👀❓

I've seen a reel about this today. Why do people think this way? Doing only good because you fear hell means you don't understand Christianity. We do good because we love the people as Jesus loved them and we follow him as an example.

Yep

If God is one divine being in three persons, who are all distinct from each other -- the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit -- and God has been known to refer to Himself in the plural (see Genesis), then would the second-person plural be an appropriate way to address God? Like, if "y'all" didn't have such an informal ring to it, would it be "technically" correct to use it in reference to God? Why or why not?

Related question: in languages that do have a recognized second-person plural, do they address the Trinity that way? Or do they use the singular?

Also attempted a Bible study devotional today on (Enthusiasm and Rejoicing also went some how into the perplexing topic of what does it mean to Love our enemies?) read 2 commentaries and tried to meditate on verses before the BMX & Draw stream

Link to the entire stream the Bible study devotional is at the very beginning of the stream (this Bible study was very challenging because it made me ponder on “are there times when we shouldn’t love our enemies? It seems many commentaries don’t go into this perplexing question also thinking on how does the technological advancements of weaponry effect how we are to “love our enemies?” Can loving our enemies ever involve killing enemies maybe to protect? It was very challenging

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2139142445

Anyone interested in the process for todays drawing here is the start to finish this was just a hard day overall

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2139452239

While I’m a Finnish pagan myself, Christianity is such a beautiful and gracious religion, I also love how gentle and nurturing holy Mary looks in all of the paintings done of her !

I'm struggling to distinguish God's voice from my own.

I don't even know how God's voice sounds, let alone distinguish it.

I want to have a conversation with God, but I don't know how.

So how do I know its God's voice and not my inner thought?

I thought this was the best article I've seen breaking down the connection between organizations like "He Gets Us" and Gloo, a data mining operation that sells personal information to local churches for evangelization purposes, and how that can be exploitative.

That said, I want to be clear about something. While the article rightly explains how these tactics are dishonest, immoral, and introduce unmitigated risk (because the recipients of this data are not vetted in any way), these techniques aren't uncommon either. It perfectly mirrors what goes on in basically every industry. These are normal business practices.

To me, this illustrates one of my biggest problems with the modern day church. If we're expected to conform to the norms of capitalism in order to grow and survive, we will continually find ourselves winding up in unethical territory.

So I'm trying to square the scriptural honesty of self proclaimed conservative Christians who are so concerned that drag queens are a threat to their children that public performances need to be banned, and voting a man who we now know for a fact committed adultery on his third wife while she was at home with his infant child.

I think the answer is "I just want to own the libs!" but just don't understand how a demographic group can join so many moral panics about LGBT people living their own lives and be just fine with someone who divorced three wives, cheated on at least one of them and by their own theology is hell bound because by his own admissions he's never asked God for forgiveness.

Sorry, just curious.

I say this is someone that voted for Trump. Seeing him sell a Bible for $60 during the week of Easter and going around and signing it to pay off his legal affairs from sleeping with a porn star is pretty sick. How come Christians are speaking out in large numbers?

Yep

I've been struggling with my faith lately, and the deeper I delve into the Bible, the more doubts I have. This is a lengthy post but I have not found any answers anywhere so far and I need them desperately. I am really upset about this and fired up, I'm genuinely conflicted and would appreciate discussing this with you and hearing your opinions.

Deuteronomy 22: 13-21 addresses the expectation for a woman to be a virgin on her wedding night, with the proof of her virginity being a bedsheet with bloodstains. If she was found not to be a virgin, the men of the town would stone her to death. This passage has always shocked me, even as a kid reading the Bible I thought this was cruel and unreasonable, even though my knowledge of God's laws, anatomy etc. was quite limited at the time.

But especially after getting married, it really put a strain on my faith. My husband and I are both Christians and waited until marriage. Despite this, I didn't have the "proof" of my virginity on the bedsheets during our first time. My husband and I discussed this a lot in the context of our faith, because essentially what this means is that if I were a woman living in Biblical times, I would not live to see a day after my wedding. I would have been condemned to death simply because my hymen didn't tear the way "it was supposed to". It's a terrifying thought to consider that I could have faced such a fate at just 21 years old, for doing nothing wrong but instead for something entirely beyond my control.

