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lumini-317 · 3 years

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Hello!

This will be my official “introductory” post!

My real name is Erica, but I go by many names. My nickname repertoire includes but is not limited to: Lumi, Lumini, Cricket (I have a habit of rubbing my feet together, lmao), Jinx, Eri, Er, EriJoy, Sunbaeby, and Aceir (my real name but in alphabetical order).

This is my first ever Tumblr blog. I’ve had it for a while but have rarely posted anything, that along with the fact that I’m on mobile is kind of a mess so I apologize for mistakes and all that.

I have 3 older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother.

I’m an ambivert. Sometimes I love hanging out with bigger groups of people, other times I dread it.

I’ve taken the “16personalities” test 4 times and all 4 put me in the “Diplomat” category, however I got “Advocate” (INFJ) 2 times, and “Protagonist” (ENFJ) and “Mediator” (INFP) 1 time each.

I am LGBTQ+. I’m asexual, aro+panromantic flux, and while I feel like I’m genderfluid, the changes are very subtle and so I sometimes just go with agender, gendervoid, or neutrois. It’s a lot less complicated that way. I’m ambiamorous, and also pronoun apathetic!

I love whump. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember but only found the whump community maybe 3(?) years ago.

I also love K-Pop, C-Pop, J-Pop, and Asian dramas, mainly K-Pop and K-Dramas, though.

I’m a HUGE multistan. ATEEZ, SKZ, TBZ, EXO, BTS, Red Velvet, SHINee, iKON, MONSTA X, TWICE, TO1, WANNA ONE, SuperM, X1, MIRAE, Ciipher, Golden Child, Purple Kiss, BAE173, SF9, IU, ONEUS, ONEWE, The Rose, PIXY, LUCY, STAYC, WEi (which I pronounced as “way” for an embarrassingly long time), Dreamcatcher, Brave Girls, TXT, ENHYPEN, SNSD, KARD, AKMU, SHAUN, Gaho, NCT, GHOST9, 1team, SE7EN, Cross Gene, D1ce, AB6IX, CRAVITY, BLACKPINK, CIX, VIXX, f(x), 4Minute, CLC, YEZI, B.I, Wonho, (G)I-DLE, EVERGLOW, SEVENTEEN, BROOKLYN, Ha Hyunsang, DAY6, GOT7, Teen Top, BAP, TREASURE, UNIQ, etc! It goes on, far longer than I can list. I am also very much against fanwars, they disgust me.

I’m also a HUGE animal lover, and a big softie. I can’t even squish insects. I don’t care that they can’t feel pain and don’t experience emotions, I just can’t bring myself to. I make it my mission to save any type of animal I come across. I find toads in our koi pond and immediately pick them out and take them to a safe place. I help turtles across the road. I got a mouse out of a puddle and revived it, releasing it when it was healthy enough. I saw a snail on a piece of wood that was going to be thrown on a fire and carefully pulled it off and put it somewhere else. So far I’ve found 5 stray cats (Piper, Toothless, Felix, Kai, and Kit Kat—all were found as skinny, sickly kittens) and took them in, raising them as my own. I rescued a chipmunk from certain death-by-cat. I’ve even saved a few baby raccoons, ducklings, lizards, spiders, and snakes in my time. And I’ll keep doing so for as long as I live.

I love writing, drawing/sketching, and painting, however I’m not confident that I’m good at any of those things, lmao. I mean, I don’t think I’m the worst, but my finished “works” often leave me unsatisfied with my “skills”. But of course, that won’t stop me from trying to improve!

I’m a maladaptive daydreamer. This can cause issues in some places while helping me out in others. On one hand, it makes doing chores and such kind of difficult. Like one time I had to take care of my dad’s pigeons while he was fixing our shed and one time he pointed out how slow I was with the chores. His words were something along the lines of, “I’m already almost done with what I have to do and you’re still working with the pigeons.” Also, it (and maybe ADHD if I do have it?) made school a nightmare for me. But it’s also helpful because then during church it’s really easy to keep myself occupied while the pastors go on about their Magical Sky Daddy™’s son throwing a tantrum and killing a figtree because it didn’t have any figs and how that story should “challenge” us or something.

The characters in my daydreams are weird, though. They merge and separate with each other to make different characters depending on the situation. Most of them don’t have definite genders. Only a handful of them have names because they’re always merging and separating like some kind of Shadow Clone Masters or something. Stuff like that.

One of my characters is for sure a demi-boy, though, and his name is Kyler.

I brought this up because I was watching The Andy Griffith Show and Andy was giving Opie a lecture on how many poor kids there are in the world and used the ratio “one and a half boys per square mile”. Opie then says that he’s “never seen a half a boy before”. Kyler just sort of pops into (fake) existence, jumps off the couch, and throws his arms in the air while saying, “Half a boy, right here!” I burst out laughing. Thankfully it didn’t seem weird, since my parents started laughing at Opie and thought that I was just laughing at it, too.

Any-who.

If I daydream while I’m standing, I’ll often pace and gesture with my arms while moving my lips. Sometimes I’ll even whisper. If I’m sitting down, I usually fidget a lot (such as pick at my shirt and rub my feet together), stare into space, and move my lips or whisper. My family sometimes ask me, “Why are you whispering?” Or, “What are you grinning about?” And I just shrug because I don’t know how to explain it to them without risking them calling someone to pray over me, lmao. I mean, I wasn’t even allowed to have imaginary friends because that was “evil”. When I was about 7, I told my parents about my imaginary unicorn friend and they gave me a lecture and “prayed over me”. It was embarrassing and awkward for me.

I’m suspicious that I might have ADHD, but don’t have the money to actually get a professional diagnosis. I’m also too scared to ask my parents about it.

Speaking of which, my family and I don’t see eye-to-eye. I mean, they don’t know it because I’m good at hiding it, and they think I agree with mostly everything they do but boy, is it a mess.

You see, they’re evangelical conservative Christians. “LGBTQ+ people are going to hell”, “ThE LeFt ARe eViL AnD ARe TrYiNg To BrAiNwAsh OuR ChiLdrEn”, “Trump was sent by God”, “Intersex is fake”, “Women must submit to men”, “You should get married no later than in a year or ‘the temptation’ to have sex might become too much”, the whole bit.

Meanwhile I’m over here with my (imaginary) pride flags, just existing as an agnostic leftist who wants everyone to have equal rights, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and would rather redo my horrifically atrocious kindergarten closing program role than pray to a god who (if they/he/she/it/whatever exists) gives cancer to kids and killed millions of innocent animals and people in the Bible.

But they have no idea that this is how I feel and now expect me to be baptized within the next month to show that I have “accepted Jesus Christ as my savior”. Yeah...that’s gonna be an awkward discussion...

Anyway, that’s just some things about me. Sorry that I got sidetracked a few times, lmao!

I look forward to posting more and maybe even making friends!

Thank you for reading (:

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bogkeep · 3 years

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hmmmmmmmmmm maybe i’ll write an Introspective Musing Post about my relationship to religion and their depiction in stories because i’ve pondering about this topic lately

so for those who are reading this and DON’T know what’s been going on... there’s this webcomic i fell in love with some years ago, about six years actually, that depicts a post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror adventure set in the nordic countries. it had, and has still, some very uncomfortable flaws regarding racial representation, and the creator has historically not dealt very well with criticism towards it. it’s a whole Thing. my relationship with this comic has fluctuated a lot, since there are a lot of elements in it i DO love and i still feel very nostalgic about, and like idk i felt like i trust my skills in critical thinking enough to keep reading. aaand then the creator went a teensy bit off the deep end created a whole minicomic which is like... a lukewarm social media dystopia where christians are oppressed (and also everyone is a cute bunny, including our lord and saviour jesus christ). which is already tonedeaf enough considering there are religious people who DO get prosecuted for their faith, like, that’s an actual reality for a lot of people - but as far as i can tell, usually not christians. and then there’s an afterword that’s like, “anyway i got recently converted and realized i’m a disgusting human being full of sin who doesn’t deserve redemption but jesus loves me so i’ll be fine!! remember to repent for your sins xoxo” and a bunch of other stuff and IT’S KIND OF REALLY CONCERNING i have, uh, been habitually looking at the reactions to and discussions around this, maybe it’s not very self care of me but there’s a lot of overwhelming things rn and it’s fantastically distracting, yknow? like, overall this situation is fairly reminiscent of the whole jkr thing. creator of a series that is Fairly Beloved, does something hurtful, handles backlash in a weird way, a lot of people start taking distance from Beloved Series or find ways to enjoy it on their own terms, creator later reveals to have been fully radicalized and releases a whole manifesto, and any and all criticism gets framed as harassment and proving them right. of course, one of them is a super rich person with a LOT of media power and a topic that is a lot more destructive in our current zeitgeist, and the other is an independent webcomic creator, so it’s not the same situation. just similar vibez ya feel as a result of this, i have been Thinking. and just this feels like some sort of defeat like god dammit she got me i AM thinking about the topic she wrote about!!! i should dismiss the whole thing!!! but thinking about topics is probably a good thing so hey lets go. me, i’m agnostic. i understand that this is a ‘lazy’ position to take, but it’s what works for me. i simply do not vibe with organized religion, personally. (i had the wikipedia page for ‘chaos magic’ open in a tab for several weeks, if that helps.) i was raised by atheists in a majorly atheist culture. christian atheist, i should specify. norway has been mostly and historically lutheran, and religion has usually been a private and personal thing. it turns out the teacher i had in 7th grade was mormon, but i ONLY found out because he showed up in a tv series discussing religious groups in norway later, and he was honestly one of the best teachers i have ever had - he reignited the whole class’ interest in science, math, and dungeons and dragons. it was a real “wait WHAT” moment for my teenage self. i think i was briefly converted to christianity by my friend when i was like 7, who grew up in a christian family (i visited them a couple times and always forgot they do prayers before dinner. oops!), but like, she ALSO made me believe she was the guardian of a secret magic orb that controls the entire world and if i told anybody the world would burn down in 3 seconds. i only suspected something was off when one day the Orb ran on batteries, and another day the Orb had to be plugged in to charge. in my defense i really wanted to be part of a cool fantasy plot. i had no idea how to be a christian beyond “uuuuh believe in god i guess” so it just faded away on its own. when i met this friend several years later, she was no longer christian. i think every childhood friend of mine who grew up in a christian family, was no longer christian when they grew up. most notably my closest internet friend whose family was catholic - she had several siblings, and each of them took a wildly different path, from hippie treehugger to laveyan satanist or something in that area. (i joined them for a sermon in a church when they visited my town. my phone went off during it because i had forgotten to silence it. oops!) ((i also really liked their mother’s interpretation of purgatory. she explained it as a bath, not fire. i like that.)) i have never had any personal negative experiences with christianity, despite being openly queer/gay/trans. the only time someone has directly told me i’m going to hell was some guy who saw me wearing a hoodie on norway’s constitution day. yeah i still remember that you bastard i’ve sworn to be spiteful about it till the day i die!! i’ve actually had much more insufferable interactions with the obnoxious kind of atheists - like yes yes i agree with you on a lot but that doesn’t diminish your ability to be an absolute hypocrite, it turns out? i remember going to see the movie ‘noah’ with a friend who had recently discovered reddit atheism and it was just really exhausting to discuss it with her. one of these Obnoxious Atheists is my Own Mother. which is a little strange, honestly, because she LOVES visiting churches for the Aesthetic and Architecture. we cannot go anywhere without having to stop by a pretty church to Admire and Explore. I’VE BEEN IN SO MANY CHURCHES FOR AN ATHEIST RAISED NON-CHRISTIAN. i’ve been to the vatican TWICE (i genuinely don’t even know how much of my extended family is christian. up north in the tiny village i come from, i believe my uncle is the churchkeeper, and it’s the only building in the area that did not get burnt down by the the nazis during ww2 - mostly because soldiers needed a place to sleep. still don’t know whether or not said uncle believes or not, because hey, it’s Personal) i think my biggest personal relationship to religion, and christianity specifically, has been academic. yeah, we learned a brief synopsis of world religions at school (and i remember the class used to be called ‘christianity, religion, and ethics’ and got changed to ‘religion, beliefs, and ethics’ which is cool. it was probably a big discourse but i was a teen who didnt care), but also my bachelor degree is in art history, specifically western art history because it’s a vast sprawling topic and they had to distill it as best they could SIGHS. western art history is deeply entangled with the history of the church, and i think the most i’ve ever learnt about christianity is through these classes (one of my professors wrote an article about how jesus can be interpreted as queer which i Deeply Appreciate). i also specifically tried to diversify my academic input by picking classes such as ‘depiction of muslims and jewish people in western medieval art’ and ‘art and religion’ when i was an exchange student in canada, along with 101 classes in anthropology and archaeology. because i think human diversity and culture is very cool and i want to absorb that knowledge as best as i can. i think my exchange semester in canada was the most religiously diverse space have ever been in, to be honest. now as an adult i have more christian friends again, but friends who chose it for themselves, and who practice in ways that sound good and healthy, like a place of solace and community for them. the vast majority of my friends are queer too, yknow?? i’ve known too many people who have seen these identities as fated opposites, but they aren’t, they’re just parts of who people are. it’s like... i genuinely love people having their faiths and beliefs so much. i love people finding that space where they belong and feel safe in. i love people having communities and heritages and connections. i deeply respect and admire opening up that space for faith within any other communities, like... if i’m going to listen to a podcast about scepticism and cults, i am not going to listen to it if it’s just an excuse to bash religion. i think the search for truth needs to be compassionate, always. you can acknowledge that crystals are cool and make people happy AND that multi level marketing schemes are deeply harmful and prey on people in vulnerable situaitons. YOU KNOW???? so now’s when i bring up Apocalypse Comic again. one of the things i really did like about it was, ironically, how it handled religion. in its setting, people have returned to old gods, and their magic drew power from their religion. characters from different regions had different beliefs and sources. in the first arc, they meet the spirit of a lutheran pastor, who ends up helping them with her powers. it was treated as, in the creators own words, ‘just another mythology’. and honestly? i love that. it was one of the nicest depictions i’ve seen of christianity in fiction, and as something that could coexist with other faiths. I Vibe With That. and then, uh, then... bunny dystopia comic. it just... it just straight up tells you christianity is literally the only way to..?? be a good person??? i guess?? i’m still kind of struggling to parse what exactly it wanted to say. the evil social media overlord bird tells you the bible makes you a DANGEROUS FREETHINKER, but the comic also treats rewriting the bible or finding your own way to faith as something,, Bad. The Bible Must Remain Unsullied. Never Criticize The Bible. also, doing good things just for social media clout is bad and selfish. you should do good things so you don’t burn in hell instead. is that the message? it reads a lot like the comic creator already had the idea for the comic, but only got the urge to make it after she was converted and needed to spread the good word. you do you i guess!! i understand that she’s new to this and probably Going Through Something, and this is just a step on her journey. but the absolute self-loathing she described in her afterword... it does not sound good. i’m just some agnostic kid so what do i know, but i do not think that kind of self-flagellating is a kind faith to have for yourself. i might not ever have been properly religious, but you know what i AM familiar with? a brain wired for ocd and intrusive thoughts. for a lot of my life i’ve struggled with my own kind of purity complex. i’ve had this really strange sensitivity for things that felt ‘tainted’. i’ve experienced having to remove more and more words from my vocabulary because they were Bad and i did not want to sully my sentences. it stacked, too - if a word turned out to be an euphemism for something, i could never feel comfortable saying it again. i still struggle a bit with these things, but i have confronted these things within myself. i’ve had to make myself comfortable with imperfection and ‘tainted’ things and accept that these are just, arbitrary categories my mind made up. maybe that’s the reason i can’t do organized religion even if i found one that fit for me - just like diets can trigger disordered eating, i think it would carve some bad brainpaths for me. so yeah i’m worried i guess! i’m worried when people think it’s so good that she finally found the correct faith even if it’s causing all this self-hate. is there really not a better way? or are they just trusting she’ll find it? and yeah it’s none of my concern, it’s like, i worry for jkr too but i do not want her within miles of my trans self thANKS. so like, i DO enjoy media that explores faith and what it means for you. my favourite band is the oh hellos, which DOES draw on faith and the songwriter’s experience with it. because of my religious iliteracy most of it has flown over my head for years and i’m like “oh hey this is gay” and then only later realize it was about god all along Probably. i like what they’ve done with the place. also, stormlight archive - i had NO idea sanderson was mormon, the way he writes his characters, many of whom actively discuss religion and their relationship to it. i love that about the books, honestly. Media That Explores Religion In A Complex And Compassionate Way... we like that i’ve been thinking about my own stories too, and how i might want to explore faith in them. most of my settings are based on magic and it’s like, what role does religion have in a world where gods are real and makes u magic. in sparrow spellcaster’s story, xe creates? summons? an old god - brings them to life out of the idea of them. it’s a story about hubris, mostly. then there’s iphimery, the story where i am actively fleshing out a pantheon. there’s no doubt the gods are real in the fantasy version of iphimery, they are the source of magic and sustain themselves on slivers of humanity in exchange. but in the modern version, where they are mostly forgotten? that’s some room for me to explore, i think. especially the character of timian, who comes from a smaller town and moves to a large and diverse city. in the fantasy story, the guardian deity chooses his sister as a vessel. in the modern setting, that does not happen, and i don’t yet know what does, but i really want timian to be someone who struggles with his identity - his faith, his sexuality, the expectations cast upon him by his hometown... i’m sure it’s a cliché story retold through a million gay characters but i want to do it too okay. i want to see him carve out his own way of existing within the world because i care him and want to see him thrive!!! alrighty i THINK that’s all i wanted to write. thanks if you read all of this, and if you didn’t that’s super cool have a nice day !

