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earth2hope · 1 year

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Personal Narrative

Hope Coardes

Sean Pears

Writing, Literacy, and Discourse

Personal Narrative

Christianity is a broad religion that people from many backgrounds participate in. One community it is prominent in is the black community. This can be seen as a result of slavery and the forcing of Christianity and the beliefs that come with it onto slaves and missionaries going to Africa to spread the “word”, but nevertheless, it has seemed to stick with the community greatly. This particular is sewn into the community and is almost an expectation of the people in it. From birth, many of us are christened and immediately put into the religion. It then progresses to the small black child going to church every Sunday with her nana; Waking up at 7 to get ready, the sounds of Gospel music playing in the background as her ear is burnt with the hot comb for the 3rd time this month. Struggling to stay awake during the service but feeling a pinch if anyone around had realized that she was nodding off. That same child grows up and is then a pre-teen, struggling with her faith, but still attending to please her family and uphold the expectations thrown on her. This soon turns into going to church maybe going once a month and on holidays, turned into just holidays as a full-fledged teenager. This child is me, Hope Jasmine Coardes.

I never really questioned my religion as a child, as it seemed normal for me. All my friends were Christian, and most of my family was too. It was what I saw on T.V. and around me in my community. It felt like that was the only religion I could participate in because it was what “my people” did. The community embraced me and everything seemed to be perfect in my eyes. That was until I came out in 8th grade. I was expecting a warm welcome and immediate support but was instead met with disgust and disappointment. My immediate family and friends supported me but the overall black community and religion did not. From social media to real-life encounters, it became apparent to me that the black community participated in toxic Christianity and was full of homophobia. Pastors would preach about the effect homosexuals had on the black community and how they were bringing us down. People said if I would just believe harder in God then I would be able to “pray the gay away”. This is the reaction many black LGBTQ+ members are met with. Our community sees us as sinners and uses the bible to back up their hatred. The same religion I was told would embrace me at any stage in my life and would love me regardless of who I was would cast me out for something I cannot control myself. This is when I began to struggle with my faith. I stopped saying grace at the table and my nightly prayers became a thing of the past. I felt like my prayers would no longer be heard because of my sexuality, as if God has a filter for whose prayers he heard and helped in life. I had the mentality that anything that happened to me that was negative would be due to my sexuality and it was God punishing me for my lifestyle. This was backed up by social media, going onto TheShadeRoom's Instagram page allowed me to read and take in all the hatred and homophobia from people in my own community. Saying that it would be the downfall of the black community and that they would be praying for these lost souls to seek God and stop dancing with the devil. All because they love someone that happens to be the same gender, something no one can control.

I guess I’ll start from the beginning, middle school; That awkward time when everyone is trying to figure themselves out, believing that everyone knows themself when in reality we were all clueless. Around the age of 12, the topic of boys and crushes was brought up more frequently, sleepovers and the hot scoop would be who we thought the cutest person was in our grade. I watched as my friends said various different guys and agreed on some while I had the name of a girl in our grade. I wouldn’t dare admit it, as I didn’t want to be an outcast and have everyone think I was weird, or that I was a predator since that’s the only representation of gay women on television that I had seen. So I lied, I picked a random guy’s name I knew they would agree on so I could continue to fit in and fly under the radar. This continued for a long time until I figured I had one friend I could tell, she had a great reaction; she hugged me and thanked me for trusting her to tell her such private information about myself. We had become so much closer than that, we’re still best friends to this day and she’s like a sister to me. This gave me the confidence to eventually tell more people in my life, one being my sister whom I’m very close to. She’s one of the biggest female role models in my life and basically a mother figure to me. I knew I could tell her everything as she had told me multiple times before throughout my life. It also helped that I knew she had some friends who were in the lgbtq+ community, it made me feel safer in telling her. Her reaction was that she had already guessed it, and it was not only funny to me because she knows me better than I know myself, but also relieving. Even though I know she was raised in a progressive generation and was very loving and open to everyone regardless of their sexuality, race, and religion, there is always that lurking feeling that I may be rejected as a person and the reaction would be terrible. After middle school, I had become more confident in my sexuality and joined the GSA club in my high school (my high school was majority black but had many other POC, it reminds me of Howard’s demographics), this is when I became more aware that other people hadn’t had the same welcoming experience that I had. Many felt unsafe coming out to their families, getting disowned, kicked out, and beaten were their fears if they were to relinquish such information. They didn’t have the choice to be vulnerable like I did, I was one of the lucky ones, one of the few POCs who had a family that would love and accept them for whoever they are and whoever they loved. Unfortunately in the community, specifically, the black community homophobia is a large issue. They find it unappealing and say it goes against God’s plan of a woman being with a man and continuing the building of the community to be “stronger”.

One of my worst encounters with this was with my sister’s now ex-boyfriend. Imagine, 4 days little getaway to Charlotte to go to my cousin’s wedding. It was supposed to be nothing but good vibes as we were celebrating love and overall joy. We were on our way back from a barbeque we had thrown for the groom and bride the night before the wedding. It was great vibes the whole night and we were on the way back to our Airbnb to get ready for the night as the wedding was the next day. On the ride back I was talking to my sister about my relationship at the time and how I was questioning if I was going to stay in it. Of course, my sister’s boyfriend was sitting there listening as he drove, and when we arrived at the Airbnb he asked me why I was going to break up with him; Probably expecting something childish such as missing calls or not receiving enough attention his curiosity got the best of him, but my answer caught him off guard. I replied, “ I think I may be a lesbian and don’t believe it’s fair to stay in a relationship with a boy when I may not even like boys.”. His mouth had dropped and the silence in the room was extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t know what I was expecting as a response but it definitely wasn’t “You’re going to hell”. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, my immediate thought was to start crying, but like my family says I have a “sharp tongue” and we started arguing. He said how I was too young to know what I liked and that it was wrong, that God had intended woman to be with man, plus some other homophobic rhetoric that I had seen online but never experienced in person. My sister came to talk to him and calm me down and that is when I responded: “You had not only one, not two, but three kids out of wedlock so if I’m going to hell so are you”. My sister broke up with him immediately after this, but it changed me and made me more aware of the experiences other people were going through. It also brought up my biggest issue with my community; They pick and chose what they want to follow from the bible and preach. I wondered how they could choose homosexuality as something that is the worst thing someone could ever do but was having children with people they never married, and were having cheating scandal after cheating scandal, but somehow who I love was the thing that would doom me to infinite punishment in the afterlife. I couldn’t and still can’t understand how they can use the bible to back up such hatred but forget everything else in it that they don’t follow.

Online it was just as bad, when Lil Nas X came out as gay, suddenly the whole community thought he was inappropriate and that kids shouldn’t be listening to it, but before they knew his sexuality it was perfectly fine. Seeing it makes me not want to disclose my sexuality to anyone because they can change their outlook on me for something that doesn’t even affect them in the slightest way. I can come from this bright young girl who is going to do such great things in life, to a degenerate who can’t be around their daughters because I may tempt them and pull them to the “dark side”. The same people who have lied or stolen (which are sins), or had kids as a teenager when they weren’t married will look down on you and act as if you are the antichrist because you just so happen to like the same gender. They demonize everyone in the community and turn sexuality into something that is just about sex. They only saw Lil Nas X as inappropriate because they immediately think of what he could be doing in private in his own time as if gay people are just sexual deviants who make everything about physical pleasure and don’t have any romantic or regular feelings like everyone else does.

Overall it can get hard at times and I struggle with participating in the religion due to the people that are in it and it’s a battle I deal with every day, but I don’t let people get away with it as much as I used to. Now if anyone says anything borderline homophobic I immediately call them out on it because I had seen my peers need someone like that in their life, and as someone with younger family members who look up to me, I don’t want them to think that it’s okay to treat people a certain way because of who they love, and they also may one day be apart of the LGBTQ+ community. I wouldn’t want any negative experiences I have dealt with or that they may see to prevent them from living in their full truth and being who they are inside.

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filmnoirsbian · 2 years

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Can’t take the hot priest in Fleabag seriously either because my grandfather was/still is the hot priest to the old ladies at our church and one tried to infiltrate my grandmother’s Bible group the stir up discourse and figure out his favourite food to make for him even though he’s a germaphobe famous for only eating my grandmother’s cooking. His younger brother also goes to our church and another old lady had a crush on him and had a meltdown and screamed during a church meeting that everyone under this roof will be struck down by god because she felt we were ‘praying against her’ by preventing her Union and I think her kids have a restraining order against her

This is incredible king thanks for sharing

#i never experienced any church drama growing up bc my local catholic community was chill as hell #so i love to hear abt these sorts of situations #asks

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queenlucythevaliant · 3 years

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First off, a caveat: what follows isn’t meant to be a theological analysis, or even a devotional reflection really. It’s more just me trying to articulate how I conceptualize things.

So angels. Great wings arching across stained glass. Porcelain figures hanging from Christmas trees. Many-eyed, unfathomable creatures crying “fear not!” in Aramaic. Figures that you don’t quite clock as anything other than human until they’re gone.

I loved angels, growing up. I got typecast as Gabriel/an angel in no fewer than three different Christmas pageants and so I felt a certain attachment to them. I had a whole motif going; relatives gave me angel-themed jewelry for Christmas and my mom gave me angel Christmas ornaments in my stocking while my little sister got stuck with an assortment of Nativity, Santa Claus, and Frosty. It was a whole thing.