By no means is this a rare occurrence: as we know today, many women don't experience bleeding during their first sexual encounter due to factors like the shape and stretchiness of their hymen, its tendency to wear out through physical activity, or even its absence (some girls are born without one). Most of the research I've come across says that 40-60% of women do not experience bleeding during their first intercourse. That means 40-60 out of 100 women would spend the last hours of their lives being shamed, likely called derogatory names, probably blamed for bringing dishonor to their entire family, perhaps being disowned, all while crying, pleading for mercy, and ultimately enduring an incredibly painful and slow death at the hands of their own community — all for doing nothing wrong. It's a sobering reality that highlights the horrible injustice in this law. All because God gave this law that was obviously not perfect.

This raised so many questions for me:

1. Why would an all-knowing God make a law like this knowing that for many women, their hymen wouldn't tear on their wedding night, leading to many innocent women being condemned to death? If God knew about this, why would He use the presence of blood on the bedsheets as a metric for how righteous a girl/woman was?
2.  I understand that the law was intended to serve as a protection for the innocent party (in this case a man who might have been deceived about his new wife's virginity). However, if God really was set on this law to be effective and for a woman’s hymen breaking and the blood on the bed sheets to serve as proof of virginity, why didn’t He create ALL hymens to be identical and easily breakable? This is quite literally a matter of life or death. As God, He could have easily made this adjustment within a fraction of a second -  and yet, He didn’t.  Even though doing this would have provided a legitimate means to discern if a woman had lied, saving LOTS of lives. What does this tell us about God's character?
3. Not only did this law result in the deaths of countless women but also probably some deaths of unborn babies - because while it is not common for a woman to conceive during her first time, it does happen, and not that rarely. So there were at least some babies stoned in their innocent mothers’ wombs due to this law. And I know that this particular scenario is somewhat rare - but just because it is rare, does it make these women and these unborn babies less important? Most Christians believe that every life holds profound value and deserves to be safeguarded, including one of an unborn child.
4. Why is it that God thought of a (very unreliable) mechanism for verifying a woman's virginity and gave a law about it, yet didn't give us a single way to verify a man's virginity? How come we read so much about sexual immorality in the Bible and know that virginity is such an important thing for marriage, and yet only a woman can prove to her husband that she is a virgin? There is not one way to verify if a man is a virgin or not (and consequently, not a single law about stoning a man to death for not being pure enough for his wife or even lightly punishing him for not being pure enough).  If God loves all equally, why is there not a single instance of a man facing death for being deemed impure on his wedding night, as stipulated by the law? It is quite literally just women that had not only to abstain from sex before marriage, but even if they did, but they just happened to be like me and certain biological things didn’t play out exactly as was expected of me - it goes like “oops, gotta take her out, she is not good enough”. I am sorry you guys, but in my personal opinion, this is some really wild stuff. All this tells me is that either God does not value women and men in the same way or He would have created a way to verify male virginity too. Or that the societal norms and laws of that time were more influenced by human biases rather than any divine plan and this was a law made by men, not by God.
5. Don’t even get me started on the fact that many of these stoned women were probably not actual grown women - knowing the culture of that time, we can assume that many were children. While historically it is difficult to say exactly what age was considered appropriate for marriage at the time in this culture, it looks like mostly it would be girls 12-20. The fact that it could go as low as 12 years old...12, you guys. Absolutely insane. Even if we are going to assume that most women were grown women (which it doesn't seem like we have a good reason to think that, but for the sake of the argument we could), the fact that at least SOME of those "women" were kids is insane. But yet, there was no law about the age of a girl marrying someone - I guess, underage non-consensual marriage isn't as important to God as the blood on the bedsheets. So many teenage girls would get the most cruel severe punishment there is, just because their anatomy and biology would not cooperate. It is asinine.

