Cyrano4747 posted:

So this isn't what your asking about at all but this stood out like a flare to me:

You might want to reconsider this unless you have some specific and compelling reasons for stacking masters. Reasons like "this particular niche industry/career path I'm on needs these." Feel free to swing by the academia thread in SAL if you want to talk about that, but the tl;dr is that stacking masters is almost never worth it from a career perspective.

If you're independently wealthy and this is what entertains you, shine on you crazy diamond.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Just saying something because I've seen that pattern in other places, from people who were getting really bad advice and being strung along by predatory admissions officers. MA + MEd makes sense, even if the second requirement is silly. Didn't mean to offend, my apologies.

Nessus posted:

It sounds like this shul let you down hardcore. Was it Chabad or something? They might have thought, OK, our job is done, we got the stray sheep back in the herd.

Earwicker posted:

good perspective

Freudian posted:

excellent advice

AngryRobotsInc posted:

this is actually super comforting

Killingyouguy! posted:

re: this and also the three masters degrees - i don't mean to diminish all you're going through and all you've achieved but, do you just need to always be working towards something?

Tias posted:

Yo Sinns, I'm not actually certain having lots of problems with faith necessarily qualifies you to be a spiritual leader. I mean, it *can*, but I've wanted to be a preacher for a long time, and I've found that I actually am an expert mostly on me. This means that I've started helping folks doing what I need to do, getting clean and sober, and helping others. It's a valuable job too, and probably does further some sort of spiritual development for both me and others.

Also, kudos on doing mushrooms in a tent, that is no joke a not insignificant part of spiritual enlightenment if I'm any judge.

Prurient Squid posted:

I read Sinn's post on and off over the course of several days!

Anyway, they said something about discernment.

I kind of think that a lot of the mechanics of Quakerism: concerns, meetings for clearness, ministry etc... is actually about creating a ballast or counterbalast against enthusiasm or sudden ispiration. Like the aim it to stop you having a sudden epiphany and deciding to go to Africa to help children or whatever without slowing down and going over it.

Actually I very almost did vocal ministry but someone else spoke and the moment past. Afterwards I was told that I was right not to have spoke because if it was really the spirit I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. This annoyed me at the time but maybe she was right.

HopperUK posted:

Moby Dick is really good.

Killingyouguy! posted:

I guess, yeah: if you're at a crossroads spiritually, how do you distinguish 'I believe this is true' from 'I would like this to be true'?

quiggy posted:

I think this is a much better way of phrasing what I'm trying to get at. Like, how do I reconstruct my sense of place in the universe without just feeling like I'm either making up some bullshit or picking an off-the-shelf answer without interrogating it enough?

Killingyouguy! posted:

Making up some bullshit is valid imo

Bar Ran Dun posted:

shitloads of quality words and like at least three months of rumination on my part

Bar Ran Dun posted:

“The element of doubt is an element in faith itself. And what the church should do is to accept somebody who says to them that this faith for which this church stands is a matter of my ultimate concern, which I want to serve with all my strength. But if you are asked to say what you believe about this or that doctrine, then you are driven into a kind of dishonesty even if in this moment you can say "I believe," e. g., concerning the Virgin Birth – or whatever that may mean. If you say you will agree, then you are dishonest.. . .; you may subject yourselves to this whole set of doctrines as long as you are ministers, and you can say you cannot promise because you cannot cease to think, and if you think you must doubt. And that is the problem. I think the only solution on Protestant soil is to say that this set of doctrines represents your own ultimate concern, and that you desire to serve in this group which The element of doubt is an element in faith itself. And what the church should do is to accept somebody who says to them that this faith for which this church stands is a matter of my ultimate concern, which I want to serve with all my strength. But if you are asked to say what you believe about this or that doctrine, then you are driven into a kind of dishonesty even if in this moment you can say "I believe," e. g., concerning the Virgin Birth – or whatever that may mean. If you say you will agree, then you are dishonest.. . .; you may subject yourselves to this whole set of doctrines as long as you are ministers, and you can say you cannot promise because you cannot cease to think, and if you think you must doubt. And that is the problem. I think the only solution on Protestant soil is to say that this set of doctrines represents your own ultimate concern, and that you desire to serve in this group which has made this the basis of its ultimate concern, but that you can never promise not to doubt anyone of these special doctrines.”

Paul Tillich

NikkolasKing posted:

I'm not a Christian but "anger is based, actually" is, I'm pretty sure, a very un-Christian message.

Also would Jesus doing that fall under the realm of "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord?" Many a Christian encountered far, far greater evil than that and greeted it with equanimity.

Prurient Squid posted:

I'm just going to infodump a verbatim Jeff Foster post on the self help industry. I do this as a self help junkie who might have gone a little too far at the moment.

edit:

I kind of want to read this out in front of an audience. Maybe I should look for venues?

quiggy posted:

God Hates Figs

Nessus posted:

I don’t get it either. I guess this is why Bertrand Russel brought it up. That said, if the one thing Jesus did “wrong” as the mark of humanity, was curse a bad fig tree, that’s pretty small change.

