|
I was raised in the Mennonite Church, and wherever I may wander, I think that'll always be my home. My beliefs are what I would call a work in progress, even after 46 years on this rock hurtling through space and time, but they always do seem to come back to the primacy of love, with its twin faces: peace and justice. This makes me politically left-wing right now, and would probably make me a counter-revolutionary in another time and place. I joke sometimes about the Munster Rebellion, I love the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree for reasons I can't quite articulate, I think impossible things are still worth trying, I do not live up to my ideals, but sometimes I get it right.
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2021 03:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 16:42 |
|
|
White Coke posted:She's got a moderate heart murmur, which is to be expected with a cat her age (which according to the vet is 15 years & 7 months not 17 years like we thought) and shrunken kidneys which were because of dehydration. What ended up saving her life is that I started giving her canned food to treat her well before sending her off, and the extra moisture allowed her to recover enough that we got a QOL check from the vet. Make sure to water your pets, folks. I'm really glad to hear that this worked out well. I got one of those little water fountains for my cats some time ago and even though it's kind of a pain to keep clean, they love the thing and thus actually drink so I consider it a good investment.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2021 20:52
|
|
|
My faith tradition explicitly doesn't hold that its beliefs should be enshrined in secular law (partly because of what happened the last time Anabaptists tried that), to the point that the question of whether we should vote in elections is still being asked among Mennonites today and it's recent enough in the grand scheme of things that the answer was even sometimes "yes". What this thread has (mostly) been good at in the past is seeing each other as people, rather than just as opposing viewpoints to be shut down, and that's why I think we've often been more successful than expected in discussing contentious things. I think if someone's made uncomfortable by a specific discussion then that discussion should probably end (or at least be taken elsewhere), but beyond that I don't think we need shy away from grappling with what we see as important.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2021 15:44
|
|
|
Fritz the Horse posted:Hmm what happened?? It turns out that apocalyptic sex cults are not actually that great a time.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2021 16:31
|
|
|
Fritz the Horse posted:Yeah I'm familiar with the Munster rebellion in general terms, just wondered if docbeard had a favorite telling of that history. Nothing I've read recently, alas. I need to track down some of the old church history textbooks I used in high school because it was amazing how defensive they got about how the Munster Rebellion wasn't representative of Anabaptism as a whole. Deteriorata posted:It relates to my own family history. Two Swiss Anabaptist/Mennonite brothers fled persecution in Switzerland down the Rhine on a raft in the latter half of the 17th century. They spent some time in the Netherlands, then crossed over to England and caught a ship to America in 1719. I think my folks settled in Ohio (or at least that's where all the family history I'm aware of comes out of, though I don't really know much pre my great-grandparents leaving the Amish church to become Mennonites) or else I'd think we were distantly related. (There probably is a nonzero chance of that.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2021 21:44
|
|
|
White Coke posted:And people say Martin Luther was the first poo poo poster. There's a reason that people in the church were very happy about Paul's calling to go preach the gospel WAY OUT THERE SOMEWHERE ELSE.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2021 21:45
|
|
|
