#i’m taking this as gospel

[faeriefully]

C. S. Lewis is credited for popularizing the three Ls explanation for the logic of Christ’s divinity.

Taking the gospels and Christ’s own words, there are only three options. Christ is either a Liar, a Lunatic, or He is Lord of all (God incarnate).

Why is this the only logical conclusion?

Christ Himself claims to be God.

In the book of John we find many “I Am” statements made by Christ.

“He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.””

‭‭John‬ ‭8‬:‭23‬-‭24‬ ‭ESV‬‬

*note that the “he” is an addition for English translation. The Greek does not contain it. It is Ego Eimi: I Am that I Am.

—

“So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”

‭‭John‬ ‭8‬:‭57‬-‭59‬ ‭ESV‬‬

—

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭35‬ ‭ESV‬‬

—

These two, along with others “I Am” statements in the book of John, are constructed in the Greek as Ego Eimi.

“The Greek construction lying behind this phrase is very important. To emphasize the “I” in an “I am” statement, writers and speakers would use the construction ego eimi meaning “I, I myself, am.” This is done very rarely in the Bible but ego eimi is the construction we find behind every “I AM” statement in the gospel of John. Significantly, the ego eimi construction is also found in the Greek translation of Exodus 3:14 when God declares of Himself: “I AM WHO I AM.” Over and over again when Jesus utters these “I AM” statements, He is making reference to His own deity. No first century Jew who was trained in the Scriptures would have missed this.”

— R. C. Sproul

—

Why does this matter?

Because, if Jesus is claiming the name of God, claiming to be divine, to be able to forgive sins, then there is a lot of weight on the validity of his statements.

Jesus is claiming to be God.

This means:

He is either a liar— a blasphemer in which is was correct for the Jews to attempt to kill Him. It would also mean that He is not a “moral” teacher whose lessons should be obeyed. Nothing He says is of trustworthiness. He is an enemy of God. And we should not believe, obey, nor follow His teachings. He is incapable of forgiving sin. He is a sinner. He cannot provide righteousness on our behalf. He cannot atone for sin nor bear the wrath of God without perishing. He is temporal. He is dead. He offers no salvation.

Or

He is a lunatic. A madman who believed Himself to be God and a blasphemer. Nothing He says is of trustworthiness. In which, again, it is correct for the Jews to attempt to kill him. He is an enemy of God. And we should not believe, obey, nor follow His teachings. Again, he is a sinner, incapable of providing substitution or forgiveness. He is dead. He is temporal, unable to atone for anyone, not even himself. He offers no salvation for anyone.

OR

He is Lord.

He is telling the truth. He is the Bread of Life. He is the Light of the World. He is the great I Am. He is the good shepherd. He is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world— capable of forgiving sin, able to intercede for us. He is our comforter. He is our caretaker. He is perfect, incapable of sin, deceit, lies, or failure. He is infinite and eternal, capable to bear the wrath of God without perishing for all His people’s sins, present, past, and future.

He provides righteousness and salvation for all who place their trust in Him.

He is God, our savior.

—

If Jesus is not God, there is no salvation.

Listen to our Lord who calls you,

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.””

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭11‬:‭27‬-‭30‬ ‭ESV‬‬

-

Come. Repent. Cast your burdens and your sin upon Jesus, our God who can remove your iniquity and comfort your grief.

[dreamingofep]

Just finished Jerry’s book and I am sobbing so hard right now😭 The love he has for Elvis just melts my heart. He was such a good friend and that last chapter absolutely killed me. The last line really did it for me.

Thank you doesn’t even cover it 😭 Excuse me while I cry alone about these two.

[biceratops7]

WAIT WAIT-

In American Sign Language, communication isn’t just about how you move your hands. Your facial expressions are vital to accurately relaying your intended message. And not just “oh be expressive for tone” I mean literally there are standardized rules for how to move your face and in what context. The signs for “big” and “little” are practically meaningless without the appropriate mouth-shape, “ice cream you like?” is no longer a question and therefore means something completely different if you aren’t raising your eyebrows, etc.

So it literally JUST occurred to me Donnie’s motivation for drawing eyebrows on his mask could be completely for practical reasons considering he canonically has at least a basic understanding of asl.

[magicalgirlfia]

I just got the art book and (roughly) translated this page of New Squidbeak Splatoon info.

See the translations are in the “readmore” because I don’t want to spoil anyone.

