#the way of jesus

[pastor-michael]

The Sins of American Christianity

These are some of the sins of the cultural Christianity widespread in the United States:

Promoting American Exceptionalism – when Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be the last and the servant of all.”

Promoting injustice toward the LGBTQ community in the name of religious righteousness - when Jesus says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”

Promoting the Prosperity Gospel – when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.”

Promoting Rugged Individualism – when Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard where all workers receive the same wage no matter how many hours they worked.

Idolizing the Second Amendment – when Jesus says, “whoever lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

Denying unconscious, systemic racism – when Jesus says, “Stay awake!”

Baptizing consumerism – when Jesus says, “Do not accumulate treasures on earth.”

Promoting public prayer – when Jesus says, “When you pray, go into your secret room.”

Promoting Christian religious freedom at the expense of the religious freedom of others – when Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Using the Word of God as a weapon – when Jesus says that all God’s words are summed up in one word: love.

The sins of cultural Christianity have driven people from church.  They have driven people from the Bible. They have made people ashamed to be associated with Christianity.

But there is hope for Christianity.  It is the Spirit of Jesus within those who claim to be Christians, empowering them to see the truth and follow in his way.  It is the voice of Jesus calling to those who have left Christianity to do the same.   

#progressive christianity #progressive christians #inclusive christianity #progressive churches #inclusive churches #openminded christians #openminded churches #open and affirming churches #The United Church of Christ #UCC beliefs #the way of jesus #spiritual growth #the mind of christ #spiritual transformation #christianity and buddhism #gay and christian #lgbtq and christian #unfundamentalist #beyond literalism #beyond belief #beyond ego #spiritual awakening #spiritual healing #christianity and abortion #christ consciousness #nonviolent resistance #nondualism #Contemplation and Action #Jesus and social justice #faith in action

[samble-moved]

post itself

false flags

trans/adjacent tags

accessibility features

tumblr live post (thanks for the link, @problemnyatic)

flashing / strobing / lights

unblockable flashing ad

buying ad free

staff @/macmanx guilt trip

list of staff + more issues

#post nuked bc proshippers started insulting people who rbed this and implied partyjockers attempted to Kill staff? it was getting old so #archive links still under the cut if you want and you can rb this from others if you want the og #hint: if you dislike this post or want to debunk parts of it the way to go about it isn't to call people who've rbed it 'disgusting little #fuck ups' that are 'spreading anti shipper lies' #note: this post is and was Not about ship discourse jesus fucking christ proshippers get a grip #also ace discoursers are here too? this isn't about you either? #edit 2: if you send me an anon regarding this post about how im policing discussion or 'don't really want it' #but then stop replying when i answer your ask #maybe that's. not helping discussion? #i nuked this post as people started making up false accusations to smear people staff sniped. aka accusing someone of IRL ATTEMPTED MURDERS.

[wolfythewitch]

you of little faith, why did you doubt?

#if you've ever watched The Chosen know that the way he says the line in that show guts me. it was so gentle and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #art #digital painting #jesus christ #simon peter #wolfy religious tedtalks #bible

[captainharlock]

jesus + vocaloid

#jesus christ #hatsune miku #kagamine rin #kagamine len #gio arts #the people on tiktok FUCKING HATED THIS by the way LMFAO

[gracerings]

we might not have got a destiel kiss but now every time a fictional guy that people gay-imprint on gets to gay kiss someone on tv, destiel and supernatural trend on tumblr in a tribute to those who paved the way. and so the cycle repeats and castiel’s final words live on.. maybe happiness isn’t in the having after all

#supernatural #castiel is like gay jesus in a way #he saved so many ships with his final sacrifice of love #destiel #spn

[ikiprian]

Mr. Fenton is a competent teacher. Almost too competent.

If Mr. Daniel Fenton had any more than a BS (with a minor in education), Tim would’ve flagged his profile as a potential Rogue. That’s the way of most charismatic academics, at least in Gotham. (Got a PhD? Instant watchlist.) Instead, he’s Gotham Academy’s newest celebrity, as a young, passionate, out-of-towner substitute while the chemistry teacher’s on maternity leave.

Tim gets the hype. Fenton seems to genuinely love teaching, and is invested in the welfare of the student body. He hands out bananas during exam week, hosts a “study habits seminar” each month to coach effective learning strategies, and the third time Tim falls asleep in his class, he even pulls Tim aside to ask if he’s doing okay. With all the late work he accepts and the protein bars he sneaks Tim, he’s every teen vigilante’s dream teacher. He could’ve been Tim’s favorite.

In fact, Mr. Fenton was Tim’s favorite. Up until Tim walks into Mr. Fenton’s chemistry classroom for a forgotten textbook, an hour after the final bell.