#rambles #i wrote this for me and theres no obligation to read it

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prolifeproliberty · 4 years

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Hi, I love your blog! I'm Catholic and genuinely curious about which beliefs differ between Catholics and Lutherans. I think my grandpa was Lutheran at one point but he never really talked about it and I'd really like to know! I know inn general we believe a lot of the same things, but what are the differences? Stay safe and healthy!

Hi @soxrox12, sorry this answer took so long! I wanted to take the time to explain everything as clearly as possible and give you a thorough answer.

The basics of what Lutherans believe (what we teach to adolescents and those new to the faith in Confirmation) can be found in the Small Catechism. If you want a more in depth version and don’t mind some more academic language, you can read the Large Catechism. If you’re a total theology/history nerd and want to read about the back and forth arguments between the original Lutherans, the Catholic Church, and other Protestants, the rest of the Book of Concord has all that and more!

To really understand the differences, we have to go back to the origins of Lutheranism with Martin Luther in the early 16th century. Luther was a Catholic priest who, in his studies of scripture, saw major discrepancies between what the Catholic Church was teaching the common people (many of whom couldn’t read and very few of whom had access to the Bible outside of hearing scripture read at Mass) and what he saw in scripture.

The Catholic Church today is not the same as it was in the 16th century, but we still have some major differences. I apologize if I get some Catholic beliefs wrong here, I’m basing this on my understanding of Catholic teaching from my research and from talking to Catholic friends.

I’m putting this all below the cut so I don’t flood everyone’s dash with this extremely long post!

Christian Freedom: Luther had a big problem with the church requiring Christians to observe certain traditions and festivals as a matter of law or obligation. Unless something is specifically commanded in Scripture, it’s optional or a matter of Christian freedom (aka it might be a good idea, but you don’t have to do it). Examples include fasting for Lent (or in general), liturgical gestures (genuflecting, kneeling, making the Sign of the Cross), and so on. We also don’t have any Holy Days of Obligation - while we observe many of the same feast days and festivals as Catholics, we never say anyone is obligated to observe them.

Holy Communion: One thing Lutherans and Catholics have in common is that we both believe that Christ’s Body and Blood are truly and physically present and are truly and physically received by the communicant. Most other protestants see it as a symbol, or see Christ’s Body and Blood as spiritually, but not physically present. This was a big sore spot in the 16th century when Luther met with others who were questioning Catholic teaching. One story goes that he and other theologians were sitting around a table, and the others were arguing over whether Christ’s Body and Blood were truly present. Reportedly, Luther, frustrated by the back and forth, carved the words “This is My Body” into the table and covered it with a cloth. Every time someone (*cough* Zwingli) argued against the Real Presence, Luther whipped off the table cloth and pointed to the words. Jesus’ words on the issue were good enough for him.

We do, however, differ with Catholics on a couple of issues related to Communion.

1. We believe the bread and wine are also still present - we don’t believe that they changed into Body and Blood, but that the Body and Blood are united with the bread and wine. We call this “Sacramental Union.”

2. We don’t believe that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross is being repeated every time we celebrate Holy Communion. We also don’t see it as the priest offering Christ’s Body and Blood as a sacrifice. Instead, we see it as participating across time and space in the once-for-all atoning sacrifice that occurred on Good Friday almost 2,000 years ago. Rather than offering the Eucharist, we are receiving it from Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

Sin, Baptism, and Confession:

I’m putting these all together because there’s a root difference in the way Lutherans and Catholics view sin that shows up in both Baptism and Confession.

Like Catholics, Lutherans believe in original sin - that is, we are conceived and born sinful and in need of a Savior - as well as actual sin (we have sinned against God “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone”). However, we don’t distinguish between the two when it comes to how we receive forgiveness. We believe Baptism washes away ALL sin, and that in Confession and Absolution as well as in Holy Communion we receive forgiveness for ALL sin.

In Confession and Absolution, we confess all our sins, both those we know and those we don’t, and we receive absolution for all of them. We don’t do penance or have any other steps. Confession is:

Step 1: Confess sins

Step 2: Receive absolution from the pastor as from God Himself.

And that’s it! We do “corporate confession and absolution” (aka confession as part of the liturgy that the whole church says together - very similar to what Catholics have in the Mass) in any service where we have Holy Communion, but we don’t ever require private confession. It’s always available on request if someone is particularly bothered by a sin and needs to hear the pastor absolve that sin specifically, but it’s never mandatory (see “Christian Freedom”).

The Pope, Church Hierarchy, and Tradition:

Luther also had a big problem with the Pope and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as he saw lots of potential for and examples of abuse of power. He has some very harsh words about the Pope in his writings. Many Lutheran churches belong to a synod that has a president and some kind of structure, but we don’t view our Synod president the way Catholics view the Pope. A synod is more administration and support, with some ecclesiastical supervision (although that often doesn’t work out the way it should, which is why my church left our synod and we are now an independent Lutheran congregation).

We view Scripture as our highest authority and our Lutheran Confessions and other doctrinal writings as an explanation of what Scripture teachers. We do refer to the Church Fathers for clarification on some issues, but if something is not found clearly in Scripture we don’t take it as doctrinal.

Intercession and Prayer/Mary and the Saints:

We don’t ask for intercession from saints who are in heaven, or from Mary. We only pray to the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We learn from the lives of the saints, and we believe they are in heaven with Jesus, but we don’t seek their direct help here on earth.

We don’t pray the Rosary, mostly because it includes those prayers of intercession to Mary/the Saints. We do have several prayer liturgies like the Litany (which our church has been praying a LOT lately because it’s been historically used by the Church - including pre-Reformation - in times of hardship, plague, etc.).

We respect Mary as Jesus’ mother, but we don’t necessarily see her as our Mother or as Queen of Heaven or Co-Redemptrix the way Catholics do.

Essentially we say that our prayers should be directed directly to God and that the Holy Spirit is our mediator who makes intercession for us (Romans 8:26-27).

Monastic Orders and Priests:

We don’t have monks or nuns or any of the monastic orders. Those who wish to go into full-time church work can be Deacons or Deaconesses, and the responsibilities of those roles vary from church to church. Typically they teach (Sunday School, sometimes Bible Study or Confirmation) or are in charge of the charitable work the church does (food pantries, etc).

Our pastors typically go to four years of seminary - 2 years of classes, one year of vicarage in a congregation (like an apprenticeship, working under an experienced pastor), followed by another year of classes before ordination. Then the pastor receives a Call from a congregation, decides whether to accept or decline that Call, and, if he accepts, stays with that congregation until he receives and accepts a Call somewhere else, retires, or (very rarely) for some reason the congregation asks him to leave (usually only if he’s doing something really wrong and is unrepentant).

Our pastors are also free and even encouraged to get married and have children. My pastor has five children and I’ve lost count of how many grandchildren.

-- -- --

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the differences, but these are the key areas that come up most often when I talk to my Catholic friends. I’d be happy to discuss any of these areas in more detail or point you to specific things in our doctrinal books that address them.

Just for fun, here’s some similarities:

Liturgy:

Our liturgy is VERY similar to the Catholic Church’s liturgy. We have “Divine Service” instead of “Mass”, although you can find some very “high church” Lutheran congregations that do use the term Mass and call their pastors “priests” and “Father.”

We also have Matins, Vespers, and other services with very similar liturgies to what the Catholic Church uses.

Here’s an excellent example of an Easter service (and here’s the bulletin if you wanted to follow along) from a high-church Confessional Lutheran congregation in Virginia that I attended when I was an intern in D.C. This was their live stream for this Easter, so due to the small attendance they didn’t do Communion, but otherwise you can see generally what our services are like.

#theology #lutheran #catholic #liturgy #divine service #holy communion #baptism #confession and absolution #book of concord #prayer #faith #religion #christianity #confessional lutheran #confessional lutheranism

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risingmoonyue · 4 years

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I was raised in a loving Christian home. My Father is a pastor’s kid, and my Mother is a first-generation immigrant who converted to Christianity in her teens. I grew up with bedtime stories about Moses and the Seven Plagues and Esther. My family has never shied away from explaining things to me as I asked. When I was seven, I had a deep conversation about death with my Great-Grandfather.

That was--is--my life. My family has been so incredibly blessed with the life and family we have now. I think families like mine also add to a common misconception about the Christian faith, especially in America: that the Bible promises a good and easy life to those who follow it.

I’ll be honest. That isn’t true. If anything, the Bible says the exact opposite--that people will hate us, that we’ll be outcasts, that people will just want us to shut up and stop. Life will be hard.

I’ve known that for a long time now. It’s something I’ve always kept in mind as everything happened, as horrible things happen to my family of faith, to my friends, to my loved ones. And this leads to what I’m going to talk about next.

As a Christian, I have experienced a lot of opposition in my short life. But most of it wasn’t actually to my face, though in all honesty, I wish it was most of the time. It would be easier that way, to be able to defend myself and say what I mean directly without constraints of time and place, or just to get it over and done with, without sounding like just another insignificant voice in this world full of people who scream, shout, hate, or just don’t care.

Most of this opposition has been passive but no less difficult, both from people and society in general.

In 10th grade, I took a civics class. At that point, the class was focused on the effects of nuclear weaponry and fallout on society and literature. Throughout the semester, we were reading the book “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a satirical science fiction novel about science, technology, and religion, that ends with Earth being destroyed by a man-made weapon. It was... A read. Not my favorite, but definitely well written.

At the end of the semester, when everyone had finished their book and was preparing to write their final essays, we had a Socratic Seminar. Now, at this point, I had already not had a good experience with these. In other classes, I was usually one of the only two people who would try to carry the conversation, and I was probably the quietest person in the room at any given point. But this seminar honestly kinda traumatized me.

At about the halfway point of the seminar, I was feeling pretty good. This class was great about getting other people to talk, and I wasn’t forced to carry and lead the conversation like my other classes. Eventually though, the topic turned to the relationship between religion and science. The “leader” of the discussion asked who in the room was religious, and to raise their hands.

To fully understand why this was already nerve wracking: my school is primarily atheist, and very, very liberal. It is focused on science and math, and most Christians I’ve spoken--myself included--to there are honestly kinda afraid to talk about it, despite the school always talking about being “open minded” and “judgment free”. While we aren’t as bad as one of our sister schools, there is still a bit of pack mentality--think what you want, as long as you don’t disagree with us. Many Christan beliefs tend to oppose that of the majority. Opinions are very strong there, and I’ve seen a girl get in trouble because she addressed the student body as “guys” instead of some gender-neutral term during a school assembly. It’s kinda bad. So you might be able to see why it was making me nervous that they were directly calling out religious people.

I ended up being one of only two or three people who raised their hand. They then started talking about how “science cannot mix with religion”, with Christianity as a focus as in the book, that is where some of the main religious themes came from. So I tried to say differently. Shy, 15/16 year old me tried really hard to explain that the two can, in fact, coexist, and that we do it all the time--case in point, me actually going to that school.

But what really got to me, was not even two seconds into me talking about it, the leader just shook his head and ignored me. That hurt. A lot. I just… stopped talking for the rest of the day, pretty much. I almost ran out of the room crying, but didn’t because I wanted to be a good student and actually get a good grade on this. I didn’t feel better until I went home and had a long discussion with Mom about science and religion and why what they said wasn’t true.

That was just the most obvious instance in my life. I’d say the thing that has the largest, but mist unseen effect though, is the media. In my experience at least, I’ve found there’s a resistance in talking about Christianity in media, especially since it’s a “White People” religion--which is also untrue, as it originated in the Middle East, and is supposed to be for everyone. So now, whenever I see it online, it’s almost painful to see, because I’m afraid it’s going to be about why my faith sucks, or why it’s wrong, or it’ll be a good post, but hey, the majority of people commenting on it hate it and are picking out any flaw they can because they don’t agree. The worst part is, I’ve seen a lot of controversial posts, but Christian posts are the only ones I’ve seen get this type of backlash. And I hate that.

I hate that it happens. I hate that I hate it so much, because I don’t want to hate. It’s a terrible emotion, and I don’t want anything to do with it. It’s painful that I have to feel afraid going on social media and saying I’m a Christian, because everyone else hates it. It’s painful that I see others struggling with the same thing. It sucks. I’ve always been an easygoing person, and never could hold a grudge. Even now, as much as I hate the action and the responses it creates, I find myself forgiving those people, because those people clearly don’t have God in their lives, and my faith preaches forgiveness.

For me, it’s always been difficult to say these struggles out loud, because I’ve had it good, and I know it. Society says to suck it up, because so many people have it worse than you. But that’s wrong, because there’s no comparing pain, and we shouldn’t be. Why are my experiences and pains rendered invalid just because of who I am? It’s not right. Everyone feels pain differently.

I believe that God has a plan. My main prayer in any situation is “Let Your will be done.” Maybe I can’t see it. Maybe it’s so big, that one action I make won’t come into effect until years down the line. I don’t know. But I can keep hope and faith that other people will see the Truth.

Honestly, two hours ago, I hadn’t even thought about making this. But today in church, during the sermon, the pastor said something, and the Lord just… Called to me. And I knew I had to make this.

I don’t know what people will think of this. I don’t know why, or how, but all I can hope for is that somewhere, this reaches someone’s heart.

My name is Galina. I’m 18 years old, and this is my testimony.

