Is Christianity Like a Necessary Drug with Bad Side Effects?

anoymous51 · Oct 25, 2025

I know that this may seem to be an anti-Christian post, but it is not.

Christ dying on the cross made it possible for people who trust in him to go to heaven; however, there are several prices that may have to be paid to go there.

The Bible says that a person must clearly repent of their sins in order to be saved. I know repentance is more about the changing of the mind and heart. But certain sins are hard to repent of. Sometimes a person can become very attached emotionally to their sins whether it is a certain vice or the homosexual lifestyle. After all, homosexuals love their partners as much as heterosexuals and a divorce would be just as painful (if they are married).

Becoming a Christian can cause a person to be in conflict with their family or nation depending on who and where it is. In Muslim countries, the person who denounces Islam in order to accept Christ could not only be ostracized from their family but could also face death. The same thing is true in atheistic Communist nations where you hear about persecution of believers all the time. A new Christian in this nation may come from a family of atheists/agnostics/secularist where there will be religious and ideological clashes.

The third issue is totally unrelated to the first two. It has more to do with who spread Christianity than the actual religion itself and how it affected certain people groups. I am talking about European Colonialism. Most nations that were established in the Americas(the New World) and elswhere are the result of Christian apostalization, whether it be Spanish Catholics or British pilgrims/puritan Protestants. Whether is was intentional or not, this resulted in the displacement/genocide of the native people and the importation of African slaves to these places. Most of the famous missionaries of the past have either been European or American like David Livingston, Hudson Taylor, and William Carey. I realize that this is not necessarily the fault of Christianity but how it was interpreted by the colonizers.

But none of this should be surprising considering the one person who suffer the most because of Christianity was Jesus Christ himself! Not only was he crucified, but before that he was rejected by his own people, tortured, whipped, and beaten. He even prayed drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Looking at this from an eternal point of view, after a person has been in heaven over 10,000 years (which is longer than recorded history itself), all the sacrifice, pain, suffering, and death might seem worth it according to Revelation 21:4

Thus, the metaphor Christianity is a drug with bad side effects.

timf · Oct 25, 2025

The biggest "price" to pay is persecution. However this usually only applies to real Christians.

2Ti_3:12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

This is because the world system (which is run by Satan (Eph 2:2)) is hostile to Christianity.

Joh_15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

The colonization of which you spoke was mostly driven by those with a financial interest, albeit often cloaked with false piety so as not not be seen as too greedy.

timothyu · Oct 25, 2025

timf said:
This is because the world system (which is run by Satan (Eph 2:2)) is hostile to Christianity.

I personally would say hostile to those that put the will of God ahead of the will of both elohim and fellow man.

linux.poet · Oct 29, 2025

I wouldn’t say that. While many, including myself, suffer from the decision to follow Christ, I think we need to use God’s standards of morality to define what is good and bad. How do we define a “bad side effect”, apart from God? Apart from God, how we know what the word “bad” means? We don’t.

Thus, that homosexual marriage was always bad, and if we were in one when we accepted the Gospel, we should be glad to be free of it. Is the divorce painful? Yes. But God asks to look beyond the pain of these fallen bodies to embrace who He is.

Is being ostracized from your family, community, or country “bad”? Yes. But accepting the Gospel adopts us into God’s family, places us in His community, and places us under His authority. We are shedding temporal authorities for eternal ones. Would it be better if we could keep both? Maybe. Persecuted Christians have forces in their lives that keep them sharp. Christians with less persecution can produce more and help those in need. They have more opportunities to learn than those who must do so in secret. On the other hand, non-persecuted Christians face more distractions and worldly temptations. One is not better than the other.

It is semantics, but I would encourage using “suffering” or “painful” to describe the bodily discomforts one might experience as a result of following Christ, not “bad”. Bad is a morally loaded word. The world describes “good” as “bodily pleasure/comfort” and “bad” as “bodily pain”. That is not God’s morality and thus distinguishing His morality from pleasure/pain morality of the world is a better way to navigate that collision.

timf said:
The colonization of which you spoke was mostly driven by those with a financial interest, albeit often cloaked with false piety so as not not be seen as too greedy.

