#but not really understanding how Christians actually use those words

[mimi-cee-genshin]

Neuvillette really loves to remind me to "be sanctified." LOL. As a Christian, I found it hilarious the first time I tested him out in the character trial.

[fanttasttica]

Family

Helion x reader, Rhysand x daughter reader

You never knew your parents and yourself. One day you decide to leave your home and try to find something about yourself and your family. You come to the Day court, where you meet their cunning High lord, who also happens to be your mate. But your mate isn't the only person you found..

warnings: mentions of nudity

words: 2764

It was a nice summer day. A wind gently caressed your cheeks, as you were looking at your friends, who were enjoying the day with their families. Fathers, mothers.. siblings. That was a luxury you have never known. You never knew your father or mother. The closest thing you had to parents were Christian and Lucille, who found you one day and raised as their own. You actually thought they were your parents, until they came clean when you reached your eighteen birthday. They knew you deserve the truth. Since then, you were jealous and happy at the same time for your friends, who had families on their own. You were watching them from a smaller distance, as they were laughing together wishing you could have something like that too. Not that you were not grateful for Christian and Lucille, you loved them but.. You wanted to find out who your parents were. Whose violet eyes were looking at you in the mirror? Did you have the same black hair as your mom? Was your smile similar to the smile of your father? Those were questions you earned an answer for.

You grew up in the mountains in Night court. Your village was quite small, nothing extraordinary here. It was not far from the borders the Night court shared with the Day court. You could walk there maybe after two or three hours. That means that sometimes you meet people traveling between these two courts. People who were more than willing to share stories. That was how you found out about Amarantha being dead. You knew her, of course you did. Everyone in Prythian did. She trapped all High lords under the mountain, took their powers.. They were helpless until one day a human girl named Feyre freed them. You were fascinated by her story. She was now your High lady, finally being happy with Rhysand, your High lord and you found that really nice. That they found each other after all that. You heard all stories about them and about other High lords and interesting people from travelers, merchants.. You were always listening to them very carefully, until one sunny day, when you decided to stop being the listener and become the traveler, narrator, yourself. It was an opportunity to get to know new places, people.. and maybe find out something about your parents.

“Are you sure you want to go? I mean..it can be really dangerous.” You smiled at your friends. “I am sure. I love you guys, I love this place but.. I just want to try and find out something about my parents, about me. And I think that's the thing I cannot accomplish here.” She sighed and nodded as a sign that she understands you. “Well.. I will not stop you, if that is really what you want. Just.. be careful and don't forget us.” You hugged her tight, trying to find back tears. “How could I ever forget you? You are my best friend, sister, even though we don't have the same parents. I will never forget you, don't worry. And also.. this isn't definitely the last time you see me. I will come back.”

It has been almost two months since you left. After almost a month of traveling, you came to the town which was surrounding the palace of Helion, the Day court´s High lord. Probably the sexiest male alive. You had only seen him once, from afar when he was walking and talking with some of his friends near the shop you worked. You found a job in a smaller café, simply because you needed money and you also quite quickly fell in love with the city and wanted to spend some time here. You weren't sure how long you were going to stay.. A few months? Year? But it didn't really matter. Your job did not only provide you with the money , no. It also helped you meet a few nice people you befriend and could spend time after work. It was nice, the days were not the same as in your old village. Every day brought something new, new skills you learned, new friends.. But the one day that stood out above all the days.. was the one when you met your mate.

It was almost noon when the bell rang and he walked into the café, where you were currently working. Helion stood in the doorway and was looking around the place as if he was searching for something, or rather someone. And then, suddenly, he looked at you, his already big smile grew even bigger. At that same moment, you felt something in your chest, in your heart. Mating bond. It snapped immediately, taking the air from your lungs. You blinked a few times, not daring to move or look away from his gaze as he walked closer to you. “Hello my little sunshine.” 

From that moment, you didn't spend a day without a stolen moment with Helion. You found out that he already knew about the mating bond. It snapped for him a few minutes before he came in, as he was casually walking around the café. He saw you and needed only a few minutes before you he plucked up the courage to go talk to you. You decided to take things slowly. He was coming to the café, where you chatted when you were working. After a week he invited you to a date, to a beautiful restaurant, theater, then he took you on the picnic.. And that's basically how you ended up waking up in his large bed, with nothing but sheets on your naked body. 

You two were seeing each other for almost three months. It was already winter, but that did not bother you. Helion was hugging you, his big and warm body was better than any blanket in the whole world. You were enjoying this quiet morning in his embrace, when you felt he was already waking up. His breathing changed and grip on you strengthened, as if he also wasn't ready to wake up and leave your bed. You giggled at him, whereupon he grunted. “Is there something funny, sunshine?” You sighed happily. “Just one certain High lord who is behaving like a little child who doesn't want to share his toy with anyone else.” He chuckled, turned you around, so you were now lying on your back on the comfortable mattress and he was towering over you in all his glory. You bit your lips at this sight. “But I don't want to share you with anyone else.” He started placing soft kisses on your neck, which was full of hickeys from the previous night. “I don't think that's possible. My shift is starting in an hour and you also have a lot of work.” You argued, trying to keep your thoughts clear, even though the idea of ​​spending the whole day with your mate in bed was more than tempting. “That's why I want you to quit. You know I can take care of you, I want to take care of everything you need or want” This time it was you who chuckled at his idea. “And what would I do? Spend all my time in your bed, waiting for you to return? It would be boring.” You caressed his beautiful face. Admiring his beauty, before he spoke again. “You could always come with me to the meetings, sit on my lap and warm me.” He winked at you, as you punched him slightly in his biceps. After that his face grew more serious. “I love you Y/N. More than my court, more than the sun, more than everything else.. Just say you want this and I promise I will give you everything in the world. I will make you my High lady. My equal. Just one word is enough.” 

It wasn't that hard a decision. You loved Helion with your whole being. You couldn't imagine a day without him. So you finally agreed. You gave him your answer that day, in the evening, when you served him dinner made by you. It was simple, private and even though Helion was known for parties, he really appreciated this. Mainly because after the meal he could immediately take to to the bedroom and fuck you all night without any disturbance. The only thing that was left to declare you his High lady. You urged him to wait a little. When you officially accepted the bond you also moved to his palace the next day and you simply wanted to get used to the new surroundings and to the bond, which was now stronger than before. He of course agreed to your wishes. But you still were slowly making plans for the celebration, because you decided to make this event publicly. Helion thought that it was only fair for his, yours, people to have an opportunity to witness this moment, when the first High lady of the Day court was crowned. And believed him, wanting to also make people happy, to make a good first impression and that was probably not possible if you were hiding in the shadows on that important day. You also decided to invite your and some of Helion's friends, which also included some other High lords and their families. You personally invited Thesan - High lord of the Dawn court, High lord of the Winter court and his wife, Tarquin, who was Hugh lord of the Summer court and lastly.. High lord, High lady of the Night court and their Inner circle. 

Before every meeting with other High lords you were incredibly nervous and Helion was trying to calm you down as he could and he was successful, but this time.. It was different and you weren't sure why you felt this way. Your heart was beating rapidly in your chest, your hands were sweating.. Maybe because you were supposed to meet the only other High lady that existed? Or maybe you were just nervous because you have heard a lot of stories about all of them? Rhysand was the most powerful High lord, his mate had powers of all seven High lords and her sisters were made by the Cauldron.. Not mentioning Cassian and Azriel, who were alive for more than five hundred years and killed more people than you have met in your lifetime. “Don't worry Y/N. They are really nice and don't bite more than me and you are already used to that.” Helion winked at you and you rolled your eyes at him. This was something about him that you absolutely loved and at the same time found annoying. He was such a flirt. “I know and I believe you. Honestly.. I am not sure why I am so nervous.” You as and at the same time tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. Before your mate could respond to you, you heard the sound of the door opening. You looked behind you and to your surprise you met the same eyes you had  and they stared back at you in shock.

There was silence as the others entered the room as well. They were looking at you with shocked expressions and you returned it, mainly to the man that had the same eyes as you. And after a few moments you noticed that the eyes were not the only thing you shared. You also had the same hair, similar features. In the end it was Helion who broke the silence. “I.. I never realized that.” It wasn't surprising he was not very receptive to these things. “That's.. How?” High lady asked, turning to face her mate, who also finally recovered from the shock. “I have no idea, Feyre darling.” He took a few steps towards you. You looked at Helion, not sure what to do. What to say. Was it even possible? Was this really your father or was it some cruel joke made by the Cauldron? How did it happen? “It's her.” You heard a sweet voice from the group. A girl, a woman, in a pink dress came closer. You shared a confused look with your mate. “The girl from my visions. Rhys's daughter.” 

To this moment, the only person who almost made you faint was Helion but when that woman said those words.. You had to grab your mate's strong arms, because otherwise you would be laying on the ground. This did not go unnoticed by your father and your mate, who grabbed you by your waist, holding you firmly. It was not only supporting in standing, it was calming you at the same time. Your father looked with worry. “Are you okay?” He asked you, you nodded in response. “I am, it's just.. a shock.” He smiled at you. “That's understandable. It's a shock for both of us. Well.. for all of us. He turned to his mate and Inner circle, as if he was having a quick conversation with them. After that, they came closer, introducing themselves with bright smiles. You have learned that the lady who was obviously a seer was Elaine, sister of your father's mate. It was Feyre who introduced herself to you last. It was a little bit weird for you, since she was a little bit younger than you and practically your step-mother, but she seemed nice. “By the way, what are you doing here? And how did you find my daughter, Helion?” You almost forgot they didn't know. Inviting High lords to your celebration was also a moment when Helion introduced you to them as his mate for the first time. He looked down at you and you gave him a simple nod. “Well.. she is my mate. And also my future High lady. We wanted to invite you to the celebration personally.” 

Once again, they were shocked, especially your newly found father, who was looking between you and Helion. You wanted to say something. Something that could make this situation a little bit less weird, but couldn't find the right words. In the end, silence was broken by Cassian's and Morrigan's augh. “Well, I did not see that coming.” Your aunt said with amusement in her voice. You smiled nervously, wanting nothing more than to disappear into the thin air. “Congratulations, it's amazing.” Feyre told you kindly and shook Rhysand's hand, so he would wake up from his trance. “Yeah.. congratulations.”He looked from you to Helion. “You better make her happy.” His words warmed up your heart. It was nice of him to look after you only after knowing you for maybe ten minutes. Maybe you were an adult, but that didn't mean you couldn't create a loving bond with him. After the first shock, you finally felt happiness. You had a parent! A father! And at that moment you realized something. With a hope in your eyes you turned to Elaine. “Do you also know who my mother is?”

The smile on her face and the faces of the others froze. Well, except for you and Helion, since you didn't know anything. Elaine swallowed hard, making eye contact with both your father and Feyre, again having some type of silent conversation. After a while, your father sighed. “Your mother.. Well.. Things get a little bit complicated here.” He breathed out. “Maybe you already heard of her. It is.. Amarantha.” It had to be incredibly hard for him to say that. After he said that, he looked away, hurt from memories that came back only after saying her name out loud. 

