#cultural christianity rearing it's ugly head

[valcaira]

What the actual fuck is wrong with you? "Martyred?" "MARTYRED??"

So, Gazans are just "noble savages" to you then? Their deaths are not tragic deaths but "glorious martyrdom"?

Fuck you. Fuck you and your shallow "activism". You don't give a shit about Palestinians if THAT'S how you talk about them.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Hello, I am not Jewish, but I grew up in an area with a noticeable population of Jews who, historically, were able to be openly Jewish. I learned from a young age about the horrors that have happened to your people throughout history, and have been disgusted by the rise in more blatant antisemitism that has reared its ugly head in the days and months since October 7th, a day which also horrified and disgusted me. I have also long considered myself to be pro-Israel, seeing the neccessity for Jewish self-determination in this world.

With my background out of the way, I saw one of your posts mentioned things we non-Jews might not notice are antisemitic due to it being part of our culture and what not, and I was hoping you could tell me some of them? I've detested antisemitism for as long as I can remember, so if I've been unintentionally doing anything that fits that, I would like to stop. Thank you and have a nice day.

I want to start by saying that I really appreciate the fact that you’re trying, and that you want to learn to do better in case you’re making any mistakes. I am a firm believer that EVERYONE has blind spots when it comes to how they treat members of minority groups, be it antisemitism, racism, homophobia, or whatever else, and that while intent isn’t all that matters, it matters a lot. While I’m answering your question, I’m going to cover some stuff you may already know based on the background you gave in the hopes that this answer will be useful for other people as well. I hope you don’t mind.

I also want to put a couple caveats on what I’m about to say. The first is that this is not a comprehensive list. It’s just whatever came to mind while I was typing this up. I’m sure I’ve missed things, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the kind of thing I was talking about. If anyone sees this and wants to add additional examples, please do!

The other caveat is that different Jews will have different definitions of what is and is not antisemitic. The big obvious stuff, like people chanting “Gas the Jews,” or accusations that Jews use the blood of Christian children to bake their bread, almost everyone is going to agree that’s antisemitic. The more subtle stuff, which is what we’re going to be talking about here, is more likely to prompt disagreement. For example, last year there was a lot of conversation on Tumblr about how the goblins in the Harry Potter game were an antisemitic caricature. The reaction from Jews I know in real life basically boiled down to, “Yeah, I guess I can see it. I don’t really think it’s that big of a deal though.” So, some of the stuff I mention, other Jews might disagree that it’s antisemitic. And there are some things that I might leave out because I don’t think they’re antisemitic that other Jews think really are antisemitic. That’s OK!

I think that if we’re going to talk about antisemitism that is present in Western culture, then we need to talk about the antisemitism that’s baked into Christianity, and acknowledge that because a lot of Western culture has been heavily influenced by the church, even if a person is not religiously Christian, if they are culturally Western, then Christianity has had a large impact on their culture, and we can say that they are culturally Christian. And if this post gets big, I know that I’m going to get murdered for that statement, but that’s ok, there’s nothing Christians love more than a crucified Jew (THIS IS A JOKE (mostly.)) I don’t know if you’re Christian or not, but I live in the US, and most people here are heavily influenced by Christian thought and philosophy without realizing it, even if they’re not Christian, and these are the people I was talking about when I made the comment that prompted the ask.

So how is antisemitism baked into Christianity? Well, to understand that, we need to understand some of the problems early Christianity had, namely, the fact that the Jews of the time rejected their beliefs and the fact that Rome persecuted early Christians pretty hard. And we also need to talk about Supersessionism.

Early Christians had a major issue with contemporaneous Jews because the Jews rejected their teachings. Like, Jesus and his followers were Jews, and after his death they wanted all other Jews to agree that he was the messiah, even though he didn’t do all the things the Jewish messiah was supposed to do. This is both why Christianity has the second coming (so that he can do those things) and why the New Testament opens with a genealogy linking Jesus to David (the messiah is supposed to be from the line of David), the early Christians were *desperate* for legitimacy in their new religion. And when the rest of the Jewish community rejected it, they got a little mad, and decided that Christians clearly understand Jewish holy texts better than Jews do (up to and including editing said texts to better support their views), something that persists to this day. I have actually seen Christians show up on posts about being Jewish and try to explain to the Jews about how we’re wrong about our own religion. This is absolutely antisemitism, and it does really happen.

The other thing early Christians decided is that the Jews have been presented with the true word of G-d and have rejected it, so they must be evil. This is true of the early Christians, but I also want to stress that almost every major player in the Protestant Reformation absolutely HATED Jews. Luther literally published a treatise entitled “On the Jews and Their Lies”, and some scholars think that there is a direct line between Luther’s hatred of Jews and the formation of the Nazi party. I think Luther was the worst of them, but none of those guys were cool with Jews, so just know that all of the protestant denominations were founded by guys who would kill me if they could.

Because the Jews were now considered evil, the Christians concluded that the covenant G-d had made with the Jews now applied to the Christians. Now, in Christian thought, they were the Chosen People, and the Jews were no longer so blessed. This is the premise behind supersessionism, and it basically posits that Christians have replaced Jews as the true people of Israel, and it was embraced by many of the men who shaped what Christianity is today, in virtually every denomination of Christianity that exists.

The early Christians dealt with their Roman persecution problem by allying themselves with the Romans. One might think that this would be difficult, as the Romans are very much the bad guys in the new testament. Like, the guys who arrested Jesus were Roman, and following Rome’s orders, Pilate was Roman, and the men who put Jesus on the cross were Roman. So how could Christianity ally with the people who killed Jesus? Well, it’s simple, they were already mad at the Jews for rejecting their new religion, so they would claim that all of that was the Jews’ fault so the Romans could be allied with for political power. And Rome didn’t like the Jews anyway, so they loved it when the Christians threw the Jews under the bus.

So, a lot of cultural antisemitism has its basis here, with this idea that Jews are not like the rest of us, they’re somehow worse (“the rest of us” meaning people in Christian cultures). And while a lot of it has turned into more overt antisemitism (“Jews killed Jesus,” Jews kill Christian children for their blood to make bread/matzoh, Jews control money/media/government). But this also turns into things like sermons about the evils of the Pharisees or praising Jesus for the cleansing of the Temple. How is that antisemitic? Well, the Pharisees are the fathers of modern Judaism, so if their evil, then the modern version of our religion is based on the thoughts of evil men. Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple was, from a Jewish perspective, a story about a man deciding that the systems that Jews established to make worship easier should be taken away. Praising that is praising the disruption of Jewish worship.

And on the other end of things, we have people (mostly Christians, but some not), who are in love with the idea of Jews, but not actual Jews. In non-Christians, this looks like people with the opinion “Christians suck, but the Jews are cool.” As an example, I had a guy show up on one of my posts to let me know that he used to hold Jews in high regard because he thought our culture would make us immune from nationalism and far-right ideologies. He was so disappointed in us when we behaved just like other groups of human beings. And while he said that he had thought well of us, he still thought of us as being not like other human cultures – that’s antisemitic. And being mad at us for acting like other humans? That’s antisemitic too.

In Christians, it usually looks like people saying “We love Jews, Jesus was a Jew!” This implies that the only reason to love Jews is because of a relation to a deity we don’t believe in. It ignores real, live Jews in favor of people who if real, have been dead for 2000 years, and makes it seem like our only value is that you like one guy from a very different version of our culture (modern Judaism is VERY different than what Jews contemporary with Jesus would have practiced). These people are also the ones who are most likely to try to connect with Judaism through cultural appropriation. The most common example of this is churches that hold a “Passover Seder.” Judaism is a mostly closed religion, and our holidays are not for other people to play dress up. Like, imagine if a church in the US said it was going to do a Native American ceremony with no Native American input, and you have an idea of the level of cultural appropriation. And people would rightly call that out as not ok, but churches do this all the time. The excuse that they use is that the last supper was a Seder, but while that may be true, the modern seder, which is what most churches try to do, is not how Jesus would have celebrated in the time of the Temple. So, their reasoning doesn’t hold much water, Jews tend to be pretty clear that it’s not ok as far as we’re concerned, so this behavior is very problematic.

Moving on from Christianity, there’s also stuff that has been around so long we’ve forgotten their antisemitic origins. I mentioned goblins at the start of this, but did you know that witches are also based on antisemitic stereotypes? The green skin, the big nose, the hat which matches hats Jews were required to wear in parts of medieval Europe, the magic received from a deal with the devil – these are all heavily based on antisemitic caricatures of Jews. And while I don’t think witches by themselves are antisemitic, if you start pairing them with other antisemitic things it gets bad fast. Like, a witch is not antisemitic, and a person kidnapping children is not antisemitic, but a witch kidnapping children is raising some serious red flags. And a cabal (the word cabal is derived from Kabbalah, which is a Jewish practice, and its use is ALSO antisemitic) of witches doing so is a big freaking problem.

Or we could talk about Charles Dickens. His works are considered classics, and are often required reading in school. But Fagin in Oliver Twist is a walking antisemitic Jewish stereotype, and that’s never called out in lesson plans. So to people who have never met a Jew, but have read this classic of English literature, Fagin is what they think of when they think Jews. For the classes with one Jewish kid – how do you think it feels to have everyone in class be like, “Oh you’re Jewish, just like Fagin the bad guy!” Of note, Dickens did write a much less antisemitic Jewish character in a later novel, Our Mutual Friend, but of these two, which one gets taught?

I also want to talk about institutional antisemitism. This is similar to the idea of institutional racism, if you’re familiar with that concept – the idea that racism has worked its way into how our very society is structured, so even if you try very hard to be anti-racist, the society you live in is designed to make life harder for POC. Institutional antisemitism is the same thing, except the system is rigged against Jews instead.

We’ll start with one that Jews and Blacks have in common – redlining. It’s the practice of not allowing people (mostly Black people, but also other POC) to buy houses in certain areas. Usually this was done by banks not giving mortgages to people, but there are also homes where it’s in the deed to the house, or in the by laws of the local HOA that you’re not allowed to sell to Black people. It turns out that some houses/HOAs also have “no Jews allowed” rules as well. And it’s super subtle – is a neighborhood Jew free because we’re an incredibly small portion of the population and just so happen to not live there? Or are they legally barred from living there? It can be hard to tell without doing some significant digging. My synagogue actually had a booth at our Purim carnival last year so that we could see if our neighborhood still had anti-Black housing laws so we could work on getting them changed if so. Solidarity.

There’s also probably some institutional antisemitism in your workplace. There sure as heck is in mine, and the last time I brought it up I was told that I could find work elsewhere if I had an issue with company policy. One of the more common ones it that many jobs that require work on Sundays give a higher rate of pay for that day. The historical reason for that is because Sunday is the Sabbath, and if your company is going to force you to work on the holy day, then they’re going to value that time more highly (my company does an extra dollar an hour for Sunday hours.) But Sunday isn’t the Sabbath for Jews, and when I asked if I could be compensated for my time on MY day of rest, well, see above for the answer I got.

You can also look at the holiday situation. My company is open 357 days a year. Of the 8 days we are closed, one is for Christmas, one is for Easter and one is for New Years on the Christian calendar (It’s the Gregorian calendar after POPE Gregory). Most people don’t work Sundays, so there’s no pay for Easter, but Christmas and New Years are both paid holidays. But the Jewish New Year, which is a religious holiday, is not. Nor are any other Jewish holidays. And we have a lot, and many of them require that you not work if you’re religiously observant. Enough that most people would have to spend their entire allotment of PTO for the year, just to have off for religious observance. You could argue that Christmas and New Years and Easter are federal holidays, except Easter isn’t, and also at my company we aren’t given off for all federal holidays (we’re open for president’s day and MLK day and so on), so you actually kinda do have to defend why these made the cut. Also I’m still waiting for the reason why a Christian holiday is also a Federal holiday in a country that supposedly values the separation of Church and State.

Jews also feel this at school. In college I had a professor schedule a midterm on Yom Kippur – the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, and a holiday that is observed, in part, by not consuming any food or water for 25 hours. I asked if I could take the test on a different day, and my request was denied. I’m sure my school probably had someone I could have talked to about this but I didn’t know that at the time, so I felt like my options were come in to class on a holiday or take a 0% and screw over my grade for the semester. I chose to celebrate as best I could, and duck out of services for an hour and a half to take the test. The professor (in what I’m sure he thought was an act of kindness) had brought several barrels of apples, so that we could each have a snack while we tested. I almost committed murder that day (what, my blood sugar was low enough to be non-existent at that point and I was feeling pretty cranky). And like, I don’t think the professor was trying to be antisemitic. He was trying to be fair by making us all test at the same time, and kind by bringing us a snack. But in effect, he made life much harder for the one Jewish student in his class by refusing an easy accommodation.

And is not being accommodating to Jews antisemitic? Yeah, kinda? It sure feels that way when it seems like your only options are 1) things are shitty because people won’t accommodate you, 2) you have to work extra hard to figure out how to accommodate yourself, or 3) you can stop being Jewish and then everything suddenly is so much easier. Another really common example of this is getting invited to a party, and then none of the food is kosher. Your options are 1) go hungry, 2) bring enough food that’s kosher for yourself and everyone else (otherwise they might eat the kosher stuff and you’re back to 1), or 3) the problem goes away when you stop keeping kosher. And the reason I feel this is antisemitic is that the host is making the space unwelcoming to Jews – you can come, but you’re not gonna like it, so you might as well not come. 

The last thing I want to talk about is treating Jews as white. A person might think that this is a good thing, like it’s granting us access to white privilege, but in reality it’s ignoring our needs as a minority. Claiming that Jews are white ignores that some Ashkenazi and many non-Ashkenazi Jews are definitely not even close to white, and it downplays the real discrimination Jews face. Studies have proven that it’s harder to get hired with a Jewish sounding name, and an article recently came out that said the prosecution was deliberately excluding Jews from juries (this is illegal discrimination) because they were less likely to give the death penalty, as examples. And even for white-passing Jews, the Shoah was very much about how Jews were not white. That was a pretty significant part of the Nazi ideology.