White Coke posted:Could you speak to the differences between Anabaptist denominations? The ones I know about, sure! The big two that most people have heard of are the Mennonites and the Amish. The Amish, of course, are the group that most people know a little bit about, plain dress, horses and buggies, no electricity hooked up to the home, etc. It's not really about shunning technology or modernity so much as it is about separating oneself from the wider world. This can lead to some odd technicalities like having mobile phones being okay as long as they're not stored in the home, can't own an automobile but can ride buses or hire people to drive you around, etc. The way I heard it expressed to me is that it's up to the local bishop to interpret what's okay and what isn't, so different Amish communities can have different standards. There are groups, usually referred to as "Old Order Mennonites" or something similar that do the same kinds of things but the mainstream Mennonite church is not particularly distinct from other Protestant groups (I think the Methodists in particular are quite close to us in both worship style and theology) with the exception that we are, like the Quakers/Friends (and like the church that Bonhoeffer was part of, I believe) pacifists. There are also groups like the Hutterites that I don't know much about, and the Church of the Brethren, who are very similar to Mennonites. (I think there are minor differences in the way we baptize people.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2021 14:06
|
|
|
White Coke posted:An argument I've see pop up is: religious experiences can be caused by drugs like LSD, or by medical conditions like schizophrenia, so therefore any and all religious phenomena are explicable by these means and therefore "untrue". In a sense, everything we experience (up to and including the idea of experience, and the idea that there's a 'we' to experience things, and ideas in general) is through the mechanism of electrochemical reactions in our nervous systems, because that's how human bodies work. Whether that makes experiences, ideas, or consciousness 'untrue' or not is certainly something that can be argued, but I have yet to see a compelling argument that such a distinction actually matters much.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2021 17:02
|
|
|
Thirteen Orphans posted:I know it’s not really the same, but sometimes, if the night is particularly dark, I believe almost solely because I want with all my heart to be with my father again. One of the last things my aunt Ruth said to me before she died was "I get to see your mom" (my mother, her sister, having passed a year or two before) with an expression of sheer joy in the midst of the terrible pain she was in. I'm not saying it's exactly why I believe (I'm not sure there's a satisfying answer to that question tbh) but the chance to be reunited with some people, and reconciled with others, is certainly a thing I think about sometimes.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2021 10:46
|
|
|
One thing to consider is that everyone who donates an organ does so willingly, so at some point the original owner of your kidney must have reflected, however fleeting it may have been, that their eventual death would be of benefit to someone else. So it's less that you're selfishly benefitting from someone's death than that you received a gift, and miracle or no, that's something to be celebrated, not to feel guilty about.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2021 18:16
|
|
|
Tias posted:Read it as the parable of talents or ninjas, and was not notably more confused. Burying ninjas rather than making use of them does seem ill-advised.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2021 13:47
|
|
|
Hi, Thomas the Fact Checker here, and we give this claim of a Risen Christ five Doubting Me's until such time as we are able to personally examine the wounds in this so-called risen...hang on, someone wants to show me something. (Happy Easter)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2021 15:43
|
|
|
ThePopeOfFun posted:I like to imagine Peter as pretty freaked out, ashamed and desperate post-betrayal, so John letting him get the first peep is kind of touching. Peter's portrayal in the Gospels as sort of an overenthusiastic puppy-man who completely fell apart at the crucifixion and had a (completely understandable but personally horrifying) moment of weakness while in fear for his life, and the risen Christ's subsequent lifting him back up in the kindest and gentlest way possible is just so, so wonderful.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2021 16:17
|
|
|
A good choral performance of a family favorite Easter hymn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z2ddaFsEv8
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2021 00:55
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:Yeah I’m not a fan of forcing. I’m saying we should be okay with people using other language than we use. They aren’t us, their lives aren’t ours, and their symbols will be different. One of the ways Menno Simons described what he called "true evangelical faith" (speaking of loaded religious terms!) was that it "becomes all things to all people". I'm not a hundred percent sure what that was intended to mean but this discussion has made me think of it a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2021 23:42
|
|