Of course you were in shock after finding out who your parents were. Being the daughter of the most powerful High lord and also a person who imprisoned not only him, but also your mate and a lot of other people.. Being the daughter of the person who killed and who was the main villain of many people's nightmares wasn't the best thing that could happen to you. But you were lucky to have your mate and also your father on your site. After finding out, you were really sad, angry, ashamed and also worried about what other people would think. What would Helion think? But luckily, he didn't care at all. He supported you, when you were recovering from the news and trying to accept them. He supported you when you tried and later successfully created a bond with your father, but also Feyre and their Inner circle. You were very lucky to have him, to have all of them. You finally had your own happy family.

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Hello!! I was wondering if you have any book recommendations for Appalachian folk magic? Especially for a beginner, I’m familiar with our local “old wive’s tales” but I’d love to learn more!!

Hello there! I have answered this question before but I have some new resources so I'll list them here!

It really depends on which part of Appalachia you are looking at! And if you want to dig deeper the ancestral roots of the family you are looking at. For example my family has a lot of Welsh and British influence because that was our family source so a lot of those beliefs lingered and changed throughout the years!

Someone from Pennsylvania would likely have a lot more German roots for their practice. But despite the root differences for the folklore these practices stem from they do still share a lot of connecting points!

But having babbled all of that here are my favorite books on AFM specifically. (Mind you Christianity takes a super huge part in the practice so a lot of bible and doing things in threes for the Trinity is involved!)

Authors to check out:

H. Byron Ballard- A pagan who also practices AFM, from the NC side of Appalachia, a lot of people hate her writing style which is a bit ramble-y. I also dislike the term she uses for her own practice but that is a super simple and small complaint honestly. I own all of her books on the subject, which should say something.

A NOTE ON H. BYRON BALLARD: I no longer support her work after discovering she is a TERF. I will no longer be suggesting her as an author to follow.

Jake Richards - From Eastern TN like me! A lot of what he talks about are things I have seen before, and he breaks down complex concepts like burn blowing into something relatively easily understood. HOWEVER HAVING SAID THAT the author is partially Melungeon, so he does have some Hoodoo mixed in from his grandmother's side iirc? He does label these things in his works and explains that they are not for everyone which I do appreciate.

Rebecca Beyer - While vaguely Wiccan toned, which I attribute to her publishers/raising, she's a transplant to Appalachia and if you're looking for herbal information on Appalachia and to wax poetic about how even with a ton of people settling there SO MUCH of the natural herbs and plantlife still survive, read her work! Her work on foraging safely and environmentally is so SOOOOO good.

Brandon Weston - For Ozark Mountain range/German/Dutch Appalachian work! He has written quite a few books on the subject and all of them are a treat!

Roger J. Horne - For how to dig into folklore and apply it to your own practice! This author is pagan and does blend in some traditional work with the Appalachian but I do enjoy his work and how he applies folklore. This author is also FROM Appalachia which is nice to see.

INDIVIDUAL BOOKS TO READ:

Appalachian Folk Healing by Jake Richards - A republication of a very old book on remedies and 'spells', while kitschy and stupidly worded, after all it was a popular book created just for sales reasons, some of these remedies are things I remember having done to me! Good for both a giggle and actual information. TW for mentions of animal parts, hunting, illnesses, the G slur, period specific phobias and racism.

Albertus Magnus - These books all supposedly written by an ancient guy, were actually mildly common on traveling salesmen's trucks and wagons. So as a result a lot of people in Appalachia had access. Like the book above it is very stupidly worded and definitely of their time. Same TW as above.

Pow-Wows or Long Lost Friend - Another Pennsylvania Dutch book! Very good and very clear.

Southern Folk Medicine - A book that breaks down a lot of common medicinal beliefs in the South which does include Appalachia! Sadly not just Appalachia but a very good book regardless. THIS BOOK MADE ME UNDERSTAND THE THEORY BEHIND BLOOD ISSUES MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE EVER HAS.

Moon Eyed People - A collection of Welsh folktales that brewed within Appalachia from Welsh immigrants. Very good book imo!

Granny Buck's Dibs and Dabs - This book is so worth the price tag! One of the more expensive books in my collection, but I'm fine with that. Granny Buck covers a lot of topics and I can feel the accent through the wording!

Signs, Cures, & Witchery - More German Appalachian stuff! This book and it's interviewees are from the Kentucky side of the mountains!

Witches, Ghost, and Signs - This book is based more in the Southern Appalachian area! Georgia, SC, NC, and TN specifically! Lots of folklore here, but does mention some not so great bits of the lore, but that is expected.

The Foxfire Books - What began as a school project exploded into a collection of true to life stories and idioms from Georgia elders within the mountains. SO SO GOOD OKAY? For everything. How to plant, hunt, make musical instruments, anything from the mountains? They cover.

[slaaverin]

To hell and back

This post is very difficult to make for me. This is not about BTS, or about fandom, but about mental health, and my personal story. I never really opened up about it anywhere except in a few facebook groups. But today is the day I decided to speak about my story.

It is surely more for me than for you.

Very few people in my friends and family can really understand what I have been going through, because it is a topic so complex that even I have trouble understanding it sometimes.

Well, firstly, I am schizophrenic. At least according to science. If you asked me though, it would be a different answer.

The truth is, I became spiritual again when I was 25, not long after discovering BTS. I took on a meditation practice and grew my consciousness very quickly.

Someday, I had an idea on how I would be able to help the collective, and I thought about becoming clairaudient (hearing the other side). So, I "hear voices". I followed my intuition on how to achieve this, and after some time it actually worked, I could hear.

So this ability to hear was totally consented on my part, I wanted this from the start.

But yeah, according to science, when you can hear anything, they put a schizophrenic label on you. I think it's mostly that they are in over their head with this kind of subject, and they simply don't understand everything enough to really be able to help anyone, except with medication.

Unfortunately, the universe is bigger and more nuanced than a label, so I never really got help from psychiatrists. I had to navigate through this on my own.

Everything was going fine at first, I was learning how to use this ability, and things were going well.

But someday, everything went to shit.

I won't go into that much details, I'll spare you, because it is pretty horrific. But long story short, I made a trip to "hell". Literally.

Of course, I myself do not believe in the christian hell. I've studied spirituality enough to understand it is not that literal, and there are many realms with different purposes.

But there are some dimensions that are close enough of what we would imagine hell to be like. And I have gone there.

I spent 2 weeks in 2 dimensions at once. In my physical body, but also in this dark dimension.

It's not really important to believe in this, or to argue whether it was real or not, because the thing is, my experience, impressions, feelings, all of it, were real to me. It felt real. It felt tangible. The mechanics does not matter, what matters is that I experienced it, and the trauma from it was real.

It was the most horrific, the darkest, the most twisted, so terrible that words cannot even give it justice. It is an experience that I felt somehow was a glitch in the matrix. Like we should not be able to experience something like this, it should not be allowed.

But it was. And no matter how much I cried for help, prayed all the gods, begged, no one came to save me. I could not sleep, did not eat, and barely functioned during those 2 weeks.

I felt left there, abandoned, alone, helpless, in total despair and horror, and with a pain that was so profound that I thought it would kill me. I was patiently waiting for death to take me, in how much my heart was broken into a million pieces.

I got annihilated entirely by the end. No emotions, no thoughts, no personality, no beliefs, nothing that made me me, was left.

I was gone, an empty shell. I had been entirely destroyed. A metaphorical death.

But something was left. A tiny flicker.

It was the light of my consciousness, my divine spark.

I understood then that even the worst darkness that exist would not be able to destroy my light, and that I was eternal.

So all of my fears vanished. I began clinging to that light and use a strength I didn't even know I posessed to crawl back from the pit of my own hell.

I had PTSD for years after this experience. And it was not truly over. I was still plagued by many interferences, trickster energies, evil things.

But over time, I healed, and brought back the pieces of myself that were scattered, and my psyche, even with PTSD, began to mend.

But now I had to learn how to play "the game". How to not get tricked, how to keep my internal balance despite being surrounded by nothing but darkness.

Some day the darkness put so much pressure on my being that I thought of ending my life. And that's not really like me, because I'm really pro-life.

But it's like I've been through some fucking intense internal military-like training, with no rest, with no pause, and no mercy. Ever.

It pushed me to my limits.

So of course I transformed. I became stronger mentally, I learned discernement, I took my power back, literally my entire being was totally refined.

I mastered "the game" of darkness, outsmarted them, mended every breach of my psyche, moved past all my fears, and my mind became as cutting and sharp as a knife. It took me years, but I learned the lesson. And I can say that darkness was my greatest teacher. The wisdom I gained, there is really no price for it. In the end I saved myself.

Today, I am good. I work very hard to keep my internal balance, to remain optimistic, to keep spreading love around me.

If you saw me you wouldn't tell I have any particularity lol

But to say this whole process has been hard is a understatement. It is SO FUCKING HARD like it's so hard and complex and layered that's it's really a bit ridiculous?

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a very bad movie, so I guess the universe and my higher self really have a weird sense of humour. But I laugh it off too because it's better than crying about it.

I know we are never alone, and that everything supports us, but the illusion that we are is really strong sometimes. Almost no one would be able to understand my experience, without having lived it, so I feel like I'm bearing this cross on my own.

But you know, all of this really puts things into perspective. The fact I have been in a place such as this, survived, and came back, makes every other little problems in life feel truly trivial.

I don't know what your faith is, it is not really important. What I learned in my studies is that most people who actually go to those places had things to learn, it's never "some punishement". It's clearly not because I deserved it.

But I did my share of learning indeed. Today I feel like I am a better version of myself thanks to this experience.

I believe it was for my highest benefit, because I can't reconcile senseless pain and hurt in my mind with a loving god. I know things aren't random.

It all began because I wanted to help. So in sharing my story, I want you to share a message of hope.

The deepest pain, the darkest fear, nothing that is abyssal and scary and any emotion you might feel, none of it will actually hurt you. You cannot be hurt. You cannot be destroyed by anything, ever. We just think that some emotions will kill us, so we avoid to feel them. We fear, so we flee.

If you actually embrace your fears, it won't kill you. It will liberate you. Nothing else will happen.

You know why we come to earth to have crazy experiences and we don't mind the trauma and the pain that come with it? Because our souls know that we are not taking any real risk in the first place.

Your light is deeper than the deepest fear, largest than the most painful hurt, and you are safe at all time, even if it doesn't feel like it.

So please, rest easy, don't take life so seriously, it's all going to be ok. We will all wake up from this dream someday and go back to love, and it will only be a memory, a blip in our eternity.

We are safe & loved.

I think I needed to get all this out of my chest.

(Please don't feel the need to psychoanalyze me or feed me religious doctrines, I had years to process and really understand the mechanics of everything that happened to me so far, but obviously I didn't want to turn this post into a million words so many aspects are left out.)

