What 2020 Showed Me About US Christianity

 Here are the main things I learned in 2020 that cemented my decision to let go of religion and the idea of faith.

• Is God in Charge or is Satan?
• In an effort to further divide the right from the left, the conservative from the liberal, there has been a narrative coming from the pulpit of many churches that villainized the left and the Democratic party to the point of stating Donald Trump was God and Jesus's chosen leader and that if by chance Biden was to win the election it would and could only mean that Satan had gained control of the country and the United States would be subjected to an evil leader. There are a few issues with their narrative. One point being that we do not know Donald Trump's religious affiliation (if he has one) but we know for a fact that Joe Biden is a practicing Catholic. As in, the man attends mass regularly and does not use a church and Bible as a photo op after tear gassing peaceful demonstrators. 
• Another issue is the idea that Satan can "take control" of something and take control away from God. Isn't God supposed to always be stronger than Satan? Isn't everything subject to God's plan? Wouldn't the narrative that an unfavorable election result for the right is equivalent to Satan being in control kind of against what the Bible teaches? If everything is subject to God's plan then even if Satan did take over wouldn't that also be part of God's plan? These people need to get their story straight.   
• Hypocrisy Above All Else?
• I have some personal experience when it comes to what the church teaches and what the people in the church actually practice both in and out of the church building. 2020 fully exposed the exclusiveness of Christianity in America. 
• Things like, "If you voted for Biden you cannot call yourself a Christian." You can fill in the blank with anything after "if you." It can be if you support LGBTQ people or BLM or are pro choice or are poor or divorced or, anything really. For something that is supposed to teach love it is the furthest from practicing love that I have ever seen.
• That said, as a liberal Christian I had reconciled some of these exclusions as a misunderstanding of the Bible. I chose to believe a more tolerant narrative from the Bible instead of taking it at what it says. I have learned that this was my mistake. Christianity truly ISN'T meant for everyone. It does exclude and condemn a lot of people for a lot of reasons. This isn't a misunderstanding, it's what the Bible says. This is what the Bible teaches. Choosing to try and cherry pick the more tolerant verses to make Christianity into something more liberal is no different than using the harshest verses of the Bible as a weapon to oppress people. Cherry picking is cherry picking. Part of my journey was the reconciliation of the Bible and Abrahamic religions being exclusive. They are what they are and what they are does not align with my morals and I have chosen to walk away instead of trying any longer to make the Bible fit the narrative I want. 
• Faith is Dangerous
• We have seen first hand what happens to a population that is raised to trust things by faith alone. This basically means believing and trusting things blindly and without evidence. People who are taught that they cannot trust their own critical thinking skills and must rely on the Bible and their church for all the answers are in danger of being brainwashed and falling for conspiracy theories. We have seen this play out in the last several years and more so in 2020 with both the election and covid. 
• All major religions teach this to a degree, but fundamentalist and evangelical Christian denominations more than others, teach that it is wrong and it is even sinful to question. Lean not on your own understanding. This is so dangerous. Populations need to be able and encouraged to think critically and question things. 
• The whole premise of living by faith is to trust in things you can't see or experience with your other senses. Faith is trusting that God is in control of everything without ever seeking out or asking whether or not God even exists. Faith is taking the word of others that something is accurate with zero actual proof. Is it any wonder people were sucked into Trumpism and Qanon? Is it any wonder that sensationalized opinion talk shows on cable TV are able to influence so many people? It is surprising that Donald Trump and his cronies had people convinced there was widespread voter fraud even though there was never a SHRED of actual proof of it. People took the word of so called witnesses, the anecdotal evidence that could not be investigated further to see if it was true or not, as God's truth. I believe this happened for two reasons. One being a confirmation bias (it worked toward the result they wanted) and the other being their willingness to just take someone's word for it. I blame church for the latter.  

I think people take great comfort in the idea of them not being fully responsible for things in life. If they can blame things on God's will or they can avoid worry or confronting scary realities because "God is ultimately in control" then they can live life under the assumption that the daddy in the sky has their back. That's enough for a lot of people. Anything to avoid those uncomfortable (more likely) possibilities about the truths of our origin and the origin of the universe and what's out there. It's a safer existence to ignore anything else while also trying to force other people to live by the rules of a religion they don't participate in and exclude people and condemn them to an afterlife of eternal damnation without being able to demonstrate ANY proof such a place even exists. A big lesson learned in 2020 was that faith is a dangerous thing.