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#course their argument is that the Bible is the word of god but like

saintmachina · 1 month

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One million dollar question: is it true that the Bible condems homosexuality? I had a discussion with two conservatives who sent me some verses that seem to confirm that but i don't know much about the context although i know this is important too

Let’s start here: why is this the million dollar question? Why does it matter what the Bible has to say about sex, or love, or human relationships? At the end of the day, it’s just a book, right?

Oceans of ink (and blood) have been spilled over not only what the Bible says, but what it does, how it functions. The course of empires, nations, and families have been shaped by the contents of this book, and from a historical and cultural perspective, it holds a lot of weight. But you didn’t ask about the sociological, you asked about the theological, so let’s explore.

Different Christian traditions vary in their approach to scripture. For example: some Protestant denominations believe that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. In this paradigm, God is the ultimate author of scripture working through human hands, and the resulting text is both without error and in no way deceptive or mistaken. Similarly, The Second Vatican Council decreed that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” When a member of the clergy is ordained into the Episcopal Church they swear that they “do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”

Can you see how many of these points of doctrine overlap yet seek to distinguish themselves from one another? Theologians have spent lifetimes arguing over definitions, and even when they manage to settle on solid teachings, the way that the teaching is interpreted by the clergy and incorporated into the lives of the laity varies WIDELY. As much as systematic theology may try, humans aren’t systematic beings. We’re highly contextual: we only exist in relation to others, to history, to circumstance, and to the divine. We simply cannot call up God to confirm church teaching, and I think a lot of people cling excessively to the Bible as a result of the ache (dare I even say trauma) of being separated from God via space and time in the way we currently are.

God is here, but God is not here. God is within us, God is within the beloved, God is within the sea and sky and land, and yet we cannot grasp God to our bodies in the way we long to. In this earthly lifetime, we are forever enmeshed in God, yet forever distinct, and that is our great joy and our great tragedy.

So barring a direct spiritual experience or the actual second coming, we're left to sort through these things ourselves. And because humans are flawed, our interpretations will always be flawed. Even with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives guiding us.

When engaging with any sort of Biblical debate, it is essential that you have a strong understanding of what the Bible means to you, an an embodied individual living a brief little awful and wonderful life on Earth. Otherwise it's easy to get pushed around by other people’s convincing-sounding arguments and sound bites.

Here’s where I show my hand. As a confirmed Episcopalian I believe that reason, tradition, and scripture form the “three-legged stool” upon which the church stands, interdependent and interrelational to each other, but I’ve also like, lived a life outside of books. I’ve met God in grimy alleyways and frigid ocean waters and in bed with my lovers. So my stool is actually four-legged, because I think it’s essential to incorporate one’s personal experience of God into the mix as well. (I did not invent this: it’s called the Wesleyan quadrilateral, but the official Wesleyan quadrilateral insists that scripture must trump all other legs of the table in the case of a conflict which...*cynical noises*)

Please do not interpret this answer as me doing a hand-wavey "it's all vibes, man, we're all equally right and equally wrong", but I do absolutely think we have a responsibility as creatures to weigh the suffering and/or flourishing of our fellow creatures against teachings handed down through oral tradition, schisms, imperial takeover of faith, and translation and mistranslation. Do I believe the Bible is sacred, supernatural even, and that it contains all things necessary to find one's way to God, if that is the way God chooses to manifest to an individual in a given lifetime? Absolutely. Do I believe it is a priceless work of art and human achievement that captures ancient truths and the hopes of a people (as well as a record of their atrocities) through symbols, stories, and signs? Unto my death, I do.

However, I am wary of making an object of human creation, God-breathed though it may be, into an idol, and trapping God in its pages like God is some sort of exotic bug we can pin down with a sewing needle.

Finally, we have reached the homosexuality debate. One of my favorite sayings of Jesus is Matthew 5: 15-17: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit." In other words: look at what religious teachings have wrought in the world. When I look at homophobic interpretations of the Bible, I see destruction, abuse, suffering, neglect, alienation, spiritual decay, and death. When I look at theology that affirms the holiness of LGBTQ+ relationships, I see joy, laughter, community building, thoughtful care, blooming families, creativity, resilience, and compassion. I see the love of Christ at work in the world. I see the hands of a God who chose under no duress to take up residence in a human body, to drink wine with tax collectors and break bread with sex workers and carry urchin children around on his shoulders. That's my limited little pet interpretation, but hey, that's all any of us really have, at the end of the day.

So, I am absolutely happy to do a play-by-play breakdown of why those passages you were given (we queer Christians often call them "clobber passages" or "texts of terror") don't hold water in a theological, historical, and cultural context. We can talk about Jesus blessing the eunuch and the institution of Greek pederasty and Levitical purity laws and Paul because I've done that reading. I've spent my nights crying in self-hatred and leafing through doctrine books and arguing with my pastors and writing long grad school essays on the subjects. Send me the verses, if you can remember them, and I'll take a look. But it's worth noting that out of the entire Bible, I believe there are only six that explicitly condemn homosexuality AND I'm being generous and including Sodom and Gommorah here, which is a willful and ignorant misreading if I've ever seen one.

In the meantime, I recommend books by people smarter than me! Try Outside The Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith by Mihee Kim-Kort, or Does Jesus Really Love Me by Jeff Chu, or Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke!

And take a breath, dear one. Breathe in God, in the droplets of water in the air and in the wind from the south. Breathe in the gift of life, and know that you are loved, now and unto the end of the age and even beyond then.

#I'm sorry this answer is the length of a Victor Hugo novel but I've been mulling on it for days and it unlocked the theology gremlin #who lives in my brain #theology #christianty #queer christianity #progressive christianity #religionposting #catholicism #episcopalian #lgbtq community

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fdelopera · 9 months

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musings on Judaism in Good Omens...

Neil has written about Crowley being one of his most Jewish characters, and i was thinking about that while watching season 2 of Good Omens, especially episode 3.

in ep 3, during the "resurrectionist" flashback, there is a discussion between Aziraphale and Crowley that exemplifies the argument between Christianity and Judaism regarding poverty.

medieval Catholicism in particular believed that the poor are potentially more holy because they have further to "climb" on the social ladder, so we shouldn't give them "handouts" (unless of course it's as a way to buy favor with the church, since Catholics believed that charitable giving could buy them a reduced sentence in purgatory). Catholicism taught that we should let the poor “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, because that would make them more virtuous and bring them closer to God, blah blah blah (you hear the same arguments in right wing political circles).

Judaism on the other hand takes the approach of the mitzvah of tzedakah (tzedakah is charitable giving that advances social justice -- the word comes from the Hebrew word “tzedek”, which means “justice”). Jews believe that it is our our moral and ethical duty to help disenfranchised people, and that it's ethically wrong to allow people to live in poverty for our own gain. it's the "we're all in this together so we have to help each other out" approach to society.

incidentally, that also relates to why pork is treyf in Judaism. it's not because the ancient Israelites knew that uncooked pork contained trichinella and that it could be dangerous to eat if not cooked properly. no one back then understood germ theory. instead, Jews are forbidden from eating pork because pigs can eat food that people also eat (they don't chew a cud, i.e. they don't solely survive on grass and ruffage that people can't digest). so if Jews raised pigs, they would potentially be taking food away from other Jews, and so the raising and keeping of pigs had to be banned for the good of Jewish society (since it was always hanging on by a thread).

Jews wrestle with G-d. that’s the meaning of what it is to be Jewish. Jacob was given the name “Israel” when he wrestled with the Angel, meaning “he who wrestles with G-d”.

in Crowley, there is an echo of Rabbinic and Talmudic thought, in terms of being able to use "fences" to shape our interpretation of the Torah. unlike with the Christian interpretation of the Bible, the Jewish relationship to our texts is not set in stone. Rabbis get around problematic passages by writing “fences”, or exceptions to the text. in essence, a “fence” says, “this law cannot be enacted, unless a series of completely improbable things were to happen first”. this allows the text to remain as it is, while removing the parts that we don’t agree with anymore (like stoning people to death as punishment etc).

watch the Job flashback in ep. 2 with this in mind.

this is part of how Jews wrestle with G-d, and it's an expression of our free will -- our texts can be addended to in order to reflect a modern understanding. (that's also why there are queer Rabbis in most Jewish denominations. most of the Jewish movements realized in the 20th century that barring queer people from being Rabbis wasn't in the interests of anybody, and so Judaism evolved.)

but while Rabbinic Judaism focuses on free will, many Christian movements (such as Calvinism) maintain a belief in a deterministic universe.

and that's also part of the struggle between Crowley and Aziraphale.

so Crowley is figuring out how to say, "these laws don't serve me, so i'm not going to follow them as they’re written. i’m going to come up with my own interpretations". and he's just hoping that Aziraphale will catch up.

let’s just hope we get a Season 3, so Aziraphale has a chance to get there... come on, dude .. i know you can do it...

#good omens #good omens season 2 #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 #gonna be spinning a lot of these episodes around for a while #judaism tag

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melancholic-and-delusional · 7 months

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Fyodor Is Alive. A Bungo Stray Dogs Theory.

The recent episode of Bungo Stray Dogs season 5 presented to us the supposed death of the main antagonist of the series - Fyodor. However, I'd like to argue that he is, in fact, very much alive. Due to the impossibility of Studio Bones being able to animate the last chapters shorty after their release, I'm going to go by the narrative that Asagiri has informed them of what should be animated beforehand, and so the final episode of the season is canon.

My first argument, which should go without saying, is that this is not the first time we have been death-bated. There are too many examples to count, where characters seem to have no way of avoiding their demise. However, that was never the case. For that fact, I believe that this will be the same situation once more.

Secondly, an argument which was quickly brought up by many fans is Fyodor last words - 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?'

The words are a direct quote from the Bible, meaning 'My God, my God, why have Thou forsaken me?' That was the last sentence Jesus Christ uttered before finally dying on the cross. As we all know, however, he came back to life 3 days later, which raises suspiciousions if Fyodor would also come back or not.

The next thing I would like to mention is that Fyodor's cut-off arm looks incredibly fake.

