Tag: Religious Belief

I am not the most Christian person you are ever going to meet.

Yes, I am religious. Yes, I try to go to church. But if we are being completely honest, most Sundays I pick work over church. I drink too much. I cuss too much. I have tattoos. I have had crazy-colored hair. I am not walking around with a Bible tucked under my arm, quoting scripture to everyone I meet.

And I am okay with that.

I also don’t believe in reading the Bible and then turning around and preaching something completely different from how I actually live. I don’t trust a lot of these newer pastors either. Sometimes it feels like everyone wants to build a megachurch, become famous, sell something, or turn God into a personal brand. And honestly, when you don’t have enough talent of your own, sometimes it feels like you use God’s name as your platform.

I also think a lot of people online have made a hobby out of demonizing regular people who are just trying to live their lives.

None of the things I just listed make me less of a Christian than anyone else.

But here is what I will say about being a Christian:

Me mentioning God or talking about my relationship with Christ is not indoctrination. And it is not me giving you religious trauma.

If I mention something that happened to me and say, “Maybe this was God’s timing,” or “I really believe this was God’s plan,” or simply say, “Thank you, Jesus,” I am not pushing God onto you.

I am talking about my own life.

I have never hidden the fact that I am religious. It has always been a part of who I am. Just because I don’t practice my faith exactly the way someone else does doesn’t mean I have to pretend it doesn’t exist to make other people comfortable.

And there is a very big difference between sharing your own faith and forcing your faith onto someone else.

I know not everyone believes in God.

I’m not going to force you to sit there and pray with me over lunch or dinner when I know you don’t believe. I’m not going to make you go to church. I’m not going to send you church service videos because I know that isn’t something you’re interested in.

I understand boundaries.

But I also think those boundaries have to work both ways.

You don’t get to tell me that I can’t mention my own faith simply because you don’t share it.

So what caused this rant?

I showed my friend a video from the Merrill Twins, specifically Ronnie’s pregnancy journey.

At one point in the video, she realizes that they had posted the pregnancy announcement and forgotten to pray. So she stops and says a short prayer.

That’s it.

Her prayer was maybe a minute of a 23-minute-long video.

And somehow, my friend’s partner got upset about it and basically accused me of forcing God down their throats.

I’m sorry, but… how?

I didn’t make you pray.

I didn’t ask you to pray.

I didn’t even show you a church video.

I showed you a pregnancy video.

And I showed it to you because I am currently pregnant.

I didn’t get pregnant when I thought I was going to. Hector and I spent almost an entire year trying to get pregnant. So watching another woman, who is literally my age, finally get pregnant after dealing with her own fertility struggles hit me in a very specific way.

I was watching her journey and thinking about how incredibly grateful I felt.

I was grateful that I didn’t have to go through the hormone and thyroid issues that she dealt with. I was grateful that my own journey looked different. And at the same time, I was genuinely happy to see that the things she was struggling with were eventually addressed and that she finally got the pregnancy she had been hoping for.

That was the part that resonated with me.

And my friend has a child too. It took her a while to get pregnant, so this wasn’t some completely random video that had nothing to do with either of us. She may not follow these YouTubers as closely as I do, but she’s seen enough of their content over time. More importantly, she’s a woman and a mom. She understands what it feels like to want a baby and to finally get that positive pregnancy test.

So when I showed her the video, the point was the pregnancy journey.

Not God.

Not religion.

Not conversion.

Not indoctrination.

And definitely not me trying to make anyone believe what I believe.

There just happened to be a one-minute prayer in a 23-minute video.

And apparently, that was enough to turn it into some kind of religious assault.

I think what bothers me most is how quickly people can take someone else’s genuine expression of faith and turn it into something malicious.

If someone is constantly telling you that you’re going to hell, telling you that you need to accept their religion, refusing to respect your boundaries, or pressuring you to participate in their religious practices, then yes, that’s different.

But someone saying, “I believe God had a hand in this,” when talking about their own life?

Someone saying, “Thank you, Jesus”?

Someone praying for sixty seconds in a video?

That isn’t automatically indoctrination.

Sometimes people are just talking about what they believe.

And you are allowed not to believe it.

I don’t need you to believe in God for me to respect you. I don’t need you to pray with me. I don’t need you to go to church. I don’t need you to agree with my theology.

But in return, I would like the same respect.

Let me have my faith without turning every mention of God into an attack on you.

Because I can respect your right not to believe without pretending that I don’t.

And if saying “Thank you, Jesus” makes you uncomfortable, I genuinely don’t know what to tell you.

Because I am probably going to keep saying it.