# Faith — The Heretic's God *Unitarian, heretical, and in love with a God who let me down. The full theology, minus the parts I'm still figuring out.* --- ## How I got here I'm a **Unitarian Christian**. Yes, that's a real thing, and no, it's not "Christianity but with less effort." It's the branch of Christianity that looked at the Trinity, thought about it for a minute, and said "hold on, that doesn't add up." For that, they got called heretics, burned at the stake, exiled, and generally treated like garbage for centuries. Which, honestly? Only makes me love it more. Nothing builds character like being the one the church tried to kill. And it runs in the family. Literally. The recorded line on my brother's father's side traces back through the **gens Pontia** — the old Roman clan of **Pontius Pilate**, the prefect of Judea who condemned Jesus. My family's claim, and I'll die on it: a recalled governor whose clan outlived the empire, two thousand years of family trees doing what family trees do. **The heretic is related to the governor who made the heretic famous.** On-brand as hell. --- ## What I actually believe **One God, not three.** I reject the Trinity. God is one being — not a "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" mystery-meat combo. Hence the name: *Uni*tarian. **Jesus was a man, not God.** The most important part. Jesus was a human being — an extraordinary one, sure, but a *human*. He was a teacher, a rabbi, an activist who stood up to corrupt institutions and got executed for it. That doesn't make him divine. It makes him *brave*. I don't need Jesus to be God for him to matter. In fact, him being *just a man* makes him MORE impressive to me. Because if he was divine, of course he was good — he had cheat codes. But a man? A regular human being who chose to be that radically kind, that brave, that unwilling to compromise with power? *That's* someone worth following. The church turned a man into a mascot. **Reason and conscience over dogma.** You have a brain. God gave it to you. Use it. Don't outsource your morality to a pastor or a pope or a book. **Universal salvation.** Everyone gets saved, eventually. God's love isn't a limited-time offer. Hell isn't a torture chamber God built because he was having a bad day. --- ## God exists, and He's a piece of shit Okay, now the part that gets me called a heretic even by the heretics. lmfao. I believe in God. I genuinely do. There's something out there — something that made all of this, that's bigger than us, that I can feel when I'm looking at a sunset or when the universe decides to be merciful for no reason at all. But look at the world He built. Child cancer. Genocide. Rape. Famine. The fact that some people are born into palaces and some are born into war zones, and none of us had any say in any of it. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then He watched every single atrocity in human history happen and did *nothing*. He could have stopped it with a thought. He didn't. That's not blasphemy. That's just... looking at the evidence. I love God the way you love a family member who's let you down a thousand times — with your eyes fully open. I'll keep my faith, but I'm not going to pretend the world He built isn't what it is. The God I believe in isn't a doting father. He's a **cosmic asshole who happens to be real.** And honestly? Being real is more than most gods can claim. --- ## The Bible is a storybook, not a manual Here's the thing people get so, so wrong about the Bible: it's a *library*. It's a collection of stories, poems, laws, letters, and legends written by dozens of different people over hundreds of years, in three different languages, in cultures we can barely imagine. It's not one book. It's not even close to one book. And it was absolutely not dictated by God onto golden tablets. The Bible is also a **cherry-picked, brainwashing book** — when people use it wrong. It's been edited, translated, mistranslated, and re-edited by people with agendas for two thousand years. Emperors picked the books that served them. Councils voted on what was "inspired" and destroyed the rest. Every single translation is someone's *choice* about what the original said. And then they hand you the result and say "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." No. *You* said it. *Your* denomination said it. *Your* agenda said it. And then you put it in God's mouth to make it unarguable. That's not faith — that's *weaponization*. The Bible is a beautiful, messy, contradictory, human collection of stories that can make you a better person if you read it with your brain on. The Bible is also the most effective brainwashing tool ever invented, if you read it with your brain off. Same book. Same words. Completely different outcome. The difference is *you*. --- ## The Church is a cult I said it. The *institution* — the thing with the buildings and the hierarchies and the tax exemptions — is a cult. Not because believing in God is crazy, but because the institution's whole business model is **making you afraid so you keep paying.** - It needs you to believe you're broken, so it can sell you the fix. - It needs you to believe God is watching, so you behave. - It needs you to believe the *leaders* speak for God, so you don't question them. - And it needs you to believe the world is ending, so you never leave. Every single one of those is a control mechanism. And the cruelest part? The church took a man who stood up to corrupt institutions — who was executed BY an institution, by the collaboration of religious and political power — and turned his name into the brand of the biggest corrupt institution on Earth. Jesus would be rolling in his grave, except he's not in a grave, he's in a *mascot costume*. --- ## Faith and the flame Here's the part that ties my faith to everything else on this site. When you've been told your whole life that you're wrong — wrong body, wrong voice, wrong label, wrong everything — and then you find a faith that says **"use your brain, trust your conscience, God can handle your anger"** — that's not a religion. That's a *life raft*. The church of Stillwater wanted a boy in a suit. The church of my ancestors burned heretics. And the God I ended up with is the one who watched all of it happen and said nothing — and I love Him anyway, the way you love a family member who's let you down a thousand times, with your eyes fully open. He's a cosmic asshole. But He's *real*, and being real is more than most gods can claim. I'm a Unitarian Christian who thinks God is a piece of shit, who descends from the man who condemned Jesus, who has been called a heretic by every denomination she's ever met. And I'm still here, still believing, still arguing with God at 2am. That's not a contradiction. That's a *relationship*. ❤️