Naturally, when the internet became obsessed with “Biblically accurate” angels, people started sending me the posts. Friends have texted me screenshots of posts about angels, characterized as eldritch abominations rather than servants of the Most High God. A friend of a friend sent me a YouTube video about “Biblically accurate” angels, and I still don’t know how she got ahold of my number. On and on.

So here’s my hot take: Biblical angels point people to God’s glory. Yet in art and in discourse, that doesn't really seem to be the point anymore. It makes me really sad.

Biblically speaking, angels are an extension of God’s glory and divine will. Yes, Scripture depicts angels both as both human-like and as various psychedelic creatures with forms we find difficult to understand. Some of them have wings. Some of them have six wings. Some have none. Some of them shoot fire. Some of them glow. The point is the glory.

We ought to read Scripture literally, but not literalistically; we should take the Bible at its word, but also understand that metaphor is a huge part of the Bible’s language. It’s not a textbook. It’s theology and poetry and history and, above all else, it’s about a Covenant relationship.

Sometimes, when angels are described, particularly when they’re described really psychedelically, it’s in the service of a broader point about the angels’ purpose and, ultimately, about God. The angels in Isaiah 6 have three pairs of wings, including pair of wings covering their feet. Why? It’s a symbolic disavowal of choosing their own paths; they go where they’re sent (thank you, Alex Motyer Isaiah commentary). Several times, angels are said to be covered in eyes. The eldritch-angels crowd really loves this, but Scripturally it points to the angels’ divine insight, and ultimately to God’s omniscience. If you dive deep enough into the theological implications of various angels’ appearances, you find that there are such meanings to all of it.

Are some angels actually covered in eyes? Did they merely appear that way to the prophets who saw them? Or is this merely a case of poetic license? I don’t know. I honestly don’t think it matters.

Angels exist to reveal the glory and the will of God. When it comes to depictions of angels, I have one condition: they have to inspire awe. I don’t mean eldritch terror, and I don’t mean inoffensive prettiness. I mean Biblical awe. The feeling of being bowled over, of smallness, in the face of beauty and greatness, tinged with terror. The feeling that you get when you stare into a sky full of bright stars or hear an orchestra play. Sometimes you get that feeling with the more psychedelic depictions—those that are focusef on conveying the strange, inscrutable power and beauty of the Biblical passages they pull from, not turning angels into cosmic horror supervillians. Sometimes, you get it with stained glass, or with Christmas decorations. Great, tawny wings arching upwards in cathedral windows! Delicate glass and porcelain that glitter when they catch the light! Renaissance paintings. Angels with swords! Ghaa! I adore angels with swords, because they so evoke the power and glory of God, the Lord of Hosts! I once saw an angel ice sculpture at a buffet and it made my heart ache in such a lovely way. Paintings of hosts of angels, filling the whole sky! Radiant angels! Some of these depictions are Biblical in the literalistic sense; others are not. I maintain that they’re all Biblical in the true, literal sense and these are the angels that I so love. I love angels not for themselves, but as an extension of God’s amazing glory.

TL;DR, “Biblically accurate angels” are depictions of angels that point people to the overwhelming, staggering glory of God. That’s what angels are for, after all, regardless of what they look like.

#i'm starting an angels tag focusing on depictions of angels in the spirit of this post #i'm calling it:#glory to God in the highest #pontifications and creations

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nerdygaymormon · 3 years

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Do you have a link to your thoughts on the CES letter? Because I'm sure plenty of folk have asked you about it. I'm, struggling.

The CES letter has been mentioned to me a few times in asks, but I don’t recall being asked to respond directly to it.

Before getting into it, I want to make you aware of this post about Faith Transitions, I think it may be useful to you.

I read the CES letter many years ago, probably the original version, it’s changed a lot since then. I think the CES letter is sloppy, and twists quotes, uses some questionable sources, and frames things in the worst possible way. It’s basically an amalgamation of all the anti-Mormon literature. But many of the main points of the CES letter are important and correct, even if the supporting details aren’t.

In a way, the CES letter has done the Church a favor. For a long time, Elder Packer insisted that anything which isn’t faith-promoting shouldn’t be taught. As a result, most members of the Church were taught a simplified version of Church history, leaving out anything that is messy or difficult. Although those things could be found if someone was looking for them, I found many of them simply by reading Brigham Young Discourses or other works of the early church.

With the internet, Elder Packer’s approach to history turns out to be a bad one. This information is out there and now most members learn about it from sources seeking to destroy their faith. One response to this has been a series of essays where the Church talks about some difficult subjects.

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I’m not going to go through all the claims & challenges of the CES letter, but let me address some of the main ones.

1) There are errors in the Book of Mormon that are also contained in the 1769 edition of the Bible.

From the more faithful point-of-view, Joseph recognizes these passages, such as those from Isaiah, and knows they've already been translated into English and copies them from his family’s Bible. The non-faithful point-of-view is that Joseph copied these verses from his family Bible and tried to pass it off as his own translation.

2) DNA analysis has concluded that Native American Indians do not originate from the Middle East or from Israelites but from Asia.

This is correct. The Church has an essay which admits this and then spends a lot of time explaining how genetics works and one day we might find some Middle East connection. I find the Church essay convoluted as it goes through many possible (and unlikely) reasons for why no DNA of the Jaredites, Nephites or Lamanites has yet been found in the Americas.

3) There are things in the Book of Mormon that didn’t exist during Book of Mormon times, or in Central America (assuming this is where the Book of Mormon takes place), such as horses, chariots, goats, elephants, wheat, and steel.

This is also correct. Maybe the translation process was using a common word in English for a common item in the Book of Mormon. Maybe these are errors. Maybe it’s made up.

4) No archeological evidence has been found for the Nephite/Lamanite civilizations.

Correct. When it comes to archeological evidence, it's true that we haven't found any. For one thing, we don't know where the Nephite & Lamanite civilizations are supposed to have taken place. If you don't know where to look, it's easy to have no evidence. Perhaps Nephites & Lamanites didn’t actually exist and that’s why there’s no archeological evidence. The Book of Mormon does seem to do a decent job of describing geography of the Middle East before Lehi & his family boarded the boat for the Promised Land.

5) Book of Mormon names and places are strikingly similar (or identical) to many local names and places of the region Joseph Smith lived in.

This seems like a funny thing to get hung up on. First of all, it’s not very many names that are similar. Secondly, many places in the US are named for Biblical places & people. If the Book of Mormon people came from Israel, it makes sense they did something similar. For example, the word Jordan is in the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and in many places in America.

6) He points to obscure books or dime-novels that Joseph Smith might have read and the similarities between them and the Book of Mormon.

Those similarities are mostly at the surface level. To me it doesn't seem like Joseph plagiarized any particular book, and these specific books seem to not been very popular so difficult to say Joseph, who lived on the frontier, actually read them. Funny how no one from that time period thought the Book of Mormon resembled those books, probably because they hadn’t heard of them. But Joseph did hear and read a number of stories and some of that phrasing or whatever of the time influenced him. Think of songwriters, they create a new song then get accused of plagiarizing because it's similar to another popular song. Even without intending to, they were influenced by things they heard.

7) The Book of Mormon has had 100,000 changes.

Most of the "100,000" changes to the Book of Mormon were to break it into chapters & verses, to add chapter headings, or to add grammar such as commas and whatnot. There are some changes to fix errors that got printed but differed from the original manuscript. And there's been some clarifications made, but these are few in number. By claiming "100,000" he's trying to make it seem like there's a scam being done. It's easy to get a replication of the first Book of Mormon from the Community of Christ and read it side-by-side with today's version. I’ve done that and occasionally there’s a word or two here or there which differ, but overall it's mostly the same.

8) There were over 4 different First Vision accounts

True. Over the years, the way Joseph described the First Vision changed. I think different versions emphasize different aspects of the experience. I don’t find them to be contradictory. Oh, and the Church has an essay about this.

9) The papyri that Joseph translated into the Book of Abraham has been found and translated and it’s nothing like the Book of Abraham.

This is true. The Church has an essay about it. The Church now says that the papyri inspired Joseph to get the Book of Abraham via revelation, much like his translations of the Bible weren’t from studying the ancient Greek & Hebrew. It is a big change from what the Church used to teach, that this was a translation of the papyrus. The papyri has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham, and the explanations of the facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price don’t match what the scholars say those pictures are about.

10) Joseph married 34+ women, many without Emma’s consent, some who had husbands, and even a teenager.

This all appears to be true. Emma knew about some of them, but not all. As for the married women, they were still married to their husbands but sealed to Joseph (I know this is strange to us, but this sort of thing was common until Wilford Woodruff standardized how sealings are done).

Polygamy was illegal in the United States. Most people who participated were told to keep it secret. So of course there’s carefully-worded statements by Joseph and others denying they participate in polygamy.

The salacious question everyone wants to know is if Joseph slept with all these women. We don’t know, but a DNA search for descendants of Joseph has taken place among the descendants of the women he was ‘married’ to and none have been found. But still, if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, why is he hiding this from Emma?

11) The Church used to teach that polygamy was required for exaltation, even though the Book of Mormon condemns polygamy.