|
Lutha Mahtin posted:the only churches i can think of that truly "control" the entirety of their members' sexuality are crazy cult ones where the whole community all live in a compound together and they have strict rules about who is allowed to be alone in a room together The Amish are actually pretty lenient, at least when it comes to their teenagers.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2021 21:55
|
|
|
Maybe it's not so much Hell I don't believe in as it is hopelessness. I don't believe the God who walked among us and lived among us and fell in love with us and died for us and with us and then tore the entire natural order to shreds because it wasn't good enough would ever give up on us no matter how adamantly we've given up on him. I guess I don't believe in a Hell that has a lock on its gates, or a Heaven that doesn't have a fatted calf on standby for every prodigal son or daughter that eventually finds their way to its doors. That being said, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between what I believe and what I want to be true. There's a lot of overlap. And ultimately I don't know, and won't know for some time yet.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2021 04:05
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:Of course the unconscious exists and explains a lot of nutty things we do but if you have an actively held belief like "I'm Christian" you wouldn't say "and I don't know why." A lot of people of faith do and have said exactly that, though. I don't know, I don't think it's radical or unfair to want answers either, to even demand those answers as Job did (and to not take "CHECK OUT THIS KICKASS SEA MONSTER I MADE" for an answer). I don't think that not getting those answers, or not being satisfied by them, need be an impediment to faith, though it certainly CAN be. Like the classic analysis of the problem of suffering that concludes that a wholly benevolent, all-powerful God isn't in any way sensible. As a logical construction, that's certainly true; a benevolent God (as we understand benevolence) couldn't abide unnecessary pain, and an omnipotent God (as we understand omnipotence) wouldn't be so limited as to render any pain necessary. For a while I took comfort in the idea of a God that wasn't necessarily all-powerful, but was entirely on our side. Now I kind of just accept that there are answers (about suffering, about the nature of God's benevolence, about the nature of God's power) that I don't have and may not ever have, for all that it's worth striving for those answers (just because something's impossible doesn't make it not worth trying). I can talk your ear off about what might be true, what I hope is true, what my opinion of that truth is. But ultimately, yeah. I believe. I don't really know why, sometimes.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2021 04:20
|
|
|
While I would normally incline toward "let people worship as they choose" I wouldn't know how to begin taking a side on this one (not least because I've already taken a rather different side as an Anabaptist Protestant). But I can (and have) offer up my prayers for everyone caught in the middle of this.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
TOOT BOOT posted:This seems like one of those things where if you're catholic you understand immediately why everyone is so upset, and if you're not catholic you still kinda don't get it even after it's explained to you. Yeah, like I think I've wrapped my head around it now, but only intellectually, and it's still quite hard not to be all "Oh, okay, but have you considered just doing services in Latin anyway, it's not like he's the Boss of All Churches...oh, he is, right, um..."
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
It's not a subject on which I'm well-informed at all but I'm learning that my church's hands aren't exactly clean in the residential school mess either (at least in Canada; I've not found any info on Mennonite Church involvement in boarding schools in the US but that certainly doesn't mean there hasn't been any). Related, I just ran across this podcast (and to be clear I haven't yet listened to any of it and cannot speak to its content at all) that looks interesting: https://anabaptistworld.org/podcast-latest/dismantling-the-doctrine-of-discovery-podcast/
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2021 13:45
|
|
|
Kayten posted:I’m not seeing a problem here. Being hostile to reactionaries is, in fact, a good thing. Changing the church to be marginally less lovely is a good thing, even, especially if it comes at the expense of reactionaries. The founder of our collective faiths made a point of being associated with his culture's equivalent of "those people".
