#and addresses the bad and evil things about the evangelical church

[myglassesareinkansas]

What does it hurt my mom for me to be interested in French religious history

[ink-flavored]

Reworking Justice

BTS Series: ⬅ Table of Contents - Introducing the Antagonists ➡ Also available on Neocities! P&J Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @elegant-paper-collection @auroblaze@zeenimf @vacantgodling @foxys-fantasy-tales Banner art by @auroblaze

There can be no evil without good, no Hell without Heaven, and no demon without an angel. Last time, I took you through my process of developing Pride’s new appearance and personality. Today, we’re going to do the same with Justice.

I won’t rehash everything I said in that post, but the long story short is I need to make original-Justice a distinct entity, in both appearance and personality, from fanfiction-Justice in order for the rest of the story to work. I’ll be documenting the process I went through to get from Point A to Point B, taking you through my thought process as a creative and discussing the changes I made.

In hindsight, I don’t think the outfit I chose completely fits his personality. I hadn’t come up with his personal style, so I’ll cut my past self some slack and pretend they’re his church clothes.

The first thing that’s obviously different is that I’ve made this Justice Black instead of Egyptian, which is a choice I made deliberately (I’ll get into it). I gave him long dreadlocks because they require a lot of maintenance and care, which is already a good indicator that he’s neat and dedicates himself. I also wanted to compare and contrast him with Pride as much as possible—they both keep their hair half-up, for example, but Justice has a neat bun and Pride has a messy ponytail. I gave him freckles on a whim, but since Heaven is in the sky, close to the sun and God, it makes for a cool “kissed by the sun/touched by God” symbol. The tiny wings and halo were the only angelic details available, and not at all what I had in mind, but they’re cute, so I included them. The apple was a little bit of wink-nudge for his role in the story—the Forbidden Fruit, disobeying God—since he abandons Heaven to help a demon escape his death sentence.

So, addressing that switch in ethnicity. Pride & Justice is going to take place in America, because I’m American and I know how to write it better, and will include explicit criticism of American Evangelical Christianity, among other things. However, I do want to make sure I’m not childishly positing that all religion is inherently bad, on purpose or on accident. Not all religions are Christianity, and a lot of Christians in America are not Evangelical, and demographically speaking, Black Americans are one of the most devout populations in the country. It would be extremely disingenuous of me not to include them in this conversation I’m having about the ways the (majority white) Evangelicals cause harm, because while their most obvious target these days is queer and trans people, it’s well known that they harm many people of color with their rhetoric too. I knew from the beginning I wanted to address this, and Justice is how I’m going to do that.

I chose him because there aren’t enough Black angels in media, and far, far too many Black demons—the reasons I’m not continuing that trend are, I hope, obvious. Justice deliberately leaves Heaven at the beginning of the story because of the harm it’s causing to innocent people (unjustly, one might say), but he remains devout from start to finish, finding his own path and using his faith to try and make things better. It’s going to be character building for him, and it’s going to be me gesturing to the fact that Evangelicals are choosing to act the way they do, and you can make different choices that don’t harm people. And finally, while a lot of queer people have divested from religion for plenty of very good reasons, not all of them do. There are plenty of religious queer people, and that reality is very often ignored or treated as strange—or worse, a betrayal. It’s not something that should be dismissed, especially because it harms a lot of already vulnerable people, closing them off from a community that’s supposed to be there for them.

Justice won’t be the only character who represents this position, of course. On Earth, he attends a Black church, and there will be multiple side characters in the form of his friends (including an overlap with Pride’s friends), regular church-goers, people he volunteers with, things like that. This means I will be doing a lot of research about historically Black churches, the people who attend them, and the communities they build. And hiring a sensitivity reader, but that won’t happen until I have a manuscript.

Onto some other details! I decided not to go with the traditional floating donut-shaped halo. Instead, a halo is a ring of light always shining behind the angel’s head—no matter which way they turn, it’s like a bright spotlight is hitting them from the other side, eternally glowing. I also love wings, so massive wings are also a required factor. I’ve thrown around the idea of making each angel have different shaped wings based on their role. So, for example, Justice is part of Heaven’s army, defending the Kingdom of God. His wings would be elliptical, the best shape for control and maneuverability, so he can fight in the air.

Like I mentioned in Pride’s post, this body belongs to Justice and Justice alone. Unlike the fanfiction, this version of the story gives them their own bodies that they always look like. It makes more sense for the rest of the story, and saves me the headache of having to come up with a reason why he’d even need to do that in the first place.

Next, his personality. I’m going to come right out and say I don’t think my depiction of fanfiction-Justice was in the best taste. While I was taking inspiration from the canon arc of Atem in Yu-Gi-Oh! where he develops a less vindictive sense of justice and learns compassion, I also recognize that making a Middle Eastern man be angry, violent, and be super ready to kill in the name of God is not a good depiction at all, and I should have been able to recognize that while I was writing it. So that’s totally on me.

Because of that mistake, I’m being extremely conscious about how I characterize Justice in the rework, considering that Black men have similarly dangerous stereotypes regarding violence, anger, and aggression. Not to mention that if I kept him exactly the same, I would be writing a white character explaining to a Black character why he shouldn’t be violent. That definitely falls into White Savior bullshit, as well as a lot of worse racism, so that needed to change right away.

The first thing I considered when making this change was what Justice’s role in Heaven would actually be. He’s the embodiment of God’s justice, the things that God has determined is right and wrong, what people deserve and what they don’t. He’s basically a holy lawyer, knowing all the ins and outs of what is worth forgiving and what isn’t. Justice has a very strong moral code—he was created for it—but is ultimately very kind. Love thy neighbor is one of God’s most absolute laws, after all, so it would only be just to love often and unconditionally. He’s quick to offer aid and forgiveness, above and beyond what’s required of him.

When it comes to the punishment aspect of his job, Justice only moves to enact it if it falls under the rules God has set out. This is also a point of tension for him. Justice seems to be the only angel in all of Heaven who thinks killing Pride would be unreasonably cruel—he’s a demon, but he’s ferrying one of God’s children, one that belongs in Heaven. Despite his protests that smiting Pride would be unjust, even if he’s a demon, nobody else cares.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I know I said that the soul Pride has with him is “supposed” to be in Heaven, but I’m changing it to be a little more ambiguous—with a reason! Justice will defend this soul that may not belong in Heaven, he would defend even the worst of humanity, because the right to a just life doesn’t discriminate on whether you’re a good or bad person. This is another reason he doesn’t get along with a ton of angels, which I’ll get into right now.

In that way, Justice is the odd one out among his angelic brethren. He follows his moral code—God’s moral code, that he was created to serve—almost too well, against the interests of the structure of Heaven as an institution. The other angels are happy to follow along, turn a blind eye to the way they might be hurting innocent people by mistake, but Justice isn’t. A lot of his superiors dislike him for that, and he’s had plenty of arguments with them about his ideas. Fortunately for Justice, he loves a good, healthy debate, and arguing his point in good faith is like a fun puzzle. Ironically, his opponents are hardly ever arguing in good faith.

Because Justice is basically purpose-built to serve God and follow the rules, he’s very paranoid about being perfect. Following God’s commands to the letter is all he knows, and retribution from Heaven is swift if he ever steps out of line. For centuries, he hasn’t been allowed to make a mistake, so when he gets to Earth after breaking a ton of those Heavenly rules… he has a bit of a crisis!

This is where his main character arc comes in. The ingrained dogma Justice was trained under, to follow the word of God to the letter with no exceptions, is at odds with his purpose of deciding what’s right and wrong. Through the course of the story, he develops his own sense of justice, still based on God’s word, but with the caveat that he will do what’s right and just before what’s ”correct.”

My wonderful girlfriend, AuroBlaze, helped me once again to solidify Justice’s final character design. While not shown here, another silly idea got added to his design. I’m taking inspiration from Good Omens for this story (you should read it if you haven’t), and I wanted to give a little nod to Aziraphale’s bookshop by having Justice attend a book club semi-regularly throughout the story. As a joke, I mentioned Justice would probably think humans with reading glasses were so cute that he’d get some for himself—even though his vision is perfect, and he’d have no reason to ever need glasses. I made it canon because not only is it adorable and hilarious, it also demonstrates Justice’s genuine love for humanity. He adores God’s children and wants to do right by them—which is why leaving Heaven was so hard. He thought Heaven was doing right by humanity, and was faced with stunning evidence to the contrary.

[Tumblr version] [Instagram version]

Welcome to the world, Justice! You’re such a sweetheart, I promise that sharing your existence with Pride won’t be exhausting forever.

Here are a few more fun facts I want to mention before the end of this post: Justice, like Pride, can choose to show or hide his wings, but his halo is on forever. It glows by absorbing nearby light, so it’s automatically dim in the dark because there’s no light for it to use. He also has his flaming wheel of fire and eyes form, but he doesn’t use it very often and can’t partially transform like Pride can. What he can do is summon a holy sword whenever he wants, as well as play a really sick harp solo.

Like last time, I won’t leave his queerness merely implied—Justice is bisexual, and it will be stated in-text without room for debate. This time, though, Justice has been kind enough to let me know he’s cis! So I don’t have a second Mystery Gender situation on my hands, though I do consider Justice’s cis-ness to be as important as any other aspect of him. Having a cis Black man be unabashedly gentle and kind, while still giving him the capacity to be angry without making it his entire personality, is something I’m trying to do on purpose in this story. Men of any race have trouble being depicted as soft and sweet, and men of color especially risk any show of negative emotion branding them as dangerous or predatory, and I want to do my best not to perpetuate those harmful ideas here. There are trans Black characters in the story, because I’m definitely not leaving that gaping hole of representation missing, but creating a spectrum is my ultimate goal.

Another huge post for you all! I invite any comments about anything I’m doing here, because it requires a lot of stepping outside my comfort zone, a million hours of research, and fucking up a few dozen times before I get it right.

Thanks for your support, and see you next time for more Behind The Scenes action!

— Annika

[regicide1997]

This is in reference to the reddit post I reblogged a couple hours ago. Making my own post because this is going to be a very much Christian-ish perspective and since OP of the other post is Jewish I'd rather not clog their notes with this stream-of-consciousness rant.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how someone can fuck up that badly.

Sure, Peter's vision in Acts 10 allows you to eat otherwise unclean meats, that's one valid interpretation—I recently learned it's not the only interpretation, but it is probably the interpretation that Paul was following when he wrote this to the early church in Rome:

13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. 14 I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 15 If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. 20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

(Romans 14:13-23)

TL;DR: In the presence of those with religious/moral/ethical dietary restrictions stricter than your own, follow their restrictions; and above all else, don't be an asshole. Now, I'll admit, I'm not the biggest fan of Paul, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one.

I'm reminded of a few minutes I glimpsed of an episode of The Big Bang Theory (back when I had cable, and before I had gained the common sense to change the channel when The Big Bang Theory was on) in which Sheldon's very much Evangelical mother comes for a visit and prepares food (it might have been turkey? or chicken? [looked it up, it was chicken]) for the protagonists, and she said to the one protag who was visibly of South Asian descent [looking it up: Raj], "I hope it's not one of the animals you people think is magic."

Yeah, it left a bad taste in my mouth, too.

Although it was written in a way that makes clear that this character is coming from a place of ignorance and Christian supremacism, she at least demonstrates a (half-hearted) attempt to be accommodating of other people's religious dietary restrictions (or at least what she assumed might be there; I might be wrong, but if I recall, the punchline was that Raj was an atheist. not going to bother looking it up, this post isnt meant to be an analysis of a fucking tbbt scene). Even though the wording is disrespectful of the beliefs surrounding the dietary restrictions, and even though the question of dietary restrictions (religious or otherwise) should've been addressed to the whole room (and not just the one person whose ethnicity reminded her that foreigners exist), she nonetheless acknowledged and was somewhat prepared to accommodate such dietary restrictions.

All of this to say: Imagine being worse than Sheldon's mom. Imagine not only knowing ahead of time that your guests (in particular, your son-in-law and his children, whom you invited for a meal) have dietary restrictions, and not only failing to prepare a meal that meets those restrictions, but purposely preparing a meal that violates those restrictions, and presenting it to your guests as if it satisfied the restrictions. Imagine being so disgustingly hateful, and claiming to act in love's name. Imagine having the audacity to demand an apology when the clanging cymbal of your hateful acts is met with similarly harsh words.

may god have mercy on your wretched souls, for were i in his place, i sure as hell would not.

If those parents-in-law had actually followed the New Testament guidelines they professed, then there should not have been any pork on the table, at all—not even as a side option for the sake of the Christian side of the family. When you (Christians) invite people for a meal, and all or the majority of your invited guests are Jewish, you don't take the non-kosher food out of the fridge; you prepare a kosher meal for all to enjoy. (Even if they say ahead of time that it's okay, you still do your best to go the extra mile to make your guests comfortable.) And above all, you don't be a fucking asshole.

And that's just the religious aspect of it. Religious aspects aside, the violation of trust, the violation of basic hospitality, the violation of consent entailed in preparing food that contains ingredients your guests have told you they cannot consume—regardless of reason—and serving that food to those guests under the pretense that it does not contain such ingredients... I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that qualifies as assault.

[demoisverysexy]

An Open Letter to the Person who Blocked Me for Being Mormon

For context:

If you’re reading this, I hope it finds you well.

This letter is mostly for me, so I can get my feelings out. I’ve already talked about this with a few of my friends, and I’m feeling better than I was than when you blocked me. I’m still upset. Mostly because of general trends I see on tumblr of hatred for Mormons. A lot of it comes from ignorance and misunderstanding. Some of it comes from a place of genuine hurt that can’t go unaddressed. I don’t want to be dismissive of those who have faced trauma at the hands of my church. I am one of those people, and I know how deeply pain associated with my church can be. After our interaction, I felt that talking about it would help me process this.

Before I go on, I must be clear that this is not an attempt to get you to unblock me. As nice as it would be to be able to see your blog again – you’re very witty, and I enjoy your content! – I can live without it. This is more a response to the trend on tumblr specifically of hatred against Mormons, and assuming that they’re all bad people who are complicit in every single bad thing that the church does. You just happened to force me to be a little introspective about my church and my relation to it. Thank you for that.

