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Welp. "I I have come not to bring peace, but a fighter jet"?
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Nov 13, 2016 20:04
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HEY GAL posted:orthodox priests will bless anything you ask them to. i think this is a good thing. hopefully, this plane's pilot will remain free from harm, which is ok to think no matter what our countries' opinions are of each other
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Nov 13, 2016 20:46
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Pellisworth posted:imo the most Christian thing to do is help kids regardless of their parentage, if you have kids of your own cool but it's really a loving awesome thing to foster or adopt kids. The American baby-adoption business (and it is a business) is waaaaay undersupplied; there aren't healthy white babies waiting unadopted. Cross-racial adoption has been reported, by the adult children of cross-racial adopters, to have lifelong effects on their self-image and self-worth. Adopting babies from overseas has led to horrible baby-buying rings in most countries where it's been tried, complete with children being kidnapped or coerced from mothers. The Christian thing to do for a baby whose mother is too poor to feed it is to help the mother. Older children who need adoption need special skills and patience, because children generally do not wind up in the foster-care system until their home lives are unbearable. Many parents who are capable of raising a child from a baby are not capable of raising a child who has been abused or neglected. Saying "Don't have a baby, adopt" is like saying "Don't drive, give the money to the AudubonSociety". Some people are called to make that sacrifice. Some people can't make that sacrifice. And some people plain don't want to, and do good in other ways. There are many different ways to organize your life and responsibilities, and no one choice is obviously correct. Lutha Mahtin posted:A minor thing to keep in mind here is that an "infertile" person or couple is often just diagnosed that way by a doctor, so science being imperfect, this means they could in theory surprise everyone and have kids someday. See: that King of the Hill episode about Hank's narrow urethra.
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Nov 15, 2016 02:47
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Pellisworth posted:Hi mom! No seriously, my mom is about your age and I mean that with all the respect I have for her. I think it's a cultural universal that you hate your parents in your teens but hit your mid-twenties and look back thinking "yeah, my parents were totally loving right about most everything." e: Paladinus posted:Pregnancy after 50? It's more likely than you think! (screams in fear) Fortunately, I'm not on HRT. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Nov 15, 2016 |
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Nov 15, 2016 16:35
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Smoking Crow posted:Y'all are weird This is news?
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Nov 15, 2016 16:59
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Mo Tzu posted:It sucks tho cause like she has no memory of the verbally abusive poo poo she'd do to our whole family, so she'll say things like "can you imagine? her own children are terrified of her. you guys were never afraid of me," having no memory of me asking my father, in tears, to not tell her about me forgetting to do a project in school and her screaming at him for not having dinner ready because he was helping me. that poo poo hurts
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Nov 15, 2016 18:44
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Hey, friends, I could use your prayers. My husband started a job in January that was a disastrous fit. They wouldn't take advantage of the professional skills they hired him for, and then they got mad at him for saying "If you do X now, you will be unable to handle task Y later." He wound up with anxiety so severe he would sit in a chair shaking, and unable to do anything. Today he came home and they'd fired him. I'm profoundly relieved, because I was worried he was heading for a nervous breakdown. (No longer a diagnosis, but hey, it explains what was going on.) The part that really bothers me is that he took this job so fast because I'm disabled and I can't contribute to the family income the way I used to. He worries because he has to support the household alone; I worry because he's carrying a burden I used to be able to help him carry. I'm so worried about my husband. We've been married 36 years, we're the best of friends, and he's wearing himself to a thread doing the single-provider parent thing we never, in a million years, expected to wind up doing. He needs to jobhunt again, and I fear that he'll take another bad job because he needs to support the family. tl;dr: If you could pray for my husband and for our family, I'd be grateful.
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Nov 16, 2016 07:08
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Bel_Canto posted:I happen to think that Bl. John Henry Newman's second miracle already happened, but it wouldn't be accepted by ecclesiastical authorities because it's super 
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Nov 16, 2016 22:50
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System Metternich posted:
There are also consecrated hermits; I used to really enjoy (and learn from) Sr. Laurel M. O'Neal, and once got a very kind reply to a question I'd sent her.