And this becomes an even bigger problem when the people who should want to be allies – other minorities and their white allies deny us the ability to seek help from them. When we talk about the discrimination that we face, we’re very frequently ignored, or told that we’re white and that we don’t know what it’s really like. This is what the left is doing right now when it calls us “oppressors” or “colonizers” – it’s denying our history of being oppressed and our history of being colonized because some of us look like we came from Europe.

Anyway, if you’re still here (I know this is VERY long), I hope this was helpful in understanding some of the ways that antisemitism can be present in small things, from church sermons to pay rates to fairy tales. And I want to be clear, I’d much rather deal with the antisemitic implications of Hansel and Gretel than deal with people chanting “Jews will not replace us.” But in an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to deal with either.

[ftmtftm]

Christian Supremacist Antisemitism/Cultural Christianity rearing their ugly heads via a bunch of people saying Isreali Jews should "go to Hell or back to Brooklyn" really shouldn't surprise me as much as it does, but holy fucking shit.

I promise you, you can support Palestinian Liberation without blatantly Christian flavored Antisemitism!!

[spacelazarwolf]

i find the response from atheists to the concept of cultural christianity really interesting because they'll be like "oh, so you're saying i'm irrevocably tainted by christianity??? even if i've never been christian??? i'm tainted by proxy??? i need to beg you for forgiveness and feel guilty for growing up in a christian culture????" like BABES you're doing the culturally christian thing RIGHT NOW like this really mirrors shit like white guilt in activist spaces. where the cultural christian lens has white people thinking they need to grovel at the feet of people of color when what they actually need to do is be able to learn, grow, materially support people of color, and meaningfully oppose white supremacy SIMILARLY, people who are culturally christian need to understand that their perspectives are limited by christianity and work to be aware of that, learn new perspectives, and understand the influence of christianity in their lives. you don't have to stop celebrating christmas, but don't act like it's 100% secular for you to celebrate it, don't ignore how you're only able to celebrate christmas because of the influence and dominance of christianity i think it really comes through when anti-theism rears its ugly head because like you said it really is just evangelical atheism. if you think all religions are bad/evil/stupid and shouldn't exist, and everyone needs to be saved enlightened by adopting your beliefs, you are no different from evangelical christians who've eradicated cultures in the name of assimilation into the dominant culture. this framework of universality of belief being good or necessary is inherently a colonialist one informed deeply by christian values anyways, I recommend everyone to read How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova for some bangers like this: "From within one's own conceptual framework (the framework that is shared with the rest of the members of one's culture) it is possible to ignore the framework-as long as one communicates only with one's fellows. This is usually the case with Westerners. Their communication takes place within a closed circle-everything that exists outside that circle of reference is seen as "other" and is subject to understanding only after extensive interpretation. The interpretative network, however, is of their own making (or it would make no sense to them), so that the interpretations lead less to knowledge of the other as other than to an extension of one's own way of seeing: the new is made familiar."

the groveling thing is so real! it’s this weird expectation white ppl have created in activist spaces where If You REALLY Aren’t Racist Then You’ll Loudly And Publicly Self Flagellate when that’s never something poc have asked people to do. it kind of reminds me of the whole thing in catholicism where you go confess your sins to a priest then say whatever prayers he tells you to say and apparently you’re good to go. or like even in the super progressive church i work for, they all recite ethos confession of sins and it’s just like 100 white ppl chanting abt how they are all miserable sinners who are only saved through jesus?????? it weirds me out lmao. but yeah, performative guilt seems eerily similar to that.

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - January 24, 2023

Know your shepherd!

Isaiah 40:11 He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm (z’roah in Hebrew), And carry them in His bosom, And gently lead those who are with young.

John 10:10-11 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.

In Israel, we often see goats and sheep roaming the countryside. Driving through rural Israel often involves suddenly stopping to allow a herd of sheep or goats to cross the road. But interestingly, I have never seen “sheep kill" on the side of the road in all the years that I’ve lived in Israel. It’s because sheep don’t roam without a shepherd!

The Lord is gathering His lambs with His arm, and carrying them to His bosom. This is not a distant relationship but one of loving care and intimacy with His sheep. He said, "I know my sheep and my sheep know me." [John 10:14]. Then He continued, "..and I lay down my life for the sheep."

The most vulnerable time for defenseless animals is at night when they need to sleep. The sheepfold is where they are gathered by the shepherd each night; a stone compound, with rocks stacked high enough to keep out predators, but without a door. Yeshua (Jesus) declared Himself to be the “door of the sheep” [John 10:7-9] because, as a Good Shepherd, He lies where a door would typically be so that nothing could go in or out, without passing by the Shepherd!

As evil seems to be rearing its ugly head in every facet of life these days, and greater darkness seems to be looming on the horizon, we need to truly realize the powerful and complete protection that our Good Shepherd provides. Nothing can get to us unless it goes through Him! When the Lord laid down His life for us He also gave us a fortress of protection and safety which is impossible to break.

Knowing of the dark days we would be facing Yeshua afforded us a profound sense of safety in Himself so that we absolutely need not walk in fear. Promising never to leave nor forsake us till the end of the age He gave us the security of intimacy with Himself, in and through every trial or danger. We need never doubt…that we can trust Him.

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Going to Christian College in Dallas, Texas) Baltimore, Maryland

Registration is closing soon! Join us on an epic, life changing journey through Israel, - https://worthynews.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b94ae97bb66e693a4850359ec&id=561938277c&e=3d3c649f0e hrough the eyes of those who are well acquainted with the culture, the people and the Land. This is not your average Israel tour— bring your family, bring your friends, and experience the REAL ISRAEL with George and Baht Rivka as your personal hosts.

[ionlylikemycat]

if you’re ever tempted to make fandomwank posts i suggest calling your mom instead and talking her ear off for eleven and half minutes about the purity culture based in christian hegemony that’s been rearing its ugly head in fandom lately instead. much better use of energy

[alexsfictionaddiction]

12 Lesbian Books Everyone Should Read This Pride Month

I need to point out how wonderful the updated version of the lesbian flag is. It’s inclusive of lesbians of all skin colours and that’s exactly what I’ve tried to do in this post. Pride is a time for acceptance, love and inclusivity and it feels especially poignant with everything that is happening in the world right now. So here are my favourite sapphic books that definitely need picking up, if your life is lacking a little girl power. -Love, Alex x

1. Something To Talk About by Meryl Wilsner.

Rumours flood the media that Hollywood starlet Jo and her assistant Emma’s relationship is something more than it is but could that actually be true? This brand new release is a sweet slow-burning romance set in a believable contemporary Hollywood that will help you escape.

2. Under The Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta.

When war breaks out in Nigeria, 11-year-old Ijeoma is sent away to safety where she falls for another girl -an experience that will forever change her. With elements of both Nigerian folklore and Christianity, this is a life story set against an eye-opening backdrop of African history, cultural attitudes towards sexuality and the effects of war.  

3. In At The Deep End by Kate Davies.

Twenty-something Julia hasn’t had sex for three years, when she gets her sexual awakening at a warehouse party and so transpires her new life as a lesbian. It’s a filthy, hilarious British rom-com with a Bridget Jones level of heartwarmth to it that reminds us that you don’t have to have it all figured out before you’re an adult. 

4. Juliet Takes A Breath by Gabby Rivera.

Juliet’s coming out didn’t go down well with her Puerto Rican family but now she’s interning with Harlowe Brisbane, a leading voice on feminism and being a lesbian, so surely she’ll get her life figured out, right? Funny and charming, this is a fierce educational novel that you will eat right up.

5. XX by Angela Chadwick.

When Rosie and Jules become the first lesbian couple to fall pregnant through innovative ovum-to-ovum technology, someone leaks the news and the whole world becomes incredibly interested in their lives. XX is a feminist, speculative critique of misogyny, inequality, homophobia and multiple other ills of the world that will pull you straight in.

6. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth.

In 1989, Cam meets and falls for beautiful cowgirl Coley in their small conservative Montana town but her religious aunt has other, much darker, plans for her niece. Cameron Post is a heady daze of a novel full of angst and heartache that deals with very real issues for many LGBT teens, making it easy to see why its largely considered a seminal work in YA lesbian literature. 

7. Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst.

Princess Denna is about to become queen of a land where magic is forbidden, while harboring a secret power of her own, but things get even more complicated when she meets her betrothed’s sister Mare. Intense friendship, conflicting loyalties and saving the world makes this fantasy novel a gorgeous read.

8. The Deep by Rivers Solomon.

Descended from pregnant African slavewomen thrown overboard, Yetu’s people have formed their own underwater society, free from sexual or gender labels, and Yetu remembers everything for them. This beautifully written novella is a very original, captivating and moving experience that is of paramount importance right now.

9. It’s Not Like It’s A Secret by Misa Sugiura.

When Sana moves to California with her family, she meets gorgeous and unique Jamie but both home and friendship dramas rear their ugly heads. As well as being a cute awkward romance, it also tackles racism, damaging stereotypes and celebrates interracial love.

10. Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

Tired of a life and afterlife of drudgery, Gideon plans to escape but her lifelong nemesis, necromancer Harrowhark has one last task for her. Gideon the Ninth is a very unique intricate fantasy with extensive world-building and a snarky, complex relationship at its heart.

11. The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

In the deep American South, Celie is separated from her sister Nettie, when she meets vivacious Shug Avery, who teaches her how to be her true self. The Color Purple is a classic within the black literature canon and explores race, abuse and feminism with wonderfully intriguing sapphic undertones. 

12. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell.

Laura Dean is Frederica’s dream girl but their on/off relationship is starting to ooze toxicity and Freddy realises that she needs to decide what -and who- is really best for her. This stunning graphic novel is a lesson to us all to go after the love we deserve as opposed to settling for the love we can get.

[eli-kittim]

The Tower of Babel: History or Prophecy?

By Biblical Researcher & Goodreads Author Eli Kittim 📖

The New World Order

For decades, atheists, anarchists, and irreligious organizations——such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation & the American Atheists——have tried to ban religious freedom and religious expression from society, culture, education, and the media. And, by and large, these secular humanists have won that fight. The Bible was removed from American classrooms in the 1960s, and shortly thereafter prayer and the Ten Commandments were also removed.

The current shift toward atheism in America and Europe is largely due to these political endeavours. And in the globalist agenda——as propounded by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, & António Guterres (the Secretary-General of the United Nations)——religion plays a subordinate role in the upcoming one-world government.

In fact, powerful leaders have been conspiring for decades. We’re talking about a global dictatorship that has been in the making since the founding of the Federal Reserve in the early part of the 20th century. It has been affectionately called by Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, & Gordon Brown, among others, as “the new world order.” It’s not a conspiracy theory since many US presidents, British prime ministers, and high level officials——including Charles, Prince of Wales——have explicitly referred to it as an ideal future government that they’re all working towards as if “they are one people” (cf. Genesis 11.6)! This is no longer a conspiracy theory since this totalitarian world government——which has now reared its ugly head by censoring the masses through social media-driven panic, fake news, government lockdowns, and forced mask and passport mandates——is emerging before our very eyes. Surprisingly, the Bible foresaw this attack on religion, and especially on Christianity, and recorded it in Scripture. Psalm 2.1-3 (NRSV) reads:

Why do the nations conspire, and the

peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth

set themselves, and the rulers take counsel

together, against the Lord and his anointed,

saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder,

and cast their cords from us.’

The Tower of Babel & the One-World Government

The modern discoveries & innovations in virology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, genetics, molecular biology, as well as the harnessing of nuclear energy are seemingly implied in the following Biblical excerpt from Genesis 11.6:

and this is only the beginning of what they

will do; nothing that they propose to do will

now be impossible for them.

Might the scheme to “confuse their language” be a form of electromagnetic pulse attack known as EMP? An EMP is a massive burst of electromagnetic energy that can be generated using nuclear weapons. It creates an enormous magnetic field that can cause widespread damage & disruption to electrical and power grids within range. According to Peter Pry, a defense analyst with the Congressional EMP Commission:

You can use a single weapon to collapse

the entire North American power grid. …

Once the electric grid goes down,

everything would collapse … Everything

depends on electricity: telecommunications,

transportation, even water.

This is certainly one way to “confuse” or disrupt all forms of communication.

Since the towers or ziggurats that ancient people built were no match for the modern skyscrapers, might the Tower-of-Babel narrative be a *prophecy* instead of an origin myth about why people speak different languages? Let’s look at the evidence. The Hebrew Bible (Gen. 11.4) says that the people built a tower (וּמִגְדָּל֙ ū·miḡ·dāl) whose top (וְרֹאשׁ֣וֹ wə·rō·šōw) is in the heavens, or will reach into heaven (בַשָּׁמַ֔יִם ḇaš·šā·ma·yim)! Have the ancients ever built a tower that soared above the clouds? Hardly! However, the Jeddah Tower (aka Kingdom Tower), currently built in Saudi Arabia, will be 1 km (3,281 ft) high, “whose top” will literally be “in the heavens.” And it is appropriately called: a “tower.”

Notice also that many of today’s highest skyscrapers are actually called “towers” and they do, in fact, reach the clouds: the Jin Mao Tower, in Shanghai, the Willis Tower, in Chicago, the Petronas Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, even the Empire State Building, in New York City. Here’s a shot of the Empire State Building peeking above the clouds!

The Prophecy Concerning Babylon the Great

Revelation 18.8-21

‘therefore her plagues will come in a single

day — pestilence and mourning and famine

— and she will be burned with fire; for

mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’ And

the kings of the earth, who committed

fornication and lived in luxury with her, will

weep and wail over her when they see the

smoke of her burning; they will stand far off,

in fear of her torment, and say, ‘Alas, alas,

the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For

in one hour your judgment has come.’ …

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a

great millstone and threw it into the sea,

saying, ‘With such violence Babylon the

great city will be thrown down, and will be

found no more.’