Thank you for reading my post and take care💜

[hilacopter]

You say ur a zionist depending on the definition but you believe jews are indigenous to the levant? That is the definition why don't you just call urself a zionist

see the thing is I genuinely think a lot of the whole zionism controversy mostly stems from a giant stupid misunderstanding and people not being properly informed. me telling someone I'm a zionist can either give them the right idea or the completely wrong idea.

let me paint a picture for you: a self-identified zionist and a self-identified anti-zionist walk into a bar. the zionist thinks the definition of zionism is wanting a Jewish state in the Levant, they want peace and a two-state solution. the anti-zionist thinks zionism is kahanism, they want peace and a two-state solution. "are you a zionist?" the anti-zionist asks, "yes" the zionist answers, and they immediately get into an argument. "anti-zionism is antisemitism!" the zionist shouts, "zionists are fascists!" the anti-zionist yells. of course this could all have blown over peacefully if they had asked eachother what zionism is, but why would they need to? what else could the word possibly mean?

I respect people on this site who identify as zionists, providing of course their meaning is wanting Jewish self-determination and not denying the right to Palestinian life and self-determination alongside us (remember I'm literally saying all this as an Israeli, if anyone wants Jewish self-determination in Israel it's me because my life quite literally depends on it). but I feel like they create a lot of unnecessary conflict for themselves by identifying as such and in most cases not explicitly stating what they mean by zionism. I know there's the desire to make dumb people understand the actual definition of the word, but with how much the misconceptions have already been set in stone I think it's a battle we cannot win.

there's more to all this though, buckle up for a pretty long post because I have a lot to say which I won't religate to the tags for once. first of all, I genuinely think a lot of anti-zionists, especially on the younger side (saying this as a minor myself), do not even have a solid definition of zionism in their head. they just see all of their peers shitting on it and follow along, making up whatever zionism means in their head along the way. since in leftist spaces it's not very acceptable to actually ask about the cause, why everyone is doing what they're doing. you have to take everything for granted, after all you wouldn't want to look uneducated by not knowing what zionism is! (this aspect of leftism 100% comes from cultural christianity btw)

there are also many anti-zionists who, at least to some extent, do know zionism means self-determination of Jews in the Levant and wanting Israel to exist. a lot of which think Israel is a white colonizer state, unaware of the history of the region, how more than there are ashkenazi Jews in Israel there are mizrachi Jews expelled from Arab nations, and are unaware of Jewish indigeneity to the Levant. how this land was originally Judea, only renamed Syria-Palaestina after being conquered from us and having most of us expelled. unfortunately the vast majority of pro-pal activists are very much simply jumping on the trendy train, not bothering to actually do their own research about the history of this insanely complex conflict and simply know everything by word of mouth from other equally uneducated leftists. I do think a lot of these people genuinely just don't know and aren't actively denying Jewish history on purpose, I've had like two cases happen where I told anti-zionists of this sort about Jewish indigeneity to the Levant and they just went "really? I had no idea". but of course for every person like that, there will be a person who will double down and dismiss it as propaganda, a myth and a fairytale. those people can go fuck themselves, clinging desperately to their half-assed worldview rather than willing to own up to being wrong and better themselves. denying Jewish history. or in a rare case of exceptional shittiness an anti-zionist can view zionism as wanting Jewish self-determination in the Levant and know that Jews are indigenous, yet still choose to identify as an anti-zionist by that definition for what can be a myriad of horrible reasons, usually complete tride and true antisemitism.

so in conclusion, I don't identify as a zionist outright until I know what kind of anti-zionist is asking me the question. is it an anti-zionist who just wants peace as much as I do, or is it an anti-zionist who wants me and my family dead? I've had people call me a zionist, non-zionist, anti-zionist and I don't really know what to expect each time. I feel like this approach leaves the most room for me to open good faith discussions with people and educate them on the subject as someone who actually knows xir shit, more than the average pro-pal at least, rather than having them immediately dismiss me as whatever definition of a zionist they have. not that good faith discussions are easy to have with people on tumblr dot com, and really online in general, but I'd rather have the option in the rare case of an actual open-minded individual who is willing to listen to Jews and better themself.

[apenitentialprayer]

Maybe I should be asking an Orthodox person this, but I do not understand the hubbub with the Filioque. To me it is hair splitting, could you explain why it would not be hairsplitting? Or if there is an aspect I am missing as to why it was the final straw for a schism?

Okay, ah, I think there are two aspects that need to be addressed here. The first deals with the simple fact of its inclusion in the Creed, and I'm going to come off as a traitor here, so let me clarify my personal position; I believe the filioque best represents the reality of the Spirit's procession, but I think it was bad that the Western Church inserted it into the Nicene Creed.

As Henri de Lubac talks about in The Christian Faith, the Church allows for many theologies, spiritualities, customs, and liturgical traditions to coexist; "from one country to another and from one century to another there are many differences in emphasis." What connects all these elaborations and practices of the Christian faith is that they are all anchored in that faith, as revealed by God and distilled in the Creed. That faith is the unity of all Christians everywhere.

And what convinced me that the inclusion of the filioque was not a good move actually came from another Catholic thinker, Karl Rahner, who wrote "the inevitable pluralism met with in theology cannot and must not cause the unity of the creed of faith to disappear from the Church, even in its verbal expression." Except.... that's exactly what the Western Church did. It took the Creed as articulated by two separate ecumenical councils, and unilaterally added words to it. And while there are historical reasons for that inclusion, and while I think the theology behind its inclusion is true, I think modifying what was meant to be the unifying symbol of the Christian faith was not a good move. And I can see why the filioque inclusion seems like a rupture from the Orthodox tradition. Because... we have caused the unity of the creed of faith in its verbal expression to disappear.

And I think that's a bigger problem than the content of the filioque clause itself, to be honest. But, as far as the content goes, let's talk about that, too.

In the Orthodox perspective, the three Persons of the Trinity share a common nature, and there's a kind of symmetry where the traits of any given Person is either held in common by all three, or is reserved for one of Them. So, for example, the state of being uncreated and eternal are traits shared by all Persons in the Trinity, as is the fact that They are almighty and infinite. Those are traits derived from their divine nature. But in terms of traits distinctive to Their individual Personhoods, well: the Father is seen as the Source of the other two, while the Son is the only begotten Member of the Trinity, and the Spirit is the only spirated Member. An Orthodox Christian may argue that the filioque ruins this symmetry of Persons; if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the distribution of Personal traits is no longer equal (two Persons have a trait that one Person does not have). This can be seen as a kind of ontological inferiority on the Spirit's end.

From the perspective of the Roman Church and Her western descendants, the articulation of the Trinity doesn't really involve this "common to All or particular to One" logic. Instead, we tend to use a sacramental logic that assumes that how the Persons of the Trinity operate within Their creation also tells us something about how They relate to each other from all eternity. So, the Father sends the Son into the world (John 17:1-4); hence the Father begets the Son. But the Father sends the Holy Spirit to the disciples "in [Christ's] name" (John 14:16-17, 26). So, the Father sends the Spirit, but the Son is somehow involved. The Holy Spirit is believed to still have one origin, but this one origin is the joint act of Father and Son. Part of this may have to do with different starting assumptions. Eastern Christians tend to start their thinking on the Trinity as Three existing in Unity, while Western Christians tend to start their thinking on the Trinity with One existing in Multiplicity.

But this is a super complicated subject, so if someone wants to correct me about either of the perspectives I tried to lay out, please feel free to do so.

[fromchaostocosmos]

I'm very frustrated with how the various youtubers and streamers talk about Ben Shapiro.

Because they do not understand or have the proper context when talking about him and everything he represents.

They also often go into antisemitic territory when mocking him, while it is unintentional and something they may not not even know they are doing, they are doing it none the less.

When they mock his voice or call him Shabibo that is actually antisemitic territory.

Due to a history of Jewish people having our names stripped from us and voices and names mocked. Now I too find his voice to be personally annoying, but I won't mock it because of said history.

It is not about the curtsy that Ben Shapiro deserves or doesn't deserve, but rather about deciding when it is okay to employ antisemitism against a Jewish person.

The answer is never.

The overwhelming majority of these commentators are not Jewish and the few that are Jewish don't seem to know any of the important details that make what Ben Shapiro says so dangerous for all Jews and such a false representation.

See what is not presented in discussions about him is that Ben Shapiro is not there to pull in a Jewish audience he is there as a token Jew to help further pull in an christian audience.

That is what makes it all so very insidious in nature. And sadly some Jewish people get fooled by this too because they do not look beyond the front facing facade he wears like costume, but they do not actually listen the words he says.

Ben Shapiro harps about a 'war on christmas' which no Jewish person would seriously do or care for. Especially any Ashkenazi Jews with our very long long history of being murdered in mass on xmas. Christmas eve is became seen a spiritually impure night that it would be called Nittle Nacht in Yiddish and Jewish people would purposefully not study Torah that night.

American Jews, like many others who belong to non-christian religious and cultural groups, have to deal with living a majority Christian country and country that culturally Christian and only makes concession for Christianity.

Has Ben Shapiro ever talked about that or the actual fights to get time off for our Holidays? No because that doesn't fit the narrative. But business having employees switch from 'merry christmas' to 'happy holidays' most certainly does.

Ben Shapiro has explicitly stated that he believes that conception is when life begins which is something to no in keeping with any Jewish held belief anywhere.

We hold life begins at first breath, the mother comes first (I wrote mother because that is wording used in the various writings, but really it would be the pregnant individual comes first), and that it doesn't just need to physical health on the line it can also be one's mental health at stake in order to need an abortion

Ben Shapiro talks about Judeo-Christan values, which a bullshit term that was created after the Holocaust to make it seem like Christian Antisemitism played no role in what happened and that the Church was not a guilty party. It is also a term that essentially holds Jewish people hostage.

He uses this term and talks about these shared values. So I have to ask what values?

Is respecting the elderly, caring for the sick, kindness to others, tending to the poor, and such? Because those are universal values and can be found in pretty much every culture and religion.

What about original sin? Heaven and Hell? Can someone be the literal child of G-d? Does G-d have literal hands, a actual face? What is the gender of G-d?

Just some questions to start with since you know we clearly have the same values and stuff.

Because Judaism would say: No such thing as original sin and in fact Hebrew doesn't have a word for sin we have words that mean things that wrongly translated in English as sin, but no, word for sin. We hold all people are born blank we go through and have experiences and make choices and those choices speak to who we are.

We believe in This World and The World to Come and the spiritual washing machine so to speak, but no a big nope to heaven and hell. No to Satan too. There is the HaSatan which means prosecutor who is as the name means in the Ultimate Court.

When we say "we are the children of G-d" it is poetic flourish and is metaphorical not literal no one can be the literal hild of G-d.

Same way we anthropomorphize G-d so that we have an easier time contextualizing G-d because otherwise it can be hard to wrap your mind around.

G-d is both genderfull and genderless at the same time. It depends on what you are talking about, in what context, and what aspect of G-d of you using. For example the Voice G-d and Presence of G-d are both in the feminine in Hebrew.

These have just been a tiny amount of examples from a vast vast array them.