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Nov 19, 2016 02:44
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Ceciltron posted:I don't think implying that the old testament is angry and mean is antisemitic. I mean there is the entire fact the thing is a kind of racial-supremacy narrative that, *thank God*, is swept away by the decision to bind the Gentiles to the Jews like the branch of a wild olive tree is joined to a cultivated one. Then again, if looking at the (biblical) actions of Jews regarding non-Jews in the places they're in charge of leaves me with a sour taste, then maybe I'm antisemitic! Judaism is like that. You cannot understand Judaism by saying "Oh, here's the 'Old Testament'", because that's not how Judaism works. There is what we call the Old Testament and Jews call the Tanakh, but there is also an ancient body of work called the Talmud, which is interpretation of the Tanakh, and without which there is no Judaism. Then there are centuries of interpretive work *on* the Talmud. Interpreting Judaism through an English translation of the Tanakh is like interpreting Christianity through nothing but an English translation of Gospels. Judaism is a practiced and lived religion, and if you want to understand how it is lived and prayed, you don't go to Christian sources to find out.
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Nov 21, 2016 19:34
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Ceciltron posted:I'd also say that there's a big disconnect between Justice and Law in the old testament. The old Testament is a book concerned with laws. These laws aren't terribly just, in and of themselves, and seem (forgive me my audacity here) arbitrary. I'd argue that the New testament, with the Golden Rule, fosters far more Justice than the previous legalistic approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Judaism quote:You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
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Nov 21, 2016 20:17
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Bel_Canto posted:The generally accepted term for Judaism's emphasis on the Law and its application is that Judaism is, in pretty much all of its strains, strongly orthopraxic: Jewish scholarship even in its more liberal denominations is concerned with what God wants people to do and how they should do it. Pretty much all Christian denominations are more orthodoxic than orthopraxic, though of course Catholicism and Orthodoxy are both more heavily orthopraxic than most Protestant denominations. Some of those can still, however, be heavily orthopraxic in practical terms even though in theory they're all about sola fide (see: some of the Neo-Calvinist churches with their extensive member covenants). Point is, calling anything "legalistic" is generally accepted as a form of derision, especially in Christian contexts, and we'd be better served by avoiding the term. I have always envied the idea that it is perfectly acceptable to be an atheist Jew; God doesn't care if you believe in Him, He just cares that you obey the laws. (Which include laws on making the world better, feeding the poor, and so on.)
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Nov 22, 2016 03:15
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SirPhoebos posted:I have some questions about Jews for Jesus. Are they Christians that have adopted Jewish customs or Jews that acknowledge Jesus (or Jeshua ben Joseph) as the Messiah? Or a mix of both?
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Nov 23, 2016 01:09
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HEY GAL posted:i goddamn hate musical theater e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HlQja4HrVo ee: Just to be crystal clear, I do not advocate assassination, nor does ASSASSINS. Far from it. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 20:02
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CountFosco posted:I mean, I'll take Sunday in the Park With George as my choice for transcendent musical theater. "I've made it through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover, Gee, that was fun and a half. Once you've made it through Herbert and J. Edgar hoover, Everything else is a laugh." Why am I not surprised that the Liturgical thread is all about Sondheim?
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Nov 23, 2016 21:04
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Bel_Canto posted:this one is also excellent and madeline kahn was a national treasure
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Nov 24, 2016 03:20
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pidan posted:
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Nov 24, 2016 20:54
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I really don't feel empathy for strangers
that's because you haven't practiced the virtues enough
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Pellisworth posted:can you also summon demons But do they come when you do call for them?" P. much my favorite Shakespeare quote. I haven't ever played with astrology, but HEY GAL talked about using it for introspection. I know people who use both the Tarot and the I Ching for introspection -- not to say "A red-headed woman will hit you upside the bed with an IMSAI 8080 next Tuesday" but to say "Something combining the Queen of Pentacles and the Fool will be happening soon, what does that suggest to you?" Basically, take the symbols and think about them -- use them as a seed for thought, not as an hour-by-hour prediction of the future. HEY GAL, does that come close to what you meant? I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help the oppressed. My husband's just lost his job, so money donations can't happen in the short term, and I'm disabled enough that I can't go places, or commit to do things on a schedule. I hope I can find something productive I can do online, by bits and pieces.
