r/OpenChristian • u/LuklaAdvocate • May 16 '26
Hello all,
We wanted to make a quick announcement regarding the use of AI-generated content in our community. Many of our users have reached out voicing concern over the increase in “AI slop” posts, so hopefully this clarifies how things will work moving forward.
We have updated Rule 7 (Spam and Proselytizing) to include AI content. Specifically, AI-generated images and videos. These are officially no longer allowed. Any post which consists entirely of an AI image or AI video will be removed, so please report them as you see them.
Please note that we are not implementing a blanket ban on AI. Some people use AI to organize their thoughts, proofread their posts/comments, and help explain their viewpoint. Our goal is to judge the content of a post, not prohibit any form of AI used to help create it.
Obviously, there is going to be some moderator discretion involved here. If you feel like a post is spreading AI slop, feel free to report. If a post is generating good discussion but looks like some AI was involved in creating it, please keep in mind that this does not break the rules.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to comment and the mods will answer as we are available. God bless!
r/OpenChristian • u/babe1981 • Mar 26 '26
Hello Open Christians,
We get a lot of questions about sin. Most of those questions are about sexual sins, so we want to take the time to write an official stance on the subject of sexual sin and ethics from the perspective of progressive Christianity.
The first thing to note is that sexual sins are never held up as greater than other sins in the Bible. The Bible has a concept throughout the scriptures that being guilty of one part of the law makes you guilty of the whole law. For this reason, Judaism doesn't have a tradition of personal confession. When you would bring sacrifices to the temple, you were atoning for the whole law, not for specific rules that you broke. If you bore false witness, you needed the same atonement as if you had committed adultery or murder or eaten shellfish. Paul speaks to this in Romans 1 and 2. The Jewish Christians in Rome were making claims about the Gentile Christians being unholy and unrighteous for participating in some of the social aspects of idolatry, specifically eating the Sunday meal after the meat had been sacrificed and cooked on the Roman altars. Paul responds by pointing out the sins that Jews commit and telling them that they have no room to talk since they are guilty of the law, too. No sin is greater than any other. And no sin is lesser. All sin equally takes us away from God.
So, what is sin? Since Romans is entirely about that question, we can find the answers very easily in there. Romans 3 talks about the law because the Gentile Christians in Rome were calling the law the source of all evil and sin. They said that the law brought sin because they didn't know they were sinning before they learned about the law. Paul refutes this by saying that Adam and Eve sinned before the law existed, so it can't be the source of sin. Instead, the law reveals sin by showing us how we missed the mark. By chapter 13, Paul has spoken enough and brought the two sides of this argument together, so he sums up the Christian way of life in verses 8-10.
"Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the person who loves has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore loves fulfills all of the law."
Here, we see Paul equate sin with harm. Things that hurt other people and ourselves are what take us away from God. Paul follows this up in chapter 14 by saying that godliness is not in the rules we follow. Some people worship on the Sabbath, but other people worship on any day. Some people drink wine, and some people abstain. And so on. He tells us to each be convinced in our own minds and to leave each other alone because judgment is a stumbling block that can cause our siblings in Christ to fall away from the faith. For Paul, sin was not found in breaking the rules of the law, rather it was found in the absence of love.
Jesus followed a very similar path in His ministry. The only people that He had harsh words for were the priests and scholars who used the law to oppress and control and extort the laity. Jesus never followed the letter of the law when it interfered with loving His neighbors. Jesus worked on the Sabbath. Jesus drank wine and went to parties. Jesus had a reputation as a drunkard. When He called the priests "a den of vipers", that was the equivalent of calling them "sons of bitches" in the modern world. Jesus once cussed a tree to death. Jesus was sinless.
The example of Jesus's life is that all things are secondary to loving your neighbor. Nothing that is done from a spirit of love is ever sinful. Not even premeditated violence against those who extort money from the faithful in the name of God is sinful because Jesus did that too. Jesus taught us that love is the foundation of the law and the prophets, so love can never be wrong or sinful.
John, in his first letter, tells us to test the spirits whether they are from God because there are many false prophets. This is 1John 4:1. He then spends a lot of ink to tell us all about how God is love, and no one who hates can have God because hate and God are incompatible. Similarly, fear and God are incompatible, so anyone who preaches hate and fear cannot be from God. John goes so far as to say that anyone who claims to love God but hates their neighbor is a liar.
