So my step sister and dad have both asked for money repeatedly from my husband and I. We have gave when we could and a few times we could not. 2 weeks ago I loaned my step sister some money and this morning she is asking to borrow more. Neither have repaid us back. Her, her boyfriend and my dad all live together. My dad and her do not work and her boyfriend did but recently quit his job about a month ago. She tells me she will repay me when she gets a job but honestly, I’m not sure if I should loan her the money this time as I feel we’re being taken advantage of. My heart is so conflicted. I know a few versus that speak on this but with this context, how would you handle the situation? Thought? Opinions? Thank you!

I became an atheist when I was 12. I asked a question at my quite extreme (anti-gay, anti-science) church about evolution, specifically if God created all species at the time of creation, how does The Bible explain speciation? They told me we don't ask questions like that here, and I lost all respect for them. That said, I always believed Jesus existed, his life was heroic, and his ideas were commendable. Specifically ideas like:

the golden rule
loving your enemies
being slow to anger, quick to listen, slow to speak,
harboring no anger for your neighbor and instead love them and hope they find peace.
serve others without expecting anything in return
mercy, forgiveness, peacemaking
anti-greed (eye of a needle), pro-contentment, pro-charity, pro-service
inspire others to virtue by living a righteous life
clothe yourself with humility and sacrifice for others

These are all wonderful prescripts that if everyone believed and acted out, the world would be undoubtedly better. You may be wondering why I am an atheist then? While I adore the moral prescriptive claims of Jesus, I remain unconvinced by the factual claims of The Bible, especially the more literal interpretations like I mentioned above. But even the base claim of the existence of the Christian God is something that I cannot genuinely believe no matter how much I pray and beg God for understanding.

Discounting the lack of any spiritual experience leading my atheistic belief, the main reason for this is the lack of physical evidence for any supernatural phenomena, and large amounts of evidence that support a natural scientific interpretation of reality. I understand that is a little unfair since science is designed to build theories based on physical evidence, and religion is primarily designed to answer questions of meaning and morals, but I cannot help but to believe that which I am most convinced.

This might sound like a trivial question but let me articulate motivation here.

I was thinking about how it’s sort of interesting that analogizing God to a human parent is something believers and non-believers are happy to do.

Believers will use this idea to praise God, or to demonstrate his relationship with free will (“you can teach children, but they may not listen.”)

Non-believers will use this idea to criticize God, even to frame him as abusive in some way, or simply a failed parent.

Inevitably connected to all this are questions about whether all humans are God’s children, or just some. And whether the love from human parents or from God should be conditional or unconditional.

So, rephrasing my title question:

Where is it appropriate to compare God to a human parent and where does this comparison break down?

Thank you!

I think this question needs a bit of explanation so ill start with a brief overview of what i mean before stating my sources.

In the old testament, there are numerous controversial passages that support immoral things like slavery, genocide, and misogyny. I’ll go into each of these in detail and explain what i believe and infer from the bible.

In many of the old testament stories, women are treated like objects being sold in exchange for something without any say in the matter. You can see how this is problematic when these stories are deemed a righteous act.

In genesis 19:8 a man gives away his two daughters (specifically mentioned to be virgins) to be raped by a town in order to save two angels.

Similarly, in judges 19:24-29, a man offers his virgin daughters and wife to a group of angry men to save another man he had just met. The group of angry men then rape his wife all night to death. Yeah.

In Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Gods instructions are that if a man raped a virgin woman, the man has to pay her father money and marry her until the day he dies. Do you see any issues with this?

Ill move on to the genocides and disregard for foreign races in the bible. I think anyone thats read the old testament can agree with me that theres a lot of killing involved.

In deuteronomy 20:10-15, he instructs his people to enslave any tribe or city apart from theirs that is peaceful. If they aren’t peaceful, Gods people have the right to “besiege” it and use their children and wives however they’d like. I think we can all tell what that means.

In joshua 8:24-26, the author talks about how Gods people went to a town called Ai and killed all 12,000 of its people, man and woman, soldier and non-combatant. Innocent lives were lost among the 12,000, yet no one bats an eye because they were supposedly “evil”.

If you don’t believe me do read through the verses and let me know if im missing something

Before any of you say that those people were evil and Gods people were delivering justice, i want you to really take a look at any war in history and tell me honestly: is one side ever completely evil? Were all russian people evil? Were all the japanese people evil? You get my point.

Lastly and the most briefly, the OT has God commanding slaves to obey their masters or commanding masters on how to take care of slaves.

I wont go too into detail on these because its rather self explanatory (exodus 21:2-11, leviticus 25:44-46)

If god was all knowing, why did he entertain and even instruct the idea of slavery?

