Be aware that most of what you see as happiness and comfort is actually just performative - they see that everyone around them is “happy” and their minister tells them if they follow the rules they will be happy. So they don’t want anyone to know how imperfect their lives are, so they pretend they are happy, and say all the right words and jump through all the right hoops.
Then you dig deeper and find that all their kids had kids out of wedlock, one is being abused by their spouse and is cheating on them, one disavowed any responsibility for their second kid they had with a second person who they weren’t married to…
You get the idea.
It isn’t all a front. The truth is that some religious communities do provide community to people who otherwise would be alone. But they are just groups of people with a shared hobby, not some kind of magic.
I grew up in a superficially religious household. This is spot on… it wasn’t a bad childhood by any means but soooo many things that deserved critical thinking or just accepting the pain of the situation were handed over to The Almighty. There are probably some decent coping skills buried in that level of faith but I don’t personally think it’s worth the cost.
Be aware that most of what you see as happiness and comfort is actually just performative - they see that everyone around them is “happy” and their minister tells them if they follow the rules they will be happy. So they don’t want anyone to know how imperfect their lives are, so they pretend they are happy, and say all the right words and jump through all the right hoops.
Then you dig deeper and find that all their kids had kids out of wedlock, one is being abused by their spouse and is cheating on them, one disavowed any responsibility for their second kid they had with a second person who they weren’t married to…
You get the idea.
It isn’t all a front. The truth is that some religious communities do provide community to people who otherwise would be alone. But they are just groups of people with a shared hobby, not some kind of magic.
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I grew up in a superficially religious household. This is spot on… it wasn’t a bad childhood by any means but soooo many things that deserved critical thinking or just accepting the pain of the situation were handed over to The Almighty. There are probably some decent coping skills buried in that level of faith but I don’t personally think it’s worth the cost.