First, however, I would like to clear up some misconceptions:

Your initial joke that prompted me to tell you I was a Mormon was a joke about Mormons and polygamy. The largest two organizations that can be classified as “Mormon,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Community of Christ (which incidentally allows for gay marriage and has female clergy, though I am of the LDS sect), both disavow polygamy. There are other, smaller offshoot Mormon groups who do still practice this, which is where horror stories of polygamists marrying teenagers arise. These people are also Mormons, though I wish they weren’t, in the same way that problematic Christian groups are Christian, though many Christians wish they weren’t.

I do recognize that mainstream Mormonism has been labeled as a cult by many people, though the reasons people provide generally don’t hold up. Often the proof that people provide of my church’s cult-like nature is to take note of corruption that can be found in almost every church. These issues – such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, to name a few – while real and important to address do not a cult make. Sometimes the proof is to point towards practices that are demonized in my church, but are practiced in other religions with no comment, or even celebration. Other times people will point to their own experiences with toxic church congregations, and while those issues are very real, they are by no means universal. My experience growing up Mormon was a lucky one in many ways. I personally don’t think that most people who study my church from an academic vantage point would call it a cult. I would consult them on this matter. After all, someone in a cult is rather hard-pressed to be able to tell whether they are in one or not.

Another point often levied against Mormonism is how it leaves its queer members with religious trauma due to its homophobic teachings. I understand this well. I have experienced deep religious trauma associated with my political stances in favor of LGBTQ+ rights (though that wasn’t the whole story). I won’t go into detail about this right now, but suffice it to say, I had a very traumatic time on my mission that led me to a very dark place, and ended with me contemplating choices I would never be able to take back. I’m fine now of course, but I carry those memories with me.

So why would I stay despite all this? Is it because I’m brainwashed? You would have to ask a psychologist about that, but I would say probably not. I knew, and know now, that the ways I was being treated were unfair and wrong. I don’t have time to go point by point to address every grievance I or anyone else has with my church and explain my position on it, as much as I would like to clear the air once and for all on this topic so there is no misunderstanding. Here’s the reasoning that has kept me here so far:

I think that every person of faith must, at some point, deal with the problematic aspects of their church’s history and doctrine. This comes with the territory. Whether it be disturbing stories in scripture, imperialist tendencies, doctrines that chafe against us, or problematic leaders, no person of faith is exempt from wrestling with the history that accompanies their faith. I have studied my church’s history in depth. Many of the horror stories I heard were provably false. Many were true. Where does that leave me?

I believe that God is bigger and better than us. We make terrible, awful mistakes all the time. But I don’t think that makes God less willing to work with us. If anything, I think it means he wants to help us more. He wants to help us move past our histories and become better. My church has a long way to go in this regard. For too long we have been silent when it mattered, and people have been wounded by our silence. Or even the words we have said out loud! If you look at my Mormonism tag on my blog, you will see some examples of what I am talking about. I have been wounded by the things my church has said and not said. It hurts awfully, and I ache for those who have been wounded more deeply than I.

But at the same time, I cannot deny the healing my faith has brought me. Whatever problems my church has – and it has many, deep and pressing issues – it is because of my faith that I am the person I am today. I can draw a straight line from my religion to the positions I hold today. Because I am a Mormon, I became a Marxist. Because I am a Mormon, I became nonbinary. Because I am a Mormon, I became a leftist. I cannot ignore that my religion, flawed as it may be, has led me to where I stand now. I am at the intersection of the hurt and healing the church offers. It is a difficult line to walk. But I hope that in walking it, I can bring healing and love to those who hurt in the ways I do. To let them know that they are not alone, and that they have a friend who can help them wherever they choose to go.

Yes I am queer. Yes I am a Mormon. I am here because I am trying to fix things. If at some point in the future I realize that I cannot change things, perhaps I will leave. I hope it does not come to that. And things are changing. They have changed before, and they can change now. I am confident that my God is willing to lead my church where it needs to go. I hope I can help speed things along. We shall see.

But spreading unequivocal hatred and disdain for Mormons does not help those of us who are Mormon who are trying to fix things. Yes, those who have left Mormonism due to trauma need a safe place to be away from that, and acknowledging the church’s many faults can be helpful to those people. I myself have criticized my church quite vocally. But refusing to listen to the stories of those of us who choose to stay, telling others that we are evil or stupid or what have you, is also quite traumatic to us. We are people too, with thoughts and feelings. It is easy to dismiss us out of hand if you assume we aren’t.

I try to be open about my religion and political stances on my tumblr. See for yourself: It’s a mix of Mormonism, LGBTQ+ activism, Marxism, and pretty much every other leftist political position you can find. Along with all the furry stuff, of course. But despite all this, I am still terrified every time someone follows me to tell them I am Mormon. More than I am to tell them that I’m queer. Tumblr is not representative of how things work in the “real world,” of course, but I have received hatred for being a Mormon there as well. And it’s mostly other Christians. So on the one hand I’m hated by LGBTQ+ folks, on the other hand I’m hated by my church for being queer, and on the third hand (as apparently I have three hands), I am hated by other Christians. I do not face hatred to the same degree from other Christians. I saw it most on my mission. But still, it exists.

(Incidentally, Evangelicals, who you seem to have problems with, and perhaps rightly so, though I have not done a study of the matter myself, largely despise Mormons, from what I have heard. Something to consider.)

I want allies. I want help. I want understanding. If I am to push back against bigotry in my church, I need your help. I need everyone’s help. Fighting bigotry wherever we see it is a worthy pursuit, I think. And if we can succeed, we can make the world a better, safer happier place. I want to fight off the ghosts that haunt my church. You don’t have to fight them with me, but I would appreciate it if I could have your support. It would make my job much easier.

We aren’t enemies. At least, I don’t think you’re my enemy. We both have been hurt by homophobia and bigotry. We live in a capitalist hellscape where police brutality and racism are on the rise. Fascism is looming over the political backdrop, along with the ongoing threat of ecological disaster. I think we would be better off helping each other than going after each other. I ask that you please listen to us when we say you are hurting us. The Mormons you blocked knowingly followed you, an openly queer person who calls out racism and bigotry and pedophilia. Yet you assume we are in favor of those things. Someone can at once be part of an institution while recognizing it’s flaws. (Aren’t we both Americans? Why not move if we hate it so much?) And perhaps we have used the “No true Scotsman” fallacy to justify why we stay. I don’t believe I have. I don’t feel I need to.

I hope that you consider what I’ve said here. I hope we can work together. And I hope that no matter what, you find peace wherever you end up.

Yours truly,

Demo Argenti

[fedtothenight]

People play quija in real life??? Like why??? They want to die or what? As an Spanish who was raised in catholicism but think the church is a sin but believe there's something more out there playing quija it will be the last I'll do in my life. We have a tv program every sunday night for years that talks about spirits and things like that and well I don't want a bad spirit to possess my body. I know better. Do you have any Italian cases about spirits?

I don’t know any ghost stories taking place in Italy, but I have a few personal stories I am willing to share – both first-hand stories and things that happened to relatives or friends, or that they witnessed. My aunt, for instance, witnessed a woman who had suffered from what looked like malocchio (the evil eye, a general state of unluckiness which you can cast by looking at someone or with food and drinks) for a long time, until she pleaded a priest for help. She told him it was, more or less, since a big family dinner she had attended weeks prior. My aunt was there, in the church. The priest started reciting prayers, until the woman screamed threw up perfectly shaped meatballs on the floor. I know a couple of people who attended spiritistic sessions, too.

There’s also a very unlucky area not far from my hometown. An entire neighbourhood so unlucky that people think it’s cursed. Houses cost nothing, but for a good reason. There was one road and a crossroads, in particular, which my godmother had to drive through every day: the crossroads was infamous for the number of car accident deaths. On the corner, there was an old, ratty, seemingly empty house which she tried to never look at, as on its balcony was a creepy doll with her left eye closed and the right arm up that gave her the creeps, until, one day, the lights inside were on, the doll was gone, the blinds were up, and there was the lid of a coffin placed against the window door. Whoever was inside was dead. Then, one day, she thankfully changed jobs. 

Months later, she ran into one of her old coworkers: he told her he’d found a new house with his pregnant wife that they were redecorating and gave her the address. It was in that cursed neighbourhood and she had a feeling it could be that house. She postponed visiting the pregnant wife until she gave birth and had to stop by: it was that house. She refused to go up, said she was late to a meeting, so her coworker’s wife came down with the newborn girl. She girl was blind in her left eye, like the doll. Her old coworker said, 

“The doctors never saw that. Actually, all the ultrasounds went well. She even had her right arm always up, as if she was waving.”

Now, my flat in Italy is on the first floor of a three-floor house. My grandparents live on the second floor, there’s just an attic on the third, and my grandfather rents part of our garage, right underneath my bedroom and the living room, to a local evangelical church. One evening in 2013, I heard a weird sound coming from - or so I thought - one of the other TVs in the house. They were faint animalistic noises, wailing, screeching, like something was in pain. I stopped the music I was listening to and listened intently, thinking it was a documentary of sorts. The noises became louder, more and more uncomfortable each passing second, hard to listen to, until I stepped out of my bedroom, marched into the kitchen and asked my mother what on earth she was watching. She looked at me with a weird look and said, ‘I thought the noises were the TV in your room.’ 

I checked the living room, but the TV there was on silent. She turned all TVs off, and we listened. I think we realised at the same time that the noises, which were still growing louder, and louder, and louder, were coming from the garage. I remember thinking, this is what it must be like to listen to a pig being gutted. It was screeching, howling, excruciating to hear; I looked at my mother, and she looked at me, as the horrifying screeching echoed, and we realised that it wasn’t an animal: it was a man. It was the shouting of a man. And it dawned on me, on the both of us, that it was an exorcism we were witnessing. 

My mother was terrified and she started praying, although she refused to call the police. I checked outside: the whole neighbourhood was eerily silent. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched exorcisms movies, but they do justice to the screaming. Imagine the sound of an animal being tortured, tore apart. It didn’t sound human. Amid the screaming, the yelling, the screeching, the man started shouting things that were not in a language I’d never heard before–the language didn’t sound human, either. It went on for half an hour. The pastor spoke in Latin. I am agnostic, but I remember thinking: Make it stop. Whatever that thing was, it was under my bedroom, and I could only think: Please, don’t let it remain where my bed is. My uncle happened to stop by while the exorcism was still ongoing – we met him by the stairs and he was pale, said you could hear the screaming and nothing else, echoing. It went on for half an hour, after which my mother prayed and my uncle stopped by a church and prayed there. We went up and told my grandfather, who told the church to never, ever do that again. I didn’t sleep well for weeks and then had my first sleep paralysis. And that’s my own personal supernatural story.

[freebiblestudies]

Questions for Christians Lesson 01 - Why Jesus?

We often take our religious faith and beliefs for granted.  If you were asked a difficult religious question, would you be able to answer it? The Bible calls on us to be able to explain why we believe what we believe.  In this Bible study series, we will attempt to address some of those difficult questions.

A Christian was witnessing to his Buddhist friend, telling him about Jesus. However, the Christian was stumped when his friend said the following:

“Why should I follow Jesus?   I go to temple every week.  I pray for my deceased relatives regularly.  I feel at peace following the tenets of Buddhism.”

Why Jesus?  Have you ever tried sharing the Gospel with someone of another faith and been asked that question?  Have you even asked yourself that question?  The Muslims have Mohammed.  The Buddhists have Buddha.  The Hindus have their deities.  What is so special about Jesus compared to other religious figures? 

Sometimes, Christians get too caught up in the “how’s” that we don’t ask “why?”  You may have heard a lot of sermons that put so much emphasis on evangelism and reaching out to others, that it may seem that you are being asked to sell a product to non-believers.  This is not to say that evangelism is a bad thing, but we need to understand the reason why we need to evangelize before we worry about how we evangelize.

Today, let’s discuss why we should follow Jesus over any other religious leader or belief system.

Who was Jesus?  The Bible tells us that Jesus was a Galilean carpenter who began in his own ministry at the age of 30 and preached in and around Israel for three and a half years.  Jesus’ teachings put Him at odds with the religious establishment.  So much at odds that they sought to kill Jesus.  Through a series of events, Jesus ended up falsely accused of blasphemy and was put to death on a Roman cross

Even if you were to reject the Bible as an authentic record of Jesus, there are several secular historical references verifying the historical authenticity of Jesus.

1.    Flavius Josephus (Jewish historian, 37-100 AD)

“So he [Ananus, son of Ananus the high priest] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before him the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others (or some of his companions) and when he had formed an accusation against them, he delivered them to be stoned.” (Antiquities 20.9.1)

2.    Cornelius Tacitus (Roman historian, 55-120 AD)

[Christians] “derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate.” (Annals 15.44)

3.       Mara bar Serapion (Stoic philosopher from Roman province of Syria)

“What else can we say, when the wise are forcibly dragged off by tyrants, their wisdom is captured by insults, and their minds are oppressed and without defense? What advantage did the Athenians gain from murdering Socrates? Famine and plague came upon them as a punishment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates is not dead, because of Plato; neither is Pythagoras, because of the statue of Juno; nor is the wise king, because of the “new law” he laid down.” (letter to his son, circa 73 AD?)

It is interesting to note that Jesus' date of birth was used as a reference point for our calendar and historical chronology: BC - before Christ and AD - Anno Domino (in the year of our Lord).  Interestingly, Jesus was actually born around 4 BC, but that is a story for another time.

Even though in academia, the nomenclature of BC and AD has been replaced by BCE (before common era) and CE (common era), Jesus' date of birth is still used as the reference point to divide between BCE and CE.

Let’s now consider the teachings of Jesus with a quote from WEH Lecky:

“The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the longest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the dispositions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.”

Even the most hardened atheist would admit that Jesus was a good man and moral teacher.  Jesus is respected by religious leaders of other faiths. Mahatma Gandhi considered Jesus to be one of greatest teachers humanity ever had.  Mohammed considered Jesus to be a prophet sent by God.  However, is that all there is to Jesus?  Is He only a moral teacher?  Maybe a prophet?

Let’s read together John 14:6.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  Truth, by its definition, is exclusive.  When you make an affirmation or a statement, you are excluding the opposite. Jesus makes an absolute statement in John 14:6 with no qualifications.  Jesus tells us that the only way we can have salvation is through Him.

How is this possible? Let’s turn to Mark 14:61-63.

Jesus affirms that He is the Son of God.

Let’s turn to John 10:33 and Mark 2:5-7.

