I need to push back just a tiny bit here. I’ve recently had several conversations with people who say, “religion made me feel bad about myself.” Or “why would I want to live in perpetual guilt, shame, and condemnation?”

Let me tell you, if you’re living in perpetual shame, guilt, and condemnation, you’re in the wrong religion and you’ve missed the entire message of grace, the gospel, the good news.

And that happens too, that is real enough. There are some appalling things being preached in the name of Jesus Christ, some toxic people within the church as a whole, but that is actually few and far between. That is not the norm, and the reason why we are so often outraged about it is because we know it is not the norm, it is a perversion, a distortion.

Religion made me feel bad about myself. Does anybody ever say…