#Christianity??

[sippin-on-bichlorine]

cursed thought: journey to bethlehem is to jesus christ superstar what the marauders fandom is to harry potter

[lapseinart]

And God saw the light, that it was good

FYI I’m not a practicing Catholic (Schrödinger’s Catholic) (I’m agnostic unless my parents ask) and I speedran my First Communion + First Confession + Confirmation so I’m basing this off 6 years of Religous Ed. crammed into 6 months and 15 minutes of googling Christianity in Japan. Yee

Okimura Rin is a dutiful Christian.

Mostly.

Some of the time.

Okay, so not really, but he definitely goes to Sunday mass more often than Yukio and he always helps out around the monastery and he goes to confession once a month, so, really, between him and Yuki, he’s definitely the more dutiful Christian.

Yeah, sure, sometimes he struggles with the theological virtues and the cardinal ones, and if he thinks about the fruits of the Holy Spirit, he isn’t exactly great at patience, gentleness, or self-control… but he tries his best, and he’s pretty sure God appreciates it anyway. Because He is all loving. All forgiving.

It’s hard to think about God when his demonic heritage is revealed. He’s the son of Satan. The offspring of evil incarnate. Why would God let him exist? How could he be anything but damned?

It’s Monday. Rin is alone.

The worse thoughts always come to haunt him when it’s quiet. They prey on him when he’s alone, without any friends to distract him. Not that he has any friends anymore after he revealed Satan’s flames. How could anyone accept something so stupid, so useless, when they were going to Hell either way? Why the hell did he bother?

He needs to get out.

He scribbles a hasty note in case Yukio comes home while he’s gone (not fucking likely he’s never home he hates you-) grabs his keys and wallet and goes wandering around the campus.

Somehow, he walks for what feels like hours but may have only been a few minutes before he finds himself outside a small church. He’s never seen it before, tucked into the little alley like it is. It’s open for confessions.

Rin walks in.

“It’s been…” he wracks his brain as he tries to make himself comfortable in the confessional, “six months since my last confession.” It felt like so much more.

“I haven’t been going to services,” he starts and it’s like he can’t stop. “I’ve fought with my brother more often than usual. I harmed one of my teachers during a training session. My dad died because of me. I… found out I was the son of an evil man,” he explains inadequately. “I’m damned. For these and all my sins, I am heartily sorry.”

The priest is silent for a moment.

“It sounds like you’ve been going through a lot,” he says gently.

“Yeah,” Rin croaks, and it’s only just not a sob.

“How did your father die?”

“He… he was protecting me,” Rin says softly, “from… my biological father.”

“Then I think that he wouldn’t be happy with you stewing in guilt,” the priest says. “Just because your father is evil doesn’t mean that you are evil.”

“But I’m like him!” Rin says, desperately. “I-I-I hurt people!”

“Do you want to do it?” the priest says calmly. “Do you want to hurt people?”

“No,” Rin whispers.

“You are a child of God,” the priest proclaims. “You renounce sin and seek to do good. There is no penance for being the son of a bad man. Try to attend Mass more often. Your penance is three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. You may now say your Act of Contrition.”

Rin walks out of the church feeling lighter than he has before, like a burden has been taken from him, the reassurance that he can be good if he chooses to be. He feels… different, lighter, after getting it all out of his chest, even if it was inadequately explained to a stranger in a confessional booth. It’s different to have to convince the whole world that he isn’t his father then it is to have someone else tell him he isn’t evil.

You are a Child of God.

You are a Child of God.

Rin takes solace in those words. They’re right. They have to be.

[ghosts-and-blue-sweaters]

Remember when Ghostbur wanted to get a Christmas tree with Tommy on Logstedshire?

[cath-lic]

this is making me lose it

[many-sparrows]

I'm very tired of this "queer college students should stop supporting Palestine, they'd kill you there!" I watched a hijabi ask a trans man, "but what name do you want to go by?" A butch giving a woman their hoodie so that she could keep her hair covered after the cops took her scarf. Muslim girls making sure the lesbian couple got through the system together. Religious men making sure purple haired protestors got out safe. I don't want to hear it. Solidarity forever, free Palestine.

[pirateprincessjess]

When I was a kid my family pretended to get raptured so I would think I was left behind on earth while they all went to heaven.

I was like 8 years old and my sister and mom had gotten really into the Left Behind novels (bible fan fic about the rapture). In the books when the rapture happened the clothes that people were wearing when they got raptured were left behind in neatly folded piles.

One day when I was getting home from school my family decided that they would leave piles of neatly folded clothes around the house, and then hide in the basement.

The intended effect was that I would get home and see the clothes then, think that my family had been raptured and that I wasn’t good enough to get into heaven… or something?

The problem was that I had never read these books, and didn’t really think about the rapture very often. There was no reason that I would see some laundry on the floor and think “The rapture happened and I’ve been abandoned by God! I’ll never see my family again!! Oh nooo!!!!”

I just sat down and watched cartoons and eventually my family got bored and revealed that they were all hiding in the basement.

It’s a good thing I didn’t understand the joke, otherwise that shit would have been traumatic.

[oxytocinatrocities]

Yet another comic about leaving the Mormon church that can be applied to a variety of things. I also plan to include some version of this in a graphic novel I’m making.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

re: google AI. seriously. do you want machine generated misinformation or do you want to come here, to our beloved tumblr, and receive specially hand crafted misinformation. support real artists, guys. come to tumblr for your misinformation

edit: if you've come back to reblog from source or something. GET LOVED NERD and God bless you in the days to come

[winged-thinged]

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[jesusinstilettos]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

[prokopetz]

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[animentality]

[my-midlife-crisis]

[lastoneout]

I know this is a tiny part of the wider problems born of diet culture, fatphobia, classism, and racism but like god the idea that "healthy" food must inherently taste bad has completely ruined us as a society.

[cath-lic]

images that WILL go triple platinum if i have my way

[fuckyeahreligionpigeon]