"Christian Conservatives...."

xposto

remember, the main reason WHY christian and conservative are so closely connoted nowadays is because certain conservatives spent the last 3 decades doing whatever they could to frame their religion as always being the same as their political bent.

One of the lecturers at the local arts college's belief in Christianity is so strong that even my granny what goes to church and says a rosary everyday is taken aback by it. At the same time the guy can say with a perfectly clear conscience that he supports stem-cell research and the right to choose re: abortion.

The attitude behind the first post does my fucking head in coz it reflects a tendency among more than a few ppl on this board to go for stereotypes & ad-hominem attacks instead of engaging with their opponents are actually saying when it comes to religion and a lot of other issues as well.

Although I'm not religious myself, I have great respect for the Scottish Christian Socialist tradition. It produced Kier Hardy after all.
It's all the uptight bigoted assholes who ignore the sensible stuff in the bible about love, respect, tolerance, charity, sharing etc and dig up obscure chapters in Ezekial to bash gays, women, the medical profession etc. Man those fuckers can go spin.

Yeah, like Xianity or the Bible are never used by their exponents to promote homophobia, are they? Maybe all those 'uptight bigoted assholes' with God Hates Fags placards are just taking the piss?

No worries, I could have constructed that paragraph better. Obviously the christian socialists are not the bigoted assholes who can go spin. If that's what you mean.

Even in Britain, which has a pretty liberal Christian tradition, the forces of reaction are really making inroads. Blair might say he's not doing religion in politics, but there's little doubt christian groups have his ear.
Sikh and Christian groups have been protesting at plays they believe are blasphemous. In the former case, the playwrite had to go into hiding as she was receiving death threats. She was a sikh, her play was about abuse going on in temples. Something worth discussing, rather than pretending it doesn't happen by accusing it of blasphemy.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in Scotland have said Catholic state schools shouldn't employ openly gay teachers because their lifestyles go against Catholic social teaching. Then what about all the non-Catholic staff who keep these schools running? It's madness.
It's deeply depressing that a religion that is supposed to be about love has been hijacked by screaming reactionaries and bigots. Nothing new admittedly (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition etc)but I just can't understand how Evangelicals can square their Christianity with the corruption, greed, lies and murderousness of the Bush regime.

Sure as it chaps my ass when someone says "An atheist, huh, well STALIN was an atheist, too!"

Luckily, the election and everything that's followed has made it FUN FUN FUN again. I could qualify my distaste for these "let Terri live!" freaks by adding that not all Christians are like that, not all Conservatives, etc. But to be honest, if they're going to act like idiots, I get to call them idiots.

JESUS SUCKS CHRISTIANITY'S GHEY ETC ETC ETC

(Extreme example, I know. But the point is there.)

If you're going to subscribe to a specific religion, why not just go with the oldest and therefore most likely to be correct? Makes sense to me. Paganism needs a non-dorky resurgence in popularity, methinks.

JESUS SUCKS CHRISTIANITY'S GHEY

Overwhelming respect for their right to believe there - and nicely unsubtle bit of "let's associate them with pedlos" thrown in for good measure.

Wow. Just...wow.

I also thought this was amusing because — hello? Read much news about the Catholic Church lately?

Also, it would be quite difficult to introduce you both to something called "sacrasm," rather than "sarcasm." Muh bad.

christian liberal/progressive.

but... hello?
These are not the only ones in the world. Some child abusers DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN GOD! Amazing but true - the Catholic Church doesn't have a monopoly on sick fucks.

Seriously, I agree. There is no monopoly on sick fuckery.

Sorry dood, but I've gotta admit this particular sentence made me roffle.

Some child abusers DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN GOD!
The same can be said of right wing conservatives. Make of that what you will...

i believe in got.

Wrong.