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Nov 26, 2016 06:26
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Here's the thing, from my point of view. When you say "divination", what's the Biblical equivalent? Because what the Witch of Endor specifically got in trouble for was talking to the spirits of the dead. It seems to me that "fortune-telling" (the modern English phrase) may not be 1:1 equivalent to "divination" as it is understood in the Old and New Testaments. I can hack around with a Tarot deck* as long as the day lasts, but that's not communing with spirits, at least not in most Tarot interpretations I'm familiar with. Ditto ditto astrology. Astrology, assuming you believe in it, is not communicating with the dead/demons/Satan; it is looking at what has already been laid down for you by the natural world. A heck of a lot of Saints have believed in astrology without ever stopping worshiping God as understood by the Church. HEY GAL can speak to this much more fluently than I can , because HEY GAL is a historian. Astrology does not mean that you think the Will of God is anything other than supreme. Astrology can mean that you seek to understand the Will of God as He has laid it out in your constellations. Me, personally, I think astrology is utter nonsense, but I am heavily on the free-will side of Christianity. * I don't because I am lazy as whoa.
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Nov 26, 2016 08:06
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Josef bugman posted:I'd rather not, I may spend an inordinate amount of time on S.A. But I'd sooner not have to put up with the proto-goon G.K Chesterton if I can really help it. I read his "defence of Job" thing a while back and I just could not see it. I always raise my hackles a bit at "a man of his time" arguments, because they so often ignore a person's contemporaries who didn't hold the same views. Lewis was, for instance, a contemporary and friend of Dorothy L. Sayers, a staunch feminist. Speaking as a woman, it is painful to read Mere Christianity and have Lewis assure me that I really want to be led by my husband, and that I despise husbands who are bossed around by their wives. Mere C also contains the logically shoddy "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?" trilemma. However, I heartily recommend The Screwtape Letters, which I found insightful and still influences my prayer practices.
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Nov 28, 2016 19:12
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This seems like an interesting analysis of Chesterton to me. (at least) Two of his poems are wonderful: Lepanto and "The Rolling English Road". G. K. Chesterton posted:Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
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Nov 28, 2016 20:27
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JcDent posted:So, ugh, how do we deal with the "any theory that can't be proven false is dogma" thing? I ran into that quote on Civ VI and in a Maddox post recently and I don't want to give my OCD more ammo. I mean, you probably answered it somewhere in the dialogue with Joseph Bugman (nice av, by the way), but I am not that smart.
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Nov 29, 2016 06:37
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CountFosco posted:On your second point, I'm not sure that this was unique to Christianity and can really be pointed to as the primary source of its great expansion. There were other, non-Judaic mystery religions at the time which also took on followers of various ethnicities. e: If we're faving books of the bible, I love Ecclesiastes like I love pie.
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Nov 30, 2016 00:39
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Josef bugman posted:And we are talking about a document compiled over centuries through various debates about truth and the overall implication of things and so on. I am surprised that people would see and read Job and not only go "This is someone we want to worship" but also "This is a specific episode marking out something that the person we worship did and we need to keep it for other people to read". I mean as a Truth about God I cannot possibly comment. But as the best way to present the Truth about God? So the question "Why would you keep this in the canon if it will put off outsiders?" is beside the point. Job is its own thing. It's the OT's direct confrontation of "If there is a God, why do bad things happen to good people?" Job doesn't offer an answer. Sure, it's framed as a bet between Satan and God, but we aren't all the victims of that bet, or at least I hope not. Job can be comforting because Job's speeches acknowledge the hopelessness of pain. His comforters say things like "Bad things don't happen to good people, because God doesn't do things like that!" (Eliphaz) and "You probably sinned, or this wouldn't have happened!" (Bildad). Anybody who has suffered knows that people still say things like that to the suffering. Job replies "This is awful, and I hate it", and "I didn't deserve this", and according to the conclusion, God agrees with him. The book of Job may not speak to those who have not known suffering, or who have gotten through the suffering by believing that God always helps people who deserve it, or who just don't feel the way Job feels. But for a lot of us, Job's rage says things we'd like to say, and the ambiguous ending affirms that while alive, we never get an answer to the Problem of Evil.
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Nov 30, 2016 00:53
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Josef bugman posted:Then why does this poo poo keep happening? If God is the universe and he cannot alter Himself, then what on earth good is He? There isn't a solution. There isn't an answer. There are many Christian answers, and which you find satisfying depends on who you are, how you were raised, and how you think about it. One standard response is that you aren't God; that God is beyond our understanding. Another answer is that we'll understand it in the afterlife. Another nother answer is that things won't be right until the Second Coming. Ignore the images, but check out this gorgeous performance of "Farther Along", a Christian hymn about it. Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt.
