Thoughts after writing this: This one got out of hand. But if you’re wondering what I honestly think and how the flow of thought travels in my mind, I hope you enjoy. I enjoyed writing it. 

I’m proud of my last post with its deep references to Taylor Swift and the subtweet nature of it like thanK you, aIMee; only us two really know. And I’m proud because posting self-written poetry is usually seen as stupid or cringey, and I want to embrace it in the name of authenticity.  (I’m looking forward to adding a “Poetry” page to the blog.)

I loved poetry in high school and excelled in college despite skipping over 70% of any art or poetry class I ever took. During running start, the poetry professor (who had a wasteful role, I agree) invited me to attend poetry competitions designated for specific writers in his circle of well-known faculty and students. Even offering to let me compete instead of a girl who had been writing with him for at least four years prior, and viewed it as her life goal. 

I didn’t go; I was kind and didn’t want to crush her feelings. 

Following a long poetry unit, my English teacher in my sophomore year of High School gave a speech about the great places we could all go in life and how so many of us would end up surprising one another with what we achieved. She ended it by placing her hands on my shoulders and saying, “Even some of you could become President” to which the entire class laughed because she wasn’t kidding. While becoming President likely isn’t my future, the words gave me a massive confidence boost because it was one of the first people who correctly identified the depth at which I analyze and consider problems, a skill I was unaware of. Yet even then, I couldn’t have correctly verbalized my appreciation for the comment until years later, nor discern the skill she saw. 

As far back as 7th Grade, I can remember how much I deeply wanted to write poems that got published in a poetry book. Poetry units and readings had been one of the few areas of learning I actually tried hard in, with politics and social studies being the only competitors. Outside of those, I really only tried hard at doing the minimum required to get the grades my dad wanted. 

When spoken word poetry became gigantic in 2011-2014, I really wanted to take a stab and post my own, but that was seen as cringey. Even if Jefferson Bethke’s Jesus>Religion spoken word didn’t fully align with my previous theological beliefs, I was mesmerized by how the tone, setting, and aesthetic could enhance the way poetry was felt. Even now, I find myself emotional all the time when I listen to words from people like @josiebalka. The blend of imagery within my imagination is driven home with the somber tones Josie usually strikes. The poetry itself is magnificent enough to be worth reading every time. 

The pride I have in the poem I posted feels new still, even if I have become much more prideful of the things I have accomplished in my life these days, both internally and externally. For the longest time, I had two nuanced voices telling me never to be proud of myself. And the two were able to play off each other in nasty unison. Even publicly posting areas about my life that I am proud of feels slightly wrong, almost sinful, even if I should be proud. 

The first voice was my anxiety, but I never knew that I had anxiety until I was prescribed a minimum dose of Propranolol, and the world suddenly became not scary. I never knew that raising your hand in class to answer wasn’t supposed to cause your heart to beat rapidly and irregularly to the point of causing shallow breathing. I was unaware that shaking and sweating when meeting anybody new was an uncommon experience. And further, most people didn’t expect humiliation to happen from total strangers at any given moment. 

My anxiety not only was causing physical symptoms, but it also convinced me that I had little to share or offer the world. My fear convinced me that I had nothing to be proud of. Even if I began to be proud of writing back then or the decisions I made that were right, my anxiety would roll back the tape on all the reasons I was stupid, embarrassing, and unworthy of celebrating and being proud of myself when I should be. 

That second voice was from the highest authority I had given to my life: the Bible. Breathed out by God and taught by the Church. An absolute core belief of Christianity is that the Bible is perfect in all ways and has stood the test of time to remain accurate and unchanged. It is without error and is considered Inerrant and Infallible. Being breathed out by God and written by men with full guidance from the Holy Spirit. Once you believe that (hard to do), granting it authority over your entire life is easy (in rhetoric) after you’ve prayed the sinner’s prayer. 