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2021 13:46
|
|
|
Freudian posted:No, Jesus made a definite point of shrugging them off in favour of solidarity with the oppressed and the outcast. I guess I reacted to the phrase 'those people' more than was warranted, though I stand by my assertion that it was specifically the despised people, which included tax collectors who weren't exactly 'the oppressed', that he made time for too. He had harsh words for the religious authorities in particular, but he would talk to anyone who would talk to him and generally had equally harsh words for anyone who told him he shouldn't. I think there's a line between challenging the beliefs and assumptions of reactionaries (or whoever) and just telling them to go gently caress themselves. "Love your enemies" doesn't mean uncritical acceptance but it does mean something.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2021 14:20
|
|
|
My oft-repeated joke on this subject (a couple times in this thread or its predecessors even) is that there are without question cats in heaven because you try keeping a cat out of somewhere it really wants to be. I don't have a strong position on the question of non-human creatures having or not having eternal souls, access to the afterlife, access to sainthood, etc., because I simply don't know. Aside from a number of metaphors involving sheep and shepherds applicable to an agrarian society, the one thing I recall Jesus saying about God's love as it relates to the animal kingdom is that he cares if a sparrow falls out of the sky, so I figure there's a chance, you know?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2021 22:10
|
|
|
Vasukhani posted:A day ago I accidentally went to a cafe owned by these assholes, it was a big red flag when I noticed that all the front of house was men and the kitchen was all women. I obviously didn't want to patronize the place, especially considering the children that seemed to be "helping their parents" bus tables and such. When I was thinking about the experience, it struck me however that I wouldn't have the same issue if the staff were, say, Hasidic Jews, even though they might be just as regressive and practice as much child abuse. It's a long time ago now, call it '95 or '96 or thereabouts, but I had a friend of a friend (or more accurately the ex of a friend, names changed, call them "Mark" and "Melanie") who fell in with this group. I didn't know Mark very well, he was a mutual friend of Melanie and some other college friends who'd known each other a bit longer than I'd known any of them, but he seemed a nice, friendly guy, someone who'd clearly been through some poo poo but it hadn't wrecked him or turned him bitter, you know? Anyway, they (then known to us as "The Community") had a little encampment not far from where we all went to school, and I'm not sure exactly how he got in with them, but in he got, and Melanie was Not Best Pleased. (That's what precipitated them breaking up, though I couldn't say for certain whether the writing was on that particular wall anyway.) I went with her to visit him (and them) one evening, and honestly it was a pleasant enough time, if off-putting. There was nothing outwardly anti-semitic or white supremacist on display that night (not that those elements may not be present in their beliefs, but it wasn't being advertised then and there), but it was definitely the case that the men were in charge and the women were there to wait on them and otherwise stay out of the way. (The very hesitant way the female community members acted, particularly around us as outsiders, is what I found most disturbing in retrospect.) He moved away to another of their enclaves and kind of disappeared into their world despite Melanie's best efforts to keep in touch. I am honestly not sure if she ever found him again, and I know it didn't sit right with her. (He wasn't, again, someone I knew especially well, so while I was sad, it wasn't a gutwrench like it might otherwise have been.) Anyway, as for the Community/Twelve Tribes themselves, I definitely got more of a "new religious movement" vibe off them than a "scam" vibe. We were not pressured to stay, or to join up though they were certainly happy to tell us about themselves and we got loaded down with literature. Mark definitely chatted me up a few times about the group after that, too, but he backed off when I wasn't interested, and I think he was pretty typical of their number, at least those I ran into. Their beliefs are absolutely not my beliefs, and I think their treatment of women in particular is appalling, but I'm not sure I'd think of them that differently from any other separatist religious group beyond that. These memories are distant in time and space, and all tied up with my memories of my friend and her friend, so I would in no way consider myself an authority of any sort on them, just that I did meet them once. I didn't go back. And, absent a very good reason, I wouldn't.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2021 02:14
|
|
|
Thirteen Orphans posted:I’m having a sleep study done tonight. Please pray they find something, (hopefully apnea) that can be addressed and enable me to live a better, fuller life. Done. I've been through that, and the sleep study is annoying (expect not to feel like you actually slept, even after they assure you that you have) but well worth the effort if they do find something. If they do put you on a CPAP/BIPAP machine it will take some getting used to but, again, well worth the effort.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2021 19:43
|
|
|
Kevin DuBrow posted:Somehow I never realized that some people say an extra line at the end of the Lord's Prayer. There are a whole bunch of minor variants that are really funny when you get a bunch of Christians who were raised in different places/from different denominations together and go SURELY WE ALL HAVE THIS IN COMMON.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 14:36
|
|
|