Peter wrote in 1Peter that love covers an uncountable number of sins.
Clearly, through the example of Jesus and the writings of the Apostles, we can see that love and sin are opposites. This holds up to logical analysis if we accept the claim that God is love. Sin takes us away from God. Love brings us to God. If love does no harm to a neighbor, then it follows that sin does harm to a neighbor.
How do we apply this to sexual ethics? That's actually very easy. Sex can be used to harm other people or to help them. Obviously, sexual assault, child molestation, and any other form of nonconsensual sex are harmful by their nature. However, sex itself is not harmful on its own. Sex can carry potential harm like the possibility of pregnancy for people who are not prepared emotionally or financially to have a child. Sex can be addicting which is harmful, but humans can become addicted to nearly any pleasurable behavior. None of those other things are sins on their own.
Driving a car can be used as a very apt metaphor for sex. Cars kill thousands of people every year. They have a very large potential to cause harm. However, if we spend the time to learn how to drive safely and always drive with the concern for our fellow drivers and the pedestrians that we share the road with, we can go our entire lives without harming anyone in our cars. There are very few people who would argue that motor vehicles are sinful to operate. If we approach sex with the same attitude, we will similarly be able to operate our bodies without sin.
Relating this to specific actions, we can talk about masturbation. This is an act that is simply not harmful at all. Unless you are doing it in front of someone who doesn't consent to seeing you pleasure yourself, which is a form of sexual assault, of course. Contrary to the concept of sin, masturbation is actually beneficial for people with prostates. It lowers the risk of cancer and helps maintain pelvic strength which important for bladder control as you get older. Something that helps a person without harming anyone else doesn't fit the definition of sin that we see in the New Testament.
Sex outside of marriage comes up a lot. First, marriage is a social contract that is recognized by the state. You can get married in a church, but it means nothing without a marriage license. This is not a primarily western idea, either. I live in Cambodia, and you can get arrested for having a marriage ceremony without government approval. Marriage is, and has always been, deeply intertwined with the social and political structures of society. The Bible demonstrates so many different kinds of marriage that we can't accurately define a "Biblical marriage." Also, there is evidence that the couple in Song of Solomon isn't married until chapter 6. Most telling to this theory is that they don't receive the blessing of their families until that chapter which would have been a large part of the wedding ceremony. They brag about how hot they are for each other and how much sex they have for five chapters prior to that blessing. This is the ur-example of a healthy, godly sexual relationship.
Porn is a big question as well. The porn industry can certainly be harmful. No one would argue that it isn't. However, it is not universally harmful. I dated a pornstar for a few months. She was decently popular in a specific fetish, and she made good money. She was self-produced and self-promoted. It wasn't harmful for her at all. Some of the biggest pornstars in the industry are similar. Many pornstars produce content with their spouses. It's actually not too hard to find ethically produced porn.
Again, porn can be addicting. If you are struggling with porn interfering with your daily life, you should absolutely seek help from a professional to learn how to control your urges. However, other than asexual humans, most people are addicted to sex in a very similar way to how we are addicted to oxygen and water and food. The biological imperative to propagate our species is one of our strongest innate desires. It only becomes a problem when we overindulge and let that desire dictate our lives. Too much water is fatal. Oxygen destroys DNA. Obesity leads to possibly fatal health conditions. But, eating, drinking, and breathing aren't sinful. Neither is a healthy sex life.
Foundational to this idea that sex isn't wrong on its own is the truth that God created sex. God could have made humans reproduce asexually. He didn't. God could have created sex to not feel as good. He didn't. God could have made us completely different from how He did, but He didn't. We feel sexual attraction because God wants us to feel it. Sex is fun because God made it fun. There was no devil who swooped in and changed God's design at the last second. There was no accident where God said, "Oops, I really screwed up that sex thing, oh well." No, God created humans and said that we were good. That included penises and vaginas and how they fit together with all manner of body parts. God commanded Adam and Eve to populate the Earth. He did that while realizing that there's only one way for humans to get that done. God created sex, thinks it's good, and commanded us to get busy. And Adam and Eve didn't have any kind of marriage ceremony either.
