#just xtian thoughts

[just-xtian-thoughts]

"The knowledge of good and evil" has come to mean for me that the implications are that our use of tools led us to thinking abstractly about everying, which turned into a desire to consider everything as just a utility, something to be retooled for our personal benefit, inconsiderate of all else.

The reason Adam & Eve covering themselves out of shame was because suddenly, they realised that they too could be seen as a "utility" to someone else. Being naked now meant being vulnerable; more easily exploited, and easy to break. It's telling, that the very next chapter shows Cain utilizing a rock for murder.

Not that I'm against human ingenuity or engineering (unless it's stuff like weaponry or Ai), since it doesn't seem like God was ever against us having it. It's perhaps the only way in which we resemble him in any way. But I do wonder sometimes, about how our brains and hormones would've been wired with the extra space there'd be from not having to be thinking about the potential harm(s) that any and every man-made object, be it physical, social, societal, or whatever, could cause...

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Me to people who are using "judeochristian" imprudently

[joelletwo]

trying to find a tkgn fic i barely remember the details of but whoaaaa no way really nice sorrowfulsweet sugi pov kid-to-adulthood........

[aropride]

ok well we know that jesus can emit pure light as he did when he was in his tomb + i assume the light is holiness or joy or purity (considering his spirit was in heaven but his body had died in sin) (considering his body was holy but his spirit was drowning in unquenchable fire).. thinking about the version of jesus i made up in my head who's way cooler and more transgender and i think he would emit sparks and a glowing electric light if you fucked him and i think it would inspire an unfathomably intense lust

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

Reading the Orchid Thief and lemme say. So fascinating to see someone like. Try to come up with a Reason Why humans like orchids. Two chapters here in a row pretty much treating Orchid hobbyists and plant hobbyists in general like one would an entirely alien culture- and don't get me wrong I understand why to an extent. Trying to make this book marketable outside just plant circles and what have you. But some of the way the camera is angled here is just. Fascinating.

Like, she explains how there are so many unique ways orchids evolved, as an attempt to contextualize for a reader why people might go crazy for them in specific, and describes individual species unique mating strategies, and the inability of them to self pollinate- but while I think that context is interesting it doesn't explain a damn thing. For one thing, having an extremely specific mating strategy is not solely an Orchid thing- a LOT of plants do it like that. Lots are flexible but I would say a vast swath are not and require specific things. For another- apples also don't self fertilize, but you don't have hundreds of thousands of apple varietal collectors.

She discusses their beauty as a reason they're collected- I won't deny that being a factor for sure, plants that humans like the shape of have a tendency to get collected and overcollected all the time- but like. A lot of people collect things that are traditionally ugly or even smell bad- and if it was exclusively a shallow pursuit, no one would work as hard as is required for an insane amount of orchids.

Part of the reasons orchids in particular are popular has to do with colonization. I can't articulate it all myself bc I haven't done research- but a genus that largely exists in tropical regions, that became popular in the late 1800s, that, in order to get in homes, white men would travel to all sorts of regions to take plants out of to get in the home? That is gonna help it get more popular than tomato or apple varieties for sure. I'm sure she's gonna touch on this eventually, given that the story she's covering actually involves the Seminole nation so I'm not holding it against her.

I suppose I'm just fascinated by her approach so far as to trying to understand why anyone would. Work to grow something? Really like something? I mean she pretty explicitly states that she "wants to want something" as much as these people want their plants- describes hobby communities and the idea of like. Working a hobby into your schedule or having friends related to the hobby as a "religion". She's baffled by like. Putting time and energy into a hobby and gaining joy and community from it and is trying to like. Break down orchids into their component parts to understand what makes someone. Want to grow a plant? And get community out of a hobby?

I'm going to be charitable and not make presumptions that she doesn't know like. The concept of loneliness and therefore a longing for community. Or that on some level she must know what common signs of autism are (ignoring her having spent several paragraphs describing several different people with classic signs and symptoms and then settling on "weird"). But it makes me want to turn the camera lens around for a moment. What makes someone presume that it's Orchid "obsession" (the word hobby is rather rare in the book acrually) that is particularly strange or more obsessed than other obsessions? What makes one abstract others hobbies and interests as needing a solve while the ones you surely have seen all over and even participated in aren't worth that examination? The line between "normal" and "abnomal" is entirely one made by dominant society

So this is why hobbies and kink aren't so different in the way they're perceived-

Orchids are an obsession to this author, to be highlighted and examined, or a hobby, to most people. They get a noteworthy category because they are seen as atypical. Sports-watching, however, is like. Never discussed as hobby. Watching football, watching soccer. It's just normal. No one says "that's my hobby." Even if a guy had a room full of memorabilia he would be noted as a "team fan" not a hobbyist. Sports has been declared normative, so it's not really considered a hobby by anyone. Plants? Non normative, therefore the same exact behaviors will get you considered unusual and a hobbyist.

Kink is the same way. People who are attracted to women being interested in breasts is so assumed to be normal and natural that no one calls it a kink. Breasts, the fatty deposits intended for feeding young, are expected to be hidden bc this kink (which everyone refuses to call a kink or a fetish or what have you) is seen as so universal. It's seen as immutable fact that there is a sexual nature to them. Feet however? If someone's into that that's a kink or a fetish if you're feeling kind, an obsession that makes you strange and worthy of examination and explanation if you're not.