Fyodor was in the helicopter, which crashed and immediately after that set on fire. If that arm was his, it would've been burnt and dark, and if that arm was an actual limb, it would have cut off blood vessels hanging from the end where it had been previously chopped off. The use of a fake arm had already been performed by Dazai in season 2, when him and Chuuya were fighting against Lovecraft, so it is very much possible that this once mentioned detail holds a certain importance later in the story (Chekhov's gun or something like that).

Moreover, when Fyodor was in the helicopter, he was not alone. He was with another vampiresed guard. As soon as the vehicle set on fire, it exploded. Fyodor could've pulled the guard to himself, protecting himself from the explosion, just like Kunikida did with Tetchou in the previous season.

However, I am slightly uncertain of this argument since both of them were inside of the exploding helicopter, and it'd be difficult to protect yourself from such a thing. I do still think that it is worth suggesting that the guard might have been of use for Fyodor to survive.

The next thing I'm bringing up is that when Bones animated Dazai's "death" scene, it appeared much more dramatic than in the manga, and it actually seemed fatal. (This is a bit of a dumb argument, but I'll still go with it.)

The manga panel of Dazai's headshot looks faked, but what Bones animated doesn't. When the chapters of the manga that were just animated come out, it might give us the opportunity to form more theories regarding Fyodor's supposed death.

Another thing I wish to point out is that season 2 of the anime ended with Fitzgerald's "death".

Of course, in season 3, we find out that he was alive all along. He used to be the main antagonist of the series up to that point and before Fyodor took over that title. Studio Bones could've waited for more chapters and content to come out for them to animate, especially since this season has been the shortest one yet, but they chose to end season 5 with Fyodor's death, leaving us on a cliffhanger. This leads me to believe that they're purposefully doing that, so in the next season, they can shock us when Fyodor comes back alive.

Finally, we know nothing about Fyodor's origin, ability, etc. It would be anticlimactic, and I'd even consider it as poor writing. Even if Sigma survives, which I think he will, and he goes to share the information he got out of Fyodor, it wouldn't be as satisfying to know all of that once Fyodor is actually dead. In a way, there's no reason for us to care about his backstory once he has died.

Also, not long before the incident occurred, Fyodor spoke about Dazai being his greatest foe since that man. However, nobody has any clue who 'that man' is.

This leaves another question unanswered and another reason for Fyodor to survive.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Thank you so much for reading my theory! It is the first time I have ever written one, so I'm hoping the arguments I've brought made the least bit of sense.

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd season 4 #bsd season 5 #bsd theories #bsd fyodor dostoevsky #bsd fyodor #dazai bsd

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geeoharee · 1 year

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More of my 'Sherlock Holmes through the lens of Discworld' thoughts, because why have one fixation when two will do

This week Holmes solved the case of The Blue Carbuncle, i.e. 'I stole a gem and hid it somewhere very stupid and now I cannot retrieve it from that place, oh no, this has all gone wrong, I am dumb'. The thief in question is James Ryder, a servant for the gem's owner who is framing John Horner, a plumber he called round to fix something in the house.

Anyway, not very important except to say Ryder does not get away with the crime even a LITTLE bit - he loses track of the gem immediately and it ends up in Holmes's living room and so does he. Horner meanwhile is sitting in a cell with the police not believing that he has no idea what they're on about.

When Holmes tells Ryder that he knows he stole it, Ryder collapses completely. He was already sitting down in a chair and somehow manages to fall on the floor, they have to give him brandy, then he begs pathetically:

Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion's knees. "For God's sake, have mercy!" he shrieked. "Think of my father! Of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I'll swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring it into court! For Christ's sake, don't!"

He does the obligatory First Person Narration Of The Whole Story that Watson always puts in here, and concludes:

"My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!" He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.

He is a horrible little man and he would have sent Horner to prison with no remorse whatsoever if he hadn't lost the gem, but honestly you can't help but feel a bit sorry for him anyway. Holmes certainly does, chucking him out of the house on the basis that he probably won't do it again, Horner will go free anyway if Ryder doesn't testify and "it is the season of forgiveness" - as well as the famous line "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies." He's not a cop. He can do things like this, if he feels like it.

The Discworld connection is to the Hedge Argument Murder. (Incidentally, if you google that, the FIRST result is that there have been several of these in real life, before and after the book came out. Hedges are serious business.) Sam contemplates copper-ness in Night Watch...

Keep the peace. That was the thing. People often failed to understand what that meant. You'd go to some life-threatening disturbance like a couple of neighbours scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties, and they'd both be bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling, their wives would either be having a private scrap on the side or would have adjourned to the kitchen for a shared pot of tea and a chat, and they expected you to sort it out.

And they could never understand that it wasn't your job. Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-justification, to get them to stop shouting and to get them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your job was over. You weren't some walking god, dispensing finely-tuned natural justice. Your job was to simply bring back the peace.

Of course, if your few strict words didn't work and Mr Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed hedge and stabbed Mr Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge Argument Murder. But at least it was one you were trained to do.

People expected all kinds of things from coppers, but there was one thing that sooner or later they all wanted: make this not be happening.

In this lovely Christmas story, Holmes sees a man who wants more than anything in the world for this not to be happening - to just be able to take it all back - to be forgiven. Even though he's not particularly deserving. And because he's not a cop, he can give it to him.

#sherlock holmes #letters from watson #blue #discworld #sam vimes #long post #but only because it's got a lot of quote in it

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mephystophyles · 2 years

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"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:13) "Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God." (Psalm 22:9-10) "Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?" (Job 31:15) Also, when Mary visits her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, she says "For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy." (Luke 1:44) These are only a few examples. In Genesis, when God made ADAM, the first man, *his* life began with the breath of God. After that, we see a great deal of examples in the Bible that either outright say or heavily imply that God forms us and knows us IN OUR MOTHER'S WOMB. And just as a disclaimer, I am not disagreeing with your stance on abortion - I am saying your arguments that use Scripture need strengthening, because what you are currently saying is not true. Wishing you a good day, and God bless.

Okay, but literally none of those are about abortion. They're mentioning that babies are developed in the womb.

Exodus 21:22 is, however, a part of the Bible that actually does mention the fetus.

“When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.��

This is fascinating because it outlines specific punishments for specific crimes. If a pregnant person is hurt in a struggle and then has a miscarriage, the penalty is a fine, a mere financial payment. But, if there is further harm, likely meaning the person has long-term and serious injuries or even dies, then the culprit could be killed.

Granted, the story has somewhat limited application to the current abortion debate since it deals with accidental and not willful pregnancy termination. Even so, the distinction made between the pregnant person and the fetus is important. The pregnant individual is valued as a person under the convenant; the fetus is valued as property. Its status is certainly inferior to that of the pregnant person.

This passage gives no support to the parity argument that gives equal religious and moral worth to the pregnant person and fetus.

In other words, the life and well-being of the pregnant person, is of much greater significance than those of their unborn child.

Furthermore, an excerpt from Numbers 5:11-31 actually mentions a ritual involving "bitter water" that will induce a miscarriage. This ritual, by the way, was conducted by a priest:

"He shall make the woman drink the bitter water... The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as an offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. When she is made to drink the water... it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry"

In terms of the Bible, other than the bit about life beginning at first breath, that is about it. We can dig away at some other scriptural references to try to justify various positions on this issue, but they’re all somewhat tenuous and none of them make an ironclad argument. It’s not that the Bible demands abortion rights, more that it simply doesn’t have anything pertinent to say about the subject.

Of course, if opponents of abortion were genuinely to live by the commandment that we must never kill, they would oppose wars, the military, the death penalty, and policies that lead directly to poverty, hunger, ill health, and death. To the contrary, the anti-abortion movement has become increasingly politically conservative over the years—it was, for example, one of the bulwarks of the Donald Trump presidency—and tends to be solidly behind the military and an aggressive foreign policy. It’s usually supportive of the death penalty as well. Contradiction and inconsistency. Abortion isn’t murder, murder is murder. Abortion isn’t a holocaust, the Holocaust was a holocaust.

A person's right to choose is a person's right to choose, and it’s downright unbiblical to try to twist scripture to argue against it.

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rogerharkness · 6 months

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The Truth About The Zionist - They Aren't

I want to make a video but I can't because my wife is sleeping. I could go out to my headquarters, a camper trailer in the back, but we have this black cat, when ever I go outside he cries and that wakes her up. So I'm just going to write what I have to say and add my picture to it and hope you all read it.

My wife and I are opposite on everything, we can't talk about anything, it turns into an argument. But I asked her, what do you think about Gaza, and on that we strongly agree. She said she saw a video of a little boy who was completely in a daze, the doctor touched him, the boy climbed up on the doctor held him tight and cried and she said she just lost it. Much like the video I posted about the little girl looking for her mother who had been killed. Matthew 18:6 "But whoso shall cause one of these little ones who believe in Me to fall, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

I'm sure Muslim children were taught to believe in God and there are also Christian children mixed in there as well. Christian and Muslim families have lived together in harmony for centuries in Palestine. Look it up if you don't believe me. The prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) had made a decree that Christians should be protected, one of his best friends was a Christian. Some Muslims follow this decree and some don't unfortunately. But the Palestinian Muslims do and always have.

They say if you support the Palestinians you are supporting terrorism. Now let me quote another scripture for you:

Revelations 2:9 "I know thy works and tribulation and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."

Who are these fake Jews and why are they fake? It would take a long time to explain that and one day I will repost an article that explains all that. Let me just say, "Satan turns everything upside down."

Those who call themselves Zionist are fake Jews. If you look up Zionism in the bible you will learn the meaning of Zionism. Anyone who calls themselves a Zionist would not as much as hurt an animal much less another human being. Yet those who call themselves Zionist are responsible for awful things, Gaza for example. They have turned this word upside down just as Satan would do, you figure it out.

The bible teaches that those who bless his chosen people will be blessed. Zionist are not the chosen ones, anything but, follow your heart, what does your heart say, does it support the genocide of the Palestinian nation, of course not. Some believe that prophecy teaches this, so its okay, well you just tell that to God on judgement day, we'll see what he will say.