Im also aware that some verses could be argued to be misinterpreted because the ancient manuscripts had this greek or latin word that meant “this” instead of “that” but that doesn’t invalidate all of these texts, and most of these mistranslations are up for debate with different scholars and interpretations. maybe some could be viewed as slightly less harsh under the certain interpretation one scholar got compared to another, but most of this is damning from what ive researched.

So why did God allow this in his holy texts? Why didnt God command his people and object such immoral acts? These arent the immoral acts he rebukes sinners for. He never rebuked someone for treating women as property, rather he used it as a storytelling device at best.

He never rebuked his people for following his command and killing/enslaving other nations. Infact, he had regretted making Saul king because he kept the enemies’ king as a hostage and spared the lives of their animals for his own people.

He never rebuked people for owning slaves, instead entertaining the concept and making rules for the slaves and masters.

I can already hear some defences against this like “it was purely the cultural norm at the time established by the evil people living then”

Wouldnt an all knowing god know that these were immoral acts like we do today? Why does he only follow the cultural norms of those olden days when hes supposedly timeless?

Either the bible has no holy divinity and is purely influenced by men, or God has no morals and does what he pleases regardless of right or wrong.

Another popular one is that everything is metaphorical. The passages describing how God commands his people to enslave other cities? Metaphorical. Or the story about how Gods people genocide a whole city (Ai), killing 12,000 people which has a ripple effect on the political ties between different cities in the following chapter. Thats somehow metaphorical too. But i cant buy into this idea because its blind faith that the bible is real at that point. Were all the prophesies that the NT fulfilled metaphors too?

Why are only the important verses literal for the sake of the canon while controversial verses are just misinterpreted and convoluted analogies?

For the past month nearly 2 ever since trying to follow god has been burdened with mental stress and pain. I'm so exhausted from it as it beats me down and I pray and cry out to god for mercy on me because it's just breaking me down and it's like maybe I get a few hours of relief but then am in the exact same position each time. I've asked god for help with what feels like an endless cycle of suffering and misery yet I seem to always be in it. Last night I gave into my sinful urges of lust and addiction to porn and I'm not kidding you the amount of burden that was on my shoulders almost felt like it vanished. I know it was wrong but it made me question even more why am I still even trying to follow god when all I have is more and more depression, guilt, stress in my shoulders and I beg for help and only get a temporary relief. Today I woke up and I've prayed a few times but truly feel like at this point I'm to far gone and the journey isn't worth trying anymore. Yet I feel even more depressed realizing I don't seem to have God anymore. I'm so tired of this loop and feel suicidal and like there's no hope for me in my life. I genuinely feel lost and feel like there's no where to go. Please pray for me I need god but it seems like I'll never have peace.

Last night I woke and had to use the toilet. We have an outhouse bucket. It was freezing & my fiance had let the ac run. It was hot before 2 am. As soon as I sat up I began having trouble breathing. I am a lot of respiratory illnesses so it was nothing new. But I couldn't get it under control. So I was having a really really bad respiratory not wanting to function issue and needing to go to the bathroom and so cool that I couldn't stop hard shakes. I did successfully I'm doing my business but I almost lost consciousness. And I asked father is the time now can I go home? Took about 3 hours for me to get it under control even with my inhalers and other medication. I don't want to die in pain I told Father that. Been in pain since I got on this planet and I just want to go in my sleep. If you won't let me come home.

This has always been my one major hang up with Christian belief. To me, it seems that a Christian God and Free Will are mutually exclusive, yet people hold these seemingly contradictory ideas in their head all the time. I feel like I really must be misunderstanding something.

I will try to explain my thought process and hopefully you can tell me where I'm wrong.

We'll use the example of Hell, because I hear that one a lot.

• God is omnipotent, all-knowing, etc.

• God knows how everything will turn out before he created anything.

• God creates a person knowing that he/she will reject Him and spend eternity in Hell.

• There's nothing this person can do to change their fate, because if they could then that would have already been the set path for them to take, since there can only be a singular outcome.

• This person's destiny was known before they were ever created, and yet God chose to create them knowing they would reject him.

• Free Will = undetermined outcome. All-knowing God = determined outcome.

How can these two thoughts exist at the same time? Either God is all-knowing and there is no free will, or there's free will but God isn't all knowing.

Somebody please help me out here

Why is Ecclesiasticus/Sirach Not in the Protestant Canon? If you've read it what's right or wrong with it? Any contradictions? When did the Protestants take it out? Thank you all for your Responses. God bless and Shalom

It was hard to phrase that. Im not sure if this is the right subreddit or flair.

