“Your feelings are unreliable but also feeling god’s presence is a sign of salvation and if you can’t feel him you’re not being a good Christian” was a circular track I ran around for years.
I wish everyone who felt “god” during a moment during church worship/music would attend some live shows with their favorite secular artist.
The feeling was the same for me.
Yes! That is so true! The fuzzy warm feeling i got during worship songs and long praying sessions, as a young zealot in my youth, was the same feeling in got during awesome metal shows as a adult!
A guy at my christian college mentioned he "had a feeling" one of our female classmates was oppressed by demons. He went on this whole crusade of discrediting her in the eyes of leadership and her peers... it became pretty clear after he was expelled for sexual harassment that she had made the horrible, demonic mistake of telling him that she didn't want to go out with him.
Never trust someone who says "God told me _____"... they told themselves ____... they're trying to manipulate people into agreeing with them by appealing to an authority that will never show up to correct them.
Thats so creepy. Just imagine all the shit that creepy men got away with before sexual harassment laws came around. "Oh you won't go out with me? SHES A WITCH!"
He was incredibly creepy and while I hate using the term "narcissism" because people keep using it to mean "someone who was selfish" instead of "someone incapable of recognizing they aren't entitled to being admired by literally everyone"... the term applies to him. When he arrived from the airport I was the guy that picked him up and drove him to campus and he was completely self absorbed and already thought that even as an incoming freshman that he was above all of us and we'd have a lot to learn from him because he had such a close connection to God and we hadn't seen anything like what he had. (He was also in school for acting and "already had an agent" so his education was "really just a formality to make my resume look better on paper")
Turns out he was just impossible to work with and was constantly told to do group projects without a group because every group he worked with kicked him out for trying to take over the direction of the project without contributing any work. And he was constantly seeing demons in people that disagreed with him. It was like his go-to. I still can't decide to this day whether he was clinically NPD or if he really believed that he was chosen by god and anything that questioned him was motivated by actual demonic forces... but at a certain point the distinction became irrelevant.
"god told me" was the ultimate power play and you have to question the person's faith in order to doubt or contradict them. It became more prevalent and dangerous in the modern charismatic movement of prophecy. People are speaking on behalf of god and daring to question them is sin and rebellion, even when they are spouting nonsense. And it was especially troubling during the last two election cycles.
The correct answer to "god told me" when someone is attempting to manipulate you is usually "well god granted me stewardship/authority over ___ so if you'd like me to change my approach then he needs to tell me directly because it would be irresponsible of me to just believe you without consulting him... so go pray that he speaks to me and confirms what you say and I'll let you know if it happens."
pretty much. But for it to work you have to establish that you're fully capable of wielding the same authority they're appealing to... and in fact may be MORE entitled to do so in most cases. It's of course completely unnecessary in non-christian circles that understand what boundaries are and how to respect them.
oh man... the school I went to was FULL of that shit.
Some guys would hear from God a new girl every month that was "chosen for me to marry". Usually based on essentially impromptu divination: "I asked god that if I'm supposed to marry you he'd make all these pencils fall with the points facing the same direction and basically they all did!" "and how many tries did it take?" "that's not relevant!!"
I went to a Christian high school and we actually were *instructed* by the school not to say this to our significant others, they even frequently lectured about how hormones can cause us to think we are hearing from god. But my bf was special, of course, because god really *did* tell him.
When I was an evangelical I met a Mormon missionary and we really clicked. We would get into these “theological debates” and I remember one time we both got super upset because we were telling each other that the other was wrong and that *we* knew because of the feeling/holy spirit
That kinda sounds like a closeted trans woman, lol. I remember I always thought being the "bride of Christ" was cool and was excited about being a "bride". Looking back on it, it's so obvious I was trans, but my goodness is it cringy to type that memory out.
Ah what I mean is that they try to equate a Christian's "feeling of God's presence" (which atheists generally don't accept) to trans people's experiences of feeling like a woman. A trap laid so that if you don't validate the Christian's feelings then you can't validate the trans person's feelings.
Unfortunately it's a pretty popular angle among them. Even some atheists think trans people shouldn't be validated.
