#Individualism in Churches

[steviebee77]

militant individualism

A SPIRIT OF INDIVIDUALISM arose out of the Enlightenment Era of the 17th and 18th centuries that championed free thinking above all else. Bertrand Russell called it, “…a reevaluation of independent intellectual activity.” The hope was to spread light where darkness had prevailed. The basic edict of the movement was science must always prevail over superstition, personal belief, and blind faith.…

[meirimerens]

patho × bible lore Isn't It Funny how the apostles Petros (Peter/Pierre/Пётр) and Andréas (Andrew/André/Андрей) are brothers within their (biblical) canon and Petros (Peter) was at first named Simon but given a stone-related name by Jesus when he said "And I tell you that you are Peter (=stone) and on this rock (=stone) I will build my church" (= upon you apostle peter i will build my church) and isn't it funny how the Polyhedron was (spiritually/psychologically) built upon Peter's back at great cost to his sanity and how it was (spiritually) built upon/FOR Simon's body at great costs to everything else. I just thought this was interesting.

[temtamtom]

Ever since he went from being the Papal States to the Vatican, Pietro has thrown himself fully into religious study and practice. But sometimes I wonder if he misses the days where he could be more than that- when he had land beyond the Holy See, when he could be a diplomat, a politician, a scientist- or a soldier, even (among other jobs and roles). Back when his whole identity wasn't solely tied to the Catholic church, and he had a bit more flexibility.

I'm sure he misses those days (though he doesn't say it), and I'm sure he takes trips out to old regions or cities that were once a part of him to satiate that nostalgia.

[muzaktomyears]

Happy McLennon Day! Here's a set of original window panes from St Peter's Church Hall, Woolton, displayed in the Liverpool Beatles Museum

[saint-ambrosef]

christians who dont go to church when they're on vacation are wild. why do you need a break from your religion.

[birgittesilverbae]

Sister "I became skilled at so many things just so I would still have value" Beatrice not having hobbies makes me feral. Camila has her music, Shannon had her art, Mary had her cooking, Lilith has her being-a-massive-bitch, and Beatrice is over there like "I have encyclopedic knowledge of the fighting styles of every woman in this convent, and also I have spreadsheets"

girl, ava shouldn't have to yeet herself into another dimension for you to realize you need a better work-life balance

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Will not lie I do not care for the way the Christian community often talks about how much better it was in the past! Why don't y'all catch scarlet fever without antibiotics and then we talk!!!

[artofkhaos404]

I am a practicing Christian in a relationship with God, yet am also most Baptist preachers' worst nightmare. I think that says something about organized religion.

You don't fit in at church or with other "Christians"? You may be doing something right. Never forget: Jesus didn't click with the religious, either. In fact, they murdered Him.

[autisticrosewilson]

First of all, you have given me so much to work with, thank you so much. Second of all, I’m really glad you could see where I was going with Grant’s real test not actually being about killing Slade. Third of all, I absolutely love what you’ve suggested with the powers and I am currently designing met gala esque outfits for the trio and Tara’s specifically is really fun to play around with. I’ve been thinking to show they’re becoming more divine I’ll change their hair and eye colours but not their faces for the most part. I was drawing robin Jason with Natalia and decided he should have brown eyes and a crooked nose from breaking it as a kid but once he returns his eyes get weird (eg go blue and occasionally other colours), a patch of his hair went white and he lost all of his scars. Also, I think the closer they get to divinity I’m gonna draw cracks on their body that glow with their specific colours just to hammer home how they’re shedding their mortal forms.

With Tara being able to see the strings of fate, I though it’d be fun to give her a harp and then with Jason having the see no evil trait I thought it’d be fun to give him weighing scales since lady justice wears a blindfold. Idk what to give Grant though. I mean probably a weapon of some sort or maybe a Shepard’s crook that he can turn into a scythe to play into the sheep, wolf, Hunter thing.

With Jason and Tara’s splintering, I love the idea of them making fun of Grant for being the baby god. He hasn’t even had a cult yet, gosh he’s so young. Also them being besties just holds a special place in my heart.

And I just came up with this, of course they have parallels to the trinity but in universe rumours of their existence have been around much longer than Bruce, Clark and Diana. They’re the big three of the justice league but these guys are justice gods. So they start calling themselves the justice trinity but then people get confused about which trinity is which because the justice leagues’ trinity sounds awfully close to the justice gods’ trinity. The new all caste is certainly more distinctive branding but the point isn’t to be distinctive, it’s to be petty.

