i hope this doesn’t sound like a white boi ego death moment lmaooo, but i was raised in a christian elementary school and as a closeted queer. was taught love, forgiveness, kindness, but NEVER empathy. and i began to believe that basically all virtues are useless/performative without real empathy. 2020 i started reading theory and radical stuff and realized my church was just a business with a cross for a brand. started protesting in Portland and realizing that my abstract understanding of who Jesus is, is more alive in the people (who most likely wouldnt identify as christian) throwing molotov cocktails at pig precincts than in any single person, pastor or family member i’d ever met in my 17 years of institutional christianity. now i’m a buddhist, taoist, Qur’an reading, christian agnostic (because why tf not, yolo, i make my own rules) and life is so beautiful. Fred Hampton is my Jesus Christ and the communist manifesto is my bible.