#but actually it's divinity original sin 2 today

[a-driftamongopenstars]

true gaming experience is hearing "careful! a trap!" followed immediately by screams of someone stepping exactly on that trap and dying

[thatguywhodoesstuff]

Popping in to share some Levi brainrot I've been mulling over for a bit.

I noticed your idea of Levi making the Vees resentful, but I personally think the opposite is somewhat more likely, allow me to explain. Sure, Levi still has most of the market, but so do the other Sins, and they (or at least most of them) don't really have a concrete rival for their business, again, mostly *cough* Ozzie is shit at his job *cough*. Sorry...I've got a soar throat. Anyway, The fact the Vees are able to be an opposing monolith at all is enough to seriously get under Levi's slimy scales.

Speaking of his appearance, I have a rather ironic observation regarding Levi, given his nature, he's the most likely to be resentful of the other Sins' successes, he would also sometimes scheme against them. This made me think of the Divine Comedy and the treachery circle being a frozen lake. So I thought, what if Envy's ocean is distinguished by having a lot of ice in it?

Though everyone's heard his voice somewhere, Levi is generally more comfortable expressing himself through written means, this is partly due to it being easier to lie through writing, and partly because when people read a witty insult, it's easy for them to makeup the proper delivery for it in their heads.

Also relating to his work, Levi is a publishing titan and has an easy pattern for approval. 1- When someone submits a work, look for places you could insert discussion bait. 2- Tell them to add it in or you're not publishing their thing. 3- If they agree, go all out on promotion for like 3 weeks before release, if they don't follow their activities in the industry and crush them with a scathing review if they publish elsewhre.

Levi has 1-3 lairs of teeth, depending on what for he's in.

And that's it for Levi time, at least for now.

Really sorry for the late response, I’ve been pretty busy today and then I lost the original draft to my reply. I really enjoyed these ideas, so I’m going to address each point:

You raise a good point about Levi being the jealous one. Honestly, that opens the door for a really fun dynamic. While the other Sins don’t think the Vees, or any Overlord for that matter, are anything to worry about, and you’ve got Leviathan whose just seething in his custom built underwater mansion and ruminate over how a trio of dead people have managed to build up their own mini empire over a period of decades when it took him, a proper demon, centuries to get his publication business the way he likes it. Not to mention how they’ve got a hold over a good chunk of the Pride ring, while his influence is rooted in Envy (The fact that he has a pretty strong presence in the other five rings isn’t good enough). The other Sins have probably gotten on Levi’s case for obsessing over (what they see as) relatively minor stuff like this in the past, so he’s begrudgingly decided to settle on just trying to slander the Vees and their brand.

The Vees for their part see the fact that they caught the ire of a Sin as a mixed bag. On the one hand, one of Hell’s biggest names sees them as a big enough deal to try and slander them. On the other, they recognize they are in a precarious position given the possibility of Levi actually taking a more active approach to dealing with them. Of course, this doesn’t stop them from taking time to subtly aggravate him. Then of course, there is the possibility of the Vees actually being mutually jealous of Levi, if only for the fact they covet the power and status being one of the 7 Deadly Sins grants.

The idea that Envy is a massive ocean populated by frozen islands is really interesting, especially given how much it differs from all of the other locales shown in both shows, barring Andrealphus’ mansion.

Levi is definitely that relative that makes passive aggressive comments or backhanded compliments when you succeed and tells everyone when you’ve failed, and given his field of work, I do mean everyone.

You cannot convince me that Levi is not petty and selfish enough that he started complaining the second Lucifer and Lilith announced they were having a child, strictly on the grounds that it would take the public’s attention away from him.

Leviathan preferring nonverbal means of communicating is a neat idea, especially given how nicely it ties with him potentially being the “creepy one”. I mean, being in the presence of a massive sea serpent is bad, but being in the presence of one that just silently stares at you and covets what you possess is even worse. Then of course is the rare instance that he does address someone verbally, because that shows, without a shadow of a doubt, you have Leviathan’s full, undivided attention.

That abusive way of managing fits really well, but I feel he’d take it even further and pit those under him against one another, fostering a toxic work environment where all of his employees are at each other’s throats and jealously doing anything to make sure their work gets approved for publication.

I think Levi having multiple rows of teeth is really fitting given you suggested he looks like an eel, as real eels have a second set of retractable jaws and (it could just be me) how there have been some subtle hints that Envy has a subtle duality motif. But I feel that it would be neat if the concept was pushed even further and each row of teeth is actually an individual, nested mouth Levi could talk out of, both for added demonic appeal and the fact it would literally allow him to lie through his teeth.

Now, with all of that said here are some ideas I had after reading them:

I will die on the hill that Leviathan was once the smallest member of the Sins and used to be envious of the others for their greater statutes. Fast forward to the present, Levi has done a complete 180, because unlike the others, he can’t make himself smaller, only bigger than he already is. This in turn makes him envious of the more “normal” sized demons, as he’s now stuck as a big fish in a world that doesn’t always accommodate him.

While reading your Leviathan ideas, I actually had a Golden Goose idea. I imagine Mammon revealing he found love with Stella completely floored the other Sins (especially Asmodeus), as he had been married to his job for millennia. After Mam leaves the meeting the others talk between themselves about this development, which leads to Levi going on a tirade about how Mammon found love before he did (which he’s done every time one of them has taken a lover), which leads to this:

Leviathan: “What the fuck!? Mammon!? Fucking Mammon!? What does that green sack of shit have that I don’t!?” Satan: (Not even bothering to look up from his phone) “A girlfriend.” Leviathan:

Thanks for the ask, I hope you enjoy my ramblings.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Kristine Harley

Published: Sep 5, 2022

There’s a saying: “Don’t think of a pink elephant.” In other words, what one resists can dominate and even control one’s mind, making the action a person wishes not to do the action that person ultimately does. Religious believers often use this accusation against atheists. We allegedly “resist” or “deny” a belief in God, therefore “proving” His existence or at least His importance to us, because believers see atheists as spitting in the wind like rebellious adolescents.

Of course, we know atheism is akin to democracy in that it rejects any supreme being or cosmic authority. Atheists observe a decentralized universe in which physical, chemical, and biological processes interact to evolve, not impose, reality. Democracy did not elect a new king, and likewise the god-concept is not a “pink elephant” to atheists. But unfortunately today, something else threatens to be.

“Racism” is the new “pink elephant,” with woke apologists invoking “whiteness” and “white supremacy” in an absurd downward spiral of resentment and retribution that will benefit no one (certainly not people of color). It has the ironic effect of feeding a white narcissism that apologizes for “white privilege” in the abstract, while punching down on working-class whites and regarding people of color as children, without agency, needing intervention and rescue.

Many atheists have adopted this dualistic, simplistic self-righteousness that mimics the good/evil, virgin/whore scriptures of religion! This has misled otherwise intelligent people into paradoxically adopting quasi-religious concepts: utopianism (or what I call the Racial Rapture), a past Golden Age (especially before the year 1619), Original Sin, retribution to be visited upon the sons and daughters of the guilty, and a perpetual payment of indulgences and/or personal flagellation without any forgiveness, human or divine. James Lindsey has already made these points.