Jesus is given too much credit even by secular liberals.

he was more or less a garden variety ascetic in a time when such deluded men were common. his values were not all that revolutionary, they werent far off from what other frauds were teaching at the time. he was simply lucky to have died at the right place and time and to have inspired the right people to keep his cult going.

i really cringe when secular liberals claim to admire Jesus. his ideas he believed only because he believed them as the word of his fraudulent god.

we have moved beyond the need for religion. atheism is imperative. in fact armed struggle against believers is our only hope of true salvation from the ways of the god-frauds. science and reason be our "gods", and the truth be our light. what say you?

-- Rectal Messiah (latebloomer), Friday, June 3, 2005 5:32 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

worst troll ever

dunno...makes a couple of good points. the armed struggle bit is loopy, kill everybody that believes in god?

atheism is imperative. . . armed struggle against believers is our only hope of true salvation. . . .

Up-is-down. Ignorance is bliss. Capitulation is strength. Merry Christmas.

the reason it's a bad trolling is because it's so obviously not sincere

a.nairn, for all of his faults, was an exceptionally talented troll. he actually got people to engage with him because he never lost his cool.

like Data the android, I am slowly learning about human nature

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v113/General_K-Star/dataBSOD.gif

I know you're right about nairn, but I don't miss him.

oh don't get me wrong, i don't want him back either.

the NYT thought it was a great idea to give a bunch of space to David Brody, CBN journalist, author of The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America, and new The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography, and somewhat well known for his softball CBN interview with Trump about a week after he was inaugurated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-evangelicals-president.html

i already know that many evangelicals support trump because as long as he opposes abortion, literally nothing else he does matters at all. i'm always more interested in the blatant hypocrisy angle, so here is Brody's take on it:

Critics say that the Trump-evangelical relationship is transactional, that they support him to see their agenda carried out. In fact, evangelicals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dispute that Mr. Trump may need a little more grace than others. But evangelicals truly do believe that all people are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the president?

Which begs the question: THEN WHY DO EVANGELICALS HONE IN ON THE PERCEIVED "FLAWS" OF EVERYONE WHO ISN'T A DEMOCRAT WHILE IGNORING THE FLAWS OF ALL REPUBLICANS, EVEN GOING SO FAR AS TO SUPPORT A CHILD MOLESTER LIKE OOZING ACNE BUBBLE ROY MOORE? a few paragraphs later, this is his answer to that:

Does Mr. Trump have moral failings? Yes. Critics will suggest a hypocrisy coming from evangelical leaders who are quick to denounce the ethical failings of others who don’t have an “R” next to their name. But the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture, not to get mired in the moral failings of each and every candidate. For evangelicals, voting in the macro is the moral thing to do, even if the candidate is morally flawed. Evangelicals have tried the “moral” candidate before.

Jimmy Carter was once the evangelical candidate. How did that work out in the macro? George W. Bush was the evangelical candidate in 2000: He pushed traditional conservative policies, but he doesn’t come close to Mr. Trump’s courageous blunt strokes in defense of evangelicals.

i think the downfall of the NYT is slightly exaggerated, but they sure are publishing an increased amount of total bullshit recently

important to note that it's not just abortion but the white nationalism. the evangelical community in 2018 is little more than a white identity movement. and i guess in lots of ways it always was.

I became a Christian this year and this holiday music at the bar (too early?) is hitting diff

Why would you convert? What sounds point to the existence of a merciful god? I’ve reached a point where I seriously doubt the existence of the historical Jesus

I'm curious about the same thing from a different perspective... without prejudgement, I'm kinda wondering about what led you to convert - what your story is, how things changed for you (if you've talked about it on another thread, it's cool if you just link to that one). I do have friends who are Christians, and it can be a difficult thing to talk about sometimes, just because there's so much judgement around that belief system in general.

Well I read this book “urantia” and it really spoke to me.

Oh gotcha. Yeah that's the thing about Christianity, there are so many different kinds... in my own life I'd compare it most to being asexual, weirdly enough, in that saying I'm "asexual" in and of itself isn't something I can communicate to others. Coming to it through the Urantia book, to me that's really different from being a Christian conservative! Honestly it's kinda why I don't call myself a "Christian" myself, even though my beliefs and views are very strongly inspired by Christianity, just because, like, what that means in the world at large is so different from what my personal beliefs and views are.

