On the pain scale.

I had a few in highschool that scared me big time!

But I had to give them back at the end of the year.

Wish I had answers, but converse to your handle, people expressing this kind of vulnerable, raw curiosity so that we all might learn something, is exactly why I love the Internet. :D

As a Christian Anarchist, I often find myself lonely and without a third place as well, because of what churches have become.

Yeah, I still haven’t found a church that I felt I belonged in. I got close once, but they couldn’t pay skyrocketing rent hikes and got taken over by a larger, faker, church. One that was more about feel-good seminars and recruiting free labor volunteers than anything Jesus actually had to say.

Churches of old in the US used to be based. People of today wouldn’t recognize them. They helped the poor and were a third place and looked out for each other, they were also pro-union, and this became a huge “Problem” for capitalists, who saw Christians as annoying leftists who didn’t share their pathological obsession with money.

There was a VERY concerted and well documented conspiracy by the moneyed class to infiltrate and rot American Christianity into the often capitalist, Republican-talking-point drooling zombie it is today.

Highly recommend Behind the Bastards: How the Rich ate Christianity to see just how deep this goes.

That’s definitely how we got the “God is not only okay with, but wants you to be fabulously rich” types today.

The Church used to be a threat to these barons and tyrants and bigots, rather than their lapdogs.

This reminds me of the people who genuinely fall for “romance scams”, and the scammer has all the personality and vocabulary of a wet paper bag.

And yet somehow someone will believe they’re some hot (barely literate) U.S soldier stuck in Kuwait until they can get a flight home to meet the victim for only $2000… Wait, $1000 more… But then there’s a $500 fee… And then…

Blows my mind…

Not only that but look how it forms a freaking fishing hook on the end like a barb. Yikes!!!