However, I see a more subtle problem here: wokeness, especially as it combats “racism,” is not only a secular religion, it is a secular religion without a god. There is only the Devil: white oppressors. Cis-gendered white men, suburban white Karens, white toddlers in school being told they oppress students of color, etc. There is only perpetual complaint, perpetual grievance, and a pound-of-flesh philosophy that no longer believes in equality, let alone strives for it. Rather, to quote Ibram X. Kendi in How to Be an Anti-Racist, “Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”

In other words, many atheists, seeking to fill a void that apparently did not disappear with their former belief in god(s) and religion, unfortunately embraced a radical 12-Step program of “anti-racism” without seeing the connections to the same religious dualism that characterizes the Twelve Steps for alcoholics.

(It’s interesting that Kendi describes the prioritizing of elderly people for the Covid-19 vaccine as a justification for racial discrimination, without also mentioning 1) being elderly is a biological realty, not a social construct or identity, 2) such a program would have been applied to all ethnicities, and 3) it was actually suggested that elderly people not get the vaccine, since they were largely “white” and not productive. Of course now we have the CDC’s recommendation that vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens be treated equally, showing why different treatment of demographics in the name of “social justice” becomes maladaptive over time.)

The Pound-of-Flesh Approach

This negative obsession with a manufactured Satan also characterized the inflammatory sermons of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who denounced evil everywhere and focused on sin and biblical “inerrancy.” (Unfortunately, I had to listen to Falwell quite a bit while growing up.)

In contrast to other religious leaders, whose supernatural beliefs I also rejected but who at least focused on charity, forgiveness, repentance and growth, Falwell spread fear, accusation and paranoia even amongst his own flock and this same internal accusation, rather than a group effort toward positive change, has divided the atheist movement.

Internal accusation has spread throughout society. There is the Amanda Gorman affair, in which activists expressed hot outrage that a white Dutch woman would translate Gorman’s poems into, well, Dutch. A translator in Spain also had to step down as Gorman’s translator for having the wrong identity. (Apparently, only black people can translate black people’s poetry into European languages.)

The widely-publicized Minneapolis Teachers’ Union contract stipulates that if an “underrepresented” teacher of color is next in line to be laid off, that teacher should be retained and instead the next white teacher higher on the seniority list would be laid off instead.

Of course, this is completely illegal, a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I have a question:

What benchmarks, if any, have been set for justice to be “restored” for these teachers from underrepresented groups, so that layoff decisions can revert to a seniority-only system that treats everyone equally under the U.S. Constitution? (In other words, how will the union know when it has succeeded?)

I doubt there are any metrics or even goals, because as with the Gorman debacle this just is more knee-jerk, irrational thinking justified by invoking “past harms” and real disparities. Yet even critics of the teachers’ contract miss a key point: the purpose is not really to achieve equality of outcome, undesirable as that is. The purpose of this stipulation, along with other gestures toward “equity,” is to satisfy an emotional, momentary need to “stick it to the man” (or in this case, the senior white colleague.) Setting workers against each other satisfies Kendi’s exhortation that we refrain from “being neutral” and turn away from equality as an ideal, instead resorting to petty squabbles over scraps in the name of making some supposedly “privileged” workers “uncomfortable.”

Here is my prediction for the future of this dubious equity initiative: the Minneapolis teachers’ union contract will unintentionally create yet another racial disparity, with newly-laid off white teachers departing for private school positions or leaving the profession entirely, and young teachers of color laboring valiantly in an increasingly anachronistic public education system while parents pull out their children and find alternatives, like magnet schools or learning pods. In ten years, as with automobile line workers and other blue collars laborers in the 1980s, and more recently service industry workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, teaching will remain a high-stress, low-paid, and increasingly outsourced job largely dominated by people of color (as auto workers were and service jobs now are), while the issues of teacher burnout, low pay, social passing, a national teacher shortage, out-of-touch administrators and disruptive, large classrooms remain unaddressed.

“Equity,” like religion, offers static solutions to dynamic problems. This is, essentially, a new form of mysticism, even creationism. Woke atheists should reconsider their embrace of a utopian future that requires a belief in a reconstituted Fall of Man (and in a new-fangled human exceptionalism, or soul-concept, in the form of gender identity extremism which estranges people from the natural, biological, sexual world of limits and consequences, which we fought to teach in science class).

CRT Proponentsists

Meanwhile, in the material world, a siege-mentality has taken over that treats resources like pie: one person must sacrifice for another person to get a fair share. Such a zero-sum game is hardly necessary (and we were assured it was a lie) but the real agenda here is a Marxist one. Equality is outdated, flawed; there must be a transfer of power from the “white supremacists” to the “oppressed” members, this time based on race, not class and owners/laborers.

This appeals to white progressives because it reinforces their controlling tendencies to solve everything and rescue everyone (paradoxically giving them a sense of power over other people), and it appeals to young, radicalized teachers who believe their success only comes from wrestling “privilege” out of the hands of someone else, even if that privilege is minute or imaginary. It is the struggle that is the goal, because all proponents are externalizing their behaviors.

If Black Lives Matter, anti-racism, and the call for “equity” have any kernels of truth they’re wrapped in thick layers of nonsense. Whatever facts they possess are derailed in an incoherent cry to 1) dismantle “systems of oppression” and 2) sacrifice certain individuals on a sinking ship. The second statement negates the first, and the first is a red herring. This adds up to a circular argument in which a “system that was never set up for black people” depends on white people to “address” the problem which breeds only patronization and dependency, a shallow and immature philosophy in the name of resistance.

(This is akin to the breathtakingly inane fallacy that anyone can confront their “inherent biases” in an unbiased way, or that teachers, being adults, should be teaching “equity” (Critical Race Theory) to children, as if children were more likely to be racist than adults.)

The New Soviet Bread Line

Suppose instead the Minneapolis Teachers’ Union wrote the contract so that instead of laying off the white teacher with the next least seniority, the teacher with the highest seniority – vested, guaranteed a pension, and likely close to retirement or able to find another job – would be asked, for the good of the membership, to step down, thus shifting all other teachers up in seniority. This would have achieved a new seniority balance voluntarily, without mentioning race, and without leaving the union vulnerable to lawsuits while still retaining younger teachers of color. But instead, a myopic rush to make the contract All About Race – even claiming it did not go far enough – resulted in at least one court challenge while still protecting those teachers at the top (who might have voted for a race-based contract knowing full well it would never affect them). Equity, indeed!

Mentally this is like being Soviets in a bread line, waiting to wrest a crumb from the Cassocks. A crumb taken from someone else is more desirable than a goal striven for by one’s own efforts, since that would only affirm capitalism and the meritocracy. And it is this—the tit-for-tat hacking away at “whiteness” rather than addressing the real issues (such as teacher burnout, which also disproportionately affects teachers of color), which is the real goal.

Other examples abound. A church in Illinois announced it was giving up the music of “white composers” for Lent. Did the marquee say, “We are celebrating the music of black and brown composers”? No—the church in Illinois announced it was “fasting from whiteness,” therefore ensuring everyone would be talking and thinking about whiteness. Real good hypocritical job there, First United Church of Oak Park.