Deteriorata posted:

I think actually Jesus was accused of pushing the kid off the roof, but he raised the kid from the dead and the kid then admitted he fell off the roof.

Nessus posted:

I think we're mostly just shooting the breeze.

NikkolasKing posted:

If Religion thread wants to talk Metal Gear Solid 2, I'm down.

Liquid Communism posted:

I'll be blunt, there's no paradox if one simply accepts that a lot of Christians historically have been hypocrites regarding the difference between what they preach and what they practice. That doesn't mean there isn't good to be found, or that the teachings are wrong, just that people and organizations are flawed and prone to do terrible things for power. The worst excesses of the Church's support for imperialism (or outright corruption and sale of religious apointments and indulgences back home) are matters of historical record.

quote:

Word of their transgression quickly got out, and the people who partook of the sausages were jailed for breaking canon law. Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli, who was present but did not inhale, quickly took to the pulpit to defend them. Historians think Zwingli helped stage the Wurstessen, planning the event alongside Froschauer with the intention of challenging the legal obligation to fast during Lent.

Worthleast posted:

https://twitter.com/UnseenOps/status/1661499544297717762

NikkolasKing posted:

I'm too tired

Put better, I think art, politics, these things are the new meaning structures people need to deal with life given the collapse of organized religion.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

There’s quite a lot of broiling unhappiness over schools and the pandemic, and in some places curriculums are very legislated with little deviation allowed which is a pocket if one has ND kids.

Remote was a massive failure and it’s basically gone unacknowledged and in many places they’ve basically just given up on trying to fix the problems it caused.

This of course is being used by the right to do racism.

shame on an IGA posted:

meanwhile, among the crowd that gives Paul way too much credit:

https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2023/05/some-people-deserve-to-starve-a-biblical-view-of-work-and-welfare/

Prurient Squid posted:

This week on Thursday I found an open mic venue in town. The turn out was pretty low. There was me, a guy who came out of curiosity and about five regulars there for the jam night.

So I was encouraged to get up first and read the poem by Jeff Foster (posted earlier). I got a big round of applause when I was finished.

Some day I think I might write my own poems and read them out!

So I enjoyed it anyway.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

This is pretty close to the idea of: the event of Jesus as the Christ as the ground of being.

Tias posted:

Well, some faiths (heathenry, hinduism) says we ARE in the age of poo poo going wrong, but that it will eventually resolve itself for good, or at least balance.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

btw, thank you for that post Bill!

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

The Christians I grew up around spoke intensely of the love and safety they felt from God, but also of a sense of terrifying awe that made it clear it was not the kind of love I had ever yet experienced, being an actual child. But they were equally intense in their disapproval of me not experiencing the "right" emotions for God, in a way that made me extremely conscious of the fact I loved God wrong, or just not enough maybe. I felt the absence of feeling the kind of Belief all the adults and seemingly other children around me felt too. Eventually, something began happening in my life that necessitated my prayers and praying to my family's God continued to leave me feeling alone and wrong. I prayed instead to a God from an ancient history book I had read and I felt it -- that love and safety and then immediately behind that a little bit of terror that I had felt so heard. Religion was from then on a very confusing thing for me, but I have always been able to center back on Belief, because I felt it when I needed it and knew it by its name.

quiggy posted:

Azathoth posted:

No small amount of ink has been spilled on exactly that question. I'll offer my own thoughts, which I think are generally in line with mainstream Protestant interpretations, and I'll touch a bit on the Historical Jesus, as that's one of my personal areas of interest.

First, that cry must be understood as Jesus directly quoting Psalms 22 and so any interpretation of what the cry itself means has to be grounded in what the psalmist is saying. I'd recommend reading the whole thing, which I'll link but not quote: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2022&version=NRSVUE. The psalm is about someone feeling that all is lost but still trusting in God, so keep that in mind as we go forward.

Given the psalm, I take the cry to be that of one suffering in absolute desolation and despair, which is fitting for someone being crucified, as crucifixion is not only designed to be supremely painful but also supremely humiliating. Jesus, at that moment, feels furthest from God the Father, but with his cry he doesn't just express that he also expresses his trust in God's plan. This is an area where Jesus the man as understood in the context of the Historical Jesus butts up against later theological development of the Trinity, which I'll address more in your second question, but for now, let's not inquire too deeply over exactly who's plan we're dealing with.

This idea of Jesus being willing to suffer and die is prefigured by his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane earlier when he says "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39) and then "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” (Matthew 26:42).

I would also argue that Jesus, as fully human, experienced the full range of human experiences and an unavoidable part of that is feeling despair at not being able to perceive the presence of God in times of hardship, yet with that cry, he also simultaneously expresses that he knows God is there and that he trusts God.

