#I spent like over ten hours on this

[crimsonmonsoon]

Jujutsu Kaisen fanart?!?! On MY TGCF enthusiast blog?! (My blog was literally miraculous focused like a year ago, the tides are shifting again, keep up.)

Geto is my favorite, Kenjaku can die.

[chiropteracupola]

an assortment of my temeraireverse fic-dragons!

[cygnet and honoré are from fifteenth-century britain and france, aquilillus, flavia magna, and bán are from second-century britain, and cipachcoatzin is from sixteenth-century mesoamerica]

[flippyplush]

some ferns (and finns kinda)

[dandelion-wings]

I could vary it up if I wanted and write Lisa/Jean/Kaeya that isn't Lisa and Kaeya ganging up on a completely exhausted Jean. I could! But I don't want to. I'm going to make them spoil her as many times as I want. This is a 'two cakes' situation but solely for me (which means that technically it is pie because ugh, cake).

[feralsneeze]

Not sneeze just mental health rambling in the tags

[the-rat-eatery]

Yay! My two favorite things- the grandness of the universe and handholding!!

Background and other things below the cut because I swear I spent half my time on that

[orcelito]

Finished all 4 assignments, and it only took me 9 hours of my day

🙃

[yoshifawful64]

man, chants of sennaar was good. it's a puzzle game about deciphering language as you ascend a tower (with a few stealth segments sprinkled in) and it's super interesting and artistic

[mwagneto]

whatever. jesus christ. good night

[helielune]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[queenlucythevaliant]

Why did God harden the Pharaoh’s? I’m in a Bible as Lit class and someone brought up “wouldn’t that be against free will,” and why did God let the Israelites stay it in slavery for so long. Why is God different in the Old Testament to the New Testament? I hope this doesn’t bother you, with all these questions

Okay, so there are several different questions here and I'm going to try to address them all. I'm sure I'll miss something somewhere, so other more knowledgeable friends feel free to add on. Follow-ups are also very much welcome.

First off, Bible as literature class! Yikes. I took a Bible as lit class for my English minor years ago and my experience was pretty much wall-to-wall frustration. It was mostly an exercise in coming up with the most transgressive reads on Scripture possible and that really upset me.

I hope that your experience is better than mine. However, assuming that the class is at a secular university, I'd still encourage you to be intentional about talking the things you cover in class over with knowledgeable Christians in your life. I certainly benefitted a lot from doing so, both in the sense that I got to vent a whole bunch and in that I got help contextualizing the secular perspectives within Christian scholarship.

That out of the way: The God of the Bible is the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

I do understand where you’re coming from. It’s not uncommon for people to find God kind of inscrutable in the OT when they're more used to reading the NT. I actually think that's a failure on the part of the contemporary church in the West; large swaths of the OT tend to be understudied among lay-Christians.

Systematic theology can help a lot here. I'm just going to hit a few really broad highlights, but I really can't recommend Wayne Grudem highly enough if you're interested in more in-depth reading. Lots of people start with Bible Doctrine, but my family happened to have a copy of his enormous Systematic Theology tome in the basement when I was in high school and I got a lot out of just poking through that a little at a time too. A few quick bullets though:

Across all the Biblical texts, God is love. He glories in kindness to his people, whether it's in the covenant with Abraham, the Exodus, the faithful ministry of the prophets, Christ's ministry/death/resurrection, or the promised coming of his kingdom.

God is holy; he gives the Law to the Israelites so that they can approach his holiness without fearing for their lives and he sent Jesus so that we can do the same. Both Isaiah and Peter react with fear and awe in the face of God's holiness.

God is just. By virtue of his holiness, he cannot allow sin to go unpunished. As modern westerners, we often chafe against this but has any of us experienced justice that was actually pure? Justice is a form of faithfulness, and the same God who sent his people into exile poured out his wrath on his own son in our place. He has promised that one day, every evil will face his perfect justice.

God is faithful. He keeps his Covenant with Abraham even unto the cross. In the OT he is faithful husband to an adulterous people. In the NT he tells us that when we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

Lots of other characteristics but this answer is going to be long enough as it is. The only way to get a real sense for the continuity within the Bible is to read the whole Bible with an eye towards the continuity.