What sounds point to the existence of a merciful god?

I love this question, I assume it's a typo, but I'm also a Christian and for me sound itself but also many individual sounds point to the existence of a kind and merciful God

Yeah see, I was going to respond to that question with "early period Van Morrison"

"What sounds point to the existence of a merciful god?"

John Coltrane.

I too came back into the fold recently.

I've been wondering who self-identifies as "Christian" on dating apps in 2024.

Seeking mature woman into pegging, improv comedy, and T.D. Jakes

i know that's a joke, but the taboo against men bottoming in patriarchal christian culture, the _shame_ directed at men who bottom, that shit is real and it's fucking painful to see. cishet guys who bottom, to me, that's one of the clearest examples of "patriarchy hurts men too"

I’m not really joking or shaming anyone. Christianity creates guilt and self-hatred. It’s stunning to me that people would embrace a faith that revolves around a man who likely never existed in the first place

a man who likely never existed in the first place

Worth noting that this is a very fringe view among scholars.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it became more widely adopted. All signs point to him basically being a composite of multiple people

I love this question, I assume it's a typo

Wait what is the assumed typo? I read it as asking what holiday music was playing at the bar, I feel so dense

“Signs” instead of “sounds”

on the question of "did the historical jesus exist"

i'm neither a biblical scholar nor a professional historian so i can't speak to things from that perspective

having said that, i will point out a couple of things

first, there is little evidence for the existence of a historical jesus. having said that, there is little evidence for the existence of _most people_ in ancient history. second, jesus in his lifetime _simply was not as important_ as christians make him out to be. i remember once seeing a striking christian billboard - the text said "WHO SPLIT TIME?" and there was, i recall a lightning bolt. jesus didn't _actually_ split time. in his day, time was measured in different ways. so yes, there's little evidence of the historical jesus, but there's no reason there _should_ be.

i will also say - this is my personal belief - the question of whether or not a historical jesus existed is just not that important to me. i know that not everybody believes that. when i was young, i went to mass, and father brendan got up and gave the homily and said that if it could be proven that jesus did not bodily rise from the dead, he would kill himself. that was the moment i stopped being a catholic. father brendan was not right in the head.

i also know that there are a large number of people who insist they believe that the bible, every word of it, is literally true. these people are mistake. any clever bastard can point that out, can say "oh yeah, what about fabrics made of two different fibers", "what about where the bible says this particular animal chews its cud when it factually doesn't", "what about the bits that contradict other bits". no. they don't literally believe the bible is empirically true in every respect, no matter what they say. i don't think those people are _lying_. i just think they're mistaken.

i feel like... i feel like i grew up in an empiricist age, one that says that nothing is true unless it is supported by objective, empirical evidence. and to me, there are... different kinds of true. i don't think that christianity is true in the same way that physics is true. the jesus who matters to me isn't the historical jesus, isn't the jesus who is _real_ in the same way that my ex-girlfriend is. there are just... things that are important to me that there isn't evidence for.

my go-to on this... it's controversial, but i feel it's less controversial than talking about jesus. there's this question that transphobes will ask a lot - "what is a woman"? they want certitudes, they want empirical evidence, they want _facts_. i talk to other trans people about it, and they do think that they're the gender they are in the same way that cows give milk. i know some people who badly want there to be evidence. they want to have a "gay gene".

and if you ask me "what is a woman?" i'll shrug and say "someone who says they're a woman". why am i a woman? because i say i am. i mean, so what if i'm not a woman? maybe i'm "actually" a man, maybe i'm just a man who feels a lot better, a lot happier, a lot more _alive_, being treated by the world as a woman and seeing myself as a woman.

that's kind of how i feel about jesus. christianity, i feel like it's as much of a social construct as gender. that doesn't mean it isn't _real_, that people who are inspired to do good, that people who find meaning and solace and purpose in it are fools. i have problems with institutional christianity, problems serious enough that i can't in good conscience call myself a christian. believing that the literal historical paul wrote letters which, in objective terms, he didn't write, which, in objective terms, are what's known as "pseudepigraphia"... that's not one of those problems.