My point is that if all these people are going to talk about Ben Shapiro especially ones with large followings please bring on someone who is actually knowledge and qualified to talk about this so the facts can properly be presented and explained.

Like I on occasion will listen to Leftovers podcast in background it hosted by Ethan from H3H and Hassan Piker and in the most recent episode that I was listening, which I had to stop because I was getting to annoyed by, they where talking about Ben Shapiro.

It was very frustrating for me. I get that Hassan might be very politically involved and knowledge about stuff, don't really know I don't watch him, but I was thinking the whole time that this is not an area you know.

You are talking about Jewish stuff and things related Jewish views points and you have no clue what you are talking about. You are talking about a religion and culture you just don't know anything about and are trying to debunk Ben Shapiro.

It will not work because you don't have necessary information and understanding to do so.

And you are missing the biggest point of it all which is again Ben is there as a draw for Christians. Because for these kinds of Christians having a Jew give a stamp of approval gives it some kind veneer of legitimacy.

It validates them and allows them to not have to feel guilty for crimes against Jewish people that they are party too.

This doesn't mean they like Jews or want us around or interested in our problems or helping us.

It is all about them in the same way they have Candace Owens tell them all the thing they want to hear so they never have to self-examine or reflect on anything and can assuage their white-guilt and keep of being horrific anti-Black.

They don't care about Black people or Black issues because they listen to a Black woman talk.

It is all for self-serving interests that they have been Ben and Candace there. While many seem to get that point (if you didn't get it before well get it now) in regards to Candace Owens and the purpose of her employment they miss that very important detail when comes to Ben Shapiro.

[hamliet]

Hi, Hamliet! First of all, thanks for your fics and metas! As someone who is blind to LGBTQ you helped me to learn. Also, you are the only one (that I know until now) who also love to talk about Christianity and know about Bible.

See, I was raised by a religious mother who is homophob and now she love "that" president who got chosen again. I love my mum so much, but it's okay that I'm sad by her choice right?

She really chose him just because he "looks religious", can you believe that?

And I tried talk to my mum about how I enjoy queer thing, and she looked at me sad and angry so I lied. Then she sent me sermon of how LGBTQ people will end in hell. And how she is proud that the real gender is only male and female.

Because of that I kinda loose a little faith in christianity (is it weird, I'm so sorry)? Have you ever feel that?

My mum really love king David's story, so when I found your post about how he is a disaster bi, I laughed so hard. Because my mum who is anti LGBTQ not realized that the person she like is bisexual, too...

Also, Paul not married at all, can he be ace or aro?

If I can asked, what is your fav story from Bible and your fav person in it?

Hello hello!

First off, I'm sorry about your mother. I understand. My own mother isn't pro-him, but a lot of my loved ones, including people who actually helped me find a real faith instead of the indoctrinated fundamentalism, have fallen to him. I hate what that man and what he stands for have done to them. I want my loved ones back. Give me back my loved ones, you alt-right brainwashing conmen.

And, I'm also angry. I don't know that I'll ever really forgive them--or, that even if I love them and forgive them, the anger won't cease so long as we live with the consequences they have inflicted on, to use the biblical term, "the least of these." Basically, the vulnerable, the people those in power don't consider. I don't think it's wrong to feel that righteous anger.

But I still want them back.

Just remember that the Bible says this about looking religious:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to (Matthew 23:13).

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27).

I don't say this to condemn your mom, or my own loved ones. Just to say that Christians in America--particularly evangelicals--have utterly lost sight of who Christ is, and when someone actually speaks the word of Jesus to them, they want her executed for treason. The American church has sold out for power, for comfort, for wealth, but you can't serve God and mammon. And the consequences of it will be its destruction. The problem is that so many innocents don't deserve this.

As for the LGBTQ thing, sigh. I'm sorry. It's awful. Sometimes I just want to ask people to read about Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome--which was only first recognized 200 years ago--and tell me with a straight face that there are only two genders, and that we know everything there is to know about gender and couldn't possibly be missing key information, even biological information, that informs gender identity.

(I'm not saying there is certainly biological information or that that is necessary to believe queer people are perfectly and wonderfully made in the image of God, as are we all. I'm just saying that I do think people who default to biology need to consider how much we still don't know and are discovering about genetics.)

I don't think it's weird to lose faith. I think it's what happens when we're in a culture where the people who boast about their faith are so far from the very faith they describe. It's a natural consequence. All the far-right conservatives in the US would be better with millstones hung around their necks for the damage they're doing to everyone--both the vulnerable, and to God's name. Because God's name is synonymous with the vulnerable. If you treat the vulnerable with anything other than love and respect, I'd say that's blasphemy, because he's on their side.

So, the funny thing about my favorite Bible story and character is... it's David and specifically his story with his son Absalom. I actually wrote a whole theology paper on it.

The saying that David was "a man after God's own heart" is true, but while we often assume that means God's heart has us slaying giants and ruling, the reality is that David was never closer to God's heart than when he was weeping over his lost son. Because God himself knows what it's like to lose a son.

The irony, though, is that Absalom went really, really wrong. Just like the path so many Christians in American are taking right now. A path of power and self-aggrandizement, where the hypocrisy is out for everyone to see, and the innocent pay the price.

I think God's weeping over them, too.

Oh, and about Paul, for sure he could be! He actually was also quite likely married at one point, because he claims to not be lacking in any qualifications according to the religion of his day--and one of those was to be married. A lot of scholars theorize his wife left him after he converted, which would certainly explain a lot of his darker view of marriage. </3

[banana-with-a-bow-tie]

I have a friend who is a Christian who has started accepting LGBT lifestyles and claiming they are not actually sinful. Me and my friends have had meetings with them and given scripture but they refute it every single time and call us unloving. They don’t believe God actually said it’s a sin to be gay/trans and encourage other Christians to embrace the lifestyle to get closer to God. We aren’t even sure they read their Bible anymore, and if they do we aren’t sure how they can possibly ignore what it says. We have tried so many times to lovingly correct and they continue to tell people to go and sin because Gods word is outdated. What should we do now?

I’m so sorry to hear you’re going through that. Be encouraged that you were able to stand firm on the truth and loved your friend enough to offer correction.

As a random guy on the internet, I don’t have answers for what steps you should take in your situation or what your friend needs. I can only speak generally from the Scriptures. This is why the local church is important. Your pastor/mature Christian friend or leader can offer you much better wisdom and possess much better understanding of your situation up close than I can from a distance.

Ultimately “What you should do now” can only be determined through prayer and walking by faith in what you believe God has called you to do based on His Word. Here are few things I believe His Word says that would be helpful for situations like these.

Most importantly, only God can change a person’s heart. We can bring all the sound biblical arguments that we want, but our faith must be in God (1 Cor 2:4-5). It’s not our job to convince anyone, only lovingly present them with truth and action the way Jesus would and surrender them into His care. If there is a professing Christian who is falling for Satan’s lies, the Spirit weeps over that (Isaiah 63:10; Heb 10:29). God loves sinners and calls us to believe He has the power and desire to rescue those blinded by lies and imprisoned by sin (Isaiah 61:1).

If we believe that God wants to save people and is the only one who can save people, then before we do anything we must pray, pray, pray, and pray some more. Then when we are done praying, go and get some more believers and pray with them.

Ephesians 6:19

praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints

Phil 4:6

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Luke 18:7

And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?

Matthew 18:19-20

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

That last one is really important because in context Jesus is commanding us to pray together for the restoration of a sinning brother. When we pray together seeking God's will for helping those in need of His grace, we can be sure that He will respond and help us know what we need to do with confidence that it is right.

As we pray together with fellow believers for God's grace to work in the lives of those we love, we will find God working in our hearts to shape us into the image of Christ so that we can be used by Him the way He wants. Then we can act in faith to share what the sinning believer needs to know.

Matthew 18 also tells us that if the sinning believer refuses to repent, even after going to him/her with two or three witnesses and elders and even the whole church, then we surrender them to their choices and put them out of the church. If they don't want to follow God's ways, then they don't need to be in God's church. Let them live like the world and trust that God will do what is right.

I will be praying for you and for your friend as well.

[honest-moth-of-silver-grove]

If the targaryens did exist in the castlevania universe would they be considered just a myth or legend and not real? or would the Belmonts have books on the family and their dragons and maybe even some petrified dragon eggs in the Belmont hold?

Because I can totally imagine sypha going on a passionate rant about "how the targaryens are a myth and metaphor spread by the church to show how evil and hellish magic is. Because clearly it is humanly impossible to have purple eyes and silver or silver gold hair together , be immune to fire and the ability to hatch, raise and control dragons? There is no evidence of dragons ever existing and those alleged dragon eggs in the hold are very obviously just carved stone, Their house words are fire and blood for gods sake they are very clearly just a story and metaphor if they were truly real the speakers would know about it "

Then the next day targ reader pulls up from the sky with her 3 large dragons daenerys styles to see if the Belmont hold really does have so petrified dragon eggs she can bring back to life and hatch, the dragons belong to her family so if there are any eggs they were clearly stolen by the monster hunters family as trophys(like they could ever kill a dragon 🙄) and to try to find a way back to westros and leave this strange world she and her dragon has found themselves in with the knowledge in the hold

That’s a really good question, Anon! 

I think it all depends on how cynical/realistic you want to be in terms of viewing the Castlevania universe and its supernatural/religious properties themselves. Much of the religious/Christian legends in the show are talked down to religion as a joke, just a means of control for the masses meanwhile supernatural elements like angels, devils, and gods are real. (This is classic Warren Ellis so it’s not surprising, but it can be a little reductive.) 

[[A good example of this would be the scene with Isaac facing the evil wizard in Season 3. The wizard’s mind control is symbolized by a glowing green crown of thorns which is a reference to the crown of thorns Jesus was forced to don on the cross as he was mocked by the Roman Soldiers as the ‘king of the tribes of Israel’. They wanted to humiliate him as un-kingly, not believing he was the Messiah. It’s just related enough, but it sort of misses the mark. The crown is interpreted oppositely within the Catholic faith (which seems to be what Ellis truly means to reference whenever the ‘church’ monolith is discussed within the show; Christianity was actually much more diverse across Eastern Europe). It’s a symbol of Jesus’ devotion to humanity: he suffered so humans could have eternal life in heaven. However, in the show, this crown is used backwards: Issac’s newfound devotion to humanity and morality is symbolized by him using his forgemaster blade to BREAK the wizard’s crown of thorns, rather than embrace it as a badge of honor. It’s all flip-floppy.]]

So I think, just off the bat, it’s a balancing act: where do we draw the line between human stupidity (i.e. excuses for cruelty based on superstition) and the actual supernatural (i.e. divine powers beyond reason or understanding, not meant to be in the hands of regular human souls)?

In the Belmont Hold, we see what looks to be a dinosaur skeleton hanging from the ceiling: 

Now this could mean one of two things. 