D34THROW posted:Is there a Christian music thread on SA or would this be it? I searched for Christian, gospel, worship, and got...jack. I don't know that it's ever come up here but this seems like a good place for it! I used to listen to a lot of Christian rock/Christian contemporary music when I was much younger, and while I don't much any more, there are still a few artists I keep going back to. (Rich Mullins in particular is someone who's been on my mind a lot of late.)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 2, 2021 15:35
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:When I played guitar at the folk masses I would have paid good money to see the back of Bind Us Together. That song is an endless loop!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2021 19:13
|
|
|
Goblin Craft posted:My first glimmer of eye-opening was around 1990 when my mom heard Petra's softer ballad "First Love," and bought the album it was on only to discover they're more of an arena rock band, and gave it to me instead. It only took a few more years for me to discover a whole world of awesome stuff that was experimental or underground then and hardly known at all today. I sometimes wonder if these people feel forgotten or like no one appreciates what they did. I could definitely go on a huge nostalgia kick (just mentioning Petra brings back a ton of memories!), even about stuff I quit listening to over the years. (Musical tastes changing since I was a teenager, yes I was a teenager in the late 80s/early 90s, more than anything else.) I still listen to The Choir though, and bless them, they are still releasing albums. (Tangentially related, Weird Al's 'Amish Paradise' leaped into my head today and I adore it and could also write an essay on the historical and theological inaccuracies of his Amish-themed parody of a Coolio song. I probably won't. BUT I COULD.) e. There's a podcast called Good Christian Fun that I've only listened to the intro episode of (and I want to give it some more time, just haven't yet) whose remit is doing deep dives into Christian music and pop culture over the years from what appears to be a more affectionate place than a mocking one.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2021 20:47
|
|
|
Catching up on the thread a bit. Thirteen Orphans posted:Not just could, but absolutely should. And maybe will! (Mostly it's the line "We're all crazy Mennonites" that I have Thoughts about, and they're marginally more complicated thoughts than just WRONG") Probably Magic posted:Do they ever get into the collapse of the Christian Alternative scene into the worship music majority of today, because I know there's a lot of material and insights about that but none of which seems all gathered in one place, and it always struck me as holding potential for a fantastic read. I still rock out to Poor Ol Lu to this day, wish there was more stuff like that. I'll keep an ear open when I start listening properly, because that's definitely something I'd be interested in learning more about. I haven't followed the industry side of Christian music in probably decades (and even then only vaguely, as a fan). I was mostly into the Choir/77s/Daniel Amos side of Christian alternative stuff back in the day, as well as the folk-rock mainstream side (Phil Keaggy, Randy Stonehill, Rich Mullins, Mark Heard, etc.) more than I was the pop stuff. Goblin Craft posted:I suppose as a thread newbie myself, now as I'm diving in would be as good a time as any for an introduction, so you can know where I'm coming from. Welcome! There was a small Brethren church in the town where I grew up and they were pretty friendly with my (equally small) Mennonite church. My recollection is that we believed almost identical things but our baptism rituals were slightly different. Fair_Winds posted:I have a statement that is a precursor to a question, Please bare with me. I recently have entered into a new stage of life and one of the problems facing me whilst all my friends are out self-actualizing, is the topic of religion. I grew up in a household that was never more than casually religious, my father was a die hard atheist and my mother belongs to a heavily baptist family. I don't belong to either, my father insisted I not have religion forced upon me and even bought me a bible when i was younger as a gift and explained that if I wished to read it and follow it I was allowed to. The question of religion was just left to me. Now that I am a fully grown adult, it feels like a church or at least religion should be a part of my life. Spirituality is a big part of many people's lives. How does one figure out what part of Christianity they should follow? What questions do I need to ask myself to figure this out? Is there some sort of specialist out there that does nothing but plugs people into the right church or belief? Any help is appreciated. A lot of people have talked about this, but I think step 1 is to at least ask yourself the question of why you feel "like a church or at least religion should be part of your life". Are you feeling pulled or called in any particular direction, are you feeling something missing, or what? No judgment of course, but the more you can narrow in on what you're looking for the easier it will be to have some idea where to look. Beyond that, attend services (in person or online as you're comfortable, given the state of things), and try to talk to people in the churches you're looking at. That's going to give you a better feel than reading up on doctrine and theology, I think.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2021 16:19
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:. . . what? Really? I've seen the question raised a lot in Christian circles (with most people thankfully concluding that the people who thought the Christian and Muslim Gods were different were wrong). Even C.S. Lewis got in on the act (and took it a bit further by implying that "good" Muslims were actually worshipping the Christian God without realizing it).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2021 13:41
|
|
|
I had a fantastic comparative religions professor in college who always did a very good job of treading that fine line between "we believe different things than other people do" and "the things other people believe are worthy of respect, and it is good to both talk to and listen to those other people".