Conclusion

All of the evidence——including the language of the Hebrew Bible——supports an *apocalyptic* rather than a pseudo-historical Tower-of-Babel. The so-called “confusion” or disruption of communication may indicate the coming world Judgment in the form of EMP attacks & nuclear weapons, as alluded to in Daniel 12.1, Joel 2.31, Zechariah 14.12, Matthew 24.6-21, Luke 21.20-26, & Revelation 6.12-15 (i.e. the Great Tribulation). And the prophecy is set to take place when the whole world will be united as “one people” (Genesis 11.6), or one-world government!

Genesis 11.4-9:

Then they said, ‘Come, let us build

ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in

the heavens, and let us make a name for

ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered

abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’

The Lord came down to see the city and the

tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord

said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they

have all one language; and this is only the

beginning of what they will do; nothing that

they propose to do will now be impossible

for them. Come, let us go down, and

confuse their language there, so that they

will not understand one another's speech.’

So the Lord scattered them abroad from

there over the face of all the earth, and they

left off building the city. Therefore it was

called Babel, because there the Lord

confused the language of all the earth; and

from there the Lord scattered them abroad

over the face of all the earth.

—

[theoi-crow]

As someone who is constantly talking about your shadow creating doubt and anxiety that presents as deities being upset with you, I was wondering how you would tell the difference between Shadow and deities actually being upset with you. I know for me it presents as the energy being "off", like something is missing or wrong.

This is such a good question! Omg! 

Okay so before I started working with Hellenic deities, I have had different experiences with various deities from different pantheons and have been in a couple of pagan religions that were very demanding of my energy regardless of my lack of spoons, plus I have PTSD that causes random episodes of anxiety or may make it easy for trickster spirits and my shadow self to pretend to be a pissed off god so…

I have spiritual boundaries!

Spiritual boundaries are a great way for me to tell when it's a god, trickster spirit, childhood trauma or my shadow self back at it again with that god-fearing Christian guilt that rears its ugly head every now and then.

Any god who will respect your boundaries is worth keeping! 

Here's a list of my spiritual boundaries: 

-if a god is unnecessarily cruel that's not a god that's something else. (Everyone has their own beliefs and opinions about the gods but I personally don't believe the gods are automatically cruel for the sake of being cruel—especially when it can negatively affect our relationship and turn it toxic.) 

-If a god insults or belittles me, especially if the insults used, trigger memories of when I was still living in a toxic environment, then that is not a god that is my shadow self back at it again with that childhood trauma trying to get me to stop working with the gods because the gods are challenging it's insecurities and traumas in an effort to help but the shadow self is afraid of change.

-if a god threatens me or my family then that's not a god, that's my PTSD having an episode (I have gotten this before and it's usually a sign of my PTSD distorting my view of the gods and causing a panic attack in an effort to make me feel helpless and isolated). 

-if a god is unreasonable in their demands even after I have already explained why I can't meet them, then this is not a god but a trickster spirit trying to twist the narrative in order to get something from me and weaponizing my god-fearing Christian guilt (which I have gotten rid of, for the most part, but still manifests in different ways because it's embedded in my subconscious mind and still requires vigilance). The gods are understanding when I tell them why I can't meet their requests and will either adjust what they want or help me acquire it.

-If a god is petty then that's not a god that's a trickster spirit. The more I learn about the gods, the more I learn that to assume the gods are petty just to be petty is to decide you are no longer interested in looking deeper into their actions or accepting that the information we have found is incomplete and taking the myths as biblical fact when the myths actually say more about ancient greek customs and culture and less about the actual gods. It also tells me the person choosing to see the gods as petty is subconsciously comparing them to biblical figures without understanding the history behind the christianization of europe and demonization of paganism. 

There are more boundaries that I'm currently forgetting but these are the main ones.

These boundaries aren't because I'm demanding that the gods address me a certain way but it's more of a guidance tool to help the gods and I connect a lot smoother. 

This isn't to say the gods don't get mad at me but the energy they give me when they're actually mad can be better explained using an analogy:

Say you have a friend who has an abusive relationship with alcohol and is trying to quit. This is his 5th time trying to quit and he wants you to help him again because, as a close friend, you have learned to see the pattern when he is about to fall off the wagon, plus you really care about him so you agree. 

One day you find a bottle of vodka he bought earlier that day and when you ask him about it, he tells you he had a very stressful day and just needs to relax.

You offer other methods of relaxing because you know this is the first sign that he's about to fall off the wagon again, but he gets annoyed and asks why are you nagging him (when you are just concerned and doing what he originally asked you to do.) He throws a fit as you pour the alcohol down the drain and you remind him that he's still experiencing withdrawal and try to comfort him as he screams and cries because he's terrified of facing the world without alcohol for the first time in 20 years. 

In this analogy you are the god, your friend is both the person trying to get their life together and the person's subconscious falling back into toxic habits and the alcohol represents behaviors or beliefs that have turned into a toxic codependency that are now negatively affecting your friend.

So this is more the kind of "fights" that I have gotten in with the gods.

They notice a toxic behavior or I ask them to help me with it and my shadow self refuses to listen due to fear of change.

One time Aphrodite got mad because I refused to let go of a toxic friend until Aphrodite literally separated us by having me move to the other side of the country.  

Another time, Hermes was SO ANGRY when I was careless and didn't look both ways before crossing the street and almost got hit by a taxi I still remember the exact thing he said as soon as he got someone to pull me back just in time: "CHILDREN LEARN TRAFFIC SAFETY IN KINDERGARTEN FOR A FUCKING REASON!!!"

Oof, and don't even get me started on the fights I have with Apollo but basically he rules A LOT of things that require me to do shadow work and most of our fights consist of Apollo telling me to do shadow work and me refusing to do it and him reminding me that I need to face it sooner or later and me continuing to put it off until he drags me into it and I start crying. 

The gods do get angry but I've only ever experienced their anger stemming from their care for me and disappointment in me falling back into toxic habits. 

[creepingsharia]

“There Was Blood All Over”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2021

by Raymond Ibrahim

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of January, 2021:

Attacks on Churches

USA: Arsonists torched an Armenian church in San Francisco in a spike of anti-Armenian hate crimes believed to have been inspired by Armenia’s recent clash with its Muslim neighbors, Azerbaijan and its Turkish supporter.  According to the Jan. 6 report,

In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, there have been four hate crimes committed against the Armenian community over the last six months including a local Armenian School being vandalized with hateful and racist graffiti, which was followed by an arson attack on St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church. There are about 2,500 Armenian-Americans living in the San Francisco Bay Area, so these crimes per capita is a very high number given how small the community is. For a region of the country that prides itself on its progressivism, diversity and acceptance of all cultures, these latest attacks should be a warning sign that hate and violence can rear their ugly heads irrespective of where you may live….  The vandals at the Armenian School in San Francisco spray-painted the colors of the Azerbaijan flag and used threatening language in Azerbaijani. In many ways, these latest hate crimes, coupled with the resurgence of hostilities in the South Caucasus, are a continuation of the Armenian Genocide that is now finding its way to the San Francisco Bay Area.  It is often said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are clearly seeing these prophetic words come to life for Armenians in the San Francisco Bay Area who have fought for decades for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. As victims of oppression, Armenians see these latest attacks as an extension of Turkey and Azerbaijan’s denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and a threat to their very existence.

Sweden: Twice over the course of four days, an 800-year-old church in Stockholm was firebombed.  First, on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, several Molotov cocktails were hurled at the twelfth century Spånga church, which is located in a Muslim majority area.  According to the church’s pastor, “the alarm was triggered when a window was smashed and flammable liquid thrown at the front gate and one of the windows. However, the fire was quickly put out by the police, who used a powder extinguisher.”  The same church had been fire-bombed just four days earlier, on Jan. 20, 2021: two explosives were hurled at and smashed through the church windows, and another was lobbed at the church gate.  Moreover, according to one report,

Spånga parish has been subjected to attacks on several previous occasions. In December 2018, an explosive device was detonated in the same parish. No one was convicted for the blast.

Hailing from the 12th century, the Spånga Church is one of the oldest in the Swedish capital. It is located on the outskirts of Tensta and is flanked by Rinkeby, both notorious for their heavy presence of immigrants (about 90 percent of the population)… Both areas are dominated by immigrants from Muslim countries and are formally classified as “particularly vulnerable” (which many consider to be a palatable euphemism for a “no-go zone”) due to failed integration and major problems including unemployment, rampant crime and Islamic extremism.

Attacks against churches have become a familiar sight in Sweden. Last year alone, a number of churches, mostly those in troubled suburban [i.e., heavily Muslim migrant] areas, were subjected to various types of attacks and vandalism, including those in Gottsunda, Uppsala and Rosengård, Malmö.

Philippines:   An Islamic group consisting primarily of teenage Muslims opened fire on a church.  According to the Jan. 8 report,

the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters [BIFF], a terrorist group based in the southern Philippines, attacked a parish church after conducting a raid on the town’s military and police outposts. After a 15-minute firefight, both the church building and a statue of the patron saint bore bullet holes.  Police and military authorities said the BIFF had also plotted to set ablaze Sta. Teresita parish church and the church-run Notre Dame of Dulawan high school in the area. However, their attempt to burn the two church facilities was foiled by policemen and soldiers.

BIFF is an Islamic separatist organization operating in the Philippines; it swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014.  Right before the church attack, dozens of gunmen from the Islamic group attacked the local police station and burned a police vehicle parked outside.  The police attack came after two men connected with the group were arrested and is seen as a reprisal attack against police.  Muslim terrorism has been on the rise in the Philippines, the population of which is 86% Christian.   According to the report,

In August [2020], pro-ISIS terrorists blew themselves up in attacks that killed at least 15 people … and injured 80 others in the city of Jolo … in the far south of the country, whose population is majority Roman Catholic.

In 2019, terrorists set off two explosive devices at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral, also known as the Jolo Cathedral, in the Mindanao region. The attack resulted in approximately 100 injuries and about 20 dead.

In August 2019, pastor Ernesto Javier Estrella of the United Church of Christ in Antipas, Cotabato Province, was shot and killed on the Island of Mindanao.

In June 2018, Catholic priest Richmond Nilo was gunned down in a chapel in Zaragoza town in Nueva Ecija province, at the altar where he was preparing to celebrate mass.

Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan:  The bloated bodies of two Christian sisters, who had long rebuffed the advances of their Muslim employers, were found in a sewer in January 2021. Earlier, on November 26, the sisters, Sajida (28) and Abida (26), who were both married and had children, were reported as missing. The two Muslim men for whom they worked had regularly pressured them to convert to Islam and marry them. Even though the young women “made it clear that they were Christian and married, the men threatened them and kept harassing the sisters.”  Forty days after they were reported missing, on January 4, 2021, their decomposed bodies were discovered. Their Muslim supervisors, during their interrogation, “confessed that they had abducted the sisters,” said Sadija’s husband; “and after keeping them hostage for a few days for satisfying their lust, had slit their throats and thrown their bodies into the drain.” The widower described the families’ ordeal:

When police informed us that they had identified the two bodies as those of our loved ones, it seemed that our entire world had come crumbling down…. I still cannot fathom the site [sic] of seeing my wife’s decomposed body.

Discussing this case, Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement in the UK, said,

The killing of Abida and Sajida in such a merciless way is not an isolated case, but the killing, rape and forced conversion of Christian girls have become an everyday matter and the government has denied this and therefore is doing nothing to stop the ongoing persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, such cases happen very often in the country, and nobody pays any attention – even the national media – as Christians are considered inferior and their lives worthless.

Nigeria:  On Jan. 16, Muslim Fulani herdsmen opened fire on and killed Dr. Amos Arijesuyo, pastor of Christ Apostolic Church and a highly respected professor at the Federal University of Technology.  “The university condemns in the strongest terms this senseless attack that has led to the untimely death of an erudite university administrator and counselor par excellence,” the university said in a statement. “Dr. Arijesuyo’s death is a big loss to FUTA, the academic community in Nigeria and beyond. It is a death that should not have happened in the first place…. Our prayers and thoughts are with the wife, children and family members of our departed colleague at this difficult period of unquantifiable grief.”

In the two weeks before this murder, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 26 more people and wounded three in Christian majority regions.  A separate report appearing in mid-January revealed that “More Christians are murdered for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country.”

Finally, in a speech released in January, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, made clear that, despite Western claims that his organization is motivated by secular interests, religion colors everything. According to the Jan. 28 report, Shekau called on the new Chief of Defense Staff, Lt. General Lucky Irabor, a Christian, to “repent and convert to Islam.”  He also told the new Chief of Army staff, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, that, by going against Boko Haram, his behavior is “un-Islamic” and “he is no longer regarded as a Muslim.”

Attacks on Apostates and Evangelists

Uganda: A Muslim man beat his 13-week-pregnant wife, causing her to miscarriage, after he learned that she had converted to Christianity.  On Jan. 13, Mansitula Buliro, the 45-year-old woman in question and mother of seven, was preparing for Muslim evening prayers with her husband when she began to have Christian visions.  On the following day she secretly visited a Christian neighbor, prayed with her, and put her faith in Christ. Right before she left, a Muslim man knocked on the Christian neighbor’s door and said, “Mansitula, I thought you were a Muslim—how come I heard prayers mentioning the name of Issa [Jesus]?”  Then, when Mansitula returned home her husband informed her that he had been told that she had become Christian.  “I kept quiet,” Mansitula later explained in an interview:

My husband started slapping and kicking me indiscriminately. I then fell down. He went inside the house and came back with a knife and started cutting my mouth, saying, ‘Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar [jihadist slogan “Allah is greater”], I am punishing you to not speak about Yeshua [Jesus] in my house. This is a Muslim home.’

