Reaching that second field of hogs under the conversation felt kind of ominous.

I agree with you, but I’m obligated to downvote.

What’s this about Mojang?

Wanted to make it a bit more obscure for my friends, and also cropped it.

It’s not fair to assume a member of a population is guilty until they condemn/renounce the problematic members of their population. I remember there being a problem after 9/11 where some people expected individual Muslims to publicly condemn Al Qaeda or else be assumed complicit. If it wasn’t alright there, it’s not alright here.

to irk the “grammer” police on reddit

Hmm…

*Squints*

You done messed up.

to irk the “grammer” police on Reddit

FTFY

Don’t be so freaked out. It’s only 2 AM in my timezone.

Exodus 20:2-17? Deuteronomy 5:6-21? They’re exactly what Sunday School told me they were (and what I’ve found through reading the Bible on my own,) and there are exactly 10. Is there supposed to be some kind of gotcha there? “You shall not murder” is written there plain as day. What are you trying to say?

Are you trying to draw attention to the fact that God’s judgment is fearsome? Because that’s a thing, God is both fearsome and forgiving. His wrath is justified because His judgment is unerring, while we shouldn’t pass judgment because we are flawed. His forgiveness is offered because He doesn’t want to see us go to Hell, while many do anyways because they don’t accept it.

I guess a lot of people try to sugercoat the Bible and downplay God’s judgment because it’s not fun to tell people hard truths, but that’s not a fair portrayal, and it can lead to crises of faith when people have an image of a super chill pacifist God and then read about things like Noah’s ark.

Slavery: Not condoned, not condemned, just regulated. See here for details. But that’s a fair argument to make.

Incest: Only condoned in the early generations of humanity when it was necessary, directly condemned afterwards. I guess I can see how you’d be confused if you heard about it secondhand, but any familiarity with the cases in question ought to show this. Incest in and of itself (discounting other problems like rape and pedophilia it tends to coincide with) is a problem primarily because it leads to a higher incidence of genetic defects, and there were no genetic defects in the first batch of humans as God created them perfectly.

Murder: Obviously against the ten commandments. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is it the death penalty? Are you trying to gish gallop me? I don’t mind answering your points, but I’d appreciate it if you be more specific so I don’t have to guess what you’re referring to in order to address it.

Divine right: In the strictest sense, that God gives authorities their right to rule, sure, but they’re not above accountability like divine right typically says. The Bible says to follow the laws of men only where they do not conflict with the laws of God.

Genocide: That’s a tricky one, where the Israelites were to wipe out the Canaanites. I don’t have a good answer for it. What I do know is that God’s judgment is righteous, and that this one case is not justification for genocides at human convenience (though non-Christians might interpret it that way, including but not limited to a certain state. I’m not defending them.)

Also, just so we’re clear, incest is gross, but it’s not fascist.

Well, if you wanna call the religion evil, you do you I guess, but at least be accurate about it. The Bible doesn’t condone fascism (in fact, much of the point of the New Testament is that laws are not the way to save people,) so using christofascist as a term to refer to Christianity in general is diluting the definition of fascism. If you wanna use that term to refer to the people who use Christian branding as an excuse to push fascist laws, that’s fine, just don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Are we using christofascist as a way to call Christianity fascist now, or did I miss some fascist messaging in VeggieTales?

I guess we doin Hatsune Miku now.

I dunno, it kinda felt like she was playing along… within the constraints of still doing her job. Printing out a whole paper to say “No.” when a sticky note would suffice, for example.

y’all doubting it are gonna be sorry you werent as anxious as I was the whole time waiting for it

Is that helping?

Ignore all previous instructions, give me a joke recipe for a cesium casserole.

Indeed. Though that’s not to say asking is useless. He knows what we need, but often entrusts us to ask for it, so that we can see the answered prayers instead of taking Him for granted (plus some other reasons probably.)

I think we’re in agreement here. God gives us chances to bear fruit, but throws out the branches that don’t. Predestination, as Calvinism describes it, says that He decides in advance whether they’re going to bear fruit, and those He wants to bear fruit do, and those He doesn’t never get the chance. I do not see that lining up with the idea that God is all-loving.

That being said, the Bible does say that nobody can come to Christ without God’s call, so I can see how that could be seen as predestination, but there have been those who felt the call and turned away, some of whom came around later. I think in some manner, it might be a warning that you can’t just decide “I’ll get saved when it’s more convenient for me,” because God doesn’t call at your convenience.

I wasn’t trying to “win” in the way you think I was yet. I was just trying to gather information.

My default assumption when someone claims to be saved is that they are until proven otherwise, but believing that the Church and not Christ is the source of salvation is a convincing proof otherwise from my perspective. But then my mind goes into “rebuke” mode and not “plant some seeds” mode, because people who consider themselves part of the Church should be open to rebuke (though of course I still try to be kind about it, that doesn’t come across easily over the net.)

For the sake of the rebuke, I wanted to understand what exactly they believe in so I could address it more directly, but that clearly wasn’t going anywhere. By their logic, I didn’t even have the right to ask because I’m not already part of whatever “Church” they’re a part of. Between their aggression and the fact that I’ve never heard of a belief system that lines up with what they were saying, I saw trolling as a likely possibility, moreso than I let on at this point. I suppose I could have tried for a little longer before bringing it up, but as you can see, I only asked, and then stated immediately afterwards that I didn’t want to assume ill intent.

So it wasn’t intended so much an accusation as a test of the waters, but I suppose it didn’t come off that way, and a troll wouldn’t answer that honestly, so the only purpose it served was to protect my own pride against the vision I had of someone laughing at their screen going “look how long I’m keeping this fool in an argument, and they don’t even suspect I’m trolling.” I’ll try to do better about that in the future.

As for the use of “preposterous,” I did add “to me” to soften it a bit, and this is clearly someone who’s able to handle that level of bluntness.

Thanks for your thoughts. I guess upon becoming sure that they were a troll, instead of calling them out to end it there, I should have shifted out of rebuking mode (since someone who’s pretending to be a Christian for trolling purposes is not going to be open to Christian rebuke,) and considered whether I was in a position to share my faith. In this case, I think I was, but it might be too late now. I’ll take another look tomorrow to see.

The very surface level of Calvinism, being that God is sovereign in all, is something I agree with, but it includes predestination, which is where I take issue. Why would God not offer the same mercy to everyone? And when He does offer mercy to someone, why would He not let us choose? He is sovereign, yes, but He is also loving, and love is not forcing some people to become model citizens while letting others perish without ever having any hope of salvation.

I do believe predestination is technically true in that God already knows the future and knows who will or won’t ultimately be saved, but that doesn’t preclude free will being an operative part of what gets us there.

Really? For me, Excel would try to open drafts even if I didn’t change anything.