I came across some discussion on /r/DankChristianMemes about "politicized faith", where people were criticizing the way Jesus' teachings are interpreted to support a political agenda (in this case, a pro-choice stance).

Now, some naive ideas were voiced like Jesus being apolitical, which is obviously objectively false. However, one point had me reflect on myself: If your faith never contradicts you, you might just be worshipping yourself.

And it is true that in the past years, I've only consumed left-wing Christian content, occasionally hearing about people from other denominations doing or saying things I agree with. But I haven't really tried to grapple with parts of the faith I might not as easily accept. And I definitely don't want to be worshipping myself!

So I'd like to discuss which parts are perhaps difficult for you, which parts may in fact have a more conservative spin, however you try to contextualize them. Or which parts, outside of politics, are difficult for you.

Here's mine:

• I generally don't focus my energy on God as a concept. It seems pointless to me to try to definitively understand something that is so far beyond my capabilities. The way I see it, we have the possibility of experiencing Godly love when we share, love, and support one another because then the life-affirming power of creation becomes something real and tangible. But this puts the onus on us to make it happen.

• Likewise, evil and suffering are just a natural part of human life. Not a challange that was issued to us. Not an expression of some kind of karma system. Evil people do win and remain safe and content with no consequences. It is a fact of life. There is no deeper purpose to that other than to (ideally) motivate us to do good where we can. And it is the reason why faith and doing good is difficult. But there is no assured "Good will ultimately win." That's fairytale business. Therefore, concepts of hell and the devil are trivial nonsense to me (unless you conceptualize "hell" as something you can experience during life as an inner torment caused by imbalances and lack of love etc)

• I don't like the idea of praying for better outcomes for individuals. It feels like I'm asking for a favor and hoping that my brownie points are enough to receive them. When Christian groups give shoutouts like "pray for my niece facing [threatening obstacle] etc," I do want to express hopeful sentiments, but theologically, I don't quite see that as the purpose of prayer. To me, prayer is more of a contemplation of the world and the forces within it, an attempt to connect to the one love in all things. I think Kierkegaard said that prayer is supposed to change (I prefer to think of "tune") the individual, not change the world.

• I struggle to find examples, but some parts of scripture just feel "off." As if there is a lot of noise included that no longer centers around the ideas of love proclaimed by Jesus. A lot seems to me like it was written in a context that no longer applies to us and that it is not helpful anymore.

• Equally difficult to pin down, but I do sometimes come across a Christian idea that does seem hard to combine with my left-wing ideals. Christianity isn't all socialism, though again, I'm drawing a blank right now trying to find an example. But the fact is: To me, ideals of socialism and Christianity are PERFECTLY harmonious, but to 99% of Christians, that's not the case. What gives?

• Forgiveness is the obvious big one that pretty much all Christians, left-wing and otherwise, struggle with. I have several people in my life who I have not forgiven. And reminding myself "Jesus also loves that person" is an exercise with some funky outcomes. How could he?! Yet I know that he does.

• Sexual mores don't make sense to me at all. Besides informed/enthusiastic consent and mindful handling of risks such as STDs and birth control, I don't see how it should be un-Christian to do anything sexual. The first part is about having it be an activity that only benefits and never harms anyone, as well as ensuring that all parties remain safe during and beyond it. But I get the feeling that no established Christian theologian would approve of drug-fuelled, kinky orgies, however loving, respectful, safe, and consensual they may be. Could it be that the availability of birth control should reframe the way we think of sex? Is the Christian faith doomed to stay behind if we cling to old-fashioned mores that obviously had in mind how women could be left helpless and pregnant, and wanted to avoid this?

On a more general note, why are sexual urges always and categorically called a "temptation?" We established scientifically that they serve a purpose and, if we keep the wellbeing of others in mind, it is possible to follow our sexual desires in a way that edifies others and ourselves.

Honestly thank you if you read this far. I don't expect definitive answers, just wondered about your own struggles and unanswered questions.

Also known as the Two Falls hypothesis. While much of our suffering in society is caused be free will, there's loads of 'natural suffering' that humans can't be blamed for, such as diseases, natural disasters, and the food chain and natural suffering of animals.

The angelic fall theodicy blames these "natural evils" on a cosmic rebellion that existed well before humanity, that radiated out and corrupted our material cosmos, before time as we know it even existed.

Thus, all 'natural evil' is a sort of 'moral evil' in itself. Suffering does not exist without free will, whether caused by rebellious men or rebellious angels.

While I don't think it's waterproof, it's certainly one of the few logically consistent theodicies I've heard. What are your thoughts on it?