#my writing #me #christianity #christians #christian faith #faith #religion #testimony

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androgyne-acolyte · 5 years

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Coming out (as a queer ministry hopeful)

A version of this was cross-posted to my personal Facebook profile. This is the first in (hopefully) a series of posts discussing what I believe, how I got here, and how my faith and praxis continue to evolve.

I’m also indebted to all the queer and trans people of faith here on Tumblr for providing me with countless tidbits of affirming and radical theology. You’ve contributed to my decision as much as anyone.

So, I have some life changes on the horizon. As of Tuesday, I’ve been accepted to the Master of Divinity program at Atlantic School of Theology, starting in September and continuing for the next three years. Concurrently, I’m pursuing candidacy for ordination as a minister in the United Church of Canada.

To those who don’t know me closely, this may seem like a surprise; I usually don’t talk about faith unless directly asked. Let me explain...

In the second half of 2018, a number of personal and professional issues came to a head for me. To make a long story short, I realized that being a full-time composer and musician simply wasn’t financially or emotionally sustainable anymore; at the same time, I faced an untenable personal situation that seriously challenged my values as a queer person.

I realized that, throughout years of unstable circumstances and a rapidly changing self, my spirituality has been the one beneficial constant in my life. It’s challenged me to act when I see distress and suffering, to see the good in people, and to not get cynical — all of which, I’ve learned, are extremely difficult to do well! Even so, my spirituality has been like a signal, calling me to explore it and live it out more fully, and I hit a point where I simply couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Again, to those who haven’t been following me closely, it may seem strange that I’m re-joining an institution like the church as an openly genderqueer person; especially (if you look more closely) as someone who seems to reject a lot of the main points of normative Christianity in favour of obscure ideas plucked from the forgotten depths of history. Maybe it helps to picture me aspiring to be a whiter, trans-er version of Shepherd Book from Firefly, or a real-life D&D cleric. But I think I’ve stumbled onto something profound, and I want to share it.

These next sections are addressed to two groups of people in my life: First, the rad queers, the activists of whatever stripe, and all those who have good reason to distrust the church. Second, the few traditional Christians who might be paying attention, if you’ve read this far.

To my queer and trans siblings especially: I want to be the rad genderqueer minister who you can trust — who provides a safe harbour for down-and-out trans kids, has Plan B in their pastoral care kit, runs free therapy groups out of the church basement (how about a whole youth shelter while we’re at it?), and gives humble, honest answers to anyone who has ever questioned and been silenced. I believe that “another world is possible”; a more just and loving world, where we can build new systems based on radical equity, work to heal ourselves and each other from the scars of trauma and oppression, and kick at the foundations of unjust power through acts of sacred mischief. This is my activism.

Moreover, the United Church is special to me in that social action and healthy dialogue (not to mention decolonization and reconciliation) are its bread and butter. I feel like I’ve finally found a spiritual home, an organization that can provide a platform and a support for me to live out this kind of work; in turn, I can keep challenging the church to be better, more inclusive, more radical. After all, truly queer-affirming and anti-oppressive spiritual practices are still sorely lacking at the church level; imagine the impact of a community of faith that uplifts and nurtures our queer descendants instead of judging and alienating them, where if anything gets denounced from the pulpit, it’s the evil of late capitalism and white supremacy.

Not that I’m attached to denominational identity, or even to the idea that being capital-C Christian is a prerequisite; the earliest form of christianity, after all, was simply called “the Way”, a community of thought and action that transcended social, cultural, and patriarchal boundaries. If you believe in compassion, justice, and healing, that’s good enough for me; I want to walk this Way with you and for you. No gatekeeping, no ahistorical rhetoric about sin and sacrifice, no dumbed-down creedal statements to accept by rote; my christian agenda is one where everyone gets enough and nobody gets left behind.

(And, like, I’m no saint, either; I’ve made mistakes, I’ve hurt people, I’ve gone off the rails once or twice. The above is as much an aspiration for me as it is for anyone.)

To any self-identified traditional Christians who are still reading: Go back and reread Matthew 3; just as the first century was a time of rapid change (Mark 13), the 21st century is more bewildering still, and I believe that we are called to walk through it with our hearts and minds open. Remember that the world that Paul admonishes us not to conform to (Romans 12:2) is the Roman world of two millennia ago; keeping our faith is something much bigger than rigid adherence to social norms and cultural identity (Galatians 3:23-29). Look at our history; how many of our beliefs are recent developments adopted in resistance to modernity? How many are medieval constructs that would have been foreign to the actual authors of the Bible? How many are compromises meant to make us look respectable in front of the Roman Empire?

Finally, when was the last time a parable surprised you (Mark 12:17)? Jesus wasn’t crucified over theological differences; he was killed because he represented something bigger and better than the repressive empire around him, and the folks in power knew it (Matthew 27:54). In every parable, every teaching, there is something gleefully, mischievously countercultural that centuries of societal change have obscured; to overlook that is to overlook part of the incredible beauty and vitality of our faith. Isn’t it more satisfying to examine our beliefs and come out with a deeper understanding? Isn’t it more inspiring to see allies all around us? Isn’t it more fun to get our hands dirty? And who are we to limit God’s overwhelming love?

Postscript: As a friend pointed out, I’m not trying to juggle being a queer person and being an aspiring minister, as if these are somehow disparate identities; I want to be a Queer Minister, with all the powerful and unsettling possibilities that implies. I think it’s something our world needs right now.

#tamsin the seminarian #tamsin writes #long post #queer christianity #queer ministry goals #anti-oppressive christianity #transgender christians #lowercase christianity #articulating praxis #reclaiming christianity #the empire never ended

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strawberry-milktea · 6 years

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Hey! I've been going to this big new church for over a year now after moving away from a toxic and broken church. I'm just wondering what can I do to grow spiritually and closer to God? I'm a college student, but the college class the church has is barely existent. The only time I go to church and listen to the Word is during the worship service on Sunday mornings. I don't have any friends at church at all. I feel more comfortable staying home than going to church, actually. Any help or inspo?

Hi! I apologize for taking so long to answer this.

I understand what you’re saying.. my situation with church is sort of similar. At my first church, it was much smaller and I knew the majority of the people well. Eventually, I started going to a larger church when I realized my first church wasn’t teaching scripturally on the level that I needed. And shortly after that, my first church eventually closed due to funding issues. So for these reasons, I started permanently going to my current church.

Like you, I go on Sundays and because of my work schedule, it’s pretty much impossible most times to get involved with church activities on other days. This, as well as the fact that the church has a relatively large number of people attending each service, makes it so that I haven’t had a chance to get to know people there personally. I wish I could get to know them and be more involved in the activities they have planned, though. However, I’m still incredibly happy at my church and feel spiritually edified by the messages preached there.

One of the most critical ways to get closer to Him is reading and studying the Word on your own. Do you read scripture on your own or is your only exposure to it on Sundays? My understanding is you only listen to it on Sundays, but correct me if I misunderstood what you said.. if that is the case though, I strongly recommend making time each day to read scripture. It’s great to go to church on Sundays and listen to your pastor read the Word/teach about it, but you also need to dig into the scriptures on your own to grow spiritually and understand Him better. Listen to people preach can be very helpful, but it’s not a replacement for personal study. Developing a strong foundation in the Word by reading on your own and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide and teach you is how you deepen your faith and understanding of spiritual matters. It also helps you to develop the ability to discern if who you are listening to preach is teaching an accurate message.

I think buying a study Bible could be very useful for you. I personally think the Life Application study Bibles are good. They come in a variety of translations and offer footnotes at the bottom of each page that provide helpful explanations/commentary for majority of the verses on each page. If you enjoy listening to the Word more than visually reading, you may like to use a Bible app with an audio feature or buy an audio Bible. I personally use the YouVersion Bible app and most often, I do my reading of scripture by listening via the audio feature.

Prayer is another way to grow spiritually stronger and closer to Him. Prayer has always been an area I’ve personally struggled in, but I’ve found I’ve gotten much more comfortable with it once I started writing down my prayers and thoughts to Him in a journal. Doing that has helped it to feel more like a natural reflex to start talking to Him and less of feeling like I have to plan certain times to pray. It’s also helped me to break through the worry (which I always knew was false but for some reason would still nag at my mind) that I’m not being heard when I pray.

I also find it’s very helpful to listen to worship music at home. I either make time to just sit down and relax to listen to the music or I do so while I’m completing certain tasks like cleaning, cooking, or getting ready for the day. Either way, I find that these times often help me to pick up on His presence and feel connected with Him.

It may also help you to find a preacher/pastor online so that you can listen to someone preach His Word on other days in addition to Sundays at church. I personally enjoy listening to J.D. Farag. You can listen to his sermons here if you’re interested:

https://youtube.com/user/alohabibleprophecy

If you don’t mind me asking, do you have specific reasons for feeling more comfortable at home than at church? Is it because you don’t know anyone personally there, or are there other reasons? If it’s because you don’t know people personally there, please know you can still enjoy fellowship during worship and benefit from the message being preached even if you don’t have friends there. I don’t know the people at my church personally, but I still feel like I belong there and I enjoy glorifying Him with them as well as seeing their love for Him in their worship.

There’s nothing wrong at all with desiring friendship with those at your church, though! I understand that you said the population of college students is relatively smallat your church, but try not to limit your friends to only those who are around the same age as you. You can meet and befriend some wonderful Christians who are younger or older than you.. and for the few who are around your age, try to look for opportunities to get to know them as well. Maybe get to church on Sundays a little early and strike up a conversation with someone sitting near you. Or keep an eye out for church events that work with your schedule where you can socialize and get to know the people who attend your church.

I hope this was helpful, please feel free to comment here and continue the discussion if you want to!

#God #asks #church attendance #friendship #relationships #worship #the Bible #studying the Bible #reading the Bible #prayer #praying

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nox-lee · 7 years

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My Beloved is Mine and I am His: 13x02 and Song of Solomon

One of the first things I wrote when I was brand new to the fandom was a short fic with Castiel reading and re-enacting sections from the Song of Songs to Dean. At the time, I thought it was too cheesy and trite to fit within the realm of Supernatural, and I deleted it in a bout of frustration. I am regretting that today like you wouldn’t believe.

I’m a bit of a bible nerd. I took a lot of theology and religion classes in my undergrad. That was nearly a decade ago though, so my current knowledge is a bit shaky. Here’s what I can recall about Song of Solomon that may or may not inform your reading of 13x02 and SPN in general.

A disclaimer: I am sick and drug addled, so please forgive any incoherent rambling. There is a lot of irrelevant gibberish, so I’ve tried to highlight the bits relevant to SPN.

To begin!

Solomon is the heir of King David (whom you may recall had a passionate same-sex relationship with Jonathan.) Solomon’s reign is idealized, much like David’s was, and it was under Solomon that the First Temple was built. Solomon is famous for his wisdom and his large concubine of women. Notably, he settled a dispute between two women who were fighting over a child. He offered to cut it in half, revealing the true mother who could not bring herself to see the child hurt. This bears resemblance to Jack’s situation right now, torn between two fathers.

Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs, or the Canticles) is often attributed to Solomon because he is mentioned. However, the text is dated much later, and certain Persian words and influences in the text suggest a post-exilic era as the earliest possible date. Some scholars date it even later.

Song of Solomon is part of the collection in the Hebrew Bible known as The Writings (or the Kethuvim). It’s the third major division in the Hebrew Bible, and one of the last to be adopted into canon. It’s a bit of a catch all category that contains vastly diverse content including poetic works (Psalms, Song of Songs), and wisdom literature (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes), to name a few.

Most of these writings (including Song of Songs) date to the post-exilic era. That is, after the Babylonian conquest, and during Persian rule. The nation of Judah perished in the fires that were set to Solomon’s temple. Post-exile, Judea was experiencing a theological crisis in the face of the apparent absence of Yahweh, or God. David’s dynasty has collapsed, and we see theological despair reflected in writings like Job and Ecclesiastes that ponder the problem of evil, the absence of God, and undeserved suffering. Song of Solomon, and other writings like it, were written at a time when things felt hopeless and there were fears that God has abandoned his people. It is oddly fitting then, that Jack should open to this particular part of the bible.

The Kethuvim mark a shift in religious thought. Previous writings centred on an independent kingdom involved in international politics. After the fall of the temple, we see an exiled, diasporic religion now led by priests instead of divinely appointed kings. Religious leaders and writers had to adjust and re-envision their scriptural teachings. Gone was the simplistic thesis that equated prosperity with religious obedience and misery with sin. The authors of the books known as The Writings were questioning conventional scripture of the time and creatively refocusing their theology.

Persian rule also introduced new religious ideas, namely Zoroastrianism, which came to influence later Judeo-Christian ideas. Zoroastrianism viewed the world as dualistic, ruled by two opposing powers of good (light) and evil (dark) and had hierarchies of angels and demons. Until this time, most biblical literature did not give name or ranks to angels, nor did they depict satan as an actual autonomous figure. We have Zoroastrianism to thank for that, and its influence on biblical writings can start to be felt around the post-exile period (i.e. the time during which Song of Solomon was written). The book of Daniel, for example, names the angel Gabriel, and the Book of Tobit names the demon Asmodeus. (In Tobit, Asmodeus is a jealous demon who kills each successive husband of Sarah on her wedding night and is later exorcised. He is someone who keeps lovers apart and keeps them from consummating their love.)

Songs of Songs is essentially a collection of erotic love poems. The book defies any easy interpretation or classification, and it stands out in stark contrast to the rest of biblical canon. It’s a completely unabashed, uninhibited celebration of sex, with little evidence to suggest that the lovers are married. They do not live together, and yearn intensely for one another when apart. It’s the subject of numerous feminist readings, as it’s one of few books of the bible to give a voice to women’s thoughts and feelings. Here, those are romantic and erotic feelings.

Don’t believe me? Read this:

My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost being yearned for him. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt. (Song of Solomon 5: 4-5)

This is some raunchy stuff for the bible! And all of this is sharply contrasted with the sexual ethos elsewhere in the bible which imposes harsh penalties for sexual misconduct, and places great emphasis on the institution of marriage. Deuteronomy (a book of the bible about sexual and social control) calls for the death penalty in many cases

There was understandably some debate as to whether this particular bit of writing warranted inclusion in the biblical canon of scripture. Rabbi Akiba was a key figure in the development of the Hebrew canon. While he argued strongly against the inclusion of certain books of the Apocrypha, he advocated for the Song of Songs, calling it the Holy of Holies. Its sanctity was preserved by interpreting it as an allegory for the love between Yahweh and Israel, and later by Christians as the love between Christ and the Church. Interestingly, God is not mentioned once in the entire book. (The only other book of the Bible where God is not mentioned even once is Esther.)

And yet, this book was called the Holiest of Holies. Love is championed here above all else.

I really don’t think we’ve seen the last of Chuck. Someone (I’m sorry, I can’t remember who!) pointed out the rainbow glare that happened in 13x01 when Dean was praying as a sign of God’s promise. (Edit: I’m an idiot. I reblogged the damn thing and it was just a couple posts down. It was @gneisscastiel who made the beautiful post about lens flares and pointed out the rainbow as God’s promise.) The inclusion of Song of Solomon in 13x02, besides being a blatant callout to Dean and Cas, suggests this is also about God and his people. I’d also like to suggest that Song of Solomon is a book that asks us to think broadly about canon. What constitutes canon? How is it formed? And I do mean canon here in the sense not just of biblical canon, but of fandom canon. Who decides what canon is? Is there room in canon for outliers like the Song of Solomon? The answer, as the show has just demonstrated, should be a resounding yes.