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2021 15:20
|
|
|
I'm not super familiar with the debates in Mennonites and related circles about what form plain dress should take but I am absolutely certain that they've happened, just based on my knowledge of Mennonites and our love for arguments about this sort of thing. It wasn't really a requirement at all in the part of the church where I grew up (though you still saw things like head coverings among my grandparents' generation; my grandmother wore one to church, though not in everyday life). There were (and are) other more conservative* sects that still kept to it and of course the Amish. ___ *I've observed before that 'conservative' to me will always be first associated with things like mode of dress and other aspects of what I think of as the horse-and-buggy set, and with politics a distant set.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2021 13:54
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I would appreciate prayers for the sake of my kidney. There's a possibility I've figured out what's been messing it up and God willing, changing one of my medications might fix it. That's wonderful news, and I hope (and pray) that it works out!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2021 20:39
|
|
|
Jupiter Jazz posted:But in the back of my mind I'm still applying the higher standard.. Quite apart from everything else, this (and similar things you've send) kind of stood out to me, because I don't think either of our faiths really expect us to settle for "it's just human nature". Do I have unkind and unworthy thoughts and form judgements that people don't deserve (or that they do deserve) about all manner of people for all manner of reasons? Of course! Even though I know better? Obviously! Should I? No! Is it on those people to adapt themselves to fix my moments of weakness and darkness? As lovely as that would be, I have to conclude that no it is not! Should I just let it stand there? I probably should not, which is where things like grace and the search for divine strength when the Earthly sort isn't enough come in.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2021 20:53
|
|
|
Religionthread: Sir, Take It Easy
|
|
#
¿
Sep 20, 2021 19:25
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Also I really want to see a bunch of Mennonites get table flipping mad about a board game. Because you know that’s going to happen. Can confirm. Also that game looks cool
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2021 23:36
|
|
|
People get very protective of this thread, and for good reason; it (and its predecessors) has long been an island in a very chaotic sea. I've learned a lot from the many people with many beliefs here, and it's had a big role in the reawakening of my own quiescent faith over the last few years. Fundamentally (lol) it's always been a place, I think, where people can talk to each other rather than the more common status quo of shouting with our ears plugged. I don't think the 57 posts I woke up to this morning, however strident things have gotten, are fully a counterexample and I hope the whole line of discussion is not treated as such. My own faith tradition has been...mixed...on this subject, of course (certain open letters to the writer's beloved church notwithstanding). There are certainly some Mennonite churches that are very welcoming of LGBTQ folks and numerous others that are, er, not. My personal belief is that it's the latter group that are wrong, but that there's a difference between being wrong and being lost, and it's my hope that God's love will in the fullness of time, get through to the hardest of hearts.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2021 14:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 16:42 |
|
|
Nckdictator posted:Good luck to those Anabaptist missionaries in Haiti. I don't know for a fact that anyone among those who were kidnapped is anyone I know but I definitely have some connections in the part of Ohio where that mission group is based. Either way I'm sure they and their families would appreciate any prayers sent their way.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 05:12
|
|