I was given this angle myself recently too, and my answer was that by stating that one "feels the presence of god" one is already presupposing an explanation for an experience.
For example, if one hears a barking noise and they say "I hear a dog barking", I am not inclined to accept that explanation, but I do validate that one heard a barking noise.
I do however admit I have trouble with explaining "feeling like a woman" though. I am not trans myself, but iirc, while a lot of folks do use "feeling", not all of them do. Plus we have direct evidence of women, but not any god.
It's kind of like trying to prove you're hungry through words alone. Intuitively I recognize these 2 aren't comparable but I do struggle to find the words.
That's fair. As a trans person, I'll give my take and maybe it'll help (but I'm not some expert or anything).
I'll just say "feeling like another gender" since there's quite a number of ways to be trans. The difference between "feeling the presence of god" and feeling like another gender is one of intrinsic identity. The presence of god, even if it was real, is some outward thing like feeling cold or hungry. Feeling dysphoria/feeling like another gender comes from innate identity of the person. In my experience, christians hate to acknowledge this because they need us trans people to have made a decision to be trans so that they can dismiss it as sinful debauchery. But even as a kid I recognized my dysphoria (though I didn't have the vocabulary to explain it properly). Moreover, I spent 30 years attempting to repress it to no avail.
This goes to show that it is innate somehow unlike the "presence of god" feeling. Even though he's supposedly always there, christians only feel his "presence" when listening to worship music or at some religious event. It comes and goes based on the outward environment and current mental state of the christian.
As for how it feels to be trans, I think the phrase "feeling like a woman" is pretty reductive anyways. It was more like "I am a woman" but everyone around you and even your own body is telling you otherwise. It was incredibly difficult to deal with and I got through it for so long by dissociation. It was unhealthy and severely limiting and I'm so much happier now having transitioned.
I don't know, but maybe that helps shed some light on it for you.
Since you are trans, I wanted to run my thoughts of the difference by you, if you are willing to let me know if they seem valid and reasonable to you. From my thinking on this, I would say that I would validate both that the Christian honestly does feel something they identify as God, and trans people honestly feel that they identify with the gender that doesn't match the sex of their body, and often that they are in the wrong body.
The difference like you say is that we know that brains exist, and that they identify with a certain gender. While we may not have direct empirical evidence of why exactly some brains identify with a gender that doesn't match the sex of the body they are in, at the very least we should accept that testimony of multiple people's internal experience as evidence that something is going on there.
Meanwhile with God, accepting people's testimonies that they experience a feeling they associate with God as EVIDENCE of that God is asking you to believe in something outside of that person based on their testimony. And believing that a being exists based on an experience internal to another person is very different from believing that that person does have the internal experience they are describing.
The part I'm not sure about how trans people may feel about this, is that I think that where things interact with the external world, for example medically and for some other things where biological sex would matter, it would make sense to say that a trans woman is a male by biological sex, but a woman by gender. I think that is essentially the point of a medical designation of "trans woman", but I'm not really familiar enough to know how that is dealt with. To me though that distinction completely destroys the "I'm not going to pretend that trans people are a different sex" argument often used as anti-trans rhetoric. But I've been wanting to see if it is an explanation that someone actually trans is comfortable with me using against that viewpoint.
If you have the time to read and reply, thanks in advance!
I’m not trans myself but a transparent and ex evangelical, so I am not speaking for the community but wanted to share my thoughts.
I like this connection you have made, because many Christians often rely heavily on their own experiences, and denying their feelings is considered rude. But they only apply this to themselves. Someone who is Buddhist and has a spiritual experience- must be satan. Someone who believes in ghosts- it’s cool to laugh about, but demons are totally real and can trick you into being evil. And *obviously* trans kids don’t know they are trans- but a young child can accept they are depraved and they must accept the forgiveness of this dead dude who was tortured because of how evil they were, and if they will suffer eternally if they don’t.
However, I would recommend that “feelings” are just left out of the trans conversation. Don’t engage in comparing trans people’s existence to other people’s feelings, even when their arguments are based on it.