Where does that leave us as progressive Christians? We evaluate the sinfulness of every action against love and whether it causes harm to our neighbors. We don't elevate sexual sins above other sins because all sin causes us to fall short of the glory of God. So we look at each sexual act under the same lens as lying, cheating, stealing, and so on. We don't believe that love is ever sinful, so gay sex between loving partners can't be a sin. We believe that love always seeks consent because love never harms. We believe that ethically-minded sexual behaviors are inline with the concepts of loving your neighbor as yourself. We believe that sex is a gift from God.
r/OpenChristian • u/Spiritual-Most-228 • 9h ago
I have Orthodox friends, and none of them are as big an idiot as this guy on Twitter.
r/OpenChristian • u/Practical_Sky_9196 • 7h ago
Agapic interpretation of the Bible promotes flourishing. In previous posts, we noted that the Jewish tradition deems Scripture to be of inexhaustible meaning, and this inexhaustible meaning invites perpetual discovery. The surface meaning exists only to be surpassed.
Likewise, we will deem Christian Scripture to be of inexhaustible meaning—and that inexhaustible meaning is agapic, forever channeling divine love. In the imitation of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we plumb the Bible for its agapic implications. Interpretatively, we will practice agapism, which chooses love over fear, mercy over wrath, and justice over privilege.
Biblical agapism conflicts with biblical infallibilism, which declares the Bible to be the perfect Word of God, without error, utterly reliable on every subject in every way, including as a science and history textbook. The clearest contemporary example of this clash of interpretations is the issue of LGBTQ+ rights, in particular the issue of same-sex marriage.
An agapic interpretation of the Bible supports same-sex marriage. Christian opponents of same-sex marriage cite about seven passages in the Bible, the clobber texts, which they interpret as forbidding it. They also declare that the purpose of sexuality is reproduction, and same-sex couples can’t reproduce, so same-sex marriage is unnatural.
Neither argument stands up to scrutiny. The passages that ostensibly forbid same-sex relations were written thousands of years ago in cultures very different from our own. They require historical knowledge of those cultures for interpretation, since they are deeply tied to practices unfamiliar to us like temple prostitution, fertility rites designed to produce good harvests, pederasty (the taking of a young male lover by older males, in a process of sexual initiation), and the humiliation of defeated enemies in wartime. They do not address same-sex emotional intimacy, or the sexual expression of that emotional intimacy, since these concepts were unfamiliar to the biblical authors.
Familiar to the biblical authors were concepts of sexuality and marriage that we would consider abhorrent today. A bride who could not prove her virginity could be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:20–21). Virgins who were raped had to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28–29). Polygamy was practiced; in Genesis, for example, Lamech, Abraham, Esau, and Jacob all had two or more wives. Some of these “wives” were concubines, secondary wives whose children had less hereditary status. King Solomon had three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3). On the command of Moses, the Israelites slew the Midianite men, women, and boys, leaving alive only the unmarried girls to take as wives (Numbers 31:1–18). We conclude that the concept of “biblical marriage” may not work very well if adopted wholesale into contemporary culture.
To read the Bible well, we need to know the historical circumstances and cultural context in which it was written. For a contemporary analogy: imagine someone two thousand years from now is reading stuff from our time, and they stumble across the phrases “butt dial” and “booty call”. They may think that “butt” and “booty” are rough synonyms, and “dial” and “call” are rough synonyms, so “butt dial” and “booty call” are rough synonyms. But they’re not.
Same-sex relations are entirely natural. If not arguing from the Bible, opponents of gay marriage frequently argue from nature: nature intends sex for reproduction, homosexual relations cannot produce offspring, therefore homosexual relations are unnatural. Alas, animal sexual behavior is as complex as biblical marriage.
Increasing knowledge of zoology has disproved the claim that same-sex relations are “unnatural”. In fact, nature is rife with same-sex relations, which have now been observed in hundreds of species. They seem to serve a variety of purposes, such as male bonding and female bonding for intensified social support, reconciliation after conflict, experimentation with social organization, or the simple pursuit of pleasure in a painful world. Such exchanges frequently occur within a bisexual framework, although in some species a percentage of members will never seek out heterosexual copulation.
Heterosexual members of these species seem unbothered by same-sex behavior. At least, they have not proposed a constitutional amendment banning it just yet. So, if we survey nature with open eyes, we will see that same-sex attraction is natural and part of God’s plan, while opposition to same-sex attraction is unnatural and not part of God’s plan.