My guess is, that this was another subtle way to sort of mock or disparage the superstitious beliefs of the masses (while making a in-game reference to The White Dragons). Because, whereas the uneducated simple folk would see the bones and go 'Oh no, monsters!', Belmonts see them and know they’re really just skeletons of ancient animals from before humanity’s time

Alternatively, this is, as you say, a way to clue us in that the Belmonts, being the infamous monster hunters they were, have tracked the myth of dragons, and in doing so battled one successfully, or at the very least, found the remains of one, and collected this fossil as evidence such beasts exist. 

I think YOU NAILED this dynamic with Sypha btw. Because she’s a Speaker, she’s kind of the closest thing an in-universe character has to acting with audience-level insight. She’s aware of the stories, but also of the science- and this has enabled her to walk the line between bs myth perpetuated by the church and actual fire-wielding Speaker magic. 

So let’s say for the sake of our Targaryen Reader Universe- Dragons are real, BUT they’re understood to be a ‘myth’ by the time Adrian, Trevor, and Sypha come along because they’ve since died out/left this mortal plane. 

Trevor insists his family has a record of them existing, and that those petrified “stones” as Sypha calls them are dragon eggs. Sypha doesn’t buy any of this because it just seems overly far-fetched. I mean hell, she’s a Speaker Magician, but do you see her running around with purple eyes and snow-white hair, being totally immune to all fire? No! Just because she can wield it, doesn’t mean it’s not a threat to her. So obviously, these ‘Targaryen people’ must be a metaphor for hubris or flying too close to the sun/God or something. 

Sypha reasons it’s similar to the story of The Tower of Babel (in which she argues God created division amongst human language to prevent human cooperation) but in the case of the Targaryen myth, it’s the Church trying to prevent human progress. 

So when our Targaryen!Reader does show up with her dragons, all fancy like, I imagine Sypha probably speedruns the five stages of grief lol before coming into acceptance. 

It takes a few days, but as she gets to know Reader, Sypha’s disbelief and distrust are replaced by curiosity and kinship. Sypha is fascinated by Reader’s abilities and unique features- she wants to see everything in action for herself. Cue Reader constantly pranking people as she shows off her fire-resistant ability 🤣

[artist-issues]

Your words and your posts have been incredibly disheartening for me to see. My mother left the church. She is not an apostate, but she did question the church’s teachings in secret. She completely left faith when I was born. I have congenital heart defects, which I was born with. I nearly died on the operating table. For this reason, my mother and I do not believe in God, who is said to be all-powerful and all-benevolent. My mother is a wonderful person. She risked her life in the Covid-19 pandemic as she works at a hospital. If anyone deserved to live in an eternal paradise, it would be her. Your LGBTQ+ views have also upset me. My oldest friend, who I have known since before I could even remember, is transgender and gay, and have been more supportive to me as a disabled person than any Christian has been. I’m only 18 years old, yet I know that you chose faith over experiences with the wonderful parts of humanity. Respectfully, please reconsider your views on gay and trans people.

I truly appreciate how thoughtfully and respectfully you typed out this message. It is clear that these matters mean a lot to you and I'm going to go ahead and assume that you aren't speaking out of any kind of hate.

I would just offer you a counter-perspective, and maybe by understanding where I'm coming from, you can see that I'm not speaking out of any kind of hate for people, either. I'm half blind. I was born that way. My twin sister and I were taken by emergency cesareans-section when we were incredibly, dangerously premature. My twin was given no chance of survival; the cesarean was just meant to give me a 50% chance of survival. At the time, my mother was recently married to a 19 year-old drug dealer after her own father abused and abandoned her and her mother. She'd been living apart from the faith for years, rejecting God to follow the occult or whatever political party had hear heart at the time. My father hated God.

But when my sister and I were fighting for life for weeks on end, and nobody was sure if we would live or die, and they had to bring us home with heart monitors because our hearts would literally stop beating several times a night, my mom realized how helpless she was to do anything to save us. And she prayed. And we lived. Both of us. Not only that, but my father, at 19 years old, addicted to drugs since the age of 13, narrowly escaped death and gave his life to Christ. After a whole life of having no social skills unless he was high, doing whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted, and caring about nothing but himself, now he is a Pastor (bi-vocationally; he is also a tradesman working with his hands) and has given me and all my family, and many other families, everything we have in our lives through his dedicated and faithful life. He and my mother have been happily married and serving God with their whole lives for almost thirty years now.

And not only them, but me, my twin sister, my younger sister, my little brother, my grandfather (who was an actual killer and drug addict as well) we all know God. We all have a relationship with Him. And that's the biggest most wonderful gift He gave us, out of all those wonderful things He did for us. Saving my life, my dad's life, my twin's life, changing who they were and making them new people.

I'm not telling you all that to like, compare disabilities or traumas or whatever. That would be ridiculous for lots of reasons. But I'm just trying to be honest.

It's not a religion or a system of beliefs that I've subscribed to. It's not a social flag I live under. It's not something I do just because my parents or the people in my immediate community have shown me. It's because He's real, and He showed Himself to me—when it's just me and Him, and nobody else's opinion or say-so matters— and it's all really true—everything the Bible says. And He's so much better, and so much more benevolent, than anyone on earth can describe to you.

And, at the same time, when you understand who He is, and who we are...the question isn't "how could a good God let anyone go to Hell instead of paradise?" The question is, "how could He let any of us live after what we did?" It's hard. But seriously, just play pretend with me for a bit, if only to "understand my perspective." Pretend there was a God, all-powerful, endlessly loving, in fact, Love Itself. The love that was His very nature spilled out so much that He created—created beautiful, amazing, complex creatures who were intrinsically full of worth and light, and made to reflect Him, that Love, back to Him, and share in it. A big happy family.

And then those creatures from the dirt committed cosmic treason and said "screw You, I don't care if You created me and I don't care if You love me or want to be in relationship with me: I want to be You. I want to call the shots." And those creatures from the dirt basically did the cosmic version of climbing in their father's lap to spit in His face, and go stab each other over fleeting pleasures in the gutter because the mansions He was offering them wasn't as good as pretending they could be gods of their own lives.

That's the story. Thats what happened. Read Genesis, if you have the time and if you're of the heart to. And because of what we chose, we got twisted up. I'm sure you read that, in my posts. So even the thing we were made for—love—got mangled up inside us and we can't express it the right way anymore.

He would've been justified in wiping us out. Starting over with new creatures. We were His creation. He gets to decide what we are and what to do with us: we betrayed and insulted and defied our rightful King. But He's not like that. He had no reason to--no obligation to--but He chose to do the work and make a way for us to be back in relationship with Him. And He chose to do it by subjecting Himself to unimaginable torture and darkness, which would have been ours by right if He hadn't taken it for us.

I know that you love your mom. It is plain to see. And I understand the feeling. But if you really get to know the God of the actual Bible, instead of just the memes and the flawed people who try to explain Him—if you really get to know Him, between you and Him, you'll see that He actually loves your mom more than you do. And He loves you more than you, or anyone, does. Because He knows you both better and more intimately than you even know Yourselves. He made you. It'd be like an author getting to dive down into the story and tell their characters everything about themselves.

That's the kind of love we were made for. The kind of love that is there even though you don't deserve it, even though you're not entitled to it—the kind of love that would die for you while you're still hating Him.

I mean just stop and think about it, clear your brain of everything everyone has ever told you about LGBTQ+ and all that. And just think: can you love someone wholeheartedly and still know they're in the wrong? Even when they wholeheartedly believe they're right? Even when they're hurt by you believing they're in the wrong? Of course you can. Anyone who's had a loved one with a self-destructive habit, like alcohol addiction or an abusive lover or just a toxic personality trait or two, can relate to that common sense. They can say, "of course I love you. That's why I'm telling you to stop doing this, it's hurting you, it's not good for you, I know it doesn't feel that way, but it's the truth."

So if you believe that there are some circumstances where that applies, what makes it so unloving for this hypothetical God, who knows the best thing for your friend and knows your friend better than you do, to say so about being LGBTQ+? Why should LGBTQ+ be any different?

Well, the answer, of course, is that you don't believe it is true that it's wrong. Because, if we rewind, you don't believe in God. But you just told me that you came to that conclusion kind of...after feeling hurt by Him. You almost died, first , then your mom chose to leave Him behind and go ahead and live as if He doesn't exist. And you did, too.

But let's go back to playing pretend. If God exists, then He didn't act how you think He should've, as an "benevolent" God: He didn't do YOUR version of "good." So you abandoned Him. (We're pretending like He exists, from your perspective.) He didn't do your version of good, you feel mistreated, so you walked away from Him.

But He would never do that to you. If He's the kind of person the Bible says He is, He doesn't treat you that way. When you (humanity) didn't do His version (which is the only real version, since He invented it) of good, He didn't abandon you. He totally could have. But instead He made a way for your relationship to get fixed. But you have free will. So He's not going to force you to love Him and accept the gift. If you want to continue for all eternity without being with Him, you can. He gives you that option.

But then don't wonder why people who choose that option don't get "eternal paradise." Because according to the Bible, that's all heaven is: getting to be in relationship with God forever. Fully who He made you to be. If you don't want that, He won't force it: in fact, He couldn't. It wouldn't be just, and He is always just.

The truth is, after what we did to Him, none of us deserve anything from Him. I didn't deserve to survive in that ICU. Neither did my sister. Neither did my father or mother or grandfather. None of us should be allowed to inhale another breath; we're the King's people who betrayed Him and tried to steal His throne. But He is so good that instead He turns around and adopts us.

I know this is rambly. But you messaged me so genuinely, I just sort of wrote this as if I were sitting down and talking it all out, one word in front of the other, with you. I don't know you. I know these are very hot button topics, and very personal issues; but like you, I think they're of the utmost importance.

So I will keep considering the LGBTQ+ and transgender issues—but you have to understand that I'm in service to the King, so to speak. I love Him, He loves me, and He's my God. When I consider any part of reality, it's impossible to do so without Him as the center and standard of truth. Without Him, who gets to decide what's right or wrong? Just me. And on my own, I am inconsistent, selfish, ruinous. But I'm not on my own. And in the meantime, I'll ask you to consider God, the real God, of the Bible. Not what a church of whatever denomination tells you—not to start with. Not what I tell you, or anyone tells you. Just what He said about Himself, straight from the Bible. Let Him speak for Himself. Thanks for reaching out.

[anamericangirl]

Just wanna give everyone following you a friendly reminder.

The bible was written 2000 years ago, times were very different then, and the translations we have today are considerably loosely translated from the original texts because we do not have the means of interpreting exact word-for-word meanings and translations via someone who was alive 2000 years ago.

The argument "The bible says <thing that comes across as evil towards a group or movement in modern day>" is absolutely ridiculous to even utter.

"The bible says <quote> and that's really homophobic!"

My man, my guy, my gay, the bible was written in a language that the only people speaking today have telephone-game'd the language over the last 50+ generations.

Case in point, something written in America just 500 years ago is like

"Faerie dearest, was it lo'e soothfast or a facade? A serenade siren'd to lure? Zounds! Not to court me?"

And that's ENGLISH. That's REGULAR ENGLISH.