The Bible gives two definitions for blasphemy:

Claim to be God

Claim to forgive sins

Jesus affirms that He is God and that He can forgive our sins.  No other respected religious leader in the world has ever claimed to be God . Only charlatans and mad men would make such a claim, but most people would agree that Jesus is neither of those.

What made Jesus so unique?  When you read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible, you will see Jesus’ accurate and specific description of the sinful human condition (Matthew 15:1-20; John 2:23-25; 3:16-19; 8:42-47).

Not only did Jesus see man trapped in the bondage of sin and completely unable to attain salvation on his own, Jesus provided a way for salvation by His sacrifice at the cross (Isaiah 53:5; Mark 10:27; John 3:16-17; 10:10; 1 John 2:2).  Mankind has been continually looking for a sacrifice that would absolve them of their sins.  Jesus is the only one that can give mankind that absolution.

Jesus gives us the opportunity to have a personal relationship with God (John 14:7-21).  As humans, we hunger for fulfilling relationships in our lives (Luke 15:11-32).  There is no more fulfilling relationship than a close intimate relationship with God.

Jesus not only lived a sinless life and practiced what He preached - He validated His claims by triumphing over the grave!  The Christian church would have died in its infancy if the enemies of Jesus simply showed the world His dead body.  However, they could not because His tomb was empty! (Matthew 28:1-7; John 26:20-29)

Friend, when you examine other religions, they teach salvation through your own deeds.  In Islam, you try to have more good deeds than bad deeds. In Hinduism, you keep paying in the karmic cycle until you reach Nirvana.  In Buddhism, you try to deny desires to make evil go away.  Yet, Jesus did not come to make bad people good.  He came to make dead people live.

Jesus gave us teachings respected by the world.  But unlike any other religious leader in history, Jesus describes our sinful condition, provides a cure for our malady, demonstrates the purity of His life and gives us hope by rising again from the dead.

Friend, will you accept that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?  Will you accept that salvation can come through Jesus alone?

[didim-dol]

Explanation of Shamanic Rituals in 손: The Guest

This is not the most organized of thought pieces, so I do apologize for that. I’m not being paid, so I honestly don’t care enough. 

Disclaimer: I am not a native Korean speaker, nor do I have any academic training, except access to academic texts, and a significant interest in the subject. Also, I’m married to a native Korean speaker, so trust me when I say, I badgered him all the time while we watched the show, asking questions that allowed me to better understand what I needed to look for in research. I can read Korean and type it, so I was able to find a lot with information he provided me. Google Translate sucks balls, but it’s often good enough, and/or points in the right direction. If you are a native speaker, and I’m totally wrong, please let me know. I will fix it and credit you! 

I know there were lots of vagueness and unanswered questions about the rituals, who Park Il Do was, and what the ever-loving-fuck was going on most of the time, so I want to address them. I don’t speak to the Catholic part of any of it, except to say, in Korea, Catholicism is one of the more tolerant of Christian denominations that proselytized/evangelized there. As you can see, while not the same, they are compatible with one another, like in structured rituals dealing with possession, among other things. If you are Catholic and want to contribute to the post, please do! 

First let me point out that in the entire show, the terms “possession” and “exorcism” are used rather loosely, and encompass many different rituals that don’t have obvious English translations. Some were more confusing than others, which I want to clarify.

Episode 8-9: Seo Joon (the little girl)

In Episode 8, when Seo Joon is questioned about what happened to her, she tells Hwa Pyung and YukGwang she was approached by an old lady ghost in old-fashioned clothing, who was frightening at first, but later wasn’t

YukGwang asks about the symptoms she had (digging, aching body), and says she has been “possessed” and she needs an “exorcism.”

The translations are a bit funky here: The English subtitle is “possession” which is true, but not in the way we think of it the west, which is primarily from the Catholic Church. What is actually happening to her is called: 무병 (巫病, mu byeong), or “spirit sickness/ghost sickness,” and she is experiencing 신병 (shin byeong) or “self-loss”, which is what happens to someone destined to be a shaman. They serve their spirit guide, take a new name, and thus “lose” their former identity.

Then he tells her grandmother she needs an “exorcism,” which is not a very good translation. He says she needs 내림굿 (naelim kut) which is the initiation ritual of a new shaman, meaning she needs to accept her role and become a shaman.

But when Seo Joon says the lady is gone, replaced by spirits with knives, they realize that can’t happen. The old lady she saw was the spirit who should have become her spirit guide, and the one she would serve as a shaman, but Park Il Do destroyed her, leaving Seo Joon without a guide, and vulnerable to the evil spirits that come for her instead.

In the end of the character’s arc, he talks about another “exorcism” which is, yet again, a different ritual. This is the 눌림굿 (nullim kut), or the ritual to suppress a potential shaman’s abilities to see spirits. It is the same one that was used on Hwa Pyung when he was a child.

Episode 12: The Blind Shaman

Choi Yoon goes to see the shaman who performed a 굿(kut) on Hwa Pyung as a child. She tells Choi Yoon she remembers the boy from the 세습무 (saeseummu), or “hereditary shaman” family. He asks which kind of ritual she performed on him, and she says nullim kut, but its effects are wearing off. She refers to the 큰귀신 (k’un gwishin), or the “great/powerful spirit,” which they call Park Il Do, that wants him. This weakening of the ritual’s power is why he is able to see the ghost of his father again. It doesn’t explain why his eye hurts or why he can’t touch the cross, though. 

Episode 16: The Ritual to capture and contain 손 

In the flashback in Episode 16, we see Yukgwang telling Hwa Pyung how to trap Park Il Do in his body. He uses two words the translators didn’t even bother with. I don’t blame them.  

The first word is the ritual that Hwa Pyung should use to trap Park Il Do, and is called the 팔문금쇄진 ( 八門金鎖陣; palmungeumswaejin)  or “The Eight Gate Lock Formation,” which comes from the Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is a fictional military formation, but also a real ritual used in Korean Shamanism. It probably comes from the influence of Buddhism and Taoism from China, which goes back to the 3-4th centuries.

Each gate represents one of the Eight Generals/Gods of the Eight Doors and the Eight Directions (If you have a better translation for these, let me know. I did my best.):

North- 휴문신장 (休門神將) - God of the Gate of Rest

North East- 생문신장 ( 生門神將) - God of the Gate of Life

East- 상문신장 (傷門神將) - God of the Gate of Injury

South East- 두문신장 (枓門神將) - God of the Gate of Fabrication

West- 경문신장 (驚門神將) - God of the Gate of Fear

North West- 개문신장 (開門神將) - God of the Open Gate

South- 경문신장 (景門神將) - God of the Gate of View/Scenery

South West- 사문신장(死門神將) - God of the Gate of Death

The act of doing this ritual is called 팔문진경 (palmunjingyeong).

In the actual ritual, an intricately cut piece of paper in the shape of a cylindrical net is hung from the ceiling where the ritual is taking place. Eight nets are then strung out from the center net to eight more hanging nets with the names of the above deities written on amulets in red ink, pasted to the corresponding net. The image of the ghost or spirit that needs to be captured is then placed in the middle of the net, like so:

Source

Because Hwa Pyung is trying to trap the spirit of Park Il Do in himself, he carves each of the god’s names into his body in, roughly, the proper directions. It’s much more gruesome, but works. His blood is red (the color of the dead)  which is a substitute for red ink. The last one, he writes on his arm which is significant because 팔 (pal) means “arm” in Korean, as well as the number “eight” in Sino-Korean numbers. 

The characters are Hanja, and correct as far as I can tell. I can imagine it would be quite difficult to carve complex characters into one’s skin, upside down, and they are kind of hard to read.

Side note: I tried to find out how these directional gods corresponded with the 오방신장 (obang shinjang), or the “Gods of the Five Directions” in Korean mythology, but I was unable to find anything. It may be that the difference is in pre/post-Buddhist and Taoist influence. I’m not sure.

손: The Guest

The term 손 (sohn or son) It means “hand” as well as “guest/visitor.” In shamanism is it referred to an “ominous force,” which is why the villagers call the thing from the sea, sohn.

It was unclear from the beginning if sohn and Park Il Do were the same or different, even in Korean, as Korean is very vague. Pronouns aren’t really used, so there is no real reference to who they are talking about except in context or direct questions. This is why Choi Yoon assumed that “he” was Hwa Pyung, not his grandfather, when the shaman said sohn was still in the body he had possessed back then.  

So at one point, they were not the same. Park Il Do was possessed by the ominous force known as sohn, then transferred to the driver. Then I’m not sure if he went into Hwa Pyung’s grandfather, or if there were more in-between. I can’t remember. 

As the grandfather was from a hereditary shaman family, his body was powerful enough to hold him for the 20 years, along with Park Il Do’s body buried in the backyard. This is like the crow that allowed Park Il Do put in the pickled shrimp, so he always had access to Hwa Pyung, even when he was far away. How he stayed attached to Park Il Do’s body, idk, except because it wasn’t destroyed or cremated. Wrapped up like that, the body didn’t decompose. 

Miscellaneous Words

살 (煞 sal) - “invisible arrow,” “evil spirit.” Sal is also a homophone for death in Chinese, and in pure Korean, it means arrow. Therefore one is struck with an arrow of misfortune. More generically, it is evil/bad things that are caused by malevolent spirits.

살푸리 (salpuri)- ritual to remove curses and evil spirits; or remove the arrows of misfortune. 

I’ll probably add more to this later on, but if you want to add to it, please do! If you have any corrections for me, you can message me or reply. But don’t be an asshole. 

11/23/18 - NEWLY ADDED

구마 (guma) - the Korean term for the Catholic Exorcism. 

저주 (chaju)- a curse (what happened to Choi Yoon)

Sources: 

Shamans, Housewives, and Other Spirits by Laurel Kendall

Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology by Choi Won Oh

Other random sites I didn’t save. Sorry. 

[automatismoateo]

A friend's suicide when I was a teenager, caused by religion via /r/atheism

A friend's suicide when I was a teenager, caused by religion

I don't want this to come off as a "why I am not religious" story. I don't believe it because it's incredibly far fetched and there is no evidence to believe it.

This is part of why I hate religion. The most personal reason anyway, I believe the damage to the world is more far reaching.

I had a friend in a small town in Wyoming. Most of his family was Mormon some were evangelical. Most of his "friends" were Mormon too. We hung out in his or my garage after school. Played Sega Genesis. Tried to start a band. All that crap.

When I was 16 he got caught in his room making out, or maybe more, with his boyfriend. The other boys parents were also religious. He was sent away somewhere. My friend was isolated. I don't really know what they did. I couldn't get in touch with him. I guess they decided he had to avoid any of his old friends especially if they weren't Mormon.

I hadn't even known he was gay, he was deeply ashamed of it apparently. Enough so that even he bought into their telling him that he was bad and evil. I saw him a few month later. He didn't talk to me. Much later, after his death, I was told by my parents that they had called and said he wouldn't be allowed to hang out with me anymore. They claimed he had "severe psychological issues" that needed to be addressed and he was going to a different school.

I guess they think gay is some kind of a cult (like they are) and that all his old friends must be gay too. I'm not, not that it really would matter. It's not like you can convert someone to gay or straight.

Two years after he first got caught he shot himself. It must have been easy to get the gun. His parents were rich gun nuts also. Gave all their sons guns for most gift occasions. Odd thing to do when your kid has "psychological problems"

I wish I could share more detail about what they did to him, but they destroyed all his journals and drawing books. I heard about that from his older sister years later after she left the church. It almost sounds like it was some sort of official church book burning ceremony, but maybe they just threw it all in the trash. He liked to draw and had a shelf full of notebooks. If he left a note I never heard of it or saw it. Parents oddly didn't even seem to care that much. His mom didn't even miss more than a few days work as a teacher. Just a lot of talk about how he was lost and Jesus called him home or some shit. They probably payed the church to make sure he still goes to heaven.

His obituary didn't mention his drawing, or his suicide. It painted a picture of someone completely else. Someone entirely devoted to Mormonism and a few other interests I don't think he really had (basketball and camping?). It only mentioned his passion for music in saying he volunteered to play guitar for church events.

They killed him, and then they killed him again by erasing him. And they seemed to do both with no hesitation or remorse.

But you know what? When a missionary comes to my door and pesters me and asks what happened that made me not believe, I don't tell them about this. They would just say some religious bullshit that would piss me off even more.

The reason I don't believe is because it's obviously a structure designed to make people easier to rule, and there is no evidence. I don't need a traumatic event not to believe something that is totally obvious bullshit with no proof. And they don't deserve the chance to try to weave it into their stupid narrative. I was an atheist before this ever happened.

I have talked to a therapist about it, even as far back as 20 years ago. It took a while to find an atheist therapist. But she put it in the best light by acknowledging the horror of it, rather than acting like it's some kind of "this isn't your fault" approach. I know it isn't my fault. The feelings I couldn't shake were those of a friend of a murder victim. The rage, disgust and helplessness anyone would feel if a cult killed their friend and never faced justice.

Submitted October 05, 2021 at 07:07AM by anythingMuchShorter (From Reddit https://ift.tt/3a9aUxO)

[longwindedbore]

The Evangelicals recognize Trump as human excrement - they don’t care

“There are a lot of church-going people who support him. People always say, look at how he treats people, his affairs, how he cheated on his wife. People like me say I’m not voting for him to be my pastor, my father, my role model. I’m voting for him to get some things done in Washington DC that have never been done before. We forgive him because of other things..”

“Getting things done in Washington”. Stuff the elected GOP believes is too-over-the-top.

As bad as we think Dementia-Don is - many of his most adament supporters are far WORSE. Truly EVIL where Dtrumpkoff is merely greedy, vindictive, accidentally murderous.

It’s not safe to bad mouth Trump in Trump Country

“But Nery, a farmer who looks after rescue animals, is concerned at how it will be received in Forest county

“I’m worried about retribution. My barn is made of wood. People have matches. Do two plus two,” she said.

Pastors and their congregations calling for Religious Tyranny is nothing new in our collective history. Nor the violence.

These Religious fanatic are the heirs of a long line of “Had to start shooting/lynching/barn burning”. That was in England.

Don’t confuse todays Fundamentalists as heirs of people seeking religious freedom.

The progenitors of today’s Fundamentalists were historical English & Scottish put-on-the-boat-at-bayonet-point Puritans. As well as other kill-or-drive-off-everyone-not-of-our-denomination Deplorables. Shipped out of England in the early 1600s.