I'm not arguing for doing away with calling things hobbies or kinks- I'm actually advocating for calling more normative things those words actually- I think it's just helpful to see where the framing of something, the way in which we choose to examine it, also has a lot to say about that which we leave unexamined, and unnamed. Because we don't categorize the normal.

[balteus]

christian esotericism is so cool too bad it's heresy 😔

[thriftdyke]

do you think jesus died and came back wrong

[lunar-fey]

YES WIN THEY ALREADY FOUND SOMEONE TO TAKE THAT OLD LADYS SHIFTS FROM ME I DONT HAVE TO GO THERE TODAY YAHOO

[llycaons]

skip 'hello from the magic tavern' ep20 if you're listening, btw. the guest makes a joke of being antisemitic. like I don’t think it's meant to reflect her actual views but her fantasty character is antisemitic and it's treated as a joke

[cruelsister-moved2]

i mean whats not clicking

[just-xtian-thoughts]

People always comparing some epic "tiny vs big" story as "David and Goliath" all the while overlooking how easy and free that battle was for David. Goliath may have been a chad and a unit, but David was the Saitama of the Bible at that moment. He was an absolute mustelid that had no doubts that he could and he would. Nowadays I suspect what people mean by their "David and Goliath" likenings is more like "white man vs the steppes of Chomolungma" than anything else. Put more "giants in my life" that I one-shot like Goliath, I need more easy wins...

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I'm sorry, but when we read from the torah this week, it's just... I'm sorry, it was hilarious in a way. Imagine being a slave and entrusted with Everything then being in PRISON and then entrusted with All The Prisoners (You Are Also A Prisoner). Obviously, it would always have turned out that this would happen to joseph but I'm just imagining how that would have played out

[lolcatsdeamon13]

Just got really excited about the idea of instead of the "melting pot" where everyone comes together to form a basically homogeneous but delicious dish, having the idea of the stew. If you just have meat in your stew or just carrots or just potatoes, it won't be a very good stew, but when you put them together on a good simmer it makes a delicious dish. The main difference from the melting pot, however, is that while the whole dish infuses with my carrot's taste, I am still a carrot. I am made better by learning the culture of the potato, but the potato is still a wonderful potato. My tastes are important in this stew, but I won't be forced to convert into a piece of beef. The importance should not be set on becoming a homogenous yummy middle, but embracing the deliciousness of each piece, picking up flavors from each other by learning from each other, and becoming a better whole because of it.

[writer-at-the-table]

There's a preoccupation in (culturally) xtian pop culture about the possibility of people secretly continuing non/pre-xtian pagan/"old ways" religious practices that's always seemed a little weird to me.

I don't just mean the folk horror genre, either, though that's a big example. It shows up as a trope in other genres of story in xtian hegemonic cultures, as well.

Heck, it comes up so often on Midsomer Murders that it's practically it's own genre of episode. That's what sparked this post, in fact.

It'm starting to think it reflects some deep insecurity in xtian cultures rooted in the coercive nature of xtianity's spread.

Something to do with the difficulty of reconciling that history with, if not necessarily active faith, then at least a self-image of the modern xtian hegemonic cultures in which the writers, directors, ect who put these tropes in their work (and the audiences who read them) were born, raised, and live their lives.

Also something to do with that history and the fact that the genuineness of any coerced conversion is always inherently suspect.

Not sure where I'm going with this, if anywhere, but I am having thoughts.

[redrook]

thinking about the time I was 5 and a teacher explained what Heaven was to me for the first time (all the best people are there, recess is forever, and I could eat as much chocolate as I wanted) and I'm like ma'am sign me the FUCK up (roughly speaking) and then she had me pray to Jesus to ask to become Xtian

And I was SO absolutely excited, because I thought I'd get immediately beamed up into Heaven, Star Trek style. Everyone else in my class may have been excited about recess coming up, but they were SUCKERS because I was about to get FOREVER recess, and INFINITE chocolate

And I'm like man what's wrong with people that everyone doesn't do this. And my teacher was like you are so smart and that's so true and I'm like yeah I AM so smart and that IS so true

cut to around an hour later, and I'm now angry, confused, and hurt, that Jesus was taking so long to beam me up to Heaven and I was expected to go to REGULAR, FINITE, TEMPORARY recess. A little delay, I could understand. The man was probably very busy. But once it got to a whole hour, that was just unreasonable.

So I go and ask the teacher what went wrong, and why Jesus was dragging his feet on this whole taking me to Heaven thing, and she was like oh. I'm sorry. You only go to Heaven when you're dead.

And I asked her something along the lines of, so the only people who know about Heaven are dead people. and we can't talk to dead people

And she uncomfortably said, Yes.

And I just scowled at her and walked away.

She never tried to talk to me about Jesus or Heaven ever again, but I hope the next time she wanted to convert a five year old, she thought about me scowling up at her in my thick rimmed glasses asking what exactly the holdup was for the Good Lord to just fucking kill me already lmao

[relativelyfvcked]

auahH i drank a lot at the game ans still pretty sloshed but its sunday tomotrow so i i think i can have more. as a treat.