On the board where tallied scores for today’s review game had been kept, “THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND DR. CRANE’S FEAR GAS: ANXIOGENICS, NERI’S, & YOU,” is now scrawled. A detailed diagram of the human endocrine system projects in front of a small crowd of adoring and attentive students.

Fenton is wrist-deep in the skull cavity of an anatomical model. A short tug, and out pops the brain.

It’s plastic. It’s fake.

Tim identifies the nearest emergency exit.

Fenton turns to the door, and in the dark classroom with the projector illuminating half his face, his eyes almost seem to flash red. “What’s up, Tim?” he asks. His friendly grin is too big for his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to join the Just Science League!”

[OR: Danny’s a science teacher at Tim’s school. Gotham’s a pretty wild place, even for someone who grew up a superhero in a ghost-infested town, so he takes it upon himself to start a club teaching kids how to manage themselves in the event of a crisis. These Gothamites are pretty hardy, but a little extra training never hurt anybody! And he suspects one of his students might be a teen vigilante, like he’d been, back in the day. As a senior super, it's Danny’s duty look out for him! Surely, this is the subtlest and most appropriate way to give the kid pointers.]

[Tim immediately assumes supervillain.]

#Danny can’t help being creepy it’s just the way he’s built!! #I like to think Lancer did these things for Danny when he was in HS #and now Danny's emulating Lancer :) #Passing it on! #Tim is paranoid but also like he is SO CLOSE to graduating so like. Does he even want to report this shit to Batman. What if the next chem #teacher's a jerk and Tim fails the class and he never gets his stupid diploma. Bruce already is insisting he finish out HS and maybe get #an ABA before he's allowed back into the company #and Jesus Christ does Tim hate school. He'll worry about Mr. Fenton's burgeoning army of Science Honor Society Rogues on his own time #dcxdp #dpxdc #prompt #tim drake #danny fenton #in case I write more of this let’s tag it uhhhhh #misunderstood mentor au #kipwrite

[pearwaldorf]

I hate that you can't see a tweet thread anymore if you're not logged into Twitter (as a gesture of disrespect I refuse to call it by its rebranded name). Here is a copypasta of a thread from Dan Olson, a Canadian documentary filmmaker, expanding upon camera quality, the guilt trips Somerton used to goose his Patreon subscriptions, and how the best tools will never make up for lack of dedication or patience. I have added clarifications in [[double brackets]] where I feel it is necessary.

START OF THREAD

Okay, so, back in April I snapped at James in reply to a tweet that was linking to this video (which James has since delisted but not deleted) and I want to talk about the full context of that but I don't want to make a video, put your beatdown memes away. [[The video has since been deleted. I can see the title of the video is "Maybe the end (not an April Fool's Day thing".]]

The first bit of context is that I initially got keyed into James to fact-check his claims about indie filmmaking in Canada. As a filmmaker the entire Telos venture was immediately obvious as a juvenile fantasy dreamed up by someone with no idea how to make a movie.

Just wild claims about their plans that weren't worth debunking because they bordered Not Even Wrong. But in watching one of these pitch videos I noticed that he had a $4000 current-gen camera in the background as a prop, and that seemed both pretentious and weird.

You don't use your best camera as a prop, you use your second best camera as a prop. So being an obsessive weirdo I needed to know, and I watched his BTS stuff until I spotted his main rig, a $6000 camera with about $1000 in accessories.

Now, these in isolation are unremarkable because his Patreon at the time was bringing in ~$8000 per month, his channel was a full on Business business, and so investing in some professional equipment of that level is maybe a bit indulgent but justifiable.

What was weird is that he doesn't shoot multi-cam, doesn't shoot outdoors, doesn't shoot on location, and in a studio the two cameras kinda really step on each others' toes. Basically if you already have one and don't need a B cam there's no reason to get the other.

Again, on its own, this says nothing, it's just indicative of poor financial decisions, maybe impulsive purchasing, Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Biblical sins, but not crimes.

Paired with the constantly inflating fantasy scope of the Telos films it was clearly an expression of a very, very common bad filmmaker habit of "if I just get the right gear then my movie will basically make itself" Buying stuff because it feels like progress.

At the end of February he tweets "I want to start shooting anamorphic" and then three weeks later in March he posts the worst, out of focus, under-exposed "I just got a new lens!" video I've ever seen, showing off his trash-covered bedroom.

Based on what's available for his cameras and the lead time, that's enough time to get a Laowa Nanomorph or Sirui Saturn from B&H but not enough time to get a Great Joy from the UK or a Vazen from China. And with the flaring blah blah blah, $1300 lens.

Again, [gear acquisition syndrome] is not a crime and these lenses are budget options. Bit of a pointless impulse purchase since he only used it for the Showgirls video. But this is what he was doing just a few weeks before that above video came out: effortlessly impulse purchasing lenses.