[tigitaldurtle]

What if I told YOU (no, not you, YOU) that I had a fun silly stardew self ship au that was about working in a library in the city what would you do then?

Anyway finals want me writhing on the floor in agony, so to combat that I am baring my soul for all to see

[bookwyrminspiration]

“why would Shannon put an e at the end if you weren’t meant to pronounce it!?” OKAY WELL first of all, Shannon didn’t make the name, she found it, and we also see similar names such as in artist Georgia O’Keeffe—which admittedly has a slightly different spelling, but not in a way that affects pronunciation. So there’s that. There’s ALSO how we use language and the matter that e’s at the ends of names aren’t pronounced like that on their own in English, to get Keef-ee it would need to be spelled Keefey, Keefie, or Keefee to indicate you need to pronounce the last part. Because names in English that pronounce the final e, such as Zoe, Kobe, or Penelope use different letters right before the end, affecting the final pronunciation and mouth shape. One that Keefe doesn’t naturally have. B and P are categorized together (bilabial plosives) in phonology, and o is a different situation because it’s a vowel. Does this mean you can’t pronounce it keef-ee? No, of course not, it’s a character’s name pronunciation. But it does generally defy typical functioning of English. Which makes KEEF a perfectly reasonable and logical pronunciation. Okay that is all

(disclaimer: this is not serious, there’s no actual venom, I’m simply going to die on this ant hill. and several people were asking how you’d get a KEEF pronunciation out of Keefe. this is how :) )

[bibleofficial]

i’ve been up like 3hrs & 2/3 of each hour has been me shitting & suffering like

[spongek-squidge]

Penny’s 2 heart event sure is a controversial one (the one where she pushed George’s wheelchair without permission) so I’m going to throw my opinion on it out there cause why not

TW! mention of bad upbringings, implication of child ab*se, mention of negative self thinking, Y’know, Penny and Pam stuff

In case you’ve forgotten this heart event sees Penny try to help out George when he struggles to get his Mail from the back of the mailbox, which you know is lovely, nice neighbourly assistance. However, she didn’t ask whether or not he needed help (doing so being good manners) and also pushed his wheelchair without permission with him in it (that’s a no-no and is as disrespectful as pushing someone without a wheelchair (except George is less likely to fall as a result)). Now, this is a problem with the Stardew community as it shows a lack of knowledge and compassion with wheelchair users. However the biggest issue people have with it is if you explain that what Penny did isn’t okay to Penny you lose friendship with her.

Now this seems really out of place, especially when you consider that if you agree Penny did the right thing George then apologises to Penny! Not the way round that should be done.

Before I continue I want to make it clear that this mistake doesn’t inherently make Penny a bad person, but this is my take on why her losing friendship points is a good story telling aspect for the character (in my opinion)

Please finish reading before responding pls don’t pull a Twitter I swear it’s justified-

Starting off with why penny would do this to grumpy old man George, it kinda makes sense, like George is the kind of guy to reject all help if offered to him, man’s got a tonne of bottled up toxic masculinity. However, this still doesn’t justify it, it’s just an explanation as to why Penny didn’t bother asking, she’s lived next to that man for a long time she knows how he is.

So she goes and tries to help George and pushes in wheelchair around without permission, which is still a no-no. However when you tell her it’s a no-no you lose friendship points with her? What the hell Penny, we’re trying to help you out her girl!

But here’s why I think she would lose friendship points and it’s very in character

Pam

Pam is the only parent in Penny’s life and has been for a long time (god knows where the baby daddy is) so it makes sense for Penny to not understand the etiquette around wheelchair users and people with other physical disabilities, doesn’t it? I mean, she learnt is from Pam, and Pam isn’t really a beacon of good morals is she?

It’s the same logic behind internalised homophobia, you grow up around people who are homophobic so even if you are gay or do your best to be inclusive it takes more then someone who didn’t grow up around the same levels of homophobia. Penny grew up around someone who wouldn’t bother educating her about people who are different due to physical disabilities etc

Penny is open minded, she’d never discriminate, but she was never taught the etiquette surrounding things like wheelchairs and how to respect wheelchair users

But why does she lose friendship with us when we try to teach her the etiquette?

I have an idea

Because it makes her think, somewhere deep in her bones, that she’s just going to become her mother. That no matter how much she tries to be open minded and be everything her mother isn’t she’s still failing and nothing can change that

This isn’t true of course but Penny didn’t have the best upbringing and Pam has been seen to insult her when she gets mad, so Penny definitely has low self esteem and would think in this manner.