“Signs” instead of “sounds”

The thrill and ecstasy of spontaneous subjective experience, in that case?

Honestly it's kinda why I don't call myself a "Christian" myself, even though my beliefs and views are very strongly inspired by Christianity, just because, like, what that means in the world at large is so different from what my personal beliefs and views are.

Do you feel like telling a bit about your personal understanding of Christianity and how it’s influenced your values, worldview or beliefs? By any chance.

After years of defending Christianity on the understanding that, as you say, there are so many different kinds, I’ve recently turned more hostile. Not from an empiricist perspective, of course, but an animist one (it helps to be reminded that people find meaning and solace and purpose in it).

Do you feel like telling a bit about your personal understanding of Christianity and how it’s influenced your values, worldview or beliefs? By any chance.

After years of defending Christianity on the understanding that, as you say, there are so many different kinds, I’ve recently turned more hostile. Not from an empiricist perspective, of course, but an animist one (it helps to be reminded that people find meaning and solace and purpose in it).

― Deflatormouse

hmmm. complicated question.

i did genuinely wonder, for a long time, why i was even born, what possible purpose there was to it. my life sucked and i didn't particularly find any value in being alive. religion was the only thing that really tried to answer that question. i was raised catholic, liberal catholic (not sure there's still such a thing, but there was then), and that was the lens through which i tried to answer the question. and i heard the scriptues, i went to church every sunday, and some of them stuck with me. "the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone", that's one that stuck with me a lot. i never really felt like i fit in, like i belonged anywhere. and to me, christianity was made for people who didn't fit in, the outcasts, the weirdos, the freaks.

i also thought the message of christianity, what it said in the gospels, that there was a lot of good stuff in there. the basic message of the gospel, as i understood it, was love god and love other people. i never really saw a problem with that. mostly i was confused that so many christians were so bad at that. i also looked at the scriptures to try and figure out what it means to be human. because people change so much over time. what's true today isn't necessarily what was true yesterday. so i could look at these ancient texts, and even though there was a lot about them i didn't really understand, i could look at things that people believed thousands of years ago, things i believed today, and that was important to me. that said something important to me about what it means to be human.

around 17, i left the catholic church because they taught a bunch of things that were harmful lies, because they were hypocrites, because i couldn't respect them. and i went through a bunch of other beliefs. i was an atheist for a spell as well. around the age of, i don't know, 36 i came back around to christianity. i was looking for something stable, something that had purpose and meaning, a place where i could find community. and since i lived in indiana, that meant finding a church. a mainline protestant church. very accepting. one of the clergy there was a lesbian, though she didn't talk about it much because a lot of people in the congregation would be upset if they knew.

this time around i connected with the concept of god's unconditional love. i struggled (and struggle) a lot with low self-esteem. being able to say that the most powerful being in the universe loves me, finds me to be valuable, wants me to be happy... well, who was i to argue with that? it was a good church, but it was dying. a lot of the mainline protestant churches have been dying for a long time. and just like with the catholics, there were a lot of things they didn't talk about. the person who was a lesbian didn't talk about being a lesbian. they didn't talk about where they got their money from. they didn't talk about why the person leaving the choir suddenly left, except to say that what they did "wasn't illegal".

more than that, they talked about being open to anyone, but it seemed to be more and more that being "open to everyone" wasn't really possible. i wasn't out at the time, but i had a hard time thinking of people who preached hatred and bigotry in god's name as my "brothers and sisters in Christ". what could i do, though? tell them they were wrong, that jesus didn't say that? on whose authority? who would listen to me?