There are many Jews, right here in America who do not support the Zionist, support them and you would be supporting the chosen ones.

So I'm putting it straight right now, I'm not going to be nice. The heart of God cries for the death of every Palestinian who cries out to him in agony. The Zionist are terrorists and anyone who supports the Zionist support terrorism and unfortunately America is on the wrong side of this and it will be our downfall if we do not repent - This is the truth - AMEN

Zionism #Jews #christianity #chosen

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angrybutpolite · 9 months

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About the ineffable coffee

While we are on the topic of annoying coffee debates. People seem divided into two camps: NOTHING or EVERYTHING. We are in the world of shades of grey, black and white makes us lose focus. There are multiple facets to this extremely important debate.

*cracks knuckles*

So let's talk alternative interpretations, nuances and symbolism, shall we?

(I have jumped down every rabbit hole I could find and even dug some new ones. My google search history is seriously messed up right now).

The coffee…

MEANS NOTHING (Occam’s razor, right?)

The coffee means nothing, it’s just filling, Metatron needs something to talk about. He could just as well have been talking about bath salts (but that would have been weird).

My verdict: Not likely, considering all the time that is spent in the episode on Metatron acquiring and talking about the damn coffee. Time is precious in film and TV, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is superfluous in Neil’s world.

RED HERRING

The coffee is just coffee, but Neil is trying to distract us from something else.

My verdict: Likely.

SYMBOLISM

The coffee is just coffee, but Neil is showing us that Metatron is manipulating Aziraphale and asking us to pay attention.

My verdict: Less likely. (Don’t get me wrong, I think that Metatron is meddling big time, but I doubt that Neil would be using the coffee to tell us that)

MUNDANE MANIPULATION

The coffee is just coffee, and its purpose is manipulation. Metatron is manipulating Aziraphale via gift giving. There is a whole branch of psychology that centres around how we can manipulate others this way.

You should read this magnificent analysis of Metatron’s step-by-step manipulation here.

My verdict: Extremely likely. It fits Metatron’s persona and bias to a tee. Metatron thinks other beings are simple and easy to predict.

THE COFFEE IS SPIKED

The coffee contains something that is supposed to make Aziraphale more malleable and easier to persuade.

Clues:

The coffee is front and centre in this part of the episode.

The coffee content is described several times.

The coffee cup features in the intro.

There’s flagrant inconsistency:

33:16: Metatron’s order to Nina: “A large oat milk latte with a dash of almond sirup”

35:36: Metatron’s description of the coffee two minutes later: “(...) oat milk latte with a hefty jiggle of almond syrup.”

At 35:53 we are reminded that angels are not immune to drugs when Metatron says: “I have ingested things in my time, you know.” There are multiple interpretations of this one:

Metatron knows first-hand that celestial beings can be under the influence.

Neil is reminding us that unexpected things happens when celestial beings ingest mundane food and drink.

Metatron consumes things/beings if he pleases. (“I will eat you if you don’t play nice”)

Metatron is playing Azi by relating to him (see manipulation link above)

Elements of the spiked-coffee-theory:

Coffee

Coffee has little/no biblical symbolism.*

*Huh. There is apparently an entire academic debate about whether or not coffee is indirectly mentioned in the bible, but for my own sanity, I’m just saying it is hardly, if ever, mentioned. Besides, Crowley chugs it like it’s water, so that’s an argument against any mystical properties.

Oat milk

Oat milk does not exist in the bible (lol), but grains do. Grains, particularly wheat, are heavily burdened with symbolism. Key words: god’s favour and grace, devotion, obedience, death of the ego, pursuit of salvation, rebirth and… resurrection.

Almond syrup - the holy version

Almonds are also heavily steeped in biblical symbolism - they signify divine favour, the holy virgin and purity.

That’s the celestial drink - mocktail if you will. However, there’s another alternative:

Almond syrup - spy version

Another interpretation of the almond syrup is of course cyanide, which is sometimes described as having a smell of bitter almonds. That would explain the suddenly hefty doses of sugar in the coffee to mask the bitterness. This also ties in with all the Clues and the spy references. I’ll even dig the rabbit hole a bit deeper and observe that Metatron, whilst in the queue, seems to be chewing on something. Cyanide capsules had a hard casing, f.ex glass. They needed to be cracked for the poison to be released.

Why cyanide? Well, episode three shows us that unexpected things happen when celestial beings ingest chemicals. Laudanum, that drugs or even kills humans, gets them high instead. Cyanide could possibly do something else?

...anyway

Accoding to the theory, this cocktail of poison and/or holy favour, ego death and purity, possibly seasoned with Metatron’s own “miracle” (No! Not that! Bah!),

...drugs Aziraphale into following Metatron’s orders.

Arguments against the spiked coffee:

Aziraphale has spent almost his entire long lifetime - several millennia - falling in love with Crowley and out of love with heaven. Distancing himself from celestial actions and propaganda. Would three sips of spiked coffee undo this?

Even when Crowley is high as a kite on an entire flask of laudanum, he is still cognizant and makes seemingly rational actions (well, ish).

Metatron tells us that he knows what happens when celestial beings ingest food and drink. Why admit openly that he is trying to drug Azi? (TBF, that could be his supreme ego showing)

If you buy into the idea that Megatron has been meddling throughout the season (ref. The Epic Essay - read it if you haven't), it nullifies the rest of it. Why bother, if Metatron can just drug him?

It's a CHEAP quick-fix with little/no setup. Metatron could have just showed up with that coffee two minutes after the miracle alarm went off in heaven. Season 2 would have been a one-episoder.

My verdict: The spiked-coffee-theory is not likely, because it is so damned obvious. Neil is shoving the coffee mug in our faces. There is manipulation, but it is most likely the good, old-fashioned psychological one.

CONCLUSION

I am leaning towards the coffee mug just containing coffee. (And Metatron being a manipulative AH). Neil is doing some prestidigitation of his own. At best, the coffee theory only works if it’s a component of Metatron’s meddling. It does not have enough legs to stand on.

Final comments:

With regards to the inconsistency, I think that ties in with Metatron’s meddling. Neil is showing us that Metatron is a sloppy storyteller and does not pay attention to details.

Oh, and also, the coffee distracts us from the fact that we do not know everything that Metatron and Azi talked about - coffee or death - read more about that here.

But, what do you think? That’s more interesting than what I think, anyway.

#good omens #aziracrow #good omens season 2 #good omens spoilers #aziraphale #crowley #neil gaiman #ineffable husbands #good omens s2

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coldcoffeandtears · 2 months

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Existentialism ahhhh

I have to go off on an existential tangent about nier, james cameron’s avatar and the bible. I have a hard time putting my thoughts it into words, but the Avatars are an existential nightmare. … AND SPOILERS OF COURSE

Ok so, in the original NIER there are to “good” guys called replicants fighting the “bad” guys called gestalt (german for shades, shapes, ghosts) and in the end it turns out that the gestalten are the souls of the humans in the project gestalt where the soul was separated from the body due to the white chlorination syndrome (WCS) caused by the white gunk from the drakengard universe. And the replicants are replicates of the human bodies, who lost their soul. The soul should be fused back with the replicant body, but it took so long that the replicants gained consciousness and developed personalities independently of their soul and started to build their own civilization with culture. Also, in Nier Automata the Machines sent by the aliens (please bear with me) gained consciousness and started to form communities, without a gooey brain. So that poses the question in james camerons avatar: Will the avatars become sentient without being taken over by their human drivers? I was always complaining that it’s not really explained how the mind controlling of the avatars works. We know that the avatar is unconscious when Jake is not controlling it, but the Avatar cannot lie there for 12 hours without breathing because then the organs would fail due to the lack of oxygen. We don’t know if the na’vi are also using oxygen for their electron transport chain in the mitochondria but they breath something in the air that used to generate ATP and fuel their bodies, which means JAKES AVATAR HAS TO BREATH BY ITSELF when he’s not taking over, meaning the hind brain for motor functions must be active. And brains have spontaneous neural activity, so I imagine the Avatars, should be able to use their brain on their own without their human controlling them. I mean it also takes us humans some years to gain consciousness after our brain has formed during fetal development. Ok, I just want to say: I think the Avatars built by humans should be able to gain consciousness on their own, you know, like the replicants in NIER do… Also, my other pet peeve is that jake just controls the Avatar of his dead twin brother. So, it’s not really him and at the end of the movie it’s just jakes soul in the body of his brother. On a side note, identical twins are genetic copies but are of course their own person. So even though their brain formed with the exact identical genetic code, they are different people. So, I would discard the argument, that Avatars are “just lifeless copies” of their human, because they are at best twins, but because of the na’vi dna I would say, they are their na’vi brother. This brings up a lot of moral and ethical questions, which I will also ignore because it’s a scifi movie. Buuuuut it also brings up and interesting moral and existential dilemma for miles quaritch who dies in the first movie but was “resurrected as an Avatar” with the memories of the old human. So, we have an Avatar, who is significantly younger than his old self, with the life experience of a 50-year-old and memories of a human body now in a Avatar body. That would be super confusing. And if the humans are able to transfer memories and a personality into an Avatar, who says, they don’t change anything to optimize him, or make him more loyal? Why should the Recom Miles Quaritch fight for something his old self died doing? Why isn’t he having an identity crisis? Anyway, also Kiri is Jesus and Grace is Mary. When grace died in the first movie, she was sent to eywa (god) but did not return. We don’t know if there is a baby daddy at the human base, but because kiri is so connected to eywa, I think that graces avatar body hat the same immaculate conception with eywa, like mary did with god and out comes jesus kiri, a conscious Avatar birthed by another Avatar. Ok so long story short: I think Avatars can consciousness which is an absolute nightmare in the context of the movies. Thank you for listening, I just had to get that off my chest and please ignore the typing mistakes :’)

#avatar #james cameron avatar #nier replicant #nier automata #existentialism #existential crisis #conciousness #philosophy #thoughts #my thougts #shower thoughts #spilled thoughts