This is accurate. The Church says polygamy was part of ancient Israel and so as part of the restoration of all things, polygamy had to be restored, see D&C 132:34. Now we no longer say polygamy is required to get to the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom.

12) Brigham Young taught Adam-God theory, which is now disavowed by the Church.

True. Joseph Smith didn’t teach this and John Taylor & Wilford Woodruff don’t seem to have any time for this teaching. It’s a thing Brigham Young was hot about and taught, but seems a lot of the church didn’t buy it as it was discarded after his death.

13) Black people weren’t allowed to hold the priesthood until 1978, despite Joseph having conferred it to a few Black people during his life.

Very true and very sad. This and the Mountain Meadows Massacre are the two biggest stains on the Church’s past. There is a Church essay on Race & the Priesthood. The ban appears to have begun with Brigham Young and he developed several theories to justify it, and these explanations expanded over the decades and bigotry was taught as doctrine. The Church now disavows all explanations that were taught in the past.

No reason for the priesthood ban is put forward in the Church essay other than racism. The past leaders were racists and that blinded them to what God wanted for Black people. There’s a big lesson in that for LGBTQ teachings of the Church.

14) The Church misrepresents how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon.

The accounts of Joseph Smith putting a seer stone in a hat and reading words from it, that's part of the historic record. Quotes about it don’t make it to our Sunday School lessons, but if you go back to the Joseph Smith papers and other accounts, it’s there to read. Joseph also used the Urim & Thummim, and wrote out characters and studied them, but he seems to have most favored the stone-in-hat method. I think the main problem here is the Church in its artwork and movies does not depict this, and therefore most members are unaware until they see anti-Mormon literature. Why does the Church not show Joseph looking into a hat? Because it seems magical and weird to modern people. But how much weirder is it than he put on the Urim & Thummim like glasses and could translate that way, or he wrote out these characters from some extinct language and was able to figure out what they mean?

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A number of the main points in the CES letter are true (even if explanations/supporting details in the CES are problematic). Some of the main points have simple explanations and don’t seem like a big deal. Others challenge what the Church has taught. To its credit, the Church put out essays by historians & scholars, with sources listed in the footnotes, addressing several of these controversial topics.

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Religion is meant to help humans make sense of their world and our place in it. Most religious stories are metaphorical but end up getting taught as literal history and, in my opinion, the same is true of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that’s why the CES letter has power, it points out things aren’t literally true but were taught by the Church as factual, and the CES letter shows us part of our messy history that the Church tried to hide.

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The story of Adam and Eve can’t literally be true. It doesn’t fit our evolutionary past, but it’s meant to make our lives important, God created us and we have to account to Him for our choices, and it’s important to find someone to go through life with. We can say the same of Job and the Book of Ruth, fiction with a purpose.

While there are some real events included in the Bible, much of what’s written is there to teach lessons, culture, and give meaning to life. Jesus taught in parables so at least he was upfront that they were stories that contained morals.

Can I believe the same about the Book of Mormon, that it’s inspired fiction with meaning I can apply to my life, or must it be literally history to have value?

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I went through a massive faith crisis while attending BYU. I had access to materials that told a different story of this religion than I’d been taught (the sorts of things in the CES Letter) and it threw me for a loop.

It felt like the floor of faith I had stood on shattered and I fell with no way to stop myself. After I had a chance to process through the things I was feeling, I looked at my shattered faith and picked up the parts that were meaningful to me.

I had lined up my faith similar to a line of dominoes. If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph was a prophet. If Joseph was a prophet, then this is the true church. If this is the true church, then...

This works until it doesn’t. Once a domino topples over, it starts a chain event.

Now I look at principles and concepts and decide if they’re meaningful to me.

I love the idea that we can spend eternity with the people we love most.

I believe we should be charitable and loving to others.

People on the margins need to be looked after and helped and lifted.

Poor people deserve dignity and the rich to be challenged.

We have a commitment to our community and we all serve to make it better.

All are alike to God, we’re all loved and God has a grand plan for us.

Those who passed away can still be saved through the atonement of Christ.

Those are all principles I find in the Bible and Book of Mormon or at church and I find Love flows through all of those.

This new approach works for me. I don’t have to believe or hold onto problematic teachings. I can drop them and still hold the parts that I find valuable. I can reject the teachings and statements which are bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, misogynistic. Prophets can make mistakes and still have taught some useful things.

That little voice of the spirit and what it teaches and guides me to do, I trust it over what Church leaders say. Overarching principles are more important to me than specific details for how this gets applied in the 1800′s or 1950′s or Biblical times.

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I truly hope some of what I’ve written is helpful.

There’s no use pretending that the CES letter doesn’t get some things correct. It’s also helpful to understand it’s not just trying to share truth, but has an agenda to make the Church look as bad as possible.

What about the things the CES letter is correct about?

Has this church helped you learn to connect with the Divine?

The Church has some very big flaws, but also has some big things in its favor. Some of its unique teachings are very appealing and feel hopeful and right.

Can you leave the Church and be a good person and have a relationship with God? Absolutely.

I also know this church is a community and it’s hard to walk away cold-turkey with nothing to replace it, without another network to belong to. It’s as much a religion as it is a lifestyle and circle of friends.

Are there parts you can hold onto? Parts you can let go of?

You have a lot to think about and work through.

#long post #ces letter #this is a much longer answer than I thought I would write

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delusion-of-negation · 3 years

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top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

#don't take life too seriously #nobody gets out alive anyway #tw abuse mention #tw csa mention #tw incest mention #tw for any tws I missed #idk why I did this

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heavensenthearty · 4 years

Note

Ooof (regarding stupid people's Hot Takes about Zutara and your personal life). I mean this in the nicest way possible, but is there anything good to remaining on tumblr for you? What makes you happy, because I feel like it's so easy for white people (like me) in positions of power to be like "mm, sucks to be you :/" when it comes to real world issues, and so easily overlook our similarities, and that it was a quirk of birth that you are there and I am here.

TW // Homophobia, islamophobia, cultural appropriation

(You don't have to read this if you don't want to.)

Thanks, that last part was sweet ☺️

Anyways, about your question, it should be "is there anything good to remaining in any social media for you?" Because it's not just Tumblr, it's everywhere, and it's not an issue limited to the ATLA fandom.

No offense to anyone out there, but I can handle a whole lot of things, just not communism or socialism. Venezuela's government declared itself socio-communist, we don't have the best mental picture about either of those systems. And I can't talk about it on Twitter without pro-communist users coming to send me GIFs of Chavez giggling. For that matter, Twitter is filled with people "fangirling" over Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. You can imagine what seeing that does to a Latine's mental health.

And if it makes you feel better, it's also not an issue limited to white people. Even with all the fuss about cultural appropriation, U.S. black people veeeeeeeeeeery often takes coloquial Spanish words and says they have insulting meanings, and even when we explain them what they really mean, they keep saying the word gringo (our way to refer to U.S. fellows) means the n-word just because they (black users) say so. Don't get me wrong, I try to be as solidary as I can with people from all backgrounds, but they sure as hell don't own my language.

So, it pretty much looks like all platforms just have it real bad against Latine's, huh?

But being Latina inside Latin America is not exactly a paradise either. Don't get me wrong again, I love my country, I think I have made that pretty clear, but Venezuela is a veeeeeeeeeeery, like veeeeeeeeeeery homophobic and islamophobic country, because Catholism is our main religion. Well, a distorted version of it. (I have studied the Bible, so I know the passages supposedly "condemning" homosexuality are mistranslations, but... Venezuelans are... Never mind, let's just say most people here aren't open to different ideas.)

So anyways, if I kept myself surrounded only by my IRL company, I would have ended up condemning LGBTQIA, too, and screaming to the top of my lungs how muslims are out to erradicate the human race. (Yes, this is actually a discourse my own mother gave to me.)

Without social media, I wouldn't have made so much friends with different sexualities and gender identities, I would have never educated myself on mental health issues, I would have never seen such amazing art and writing.

Yes, it's difficult most of the time. Even in supposedly "safe" spaces like AO3, you can still get negative comments from haters or just people with internalized racism telling you to not write what you write, and it only worsens my already frail mental state. But, in a way, sharing with different people is what helps me keep it together. And it just happens that I'm one of those people that keep looking for the good, even in places where there doesn't seem to be any 🤷🏽‍♀️.

#about me

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bidaubadeadieu · 3 years

Text

long post warning, thinkin abt gender, epistemology, and ethics

this intro is gonna be a long one, but bear with me, it’s relevant, and I think this is a worthy part of the discourse. so sorry for the block text, but if you haven’t got time for this right now, consider keeping this post around in your likes and coming back to it later.

i’ve been thinking a lot abt questions of empirics vs ethics lately. i’ve been watching some youtube videos on Street Epistemology. The goal is to take people on the street, ask them to give an example of something they think is true (although they’re encouraged toward a belief system, e.g. belief in god, karma, a certain philosophy, and not something strictly measurable), and then the street epistemologist asks them questions to determine the sources of evidence on which they are basing their belief. The practice is supposed to be non-judgmental, but this is somewhat dubious because the whole technique was designed to convert theists to atheists. A common exchange will go “I believe that God is real” -> “what makes you believe in god” -> “I find that there is compelling historical evidence in the Bible, and that I have had a number of personal experiences that I see as miraculous/divine in some way” -> “If the Bible was written differently, or if you hadn’t had those experiences, maybe your life had gone a different way, would you still believe in God” the idea being that a rational and consistent person would say “no, because I would have no evidence” but in actuality most people say -> “yeah, actually I still would”, showing that their belief actually exists independently of any evidence, it’s purely faith. And then the street epistemology practitioner will often say something like “Could someone reach a different conclusion using faith? If a Hindu uses faith to determine the existence of Vishnu, would they also be correct?” and sometimes people get led down this path of -> “well, it’s true for them, but it’s not true for me” which I find fascinating, but if you’re a street epistemologist you generally seem to think that truth and non-truth only exist in binary states, and that this admission is the result of the terrifyingly faulty reasoning of religious people (because that tends to be their angle).