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Nov 30, 2016 01:59
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Josef bugman posted:Why does existence require suffering? Why does a being of infinite power and benevolence allow these problems to occur and still be called "good"? This is the problem, existence does not require it, and yet God allows it. Any of us can tell you how our faith tradition addresses this, but asking why it hasn't been solved ignores the fact that it's a fundamental philosophical problem that isn't going away. People have been working on this, for thousands of years, and there isn't one solution that satisfies everybody. The best any of us can tell you is "Thomas addresses this in such and such a way, but Philosopher Z says Y." A similarly insoluble problem is what exactly did Jesus mean by "Do this in remembrance of me" at the Last Supper? Are we just having bread and wine as a ceremony of remembrance? Are we participating in Christ's sacrifice as we do so? Are the bread and wine actually Christ's flesh and blood? Is it even acceptable to have wine? You aren't going to get one answer; you're going to get the answers of different Christian faith traditions.
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Nov 30, 2016 18:12
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The Wolfen posted:He was/is furious that innocent children are dying because God has allowed them to (assuming that any such God existed in the first place). What he failed to take into account, or willfully ignored, is that children get cancer from things we as humans have chosen to do/create. Genetically modified foods we don't know all the effects of, radiation from technological "necessities", harmful toxins released into nature from manufacturing, the list goes on. The Wolfen posted:Those who are angry at God about allowing evil to be the just consequences of our own choices are (at least to some degree) discounting the agency humanity has had in bringing that evil about. If Christ on the cross was allowed to yell "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" even though he knew exactly why he was there, I think the rest of us, who are not sinless, get a pass on being despairing and outraged.
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Nov 30, 2016 19:03
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Josef bugman posted:Do you share that perspective? Because that seems like something worth discussing. I mean a "you" as a collective, not just yourself. Do you believe that the book of Job shows God being Unjust? If it does and you still worship him I would like to debate that more. My view, and I think it's pretty Protestant mainstream, is that parts of the Bible are teaching stories, parts (like Deuteronomy) are beside the point for modern Christians, and part are the continuing word of God, directly applicable to our moral choices. I am well aware of issues like the two conflicting creation stories in Genesis, and it neither shakes my faith nor is something I feel the need to explain away. I don't think all the stories are literally true. I think they are about God and God's will, but I don't think you can disprove God by noting that evolution is a thing that happened, and noting that there isn't a bright line you can draw between proto-hominids and man. On Job? It's very much a teaching story, and it isn't directly about the character of God. It's about Job's suffering, and his response to the suffering, and his "comforters'" responses. The frame story of God making a bet with Satan is textually very small compared with the text of Job's speeches. Do I think it happened just as written? I dunno. I think Job is a parable, just such a parable as Christ told, and that it's about the moral response to suffering.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:41
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thechosenone posted:I feel that I can sort of generalize the main thrust of socrate's argument like so: (A) We don't know and (B) He set the whole thing up and continues intervening in ways that, again, are church-specific.
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Nov 30, 2016 21:47
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thechosenone posted:can you elaborate on B? are you talking about the poster I was speaking with or god? if god, then how so be he "intervening in ways that... ... are church-specific"? When you argue here, it's very, very important to understand that there is no generic Christian. There are a lot of different Christians, from different faith traditions, and the dogmatic foundations we agree on are pretty drat small. I joke that anybody who can recite the Nicene Creed with a straight face is a Christian, because that's one of the last generally-accepted documents before the Orthodox/Roman Catholic split. It's a very short Creed, and it doesn't address most of the questions you're asking. e: Also, just to be clear, many of the posters in this thread disagree on foundational faith issues; we agree to talk courteously not because we're all equally correct, but because courteous discussion of Christian differences is both enlightening and fun.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:12
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thechosenone posted:but are there not similarly rad and awsome ways to get feathers? Are there not other pretty things other than birds god could have created instead of them?