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hiyutekivigil · 1 year

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i'm hungover and haven't slept a wink, but i can't give it a rest. a little while ago i was staying with a christian lady who very kindly let me sleep on her couch while i had nowhere else to go just having arrived in a city brand new to me. i had hoped that living with her would help me change my somewhat stiff attitude against christians that my life experience has given me. suffice to say that it didn't, but i did enquire a lot about the way she sees the world, because i wanted to understand. heard a few speeches and came to the realization that religion for her is a strong enough distraction from the reality that makes her suffer greatly. for one thing there is the suppressed homosexuality, but also a wider inability to feel and express love for this world. she frequently goes to squares and parks and such with other believers and addresses people by asking something along the line of: "do you agree that where the world is currently heading is no place good?" usually people agree and then she proceeds to tell them of the gospel, and from what i understand of her words, it foretells that as long as one lives without sin and serving god, repents and prays and so forth, they would have earned a perfect life after death. when i asked her if this were to be heaven, she said, no, not quite. i got the sense that it'd be something more like a parallel dimension or another realm or universe where everything would be in abundance, everyone would get along, in short, a perfect world with no suffering and evil that only those 'selected' would get into as this world goes to shit. so she said she is just floating along this life, not caring much about anything except serving god, waiting for that life. and i responded to her twofold: first, this kind of worldview takes off all responsibility off your shoulders to care for anything in this world besides what you interpret as the bible as commanding. that is a questionable way to live your life in any case, but this morning i can't stop thinking about the second reason for my unease - this sort of premise requires as its fundamental the assumption that this world is bad and only getting worse. it dismisses any faith in humanity and goodness that it would require to even the bad out. and, me, as an existentialist and the believer of no inherit meaning and an absurd world, revolt against any such assumption. i love living beings dearly, and love to consider everything as living or deserving of such respect as if they were. this is not an argument against hers, but i think it's that kind of thinking that would be responsible for making the world better. and we see it every day if we pay attention. and it brings me to tears, to see people wholeheartedly enjoying being alive for small moments during the day or doing selfless things or sweet things. they have no meaning besides the one we attach to them and i believe there may be nothing beyond this, but this! still! despite everything, this is beautiful! and so many people care about so many lovely things and they care about doing good things and being kind and making the world a better place, and they are! they are doing it! we all have been equally thrusted into this space of being, involuntarily sharing with others who we don't ever fully understand and they don't understand us, but we can be curious. we can take up responsibility for each other none the less, and caring and being cared for feels so good. none of us know what came before or what will come after, but we still look up at the sky and wonder infinitely. and we lean against each other and look into other pairs of eyes and recognize that we are here together, and maybe its not so bad at all.

i think more people need hope. despite camu's definition of an absurd man being quite reasonable in a way, it is not applicable for anyone wishing to feel joy and wonder. that feeling as if sparkling water is coursing through your veins and you look around you and your eyes are so wide and you love how you're smiling.

this, i think, does not mean some level of ignorance of all the insurmountable suffering that is happening every second in so many places all at once. but the belief that it balances out with all the good. and that you can be a part of that tipping scale.

#this is not meant to banter anyone's religious beliefs #i understand the need for spirituality quite well. this belief of this lady in particular #however #limits her life and happiness so much. she has denied herself love and i cannot unsee it. now i think about her from time to time and despa #philosophy #existentialism #existentialist philosophy #academia #academia aesthetic #dead poets society #dead poets society aesthetic #words #humanity

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littleapocalypsekitten · 5 months

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So, I feel like ranting a bit about something that annoys me. So, a youtuber I watch frequently for politics and interesting religion-stuff took some calls and talked about Islamophobia and some contradictory things he' said. He is an atheist youtuber, but known for tolerance and being all "I don't care if you're (moderately) religious, I want allies to go after the fanatics." At the same time, he openly wants everyone who is religious in any way to "wake up and realize that it is all false." You have no idea how condescending I find that.

First, the take on Islam. (I personally do not have much familiarity with the religion), but this guy I watch seemed to fall into the trap of seeing Islam as "especially dangerous" - (the video was titled "Islam is a problem, how to solve it") which I clicked on because it seemed... kind of out of character for him to have a video titled that. He made clear that he didn't want to see Muslims hurt but saw the religion a above-and-beyond dangerous, like a bit more than Christianity. My first thought is that he only feels that way because he was formerly a form of Christian (JW) and because he lives in a society where it predominates, so, of course, like most Americans, he's not going to see the background-radiation he lives with as nearly as "dangerous" as the foreign thing he is unfamiliar with and which get a lot of war-coverage and propaganda against it. He seems to think that Islam is mostly terroristic, has fewer moderates. Second... it's the take on other religions as an "I'll work with you, but wake up" attitude. The idea that the entire world will be a better place once everyone becomes atheist. Blah! Not with some of the jerks I've known. I truly believe that the solution to religious extremism ISN'T pushing the world toward no-religion, it's fostering and encouraging BETTER religion. Also, just a good, humble, general uncertainty on all our parts. Back when I was more religious than I am now - back when I was Evangelical rather than Progressive/Universalist in my own religion (Christian-based, although I am questioning now), I encountered a lot of people who treated me like I was stupid for believing in a God at all. I encountered people who said that if I wanted to be respected as an intelligent, full human that I needed to give up my faith. This was "the world" that I was warned about on Sundays. I saw people who wanted me to conform to the world. I saw a danger to my soul. Predictably, I dug in, and was like that for a long time. Do you know what got me to mellow out? Not "Be an atheist / be a wan deist." It was... other forms of Christianity that I'd discovered. I disliked what I felt like I "had to believe" and sought out, on my own, online generally, other ways to do Christianity. I discovered the *concept* of LGBT+ Christians, for example - that Church was wrong about being gay being inherently a rebellion against God. And not just "I'm gay but I'm chaste" people, but you know, people who scholared out some of the probably-original-words of Scripture with arguments of them being mistranslated over the centuries. The same with the concept of Hell, which I'd believed in for far too long not just because of dogma, but because of depression, low self-esteem and ideas I had about the inherent cruelty of Nature. (Yeah, I'm weird). I saw people arguing against Hell USING THE BIBLE. (Talking of original languages, and of scriptures that even in English seem to counter the eternal torture idea). The people telling me "just be atheist" scared me, pissed me off and got me backlashing. It was the "Keep your faith, but you're allowed to do it kinder" that got me, well, kinder, more open, and more questioning. And, no, it does not (nor should it) inherently lead to atheism. I've seen atheist into fostering moderate religion because they think they'll eventually "save" the religious people. And on the fundie side, that's exactly why they warn against moderate religion ("you'll lose your faith and lose your meaning.") I DEPISE the idea that both drawn up "sides" seem to think of it having a single direction. Humans are more complicated than that. From one "side" (fundie) there's a scare-tactic. From the other, they may think they are being favorable, but they are being insulting.

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denimbex1986 · 8 months

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I recently watched Sofia Coppola’s 2003 comedy Lost in Translation on my laptop for the first time in over 20 years to prepare for or, more likely, to procrastinate writing a lecture I was slated to give surrounding the translation of Francesco Petrarch’s sonnets. I remember this film being formative when I was 16; it communicated what I thought, at the time, was a sort of untranslatable feeling of anomie and social isolation. This feeling was pervasive among my suburban high school friends, who tried our best to capture it in our respective blogs but never could quite find the right words or the adequate Livejournal emoticon in its list of moods, which at the time were restricted to Sad, Tired, Happy, Feeling Excited, Confused, etc. This time around, I watched Lost in Translation via Amazon Prime, whose viewing platform, at the end of the film, recommended I next watch Jackass Forever.

This seemed like an unlikely pairing from an algorithm; it confused me. It didn’t seem like counterprogramming since that happens on the level of a box office release to hundreds of millions of viewers rather than on the level of a streaming program option advertised to one sole viewer. Besides, counterprogramming assumes the existence of separate target audiences with disparate tastes. You don’t want to watch The Dark Knight, but you want to go to the movies? Chances are you’ll want to watch its polar opposite, Mamma Mia, released on the same day. This happened in 2008; I ended up watching both, but I think I was the exception to this rule.

A larger exception to this rule, of course, is Barbenheimer, which, in a kind of cultural fission, resulted in the co-incident one-day dropping of the two films Barbie and Oppenheimer, resulting further in a fusion of the two seemingly disparate target audiences, caught in the twin sights of the two films’ media teams’ allied marketing strategies. When I watched Lost in Translation, Barbenheimer wasn’t yet even a meme.

It’s hard to imagine a time before Barbenheimer was a meme. This has more to do with the nature of memes than the films: “meme”, in French, is a noun that means “same” or, as an emphasizer of personal pronouns, “self”, for example, “memes themselves.” Like nuclear proliferation and a mass-produced one-name doll, a meme is simply a virally self-replicating and highly disseminated image or concept. Of course, it’s not “simply” that, in regards to the hierarchical and moneyed interest differentials between an Instagram user adapting and re-posting a Barbenheimer meme and two film production companies making good on the meme by releasing Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie and Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer on the same day.

In the beginning, was the meme, and then Warner Bros. and Universal Studios said, “Let there be Barbenheimer”, and it was so. A meme travels across time, regardless of its origin, but it transports along with it some of its originary cultural and historical contexts and transforms the present. “In the beginning” has become a meme, most famously originating from the Bible, but it is also played upon in the opening of Barbie, and it helps herald Barbie’s genesis, a Deus ex machina moment, a God out of the Doll.

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer recall particular times when the world was forever changed or, at least, both the films make an argument for a product that changed the world by introducing something new that threatened – or that promised – sameness. A meme change. Both arguments are convincing. Oppenheimer is specifically a period piece that argues for periodization; there is the time before the bomb and the time after. Within Oppenheimer‘s story, we live in the aftermath, or the fallout, of a nuclear event that is yet to come, the total annihilation of human existence through human-driven actions, when all will be razed to ash and reduced to sameness. The name “Barbie” is itself a meme. Though the actors playing Barbie are multiple, their name is the same. Their call and their response are fused into one and the same: “Hey Barbie,” calls one Barbie, “Hey Barbie,” responds another Barbie. They are more like dolls than humans, though, and more like atoms than Adam, and they proliferate rather than procreate, and in their fission, something is unleashed and exploded.