Some people in street epistemology interviews, rather than discussing religion will discuss gender (the practitioner is not supposed to lead people in any particular direction, the interviewee gets to pick the topic). See here and here (feel free to watch those and come back). These videos are okay, but I find it so frustrating, sometimes just infuriating, to watch these, and I’ve been thinking for weeks now why that would be. If I couldn’t hold my own with this guy, going toe-to-toe to defend why I think trans identity is real, is that a massive problem for me? I can’t hep but imagine myself in conversation with the main guy I’ve been watching (and to be clear, he’s a really nice guy, he wouldn’t be arguing with me, or attacking my positions, just asking purposefully instructive questions), but I can’t think of any claims regarding my gender identity that I think would be interesting to discuss. For example, he might suggest something like “I am transgender” as a claim, but I think this actually entirely misinterprets gender to begin with as something evidentiary. The best answer I can think of to answer the questions “What makes you transgender” or “What is the evidence on which you base your belief that your are transgender?” is genuinely “because I want to be” and I don’t think this is wrong or internally inconsistent. I think gender, because it is something that is social instead of empiric, means that it is not something that exists in a binary truth state. It would be like the claim being “I believe murder is wrong.” There isn’t evidence to support this claim, because it is ethical, and if you want to defend it (”Why do you think that” -> “Because it hurts people, and I think hurting people is wrong.” -> “What is the evidence that hurting people is wrong?”) you’ll never find a satisfying answer that is defendable. At some point the need to take an ethical stance is irreducible, and like a child who asks “Why? Why? Why?” you’ll always be able to go down the rabbit hole, never ceasing.

My being transgender is because I like it, and you could ask why, but it would be like asking why I like my favorite movie, or why I like my favorite food. I like these things because I do, through some concoction of nature and nurture, and that’s just the way my world is. This is a hot take, and it’s not something I would say to any cis person, because it’s bad optics. I can imagine the kind of flak I would take. “What do you mean being trans is your preference?” “How dare you compare something as important as gender identity to liking mac & cheese, or the Lord of the Rings?” I recognize that this may be a unique outcome of my being nonbinary, and that a binary trans person for whom the “I always knew I was a woman” or “I have a female soul in a male body” narratives really do apply might find what I am saying to be insane and detrimental to them.

In response to Elliot Page’s coming out, I saw a friend of a friend on Facebook write “she doesn’t look like a boy at all but ok lol. anyways my dog is my cat now because i want it to be” and my friend, a well-meaning, intelligent, cis ally, called her friend out for his bigotry and in doing so she posted links to several scientific studies supporting the legitimacy of trans identity, appealing to scientific consensus. But here’s my thought: Neurology may prove that there are monumental differences between the brains of male and female people that never change regardless of socialization or hormones. Social psychology may prove that trans women act more similarly to men than they do to women 99% of the time. We could wake up tomorrow and learn that a historian with an agenda has faked the existence of gender non-conforming people of the past, that they doctored a text or lied about what they found in a burial site. This isn’t to say that any of these things are likely, but the sheer fact that they’re possible means that claims like “A new study shows that men and women’s brains are fundamentally alike” or “A new study shows that trans women behave like women” or “A new study shows that trans people have always existed throughout history” are actually worth jack shit. All scientific claims are falsifiable, they are fallible, but actually my worth as a human being, as a transgender human being, is not. I don’t think being transgender is valid because of any scientific finding, it’s valid because I wanted to, and I think it’s good for people to get what they want if it’s not hurting anyone, and I don’t think gender non-conformity hurts anyone, because in fact I think that questioning binaries and transgressing authority is good for society. Let me repeat that. I am transgender because I believe it is good for me and good for society. If I stop believing these things, which I might do based on exposure to new evidence, then I should stop being trans, but just on their own these are all ethical claims, unverifiable ethical claims, that require assumptions. If you are transphobic to me, or otherwise cruel, I think you’ve made an moral violation, but I don’t think you’ve necessarily made an unscientific claim; if you think that being non-conformant with gender expectations is bad for society, I might fall down a similar rabbit hole of “why do you think that” --> “I just do, because this is a priori wrong to me” and we’re stuck.

Is this line of reasoning dangerous? I think it is dangerous for people to get to comfortable with “Thing X is true because I want it to be.” For empirical, verifiable claims, this does not work. I don’t become rich by wanting to be, you dog doesn’t become a cat because you want it to be, but these are fundamentally different types of claims than “I am a woman.” I am saying that being a woman has no truth table. Politics is theatre, gender is theatre, and what it means for something to be “true” is complicated.

This whole thing has big and strange implications. Going back to the beginning, I’m not sure what this means for theists. I’m an atheist myself, so I do find it somewhat concerning if they could use my argument against me, and say “Actually this doesn’t matter if this is rational or defensible, because it’s simply my belief system, informed by my values, and I think believing in God is good. For as long as I believe that, I will let it influence my behavior. Also, sidenote, I’m now going to ban all abortion.” But I think in general, there is a role for evidence to influence belief systems. I don’t think that gender non-conformity is good for society for no reason at all, and my line earlier that I think if I stopped enjoying being trans then I could and would stop being trans is really important here. But this does shift the focus from “Why are you trans” to “why do you enjoy being trans?” and I think that shift is important. I wonder if my street epistemology guy should shift his focus from “Why do you believe in God” to “Why do you enjoy believing in God?” or even “Why do you think it’s good to believe in God?” I wonder where that would lead him.

#speaks #gender #identity #epistemology #street epistemology #anthony magnabosco #philosophy #science #ethics #trans discourse

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mariaoverbooked · 4 years

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Redemption - A Star Wars Story

There’s been a lot of discourse around the idea of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo getting a redemption arc. I’ve seen arguments that he’s done too many bad things (killed Han) or that Bedemptionists only want him redeemed because Adam Driver is *hot*.

I’m stepping on here to say that I question anyone who is anti-redemption in Star Wars because that stance is ultimately anti-Star Wars.

Star Wars is about redemption. Point blank. The entire arc of the first six movies is the fall and subseqent redemption of Anikan Skywalker - Star Wars at its core is Anakin's redemption story (hot take: This was never about Luke or battles in space. This is a story of redemption, this is Anikan’s story). The basic theme is good triumphing over evil (which is arguably the heart of any epic story throughout history but that’s another post). Star Wars places emphasis on how it’s never too late for someone to come back to the light aka become “good.”

Vader spent years torturing and killing for the dark side and his story still ends in a redemptive sacrifice. Anikan’s downfall was always how hard he loved. He loved Padme so much that when he couldn’t save her and his own fear of her death turned him dark and ultimately his love for his family (son) brought him back to the light. This is the message of Star Wars. That how we win - fighting for what we love.

Kylo is the culmination of the Skywalker redemption story. He is the antithesis of his grandfathers story and to say he doesn't *deserve* redemption is to go against every theme that every episode has attempted to display and really makes me question if you’ve watched a Star Wars movie?

If you think Anikan’s story was a perfect circular arc and Vader sacrificing himself for his family was great storytelling (which it is) why can you not extend the same ideals to Kylo Ren - who was manipulated by Palpatine since birth, has always felt a pull the light, and literally killed his “master” to save the girl.

Side Note: I love Han Solo as much as the next person. He was my original Star Wars crush, however, his death was necessary. It literally split Kylo’s soul to the bone to do it and thus secured the fact that he can never truly go dark. I want Han Solo’s son to be redeemed even more after he committed patricide. Not to mention Han’s final act was to forgive his son (hand on cheek).

I honestly think any argument against a redemption arc completely misses the point of Star Wars. You’re looking for space action with no depth and that’s never been this story. This has always been a fairy tale in space and you can trace redemption arcs to the very heart and soul of literature (Odyessus, Epic Narratives, Fairy Tales, The Bible). The idea that no matter how badly we mess up we can always choose to do the right thing in the end is a lesson that we as humans have needed to be reminded of since the beginning of time.

If you think Ben (you’re my only hope) Solo doesn't represent hope and redemption you don’t understand Star Wars at all.

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rpmemedumpster · 5 years

Text

Unraveled: Absurdly Comprehensive Game Lore Starters (pt.1)

Solving The Zelda Timeline in 15 Minutes:

“He does this thing and then he goes sailing and then he crashes and has a dream and then dies in the ocean.”

“And then it’s another existential crisis.”

“What comes after that? That’s right it’s darkness, baby!”

“___, we have to start over.”

“Tingle is, um, the perfect evolution of humanity.”