I'm so glad my unmedicated rambling helped!!! And I'm so excited for the outfits!!! I love when characters start becoming less and less human, when they're stuck in that uncanny valley spot of not quite human but not entirely Other, when they lose control and the cracks start to show...um I should probably give a warning for slight body horror elements. Not in the gore sense, in the "this body is not made of flesh and there is something divine clawing it's way out". Uh also there are teeth. Just. Teeth. I dipped into a little bit of cosmic horror at the end there because I wanted to cover my bases with mixed mythologies

Jason, with his defined splinters, is usually depicted with three faces in ancient texts. The Child, gaunt and dark colored, is said to appear before the downtrodden and impoverished. The few stories remaining tell of kindly people who give him an offering, and in exchange he reveals his true form, with his crown of golden ivy and beautiful strong wings to gift them bounties of food and water and riches. Other stories tell of not so kind encounters, where The Child witnesses an injustice - typically against women or children - and again reveals his true form, one with clawed hands and a mouth dripping with blood. Scholars argue what the wings looked like, but whichever All-Caste member annotated it before has compared their likeness to either a Robin or a Shrike.

There's also The Ghost, He appears young at first glance, but his hair is wirey and gray, his eyes milky and unseeing, in bloodied armor he greets the souls of the damned as they're delivered to him, and with scarred hands he wipes the tears of children taken too soon. Accounts of this face are few and far between, but all of them are entrenched in sorrow.

Finally there is The Soldier, scarred and still smoking from the ruins of battle he emerges, giving voice to the weak and resources to the needy. He champions revolutionaries and philosophers first, a strategist who delights in the liberation of the people from corrupt systems. Accounts of him usually come from times of famine and war, and he was particularly popular with poor villages, who would mark the graves of their dead with the symbol of his sword as offerings. For some reason or other, he got particularly popular with the youth, girls and boys both seemed to pray for him and leave him offerings.

The way these manifest on Jason is subtle at first. I could go the body horror route, but I won't. Yet. Instead I think his splinters show up as reflections, shadows, imprints. The faint echo of bell-like laughter when Jason does a move he learned as Robin, the image of a younger him with longer hair and unblinking eyes staring at him in the mirror. It gets worse when he gets the blades, the white streaks his hair, the swirling mark covers more of his skin every time he uses them, he trails the scent of smoke and blood behind him like a signature. His scars...they should disappear. They have for everyone else who used the pit, but instead his skin starts cracking. Any place he's ever been scarred glowing cracks break up his skin. He can't feel them, but he's always aware of them, the meaning behind them, the divinity literally leaking through his body. His eyes aren't brown anymore. They aren't even green. He looks in the mirror and they are copper, molten and burning. He tries his best to keep his mask on.

What do you think of when you imagine the word divinity? Probably something like Tara. Something with skin carved from stone, with moss and fungus crawling up her legs and snow laden shoulders. They say her hair is made of swirling clouds and the sun and moon are her eyes.

Some say she's a nymph although no one knows what kind. You're just as likely to see her name among the naiads as the dryads. Whether flowers bloom where she dances or waves crash when she sings, she's known to be more vicious towards suitors than her sisters.

Others have said she's a faerie, who takes the faces of lost daughters and lovers, slipping into their places seamlessly, forcing unruly men to pay their dues. Others say she's a shifter of a different sort, with a shawl of feathers and a crown of twine and gems. Stories range from men trying to steal her coat (and paying dearly) to lost children returned safely home on the back of a swan.

Tara doesn't think about it at first, the way gravity tends to cede to her, she doesn't notice how sunflowers turn their faces towards her instead of the sun. She doesn't notice the way her face...shifts. it's imperceptible really, and it's not like she looks in the mirror all that often. But everyone around her notices it, on some level, the way her expressions are off. A little too exaggerated. The way her limbs bend just a little too oddly. The way she never looks quite the same as she did the day before, the way she picks up features from the people around her the way she picks up rocks from ground to add to her collection. Clay molded subtly into the image of those she loves, a museum of everyone she's ever met. She does notice when her hair starts going white at the ends, the strange way her hair starts to curl unnaturally, almost floating. She's not so upset about her eyes, the deep blue of her father that has glared down at her day after day, she has changed her hair, her face, her language but she could not change her eyes. It seems she didn't have to, when she wakes up with one a little too silver to be gray and one a little too gold to be brown. And then her skin starts splitting, a cavern made from a broken rib and ravines made by the slashing of knives. She doesn't even bleed anymore, they never scab over. They crystallize, amber like ambrosia, like ichor. Her body a geode waiting to be cracked open to let the thing within finally break free.

They know the least about Grant, whatever he used to be. Half written scrolls, torn or burnt or simply stopped abruptly, illegible journal entries with symbols never recorded in any known language, half finished sketches where the details are never quite clear. A few things are usually consistent though, signs that he's been there, usually from hunters down on their luck or the particularly old and sickly. First, the howling. Like a wolf or a storm, although later accounts would add that it occasionally sounds like a mechanical whirring. Then the rabbits, dead and gutted, but not a trace of blood. Piles of them left in heaps on doorsteps or windowsills. Some have reported knocking at strange hours or finding teeth in their homes, a mix of human and animal. There is one photo on record, the most recent thing in the archive most likely, of claw marks on the side of a barn, too big and oddly serrated, certainly not from anything native to the area. Elderly that report these phenomena typically pass from heart problems within the week, according to some of the old medical files.