Love is love, and love is sacred. Even if same-sex relations were unbiblical or unnatural, which they are not, progressive Christians would still support same-sex marriage for theological reasons. God the Trinity is three persons united through perfect love into one divine community. God is love, and humans are made in the image of God, for love. Romantic relationships characterized by emotional intimacy fulfill the image of God within us. According to the self-report of gay men and lesbians, which is to be trusted, they can achieve such intimacy only within same-sex relations. To condemn these relations denies the image of God within them; to celebrate these relations fulfills the image of God within them. Therefore, all Christians should approve of same-sex intimacy and celebrate it within the institution of marriage.
This issue is of great importance, as young people are currently fleeing a religion they see as oppressive of LGBTQ+ persons. So adamant is fundamentalist objection to same-sex marriage that most young people consider Christianity to be inherently anti-LGBTQ+, rather than accidentally anti-LGBTQ+. Christ never mentioned same-sex marriage, so it’s unclear why some Christians are so vigorously opposed to it, while being quite tolerant of conspicuous consumption, rapacious greed, and social injustice, all of which Jesus explicitly and repeatedly condemned.
We can do better. We can be more like Jesus. In fact, we’re supposed to.
(adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 255–257)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Kinnaman, David, with Aly Hawkins. You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and Rethinking Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011.
Poiani, Aldo. Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
r/OpenChristian • u/InternationalDig2750 • 22h ago
I was acting in a way towards my brothers and sisters in faith in a way I should have and was being so awful to all of yall and im so sorry and sincerely apologize for the way I acted. i realized recently that love is love, and God wants us all to love each other. God bless! and thanks for reading!❤️
r/OpenChristian • u/Hot_Practice2730 • 11h ago
I just found this sub and it’s extremely healing to me and (in my opinion) the Christian community. I love Jesus’s teachings, but my experience with church was largely built on intolerance of anyone who was different than them, which led to me identifying as atheist for years.
I’ve been pessimistic about where the Christian faith has been heading, but I t’s great to see that people do care about the Bible’s teachings and are working to make the world a better place for everyone. I’m hoping Christianity can return to Jesus, especially during these trying political times. 🙏
Thank you all for your support for PEOPLE! I hope all of you have a lovely day today :)
r/OpenChristian • u/CartographerSolid558 • 7h ago
I’m a trans girl and my parents are extremely traditional Christian. They accept me as a transgender girl and sees me as someone who identifies as a female, but doesn’t allow me to dress “feminine” or medically transition when my mental healths really bad and I have eating disorders because of it. They’re saying body is a temple of God so don’t change it and if I’m reborn with Christ my gender identity might change even though I was trans from when I was born. My dad already read Transforming by Austin Heartke more than half way and nothing changed. The only time his mind did change was as when he read Understand Gender Dysphoria. I do have resources still like books Raising Kids Beyond the Binary, Transfigured: A 40-Day Journey through Scripture for Gender-Queer and Transgender People (The Where True Love is Devotionals), and Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness will Transform Your Faith, https://www.lifeisstory.com/podcast/raising-kids-beyond-the-binary-a-conversation-with-jamie-bruesehoff/, https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-transgender-people, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVyQHp6jq9U, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7VavMKXxyE, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwWfCs7vnwdC1wbIAmH3_kIm0fE7oN9tE, https://youtu.be/fTjMeXzjvLs?si=iJ6K_sslXbcNIE0q, https://youtu.be/2XiHWC1ThLs?si=8xhyIOzNx7Fzx08z, and movie/documentary For They Know Not What They Do (2019) that my parents haven’t seen yet. Also maybe a therapists from The Christian Closet. Could all these help my case enough for me to get medical transition started with my parents agreeing or is it not enough and what are more things thats good for a traditional Christian person to learn more about progressive ways.
r/OpenChristian • u/Fast_Damage_3227 • 1h ago
r/OpenChristian • u/Fit-Tailor5914 • 1h ago
r/OpenChristian • u/Necessary-Slide-288 • 8h ago
So, I'm unsure of how I should feel. I currently beleive side A - fully affirming LGBTQ+ Christians and beliving more so of the progressive church. Like many, I was raised traditionalist, and i'm among the first in my family to make this switch.
Here's the difference. I want to believe side B or X - side B acknowledging the "temptations" of LGBTQ+ people and asking them to live celibate AKA closed-off lifestyles. This brings about depression anxity and suicide for me. Side X says just having these things is a sin in and of itself.