I agree with this. By the time the colonial governments came in, they showed themselves more interested in shaming and subjugation than any sort of righteous purpose. I’m forever reminded of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart where he would describe how Christianity would undermine the social structure of colonized peoples by converting the outcasts in their societies and raising them to positions of power.

But again, that was a strategy. The Christian missionaries in those contexts could have respected the structure of those societies by talking with the traditional authorities first. We see that happen in Papa New Guinea, so it could have happened there. People can be saved “in place” without drastically changing their role in the community. Instead they chose to set up churches and invite the outcasts who had nothing to lose. The results were timed to hurt and traditional leadership was replaced with the colonial government. Everyone was exploited and used as a pawn.

In the end, this hardens people against the Gospel by connecting it with exploitation and trauma. I do believe that some of the outcasts were legitimately saved, but this was a poor evangelism strategy that delayed the salvation of many elect and damaged a lot of relationships in the Body of Christ.

fhansen · Oct 29, 2025

anoymous51 said:
I know that this may seem to be an anti-Christian post, but it is not.

Christ dying on the cross made it possible for people who trust in him to go to heaven; however, there are several prices that may have to be paid to go there.

The Bible says that a person must clearly repent of their sins in order to be saved. I know repentance is more about the changing of the mind and heart. But certain sins are hard to repent of. Sometimes a person can become very attached emotionally to their sins whether it is a certain vice or the homosexual lifestyle. After all, homosexuals love their partners as much as heterosexuals and a divorce would be just as painful (if they are married).

Becoming a Christian can cause a person to be in conflict with their family or nation depending on who and where it is. In Muslim countries, the person who denounces Islam in order to accept Christ could not only be ostracized from their family but could also face death. The same thing is true in atheistic Communist nations where you hear about persecution of believers all the time. A new Christian in this nation may come from a family of atheists/agnostics/secularist where there will be religious and ideological clashes.

The third issue is totally unrelated to the first two. It has more to do with who spread Christianity than the actual religion itself and how it affected certain people groups. I am talking about European Colonialism. Most nations that were established in the Americas(the New World) and elswhere are the result of Christian apostalization, whether it be Spanish Catholics or British pilgrims/puritan Protestants. Whether is was intentional or not, this resulted in the displacement/genocide of the native people and the importation of African slaves to these places. Most of the famous missionaries of the past have either been European or American like David Livingston, Hudson Taylor, and William Carey. I realize that this is not necessarily the fault of Christianity but how it was interpreted by the colonizers.

But none of this should be surprising considering the one person who suffer the most because of Christianity was Jesus Christ himself! Not only was he crucified, but before that he was rejected by his own people, tortured, whipped, and beaten. He even prayed drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Looking at this from an eternal point of view, after a person has been in heaven over 10,000 years (which is longer than recorded history itself), all the sacrifice, pain, suffering, and death might seem worth it according to Revelation 21:4

Thus, the metaphor Christianity is a drug with bad side effects.

By placing love, the love of God and neighbor, the love that God has, that God is, above all else in this world, we end up with the most beautiful "drug" the world can ever know, one that cures, that heals, that uplifts, that forgives, that elates, that lays down its life for others, even its enemies. Somehow that can't be bad, especially in a world that far more often places selfishness ansd pride above love, trampling on it and causing harm to each other as we pursue worthless, temporary desires and values that never satisfy anyway. The side effect is that love, together with its compadre, truth, may get you ostracized at best, killed at worst, as they did with Jesus, as they oppose and interfere with those worldy pursuits and status.

timothyu · Oct 29, 2025

Few (non-Christians) people rebel against the Gospel of the Kingdom or the commandments that accompany it, especially loving neighbour as self. They may not pursue it themselves but they do appreciate being loved by others, whether they deserve it or not. What most people reject is the religion that many may use instead, not their way of life that is kind and caring.

com7fy8 · Oct 29, 2025

anoymous51 said:
I know that this may seem to be an anti-Christian post, but it is not.

After reading your post, I would say it is not

anoymous51 said:
Christ dying on the cross made it possible for people who trust in him to go to heaven; however, there are several prices that may have to be paid to go there.