To think that a non-English written language from 2000 years ago is gonna be spot-on and describe modern living in 2024 and be derogatory towards gay men because you looked at it and went "That sounds homophobic to me" is testament to your complete lack of understanding of how any written piece of work should be interpreted.

The bible is not homophobic. It does not say gay people are evil. It does not say you should circumcise your children. It does not say whores should be killed. It does not say you should kill your son. It does not say you should kill someone who wears cloth made of two threads.

Even religious people who preach the word of God do not just take it at face value. They have faith in its teachings, they have faith in God, they let Christ into their heart, they understand that the book they are reading is most likely a very very loose interpretation of what it once said, and yet they carry on practicing their faith because it is their faith and they love their God.

So Merry Christmas, everyone.

Please stop taking the bible super literally and using that to bash Christians. You're just ignorant hateful people.

I think with the amount of times the Bible has been studied, scrutinized and translated we have more than a loose idea of the translation and actually have a pretty solid grasp of what was written in the original texts but you are absolutely correct in how difficult it is to understand a language from so long ago and the likelihood that we have an exact, verbatim translation is highly unlikely.

And a big problem with the people making those kind of claims, like you brought up, is they are applying modern day context and understanding of language to an ancient text while disregarding historical context and language, which is an incredibly stupid thing to do with historical texts and people do that with the Bible more so than any other ancient text.

People act like it was written 20 years ago and not 2000 and think their criticisms of it are legitimate when they apply modern day standards and concepts in order to try and make a point against it.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

referring to your tags, please talk about genesis 3 that would be awesome

Disclaimer 1: all of this is really just me reading the verses and writing the first things that come to mind so buckle up there is a very “organized chaos” type of pseudo-structure to this lol 

Disclaimer 2: This post is as nerdy as it is long and it is very long.

It has been like 10 days but FINALLY I can address this. Gosh it’s been wild lol

Okay. I’ve probably said this before but like. Genesis 3 is one of my favorite parts of the entire scriptures. Those first 3 chapters are the bedrock for where all else in scripture flows (I’m mixing metaphors now lol).

Honestly it’s just like, where do I even begin! Part of the reason I love this chapter is how absolutely packed it is. The first half of the first sentence “Now, the snake was more shrewd than any beast of the field which Yahweh Elohim had made,” is already incredible. First of all, clearly this is not a normal snake: snakes do not talk and also it claims to have insight into God’s counsel and council. Now I know this is like really obvious to us as Christians but Voltaire was convinced this was a normal snake so

Here’s some totally coincidental facts about nakhash: snakes are creatures of the wilderness (a place of chaos where no one can live or grow) that come up out from under the land (so, from the underworld) and thus are associated with non-order and death/ the dead. The fact that most cultures have agreed that snakes are evil is not a coincidence. Neither is the fact that the word for “divination” is “nikhesh”. I mean. Divination is the practice by which a human attempts to get wisdom — not being seeking Yahweh — but by consulting one of two things: (1) the dead or (2) the stars. As I said, snakes are associated with the dead, and stars were thought to be spiritual beings (which ofc the serpent in the garden is since it can talk, knows God’s will, and can possibly fly). So what Adam and Eve do in the garden is a form of divination! And it leads to death, go figure. This makes a lot of sense of the whole “you shall not allow a diviner (nikhesh) to live amongst you. To do so would be to repeat the fall all over again.

Also, also on the snake: pay attention to where it comes from again, the field. The language of “the field” is something I was recently clued in to so I do t have a lot of thoughts on it but it is clearly associated with wild beasts (“beast of the field”) and with humans acting like the beats: Adam, deceived by a beast, must eat “the herb of the field” like a beast (they were given to the animals while humans were given fruits and seed-giving herbs); Cain, who allowed “failure” to pounce on him like a wild beast, murders Abel “in the field” like a wild beast; Pharaoh in the Exodus is frequently associated beasts (in particular, sea monsters) and he enslaved the Israelites to work “in the field”.

Also also actually actually the word translated “shrewd” here is “arum”. Now this is one of the few areas I disagree with the translator here (I’m using Tim Makie’s “A Literal Literary Translation”). I prefer the word “prudent” because the word “arum” is only used a few times in Scripture (mostly in Proverbs because it is what we call “a wisdom word”) and is almost always a positive thing. It’s a synonym with wisdom, which is also mostly positive. Arum means to be able to look at circumstances and understand what is the next best course of action to achieve a certain outcome. (Lord knows I could use some of this) It is like a chess master: an arum person can look at the situations and maneuver in such a way to get the best end result.

The question then is who it is best for. 

Now, the snake was more shrewd than any beast of the field which Yahweh Elohim had made, and it said to the woman, “Indeed, has Elohim said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the snake, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden; Elohim has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” And the snake said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For Elohim knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim, knowers of good and bad.”

Everything about this conversation is fascinating to me. First off: the lack of the divine name “Yahweh”. All throughout the previous chapter and all throughout the rest of this chapter, the supreme Elohim is called “Yahweh Elohim”.

Here, however, this prudent snake has taken it upon himself to distance himself and the woman from Yahweh by simply calling them “God”. To know and get to use the divine name is an incredible privilege and reflective of great intimacy (names, especially of gods, was a very big deal in the ancient world) so for the nakhash to just *not* use the divine name… it’s suspicious. It’s, as I said, a distancing. A lack of intimacy. A certain coldness, one could say. And this is all very shrewd considering his question: Indeed, has Elohim said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’? Now ofc we know Yahweh has said no such absurdity; in fact he tells the human to “eat eat” from every tree of the garden. Except one. Because if they do they will “die die” (repeating a word twice is a thing they do in Hebrew that I find incredibly amusing lol). So, the nakhash, who St John says has been lying since the beginning, has rather cleverly phrased this question to distance us from the identity of our God. What is our God’s identity? Love, ofc. God is an eternal community of other-centered life-giving intimate live. And as biblical love is not a feeling but an action, this love is made manifest thru the planting of a beautiful garden abundant in good food and the chance to partake of the divine essence itself (The Tree of Life) and thus commune directly with the holy love, power, and wisdom of God (Galatians, Isaiah, Proverbs). 

My point is: Yahweh Elohim has been radically generous because Yahweh is a being of radical generosity. So when the nakhash questions Yahweh’s generosity, he is calling into question the very identity of our God. And the tactic then, is to not use the divine name. It is incredibly subtle and incredibly brilliant. Though I expect nothing less from the “Father of Lies” and “Deceiver of the Nations”. The snake is indeed very prudent. 

So, after the snake distances the conversation away from the true loving and generous identity of Yahweh our Elohim, the woman tragically falls for it. She says “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden; Elohim has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” Now, there has been lots of debates and commentaries about this but what I find most fascinating is that she also does not use the divine name. She too has been distanced from the “passionate God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and overflowing in loyal love and faithfulness”. And so it does not surprise me at all that she then misquote ms Yahweh and ends up with an image of him that is harsher than reality. 

Now there have been thoughts about “Did the man tell her this version of the command rather than the original simple ‘Do not eat.’?” And while that is possible, I think such a question missus the point here: the woman has an incorrect version of the divine command because she has an incorrect conception of the divine identity. I believe that is the point the biblical authors are trying to get at. Or at least one of them (scarcely do they ever have just one purpose in anything). 

Now the nakhash’s response is equally fascinating to me (you will find I am easily fascinated by scripture lol): “For Elohim knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim, knowers of good and bad.” First off, this is the piece about the nakhash definitely being a god/spiritual being as he claims to have knowledge about the divine counsel (that is, wisdom) and council (that is, the other spiritual beings). It is subtle and intentionally do both in the original Hebrew and in this translation. 

If anyone is even slightly familiar with common Hebrew words, skip the next couple paragraphs. For the uninitiated, im sorry if it’s confusing lol. 

So, “elohim” despite having been used like a singular proper noun (to refer to the One Supreme Spiritual Being of Israel) up to this point is actually a plural word (“-im” is plural). It is the plural form of “eloah” which I believe is where “Allah” comes from but would need to do more research. Similarly is “el” (god) and “elim” (gods). So elohim technically means “gods”. HOWEVER in Genesis 1, the verbs are distinctly not plural. So in “In the beginning, Elohim created the skies and the land” is “Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz” and “bara”/“created” is a singular verb which shows us that the noun is a singular being despite being in the plural grammatical form. 

Get it? Got it? Good.

The pay off for that weird side note is that in this verse “you will be like Elohim, knowers of good and bad” both “elohim” and the word translated “knowers” is plural. So. This can be translated a myriad of ways

You will be like God, knowing good and bad.

You will be like gods, knowing good and bad.

You will be like gods, who know good and bad.

You will be like God, knowers of good and bad.

You will be like gods, knowers of good and bad.

And that ambiguity is most definitely intentional. 

If it is “You will be like God”, then we have a sad irony of humans already made in the likeness of God trying to take what they have already been given (read the Jacob story for a deep meditation on humans trying to steal what God has freely given). 

If it is “You will be like gods” then what we have is humans, who are already rulers of the land, sea, and skies, trying to take another domain of rule for themselves. 

And that idea of envy as being the ultimate root cause of the humans betrayal of their Creator and (Generous) Host, is very similar to the motivation attributed to the serpent during the Second Temple Period as well as latter into the Patristic era: envy. The serpent is a spiritual being that is jealous that the humans, dirt bags “made little lower than the spiritual beings”, have been “crowned in glory and majesty”, made “rulers over the works of [Yahweh’s] hands”; and “everything has been put under their feet”. As a friend of mine was telling me recently, the Adversary was ultimately envious of the humans being able to partake of the divine essence and be utterly transformed by it. 

This is part of the “firstborn” theme in scripture, which is not so much about birth order as it is about status, power, and human institutions built around those. Both the spiritual beings and the beasts of the field were created before the humans in Genesis 1, and yet it is humanity — as individuals and a collective community — that is made in the image of God as the cult images of the divine temple that is the cosmos. There is a reason critical scholars say Gen 1 was written by a priest; and for once I agree. (P.s I know the order of creation is different in Gen 2; it’s irrelevant to this topic though and should be its own post. Long story short they are 2 narratives but 1 story so the differences make no difference on this exegesis for me). 

The next thought I’d random: Adam and Eve are children. Not in biology, but in their maturity. To say, in scripture, that someone “does not know good and bad” is to say that they are a child who needs to grow in wisdom under the guidance of an elder guardian figure. St. Irenaeus talks about this and it was most likely the dominant way of reading Adam and Eve in the early church. I do not know if it was the dominant view in other Second Temple Jewish religious groups; someone with access to the Deuterocanon can inform me of that. 

There is also some interesting stuff I’ve learned about Eastern Orthodoxy and Adam and Eve. If anyone is interested check out this series of articles https://www.joeledmundanderson.com/irenaeus-of-lyon-and-the-early-churchs-teaching-of-adam-and-eve-part-1/ 

Here’s some quotes from the articles about this idea: 

Irenaeus said that Church Tradition had always taught that Adam and Eve were essentially children who had yet to develop into full maturity. Therefore, their sin was not so much a “fall from perfection,” as it was childish immaturity. Now, if that shocks you, consider something else. Irenaeus viewed Adam and Eve as symbolic of all humanity. For Irenaeus, Adam was never just an individual—he symbolized all humanity.