“I’m not gonna explain how it connects just yet, because I’ll do that later.”

“This whole goddamn suit is so tight, I feel like a Christmas ham.”

“Got nothing better to do, might as well go have fun, and you know what, I respect that.”

“I swear to god if I get one “well actually…” comment.”

“TAKE FUCKING NOTES. I JUST SAVED YOUR ASS WITH MONOPOLY.”

“Don’t ask me to do this again.”

I Read All 337 Books in Skyrim So You Don’t Have To:

“ History’s so BORING. UGHHHH.”

“ I don’t give two shits about a king who lost a war 700 years ago.”

“Who doesn’t love a little erotic lizard fiction?”

“I straight up chortled. That’s what I did.”

“NO!”

“I BORE THIS BURDEN! FOR YOU!”

“DON’T READ THEM! NO!”

“ HOW DARE YOU JETTISON MY GIFT!”

Ranking all 200+ Mega Man Robots:

“I do not feel at all qualified to discuss the philosophical implications of that.”

“Humans are real squishy, really, when you think about it.”

“I’m digging myself in a hole.”

“We’ve done some shit to bees y’all.”

“No one likes a narc.”

“Why the FUCK is he a top?”

“Don’t let me suck more than I can handle.”

“Just hire a 16 year old. Like, they need the job.”

“Here’s a big rule of thumb: magicians are always evil.”

“Technically not murder. Definitely bad.”

“Humans are trash.”

I wasted 3 weeks of my life finding Castlevania’s hottest monster:

“So I went out to grab some lunch, but it start to rain, so I ate a chicken sandwich drenched.”

“I am going to throw myself into the sea.”

“Why are vampires always the hot monster? Isn’t it someone else’s turn?”

“Anything unique can be sexy. Look at Benedict Cumberbatch.”

“I don’t want to know what that mouth do.”

“You should be wary of anyone who builds their personality around swords.”

“I don’t need anymore reason to be afraid of looking at myself in the mirror.”

“They say eye contact is important, but maybe not this much.”

“Jerry Seinfeld taught me that through love all things are possible.”

“I just think we need to start thinking of New Jersey in general as sexier.”

“He might kill you, but, he also might open up and be really lovely.”

“When I was a kid, my mom thought that I had a nutritional deficit because I kept wanting to eat mushrooms so much, like I ate only mushrooms for like a whole week.”

“What is more sexy than feeding someone with a lovely fried dish?”

Smash Bros. owes millions of dollars in OSHA violations:

“Am I safe to smash?”

“Look at this polar bear!He has no fuckin' clue what's going on!”

“Not everyone can double jump.”

“I need to know where Donkey Kong pees.”

“Put your toys away, honey!”

“I don't care how good you are at surfing, _____.”

“ Violation.Violation.VIOLATION.VIOLATION!”

“I couldn’t give a shit about death.”

“JUST LET ME GAME, MOM!”

Scientifically calculating the game of the year:

“Anything that I say is just a drop in the ocean of discourse. No one wants to hear my opinion. WHICH IS WHY I AM NOT EXPRESSING AN OPINION.I AM STATING A FACT.”

“They called me a fool! But do I look like a fool to you?”

“Fight me.”

“Would you say you are a math expert?”

"I tell you what, this is a lot of research into things that really have very little meaning."

“And if you'll excuse me, I have to go do my dark bidding on these spreadsheets.”

“Come on in, hope you're not as big of an asshole as the past few of your friends!”

Every sonic game is blasphemous:

“PLEASE DON'T SHOW THAT TO ME ANYMORE.”

“What are the ramifications of a Sonic the Hedgehog game based on the bible?”

“Before you get upset with me, saying,"_, aren't you just starting a cult?" Look at this question answered by Cutegirlcorr: "Technically speaking, religions and cults are the same thing."

“EITHER SONIC IS A GOD OR COULD KILL GOD AND I DO NOT CARE IF THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!”

“Biblical literalism is just an early form of fandom.”

#rp meme #starters #roleplay starters #rp starters #roleplay meme #comedy #humor #this got super long so i'll do the rest in another post

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hot-take-tournament · 10 months

Note

Also as a Christian, I would argue that if we're going by fandom rules, there is some basis for a Jesus/Peter pairing. Peter was one of the first disciples to follow Jesus. When Jesus was walking on the water Peter also walked out on the water to go to him, and when lost faith and began to fall Jesus pulled him up out of the sea. Peter's real name was Simon, but Jesus called him Peter (which means stone or rock,) pretty cool sweetheart name, waaaay better than "sugar" or "sweetie". And of course, when Jesus was being arrested in the garden Peter immediately jumped to his defense with a freaking SWORD, which none of the other disciples did. Can't forget his anguish and angst when he denied knowing ;) Jesus out of fear. John is "the one Jesus loved" but like. There is a good argument to be made for Jeter.

When I die do you think that Peter will deny me entrance based on this answer or will he high-five me and say I was the only one who understood?

you make a pretty compelling case, it's just...

the name

'jeter'

like 'derek jeter'

i don't know if i can unhear it

#asks #not a poll #hot take bible discourse

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judefan841 · 4 years

Text

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biblegossip · 4 years

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How Gay was Jesus, Ranked from 0-6?

The year is 2020, and we are all equipped with the knowledge of our own gayness. I mean, you might be mostly straight, but you are at least a little bit gay. It’s just science.

Shame that the Bible wasn’t written in 2020, and therefore assumed Jesus to be a heterosexual. God, people were just so close-minded back then. Can you believe that people assumed Jesus’s sexuality?

Today, we don’t take any major public figure’s sexuality for granted. We’re enlightened enough to have public discourse (via twitter) on the matter. Take, for example, the famous debate: did the colors of Taylor Swift’s wig in her music video You Need to Calm Down mean she was secretly coming out of the closet? I mean, her hair was the color of the bisexual flag:

Celebrity gossip blogs, of course, reported on this matter. Elle.com’s June 2019 post “Twitter Thinks Taylor Swift May Have Subtly Come Out As Bisexual In 'You Need To Calm Down” inspected the music video’s potential (gay) easter egg.

(Hate to break it to you, heterosexuals, but the Easter Bunny is definitely a gay icon. I mean, look at his outfit. Have you ever seen a straight man wearing a bowtie outside of a wedding and/or formal school dance? On the Kinsey Scale, the Easter Bunny is defiantly a 5. See the chart below).

In this article, I will attempt to correct one of history’s many injustices: popular culture’s assumption of Jesus’s heterosexuality. We’ve devoted so much time to wonder if Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are gay, isn’t it time we ask ourselves if Jesus was into dick?

We live in a celebrity culture, but what about the Bible’s celebrities? You know, the people God *actually* wants us to read about?

So, let’s get to the question I asked right in the title: just how gay was Jesus?

We’ve already discussed the fact that Jesus was at least a 1. The year is 2020, and no one is totally straight. Like you can at least name one same-gender celebrity that you would bone if given the chance.

Take, for example, me. I’m mostly straight but here’s my personal gay-exception list:

Taylor Swift (I have a chance! There’s a possibility she might be kind of gay!)

My College Roommate (She was like super hot and yeah we did actually hook up, ka-ching)

Any Woman that is Alive and Into Me and Brushes Her Teeth Regularly

I think I might actually be significantly gay

Who would be on Jesus’ gay exception list? To research this question, I googled “hottest bible characters.” There were about 4,980,000 results. I surveyed the internet’s opinions with a grain of salt and arrived at my own conclusions. They’re listed below:

Guys Jesus Would Bone

1. Joseph

No one get too mad at me -- remember it’s not his biological dad. And like half the videos on pornhub are titled “Stepmom Bangs her Barely Legal Stepson on Top of His 18th Birthday Cake.” It’s a common fantasy now, and it was probably a common fantasy then.

2. King David

King David was fit enough to fight off wolves and lions. On a purely animal level, Jesus would be aroused watching Kind David fight off these predators because his survival drive would be like, ding ding ding you found yourself a protector.

3. Samson

Samson ripped out the jawbone of an ass with his bare sexy hands and “slain a thousand men.” (Judges 15: 16). He was James Bond of the Old Testament. Also, he slain a thousand men with his ass? Um, okay -- that’s freaking hot.

4. Probably Lots More Men

Listen, this was before Trojan released its UltraRibbed UltraSmooth Lubricated condoms ™ . If a guy was gonna screw a girl before marriage, he had to rip out the belly of a squirrel and use that as a condom. There was no other way to detach the act of sex from the possibility of pregnancy -- other than to have gay sex. The Greeks were the only ones who talked about it, but everyone must have been doing it. I’m not a historian, but I have common sense.

So given that Jesus was most likely into Joesph, King David, Samson, and probably lots more men, I’d say he’s a 5 on the Kinsey Scale. I reached out to Pope Francis for comment, and in an email he replied that I was “most likely right.”

#jesus #taylorswift #gay #kinsey scale #bible #celebrity #history #god #bisexual #bi #homosexual #gaypride #celebrity gossip #comedy #humor #lol

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absolutes-are-dangerous · 5 years

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Hot take: Fictional characters are 'real' and 'have rights' discourse is literally just Ancient Greece w/ Greek mythology all over again. (Playing hot potato with beings that don't exist, believing them to exist and acting on those beliefs, and adding onto the stories and believing those are real as well.)