It is not only about me making it to Heaven.

"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren." (Romans 8:29)

So, Biblical Christianity is mainly about what our Heavenly Father desires for Himself > to have many children who are like Jesus so we are so pleasing to Him like Jesus is. This is the main prosperity of God's word . . . prosperity for God Himself to have many such delighting children.

However, there is suffering involved in the process, including the suffering of Jesus Himself, as you say below. Once we are like Jesus with God for eternity, there will be the point when we no longer remember this universe >

"'For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
. .And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.'"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . .. . (Isaiah 65:17)

@anonymous51 >

So, in case this world will not be remembered, at some point we will likely not remember the suffering which we have gone through, here. And whatever sacrifices and losses we go through, God brings us to so much better. I often find it is like a resurrection, from what I leave behind, to all that comes later. And we mature so we become able to handle well what comes that is more > we are more maturely able to handle things; so Jesus arranges for us to, in His all-loving management, not only for our own selves.

As I offered, we are not here only to get our own selves to Heaven, and Jesus has things go well for us but with how it can be all-loving in benefit and not only for my own self! Because Jesus is all-loving in how He rules.

fhansen · Oct 30, 2025

timothyu said:
Few people rebel against the Gospel of the Kingdom or the commandments that accompany it, especially loving neighbour as self. They may not pursue it themselves but they do appreciate being loved by others, whether they deserve it or not. What most people reject is the religion that many may use instead, not their way of life that is kind and caring.

And yet the commandment is for us to love our neighbor, not about being loved even if that, too, would result if we all actually observed the commandment. 90% of the misery in this world is caused by the failure to do so.

timothyu · Oct 30, 2025

Sorry. I should have added what is in brackets sooner.

fhansen said:
And yet the commandment is for us to love our neighbor, not about being loved even if that, too, would result if we all actually observed the commandment. 90% of the misery in this world is caused by the failure to do so.

Few (non-Christians) people rebel against the Gospel of the Kingdom or the commandments that accompany it,

com7fy8 · Friday at 1:46 PM

anoymous51 said:
The Bible says that a person must clearly repent of their sins in order to be saved. I know repentance is more about the changing of the mind and heart. But certain sins are hard to repent of. Sometimes a person can become very attached emotionally to their sins whether it is a certain vice or the homosexual lifestyle. After all, homosexuals love their partners as much as heterosexuals and a divorce would be just as painful (if they are married).

Yes, I would say, a sin might be harder to repent of, especially if it includes another person who you are emotionally attached to, in order to get what you are using that person to get.

But that attachment is likely emotional and not in God's love. It can be confused with love. Lust, for example, can masquerade itself as love. There are ones who are in love with their own feelings of pleasure inside of their own selves!! The other person, really, is only being used.

But every person is unique; so I offer you can not know what is really true, in general, about all gays and all straights and all others. But, I will offer, the Bible says lust is a trick. And lust tends to be for pleasure so ones have their preference for pleasure, in different sorts of ways. However, the basic real preference is for the pleasure. And so, ones can have affection for whoever is helping them to get that pleasure.

And about the pain of divorce > if I am weak for selfish pleasure, this weakness can also make me weak so I can deeply suffer. But if I am staying with God, but another forces a divorce on me . . . with God I can avoid a lot of suffering. Because in God's love we have His strength against deep pain when others hate and betray us >

"And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?" (1 Peter 3:13)

com7fy8 · Friday at 1:53 PM

anoymous51 said:
Becoming a Christian can cause a person to be in conflict with their family or nation depending on who and where it is. In Muslim countries, the person who denounces Islam in order to accept Christ could not only be ostracized from their family but could also face death. The same thing is true in atheistic Communist nations where you hear about persecution of believers all the time. A new Christian in this nation may come from a family of atheists/agnostics/secularist where there will be religious and ideological clashes.

Some number of us know that not all trouble from unbelievers is persecution against Jesus and our living for Him.

"No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier." (2 Timothy 2:4)

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Is Christianity Like a Necessary Drug with Bad Side Effects?

anoymous51

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timothyu

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linux.poet

act from love, not fear

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