(I certainly hope the pastor did not assume Aram Khachaturian or Clara Schumann were “white men,” and I wonder if Tchaikovsky, who was gay, merited an exception.)

By contrast, my childhood church’s choir, led by a black director, performed his grandmother’s Spiritual hymns, which were recorded and sold on cassette tape (this was the 1970s) to pay for the new church organ. Our director could play almost any instrument but he relished that organ, and would perform classics by memory, including the famous Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor.” The emphasis was on us learning the story of his grandmother’s journey to freedom, not divisive concepts about our “whiteness.”

The New Prohibition

So how did atheists go from presenting a united front on the fight against Intelligent Design to a splintered community arguing about racism, misogyny, identities and “white tears”? Why would those who promote science fall into racial essentialism and side with #ShutDownSTEM?

I don’t have a simple answer. But I would like my fellow “woke” atheists to consider one more fact:

In the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries a lawyer from Illinois ran for President three times as a Democrat, representing the left-wing Populist Party. His second Presidential campaign specifically opposed American imperialism after the Spanish-American War. A gifted orator, he railed against the gold standard and eastern banking interests and won two elections to the House of Representatives. He became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson but resigned to protest U.S. threats against Germany after the sinking of the Lusitania. He supported U.S. joining the League of Nations, the minimum wage and the eight-hour workday, the right of unions to strike, and women’s suffrage. He called for agricultural subsidies, a living wage, full public financing of political campaigns and government inspection of food, sanitation, and better housing conditions.

Sounds like a great guy, doesn’t he? And I’m sure he was if you knew him.

His name was William Jennings Bryan, and he was an ardent Prohibitionist. Of course, atheists mainly know him as the prosecutor in the case of The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, arguing against the teaching of evolution opposite Clarence Darrow, who defended John T. Scopes. Bryan took this stance against evolution because he feared it would lead to a tyranny of the strong against the weak and the destruction of his gentle, justice-oriented Christianity.

Bryan, an otherwise reasonable guy, found his devil and stood on the wrong side of history. Atheists should not.

[blood--king]

Data Post!

◢Nix's Origin: pt.1 — pt.2 — pt.3

Today we are going to introduce another Primordial God. He is Plague, de God of every plague and illness, but also God of every cure and potion. He created and designed every plant and is the patriarch of every science and medicine. Plague is the God of knowledge, nature, poison, you get it.

He was Armony's best friend among the other Gods, and due to his designer traits, he helped the other Gods with their own creations. He assisted his husband, the Primordial God of War, to create the animals, though Plague gave his best effort while helping with the insects. He helped Armony with one of her revolutionary ideas: The Instant-Evolution, and as well helped the God of the Sins to create the project "Survival".

Plague was loved by a large group of humans, he brought them the seed of science, a seed they should turn into a great tree of knowledge. Almost no group of humans could achieve this, except for a small tribe, which he turned into his loyal religious group: The Technorian.

He was often represented with a triangle with an eye inside, or an eye in the palm of a hand, a crown of thorns, a hand pointing at the sky, a raven, etc. This is because, unlike his comrades, he didn't descend with his regular form, instead he would do it in his Divine Spaceships, obviously created by himself, thus those odd representations, because those were actual spaceships.

Plague was always a shy god but he was a kind one as well, he loved to see how humans could learn and grow, how other creatures respected the nature he created, and how those mortals that even in possession of great knowledge and wealth, wouldn't be stupid enough to say they were smarter than Him.

[marsdemo]

Hi! I'm looking to explore more punk artists who write about disability (of any kind really) and/or chronic illness, would you happen to have any recommendations for that? Thanks!

hi! i didn't have a concrete list, really, so i did a bit of digging and here's a couple albums & blurbs! it's not actually very punk-centric (more experimental than anything) my apologies. i haven't listened to all of these fully, but the stuff that i've heard has been lovely!

grim bitch/sick shit — collander: experimental/electronic bedroom pop. "a peek into a few weeks of low-spoons electronic production, demo tracks demo bodies." alli yates, the singer behind collander, is also "member of Sins Invalid, a performance collective for artists with disabilities, and is a prominent disability rights activist within Oakland’s underground scene" (bandcamp daily)

187bpm_demo — wheelchair sports camp: experimental funk/hip-hop. "We would like to offer this song of rage, anger, and grief to the ongoing fight for liberation. For those on the frontlines of today's uprising and for the generations of movements before that paved the way, taught us how, and who gave their all for us to be here." i found them through kr/p-hop nation's network, whose website is sadly defunct but the founder's twitter (leroy f moore jr) is still up!

sicko — beast nest: experimental/electronic noise. "And when I personally think about liberation, I think about what it means to get to a place where you are able to be present and really live with that presence. I think about what oppression functions as, what abolition is about, what disability justice is about" (bandcamp daily). sharmi basu (of beast nest!) is one of the people behind ratskin records, a label based in oakland, ca dedicated to "decolonial experimental music centered in the Bay Area and beyond". i've heard some of beast nest's stuff before and it is stellar, definitely recommend if ur interested in brown noise.

the runner — boy harsher: coldwave/drone. "Last year, in the midst of the obvious chaos, but additionally with Matthews’ MS diagnosis, Muller started working on moody, cinematic sketches. It was uncertain what these pieces would become other than catharsis — the duo were unable to tour and making “club music” did not feel right." this one i had saved from a rec post i'd seen somewhere on here, but i hadn't had a chance to listen till now. this is the soundtrack to their short horror film of the same name!

split 12 — chronic anxiety / dialer: post-punk noise/harsh electronic punk. "the album is six slices of pure post punk-noise rock wrapped in a silk swaddle of self-assertion and anxiety." this one's actually a vinyl split between 2 bands but i figured it would be a fun add! this one's a joint release between Bunny Cat Records (Great Weights, Love Club, Impressionist) and SRA Records (FOD, Dead Milkmen, HIRS, Psychic Teens) and their noise is so so cool.

https://synthfreq.bandcamp.com/album/vol-1

the enigma of heaven and other daily delusions — heaven pierce her: electronic/experimental breakcore. "An exploration of christianity, mundane divinity and paranoid schizophrenia in the information age." i'm originally familiar with hakita's work via ultrakill, but this album actually means so much to me for a lot of different reasons. shan't get into it here, hope you enjoy it.

the flesh of the world — uboa: dark ambient/harsh noise. "These four songs were done under quarantine and are about bodies, body dysmorphia and the schizophrenic dissolution of the boundary between self and other" ; i love uboa's work and this album is genuinely fantastic.

i'm not 100% sure if these completely qualify, but the following punk bands are extremely vocal about their support for marginalized groups (and discuss mental illness / disability here and there in their work): hirs collective, blkvapor, the muslims, soul glo, pulses., pinkshift, S.B.S.M., and G.L.O.S.S. ^_^ if anybody else has any recommendations, please feel free to add on! this list is by no means exhaustive, it's literally what i found after a couple weeks of sitting on this ask. i would love love love any recs; they would be much appreciated.

all albums linked are through bandcamp! obligatory mention that bandcamp staff are currently unionizing: check out bandcamp united's linktree for a ton of resources to support them, including email templates to the co-founder expressing your support for the union. on bandcamp fridays, the first friday of every month, all proceeds from sales will go directly to artists & bandcamp will not take any fees. <3

[writernopal]

Hi Nopal! And happy WBW to you☺️

You've been probably asked this before, but I'd like to know: why lizard folk?