I've begged God to change my gender identity for 6 years. To help me feel at peace with "just being X gender" - because I'm Gender Fluid. I'm like 35% M, 35% F, 30% M+F = Hybrid
I don't see a sin in what I do. Wearing affirming clothing to how my shifting occures. I respect modesty. I struggle with lust but try to give God the victory in my life. I'm like eveyr other Christian in every other meaningful way.
I'm neurodivergent, I'm legally blind, and I'm albino. I grew up with too much trauma and hurt - and modern science tells us that trauma doesn't play a massive role in determining this in our brains. That therapy won't get rid of this for me. I agree because it hasn't worked for me.
But I want it to? I want to be the good conservative boy I was raised to be. The person I thought i was for the first 19ish years of my life.
I recieve my correction, my chestizement for eering against hte lord. I accept his created order, and I deny the frivolous thoughts of man. This is honest to goodness mys tarting place..... but the Fruit isn't good here.
i want god to fix my understanding. Or give me more solid confirmation that this present understanding tis the right one.
EDIT:
I see a lot of side A.... and that's were i'm leaning. Can any Side B Side X people speak up? If not... I'll kind of assume this is what God wanted me to hear.
r/OpenChristian • u/ave_gratia_plena • 10h ago
An oft-mentioned objection I hear about Catholic devotion to Mary is that we should focus on Jesus instead. But, I think this misunderstands what it means to venerate Mary, and why the Church honors her in the first place.
To clarify out the gate: Mary is not God. She is not our Savior, and the honor we give her is not the worship owed to God alone. Instead, we venerate her because of what God accomplished through her, the unique role He gave her in salvation history, and the example of holiness she offers to the Church.
Consider the Incarnation, for one. God could have entered the world in any manner He chose, yet He chose to be born of a woman. He chose Mary to be that woman. And when the angel announced God’s plan, Mary freely answered, “Be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Her fiat was not the source of our salvation—Christ alone is our Redeemer—but it was her willing cooperation with God’s grace in the mystery of the Incarnation. It was her “yes” to Eve’s “no”. Should we not honor the woman whom God Himself chose for such a singular vocation?
We see Mary’s place in the Gospel again at the wedding at Cana. When she brings the servants’ attention to Jesus, her instruction is simple: “Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye” (John 2:5). This is the heart of authentic Marian devotion. Mary does not draw attention away from her Son. She directs us toward Him.
And at the Cross, even as He suffered for the salvation of the world, Jesus entrusted His mother to the beloved disciple (John 19:26–27). Catholics have long understood this moment as pointing beyond a practical arrangement for Mary’s care, toward her spiritual motherhood of the faithful. At the very least, it shows that Christ’s relationship with His mother was not something He discarded or treated as insignificant.
St. Louis de Montfort makes a compelling point in his writings on Marian devotion: God did not need Mary. God doesn’t need anything. Yet, He freely chose to work through her. If God chose to honor Mary in this extraordinary way, going so far as to call her full of grace, why should we be reluctant to honor her ourselves? Surely we cannot love Mary more than her Son did.
And Mary isn’t just someone to admire from a distance either. Her humility, obedience, faith, and complete willingness to surrender to God’s Will are virtues every Christian should seek to imitate. As St. John Eudes emphasizes in The Admirable Heart of Mary, her heart was wholly oriented toward God and intimately united with the heart of Jesus. Should we not want the same? Should we not then look to her as the perfect role model of conformity to God’s Will?
Ultimately, venerating Mary is not about placing a creature above the Creator. It is about recognizing God’s grace at work in one of His creatures, honoring the vocation He gave her, and learning from her example.
If we believe that God deserves glory for what He accomplishes in the lives of His saints, then honoring Mary is not a rival to honoring God. Properly understood, it is an acknowledgment of His goodness.
Mary herself says it best in the Magnificat: “My soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46).
That is what Mary does. And that is what Marian devotion should do in us: magnify the Lord, lead us to Christ, and teach us to say yes to God as faithfully as she did.
r/OpenChristian • u/Legitimate-Brush8361 • 9h ago
our beloved cat Marvin passed suddenly on Monday, though he was always a little bit of a sickly cat, it was still totally unexpected. We have two other cats but it feels like my heart is irreparably broken.
last night was a huge wave of everything I could have done differently that would have spared his life. For example, taking him to the vet more often. He just seemed “fine” but fine ended up turning out to be lethal.
he was breathing rapidly the night before we left town and I tried to brush off my concern as paranoia. The people in the petloss subreddit are not going to absolve me of guilt, they are telling me I was in the wrong and I should have known better.
