#how am I reconciled to God

[thinkingonscripture]

Reconciliation with God

In his letter to the Christians at Corinth, the apostle Paul wrote that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). The word reconcile translates the Greek word katallassō (καταλλάσσω), which refers to “the exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship.”[1] According to Merrill F. Unger, “Reconciliation, therefore, means that…

[rhymaes]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) // Anne Carson

[your-fave-is-christian]

I have a dumb question, and I really hope this doesn’t sound rude. What’s the logic for some of the characters? Like, if they’re the “hero” in their storyline, but they don’t seem to follow Biblical doctrine… does that even count? I’m sorry if that sounds snotty; I don’t mean to have an attitude.

No, you're fine!!

Short answer: I don't know, I'm not the one sending in the characters 😂

But really I would say there's not necessarily a consistent logic that they have to fit. That's part of the beauty of Christianity, isn't it? Anyone who repents and believes is welcome; it's not limited to any certain type of people. For the characters people are sending in here, I think there are a few categories. There are some that fit what you said, who already hold Christian morals and who one could easily headcanon as being Christian within the story. Sometimes people send in villains who they want to have redemption arcs and become Christian. Sometimes it's characters who are Christian; mostly it's characters people would like to see become Christian.

[outeremissary]

For no reason in particular I think it's really important to note that as much as I am a pretty intense atheist irl in 2024 I do not blame Sarenrae for all of Tristian's fuckups and am generally disinclined to point fingers at the gods in Kingmaker for mortal affairs (someone at Owlcat just straight up hates Shelyn and whatever they are doing there is mildly incoherent). Is it best practice to leave your now ex-angel with Nyrissa? Definitely not, many things would have been solved by Tristian Not being there. But I don't think in the least that Sarenrae has "broken" Tristian out of malice or neglect. I believe that Tristian's divinity was an extraordinary privilege which was revoked for Tristian's failures to be worthy of that privilege (which I hardly think started with Nyrissa, that was just the breaking point).

I also think that there's a way of seeing being left at that moment as both a moment of harm reduction and a trial of faith. I don't think Nyrissa expected to find herself with an angel who had fallen. I think she had likely prepared to manipulate an actual outsider, had wanted someone in command of the full range of their supernatural abilities. And I think such a being could have enabled more damage much faster. And as for the trial of faith: I think there was a solve to this puzzle, a way to prove that one could hold themself to the extraordinary standards of a servant of the transcendent divine, and that was to have faith in the goddess regardless of fear and to refuse to cooperate no matter what. To as soon as aware refuse to be complicit in the slaughter of innocents, the assassination of a stranger. I'm not the world's biggest self-sacrifice advocate and Balthazar certainly reflects that about me but: these are the deeds of heroes and saints. Furthermore, the soul of a mortal can be recovered. If Tristian dies in chapter seven, the given explanation is that they can't be resurrected because Sarenrae has intervened- I firmly believe that if Tristian had died standing up to Nyrissa Sarenrae would have reclaimed them and restored their divinity. Tristian's failures are failures of first ego and then cowardice. When push actually came to shove, they could not be what they claimed to be. It's pitiable. It's very human. Huge fan of the angel who fails by being too human and too flawed. But I do not place this at the feet of Sarenrae. Not fully, at least. Not even mostly.

Of course, Balthazar would be a different matter: he's always happy to throw accusations to the heavens.

[vv-ispy]

.

[angelstrawbabie420]

grief will have you saying shit like goddamn and fuck maybe the abuse was worth it

[soulofamy]

.

[sukugo]

baby, AotC anakin, or Clone wars early anakin, or Clone wars s7 anakin or RotS anakin???

ahaha this is EASY

BABY BOY AOTC ANAKIN. MOST DELICIOUS BOY IN THE WORLD

rots anakin my belovedddd <3 he's sooo sexy with his hair and his mech arm and his going insane

the clone wars anakin? idk him

[moe-broey]

Me, losing my absolute mind over the fairies and the greater implications of it all and the intricacies I swear to fucking god are there I swear to fucking GOD there's way more to them than meets the eye and I'm going to fucking get all the alts I fucking can so I can study The Lore and I'll fucking get to the fucking bottom of it all --

.............. you know what. A nap does sound nice.

[spessolus]

i'm having some sort of revelation and now i can't stop thinking about how beautiful trans people are in a spiritual sense. like god looked down at his creation and decided that he wanted humans to share in his creativity, which is why we can build things and make art and all that. but also he gave us the creative power to be who we are! what evangelicals don't understand is that trans people existing doesn't take anything away from god's ability to create. they're just proof that we share in his ability to create, and also that he wants us to be creative. the longer i live as queer the more i realize exactly how beautifully trans people fit into creation.

[ghostzzy]

realizing things. etc etc

[bubble-you]

true bestiehood would be letting me make them watch mummy on the orient express with them and let me watch their reactions and listen to me talk about it and repeat this until they get the significance of every line

[honeyvenommusic]

my god. so i’m working on a single i wanted to put out 1.5 years ago lol (surprise) but really wanted to give more to it but just didn’t have the means and man….

retrieving vocal stems from one DAW that only allowed me 8 tracks like i knew i was making it work with whatever i had and that sometimes meant bass sharing a track with vocals sharing a track with bg vocals sharing a- 😭

and now i’m crying (bc i have to sort it out but that’s also bc) damn we really were living in squalor had to give myself a little kiss bc damn you really made that work babes i’m astonished and it still sounded dynamic and great i really took time to calculate what effects would work overall on a track with whatever i had on it it had to work across the board and it still sounded good eye- now i’ve just started a new DAW like a month+ ago (still holding my head whenever i need to add a new track just waiting for the other shoe…) but i’m already feeling less stressed (miss some definite things so i’ll be back to start something or add something and then move to the other but ehh we’ll make it work like we are now)

[0ne-in-salems-lot]

Just a thought

But does anybody else need to lock themselves away in a log cabin with a roaring fire, an unconsumable amount of weed and whiskey, and Elliott Smith records and just have a complete artistic breakdown?

If you do, and you have such a log cabin, hit me up and we'll break down together and create some shit.

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[senualothbrok]

I was wondering how long it would take before a Mystra apologist came out and said this 🙄

This is a comment on this video of Gale's evil ending

Nope, not thanking Larian for having the only time we see Gale remove Mystra's earring be when he completely loses his goodness and enthralls a bunch of free and sentient beings, because he has been completely consumed by his bitterness and rage

Not thanking Larian higher ups for making it abundantly clear that they believe Gale blowing himself up / completely folding to Mystra's demands is Gale's "redemption arc"

Smirking at being called an irrational hysterical Mystra-hating fangirl for simply being someone who has media literacy and character empathy ✊

Nope. I am going to continue to imagine that a happy, at peace, reconciled Gale who believes that he is enough as he is would still come to terms with everything that has happened to him and choose to remove or replace his earring one day

I am going to continue to see Mystra as the DnD god that she is - distant, neutral and indifferent, and actively manipulative and negligent towards Gale

I'll just be here in my corner being evil, hysterical and irrational 🫶