I went to a Christian kindergarten and I am trying to figure out if this was a real person or some sort of education packet my teacher had. Basically the writer of the letters was always the same missionary/person (i dont fully remember if they were a missionary) but was in a different place in each letter. They also had a generic name like Sam or Fred (maybe?). I remember really enjoying hearing the letters the teacher read for us. There is one that I remember more distinctly and a friend from back then also remembered it. He was talking about Japan. Then at the end of the letter it said that he learned how to sing Jesus loves me in Japanese and he wrote it for us. I can still remember the "yes Jesus loves me" part "Si yesu ai wo" Which, now that im older, i know is Chinese. (I dont have an easy way to correctly romanize Chinese on my phone keyboard) That is part of why i suspect it was not a real person. Along with the whole weekly change of location.

Does anyone know what this was or also remember it? I know its a long shot but the internet is a big place.

I don't want to be on this planet anymore. I don't. Yesterday I spent like 2 hours crying and screaming at God, telling him that this planet is a curse and all I wanted for 16 years was to die. I am saved now, so why do I have to stay here?? I told him whatever purpose he has for me I'll do it in 2 minutes, just take me out of here. I don't want to be here. I told him that he can give me all the blessings in this world, all the blessings spiritually but I only want to go. Now. Everybody is telling me to go to a psychologist but I am not going. That's fake. All of these are just demons, literally like 80% of Christians agree on that. Therapy is false and useless, I am just wasting my time with it. I don't want to be here. I am not going. I don't want to be here. But it feels like he just doesn't understand or idk. So how do I make him understand? Cause it feels like he thinks I'm bluffing

TL;DR How are Catholic and Protestant Churches organized in matters of social programs in the US/NZ/AUS?

Full text below:

I was raised roman Catholic in Rome, under the polish Pope Giovanni Paolo II. I was taught according to the New Testament. The Old Testament was considered something to be known but not to be followed because of the high level of violence and vengeance in it, as it was considered surpassed with the coming of Jesus.

During our formative years we usually visit places of importance, such as S. Francesco or S. Bernardino's holy places for religious meditation, but also places like Auschwitz and Birkenau for social responsibility. I was also lucky enough to be able to visit the places where the people would smuggle the ones who were persecuted and/or about to be shipped to concentration camps, and to have access to original documents from the Mussolini years (living in Rome is a blessing for a curious person).

Since childhood, Churches also had something we call a "family home", which is a place where people without money, with past troubles with the law and/or without papers can raise their children and receive financial help. As children we played with the "family home" kids and as adults we contribute economically to this institution or we volunteer. We teach the language, expose the newcomers to the local culture, babysit so the parents can work, help prepare people for a job. Legal teams volunteer to help illegals into finding a legal way to stay, and financial help in this regard is covered at different levels.

My neighborhood is also the most prominent in term of immigration in the entire city of Rome. A lot of immigrants do not have papers nor speak the language, but they have good support both from fellow migrants and citizens. Around 10 years ago a new law was passed which made some migrants criminals, not illegals, so the punishment was to be harsh. The use of force was widespread, police and military started coming to our neighborhoods to violently arrests anyone of different color, and the neighborhoods organized and avoided many baseless arrests because they were not able to use violence on common citizens and those citizen's kids who were acting as shields. The "family home" was never thouched because the neighborhood and Church protected them. We also have special events and free classes in which we can share food, clothes, music, confront and teach languages and cultures, etc. The events involve Muslims and Jews as well, in order to facilitate cohabitation in the neighborhood as it is difficult and we do struggle at understanding why of certain habits. Also schools work in the same way. In the past year the Church has lost a lot of people, but the support for social programs has not waivered. We do have a church and a school every ten minutes at least, walking distance, which I think makes everything easier, and they all operate only towards the really really poor people, no matter if citizens or not. After 30 years of immigration and hard work, my neighborhood is different from most of the city. It has become dirtier, but also safer, and there's now a sense of community since a lot of new generations are born into it and schools, non-religious groups and churches mediate the integration.

I would like to know how it works in the US, New Zealand and Australia.

I see someone holds special sermons in the US, which is something we do not do as social and political issues are handled after the sermon in different halls. We do have Bible study in common, but the rest of the organization is obscure to me.

Is it common to hold a sermon pertaining modern issues? How do Catholic and Protestant communities act, in regards to contribution to society? What do you teach in Bible School, are you taught about Jews in the OT, about the persecution of minorities during the Reich, and about the positive and negative role of the Church in regards to the indigenous communities in modern times? Or does it only pertain Bible verses? Are Church communities organized, in regards to the risk of abuse towards minorities, and do they work with legals experts in regards to help illegal immigrants with papers and integration? How do Churches operate towards social issues, besides free speech in sermons? Do you have teams who tackle modern problems, and are you supported by the Church or a non-religious legal system? Or is Church and day-to-day life a separate thing? How do you personally react when the Church doesn't protect the weak: do you have autonomy and power to intervene and appeal within the Church, do you change Church because some others have social programs, or do you ignore the fact because you think it doesn't pertain to religion?

US only: has the Church reacted to the most recent deportations? If so, how?