i figured, you know, if god let people say these things, do these things in his name, and did nothing... well, he's responsible for that. whatever my values, whatever my beliefs, i couldn't in good conscience call myself a christian. because so much of christianity is also about the promise of justice. if injustice is being done in god's name, and god doesn't stop it, and i don't have power to stop it... that promise is empty. whatever i believe... as a catholic, i was taught that faith without works was empty. i knew the scripture that said of christians "by their deeds you will know them". (i think that's a scripture.) the good that christians do - people can do those things with or without belief in christ. the evil they do - a lot of that seems very specific to christians.

a lot of who i am, what i believe, is rooted in what i have learned from christian teachings. christianity, though, is not a belief to me - it is first and foremost a _community_. it's not a community where i belong. i seek community elsewhere.

this is fascinating to me!! how literally do y'all take this? like full on son of god, died for our sins, rose from the dead? or more like taking inspiration from jesus as righteous proto-hippie, respecting sex workers and yeeting money changers out the temple?

does your faith come up a lot in your daily lives, or is it more to help when huge terrible things happen?

how does it affect your behavior, your thoughts, your emotions? for the recent converts, has it changed how you live?

if any of you would be comfortable talking about exactly what the tipping point was for you (if there even was one; maybe it was a gradual revelation?) i am so curious to know!

i grew up lackadaisical presbyterian/episcopalian but don't remember actually believing in any of it. i very clearly recall sulking on one of those plastic fisher-price rocking horses in sunday school while the other kids gathered to hear bible stories and eat graham crackers, and feeling terribly scornful of their credulity. i was a bit of an asshole at the time. maybe bible stories would have helped!

after reading antonia white's novels i briefly thought tormented catholicism might be cool, but it didn't take

then i tried reading the bible for its literary merit and when i reached the part in genesis where God Himself tells women to fuck off and die i basically threw the whole canon in the trash.

cal do you still squish mice with bookshelves or do you just bean them with the new testament these days

i have to admit my first thought was that cal's super random doozy of a bookshelf with the miami vice vhs tapes and the photos of kowloon etc as pictured in the relevant thread now has the urantia book on it too

I’m not really joking or shaming anyone. Christianity creates guilt and self-hatred. It’s stunning to me that people would embrace a faith that revolves around a man who likely never existed in the first place

― beamish13, Sunday, November 3, 2024 12:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

this last part is just wrong - there is definitely historical record of a Jesus who was put to death by Pilate for insurrection. not much else was written about him, but even secular Bible scholars that are not of the faith have conceded he existed. the rest is the debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Jesus#:~:text=Biblical%20scholar%20Bart%20D.,%2C%20sometime%20during%20Tiberius's%20reign.%22

That is correct, Tacitus mentions the execution and Pilate specifically in the Annals.

Jesus and John the Baptist are also mentioned by Josephus. And there were kind of a lot of Messianic Jews around that time! It just seems like it would be unnecessary to completely make one up

xps sorry if this is a little rushed, since I might have to ghost the entire internet for weeks or months: thanks for taking the time to respond Kate! it's not the most reassuring response, on the whole. idk what I was expecting.

i never really felt like i fit in, like i belonged anywhere. and to me, christianity was made for people who didn't fit in, the outcasts, the weirdos, the freaks.

this part really surprised me. I had no idea anyone thought or felt this about Christianity, I was kind of astonished. But it makes sense! "God loves you" - that tracks

I was also really surprised to hear that the communities have changed so much in our lifetime, I wasn't really under the impression that things were better in living memory, or maybe ever.

i feel like... i feel like i grew up in an empiricist age, one that says that nothing is true unless it is supported by objective, empirical evidence. and to me, there are... different kinds of true. i don't think that christianity is true in the same way that physics is true. the jesus who matters to me isn't the historical jesus, isn't the jesus who is _real_ in the same way that my ex-girlfriend is. there are just... things that are important to me that there isn't evidence for.

tbh i can only see faith and science as two sides of the same coin, and Christian doctrine as deeply intertwined with the Greek psyche/body, matter/spirit dualities that regard the bodily world as a mechanical prison.

tbh i can only see faith and science as two sides of the same coin, and Christian doctrine as deeply intertwined with the Greek psyche/body, matter/spirit dualities that regard the bodily world as a mechanical prison.