But that’s just a theory, a game theory!

But seriously, it does make sense when you think too much about it (which I have)

[lezabeththetheodoraimposter]

thinking bout that time I decided to doodle rayni before we knew anything about her and thought “hey yk what I’ll make her south Asian bc I say so” and guess what I was right

[cryptidowl]

I’ve always found it difficult to voice the shit I find enjoyable in a way that actually conveys how much I enjoy something, and that shit has just gotten harder and fucking harder as the years go by and the way media is fucking consumed nowadays.

Nitpicking everything to the most minuscule molecule, comparing in media acts to real life shit, and just sucking all of the fun of a proper discussion out of anything fandom related is just fucking exhausting.

At this point I’m fucking scared to tell people the shit I enjoy so much it hurts because then someone who doesn’t like it is gonna bust out 300000 pages of shit they dislike about it just to make me feel like shit for liking something.

None of this shit is real, chill the fuck out, this is supposed to be a casual escape not more fucking misery

[wildevenusian]

went to church today (listened to a guy talk out loud about nature and god and the universe on the bus)

[slythereen]

“we shouldn’t be encouraging the #1 and #2 driver pressure it’s not helpful” says the man who knows he’d be #2 😭

[littledreamling]

Hob Gadling who taught himself how to read in order to become a printer with the first book to ever be printed : the bible. Hob Gadling become knight getting a humanist education, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew and studying the holy text in every iteration. Hob Gadling who has had plenty to reconsider about his faith throughout his life due to his immortality but never his queerness (and Hob Gadling has found out early on he is not straight), suddenly hearing the bible quoted to support homophobia out of nowhere in the 1980s. Hob Gadling pushing back and campaigning without care that he might be endangering the secret of his immortality against this "new translation". Hob Gadling till present days calling that out, loud and clear everywhere he goes to make sure any queer-secretly-religious or religious-secretly-queer kid (and not-kid-anymore) gets to hear it, because he might have his own quarrels with religion but he also knows how important faith can be to someone and he's not about to let bigots manipulate that against his people !!

Listen I’m a whore for religious Hob and this hits the nail on the head. I’m a little brain dead at the moment as I just got back from a bachelor’s party but I’ll attempt to do this ask justice (and if I don’t, I’ll come back to it because I live and breathe for Hob Gadling and all of his complexities).

The first words Hob ever heard recited to him were out of a bible. Growing up, Hob’s parents dragged him to church every day for Mass, where he would hear the Latin words wash over him like a cool, cleansing water and while he didn’t understand the words, they meant something to him nonetheless. When his parents and siblings died, either from the plague or other natural causes, he made sure they got their last rites, the words that would comfort and strengthen their souls on their journey to Heaven, and he took comfort in the fact that those same words would comfort and strengthen his own soul one day. He saw the priest, solemn and wise, cupping his bible with the reverence he showed to the bodies in the ground, a respect and adoration and dedication that shook Hob to his core.

The first book Hob ever touched was a bible. He still couldn’t read it, he simply placed the type letters where he was told, but the unadulterated joy and pride he felt, holding his very first book, the first book he had ever printed entirely by himself, was a feeling like no other. He couldn’t understand a single word of it, but he could’ve recited it with perfect clarity; he had placed that exact same type in that exact same order countless times, eliminating each mistake one at a time until every page was perfect. It wasn’t fancy, just a simple bible for a local parish, but deep down, Hob always thought of that one bible as his.

The first book Hob ever read was a bible. He had traveled to Venice and Florence, centers of Humanist learning and intellectualism, in the early 1500’s to learn Latin and Greek and Hebrew; to study Ancient Greek and Rome society and culture; to immerse himself in the knowledge of history, language, philosophy, art, and literature; to become educated in translation, letter-writing, public speaking, and military affairs; to study Plato and Aristotle and their texts on philosophy. He studied Jewish and Ottoman thought and better understood his own faith all the better for it (and then spent the next two hundred years unlearning all of the prejudices and biases that he had learned from the Christian-centric and racist tutors). From then on, he made it a point to always have a bible in his house. It was a constant between every life he lived; it was the second-to-last item he sold in the 1600’s (the last thing being his portrait of his lovely and lost Eleanor and his son Robyn) and the second thing he bought as soon as his fortune turned a tide (the first being an apple, an irony that he and Death chuckled over later). Even when England was under Protestant rule, as it would be for a long time, he kept a Latin bible tucked away, out of sight but never out of mind, and when the stresses of his daily life and the mind-bending reality of his everlasting life weighed heavily on him, he would pluck that bible off the shelf (he never had to dust it off, he kept it as clean and pristine as it was when he bought it) and let those cool, cleansing words wash over him once again.