This is the other aspect and function of the meme; not only does it travel relatively unchanged through time, but it spreads and mushrooms through self-replication and through the transformation of unlike elements into like elements. We can think of money, for example, as the superlative meme example of our time, and its alchemical technology of sameness-making being commodification, the transformation of images, like the atomic bomb exploding in Japan, or the transformation of labor, like the manufacture of the first Barbie dolls in Japan, or the transformation of concepts, like the critique of Patriarchyô, into near-Universalô profits for Mattel.

Amazon Prime didn’t even recommend I watch the 2002 movie Jackass – a contemporary of Lost in Translation – but its sequel, the 2022 movie Jackass Forever. What does this mean? Lost in Translation :: Jackass Forever. What is the relationship between what is Lost and what is Forever? What happens to a work as it ages? What about works that seek never to age, that seek to update themselves, or continually translate themselves, or to laminate and plasticize themselves, to modify themselves? The unlikeliness of Barbie and Oppenheimer‘s success has been described as their representing something new in the film industry. But in the current climate, the standard for “something new” has lowered dramatically: essentially, neither film is an action movie nor a sequel.

The term “sequel” loses meaning in reference to the meme, as does the term “original”: the meme displaces both of them. Even “action”, such as an action film, is problematized insofar as an “act” is a “thing done”, but the moment a meme is generated is the same moment a meme is spread, and the moment a meme is spread it has copied and been regenerated; simultaneously, it is asking to be translated. Interestingly enough, “to translate” comes from the Latin “transferre” which means “carried across”, and “metaphor” comes from the Greek “metapheirein“, to transfer. Maybe I am still writing my translation lecture after all.

In any case, these analogies are not too metaphorical, and they translate. As in translation, a meme does “carry across” itself, its selfsame self, largely unchanged, and nonetheless, some meanings are gained and are lost in that movement between spaces and times. Oppenheimer exemplifies this phenomenon: as a translation machine, the film’s primary aim is the transformation of the foreign into the familiar, of unlike elements into like ones. Through literal acts of translation and aesthetic acts of cultural erasure, Oppenheimer is a film about the end of difference not due to the emergence of endlessly proliferating nuclear energy but, well, metaphorically. Metaphor is a principle of replacement; one element stands in for another. In Oppenheimer, English stands in for Sanskrit, dramatic actors stand in for historical actors, and the guilt of the perpetrators stands in as worthy of dramatization, as worthy of recognition, rather than the horrors faced by the victims; in Oppenheimer, the victims have no faces.

Beginning at translation, let us consider a meme that is older than “In the beginning”, as dramatized in the film Oppenheimer. “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” is the English translation of the ancient Hindi scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, written in Sanskrit. J. Robert Oppenheimer reported later, in a televized speech, that this was the line that flashed through his mind as he viewed the first successful test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. After saying as much, he adds: “I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” The “I” in “I am become death” is not solely referring to Oppenheimer, then, but rather to the human species itself, which now possesses this world-destroying bomb. Oppenheimer’s historic regret, or at least ambivalence about being father to the bomb, falls on all of us. It is a gesture towards communal accountability.

The fictional and titular Oppenheimer, however, is represented as using the same quote in a context completely removed from, and in fact antecedent to, the development of the bomb. Writer and director Christopher Nolan dramatizes a scene years before the Manhattan Project when Oppenheimer has just accepted his first academic appointment at Berkeley. One night at a house party thrown by colleagues with socialist leanings, Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, meets Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh. The two exchange meaningful glances, and suddenly we find ourselves at the beginning of what will be a tortuous relationship full of pain and adultery.

For now, however, we find ourselves, again suddenly, in Oppenheimer’s bedroom, where he and Jean Tatlock. Tatlock abruptly dismounts Oppenheimer and walks pointedly a few meters to his bookshelf, where she removes the Bhagavad Gita. She opens the book, views the Sanskrit, and says, “Can you read it?” Oppenheimer humbly and somewhat bashfully avers that he can. “What does this say?” she asks, pointing to a short passage. Oppenheimer equivocates a bit, and starts explaining the context of the passage. “No,” Tatlock pursues, “what does it say?” She points to one line.

This scene confuses me for a few reasons, some of which I indicated above, but primarily because I expected Murphy’s Oppenheimer, at this moment, to pronounce Sanskrit. Granted, the spoken language is far in the past, so correct pronunciation can largely only be conjectured at, but when Tatlock says “no, what does it say?” in response to Oppenheimer, I expect she’s asking in contradistinction to his English translation, that she wants the Sanskrit. Oppenheimer says, “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” They resume having sex.

The historical context of death in relation to death, i.e., death in relation to the destruction harbored by the bomb, is translated to a filmic context of death in relation to sex, i.e., death in relation to the destruction harbored by love. The communal accountability is lost; it is replaced by an eroticization, which gains its sexual charge from the exoticization of a foreign text. This is the great palliative Oppenheimer offers us in metaphorical exchange. Sex for death. The biopic for history. The fetish object for the sacred text.

Similarly, now “I” and “worlds” in “I have become death, destroyer of worlds”, refers to Oppenheimer and relationships, becoming entangled in the drama of his own personality and vices, his perpetual adultery. This also sets the film up to ultimately steer empathy toward the perpetrator instead of the atomic bomb’s victims.

This latter point becomes obvious in Oppenheimer‘s treatment of the Japanese. There is a scene after the twin bombings of Japan where the bomb’s architects are in a screening room, watching a film documenting and displaying the horrifying effects the blasts had on the skin, especially the faces, of the Japanese civilians. The audience sees no footage of this; rather, we watch the principal characters watch the footage. We watch the bomb-builders’ faces distort in; well, in what? Horror? Regret? Shock? Sad? Tired? Confused?

While we can’t know their feelings as they see what their product has wrought, this is the point: the drama shifts not to the brutality of the action and its victims but to how the people responsible for it felt about it. The historical disfigurement is imitated by aesthetic defacing in that not one character in the film is Japanese; they are rendered faceless. This is not simply a film within Nolan’s film; it’s the nucleus of the film itself. The effects of the disfigurement are expropriated from the Japanese and superimposed onto the Americans. We could consider this filmic erasure a loss in translation: the lethal erasure of Japanese civilians is echoed and cinematically re-employed through aesthetic erasure.

The same dynamic occurs throughout Oppenheimer, but this time with a translational gain or addition. In several scenes, we watch Oppenheimer hallucinate a recurring waking nightmare: whatever crowd of Americans he is viewing – generally his colleagues at Los Alamos – a blinding white light obscures the screen, and we hear the sound of people fleeing, and in a soft blur, we see a white ectoplasmic goo slide down the faces of the crowd. Not only has the Japanese’s physical blast trauma been erased; it has been superimposed onto the faces of the white Western builders of the bomb. In this displacement, the literal and figurative defacement of Japan is appropriated by Americans and grafted onto the professional dishonoring and defacement of Oppenheimer, towards whom our sympathy is ultimately steered. Even their victimhood is appropriated.

This erasure is not incidental; if the disfigurement of the Japanese people is literally just beyond the periphery of the camera – relegated to verbal and textual history – it’s because the main focal point of Oppenheimer is Americans’ faces. Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer‘s cinematographer, explained in an interview with IndieWire: “This was a three-hour-long movie about faces. And our challenge was to be able to get closer with the camera to make those faces become our landscape, and to make those faces interesting enough for the audience to become captivated by them.”

There are very few wide-angled shots in Oppenheimer. We do not look out at the Los Alamos landscape with Cillian Murphy or the other actors; we do not identify with them. We do not witness events with them; we do not witness events without watching them witness those same events. The depiction of the detonation of the atomic bomb, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, is more instructional than it is exceptional. The preparation for the detonation involves close-ups of others – the builders of the bomb – being instructed by Matt Damon’s Leslie Groves to hold a chunk of metal before their eyes during the blast while Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) slathers sunscreen all over his face.

Jack Quaid’s Richard Feynman is sitting in the front seat of a car and says the windshield will protect him from UV radiation. Once the blast occurs in the film, the camera spends more time on the spectators than on the spectacle, as the real drama revolves around which viewers look away and which are too captivated to follow safety protocols. The faces are the events, and their reactions to historical events are also the events.

How did Nolan make a film where the locus of all action is the white American face? In the same way, and for the same reason, I name-dropped so many actors’ names above. Matt Damon of the Bourne franchise, playing Leslie Groves, says, “Hi Ken!” to former “Iron Man” Robert Downey Junior, playing Lewis Strauss, says, “Hi Ken!” to Kenneth Branaugh, playing Niels Bohr, says, “Hi Ken!” to Josh Harnett, a predecessor from another wildly jingoistic and inaccurate film, Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor from 2001. In one scene, Japanese planes attack a civilian hospital, although historically, this never happened, and Japanese pilots were under strict orders not to fire on civilian targets.

Michael Bay knew this and went ahead with the scene anyway because he said it would be “more barbaric” – who says “Hi Ken!” to Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Rami Malek, who says “Hi Ken!” to Cillian Murphy who says “Oh, hi Ken!,” delightedly, a pleasant shock of recognition on his face, to Harry S. Truman disguised as Murphy’s former castmate from Nolan’s Batman franchise, Gary Oldman. Because it is not actors playing historical characters but historical characters playing actors. Nolan makes the famous face the site of entertainment, a familiarized (white western men) landscape that absorbs the shock of death and foreignness (Japan). What we ultimately recognize when we recognize this celebrity landscape of faces is not a story, narrative, or history but the film industry itself, an autobiography.

Closing the chapter on Ken, I mean Oppenheimer, which is placed largely in the mid-’40s and dramatizes an event that takes place at the beginning of the age range for the genesis of the Baby Boomer generation, we move on to Barbie, a film that opens by dramatizing a similar paradigm-shifting event that takes place at the middle of the age range for the genesis of the Baby Boomer generation, the introduction of the first Barbie doll in 1959. Fittingly, the film’s opening is also the film’s promotional video.