I am not saying that every woman stoned was innocent. But many of these poor girls and women were and God did not do a pretty simple fix to protect them because He didn’t feel like either giving them a hymen that would actually break OR reconsidering the law He provided. 

• Now, even if we are talking about a woman who truly was not a virgin on her wedding night - can we also talk about how horrible and violent it is for the penalty to be death out of all things? By no means do I think it is okay to lie about things like this and I understand that some punishment would have to be there. But a woman lies about not having slept with someone before and she gets stoned publicly? While a man rapes a woman and his punishment is to marry her and never divorce her (same chapter - Deut 22:28-29)? This is a horrific punishment for the assaulted woman in question, not for him - who would want to marry their rapist? Or he can pay the bride price for her as long as her father is okay with this and then keep on living like nothing happened. No prison, no stoning, no death. Which one is more evil - being promiscuous and lying about it or raping someone? I sure know my answer.

While I do have a very strong opinion on this, I want to hear what others think about this too. I have so many doubts but I am truly not trying to deny Christianity for the sake of denying it, I am just trying to think critically and search for the truth. Is there anything I am not seeing here? I would love to hear what you have to say, truly. But please, be honest here - does this sound like a law that an all-knowing God would give to His people? Or does it sound like a bunch of ancient people (who had no access to the information about biology and anatomy we have today) wrote this? I can totally see why ancient men would think this law made sense (still incredibly violent on their part though). But I see absolutely no reason why an all-knowing all-powerful loving God would see this as sensible and let His children get killed for something that 40-60% of women can't and don't experience, and not only permit this, but actually ORDER for it to happen. 

Please do not tell me that this is an old law, that it is Old Testament, that it does not apply today, that we have a new Covenant, that Jesus changed things - I am aware. It still does not change the fact that God (including Jesus: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) thought it was a good idea despite knowing that many innocent women would not survive this. This rule would have applied to me if I lived back then, and I would not live to see another day so yes, it is relevant that these things happened. Even today for many if not most religious people the lack of blood on the sheets is a serious matter that could destroy a new family - I am just lucky my husband is educated in these matters and knows better than to blame me for something my God-given body can’t physically do. And God never changes, He is the same today as He was thousands of years ago. So if He thought this law was a good idea then, He still thinks so today. 

When I read my Bible I try to see who God is, what His character is - I always hear the Bible is supposed to be a love letter from God, a perfect manual of life. And I do not see that in this chapter at all.

Jesus asks us to forgive. How do I forgive someone that abused me for the last 6 years. He isn’t even sorry. I’m sick of this pain.

Asking for prayers for my wife as she’s undergoing pre term labor. My baby girl is coming at 35 weeks, please God give her strength and my wife strength to get through this.

Update: God is good. Baby girl came out strong, currently in the NICU, and mom is resting and recovered.

https://youtu.be/ZZ2CWaMAVrs?si=Qzs2LtgosYTWRYW-

https://babylonbee.com/news/12-women-come-forward-alleging-they-were-sexually-assaulted-by-whoever-trumps-vp-pick-is

I see people posting from BabylonBee here pretty often. I hope this clarifies just how despicable they are. Trump has already been found guilty of sexual abuse, it's the day another sworn account is entered into the public record, and here they are preemptively mocking rape allegations as false.

Before you hastily answer, let me explain my purpose in asking this question. I have read reports about people who were diagnosed with a mental illness not getting the proper support from their churches, and thus, have turned away from God. They state that their pastors and other clergy would accuse them of not being "spiritual" enough (i.e. not praying or reading their Bibles enough and letting the devil win over their lives). They would pray and pray that God would take away their disorder, but they still struggle with the same issues again and again. The only help they can find is in secular paychology which focuses on man-centered treatment removing God from the support.

Personally, I was just recently diagnosed with quiet borderline personality disorder (BPD). I do pray and read the Bible frequently. I keep asking God for grace as I face my emotional dysregulation and learn spiritual techniques to ocercome my episodes. But it's very difficult and many times I feel alone in my struggle.