This sounds like a fic, I just realized, and in some ways it is, but it’s also a deep reality of who Hob is and what he holds in utmost importance. I can also offer this little-known tidbit of information (that I think the Sandman fandom would benefit from knowing): homosexual relationships were incredibly common in the early Renaissance, at least in Italy (though if the Italians, with their proximity to the Papacy, were willing to risk it for the biscuit, the rest of Europe was probably jumping on the bandwagon too).

Among nobility, men were expected to marry around the age of 30 whereas women were expected to marry around the age of 15-20. Men were also expected to be sexually experienced in their marriage. So the question is, who exactly are they having sex with? And if you just said “each other” out loud, you’re absolutely correct. In Italian culture, noble men would frequently have sexual relationships with each other prior to getting married to their wives. Now, a lot of these men would never identify as homosexual as we would define it today; these sexual relationships were more along the lines of a gender role to be performed than any real attraction towards men, and it was seen as more of a mentor/mentee situation-the older man in the relationship was showing the ropes of sex to the younger man in the situation and then, when the older man got married, the younger man would then find someone younger to mentor. It was a way of building friendships and bonds, which sound laughable to us now, but were a genuine and deeply respected aspect of society; the feelings they had for each other were strictly platonic in the majority of cases (though gay people have always existed and I’m sure Hob Gadling would’ve reveled in this aspect of society) and would lead to business and family connections later down the line.

I want to stress that these connections were not romantic in nature; it was just a participation in society, but it also means that Hob Gadling has definitely had sex with men before, especially if he had (as I said about halfway through this extraordinarily long post) traveled to Italy for his education. He would’ve first been subservient (as the younger men were) and then moved to a more dominant role once enough time had passed for people to believe that he was getting closer to the age of marriage. He definitely would’ve realized that he was attracted to men then, if he hadn’t already in his hometown as a teenager. What’s more, these men engaged in homosexual relationships were also devout Catholics! Religion had absolutely nothing to do with it, and this would’ve been Hob’s first and lasting impression of homosexuality. Religion has nothing to do with it! It’s simply a part of society, an aspect of the larger culture that most ignored in favor of minding their own business. He would’ve been horribly enraged at the fact that modern Christians took up arms against homosexuality when Christians have had a long (long) (long) history of homosexuality and queerness.

And he’d teach that. In every class where it was relevant, in every conversation where it came up, in every religious debate. He’d make a point of mentioning that history that so many are so quick to cover up because it’s important. It’s important to him and it’s important to other queer people, not because it’s a part of queer history (again, for the vast majority of these men, they were not gay or queer in any way) but because it’s important to understand just how recently Christianity’s crusade against queer communities has cropped up (that’s not to say, however, that the church in any way condoned Renaissance Italian men and their gay sex because they decidedly did not, but it wasn’t an act punishable by death, nor was it punished at all. If anyone had a problem with it, it was their eventual wives, but they had a bigger issue with the prostitutes that their husbands would see on a regular basis even after their marriage).

So yes, to sum up my incredibly rambling post, Hob Gadling 100% has a very unique and deep connection with his religion, though he keeps it very separate from his relationship with his sexuality because that’s how it’s always been. He’s a Godly man and he’s a queer man and the two can coexist.

[stewyonmolly]

are we sure that stewy would even continue being in ken's life post-s4? like yeah sure stewy wanted him out & they've known each other forever but idk. the idea of the roys having no one outside the family + the corporate circles (or having someone at the beginning & losing them over the course of the show) seems like a pretty major theme of succ?? like, are ken & stewy's personal relationships extricable from their business ones atp?

bro i’m not jeremying kendall’s ending i’m hopefuling it

[ashyblondwaves]

Christ. People really do believe that Nancy and Steve were still together when Nancy and Jonathan got together. Help. The lack of critical thinking. It huuuuurts.

[alarrylarrie]

mlm couples aren't "rockstar bf and popstar gf!" and putting gay men into heterosexual roles for your own enjoyment is homophobia. hope this helps!

I mean this from the pop of my heart. Genuinely. Are you okay? When was the last time you put your bare feet on the ground?