Jesus said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Matthew 18:3-6
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When I started my journey as a parent, I assumed that if I brought my children up in the Lord, they would follow Jesus as I did. Every parent wants their child to truly love the Lord Jesus and want them to walk with Him as early in life as possible. It's not always the case. I have seen many prayerful parents facing trials because of rebellious children. If you are one of them, I want to encourage you, God's ears are inclined to your cry, He will answer your prayers. In my case, God eventually did answer my prayers and transformed my children to love and follow Jesus and serve Him alone.
Parenting has humbled me significantly. It has made me less judgmental and more sympathetic with those struggling with rebellious children. It has given me a burden to pray for such children. One thing I can assure you, if you ask, you will receive. But we will never know God's timetable, but that, He will surely do it. So, let us not give up praying for our children.
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I love AO3 because it is the only place on the internet where you do not need to worry about your works, or other people's works that you love, being deleted. You also know you can comfortably talk about anything you want. And I can properly tag it so that those likely to be triggered can block it.
For example, on Tumblr, if I wanted to discuss something dark, serious, or of a taboo topic, like say, eating disorders or anything sexual, I used to be able to tag it so that people triggered by those topics don't see it.
Now? If I talk about my experience with eating disorders and attempt to encourage others to recover, all with an educational and honest mindset, if I tag it with any of the common tags to get it seen by those people, I risk my entire blog being deactivated.
I have literally had this happen before. That is how my last blog died.
Now, if I want to make sure I don't see those topics, I can't block the tags because the people talking about them aren't tagging them properly. They don't want to be deactivated, so when they talk about them, it's with no tags or the wrong tags.
The amount of triggering pr0/*na stuff I've seen on my dash lately is ridiculous despite the fact my blocked tags look like this:
And so on.
Or think about an egregious example...wattpad. I don't want your shitty alpha mate erotic self insert bts fanfic. You know what I can do on AO3? Filter literally any of those terms out.
You know what I have to do on wattpad? Scroll past them all because they make up the majority of the top stories in some categories despite wattpad's terms of service. Sometimes, I will start reading a nice fantasy story only to get part way through the second chapter and MC is getting r*ped by a pack of "muscular, dominant werewolves." I would much rather the author mentioned there would be explicit heterosexual sex and rape. I would not read it then.
People also have boundaries in wildly different places. I'm okay with reading a story about lesbians involving consensual nonconsent, you know, bdsm style, where the rules have been worked out in advance and there's a safeword + signal. That's fine, it doesn't bother me at all even if I'm not particularly interested in it. But make it a man r*ping someone physically weaker (regardless of gender) nope! I'm out. Even if it's not for pleasure purposes and is a dark scene which is traumatic for the character and is important for whatever psychological themes of the work. Aspects like that can be included in writing legitimately, especially in works on the more psychological side. But I do not want to see those particular topics, so I filter them out. No problem.
My favorite fic author of all time writes a ton of disturbing stuff in the death note fandom, which, given the tone of canon, is a ripe canvas to work from. Half of the good psychological death note fics would be banned within the first couple of months, I'm sure. Even darker/more intense works like psycho-pass? It had a r*pe scene in the very first episode. It was definitely not meant to be gratifying to the viewer. It is meant to be horrifying. Any fics that deal with any of the topics canon deals with? Control, manipulation, gore and physical violences spanning the range which occurs in the real world and how you deal with them? How you deal with the people who commit them? There is a vast amount of ugliness canon portrays that is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable. If it makes you uncomfortable, good, you are a normal person. If you're not up for these topics, filter them out.
Those of us who want to see even the ugly sides of human experience discussed in writing can read them in deeply unsettled peace and you can read a different fic.
Banning these topics from being discussed entirely? You make the whole of literature, of what we are allowed to discuss publicly, more shallow. The depths are banned. You can't discuss anything about them. Not from the cathartic voice of an abuse survivor or the philosophical curiosity of someone who wishes to understand people, even bad people.
In short, it's dumb, and completely missing the point of an ARCHIVE.
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