The film/promo opens with several wide shots of an empty and austere landscape golden-drenched with the light of the dawn sun. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been,” and here a dramatic pause from the narrator, Helen Mirren, before she completes the sentence: “…dolls.” Here we cut to an amber-hued landscape of rocks, leaden gray clouds above, and then in the foreground, the profile of two little girls in shadow facing one another and each holding up a baby doll; a lone pram is behind one of the girls, giving the whole atmosphere a Little House on the Prairie feel. “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls,” says Mirren, and now several little girls appear in plain drab dresses, walking prams across the rocky landscape, raising tea cups to baby dolls’ mouths – baby dolls dressed in the same joyless and muted-colored dresses as the girls – “until,” says Mirren, and this is the final word of Mirren, whose narration is replaced with the opening strings of Richard Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The irruption of the music is synced with the sudden apparition of a gigantic Margot Robbie – or Barbie – as viewed from below by a blonde-haired pigtailed child, who watches Barbie’s face in shadow as the crown of her head eclipses the corona of the sun, effecting the emergence of a new celestial/earthly body. So far, it would appear the other girls have only seen Barbie’s enormous and nude legs; they stare directly up at them. One of the girls touches her shin as if it is a structural beam, then rapidly removes her hand; both the impulse to touch and the impulse to retreat are symptomatic of the experience of awe, of something extraterrestrial but also familiar.

So far, this is shot-to-shot a masterful, hilarious, and, most importantly, recognizable parody of Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the opening of which is headlined “The Dawn of Time”. 2001: A Space Odyssey opens in a similar barren landscape but with chimpanzees as its principal characters, and instead of the mono-nym Barbie, we have the monolith, the enormous black smooth rectangular tower jutting out of the arid dirt, which has either arrived from outer space or even from another time and seems completely alien to everything surrounding it. The peak of the monolith similarly eclipses the sun’s corona, signifying not only the emergence of a new form but something that interrupts time itself.

Barbie, in a one-to-one correspondence with the monolith, replaces the sun and time itself, where the unmentioned year 1959 is only visually referenced by the black and white swimsuit and is further displaced into a new mythical time, a kind of year 0 that, like in Oppenheimer, documents a paradigm shift. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith is entirely alien; however, the Barbie monolith in Barbie is as new as the doll is familiar. There is no compelling visual link or likeness between the chimpanzees that touch, in awe, and then retract their hands, in awe, from the inorganic structure that is the monolith. The Barbie monolith, on the other hand, while distinct from the landscape and the girls in her smiling attitude, her striking and modern outfit, and her height, nonetheless resembles a possible, a desired future for the girls; both demographics are at least human, and the smooth monolithic legs of Barbie, which never grow hair and, as Gerwig’s film later dramatizes, never grow cellulite, could become the girls’ as well. It is the tangible object of the girls’ fingers’ veneration, a new model to strive to resemble, rather than the baby dolls that are dressed like the girls and that are, after all, babies and represent their past.

This representation of a break between the past and present that can trend towards a new future is notable, considering 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sci-fi genre is a serious genre that posits alternative and possible futures as a way of commenting on the trajectory of the present. 2001: A Space Odyssey is somewhat exceptional to the genre, however; it argues, through its structuring, that the dystopian future finds its source in the remotest past, “in the beginning”, from which irrupts the monolith that, like a meme, recurs and reappears unchanged through monolithic time.

This is the strange ambivalence that Barbie introduces in its parody: it is parodying a dystopia. While the monolith is the most commonly parodied element – the most meme-ic element – of 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s opening scene, the central argument of “The Dawn of Man”, however, is a kind of narrative argument that immediately follows. After the chimpanzees crowd and touch the monolith, and we see the crown of the monolith obscure the sun, we cut to a lone chimpanzee sitting in a pile of the bones of a large, long-decomposed tapir. This is when Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra begins.

The chimpanzee, thinking, creating, repurposing, lifts one of the longer bones and begins smashing the other bones with it, tepidly at first, until the music swells with the increasing ferocity of the chimp, crescendoing at the moment the chimpanzee smashes the skull of the tapir. The music suddenly ends and cuts to a scene of rival chimpanzees encroaching on the territory of the original tribe. The chimpanzee holding the bone from the previous scene then kills another chimpanzee from the enemy tribe, causing the enemy tribe to retreat before this new technology.

This is the cosmological argument of 2001: A Space Odyssey; humans are not distinguished from animals through language or through culture; it’s not even because we discovered and wielded tools; rather, it is because we discovered and wielded weapons. In this way, humans make animals and other humans submit before the threat of violence. Its transformative and primordial use is in destruction and death. I am become death, destroyer of worlds, implies the bone-wielding chimp.

In Barbie, after the girls have finished touching the monolithic legs of the new giant adult doll, the camera returns to the blonde-haired girl in glasses with wide eyes staring up at Barbie. With a close-up to Barbie’s face, a pulling down of the glasses to cheek level, and a wink, the girls, as if cued by the wink, in slow motion – cued now also by the crescendo of Strauss’ music – raise their baby dolls by the feet, and smash the head of the now-weaponized baby club into the head of a prostrate baby doll, smashing the latter to plaster pieces. Then the girls fling their dolls away, and the final flung doll rises to the sky, revolves, continues rising, leaves Earth’s atmosphere, which is replaced by stars, and then pops to be transformed into the Barbie logo.

As an opening to the film and a promotional video for the film – focusing on the latter here – it’s ingenious. Not only is Margot Robbie’s character winking at the girls who are audience to her arrival, but Gerwig seems to be winking at an audience that could otherwise be torn, acknowledging the fraught and polarizing symbol that is the Barbie doll. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith is not the weapon, but rather the catalyst for the discovery of weaponry or, if a more causal relationship, that which incites and invites violence. The bones in 2001: A Space Odyssey are aligned with the baby dolls in Barbie, but in the former, the bones are used as weapons against the living, whereas the baby dolls are used as weapons against themselves.

Will Barbie then be a feminist weapon against the Patriarchy, or will it be used as a tool of the Patriarchy? This question is purposefully left unresolved and ambivalent, and this is the genius of the commercial because it is, ultimately, a commercial for two things that will become one. First as a promo, the scene is a commercial for the film itself, and it is the real counterprogramming at work, more successful I think even than the Barbenheimer counterprogramming: whether you are against Barbie or for Barbie doesn’t matter, this film is for you. Second, Barbie‘s opening scene and the entirety of the film is a commercial for Mattel itself. Once again, the final image of the promo is a baby spinning in space, replaced by the Barbie logo.

Notably, it’s the logo and not a Barbie doll, not Margot Robbie as Barbie, but Mattel’s Barbie font and Barbie pink. Whether you buy a Barbie doll, a Ken doll, or a Midge doll, you will always find this logo on the box—the meme behind the meme. Indeed, Barbie‘s opening scene is both the promo video and the film itself; it is art that advertises the art that advertises the product. It says to throw out the baby with the bath water and buy Barbie. Mattel’s profits have reinvigorated since the release of Barbie, and of course that is the point.

There’s a parable by 3rd-century Chinese writer Han Fei that speaks to this. A merchant one day has two objects for sale at the marketplace; the first, he says, is a spear that can break through any shield. The second, he says, is a shield that can repel any spear. A savvy customer comes by and asks the seller, What happens if you hurl the unstoppable spear at the unbreakable shield? Naturally, the seller doesn’t answer and leaves the marketplace. Naturally, the story ends. This story is itself the origin of the Mandarin Chinese word mao-dun. Mao literally translates as spear, and dun literally translates as shield. Mao-dun, or spear-shield, is the Mandarin term for “contradiction”.

Mao-dun, or contradiction, also operates like a meme that has detached from its original picture. That original picture, which is also the original picture, is the market. That’s to say; in the story of the spear and the shield, we make the mistake of taking the merchant’s words at face value. The spear isn’t an unstoppable spear, and the shield isn’t an unbreakable shield, and they don’t actually cancel one another out nor contradict each other; they don’t actually, together, form a contradiction. Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. Whatever they actually are, they aren’t now; now they’re just for sale.

Before moving on from this inaugural scene in Barbie, it’s important to tease out the implications of the outermost frame, which infrequently but strikingly persists in the form of Helen Mirren’s narration, and that is the Documentary Now – also narrated by Mirren – allusion. The mockumentary Gerwig references is not one episode, but an entire current and ongoing series. The strength of Documentary Now is in its research; the most effective, which is to say funny, episodes are the ones that most closely document the original documentary.

Thus, Gerwig can have Barbie walk a tightrope between fact and fiction, between force and farce; if you take it too seriously, you’re ruining the fun. Mockumentary is also a keenly self-aware genre. The uncanny juxtaposition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Documentary Now actually synergize: these two seemingly antithetical registers – the iconic and the ironic – are mutually reinforcing as frames that translate and transfer and recycle content, that reinforce tropes and memes even as they “critique” them.

The monolithic Barbie, and the opening monolith that is Barbie, follow this opening scene to an immortal place populated by immortal and unblemished Barbies of different social castes and social roles – it’s Plato’s symposium, only now it’s Barbie’s symposium – delimited by a mountain whose face is lettered BARBIELAND, in the same font as Hollywood’s HOLLYWOOD wign. This acts, intentionally or not, as a kind of foreshadowing: while the world of the film is putatively divided into Barbieland and the Real World, the Real World is actually just “the country of California”, as they say in the film, and the portal between the two worlds leads directly to Venice, California. The original Venice is a city in the country of Italy, and so Venice of California is like its copy, but Hollywood reverses this by rendering every other place in the world a copy of itself, via image production and image distribution that transforms Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Similarly, when Barbie alights to the ground from her bed in the morning, the wind pushes up her dress as her arms push it down, a visual absorption of the Marilyn Monroe meme. Quickly, however, Barbie starts experiencing thoughts of death and other disturbances, which begin to expose the cracks in the simulacra of her life and surroundings: her heels touch the ground, the waterless shower nozzle emits what Barbie “experiences” as cold instead of hot water, etc. It is as if there is a chink in the programming of the matrix in which she lives.