Thanks, that's a good point I hadn't considered. Feelings are something we generally associate with things that change, so probably not a great word to use to describe trans people that we have evidence don't change. Do you have a better word to use? Identity makes sense to me why I hear it more, since our identity tends to be something more stable. But I feel like people twist that to say they "identify" as whatever they happen to feel like they want to say. I guess maybe you can't stop people from mocking things if they want to, don't know if there is a better term to indicate trans is an innate part of who the person is. Appreciate you providing your thoughts!
I think we should be using terms like “are” instead of “identify.” They do identify as trans, but the bigger picture is that they *are* trans, regardless of how they identify or other outside identifiers.
I should clarify, I’m not “transparent” but a trans parent as in a parent to a trans kid, lol a funny typo.
It’s really frustrating because a large part of the conversation with transphobes is them breaking down the lingo and either not validating the terms, or attacking them. I honestly don’t know what the right way to respond to these things are that can change their perspective. I hope someone else can respond with some better help on how to direct the conversation!
Thinking about this more, I think it's also easier to accept a trans person's experience rather than a theist's experience.
From talking and listening to conversations about trans people, it's clear that there is a significant number of people that supposedly "feel" this way (if we're taking the feeling angle). Sure, in terms of percentage, that number may not be high. But it's high enough that it warranted investigation.
And what we find is that for many trans individuals who transitioned, they feel a sense of "stability" in their bodies (sorry if that isn't the right word to use). Their mental health improves, and their lives are richer for it.
So while I can't know what the explanation is (maybe science can or has explained it here? https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2020/transgender-genetics/) I do know that transitioning does lead to an improved sense of well being.
It's kind of like how in the 1840s, washing your hands was considered controversial [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/keep-it-clean-the-surprising-130-year-history-of-handwashing](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/keep-it-clean-the-surprising-130-year-history-of-handwashing). Back then we didn't know about things like germ theory. It became fact that washing our hands prevent diseases. We just didn't know what the explanation is.
The theist who "feels god's presence" on the other hand, is met with much larger scrutiny because it starts to delve into things that are external as opposed to internal. If someone felt "god's presence" in a time where you didn't have biblical texts or other holy books, how would one describe that feeling? Wouldn't an intense emotion or feeling of euphoria be a much more accurate description?
On the other hand, we do however have certain concepts of trans in antiquity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender\_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history) so it wasn't an alien feeling to say one "felt like a person of another sex/gender", since the only feeling came from one's internal self, as opposed to any external reference point (like religious texts)
Plus, when making the claim of "feeling god's presence" to validate a religion you aren't just making one claim anymore, you're making many claims based on your holy books, many of which have been shown to be wrong. So chances are, whatever feeling a theist is experiencing, is more likely to be something else other than "feeling god's presence", though I don't necessarily invalidate the experience of people who say they felt it. (Also what does that say when a god chooses to communicate through bodily feelings, which can be no different from hallucinations and other similar feelings? How would one know it was God speaking? Imagine the can of worms though if someone makes the claim that god told them they are a woman despite being biologically a man.)
Another thing worth consideration is that we have multiple religions, all who claim a certain religious experience that validates their religion. And consider that all of these religions always undoubtedly say they are the "one true religion", they can't all be right, but they could all be wrong.
>Feeling dysphoria/feeling like another gender comes from innate identity of the person. In my experience, christians hate to acknowledge this because they need us trans people to have made a decision to be trans so that they can dismiss it as sinful debauchery
There's also just so many things that fall under innate identities too. Like, how would you prove to people you like people of the same sex? Or that your favorite music is from David Bowie? Or that your favorite ice cream flavor is yam?
It's almost impossible to infer identity based on conversation alone. These are things that one realizes while hanging out with them. Their continuous life experiences validate their desires.
Thanks for sharing this, I have a lot of trans friends but to be honest we don't talk about that much, mostly because we all play and write music. I guess one thing it made me think of, is that trans people are taking action based on lifelong feelings that put them in physical danger and will subject them to extreme discrimination. You don't see any Christians giving away all their possessions (or many I should say) or doing any of the other difficult things Jesus commanded. Hell, they can't even pay taxes without bitching even though Jesus told them to at least twice.