What this means is that Irenaeus taught that the story of Adam and Eve was the story of humanity: we are created in God’s image, but our purpose and task as human beings is to grow into the full likeness of God by means of relationship with Him. Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness.” The Orthodox Church has always made a distinction between “in God’s image” and “after God’s likeness.” Simply put, God’s image is something we are born with—it is part of our nature; God’s likeness is something we grow into, if we so choose.

Concerning Adam and Eve, Irenaeus said, “Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed, for their thoughts were innocent and childlike,” (Proof, 14). The very description of them as “naked” implied their child-like innocence and vulnerability. It wasn’t only Irenaeus who taught this. This view was, in fact, the view of the early Church. Theophilus of Antioch described Adam and Eve as “infants” at the time they sinned. Their sin, therefore, was that they tried to become wise beyond their years—they tried to grow up too fast. Clement of Alexandria called Adam a “boy” before his fall, and said that it was by sinning that Adam became a man.

That is what we see in Genesis 3, with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit on that tree was “adult food,” and Adam and Eve were still on Gerber’s baby food, so to speak. Or to use another analogy: the fruit on that tree was like wine, and Adam and Eve were still under-aged. In their immaturity and curiosity, they snuck a bottle of wine back to their room drank the whole thing, and ended up throwing up, and waking the next day with a massive hangover. Thus, not only did they suffer in their bodies, their relationship with “Dad” was also affected, for they proved themselves to be disobedient. They were not fully grown up, and it showed.

Okay this is incredibly long so I will do one more and then I’m stopping:

And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was desirable to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, and she took from its fruit and she ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked (ערום); and they sewed leaves of fig tree together and made themselves loin coverings.

Gosh y’all this chapter is so freaking important. Specifically the “saw”, “eyes”, “took”, “gave”. Those words — alongside “good” “bad” “desirable/beautiful” “know/knowledge” — appear all through scripture and when they do the writers are always mentally thinking about this passage. The most recent example for me was a law about what to do when “a soldier at war saw that a woman was beautiful to the eyes and took her, he is to let her mourn for 40 days (? can’t remember the #) and not touch her. Then she is to be your wife. And if you decide you do not want her she is to go free and you may not sell her as a slave”. It is highly disturbing to read but the thing is that THE AUTHORS KNOW THAT!!! The writer is not going “When you see a woman and you want her just go ahead and take her it’s all good” he’s going “If you’re going to be a stupid, foolish human who is incapable of controlling your animal-like lusts and is bent on repeating the fall narrative again, here are the stipulations to ensure that there is no abuse of this woman at all. You do not own her and never did.” 

Edit: yesterday I was reading Genesis 1 with my sisters (made it thru 6 verses lol) and we realized that in Genesis 1 it is God who “sees that something is good” because God is the source of goodness and wisdom (by which I here mean the ability to discern good and bad). When in Genesis 3 it says “And the woman saw that the tree was good”, the only character before then to see that something is good, has been God. So even down to the language, it is making a statement about the woman(and thru her, all of humanity)’s propensity to see what is good and decide a course of action on there own terms. Which ofc, backfires. As defining good and bad on your own terms often does.

Edit edit: I FORGOT THE WORDPLSY!!! The humans are arom (naked); the snake is arum (prudent).

So… yeah. You asked me to talk about Genesis 3 and I made it thru 1 paragraph. You’re welcome lol. Honestly tho, this was very fun and I really enjoyed doing this. 

[alarajrogers]

Just re-reading some of my old "for the love of God vote for Biden so we don't get Trump" posts, and I'm super happy that instead we have Kamala Harris, who people seem to be excited about... but I did notice a recurring theme in the leftist opposition (aside from refusal to actually understand electoral politics or pay attention to what's going on outside of the one issue they care about):

"We need to smash the existing system because it doesn't serve anyone! We need a revolution!"

It is understandable that Americans should believe in this fantasy. We have been taught that our Glorious Revolution that started this country was the height of righteousness and a wonderful thing for the whole world.

The problem is, it wasn't a revolution except in the most technical sense. It was the overthrow of a distant colonizing power and the institution of locally controlled government.

"Revolutions" that get rid of distant colonizing powers and grant the locals self-governance are often pretty successful, because the locals have a structure for self-governance already -- no distant colonizing power has ever been successful by installing nothing but puppets at every level of government in the entity they're trying to govern. But they're not really revolutions. They're the overthrow of occupying powers.

France took inspiration from us, misunderstanding what our "revolution" really meant, because they hadn't had 250 years to understand colonialism and what it meant and how it behaved... and their revolution involved unspeakable bloodshed and then takeover by a strongman who wanted to conquer Europe, and came damn close to doing it. How many French people died in the revolution? How many in the Napoleonic wars? Yeah, eventually they got their shit together and got a better government in place. It only took them a hundred years after the revolution... which, by the way, killed 16,000 French people. There were not that many nobles in the country. During the century of unrest that followed -- Wikipedia quotes this:

"Every [French] head of state from 1814 to 1873 spent part of his life in exile. Every regime was the target of assassination attempts of a frequency that put Spanish and Russian politics in the shade. Even in peaceful times governments changed every few months. In less peaceful times, political deaths, imprisonments and deportations are literally incalculable."

The Russian Revolution killed even more people. They started with the idealistic notion of a state that would wither away, and ended up with totalitarianism, and widespread hunger and black markets, because their version of Communism had to start with a state strong enough to strip everyone's property. They had a brief period of free press and free speech from the mid-80's when the Wall fell, to the 10's when Putin started turning them back into a colonizing empire. Now they are no better off than they were before the Revolution -- overall better food and health care, maybe, but less freedom to speak out against the government.

Oh, but our revolution would be different, right?

I want y'all who hope for revolution to seriously ask yourself these questions:

In the US, who has the most weaponry (outside of official government functions like military and cops)? How strong is our military? How leftist are our soldiers, in general? How leftist is the country, in general? Who controls the media that tells most of the country what to think?

I will answer those questions for you:

Right wing gun nuts who hate queers, Jews and Muslims and are not real happy with the notion that women and black people are human

Strong enough that if every single right wing gun nut rose up in revolution to kill our elected leaders, the military could put them down

Not very leftist at all

Our "left" is the rest of the world's center or moderate right

Big corporations, and a disproportionate number of evangelical Christian billionnaires who control those corporations

In other words, a violent leftist revolution is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Never. Not in our lifetimes, at least. And I'm including three year olds in that "our" there. And if it did, it would probably condemn our country, and most of the world, to unrest for a hundred years, and might result in us ending up with a far-right-wing dictatorship at the end of the churn.

The far left wing of this country -- the communists and extreme socialists who want to see all or most capitalism destroyed -- are a tiny minority of the nation. The progressives, who want stronger socialist protections but are okay with capitalism existing with stronger controls, and who want to see all people being treated as equals, are not a minority but have almost no guns in comparison to the right wing. Guns are actually necessary in rural areas due to the existence of wolves, bears, coyotes who will eat your chickens, etc, so even if we had excellent gun control measures, the majority of the non-government weapons would be held in the rural areas, which are predominantly white, Christian, and have been largely taught that queers, Jews, Muslims, atheists and socialists are evil subhumans. But most of the non-military weapons are held by cops... who exist to protect property rights and are so riddled with racism, sexism, ableism and corruption that good cops often end up dead rather than being able to change anything.

When do you think a minority of leftists who mostly do not have guns are going to be able to mount a revolution against the most powerful military in the world, against cops who are willing to drop bombs on civilians (check out the story of MOVE in Philadelphia, and recall that the cops have gotten worse toward civilians since then), against the people who feel like they're not really safe unless they have twenty-seven guns in their home and they know how to shoot all of them?

Your leftist violent overthrow of the wealthy will never happen, because all the wealthy will do is use the media to redirect a substantial number of you into attacking Jewish doctors and lawyers for being "rich" instead (or for being "Zionists", which is happening right now, because anti-semitic hostile powers like Iran and Russia have infiltrated your leftist spaces and filled them with misinformation), and the people who should share your class consciousness think you should be dead for not being a straight evangelical Christian, or for believing in Communism, or both.

Your only hope is to change the culture. Change the government through non-violent ways like peaceful protest, calls and letters to your representatives, and voting. Change people's beliefs by writing, teaching, running for office and speaking, controlling school boards to make sure the next generation are taught to question authority and not mindlessly accept everything the media tells them. Make things better in little ways, then crow about it so everyone knows you did it, then use that to prove that you could make things better in bigger ways if you were given the power to do so.

You have tried, election after election, to "teach the Democrats a lesson" by withholding your votes, to make them go further left. As a result they went further right. Because if leftists don't vote, why should an elected politician care what they want? Go after the people in the middle who could maybe be pried loose from the right wing, by catering to them. That's how we got Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act and welfare "reforms" that fucked over poor single moms and why we still don't have national marijuana legalization despite the fact that Bill Clinton admitted to smoking it in college. When a strategy has not only failed to work but has made matters much worse, over the course of at least 20 years, maybe 50, why do you keep pushing it like it changes anything?

You argue, votes don't change anything. Has nothing changed in 50 years? Corporations have more power now than when Howard Beale yelled "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" in the movie Network, in the 70's. Real wages are down. The job I do paid $90 an hour in 2010 and now it pays $70 -- that's not "with inflation", that is actual numbers. AIDS happened and killed untold thousands of gay men, drug users, hemophiliacs and people who needed blood donations, because the left wing didn't come out to support Jimmy Carter, so we got Reagan instead. Reagan didn't cause AIDS, but he did his damned best to make sure that AIDS research got no federal funding. Many things got worse because you didn't come out and vote.

Things have also gotten better. Because people who are nowhere near as far left as you economically, but who believe all humans should have rights, have voted, so now we have a world where on paper everyone is equal and discrimination is illegal, which is nothing at all like a world where everyone is actually equal but a hell of a lot better than a world where people are allowed to legally discriminate. But meanwhile things turned to shit for the working class. Because you guys are the ones who put pressure on the government to protect people's economic rights, and you abdicated because you wanted to teach the politicians a lesson. Well, you sure did. You taught them that nobody who votes cares all that much about economic justice. It's only now that late-stage capitalism and corporate/right-wing control of our economic system has gotten so toxic it affects the middle class, that we're seeing any economic reform at all or any pushback against corporations -- because you gave up. Because you declared, on the basis of no evidence because most of you are 20 and the rest have become so beaten down by life that you're hopelessly cynical, that votes don't matter.

The right wing buckled down and voted. Every election. Dogcatcher, school board, municipal waste authority, whatever. Vote for the person who gets you closer to where you want to go. And as a result, we are on a precipice where, despite how unpopular their extreme ideology is nation-wide, they are on the verge of being able to achieve it -- the rollback of everything we've successfully achieved throughout my lifetime, 55 years of progress, gone. Or, we can have leadership who have been trying to push a progressive agenda, uphill both ways but they're doing what they can.