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Nov 30, 2016 22:21
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thechosenone posted:So why did god create logic? Smoking Crow posted:God created logic in the same way He created the Hunger Games
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Nov 30, 2016 22:45
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thechosenone posted:Welp, can't argue with that. What about this question, which is significantly different I feel: Does belief require existance of god? In your opinion. So, why do I believe if I acknowledge my belief might be wrong? Because Faith. I had an ineffable, meaning genuinely according to my perceptions God-inspired, moment, and I knew that I believed in God. Lots of other people have never had that moment. We call it "the mystery of faith" meaning that it is bona-fide inexplicable. Some of us think everybody gets the chance and some turn away; some of us think God chooses some of us to have faith and others not; some of us think that one way or another everybody gets saved sooner or later. That's another big and unresolved theological issue: a given church may have its own dogma, but churches disagree.
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Nov 30, 2016 22:59
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thechosenone posted:Well, what I mean is, I get the feeling that, the more objectionable and inflexible a belief system is, the more difficult it is going to be to keep up with it. I feel that the more difficult to follow, and more objectionable parts of a faith seem to get downsized, stricken off the list, or just plain ignored or reinterpreted as need be. Religions which cannot do this likely have a difficult time of things, especially when they have more flexible competition, or hit a hard spot. Before you say "Well, nobody does that now", the custom seems to have lasted around 1900 years, and to have been stopped by a foreign invasion rather than by any sort of internal weakness.
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Dec 1, 2016 00:39
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Josef bugman posted:I think there were differing types of human sacrifice in what we would now call Central America. I think calling it the same thing is a bit different. It still continued of course.
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Dec 1, 2016 00:57
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Josef bugman posted:The mass human sacifice though was a common thing throughout the history of Central America. e: Also, whoops on the Aztecs and thanks for the correction.
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Dec 1, 2016 01:02
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Josef bugman posted:It's no problem! Can you recommend any good books on the history of Mesoamerica? ::bambi eyes::
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Dec 1, 2016 06:28
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thechosenone posted:what does this thread think about my mayor making the town splash park closed on sundays? I figure it doesn't make sense, as a day of rest wouldn't having some fun at the splash park make sense? Not that it is a replacement for the pool they filled in... In the places I've lived in the USA, the objection to Sunday openings were generally couched as "if the stores are open on Sunday (sometimes just Sunday morning), then employees won't be free to go to church." The formulation of "nobody should be working on Sunday, because it's the Sabbath" seems to have mostly died out. Anyway, blue laws are weird. When I visited my grandmother in Texas, some aisles of the grocery store would be taped off because they contained things you couldn't legally sell on Sunday. Not alcohol, because you certainly couldn't buy liquor at the grocery store in Texas, but "non-essentials", and I forget what those were. In Massachusetts, and I think this has changed, you could buy groceries before noon on Sunday, but not beer, wine, or hard liquor. I don't believe in compulsory Sabbath because hey, state establishment of religion, with bonus "Sunday isn't everybody's Sabbath". I do respect individual businesses, like Chik-Fil-A and various kosher delis, that close on their holy days because their employees shouldn't be required to work. I loathe Chik-Fil-A for their anti-gay bias, admire them for their Sunday closing, and am shamefully attracted to them for their excellent chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.
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Dec 1, 2016 06:43
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thechosenone posted:Fair enough. how about favorite goof by god? like the platypus, or dick shaped rocks? (btw if god made the platypus, it was to see if he could combine all the cuteness of a duck, a bever, and a poisonous hammerhead shark into one being Hyenas giving birth through their clits. OH GOD WHY. (note that a significant number of pregnant hyenas don't survive their first birth.)
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Dec 1, 2016 06:50
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thechosenone posted:The thing about chick fil a is that I prefer their nuggets. I had one of their sandwiches once and it offended my tastes. I also figure that if they really wanted to be accomodating, they could offer people a little bonus to work sunday, and let them have some other day off. and I'll tell ya what, a weekday off is worth two in the bush, or something like that. would let someone earn a little more which would help out, and allow them to do some stuff they need to, and even attend a non sunday mass if they want to. For those of you who, like me, feel guilty when you eat at Chik-Fil-A, marinating boned chicken in pickle juice really does work. My son tried it, and it was magnificently tender. (My lesbian daughter sometimes gives us permission to eat Chik-Fil-A because she misses it, too. I figure this is like the Pope saying "Oh, go ahead, have another serving of the capybara.")
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Dec 1, 2016 07:01
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