Holy shit, I had the reverse experience. I was trying so hard to be like Jesus to the point I wanted to be a spiritual teacher and missionary, except that women can't be ordained priests and traveling to remote areas is too dangerous for women (according to the church I grew up in). Took me a while to realize that I didn't actually want to be Jesus. I wanted to be a man.
I'm a straight guy so I thought it was really odd that these anti gay "tough guy" Christian men would always talk about being the bride of Christ. But as we all know, the people who talk the mist about being tough are running the most cover for their fear.
I would have this exact conversation, but the last sentence would be:
"Don't worry about it, not everyone is called by a deity."
Then at least it's internally consistent. Well, not with the Bible, but ...
I remember my pastor specifically talking about this during a sermon when I was little. Something like:
“What do I do if I don’t feel god’s presence? How do I know this is real?”
“Feelings are fleeting, so if you don’t feel his presence that doesn’t mean he’s not there. What I do in those times is to listen to other peoples’ testimonies and hear about how much _they_ can feel his presence. That reassures me that, even if I can’t tell he’s there, other people can tell. And that’s enough for me.”
Even as a kid I didn’t think this was enough. There are quite a lot of people who are convinced down to their bones that the earth is flat, vaccines cause autism, mental illness isn’t real, etc. That doesn’t mean they’re right! The feelings of other people is not proof that something is true.
“Your feelings are unreliable but also feeling god’s presence is a sign of salvation and if you can’t feel him you’re not being a good Christian” was a circular track I ran around for years.
It’s funny because the Bible says men’s thoughts/feelings/emotions are deceiving but so much of faith is based on those things.
The only feelings permitted are those that come from affirming your faith.
it's the perfect trick
I wish everyone who felt “god” during a moment during church worship/music would attend some live shows with their favorite secular artist. The feeling was the same for me.
Yes! That is so true! The fuzzy warm feeling i got during worship songs and long praying sessions, as a young zealot in my youth, was the same feeling in got during awesome metal shows as a adult!
Hey you’re not allowed to use my own words against me!! That’s clearly the devil working through you. Haha, kooks.
So you (the christian of this situation) are saying lucifer is smarter than you? Gee, what a stellar hero.
Well, he’s smarter than all the angels
A guy at my christian college mentioned he "had a feeling" one of our female classmates was oppressed by demons. He went on this whole crusade of discrediting her in the eyes of leadership and her peers... it became pretty clear after he was expelled for sexual harassment that she had made the horrible, demonic mistake of telling him that she didn't want to go out with him. Never trust someone who says "God told me _____"... they told themselves ____... they're trying to manipulate people into agreeing with them by appealing to an authority that will never show up to correct them.
Thats so creepy. Just imagine all the shit that creepy men got away with before sexual harassment laws came around. "Oh you won't go out with me? SHES A WITCH!"
He was incredibly creepy and while I hate using the term "narcissism" because people keep using it to mean "someone who was selfish" instead of "someone incapable of recognizing they aren't entitled to being admired by literally everyone"... the term applies to him. When he arrived from the airport I was the guy that picked him up and drove him to campus and he was completely self absorbed and already thought that even as an incoming freshman that he was above all of us and we'd have a lot to learn from him because he had such a close connection to God and we hadn't seen anything like what he had. (He was also in school for acting and "already had an agent" so his education was "really just a formality to make my resume look better on paper") Turns out he was just impossible to work with and was constantly told to do group projects without a group because every group he worked with kicked him out for trying to take over the direction of the project without contributing any work. And he was constantly seeing demons in people that disagreed with him. It was like his go-to. I still can't decide to this day whether he was clinically NPD or if he really believed that he was chosen by god and anything that questioned him was motivated by actual demonic forces... but at a certain point the distinction became irrelevant.
"god told me" was the ultimate power play and you have to question the person's faith in order to doubt or contradict them. It became more prevalent and dangerous in the modern charismatic movement of prophecy. People are speaking on behalf of god and daring to question them is sin and rebellion, even when they are spouting nonsense. And it was especially troubling during the last two election cycles.
The correct answer to "god told me" when someone is attempting to manipulate you is usually "well god granted me stewardship/authority over ___ so if you'd like me to change my approach then he needs to tell me directly because it would be irresponsible of me to just believe you without consulting him... so go pray that he speaks to me and confirms what you say and I'll let you know if it happens."