Her screaming caused her two youngest children (six and eight) also to start screaming, prompting neighbors to rush and stop the attack.   “There was blood all over from my mouth,” Mansitula said. “My in-laws arrived, and in their presence my husband pronounced divorce: ‘Today you are no longer my wife. I have divorced you. Leave my house, or I will kill you.’”  A neighbor took her by motorcycle to a nearby hospital.  “I was examined, and they found that my fetus had been affected, and after four days I had a miscarriage….  It is now very difficult to reunite with my family. I am now Christian, and I have decided for Issa’s cause.”

Separately, on Dec. 27, around 7 pm, eight Muslims ambushed and beat Pastor Moses Nabwana and his wife, a mother of eight, as they were walking home from a church function: “They began by beating my husband, hitting him with sticks and blunt objects on the head, the back, his belly and chest,” Naura, his wife, said. “I made a loud alarm, and one of the attackers hit me with blows and a stick that affected my chest, back and broke my hand.”  Christian neighbors rushed to their cries, prompting the assailants to flee.  Due to the severe injuries they sustained, the wife was hospitalized for five days and her husband, Pastor Moses, was hospitalized for several more days.  The assault came after area Muslims learned that an imam had converted to Christianity and joined their church; mosque leaders incited the attack.  On that same night, “area Muslims demolished the roof, windows, doors and other parts of the[ir] church building that has a capacity for 500 people, leaving a heap of broken debris… Chairs, benches, musical instruments, amplifiers and other items were destroyed.”

Then, around 4:30 am on Sunday, Jan. 24, while the pastor was still recovering at the hospital, three Muslims broke into their home, again beating his wife, Naura—who was still recovering from her first beating—as well as two of their eight children.  “I heard loud noises and plates being broken,” Naura recalled. “The children and I woke up.  The attackers had broken the door and entered in. One started strangling me, while another threw one of my daughters outside through the window and broke the skin on her leg.”   The Muslims fled before inflicting more damage once they learned that her brother-in-law and his family were rushing over: “The assailants left behind a Somali sword,” she said, “which I think they possibly had planned to use to rape and then kill me.”  Naura’s 10 year-old daughter suffered a deep cut on her knee, and her 12-year-old daughter suffered an eye injury.  Atop all the injuries she suffered from her first beating, Naura’s neck was injured: “I am still in great pain, and the doctor has recommended that my uterus, which is seriously damaged, needs to be removed,” she said. “This will need a big amount of money.”  According to a church leader who visited Naura and her family in their thatched-roof dwelling the day after the attack, “She is still in pain and needs basic assistance in the absence of the husband, the bread-winner.”

Iran: On Jan. 18, the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” arrested Fatemeh (Mary) Mohammadi, a 22-year-old convert to Christianity and human rights activist, on the accusation that “her trousers were too tight, her headscarf was not correctly adjusted, and [that] she should not be wearing an unbuttoned coat.” This is the third time officials arrest Mary.  She did six months of prison time, after her first arrest, for being a member of a house church—which the regime recently labeled as “enemy groups” belonging to a “Zionist” cult; she also spent a brief time in jail after participating in a peaceful protest in April 2020.   Officials have also pressured her employer, whom she always had a good relationship with, to prevent her from returning to work as a gymnastics instructor; and she was kicked out of her university on the eve of her exams.  Reflecting on her travails, Mary wrote that:

Everything is affected…  Your work, income, social status, identity, mental health, satisfaction with yourself, your life, your place in society, your independence….  And as a woman it’s even harder to remain patient and endure, in a society so opposed to women and femininity, though crying out for them both.

Attacks on Christian ‘Blasphemers’ in Pakistan

Pakistan:  On Jan. 28, hospital employees slapped and beat a Christian nurse who had worked there for nine years, after a Muslim nurse told them that she had said “only Jesus is the true Savior and that Muhammad has no relevance.”  A hospital member recorded and loaded a video of the attack on Tabeeta Nazir Gill, a 42-year-old Catholic gospel singer.  It shows the woman surrounded by a throng of angry Muslims who slap her and demand she “confess your crime in writing.” “I swear to God I haven’t said anything against the prophet [Muhammad],” the Christian woman insists in the video. “They are trying to trap me in a fake charge.”   “Fortunately, someone called the police, and they promptly arrived on the scene and saved her life,” Pastor Eric Sahotra later explained. After questioning the accused, police concluded, based also on the testimony of other co-workers, that “A Muslim colleague made the false accusation due to a personal grudge,” continued the pastor:

Other hospital employees were misled into believing the allegation, so they also attacked Tabeeta….  News of the incident spread quickly through the social media, raising fears of mob violence outside the hospital and other areas.

A Muslim mob later descended on and besieged the police station; this prompted police to register a First Information Report against Gill under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s blasphemy statues—which calls for the maximum death penalty for anyone who verbally insults Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.  Last reported, the woman’s two young children were “in a state of shock since the time they saw the graphic video of their mother’s beating,” said the pastor.  No legal action was taken against the Muslim nurse who fabricated the blasphemy accusation to instigate her coreligionists.   The report adds that,

In Pakistan, false accusations of blasphemy are common and often motivated by personal vendettas or religious hatred. Accusations are highly inflammatory and have the potential to spark mob lynchings, vigilante murders and mass protests. Many of those accused of blasphemy never reach the courtroom; violence has killed 62 accused people since 1990, with few prosecutions.

Separately, hundreds of Muslims descended on the village of a 25-year-old Christian man, and threatened to behead him and torch his and adjoining homes, soon after it became known that he had shared a Facebook post critical of Muhammad.  According to the Jan. 5 report, on first learning that Muslims were angry, Raja Warris apologized, pointing out that he had only shared the post “for academic understanding between Christians and Muslims and did not mean to offend any Muslims.”  The matter seemed to be closed after that; but then, and in the words of Rev. Ayub Gujjar, vice moderator of the Raiwind Diocese of the Church of Pakistan,

[W]e were informed by our congregation members in Charar that a huge mob had gathered in the locality on the call of a cleric affiliated with the extremist religio-political outfit, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan [TLP], and were demanding the beheading of the catechist.  Fearing violence, hundreds of Christian residents fled their homes while around 400 anti-riot policemen were deployed in the area to thwart violence.

Rev. Gujjar and other Christian leaders rushed to the police station, which was quickly surrounded by Muslims who “chanted slogans against Christians,” prompting police to insist that Warris be handed over.  Police then registered a First Information Report under Section 295-A and Section 298-A of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which call for up to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemers, and then showed it to the mob leaders, at which point they called off the siege and dispersed.  Discussing this incident, Bishop of Raiwind Diocese Azad Marshall said that “Warris is an educated youth who loves to serve God.”  Even so,

Christians especially need to be more careful in sharing content, because any faith-based post could be used to instigate violence against the community…  We need to understand that Islamic religious sentiments run high in our country, therefore it’s important to carefully analyze the content before posting it online.

General Hostility for Christians and Christianity

Pakistan: On Jan. 5, a Muslim man severely beat his Christian employee because he had taken leave to attend a Christmas Day prayer service.   Even though Ansar Masih had compensated for the missed day of work by working on the following Sunday, his manager was abusive.  “When I argued with him, he called four other staffers to teach me a lesson for going to church and arguing with him,” Masih later explained. “They abused Christians for their religious practices and said derogatory words when they came to know that I was busy praying at the church.”  The Christian man sustained several injuries during the assault and was taken to a local hospital.  According to the report, as often happens in such cases,

Police officials and the men that assaulted Masih are now putting pressure on his family to settle the matter out of court. Masih has submitted an application to police regarding the incident, but not action has been taken by officers against Masih’s assailants.

Austria: According to a Jan. 5 report, approximately 40 Muslim migrants rioted and burned down a Christmas tree in Favoriten.  On coming to extinguish the large tree, the fire brigade heard one of the migrants yelling: “A Christmas tree has no place in a Muslim district,” even as the raging mob pelted the emergency service officials with projectiles to screams of “Allahu Akbar.”

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again and Sword and Scimitar, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic.   Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1)          To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2)          To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Watch video below as Ibrahim describes his monthly report.

[frownyalfred]

Hi, I hope I'm not being disrespectful by asking this but im curious about the basics of Judaism and how it works. I was raised Christian but I couldn't "get behind" it, but I've always been curious about other religions and how they work from another persons point of view. I hope this isn't rude or anything I just like personal viewpoints on things.

Sure!

Like I’ve said before, I’m not an authority on anything. Just a reform Jew with some thoughts. 

Judaism preceded both Christianity and Islam, which both draw heavily from its belief system. Judaism revolves around the torah, or what many would know as the Old Testament, as well as other scriptures and ancient writings. 

Jewish “priests” are called rabbis. Jews observe the sabbath, or shabbat, starting at sundown on Friday nights, and ending on sundown the next Saturday. This is where the Christian Sunday sabbath comes from. 

There are several sects of Judaism (think like catholics, protestants, etc). Some of the largest are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist. These are in order of strictness of observance. 

I’m a Reform Jew, who dabbled a bit in Reconstructionist and Conservative Judaism, so I can only speak from my own experience. My “Jewishness” looks mostly like:

Observing Shabbat weekly (I still use electricity, but try to light candles and sit down for a meal)

Observing major Jewish holidays throughout the year (Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, etc)

Wearing a necklace with Hebrew on it

Not eating pork or shellfish (very lightly kosher, essentially)

Talking about anitsemitism a lot (unfortunately because it still rears its ugly head pretty often)

asking my coworkers not to schedule things on major holidays

Observing Jewish funeral rites :(

a grab bag of cultural traditions that pop up all the time but I can’t seem to name right now for some reason

If you’d like to know more about Jewish folks, or Judaism in general, I would highly recommend talking to a Rabbi, or a Jewish friend. Judaism always looks different depending on who you ask. We even have a saying -- “two Jews, three opinions” 

[good-omens-classic]

Hi Good Omens fans, ever since making this blog, and trawling through the archives for old art, I have been thinking again about trends from before the TV-show, and the way people draw Aziraphale and Crowley.  I wanted to make this post addressing it but this is not “discourse” or to start a fight, in fact I would be perfectly content if all I did was make people think critically about what I am about to say and not even interact with this post at all, but I feel like I need to say it.

Talking about any racist undertones to the way people draw our two favorite boys usually makes people dig their heels in pretty fast.  This is not a callout post for any artist in particular, this is not me trying to be overly critical of artists especially since they have more talent and skill than I do, and I’m going to address some common counterpoints that I frankly find unsatisfactory.  Let’s just take a moment to set aside our defensiveness and think objectively about these trends.  It took me a while to unlearn my dismissive attitude about these concerns so maybe I can help others get over that hurdle a little faster.  Now let’s begin.

I’ve been kicking around the Good Omens fandom since maybe 2015 and for art based in book canon, whether it was made before the TV show came out, or because the artist is consciously drawing different, original designs, I’m going to estimate that a decent 75% of all fanart looks like this

Aziraphale is white and blonde and blue-eyed while Crowley is the typical “racially ambiguous” brown skin tone it’s become so popular to draw podcast characters as nowadays.

And the question is why?  With the obvious answer being “it’s racist,” but let’s delve a little deeper than that.

A common thing I hear is that people get appearance headcanons fixed in their mind because the coverart of the book pictures the characters a certain way.  My first point is this only shifts the question to why the illustrators drew them that way, when there aren’t many physical descriptions in the book.  My second point is that while there definitely are cover arts that picture Aziraphale as cherubic, blonde, and white and Crowley as swarthy, dark-skinned, and racially ambiguous...

(side note: why is Crowley’s hand so tiny?  what the hell is going on in this cover?)

It’s much more common for the covers to simplified, stylized, and without any particular unambiguous skin tones

I don’t know about the UK but the most popular version in the United States is the dual black and white matching covers

And while you could make an argument that the shading on Crowley’s face could suggest a darker skintone, it seems obvious to me that lacking any color these are not supposed to suggest any particular race for either of these two, and the contrasting colors are a stylistic choice to emphasize how they are on opposite sides.  If anything, to me it suggests they are both white.

In short I simply do not buy the argument that people are drawing Aziraphale and Crowley this way because that’s how they were represented on the cover art of the book.  If you draw them the way they are on the cover then whatever, I don’t care, but I don’t believe that’s what’s driving this trend.

The second thing people will say is that Good Omens is a work of satire, and it’s based in Christian mythology which has this trend of depicting angels as white, and it is embodying the trope of a “white, cherubic angel” paired with a dark-skinned demon for the explicit purpose of subverting the trope of “white angel is good, dark demon is bad” since Aziraphale is not an unambiguous hero and Crowley is not a villain.  “It’s not actually like that because Crowley isn’t a bad demon, and Aziraphale isn’t actually a perfect angel” is the argument.  This has a certain logic to it and allows some nuance to the topic, but to this I say:

Uncritically reproducing a trope, even in the context of a satire novel, is not enough to subvert it.  Good Omens is not criticising the racist history of the church, and while the book does have some pointed jabs at white British culture (such as Madam Tracy conning gullible Brits with an unbelievably ignorant stereotype of a Native American) it is not being critical of the conception of angels as white and blonde or the literal demonization of non-white people.  That’s just not what the book is about.  So making the angel white and the demon dark-skinned, playing directly into harmful tropes and stereotypes, is not somehow subversive or counter-cultural when doing so doesn’t say anything about anything.

Please consider fully the ramifications of the conception of white and blonde people as innocent and cherubic and dark-skinned people as infernal and mischievous, especially in modern contexts...

Black people are more likely to be viewed as violent, angry, and dangerous.  Priming with a dark-skinned face makes people more likely to mistake a tool for a gun.  Black people are viewed as experiencing pain less intensely by medical professionals.  Black men are viewed as physically larger and more imposing than they actually are.  The subconscious racial bias favoring light skin is so ingrained it’s measurable by objective scientific studies, on top of the anecdotal evidence of things like news stories choosing flattering, “cherubic” pictures of white and blond criminals while using unflattering mugshots for non-white offenders.