I've given myself back to Christ this year, and 5 months in, I still feel like a brand new Christian. I was very devout and knowledgeable in my faith 18 years ago, but since coming back, I'm finding it is far more like knowing nothing and starting over than I feel like I am "picking it back up". I still KNOW what I did before, and know even more by way of experience than I did, but I'm fighting a much harder battle this time around. The first thing that occurred to me was that this isn't like a magic word, it's a quantitative thing. It feels like I simply displaced the Holy Spirit one drop at a time over almost two decades. Even before I wasn't exactly righteous or perfect, and when I did lose God it was seemingly overnight. That isn't strong in faith, that was strong in data. That's the opposite. So, I feel like I'm fighting up a much steeper hill this time on my way to walking in the path of Christ and living as an example of His teachings.

I am feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit far more profoundly now, almost to an offset degree to my struggles. I'm not simply moved to happiness by things I assume God adores. I am moved to tears. Joy. Like my chest is going to split.open and rainbows and stars are going to erupt from me and touch everyone with a cloud of infinite singularities of love. It's profound and makes me want to keep it. It's not hearing God, it's like I brush against His robe in passing, in my way to do the right thing after considering against the Word what He'd want me to do.

The problem is the urges to do otherwise. Pornography, lust, masturbation, daydreaming about violence, watching it intentionally, cursing people when they can't even hear me, pride, lying and embellishing, lying to myself, projecting myself, even when alone, as someone I am not truly. It's a nightmare because it feels like a reflex. I do these things, less than before but still, I do them, and sometimes immediately realize what I have done and feel like I was powerless. I envoke the name of Christ and thing about righteous things and God and it helps, but when my brain is blank, it turns into a toxic waste facility. I've been mostly reacting to this through prayer, talking to God, remembering the person I want to be, and being deserving of forgiveness and life in the light of Christ.

I was thinking last night...the flood killed every man, woman, child, animal, and nephilim in the world, but it was never claimed that the flood hurt the fallen AT ALL. It got me thinking about the actual number of fallen we're considering, and what if only possession in combination with physiological schizophrenia is recognized as possession? What if possession also contains a level of finesse? 99% possession with only 7 out of ten million showing any outward signs of it? What if those thoughts are just flung into your silent brain because you invited something in and let it stay, and it will continue to eat and grow fat the longer you rent to it. It feels good the whole time. I understand why, I think.

Love, neurochemically, is associated with five neurochemicals. Oxytocin, serotonin, neuroprenepherine, dopamine, and vasopressin. Every life ruining, addictive hard drug; Heroin, cocaine, meth, MDMA, alcohol... they are all antagonists and some reuptake inhibitors of these neurochemicals. Real love is so good you cry. Happiness is a neurochemical component of love. What if demonic possession does something similar to these drugs only using a different pathway? What if it's all a spiritual attack, sustained for life until expelled, but it feels so comfortable and nice that you really don't need to?

I can't think of anything that can be effective aside from constant thoughts on what you are supposed to do. Even when doing nothing, be thinking about how to be better and what to do to make the next five minutes easier. Like detoxing from drugs, only the hard drugs for your soul that have been displacing the Holy Spirit the entire time.

Nobody will ever be perfect, but we can all be trying to be better, and I'm going to see if fighting all of the demons at once is possible. I'm working my way up to something more complete, but I am trying very hard and not regretting my efforts.

I'm sorry if it sounds crazy or there are typos, but it's pretty much just falling out of my head onto the page.

If you are going to vote, vote for Kamala Harris.

If you don't want to vote for Kamala Harris because the genocide by the theocracy of Israel is being supported by our administration, then I would put it to you that your problem isn't with Kamala Harris or with Joe Biden.

Your problem is with the American people.

The American people by and large have supported Israel. This is starting to change.

Withholding your vote from Kamala Harris will not do anything to help the Palestinians. Convincing other people that what's happening in Israel is ethnic cleansing by a theocracy operated by ethnic supremacists will do more to help Palestinians than withholding a vote.

Because if Trump wins, Trump represents the Zionist sympathy of the boomer population.

Democrats can only represent the will of the American people and actuate the foreign policy of the American people as expressed in our international agreements over the last 20 years.

But people's minds can be changed on that and if we elect a Democrat we can reasonably believe that when they are changed, our foreign policy will change, too.

Trumpism is white supremacy, and allowing it back into power will only empower the authoritarian cultures of the world including and especially Zionist Israel, which has regressed to a pagan monstrosity.