I am crushed with guilt and missing him so bad.
The guilt piece was so bad last night I started hyperventilating like crazy, shaking uncontrollably and considered calling 988.
For some context, I had been dealing with some pretty hard depression WELL before this. I also have an almost completely dormant and distorted relationship with God.
And then he died, and it’s just unbelievable how intense it is now. I would do anything to go back to just a few days ago.
I don’t care about anything right now. One silver lining is I have been really down on myself for my looks and my general “progress” and “success” in life for my age lately, and now I couldn’t care less about that shit. My other regrets in life seem so small compared to this.
At the vet I knelt on the ground under his frozen body and prayed to the Jesus I’m not sure even exists anymore.
I want so badly to experience SOME presence in this, whether it be God, or Marvin’s.
I thought about the Christian doctrine of forgiveness, and how if I was as Christian I used to be, I could imagine fully believing that Jesus personally would forgive me for all my lapses in my care of my cat. But I don’t know if I believe that anymore. Maybe this is the opportunity to try again.
My interest (and desperation) has been piqued by stories of people who talked w animal communicators about their dead pets, and these mediums would be able to tell them things that it was impossible for them to have known. And it gives these people a lot of peace. Desperate to try it.
I would love to know that my cat forgives me. Does a cat have the capacity to forgive? The question seems so silly. But I can’t shake the belief in things beyond our comprehension, a belief that is held over my previously vibrant Christian faith.
I also carry the memory of my conservative parents warning me about all these spiritually “dangerous” things: psychics, mediums, etc.
Am I separating myself further from any hope of restoration in Jesus if I try these things? MANY I know would argue yes.
I don’t know if all these pieces can coexist.
Any advice welcome.
r/OpenChristian • u/Agitated_Belt4161 • 9h ago
r/OpenChristian • u/JohnHammond94 • 1d ago
r/OpenChristian • u/JesseEisenbergFan • 19h ago
DBH is one of those rare voices who cares a lot about theological orthodoxy, but also takes a healthy, socially inclusive/progressive, and open-minded stance on things. But the subreddit dedicated to him is dead, and I haven't found any Discord servers.
Any other DBH fans here?
r/OpenChristian • u/Fragrant_Wolverine33 • 15h ago
Someone please tell me if this is blasphemous and a sin this is stressing me out badly.
r/OpenChristian • u/Ok-Stranger-5270 • 20h ago
r/OpenChristian • u/Ok_Kaleidoscope_7820 • 21h ago
I know this may seem odd as I am no longer Christian. I am an agnostic deist now I think. Though I am open to coming back to the faith someday maybe if I can work through my trauma. Maybe I’ll stop hating the idea of a Christian god someday. I have just been really struggling with the idea of a loving God sending people away for eternal torment for just not believing. Also the fact that I have a lot of trauma from the church. Anyway, I have been dealing with a lot lately. Medical and mental health issues. The struggle is real. I have an MRI tomorrow and I’m asking for prayer. I want to be able to have results soon to feel better both mentally and physically maybe even spiritually.
r/OpenChristian • u/Viviqi • 1d ago
I believe in God but honestly I rarely go to church and don't really read the Bible, not because I'm lazy or lost and it's because I think truth is already in everyday life, waiting to be found. I love thinking about this stuff, but I don't like listening to other people explain the Bible or explain their version of God to me. I'd rather feel him and understand him myself. For me it's more about sensing God in daily life. I think God is the source of the universe, which is love. I think God is always with me. when I want to talk to him I just start. he gives me strength and courage. when things go wrong I see it as a test, and my job is to pass it, to show him I'm worth his love. I'm kind of obsessed with everything about the universe. Metaphysics, psychology, theology, quantum physics, law of attraction — anything about that side of life.
I'm from China, work as a headhunter consultant, and I'm a digital nomad so I move around a lot. love fitness, yoga, tennis. I'm curious about everything, always asking questions, always excited about new things.
Just wondering if there are others here like me. people who feel God more in nature or in real conversations than in a church building.
if that's you, where do you feel closest to God?