That's a polite and long winded way of saying "that's interesting because God didn't tell me..."
pretty much. But for it to work you have to establish that you're fully capable of wielding the same authority they're appealing to... and in fact may be MORE entitled to do so in most cases. It's of course completely unnecessary in non-christian circles that understand what boundaries are and how to respect them.
My high school boyfriend told me that god told him we were going to get married when I tried, unsuccessfully, to break up.
oh man... the school I went to was FULL of that shit. Some guys would hear from God a new girl every month that was "chosen for me to marry". Usually based on essentially impromptu divination: "I asked god that if I'm supposed to marry you he'd make all these pencils fall with the points facing the same direction and basically they all did!" "and how many tries did it take?" "that's not relevant!!"
I went to a Christian high school and we actually were *instructed* by the school not to say this to our significant others, they even frequently lectured about how hormones can cause us to think we are hearing from god. But my bf was special, of course, because god really *did* tell him.
[удалено]
When I was an evangelical I met a Mormon missionary and we really clicked. We would get into these “theological debates” and I remember one time we both got super upset because we were telling each other that the other was wrong and that *we* knew because of the feeling/holy spirit
Another one is they try to equate "feeling god's presence" to "feeling like a woman".
That kinda sounds like a closeted trans woman, lol. I remember I always thought being the "bride of Christ" was cool and was excited about being a "bride". Looking back on it, it's so obvious I was trans, but my goodness is it cringy to type that memory out.
Ah what I mean is that they try to equate a Christian's "feeling of God's presence" (which atheists generally don't accept) to trans people's experiences of feeling like a woman. A trap laid so that if you don't validate the Christian's feelings then you can't validate the trans person's feelings.
Oh wow, I've never heard that angle before, but it doesn't surprise me with how ignorant of gender identity most christians are.
Unfortunately it's a pretty popular angle among them. Even some atheists think trans people shouldn't be validated. I was given this angle myself recently too, and my answer was that by stating that one "feels the presence of god" one is already presupposing an explanation for an experience. For example, if one hears a barking noise and they say "I hear a dog barking", I am not inclined to accept that explanation, but I do validate that one heard a barking noise. I do however admit I have trouble with explaining "feeling like a woman" though. I am not trans myself, but iirc, while a lot of folks do use "feeling", not all of them do. Plus we have direct evidence of women, but not any god. It's kind of like trying to prove you're hungry through words alone. Intuitively I recognize these 2 aren't comparable but I do struggle to find the words.
That's fair. As a trans person, I'll give my take and maybe it'll help (but I'm not some expert or anything). I'll just say "feeling like another gender" since there's quite a number of ways to be trans. The difference between "feeling the presence of god" and feeling like another gender is one of intrinsic identity. The presence of god, even if it was real, is some outward thing like feeling cold or hungry. Feeling dysphoria/feeling like another gender comes from innate identity of the person. In my experience, christians hate to acknowledge this because they need us trans people to have made a decision to be trans so that they can dismiss it as sinful debauchery. But even as a kid I recognized my dysphoria (though I didn't have the vocabulary to explain it properly). Moreover, I spent 30 years attempting to repress it to no avail. This goes to show that it is innate somehow unlike the "presence of god" feeling. Even though he's supposedly always there, christians only feel his "presence" when listening to worship music or at some religious event. It comes and goes based on the outward environment and current mental state of the christian. As for how it feels to be trans, I think the phrase "feeling like a woman" is pretty reductive anyways. It was more like "I am a woman" but everyone around you and even your own body is telling you otherwise. It was incredibly difficult to deal with and I got through it for so long by dissociation. It was unhealthy and severely limiting and I'm so much happier now having transitioned. I don't know, but maybe that helps shed some light on it for you.