This is where we are. Because you want moral purity. You want to absolve yourselves of all the bad things American leaders do by not voting for any of them. But since you had the power to vote and you didn't use it, there is no absolution for you. Everything an American leader does that is worse than what his opponent would have done, your hands are dirty if you didn't vote against him. And if you wilfully refuse to understand that voting third party in a presidential election is basically not voting at all, and that all it does is make both of the large national parties that are capable of winning ignore you, and that this behavior is why we are in such a shitty place right now...

Well, maybe you think your conscience is clear, but honestly, you are the guy standing next to the trolley lever operator, saying, "Well, I didn't do anything to stop him from making sure 1 guy died instead of 5, because making 1 guy die is as bad as making 5 guys die, so my hands are clean!" And then the next trolley operator comes along and wilfully kills the 5 people on the train tracks and you didn't stop him either, because the last guy killed 1, and you refused to accept that your choices were 1 or 5. And because you gave away all your actual power, and fantasized about power you don't have and never will, you imagined that someday, in a perfect world, you and your friends will fix the trolley system so it never hits anyone. But you aren't even engineers, you won't pick up tools, you don't join public transportation planning committees, and you won't even stop the guy who keeps turning the lever to kill 5 people because the 1 on the other track gives him money, because the other guy killed 1 to save 5 and that makes him just as bad in your eyes.

[proclaimtheword]

(Photo credit from another site. I redacted a name often accused against the pope because I don’t like throwing that word around and I don’t believe in using it against other people, no matter how much I disagree with them.)

It has been more than a week since this happened and the pope said this before a congregation on an official trip to Singapore. I’m appalled that catholic tumblr is utterly silent on this, but not surprised. They really only get up to defend their church against protestants, and then even happily side with unbelievers. I hate fighting with other Christians, of all people, and many times avoid it and just move on. But THIS. Come on. COME ON. I thought we at least agreed Jesus is the only way to salvation! How could you not say something? At least don’t be blind to false teaching!

A catholic, of course, tried to defend it, who actually said the pope is not infallible—but I corrected him on that one (I grew up catholic you’re not fooling me, and yes I have been catechized enough)—then came back to say it only applies ex cathedra: meaning, only when he is ‘in office’ with “full authority.”

I said my pastor then has more integrity. He’s not perfect, but at least he says the same thing whether he is on the pulpit or not. He preaches the same gospel whether at church or in a grocery store. And I never have to make up new doctrine to make him or his job infallible, or exalt him more than necessary to a level higher than a church leader or teacher (I am looking at the saint and blessed pope).

Jesus says, I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life. No comes to the Father except through Me.

How clear can that be? I’ve said this before, No wonder Muslims love Catholics (I constantly refer to Islam on this blog because I live in Middle East; this is also where I converted, and I had never known what it was actually like to be Christian until I lived here). If the world had a favorite type of Christian, it might be the Catholics. And if the world had a least favorite type of Christian, I am sure it’s evangelicals. I mean, even other Christians hate us.

Today I went to church. Have I mentioned we don’t actually have a proper church building? We rent a small villa in a far-side residential area with over 50 people at a service (Praise the Lord! Even in a cramped area and with a tight budget, God still fills our house). We don’t have a name or sign plastered outside identifying as a church. We’re scared because it’s not actually legal to run an evangelical church in this country. But there are Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox churches at least one of each in my city. As I’ve said before, evangelism is illegal, but they will openly convert you to Islam. (I don’t blame them, it’s their country, we’re just here as immigrants and treated accordingly. We don’t try to change laws or culture, and we try our best to live according to the rules. As long as we keep to ourselves and treat it nothing more than a closed gathering, we’ll be fine).

Trust me, I missed being Catholic - because I was just happy and carefree. I didn’t know much of the world or the Word. Ignorance is bliss. But my life changed as soon as I became Christian - when I professed that faith, took it seriously, and preached the gospel boldly. Now I understand the Bible even more intimately - anytime it speaks of persecution, insult, and suffering, I can relate to it. When Jesus says ‘love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you,’ it has more weight.

I don’t know where I am going with this post other than it’s a rant and a writing of personal experience. My journey as a Christian is both a blessing and a curse - in the same way the apostles have written about it. But narrow is the way that leads to life. I know persecution is part of Christian life, and I shall rejoice in it.

Repent! I say this to myself more times in a day than I address it to others. I am a sinner. Always will be. But by the grace of God and blood of Jesus on the cross I shall be justified.

Jesus is the Way. There is no other way.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

how do you keep your faith even while such horrific things are going on in palestine? i've been a christian all my life and i understand that the question of why god allows suffering is one that people have always been asking, that we can never really know the answer to, but it's just so hard for me to see things like this, all of these innocent people being terrorized and murdered in such evil ways, and understand why god can't stop it from happening. in church we pray for both israel and palestine and it feels so pointless, and just makes me frustrated that i can't actually do anything to stop this. especially knowing that even bethlehem, the place of jesus's birth and home to many palestinian christians, is being attacked and churches are being bombed. it seems pretty clear that the people committing these atrocities are never going to open their hearts and stop, and the world leaders who would have the power to make them stop either don't care or directly support them. i do not want to believe that god doesn't exist, or that god would just sit by and watch all of this happen if it were possible to stop it, but it's such a struggle at times like this. i feel like it shouldn't be and like i should've had this figured out by now. it's okay if you don't answer this, i just love your blog and have learned a lot from it over the years, and am incredibly saddened by the state of the world right now.

Hey there, anon. I feel with you and stand with you in your struggle. I also gently suggest you work on letting go of the sense that you "should" have this figured out by now. Firstly because learning to release myself from "shoulds" is something my therapist taught me and it's been super helpful for showing myself love; secondly because I believe it is deeply, deeply faithful to ask these questions, to demand to know where God is in the face of evil — not just once, but continuously across our lives.

If at any point we think we have it "all figured out," if we think we've reached a fully satisfying solution to the problem of how a good God could "let" evil things happen, we're more likely to be numbed by fatalism or become complacent in the face of injustice. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (may his memory be a blessing) put it when asked why God lets bad things happen to good people,

“God does not want us to understand, because if we ever understood, we would be forced to accept that bad things happen to good people, and God does not want us to accept those bad things. He wants us not to understand, so that we will fight against the bad and the injustices of this world, and that is why there is no answer to that question.”

Ask the questions. Bring all that you feel — your grief, your confusion, your frustration, your doubt, your fear — to God. Study and pray and converse with others.

And while you're doing all that, and accepting that it'll be a lifelong exploration, act.

Let your love, your words, your actions be the divine response to injustice — because for whatever mysterious reason, God chooses to act through us, through all who follow Their call to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly" (Micah 6:8).

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So yeah, I can't tell you why God doesn't just jump in and stop the evil, why God seems to limit Their own power to intervene (or even to lack that power to begin with), why God respects our free will even when we misuse it to such great harm (though you can see the bottom of this post for places to explore all those questions).

But I can tell you where I believe God is in the midst of all the questions, all the loss, all the suffering — and that's not on some lofty throne indifferently observing our pain; God is right there in the midst of that pain.

Where is God in the face of hate, violence, death? God is co-suffering with us, shouldering the burden with us.

In Exodus 3:7, God says They don't only see the enslaved Hebrews' misery, don't only hear their cries, but that They know the people's suffering — an intimate knowing, as of one who experiences it themself.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that when humanity fails to welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the oppressed, we fail to do those things for him — for he identifies so intimately with all whom the world calls "least" that he is one with each and every one of them.

So I don't know why God doesn't just fix everything, dammit! — it's the first question I'll be asking Xir when I die, because wtf!!

But I do believe, and I do draw some comfort knowing, that God does not leave us to suffer alone. God is one with the oppressed; God shows ultimate solidarity to the oppressed; and God acts with each of us who act for and with and as the oppressed.

And the good news in the midst in this horror is that there are things that all of us can be doing to act in solidarity with the oppressed!

Our efforts truly are making a difference. Politicians and whole governments across the globe have been startled by the resistance to pro-Israeli propaganda and solidarity with Palestine. The change is slow, but our protests are making an impact. Palestinians have been asking that we keep protesting, boycotting, educating, spreading the word. Because it is helping, slowly but surely.

As long as Palestinians refuse to give in to despair, we too must continue to fight. Palestine will be free. We will not stand silent as genocide occurs.

Boycott as many of the companies named by BDS as you can. Notice that they're focusing on a narrower, more targeted group of companies than some of the enormous lists people keep sharing — that's to help us avoid becoming overwhelmed! So boycott what you can from their list; these are the companies directly contributing to Israel's violence. And spread their list to anyone you can.

If you live in a country with a government that has yet to join the call for a ceasefire — and especially if you, like me here in the US, live in a country that is actively funding/otherwise supporting Israel's violence — call or email your representatives to demand a ceasefire.

Resistbot can help make that easy, in the US at least.

Educate yourself about the history of Palestine and Israel. It's important so that you can recognize lies and propaganda, and also so you can speak knowledgeably about the issue with others. It's also important because understanding and simply bearing witness are two big things Palestinians ask of us. You don't need to know everything, but know enough to bear witness, to remember the loss, and to debunk bullshit when you see it.

Here are some places you can get educated — link to free ebooks; article on current events; article with current perspectives from Gaza; and I've been reblogging news & resources as I see them over on @a-queer-seminarian

Post about what Gaza is going through on social media!! Don't let the fight die down! Talk about it with friends or others you think might be swayed to join the fight if they had the information that most media stations are failing to report on.

Stand up against Islamophobia in all forms.

Stand up against antisemitism in all forms. As Christians, this includes recognizing and uprooting supersessionism in our biblical interpretation, our liturgy, our hymns, etc. It also means learning about Christian Zionism.

One of Israel's primary arguments for the "necessity" of its oppression of Palestine is that Israel is necessary because nowhere else on earth is safe for Jews. They're right that nowhere else is safe for Jews; but they're wrong that Israel is safe for Jews — an settler-colonialist state, a war zone, a state that requires every civilian to serve some time in the military, is not safe for Jews either. But as long as they can point to the antisemitism rampant across the globe, they can use that as an argument. So to counter Israel, and much more importantly to stand in solidarity with Jewish people across the world, don't let antisemitism go unchecked.

Join in protests in your area. Follow Jewish Voices for Peace or Jews Against White Supremacy for info on such events.

Link to places to offer fin.ancial support

Want more ways to act? Check out https://www.palestineaction.org/

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There is no easy answer to the question of suffering — but even so, it can be helpful to explore it deeper, to examine what conclusions others have drawn over the eras. If you want some resources for your wrestling, here are some:

This post goes into the basics of theodicy, the "the intellectual effort to jerry-rig three mutually exclusive terms into harmony: divine power, goodness, and the experiences of evil"

Then there's my #theodicy tag where I put all posts / links about this issue

I also have a long-ass YouTube video diving deep into "the problem of suffering"!

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I hope this response brings you comfort and courage, friend. Don't be afraid of questions, of grief, of concern — let them galvanize you for the struggle. Solidarity forever <3