Onto the destiel side of things, which I’m sure has been discussed already. Song of Solomon contains some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible. It is full of similes and references to nature (and arguably Eden/Paradise). It is deeply rural and pastoral, with an appreciation of agriculture, nature, and animal life. The multiple reference to sheep in 13x02 were no coincidence, I’m sure. Castiel has long been associated with natural, rural things: flowers, bees, goats, fish, etc. (If the Void is depicted as a garden and Cas has been spending his time under apple trees, I’m going to lose my freaking mind.) Is he being associated with sheep now? As someone who has been led by God, other angels, duty, Dean, Jack… perhaps this is time for Cas to choose a direction for himself. Sheep and lambs in the bible are also frequently marked for sacrifice. They represent symbolic innocence, and in the New Testament, Christ is called the “Lamb of God.” I definitely think Cas is being set up as a Christ-like figure with his death and anticipated resurrection. If 13x02 made anything clear, it’s that Cas is the answer the whatever problem faces Dean, Sam, and Jack alike.

Lamentations might have been a more appropriate choice for the episode. It’s also a book of poetry, but one that evokes pain and loss. But they chose instead to give us the book that celebrates love and hope amidst despair. That’s a choice that feel very deliberate, and makes me cautiously optimistic for Dean and Cas.

In closing, here are some passages from Song of Solomon, and the ones I feel are most closely tied to a destiel narrative.

“You have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes.” (Song of Solomon 4:9)

“Set me a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm…” (Song of Solomon 8:6)

“… For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.” (Song of Solomon 8:6)

“I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not.” (Song of Solomon 3:2)

“My beloved is mine and I am his.” (Song of Solomon 2:16)

#spn season 13 #spn 13x02 #song of songs #song of solomon #destiel #bible #spn meta #?

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restorerjourney · 3 years

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Week 2/7 in Mazatlán

July 13, 2021

Buenos Dias Amigos~

This past week has been amazing and we’ve experienced so much already. Literally everyday we have something to do from 7am till 8pm and it’s a glimpse of what it means when the bible said that we are called to die to ourselves, this sanctification process. We have to surrender our freedom, control, and comfort being here. We agreed as a team to only spend our personal money on Saturdays and Thursday evening and for the rest of the week use only our team’s budget to buy coffee, drinks, or snacks, in the afternoon. We can’t conveniently go to the market and buy what we want, we can’t have our own personal time whenever or wherever we like, and during the day since we don’t have a/c in our room we would have to escape the heat and humidity to the small library or prayer room which is often crowded. The showers are cold, we have to put on strong bug spray and sunscreen daily because we get cooked and eaten alive. We don’t even get cold water to drink here but we are grateful it is unlimited and filtered. But to be honest, I realized, as I entered a local’s home to use the bathroom that their living situation was so much worse. Us dying to ourselves was to be able to relate for the people we say we have come to love. This is a glimpse of what Jesus did for us by humbling himself from glory to a stinky, poor, dirty manger. Every time I have a moment of grumbling and wishing to go back home, I am reminded that this time that I have, this privilege to serve the Mexicans here with my team at a time like this….it is a one time deal. I won’t get it again and I don’t want to look back regretting if I could have done more. I am so thankful for the leaders that we have that encourage us to have the freedom to hear from God. They truly walk in the fear of the Lord and not by their own agenda.

Monday: We met with the Stone Island church plant team and pastor that we are partnering with. We trained them on how to start an Alpha course for the following week. Alpha is a great platform that allows others to know more about Jesus. Imitating Jesus’s ministry while he was on earth, it’s sole purpose is to build relationships and allow open discussion for anyone who is interested with, of course, food. Alpha is free and easy to use and is in multiple different languages so anyone who is interested can start an alpha course with a group of people. In this case for our Stone Island church plant, to help their church grow we are helping jump start it by creating flyers, creating the atmosphere with decoration and food, training, showing the video for each week, and helping to run it for the next 4 weeks. There are 11 weeks total and each week there is a video talking about different topics of who Jesus is and different aspects of the Christian faith. After the Alpha course is finished, the local church could take it from her discipling the people that started this course. This allows the local churches to be empowered and for this ministry.. to be self sustainable even when we leave. It’s exciting because it’s both our first time ever running it but our leaders have seen the wonderful outcome of Alpha and so we have faith this is what God is leading us to do. After training, we split into small groups and did our first street evangelism. I’m not going to lie, I felt like a cult sect and I’ve never done it this intentionally before and it was a humbling and eye opening experience. I had to overcome my fear of man and what they thought of me and remember that God has commanded us all to share the good news and the love of Christ. One of the highlights was when we actually saw a young teen wearing all black with a black mask from a far sitting on a bench. When we were walking towards him, as if he knew he got up and walked to another bench. I felt like he knew and I had a moment of feeling the fear of man rise of what he thinks of me, but we just pushed through and spoke to him. He was also with his sister whom we found out to be Jehovah witnesses. Surprisingly they were open to us talking to them as most Jehovah witnesses are pretty closed off. I felt they were curious and surprised how we didn’t try to shove the gospel down their throat and we were just wanting to develop a relationship and love on them. We even were able to pray for them which was a wonderful experience.

Tuesday: In the morning we were supposed to go to the dump ministry but we ended up only going to the market store that helps supply the food for the poor there. The market owner was this sweet old gentleman who always had a smile on his face even though in his store there were flies everywhere, it was dirty, hot, and smelly which was a humbling experience. It was evident that him and his fellow workers really loved Jesus and they were serving joyfully. In the evening we had ministry night and the praise band asked if our team would like to lead worship. We had so much fun leading the congregation and it was so touching to see how far our team members have come since the beginning of DTS, from broken..to being on fire for Jesus. I led a healing altar call and a girl named Trinity got healed by Jesus from chronic pain in her feet. It was just so amazing to see how we were activating all that we learned in lecture phase to outreach and seeing the fullness of what God wanted to reveal to us.

Wednesday: We did bible distribution and in my group I was with Haya and yoonkyung. We went down the street that we were assigned and all the families we encountered were catholic and not open to the gospel but willing to receive the bible at least. We were able to thankfully pray for them and get to know them with our broken spanish. I just pray and trust that the word of God is powerful enough to impact their lives the moment they read it. One of the highlights there was a guy named Cezar who we saw in his front yard. He is in his early 20s and his prayer request was for his family during this pandemic since two of his relatives passed away from COVID. Haya felt the Lord saying to Cezar that God was near him and Cezar was touched by those words. On a side note, one of our team members was feeling bitterness and frustration since he felt left out and misunderstood.He is the oldest guy in our team and while in Kona there were other staff members around his age that were his community but being here alone with his family was difficult. As we did our team brief we unexpectedly had a powerful time of prayer for healing, vulnerability, honesty, and freedom for some of our team members. It was one of the most unifying moments for our team and was much needed.

Thursday: This day is when we get to choose what kind of ministry we want to volunteer in. The options are skateboard/surf, children’s ministry, soccer ministry, hospital ministry, immigration ministry, Stone Island ministry, and Bible distribution. I wanted to do immigration ministry since it deals with the border issue and as an American I felt more obligated to know more however there wasn’t enough room in the car so I went to the hospital ministry. The hospital ministry used to be where we would go and visit the patients and pray for them. Due to COVID, visitors and family members have to stand outside the hospital gate. Family members of patients would come from all over since there aren’t many hospitals in the country and would sleep in front of the gate waiting for the news of their loved ones. We provided food and drink for the weary travelers, worship music to encourage them, the gospel to those who have no hope, and prayer. The highlight for this ministry was when we met a mexican missionary there who was recovering from COVID whose wife and nephew were in the hospital. As we prayed I felt just such grief and sadness hit me and that’s when I realized this was what Jesus felt for this missionary. He started to sob and we shared encouraging words that we heard from the Lord to him. He was so encouraged and felt convicted that he has been focusing on ministry more than intimacy with the Lord and he felt refreshed. Another highlight was the fact that there were so many mosquitoes there and we were getting eaten alive. I never experienced humidity, fatigue, heat, being tortured by mosquitoes while praying for someone and sharing the gospel and both I and the people that I’ve met were twitching. It is an experience I will never forget and despite us looking crazy slapping our legs and moving around to not get bit, I felt the patient’s families knew that God is real and He is love...otherwise why would we put ourselves through this torture.

Friday: Today was our weekly visit to Stone Island to do street evangelism and I particularly wanted to go to the home that I first visited last week. It was because I heard one of my friends who went to Stone Island last week visited the same family and shared that after we prayed for one of their family members, she got healed. We decided as a team to go visit them. When they saw us they invited us in and we all started to continue to build on that relationship that we started last week. We prayed for the grandpa who experienced a warmth sensation that he has never experienced before and his knees were healed. We prayed for a widow who lost her husband a month ago. We prayed for a woman whose son was in rehab due to a possible drug overdose and her grandson. ( We later find out that her son got out of rehab and is doing better! PTL)

Saturday we had our day of rest and Sunday we went to church on Stone Island and debriefed!

Prayer request:

1) Unity: The enemy is really attacking us through personal issues and it has been affecting our team unity and has been distracting us from focusing on outreach. Please pray for grace, obedience, and the fear of the Lord for all team members so that we would not miss out on what God has for us.

2) For the people of Mazatlan and Mexico: God revealed to us that the field is ripe for harvest and we want to walk in obedience in faith to harvest what God has sown. Would we not let fear of man get in the way from us sharing the gospel out of love. We have started to establish some relationships so please pray that they would be connected with the locals here so that discipleship could be initiated.

3) Health: COVID cases are on the rise, and so is fear here in Mexico. Please pray that we would use God’s wisdom and discernment. Please pray that our team and those whom we have encountered would not get COVID. We’ve been taking turns getting diarrhea, dehydrated, and fatigue, please pray for protection and grace.

Gracias!

Alicia

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saltydogscast · 4 years

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How To Handle Conflict

FB @darinkingdombringer • Insta @darin.eubanks

This blog was originally posted by Darin Eubanks at KingdomBringer.com.

There’s something I’ve learned about myself over the last few years that I’ve been hesitant to admit until very recently. It’s a truth I have only learned through experience. I can’t say I’ve fully accepted it as a part of my identity or if it’s just something I’ve adapted into. I don’t know if it’s something that has produced more positive experiences or if it has generated more pain. But the reality of it’s existence is something I can no longer deny. I understand this could be considered a shocking statement. If we’re friends, this may be a startling revelation. If we used to be friends, you may have experienced this truth first hand. Here it is…

I REALLY LIKE CONFLICT.

How’s that for honesty? It’s true. I’ve come to the simple conclusion that most of the reason I’ve experienced so much relational tension in my life is due to the fact that I like conflict. I’m drawn to it. And on top of that, I’m actually okay with it. The more I really think about, the more I’m convinced that it’s an important quality for a Christian leader to possess. Okay, maybe not every leader needs to “LIKE” conflict, but I do think that it’s imperative that they at least aren’t afraid of it.

Conflict is not a dirty word. At least it shouldn’t be. It has become some sort of big bad wolf within the church and it’s leadership circles. It’s the kind of thing that, when it rears it’s ugly head, sends the boldest of pastors running for the shadows. It has been a daunting chasm that has created impassable division in leadership teams and church communities. It has found itself atop most pastoral leaders’ list of “THINGS TO AVOID”. And while it may seem like a dodged bullet, side-stepping conflict can (and usually will) create more problems than actual relief.

I’m not totally immune to the temptation of eluding conflict. I’m also not so naive as to think that everyone is going to agree with everything I have to say. Not everyone is going to accept what I bring to the table as worthwhile or even good. But I have seen, too often, the affect that making decisions to avoid conflict has had on personal and corporate visions and dreams. I’ve seen leaders promote people and agree to and compromise with, things that don’t line up with the vision and desire that God had put on the their hearts for their respective ministries and missions. All for the sake of evading conflict that may lead to hurt feelings, loss of support and lack of approval. There are a few things that are important for us to understand, if we are going to start handling conflict in a more constructive manner.

If we are going to truly carry ourselves as KINGDOM BRINGERS, we’ll need to start looking at conflict differently.

— Darin Eubanks

First, we need to start seeing conflict not as a hindrance but as an opportunity. We need to stop rejecting it and learn to truly embrace it. If we really want to know if the Holy Spirit is producing Kingdom fruit in our lives, we need to be open to experiencing moments of conflict for that fruit to be revealed. For example, do you really know if patience is something being produced in your life if you never allow your self to be around people or things that test your patience? How can you tell if you’ve truly matured in Kingdom peace if you haven’t walked through some type up relational storm? Conflict comes for all who live and breath, even those of us that follow Christ. And it can be an awesome opportunity for training and growth. In the bible, Proverbs 27:17 mentions that iron sharpens iron. It’s not talking about the reckless clanging of two dull blades . It’s talking about two sharp swords strategically being buffeted against each other, removing every snare and every nick, for the sole purpose of making them even sharper and more effective for their created use.

Secondly, we need to look at how Jesus handled conflict. We can easily understand that he absolutely experienced it. But we need to see that it wasn’t just him sitting back and dealing with the conflict that came to him. As the original KINGDOM BRINGER, Jesus understood the power and authority that he carried. And he had a unique perspective that allowed him to believe he had the opportunity to restore and redeem. He actually looked for things that weren’t in alignment with the Kingdom of God and considered it a privilege to confront them. The Apostle Paul talks about this in Colossians 1:20 – “Through Jesus, God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.” That means that Jesus was on a mission to bring into alignment the things on earth with the glory of Heaven. He confronted sickness, demons, low self-esteem, broken heartedness, pride and even (especially) the religious. He knew that in order for God’s true glory to be revealed in and through THE CHURCH, there would have to be conflict between the freedom of God’s Spirit and the false authority that comes with the structure and rituals of man. Because of his great love for God’s greatest creation, Jesus faced conflict with authority. He didn’t pull punches and he didn’t waste words. He was also determined to teach his followers to do the same.

Lastly, we need to understand that healthy relationships are growing relationships. In order for real growth to take place, there has to be a willingness to learn and be stretched. Conflict provides opportunity for that. I’ve been in relationships where there was a fear of confrontation. A fear of offending each other. True feelings were never discussed and true struggles never got dealt with. Real Kingdom relationships require truth. And honor. And love. They require a pressing in. I’ve also been involved in relationships where conflict was handled intentionally. Where the yearning for greatness was more of a priority than the temporary satisfaction that comes from bypassing a dispute. There may have been pain when truth was spoken. But when there is truth, there is freedom. And when the door for truth is opened and ultimately stepped through, the atmosphere is set for hearts to align and for God’s plan for thriving relationships to be a reality.

I’ve heard it said that conflict leads to intimacy. I haven’t always seen that to be the case, but I haven’t always embraced conflict either. It’s been a fairly new adventure for me. I can honestly say that as I’ve learned to see conflict differently, I’ve found it to be more of a friend than a foe. It’s caused me to understand that not every mole hill is destined to be a mountain. And not every disagreement is a vow of disapproval. It may not seem like the easy road, but it’s the better one. And I do believe that when love is the highest goal, then truth is the path that leads there. And if truth is something you find worthy of seeking, then conflict is a bridge worth crossing. Sometimes it’s the only way to get from one side of the chasm to the other. From one glory to the next. It’s inevitable. It’s coming. Embrace it. And maybe you too, will learn to like it.

Check out out kingdombringer.com for more blogs and podcasts.