Not to be confused with those seeking religious freedom in the new World like the Amish or the Shakers or a new life like the Pilgrams.

Some of the expelled religious fanatics weren’t sent to the New World. Some had a shorter voyage across the narrow sea to North Ireland. The original Celtic Irish occupants had been ‘ethnically cleansed’ from the Belfast area. Replaced with expelled English Catholics and Scots Protestants. Some of these voluntarily immigrated to the US in the early 1700s.

The Troubles - in North Ireland

These ‘Anglo-Irish’ and ‘Scots-Irish’ who stayed were loyal to the Crown. Until riled up by Pastors-looking-for-butts-in-the-pews-for-money-in-the-collection plates in the late 1960s.

Then 30 years of bombings and shootings in North Ireland 1970-1998. Over who was green Catholic and who was orange Protestant.

‘Christian’ North Irish doing to women who did not kowtow to their sect’s requirements in 1988 EXACTLY what Iran was doing to woman in the 1988 Fundamentalist crack down in that country. Including the murdering of women.

The Troubles - in the US

Troubles. Driven by a ~ belief ~ of Fundsmentalists that their branch or denomination is more pleasing to God than any other branch or denomination. Just like Islam’s Sunni and Shi’a factions which have been at war for 1,500 years. Teligious division reflected in Iran vs Saudi Arabia.

More pernicious in the US with the added bigotry of race.

Of course any civic call for equality between the great mass of the surely-damned non-fundamentalists and the Fundamentalists is an affront to GOD. An unbearable insult to the hierarchy established by Divine fiat. Any insult must be addressed with blood being spilled.

400 years of white vs brown indigenous blood spilling. White insurrectionists vs National governments civil war iv Texas 1836, Kansas & Missouri territories 1856-1861, US Civil War 1862-1865. Armed militias like the KKK in Jim Crow era, State armed defiance of Federal laws Civil Rights Era. Murder of Abortion doctors 1980 to present. White Secessionist Movement 1990s with Oklahoma City bombing, etc.

The Root of All Evil

There is a LOT of money to be made in promoting Fundamentalism. The US had one mega church in 1979. Televangelists were only on grainy UHF if your TV even had the extra dial.

Then in 1979 the Fundamentalists discovered abortion. Now we have 1,500 mega churches. Televangelists are super wealthy - tens of millions of dollars

Now they want Power. Just like the Iranian Fundamentalists have. What the original Puritanshad in England 1640-1660. Bringing back the witch burnings and Genocide.

Making Religion Great Again.

Trump supporting Fundamentalists want changes in Washington. They want changes in the Country. They will be happy when the US is like North Ireland in 1988. Or Iran in 1988.

As bad as Trump is - these people are worse.

[jspark3000]

Hi J.S. Park! I've been reading your book "What the Church Won't Talk about..." because I am currently struggling a lot with stuff and on top of that feeling a very dry season with God. I honestly love reading through your thoughts and stories on tumblr, and reading through this book has brought me a renewed perspective on things- so thank you J.S. Park for being a light in so many lives! I don't know if you have written anywhere on it before- but have you ever shared your thoughts on shame?

Hey dear friend, thank you so much for your encouragement and your kind words. I really needed them today; it’s been a discouraging time. Also the book you’re referring to is here for anyone interested: http://www.amazon.com/What-Church-Wont-Talk-About/dp/1502529564/

Here are a few thoughts about shame:

1) Shame is a very poor motivation for long-term change.

Shame is that sick physical feeling of being washed through with a debilitating shiver; emotionally it can be an internal bomb of embarrassment, grief, anger, or regret; psychologically it feels like losing self-worth and value. We try to escape this feeling as much as we can—it’s an awful, nauseating, dizzying flush that your entire body recognizes on impact.

Shame is socially weaponized to coerce others into “doing the right thing.” Other times, it’s just to make someone feel like a terrible person, like they could never do any good. In the best case scenario, “shaming” would create the desire to reflect and change their ways for the better. It provokes a sort of social conformity in which you must fall in line for the common benefit of everyone else.

You can see shame tactics being weaponized everywhere. Think of every “public shaming” blog, made famous first by Tumblr, that calls out your fave celebrities for being problematic or mocks the guy who uses the entire four-chair table at Starbucks. Think of books like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother or movies like Whiplash. Think of the model who was recently charged for “fat-shaming” (the actual charge was invasion of privacy, and rightly so). Think of this recent method to help quit smoking, in which if you relapse, you donate the amount of money you’ve saved off cigarettes to a campaign that you hate (this combines shame with aversion). Think of a typical evangelical preacher, who uses fear, shame, and fire-and-brimstone to manipulate you into “getting right with God.” Think of terms like “slut-shaming, virgin-shaming, gay-shaming”—and the list goes on. 

In the short term, some studies show that shame can make change. However, other studies show that shame is destructive and does permanent long-term damage. 

I believe that shame doesn’t really work as a motivation for long-term change. All it does is modify behavior to look like it’s conforming, without actually getting to the root of the issue. 

For a great talk about shame and vulnerability, watch Brene Brown’s TED Talk, the most watched TED Talk of all time. Her research is the absolute seminal work on this topic.

2) Shame and guilt are two entirely different things.

You’ve probably heard this by now, but guilt is saying, “I did something bad,” while shame is saying, “I am bad.”

It sounds like splitting hairs, but our approach to both can have entirely different outcomes. 

If we can adapt to guilt—”I did something bad”—then we can focus on the how and why of the behavior and even internally change our motivations. 

If we adapt to shame—”I am bad”—then there’s no room to look at how and why we do things, and instead can only use punishment and external deprivation to make change. This is turn only makes us craftier and more likely to suppress our true motivations without changing them.

We’ve all seen this before. You can have two people who attend church sit side-by-side who look exactly the same: they show up on time, they donate to charity, they bring coffee and donuts, they read their Bible everyday, they mow your lawn for free. But one is motivated by the anxiety of possible punishment and always compensating for a terrible gap inside them, as if they’ll always be found out. The other is motivated by doing good purely for the good in itself.

Of course, our motives are very messy and never this clear-cut. We could be a blend of both. But the next time you mess up, pay attention to your thoughts and feelings. Do you feel guilt or remorse or even anger about the thing you did? That’s more or less normal. Or do you disproportionately beat yourself up and wish you could disappear for a week? There’s probably buried shame that’s been carved into you by condemning voices over a lifetime—and really that’s no fault of your own. Many of us have been indoctrinated since birth to only respond to shame, and so we’ve become maladaptive.

3) Shame, despite its damage and ineffectiveness, still points to something deep and true.

I believe shame points to something very real about our human nature: that we know something is desperately missing inside, and we need no less than the divine to be made whole. Underneath our attempts at glamour and glory and prestige, we’re dreadfully naked underneath. The feeling of shame, whether that feeling has come about by right or wrong methods, points to our constant imperfection, that visceral longing that we’re always reaching for something just outside our reach.

So when someone says, “Don’t shame me!” or “Shame doesn’t work,” they’re absolutely right. Shaming doesn’t address the actual need. It only bludgeons someone into good behavior, and only works as long as the bludgeon is there. When it’s not, the behavior just regresses and reverts. The human spirit is a rubber band, always trying to snap back into place.

But to say “Shame is a lie” is actually false. When someone shames someone else, they’re not creating a feeling, but exposing a feeling that points to a human truth. We fall short. We’re incomplete. We’re not whole. 

In other words, The person who does the shaming is in the wrong and it won’t work. The person who feels the shame should recognize that this feeling points to a deep human need for wholeness and goodness, and should not ignore these implications.

4) As a Christian, I believe that Christianity both exposes and solves our shame problem.

On one hand, it’s too easy to say “shame is bad and evil,” as if the feeling itself must be banned from culture. The thing is, a world without any shame would be a dang shame. If you swing the pendulum too far this way, then there’s no accountability or justice—and in my opinion, I think it’s become harder to find people who can genuinely admit, “I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I hold myself accountable to doing better,” and then following through. Socially and politically, it seems almost impossible these days for anyone to embrace their shame as a reality which must be confronted. 

On the other hand, everyone lives with shame, and it’s a terrorizing, anxious burden in the basement of our hearts, often filling us with such dread that we 1) over-work ourselves to death, 2) hide our true selves under a mask of smiling conformity, 3) reinforce our pride to avoid any self-correction, or 4) stay terrified in the dark of making any moves at all. All these options end in spiritual implosion.

In the Christian worldview, shame points to my sin, and sin is the human condition of both my selfishness and emptiness. When I feel shame, it’s simply one more thread that traces back to the very real problem of humanity. 

In a perfect Garden, we once had no shame at all, because we had all the wholeness and validation we could ever want. But ever since our disconnection from God, we’ve all been clawing back to Eden, and sometimes, someone points at us and laughs. The pointing and mocking are wrong, but the clawing is our very real struggle for the divine love we once had. It is, like Genesis 3 says, a kind of curse, or perhaps a poisoned sickness, in which we’re trying to find the remedy. And culture says, Do this and that and the feeling of shame will stop. But it never stops. It only changes the behavior and not our nature. 

When Jesus died on a cross, he was exposing the high cost of our sin. This is what it takes to claw back to Eden—you’d have to beat yourself up to the point of bloody shreds. Jesus placed himself under the cost of our curse, so that now and eternally, we’d know that our shame was revoked. He did this out of love, but even better, out of grace, a costly love. When Jesus resurrected, this was showing he didn’t just pay a cost, but he also wants an eternal relationship, a relationship without shame. Think of that. He not only died for sin, but came back to live with us, walk alongside us, love us into who we could truly be.

Think of every other relationship you’ve ever had, whether it was with a person, with money, beauty, reputation, sports team, housing association, government, church, career. If you fail those things, they will shame you, and even if you change for them, they have you by the neck, and you’ll still feel unfulfilled. It’s a constant balancing act with unstable, unpredictable forces. These idols promise wholeness, but crush you the second you fail.

With Christ, if you fail him, he’s already taken the shame. He’s already forgiven you. And when you follow him, he actually fulfills you. There’s not an ounce of punishment or penalty in him towards you. He is purely grace. His love is such that, if you mess up, he already knew it was coming, and so instead of compensating for all the mess before, you can actually become who you are meant to be in Him now. No other person, philosophy, system, or interaction offers such grace when you fail. 

And only grace, in the end, is the pure motivation that causes true heart transformation. It may take longer, but that’s why it’s grace. Shame is like laying down bricks that never grow, but only keep shape. Grace is like planting seeds, that push through the dirt to the sun, so that your whole being is different. With shame, you only change for what it looks like. With grace, you change because you want to, because you can’t help but look at a savior and be tenderized and galvanized towards His goodness.

— J.S.

[viduamor-moved]

do u have any headcanons abt natasha's religion? i'm always interested how marvel chara muns tie in their muse's religion w/ the myth based nature of the marvel universe, and with natasha's cultural background it's especially interesting! xoxo

OF  LOVE  /  OF  DEATH.     thank you  SO MUCH  for sending this in !!!      & in fact,     i do !!     i’ve been meaning to write about it for … more than a year,   honestly but just never got around to it.      but that’s changing   ————     SHORT  ANSWER  :   I  SEE  NATASHA  AS  AGNOSTIC,      with a tendency towards belief in some kind of higher power.     whether that be  GOD  or  FATE,      she has yet to decide.

but i’m sure you’re here for the long answer.      IT’S  IMPORTANT  TO  REMEMBER  THAT  SOVIET  RUSSIA  WAS  MILITANTLY  ATHEIST.     the government seized land & property that was owned by the orthodox church,     persecuted & publicly ridiculed or arrested religious followers,     & did all that it could to erase orthodoxy  ( or even pagan superstitions that were both separate from or intwined with orthodox beliefs   —–   this marriage between superstition & christian orthodoxy was one of the biggest contributing factors to pre - soviet russia’s rich culture )  from the face of russia.     natasha was born about six years after the soviet union was established,      & was raised by a soviet soldier for the first ten years of her life before she was put into a soviet orphanage / training facility for about three years   ( after which she returned to ivan’s care ).      needless to say,     natasha grew up without religion.     & whatever tidbits of religion she did encounter were heavily implied to be foolish little habits,      or archaic beliefs that nostalgic laymen who were useless to the soviet stubbornly clung to.     but that would be an oversimplification,     i think.     there were still people who had not yet reached their middle age when nat was reaching her adolescence,      who were born before the bolshevik revolution,      who still held to orthodoxy or tradition in some way,      who found it hard to let go no matter how much they tried to in public.     in reading  DEATHLESS  by catherynne m valente,      i found a small passage that i think perfectly sums up these people born before the revolution,     still holding to their traditions:

IVAN  HISSED  THROUGH  HIS  TEETH  &  MADE  THE  SIGN  OF  THE  CROSS.      IT  WAS  A  BAD  HABIT,     CROSSING  YOURSELF,     BUT  LIKE  BITING  FINGERNAILS,      HARD  TO  BREAK.       catherynne valente   -   deathless,     chapter 14.

no matter what the people soviet or the government did,     they could never truly erase religion from russia.     still,     they tried their best,      & their best meant a generation born into the USSR that found itself to be atheist.      NATASHA  WAS  AMONG  THEM.     in her prime,     she became a member of russia’s  ELITE,      married to the premiere test pilot,      previously trained under  THE  WINTER  SOLDIER  himself,      becoming the  BLACK  WIDOW in the early  1960′s.      the concept of  ‘ GOD ‘  was never on her mind.      the only  higher power  she looked to was  THE  STATE,     MOTHER  RUSSIA,     &  THE  PEOPLE  SHE  SERVED.      but that changed when she defected in the late 60′s.

it is nothing less than understandable that once natasha defected from the USSR to the west,     she underwent a major shift in thinking.     she doubted her identity,     she doubted her homeland,     she doubted everything they made her believe,     & when she finished doubting,     she started  BELIEVING.

