#theology is complicated

[a-witch-in-endor]

I want to agree with some of the things you said to the last anon there - 'Hinduism' sometimes feels like a combination of many different local religions and varies enormously from region to region and person to person. Some people absolutely believe in and worship multiple gods, some people believe in multiple gods but worship one god (for e.g. shaivaites, vaishnavites), some people lean into the spirituality of it all and believe in Brahman, and there are Hindu atheists as well. Obviously a massive disclaimer that I'm not any sort of expert or scholar but just a person who lives in India, so this has just been my observation.

I love the analytical posts about world religions and the lore for the MO-verse religions! I am way behind on MO but I will catch up when work eases up soon :)

Hi! Thanks for the comment, it is helpful to hear from someone on the soil, so to speak.

I have lots of theories about the ways in which Judaism is misunderstood by outside culture mirroring how Hinduism is misunderstood by outside culture. One day, maybe I'll go on a quest and then write a book about it.

[blessedarethequeer]

people always say "your body is a temple" as some kind of pearl-clutching gotcha finger wag to people with tattoos and piercings and body mods which has never made sense to me

cause like.

y'all know what we do with temples right? with holy spaces?

we adorn them in art and precious metals and things of beauty. we make them spectacles of gathering to signal that this is a space we know the Divine calls to us. our Creation does not end the moment we take our first breath, we continue to collaborate in our own Creation each and every day.

get the tattoo or that piercing, fill yourself with delicious things and celebrate in wonder at the mystery it is to live within your body!

[many-sparrows]

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this from @jspark3000 , a hospital chaplain in Florida. He sums it up so perfectly.

People are dying and you are asking me to look away. People are dying and you are telling me that it's just too complicated for you to have an opinion on. People are dying and they are being called animals. People are dying and you are telling me that the Bible justifies the state of israel, actually, so it's fine.

I hold so much grief and pain and compassion for Israeli citizens now living in fear. I share anxiety and prayers and hope for hostages, and grief for innocent people who were massacred. But I cannot do that and then ignore the plight of Palestine. Not when people have been crying out in pain for decades. Not when a child dies every fifteen minutes. Not when families are being eradicated and settler violence is escalating without recourse. For the same reason that I grieve the victims of Hamas, I must side against the state of Israel and its history of oppression and violence!

I go to the wounded! I go to those fighting to survive! I go to those facing oppression!! I have no other choice! The Bible tells me to listen to those in pain, no matter who they are, and that means that I can hold compassion and dignity for people all over different parts of this conflict, while still understanding the inequity at play. When there is so, so much suffering and anguish, I cannot look away, no matter how much easier that would be! Acts 20:27 refuses to let us shrink away from the FULL council of God, no matter how difficult it becomes!

As long as I am alive, I must go to the wounded and the weeping. I go to my Christian siblings who are being persecuted in ways that most born and bread American Christians can't fathom. I have committed myself to peace making, different than peace keeping, and I cannot abandon that! Some analysts project that when this is all over, there will be no more Christians left in Gaza. I have no other option than to hold the people of Palestine and to continue to see them.

To follow this faith, you must have courage. Not only to do difficult things, but to challenge difficult thoughts. To engage in difficult conversations. To abandon neutrality when it is a tool of oppression. To hold complex realities without abandoning those who need you. To extend compassion and mercy farther than you can imagine possible. To listen when people cry out.

I go to the wounded, because I do not have the option not to. Palestine, you will never, ever walk alone. 🇵🇸

[fate-defiant]

NOW HOLD ON A SECOND HOLD ON A FUCKING SECOND EVERYONEso if Drosselmeyer can, ad the show implies, write entire worlds into existence, write people imto existence- i mean yeag we al allready agree he is basically a God right.

So like. Author right? Number one Drosselmeyer fanboy , knows all the lore , reconstructed Drosselmeyers fucking study out of sheer devotion, brings fakir in there, pours water on him to 'purify' him, makes him fast and meditate to initiate him, etc.

He's not just being a nerd y'all. Hes not just obsessed. He is WORSHIPPING.

[communistkenobi]

I’m curious if other communists have like a religious relationship to their political beliefs for lack of a better word? That’s not a good word to use but I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m solidly atheist but all of the feelings and emotions religious people talk about, revelation and spiritual connection to community and so on are all things I experience pretty regularly and I interpret those feelings as fundamentally communist. the way I take in and absorb information in particular feels revelatory in a religious sense. I’m pretty sure this is fairly common with MLs but I’m curious about it in general

[thebirdandhersong]

:'))))))

[evenaturtleduck]

Was not expecting the passionate theological discussion at Eel-face Yusin's bar but I and my heretical (yet deeply religious) little heart and brain are So Here For It ❤️

[agentfascinateur]

"Allies for Armageddon"...

Israel first became central to evangelical eschatology four centuries ago, when Protestant theologians, especially those of a millenarian bent, seized upon very specific passages about the end times.

...

And then, if the prophets were right, some pretty unpleasant things would happen: A false messiah known as the Antichrist would take over Jerusalem and install himself as the savior before inaugurating the Tribulation, a seven-year period of death and destruction, with most Jews perishing. Finally, Jesus would return to Earth, overthrowing the pretender and inaugurating a thousand-year reign of peace on Earth. By the 1970s and '80s, a growing number of prominent evangelicals, including Falwell, made trips to Israel, eager to get in on the ground floor of the coming apocalypse. At first, the Israelis paid them little mind, but Prime Minister Menachem Begin quickly realized that the religious right had become increasingly influential in Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party.

So to arrive at a biblical moment, these lunatics meanwhile sacrifice the blood of tens of thousands at the altar of religion.

It all rather sounds very pagan to me.

[nunery]

🌼✨💕Just girl things💕✨🌼

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.

Barbara Brown Taylor

[mortuarybees]

can't wait to replay the game as all the different andreases you can be but on my first playthrough I just love andreas torn between divided loyalties; to the abbey as a place he finds peace and belonging and friends, and the friends he finds in the town, people who love and welcome him despite having no obligation to do so. And limited by his own experience as a sheltered middle class man from a large city who is just a visitor here in a place he's come to love and has no real desire to see it change even as he wants the lives of his friends to improve and sees the necessity of change

[froggierboy]

"kill God in s3" actually break down God's office door and demand answers s3. aziraphale's got his sword in one hand and crowley's hand in the other. jesus is on their side because if we all remember jesus was literally human and also questioned God's plan canonically

[royalreef]

(( Speaking of which, I should probably talk some day about the “foster system” that Amanda’s branch of things runs and operates for the Merkingdom.

[godlovesdykes]

changed my mind abt being a self identified hylic actually. the hylic/psychic(/pneumatic) dichotomy (/trichotomy) sounds very cool but i disagree with the first principles. so by self identified hylic i meant one who lives happily in the body despite the upper realms of existence but what i really am is someone who lives happily in the body and soul and communion with god and communion with nature because i don’t believe they’re separate. i want to focus on the body and material existence more than many philosophers and theologians do but i don’t want them to have priority over the spiritual. they’re equivalent to me. one is Love and the other is the outpouring of that Love. so obviously one is older/more Real But the other is beloved by god and beautiful in its striving for god

[lunaticamic]

not to be catholic on main but that shit worked

[ex-furry]

tumblrina with jesus icon who isn't actually christian