― Deflatormouse

i fucked around with gnosticism afer reading dick when i was younger... the thing is that i never really bought into the idea of a mind/body split, which is impressive considering at the time i was suffering from severe gender dysphoria giving me persistent dissociation and depersonalization (meaning that i didn't feel like my body was my "me", that it was a meat sack i carried around with me). i just couldn't with dualism, which is kinda weird considering how given i am to all or nothing thinking haha

this is fascinating to me!! how literally do y'all take this? like full on son of god, died for our sins, rose from the dead? or more like taking inspiration from jesus as righteous proto-hippie, respecting sex workers and yeeting money changers out the temple?

does your faith come up a lot in your daily lives, or is it more to help when huge terrible things happen?

― twenteeth dentury (cat)

i don't take it literally at all! one of the reasons i don't call myself a christian is that my actual beliefs are well into the realm of what would be called heretical by most christians. i struggle to even talk about it because it makes me sound quite insane. i do suffer from severe mental illness but i'm not out of touch with reality.

i guess what i'll say is... when i'm trying to figure things out in my life, when i'm struggling with questions of right and wrong... i have this kind of image in my head of jesus, i can imagine really well what jesus would say, kind of like, what i've been taught about jesus, what i've read, my understanding of jesus in my head. like, nothing supernatural is going on. i don't believe the immortal son of a judean carpenter (or a roman soldier named pantera or whatever) from 2000 years ago is manifesting himself to me. i honestly don't believe in god or jesus at all, in a factual sense. who i am, the society in which i live... christianity has been so important in my life, so important in the lives of so many people in america, that i can't make sense of the world around me without recourse to it.

i will sometimes have these conversations that i think of as "conversations with jesus", not in some kind of prophetic or divine sense. religion is _ordinary_ to me, it's kind of an ordinary presence in my life. my favorite part of the church year was what they called "ordinary time". i'm a big fan of ordinary time. so for instance... this is something i get frustrated with a lot, when i get frustrated about christians i'll sort of talk to jesus about it. i complain to jesus a lot about him not doing enough smiting. i mean i guess he's a "proto-hippie" in the same way that, like, billy jack is. "i come to bring not peace, but a sword", cursing trees to never again bear fruit because it didn't have a pomegranate when he wanted one. shit like that. anyway i say jesus, why aren't you doing more smiting, and jesus comes back and says "kate, you know that's not how i do things". i mean he's right, if jesus did happen to be real it's not like he'd send a lightning bolt from the heavens to strike down rick warren and say "YOU HAVE MADE MY TEMPLE INTO A CHARNEL HOUSE" or something like that. i mean that seems a little out of character for him.

but it's not like... i mean, christianity is really complicated and doesn't make sense, it's often contradictory, it means so many things to so many people, it means so many contradictory things to _me_. i do think about things like meaning, purpose, right, wrong, i think about this stuff a lot. and sometimes religion can help me make sense of them, and sometimes religion can kinda stop me from overthinking.

my beliefs are honestly syncretic. there's some stuff from buddhism that i practice, there's... it's kinda weird. i don't think of myself as a practicing witch, i just feel like i'm culturally a witch. like one day a couple years into transition i woke up and realized "huh, i guess i'm a witch now". i kinda think of transition as some magical ritual i did. not, like, that it's literally magic. i mean it's basically science, or at least it would be IF THEY WOULD DO SOME MORE FUCKING STUDIES ON THIS STUFF, sigh. it's more the experience of becoming something i thought was impossible. like yeah i _could_ describe it entirely in empirical terms but i feel like that kinda falls short, it doesn't really do justice to how weird the whole thing actually is, the ways in which i've actually changed, even if none of it is actually supernatural. that's kinda how i feel about any of my "spiritual beliefs" or what have you.