As always, feel free to email us at [email protected] Feeling social? Shoot us a text. 316-530-2313

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source https://www.saltydogspodcast.com/blog/how-to-handle-conflict

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dailyaudiobible · 7 years

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10/24/2017 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 44:24-47:7; 2 Timothy 3:1-17; Psalms 94:1-23; Proverbs 26:6-8

Today is the 24th day of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's great to be here with you today and fantastic that we can take the next step forward into and through the adventure that are the scriptures in a year, in community. And, so, let's get to that to a reading from the Names of God Bible this week. And we will continue forward in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 44 verse 24 through 47 verse 7 before taking the next step forward in Paul's second letter to Timothy. But first Jeremiah chapter 44.

Commentary:

Okay. So, this week we’re reading from the Names of God translation, which, like I said yesterday, preserves any reference to God in its original language. And, so, most of the words used for God, we kind of recognize, we've heard them around. But the names of God Bible puts them in some context, like using them in sentences, like, so we can see, like, how they're actually used. And, so, yesterday we looked at, what is it mean when the Bible says I am Yahweh, Tsebaoth, Elohim of Israel, which means I am Yahweh, the Lord of armies or the leader of the heavenly hosts, the God of Israel, and we talked about, in the New Testament, when we see Yeshua we’re just pronouncing Jesus name in its original tongue. So, we come to a couple of other words today. Let's just point them out so that will always know going forward when we hear these names pronounced or in song or, you know, spoken somewhere, we know what they mean. So, we come across as Adonay Yahweh lives. So, Adonay, you probably have mostly heard it Adonai. This translation phonetically writes it out, Adonay, because that is actually more proper Hebrew. Adon – Adonay. And we pronounce it Adonai. But this means the Lord, like the highest, like, the top Lord. And of course, we talked about Yahweh yesterday as being, like, a personal name, a personal name ascribed to God. And, so, we can be, like, so, this is God's name? Like, this is his first name, like, Yahweh is the name? Like haven’t they called…like Jehovah…like what are all these names? Well, in terms of Yahweh, when God speaks through Jeremiah, but it's not just Jeremiah, but we’re in particular talking about Jeremiah because we’re reading through Jeremiah as we’re reading this translation. This is what God calls himself, Yahweh. So, for God to say, as Adonay Yahweh lives, He's essentially saying, as the highest God lives. So, like, as the highest Lord of all, who is God, and whose name is Yahweh lives. That's what where talking about when we’re talking about Adonay Yahweh. And when God refers to himself as Yahweh Elohim, He is a saying, I am the God whose name is Yahweh. Okay, let's look at another one. As I live, declares they Melek whose name is Yahweh Tsebaoth. Well, we’ve already talked about Yahweh Tsebaoth. What is Melek? Melek is the king. So, as I live declares the king whose name is Yahweh, the Lord of armies. Okay, and then we get to the Psalms and we encounter the word El. Which is just root of Elohim, and it just means God, like the highest, the mightiest God, El. And we also encounter, arise oh Shophet of the earth. So, Shophet is one who governs. So, like, the judge, like, arise oh judge of the earth. Okay, so, there’s our Hebrew for the day.

So, let’s talk about second Timothy. So, in this letter, Paul, as he often does, is making some contrasts but we have to understand the context or at least remember, remind ourselves of the context. This is a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. Timothy has been raised up in the faith since youth and has been a protégé and a son in the faith of Paul. So, Paul has mentored Timothy up in ministry and has placed him as the pastor of the church in Ephesus. So, Paul is writing to somebody that he knows well and he's writing to somebody that he trusts and who trusts him and he's writing in the context of a personal letter to a pastor, to someone leading God's people. And when that context becomes apparent, like, what we are actually talking about here, it really opens up. So, Paul tells Timothy, you’ve got to understand, in the last days there are going to be violent periods of time and people will be selfish and they will love money and they'll brag and they'll be arrogant and they'll be abusive with their language and they’ll curse their parents, show no gratitude, have no respect for what is holy, they’ll lack the normal affection that you find in families, and they won’t be willing to make peace with anyone. Like, these are the people that have to be right, even if they're wrong. They have to be right. They’ll be slanderous, they won't have any self-control, they can be brutal, and they can have no love for what is good. They’ll be traders, they'll be reckless and conceited, and it will be pleasure that they’re after more than seeking God. They’ll look good, like, on paper. They’ll appear to have a godly life but they will not let the Holy Spirit change them by His power. You need to avoid those kinds of people. So, we can read that as instructions just for our daily lives, for those kinds of people who are like black holes, sucking the life out of every room they walk into or, you know, people who are two-faced, who are really just playing a game. So, we can take that and go, alright, I know some of those kind of people. But when you bring into the context of a pastor or priest, you begin to understand that this is a dangerous kind of person within a faith community. All kinds of dissension and division, and any number of things can happen. Paul even goes on to talk about how some of these people, these guys, they go into, you know, “minister” to women and the ministry may be a little bit different than studying scripture. It may be more ministry done in the bedroom. And Paul’s just saying, like, none of this is good and none of this will build up the community and you’ve got to understand what you're dealing with here and avoid it, shut it down. And you know, like, those of you are pastors, you’ve got this crystal clear. You know exactly what Paul is talking about, which is interesting, that Paul’s talking about this a couple of thousand years ago in the early church. And these kinds of things continue to go on. And these kinds of behaviors are so destructive inside of the community. And these kinds of people, who are not willing, as Paul would say, to allow God's power to change them. And these are the kinds of people that go from place to place, to place, to place causing harm - the kind of people that have a desire for community but are so broken that they want the whole thing formed around them. Everything centers around their orbit and they can't be wrong. So, Paul is essentially saying, like, this is not healthy, this behavior is not healthy. And when it's habitual and a person isn't pressing in any way, like, isn’t looking for transformation, doesn't even see that they're doing anything wrong, and will not be corrected, will fight even when they know they're wrong, there's a nonstarter here. There's no way this to move forward and it's got to be avoided. And, so, Paul then contrasts that kind of behavior with his own because what he's telling Timothy is, look, this kind of stuff is going to show up from time to time and you just need to be able to spot it early and understand completely what's going on here. And so, when you do spot this kind of stuff you also have a couple of reference points for how things should be. You have my example. So, Paul is saying, you have my example, you have walked with me and lived with me and ministered with me. You have what you’ve seen and you have the Scriptures. So, let's start with a contrast of Paul. Paul’s saying, look, you know my teachings. You know how I live my life. You know what burns inside me as purpose. You have witnessed my faith. You have seen my patients. You have seen my love and you have seen me endure things. And you know about the persecutions and sufferings that happened to me. You were there in Antioch and Iconium and Lystra when things were not going so well and I was getting stoned and thrown out of places. So, you've seen what I've gone through and I endured those things and you watched God rescue me, which is a direct contrast to the kind of behavior that I'm telling you to avoid in your personal life and in the faith community of Ephesus. So, you know that. And you know that I have lived true. And you have also watched me face persecution. You have watched me face opposition. So, you’ve got to know that this kind of comes with the territory. And, so, he sums this thought up by saying, listen, continue in what you have learned and what you have found to be true. You know who your teachers were. So, stick to that and don't listen everything that's going on, all of the discussion that’s going on, stuff that we were talking about yesterday. From infancy, Paul says, Timothy, from your infancy you've known the holy scriptures and they have the power to give you wisdom so that you can navigate all this and so that you be saved through faith in Jesus. Which brings us to Paul's declaration on the value of Scripture, which also happens to be, like, a formative Scripture for what we do here every day, for the Daily Audio Bible for the community that we are. Paul succinctly names why it is that we do what we’re doing together every single day as we journey through the scriptures in a year. Every scripture passage is inspired by God. All of them are useful for teaching, pointing out errors, correcting people, and training them for a life that has God's approval. They equip God's servants so that they are completely prepared to do good things. This is why we’re here. This is why we do what we do, which creates a natural and nice segue into just mentioning, you will have received an additional program in your feed in the app or wherever you’re listening to Daily Audio Bible today. And it's a little fireside chat about this community, about the global campfire that we share every day, and how we got here, and where were going together. So, it's sort of like an all community meeting about how we do what we do and how we need to do it going forward. So, by all means, if possible, don't miss that.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for Your word. We thank You for the richness in it and like we were talking about yesterday, just the adventure of discovery. It's endless - the contexts, the words, the way that they speak to us and go inside of us and transform us as we continue to expand and mature and grow up and You. And, so, we do believe that every scripture passage is inspired by God. And we do believe all of them are useful for teaching and pointing out errors in correcting people and training them for a life that has Your approval. This is what happens to us every day, so, we can bear this out in our own lives, that, yes, Your word has done those things in our lives and You have equipped us so that we’re prepared to do good things. We’re prepared. We may choose otherwise but You have prepared us and continue to transform us through Your word. So, come Holy Spirit. We invite You to continue that work that You have begun in us at the beginning of this year and to see it through all the way to the end of this year as we continue to speak Your word, every single word in the Scriptures this year. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what's going on around here. And it’s the fireside chat is what's going on around here, what I just mentioned, so make sure to check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link on the homepage. Thank you for your partnership. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the more button in the lower right-hand corner or if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Springhill Tennessee 37174.

And of course, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayers and Praise Reports:

Singing – The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him. We fear You Lord and we trust in Your unfailing love. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him. The fear of the Lord is ____ inside. It means friendship with God and eternal life. The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him. We share You O god ___. We find healing within Your forgiving love.

Hello everyone. This is Jay from New Jersey calling, freshly discharged from the hospital as of Tuesday. As a result of just the guilt of everything that I’ve done I had some thoughts of wanting to take my life. So, I went into the hospital there and admitted myself. So, I’m out now and I’m going to catch up on the DAB. I got an email from Mark S. saying that everybody is sending me out love, so, thank you in advance. And let’s just pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the DAB family that just loves me so much and Father I pray that their prayers, as I hear them, will just encourage me and assure me that I’m wanted and I’m needed and I’m loved and that Your will be done in my life. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen. All right. Talk you soon. Love you guys.

Hi family. I haven’t called in a while. This is Kim from California. I do need to ask for your prayers. First, I’d like everyone to pray for everyone that is in California that has had any kind of loss with all the fires. California is on fire right now, as I'm sure everybody knows. Things are getting a little bit better. Some of the fires are contained but a lot of people have lost their homes. They’ve lost loved ones. They’ve lost everything. And a lot of those people are workers in the Napa area and Sonoma area. There's a lot of workers out there that people…everybody thinks that there’s ten million dollar homes out there…well there are but those people have insurance and the people that don't have insurance, they’ve lost everything. So, I am going to ask for your prayers. And it is supposed to rain tomorrow…a little bit. ____. We live in the woods. We are surrounded by woods. There’s a lot of forest out here. So, I also ask for my own personal prayers for my husband and my family and all our neighbors in our little town and everyone that is involved in these fires. We are preparing in case we do have to evacuate. But I just want to ask for your prayers for everyone in California. I pray for rain. Thank you so much for your prayers. I do pray for you all the time. Thank you so much Brian and Jill. Thank you so much for this wonderful forum. God bless you all. Kim from California.

Hi Brian. This is Terry from Alabama. I love this community. I’ve been part of this community since your second year of doing this. I met you with John Eldritch and I need some help. I need prayer. I’m in love with a beautiful woman and I have been addicted to pornography for a long time. I'm in counseling for it and I’m working towards with a prayerful life of getting rid of it. But I need more prayer because of that addiction has resulted in lies that have caused pain to my girlfriend and I want her to have some healing and I want our relationship to have healing. So, please pray out for me and pray for my addiction and pray for my girlfriend and I love you all and I need your prayers. Thank you.

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comebeforegod · 5 years

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Through a New Understanding of Justification by Faith, I Find the Way to the Kingdom of Heaven

By Kemu, United States

Believing in the True God, My Heart Is Filled With Peace and Joy

My family used to be Buddhist, but in 2004, we converted to belief in the Lord Jesus alongside my aunt. At that time, I realized that human beings were made by God, and that humanity’s survival to the present is due to the Lord Jesus’ crucifixion to redeem us, and I felt that the Lord’s love is truly great.

In particular, I was moved when I saw missionaries preach the gospel, visit their brothers and sisters, and help their brothers and sisters in difficulties without asking recompense. So, I was baptized into a Christian. After believing in the Lord, I enjoyed reading the Bible and listening to sermons, and that was when I read the Bible verses, “For with the heart man believes to righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made to salvation” (Romans 10:10). “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). I felt that the Lord gave us so much grace. Merely by believing in the Lord Jesus we could be called righteous, have our sins redeemed, and be raptured up to the kingdom of heaven when the Lord came. These were incredible blessings! I vowed to have faith to the end. No matter what environments I encountered, I would pray, read the Bible, and remain living before God. After that, I seriously read the Bible every day, actively took part in meetings, and my heart was filled with peace, joy, and confidence.

As My Faith Becomes Weak, I Yearn More for the Lord’s Return

I don’t know when it began, but I started to notice that my pastor’s sermons were stale and cliched. Spiritually, I wasn’t receiving provision, and I began to feel weak, not as passionate as when I first started believing in the Lord.

In 2008, after I came to the United States, to find a church with better sermons, I went to the Methodist Church, the Church of Grace, and the Church of Good News, but none of the pastors at any of these churches had anything new to say. Some pastors asked the believers to make offerings at services, saying that if they wanted to receive God’s blessings, they must first give offerings before they could have a share of the kingdom of heaven. This seemed like asking believers to use their money to buy tickets to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is not in accordance with the Lord’s teachings. The pastors on stage spoke eagerly about their previous experiences of obedience to the Lord. They made others feel as though they believed in the Lord very well, that they possessed significant life, and that the Lord loved them very much. They were showing themselves off and exalting themselves to make people worship them. One pastor even required believers to pay $600 a year to become members of the church and qualify to be church workers.

Looking at the churches I had visited, I felt that the church had changed. Pastors either preached the doctrine of making offerings, or their experiences of things that happened long ago. They didn’t testify the words of the Lord, and there was no light at all. Some preachers also found lovers, kept mistresses, and contended for the stage. The believers lived amidst evil trends, competing in what they wore and ate, did not fellowship on spiritual matters, and always talked about where they had traveled, gathered for dinner, and where to buy goods on sale. I found no light when reading the Bible, my faith became weak, and I lived in sin. I was envious when I saw others who had lovers, and my heart was full of evil thoughts. At work, when I saw good items forgotten by customers, my greed made me think of keeping them for myself. When my boss and colleagues said unpleasing words to me, I bore them externally, but I still had ideas of resentment and revenge in my heart. Especially at home, I often argued with my wife over little things, exposing my anger, and as time passed, I even thought of divorce. I often prayed to the Lord, “Lord! I don’t want to quarrel with my wife, but I can’t help myself. Lord! Please forgive my sins and help me escape the bondage of sin.” But after I confessed my sins to the Lord and repented, the same problems would reemerge. I was unable to extricate myself from the state of confession and sinning every day, and this made me especially miserable. I could only console myself by saying, “The Lord is benevolent and merciful, and has bestowed the grace of forgiveness of sins. As long as I believe, I will be called righteous. When the Lord returns, I will be brought up into the kingdom of heaven, and all this pain will pass.”

Meeting a Sister in the Lord and Gaining Much

In January 2018, I came to New York from another state. When I was shopping at the supermarket, I met Sister Cai, who also believed in the Lord. When I talked about the actual situation of the churches, I found that this sister was different from the average believer. She had some insights into the state of the churches, and had a sense of righteousness. She said, “Although the church is chaotic and desolate, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be confused by this fact. We must be wise virgins, soberly await, and listen for the Lord’s voice….” We talked long and much. Later, Sister Cai invited me to come to her house to discuss belief in God with some other brothers and sisters. I thought it was a rare chance to meet brothers and sisters I could talk to, so I happily agreed.