This is why I say that if you’re going to invoke the “whites are angelic” trope, you better have a damn good subversion of it to justify it, because this idea causes real harm to real people in the real world.  And Aziraphale being a bit of a bastard despite being an angel, I just don’t see that as sufficient.  I am especially cautious of when it’s my fellow white fans that make this argument, not because I believe they do this out of any sort of malice or hatred of people with dark skin, but because I know first-hand it stems from a dismissiveness rooted in not wanting to think about it for too long because it makes us uncomfortable.  Non-white people do not have the luxury of not thinking about it, because it’s part of their life.

Now the strongest textual evidence people use, in the absence of much real descriptor, is this:

"Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort" 

This piece of art has circulated in the fandom for so long I don’t know the original artist and it’s been used for everything from fancovers to perfume.  This is where I found it and it’s one of the first things that come up when you google this quote about Aziraphale.  

Doesn’t it just feel like this is the man that’s describing, some blonde effeminate gay man?  Well guess what, there’s the “blonde as innocence” trope rearing its ugly head again, because the stereotype of gay men and effeminacy as being a white and blonde thing is--ding ding ding you guessed it--racism.  And why would intelligent suggest a white and blonde person, except if the stereotype of a dark-skinned person is less intelligent?

Now the point of “people assume Aziraphale is British” is another sticking point people will often use, claiming that the stereotype of a British person is white and blonde.  I guess this has some merit, since the British empire was one of the biggest forces behind white colonial expansion, and it seems disingenuous to assign “British” as “nonwhite” as soon as we’re being satirical, in the same way I found it distasteful that the TV show made God female when so many of the criticisms of the church are about its misogyny and lose their teeth as soon as God is no longer male.

However consider that 1.4 million Indian people live in the UK.  I heard a man say aloud once that the concept of a black person having a British accent was a little funny, as though Doctor Who doesn’t exist and have black people on it.  And I’m not overly familiar with the social landscape of the UK, but I understand they’re experiencing a xenophobia boom and non-white Brits aren’t considered “really British.”  The stereotype of non-white people not being British only exists because of reinforcement in media.  If you really want to be subversive, drawing Aziraphale as Indian goes way further than drawing him as white IMO.

Now let’s talk about Crowley.  He is almost always drawn with a darker skin tone than Aziraphale, even when they are both white, and while I’ve outlined above how this is problematic on terms of linking light skin with innocence, I think it does have an extra layer.  I think it also has to do with the exotification and fetishization of brown skin and non-white people.

This artist’s tumblr is gone now but their art is still on dA and while it’s definitely beautiful and well-done, I think this is a very good example of what I’m talking about.

Crowley and Aziraphale necessarily contrast each other, so describing Aziraphale as “British” might suggest that Crowley is “foreign-looking.”  I also know *ahem* that the fandom generally thirsts over Crowley to hell and back, so making him a swarthy, tall dark and handsome is not necessarily surprising.

An interesting thing happened when the TV show came out, and everyone started drawing Michael Sheen!Aziraphale and David Tennant!Crowley more and more often:  It’s not ubiquitous, but it does happen that sometimes artists will draw David Tennant’s skin darker than it actually is.  The subconscious urge to see Crowley with dark skin is for some reason that strong for many people.  And I really encourage people doing this to think about why.  Not naming any names but I’ve working with fanartists before for collabs who I had to ask to lighten “bad guy” demon’s skin tones because it looked like they were making the skin darker on purpose to make them look scarier.  This person is a perfectly pleasant person who tries not to be racist!  And we both still fell into it accidentally, and it took me a while to notice and point it out, because the ingrained stigmatization of darker skin is pervasive yet often goes unnoticed.

What is the solution?  I don’t know, and as a white person I’m not really qualified to make that call.  Do we draw them both with the exact same skin tone?  Is it better to make them both white?  Should we make both of them non-white?  Should we only make Aziraphale non-white?  I am consciously aware of the fact that the Good Omens fandom is mostly white people, so most of the art we make is being both made by and consumed by white people, so I don’t feel comfortable saying “draw these characters of color specifically” because that can also veer into fetishization territory very quickly.  This is not specific to good omens but I think we should pay attention to what fans of color say in all fandom spaces and weigh our choices even if they seem insignificant.  And it’s important to realize that fans of color will not be a monolith in their opinion either, and it’s our responsibility to recognize that everyone can be affected by racism and social issues differently, the same way all women are affected by misogyny differently so just because one woman says such as such is misogynistic and another says it’s not.  I’m sure there are non-white fans who think it’s perfectly fine to draw Aziraphale as white and Crowley as ambiguously non-white.  I’m not saying they’re wrong.  And I’m not saying you can’t reblog this kind of art, or that people who make or made it should feel bad about themselves.  But so often this sort of thing goes unaddressed just because people don’t like thinking about it, and well, avoiding hard questions never really goes well I think.

[carriemaya]

Stuff as Sacred: The Spirituality of Things

Hyperspirituality alienates us from our physical environment. Space for our belongings cultivate belonging.

Last week, I wrote a piece about moving into my forever home.

Until my mum and sister officially find a place, though, my boxes remain unpacked; stacked in the far corner of what’s technically my room but definitely doesn’t feel like mine.

And I think this is because I don’t have the freedom to take up space yet

Yes, little bits here and there: I can clear out the shaving cupboard and put my toiletries in there. And I can connect my laptop to my mum’s WiFi (which is great because I work on the Internet).

But I’m struggling.

I’ve been living out of bags and boxes for nearly three months now. And not being able to unpack properly (or at all in some cases) causes my mood to drop. Not having a desk to work at makes me feel anxious. And not being able to let my cat Ferdinand out of the one room he’s living in because my mum’s dogs have free range of the house makes me sad.

I love her dogs. They’re beautiful souls. But I struggle with dogs, personally, in terms of cleanliness. Definitely more of a cat person. So sharing space with a giant one who’s tail is as strong as my right arm, and another who sheds every three seconds, just makes me feel dirty, claustrophobic, and a little bit powerless.

It’s not one’s fault. It just is what it is for now. But this waiting period has me thinking about the way that having space to survey, define parameters for, and then curate and personalise is a form of freedom.

Here are a few musings on the topic.

SPACE. As in the cosmos. As in outer space. As in not on earth. As in not here. As in out there.  As in atmospherically incompatible. As in can't breathe.  As in floating. As in ungrounded, and vast, and ever-expanding.  As in unfathomable. Unknown. A dark forever ocean of unknown. As in it makes us feel small in comparison. Because we are small in comparison. Space as in no thing. Earth as thing. Earth as in map. As in scribbled with arbitrary borders. As in I wonder if aliens looked down at us, they’d mistake the checkpoints we've erected at state lines as our altars to separation. Earth as in location. As in a place that exists at a specific point in space.

If I don’t have space, I don’t have freedom. And if I don’t have space, I can’t locate a point within it to create place. And without place, I cannot make a home.

EARTH. As in place. As in tether. As in force of gravity. As in a touchstone between somewhere and nowhere.   As in the statue of David not the slab of marble from which he was sculpted.  As in this (not that) and here (not there). Earth as in terrain. As in planes, meadows, mountains, oceans, and deserts. As in soil. As in oil. As in metal, crystals, nutrients. As in sowing seeds and yielding produce. As in dependant on it for survival. As in solid. And surface. Earth as in habitat. As in trees, rivers, rocks, sky, wind, mammals, reptiles, and insects. As in ecosystem. As in bodies and breath. As in human creation. As in building shelter. As in hunting and gathering. As in making fire. As in eating. sleeping, reproduction, ritual,  information, education, commerce, government. As in culture. Culture as in hub. As in cauldron. As in us. As in art that rings true. As in language. As in feeling understood by you. As in feeling heard by you. As in feeling so heard by you that here is where I want to be.  

As in resonance.    

If I don’t have space, I don’t have freedom. And if I don’t have space, I can’t locate a point within it to create place. And without place, I cannot make a home.

If this is true, then it must also be true that having infinite space can’t be freedom. Because if I have space without any definition whatsoever, then what I am isn’t free but lost. And the opposite of being lost is being where I belong.

BELONGING. As in connection. As in emotional ties. As in memories; sharing them and making them. As in trust. As in knowing I'm not going to be hit or punched. Or yelled at. As in communication. Belonging as in voice. As in what I have to say matters as much as what you have to say. As in apologising when we hurt each other. As in saying I love you. As in saying well done. Belonging as in generational. As in wisdom passed down from grandparents to parents to grandchildren. As in shared history. As in doing whatever it takes to keep the tribe safe.

Making place within space should be a negotiation, a dance. Never an act of Imperialism.  

HOME. As in a point and place that exists within the vast space of earth as terrain. As in house. As in a pocket of thing in the fabric of no thing. As in eating the root not just the leaf. As in compatible atmosphere. As in I can finally breathe. As in habitat. As in ecosystem. As in the culture that exists beneath my roof.  Home as in mine. As in not yours. As in occuppied not vacant. As in territory. As in protection from the elements. And landlords.  As in tether and force of gravity. As in doors. That lock. As in ownership. As in home. As in home. As in home. As in home. As in home.

Space becomes place when it’s occupied. House becomes home when it’s occupied. Terrain becomes territory when it’s occupied.

* * *

I can’t decide if I made the right choice by listing belonging before home. Should I have put it the other way around? I don’t know. These two concepts confuse me and scare me.

Maybe because I’ve never had a good grasp on matter.

Space is what I know. It’s the familiar daydream of floating in the ether.

The Christianity I was raised in taught me that the body, possessions, money, and even the planet weren’t as important as “living in the spirit”. It instilled in me a doomsday fear of putting stock in anything that I can’t take with me when I die.

If I stay hovering above the ground in the heavenly realms, I can let God move me wherever He wants to. Because I have surrendered my agency to Him. I stay alienated to my physical environment out of obedience to my Divine call.

In a nutshell: I feel like the physical realm is an upside down world. I cognitively understand its importance, but on an emotional level I struggle to care about it (hello terrible relationships with food, money, and housing).

Belonging and home? They’re the worldy, human, ungodly realms of density.

Sending my spirit earthbound is to bind myself to sin, retribution, and hell.

This is the deep programming that’s starting to rear its ugly head as I begin to get used to the idea of occupying a house in forever-home fashion.

I want to TRULY believe in the sacredness of life on earth. And maybe learning to make a house my home can help me to do this.

I’m in the process of surveying the walls, floors, and cupboards. And when they’re empty, I’ll make them my own through personalisation—an act born of freedom to choose; curating the feel and flow of my home with colour schemes and carefully-placed possessions.

The off-white Victorian-style clock that I plan to sit on the fireplace mantel.

The Boston Fern I plan to hang from the ceiling in the bathroom.

The makeshift alcove I plan to create from the unused window in the living area.

What if stuff is sacred?

What if the house is a voicebox and possessions are the voice?

What if the freedom to set up my belongings is what creates place for me to belong?

What if, because I matter, so do the things that matter to me?

1.  What are the stories you tell yourself about the importance of you body, possessions, and physical existence?

2.  Do you feel your life shows that you value both spirit AND matter?

3.  In what ways can you bring greater balance to your relationships with both spirit AND matter?

4.  If you're struggling to find this balance, where can you turn for help? If you don't know straight off the top of your head, is there someone who can point you in the right direction?

[bamby0304]

Her Saviours- Ch.27

Series Masterlist

Summary: During an odd case, the Winchesters came across Y/N, a scared young Omega girl who had been used as a lure for a nest of vampires. After rescuing her from the monsters, John and his sons took her in knowing she was in no state to live among ordinary people. But three Alphas and one Omega is a mixture bound for disaster.

Warnings: Explicit language. ABO dynamics. Heat. Angst. Death. Fluff.

Bamby

The sound of the motel door opening drew your attention to it as Dean walked in. Taking one step into the room, he tensed and stopped on the spot. You watched his nostrils twitch as he took in the scent of the room, no doubt smelling your heat and sex.

“Open a window,” he grunted, pushing the door shut with a resound thump.

Averting your gaze, you tugged on the flannel you wore and scurried off the bed, moving to do as he said. You were grateful you’d decided to get dressed after waking up in Sam’s arms… if you’d been naked it would have just pissed Dean off more.

You’d hesitated on what flannel to wear. Part of you wanted to wrap yourself in Sam’s scent to prolong the buzz you still felt from being with him. Another part of you wanted to huddle in Dean’s, to even out the brother’s scents so you were still close to them both. Even though they wouldn’t admit it to you, neither of them would have liked you wearing the other’s clothes, so you opted for your own.

Tossing his keys onto the table by the door, Dean turned his attention to his brother as he fought not to snap. “What'd you find out?”

Sam’s voice was quiet as he answered, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

Turning in his seat at the dining table, Sam looked up at his brother with guilty puppy eyes. “Marshall Hall died at 4:17.”

Dean froze. “The exact time I was healed.”

“Yeah.” Sam nodded, looking away. “So, I put together a list of everyone Roy's healed, six people over the past year, and I cross-checked them with the local obits.” He handed over the stories he’d printed. “Every time someone was healed, someone else died. And each time, the victim died of the same symptom LeGrange was healing at the time.”

Climbing back onto your bed, you watched the brothers carefully.

You knew knowing the truth was going to make them both feel extremely guilty, and that honestly hurt you. Despite them being annoying and sometimes dicks, you cared for them deeply. If you didn’t care you wouldn’t have stuck around for so long. It’s why you put up with so much crap.

Seeing them take on mountain loads of guilt just made you want to hold them tight and tell them everything was going to be okay. But it wasn’t, you all knew that. So instead you just folded your legs in front of you as you watched silently.

“Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?” Dean asked as he took a seat across from his brother.

“Somehow. LeGrange… he's trading a life for another.”

“Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall died to save me?”

“Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway. And someone else would've been healed.”

Sam was right. If Marshall was on the reverend's radar then it didn’t matter who he healed, the guy would have died. The church had gathered for a reason, someone would have been healed.

