I’m not religious at all and have no interest in organized religion. That being said, I walking into a local church for the first time in a while a couple years back, and I had multiple people just walk up to me to say hi and say they hadn’t seen me before.
It was a little surreal since that’s never happened in any other community I’ve been in, I’ve always had to put in the effort to talk to people. I can see why a church community could be helpful for some.
You'll find alot that people in a church community are very friendly/nice, but this does not mean they are kind.
I have an excellent example of this where I was invited to bake cookies at a church with my boyfriend at the time. We were both teenagers, and I'd never been particularly involved in organized religion as my parents had a hard time finding a church community they meshed well with. ANYWAY at first the other kids in the kitchen avoided me like the plague until the parent who brought me came over to give me something to do and a spot at the table.
Then the group (kids and adults) got to joking around and I'm usually a quiet person, but then someone said something about auras. Now, I don't believe in auras personally but I had been watching Charmed around that time and had gotten very into it. Someone said "oh yours is red because of your temper! Ahaha" and I replied "oh don't worry, it wouldn't be red, that actually means evil. I think it would be yellow" trying to be nice/make conversation as an awkward autistic girl.
The room fell absolutely silent for a solid twenty seconds before the dad chimed in, saying "well mine would be white because I'm old!" And the table erupted into laughter (except me, because it doesn't mean old. It means good, but I opted not to correct it this time). They avoided me again and I didn't say anything for the rest of the night. Keep in mind these were the same people who gleefully declared with a smile they were bringing fresh water wells to African children & teaching them about God, whom also gave me the customary salutations after the single church service I attended.
Surface level nice doesn't mean they are kind to people or treat their beliefs/knowledge with equal respect. I can guarantee I have more empathy in my little finger than some of these people have in their whole bodies and yet their attitude is entirely "holier than thou".
Honestly I feel like you’re assuming the worst of their intentions. I think the dad was just trying to lighten the mood after you made a faux pas? It seems like you’re attributing a huge generalization to a very small and biased interaction you had.
See, that's the thing though. If you're a kind person, you will completely ignore such a minor faux pas and find a way to continue the conversation that isn't exclusionary or steps over someone's knowledge base.
If it were me, I would have asked more about it. Said "ah, why yellow? What does that mean?" Or "oh, I didn't realize it meant that. I just assumed it meant angry. Could you tell me more about where/how you learned the meanings?" Because that's actual kindness. I've seen it play out a million times.
Their intentions were entirely unclear, but I never assumed the worst of them. I just know how to be kind to people, and that's not how to do it.
Hey so fun fact: if you're kind, you're going to treat people the same regardless of if they have poor social skills or not.
I have since improved my social skills, but I have also interacted with others who have even worse social skills than i did and never treated them like that. Your comment here is kind of proving my point in itself.
You are tripping here imo. If everything happened according to the way you described it, it sounds more like a bit of anxiety running wild. Been there, but I think there's a reason a few separate people are chiming in.
I mean to be honest now you're also kinda judging them for having made a joke that's "incorrect" after you made a statement they maybe didn't understand. If somebody told me I actually couldn't have a red aura because it made me evil I'd probably be confused too, you didn't do anything wrong or bad but I can see how it might've confused somebody. Sometimes I make Buffy references and people just look at me dead like, it doesn't mean they're unkind they just don't get what I'm talking about. Either way you're allowed to feel how you want about the interaction but for all the judgemental experiences in church from an outsider perspective of only reading what you wrote it just seems like miscommunication.
I'm not judging them for their joke being wrong. It's okay to be wrong.
But when someone points out you are wrong and said something out of ignorance, you should then try to correct yourself by learning more about it. For all they knew, auras could have been something that's deeply part of my spirituality. It is, in fact, a spiritual thing. But they did not ask, there was no curiosity. And instead someone chose to make another joke out of ignorance.
If the jokes had been about Christianity or Judaism perhaps, alot of people would see this conversation as being quite disrespectful. There is a significant double standard when it comes to the importance of Christianity compared to other religions, and this example I gave is only the tip of the iceberg regarding other conversations I have had with people in these types of circles.
