Podcast Engl 105

The speaker grew up in a religious small town in the South. They were raised Christian, but as they got older, they began to question the views of Christianity and saw the hate coming from the religion. They didn't understand why Christianity didn't support and love the LGBTQ community. This pushed them away from Christianity and made them prioritize kindness and compassion towards all people, regardless of their identity or actions. They believe in showing love and support to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. They no longer believe in the idea of "loving the sin, not the sinner" and value kindness and acceptance in their life. So I grew up in a small town in the South, and one thing you should know about small towns in the South is that they are very religious. So I grew up a Christian, my parents grew up Christian, I went to church every Sunday, youth group every Wednesday, I went to a couple of Bible camps, and so religion and Christianity was always a very big thing in my life growing up. But as I got older and I started to have my own independent thinking and I started to see things on the internet and see things around me about the views that Christianity was upholding in our current culture, I started to realize that Christianity wasn't really for me. I didn't truly believe in it, mainly because there was so much hate that was coming from a religion that was supposed to be preaching about kindness and loving thy neighbor, and I just didn't understand that, especially, I was a theater kid, and so I had a lot of experience with friends who were part of the LGBTQ community and didn't feel like they were supported or loved by Christians because they were constantly told that loving who they wanted to love was a sin, and I truly just didn't understand that. So it really pushed me away from Christianity, because I think that being kind to people is so important. Loving other people is so important, and dictionaries say that kindness means being selfless, caring, compassionate, and unconditionally kind to people, and while I think that is true, I think it does need a bit of a broader definition, because kindness to me means showing compassion to people no matter who they are, no matter what they've done for you, no matter what they've done for other people, or even no matter if you know them personally. It could be a random service worker, it could be an Alpine bagel coffee shop worker, and I still think you should show them compassion and show them kindness simply because that should be in our human nature to do so, and it doesn't matter if they are homosexual, if they love people of the same sex or the same gender, if they decide that they want to be a different gender than the sex that they were assigned at birth. I feel like we should show love to people no matter what they want to be, because they're just living their lives the same way that we want to, and Christianity and growing up that way showed me that the values that they uphold of saying that I'll love the sin, not the sinner, that's not for me, because I want to show kindness and show love to people no matter who they are, and I want to support who they are, and that's a big value in my life.