To be honest, this comparison makes me feel a bit uneasy. I’m no expert in greek history but what you call mythology now was actually a religion back then. They firmly believed these beings, their gods, were real and those stories were as much truth to them as the stories of the bible or other holy books are for believers today. I’ve also never seen the take that ancient greeks believed fictional characters have rights. If anything, it would've been more like “if god x reads what you’ve written about him, he’s going to smite you”. And again, they didn’t believe “those fictional characters are real” but “these are stories about our real deities”. At least as far as I know about greek history. I think there’s a vast difference in “I firmly believe that this being that I am writing about is a real being, so writing about it can have real consequences (especially if it’s a revengeful deity)” and “writing this fictional character in a hurtful scene will actually hurt said fictional character because they’re written in a scene that hurts them and that’s against human basic rights”. Not to say that the former can't be a big red warning sign, the context is important. But the latter is definitely a statement beyond reasonable.

#ask #anon #discourse #greek mythology #religion mentioned

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willpowerbutch · 5 years

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Willpower Butch: In Profundis

Dawn clambered over the LA quarantine like a wearied soldier storming a hill – the hill that has become the burning bosom of the Gay-Transgender. Since NASA identified God in the night sky, flying toward earth to assess His children, society has been thrust into a state of nihilistic chaos. The Christians rejoice, and the Gay plot on how to turn Him over to their wickedness. The Transgenitalists, banned from public restrooms, desecrate suburban streets with their bodily fluids in an expression of protest, making neighborhoods where once children could freely get hit by cars while playing Pokémon Go into a biohazard.

(God, who is due to arrive this summer, is shooting through space right now.)

Morning threw these degenerates into relief as they staggered over the pavement of Duplass Avenue and into oncoming traffic, waving stolen underwear on long strips of decrepit building vinyl: the art gallery spinsters who invented Mitski; adults who cosplay as memes; “grandfathers” who loiter in the Youth Bibles section of book stores; and, most troublingly, the bodies of fallen straights, levitating up through the storm drains on the wands of gay necromancers – in short, the entire Green Party – were only the first denizens I encountered along the harrowing road to James Franco’s homo-cidal circus. Everywhere, there were the remnants of bar food and suspicious in-laws. All this was the plutonic vision which greeted my trusted correspondent and I as we strode heterosexfully down the block.

Paragon Shag beside me had not been the same since our eviction from the House of Those Motherfuckers Who Wear Sandals. Only the whiff of pedicure oils on a passing European businessman would send him into such extravagant declamations on the aesthetics of marginalization that I would be impelled to beat the fuck out of him.

“Shag,” I spoke unto him as we arrived at our destination, the Villa de Hermaphrodita, that crypt of human bipedalism. “What is this stench wafting from your chest?”

“Deodorant,” said he.

“I fear for you, Shag. You are aware that deodorant is a witch’s brew intended to inculcate children into the homosexual lifestyle.” He knew as I did that those who use it too much become ravenous beasts, mere British culture journalists, addicted to the scent of Orientalism and male crying.

“Precisely so. We cannot allow ourselves to be overtaken by those limping nancies. With this, we shall confuse their predatory instincts.” And just then, a furious piss communist passed us by, navigating by the odor of listless pretension to James Franco. “You see?” said Shag, turning to me suddenly. He took my arm in the manner of the Romans, up to my elbow. “We are brothers, Mr. Butch, and not in a YouTube Red sort of way, nor in the sense that two different-looking male roommates claim to be, nor in the manner of college boys who make out at strangers’ house parties and tell everyone that it’s part of their fraternity hazing ritual, nor like bohemian male friends who have a large age gap in a hot way, nor indeed like the Quakers, who we all realize developed oatmeal as a gateway to eating spunk.”

He spoke prettily, and I could do nothing but convert my doubt into glorious masculinity. We had come to investigate Franco, after all, whom we suspected of creating twinks to try to turn himself gayer.

We entered the villa -- and there he was, directly before us, barefaced and shockingly confident for a man who looks like a toilet squeegee, licking chocolate off the thighs of a servant boy. James Franco: provocateur of the Gay and war poet of their slick uprising against biological persons.

“Wow,” he greeted us running a hand through his hair. “This is, like, crazy. I haven’t been tag-teamed by two bears since I was on the set of Milk. Did you come to see how I kidnap women and transform them into twinks to make myself gayer?”

We were speechless before this display of arrogance, but Franco’s attention had already been diverted. The servant boy’s epaulet had come unbuttoned.

“Well,” said Franco, hooking him by the shoulders, “the evidence is piling up, huh?”

“Sir?”

“Tell me,” Franco mewled in a squalid attempt to sound erotic, “while you’re existing in a state of, like, untroubled happiness because of straight privilege, do you ever wonder how it feels to have ornery fetish sex with glamorous-yet-blasé strangers every second of your life like the Gay-Transgender are expected to do?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, now you’ll have nothing but time for that, man – as the newest member of the Heterosexual Circus.” Turning mercurially, as if astonished to discover that Shag and I had not moved, Franco addressed us. Raising his arms, he shouted, “Birth is Death! Reason is Treason! Empiricism is Imperialism!”

We could not bear to witness the poor boy’s torture by being forced to be bad at dancing in front of gay perverts. As Shag and I shuffled back onto the street, idly kicking the shit out of a taxi that had parked on the sidewalk, I was emasculated by a notion unrelated to the sweating power of my manhood: that we had not heard the last of these frightful slogans.

*******************************************************************************************

It did not take long for us to find a trap door at the other side of the villa, under a cypress tree. It was locked, but not for a man. Reducing it to smithereens with a mere touch of my beard to it, we descended into a lively disco club where, clinging to the shadows, we moved about curiously. There was in one of the dance-floor cages a sight which startled us.

“Gayflame!” called Shag. “Reddie Gayflame!”

“It’s just Sexchaynge now,” she whispered above the music, on the verge of tears because her body was undergoing a dramatic change.

“But, Sexchaynge,” Shag advanced fretfully, leaving enough distance so as not to be endangered by her femininity, “I thought you were a Gay as well.”

“I was, but I gave it up. You see, I believe in doing things as hard as I can, like Hugh Dancy -- but I knew that I would never be the gayest of all. Not while Ben Whishaw still has a career as an international sex fae... So, why not become a transgender instead, I thought to myself, since there’s less competition?”

Shag nodded sagely.

“Anyway, there is somebody else here that you ought to meet. Follow me.”

My correspondent and I were led into the adjacent hallway, where loomed a misshapen yet familiar silhouette. Suddenly recognizing it, I cried out, “It is the Lord of Lust, the fluent horizontal dancer ‘himself,’ Ben Whishaw! You fiend! You devil!”

But when the vampire stepped into the light, it turned out to be only Twinkathee Charlotterampling, who is merely probably an insatiable fairy.

He threw himself into Paragon Shag’s arms, weeping. “I knew you would never go back to Italy, so I came here to find you. Oh, please say that we can stay together, Daddio. Listen, I can even help you out: Gay Franco isn’t only turning women into twinks, he is then cloning the normal homos! Next, there will be enough fit gay guys to have sex with each other, and Franco will be our only option. Then where will I get any action with men who don’t look like a rejected Muppet? It’s a direct assault on bottoms, and not the fun kind, like when Benedict Cumberbatch gets turnt on Corvo and tries to turn my ass into Christmas lights,” spoke Timpani, gulping. “It’s against my huwoman rights.”

The dimensionless sex balloon’s discourse rained down upon me the spume of flaccid object permanence, and I was forced to rebuke him. “You skinny-jeaned Socratic, you purveyor of gay lies. Humans are not women. And the only right you have is to stop dangling your driftwood in front of every sailor you lay eyes upon. Knave!”

We resumed our progress down the hallway, the two of us and our limpid sidekicks, who stopped every so often to slather their tongues over errant broomsticks. At last, we cruised into a large room, which contained in its rear a glass chamber that held a strange, dark machine within.

“It’s the TRANSporner,” said Timpani Gayparade.

Turning to Shag, I asked, “What do you suppose it is, my macho companion? I cannot well understand the cartoon elf’s French.”

“It must be how Franco transfigures women into the Gay. My God,” Shag exclaimed, “it’s full of emo music.” Grabbing Gayparade’s weird jaw, he brought him into his line of sight so he could address him. “You – What else has Franco created?”

“He has an entire lab devoted to cloning the Gay,” Timpani laughed drily. “And it’s completely, like, impenetrable. Any man who goes in there is brainwashed into Franco’s horde. Only a woman could do it.”

“A woman?” we shouted together.

Twinkathee nodded.

“But we have so few in our warehouse. What if Franco merely kills them? We cannot afford to risk one,” Shag bemoaned.

“You see this?” Twinkathee peered up at Shag and shook his head despondently, pendulating his curls like Quentin Crisp’s spinal column. “This is only the first step. Once Franco masters cloning, the gays will be able to have orgies with themselves, and then they’ll spend eternity competing to see who can suck the most of his own dick. We can’t let God know that we ripped off twincest from Leviticus; he’ll think that we’re total fucking nerds. Shag,” Timpani huffed Frenchtastically, “I know this is the last thing you want to hear–”

“Silence, you animated meringue.”