Could you elaborate on how you created them? Did you decide which features they share with humans and which they don't? Or was it more of discovery? Were there any concrete inspirations?

Any other interesting behind-the-scenes facts about them?

Happy late WBW, Sam! It's been a super busy couple of days, so I'm sorry I couldn't answer this on time! Also this is going to be a long one, sorry for that too!

Why Lizardfolk?

Why indeed?! When I started developing the world of AASOAF I took a lot of inspiration from Skyrim, Divinity Original Sin II, and D&D-style TTRPG worlds because I knew I wanted a big world where I could do whatever I wanted. However, when I was picking the different races/species I wanted to include, they originally didn't make the cut. It wasn't until I started writing that I added them in because I thought, why not? Why shouldn't I have Lizardfolk? So in they went! I should say I never counted on getting obsessed with them. That was a complete accident!

Could you elaborate on how you created them? Did you decide which features they share with humans and which they don't? Or was it more of discovery? Were there any concrete inspirations?

The short answer, I created my first problem child: Wilkes.

There was this whole concept of an organization similar to the Nine Pirate Lords of Pirates of the Caribbean in the original telling of AASOAF, and in an effort to make things simple, I thoughtlessly picked a few names and assigned them to characters with some kind of identifiable appearance. Wilkes was one of these characters and was mostly meant as a set piece, just like the others, for Fay to interact with. She was the only main character at the time, and the idea was she would have run-ins with these pirates to form part of an arc in her story. I wrote a few of them (all human up to that point), and they were great fun, but then I got around to Wilkes and I got STUCK.

Remember when I thought I was making things easy for myself? (She didn't) I offhandedly created him as an albino Lizardfolk and when I tried to write him, I quickly realized 2 things:

1. It wouldn't make ANY sense to write him the way I would with a human. I got so stunlocked when I realized that he probably wouldn't have ears LOL.

2. I didn't know how he related to other Lizardfolk because I knew next to nothing about how I wanted Lizardfolk to be or how they as a people connected with the world around them.

So as I started to develop his character, I also started asking myself a lot of questions that forced me to research beyond my initial inspirations. I started looking at nature and biology. I did TONS of research on socioeconomic and political systems, languages, ecosystems, and how all of these are represented in my initial inspirations for AASOAF's Lizardfolk (Argonians of Skyrim, Lizards of DOSII, and Lizardfolk and Dragonborn of TTRPGs).

Eventually, I arrived at Version 1, which was enough for me to continue writing and have a more 3D version of Wilkes. The dynamic he and Fay developed was SO cool to me despite him still being a bit of a prop that, eventually, the story centered around the two of them instead of just Fay. And as I wrote him more, I discovered new things about Lizardfolk, which eventually turned it into the lore behemoth that it is today. So by the time I started canon AASOAF with Mariel and Axtapor, the world of Lizardfolk and the race themselves were already quite built up and I ran with it!

Any other interesting behind-the-scenes facts about them?

I actually have a whole info dump post here that covers most facts about them!

[nedflix-n-chill]

Satanico Pandemonium I put my fate in the hands of the wheel and whatever divine guide, cosmic karma, or just random chaos (it's the latter) has lead me to Satanico Pandemonium. But God almost had other plans because when I originally ordered this movie from an online retailer they mistakenly sent me Bela Tarr's Satantango, a 7 hour black and white art-house film. Maybe that unknown guiding force was trying to get to me watch less trash and be more cultured. Not today! Nunsploitation leads me to believe there's 2 types of nuns. 1) Young Nuns who are equally horny as scared because of years of indoctrination that taught them sex is evil. They either succumb to temptation (thus becoming evil) or B) they grow into an old bitter asshole Nun, probably cuz they went their entire lives without orgasm. It's a lose lose situation. This is about the former who stumbles upon a nude man in the woods and the sight of peen just fucks up her whole day. She becomes haunted by this penis spectre, unaware if he's real, anthropomorphized horniness, or maybe something much darker. Ah, the beauty of cinema! She chooses sin and it turns her into an uncontrollable sex monster, committing a string of sexual assaults (and eventually murder) mostly directed at the other nuns (and not terribly graphic). She then assaults a young man... er... boy? The age is never given and regardless of the statutory laws wherever they reside I'm pretty sure what she does to him is a crime regardless of geographical location. I'm not trying to grade sexual assaults, just give you the heads up so no one is caught off guard by me recommending the "rapey nun" film. Cuz as far as rapey nun films go this is one of the better ones. While nunsploitation primarily dwells in sleaze most of it is born out of the oppressive and hypocritical nature of religion, though dealt with a far from nuanced touch. This film has a subplot regarding the nuns being racist, a concept that should be antithetical to Christ's teachings but that's the point cuz in actuality (especially regarding today's American Christians) it's a perfectly apt display of hypocrisy. This movie also has the worst fake knives I've ever seen. https://www.instagram.com/p/Co5gzG1P4uH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mask131]

Dante’s Inferno: The game

Last time there was a big Helluva Boss release, I made a series of posts exploring the Hell depicted by Alighieri in his Divine Comedy. Today, in honor of the long-awaited release of the finale of season 1 I give you... Again, a series of posts exploring Dante’s Inferno. BUT this time it is the video game!

Everybody who was a bit interested in the topic of Hell heard of this game one way or another. Dante’s Inferno is, as the name says, a video game turning the Inferno poem of Dante Alighieri into a monster-burster wall-crashing exploration game inspired by the likes of God of War. It is a fun, short, simple game, which was very easy to play for the teenager that I was when I discovered it. But what truly got me into this game - what a LOT of people adored about this game - was the visuals. Such delightfully dark, morbid, but clever and inventive visuals! 

And it is not a surprise when you learn that the game was designed by FRIGGIN WAYNE BARLOWe HIMSELF! He, and the visual team of the game, made sure that each of the circles of Hell would be a twisted take on the sin it reflects and the landscape originally described by Dante.

Now, some of you might not know of the game or its story - so I will briefly recap it. Beware, this is a very LOOSE interpretation of Dante’s Inferno, turned into a dark fantasy, brutal and edgy epic. As I said, comparisons with God of War were inevitable. In this story, Dante is not a poet anymore, but a former member of the the Third Crusade (between King Richard and Saladin), a deeply faithful (and powerful) Christian warrior, who however was forced to commit all sort of atrocities and horror during the battle - but now he returns to his Italian countryside home where his father and Beatrice, his bride-to-be, awaits... Only to find them both killed. Not just killed - in the case of Beatrice, stolen away. You see, the soul of the deceased Beatrice appears one last time to Dante... before the Devil himself, as a dark wraith, appears near her, and snatches her away into the depths of Hell, invoking that because Dante broke a certain vow he doomed his lover... Dante, to get back the soul of Beatrice from the clutches of Satan, will plunge into the depths of Hell to get her back - he literaly bursts open the Gates of Hell (which were designed after Rodin’s Gate of Hell) to plunge, still alive, into Hell... 