Tossing the obits onto the table, Dean pushed himself out of his chair. “You never should've brought me here.”

Sam sighed, the look on his face telling you just how horrible he felt. “Dean, I was just trying to save your life.”

“But, Sam, some guy is dead now because of me,” Dean snapped.

“I didn't know.” Sam’s gaze dropped to his hands as they sat in his lap. Shaking his head, he returned his gaze to his brother. “The thing I don't understand is how is Roy doing it? How's he trading a life for a life?”

Dean scoffed, “Oh, he's not doing it. Something else is doing it for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The old man I saw on stage. I didn't wanna believe it, but deep down I knew.”

“You knew what? What are you talking about?”

“There's only one thing that can give and take life like that.” You and Sam looked to Dean, confused. “We're dealing with a reaper.”

…

Standing in the shower, you tried to ignore the light tug in your stomach. You were fine, you still had hours before it would get worse, but that didn’t change the fact your heat was rearing its ugly head up again.

The brothers were in the next room, researching reapers to find a way to stop Roy. You wanted to help, obviously, but they weren’t making your situation any better. Their scents were thicker than usual, either because of your heat or because of each other.

If it was the latter, then things were probably not going to get better anytime soon. Neither Dean or Sam were really into talking about their feelings- Dean less so- which meant you were going to have to tread carefully until one or both of them snapped.

Really, it didn’t make sense to you. Even though Sam had left for a few years, that shouldn’t have changed anything. They were still brothers, you were all still pack, and you weren’t technically anyone’s exclusively. If the issue here was you being shared between them then that was just crazy. It’s not like that hadn’t been the case before Sam left for Stanford.

Shutting the water off, you shivered at the cold air as you scrambled out to grab a towel and dry yourself quickly. You’d grabbed some fresh clothes, in the hopes the lack of scents on them would help calm your heat. Slipping and tugging them on, you quickly got dressed before heading out into the main room as you used your towel to pat dry your hair.

“Hey.” Dean smiled, reaching out for you.

Taking his hand, you let him lead you onto the seat next to his before continuing to dry your hair.

“You really think it's the Grim Reaper?” Sam asked Dean as he looked over his laptop to his brother. “Like, angel of death, collect your soul, the whole deal?”

Dean shook his head. “No no no, not the reaper, a reaper. There's reaper law in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names, it's possible that there's more than one of them.”

“But you said you saw a dude in a suit,” Sam noted.

“What, you think he shoulda been working the whole black robe thing?” Dean gave his brother a pointed look. “You said it yourself that the clock stopped right? Reapers stop time. And you can only see 'em when they're coming at you, which is why I could see it and you couldn't.”

“Maybe,” Sam mumbled, his mind drifting.

“There's nothing else it could be Sam. The question is how is Roy controlling the damn thing?”

“That cross.”

“Hmm?” You lowered your towel and looked over at the younger brother.

Flicking through a deck of Tarot cards, Sam explained, “There was this cross, I noticed it in the church and I knew I had seen it before.” Finding what he was looking for, he showed the card to you and Dean. “Here.”

It was death.

“A Tarot?” Dean asked, taking the card from him.

Sam shrugged. “It makes sense. A tarot dates back to the early christian era right, when some priests were still using magic? And a few of them veered into the dark stuff? Necromancy and how to push death away, how to cause it?”

“So Roy's using black magic to bind the reaper?”

“If he is he's riding the whirlwind. It's like putting a dog leash on a great white.”

Dropping the card on the table, Dean grabbed the empty coffee mug and stood, moving to the sink. Here was a pause as he stood there, thinking the situation over before saying, “Ok then we stop Roy.”

“How?”

Leaning against the bench, Dean gave his brother another pointed look. “You know how.” His jaw clenched.

Your stomach dropped. “Dean… killing Roy… he’s a human.”

“The guys playing God, he's deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book,” he countered.

“No.” Sam shook his head, not budging on the subject. “We're not going to kill a human being Dean. We do that we're no better than he is.”

“Ok, we can’t kill Roy, we can't kill death. Any bright ideas college boy?”

“Break the bond tying the reaper to Roy.” You shrugged.

“That.” Sam nodded, pointing to you. “If Roy's using some kind of black spell on the reaper, we gotta...figure out what it is. And how to break it.” Pushing out of his seat, Sam started towards the bathroom. “There’s another service this afternoon. We’ll leave in ten,” he said before closing the door behind him.

As soon as the two of you were alone, you and Dean turned to each other.

“You’re staying-”

“I’m not staying here,” you finished before he could.

Mouth snapping shut, he clenched his jaw as he stared at you. “Y/N…”

“I’m in heat, I know that, and I can feel it stirring a little. But I’m fine,” you assured him.

“Yeah,” he pushed off the counter and started towards the beds where his bag sat, “‘Cause Sam helped you.”

“Don’t.”

He turned on his heels. “You smell like him.”

“Dean…”

“This whole room stinks of the two of you.”

Sighing, you pushed yourself up to your feet and moved to him. “Nothing has changed between us.”

“You sure?” As you stopped in front of him he searched your eyes, looking for a sign that things had changed.

“I’m in heat, Sam’s an Alpha I trust, you-”

“Were dying in hospital,” he finished for you. “What about today? Was it a convenience thing? He just happened to be here first?”

Yes. To be honest, that’s why it had been Sam today. If Dean had shown up first then you would have been just as grateful and happy to take his knot. There was no favourite, here. You didn’t care for one more than the other. The feelings you had were strong, and deep, and equal.

“I know I flirt with other women, and I know I sleep with most of them,” he lifted his hand to caress your cheek, “but you’re it for me.”

“Dean-”

The bathroom door opened, cutting you off as Sam stepped out. You glanced over your shoulder at him, seeing the way he was eyeing the close proximity between you and his brother.

Clearing your throat, you stepped away from Dean. “We ready?”

“You’re coming?” Sam asked as he grabbed his jacket from the back of his seat. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

“If it helps, I’ll just keep an eye out and make sure you don’t get busted by the sheriff or Mrs. LeGrange,” you offered. “I won’t get in the way of the reaper.”

Sam shrugged. “It would be safer to keep you close by. That way you can’t lie about having another flare up.”

“Lie?” Dean looked from his brother to you, confused. “What?”

“Y/N could barely stand when I got back,” Sam explained as he started towards the door, watching as you ducked your head guiltily. “She didn’t call either of us because she thought we were too busy to help.”

Dean’s jaw clicked. “Really?” You looked up and found him watching you with a disapproving glare. “Then you’re definitely coming. The last thing we need is you passing out while we’re gone.”

You were never going to hear the end of this. The brothers were already so protective of you… you wouldn’t be surprised if they never left you alone during a heat ever again.

“Come on.” Dean slipped his hand into yours, leading you to the door. “Let’s get this done before someone else dies.”

…

“If Roy's using a spell, there might be a spell book,” Sam noted as he opened your door.

You slid out of the car and looked around, noticing how there seemed to be a few more people outside the service tent then there’d been before.

“See if you can find it.” Dean checked his watched as the three of you met at the trunk. “Hurry up too, the service starts in fifteen minutes. I'll try to stall Roy.” Leaning towards you, he cupped your cheek and gave you a quick kiss. “Go with Sam. Make sure no one catches him.”

Kissing him back, you nodded. “Be safe.”

“You too.” Letting you go, he jogged over to the tent.

“Roy LeGrange is a fraud. He's no healer.” The protester from before was back. As you and Sam passed him, he handed you both a flyer.

“You keep up the good work,” Sam told him.

“Thank you.”

Grabbing your hand, Sam continued towards the LeGrange’s house. “I’m gonna sneak in. I want you to stay out of sight, but keep an eye out. If you see someone head towards the house, stall them.”

“Got it.”

…

As Sam ducked into the house, you did as you were told as stood guard. Your eyes scanned the area, watching as more and more people ducked into the tent. Everyone was so focused on what Roy could do, you went completely unnoticed.

When Sam emerged, you could tell something was very wrong.

“What’d you find?”

“Come on.” Grabbing your hand, he led you towards the porch steps as he pulled out his phone and dialled Dean’s number, putting him on loudspeaker.

“What have you got?”

“Roy's choosing victims he sees as immoral,” Sam started as the two of you jogged down the steps. “And I think I know who's next on his list. Remember that protester?”

“What, the guy in the parking lot?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'll find him. But you can't let Roy heal anyone, alright?”

As you and Sam hurried through the parking lot, winding through the cars, looking into windows, you fought your building panic. You knew that if you didn’t find the protester in time then he would likely die. Even if you did find him, however, that didn’t mean you’d be able to save him.

“Help!”

You and Sam spun on your heels, looking in the direction where the voice had come from before tuning to each other. Then you were off, feet pounding on the dirt ground as you prayed you’re reach the man in time.

“Help! Help me please!”

He was pressed against a car, scruying back as he stared wide eyed at nothing. Only you knew it wasn’t nothing. You knew it was the reaper. Time was running out.

“Where is he?” Sam asked as he put himself in front of the protester, looking around wildly.

“Right there!” He gestured in front of Sam.

“Run!” Grabbing the protester’s arm, you pulled him along hoping that if you kept him moving you could keep him safe.

…

Behind you, Sam pulled out his phone as it rang. “David, I think it's ok,” he told the protester once whoever was on the other end of the call- no doubt Dean- has spoken.

You let out a small breath of relief as you stopped moving.

David moved a little further, still freaked. As he stepped out into a clearing, however, he only got worse.

“No!”

David dropped to his knees, before falling to the ground. You watched him struggle to breathe as his eyes turned white and skin went grey. It was horrible, seeing him dying right there in front of you while you could do nothing to help.

Sam grabbed you out of instinct and held you back as he hurried towards David, looking down at him with no clue how to help. “Dean it didn't work.The reaper's still coming! I'm telling you, I'm telling you it didn't work. Roy must not be the one controlling this thing.”

The panic lasted a moment longer… and then it stopped.

Hanging up the phone, Sam got to his knees by David to check him over. “You okay?”

“What the hell was that?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Sam noted. “I think it might be best if you get out of here while you can.”

Nodding frantically, David scrambled to his feet and ran.

Getting back up, Sam turned to you. “It’s Sue Ann.”

That actually made sense to you. “How’d you know how the victims were being picked?”

“I found newspaper clippings-” Sam stopped, coming to the same conclusion at you. “Roy can’t read the paper. He’s blind.”

“We all thought it was him because he’s doing the healing. But he’s just a pawn. His wife is the one pulling the reaper’s puppet strings. She’s the one it’s bound to. She’s the one we’ve gotta stop.”

…

Pushing through the crowd, you found Dean with Sue Ann, the sheriff and another officer.

“After everything we've done for you. After Roy healed you. I'm just very very disappointed Dean.” Sue Ann shook her head at Dean as he stared at her knowingly. She looked to the cops. “You can let him go. I'm not gonna press charges. The Lord will deal with him as he sees fit.”

“We catch you round here again son, we'll put the fear of God in you, understand?” the sheriff warned.

Dean gave a short nod. “Yes sir, fear of god. Got it.”

Shoving him, the cops then walked away

Looking up, Dean watched as you headed over to him. “The guy okay?”

“Yeah.” You nodded, shoving your hands in your pockets. “Sam wanted to make sure he actually left.”

“What about you?”

“I… I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Smiling, he reached up to brush his thumb along your cheek before leaning in to kiss you lightly. You smiled against him, melting into the familiar touch. It was nice to know he wasn’t upset with you, despite everything that had been going on.

Pulling back, Dean’s attention was caught by an approaching figure. “Layla…” He looked so guilty and ashamed.

“Why would you do that Dean?” She came to stop in front of the two of you. “It could have been my only chance.”

“He's not a healer.”

“He healed you,” she countered.

“I know it doesn't seem fair, and I wish I could explain. But Roy is not the answer, I'm sorry.”

Sighing, she shook her head softly. “Goodbye Dean.” Walking away, she glanced back at him. “I wish you luck. I really do.”

“Same to you,” he called back, his voice cracking. As she walked away he mumbled to himself, “You deserve it a lot more than me.”

Grabbing his hand, you tugged on him until he turned to you. “Don’t ever say that. She might deserve to be healed, but that doesn’t mean she deserves it more than you. You can’t compare your worth with someone else’s.”

Leaning in, he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. “You always see the good in me.”

“Because you’re a good man, Dean Winchester.” Tugging on his hand again, you began to back up. “Come on. Sam is probably waiting.”

Nodding, he let go of your hand and wrapped his arm around your waist to pull you closer. Walking through the crowd, ignoring the few people who looked at Dean with distaste- they clearly knew he was the reason the service had been cut short- you overheard Roy’s voice.

“Private session tonight, no interruptions.” Looking over, you and Dean spotted him and Sue Ann talking to Layla’s mother. “I give you my word, I'll heal your daughter.”

You’d know saving David hadn’t meant the end of the case. Sue Ann still had control of the reaper, and until that bound was broken people’s lives were at risk.

...

“So Roy really believes.” Sam scoffed, shaking his head as he sat on his bed.

Walking over to the window, Dean looked outside. “I don't think he has any idea what his wife's doing.”

“Well, I found this.” Sam pulled a little book from his jacket pocket. “Hidden in their library. It's ancient. Written by a priest who went dark side. There's a binding spell in here for trapping a reaper,” he noted, handing the book over to Dean as he came to sit with you on the other bed.

“Must be a hell of a spell.”

“Yeah. You gotta build a black alter with seriously dark stuff. Bones, human blood.” Sam sighed, “To cross a line like that, a preacher's wife. Black magic. Murder. Evil.”

“Desperate,” Dean corrected. “Her husband was dying, she didn't have anything to save him. She was using the binding spell to keep the reaper away from Roy.”

You would have done the same thing for Dean if Sam hadn’t found Roy. If things got bad, if your options were running out, you would have done whatever it took. Even if it meant risking your own soul.