Grant came back wrong. Physically, at least. He knows that he's still himself for the most part, dying didn't make him a selfish asshole he did that all on his own, but...but something is wrong with him. It's the way lightbulbs flicker when he's mad and how cameras, no matter the quality, never quite get a clear shot of him. The way Joey can't ever grasp his features, not fully, the details slipping from his mind like water. The way eyes on his face slide right past, unable to look directly at him. It's in the gray spreading from his roots and his eyes too wide and dark to belong to something human. It's the way death clings to him like a second skin, sickly and pallid turning the tips of his fingers gray. His teeth are starting to feel too sharp for his mouth, and he hears things no one else does, whispers of voices that Are Not and Can't Be. The worst part is the orange, liquid candlelight under his skin, lighting up all of his veins and scars, webbing together like the world's worst game of connect the dots. No, there is no mistaking him for something human, so there is no reason to try. If this is his fate then he will take it, because he is not a sheep and he will not be a wolf, he is a hunter, and he is hungry.

[heavenly-garden]

I am not a robot 🤖 I am human and happy to be alive even if the world is shrouded in darkness and looks super ugly right now but there is still a light within my heart and I refuse to give up faith and I refuse to give up hope. I still believe in human kindness. The media doesn't show it so we have to show it. We cannot depend on any govt to care about our wellbeing. We need our own communities to care for each other, neighbors helping neighbors. That's it. Human endeavors are not all evil, there are still good people trying to make a difference, they don't yell or make a scene they quietly move amongst us as hidden angels in human form.

[starlit-mansion]

i liked the fact that hbomb pointed out that in the absence of money, social capital still drove copying and stealing. a lot of times, you get the "(pulls mask of bad thing) it was capitalism the whole time!!!" moment in video essays but it really doesn't cover like. the general human capacity to do these things at small scale for no or negative monetary benefit

[ectonurites]

guess what tiiiime it iiiiis [comics cataloguing time baby]

[vanlegion]

I don't buy it.

I mean, if Bernie legit flat out said " This is a retcon; we're throwing it all out," staring at the screen like Steve from the Office, then. . . obviously, okay he's saying it is. But I just don't buy it, if it's all being based on what was in the teaser for S19. In order for Seasons 15-18 to be Epsilon Simulations, that would imply Epsilon would need to know information he could not possibly have: Knowledge of the AI Gods Knowledge of Huggins Knowledge of Dylan Andrews Knowledge of Kaikaina's deepest regret/fear from her early childhood Knowledge of Tucker's fear of being a shit leader Knowledge of how the other Alien Temples actually work - not just their function but how they'd actually work on the planet Knowledge of both sides of the war on Chorus and every single inhabitant's motivation, feelings, flaws, speech patterns And so much fucking more between interpersonal thoughts, memories of people he's never touched, locations he'd never been to, etcetera. Like, No. There's no fucking way you can run a simulation on data you DO NOT POSSESS. Or at least, not without it being very unbelievable. Unless they're trying to just say all this shit was made up, which frankly would be such a dick move to do. Not to mention, as someone else also pointed out, that Red Team finally got some awesome story beats and arcs for all their people. Finally got some movement on some much needed interpersonal developments. Like, the way I took the teaser, it felt and sounded more like Church(Epsilon) was saying how he was going over the big fight we didn't get to see, and how he was trying to make sure everyone would live - and that THAT was what was causing him problems. Like there would have to be some kind of sacrifice somewhere, and the only way to keep everyone else alive was for himself to be that sacrifice... AND then, on top of all that... Once he does, and the events we witness do come to pass, perhaps the change is that maybe there's a moment here and there that plays out just slightly differently or we see like, missing moments during 15-17... like Retconning to add in moments/tweek moments...instead of flat out trying to rewrite/rid all that development and emotional journeying we all did. I dunno. I want to have faith and be hopeful for S19, but to just think that everything we got from 15-17 (not counting 18 atm since it's not full out and also very different) could be hand-waved? I REALLY do not want S19 of Red vs Blue to do to it's series as a whole what Trollhunters: Attack of the Titans did to it's legacy.

[hauntingblue]

"Would you like me to translate that? Or was it for me?" The show's thesis

[catholic-character-tournament]

I'm obsessed with the fact that this blog is followed both by people who think Catholic = Good and people who think Catholic = Bad

Truly finding harmony through shitposting 🙏

Catholics ✝️ shitposters 🤌🏼 we're just like you 🌈

(also like most Catholics are POC and a lot of anti-catholic sentiment is rooted in racism and anti-immigration so I do suggest reevaluating your anti-catholic sentiment. In my experience, Catholicism in POC bubbles is not the same as in white bubbles. Just because white Catholics tend to be conservative does not mean Latine/Indigenous/Asian/Black Catholics vote the same way/have the same opinion on social issues. Cuz, you know, Catholicism isn't a monolith and many controversial social teachings are not dogmatic and most Catholics want to change those teachings but there are a lot of old people that need to die first and the church actually does teach conscience > church teaching anyways. Sorry I'll shut up but it's like super important to be that people realize *not all Catholics are homophobic white men*)