But not before having a personal fight with the Grim Reaper himself, and DEFEATING HIM to take away the REAPER’S VERY OWN SCYTHE, which will become Dante’s main weapon - alongside the cross Beatrice gave him before he left for the Crusade, and still charged with the holy energy of Beatrice and Dante’s respective faiths... Yep, it’s this kind of game. 

Before going into the details of each levels, a few additional points that I think are part of the interesting style and framework of the game.

1) As you can see by Dante’s design (above), he has a red cross literaly stitched into his chest. This is not just an edgy detail - it is actually part of the storytelling of the game. In-universe, Dante’s stitched this red cross onto his own chest, as he was by the “dark forest” of the beginning of the poem, returning from the Crusade. He did this as a way to do a personal penance for the many crimes and atrocities he commited during the Crusade - the red-cross literaly representing the guilt and the burden of his sins, that he decides to openly carry onto himself. From a game point of view, the cross actually serves as a way to bring the flashbacks much needed for the gamer to explore the past of Dante and the actual plotline unfolding. Because the cross retells all of the sins of Dante in a stylized, Tapestry of Bayeux-format. And when it is time for a flashback to understand how we got there and what was this fictional Dante’s life, the tapestry “animates” itself for the flashback. 

2) There is at least one flashback per level in the game, because the storytelling itself is closely tied to the gameplay itself. When the game begins, we don’t know much. We know who the main characters are, and what just happened, but we don’t know anything about their personalities, or how we got there. In each of the Circles of Hell, Dante is forced to confront one of his personal sins (or how he was affected by the vice of the Circle he is in) - and so each flashback corresponds to the theme of the level Dante is in. For example, in Lust we discover that Dante was actually unfaithful to Beatrice during the Crusade, as he agreed to free a female prisoner in exchange for sexual favors ; while in the Gluttony circle we discover that Dante’s father was a horrible person, a gluttonous and greedy drunkard that abused his large wealth in a life of excess. Similarly, Dante will meet back in Hell several key persons of his life - members of his family, or companions of arms - as this trip through Hell is literaly about Dante fighting his own memory, actions and hauntings. In fact (mini-spoilers), the Devil confirms the self-exploration nature of Dante’s trip by the end, as he reveals that the path Dante took was the one of his personal Hell, which explains why he kept bumping into people closely tied to him. By exploring Hell, Dante had to explore the dark depths of his own soul. 

3) The gameplay system is tied around a form of evolution - by accumulating a number of points, you can buy new attacks or make your attack evolve. However, what is quite interesting is that there are two “evolution paths” disponible, based on your choices. As in the original poem, Dante meets a lot of “famous damned”, souls of historical sinners now reduced to weeping, begging carcasses in each corners of Hell. The game offers you a choice for each of them - you can either punish them or absolve them. If you punish them for their sins, you stab them with the Scythe of Death, destroyign their afterlife-body and making them burn with the fire of death (apparently Death is part of the hellish forces, or closely associated with them in this world?). If you absolve them, you use your holy cross to purify them of their sins and send their souls to a higher and more positive form of afterlife (purgatory probably given it is Dante’s cosmogony). 

But this choice has an affect on the “points” you collect, because absolving gives you “holy” or “positive” points, while punishing gives you “unholy”, “negative”, “hellish” points. The positive points are for the first path of evolution - centered around attacks from your holy cross. These are attacks of holy-energy and heavenly-magic, whose effects are destructive - but because they purge the demons of their evil and erase the very essence of wickedness of the wretched spirits of Hell. The other points, the unholy ones, are for the second path of evolution, about “devilish” attacks, where your scythe-based attacks evolve into becoming more destructive fueled with the hatred, evilness, and brutality of Hell itself. These attack-evolution paths are basically supposed to represent how the character of Dante evolves. They unfortunately do not have any actual influence onto the scenario of the game itself, but they will determine if you want to play a holy character, a truly good and Christian man who goes to Hell to absolve his crimes, save people, and fight evil in hope of bringing salvations to others (the holy path, which fills you with heavenly and angelic energy) ; or if you are just a brutal and sinful warrior that never truly redeemed, that in front of Hell itself becomes more devilish and demonic in nature, and finds his own strength in his own crime and the violence around him, fighting fire with fire - and evil with evil. 

[maniculum]

I showed this to my co-host, and her immediate response was to ask how this interacts with the medieval / early-modern practice of animal trials -- if animals can sin, surely they can also be held responsible for their crimes, yes? (Animal trials are exactly what they sound like, trials where the defendant is a nonhuman animal, and yes they were a thing.) And then I got caught up in the Implications, so this is going to be a whole post.

(Obligatory shameless plug: we did do an episode on Animal Trials back in 2022, and I'm going to put a link to it at the end of this post for anyone who wants to check that out.)

Disclaimer: for the remainder of this post, I am working from the premise that the whole lapsarian, original-sin, fallen-state-of-humanity framework is accurate, and that the claim referenced by OP regarding menstruation as punishment for same is true. This should not be taken as any indication of my actual beliefs; I'm just playing in the space, so to speak.

Second disclaimer: any nonsense or unusual diction present in this post should be considered in light of the fact that I have been drinking wine this evening and may be less sensible than usual.

Putting a cut in here because length.

So anyway. As I understand it, the traditional line on animal sin (in Christian doctrine) is that animals do not have souls and are therefore exempt from the whole concept. However, if we accept the argument:

1. Menstruation is punishment for original sin 2. Some nonhuman animals menstruate ∴ Some nonhuman animals have sinned

Then I feel that implies:

3. (As previously mentioned) Creatures with no souls are incapable of sin 4. (As established above) Nonhuman animals are capable of sin ∴ Nonhuman animals have souls

Moreover:

5. Animals who menstruate have sinned 6. Most animals do not menstruate ∴ Most animals have not sinned

In short, we're left with the idea that while man and spiny mouse have sinned against god, this is not the case with all animals -- and, in fact, most species are ensouled creatures who exist in a state of prelapsarian grace.

The theology is relevant here, because we're talking about this in relation to animal trials, which were generally carried out by the Church rather than the civil authorities. If the religious authorities are the ones claiming jurisdiction, the religious aspect is an important part of the question.

A clarifying note. The Church was in charge of animal trials partly because nonhuman animals weren't really seen as under temporal jurisdiction like human citizens were, but perhaps more importantly, because they were often the only ones who could carry out the sentence. In all of the really weird en masse animal trials you hear about, when the defendant is a whole lakeful of eels or something, the sentence was liable to involve Doing A Miracle. It was Understood that people invested with divine power could drive away animals through that power -- most famously today, driving the snakes out of Ireland. So you needed a religious authority to banish the eels, and it was expected that this would work if you went through the correct process first. (Hilariously, this included excommunicating the animals in question.)

Now, here's the next thing. I am not aware of any animal trials against a species that can menstruate. No elephant shrew, to my knowledge, ever stood as defendant in an ecclesiastical court. And if an animal is free of sin -- as, presumably, all of the defendants in medieval animal trials were -- can a religious body hold them accountable for their so-called crimes?