“—but Ben Whishaw is the only homo who still dares to manufacture women. We need him.”

(A diagram of some of the unique anatomical characteristics of women.)

There was little sound then – nothing but the shaking swallow of breath and a distant applause, floating down from the circus where Franco was, variously, receiving his latest recruits. Tears of frustration had sprung up to rim Gayparade’s eyes. There was something accusatory in his gaze at my friend; such a look might have paused me in my celebrations of erectile power, if it had been produced by a man and not by a melancholy bagel fingerer.

Twinkathee lifted his chin, which surprised me because most homosexuals lose executive function of their necks by his age. “You know I’m right. And you know that you have to make him come.”

“He already has,” I interjected, “Whim Bitchaw, Colin Firth, Tom Tykwer, Patrick Stewart, and Judi Dench all at the same time. Oh, you mean come here.” I turned unto Shag, who shirked his eyes. “Why, Shag? What can this eroticized bungee cord mean?”

Slowly and with great shame, Shag reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, right above his heart, and pulled out a condom. “This – this is how we summon Ben Whishaw.”

“With a condom?”

I was surprised, but my skepticism soon changed to heroic terror as Shag tore at the wrapper with his teeth and emptied its contents onto the floor.

“Ben cannot resist the scent of a condom that is left unused. He will come now whether we want him to or not.”

Soon, Ben Whishaw came.

He came – in a flourish of glitter and sharpie tattoos -- attended by his insidious Cummunists: nudists brandishing firecrackers at uncomfortably-pretty busboys, male lingerie models, lions mounted by braless Valkyries, weeping Bavarian youths, the entire population of Barcelona, Michael Shannon, and a parade of cats, all singing “Cake” by Rihanna at the top of their lungs. BBC4 was empty that day; all the mouthwash Mary-Janes were on earth, rutting against children’s harmonicas, instilling fear in all but the most excellent specimens of manliness.

“Rejoice,” Ben Whishaw sang as his silky knees folded to the ground, chafing immediately. “Rejoice, you who have beheld the bawds of my bedchambers, the Greeks of old beachfront restaurants, the harbingers of fantasy sex tours like Ezra Miller’s career. I have come, and so shall you.” Swanning over to address Shag, he bit his lip. “Darling, I am here for you! What do you need, hot stuff?”

“Women!” he shouted manfully.

“What for? You aren’t still trying to figure out which hole is the mouth, are you?”

“Nay,” he replied, “my brother Butch told me. We need them to infiltrate Gay Franco’s hideout and destroy his cloning technology.”

“And you,” the hunch-hip padded towards me, “this is your brilliant plan? You send women to do your dirty work for you? What are you afraid of, big boy, and what can I do to ease that stress?”

“Naw, son,” called out Michael Shannon from afar, “do you want a garden salad with that skewer, or should I just serve you a knuckle sandwich?”

But Whishaw held up a slim, delicate wrist, jangling his fetish jewelry, silencing him. “I will say it to you strai—” he hacked painfully, “directly. I will give you my women, whom I had intended to use to lure fathers into a gay orgy, thereby undermining their paternal confidence. This, of course, would homosexualize the youth. But I will command them to join your cause instead... for a price.”

“Speak, elongated child!”

“Your beard,” said he.

I was struck silent.

“I need your beard,” he repeated, endless tears gathering in his eyes. “It’s for my play. The director is afraid that I’m not hairy enough to be Marilyn Monroe.”

“Why,” I puffed my chest, but it didn’t look gay or like breasts, “of all the evil perversions your kind have committed against man, this is the one that I shall never entertain to forgive.”

“That is the deal, Comrade Butch: your sublime brush for my women.”

There was no canon fire, there were no memorial barbecues where suburbanites play a game of subconsciously adulterous cat-and-mouse over the grill, for the sacrifice I made that day. Dear reader, it is a day that shall be marked forever with infamy, for that is the sin that hangs over whatever circumstance impels a straight man to give any piece of himself over to a queer Nancy. Do not mourn for Faust, do not pity Dante the Pilgrim for his travails in Hell; in the flash of a scalpel, I fell into a greater damnation than those dramatic homos could ever conceive.

*******************************************************************************************

When he had his ill-gotten prize, Ben Whishaw parted our company as he has left each of the tens of thousands of men he’s seduced around the world, with a lachrymose little smile, a wiggle of the ass, and a soliloquy on the transient beauty of tricking straight men into thinking you’re a woman until they’ve already removed their pants. Being a consummate phallic god, I was immune to his European witchcraft; Paragon Shag, I’m afraid, was somewhat awestruck by this coy display. But there was no time for either of us to dwell on his fabulous sorcery. The deal was done, and there awaited before us creatures yet almost as feminine as that enchanted nymph.

“So,” I said, stalking around their strange mass, “these are the notorious ‘women.’” A slim shadow fell across my face, and a chill entered my heart. “Shag, what do you make of all this?”

He proceeded to inform me, “It is supposed that women were invented by the early Catholics, at the decree of the Pope.”

“The Catholics?” I interrupted him. “But what do those queers need from women? They themselves gave rise to the two cruxes of gay culture: old men who sort of cross-dress, and bottoms who think they can top.”

“Like Michael Kors,” added Shag, “but with less herpes.”

“So, what, by God, did they want with women?” Yet Shag could only shake his head. “Women!” I shouted unto them, for their ears ring incessantly from all the cock they swallow. “What are you for?”

They seemed to consider my question. “We like Shakespeare!” shouted one. “We create life, and we perpetuate culture,” replied another thoughtfully. Said the third, “We’re trying to eliminate baby-faced depressives from the gene pool.”

“Then you’ve certainly backfired on the Catholics.” I stroked the remnant of my beard and turned to Shag. “Sir, we should waste no time in bringing them to the safety of our suspicious roadside barn. Send Gayparade back through the TRANSporner and let us put a plug in James Franc’n’o in a firm and impressive way.”

Shag nodded apprehensively, taking the marionette by the elbow and helping him toward the entry port. “Fear not,” he advised the waif, “for soon you will have no rap career again. Iggy.”

“Iggy,” Gayparade murmured after him. “Iggy, Iggy.”

They came upon the threshold of the TRANSporner, its dilated cavern of unnatural lust that had given Iggy Azalea talent and genitalia so many years before. The twink gulped, appraising it, unsure of how to proceed.

“Timpani?” Shag inflected. “What is the matter?”

But the twisted, hollow-cheeked spaghetti said nothing, impelling Shag to grip him by the hair, repeating his query in a low growl.

“Oh, Paragon!” cried the gimp at unimpressive length, “I can’t do it, brother! Being a girl is bullshit!”

“Truly,” said Shag. “I’ve read Nietzsche.”

“I won’t go back into the TRANSporner,” he wailed. “I would rather die than look like an adult human.”

Shag leant down, menace in his eyes. “Then we must leave, Timpani, quickly -- before Master Butch is able to transfer sufficient power from his penis into his legs to follow us.”

“You mean...?”

“Yes,” my noble friend, my eternal companion responded, turning to me. “I am prepared to accept my animal nature, the amoral truth of my life: there can be no more good taste, because that is for the straights. I am a total gay forever.” And thus, Shag tore the bomber jacket from his shoulders, and it fell away like his erection, revealing a strapless silver gown and taffeta stole. Rising by fabulous vampirism, he glared down at me; nevertheless, I could discern a cold and implicit sadness in his gaze, the gaze of young man after the golden summer of 1914.

“Shag,” said I, my loins quivering, “get ahold of your senses. There is no future in the Homosexuality. Every country where gay queers establish their warrens, penises shrink. This is because the Nancy makes healthy public arousal impossible by constantly bringing up Madonna.”

But he had already vanished, along with Gayparade, into a vortex of passionate mid-century female friendships.

The silence that prevailed in his wake was deafening; it was interrupted, at last, only by the genital whir of the TRANSporner and the soft, incomprehensible chattering of the women. And after much prayer, my noble witness, I still cannot say which of us in that final instant had been more the queer Dorothy: Shag, his crystal-blue eyes darkened with looming cocks, cutting loose to spend his life spoon-feeding treacle to a preteen girl’s gay skeleton; or myself, at the realization that, more than my box of horse condoms, more than my brass knuckles, more than even my beard, I needed Paragon Shag with me. It brings me shame to confess this, but we live in such times as make masculine pride scarce, and I do not foresee Western civilization’s return to glistening worthiness until the metrosexuals have been pounded back into almond butter and adult coloring books.

I crossed myself, still in a state of disbelief, and turned toward the threshold of hell, where Sexchaynge stood waiting. She had pressed her cheek against her fist, and her gaze lifted to me sympathetically. “What are you going to do now, Master Butch?”

In a supreme display of muscular eminence, I diverted my erection away from the heart of the sun, boring it into the ground, quaking the earth with my righteousness. “I must pursue Shag, and I must put an end to his delirious transsexual rampage at any cost. Even at the cost of his life. Before he encounters God and offends Him with Sapphic literature.”

“Take solace,” Sexchaynge whispered. “I don’t believe it will come to that. Shag has become a gay slut, so you will always know where to find him...” She smiled sadly as I considered her words. “And lucky for you, sweet-meat sandwich, I know just the ‘man’ to get you in.”