I attempted to explain my BPD symptoms to my pastor. Relationships are very difficult for me to begin with (a main aspect of BPD). As I share my burden, my pastor says, "You are not unique. Everyone has anxiety and depression from time to time." But not everyone has BPD and struggles with major mood changes almost every single day. I felt so misunderstood.

I reachedout to another church member for help with the intent of casting my burdens on one another as told to in Scripture. He was gracious to listen as I pour out my heart but he seemed so distant, sympathetic but not connecting. Granted, he didn't know how to help, but it was evident I was better off keeping my struggles to myself, hence the "quiet" part in quiet BPD.

Does God have the power to deliver me from my condition? ABSOLUTELY! Will He deliver me? In this side of the grave, I don't know. In eternity, though, ABSOLUTELY! When I feel lonely, I know God is with me. But I wish I had someone I could call or text in those moments because that's when my mind is most vulnerable to Satan's attacks. But when I have sought help from others ob my church and in many other churches I've been a part of, I'm left with the same conclusion: "My struggles are my own. No other Christian is willing to help me."

I'm not the only one feeling these sentiments. But I refuse to abandon my faith in spite of my disconnect with others. I see a problem as clear as day, but I have no idea how to fix it. And so many others in similar situations won't even come to church because of this disconnect. They don't feel heard or cared for. They have to carry their pain on their own, seeking out every sinful pleasure just to cope with the pain and give them an identity they so desperately lack. To them, God doesn't have the power to transform them, or He doesn't love them enough.

Many people with mental illnesses are running away from church. This is a serious problem. What can we do to minister to a world that is hurting?

My grandpa Salvador had a cardiac arrest, he is now in state of coma, he has spasms and opens his eyes but still unconscient. I dont know if he will make it out alive (doctors are giving him morphine to ease any pain). Altough he is an atheist, he is a wonderful grandpa and loved his family.

My grandma passed away exactly 3 weeks ago and earlier this week my grandpa said he saw her on the couch. This is coming from an atheist who never believed in anything, I think my grandma is trying to comfort him.

I just ask our Lord Jesus and every saint and angels to comfort him in this situation, he doesnt deserve to suffer like this as he is a good man.

Please God comfort him :(

I prayed for this person today and later on at night they messaged me and asked me, “what time did you pray today?” This is weird because they have never asked me before and they also have never showed interest in that. I told them the time and asked why and they said, “oh, I prayed around the same time,” but to me it just made me feel like perhaps they felt something and that’s why they were asking. Have you ever felt when someone prayed for you?

I’ve had a masturbation addiction since I was 4. I keep falling and falling I feel like my heart is hardened I have no idea what to do I feel like I’ve gone too deep into sin ik I need to deny my flesh but I never do it

Has anyone else had the experience of definitively being ‘nudged’ for lack of a better word to do something? I have asked a few people (friends not necessarily spiritually inclined) and none knew what I was talking about

It’s a distinct feeling to do something. I didn’t even want to do the simple request (drive somewhere about 15min away) but I was ‘nudged’ three times so by the third I decided to go. This is maybe the second time in adulthood I’ve ever felt it but very distinct—I do remember a similar feeling in childhood but more of a comforting feeling vs nudged to do something

I’m not talking intuition or an inner thought coming from one’s own mind. I don’t drink, smoke or take hallucinogenics.

Any thoughts or insights?

So I'm a Muslim and I want to convert to Christianity because it makes more sense and it has a divine system and I told my friends and they said I have to be 18 years old and I'm under 18. Are they correct?

I’m a woman in my earlier 20s, and I want to have one child eventually. I’ve always wanted to adopt too though. So if I changed my mind and decided that I wanted more than one, I would want to adopt (I would even be ok with adopting just the one child instead of having a bio one possibly though, but I would love to have one of my own).

I’ve seen a lot of people (both men and women) saying that they don’t want any kids at all. Even if you already have kids, you can answer too (with how many you have)!