Hell, you’d do it for Sam, too. Those boys… they meant everything to you.

Sam scoffed, “Cheating death, literally.”

“Yeah but Roy's alive, so why is she still using the spell?”

“It’s power.” You shrugged, answering Dean’s question. “She realised what she could do, and when people thought Roy was the miracle after he was healed, then she decided to use that. Use that to spread the word of what they could do, and to punish those she deems immoral.”

Looking down at the little book, Dean shook his head. “May God save us from half the people who think they're doing God's work.”

“We gotta break that binding spell,” Sam noted.

Flicking through the pages, Dean came across a picture of a cross. “You know Sue Ann had a coptic cross like this. When she dropped it the reaper backed off.”

“So you think we gotta find the cross or destroy the altar?” Sam asked.

“Maybe both.” Dean tossed the book back to his brother. “Whatever we do we better do it soon, or he's healing Layla tonight.”

…

When you pulled up outside of Roy’s tent, you spotted the sheriff’s car parked right out front. No one was around though, more than likely gathered in the tent for the service. The service that was supposed to save Layla’s life.

“That's Layla's car.” Sam pointed out a nearby red car. “She's already here.”

Dean nodded, an air of sadness settling over him. “Yeah.”

“Dean-”

Not giving his brother a chance to finish, Dean cut Sam off, “You know if Roy woulda picked Layla instead of me she'd be here right now. And if she's not healed tonight she's gonna die in a couple o’ months.”

“What's happening to her is horrible. But what are you gonna do? Let somebody else die to save her? You said it yourself Dean, you can't play God.”

Staring out the front window, Dean didn’t say anything as he let Sam’s words settled. As he ignored whatever response he might’ve come up with. Sitting there, he paused a moment before getting out of the car, with you and Sam not too far behind.

Creeping over to the tent, the three of you found a crack and peeked inside, finding a small group of followers surrounding Layla and Roy on the stage.

“Gather round, please everyone, gather round.” Roy opened his arms out to everyone. “Come in closer, come on up.”

“Where's Sue Ann?” Dean asked, scanning the crowd, looking for her.

“House,” Sam suggested.

Pulling away from the tent, the three of you started towards the house… only to stop as you spotted the sheriff and another officer. They were drinking coffee or something like that, talking amongst themselves. Neither had spotted your group yet, but they were blocking your path to the house. If you wanted to get in there, you were going to have to get noticed.

“Go find Sue Ann, I'll catch up.” Dean shoved you and Sam behind a nearby car.

Frowning at his brother, Sam watched as Dean stepped out in the open. “What are you gonna-”

“Hey!” Dean called out, catching the cops’ attention. “You gonna put that fear of God in me?”

Dropping their coffee, the cops started towards Dean, running. Without missing a beat, he took off in the opposite direction, leading the cops away from you and Sam.

Hurrying towards the house and up the porch steps, you and Sam tried to stay out of sight as you peeked into the windows, looking for any sign of Sue Ann.

“Psst.”

You turned to Sam, seeing him gesturing you over to him. Stepping up to his side, you followed his gaze over the railing and spotted a basement door below. Between the cracks of the door, you could see light from the other side.

“Come on.” Sam started back down the porch steps with you right behind him.

Opening the basement doors, he held them as you slipped inside before he followed you in. The two of you were careful, looking around for any sign of Sue Ann. She didn’t seem to be around, but you did find something of use.

“Sam.” Grabbing his hand, you led him over to the opposite side of the basement to where the altar stood.

It was lit by multiple candles, and decorated with parts of dead animals, blood, horns… it was horrible. Sam had been right, this kind of magic was evil.

Sitting in the middle of the altar was a photo that made your heart leap. It was of Dean, taken from the security camera that first day before he’d been healed. His face had been crossed out with what you could only assume was blood.

Dean was the next victim.

“I gave Dean life, and I can take it away.”

You and Sam spun around to find Sue Ann standing by the basement stairs, watching you both disapprovingly.

Furious, Sam grabbed the altar and tipped it over, spilling everything onto the floor. The two of you started for Sue Ann then, but she was too close to the door. Before you could reach her she was out side, slamming the door shut in your face and locking them.

Reaching up, Sam tried to push it open, slamming his hands against the wood, but it didn’t budge.

“Sam, Y/N, can't you see?” Sue Ann started. “The Lord chose me to reward the just and punish the wicked. And your brother is wicked and he deserves to die just as Layla deserves to live. It is God's will.” There was movement outside, as if she was moving away from the door. “Goodbye.”

Not one to give up, you and Sam surveyed. Sam grabbed a block of wood that stuck out from the wall and grunted as he tore it away. Using the wood, he smashed the window above him until the glass and the boards behind it broke.

“Come on.” He reached, tugging you closer and hoisting you up so you could creep through the window. “Run!” he yelled once you were outside. “Find Dean!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right behind you. Just go, now!”

Nodding, you scrambled up onto your feet, cutting your hand open on a piece of the broken glass as you did. Ignore the pain, you ran for the tent, praying you’d find Dean before it was too late.

…

When you found Dean, you found him kneeling in the parking lot… turning grey and clearly in pain. The groan that spilled from his lips spurred your forward.

Your feet slipped on the muddy ground as you ran towards him, not caring about the pain in your hand or the ache in your body. The only thing you cared about was getting to Dean. It didn’t even occur to you that there was nothing you could actually do to help. You just needed to be there to help him.

Reaching him, you dropped to your knees and fisted his shirt, holding him up. “Dean, look at me. Please, look at me.”

He groaned, eyes rolling back as his body grew tense because of the pain.

“No.” Shaking your head, you felt tears begin to stream down your face. “No, please. Not you. Not you. I just… I just got you back. I can’t… oh Dean, I can’t lose you.”

With blurred vision, you looked around, hoping to find any sign of Sue Ann. She was the one doing this to him. She was the one you needed to stop. But she was nowhere in sight.

Looking for her meant leaving Dean, and you just couldn’t do that. What if he died? What if you didn’t make it in time, if you didn’t stop her, and Dean died?

“I’m not leaving.” You looked into his greying face. “Don’t leave me… please.”

He could respond though… the reaper’s grip on him was too strong.

Dropping your head to his shoulder, you cried. You let your tears soak into his shirt as you felt him twitch below him. As you listened to him groan and grunt, the life slowly draining out of him.

“I wish it was me,” you sobbed. “I wish… I wish I could take your place.”

Sucking in a breath, Dean startled you as he dropped to the ground. You stayed kneeling where you’d been, now looking down at him as the colour returned to his face. He breathed in deeply, clutching at his chest, staring up at the sky.

“Dean!” You threw your arms around him tightly.

Groaning, he rubbed your back as you cried into his chest- though now you were crying with relief. “I’m okay,” he assured you.

“I thought it was too late.”

“I’m okay,” he repeated. “Hey, your hand.” Carefully, he grabbed your wrist and pulled your hand away as he checked out the cut on your palm. “You hurt yourself.”

Wiping your tears away with your other hand, you looked at him as he eyes the cut with concern. “I’ll be okay.”

…

The tension in the air was thick and uncomfortable. Sleeping had been weird, considering there were only two beds… and you had to pick between the brothers. In the end, you’d slept on the couch. You’d insisted you were just going to stay up and do some ‘research’, but really you just waited until the brothers were asleep so then you could crash without them fussing over you.

Now that it was morning, and the brothers had realised what you’d done, things were worse. Your decision to not sleep with either of them just confirmed their suspicions.

Dean now knew for sure that what you and Sam had wasn’t just convenience. Sam now knew that what you and he had didn’t mean there was nothing between you and Dean. You were stuck between two brothers, two Alphas, and it was terribly confusing.

A knock at the door offered a reprieve in the tension.

“I got it,” Sam called over his shoulder as he walked over to answer it. Standing on the other side was none other than Layla.

“Hey Layla. Come on in.” Sam gestured for her to enter.

She smiled shyly, her eyes turning to Dean. “Hey.”

Dean rose from where he’d been sitting on the bed, looking from you to her. “How did you know we were here?”

“Sam… called. He said you… wanted to say goodbye?”

Both you and Dean looked to Sam who shrugged. “Come on, Y/N.” He grabbed your bag off the bed. “Let’s go pack the car.”

Not having any reason to argue, you followed the younger Winchester out of the room. Before you left, you looked back at Dean and Layla. As Sam closed the door, you couldn’t help but wonder if he’d done this on purpose… if he was trying to prove a point to you.

Bamby

[a-toast-to-my-real-friends]

LOVER RANKINGS

Alright, y’all may or may not know, I’m a Taylor Swift fan. Chad Willard posted his Rankings and Reasons for her newest album, Lover, and it inspired me to do the same. So, for the two of you who care about my personal Taylor opinions: here they are.

I haven’t sat with Lover long enough yet to really figure out where I am with it. Speak Now is my peak Taylor Swift album. I love the honesty and vulnerability on all those songs. My emotions oftentimes seem overwhelming, irrational, and illogical, and I feel like a crazy person because I tell myself, “Johnathan, you shouldn’t feel this way, so and so hasn’t done anything wrong, if anybody knew you were THIS upset about THIS situation, they’d all laugh and tell you to relax and calm down and that you were acting crazy.” And oh buddy, if I weren’t acting crazy before, best believe I’d act crazy after.

Speak Now makes me feel like it’s OK to be overwhelmed by my feelings, and Taylor does such a great job of saying exactly how I feel.

So I say all that to say, I’ll probably compare every Taylor album to Speak Now. Does Lover make me feel the same way Speak Now does? Yes and no.

I like Lover a lot. To be fair, I have listened more to the first half than the last, only because by the time I get to  “Death By a Thousand Cuts” I want to go back and listen to “I Forgot that You Existed” again. I’m going to agree with what Chad said that Hannah said: “our enjoyment of her songs oftentimes stems from where our current relationship status is.” I’m so happy that Taylor is in such a healthy, great place emotionally, and that she’s so deeply in love – and the songs she’s made are SO GOOD; but I think I’m having a difficult time enjoying them the way I would if I were in a solid, committed, tried and true relationship. I listen to “I think he knows” and “Paper Rings” and “Lover” and instead of being all glowy and glittery I just feel – sad, I guess. Which maybe explains why I like Speak Now so much, because a lot of those are sad and Overwhelmingly Emotional.

Anyway, TO THE RANKINGS!

18: False God. I just think it’s sonically boring. It’s not fun to sing along to, and the lyrics don’t do enough for me to raise it any higher. I’m gonna give it a little bit longer, maybe it’ll eventually grow on me, but it’s dangerously close to becoming a skip.

17: Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. I’m going to get dragged for this, but it’s got the same chord progression as “So it Goes” from REPUTATION, and tbh, that one is a skip for me too. Maybe I’m not deep enough or politically educated enough to see all the brilliance behind it, but I’ll give it points for the line “It’s you and me, that’s my whole world,” though.

16: It’s Nice To Have a Friend: Meh. This just seems like a list of unrelated things she’s done with Joe. Again, maybe I’m not deep enough to understand the brilliance, but what is she trying to say? And the song is so repetitive, it doesn’t keep my interest. All this snow, ya know?

15: The Man. It’s a fun song, good beats, fun to sing along to. But as a white male, the content is unrelatable to me. Which is the point, I suppose. The song isn’t meant for me. I appreciate it, for sure, and I think it’s important, but I just don’t feel the way she feels, so it’s just strange to sing along to it. I don’t wonder if I’d get there faster if I was a man, because I am a man.

14: Soon You’ll Get Better. OK, I LOVE this song, to be clear. It’s so sad, so relatable, so pretty to listen to. Hello Dixie Chicks, glad to have you back. I cried the first time I heard it, because I’ve followed along with her mom’s struggle with cancer, and I’ve two really close friends who have lost parents recently to sickness, and the thought of them feeling this way just breaks my heart. The only reason it’s so low on my list is because I like the other songs so much. Here’s where it starts to get difficult for me.

13: London Boy. This one is a lot of fun, it’s fun to sing along to, and I like the fast rappy bridge. Gotta work on getting those lyrics down. I also like the small details about the steps that we all take in relationships, specifically meeting all of his best mates and listening to his stories from uni.

12: ME!. Brendon Urie come through with those vocals. I think I’m a little biased towards this one, just because of the video, and the excitement that always surrounds a new Taylor era. It was the first thing we saw post REPUTATION era, snakes into butterflies, all the bright colors in the video, the peppy catchy chorus. I also strongly relate to “I know that I’m a handful baby…but I promise that nobody’s gonna love you like me.”

11: Daylight. Highly relatable content here. I always say Taylor knows exactly where I am and what I’m going through. Speak Now, I was living in New York, struggling in every aspect, and spent a lot of that era feeling pretty lonely and crazy, broken, losing friends and missing them but not knowing how to say any of that to them. Red was a carry-over. 1989 I had moved to Orlando, was living in the Wolf Den with a bunch of doods that I loved, everything felt neon and electric and exciting. Reputation I had been kicked out of my house and betrayed and felt very snake like, unforgiving, and hard-hearted. And February of this year, I moved into a house I had found, picked amazing people to move in with, and felt in control of my life again. And if you happen to follow Taylor culture, that’s the same month she posted the picture with the seven palm trees to her instagam, which kicked off the whole Lover era. I say all that to say, it was time for me to step into the daylight and let it all go. To be defined by the things that I love, not the things I hate, or haunt me in the middle of the night. I only want to see daylight and think of that that special person, you know?

10: Afterglow. Hello Speak Now. It’s all me, in my head. I’m the one that burned us down, but it’s not what I meant. I don’t want to do this to you, and I don’t want to lose this with you. It’s the perfect example, IMHO, of unconditional love. Here’s all my crazy. Here’s all my insecurities. They’re going to rear their ugly head, will you please love me even with those? Here’s what I need from you in those moments of temporary emotional insanity: Tell me that you're still mine, tell me that we'll be just fine, even when I lose my mind. Tell me that I'm all you want even when I break your heart. And when you do that, I’ll say “I’m sorry that I hurt you.” What a beautiful picture of loving and being loved in return.