One of the key sins that most Christians will use to show transparency masked as vulnerability instead of actual vulnerability is the sin of Pride. Being proud, according to God, is pointless because He is the one who empowers us to do anything worthy to be proud of. How can we accept feelings of achievement when we would not have achieved it without God? And even further, the Bible uses imagery to portray the good works of his followers as “dirty rags” that are inconsequential and worthless without God having worked through us. Anything good in us is from God, and anything else is because we are depraved human beings who lust after sinfulness and evil. 

If my anxiety already told me I was worthless and God told me that my core was depraved, evil, and my actions worthless, how would I ever be proud? How could I ever value myself or my skills correctly? For a long while, these inner voices did a great job projecting insecurity as humility because I had no faith in myself. The performative nature of my Christianity was actually a plea for someone to be proud of me because I wasn’t supposed to be. My anxiety offered perfect reinforcement of the “Holy Spirit” telling me I had nothing to be proud of and my true nature was evil. The moment I started believing I was born sinful, my self-worth was set on a path of rapid decline.

This is one of the key nuances to why I think teaching kids that they’re sinners is its own form of evil. And, it completely and utterly goes against the Evangelical saying “No kid is born wrong” or some variation of it. It’s honestly no wonder that the political divide between Christian MAGA’s and the left has become irreparable. They shout down core values of the opposite side for being dangerous, but preach to kids that they were born evil and are going to burn in Hell until they accept Jesus. 

Do you really think I asked Jesus in my heart at 6 years old because I loved him?

I just didn’t want to burn in hell and be separated from my mom and dad if I died in a car crash the next day. In fact, I prayed Jesus into my heart nearly every night from 6-8 because I was worried my new sins would cause me to burn again. 

Belief in God does not chip away at someone’s self-worth and confidence, but teaching them that their true nature is awful and their soul is hell-bound without something else to save them certainly does. And I don’t believe that most people have the anxiety I had, but the Church still told them not to be proud and that their actions and achievements are just dirty rags. The sin of pride is a doctrine based upon knowing how evil we are; it has to chip away at our image of ourselves. True belief that pride is sin is founded on the belief that we are evil and vile in our nature.

I wonder if the mental health crisis in America can be traced back, in part, to the overwhelming teaching of children that they were sinful. I guarantee I’d be dead if I had not started to be proud of myself. While Christians may argue that I’m taking this to the extreme, I’m not. Failure to view pride as sin, actions as rags, or yourself as depraved and evil is a failure to accurately follow the Bible. It’s a failure to see the work of the cross as it is painted in the Bible. Jesus can’t save you if you aren’t sinful and evil-natured. To believe in the Bible means to believe that you were born wrong and doomed, sinful. Even if Original Sin theology isn’t yours, the lesson was taught the same. And that’s a nasty lesson to teach a kid. 

And that lesson comes with specifically and explicitly laid out sins in the Bible: 

Like pride, homosexuality, murder, lying, adultery (via remarriage too), etc. 

And that lesson comes with specifically and explicitly laid out sins in the Church: 

Like cussing, drinking alcohol, showing midriff, Plan B pills, rap culture, anything that could be close to being gay besides the rainbow, etc. (This list just continues to grow with culture, even if a few are removed over time. Don’t believe me? Skateboards and Guitars used to be sinful.)

And a major problem for the church in the 1990’s-2010’s is that homosexuality does exist in the list from the Bible (as well as the church). The homosexual children were taught the lesson of sinfulness with their deepest secret and portion of their identity being inherently sinful to the Bible. Because of that lesson, Christians forced all of the LGBT to choose between God or being True to Themself. And when the Church is focused on teaching the lesson of sinfulness to produce salvation instead of showing the radical love of God, that choice isn’t hard for the gay kids eventually; it only hurts them.

With that choice, forced by the church, they silently dealt the death sentence of access to salvation for the LGBT community forever. Churches loudly and often proudly express that homosexuality is a lifestyle unrepentant to God, and unrepentance prohibits access to the kingdom of heaven and salvation. By June 26th, 2015, the Church had preached that message and lost the LGBT community to a point where over 90% will never believe in Jesus in the way the Bible describes. I’m not telling you that you have to change your beliefs, I’m telling you that you don’t fucking love them. As is your requirement to be Christian. 