At Sister Cai’s house, I met Sister Wu for the first time. It didn’t feel like meeting a stranger at all, but rather a friend I had known for years. The three of us fellowshiped together, and I felt especially at ease. Sister Wu used Genesis to talk about God’s intentions in creating mankind, the root cause of mankind’s fall, how God did the work of salvation, and the depravity of humanity in the days of Noah, their stubborn refusal to change, and how ultimately God destroyed them with a flood. Afterward, God’s heart ached, so God used a rainbow to make a covenant with Noah, swearing that He would no longer destroy the world with a flood. I thought to myself, “This sister uses the Bible to speak so much light, so many things of which I’ve never heard. I truly didn’t come in vain today!” I said, “Sister, fellowship like this makes me feel God’s goodness. Before I only knew that the rainbow was the sign of God’s covenant with mankind after the flood. I didn’t know that after the flood, God showed sadness at the loss of mankind. Learning this is very comforting for me.” Sister Wu’s eyes were filled with tears as she smiled and nodded.

If We Are Called Righteous Because We Believe, Will We Be Lifted Up to the Kingdom of Heaven?

Next, we talked about the desolate state of the church. Sister Wu continued, “The sermons pastors preach today provide no light, they fight one another for power and status in churches, and believers live in sin, follow evil worldly trends, and lack God’s discipline. The churches have become desolate. Brother, what problem do you think this desolation in the churches proves?” I shook my head and invited Sister Wu to tell us her opinion. She said, “Actually, this shows that God has already begun the work of a new era. God’s temple in Jerusalem became desolate because the Pharisees did not obey God’s laws and commandments, and regarded the temple as a market for the sale of cattle, sheep, and pigeons, and also because the Lord Jesus began new work. In the same way, today’s churches are desolate because the pastors and elders have deviated from the Lord’s path, leading the believers down the secular road and causing the Holy Spirit to cease His work, and also because the Lord has returned to do the new work of judgment. Let’s read 1 Peter 4:17: ‘For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God,’ and Revelation 14:6–7: ‘And I saw another angel fly in the middle of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come.’ From the prophecies in these Bible verses, we can see that God will do a new stage of work in the last days, the work of judgment. Our sins must undergo God’s judgment and we must be purified before we can enter the kingdom of heaven.”

In confusion I said, “How could there be new work? The Bible says, ‘For with the heart man believes to righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made to salvation’ (Romans 10:10). We believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths, so we are called righteous because we believe in God. When the Lord comes, we will be lifted up into the kingdom of heaven. Even though we are sinful, the Bible says, ‘And such were some of you: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6:11). Since we are already called righteous because we believe, our sins have been washed away, and our spirits are sanctified. Doesn’t that mean we can enter the kingdom of heaven? Why does God still need to do the work of judgment and purification? God couldn’t possibly return to work again!”

Sister Wu smiled and said, “Brother, did the Lord Jesus ever say that since we are called righteous because we believe, we can enter the kingdom of heaven?” I shook my head and listened intently to her fellowship.

As she flipped through the Bible, found a verse, and handed it to me, she said, “We can’t evaluate what kind of person can enter the kingdom of heaven based on the words of man, we need to do so based on God’s words. The Lord Jesus said: ‘Not every one that said to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of My Father which is in heaven’ (Matthew 7:21). ‘Be you holy; for I am holy’ (1 Peter 1:16). From God’s words we can be certain that only those who do God’s will and who are purified can enter the kingdom of heaven. Although we are forgiven for our sins, the Lord Jesus has not redeemed our sinful natures. Controlled by our sinful natures, we often betray the Lord’s words. We are not at all people who do God’s will. The Lord is holy, yet we live trapped in a cycle of sinning and confessing. How could we enter the kingdom of heaven like this?”

I nodded, contemplating, while Sister Wu paused. She smiled and said, “Let’s read two more passages, and you’ll understand more clearly. God’s words say: ‘At the time Jesus’ work was the redemption of all mankind. The sins of all who believed in Him were forgiven; as long as you believed in Him, He would redeem you; if you believed in Him, you were no longer a sinner, you were relieved of your sins. This is what it meant to be saved, and to be justified by faith. Yet in those who believed, there remained that which was rebellious and opposed God, and which still had to be slowly removed. Salvation did not mean man had been completely gained by Jesus, but that man was no longer of sin, that he had been forgiven his sins: Provided you believed, you would never more be of sin.’ ‘For all that man may have been redeemed and forgiven of his sins, it can only be considered as God not remembering the transgressions of man and not treating man in accordance with his transgressions. However, when man, who lives in a body of flesh, has not been set free from sin, he can only continue to sin, endlessly revealing his corrupt satanic disposition. This is the life that man leads, an endless cycle of sinning and being forgiven. The majority of men sin in the day only to confess in the evening. This way, even if the sin offering is forever effective for man, it will not be able to save man from sin. Only half the work of salvation has been completed, for man still has a corrupt disposition.’”

Sister Wu fellowshiped, “From these two passages, we can see that although we have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus, and that our sins are forgiven, this only means that God forgives our transgressions and doesn’t treat us according to our past transgressions. However, we live in fleshly bodies, and haven’t escaped our sinfulness, which means we can only continue to sin and constantly expose our corrupt satanic dispositions, which is the reason for our continual sinning and seeking forgiveness. So even if the offering for the redemption of our sins is forever effective, it cannot grant us salvation from sin, because we still have corrupt dispositions. From this, we see that our sins are forgiven because the Lord Jesus was crucified to redeem us from sin, and the Lord does not see us as sinners, so we can be called righteous, but the satanic root of sin has taken hold deep in our souls. No matter how many years we believe in the Lord, and no matter whether we are pastors, elders, or ordinary brothers and sisters, we still live trapped in the cycle of sinning and confession, what is exposed in us is still arrogance, selfishness, deceit, greed, evil, and other such corrupt satanic dispositions. Consider that many pastors and elders interpret the Bible for the believers every day, yet they do not practice the Lord’s words, often show off and try to make others admire them, and they fight for power and interest in the church and take the church’s wealth for themselves. There are still many believers who lust for worldly things, just like unbelievers, and they even seek out lovers, keep mistresses, and gamble. Better-behaved brothers and sisters may appear to do good deeds on the outside, and may not beat or scold people, but when others impact their interests, they are still capable of hating people, and of blaming and betraying God when disasters happen to them. These manifestations exist in us to different degrees. Do you think God would ever allow people like us, who are filled with satanic dispositions, to enter the kingdom of heaven? Impossible. In the last days, God has again come in incarnate flesh based on the needs of corrupt mankind to express the truth to judge and purify us, which allows us to escape from the bondage of sin and be purified. If we only believe in the Lord Jesus, but do not accept God’s work of judgment, even if we confess our sins and repent, and the offering to redeem our sins is always effective for us, our corrupt satanic dispositions will remain unresolved, and we could believe for a thousand years yet never be purified.”

After listening to my sister’s words and fellowship, I contemplated on the words, “When man, who lives in a body of flesh, has not been set free from sin, he can only continue to sin, endlessly revealing his corrupt satanic disposition. This is the life that man leads, an endless cycle of sinning and being forgiven.” These words were very true. Believers in the Lord lived trapped in a cycle of confessing and sinning, and even if we don’t want to sin, we do so involuntarily. I applied these words myself. I knew that the Lord detests fornication, but when I saw other people with their arms around their lovers as they explored the mountains or caroused at the beach, I felt envy and admiration in my heart. When I had conflicts with my colleagues, my heart was full of hate. At home, I wanted to have the final say in everything, and I couldn’t get along with my wife. … I saw that I really hadn’t resolved my sinful nature, and that I couldn’t escape the bondage of sin, so I said, “Sister, I understand what you mean. I used to think that if I believe in the Lord Jesus and my sins are forgiven, I can be called righteous and enter the kingdom of heaven, but now I know that was merely based on my own notions and imagination, and that it doesn’t match the facts. Although the Lord Jesus forgives our sins, my sinful nature is still within me, and I still live in a state of sinning and confessing every day. We really do need to undergo the returned God’s work of judgment and purification. Only through this can we be purified and enter the kingdom of heaven. Sister, how does God judge and purify people in the last days? Can you fellowship more on this subject?”

How God Judges and Purifies Mankind

Sister Wu nodded and happily answered, “Thanks be to God! Brother, you understand perfectly. As to how God judges and purifies people, the Lord Jesus said, ‘And if any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejects Me, and receives not My words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day’ (John 12:47–48). The Lord tells us that in the last days, God judges people by expressing the truth. Another passage explains it very clearly. ‘In the last days, Christ uses a variety of truths to teach man, expose the essence of man, and dissect his words and deeds. These words comprise various truths, such as man’s duty, how man should obey God, how man should be loyal to God, how man ought to live out the normal humanity, as well as the wisdom and the disposition of God, and so on. These words are all directed at the essence of man and his corrupt disposition. In particular, those words that expose how man spurns God are spoken in regard to how man is an embodiment of Satan and an enemy force against God. In undertaking His work of judgment, God does not simply make clear the nature of man with just a few words; He exposes, deals with, and prunes it over the long term. These methods of exposure, dealing, and pruning cannot be substituted with ordinary words, but with the truth that man does not possess at all. Only methods of this kind are deemed judgment; only through judgment of this kind can man be subdued and thoroughly convinced into submission to God, and moreover gain true knowledge of God. What the work of judgment brings about is man’s understanding of the true face of God and the truth about his own rebelliousness. The work of judgment allows man to gain much understanding of the will of God, of the purpose of God’s work, and of the mysteries that are incomprehensible to him. It also allows man to recognize and know his corrupt substance and the roots of his corruption, as well as to discover the ugliness of man. These effects are all brought about by the work of judgment, for the substance of this work is actually the work of opening up the truth, the way, and the life of God to all those who have faith in Him. This work is the work of judgment done by God.’”

After she finished reading, Sister Wu fellowshiped, “Christ in the last days expresses all aspects of the truth required to fully save mankind according to their needs. In these words we can find revelations of our corrupt essence, knowledge of God, and revelations regarding the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. From God’s words we understand aspects of the truth regarding what it is to do God’s will, what kind of people God saves, what kind of people are eliminated, what the future destination of mankind is, how to escape our satanic dispositions and be fully saved. Also, in God’s words of judgment which reveal the corrupt essence of mankind, we see that God observes the depths of people’s hearts, and knows our corruption thoroughly. God’s words reveal all variety of expressions of corruption, and completely expose our corrupt, filthy thoughts and notions. Only then do we see that we have been corrupted very deeply by Satan, and that we are capable of exposing our satanic dispositions like arrogance, selfishness, and deceitfulness at any time and place. At the same time, in the revelations in God’s words of judgment, we see that God detests all the varieties of people’s evil deeds, and even condemns and curses them, and we realize that God’s righteous disposition brooks no offense. This forces us to reflect on and come to know our own corruption, which produces true repentance, thereby making us willing to accept the judgment and chastisement of God’s words, determined to live according to God’s requirements, and determined to pursue dispositional change. In addition, based on our corrupt dispositions, God also arranges all kinds of environments to discipline, chastise, prune, deal with, try, and refine us, which makes us more aware of our own corrupt essences and God. As we come to understand the truth, our understanding of God gradually deepens, and our practice of the truth and obedience to God grows, so that, without realizing it, we can escape our sin and be purified. This effect can never be achieved by those who have not accepted God’s work in the last days. So, only through experiencing God’s judgment and chastisement can we know God’s righteous disposition, which brooks no offense, and only then are hearts which fear God produced within us, through which we can fear God, shun evil, and live by God’s words.”

After I heard Sister Wu’s fellowship, I had some understanding of God’s work of judgment, and I said, “So, God uses the expression of the truth to judge and purify us, to enable us to know our own sins and God’s righteous disposition from the revelations in God’s words, only after which can we learn to loathe ourselves and produce fear of God in our hearts, which in turn allows us to achieve true repentance and change. Although I’ve never experienced God’s work of judgment and chastisement, there are prophecies in Revelation in the Bible that God will come again to do the further work of judgment, and I believe the prophecies of the Lord Jesus will definitely be fulfilled.” When she heard me say that, she nodded appreciatively.

Reunited With the Lord, Bidding My Days of Searching Farewell

Before I realized it, we had been talking for several hours, and the sky was already dark. I curiously asked Sister Wu, “Who wrote all the things you read to us today? They were wonderful, full of light, and I’ve never heard any of them. I don’t think these are things an ordinary person could say.”

Sister Wu answered happily, “Thanks be to God! The words I read to you today certainly weren’t spoken by an ordinary person. These are the utterances of God. God has already appeared to man to do His work, and those who can hear and understand His voice are blessed….” I was incredibly happy and excited when I heard that these were the utterances of God. I had never imagined that I would have the honor to see God’s words. I was truly fortunate! I wanted to hear more, but it was late, so we agreed to meet the next day to continue our fellowship.

Over the next few days, through Sister Wu’s fellowship on God’s words, I came to understand aspects of the truth regarding the incarnation, the difference between the work of man and the work of God, how to discern the true and false ways, the truth of God’s name, and so on. I couldn’t help but be amazed: That there was light in Sister Wu’s fellowship was because Almighty God’s words had already explained these truths very clearly! God’s words were the spring that supplied the living water of life, and spiritually, I felt very provided for.

After that, I read God’s words every day and often participated in church life with my brothers and sisters in The Church of Almighty God. After a period of investigating, I determined that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus. So, I joined The Church of Almighty God. Today, my life in The Church of Almighty God is like being part of a large, loving family. I often fellowship on God’s words with my brothers and sisters, I enjoy an endless supply of God’s ample provision, and my days of searching are at an end. Thanks be to God! All the glory be to Almighty God!

#Lord Jesus #God’s word #believe in God #be saved #the gospel

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kabane52 · 7 years

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It’s Not Your Church’s Fault, Actually

http://faithit.com/12-reasons-millennials-over-church-sam-…/

If the author walked into a homeless shelter once in his life, he could talk to the little old ladies whom he disdains so much- the little old ladies who are there every week but never talk about it because they're not thinking of themselves or getting brownie points. Yes, it's true that millennials are more likely than others to not attend church. But it's also true that millennials have a larger number of sexual partners than other people- perhaps this has something to do with their lack of church attendance? But I guess that's just me "blaming the culture."

Obviously, everybody has a subtly different experience. But I've spent enough time talking to millennials to gather some trends. I once saw a millennial declare that Jesus was dead within two weeks of discovering the JEDP theory. It also turns out that this individual had recently discovered conjugal relations. What, am I actually supposed to believe that this was an existential struggle over Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch? I don't buy that anymore than I buy the idea that the pastor stepping out on his wife actually had an existential crisis about the reality of God based on a 30 second Sam Harris clip.

The author complains mightily about how his churches aren't helping the poor:

"Let’s clock the number of hours the average church attender spends in “church-type” activities. Bible studies, meetings, groups, social functions, book clubs, planning meetings, talking about building community, discussing a new mission statement…

Now let’s clock the number of hours spent serving the least of these. Oooooo, awkward."

First, this really isn't my experience at all with conservative churches of any confession. Wherever I've lived I've found that all sorts of conservative churches regularly host and contribute to meals and homes for the homeless and poor, as well as regular collections which are given to the poor. But second, it's quite ironic how the author is upset about the allocation of funds, yet apparently wants funds dedicated to the following:

1. "Create regular outlets (forums, surveys, meetings) to discover the needs of young adults both inside AND outside the church."