I  GAVE  UP  ONE  COUNTRY  FOR  ANOTHER.      ONE  COUNTRY  FOR  AN  IDEAL.     I  DIDN’T  THINK  OF  IT  THAT  WAY  AT  THE  TIME.      CALL  ME  CRAZY.     BUT  I  JUST  WANTED  TO  BE  FREE.        natasha romanova,     name of the rose (2010),     #1

& free she became.     free to love,     free to choose,     free to  THINK  &  BELIEVE  in what she wanted,      how she wanted.      the atheism she was raised with,      she looked upon the same way as everything else the soviets tried to make her believe.     she looked at herself critically,      & she made herself someone new.      but in terms of direct beliefs,      natasha did not rethink them immediately.      i’d say it was a slow process,      via exposure rather than searching.

during the 60′s - 70′s,      america was still a very protestant / evangelical nation,     & belief in God was pretty commonplace,      & natasha definitely picked up on this.      her first real,     substantial interaction with a devout believer was  MATT MURDOCK,      her on/off boyfriend for nearly a decade,      her fwb ever since,      who as we all know is fundamentally catholic.      though never addressed on - panel in the 70′s daredevil run,     i’d say that natasha was shifting from atheism to agnosticism during their relationship.       however,     religiously,     things got a little more complicated when natasha began a relationship with  HERCULES.      yes,     that hercules.      ancient greek god,     heracles,     son of zeus,     figure of myth.      of course,     we cannot forget that natasha also had a teammate in  THOR  when she joined the avengers.       as someone who was not exposed to the concept of a god for the first thirty or so years of her life,      this was no doubt somewhat of a shock,      even if she never showed it.      assimilating into a nation that believed freely,      being close to a devout catholic,     knowing two separate gods from two separate pagan religions   …   it threw her for a loop.      but it also opened up a whole new world for her in terms of how people actually view their religions.

as a christian myself,     God is a being that is so intrinsic to my life    ——    i literally do not know how i could live without Him.      & i think that through the people she was around,     especially matthew,      natasha saw this.       & through interacting with hercules & thor,      natasha realized that all these ancient beliefs,     these religions,      could have some truth in them since their deities actually  EXISTED.      but still,     there remains a distinction between how natasha views pagan religions whose figures she personally knows,     & how she views a God that she cannot see.     she knows hercules exists,     she knows thor exists.     she has been to mount olympus & conversed with the pantheon,      she has seen odin,      fought alongside brunnhilde,      against loki   ——–   she knows without a doubt that these deities exist.     but she does not pray to them,      she does not devote her life to them,      she merely acknowledges that they are there.      & frankly,      if we’re just talking about hercules,      she’d much rather tell him what to do in a team setting,    & sleep with him,     than offer him prayers & supplication.

but if there were a God that natasha would believe in,      if there were a God that would define natasha’s agnosticism,      it would be the abrahamic God.      she knows the pagan gods exist,      but from what she sees of them,       their power is limited.     they fight,     they make the worst of humans,      & are far too hot headed & proud for her taste.       what she has heard of the abrahamic God,     however,     is that he is good,    merciful,    perhaps omnipotent,      & grants salvation even to those who do not deserve it.      AS  SOMEONE  WHO  HAS  DONE  SO  MUCH  WRONG  IN  HER  LIFE,      is steeped in sin,     kills like it is nothing,      & hides so many secrets within her heart,      this God,     this concept of a higher power is one that is attractive to her.      but for a person this complex,      it’s not that simple.      as someone described above,      she is also a person who has  SEEN  so much evil in this world.     she has seen men fight,     millions of people die in war & of starvation,      & it is extremely difficult for her to reconcile such a world with a creator that lets it fester like it does.      but she also believes that without a higher power,      without anything watching over the world,     she & everyone else is practically screwed.      in terms of her own belief & how it applies to her,      she also can’t quite  …  wrap her head around sin,      & how her own sins can be forgiven.     in  MARVEL  KNIGHTS  vol. 1,     natasha visits a church & goes to confession.     the first time in a very long time,     she admits,     & what she says is quite telling.

BEGIN  WITH  THE  LEAST  OF  YOUR  SINS.AREN’T  ALL  SINS  EQUAL ?      DOESN’T  EACH  ONE  OF  THEM  CONDEMN  US  TO  THE  SAME  FATE ?     IS  THERE  REALLY  A  DEGREE  TO  SIN,     FATHER ?      AM  I  EXCUSED  BECAUSE  THE  SINS  I  COMMITTED  WERE  IN  THE  CAUSE  OF  GOOD ?      CAN  HE  SEE  THAT  THE  DEED  IS  SOMETIMES  ISOLATED  FROM  THE  SOUL ?      DOES  GOD  SOMETIMES  LOOK  AWAY ?        natasha romanova,     marvel knights vol. 1,    #1

these are not the words of a woman who does not entertain the belief in a higher power.     NOR  are these the words of a woman who believes with clarity that this higher power can be defined.     & at the end of the day,      though she may mull over what she believes about God when she drifts to sleep,      she does not have the time nor energy to devote herself to a higher power,      especially when her life is already given to helping people herself.

though she does not yet know where she stands,      she does have a high respect for those who do practice religion,     or even just for the concept of a God.      & it has seemed to me that she thinks it is a concept that  SHOULD  be respected,     & untouched by those who would seek to taint it.      there are two instances that come to mind  ( both from black widow vol. 5 ),      the first when natasha is fighting against a man who calls himself  the  HAMMER  OF  GOD.      natasha thinks this is ridiculous,      insane,     & tells him that she thinks that somehow,    God cannot hear his prayers over his machine gun.     the other instance is when the  ‘ translator ‘  of  CHAOS / the PROPHET,    is offering natasha a part in their new movement to rid the world of evil,     through means that natasha does not support.      she ridicules him by saying that he cannot pretend to be jesus,     that he does not have the right to be the final arbiter of good nor to take away people’s will.      both of these instances are never explained in terms of natasha’s beliefs,     & i think are left there to be interpreted as one wishes,     but to me in context of natasha’s entire history,      they are indicators of a leaning towards belief,      of an acknowledgment of a God,     a higher power,     but nothing further.

ALL  OF  THAT  SAID,     i return to my short answer:     natasha considers herself agnostic,     & perhaps with a side of deism that she can’t quite put a finger on.     to me,    she is definitely  NOT  atheist,     which is what fanon / fandom so loves to pigeonhole her as.     but it’s not that simple,     & there’s ample evidence sprinkled across her canon that says otherwise,     much of which i probably haven’t even touched on here.     i hope this answers your question,     & i’m sorry if this was messy or complicated   ——-   there’s just so much to consider.      religion is never something easy,     because it isn’t just a set of frivolous beliefs,     it’s a way of life.     this is no different for natasha.     & since she herself is so complex,     so multi - faceted,     it only makes sense that her own beliefs are the same.

[mjwood93]

When Wright is Right, When Wright is Wrong: Thoughts on N.T. Wright and “How God Became King”


A note to the reader: This is my first foray into a blogpost dealing with Theology so, please be gracious. I understand I have a long way to go in terms of writing and am open to constructive criticism.


I’ve never enjoyed disagreeing with someone more.


N.T. Wright is the well-known, highly controversial New Testament Scholar, current Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Saint Andrews. He was former Bishop of Durham, and is well known for his four volume work on Christian Origins and the People of God.


I have not had that much experience at all with Wright until fairly recently. Wright is someone who I’ve always heard Christians rant and rave about. In my undergrad I always heard about his claims of “How there’s so much more” and “How we got it all wrong” as Christians when it comes to the Gospels, or Scripture as a whole. It wasn’t until I started reading more Reformed authors and those into Biblical Scholarship that I really started to see him pop up more, which would make sense in reading academic work. I was very curious why Reformed authors would quote Wright in particular, because from what I knew at the time they claimed to be at odds with their theological systems as a whole. I decided to delve into Wright myself, and purchased the book “How God Became King”. I have supplemented this reading with listening to interviews and lectures on how the Reformed and broader Evangelical community view him, as well as some lectures from the former Bishop himself, to try and get a full picture of his theology.


So, from the get-go, would I recommend N.T. Wright? Well, yes and no. Let’s get something straight here, there are ALOT of good things about Wright and to completely blanket him as a complete enemy to Christianity is just wrong, but for as many good things that Wright says, there are just as many bad ones that do greater damage to someone who may not have a full understanding of the Gospel. But first, let’s start with the positives:


When Wright is (W)Right


1. The first thing I will say about Wright is that he is a brilliant, readable, clear, sometimes humorous, and insightful communicator. He can write easily for the layperson as well as an academic. For example, I especially enjoyed reading about his views on the Temple in the Bible, and while I’ve read and listened to many Reformed authors convey their thoughts on this theme, Wright is the one who has communicated that theme probably with the most ease and coherence.


2. I think it is great that he is a proponent of Biblical Theology or “whole-bible” theology. My generation is probably the most illiterate generation of Christians from a Scriptural standpoint. We can quote Bible verses in and out of context without having any idea of how that verse or passage of Scripture fits into the rest of Scripture as a whole in terms of context and canon. Many Christians today cannot even tell us what the broad story lines or themes of Scripture are, how they run through the rest of Scripture, why they are laid out that way, most important of all being how that relates to Christ and by extension to His Church. In “How God Became King”, Wright is able to give us “mini-tours” if you will on the themes of Israel, Temple, Christ, and most of all Kingdom from Genesis to Revelation. I would make a few modifications, but for the most part Wright is correct in how he lays out each of one of these themes, and one is able to follow them with ease and coherence as I said before. The fact that he is giving a broad outline and cares so much about it is different from the rest of shallow Christianity.


3. From what I’ve heard, when it comes to apologetics dealing with the Resurrection and Historical Jesus, he is a must read. Just from the snapshot I’ve gotten in “How God Became King” how he deals with Enlightenment thinkers, as well as calling out flaws of the Jesus Seminar, I’m definitely adding “Jesus and the Victory of God”, and “The Resurrection and the Son of God” to my reading list. You will find these along with other books of his referenced in almost any scholarly bibliography.


4. He is able to point out flaws in our current Western tradition that should not be ignored. Wright is correct when saying that some Christians incorrectly make the Gospel about “just going to Heaven when you die”. The Gospel is not a Heaven-destination flight, it is about the fact that we are dead in our sin, and it is only by God’s power through faith in Christ that we have a reconciled relationship with God the Father so that we can live in obedience for His Glory. Sadly, Wright does not make this the Gospel at all, which I will have to deal with later.


5. Though not in HGBK, another positive thing about Wright is that he is against homosexual marriage. When it comes to this subject we should find an ally in Wright. 


6. Also not in HGBK, but another good thing about Wright, is that he is in support of more theologically-related Worship. Specifically Psalmody or Psalm-singing. His Plenary Address in 2012 at the Calvin Symposium of Worship on the Psalms is one of the best lectures I’ve ever heard. Seriously. If there is one thing you check out from Wright, let this be it and nothing more.


Now, on to some more concerning matters.


When Wright is Definitely Wrong


1. The Gospel and our Sinful Condition - Though the Kingdom theme is one that is central to the Bible and God Himself (I’m reading a book right now God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants that deals with this), the Gospel is not “Jesus is King over all Heaven and Earth” and that’s it. The Gospel is how through the substitutionary atonement of Christ, sinners have a reconciled relationship to God the Father and are declared righteous in and through the work of Christ alone, and can now truly be obedient to Him by the Holy Spirit for God’s Glory. Instead of this Penal Substitutionary atonement view, Wright holds the Christus Victor atonement view, which basically says Christ overcame the powers of the world and took all the consequences (effects) of sin and evil in the world, and defeated the dark spiritual powers of the earth and the rest of the cosmos, so now Jesus is King over all the Earth and in Heaven. Now, this is correct, but it does not go far enough, and it does nothing to affect our SINFUL CONDITION and standing before a holy God. The Bible says we are dead in our sin and cannot choose God. The Christus Victor view presupposes that we are able to choose God and Christ on our own and therefore at the very LEAST ends up being Arminian. Though Wright says many Christians do not have the dial turned up on the Kingdom when teaching the Bible, I think Wright goes too far and turns it up to eleven, drowning out everything else. Another way I would put this is, that Wright says a lot about Jesus being King, but does nothing with Christ’s role of mediator as Our Great High Priest. Wright never ultimately defines what he wants this Theocratical Kingdom of Jesus on Earth to be and look like. 


2. Justification - New Perspective on Paul. In very broad terms this means justification is mainly or solely a corporate/communal matter and doesn’t really deal with individual justification. Individual justification is largely a Western thought process. Wright uses his own translations of the New Testament (which in my opinion are just very clunky to read) and in HGBK, he literally translates a passage that deals with our individual justification before God and translates the word justification into “God’s covenant-faithfulness” i.e. God keeping you in the community. This does not deal with our repentance and again, our sinful condition. To emphasize our corporate standing with the Church is important when one becomes a Christian, but to completely divorce that from our individual standing before a holy God undercuts the Gospel. To make justification solely a corporate matter also could lead to a works-based salvation of how one stays in the community. Behind the New Perspective of Paul there is also an undercurrent of ecumenicalism and that “if we can just get rid of what Luther said about justification, then we can we can see that really each denomination of protestantism and Catholics aren’t that different at all. It was Luther who read Romans and Galatians wrong, so the Christian church has misread the Bible for the past 500 years”. Really? If we read the Patristic fathers, we can see very easily that this is not the case at all for the doctrine of Justification.


3. Inerrancy of God’s Word - Wright emphasizes the human author when talking about the Bible. Now don’t get me wrong, this is important to do. The Bible did not just drop out of Heaven, it was written over long periods of time by different authors who all had their unique writing style and wrote in different genres and in different cultural contexts in three languages. But I don’t think Wright ever relates the human authors of the Bible to God speaking. The problem is in the Bible we see Moses and others writing something in their books and when it is referred to later in the Bible, it is quoted something to the effect of “The Lord says…” To say the Bible is filled with error because of the fallibility of the human author or to say that the Bible is an authority but not our final authority for our faith and practice are slippery slope arguments. If the Bible is in error in some part where do we find them and where does the error begin and end? If the Bible is not our final authority then what is? Culture? Man? Experience? As someone who holds a Christ-Centered view of Scripture it is astounding to me that he says the whole Bible points to Christ yet he believes the Bible is not inerrant. The only way it could do that is if it was. He says multiple times in this book that Scripture DOES have authority but what that authority looks like and how much authority it has he never really defines. It is outside of HGBK that he has stated he thinks of the doctrine of Inerrancy as a response to the Catholic Church and Enlightenment thinkers of their day.


4. Evolution - Wright is a supporter of Bio-Logos and from what I know, is at the very least, open to Theistic Evolution being the way the opening Genesis chapters took place. While I understand the intention of this view, ultimately Evolution and Christianity are two different world-views, one being based on chaos and naturalism, while the other is based on order and Truth. While I do think one can be a Christian and a Theistic Evolutionist, and there is grace to be given as long as one truly professes Christ as Lord and bears fruit, I do think they have seriously mis-stepped logically in their worldview, and do not realize the full implications of holding such a worldview relating to the Gospel. There is much more I could say on the whole Genesis issue, but I’ll leave that for another time.


