#Christian God

[bible-hunger-games]

Oh dear...It appears some Biblical figures have been thrown into The Hunger Games.

[CLOSED] Submit names into the reaping here.

Here's a poll tournament for characters from the Bible where you can vote on who you think will survive, inspired on a whim by mostly @hellsite-hungergames. (I'm failing at not playgerizing their info post at this very moment, in fact.)

Rules and information are under the cut!

Rules and information!

The submission form is open until Saturday, February 19 begins in UCT.

You can submit more than one character, but please don't spam one character over and over.

Characters don't have to be directly from the Bible so long as they are related to it in some way. e.g. Dante from Dante's Inferno (book that influenced views about what hell, heaven, and purgatory were like but wasn't ever officiated by the church) or a well known pope.

Each poll will be open for 24 hours; the polls for each round of the hunger games will run concurrently.

I will try to match characters up so that the pairings are entertaining, but there will likely also be some randomization involved.

The Bible Hunger Games will hopefully begin on Monday, February 21.

(Disclaimer: Um. I have next to no in depth bible knowledge. I've some studying to do.)

[shadowbrightshine]

I'm a Christian.

Sometimes I like to envision God as a beautiful lizard, looking the world and basking in the heat of the stars he made. Listening to the music his angels sing and waiting for the day he comes down to make the universe the perfect temperature again.

[narcissus-lives]

A Conversation With God

You do not know where you are or how you got here. This does not distress you, nor does the entity that you first thought was in front of you but that you now realize you cannot locate. The thing that is nowhere but that you are convinced you can see is watching you, you think, from an impossible distance away. The breath on your face is warm and smells of wildflowers and rot. As quickly as you meet the eyes they are no longer eyes. You try to open yours but aren't sure if they're closed. The anatomy of the entity makes perfect sense, but you aren't sure how, and the way the body shifts is so seamless it is nearly imperceptible. You can identify bits and pieces, the antlers of a stag or the wings of a dove, but by the time you recognize its form it has already become something else. How foolish you are for thinking you understood. You have never felt terror like this before. You will never know peace like this again. You have a question. There is no answer. The entity screams, not audibly but in a voice that echoes infinitely, and it is grief and rage and ecstasy and sweet, delicate, mocking laughter. The silence is oppressive and absolute. Your ears are bleeding. The anger is reciprocated and you are shaking, fists tight, fingernails cutting into flesh. Without moving the entity reaches out, takes your hand, shatters twenty-seven bones. Gently, with the grace of a lover, it kisses your palm. You want to apologize, and the entity parrots your words before you speak. You are hated. You are loved. You are witness to a beautiful display of horror. You are god.

[atheostic]

[n0thingiscool]

[witchcraftingboop]

Another Theory Segment

This was prompted by a discord discussion and specific question, but I am just gathering my thoughts for a later cohesive, longer piece. I'm thinking of doing a single document covering all of the points in this post plus a few supporting bits and bobs.

So I know angels can be incorporated in fire, but I don't think they're made of it. My understanding has always been that they were made of "substance," incorruptible matter, and immense creations taken of the universe/system God had made. Humans, on the other hand, were made in God's image, blessed by/with the Holy Spirit (depending on which strand you follow), and created ignorant. So they lack the knowledge of all things - which God was said to have given to the angels.

Right off the bat, angels are beings of spirit who can take form, who possess all earthly knowledge, and are assigned individual roles according to the will of God - i.e. God's Strength, God's Light, etc. Whereas humans are flesh and blood and divine breath/spirit, tasked with taking dominion over the earth but given none of the knowledge or powers allotted to angels. And through God having to identify and single out specific humans as being holy or close to his divine/connection, it could be argued that humans are closer to the dirt from which they were built - even before Eve ate the apple, as neither were called as such - than to having a true divine nature, or tangible divine connection, within themselves.

Another supporting nugget would be that angels regard humans as lowly and undeserving of God's high esteem, let alone love, very few sought to mingle with humans outside of carrying out God's plan, and those that did weren't exactly looked upon favorably for it. From my perspective, angels, due to their creation directly from the universe's matter, are already considerably closer to the divine, even just given that that was one of God's first creations.