The reason that God is more approachable in the NT than the Old is that he became human. In the Incarnation, all of that holiness and justice and faithfulness and love that was God came to earth in our perfect likeness so that he could live beside us and die for us. God is certainly easier to approach in light of Christ's work, but he is utterly the same as he ever was. Read the Transfiguration and tell me that isn’t the God of Mount Sinai. Read John 1 and tell me it doesn’t remind you of the end of Job. Read the Gospels, Hebrews, and Revelation and play spot-the-OT-parallel. It's beautiful.

Why did God leave his people in slavery for so long? You could ask the same question about the Babylonian captivity and even about why Jesus waits to return and finally defeat Death. Why does he wait? Why let his people suffer?

Well. God is sovereign and he only permits evil to the extent that it ultimately accomplishes the very opposite of what it intends. Because the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, the Exodus was able to occur. The Exodus glorified God in extraordinary fashion, both among his own people and to the peoples of the ancient world. It was also a necessary type and precursor to Jesus's work on the cross. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that redemptive history rests on God's work in the Exodus, which is itself contingent on a period of slavery in Egypt.

“How long, O Lord” and “Come Lord Jesus” are the same sentiment in different words. We are still in exile, even now. We are chronologically exiled from the place where we belong, the New Jerusalem, and we mourn because we live in a fallen world in which sin and death can still hurt us. We can ask, just as the Prophets once asked, why God waits to vanquish the Enemy, extract suffering from the world, and restore our years that the locusts have eaten. And in each case (the slaves in Egypt, the Babylonian captivity, and the period of waiting for Jesus to return), the answer is that God does not fix it yet because He is doing something bigger!

Regarding Pharaoh's heart: this is basically a question of human nature. The easiest way that I can articulate it off the top of my head is using Augustine's fourfold state of man:

Prior to the fall, man was able either to sin or not to sin (posse peccare, posse non peccare)

The natural state of man after the fall is one in which he is unable not to sin (non posse non peccare). This was Pharaoh's state.

Following the work of Christ, regenerate man is able not to sin (posse non peccare)

In eternity, glorified man will be unable to sin (non posse peccare)

When we talk about man's will, we must acknowledge that our wills are subject to our nature. In other words, Pharaoh was a natural, fallen man. His nature was inherently sinful and his heart inherently hard.

What we've got here is sort of a "Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated" situation. Pharaoh, in his natural state, had a hard heart and a natural enmity with God. God did not intervene to give him a heart of flesh. My people I have loved, but Pharaoh I have hated.

Not a perfect parallel, but I think it serves its purpose. The point is that God's sovereignty isn't in conflict with man's will, since our wills are a function of our natures. Man behaves however his nature inclines him to behave at any given time. We call this free will; however, God is entirely sovereign over all of it.

This is definitely a long, messy answer, but like I said, feel free to continue the conversation. I've got some biochem to work on, but I'm always happy to talk theology :)

[coquelicoq]

Speaking of crosswords, I made a new friend that loves them (her personal record for the nyt mini is 13 seconds!!!) and we were doing paper plate awards and I made hers a super basic crossword and she was so excited she cried a little!

Anyways I told her she should start trying to write them, considering she says she literally sees crosswords when her eyes are closed. Just wanted to share since you are The Crossword Person in my brain lol

that's awesome! i hope she tries it out and has fun with it! i think writing crosswords enhances the crossword-solving experience because you better understand what goes into it and can really admire a clever theme or an elegant fill in a way that you might not have noticed otherwise. at least that's been the case for me! it also makes me way crankier now when i see a poorly done puzzle, but you win some you lose some. best of luck to her!! <3

[cha1cedony]

Sigh. Tomorrow. I'll do more. tomorrow 🥲

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

Ok real talk, looking for advice from other DnD’ers... at what point do you just nuke your character?

Rant/more info in tags.

[uhzuku]

daddy is at 31 pity w no haitham yet :’) but i have discovered this wonky fuck so :’D

[phantomdecibel]

I fed my grandmother to Epic: the musical and now I FINALLY and someone to obsess over it with >:3

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

…admittedly this has not helped my brainrot, just made it worse ;-;