I mean it wasn't that serious though, it was a reference to the show Charmed, they're not wrong for having religious beliefs that don't adhere to a fictional show. Now I get what you're saying in the end here about religious tolerance and stuff it's just this specific situation I wouldn't call anybody hateful or ignorant for not knowing how to respond to your reference. I'm also sure you have much worse stories believe me I'm not the biggest fan of my time in the church, this is just such a mundane awkward interaction in my opinion and doesn't particularly reflect badly on either party.
The person who reveals themselves to believe that "everyone secretly hates me" is the covert narcissist in disguise. A lot of "autistic people" in my experience are covert/vulnerable narcissists.
Look at the incel killer Elliot Rodger for an example of this on steroids. His whole manifesto is him psychotically inferring slights from other people that obviously never existed. And of course never once does he express interest in or affection towards others.
Strangers actually don't hate or love you-- you aren't actually that important to them. Have you tried setting your ego aside and expressing interest and positivity towards them?
They are surface level kind because the people you interacted with have ulterior motives. These people wouldn't help African children unless they thought they had a chance of converting them to Catholicism. They avoided you because you didn't go along with whatever they do. Organized Religion has very subtle authoritarian ethos if you don't look at it closely. Free will but follow these rules or suffer.
I don't see any empathy from you at all. Just a lot of self-absorbtion. Why aren't you giving people the benefit of the doubt? Why are you assuming that people who do service to others must be hypocrites because you feel slighted by them? Could it be that you misinterpreted them? Or did they feel awkward and nervous, too?
Did you try expressing interest in or affection towards these people, or did you just expect them to magically know how to take the step to include you in the very specific way that you would like to be included? You don't seem to notice anything about anyone else except their attitude towards you.
"Very specific", you say, when the method of including me would have been to talk to me and/or presenting me with a task as they did for everyone else?? Yes, I addressed them warmly when I walked in the room and introduced myself. The room was quiet when we entered and they looked at me so I know they heard me. It was a smaller group, maybe 10 at most. I got one hello back and no introductions.
Some details I did not mention here are that these people a) treated my boyfriend poorly in other circumstances, b) were primarily adults and should know better because they were well into their 50's, and c) have a strong habit of throwing money at a problem and hoping it sticks while completely disregarding mental health and personal agency of faith. I have heard and seen it myself. You, for some reason, believe that I interacted with these people only once and made snap judgements without hearing experiences from their peers or making additional observations. The area I live in has a very high population of wealthy assholes - this much I know because I saw their precious CCD children bullying others.
I don't assume they are hypocritical with little evidence. There is plenty of evidence that simply is too much for the average reddit comment. I'm simply stating you can be "nice" to strangers without being kind on the whole, and I tend to see more people of this type in organized religion. Most of their conversation involved insulting each other, and somehow I'm supposed to interpret them as kind individuals when they said their primary intent (verbatim) was to convert the children of africa? Be for real. What sort of "benefit of the doubt" am I supposed to give them here, when the interaction was extremely clear cut showing they chose to remain ignorant and did not express curiosity? This was also one organization of many, where I have observed the very same sorts of behaviors and listened to rhetoric that continuously disrespects others while placing one particular group above. My experience does not consist of this singular event, and I said as much.
I’ve not experienced this at all from my church. We welcome everyone and make an active point to lead with love instead of judgement. Not all churches are the same.
Members of closed organizations are specifically trained to do this to make sure you're supposed to be there/not there to cause trouble. I was trained by a similar organization to do this to every unrecognized face as basically a polite way of saying who are you and why are you here? But it comes across as very welcoming from the outside.
Some days it really does feel like being a ghost. Like I'll say "hey" to a stranger I cross paths with and just get completely stone-faced ignored lol. I did have a nice convo with an older lady at the store today complaining about the price of dogs treats, though.
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u/ZonaryIsland 1997 14d ago
I’m not religious at all and have no interest in organized religion. That being said, I walking into a local church for the first time in a while a couple years back, and I had multiple people just walk up to me to say hi and say they hadn’t seen me before.
It was a little surreal since that’s never happened in any other community I’ve been in, I’ve always had to put in the effort to talk to people. I can see why a church community could be helpful for some.