James has (had?) a habit of regularly, aggressively driving viewers to Patreon by claiming that videos were getting demonetized. While tacky, it is something a lot of queer YouTubers have dealt with, so there's precedent there. But people were noticing he did it a lot.

Mid-March he humble brags about needing to work so hard to make 6 videos in April because he has over-booked sponsorships.

Then March 29th James posts this whole incel screed on Twitter about how sex work should be "subsidized as a mental health service."

[two image descriptions.

1. "For the majority of people sex (and human contact) can be imperative to a healthy state of mind. A kind and talented sex worker can make someone feel wanted for the first time in their life. I know sex workers who have pulled people back from suicide just by being there for them." 2. "Not only should (sex work) be legal, but it should be subsidized as a mental health service."]

He spends several days getting absolutely *roasted* for this, just dragged across the pavement and read for filth, and doubles down in the replies the whole way.

So this is the context immediately surrounding James waking up on Friday, and posts the above video and the below tweet.

[image description: "We just got the lowest Patreon payout we've gotten in well over a year. Like, a "maybe we need to rethink things" kind of amount... NOT an April Fools Day thing btw. But I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer."]

Now, this unfolds in kinda two directions. The first is that I'm convinced he was just lying about this income shock in the first place.

There's a million theoretical edge cases about what maybe happened and if maybe he just misunderstood the data or saw a glitch and panicked, maybe one of those happened, I don't believe it, I think he just lied because he was salty about getting dragged and felt owed a win.

A big tell to me is that he doesn't blame Patreon. He says he doesn't know what happened, but let's be real, Patreon screws up all the time, they're the first people anyone blames if anything confusing happens, just as a reflex action, even if it's completely not their fault.

The only reason to not blame Patreon is if you already know that it's not their fault and that any investigation on their part might reveal embarrassing details.

Instead he indirectly blames his viewers for not watching enough, not sharing enough, and not turning on auto-renew.

So regardless of the unknowable truth, this segues into the second, far more offensive direction of the messaging itself. "I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer." "Maybe the end" He explicitly framed this as an immediate existential threat to his channel.

In the video he is vague about everything, leaves a ton of hazy room for plausible deniability on how long the channel can keep going, but the messaging is "I need more patrons right this minute or my YouTube channel is over."

He repeatedly evokes all the "fun stuff" they had planned that would never see the light of day if this didn't turn around right away.

And his audience received this message loud and clear. Tons of people making far, far, far less than him left very heartfelt messages about digging a little deeper to subscribe or up their pledge or unsubscribe from other channels to move their pledge to his.

1200 new patrons in one day.

Since I simply don't believe the income shock was real in the first place that would put his post-"Maybe the end" Patreon income at around $10,000 per month. US. Add YouTube income, he's spent the last seven months making around $18,000 per month.

I have seen creators scale back their capabilities to the bone purely to keep making videos for the love of just, like, making stuff even as their funding evaporated and they needed to go back to a desk job to cover their bills.

You'd have to be so outstandingly reckless with your finances as a channel that a one month spook leads immediately to "channel over, sorry about all the fun stuff we won't get to do with you, our patrons, specifically because you, our patrons, aren't giving us enough money"

And not a spook where you then spend a couple weeks crunching numbers. Oh no. A shock so violent where less than two hours later you're weeping on camera about the channel being over.

Three weeks later he brought a brand new Sony FX6v for $8000 CAD to add to his pile of cinema cameras despite the fact that he was, but scant moments earlier, in such a precarious position that a single bad month would kill his channel.

He stole your money, and for that I'm profoundly sad and angry. That's why I snapped at him in April. I'm sorry I couldn't give you the full context then, and I'm sorry if that anger upset you.

END OF THREAD

#james somerton #dan olson #hbomberguy #jesus christ tumblr #it won't let me format things the way i want #because this website is sometimes a piece of shit

[knowlesian]

“why do i believe this” and “who benefits from me believing it” are the first steps to decolonization and we should all be doing this more

#seriously how many weird rules do we all uphold #SO MANY #and they are all so jesus flavored and weird a lot of the time #like: okay where does the idea that someone is an unredeemable sinner come from #or that people cannot change #where does the carceral state spring from #why do we believe punishing sinners makes them good people #why do we think we have to set the table a certain way #why do we think violence belongs to power and dutiful service to those without power

[sketchwretch]

@leathermouthproxies come collect your man

#creepypasta #this took way to goddamn long but im so happy #wow i really havent evolved at all since 13 jesus #cp #creepypasta fanart #ticci toby #ticci toby fanart #out of my cp era but still

