A Self-Righteous Evangelical Christian and His Myspace Blog

20-something aggressively dogmatic David tells the world how to be better Christians

Oct 25, 2024

A couple of quick notes: my account this week emailed all of you asking if you’d financially support me. I did not tell it to do that. I would never send out a dedicated email asking you to give me money. Never ever. Please don’t think less of me because Substack went rogue. I hate that my account did that without my say-so, and I’m so so sorry.
You can support me if you want, but it feels so gross that Substack sent out an email begging you to do so. Ew ew ew.

One last quick note: I have a second substack all about board games. Posts come out Tuesday morning. Subscribe here: https://cardsandcubes.substack.com/

I’ve spent the last 10 months intending to respond to a series of tweets an influential pastor put out about those deconstructing their faith, and how they’re liars and fakers who hate Jesus and hate the bible.

The problem is, this dude wants me to put it out.

Provocative tweeters live and die based on the rage responses.

And, quite frankly, this dude’s an a—hole and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.

Maybe someday. Not today.

One a—hole I will talk about is me, as a teenage/early 20s evangelical Christian.

About a year ago I wrote a post (https://davidlibby.substack.com/p/dead-to-me) about swearing off Christians who 1. used bad words (gasp!), 2. didn’t acknowledge God frequently enough, or 3. changed their minds about almost anything related to Christianity.

I swore off Switchfoot when Jon Foreman didn’t acknowledge in ONE interview he gave ONE time that a small line from one of his songs was from the book of Ecclesiastes in the bible.

According to basically every person who’s ever met him, Jon Foreman is the nicest dude on the planet.

His music is also provocative at times, but deeply, deeply Christian (listen to the song “Vice Verses”).

And yet, a single time in a single interview he didn’t acknowledge God ENOUGH for 20 year old David to accept, and for years I had a negative opinion of him.

It only got worse when he put out his absolutely brilliant set of seasons EP’s and the song “Somebody’s Baby” had the line “sure as hell.” In context, the line was quoting a houseless person saying “If you were homeless, sure as hell you’d be drunk.” So it wasn’t Jon saying it at all. It was just him quoting someone else.

(And, quite frankly, if you’re someone who lives in the cold and the rain on the street, constantly afraid of having every belonging you have stolen in the night, or worse, being assaulted, then using the phrase “sure as hell” is probably the tamest thing you’re going to say. And rightly so.)

“Somebody’s Baby” is probably the best song of the entire Seasons project. And yet, I couldn’t sing it in the car. I often skipped it. I couldn’t let my virgin ears hear Foreman sing “sure as hell.”

I was inwardly and outwardly critical of the dude. For years. The nicest guy on the planet.

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And, as I mentioned in the original post, I was the same level of critical of so so so so so so so so so many bands and public figures who called themselves Christians.

I became so much more insufferable, though, when Myspace became a thing.

Remember Myspace?

Good times.

Okay, actually, it sucked compared to literally every social media we have now. But at the time, it was the best.

Ranking your top 8 friends and making every other friend feel bad about themselves? Putting songs on your profile that people had to listen to if they wanted to see how you were? Never figuring out how to subscribe to other people, so you had to go to every friend’s page to see if they’ve posted anything new?

It was terrible, and it was perfect.

Myspace had blogs.

I never kept a Live Journal account. I never had a blog of any kind.

Until Myspace.

I had a Myspace blog.

And I’m so stinking glad that Myspace deleted every account after Tom (remember Tom?) left.

Tom is my friend. Tom is your friend. Tom is all of our friend.

I was such an a—hole on that blog.

I didn’t (still don’t) like confrontation with people face-to-face, but I’d keyboard-warrior criticisms of college friends frequently.

I wouldn’t use their names (in fact, I’d attack anybody who did criticize people by name…why? I dunno), but I was specific enough that they’d know I was talking about them.

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If people weren’t acting “Christian” enough, they were targets of my righteous wrath.

Friends.

Co-workers.

Family.

And yes, public figures and band members.

I went to see Blindside in college, and they played a new song where they name-dropped Jesus.

They instantly became heroes.

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While Jon Foreman was The Worst Sinner.

My blog was so bad. I spent hours each day telling the world in a super passive-aggressive way why it was wrong that Big Pimpin’ by Jay-Z was played at an adult dance with only adults present.

I spent hours telling friends without telling them directly that they weren’t “reflecting Christ” enough.

I spent hours telling friends that if they’d spend the same amount of time reading their bibles as they did listening to music, the world would be a better place.

(Did I read my bible instead of listening to music? Of course not. But all of my friends damn well better do so)

It’s painful to look back and realize how much of an a—hole I was toward my friends.

Toward my family.

Toward bands I loved.

Toward speakers and writers I admired.

I’m perfectly aware that I was far from the only pompous and dogmatic evangelical in his teens/20s at the time.

There were thousands of us. We were all, collectively, The Worst.

I’m also aware that most of us probably look back at the person we were and despise the things we said about good people.

The self-righteousness of young evangelicals from the 90s/00s was extreme, for sure.

All the Things I Haven't Said

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