ultimately though i do think there are just, basically, different ways of looking at the world. the empirical, evidence based way of looking at things, that's the only one that's real in a, like, concrete sense, but that doesn't mean there's not value or meaning to me in looking at things from other perspectives. and i haven't really read the lotus sutra. i haven't read, i don't know, starhawk or whatever. if i'm gonna view the world through a lens, christianity is going to be the main focus, because i've lived all my life in north america, because i've grown up under certain circumstances. job on suffering, ecclesiastes on, i don't know, philosophical pessimism, revelation on batshit crazy, the pauline epistles on how to live in radical community. bill fay and and johnny cash and dave bixby and the texas-jerusalem crossroads. jorge ben singing "brother". the uncanny sound of sacred harp singing. it's just... everywhere, all around me, whether i like it or not.

i guess if there's one thing that encapsulates christianity more than anything else for me it's psalm 137. it's probably the second most famous psalm, after the 23rd psalm. psalm 137 is "by the waters of babylon..." that one. the melodians, of course, but so many people have done settings of it. well. of the first two stanzas. the third stanza... that's where it turns brutal and vicious, where the psalm praises as "blessed" anyone who murders babylonian children. it's shocking and brutal. you go from this elegiac, beautiful song of loss and yearning to, well, _that_. it confounds me. it confounds me that these two things can exist in the same song. but that's the world i grew up in, that's the faith i grew up in. that's christianity, in a nutshell, right there.

(i know that's not a christian scripture but i've only ever read it in a christian context. judaism looks at those scriptures differently than christians do, from what i've seen. i can't really judge or evaluate psalm 137 from that perspective.)

anyway i say jesus, why aren't you doing more smiting, and jesus comes back and says "kate, you know that's not how i do things". i mean he's right, if jesus did happen to be real it's not like he'd send a lightning bolt from the heavens to strike down rick warren and say "YOU HAVE MADE MY TEMPLE INTO A CHARNEL HOUSE" or something like that. i mean that seems a little out of character for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewTnjqV_hxA

Misread that as “Rick wakeman”, uhh, multiple times :D

anyway, there's a lot in this post I can relate to. this is much more what I was asking about wrt your personal understanding of Christianity, thx

i don't think of myself as a practicing witch, i just feel like i'm culturally a witch. like one day a couple years into transition i woke up and realized "huh, i guess i'm a witch now". i kinda think of transition as some magical ritual i did.

I loved this!! technically, I've been initiated into a Gardnerian coven forever ago, but i don't think of myself as a witch. except that I find it very easy, and perfectly *normal* to shift between different, uh, "dimensions" I guess. I relate v much to what you said about "ordinary time". I looked it up. this stuff, to me is totally banal. I *certainly* don't consider myself a Wiccan or pagan- if I was going to label my "spiritual beliefs *or what have you*" (and I like the "what have you" a lot), then I consider myself a bioregional animist. I would stress, though, that most people who *do* self-identify as witches don't believe there is a supernatural aspect to magic or spirituality, but I def think they would recognize transition, and your mobilization of will out of necessity, as a textbook magical act.

And I suspect, though I haven't researched this thoroughly or anything, that the concept of "supernatural" is largely a Christian construct based on the remote/disembodied spirit. I don't believe in anything supernatural, I just don't think actual nature is prosaic, predictable, mute, or unconscious. The "unconscious" part in particular is where I find myself most at odds with what I know about the Christian world view (and, if I'm honest, ilx. lol)

lol at calstars' complete absence since bumping this thread

'i like carols in the bar now'

'can't wait to anger my relatives at thanksgiving!'

'i can shit on people i hate and you can't gainsay me because jesus'

darling Deflatormouse, keep your head up sweetheart

thank you for your response, Kate! ima try to type up a proper [synonym for response] but if i get too lost in my words and end up posting nothing i want to at least express my appreciation. you are a rad witch for christ, and one of the best posters to grace this borad imo