If you're not going to vote at all as a principled stand to avoid granting legitimacy to a broken system, I respect that, though I will cut you a little in this specific way: will your moral purity help the people who would suffer under a fundamentalist evangelical white supremacist regime? Will it help Palestine?

Or will it make you feel better?

I pray for peace in our time, or at least, peace in some still distant future.

If there is anything you need praying for please write it in a comment on this post. There are no situations "too trivial" for G-d to help out with. Please refrain from commenting any information which could allow bad actors to resolve your real life identity.

As always we pray, with openness to all which G-d offers us, for the wellbeing of our online community here and all who are associated with it in one form or another. Praying also for all who sufferer oppression/violence, for all suffering from climate-related disasters, and for those who endure dredge work, that they may see justice and peace in their time and not give in to despair or confusion in the fight to restore justice to a world captured by greed and vainglory. In The LORD's name we pray, Amen.

What do you say of a book on Jesus? Jesus has been haunting my heart and my imagination for some time past. I am sick and tired, Mischa, of people who profess to believe in him, yet always speak of him and paint him as if he were but a sweet lady with a beard. To them he is beautiful, but lowly, humble, weak and poor. I’m also weary of those that deny him, yet present him as a sorcerer or an imposter. Still more weary am I of ‘the scholars’ who are ever digging into antiquity to produce lengthy and stupid arguments either for or against the historicity of his personality which is the greatest and most real personality in human history. What shall I say of the senile juggleries of theologians which make of Jesus a sort of a hybrid, half-God and half-man? My Jesus is human like you and me. A certain American writer was even so brazen as to portray him as a clever business man whose deeds and teachings had nothing else in view but cold material profits. Just think! To me he was a man of might and will as he was a man of charity and pity. He was far from being lowly and meek. Lowliness is something I detest; while meekness to me is but a phase of weakness. [...] I propose to have a number of Jesus’ contemporaries speak of him, each from his own point of view. Their views combined will bring out the portrait of Jesus as I see him. The scheme will be in perfect harmony with my style.

Why I Wrote ‘Jesus the Son of Man’: A Little-Known Interview with Gibran by Francesco Medici (Nov. 13, 2022)

Hi! Since it’s Halloween, I wanted to get your opinion on this video I just watched. Do you agree or not?

https://youtu.be/emYzcMeeais

I think it can be a tricky question when it comes to this issue…

I’m gonna post this on other Christian subs, too.

I personally am a child of a father who not only has tried to forced religion on me, but also used religious extremism to try to say things like, "god will curse your future" "you don't love me, anyone and not even yourself" "you will end up dying in a mental hospital with no one by yourside and burning in hell forever after" and I could go on and on.

Ive created this community for kids like me that have dealt or are currenenlty dealing with this. If you or if you know someone who has also dealt this or some similar, https://www.reddit.com/r/childrenofchristians/ is a place you will not be judged and will be accepted and get advice and love.

I understand if this kind of doesn't fit the sub but I need some help and thought this community would be the best first stop.

At the college I attend there's a man who stands outside the library and preaches about how God hates homosexual people, jewish people, transgender people, and just about every minority you can think of. He's saying really cruel things and it's making a lot of students uncomfortable, but it's a public university so the school can't do anything. I'm planning on organizing a counter-protest and would like to have a list of bible verses to use to point out his hypocrisy, and to emphasize the kinder, loving teachings of the Bible, but I'm not very well read and was hoping I could get some help sourcing passages.

Again, I understand if this doesn't fit the topic of the sub and would be more than willing to take it down.

As a Christian sometimes I wonder if divorce can help one remove marriage partner stress. Yet the Bible does not encourage divorce. So what does one do ? And if one ends up divorced? Do you miss your partner? Would you want them back ?

Excerpt from 'The power of the poor in history':

"‘What is the good of changing the structures without a change in the human heart?’ This is only a half-truth, for changing social and cultural structures is a way of changing the human heart. There is a mutual dependency, and reciprocal demands, between the human heart and its social milieu, based on a radical unity. It is no more 'mechanistic’ to think that a structural change automatically makes for a new humanity, than to think that a 'personal’ change guarantees social transformations. Both assumptions are unreal and naive.

But perhaps what most shocks the Christian seeking to take sides frankly and decisively with the poor and exploited, and to enter into involvement with the struggles of the proletariat, is the conflictual nature of praxis in this context. Politics today involves confrontation - and varying degrees of violence - among human groups, among social classes with opposing interests. Being an 'artisan of peace’ not only does not dispense from presence in these conflicts, it demands that one take part in them, in order to pull them up by the roots.

