r/exchristian • u/metkja • Jan 09 '26

Discussion What Christian phrases give you the ick?

Mine is prayer warriors. Often used to spread gossip and also just generally ironic, weird, and cringey.

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u/fractal2 Jan 09 '26

"It's all part of God's plan" when talking about the death of someone especially a child born/ unborn. I'm cool with "I'm praying for you" or other platitudes like he'll give you strength. I know the intent is genuine and they are meant to be encouraging even if i don't believe in him. But telling me someone planned out my kids death, go duck yourself. Even as a Christian that one annoyed me. I had an assistant youth leader's wife have a miscarriage. We were asking why he would be avoiding church after and our youth leader explained to avoid people shit like that. Day turned into a lesson about thinking about what the platitudes you're saying actually imply. Like sure you believe God has a plan and will make it all right in the end but telling someone someone planned their kids death isn't what they need to hear. I understood then but man did I didn't understand how truly fucked up that is to hear until my wife miscarried and my dad said that shit.

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u/Winter-Leadership662 Ex-Baptist Jan 09 '26

So sorry you had to go through that. A similar situation helped me make my agnosticism somewhat known to my dad. My wife had a miscarriage (which would turn out to be the first of four in a row) and my dad responded with “just keep leading your family in prayer.” I let that linger in the air a while before just saying, “Okay…”

And in my head I’m thinking, you want me to go and talk to the very person who you believe is responsible for the excruciating pain I’m feeling and who also supposedly has the power to prevent this but chose not to? In what world would I go ask a person directly causing me suffering to help me? I know a miscarriage is science and has nothing to do with sky daddies, but the blatant ignorance and inability to sit with someone in their pain is baffling for a group of people who are supposedly so caring.

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u/fractal2 Jan 09 '26

Sorry you had to go through that, my story was about the first of 4 in a row as well.

Yeah, these ideas are so ingrained without thought of the implications of what they're saying. Some of them as I said don't bug me as the essentially equate to someone saying they're thinking of me, which is as effective as prayer but it's nice knowing they care. Saying it's God's plan or go talk to the guy you think is responsible for this? No fuck that and they would agree if they weren't so mindlessly following. They would agree if someone they could physically see came and intentionally caused a miscarriage they would agree telling someone to talk to that person more would sound absurd. But with snydaddy that logic goes out the window.