feotakahari

Nonbelievers, imagine that there is no problem that you can’t walk away from because everything is in God’s hands. Oh, you’re unemployed? Pray about it. God is in control. He’ll either help you find a job or not – either way, He’s in control. Are you depressed? Ask God to help. Whatever you’re going through is happening for a reason. Are you sick? It’s not God’s fault, but he will get you through it. Elections aren’t going your way? That’s definitely the Devil at work, but we can pray about that because God made the Universe and has a plan.

–Kristi Harrison, 4 Specific Things You Lose When You Leave Christianity

It’s not okay, it will never be okay, and the only thing worse than it not being okay is insisting that it is …

[E]verything good I’ve ever accomplished, even from before the trauma, comes from that place. It’s Not Okay that people are being denied asylum. It’s Not Okay that mom was facing dad’s death alone. Nearly every word that I write, even on pretty frivolous stuff, comes from that place …

I don’t know how I can communicate this, but living in that headspace isn’t as depressing as you’d think. Kind of liberating, actually. In its best moments, it’s getting involved in EA stuff, realizing you can save multiple lives just with your meager salary, and know you’ve gotten is one step closer to a world where no one finds their father comatose on the couch. It’s realizing how much good there is to do, and how much of a difference it makes when you do. And for me, it’s an affirmation of the value of human life. To affirm that the root of spiritual values isn’t in a distant afterlife or tribes or groups, but the goodness of happiness and the obscenity of suffering. No one should have to go through what I went through. Or what you did.

It’s Not Okay. And together, we’re working towards a world where it never happens again.

Academicianzex, untitled post

(This is also what Marx was talking about with his “opium of the people,” but he’s way harder to understand.)