2. "Hire a young adults pastor who has the desire and skill-set to connect with millennials."

3. "Create and train a team of CONNECT people whose purpose is to seek out the outliers on Sunday mornings or during other events. Explicitly teach people these skills as they do not come naturally to most of the population."

4. "Create a database of adult mentors and young adults looking for someone to walk with them."

5. "Create a young adults program that transitions high school youth through late adulthood rather than abandoning them in their time of greatest need."

Curious, isn't it? It doesn't sound like the author is most concerned about allocating resources towards the poor. Instead, it looks like the author would like the churches to spend money on him. As it usually is, concern for the poor is a cover for something else- and this is a very ancient practice- just take a look at Matthew 26:7-11.

These various points are in varying degrees of tension with one another, and their presence in a single article is only intelligible when one understands that this is really just about blaming everybody but himself. For example:

-On one hand, this author is "tired of you blaming the culture" but on the other hand, he thinks the churches aren't "talking about controversial issues" enough. Well, what do you think controversy means, mate? It means that it gets certain people riled up. In the modern age, it happens when churches and pastors condemn the cultural zeitgeist which has overtaken parts of the West. The Scriptures are absolutely full of words "blaming the culture" in which they were written. When the culture is taking a path careening towards self-annihilation, perhaps it ought to be blamed, at least in part? But this all becomes understandable when you realize that by "controversial issues", this young man means "condemn people who aren't me."

-He wants churches to "intentionally train young adults in how to lead a godly life" but also needs "the church to tell us we are enough, exactly the way you are." Well, Sparky, if you need training to lead a godly life, you aren't enough, exactly the way you are.

-He claims churches aren't invested enough in helping the poor, but on the other hand, complains that "we’re tapped incessantly to help out." Pick one. Do you want to help out? Or are you saying that you want others to do the work you are asked to do? Guess what: we're young people. The way for us to become wise is to close our mouth and use our hands to serve others. Opening our mouths to shout at others to serve more to lighten the burden on us is not the way.

-He wants churches to "stop talking about us" but also wants churches "consistently speaking truth into every [issue relevant to millennials, particularly sex.]" This is intelligible when you realize that he just means "tell me what I already believe and affirm me in that belief."

I could keep going, but I'd be writing for hours. The long and short of it is this:

The author wants the churches to encourage him and those like him to "chase our big crazy dreams." By contrast, St. Paul writes that Christians ought to "aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands." This is the precise opposite of chasing "big, crazy dreams." Christ calls us to die to our big crazy dreams that we might live to another, to Him who died and was raised from death.

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dcnativegal · 7 years

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Church shopping, Part 3

In The Color Purple, the character Shug tells Celie, …”have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church in brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”

I remind myself of this as I climb the five steps to the little clapboard church in Paisley most Sundays. The other motto I think of most often is from Alcoholics Anonymous: Take what you like and leave the rest.

This morning, feeling under the weather but nevertheless committed to going the 3 blocks to Paisley Community Church, it was snowing big fluffy flakes. I walked carefully in my big boots and still I went DOWN with a thud about halfway there. Under the puffy snow was a clear layer of ice on the asphalt. Ow. I breathed deep and got myself up, and in 10 feet I went down again. OW. My left knee was unhappy and I already was feeling rough. I debated whether to just lie there and call Valerie to pick me up. But then I thought, by the time she got here, someone would have noticed me and offered to help me up. Which, suddenly, was a comforting thought. If not the first then the second would for sure respond to a bright blue-coated figure lying in the snow. I decided to get my ass up, walk over to the crusty part of the street and walk ever so slowly the rest of the way. I could hear the bell ring, and I knew I had a few minutes. In I went, and sat heavily in the back row where I always sit. (I sit and crochet during the sermon to keep me focused and to work off the dissonance in my head as I listen to evangelical style preaching. It really helps. )

I was glad I made it. My friend, the rancher’s wife, was in the back row and she greeted me warmly. I was glad to be there so I could offer up a prayer request for Valerie’s son, Jer, who was helping someone who’d slid off the road when another car slid off the road and hit the car and him. Thank goodness its only his knee. But he’s a ranch hand. He’ll be off his leg at least a month. I also learned that the rancher himself has a rather serious condition, so I can pray for him, too, along with the assembled. And lastly I was grateful for one metaphor in the sermon. The guy pastor, who flings around bible verses like Valerie flings hay to the cows, mentioned the very strong very old very tall trees on the coast of California, the redwoods, who do not have taproots. Apparently, their roots travel over hundreds of feet, and grasp onto the roots of other redwoods. And when a big wind off the pacific coast comes whooshing, they hold onto each other.

Kinda like the millions of women who gathered all over the world to protest Trump and to energize for peace.

Nice. Very nice.

Of the hymns, one was lovely. The others… not to my taste. I’m trying to expand my taste, I really am. But I’m also emailing hymns to our pastors, hymns like this one, which the guy pastor can play on his guitar, with the words displayed on the wall, next to the portrait of Jesus as a tall foreheaded Northern European dude: (I’m pretty sure he was a shorter darker Jewish dude)

Be thou my vision, o Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that though art

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light…

(Irish traditional hymn, the words dating from 6th century or 8th century depending on the scholar)

I’ve decided that this is my church community. Valerie and I have chosen to live in Paisley, so imbed myself in Paisley life is the way I want to live. I don’t want to drive an hour to hang out with the Methodists or Presbyterians in Lakeview, while the tiny Episcopal Church looks for a new vicar. What I will do is hit up an Episcopal Church whenever I’m in a big enough city to find one. It was a great comfort to worship in Reno NV after dropping off the kids at the airport in November. I hope to attend the one in Klamath Falls next Sunday because we’ll be there. Otherwise, it’s PCC (Paisley Community Church.)

I have never attended a church where I know for a fact that people there “disagree with homosexuality” but still proclaim they can “love” me. One of the members, younger than me, actually said that to me. A small group of us were sitting sideways in the pews chatting after a service. My friend the rancher’s wife decided to have a brief discussion with the copastors who are married. Something about the rancorous quality of civil discourse in the presidential campaign that we were all suffering through. (It had to be October.) About six of us, and the pastors, talked about the candidates, and the pastors diplomatically did not reveal their preference, although half of us were pro Trump and half pro Hillary, near as I could tell. At some point, the rancher’s wife encouraged me to talk, or perhaps I just felt her support, and so I said something to the effect of, I don’t really feel safe here, as an out lesbian, but I’m attending, and I’m giving this church a chance. One of the straight women said she felt very supported as a single mother, and that she has a gay brother that she does not fear for. (She’s a trump supporter.) Another said she too has a gay brother (she’s a progressive. In fact, today, she said to me quietly, “great day on Saturday, wasn’t it?” referring to the millions of women and men globally protesting trump. Yes, it was indeed.)

One of the men there, who is a son of a very conservative pair of Paisley residents, said to me, I disagree with homosexuality but I can love you as a sister in Christ. I looked at him, hiding my cringe at the words “disagree” and “homosexuality”. But I thanked him anyway. At least he wasn’t condemning me to hell at the top of his lungs. I did NOT say that God made me this way, there is nothing with which to agree or disagree, and no one LGBT uses the word homosexuality.

Basically I said, I’m here with y’all, giving you the benefit of the doubt, and coming in all humility, though not because my gayness is a sin, but that I, too, am broken, and seek wholeness in community. To share God. That seemed to be cool. Okay then.

I think I’ll skip the service with special guests who are missionaries to Africa. I’m afraid my blood pressure will soar…

I have found additional sources of church in the home of one Toni Bailie. She is a massage therapist and a Soul Collage facilitator. I’d never heard of Soul Collage, and now I participate in it once a month upon a Saturday after a delicious potluck meal. It’s a form of art therapy, kind of. Toni scatters cut out pictures by the hundreds, all over her living room and dining room and kitchen. After a meditation together on a theme, we wander about and gather images that speak to us. Then we construct cards with glue and scissors. When we’re done, we go around the circle and explain that “I am the one that… “ trying to share why these images spoke to us.

On New Years Eve, we gathered for Soul Collage and came up with mandalas for the new year. Mine is shared here. My wish is to be centered in my body, unselfconscious, healthy, joyfully eating and moving. I am the monkey at the center of an abundance of bananas, looking pleased. Turns out that, here I am, week 4 of the new year, on a clear liquid diet because of medication-induced pancreatitis. I may be forced into strict eating from now on, and hopefully it will become a joyful thing. At the moment, I am hungrier than I’ve ever felt, going into my 4th day of broth and watered down juice. That deep rumbling and gurgling you hear is my tummy.

Toni gathered a group of us on the day of the Women’s March, and we 4 marched around her double wide with drums. I felt silly for about 2 seconds, as I held and shook my rattles, following her. But then it felt sacred and right. We were marching along with millions of other women on the planet in that moment. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at Soul Collage cards and gathering up our courage, commitment, creativity, and strength for the years ahead.

Toni has a real gift of gathering women into what I call church. The other thing I do at Toni’s house is share what I’ve written for this blog, and listen to other women’s writings, twice a month in a gathering called the Easy Writers. Amazing, smart, tough, hilarious, experienced women. The average age might be 70, as there is a writer in her 90s. I am in the presence of crones, of wise grandmother’s. Twice a month. It is a sacrament: an outward and visible sign of an inward invisible grace. The grace of women’s wisdom.

So church doesn’t look like I thought it would. But I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be, for Paisley, Lake County, Oregon, at this time. I deeply miss my old church community, with its music from all parts of the world, with people committed to justice in their lives and in their professions, with a grand sanctuary that now has a labyrinth etched in the concrete floor that is so old and polished it looks like marble.

But I carry church within me and recognize it when it appears and I expand into it whether it’s in a tiny evangelical congregation or a group of sage-burning hippy grandmothers. Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Alice Walker:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”

#worship #church #crones #womenswisdom #soulcollage

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mychaptersarebeautiful · 7 years

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The Other World - Chapter 2

After I turned sixteen, I didn’t fear the dark or really hear things; it began to subside slowly from that point on. Many of the real people in the life were no longer there for various reasons, and new people came in. My “friends”, or whatever they were, remained. They became quiet as I began to attend our new church and got involved. It seemed like my life was getting on track for the first time… at least, it seemed like it. I began working and I wasn’t having the problems anymore. I don’t think I cut for months, maybe even as much as a year. I wasn’t even afraid of the dark anymore. Yes, it seemed like things were better now, and I could really live.

I graduated from high school (which was not really a goal when I was a teenager) and actually wanted to go to college. It sounds like a good, wholesome plan for the future, doesn’t it? I didn’t actually enroll--I kept working where I was, and it seemed like the place for me. It made me too busy to think much about other things, which was good and bad, in a sense. I wasn’t focused very much on how I felt, but then it took out a lot of my life. Though there was never a logical reason for it, I felt absolutely useless.

Anytime the pressure began to build up, there was only one way to release it: cutting. Not terribly deep cuts, but deep enough to bleed and sting, and enough to forget what I was worried about. Now there was a new reason to feel guilty.

In the Bible, there's a story about a demon possessed man who lived in a cemetery. He was always naked and cut himself with sharp rocks, and I'd heard it often enough to relate cutting to being a bad thing, so that make things so much worse. Was I heading down that road? I'd had urges to hurt myself in public, but not enough to act on it, and I've never had the impulse to go naked. I barely had enough confidence to wear a strapless dress.

Judging by the name of this chapter, things got better, didn't they? Yes, I started to feel better, but something was wrong about it. I couldn't put my finger on it for the longest time. Then I met my first, soon-to-be boyfriend (we’ll call him “Ex”).

I've never been so in love in my entire life (considering I'd never dated before and the only crushes I had were on celebrities, it was pretty understandable). I had a very good and close guy friend at the time, too, who was also good friends with Ex, so we hung out together a lot. It opened a new and exciting door of feeling confident. He was very charming, sweet, and gave me butterflies any time I thought of him, let alone saw him. In my eyes, he was the best thing that ever happened to me. All my friends and family couldn't stand him, and I couldn’t understand that for the longest time.

His true colors began to show after the longest time, and I found out from our mutual friend that he openly discussed his lustful thoughts and intentions, which is when things began to turn. His charm was slowly replaced by long conversations about his past, and his longing to be happy. The only way he could really be happy, I found out, was if he got what he wanted.

We never kissed or got that close, but he would hold my hand when we were alone and I finally gave him permission to kiss it, which he did with every chance he had. To this day, an alarm still goes off in the back of my mind when I think of it. It was just the beginning. Finally, when we were alone in the sanctuary of our church, Ex grabbed me and kissed me. My first kiss, and it was as if I got raped. Every time I remembered it, my stomach would churn, and it would pop up very often (thanks to my dear friend, Guilt).

A close, older friend of mine who was also a confidant of his had a conversation with me one day that Ex was upset that I pushed our relationship. The more I dwelled on it, the more I blamed myself. From then on, the handsome man I fell in love with became a creepy stranger. His compliments made my skin crawl. His presence made me feel like I was around a serial killer. When we were out, he asked me to be his girlfriend.

“We wanna take this slow, don't we?” All our conversations went this way. “Let me think about it before I give you an answer.”

“If you have to think about it, then you probably don't really love me,” he replied, with tears gathering in his eyes. I felt Anxiety tap on my shoulder.

“If you don't say ‘yes’,” he whispered, “you're letting him get away. Think about it: you won't get an opportunity like this again. Besides, you know in you heart he’s the one.”

I couldn't argue with that as I stared at the former love of my life. If I let him go, there was no turning back; I wouldn't be loved anymore, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. So my stupid, twenty-year-old gave in. The moment I got home, my sister was very upset and in the middle of a rant.

“I hate him and I wish he would get out of my life!”

It's that feeling you get when you leave home and forgot to put the milk away, or left school without your textbook; Regret smirked at me, raising his eyebrows. I knew what that meant. “Congratulations on your relationship.”

Indeed. Congratulations on entering another trap, you idiot. Once again, you’re letting yourself play the victim, and someone take advantage of you. You’re stuck now, and there’s no way out of this. It was difficult to look at myself in the mirror from then on (which wasn’t abnormal in itself). And there was Self-Hatred standing in the background with her arms crossed, that trademark smirk on her face.

“Really?” she asked me, leaning against the wall. “Did you really expect that to go well. There’s no way you’re going to be able to get yourself out of this one.”

I know God gave me the strength to be able to break up with Ex before it went any further. In that moment, standing out in that parking lot with him, I had never felt so free. It was like rain after a bloody battle, where the big, heavy drops wash the crimson from the pavement and down the curb. Or like chains had been taken off of me, as I looked back into his heartbroken eyes. Our mutual friend later told me he’d cried. Another one of my ex’s friends told me he went to her house and cried, hoping we could get back together.

What seemed to be a horrible situation turned into a life lesson; I’d no longer worried about being in a relationship, or wondered if any man could love me. Knowing the kind of love Ex operated in, it made me hesitant to even think in that direction. Still, I didn’t feel like myself for months after that, and it was uncomfortable. It was as if I’d been placed in new skin that was a little too big or a little too small, or something like that. Something just wasn’t right.

A month or two passed, and I stopped dwelling on that fateful day where he’d kissed me in the church. Every now and then he showed up in my dreams as an adversary, desperate to take his revenge. Guilt was very subtle in reminding me, just like an ongoing ring in my ear: quiet, continuous, and maddening. Ex showed up at church again at some point, but people who cared about me made sure I was never alone… until one Bible study.