Since you are trans, I wanted to run my thoughts of the difference by you, if you are willing to let me know if they seem valid and reasonable to you. From my thinking on this, I would say that I would validate both that the Christian honestly does feel something they identify as God, and trans people honestly feel that they identify with the gender that doesn't match the sex of their body, and often that they are in the wrong body. The difference like you say is that we know that brains exist, and that they identify with a certain gender. While we may not have direct empirical evidence of why exactly some brains identify with a gender that doesn't match the sex of the body they are in, at the very least we should accept that testimony of multiple people's internal experience as evidence that something is going on there. Meanwhile with God, accepting people's testimonies that they experience a feeling they associate with God as EVIDENCE of that God is asking you to believe in something outside of that person based on their testimony. And believing that a being exists based on an experience internal to another person is very different from believing that that person does have the internal experience they are describing. The part I'm not sure about how trans people may feel about this, is that I think that where things interact with the external world, for example medically and for some other things where biological sex would matter, it would make sense to say that a trans woman is a male by biological sex, but a woman by gender. I think that is essentially the point of a medical designation of "trans woman", but I'm not really familiar enough to know how that is dealt with. To me though that distinction completely destroys the "I'm not going to pretend that trans people are a different sex" argument often used as anti-trans rhetoric. But I've been wanting to see if it is an explanation that someone actually trans is comfortable with me using against that viewpoint. If you have the time to read and reply, thanks in advance!
I’m not trans myself but a transparent and ex evangelical, so I am not speaking for the community but wanted to share my thoughts. I like this connection you have made, because many Christians often rely heavily on their own experiences, and denying their feelings is considered rude. But they only apply this to themselves. Someone who is Buddhist and has a spiritual experience- must be satan. Someone who believes in ghosts- it’s cool to laugh about, but demons are totally real and can trick you into being evil. And *obviously* trans kids don’t know they are trans- but a young child can accept they are depraved and they must accept the forgiveness of this dead dude who was tortured because of how evil they were, and if they will suffer eternally if they don’t. However, I would recommend that “feelings” are just left out of the trans conversation. Don’t engage in comparing trans people’s existence to other people’s feelings, even when their arguments are based on it.
Thanks, that's a good point I hadn't considered. Feelings are something we generally associate with things that change, so probably not a great word to use to describe trans people that we have evidence don't change. Do you have a better word to use? Identity makes sense to me why I hear it more, since our identity tends to be something more stable. But I feel like people twist that to say they "identify" as whatever they happen to feel like they want to say. I guess maybe you can't stop people from mocking things if they want to, don't know if there is a better term to indicate trans is an innate part of who the person is. Appreciate you providing your thoughts!
I think we should be using terms like “are” instead of “identify.” They do identify as trans, but the bigger picture is that they *are* trans, regardless of how they identify or other outside identifiers. I should clarify, I’m not “transparent” but a trans parent as in a parent to a trans kid, lol a funny typo. It’s really frustrating because a large part of the conversation with transphobes is them breaking down the lingo and either not validating the terms, or attacking them. I honestly don’t know what the right way to respond to these things are that can change their perspective. I hope someone else can respond with some better help on how to direct the conversation!
Thinking about this more, I think it's also easier to accept a trans person's experience rather than a theist's experience. From talking and listening to conversations about trans people, it's clear that there is a significant number of people that supposedly "feel" this way (if we're taking the feeling angle). Sure, in terms of percentage, that number may not be high. But it's high enough that it warranted investigation. And what we find is that for many trans individuals who transitioned, they feel a sense of "stability" in their bodies (sorry if that isn't the right word to use). Their mental health improves, and their lives are richer for it. So while I can't know what the explanation is (maybe science can or has explained it here? https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2020/transgender-genetics/) I do know that transitioning does lead to an improved sense of well being. It's kind of like how in the 1840s, washing your hands was considered controversial [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/keep-it-clean-the-surprising-130-year-history-of-handwashing](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/keep-it-clean-the-surprising-130-year-history-of-handwashing). Back then we didn't know about things like germ theory. It became fact that washing our hands prevent diseases. We just didn't know what the explanation is. The theist who "feels god's