When I was young growing up Southern Baptist there was one time where the pastor preached about this verse, and the whiplash I felt when I heard family members bad-mouthing immigrants the moment they stepped outside is partly what led me to read the Bible myself, which led to me losing my faith.
did you ditch the family too? sounds like the Bible was actually ahead on this one so itsweird you dump the faith instead (not overall, just the way you told the story had a whiplash of its own)
Just because you disowned your family doesn’t mean you have to project your misery in everyone else.
The people I know that have cut out parts of their family are happier for it, not miserable.
I suppose I excluded some important detail. The reason I had wanted to read the Bible then was so I could better understand God’s word and confront my family with that understanding. But reading the Bible didn’t clarify things for me the way I thought it would, instead of clear instruction on right and wrong I found more hypocrisy and contradiction, as well as a disturbing focus on the appropriate conduct of slave-owners and the treatment of women as property.
Reading the Bible gave me the same whiplash I felt seeing the hypocrisy of the people around me, which made me realize that it wasn’t in spite of their faith, but because of it.