In the early 16th century, the court of Autun in France brought suit against the local rats for eating their barley crop. The defense was headed by Bartholomew Chassenée, who deployed a number of creative arguments to aid said rats:

... he excused the default or non-appearance of his clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage.

(Source for this and most of the other material here is "Bugs and Beasts Before the Law" by E. P. Evans -- it is public domain and may be found on Project Gutenberg.)

An argument which I do not believe he made, but which I will make here, is that, as rodents who do not menstruate, rats must be assumed to be free of sin until determined otherwise. What gives France or the Church the authority to expel them from their own barley-filled Eden? Their small rattish souls are unstained, a statement which I wager no human present in that court would dare claim of their own souls.

There are, however, certain biological questions. In Bern, Switzerland, in 1478, a case was brought against a population of weevils, also for eating crops. (This is where the "creeping secretly in the earth" line comes from, BTW -- the actual phrasing is as follows.)

...which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the fields, meadows and all kinds of grain..."

Weevils also do not menstruate -- but is that a reasonable metric for insects? Their biology is sufficiently different that it wouldn't really make sense. Perhaps they, and other non-mammalian species, are subject to different punishments for any instances of original sin. Big question mark, there.

I would argue that, in order for a religious body to hold a creature responsible for its crimes, it must be established whether that creature is in fact tainted by sin. If their species has never fallen from grace, then what right does a human institution have to pass judgment? They do not exist within the same framework of Right and Wrong as mankind, and indeed could be argued to exist on a higher metaphysical plane.

There are multiple cases where a pig was put on trial for eating a human. Is this... fair? There's of course always the argument that if it's not murder when a human kills a pig, it is equally not murder when a pig kills a human -- to which the typical response is that humans and pigs don't exactly carry the same moral significance. However, if pigs -- who do not menstruate -- exist in a state of grace, surely they should if anything receive less blame. The pig is free of sin; can the human court make the same claim? How dare you, members of a fallen species, sit in judgment of the unstained pig? What right have you to condemn it when god has not?

No -- henceforth, the ecclesiastical courts only have jurisdiction over various species of primate, a number of bats, the elephant shrew, and the Cairo spiny mouse.

Anyway. I think it would be fun (whether in your worldbuilding or in real life is left as an exercise for the reader) to have a heretical order dedicated to figuring out which nonhuman species Have Sinned through a variety of recognized metrics (since it can't just be menstruation), and revering the ones who Have Not Sinned as transcendently innocent souls.

Sorry for all the nonsense here, below is the link I mentioned previously, goodnight everyone.

"menstruation is punishment for original sin" is a fairly common doctrine (altho in my experience it's usually more implicit than just baldly stated like that)

anyway this implies that of all the animal kingdom, humans are not UNIQUE in sinning, but are joined by bats, the elephant shrew, and the spiny mouse species Acomys cahirinus. (according to my 5 seconds on wikipedia at least)

[cadaveerie]

today on my personal updates... (Entry #1 - 09 Sep. 24)

i decided to do this new thing on tumblr that might serve as some sort of journal! i'm used to saying whatever crosses my mind at the moment over twitter, but i think it's interesting to adopt this sort of new format that's more typical of blogs and personal websites, now that i'm a little more active over here :) we'll see if i grow tired of it or not! so far i'm not sure how often i'll update it. weekly? every other week? maybe. we'll see :) you can blacklist "my journal" if it bothers you.

anyway... i finally got a bank account! i'd been postponing this for years cause it made me anxious, as stupid as that might sound. who would have thought, once i did the damn thing i realized there was nothing to be nervous about, lol.

to celebrate i got divinity: original sin 2! more than to celebrate it was bc it's on sale, lol, but anyway. i haven't played the other (first game), but apparently you don't need to in order to play this one. and it's larian. it seems it's kind of similar to bg3 so... if it's half as decent i'm willing to give it a chance!

ever since i first saw this guy i've been like "i need to play this game one day". but at the end what made me decide to actually get it is that the game seems genuinely good, so :) we'll see! i'm excited

i also like the skelly guy.. he seems interesting evil and right up my alley, we'll see about him :)

and the rest of companions seem interesting as well. i'm looking forward to get to know them :^)

anyway... spending money makes me anxious :/ i hope i like it as to not feel guilty about it.

i'm also unsure if i want to play the thing now or if i should wait for after datv... i told myself i would not start any new game until datv came out, because i don't want to be burn out in the middle of datv (sometimes if i play to too many long games in a row i grow tired of it). i'm still unsure... maybe i'll download it and take a look? idk.

i also have a trip approaching soon and im very anxious. aside from the fact that my mood seems a little unpredictable and that when it's bad, it's baaad, i'm unsure if i'll physically be able to keep up, because lately my lower back/hip hurts sooo much whenever i stand for a while, and also when i sit and i don't have back support, so im very concerned.. sigh. i guess we'll see. i wish my body was healthier, and i could probably fix it, but my mental health doesn't seem to allow it. i'm so tired of everything.

anyway that's all for know i think.

currently...

listening to: Year Zero by Ghost

playing: -

reading: -

watching: -

waiting for: DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD! (51 days to go!)

mood: depressed, anxious. and annoyed at fandom discourse :/

[thewahookid]

A Special Announcement!!

During the Apparition to Marija yesterday,

Our Lady asked Marija to invite us all

to meet on Apparition Hill today,

January 1, 2024,

to pray together with Marija

from 3:00pm until 6:00pm.

Mary TV will live stream this time of prayer!

Join us at www.marytv.tv

January 1, 2024

Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

Dear Family of Mary!

Today we honor and praise Our Lady, Mary the Mother of God! The Father chose her from all of creation to be the Mother of His Son, Jesus. We cannot fathom the wonder of Mary, chosen to be the Mother of Christ. But we can contemplate it. It is very helpful for us to allow the Holy Spirit to expand our minds to begin the glimmer this heavenly reality.

Here is a short explanation from Magnificat that is very good for us to ponder:

The Greatness of the Mother of God

Our Lady is the Mother of God because Jesus Christ who was born of her is God. To Jesus Christ she gave what every mother gives to the child that is born of her, and for which she is called the child’s mother. Our Lady is the Mother of God just as truly, as fully, as literally, and exactly as every other mother is the mother of her child. By reason of her divine motherhood and the special relation in which this places her to the Blessed Trinity, Our Lady was necessarily a creature apart and unique from the very first moment of her existence. To make her worthy of her marvelous destiny in every way, God so created her soul that from the first instant of its existence it was filled with grace. Our Lady then, by this special intervention of God, applying to her by anticipation the merits of the Passion yet to come, was conceived untouched by the sinful legacy of the Fall.

As Our Lady was thus unique in her creation in grace, so is her place and role unique in the glory of heaven. Thanks to her actual kinship with God according to his human nature, there is a union between Our Lady and God that no other saint can come to, and because of this union her power of intercession is unique. So much so that it is the common teaching of theologians that God has so disposed things that whatever graces are granted to mankind are granted through Our Lady’s intercession….