This is not a political question, I don't want to know political positions about this nor what is happening politically. You are free to express yourself however you want, but my curiosity is about the role of the Church in modern times. I specifically ask for those Countries because I am well versed in Europe and LATAM as it is part of normal schooling and part of my degree.

Thank you for your time, I know it's a lot.

I wear it because I simply like the dark/black aesthetic & love wearing it. My family calls me emo… Im not. 😭

Lutherans, Baptists, and Anabaptists were all reformers. They were all reformed, in the sense that they departed from the Catholic Church. Why is the trademark Reformed awarded only to Zwingli and Calvin's Swiss church?

Luther was a more prominent and well-known Reformer. Baptists and Anabaptists seemed to me more reformed, that is, farther from the Catholic Church. Why is the Reformed tradition alone called ‘reformed’?

My other post was removed because it “wasn’t a serious inquiry” and was accused of “trolling” because it didn’t have appropriate flair and the only body text (which said optional, mind you) was a smiley face. I am not trolling, would never and have never trolled, and I will address the allegations here:

1. I was originally going to ask a question about circumcision when I thought of the dubstep question, and I forgot to change the flair. Am I perfect? No. Have I ever claimed to be perfect? Yes, but that was before I renounced the sin of pride.

2. I thought the question “is dubstep christian” speaks for itself (apparently not, caused a lot of confusion -again, not perfect) and in the spirit of goodjoy and merryspreading, put what I thought was an innocuous symbolic expression of that: a smiley face :-)

So is dubstep christian do you think or not

So I had a demon for 16 years, got it casted out of me. And I've been fine for 2 days but now it feels like he's back, I feel a pulling feeling like gravity but I asked Jesus to look me through everywhere and gave him full permission to cast out any evil, unclean, demonic or satanic spirit out of me at any moment he sees them. So can it be that the demon is not back, it's just me who got traumatized? Edit: what the heck is spiritual vertigo.

I've been through a lot of trauma in my life, so it may be a trauma response. But I've given up my faith because the way I go about life is if I feel I'm not going to be absolutely perfect at something, then I don't even try. Or if I mess up or if I'm not being good enough in my mind at something, then I stop doing said thing and give up.

Hello! I have been Christian basically all my life, but I'm not sure if I'm praying the "proper" way. Save for worship, when I pray, I basically just talk about things that trouble me, things that make me happy, and sometimes, if nothing is going on in particular, I'll just talk about my day/week. Is this normal? I don't like to ask God for things and I never really expect a "response".

My reasoning for this is that I think that talking to God about these things can help me process bad emotions/situations. It can also help me appreciate the things going wrong.

I never really "understood" prayer. Even when I was a child in my religion class preparing for Communion and Confirmation, I don't ever recall getting "instructions" on how to pray.

Sorry if this sounds a little stupid haha. Thank you!

I've recently realized that my family are considered radical by other Christians (but their version of Christianity is all I know), so I'm genuinely interested in hearing the discussion. full disclosure, I do not identify as a Christian myself, but I would appreciate this sub's perspective. I am earnestly asking these questions based on what I've been taught about religion.

do you believe all non-Christians are going to Hell on principle? how do you feel about tarot cards , crystals, and media that depicts witches and wizards (ex. Charmed the tv show, Harry Potter series, Wicked, etc)? Do you believe your religion is the only correct way to live? my religion teacher in Catholic school told me that animals don't go to Heaven because they don't have souls. is that true?

thank you in advance for sharing your perspective!

I know many sects and denominations reject the teaching that all humans after Adam and Eve inherit personal guilt from the sin of our first parents, but I'm not currently aware of any official sects/denominations that go all the way and reject Augustinianism altogether by rejecting the idea of being born with a 'sinful nature' as well.

I'm defining 'sinful nature' here as "the proclivity to wilfully sin to such an extent that it is inevitable, regardless of how much effort one exercises to avoid purposefully sinning."

i go hunting with my dad when ever its season and me and my dad don't leave the animals to rot we eat them and if we don't it eat all of it we give it to some friends

I’m 23 tomorrow and I only have $2500. every time I move back in with my mom I feel like I can’t actually accomplish anything. my step dad is always praying on my downfall. they don’t appreciate me. should i rent a room in another state or try sober living?

My Wife and I are both Christians. My wife was raised in a Christian household and has always had unwavering faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Her understanding of scripture is remarkable, but she never studied the canonical history of the Bible, early church history, knows anything about the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and so on. Why was her heart so readily open to receiving Christ as her Savior, whereas other people (like myself) require such a high standard of evidence before they can fully believe? Why are our hearts not equally open to to receiving Christ through scripture? Why are some spiritually hardened, and others not?

I strive to have the faith that she possesses, but I'm having a difficult time. Thanks in advance.