And I bring this up, because the death sentence that the Church gave to the LGBT is small compared to the one being delivered to anyone who is politically left of the right. Church and Christian support for Donald Trump isn’t sober-minded, even if they had some claim to it in 2016 or 2020, which was rare. And that support is so strong in rhetoric at church, from Christians and in voting, that virtually every move Donald Trump makes is communicated to the left as Jesus-Approved. Christians and their churches have bound themselves at the hip to Donald Trump. My own Christian friends (Pastors, Elders, Bible Students) show more worry that I’ve moved left than they do that I don’t love Jesus. 

Giving the death sentence to the LGBT should’ve at least grown Christians in terms of strategy if nothing else, Republicans at least learned not to be against gay marriage if they want to win. Instead, I’ve seen scary levels of division and a willful ignorance of wrong or potential wrongs. Initially, that ignorance was born because the left DID push really hard with Obama against Christian values. And I know Joe Biden promised unity while we all knew it was a sham. But I guarantee that Donald Trump being your President did not and will not make America more Christian, just the rhetoric. Because the ones who are and aren’t Christian are still the same, we’re now just separated by even more. 

It is why Donald Trump would still be hated if he cured cancer. He’s used God and the Church worse than Nixon, and because of how closely tied the two have become, it’s delivering the death sentence of salvation to an even larger group of people than before. 

Maybe Jesus is real, and the way to heaven is Christianity, but the American Church is willfully giving up the chance to prove it to more people than ever before. Donald Trump has made the Church foolish. Your grandma bitching at you about cigarettes or rap music didn’t bring you closer to Jesus. Yet, you fools think Donald doing it to the left with words like identity, race, gender, sexuality, and disability will. You won the election but lost a chance at saving anybody who disagrees with you. 

Agreeing with Donald on sending a man with a legal right to be here to an El Salvador Prison in error and refusing to get him home, after being ordered by the Supreme Court to do so, is not going to get your neighbor to come to church when you ask for Easter. Even if you can agree with something he does, or a lot of it, you’ve made yourself and the Church a fool with Donald.

I did vote for Donald in 2020, and I’m not sure how to feel about it. I refused in 2016 during Bible College, and hated him well before 2024; to cast my first vote towards a Democrat presidential candidate. It’s crazy to imagine that I would be arguing against the Republican Party, let alone just the Church, based on who I’ve been and what I believe to my core:

Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics is one of my personal bibles. Javier Millei is one of my idols. I believe in God. I love the Church. I like most of Donald’s foreign policy decisions. I’ve loved politics since Mrs. Berger did her election unit in 2007 and dreamed of being a republican politician. I never thought I would vote democrat. 

And I realize my views have changed over time, too:

 I love Bill Clinton; I wish he were a candidate today. I proudly support the LGBT. I don’t like Israel. I think Universal Healthcare probably would be better than this shit. I don’t think my student loan payment should’ve risen from $467 to $2312. I understand that the top 1% of the wealth owners actually work hard, but I have no remorse for Brian Thompson. 

Ruining the Republican Party to make it Donald Trump’s is fine enough, I guess; it’s stupid strategically, but whatever. But ruining the Church for him? Is it worth it if he “fixes the country or the world” when most of you believe in an eschatology that says the world will get worse until Jesus returns? Is it worth ruining domestic evangelism outside of the immediate family? Is it worth the death sentence of salvation to the rest of us?

Paul really would be writing the Church in America letters. Jesus would flip its tables. And He would sit, eat, and make disciples with the people whom Donald and the Church seem to hate the most. 

The path to heaven is narrow. It might not include me, but it doesn’t include the Church of America, and it hasn’t for a very long time. We just all see it now. 

Oh yeah…this post is about poetry. I’m gonna write more of it, maybe you’ll read it, or you wont.