I was a drummer for our worship team, and played once a week. Though I wasn’t great at it, I began to really get the hang of it and enjoy it more and more. It was almost like being an artist, but instead of paintbrushes, I had drumsticks. Instead of hanging my “masterpiece” up in a museum, I was able to give my talent back to go. It makes my heart flutter to think of it that way, and my breath catches in my throat. Every time I would go up and sit at the set, Worthlessness would stand at the side of the stage (the altar) and shake her head in disapproval. You’re not good enough to be up there. You’re not enough a good drummer.

But that’s when my new friend would show up. He wouldn’t force his way into conversations; he would ask permission before putting in his opinion or stating a fact. I liked him much better than Guilt and his crew… his name was Hope.

“You’re going to do just fine,” he assured me, making Worthlessness fade into the background.

“What if I mess up?” I asked. “My hands shake and they sweat. What if I drop my sticks again?”

“Everyone here knows you’re beginning, and they’re not here to judge you, anyway. You’re here to help them worship. You’re giving a gift, and not only is it the best you have, but it’s the best you are. That’s saying a lot.”

It was like pure oxygen being pumped into my lungs, as I felt tears sting at my eyes. Hope had introduced me to one of his other friends, and her name was Worth. She stood by him, her hands behind her back as she smiled warmly at me.

“Hope is right,” she said. “You have so much beautiful talent that God gave you, and all you have to do is let it shine. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be you.”

I nodded in excitement as the music began to play, and did the best I could. She was right: it wasn’t perfect, but it was me. And people had been so encouraging every time I came off the altar. It was a very small congregation, so one time the pastor made a comment at the pulpit about how well I did, and I felt very special, sitting with my new friends.

But on this night, as we began to start, Anxiety tapped my shoulder. “Look over there,” he whispered, pointing toward the back of the church. My stomach churned when I saw Ex back there. “He’s going to talk to you, you know. He’ll be watching you all this time.”

“Wait,” said Hope. “Will you listen to me?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“You’re only up here for one reason: you’re playing unto the Lord. Let him sit back there with his thoughts and intentions, but you have a job to do. Don’t let him take that away, too.” I nodded, and Anxiety faded away.

After the study, I made sure I was busy putting some of the pieces of the drumset away. Ex loomed about, going in and out of the sanctuary, and I made sure some of the kids (they were fun to hang out with) stayed with me at all times. I carried some of the cymbals into the side office, and turned around when I heard someone clear their throat, facing him. No one was around; neither group of friends were there, either.

“Hello,” he said nervously. He had gained some weight, I realized, and had longer hair.

“Hi,” I said slowly.

“How are you?”

Please don’t do this, I mentally begged. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Good. Let me help you with that.”

“No, no, I got it.”

“Really, I can help--” As he came closer, I dropped the cymbals with a loud crash, and both of us cringed.

“No,” I muttered again, trying to keep from getting angry at him. My heart was pounding violently. Where were the kids? “I got them.”

“...okay. Is it okay if we talk?”

“Yes, but we have to talk out there. Hang on.” I put my things away and walked with him to where we were in plain view. The pastor was nearby.

“You look good,” he said after a while. He’d always said that to me. “You lost weight.”

“Actually, I think I gained.” I didn’t want to to him that me and my guy friend had been jogging daily while he was away, but I just couldn’t stand his compliments anymore. They made me physically ill.

“Oh. Well, you look thinner. It’s good. And your hair…”

I absentmindedly touched my once-brown hair, which I had recently bleached. “Yeah, it’s a change.”

“I like it. Look, uh… I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I hurt you, because I never wanted to do that. And I feel bad.”

“No, don’t feel bad. We both had a part in this, and it’s nobody’s fault. I’m sorry, too, and I hope you can forgive me.”

“I do.”

“I forgive you, too. We can move on, now.”

“If there’s anything you wanna talk about…” He didn’t say anything else. I knew that meant he wasn’t finished with our relationship.

“Not now. I really don’t want to talk about anything for a while. Okay?”

“...okay.”

“I’m not mad at you, I just… I need to figure things out.”

“Okay. I still love you, you know.”

All of my muscles tensed. “I did love you. Before.” With that, I went on my way, and he went on his.

We usually stayed for a while, talking to people and cleaning up. I was walking back inside after getting something from our car, but Ex was standing by the church door. Feeling it would be awkward if I didn’t say anything, I stopped in the doorway, leaning out to speak to him

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked; it was autumn by this time.

“No, I’m fine. Look, anytime you wanna talk…”

“I’m not ready for that.” With that, I went back inside, and that was the last time I talked to him.

Time went by, and the platonic relationship with my guy friend (we’ll call him “Guy”) strengthened. We had agreed that we were friends, even as far as brother and sister, and nothing more. I had begun to struggle with Depression again, but worse than before. Guy was a good confidant when I needed to confess my feelings, but he didn’t do much about them. He was newly Born Again, so he would just speak encouraging things, reminding me that I didn’t have to condemn myself and he didn’t see me as a bad person. I stopped believing him after a while.

We started to drift away gradually, as he missed hanging out with his old friends in his old life. Eventually, he stopped answering me altogether, and I later found out he was in the hospital after an accident. I blamed myself. In that time, I began to cut my arm more frequently than I ever had in my life. It seemed to be getting worse and worse by the day. They were deep, but just enough to sting.

Before he stopped talking to me, I was at work with the kids. One of the little girls had sore gums and needed salt water, but she was afraid of putting it in her mouth. I took a sip to show her it wasn’t bad, and did some research. It turns out that consuming large amounts of salt water in a short period of time will dehydrate the human body, faster than a human could replenish it with freshwater (that is, if enough salt is consumed). I wasn’t very suicidal at the time, but I realized that this was something I could do.

I had thought about taking a bunch of pills, but I had read there was no death guarantee, so that was out of the question. I didn’t have access to a gun, I couldn’t hang myself, I couldn’t bleed out… there didn’t seem to be a way out until that moment. It took a lot of contemplating and planning, but I was going to do it. I was finally going to do it, this thing that I had dreamed about for so many years.

I remember having nightmares starting in the fifth grade about having to wake up from the dream, but the only way out was to kill myself. It was the only way, I was convinced. It had been a long time since I’d had one, but it made sense.

I went home and took the carton of salt, hiding it in my room for a few days. After building up the “courage” (if you can call it that) to write the note on my phone and take off the passcode, I sat in the bathroom with a sixteen ounce mug the salt, and the fading cuts on my arm. A few days before, I decided I was done cutting, and if I ever did it again… that would be the last thing I ever did. In life. So I poured over a cup’s worth of salt into the mug and ran the hot water. This was it. I was finally doing it.

Dissolving the salt, I added some cold water to cool it down and took as much in one gulp as possible before swallowing. My throat burned and my stomach jerked, but I got it down. I was desperate to vomit it up immediately, but there was no turning back. I got another gulp down, trembling uncontrollably at the bitter taste, and one more. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I felt completely alone. No one knew what I was doing, and they wouldn’t until after I was dead. Would they figure it out? Would they think to find the note on my phone? It didn’t matter anymore.

Suddenly, the room got unbearably hot, and I became dizzy. I had to throw up. But then it dawned on me:

I’m dying.

#hope #depression #anxiety #suicide #guilt #self harm #cutting #there's still hope #don't give up #beautiful #strong

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whitegirlrevert · 3 years

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Conversion from Catholicism to Islam – a response

How have you found the conversion from Catholic to Islam. Lots of things in common but I’m sure there are also some pretty big differences.

*note this is just my experience*

At the end of the day religion is just a way to connect with the divine nature. I don’t see it as black or white. The more you get into any religion the more it starts to bother you because you recognize the inconsistencies between faith and practice.

I believe that you can be a believer in something higher or not. It’s something that’s personal. If at the end of the day, religion doesn’t make you a better person and help you benefit humankind then what is the point? That being said, there are many religious people who do benefit immensely from practicing their faith.

…

Use of reasoning.

What I appreciated with Islam is this notion of logic and rationality being used as an explanation for every single tiny thing. My understanding of this has now developed further and I know that even the ways that we construct religious rules and practice can shift depending on the social underpinnings of the initial “law-makers”. Growing up catholic, (and that may just be my specific upbringing) there were no explanations for anything. Everyone just took their faith as something certain without questioning it. This also still happens among muslims. I think it comes from a fear of questioning, based on a slippery slope concept. Perhaps questioning may lead you to leave the faith, and thus, it must be inspired by the “evil spirit”.

I am almost certain that if I was to continue searching with Catholicism, that I would have found a more intellectual basis for it. But there were just too many aspects of belief that were integral to the faith, and yet I fundamentally disagreed with, that it just didn’t make sense to identify as catholic anymore. It takes a lot of courage to reject something that you were brought up with. Multiple layers of disidentification occur before you can ultimately distance yourself.

Similar to use of reasoning, is having explanations for traditions.

Mass, or the specific traditions involved, was never explained to me. Even if I asked, no one seemed to know. In Islam, however potentially flawed, there is a specific reason for everything, and it’s not merely “well this is how people have been doing it for awhile”. I was never a fan of confession and I appreciate the Islamic principle that humans cannot intercede on your behalf. A similarity among reverts to Islam is their rejection of the concept of a trinity due to their inability to conceptualize it. We were always taught that this is the “truth”, but truth is always a construct. If you don’t have a trinity, then a lot of things about Christianity don’t come together for you anymore. I am not saying that it’s incorrect, just that it’s actually quite a difficult and contested concept, and yet, it has become simplified as if you’re just supposed to take such a theological concept at face value.

Specific rights for women.

If you go back to the New Testament and the Old Testament there aren’t really any explicit rights that women get. So when people question me, why can’t Islam operate how christians treat women. First of all, which christian women? Where do they live? There are christian women in parts of Africa who cohabit in polygynous relationships and have no explicit rights. In these regions, muslim women in polygynous relationships actually report higher marital satisfaction in comparison.

Comparative statements may be true in the sense that muslims should be treating women a different way, but often we mix Islam with muslims. The legal rights that women receive in Islam are very clearly stipulated in the religious text. The same does not occur in the bible. Instead, it’s actually external practice that have shaped the lives of Christian women. Do I think that the notion of Christ’s love and salvation plays a role in this? Absolutely! But we nonetheless have countless examples where women are not treated well in Christian communities. We cannot only look at how much fabric is on a woman’s body and deduce from that what the level of her “oppression” is.

Female religious leaders.

I grew up catholic so that’s a pretty specific ubringing. Many other churches allow women to be much more involved in the church, either as priests/ministers/pastors or other leadership roles. Arguably, the catholic church does not provide these positions. The same can be said of mosques – a woman can’t lead prayer in front of men. They can in front of women, but there are pretty much no opportunities made for women to lead female-led prayer either. It’s just not a priority. There are often religious conferences where they invite a token female scholar or worse, no female scholar to the panel. Sometimes I want to yell, “hey! We exist.”

Also, the struggle to find recitation of God’s word in Arabic by a female is real. It’s ridiculous. If you are a man, and think a woman’s voice will distract you then pick a male reciter! It is very simple. I think the concept of a woman’s voice being sexualized is absolute bullshit personally, and unsupported by both the qur’an and sunnah. This view is something that I’ve always found absolutely shocking, particularly because this is not a christian practice.

Judgement.

I don’t know many people that are catholic and actually know about their religion. Instead, I was exposed to individuals who went to church on Sunday, walked straight out, and made racist comments. My experience of the muslim community, however flawed, is that even if they judge (under the cover of haram policing; aka. “leading you to the truth”) they know that judging other people, backbiting, and slander is not permissible in Islam. This value is something that is fortunately often discussed at religious gatherings, and to me, it represents perhaps more authentic practice. For example, I was once coming back from a religious conference in a car with a sister who literally stopped the discussion in the back of her vehicle about how the religious speaker’s voice could have been improved. That to me, is living out your faith. I had never experienced something like that with christians. One thing that the two religious groups have in common is judging each other’s faiths without truly knowing much about them. Muslims definitely know more about Christianity than christians know about Islam. What they lack, however, is an ability to try to see Christian belief from a Christian perspective.

Connection to the divine.

1. Prayer.

I used to think, “wow, praying 5 times per day on a set schedule. How tedious!” But I think it’s honestly been my greatest blessings since converting. The prayer itself is actually more of worship mixed in with what we would normally view as “prayer” from a Christian lens. The rhythmicity of it all allows it to be a rather mindful exercise. The “call” to prayer is a reminder to prioritize and of the meaning of the word “Islam” itself (to submit to the will of God). We don’t pray when it’s convenient for us, but rather, because we have devotion to something greater. Obviously, this concept was new for me.

2. Jesus culture.

Jesus culture is what I would define as trying to make religion digestible for youth by making the concept of Jesus into something cool, i.e. “Jesus as pop star”. Growing up Catholic this didn’t really happen, so maybe my commentary is directed to other forms of Christianity. As muslims, we still respect and believe in Jesus as a prophet, but we don’t raise this respect to the level of worship. I find it telling that often when people want to insult muslims and Islam they refer to muslims as Muhmmad worshipers or refer to “our God” as Muhammad (astf). It reveals an identification of a human figure with God. Again, prophets are important to our relationship with God, but ultimately, they are not God. This is a concept called shirk in arabic, and it means equating something with God. This is the ultimate sin in Islam.

That being said, I think Jesus culture assists believers in feeling love toward God. Since their God has become so personified, it’s much easier to feel an emotion like love toward another human being than this higher concept of God. Growing up Christian, you just take Jesus as the son of God/also God as something normal. It’s fine if you want to believe that, but to deny that this concept is not problematic theologically, even from a Jewish perspective, is unfortunate.

3. Arabic.

In Catholocism/Christianity, you don’t need to know a certain language. Learning how to pray (the worship ritual prayers) required me to learn those prayers in arabic. But it really isn’t too different from how one learns to pray Our Father. These words are words that are pre-established for us to get certain meaning across. We can do our own prayers using whatever words or language afterwards, but Our Father is kind of a set prayer. The use of Our Father is very similar to the use of Al Fatihah (the first chapter/first few lines of the quran). Eventually, you pick up on terms and use them without thinking. Part of using arabic is because you can convey concepts that you couldn’t adequately describe by translating them into English. Now I am even learning to read the quran in arabic, which is something that I once assumed was impossible.

4. Ritual

I grew up Catholic so I am used to ritual. Nevertheless, I am not going to lie and say that conversion to another faith that employs ritual is easy. It isn’t. Particularly, if you’re trying to hide this new faith from your family members. All I can say is that youtube is a godsend and focusing on intention rather than correctness is very helpful. I have been thinking about creating how-to guides for new reverts and hosting them here, so hopefully that will be beneficial to followers.

5. Gender division

This has been very upsetting and unsettling for me. I understand the reasoning behind the arguments for it but I still find it hard to accept. Growing up and not being exposed to this culturally has a significant impact on how “normal” you find this. For example, certain synagogues also separate by gender in a similar manner. On the one hand, I appreciate being able to focus without distractions. On the other hand, I have extreme hatred for mosques that have dividers for the women constructed in such a way that does not allow me to see the interior of the building, or perhaps worse, is the equivalent of a tool shed. My ideal space is like a gurdwarah, where the genders are separate but side by side. I know a lot of people argue that more men tend to come to the mosque, therefore, they need more space. But I also wonder whether more women would come to the mosque if there was a comfortable space for them. This absolutely isn’t an issue at every mosque, but it’s enough of a problem that there is even a blog created–Side Entrance–that documents the various women’s mosque entrances and spaces across the world. If I don’t feel comfortable in a religious space, I simply don’t go there again. I don’t need to spend my time feeling angry rather than in peace.

#convert #revert #islam #muslim #catholic #conversion

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