#and got all evangelical about it

[artist-issues]

Yesterday my German coworker yelled at me because she firmly believes no world religion can know anything, for sure, about God, so there’s no way to call anyone “right” or “wrong.”

And it took all my strength not to say, “so you’re saying I’m wrong”

because truth in love, truth in love

But seriously. What actually is the deal with the discourse that goes: “you can’t know anything for sure about God.”

“Wait, yes you can, like I know you well enough to know for sure that you’re from ____ Place—“

“—no no, no, that’s different. This is about God.”

“How’s it different?”

“You can’t say someone’s wrong about God.”

“…Well, can I say anything that’s wrong about you? Like, if I say, ‘_____ Person likes to kick puppies,’ can’t you say I’m wrong about you?”

“Yes but I’m not God.”

“Right, but you’re a real person who exists, so there are some things that I can know for sure about you—“

“THAT’S DIFFERENT”

No it’s not! It’s not ‘different.’ Quit acting like it’s different. Christians don’t believe in a set of ideals or the properties of rocks or some mystical vibe that nobody can be right or wrong about. We believe in a living and existing deity with an unchanging, eternally constant personality, and will, and DESIGN, outside of ourselves. So we can be wrong about Him. You can be wrong about Him. Everyone can be wrong—OR RIGHT—about Him, because He actually exists.

He’s not some imaginary friend who’s open to anybody’s interpretation. You get to claim an independent identity, character traits, and a personal history, but the God of the universe doesn’t? What is happening?

I’ll tell you what’s happening. You’re fine with me believing in an imaginary figment that’s only real to me, but as soon as He starts having an effect on the outer world, as if He actually exists and you have to start making some decisions based on that fact, THEN you’re not fine.

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

So something I really like is how Thich Nhat Hanh defines love in Teachings On Love (I mean, it’s Buddhism, but that comes in a lot of varieties, many of which center concepts differently than this one, etc).

Any way. Pretty much the first thing he does in the book is explain The Four Immeasurable Minds: love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. None of those are defined exactly the way i’d have thought, from a culturally Christian perspective. And in more than one of them he stresses the importance of understanding the beloved. In fact, to the point that understanding is a PREREQUISITE to being able to love someone at all well. And seeking that understanding as a skill that can be cultivated.

What I’m getting at is: the more Zhuo Yichen understood Zhao Yuanzhou, the more he loved him. Even more so, the more Li Lun understood Zhao Yuanzhou, the better he was able to love him. Zhao Yuanzhou, although he came at his new friends with a lot of benevolence, hurt them by assuming about them instead of trying to understand. And that’s really real. (Wen Xiao was miles ahead of everyone with this skill).

I’ve tended to think, ok if I love someone I’ll want to understand them. But it’s really turning out to be that understanding is necessary for love that feels like love to the other person to be possible in the first place.

[timeisacephalopod]

The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

[captainjonnitkessler]

Atheists can talk about their atheism in the blandest, most matter-of-fact way possible and will still get accused of being “angry” and “bitter” and “pushy”. I just saw a post where a pushy Christian tried to preach to a room of non-Christians and verbally got their ass handed to them (and then everybody clapped, I’m sure), and one comment said they liked it because “the snooty atheist AND the pushy Christian both got their comeuppance!” The only thing the atheist said was “I don’t believe in God”, after everybody else had listed all the gods THEY believed in. There was a post on AITA where an atheist got badgered about their beliefs - at work, and after their coworkers had a twenty-minute discussion on THEIR beliefs - and after several minutes of trying to deflect the conversation, admitted that they don’t believe in an afterlife. They got voted the asshole because someone in the room was grieving and they “should have been more tactful” - even though they tried multiple times to deflect out of tact and were essentially harassed for it. I once reblogged a post that said calling victims of Christian abuse “cultural Christians” was cruel and someone I thought was a friend publicly announced that I was a bigoted asshole who was just angry because I knew that what they were saying was true.

And once again I cannot stress enough that that’s exactly what the fundamentalist party line is on atheism. Atheists are angry because deep down they know that fundamentalists are right and just don’t want to admit it. Atheists are pushy because they’re miserable and they want everyone else to be just as miserable. Atheists are bitter because they know they can never truly be happy. Atheists are joyless because you can’t know joy without God. There’s a whole fundamentalist movie genre about those snooty, elitist, angry atheists getting taken down a peg by good faithful Christians and some of those plots are identical to posts on this website.

Atheists are allowed to be angry. But I know so many who walk on absolute eggshells around religious people and still get these accusations thrown in their face the second they try talking about any atheist issue. And if your “progressive” space is using the exact same language about atheists as your average evangelical then maybe that’s a good reason to be angry actually.

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

While I'm talking about single guys in my area, there's one at brunch group who 5 years ago I would have fallen madly in love with and now I need to study him like a bug

[arrowpunk]

Sometimes I think about how I used to know this like fairly popular artist who made a decent living off commissions who like, very purposefully put in her terms of service that she wouldn't draw ships. Which is fair, artists can do what they want- but I was friends with her at the time and so I knew the entire reason she had that in her terms of service was because she didn't want to draw any queer ships.

And the thing that gets me about it is that the majority of her fan base was/is queer. And so fairly frequently people would commission her to draw like 2 different bust portraits of the different halves of their gay ship- which! Good for them! But she like knew it was for ~gay shipping~ reasons and she wouldn't turn it down but she would come into the group chat and complain about how uncomfortable it made her. And how she hated how when she sold charms the most popular were always the popular fandom gay ship. Like she made/makes her entire living off of queer people. And like. Hates us. Behind the scenes where her fan base cannot see.