9: You Need To Calm Down. I dunno how closely y’all follow my antics on Facebook, but when this video dropped, I casually posted it because I liked the message. As a believer in Christ, I feel the Christian community has done a HORRIFIC job of loving the LBGTQ community, and my simple post BLEW UP, proving my point. Sidebar, I also link the first listen of this song to being in Toy Story Land with Topher, Jessica, and Leslie, huddling around my phone under the giant Christmas lights for our second dive into New Taylor.

8: Paper Rings. Ok now it’s starting to get super hard narrowing it down. We’ve entered my True Jams™ section. The only reason this is at the bottom of my True Jams™ section is because I ain’t in love like this, so where I want to feel like glitter is exploding inside of me, I just feel like dried glue the glitter was meant to stick to. I love how deeply personal it is, I love the specificity, and the song is a BOP. Standout lyrics: “I’m with you even if it makes me blue,” and “I want your complications too, I want your dreary Mondays…”

7: I Think He Knows. A Bop. Fun. Sexy. Coy and flirtatious, while also owning her power. The rappy bits. I’ve never felt a longing for somebody’s body just by the way they hold a cold glass, but boy, does this song make me want to. What specifics, what detail. Also – “I want you, bless my soul.” HONESTLY. BLESS IT LORD.

6: The Archer. Giving me those Speak Now vibes. All my heroes die alone – I jumped from the train, I ride off alone. The LONGING. The wanting to be wanted. Knowing you’re good enough, knowing you have a lot to offer – but also knowing that it’s so much that maybe nobody can handle it all. I’ve got so much to offer, who could ever leave me? I’m too much to handle – god, who could put up with all of it?

5: Cornelia Street. My God can I relate to this. I’m ALWAYS looking for the ending, for someone I love to tell me they’re leaving because being with me is too much. I always prepare for the worst case scenario. And only recently have I started to believe that maybe the worst case won’t always happen? Maybe somebody will stay? But man, my natural impulse, my knee-jerk reaction, will always be to get as far away from any and all memories of the good times. I don’t want to be reminded of the beauty and joy and greatness because it will just keep reminding me that I don’t have it anymore, and there’s nothing I could do to get it back.

4: Death by a Thousand Cuts. Ahhh, yesss, Taylor. Speak to me of being left and of the heartbreak that brings. Also, make it a bop. I constantly find myself looking through the boarded up windows of past relationships, and I see the chandelier still flickering and see all the beautiful moments, though they may have lost the radiance they once had. Saying goodbye is the worst, endings are the worst, new beginnings mean something else ended stale. Also being given up like I was a bad drug – reminds me of a line from “Better Man”: “You pushed my love away like it was some kind of loaded gun.” Pure Taylor and I’m here for it.

3: I Forgot that You Existed. On repeat. Will dance and sing to this endlessly. Also always here for a good snarky twist of the kinfe.

2: Lover. Again, the longing. The vulnerability. Asking the questions that are scary to ask, that people would think you are insane for asking someone. Loving somebody so much that you put everything else aside, and all you want is to ask, “Can I go where you go?” Clingy. Needy. Co-dependent. As brave as it would be to ask a question like that, the fear of being seen as any of these things will keep most from doing it. Which probably hinders more than it helps, because if somebody loves us, truly loves us, we should be able to ask that without any fear of anyone or anything. But I’ll sing it and pretend.

1: Cruel Summer. SO. SINGABLE. I love the chorus. It gets stuck in my head. I love the lyrics. The frailty. A relationship that started as friends with benefits, her saying “it’s cool, no rules,” when secretly she’s falling in love and fears saying it, because she thinks it’d be the worst thing he’s ever heard. Yeah, OK, please stop reading my diary, girl. But the best part is, IMHO, he feels the same way about her, and also has feared speaking up, which is why he’s grinning like a devil, because he’s so happy because he feels the same way. 10/10 cant’ stop listening.

 And there you have it, folks. Time may change my rankings, relationships may change my rankings, but from where I sit, 10 days in, these are my thoughts. If you made it this far, I’d love to know what you think of the album, and your rankings!!! As if I’ll ever pass up a chance to talk about/listen to someone talking about Taylor Swift. Sound off!

[joebustillos]

JBB’s Final Thoughts Episode 41: Jesus & The Folly of Using the Bible As Prop

June 1st Trump takes a walk after protesters are forcefully removed, so that he can take a picture in front of a church and how does that or doesn’t that express his Christian Faith.

MP3 Version: https://joebustillos.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/jbbsfinalthoughts_e041_jesus-and-the-folly-of-using-the-bible-as-a-prop.mp3

Enjoy and please subscribe to my YouTube channel or subscribe to all of my blog posts (scroll to the right of this page to the black box that says, “FOLLOW JoeBustillos.com via email,” type in your email address and click the button).

Please Subscribe:

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Past JBB’s Final Thoughts Podcast Episodes

Credits/images:

music: Social Blindness – 22K by Smart Sound Music

All images and screen grabs by Joe Bustillos ©2020 except where noted

A video timeline of the crackdown on protesters before Trump’s photo op, Washington Post, 2020-06-08, https://youtu.be/JxYmILDya0A

Jimmy Carter (caricature) by David Levine, https://shop.nybooks.com/collections/david-levine/us-presidents

Jimmy Carter And Rosalynn Building  Home, Habitat for Humanity

George W. Bush, jr., caricature by managevpants, https://www.deviantart.com/managerpants/art/George-W-Bush-caricature-408026248

Bill Clinton caricature by managevpants, https://www.deviantart.com/managerpants/art/Bill-Clinton-caricature-408026999

Tricky Dick by Nina Reid, https://flic.kr/p/dguKDM

Ronald Reagan – Caricature by DonkeyHotey, https://flic.kr/p/2iE39wi

George H.W. Bush caricature by managevpants, https://www.deviantart.com/managerpants/art/George-H-W-Bush-caricature-408028476

Barack Obama caricature by managevpants, https://www.deviantart.com/managerpants/art/Barack-Obama-caricature-408025985

18 of the funniest photoshops of Trump’s Bible photo op., by Orli Matlow, https://www.someecards.com/life/lifestyle/donald-trump-bible-photo-op-photoshop-edits/

President Obama sings Amazing Grace (C-Span), 2015-06-26, https://youtu.be/IN05jVNBs64

Resources:

Jimmy Carter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

Fact check: No, Donald Trump church photo op was not the same as Bill Clinton church photo, by Eric Litke, USA Today,  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/09/fact-check-facebook-post-wrongly-compares-donald-trump-bill-clinton-photos/5322448002/

All the Absurd Details We’ve Learned About Trump’s Church Photo Op, By Adam K. Raymond, Intelligencer, NYMag, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/trumps-church-photo-op-all-the-absurd-details.html

‘He Did Not Pray’: Fallout Grows From Trump’s Photo-Op At St. John’s Church, by Bill Chappell, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867705160/he-did-not-pray-fallout-grows-from-trump-s-photo-op-at-st-john-s-church

American Bible Society Responds to Trump Photo Op: Scripture Is ‘More than a Symbol’, by Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/june/american-bible-society-responds-president-trump-photo-op-sy.html

Surprise: No One Is Impressed by Trump’s Tough-Guy Church Photo Op, by Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/no-one-is-impressed-by-trump-tough-guy-church-photo-op

Trump’s tear gas photo-op was ‘frightening’ to authoritarianism experts, who warn that his behavior will only get worse without ‘fierce opposition’, by John Haltiwanger, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-teargas-photo-op-was-frightening-to-authoritarianism-experts-2020-6

Episode Notes/Script/Post:

Joe Bustillos, here…

Yes, I have a scratch on my forehead. I stood up and bumped my head on my mic. Speaking of clumsy… Trump’s recent awkward photo op, I’m not sure what message he thought he was projecting (some say that the pre-photo-op clearing of peaceful protesters by force was the real photo-op)… Anyway, as with many things, this business of public displays of “religious affiliation” is certainly not something new.

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In fact, way back in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the presidency, my hippy-dippy born-again Christian heart was delighted that a real Christian was going to be my nation’s president. It was a far different time, long before the Moral Majority reared it’s ugly head, when only (Thompson-Chain Reference™️) bible-thumpers, such as my self, would even have such thoughts. I got the sense that most others were fixated on Carter’s southern drawl and toothy smile. But, I could tell, or rather, my 18-year-old self, knew that this man was devoted to the truth found in the Bible. Sadly, that didn’t seem to help his presidency and he was replaced after one term by someone who I could tell was less of a believer, and more of a Hollywood-camera-ready-Christian.

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Such a different time, I was also a very different person. Being raised Roman Catholic, I really didn’t know my Bible until I got swept up in the Jesus Movement in the mid-1970s and then I couldn’t get enough of the book (resulting in a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies from conservative Biola University and taking Masters classes at Fuller Seminary). Again, those were very different times, and I have to laugh at the memory of how much my little group of friends with our bibles were looked down on by our high school classmates (especially when I see how many of those who thought we were a bunch of weirdos… which we were… now post all about Jesus and how the nation needs to get back to Jesus on their Facebook streams… too funny).

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So, being all about the born-again, personal faith experience, when I think about the presidents over the past 40-years I would have to say that good ol’ Jimmy Carter seemed to be the one with the most genuine witnesses of faith. Mind you, this isn’t an assessment claiming to determine the legitimacy of the professions of faith from these fellows. But I think the distinction comes down to how many of them practice or would practice their faith regardless of their station in life, or publicity, versus how many of them are more a part of the institutional/cultural tact that has less personal value. Interestingly that leads me to believe that Bush Jr. with his redemption from alcoholism and Clinton with his “predilections,” would tie in terms of the “personal nature” of their Christianity. Highly flawed persons, which connects them all the more to their faith. That said, I never once believed that the Christianity of Nixon, Reagan or Bush Sr. was anything more than the “cultural” noise they were raised with and the language they used as part of their jobs as presidents. By the time of Obama, my own journey was such that I was far less concerned about whether their faith was genuine and more interested in the genuine nature of their desire to help fix the system. Remember, Carter was the most genuine Christian by my former estimation, but his presidency felt largely like a brief buffer between the criminality of the Nixon years and PR of the Reagan years.

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And that brings us to Lord Dampnuts and his blatant “Christianity as a prop” modis operandi. If I felt like Nixon, Reagan & Bush Sr. were “doing it for the cameras,” I cannot imagine any believer with an ounce of integrity (or “spiritual discernment”) thinking that this guy is the real deal. Seriously. I have a staunch anti-abortion cousin who resorts to the old, “they’re all crooks,” to justify her support. Really? He’s using you and your faith and expects you to keep him in power because… that’s it, “because.” For all his rhetoric and bluster, he’s so in favor of families and the sanctity of life that he’s still separating families and putting babies in cages. How does that square with your estimation of the quality of his Christianity? It just doesn’t pass the sniff test. I’m sorry, yes, we’re all flawed and imperfect but this guy doesn’t even try. Really. Forcefully removing peaceful protesters so that he can pose in front of a church should be proof that he’s never read the book he used as a prop. Hell, Princess Handbags had to give him the upside-down bible for him to hold up, like it’s a freaking trophy… in the middle of a pandemic! No.

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Had I not left the church before the ascendency of this clown who would be king (in the name of Christianity) with the full throated support of the American Church, that would have been it. The idea that God is in control and that He wants the best for you, like he cares for the birds & the fields of grain, and then this atrocity of an administration happened… that would have caused me to doubt that any one or anything is in control. All along, it was just one big sad farce. Oh, by the way, that photo of Clinton holding up a Bible, it’s not the same. President Clinton was returning from a church service, and waved at the crowd with his bible in his hand. Just an image of an imperfect man practicing his faith, not a staged photo-op requiring the forceful removal of peaceful American citizens. If you can not see the difference you mustn’t be reading the same bible that I studied.

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This is why the founding fathers included the “non-establishment” clause in the constitution, they had seen the endless European wars fought in the name of competing Christian sects and desired for that not to be part of the American experience. Truthfully, you cannot remove religion or cultural beliefs from the human experience, but you can restrict their role in the governing and decision making process of a diverse people. Personally, I don’t care what you might believe in, as long as you’re willing to help make our community and country a better place through your own hard work and our common values. Just don’t expect me to follow your faith as part of your willingness to work with me, it doesn’t work that way.

Now that I think about it, it was probably naive of me to think that my faith or the faith of the president had or has any relevance to the difficult job that a president has to do in the service of our country. When done properly, the president’s faith can be a sign of our common struggle and association, that we all have to deal with difficult and unanswered challenges. But that would require the president be willing to reveal some of his or her humanity and Lord Dampnuts has never allowed anything remotely negative to be said or hinted at in his presence. He’s just not self-aware enough to do that. So, it turns out that this has nothing to do with religion in the public square and everything to do with flawed humanity and how willing our leaders are willing to be their true-selves in public. That’s the real question. And it would seem that Lord Dampnuts is incapable of really being “one of us.”

After recording this podcast I found a video by the Washington Post, that reported on the timeline of events of June 1st, beginning with the action against protesters in the Lafayette Park area just before and during the president’s speech in the Rose Garden, leading up to his walk to and photo op in front of St. John’s Church. Please watch the full video, which I will link to and tell me that there is anything Christ-like or Christian in the behavior or attitude of this man. I don’t see it and I challenge you to show me where this behavior is promoted in the Bible. Please enlighten me. Where does it say that God’s man will have his troops fire weapons at peaceful protesters so that said leader can hold up a holy book, like it’s some kind of talisman, in front of a place of worship? Where is that part of the walk that Christ calls all men and women to follow?

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JBB’s Final Thoughts Episode 41: Jesus & The Folly of Using the Bible As Prop JBB's Final Thoughts Episode 41: Jesus & The Folly of Using the Bible As Prop