5. Caricatures of the Reformed traditions and their creeds - One thing I was continually disappointed in by the opening and closing chapters of HGBK, was how Wright ultimately makes it seem like HE has found the answer to what everyone else has been missing for the past two-thousand years. Nowhere in HGBK does Wright give any scholarly evidence for what he claims about the Creeds and Confessions. He claims that they do not tell the whole story of Christianity and he makes it seem like this was all former Christians of the time knew and repeated. “They miss the whole part about Israel and there is nothing about the Kingdom!” is what Wright basically exclaims, but teaching the story arc of the Bible was not what creeds and confessions were for. They were formed to combat against heresies of the day to mark out truth from error. The Puritans and other past Christians wrote extensively on the Kingdom and about Israel and the Church being the new creation of the one true people of God. I honestly just don’t know where he gets this idea, unless it is just to help sell the book.


So, to come full circle, would I recommend Wright? Again yes, and no. I would not recommend him at all to someone who is a new Christian; someone who is still trying to flesh out the Gospel and the theme of Kingdom in their own study of the Word. I would want to make sure if someone did read Wright, that they knew what they were in for and that I could trust them with discerning different parts of theological systems. Is he completely wrong on everything? No. As I’ve said earlier, with the themes of Scripture that he does get right, he can be very clear and helpful. Sometimes he adds new insights and angles that I had not previously thought of before. His influence has gone far and wide, laying the groundwork for non-profits such as The Bible Project (who, while I like a good amount of their stuff, basically hold the same theology as Wright). His research and work on Second Temple Judaism should not be ignored. I do plan on reading his book on the Psalms and his Christian Origins series at some point. Reading Wright has helped me become a more discerning reader, and though it may be awhile before I pick up another book of his, the thoughts and discussion that have come out of reading him ultimately have been beneficial to me. I feel like I have much more of a grasp on what he actually believes, and could articulate that to someone else. And that should be one our goals as Christians who encounter and engage other world-views and those who even share (or claim to share) our own. If we are truly saved by the Gospel and believe what it says, then we should know that we have nothing to fear because His Truth will remain and conquer over all. It is sad to me that such a brilliant mind who gets large swaths and themes that lead up to and come out of the Gospel correct, but gets the central core of the Gospel wrong. I pray that he sees his error and comes to joyfully embrace the True Gospel for what it is.

[alexsmitposts]

Mike Pence & John Bolton: Cold War Conservatism Clings to the White House The Trump presidency represented a solid break with the longstanding norms of right-wing politics in the USA. Trump campaigns as a foul-mouthed populist who criticized military interventions and seemed champion “the little guy” hurt by trade deals and Washington mismanagement. However, within the White House, Mike Pence and John Bolton seem to represent two dual trends that dominated American conservative politics from the 1970s onward. A Neoconservative National Security Advisor, and an Evangelical Vice President, seem to be working hard to preserve the Cold War formula for Republican leadership. John Bolton: The Heir of Strauss & Kristol A lot has been written about ‘Neoconservatism.’ But what does the term actually mean? Libertarians and paleoconservative analysts tend to use the term as a pejorative for mainstream Republicans who operate against their principles. The New York Times seems to portray “neocons” as a mysterious faction of interventionists that has infiltrated the government, pushing for larger foreign entanglements. In reality, Neoconservatism was the Republican Party getting slick, and marketing itself to a generation of Americans raised on television and rock music. It also involved honestly accepting elitism, something previous conservative trends had shunned. According to the New York Times, Irving Kristol was “commonly known as the godfather of neoconservatism.” Irving Kristol was a Trotskyite Communist in the 1930s who gradually shifted away from Marxism. According to his New York Times obituary, it was contact with actual working class people in the US military that convinced him to drop socialism altogether: “Drafted into the Army with a number of Midwesterners who were street-tough and often anti-Semitic, he found himself shedding his youthful radical optimism. “I can’t build socialism with these people,” he concluded. “They’ll probably take it over and make a racket out of it.” In his opinion, his fellow GI’s were inclined to loot, rape and murder, and only Army discipline held them in check. It was a perception about human nature that would stay with him for the rest of his life, creating a tension with his alternative view that ordinary people were to be trusted more than intellectuals to do the right thing.” After working with the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom program, Kristol eventually moved from liberal intelligence circles to the think tanks aligned with the Republican Party. The other individual credited with giving birth to Neoconservative thinking is Leo Strauss, the Plato Scholar who taught philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the University of Chicago. According to the Brooklyn Rail: “Strauss’s acolytes have penetrated American government and higher education, and have proudly influenced the nation’s social and public policies. In the Bush Administration itself there are numerous people who have been either taught by Strauss or who are disciples of his ideas—most notably Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Abram Shulsky, Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans; and there are those outside of government with great influence.” Leo Strauss, like Kristol, seemed to believe ordinary people needed to be duped and manipulated by a superior group of intellectuals. Describing Strauss’ worldview, The Nation wrote: “Intellectuals, he believed, would have to spread an ideology of good and evil, whether they believed it or not, so that the American people could be mobilized against the enemies of freedom. For this reason Strauss, we learn in one of many telling asides, was a huge fan of the TV series Gunsmoke and its Manichean depiction of good and evil.” Neoconservatism’s birth is traced back to Richard Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign, where Nixon appeared to have learned from George Wallace that sticking up for “ordinary folks” who were put off by the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Protests was a good strategy. Nixon’s rhetoric about the “silent majority” and “law and order” won him the Presidency. The Presidency of Ronald Reagan seemed to be Strauss’ dream come true. Reagan was a former cowboy actor, and when he described US foreign policy in oval office addresses, he sounded like a Sheriff on an episode of Gunsmoke. The wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Libya, Grenada, and Lebanon were simply a battle between the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” with the complex realities hidden from the public mind. John Bolton is widely described as a Neoconservative, and he now holds the post to which Trump originally appointed Michael Flynn. Bolton seems to fancy himself as an expert on who the latest “bad guys” of the CNN narrative are, and why the USA should not hesitate to “spread freedom” by overthrowing them. His bombastic tone, including threats to send Nicolas Maduro to Guantanamo Bay, fit the neoconservative playbook. But these days, the non-interventionist sentiments once espoused by a minority of Ron Paul-types seem to be popular among the Red State base. And just as Neoconservatism is on the decline, a trend that the neocons depended on to exercise their political power, is also losing strength. A New Brand of Religious Fanaticism In 1957, British psychologist William Sargant wrote: “Various types of belief can be implanted in many people, after brain function has been sufficiently disturbed by accidentally or deliberately induced fear, anger or excitement. Of the results caused by such disturbances, the most common is temporarily impaired judgement and heightened suggestibility. Its various group manifestations are sometimes classed under the heading of ‘herd instinct,’ and appear most spectacularly in wartime, during severe epidemics, and in all similar periods of common danger, which increase anxiety and so individual and mass suggestibility.” Sargant’s book The Mind Possessed digs into the nature of propaganda and mind control, specifically exploring aspect of it in religious ceremonies. Sargant’s research was conducted in coordination with the Tavistock Institute, as British intelligence worked to understand the nature of persuasion in the aftermath of the Second World War. The religious movement commonly called Evangelical Christianity is very much the result of efforts to cultivate and refine the phenomena that Sargant’s work described, and utilize the emotional aspects of religion to control and manipulate people. Distinct religious movements and communities have always existed throughout US history. Because the USA originated as a settler colony to which European cults and sects fled, the United States has a much higher tolerance of religious fanaticism. In two US states it is legal, for example, for churches to engage in snake-handling. This is an often deadly Christian ritual in which adherents take turns holding venomous snakes in a group setting, believing that God will protect them from being bitten. Fundamentalist and charismatic Christianity emerged as movements among American protestants in the 1800s. Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Pentecostalism, and other sects with very unique beliefs emerged as well. However, the religious current of Evangelical Christianity that gained a very large amount of political power during the 1980s and 90s, is a distinct trend, separate from other episodes of fanaticism in American history. While it drew from these previous, uniquely American movements and belief systems, it arose due to unique historical circumstances in the 1970s, paralleling and aligning with neoconservatism in the Republican Party. The first incarnations of what became Evangelical Christianity appeared in the late 1960s among the hippie counter-culture. Among drug using, rock music listening, anti-war protesting youth, a tendency emerged known as Jesus Freaks or Jesus People. This was a combination of hippie aesthetics with Christian teachings. Two broadway musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, both of which became Hollywood movies, seemed to follow this trend of merging cultural hippy-ism with the narrative of the Bible’s New Testament. Early Jesus Freaks followed the path of leftist Christian Dorothy Day and joined the Catholic Church, despite questioning many of its teachings. The hymn They’ll Know We Are Christian By Our Love was first sung by counter-culture elements the embedded themselves in Catholic Congregations. Record company exec Tony Alamo, who had been largely involved in marketing the Beatles, quit the music business and launched his own church in Los Angeles utilizing the religious/aesthetic combination pioneer by the Jesus Freaks. These counter-culture Christians differed from other religious upsurges in American history because they had a consistent lack of interest in theology. While this was, to some degree, a gesture of rebellion against the “up tight” authoritarianism of existing Christian denominations, it was also an expression of anti-intellectualism. Historical facts, theological arguments, and knowledge of scripture did not matter. To the Jesus Freaks, religion was about the emotions they felt as they prayed, sang, and clapped in unison with other believers. It was about the glow they felt from engaging in acts of kindness, and the emotional relief provided by praying for forgiveness. Throughout US history, Fundamental Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Mormons, and the various Charismatics took their history and unique interpretation of the Bible very seriously. Adherents of these movements can cite chapter and verse and argue harshly against rival interpretations. However, the Jesus Freaks were known for statements like “None of that matters, man, it’s just about love” and “I just believe the Bible.” Rather than pushing a specific doctrine, the Jesus People focused on a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” From Jesus Freaks to Mega-Churches Richard Nixon’s spiritual advisor Reverend Billy Graham, who supported the Vietnam War and opposed the Civil Rights Movement, was not a hippie by any stretch. But starting in 1969, Graham embraced the Jesus Freaks and had TV specials featuring long-haired, guitar playing youthful Christians. In 1972, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who had founded the Unification Church in South Korea, relocated to the United States. Reverend Moon was a skilled orator and a fanatical anticommunist. He had a very close relationship with Japanese and South Korean intelligence agencies, as was later revealed in testimony before the US congress. Nixon brought him to the United States where he also jumped on the Jesus Freakaesthetic, recruiting teenaged runaways and others to what was often presented as his “Peace Movement.” Like Graham, Moon was also a supporter of Nixon. Moon’s followers staged a hunger strike during the Watergate investigations, claiming they were a Communist plot to divide the United States. Reverends Moon, Alamo, and Graham all experimented with what started to become a very effective political-religious formula by the end of the 1970s. It was Reverend Jerry Falwell, whose organization called the Moral Majority, that became the vanguard of what eventually became known as Evangelical Christianity or The Religious Right. Instead of specific interpretations of Christianity, Non-Denominational churches sprung up across the country. These Mega-Churches as they were called, involved pastors who preached in front of big movie screens that showed images of what they were speaking about. They involved praise-bands that played Rock and Roll Music with Christian lyrics. While the Jesus People had opposed the Vietnam War and supported the Civil Rights Movement, the Evangelicals that emerged to dominate US politics were right-wing in every way. They aligned with the Neoconservative movement, and repeated its talking points. They believed that somehow the USA was divinely selected to rid the world of Communism, and eventually of Islamic Terrorism. The Evangelical Christian movement eventually became very well embedded in the US military, with the West Point military academy becoming a stronghold of evangelicalism. The “know-nothing” anti-intellectualism and lack of depth that defined the Jesus People, along with the hippie aesthetics, survived their movements transition to the right-wing of US politics. While Fundamentalist Baptists generally opposed rock music and men having long hair, and the Evangelical Mega-Churches embraced such things. While fundamentalist preachers like Billy Sunday or Charles G. Finney had certainly worked hard to stimulate emotional conversions with powerful oratory, the Evangelicals used flashing lights, rock music, and movie screens to turn the emotional volume up to a maximum level, while watering the theology down to almost nothing. “I believe only the Bible” Evangelicals were trained to say, “If it is not in the book, then I don’t need it.” A popular bumper sticker says “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” The long-standing theological wrangling found in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, John Calvin, and Martin Luther is long forgotten. Faith is about explosive feelings of fervor and sobs of redemption, not to be interrupted logical debate or moral reasoning. Mike Pence, who began his career as a radio host in Indiana before being elected governor, is very much an Evangelical Christian. He makes a point of publicly praying and attending evangelical gatherings. Like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson did before him, Pence is keenly interested in foreign policy and seems to take his cues from his neoconservative contemporaries, such as John Bolton. How Much Longer for the Neocon-Evangelical Block? The strength of neoconservatives in US politics has largely depended on a mass movement of evangelicals to back them up. As political leaders present a foreign policy narrative that sounds like a Hollywood movie, voters endorse it and soldiers carry it out, hyped up by a very simplistic and emotional reinterpretation of the Christian gospels. However, since the Presidency of George W. Bush, the Neocon-Evangelical block among Republicans has gotten significantly weaker. Both formulations are politicized smoke and mirrors, asking their adherents to just sit back and enjoy the show. Don’t do your own research. Don’t think too deeply. Let us entertain you and pluck your emotions with flashing lights. Listen to our surface level story about super-heroes battling super-villains. The 2008 financial meltdown made it hard for Americans to simply accept a narrative. Many wanted answers about why their homes had been foreclosed, why their wages were dropping, and why they were drowning in debt. Furthermore, the accessibility of information created by social media, allowed the religious skepticism of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris to enter every evangelical household with a doubting teenager. Trump won the Republican Nomination and the eventually 2016 election because he was explicitly not an Evangelical or a Neocon. However, Mike Pence and John Bolton seem to represent this longstanding formula for conservative policy-making, holding on to power within the Trump White House. It is doubtful that this political block, formed during the Cold War, will rebound. Populism, not authoritarian elitist manipulations, seems to be rising trend among the American right-wing.