We do not adore Our Lady, but the honor we give her is greater than the honor we give the saints. “The Blessed Virgin,” says Saint Thomas Aquinas, “from the fact that she is the Mother of God, derives a dignity that is in a way infinite from the infinite good that is God. And in this sense just as there cannot exist anything better than God so there could not be made anything better than herself.” Between this most glorious of all God’s creatures and the rest of us there is moreover this special link: In a very real sense, she is the Mother of us all. For Our Lady is the Mother of him whom Holy Scripture calls the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29). And he, when dying, giving her to be the Mother of the beloved disciple Saint John, foretold and created her role as Mother of all Christians. Such are the reasons and the origin of the immense place Our Lady occupies in the daily life of every Catholic.

- Monsignor Philip Hughes (Magnificat - January 2024)

And here is a message from Our Lady in which she shared about her motherhood with Mirjana:

February 2, 2020 "Dear children, by the act of the decision and love of God, I am chosen to be the Mother of God and your mother. But also by my will and my immeasurable love for the Heavenly Father and my complete trust in Him, my body was the chalice of the God-man. I was in the service of truth, love and salvation, as I am now among you to call you, my children, apostles of my love, to be carriers of truth; to call you to spread His words, the words of salvation, by your will and love for my Son: that with your actions you may show, to all those who have not come to know my Son, His love. You will find strength in the Eucharist - my Son who feeds you with His Body and strengthens you with His Blood. My children, fold your hands [in prayer] and look at the Cross in silence. In this way, you are drawing faith to be able to transmit it; you are drawing truth to be able to discern; you are drawing love that you may know to love truly. My children, apostles of my love, fold your hands [in prayer], look at the Cross. Only in the Cross is salvation. Thank you."

I know this is a lot to read, but on this day, we can give Our Lady the time it takes, to get to know her better! She is Our Mother too!! God bless! And don't forget to join us on Apparition Hill today at 3:00 pm Medjugorje time to pray with our Mother!!!

(Our Daily Rosary with Denis and Cathy will be live at 2:00 pm Medj time today)

In Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

Cathy Nolan

(c) Mary TV 2024

Mary TV. Inc. | www.marytv.tv

[ramrodd]

Protestant Reaction to Visiting Catholic Church Inspired by the Book of ...

COMMENTAY:

White Supremacy and Woodrow Wilson Jim Crow bigotry is the original sin of the Presbyterian Church , USA.

John Knox had veen a slave on a French galley and his Book of Disciple in absent any racial component.

Federalist 10 is heavily invested in the Presbyterian structures of the Book of Discipline, the difference being that James Madison was a slave owner. Ivy League Presbyterian ware part of the slave trade as underwriters to marine industries.

Tommy Wilson grew up in the lave economic of chattel slavery and exercised his racial privilege as divine right. Princeton Reinforced this in spite of his  opposition to Fraternities.  His example of unalloyed racial bigotry etched  whited supremacy into the cornerstone of Presbyterian stewardship: the mathematics of black and white, Evil and Good is eternal and universal in the Calvinism of the Presbyterian Church, USA.

The thing Calvinism and the Catholic Church have in common in the Total  Depravity Gospel of the Roman Catholic Confession that Martin Luther abandoned with the 95 Thesis. The TULIP doctrine violates Ree Will, which is why Hegel rejected it. The conservatism of Pope Benedict was informed by the Total Depravity Gospel approved by serious Marxists. The Liberation Gospel of Pope Francis is what Jesus meant when He told her to become male and sovereign of  her uterus.

The TULIP Doctrine is grounded entirely in the total depravity of Eve without  mitigation of Cross.  Burning people at the stake for religious reasons misses the point of the binding of Isaac. Jesus is a substitutionary sacrifice for Isaac to reinforce the point.

Here's the thing about parenting Jesus can show you. Jesus was like a cat: a cat doesn't try to be a cat. When it is hunting, it makes no effort to be invisible; he moves to look not like act.

Jesus was the same way. He was divine. He didn't  try to act like He was divine. He just walked around and  let people follow His example. Your post mortem processing of your interview sounds dangerously like someone trying to demonstrate how spiritually open you are as a Christian without being woke.

I believe there is a great deal of truth in Sura 10 Maryam  in the Koran  that actually helps to complet the  portrait of Mary, Redemptrix, Mother of Jesus, especially Jesus being Self aware and talking. It's like the gnostic infant tales of Him shaping doves from mud which lly away when He Claps his hands.

Like the Holy Spirit,, and; probably, The Satan, Jesus had agency over the Sprit of God. which became existent in Genesis 1:2. This was Jesus' super power, that allowed Him to walk on water, still the tempest and feed the multitude. Literally. The Spirit of God is a planetary force that affects weather, globally, today. One of Jesus's purposes was to demonstrate how  humanity can gain agency over this planetary force through the Holy Spirit and optimize global weather patterns as practice for colonizing planets like Mars throughout the cosmos.

Pat Robertson was able to do this with the Holy Spirit and CBN but then began to engaging the Spirit of God directly with the access he had to the collective id of the market of Pro-Life Fascism in the Evangelical collective ID of the intersection of the Prosperity Gospel and the Total Depravity Gospel and the CBn global foot print.

This is the nature of the eh blasphemy Jesus  means in regards to the Holy SPirit. To do what Robertson was doing denies the Holy Spirit and uses the name of the Lord for his personal vanity, that is, in vain. And this goes back to this whole thing about  white supremacy being the original sine of the Presbyterian Church USA. This is the connection between Trum, Norman Vincent Peale and the January 6 conspiracy. Being a Jim Crwo Bigot like Woodrow Wilson was the path ot Heaven on Earth at the end of the Ivy League Socialism of the John Birch Society rainbow.

[edelweissacermacrophyllum]

I desire mercy, not sacrifice

Genesis 21:1-23:20, Psalm 7 pt 2, Matthew 8:23-9:13

This story deals with the birth and near-sacrifice of Issac as well as the death of his mother and the exile of his half brother.

I wonder if this story is one of the more optimistic portraits of God in this section of the old testament. God makes good on a promise, preserves a helpless single mother and her child, and teaches Abraham a really valuable lesson about who they (God) are. It doesn't sit well with me at first, of course. God's lesson seems like a very nasty trick, but remember that human sacrifice was normal in those days. In our modern interpretation we might hope that Abraham would have said, "No, I will not follow a God who would ask me to do that." And God would have rewarded this correct assumption of their character. But it wasn't like that. It gives no impression that Abraham even hesitated. He just did what God told him. I don't really like the lesson that this teaches humans, that the word of God justifies any act, because even if God is good, people can be mistaken about what divine revelation they hear.

Enter Jesus, who starts doing miracles in a big way and feuding with the other religious leaders. He gathers a cult following around him a bit and starts associating with the wrong sort of people. But he also defends his claims with demonstrations that he has access to divine power. I particularly like the story of the paralytic. This one is a Sunday school story because of the drama. The roof cracks open (in another gospel's telling of the story) and a sick man is lowered into the house. I think Jesus appreciates the drama too, as he appreciates the friends' willingness to make a scene. He says that the man's sins have been forgiven. This would be a trite remark in today's culture, just another preacher trying to look special without actually doing anything. But in that culture it is offensive and Jesus knows it. Notice though that Jesus doesn't say that he forgives the man's sins. No, he just assures him that his sins have been forgiven. But this is what is assumed and for all I know that's what is implied in the original language. Responding to the backlash, Jesus heals the man and says that he has been given authority to forgive sins and heal bodies.