But anyways! Humans have to be singled out and given a task/prophecy. Angels are created, existing, and working under the divine's direct guidance and influence. I think humans could be argued to be divine in only sofar as they 1) were made in the divine's image and 2) contain the breath/spirit of God.

Note: Later, we'll (I) have to comb through my resources for supporting source links and files to be made available in the overarching document as well.

[noperopesaredope]

I just randomly remembered the fact that, when I was a little kid, I thought God was supposed to look like this mf:

And I just thought that everyone knew that. This is the canonical version of what (the Christian) God looks like. I was so baffled when I learned that that is not the common portrayal of God, and that my figurine of this guy was not a figurine of God, he was just from Star Trek. Nevertheless, when someone mentions God, I almost always imagine this guy.

[pirateprincessjess]

When I was a kid my family pretended to get raptured so I would think I was left behind on earth while they all went to heaven.

I was like 8 years old and my sister and mom had gotten really into the Left Behind novels (bible fan fic about the rapture). In the books when the rapture happened the clothes that people were wearing when they got raptured were left behind in neatly folded piles.

One day when I was getting home from school my family decided that they would leave piles of neatly folded clothes around the house, and then hide in the basement.

The intended effect was that I would get home and see the clothes then, think that my family had been raptured and that I wasn’t good enough to get into heaven… or something?

The problem was that I had never read these books, and didn’t really think about the rapture very often. There was no reason that I would see some laundry on the floor and think “The rapture happened and I’ve been abandoned by God! I’ll never see my family again!! Oh nooo!!!!”

I just sat down and watched cartoons and eventually my family got bored and revealed that they were all hiding in the basement.

It’s a good thing I didn’t understand the joke, otherwise that shit would have been traumatic.

[akumamon666]

is it any consolation?

for an unlucky child to be given a place in heaven?

a place shared by a God;

whom they did not get to know in their life;

not given time to, by Him

is it really any consolation?

to be given space in heaven after a life untouched to the goods of God?

how can a child not bear resentment towards Him then?

in the face of their suffering brought on by His hand

does it make it "all better"?

can they forgive you?

for what you have done to them?

if you promise a paradise at the end of everything?

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[bolontiku]

My pops is praying too much for me.

Had a Christian boy come up to me outta nowhere after work and speak to me about God. I used to be Christian, what I am now does not fall into that, nor what others believe. The boy was quiet and careful with his words, later he asked if he could pray for me. I said as long as it's blessings I don't turn away a prayer.

He thanked me for chatting with him for a moment and for not outright turning him down. For telling him a little about my experience and giving him things to think about as he grew in his path alongside God. I hope he does alright.

[somerandomg33k]

Gay people can be single handedly blame for the fall of the Roman Empire. Gays can have that. But it is Trans People who have replaced the dead Christian God. MUHWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[vmkhoneyy]

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

[spn2006]

the fact that eric kripke isn't even christian really adds something to the way christianity is depicted on supernatural. because its really not about being christian at all, but about living in america, a country dominated by christianity, and having to decide for yourself how to handle that. faith is huge in supernatural, and the mythology of the show is very bible-centric, but notably, christ is never there. even sam, who starts out revering the angels, who once said he prays every night, doesn't actually call himself a christian or imply that he believes in jesus--the show is steeped in christianity and biblical lore and yet neither sam nor dean are christians. in fact, over and over again the church itself is depicted as a haunted house that sam and dean will only ever enter as strangers, as outsiders. priests, preachers, faith healers, chapels, crypts, etc. are all just iconography that create an intense sense of unease that sam and dean respond to instantly. as a jew, its very relatable. an essential part of living in america when you're not christian is that exact sense of unease, of knowing that the culture of your country has ensured that you'll get knocked over by christianity no matter where you go, that you'll see hundreds of people truly believing they're good people while doing awful things in the name of their god, and you have no choice but to confront that. kripke gets it

[stil-lindigo]

the calamity.

a comic about being seen.

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