Now, admittedly, this is a complex reading of the text and more plain readings are possible. One of those readings is that Jesus the man was crying out to God because God had actually departed from him before his death. This is a view considered heretical by most modern Christians. Basically it says that Jesus wasn't born divine but that God entered into Jesus at his baptism by John the Baptist and he then departed Jesus on the cross, usually reasoned because God cannot possibly die. It also has the advantage of explaining why Jesus needed to be baptized at all, another theologically tricky question. I don't personally hold to that view, but it was common enough in early Christianity that it needed to be condemned as a heresy later.

Now, this brings up a point that will take me into your second question. The four narratives of the crucifixion presented in the canonical Gospels are irreconcilable. Jesus cries out to God in Mark and Matthew but says other things in Luke and John. So we have to ask ourselves, did Jesus really quote Psalm 22 from the cross?

My answer to that is that it's possible but we don't really have a way to know. Matthew is very concerned with portraying Jesus as the fulfillment of Israelite prophecy about the Messiah, so having Jesus quote a Psalm there fits perfectly with what he's doing. That Mark includes it when he doesn't have the same goal is a point in favor of authenticity, but it's an open question in scholarship exactly how scripture Jesus would have been able to recite as it's generally accepted that he was illiterate. Personally, I think it's likely that, on the cross, he did express a feeling of abandonment and desolation, though I question whether it was in those specific words.

And here we come to the Historical Jesus.

The mainstream (little-o orthodox) understanding would say that Jesus understood at all times that he was God and this view seems to have developed early within Christianity, though it was by no means universal in the early Christian community. It is, however, the view expressed by the eventual winners of the theological struggle.

Something that may help here is understanding the order in which the Gospels were written. It is generally accepted that Mark was written first, followed by Matthew and Luke, then John. Whether Luke used Matthew or vice versa is an unsettled area of scholarship but most scholars agree that they were written pretty close to each other and that they used Mark when writing, with John coming later. Personally, I subscribe to Mark being written first, then Matthew who had a copy of Mark, then Luke who had a copy of both Mark and Matthew.

This is relevant because on the chain of Mark -> Matthew -> Luke -> John, we see a historiographical shift in the presentation of Jesus. In Mark, Jesus is portrayed as the most human while in John he is portrayed as the most divine. Scholars will vary on that, but to me it is plain as day, with the caveat that I think Matthew and Luke both are about on the same level.

It's also important to remember that despite the names attached, none of the authors knew Jesus. None of the writers claim to be disciples, and we know with certainty that they were not. Mark claims to have been written by the companion/translator of Luke, but that is not likely for a variety of reasons. So basically it needs to be accepted that although the writers of the Gospels were passing on hearsay about the life of Jesus. Also note, they are called by convention after the name of their Gospel though not accepted by anyone anymore to actually be said historical figures.

So when Mark includes the direct Aramaic that Jesus spoke, he didn't hear it from Jesus' lips. He also likely didn't hear about it from someone who heard it directly either. Same for Matthew, who likely included what Mark wrote because it fit his goals, not because he necessarily knew it to be historically accurate, though he may have thought it was.

By the time we get to John, we have gone from the very human Jesus sweating bullets about the crucifixion in Mark to a very divine Jesus in John who acts much more in line with the modern view of a Jesus who could look upon the world in knowing bemusement as it all plays out.

Personally, I think that Jesus understood himself to be the prophecied Messiah eventually but not right away at birth. My reading, informed by a historical critical framework, is that Jesus was initially a follower of John the Baptist and at some point around his baptism came to understand himself as the one John was talking about, and thus began his own public ministry. I tend to view this as being caused by the killing of John the Baptist, which caused Jesus to rethink a lot of things.

I get this and the next point from Historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan, who asserts that Jesus' big innovation was understanding that humans were waiting on God to fix the world and God was waiting on humans to start the process. So Jesus preached about the coming Kingdom of God, which he viewed as very much an earthly creation. Note, this is in express contrast to little-o orthodox understanding of the Kingdom of God as something spiritual. He asserts that it is likely that Jesus thought he was building an earthly kingdom and that God would eventually place him on the throne of said kingdom.

I am dubious on that specific point about earthly power, in that I view Jesus through an apocalyptic lens (which Crossan does not). My view is that Jesus also thought the world was going to be radically remade by God in the very near future, so unlike Simon bar Kokhba who a hundred years later would claim to be the messiah and rule over an earthly kingdom, I don't think Jesus thought that it would get that far before God came back, resurrected the dead, and instituted his kingdom on Earth.

As for why Jesus would not know all this, well, if he knew everything, he wouldn't be fully human. Humans cannot be omniscient so it makes sense that Jesus would have a period where he would experience that. I don't think that continues today of course, but there's a bunch of places where Jesus either explicitly or implicitly lacks full knowledge, and that's fundamental to the human experience.

I've rambled enough on this, so I think I'll just cut this here.