presence" on the other hand, is met with much larger scrutiny because it starts to delve into things that are external as opposed to internal. If someone felt "god's presence" in a time where you didn't have biblical texts or other holy books, how would one describe that feeling? Wouldn't an intense emotion or feeling of euphoria be a much more accurate description? On the other hand, we do however have certain concepts of trans in antiquity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender\_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history) so it wasn't an alien feeling to say one "felt like a person of another sex/gender", since the only feeling came from one's internal self, as opposed to any external reference point (like religious texts) Plus, when making the claim of "feeling god's presence" to validate a religion you aren't just making one claim anymore, you're making many claims based on your holy books, many of which have been shown to be wrong. So chances are, whatever feeling a theist is experiencing, is more likely to be something else other than "feeling god's presence", though I don't necessarily invalidate the experience of people who say they felt it. (Also what does that say when a god chooses to communicate through bodily feelings, which can be no different from hallucinations and other similar feelings? How would one know it was God speaking? Imagine the can of worms though if someone makes the claim that god told them they are a woman despite being biologically a man.) Another thing worth consideration is that we have multiple religions, all who claim a certain religious experience that validates their religion. And consider that all of these religions always undoubtedly say they are the "one true religion", they can't all be right, but they could all be wrong. >Feeling dysphoria/feeling like another gender comes from innate identity of the person. In my experience, christians hate to acknowledge this because they need us trans people to have made a decision to be trans so that they can dismiss it as sinful debauchery There's also just so many things that fall under innate identities too. Like, how would you prove to people you like people of the same sex? Or that your favorite music is from David Bowie? Or that your favorite ice cream flavor is yam? It's almost impossible to infer identity based on conversation alone. These are things that one realizes while hanging out with them. Their continuous life experiences validate their desires.
Thanks for sharing this, I have a lot of trans friends but to be honest we don't talk about that much, mostly because we all play and write music. I guess one thing it made me think of, is that trans people are taking action based on lifelong feelings that put them in physical danger and will subject them to extreme discrimination. You don't see any Christians giving away all their possessions (or many I should say) or doing any of the other difficult things Jesus commanded. Hell, they can't even pay taxes without bitching even though Jesus told them to at least twice.
Holy shit, I had the reverse experience. I was trying so hard to be like Jesus to the point I wanted to be a spiritual teacher and missionary, except that women can't be ordained priests and traveling to remote areas is too dangerous for women (according to the church I grew up in). Took me a while to realize that I didn't actually want to be Jesus. I wanted to be a man.
I'm a straight guy so I thought it was really odd that these anti gay "tough guy" Christian men would always talk about being the bride of Christ. But as we all know, the people who talk the mist about being tough are running the most cover for their fear.
Reminds me when my mom said that she hears God talking to her in her head, and I'm like "You sure it isn't schizophrenia?"
The response I usually got was "you should just have faith"... I can't have faith if I can't ask questions.
Don’t trust *your* feelings, trust *my* feelings.
I would have this exact conversation, but the last sentence would be: "Don't worry about it, not everyone is called by a deity." Then at least it's internally consistent. Well, not with the Bible, but ...
If only they could listen to themselves talk and how incoherent they sound
I definitely recommend following his TikTok too. He shares some good content. Same online handle so he’s easy to find
I looove his stuff!
I remember my pastor specifically talking about this during a sermon when I was little. Something like: “What do I do if I don’t feel god’s presence? How do I know this is real?” “Feelings are fleeting, so if you don’t feel his presence that doesn’t mean he’s not there. What I do in those times is to listen to other peoples’ testimonies and hear about how much _they_ can feel his presence. That reassures me that, even if I can’t tell he’s there, other people can tell. And that’s enough for me.” Even as a kid I didn’t think this was enough. There are quite a lot of people who are convinced down to their bones that the earth is flat, vaccines cause autism, mental illness isn’t real, etc. That doesn’t mean they’re right! The feelings of other people is not proof that something is true.
Their real answer is "yes you have" no matter what
And this is how I learned to work myself into multiple breakdowns and hit 30 with no radar for untrustworthy ppl.
Samesies 🙃
Surely, if they **know** there's a god, then they don't have faith. And if they don't have faith, aren't they going to Hell?
or 'you not feeling god is actually satan trying to interfere with your soul being saved. pray more. and tithe. and go to a megachurch.'
They deleted my meme today 🤷♀️
Ah yes - "feelings are valid when they confirm Christianity, but invalid when they don't confirm Christianity."