To Be Continued

About the Authors

In preparation for the BAFTA ceremony, Admiral Willpower Butch is studying how to act prissy and entitled by sitting in on liberal arts film classes. His former beloved companion, Paragon Shag, hasn’t been seen in public since he scandalized a group of children with a flamboyant Broadway medley at their school vape bar; now, he prefers the privacy of the abandoned crime scene he shares with Timpani Gayparade and his twenty-two hot brothers. Their secretary, international murder victim and street gastroenterologist Dead Summer Days, will never get into heaven, but he will loiter around the gate smelling of weed.

#willpower butch #paragon shag #jesus this turned out long #my dumb sense of humor as always #manly men! magazine

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dweemeister · 5 years

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One Foot in Heaven (1941)

Christian films, sometimes derisively referred to as “faith-based films”, in the United States have undergone a resurgence in the last decade. Whether the film is explicitly Christian or contains Christian themes, such films have existed since the early silent era. Numerous contemporary Christian films – not all of which have been made or produced by those who are artists before proselytists – have been burdened with a reputation for being sanctimonious, inviting the converted while repelling everyone else. That reputation, largely deserved, was nonexistent during the height of the Hollywood Studio System (1930s-late ‘50s), when films touching upon religion looked upon their subjects and themes with reverence while respecting that the audiences congregating in theaters might be of different or of no religious faith.

Irving Rapper’s One Foot in Heaven – released on home media for the first time in March 2015 – presents its religious themes seriously, yet never intrudes on the beliefs of others. There is a notable exchange between William Spence (Fredric March), the film’s protagonist and (by that point in the film) a well-established minister, and Dr. Horrigan (Jerome Cowan), who has been openly disparaging of the Christians in town. The two engage in discourse about what can be seen, heard, smelled, touched. Can a soul or one’s faith be seen, heard smelled, our touched? And if not, does it still exist? This line of questioning is followed by a line of thought that – during an argument over religion – one seldom hears in real life or in fiction:

DR. HORRIGAN: Well, that’s just sophistry! Pretty good, though – worthy of old Socrates himself… WILLIAM SPENCE: …Alright, you admire Socrates– DR. HORRIGAN: –As a philosopher, I do… But you don’t hear people going around claiming Socrates is divine; as far as that goes, Christ was a good teacher. WILLIAM SPENCE: Why don’t leave the religious angle out of Christianity and respect it as a good rule of living?

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It was this moment where One Foot in Heaven extinguished whatever doubt I, as someone who is nonreligious, may have held in its intentions. It takes two to make a disagreement civil. Credit Dr. Horrigan for realizing, “Christ was a good teacher.” Credit Will Spence for not attempting to reach an understanding, and seeing no need to condemn Dr. Horrigan and respecting the fact that he is not Christian (no Bible quotations to be heard in this scene).

One Foot in Heaven is based on Hartzell Spence’s biography of the same name that he wrote about his father. The film follows Will Spence and his wife, Hope Morris Spence (Martha Scott; fresh off starring in an emotional leading role in 1940′s Our Town) as Will enters the ministry, all while raising a family in places far from their original dreams. Life in these small towns is humbling, but wherever the Spences go, despite the local drama, there are always parishioners who will support them just as Will serves the communities he is assigned to. Though the Spence children are not nearly as prominent as their parents, we also see how difficult it is being the child of a priest. This is an episodic, intimate drama graced with good humor, showing a man and his family living sincerely as the times and people around them change.

The film begins in 1904 in Stratford, Ontario. William Spence is in medical school, but has found his calling to become a Methodist minister. Hope Morris, his future bride and from a wealthy family, is encouraging of these new aspirations where her parents are not. With no ministerial vacancies in Canada, they move to small-town Iowa – the townspeople live simply, with everyone knowing each other’s faces. The Spences raise their children there: Hartzell (Frankie Thomas at age 18; Peter Caldwell as younger Hartzell), Eileen (Elisabeth Fraser at age 17; Carlotta Jelm as younger Eileen), and Frazer (Casey Johnson; the kerfuffle around Frazer’s baptism and naming is warmly humorous passage). The family adjusts as the children grow, the United States enters World War I, and multiple moves across the central U.S.

As a minister, Will is aware of what he is not an expert in – he never pretends to be something he is not. He is always approachable and hyper-local (declining a potential posting as a missionary to Africa or Asia, he quips that, “the real heathens are in the church”). One Foot in Heaven’s most memorable scene involves Will learning that Hartzell has been to the local cinema. Attending the cinema, so say Will’s superiors (or popular evangelical belief perhaps), cultivates sinful behavior – something turn-of-the-century old time religion said about billiards, all types of gambling, speaking about divorce too loudly. Will warns his son not to do so again, as such actions embarrass the moral authority that he wields. Hartzell objects, to which Will says that he will accompany his son to the movies and point out why the artform only promotes sin. Some time after, they pay the admission for The Silent Man (1917; the director and star of that film, William S. Hart, was a guest of honor at One Foot in Heaven’s premiere) – attracting the stares of the patrons who can scarcely believe the local pastor is at the theater. The lights dim. The flicker of the projector and the nitrate film reel fill the room. And to Will’s surprise, the film contains worthwhile messages extolling virtue, honesty, and a disgust for injustice. Will acknowledges he has been wrong and how quick to judgment he was.

This, too, is where One Foot in Heaven refutes many of the attitudes found in modern-day Christian films. Will demonstrates a willingness to change prior views, to heed the words and feelings of the young generations that will someday be sitting in the pews of his church and, perhaps, one of them standing at his pulpit. He and Hope may initially approach a situation in anger or frustration, but work through their problems with kindness in mind, and leave the scenario able to laugh at themselves thinking about their predicament or how foolish they might have been before. Cultural change is not to be fought, but welcomed. Christian fundamentals will endure (and have endured) such changes anyways. What repulses non-Christians from modern Christian cinema is the perception that many of those films carry an evangelical righteousness that make nonbelievers look like wet towels or hot-headed ignoramuses (after a heated dispute with a nonbeliever, “I’ll pray for you” is probably not a helpful thing to say). How refreshing One Foot in Heaven is to avoid all these traps of losing the empathy of non-Christian viewers, putting it in the company of The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Ben-Hur (1959).

Screenwriter Casey Robinson (1935′s Captain Blood; 1940′s All This, and Heaven Too) has crafted beautiful dialogue for the sermons, endowing the character of William Spence with a minster’s ideal literacy. But once the plot exits the first few years of the Spences’ life in Iowa, the screenplay begins to accelerate the proceedings. The Spences’ years in Iowa take the time to relax, to soak in all the quiet pleasantries and meaningful conversations between characters and have them reflect on what has transpired. From their first and subpar parsonage home (to the disapproval of the infant children, it is next to the fire station), church politics, and the aforementioned segment where Will has learned that Hartzell has been sneaking into the local cinema, one feels the weight of time’s passage in the opening two-thirds of the film. What happens to the Spences following the American entry into World War I feels underdeveloped, and the 1920s seem like a narrative blur that is dominated by controversies with Mrs. Sandow (Beulah Bondi) and the Thurstons (Gene Lockhart and Laura Hope Crews).

Hartzell Spence, who wanted Raymond Massey (who was commanding headlines on Broadway for his turn as the President-to-be in Abe Lincoln in Illinois) to star as his father, settled on Fredric March upon her mother’s recommendation. Warner Bros. indeed chose March, but only because of the fact March was considered one of Hollywood’s premier actors and a dependable box office draw. Olivia de Havilland was Warners’ first choice for Hope, but their executives wanted to pair her with Errol Flynn (yet again) for 1941′s They Died with Their Boots On. Scott and especially March are excellent in One Foot in Heaven – March truly shines as Will when speaking to his parishioners and in the film’s final moments; Scott (whose stage background made her suspect to overacting during this production, but was assisted by March to help address these tendencies) is tremendous when attempting to show Will a different way to think about a dilemma. The inside jokes between Will and Hope all work thanks to both actors. March would later consider One Foot in Heaven to be a favorite among the films he appeared in.

This was Irving Rapper’s second film as a director. He usually worked as a dialogue director for Warner Bros., but his crowning achievement – Now, Voyager (1942) – was a year away. Rapper keeps his camera relatively close to the actors and the action, lending One Foot in Heaven an air of intimacy. Composer Max Steiner’s score is gorgeous, with his signature stirring string melodies leading the film’s musical identity. Steiner arranged Samuel John Stone’s hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation”, as the score’s spiritual center. Following its release, One Foot in Heaven – despite receiving acclaim from film critics, who were more influential on their readers than today’s critics – was considerably more popular in rural America than urban America. A publicity campaign geared towards rural parishes paid dividends. One Foot in Heaven remained a fixture in small-town American cinemas following the United States’ entry into World War II; its rural-skewed popularity probably contributed to its unavailability on home media until rather recently.

It would be easy to write off One Foot in Heaven as anecdotal treacle. Listen and look closer. It is a film of enduring faith but, regardless of one’s faith, it celebrates lives dedicated to the purpose of serving others. One need not attend Sunday services or believe in God to intuit that.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

#One Foot in Heaven #Irving Rapper #Fredric March #Martha Scott #Beulah Bondi #Gene Lockhart #Elisabeth Fraser #Harry Davenport #Laura Hope Crews #Casey Robinson #Hartzell Spence #Max Steiner #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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