Jesus then recruits an IRS agent into his posse.

[buggie-hagen]

Sermon for Circumcision of Our Lord (1/1/23)

Primary Text | Philippians 2:5-11

-------------------------------------------

Dear People of God,

            It is still the season of Christmas. The old song “The 12 Days of Christmas” refers to an actual thing. December 25th is but the first of the twelve days. Today being the eighth day of Christmas. With January 1st, because it lands on a Sunday, we have the rare opportunity to celebrate the festival of the Circumcision of Our Lord. More humorously put as “Feast of the Snip.” It seems the Lutheran church has found some branding issues having a feast about the circumcision, so the newer and I would say, tamer way, of putting it, is “Feast of the Name of Jesus.” But, as your pastor, I see great value in not taming God in this way, there is something to learn when we don’t shut God in a box—to let God be the strange God that he is and to work in the strange ways that he does. We celebrate this festival on this eighth day of Christmas because these two things would have happened on the eighth day after Christ was born—that he was given his name of Jesus, and as any Jewish boy, he was circumcised. There is a very Christmassy meaning behind the circumcision of Jesus as a baby. Christmas is about God becoming a human being in the birth of Jesus Christ. This is what we call the incarnation—God-becoming-human-flesh. To the point that, yes, in his circumcision, he had a bit his flesh cut off! That couldn’t have happened if Jesus was a shadow or a ghost or a hologram or had only been God but not also actually a human being.

            This particular ceremony of the law was originally given by God to be a sign of the covenant. A sign of God’s promises to his people. It was to have something written on the body to remind the people of Israel that the Lord is their God and they are his people. When it comes to the circumcision of Jesus we know it has something to do with our salvation. Even in this little ceremony he has come to fulfill the law for us. On our own, we have no righteousness, we can’t redeem ourselves. We can’t keep even one syllable of God’s commandments. Sin has made its home quite comfortably in us, it warms itself by the fire. That is, until Christ in his word proclaimed puts an end to it all. We have these words from St. Paul about Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). When you consider the cross, the mark of circumcision was only the beginning of the marks to be made on his body. On the cross God tore himself in pieces so that we might finally turn from our sin and believe in him and so have eternal life. Christ’s obedience unto death is so important because it means the impossible: “God dies to make alive” (Timothy Wengert). If Jesus was obedient only as a human being, his suffering and death would not have reconciled us to God. If Jesus was obedient only as God and never was born a human, it would not mediate between God and human beings—our relationship to God would not be fixed. It is the whole person of Christ—in his divine and human natures, his  obedience unto death, even the shameful death of the cross, that renders true obedience to God the Father and true forgiveness and righteousness for his chosen people. From circumcision to the cross he has fulfilled the law on your behalf—so that you are saved not because of what you do but because of what Christ has done for you! To show you his mercy, his unconditional love, God did not withhold even a bit of his flesh and blood from you. Through the obedience of this one child born of the Virgin Mary you yourself are made a child of God. It is a great comfort that our Lord Jesus was not born in a golden crib—but in a donkey’s lowly feeding trough. For though the world and it’s riches have no need of the Christ, he has come to redeem the poor, the outcast, the sinner, and those without hope. Be of good cheer, through the child of Christmas, the Lord blesses you daily, keeps you in his arms, makes his face shine on you with grace and mercy, looks upon you with favor, and gives you peace.

[yhwhrulz]

Today's Daily Encounter Wednesday, December 21, 2022

God Is Love

"Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love."1

"Love Came Down at Christmas" was originally a poem written by Christina Rossetti in 1885. She lived in London where her entire family studied literature, music, and art. Her brother Dante Rossetti was famous for his paintings.

Christina's inspiration for this poem came from 1 John 4, a passage that describes how great God's love is and how he calls us, his people, to love others like he loves us. Christina wanted people to realize that Christmas was the greatest demonstration of God's love, as he sent his Son, Jesus, to this world. John 3:16 speaks to this love: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." We often think of this verse during Easter remembering how Jesus was sent to die for us, but this could actually be a Christmas verse, as it speaks of the time when Jesus was sent to this world. He was sent as a baby, for us, because of God's love for mankind. Two lines of "Love Came Down at Christmas" read:

Worship we the Godhead

Love incarnate, Love divine.2

God loves every person, and his desire is for all to know Him. We were sinners, and God knew that no matter how hard we tried, we would fall short of his glory. It was necessary for a sinless life to be sacrificed once and for all, and this life was Jesus. He was the perfect depiction of love incarnate. It is Jesus' example that we are meant to imitate. The world will know we are children of God by the love we show to one another.

Suggested prayer: Dear God, your love is honestly too great for my human mind to comprehend, but I ask that you use me as a vessel to show your love to others. May this Christmas be remembered, not because of the gifts and celebrations, but because of the lives changed by Your love given to us in Jesus. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.1. 1 John 4:7-8 (NLT). 2. "Love Came Down at Christmas" written by Christina Rossetti 1885.

Today's Encounter was written by: Crystal B.

NOTE: If you would like to accept God's forgiveness for all your sins and His invitation for a full pardon Click on: http://www.actsweb.org/invitation.php. Or if you would like to re-commit your life to Jesus Christ, please click on http://www.actsweb.org/decision.php to note this.

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[apenitentialprayer]

i've seen a lot of defences for witchcraft within christianity, and mistranslations of the word resulting in this misconception of "witchcraft is a sin"...do you know if there is any truth to that?

Yeah, I actually got another ask about this yesterday that actually name dropped the blog that was making those claims. I was working on a response for that one, but I'm just going to answer this one instead because it doesn't name drop the blog, and let's keep it that way.

I have seen it claimed that מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה (the purported "witch" in Exodus 22:18) means "poisoner." This may make sense, or it may not. Helpful, I know. But let me explain.

In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה (mekassepah) becomes φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), which can mean herbalist - it's where we get our modern "pharmacist" from. A similar choice is made in the Septuagint of Daniel 2:2, which uses φάρμακος (pharmakos) when the original Hebrew uses וְלַֽמְכַשְּׁפִים֙ (wuhlamkassepim).

But, here's the thing. In Daniel 2:2, this group of people, whatever they are, are associated with magicians and astrologers. Likewise, this same group is associated with people who practice divination, child-sacrifice, and foretune-telling in Deuteronomy 18:10. So whatever these guys are doing, it sounds like it would be counted as a pagan practice in that time period, and definitely an occult practice today.

But, okay, speaking of Deuteronomy 18:10, let's say that מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה really does just mean poisoner. What about these instances in which pretty broad categories of behaviors of what we would refer to as witchcraft are condemned? Fortune-telling and divination are out. What are these so-called Christian witches doing that makes their practices "witchcraft," exactly?

And, while I'm at it, can I say just how very convenient that these people assume that the majority of interpreters throughout the history of their tradition (some of whom had first-hand knowledge of the languages involved) totally misinterpreted their texts, but that they somehow have gotten it right?