[pastordorry-blog]

Called to Be Neighbors and Witnesses

Lent Week 3

Matthew 5:43-48

March 24, 2019

           We’ve been talking the last several weeks about God’s will.  Since we pray for it every week as we recite the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it seemed like a good idea for us to get some clarity about what we are really praying for, and be sure we really mean what we are saying!  In the gospel of Matthew, right before Jesus gives his disciples the Lord’s prayer, he tells them, “When you pray, do not keep babbling like the pagans.”  Matthew 6:7 has also been translated, do not heap up empty phrases, or do not repeat vain petitions.  We do not want the Lord’s Prayer to be a bunch of empty phrases, or babbling, or vain repetitions.  We want to leverage the power of this prayer!  When we end the prayer with the word, “Amen”, which means, I agree, or more accurately, this I vow—I know the people of Lima mean it.  We are vowing to do God’s will every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  

But, if you haven’t noticed already, God’s will is a mystery that we can only partially understand. It is not easy to define and articulate!  I was particularly thinking about this a couple weeks ago, reading yet again another news post about anti-Semitism in America.  I knew I wanted to address God’s will for us as it relates to our dealings with people of other religions, because this is a real-life issue for us.  Our key verse on the front of the bulletin this week is one we probably all have memorized:  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)  We call this the Great Commission, and it is our marching orders as disciple of Jesus Christ.  Yet despite two thousand years of evangelism and witness, only about 1/3 of the world’s population identifies as Christian.

We know God’s ultimate will is that, one day in the future, Christ is going to come again, and according to the book of Revelation, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord. But for now, we live in a religiously diverse society.  What is God’s circumstantial will for us?  Given the reality of so many other competing religions, what should we do?  One strategy is to move toward isolation. Some communities, such as the Amish, do this in an extreme way.  Another strategy is to water things down and conclude, “We’re all the same.”  Most Christians reject both of those pathways, at least in theory.  We want to love others as neighbors and friends, even as we retain our distinct beliefs.  Our United Methodist Social Principles contain a resolution detailing this commitment, to be both neighbors and witnesses.

The resolution is important, because, we have, inadvertently, become somewhat isolationist.  I have had many conversations over the years with church members, encouraging them to invite their friends to worship—and the response I get is, “But Pastor Dorry, all my friends already go to church!”  What could I say to that?  I’m glad people have Christian friends!  But maybe we should be trying to make some new friends.  Maybe it would do us good to intentionally befriend some people who are quite a bit different from us.  Not only would that help us build community, I think it might help us better define and articulate what it is about our faith that matters so much.  One of the boys in my son’s cub scout troop was Jewish, and one time he told me, “My faith has served me well over the years.”  Then he proceeded to tell me what he valued most about being Jewish.  It really impressed me, and made me wonder how many Christians could do something similar.  

Christianity was born in to a religiously diverse world. Its immediate roots of course are Judaism.  But get out of Jerusalem, and right away there were other faiths, and of course, as the gospel spread throughout the Roman empire, it was one option among hundreds of religions.  This has always been a source of difficulty.  In the early church, violence and hatred and persecution were a part of things from almost the very beginning.  Later, it was the Christians who took up the sword, mostly against Muslims, in the Crusades. It would take an historian hours to name for us all the religiously inspired wars over the years.  Violence and hatred in the name of God continue, in heartbreaking ways, in our world today.

That any person of faith would think that hatred is God’s will is pretty troubling.  And especially that any Christian would think hatred is God’s will.  If there is anything we know about God’s will, it is this:  It is God’s will that we love one another (John 13:34).  This the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night he was arrested and is the reason we call Holy Thursday, “Maundy Thursday”, from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment.  Jesus’ command, God’s will, is that we love one another.  The two central obligations of our faith are to love God with our whole beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And Jesus did not mean just the nice neighbors!  It is laid out very clearly for us in this gospel lesson, that we are called not only to love the neighbors we agree with, the ones who are easy to get along with, or the ones who love us.  We are called to love ALL our neighbors.  Even our enemies.  

But what about people who aren’t our enemies exactly, but they aren’t our friends, either?  Can you picture someone like that?  Maybe a family member whose choices you don’t agree with, who consumes more than their fair share of resources or commands more than their fair share of attention. Or maybe you have a co-worker like that, or even someone with you in this room right now!  You want to love them—but they are WRONG about so many things. Can you picture a person like that?

I sure hope so, otherwise I’m preaching a sermon that only I need to hear!  There’s a country song by Lee Brice, “I’m Hard to love, hard to love, I don’t make it easy.  I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood.”  We can all imagine a hard to love person, and if we’re honest, we know it’s true of ourselves at times, too!  I think we can get some comfort from verse 45.  “I cause the sun to rise on the evil and the good.  I send the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  God’s love and provision extend to all people.  Not just the ones who agree with us or who like us! Thanks be to God for being all good, all the time!  

But after those words of comfort, Jesus goes on to challenge us to love better.  To love perfectly. Whew! Talk about a tall order. But loving God and neighbor perfectly is God’s will. That is God’s intentional will for us—what God wanted for us from the very beginning.  That is God’s ultimate will for us—what we will one day be able to do.  And it is God’s circumstantial will that we be working on it!  Or as John Wesley would say, we are “going on to perfection”.  We are called to be growing closer to God so we can love ourselves and our neighbors the way God loves us.  

It’s interesting how many people have fought wars for PURITY, so that a whole people would love and worship the same way.  But what God really wants is PURITY in each of our hearts, an ability to love that not only tolerates differences but blesses them!  Pray for your enemies.  We are called to transcend our conflicts, in part by respecting and even celebrating differences.

Have you heard that line, “God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”? It’s true!  The gospel of John says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son.” The world—the whole world!  The Greek word there is ha cosmos.  The entire creation, the entire population, the good, the bad, the ugly is loved by god. Everyone.  God loves all people, and that is why God sent his son Jesus.  

I grew up singing, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.”  But I want to tell you that, this week I realized that somehow along with that, I also absorbed the idea that God loves some people more than others, and that means it is okay for me to love some people more than others, too. Not that anyone ever said it so explicitly.  I learned it because that is how people acted.  I got the idea that God’s love has a hierarchy:  God loves Christians the most, and then Jews, and then maybe people of other faiths. And then there are probably some bad people God doesn’t love at all.

This may sound shocking to you, but I don’t think it’s uncommon.  When someone in my little dairy farming community bought a Japanese car in the early 1970’s, that was very controversial!  On paper maybe God loved everyone equally.  But the assumption was that everyone stilled hate the Japanese for what they did to us in World War II.  Many people thought it was okay to be mad at them, we certainly didn’t want to help them profit and flourish, and that seemed to me the prevailing “righteous” view.  

Here’s another example.  A few years ago I went to a preaching workshop the required staying in a college dorm with shared bathrooms.  I met a woman from Canada with beautiful red hair; all of us in the ladies’ room admired it.  But the woman from Canada said, where I come from, it’s not a source of admiration. It’s a source of shame.  Being a ginger gets you picked on.  She hated her red hair and felt terrible for passing it on to her children.  In theory she knew God loved her.  But her lived experience was, God loves red heads less than other people; it’s okay to pick on or treat certain people as less than because of some arbitrary characteristic.

This has given me a lot to think about.  I admit to you today that I do not have a single Muslim friend.   One-fourth of the world’s population identifies as Muslim, and I don’t know a single one. There is an Islamic Center in West Chester, and when I did some reading this week on their website, I was really impressed.  I am going to reach out to them.  I admit to you today that, although I don’t want this to happen, I sometimes have unkind immediate thoughts about certain groups of people.  That is racism.  That is sin. I admit to you today that I have had an unconscious belief, that God loves certain people more than others.  I admit to you today that I feel called to sort through the remnants of that belief, and see how it continues to influence me today.  

I like to plan worship well in advance, but honestly, I never really know where a sermon is going to take me until I sit down and write it.  As I anticipated this week, I thought I would feel convicted to draw my circle wider and get to know some “non-church” folks.  But as I worked on the sermon, I got convicted in an even bigger way.  I felt like God was holding a mirror in front of me and I could see things this week that I never saw before, and it was scary. Kind of like trying on a swim suit at the mall.  Do I look as bad in real life as I do in this dressing room?  I saw ugliness in my heart.  Maybe you are seeing some in your heart, too.  

So let me use this opportunity to assert one of our distinctively Christian beliefs:  God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!  Nothing can separate us from God’s love for us, including our sin.  God is here today to give us a fresh start.  We call that fresh start grace.  It is what makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, and the sun to shine on the good and the evil.  This grace is available to us in its most potent form in the person of Jesus Christ.  This grace turns us from God’s strangers into God’s friends, and calls us to go and do likewise.  Amen.

[johnchiarello]

Corinthians 7-8

Corinthians 7-8

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  1ST CORINTHIANS 7:1-15 Paul addresses divorce. It is interesting that Jesus himself actually raised the bar from the Old Covenant practice to the New. In most other areas he emphasized grace as opposed to law ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ but in this area Jesus said ‘Moses made an exception under the law for divorce, but from the beginning this was not Gods plan’ and Jesus restricted divorce to the cause of adultery [fornication- actually the word for pornography] only. Here Paul gives some direction. First, you shouldn’t divorce. You also shouldn’t be married to an unbeliever. Well, what should happen to those who were unbelievers when they married, but now one is a believer? Paul says if the unbeliever is ‘pleased’ to stay in the union, then that’s fine. Well what does ‘pleased’ mean? If the unbeliever is physically abusing his spouse, then that doesn’t seem ‘pleasing’ to me. Paul will say if the unbeliever departs, let them go. The believer should not feel condemned by this. He/she had no control in this case. But if there is a divorce, let the one who left remain unmarried. So what happens if you were forced into it, can you re marry? Paul does not specifically say. He does say to the one who left the marriage, they should not remarry. Divorce is a tricky issue. When attending the fundamental Baptist church they taught that if one were divorced they could never be ‘a Pastor’ [even though no one was ‘a pastor’ in this way in the first century church!]. Many teach that Paul’s instructions on Bishops/Elders said a divorced person should not be an overseer. Paul actually said ‘they should be the husband of one wife’. This most certainly could simply be saying they shouldn’t be in a plural marriage. This was common in the first century, so you could take it this way. Overall I find it strange that someone could have been a murderer [Paul] or any other type of sinner, but the divorcee’ seems to be the only sinner that is excluded. The other problem is how much of ‘a believer’ were you at the time of your divorce. There have been well known preachers who initiated the divorce from their wives, they remarried and later wanted this to be treated as any other sin, just forgive and forget. The problem is if you were wise enough in the lord to have known better, then true repentance would entail making things right. Whether that’s reconciliation or simply remaining single, but it sure seems like these types of brothers who went into the whole remarriage thing with their eyes wide open, they should be held to a higher standard. Overall, we should not be in bondage to things that were out of our control. Those who were victimized and the partner left you, you should not be condemned for something that was out of your control. Believers who initiate the divorce from someone who was willing to stay in the marriage, they should not remarry. There have been too many cases where believers divorce other believers, without biblical grounds, and then remarry someone from the church. These situations are not permitted. If the believing spouse was simply ‘difficult to live with’ then that doesn’t cut it. In situations where there was actual physical abuse, well I don’t believe the Lord wants you to stay in the house under these circumstances. But the only biblical excuse for divorce, according to Jesus, is adultery. In all of these gray areas, wisdom must be applied. The high profile ministers who have initiated their divorces and remarried, without the proper biblical grounds, should not be simply ‘forgiven’ and permitted to continue in their public role in ministry. True forgiveness and restoration would entail some sort of repentance and a public change in the situation. Like Paul says ‘to the rest speak I, not the Lord’. I am giving you my opinion on some of this stuff, but I too think I have the Spirit of Christ.

 (962)1ST CORINTHIANS 7:16-24 ‘Were you circumcised when you were called into the Christian life? Then don’t become uncircumcised’ [that would be quite a feat!] ‘Were you uncircumcised when called? Don’t get circumcised’. What’s Paul saying? Basically he is keeping the decrees that were made at the Jerusalem council [Acts 15]. He is stressing the importance of Christ’s spiritual kingdom. To the Jew, he is not saying ‘keep trying to become justified by the law and sacrifices’ but he is saying ‘I am not trying to wipe out your culture and heritage, I am trying to bring you into the fullness of what the Prophets have foretold’. This is Paul’s ongoing defense in the book of Acts ‘I stand condemned because I believe that what the prophets said would happen, did!’. Paul says the thing that matters is ‘the doing of Gods commandments’. When we studied Romans I showed how Paul did say ‘the hearers of the law are not justified, but the doers shall be’. Here again Paul stresses the importance of the Christian life being one of true conversion. Those who believe are changed and become doers of Gods law by nature. The mechanism of conversion is Faith, the outworking of that conversion is obedience. So even though Paul is not putting the law on the gentile converts, yet he does teach that they will by nature keep the law [Romans again]. Now he says ‘were you a slave when called? Seek not to become free. Were you free? Don’t become a slave’ and ‘be not the servants/slaves of men’. We actually have hit on this a few times in recent months. Once again Paul says ‘don’t see this new faith as an opportunity to mount a civil disobedience campaign’ but at the same time he makes it clear ‘don’t put yourself under servitude either!’ The New Testament does not justify the institution of slavery or racism! The basic ethos of this new kingdom is freedom from bondage, it was only a matter of time before this new movement would shake the foundations of society and uproot this evil. Make no mistake about it, the anti-slavery movement was instigated by the people of God [William Wilberforce, Charles Finney and many others].