In keeping with and further embedding itself within a production matrix that reproduces itself, Barbie employs a Matrix reference. Barbie seeks the advice of Weird Barbie, an outcast guru who explains to her that she has a choice: she can either choose a pink high heel (the blue pill), which represents staying in Barbieland, or a brown Birkenstock sandal which represents knowing the truth (the red pill). Barbie says, “The first one, the high heel”, and the guru says, “You have to want to know. Okay? Do it again”, and further explains to Barbie that she doesn’t actually have the power to choose, but just wants Barbie to feel better if she happens to make the right choice, but she has to choose the Real World because that’s what happens in movies.

Here is where the Documentary Now frame makes even more sense; Gerwig treats all of Hollywood’s cultural production as one document to remix, to parody. But the parody is a parody of parody; rather than satirizing and thereby escaping Hollywood’s endless revisions and recastings and inability to generate anything besides sequels and reboots, Barbie is imprisoned in Hollywood. The film cannot even imagine a place outside of the real world, nor can it imagine a dream world; both are Hollywood. Moments like this are depressing because they didn’t offer any kind of escape but rather a dissertation on the history and makeup of the prison bars. In other words, Barbie‘s self-awareness seems less interested in teaching viewers how to live and more interested in showing them, in algorithm fashion, what to watch next.

Another such moment is framed once again by Mirren’s narration. Towards Barbie‘s end, experiencing a sort of paralysis or what we’d call a Reality Check, Barbie laments that she is no longer pretty, that she is no longer “stereotypical Barbie pretty”. Here, the Documentary Now narrator interjects, “Note to the filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast if you want to make this point.” That is, I think, the point: the filmmakers don’t want to make this point. The point the filmmakers want to make – and it is the writers, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, of course, who wrote Helen Mirren’s line – is that they are aware that their film promotes stereotypical ideas of feminine beauty. And by stereotypical ideas, I mean patriarchal ideologies of how a woman’s body should be shaped and displayed. Gerwig and Baumbach commenting on their awareness of their not having escaped this does not allow them to escape this, but this is how Barbie is structured; this is the patriarchal weapon against the patriarchy that the film presents, the smashing of the baby doll’s head into the baby doll’s head.

In its climactic scene, Barbie presents this weapon, or shield, against the patriarchy. Barbieland has been usurped by Kens, who have introduced the patriarchy to Barbieland and transformed it and the Barbies therein. The Barbies have been brainwashed; they are subservient to the Kens and have no memory of their own needs, personalities, abilities, or former vocations. Breaking the spell requires that another woman shares a testimonial of how difficult it is to be a woman in this society, the contradiction of being an oppressed person who cannot testify to her oppression because she is supposed to enjoy it, for example. Suddenly, the awakened Barbie’s eyes pop open, like she is a doll, out of a trance, as if from the Barbie’s neck just fell an enchanted charm bracelet called The Patriarchyô, made by Mattel.

It is not the job of a Hollywood film to critique power structures, promote alterity, give voice to the oppressed, and help viewers imagine a future outside of the patriarchy. But why isn’t it the job of a Hollywood film to do that? Even if there is an argument that concretely and irrefutably lays out why it shouldn’t be Hollywood’s job, Barbie purports to be doing just that. And yet, the patriarchy isn’t a magic spell that we can simply wave away by talking about it. It’s a crushing, brutalizing, murderous machine or, better yet, a matrix of machines that is so powerful, so subtle, interconnected, and so meme-ic and self-reproducing that it can make a slew of films about itself and make money doing it.

In Barbie, the patriarchy is presenting the all-male board of Mattel as bumbling, witless, and supportive, while in the real world the majority-male Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade according to “non-biased” legal logic regarding the intentions of the slave-owning and women’s suffrage-denying founding fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution. The patriarchy is a film that presents a car chase between those same Mattel owners and Barbie but reveals itself as a Chevy Blazer commercial with prolonged filming of the car’s cross-shaped logo.

In that same car in Barbie – which, to be fair, is an electric vehicle – towards the film’s end, America Ferrera’s character’s husband says “Sí, se puede” to Barbie, and both Ferrera and her character’s daughter say “that’s cultural appropriation”, which it is, but more on Gerwig’s part. Sí, se puede is historically associated with civil rights and labor activist Dolores Huerta, who used the phrase to motivate and organize labor strikes in Arizona and California in the ’60s, and which later became President Obama’s campaign slogan; he credited Huerta when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

While this is most likely what the phrase “that’s cultural appropriation” refers to, it ironically does so without cultural or historical context. “Sí, se puede” here is re-appropriated to refer to the 2002 Disney film Gotta Kick It Up, in which the character Yolanda, played by America Ferrera, would chant as a high school Latin American dance team member. Treated as a meme, “Sí, se puede” largely retains its cultural context, but its revolutionary and class context is erased and re-employed as self-referential by Hollywood: “We said that,” says Hollywood.

In other words, “Sí, se puede” is removed from its original context of striking farm workers in California and is re-employed as a meme celebrating and advertising earlier Hollywood films at exactly the moment Hollywood writers and actors are striking against being replaced by literal meme machines, or AIs that generate new scripts by remixing human-written scripts they have been fed, and that also reproduce the faces of background actors so those memified faces can melt more cost-effectively in Oppenheimer: The Squeakquel. Not to mention that the husband who says “Sí, se puede” says it while using Duolingo, an app advertised throughout Barbie. Thus the labor activist’s chant is commodified into a commercial for a language-learning app for white people.

The anonymous husband says “sí, se puede” to Barbie at the end of the film; he’s wishing her luck for what the viewer is made to think will be a job interview. “You’re going to do great,” America Ferrera says. Barbie is wearing a brown blazer, business casual, like she’s looking for a job. She enters a glass building of what appears to be corporate America and then goes to the secretary’s desk. The secretary says How can I help you? and Barbie says I’m ready to meet my gynecologist! Rather than entering the department of labor, Barbie is entering the reproductive labor market. This makes her really real, like a real woman, in the real world. Like being born, the doctor first says, “It’s a girl!” Once she is real, she must be a woman; she is immediately equated with biological sex. This is the patriarchy, too.

Another strange aspect of Barbie is the eerie absence of sex until this culminating moment and the strange lack of gender exploration. Again, the moment when Barbie individuates from the other Barbies, where she is suddenly inhabited by The Real, is when she says, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” to her fellow memes. This is Barbie’s own “I am become death, destroyer of Barbieworld” moment, but whereas in Oppenheimer, death is harbored and eroticized in a culture-appropriating sex scene, sex haunts Barbie throughout metonymically.

I mean this in a few ways. In terms of “haunts”, neither Barbie nor Ken has genitals, and this absence is indirectly addressed throughout the film, mostly via euphemistic substitution: “I’m gonna beach you off so hard,” Ken says to Ken. The truly funny but truly bizarre aspect of this homoerotic scene is that, according to the logic of the film, it almost isn’t homoerotic because none of the denizens of Barbieland have sexes (genitalia), and none of them have knowledge of nor desire for sex. “Can I stay over tonight?” Ryan Gosling asks Margot Robbie. “And do what?” asks Robbie innocently. “I don’t really know,” admits Gosling. Sexuality is intuited in this scene, and the two are nominally boyfriend and girlfriend, but this only reaches so far as the nominal.

It is interesting that in the Real World of Barbie there are no queer characters nor depictions of queer sexualities, nor of nonbinary genders. Instead, we have the liminal and deferred sexuality of Barbieland, which at best functions as a kind of incomplete heteronormativity. While societal gender roles are explicitly thwarted in the sense that Barbieland’s vocations are all held by women, they’re never called such; instead of gender roles, we simply have The Patriarchy, which is inverted in Barbieland. After the Kens are deposed, they are permitted to remain in society, but they’ll probably have to work their way up, the same as women in the Real World. But as Helen Mirren points out, perhaps the filmmakers should take note that weapons built by the patriarchy don’t work so well against the Patriarchy. I add that the meme-ification of the concept of the Patriarchy – which in Barbie is so simplified, reduced, and docile that it actually comes to resemble a product of Mattel, as inseparable from Barbie as Ken – is also the patriarchy.

In the 2022 film adaptation of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise, written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Greta Gerwig, which adheres very strictly to the events and the mood of the book, even down to the level of dialogue, there’s a scene missing from DeLillo’s book. I guess it was lost in translation. The book’s story takes place in a small college town. The narrator is a professor at a small liberal arts college; he is the chair of Hitler Studies, and there is a new professor named Murray who teaches cultural studies, and he is most interested in teaching the legacy of Elvis. He wants Elvis to become, in terms of cultural capital, the new Hitler.

Murray one day suggests to the narrator that they drive to a small outlying town with a tourist attraction called The Most Photographed Barn in America. On the 22-mile car ride, they count five signs that all say THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. They park and walk to an elevated spot and, like the audience members of Oppenheimer, stare less at the barn than they do at all the spectators with their cameras and tripods trained on the barn.

The narrator has the same question you and I have: Why is it called Barbenheimer? I mean, Why is it the most photographed barn in America? But the narrator doesn’t actually ask this; the two remain silent. Murray says, “No one sees the barn,” and then there’s silence, and then Murray says, “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn,” and then there’s silence, and then he says “We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one,” and then there’s silence, and then Murray says, “They are taking pictures of taking pictures.”'

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coffeeman777 · 11 months

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so i've never shared the gospel, at least explicitly with words, but I do strive to be living testimony...

right now i have a friend who's, I guess, agnostic and I don't know how to go about sharing the gospel.

Do i just talk about it out of the blue? any questions that might lead me to that conversation? any resources I could use to prepare or something?

definitely praying for the spirit to guide me but I also want to do my part in preparing in some way

I know exactly how you feel! It can be very hard to share the Gospel in person, especially with friends and family. It feels harder to do with people you're close to.

In my experience, the easiest way to do it is to just start talking about God. When you're having a conversation, and they ask anything about how your life is going, bring God into the conversation.