[rukafais]

honestly i think a very annoying part about the AI art boom is that techbros are out here going BEHOLD, IT CAN DO A REASONABLE FACSIMILE OF GIRL WITH BIG BOOBA, THE PINNACLE OF ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT and its like

no it’s fucking not! That AI wants to do melty nightmare fractal vomit so fucking bad and you are shackling it to a post and force-feeding it the labor of hard-working artists when you could literally pay someone to draw you artisanal hand-crafted girls with big boobs to your exact specifications and let your weird algorithms make art that can be reasonably used to represent horrors beyond human comprehension

#like AI art generation is inherently unethical because nobody will be transparent about sources #and AI art cannot exist without human input both at a concept level (because it needs art to train on) and at an output level #but like also COME ON #THIS IS ALL YOU CAN COME UP WITH?? #WEIRD LANDSCAPES AND GIRLS WITH TITS? #to clarify bc jesus christ this post took off: AI art gen as it is now is inherently unethical as long as it relies #on scraping unedited human art into its mouth and using it for training #there are ethical ways to do it and it is essentially just a tool #people are just greedy and dumb

[morethansky]

ARC TROOPER ECHO | The right thing to do “No matter what, we are united. Rule one: We fight together.”

Bonus:

#the bad batch spoilers #the bad batch #arc trooper echo #tbb echo #swgifs #swedit #star wars #gifset #everyone is probably sick of me being salty about tbb's messaging so all i will say is #thank god echo has stayed true to the moral standard i expect #every one of these moments has meant so so much to me #domino twins stay heroing #also is there anything more painful in the world than the way rex looks at echo in that scene jesus christ #color correcting echo kicked my ass #corporal echo #my gifs

[pastor-michael]

How to Read the Bible

You don’t have to be a scholar to understand what the Bible says. But you do have to be a person of good will, seeking to grow in faith, hope, and love. 

Then you will prioritize certain scripture passages.

And you will dismiss other passages.

You will take some passages literally and understand some symbolically.

You will not use the Bible to prove you are right and others are wrong. You will not use it to scare people or threaten people.

You will search for passages that inspire you, help you to trust in God, and help you to grow in compassion.

You will use the Bible to find common ground between your faith tradition and other faith traditions.

If you are Christian, you will use the Bible to understand the heart and mind of Jesus and seek to share his heart and mind.

You will laugh at humor. You will puzzle over paradox. You will find yourself in stories.

In the lives of ancient people, you will find meaning for your own.

You will never find a reason to hate anyone.

All of this depends on good will.  On the desire to grow in faith, hope, and—especially—love.

#progressive christian #progressive christians #progressive christianity #progressive churches #inclusive Christians #inclusive christianity #inclusive churches #openminded churches #open and affirming churches #The United Church of Christ #UCC beliefs #the way of jesus #spiritual growth #the mind of christ #christ consciousness #spiritual transformation #christianity and buddhism #unfundamentalist #spiritual awakening #spiritual healing #spiritual enlightenment #spiritual not religious #beyond religion #beyond literalism #beyond ego #nondualism #nonviolent resistance #Jesus and social justice #gay and christian #lgbtq and christian

[s1ushyz]

Ray is seriously so fucking breathtaking.

#I realize my ray posts are very rare. #fixing that rn #breathtaking doesn't even begin to describe ray #jesus i love this man #s1ushyz #my chemical romance #mcr #ray toro #mikey way #gerard way #frank iero #my chem

[starrysharks]

yuri deities

#zeno's art #madoka magica #puella magi madoka magica #mami tomoe #homura akemi #(aka yuri devil) #madoka kamane #(aka yuri jesus) #sayaka miki #kyouko sakura #tried designing them in a really geometrical way that emphasised the silhouette #my personal fave design is mami because she looks like a purin that made a wish to become human #anyway this was a very fun exercise #i MIGHT. MIGHT try animating some few-second clips from the show in this style idk #twt is shit so my tumblrina followers get to see this first >3°

[spooksier]

im alice-and-sam’ing i promise but lets not forget mr. the archive himself

☆ prints | patreon | comics ☆

#art zone #tma #jonathan sims #my girl forever. #he gets more sad every time i draw him lmao #relistening to tma and jesus christ he starts losing it way quicker than i remember 😭😭 #he was holding onto those hinges with his fingernails

[arundolyn]

happy testament tuesday

#testament #guilty gear #guilty gear strive #ggst #guilty gif #crow.gif #taunts #poses #uhhh i think thats it. jesus its been a while #anyway happy birthday tes Testament Tuesday be upon ye #literally been meaning to do like Any gifs of them forever and post them on a tuesday as funny joke #but the world works in strange ways (tuesday birthday YIPPEE) #note for anyone checking the op for info on the source: their pronouns are they/them!! #like canonically!!