 (963)1ST CORINTHIANS 7: 25-40 let’s be a little unconventional today. This passage deals with Paul’s counsel on celibacy and marriage. The historic church has had a bad rap on this issue. It is common today to say the church devalued marriage [and sex] and therefore we should exalt it. Sometimes this attempt at trying to correct the perceived imbalance puts a stumbling block in the way of those who are truly called to live the single life. Though marriage is an honorable thing, a true gift from God, yet living the celibate life can also be considered a very noble thing. It is rare in contemporary evangelicalism to leave this option open. Paul does say this option is not only available, but a noteworthy calling! He also makes it clear that only those who are called to this single lifestyle should attempt it. The church should not force celibacy on people. Now, do our catholic brothers force it upon the Priests? In a way, yes. But don’t forget that no one is ‘forced’ into the priesthood. Some feel like the scandals of catholic priests who abused children can be blamed on forced celibacy. The problem with this idea is many protestant ministers have also fallen sexually, and they were not celibate! The point being we need to be careful when we brand any Christian denomination with an accusation. Now, Paul also makes an interesting statement that we need to look at. He says ‘for the present distress I give these guidelines’. Is it possible that Paul’s seeming harshness on marriage was due to the fact of some type of distress that he saw coming? Possibly the Neronic persecutions? If so, Paul could be saying ‘because of the upcoming severe persecution I recommend everyone just laying low for the time, if married, seek not to be single and vice a versa’. This is possible, we need to keep this in mind when reading this section of scripture. But most of all I think the modern evangelical church needs to retool her message in this area. Marriage and sex are good, God ordained these things in their proper place. But living single and celibate is also considered a very noble calling, we do not normally reflect this balance in the present atmosphere. Also as an aside, a few years back it was common to teach ‘the world/public schools have taken sex and taught it to our kids. They have usurped the job of the family/church’ while there is some truth to this, the problem was some well known TV evangelists began to discuss sex in the Sunday morning setting that was improper in a way [If you local Pastors who read this have done this, be assured I am not talking about you!]. I remember watching a national minister speak openly, with grandma’s and children in the service, and say ‘now speaking about sexual climax’ Yikes!! Just because the family/church dropped the ball on these issues, this doesn’t mean there are no barriers at all while dealing with these issues. Those who do this type of stuff seem to be saying ‘sex is not a dirty thing, therefore we need to bring it out into the open’ while this is true to a degree, there are also age appropriate subjects that should be taught in a private setting. If the church feels the need to delve into these subjects, we need to be careful that we are not crossing boundaries when doing it.

 · MORE PROOF FOR GOD- Okay, what’s up with ‘dark matter’? In the 20th century the amazing breakthroughs in science showed us that what we thought was a limited universe, was actually a growing universe that was expanding at a faster rate every day. The further out you got, the faster it was expanding. This discovery [Hubble] worked in harmony with Einstein’s theories. This discovery also created a problem. If the universe is so much more vast than previously thought to be, then the amount of known matter needed in the universe in order to maintain the proper gravitational force was not there. Basically you need so much matter to exist in order for this newly discovered expanding universe to hold together and function right. The problem is that the matter is not there![some say it is still not detected]. So the theory of ‘dark matter’ [unseen, undetected matter] has been floated. This invisible matter is supposedly the single greatest matter in existence, though we have no proof that even one tiny particle exists! Ahh, when stuff like this happens, we need to pay close attention. Why? Well some who defend the young earth theory of creation use this to back up their claim of a young universe. It’s kinda technical stuff, but this ‘dark matter’ has to be there to defend the old age theory [for some!]. Another problem is we have absolutely no proof that this dark matter exists. It is simply believed in because the naturalistic explanation demands it! Sort of like coming to a part in a puzzle where a piece doesn’t fit, so you simply make something fit. Now, the bible does teach that the vast universe is held together [a key role of so called dark matter] by Christ’s absolute power. The other explanation for how the vast universe is able to function smoothly, without the needed matter to create the huge amount of gravity, is that God himself is holding all things together by his omnipotence. In essence, we need God for this puzzle to fit. I am not saying the idea of dark matter is totally false, but as far as we know today, there is no proof that it exists. We as believers should not take an anti scientific stance on everything, to the contrary, true science always backs up the Christian world view [in general] but we also need to be suspicious when science floats an idea that can be explained by the existence of a creator. If the idea is simply out there, with no proof at all [the multi-verse] then we certainly have the right to challenge whether the whole thing is a bunch of ‘dark [invisible] matter’!

 (965)1st CORINTHIANS 8- Once again Paul will deal with the issue of what’s clean or unclean, the Christians convictions. Corinth not only had low sexual standards, but also much idolatry. This led to a problem of whether or not believers should purchase the meat sold in the market that was used for idol worship. After the sacrifice was made, whatever good meat was left could be sold on the streets. Now, Paul says the believer knows there is only one true God, so with this knowledge you are not sinning because you know the meat really wasn’t used to worship other gods, because there are no other Gods! But he also says that every man does not have this knowledge. So just like he taught the Romans, he teaches the Corinthians that in all of your freedom, the highest standard is whether you are building others up or tearing them down. If you have a free conscience to eat the meat, then fine, it is no sin to you. But if this liberty is offending the minds of those who are weaker in the faith, then your freedom just became a stumbling block and worked against the main goal of building others up. So the real question isn’t ‘can I do this with a clean conscience’ but ‘does my practice offend or build others up’? Many years ago I had a friend who smoked cigars, he was a believer and simply saw nothing wrong with it. We had a mutual friend who found out about it and bought some cigars and gagged on them. His conscience was emboldened to ‘eat the meat’ and by doing it he sinned. Why was cigar smoking sin to the weaker brother? Because he really wasn’t doing it out of a pure heart with a clean motive. Though the cigar smoker felt he had the freedom to smoke [it wasn’t an every day thing] yet his freedom caused another to fall. So Paul consistently takes this position in his letters. Some day we will get to other verses like ‘the things the gentiles offer to idols are being offered to demons, so don’t partake with them at the same table’ this is dealing with a different thing, I’ll explain it at another time. Paul also says ‘knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up’. One of the side trails believers can easily fall into is thinking the Christian life is simply an exercise is learning things. That is knowledge for knowledge’s sake. While Paul was not advocating ignorance, he was dealing with carnal believers who walked in pride. He was showing them that those who think they stand should be careful lest they fall. Paul was calling them to a higher purpose than just learning scripture and applying it for personal satisfaction, he was calling them to live sacrificially, to take the wrong done to you [legally in court stuff]. To give up the freedom to ‘smoke cigars’ if you will, for the sake of others. Paul was teaching them that it was possible to be right and have the answers to back up your position, but if you are truly not dieing to self, you are simply getting ‘puffed up’.

  Corinthians

  1-2

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http://ccoutreach87-1.mozello.com/params/post/1756715/corinthians-3-4

https://ccoutreach87.jimdo.com/2019/04/02/corinthians-3-4/

http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/2019/04/corinthians-3-4.html

  5-6

http://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/2019/04/corinthians-5-6.html

https://ccoutreach87.com/2019/04/04/corinthians-5-6/

https://vk.com/wall533663718_359

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https://medium.com/@johnchiarello/corinthians-5-6-2660da8cd12?source=---------2------------------

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[jamesmeroney]

FIX THE SYSTEM

(Originally posted at Facebook/JimMeroney on 10/20/16)

Following are excerpts from a speech posted on Twitter’s @Pledgers2020 on August 12, 2014…

 Washington politics NEED to be cleaned up, and our book shows exactly how to—easily!  Here's just a taste of its common sense reasoning(s)...

 DON’T put faith in parties 100%, but principles, and ONLY support politicians so committed to them that neither party can dissuade them from what’s right for our country.

 It has been said that you have what you tolerate.  Democrat or Republican?  Either/or?  No!  BETTER RESULTS, or throw all the bums out!  Reform is NEEDED!

 IF you DON’T have knee jerk thinking, you’ll notice that our positions balance BOTH parties except if their position has NO good in it.  It’s called objectivity.  Take the good, reject the bad.

 Our books, Dumb as a Donkey Fat as an Elephant and Wit and Wisdom detail the good and bad of both parties, and offer solutions to choosing the lesser of two evils with NO third party.

 No other country is as widely or historically admired.  MAKE HER admirable in the future.  Our new generations CAN’T abandon this American value!

 We are the light on a thousand hills, and though NOT arrogantly, WE must rise to lead this world into a BETTER future.  We, Americans, have VISION!

 The GREATEST weakness in the American Dream is idolizing the love of money, with LITTLE social pressure to generously give back (i.e., only promoting selfishness).

 Democrats are GOOD on protecting the environment and animals, helping the poor, opposing racial and job discrimination, helping the elderly, decrying greed and being for equal pay.

 The GOP is good on ~economics, national defense, law and order, opposing at-will aborting, lower debt and advancing democracy.  Praise the GOOD!

 Democrat strategic advantage (vs. conservatives):  Ask them publicly if they regularly evangelize vs. just vote against abortion and gay marriage.

 GOP strategic advantage:  Close the borders, no amnesty, EASIER immigration and effective welfare to IMPROVE lives, skills and improve the economy.

 I’m NOT against Democrats or Republicans—just against their bad policies.  No one should support those.  Define good and bad by principles—not your feelings or money interests.

 82 percent of us are sick of what D.C. spews, with embarrassingly POOR results.  WHEN will WE do something about it?  How long will we be doormats or ostriches?

 We ALL know how BAD Washington politicians can be!  The majority wants them to change, but what will WE do about it?  They ONLY follow OUR clamorings.

 Bankruptcy, second-world standards, weakness, strife—if not civil war.  These are NOT ambitions any noble nation aspires to, or path we should go down.

 WE spend too much, empower laziness, offer no opportunity to millions, then complain if our taxes are used to keep them from dying.  Foolishness!

 The economy is ~stalled, the Middle East is ablaze, Russia's rising, our debt is crippling, China's beating our tails; QUIT ignoring FACTS, citizens!

 ACTION is needed, and ONLY action will help America! Our government is FAR too wastefully large; China's kicking our tails.  WHY do we take it so peacefully?

 You can and should respect honorable public servants, but with ideological intransigence, fighting and gridlock, there are less of them around today!

 DON’T let HIGHLY paid politicians (often rich lawyers) tell us that current state is the BEST we can do.  We're the greatest nation in the history of THIS planet.

 Clever politicians do JUST enough to make you FEEL they’re working, then agitate you enough to make you think you need them.  Great snake oil trick—if you’re DUMB!

 No matter WHAT Presidential candidates say to you, soon 99% of them REVERT to party line once in office!  WE have to change party lines where they are NOT good.

 Politicians who only address issues at the "right time" (i.e., just before elections) should be paid accordingly—PART-TIME!

 When we the people vote in politicians who are more concerned with our country than their personal gain, America will personally gain.  Until then, God help us!

 We are obsessed with personalities in politics, though ALL of them just spew the same policies of their idol—their party.  How dumb can we citizens be?

 We're trying to be clever with a first African-American and woman President.  Try common ground principles based on morality and common sense.  That WORKS!

 So long as your attitude is that politics is the professionals' department, life will cost you more, and your freedom to make decisions will be less, and America will NOT be number one again.

 ONLY a do-do fully supports every policy their political party espouses, usually because they protect their money, or help them get more money from others.

 'We the people' need representatives to speak TRUTH and morality to D.C. politicians, no matter the cost or backlash—to say ‘bring it on, party loyalists!

 It’s time to view American politics as a good thing that we can respect and be proud of, and judge it by its ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Lead the world that area too, USA.

 It’s time to kick tail and clean house in D.C.  IF you’re qualified and a MORAL American, join the "Pledge class" in 20/20 to broker power between parties’ extremes!

 Political common ground begins when we admit the TRUTH—that NEITHER party is perfect, and that neither will get all that they want forever.  Duh 101.

 Solutions are with common sense principles you and I live by every day.  They are NOT with people with famous names, or who are rich or telegenic, but with good policies!

 Un-naive reconciliation, communication, honesty and rightful intentions can solve MOST of our problems with a little effort exerted by us ALL; Just do it.

 Go to dinner with someone from the opposite party tonight.  See that they're human, and MOST of them want the best for our country.

 Get rid of the bad, and keep the good in both parties, or third parties will be inevitable.  America should LEAD the world economically, politically and militarily—but ~doesn’t.

 The majority is in the middle, but we're not given centrist options, as every issue is addressed by polar extremists for publicity and lobbyist money.

 Ninety+ percent of Americans constitute citizens and consumers.  We HAVE numbers to change a system favoring and pampering SPOILED elitists!  Just do it!

 DOING the right thing is ALWAYS more important than SAYING the right things.  DO NOT accept ONLY good words, "WE the people” political consumers!

 Choose to refuse to be manipulated by either party’s red meat issues that cause you to STOP thinking of better alternatives to their pabulum—offered daily.

 QUIT re-hiring failed politicians.  Hire new blood with BETTER ideas, who aren't worshipping parties or political career.  That's common sense!

 Speeches WON'T cut the mustard.  Talk is cheap.  ONLY actions achieve.

 FORGET your party and vote ONLY for good policies.  INSIST that your candidates defy party bosses when their policies are bad.  Do something, America.

 IF you’re content that our debt could crater our country, China OWNS us, and the dollar WILL keep losing value as we print funny money—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content that even the E.U. is moving away from us toward independence, due to our WEAK foreign policy—KEEP the system/status quo.

 IF you’re content that our economy has STUNK since 2008, unemployment is still HIGH, and MANY have stopped looking for work—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content that executives fare VERY WELL, as workers they get rich off barely get by, and are told to accept third world wages—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content with REGULAR gridlock, demonizing, extremism, and well-paid politicians who do VERY little, and primarily tow party line—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content with politicians and government LYING to you, spinning, wasting your money, buying votes with your tax dollars, and getting rich off evil—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content with just pursuing your own career and family happiness, as America drops to NOT #1 or its historic leadership status—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content with our country having struggling poor in the richest nation on earth, and some people abusing the system and NOT working—KEEP the system.

 IF you’re content that Social Security WILL run out, and our YOUTH will be stuck footing the bill, and the rich getting richer or complaining taxes are too high—KEEP the system.

 But IF you’re DIS-content with our political system, vote for ‘Pledged Politicians’ in 20/20, and DO something to improve our nation, ASAP.

 I believe almost every issue can EASILY be resolved if there is the will, money, and sincere determination to use common sense to find common ground.

 Just as God led me to attack top problems in His Church, I may be led to do same concerning America’s top problems.  Parties are NOT the answer!

 Americans want quick, easy answers, as we are busy, and disinterested in disrespected politics.  Our book provides just that—Easy, fast SOLVING of problems

 You name me traits the citizenry wants from D.C., and it’s already in our book.  My other 12 books verify that I tell truth and don’t lie!

  “We the people” can create a better future and society with LITTLE extra effort on our part, if we wise up, unite, and, most importantly—ACT!

 The MAJORITY in the U.S. are NOT extremists, right or left.  That IS a winning formula for 20/20—a year with symbolic significance.  Do we see clearly?

 For MORE common sense, common ground SOLUTIONS, see our books, Dumb as a Donkey, Fat as an Elephant, Wit and Wisdom and AmericanAnswers.org!