore an equitable world where we all get to be free and safe to be us. And that Christianity, will never come from the powerful, from power only the weapon can be produced; the tool comes from the margins.

More from Jo Luehmann

TW: suicidal ideation.

At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
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I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...

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survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.

Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.

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She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.

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I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
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