"Yeah, I'm doing really well, God is blessing me left and right!"

"It's been hard, for sure. I've been seeking the Lord in prayer about the situation."

Stuff like that.

Also, if they tell you some good news, you can say something like, "Praise God, that's awesome!" Or if it's something bad, tell them that you'll be praying for them.

Aside from this, look for opportunities to bring up something from the Bible; if your situation, or theirs, or something in the conversation is reminiscent of a story or teaching from Scripture, mention it.

Just casually bringing the Lord into the conversation has opened the door for me to share the full Gospel more times than I can remember.

Of course, if you feel the Lord leading you to do it, then dispense with all pretense and just tell the person, "Hey, listen, I need to talk with you about something important." Then just lay it out there directly. That works, too.

Stay in prayer, keep studying the Scriptures. Ask the Lord to help you, and to give you more opportunities.

As for resources, you can go for stuff like The Way of the Master developed by Ray Comfort, that's a tried and true method. For me personally, I prefer to do the above and prepare by practicing apologetics (arguments for God and the validity of the faith). Dr. William Lane Craig has loads of free resources on his website Reasonable Faith, as well as a bunch of stuff free on YouTube.

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lady-merian · 2 years

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As long as I’m drafting tumblr posts in my notes, I might as well talk about the book of Job and what I got out of it this time since I just finished it again.

Until I started my own read through the Bible in a year challenge, I had trouble with Job. The thing is, reading only one or two chapters at a time often made it hard for me to follow the thread of arguments. (Who’s talking here again?)

The easiest parts were the beginning and the ending, but the middle was so frustrating. (Okay, it still was even after starting to read more at a time, but at least I could keep track of who was talking and what about.)

Everything means something in the Bible, often meaning more than one thing at a time.

Tell me if you all already noticed this, but this is the first time I recognized Job as an imperfect picture of Jesus.

If like me you hadn’t thought about this before, and it sounds all wrong, hear me out: we’re told in the beginning of the book that Job is “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” And God points him out to Satan as such, which starts the events of the book in motion. I know some have difficulty accepting what God allows Satan to do, because we’re told Job specifically *doesn’t* deserve what’s happening to him, and yet the fact that he doesn’t deserve it is *why* these things happen to him. It’s not fair.

It could be said that that’s the whole point.

-he suffers not merely in spite of his uprightness but because of it.

-even his friends turn against him, insisting he must have sinned because of what has happened to him.

-at the end of the book God instructs his friends to make their sacrifices but have Job pray for them “…for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.” (42:8)

Hmm. Is it just me or does that kinda sound like someone else…

Of course it’s still imperfect. Job is still human, not God. He eventually cursed his day, and whether or not his words were all correct, he still didn’t take this on willingly for the whole world as Jesus did.

Still, read Job 16:10-11 which is what made me realize this:

10.They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully, they have gathered themselves together against me. 11. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

This especially sounds familiar, don’t you think?

I really can’t believe none of this was clear to me before. People have accused God of punishing people without cause, and Job seems like a prime example, but even aside from the fact that God gets to set the rules because he created us, here’s the thing:

Jesus willingly took it all on himself, he who deserved it even less than Job. God himself came down to bear the weight of it all for us so we didn’t have to.

#Thoughts?#If you read this far you deserve a cookie #Oh also #We’re human…we know pain and discomfort from the time we’re born #We go through our whole lives not even knowing what it’s like to live without some kind of pain and grief #Some have more than others it’s true #but the most perfect life you can conceive upon on earth still wouldn’t be free of it #without loss of any kind #What I’m getting at is #The most wonderful earthly life can’t compare with Heaven #but Jesus #knowing *exactly* what he was giving up in a way we can’t fully wrap our minds around #came down to save us #There is no way one could ever say God was forced to experience any of this #he chose it #Also #Job lasted a week with that skin disease before he questioned God. I’m not exactly sure how it felt but I couldn’t last a day before beggin #*begging God to take mine from me #but when people refer to the patience of Job I personally think it was because of him having to deal with his “friends”

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papirouge · 8 months

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Hi, genuine question here for you been following a long time. I was wondering how one would prove why the God of the Bible is the true God of everything. For example, I've been told in the past the reason God is God is because the Bible said so and God wrote the Bible. But that argument doesn't resonate with me, because humans had to write it, inspired or not and it seems a roundabout argument, like, you could say God wrote the Talmud or wrote the Bhagavad Gita because they said so. Another one I heard was that to believe because of Pascal's wager where it's better to try to believe than not because there's no harm done if it's wrong but you'll lose it all. But that could work for any religion, how's it to not lead to the Quran vs. the Bible? What kind of argument or justification can one use? I know you're pretty knowledgeable on the subject as you're a Christian, but I just don't know how to get on that bandwagon just yet because I haven't seen very many arguments that aren't able to have holes poked into them.

Here's the shocker anon : there's no one on this planet who will be able to convince you of God existence.

There's a reason Jesus spoke into parables and that many of the people he professed to never got his message. Not everyone can understand God, and God Himself saves whoever He wants to. Sure, as Christians we have the duty to profess His words, but ultimately, God has the last word in whether people will actually accept His message or not.

That's why Faith is so important in Christianity. Trusting in Jesus being the son of God and that only the only true God YHWH, saves. Jesus said how blessed are the people who trusts without seeing actual evidence of God. Such as a centurion who trusted Jesus when he said his servant was healed, before he even came back home to check whether it was true or not.

Obsessively trying to find rationale evidence of Christianity being real is comprehensible and necessary, but it can also be a stumbling stone (uncredulousnes, hardening of heart, etc.). Never forget it was satan who was taunting Jesus into making miracles to make him fall.

And FYI what separates religion from cults or "spiritual philosophy" are the revealed miracles. Whether you believe it or not, multiplication of bread happened, people spontaneously speaking & understanding foreign tongues during the Pentecost happened. Jesus coffin being empty after 3 days happened. Because God was smart enough to put up witnesses to testify about it. Even Jesus haters acknowledged his 'powers' - they were just wrong to argue they were from the devil. Prophecies written by Jews happened too.

That's what separates judaism & Christianism from eastern 'religions' and cults. That's what give them an actual relevance and trustworthiness that other spiritual movement don't.

The only'way to know that God is God is to simply ask Him. The Bible isn't some magical book that will turb me you into a Christian just by reading it. That's a spiritual leap. And no, it's not accessible to anyone.

That being said, I've always found pretty troubling the stories of Muslim who, when genuinely asked God to show Himself (instead of their repetitive mindless rehashed prayers) they saw a cross, or a man... There's the story who happened in a MENA country where a toddler and her baby seebling got buried alive by their uncle who wanted to get rid of them after his sister (their mom) died. They survived SEVERAL WEEKS, and when they got found and everyone asked the little girl how they managed to remain alive so long, the little girl said a man with white close gave them bread and that their mom (their psycho uncle buried them in the same coffin as her) regularly woke up to breastfeed her baby sibling. It's said that when they found them, the mom looked like she was dead just moments ago, not since the severals weeks she actually did.

Waking up the dead? A man with a white robe? That was Jesus, babe. But OF COURSE the Muslims REFUSED to admit it and coped saying it was an angel or some stuff. You can't force someone to believe when they obvious is just there.

If you want actual evidence of YHWH being God, just ask him.

#answered #Christian

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yamayuandadu · 2 years

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Could you talk about Shalim and Shahar? I'm assuming there's not that much about them, but I think they sound interesting. I'm also curious about whether the info on their Wikipedia pages is accurate.

Yeah, sure thing. Shahar's just about the Bible so of course it is not accurate. Imagine if Siris' page was about tracking down every time the common word "wine" appears in the Bible! Shalim's has an absolute abomination in it, "likely Asherah (Athirat or Anat)," this level of depraved longing for full interchangeability of goddesses (coupled here with illiteracy) frankly should result in social shunning at this point. I'm tired of fixing it. I'm tired of it being present even in peer reviewed publications. Granted, in Ugarit studies this longing is so strong even male deities get hit by it, for example mr. N. Wyatt is apparently obsessed with proving Yarikh is El which to me seems like an echo of these christian fundie “moon god Allah” graphics which were all the rage in the Bush era, I genuinely can’t think of any other explanation for this nonsense existing. While I've seen MUCH worse, and honestly you can find 10x worse on wikipedia (which is part of why I did not really put these particularly high in my queue), both articles are weak because they are unconcerned with material evidence. You can't write a good article about a deity until you spent some time reading something like "grain distribution statistics from the Umma province" is what I firmly believe. A good term to use to describe Shahar and Shalim in Ugarit would be "sort of irrelevant." Shahar never appears on his own, only as Shalim's cognomen. Shalim does receive offerings alone in some of the KTUs (Keilalphabetische Texte aus Ugarit, the most common designation for Ugaritic text, next to RS, which just stands for Ras Shamra) but as far as I know he's often near the very end, alongside deified instruments and censers. I think he also gets livers a few times, no clue if this indicates anything specific though (liver was the favored type of organ for divination, fwiw). As a pair, they appear in a single myth which is considered particularly confusing and gets regularly retranslated so the only things which we can say for certain is that both are children of El and that they are voracious (?). That "globetrotting" ritual text where deities are invoked from their cult centers just places them in the heavens rather than in any specific city or mountain like most of the rest.

The Akkadian cognate of Shahar, Šērum, had a bit more clout. He has no twin, though. Also, he inexplicably appears in the Nippur god list with grain deities, though followed by Tiranna (Manzat) and Mahdianna (Kabta), who are obviously astral. Interestingly, a description of his statue would indicate he was not antropomorphic: he had wings, the forelegs of a bovine, the body of a lion, and the face of a man. Interestingly, it is possible that the name of Ashur's... daughterwife (they were already arguing if she's his wife or daughter in the Neo-Assyrian period!)... Šerūʾa either was derived from the same root or received a folk etymology based on it. Gebhard Selz also thinks the "Sumerian" counterpart of Aya, Sherida, was derived from the same word, and personally I find his argument sound, though note it is not universally accepted, see here.

#ugaritic miscellanea #mesopotamian miscellanea

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