There is no peace without justice. This is a hard, uncomfortable truth for those who prefer not to see these conflictual situations, or who, if they see them prefer palliatives to remedies. It is equally hard for those who, with all the good will in the world, confuse universal love with a fictitious harmony. But the gospel enjoins us to love our enemies…There is no way not to have enemies. What is important is not to exclude them from our love.

In Christian circles, of course, we are not very much accustomed to thinking in conflictual, concrete terms. Instead of antagonism we prefer…a spirit of conciliation. Instead of the provisional, we prefer our evasive 'eternity.’ We have to learn to live peace, and think peace, in the midst of conflict."

The Bible is pretty clear that belief in Jesus is the path to eternal life (whatever that means), but is it clear anywhere that said belief must occur before death?

For those who don't know him Fr Gutierrez was the founder of Latin American Liberation theology in the 1970s. He was an indigenous priest from Peru who's writings helped shift Latin American Catholicism and Christianity into being a major force fighting for social justice in the context of right wing repressive regimes of that era. Things ranging from grassroots base communities that centered Bible studies on social action and solidarity, to the activities of Oscar Romero in El Salvador, to the clerics standing against the repression in Brazil in the 70s and 80s all had a major theologian influence from him. RIP to a major giant.

DEAR GOD we am not asking for an easier life, but please give me the strength and courage to face all our struggles. We need You. Every day, every moment, every second-as long as I breathe, we need You. We can't face this world alone. You are the only reason we have come this far! Without You, we are nothing. We pray that You will never let go of my hand 🙏

If there is anything you need praying for please write it in a comment on this post. There are no situations "too trivial" for G-d to help out with. Please refrain from commenting any information which could allow bad actors to resolve your real life identity.

As always we pray, with openness to all which G-d offers us, for the wellbeing of our online community here and all who are associated with it in one form or another. Praying also for all who sufferer oppression/violence, for all suffering from climate-related disasters, and for those who endure dredge work, that they may see justice and peace in their time and not give in to despair or confusion in the fight to restore justice to a world captured by greed and vainglory. In The LORD's name we pray, Amen.

Finished work seems to have a potential to make us undisciplined, careless and chaotic. This is the reason many religious people consider it risky to believe completely in it. I don't know whether 'Chaoticity' is even a word in English language, yet I chose to use it. First, let us introduce this important and unique New Testament principle. https://decodelifewithdev.com/chaoticity-of-finished-work/ For our YouTube chanel packed with spiritual thoughts and Bible classes https://youtube.com/@decodelifewithdev?si=84lcomKkEF9eHIGu

Hilarion Capucci was a Melkite Catholic Archbishop from Syria. He spent his career as an advocate for Palestinian rights, one time even smuggling weapons to resistance fighters on the West Bank. The Israeli military court sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

He was defended by Maximos V, the Patriarch of the Melkite Catholic Church who said; “Is this Bishop reprehensible if he thought it was his duty to bear arms? If we go back in history we find other bishops who smuggled weapons, gave their lives and committed other illegal actions to save Jews from Nazi occupation. I do not see why a man who is ready to save Arabs should be condemned.”

During the Kfar Yuval hostage crisis in 1975, hijackers demanded his release. However, he wasn’t released until the Vatican intervened on his behalf in 1978.

Later in his career he played an important role in negotiations during the Iran hostage crisis. He made several visits to hostages and obtained the bodies of American soldiers who died in a refueling accident in Iran.

In 2010, he was arrested by Israeli forces once more on a ship carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

He died in 2017 at the age of 94.

I'm bothered that I keep desiring to buy clothes/books/music/nice things when there is a genocide in Gaza, South Lebanon is being flattened, millions of people are dying in the Congo, Somalia is in the midst of a politically motivated humanitarian crisis. My money could be put to better use.

I'm a young professional. I don't know how much money I ought to put away for my future. And I feel jealous when I see other young women walking around with gorgeous haircuts and beauty treatments. I feel ugly.

At the same time, my money needs to go where it needs to go, which is to people who really need it. I think I'm right about this, although I'm not sure what percentage of my income would be considered "excess" income.

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for this kind of dilemma?

If there is anything you need praying for please write it in a comment on this post. There are no situations "too trivial" for G-d to help out with. Please refrain from commenting any information which could allow bad actors to resolve your real life identity.

As always we pray, with openness to all which G-d offers us, for the wellbeing of our online community here and all who are associated with it in one form or another. Praying also for all who sufferer oppression/violence, for all suffering from climate-related disasters, and for those who endure dredge work, that they may see justice and peace in their time and not give in to despair or confusion in the fight to restore justice to a world captured by greed and vainglory. In The LORD's name we pray, Amen.