She would sometimes show the group chat asks she got asking if she was homophobic because it isn't actually that difficult to figure out if you pay attention. Because in spite of it all she did draw a lot of het ship art. And she would fret and worry that people would Find Out that she's. Really homophobic. And then she'd lose her entire source of income. (She would of course just delete the asks and never answer them)

And she always had such a victim complex about it too. Like The Queers were conspiring to get around her terms of service to make her, a Good Christian Woman draw their dirty little gay ships.

Like not a single thought spared for how she was profiting off of a marginalized group of people by publicly making sure she seemed totally fine with queer stuff. (In her charm sets she did always include the popular fandom gay ships, in spite of how much she complained about how she hated that people bought the charms for gay reasons) While behind closed doors she would mock and deride queer people and participate in discussions about how awful it is that queer stuff is so Normalized these days, and whatever happened to the sanctity of marriage and all that conservative evangelical bullshit.

And like I haven't interacted with her in many years, for uh. Obvious reasons. And it doesn't happen often but Every Now And Then some of her art will show up on my dash. Usually reblogged by someone openly and proudly queer, and I will just be sitting there like. Damn. You have no idea how much she hates everything about you. This sucks.

[potatoesandsunshine]

"elsie's a bad cleric she keeps seeking out other gods and never even mentions her own—" EVERY kill is dedicated to him. and she kills a LOT of people.

[waspgrave]

My 78 yr old grandma having to deal with other Olds try to talk to her about ‘the democrats and the liberal agenda’ is so tragic. She doesn’t deserve that 🙁Granny’s going to snap and bludgeon someone to death with their own cane

[im2tired4usernames]

Ugh I was excited for today until I found out I'd have to spend it with people that actively make me hate being alive hate the future and drain me off all energy physically mentally spiritually like a vampire I can't stand to be around her she is the definition of stupidity and even then that's generous as fuck this bitch has filled her brain with so much garbage I watch her brain cells die at alarming rates every single time she uses her vocal cords her giggles make me want to jam a sewing needle into my ear repeatedly so I can never have to hear it again its a friendly reminder that my parents decisions this time my dad's constantly makes me want to die

[goatsandgangsters]

the good news is that I finished a book and it got me out of my reading slump where I would start things, not finish, switch to something else, not finish

the bad news is that "yes daddy" by jonathan parks-ramage is one of the worst written books I've read in a whiiiile. bland expositiony prose, flat characters, a bunch of weird plot detours. Written like a 200-page Wikipedia summary instead of an actual book

the worst news is that it has such intensely favorable gushing reviews on goodreads, and the people who hated it mostly hated it for a different reason, and so I'm left alone like oKAY BUT THE PROSE WAS SHIT, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS

[lith-myathar]

.

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

quote by paul, from nona the ninth chapter 28:

"But there are more worlds than this. Come with us. We are the love that is perfected by death— but even death will be no more; death can also die."

selections of saint paul's first letter to the corinthians (1 cor 15:54-55):

"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

[nutzo0001]

Anon 2000s nostalgia

In the early 2000's I finished high school and went to college. I was so stressed out, and in many ways very stupid, and didn't appreciate it at the time. But god do I wish we could go back. Pop culture seemed so dumb, but today it's even dumber. The post 9/11 world seemed so dire, but today things feel even worse. The Patriot act was the height of tyranny! But it was just a stepping stone to even more authoritarianism. --- You know one thing I really miss? When most people still understood how important freedom of speech was! I think it was the height of free speech in my lifetime:

The Evangelical Christian Conservatives had lost the cultural power to enforce their prudishness and were mocked by comedians.

The 80's/90's PC movements from the leftist academics had not gained any traction, and were mocked by comedians.

People who got themselves all worked up and offended by things were rightfully mocked as the weak morons the are.

It was "anything goes" when it comes to comedy, horror, political discourse. And everyone recognized it as a good thing.

Xbox live voice chat.

But then at some point it seems like the progressives realized that the Christians Conservatives didn't have the power to censor anyone anymore, and that was the signal that the left no longer had to pretend to care about free speech. Thus began an ever growing snowball of political correctness which continues to this day and busted open the doors for all sorts of impending speech controls in the name of bullshit like "misinformation", "disinformation" and the new term they made up as an excuse to censor verifiably true things: "malinformation".

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Dude you nailed it. You absolutely nailed how I feel about the 2000s. I also finished high school and also college in this decade. Our mid gen Y generation was raised on this idea that there were these conservative blockheads running the culture. We were raised to be so sensitive to it. At some point the progressives realised they completely won the culture war long ago, and over the next decade and a half went rampant with their authoritarianism. So while I miss the aesthetics of the 2000s, the risk taking innovative tech that wasn't too invasive in life, my youth at the time. The thing that sticks out the most is both sides of the political divide could respect each other's free speech. It went beyond that too, don't we miss when everything didn't have to be political?

[solitarelee]

Liberals will deadass be like "ah yes the three great evils: the British Empire, America, and Jews" and then wonder why Jews don't feel safe lol

[batemanofficial]

i saw a tiktok today of somebody's rewritten version of the countdown song and im near inconsolable about it :( it's also stuck in my head so ive been humming end-times-y hymns all day

[sanstropfremir]

It cracks me up every time someone sends you an extended ask about a groups you don't care about and how you reply to them🤣 idk I guess I just appreciate how honest that is. I feel like often times ppl feel the need to justify why they don't like sth, but I think a "not my cup of tea, doesn't do it for me" is just as valid

alsakdfkasdfjk it's also funny bc i HAVE replies where i do explain why i don't like specific groups! there def is a mindset now where you have to be 'justified' in having the opinions that you do, and i agree with you that 'not my cup of tea' is just as valid as any other reason to dislike or be not interested in something.