#remember jewish means both those who follow the religion and those who are members of the culture/family group

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Hey!

Are you a gentile who is not a member of an interfaith Jewish family?

Do you want to celebrate Passover/host a Seder, but you haven’t been invited to an event held by Jews (friends, family, co-workers, interfaith outreach initiatives etc.)?

DO NOT CELEBRATE PASSOVER OR ATTEMPT TO HOST A SEDER

No matter what your reasoning is for observing Pesach, from honouring or being like Jesus to “standing with Jews” nor for any other reason you may come up with.

Due to many factors, such as the fall of the second temple and the introduction of Rabbinic Judaism, Passover today is nothing like it was in Jesus' time.

Pesach being biblical does not justify non-Jews observing the holiday (outside of being welcomed in by Jews) as the covenants found in the Torah, laws that Jews still follow today, are not relevant to nor commanded of gentiles in general or of modern Christians.

Not only is this appropriation of a closed religion, but Passover is a major holiday has a deep cultural significance that cannot be removed from its religious and historical context.

If you have people in your life who are Jewish who welcome you to observe Pesach with them, that is wonderful and we are happy to have you, but you should not be doing it independently, especially if you are altering the message to make the story about Jesus.

Before you shout “gatekeeping” remember Judaism is a closed practice, if you want to be allowed through those gates you need the key.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Hello, you seem to be knowledgeable about god. Do you know where to find him and what his weaknesses are? I have dedicated my life to hunting him down and killing him for the indescribable amount of suffering he has directly or indirectly caused.

cw: violent language, including about fighting / killing God; as well as discussion of the Shoah / Holocaust later on in the post

(gonna start this long-ass response by saying that yes, i know this anon is probably joking about dedicating their life to hunting down God, but i’m gonna answer it like they’re serious because that’s the kind of person i am haha)

honestly anon, all power to ya! it sounds like my own understanding of God is quite different from yours (for instance, i would claim that God’s main weakness is actually Their best strength, which is compassion and steadfast solidarity) -- but the question of why God allows suffering is one i come back to all the damn time.

if you do track God down -- if God turns out to be a Being that can be tracked down to one location and time -- please do deliver my regards and my sincerest “WTF??”

you’re not the first to demand God answer for the suffering that’s happened on Their watch --

for if God is truly omnipotent, and truly all-loving, why don’t they do something about all this pain??? Indeed, the Bible is rich with similar demands -- from the psalmists to Job to Jesus himself from the cross (quoting a psalm, he cries, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me??”).

You might already know all this, but if not, the question of God’s place in suffering is often referred to as theodicy, at least in Christian circles.

That term comes from the Greek for god + justice, so what it literally means is “justifying (or vindicating) God”....which I’m not a huge fan of, because it implies that when we explore this question of where God is in suffering, we already know the result will be that God will be proven innocent (or at least “not guilty”).

But do we know that?? See the bottom of this post for an example of a time people of great faith found God guilty!

Anyway, theodicy describes intellectual efforts “to jerry-rig three mutually exclusive terms into harmony: divine power, goodness, and the experiences of evil.“ - Wendy Farley

If you want to learn more about theodicy and the way some theologians have “made sense” of suffering, check out this introductory post I’ve got.

Or wander through my whole #theodicy tag over on my other blog.

I invite you to explore theodicy not in any attempt to convince you of anything, but so you know some of the arguments you’re up against! Honestly, the more i explore theodicy, the less satisfied i am with any justifications for why God doesn’t intervene in the face of so much suffering...so if you do the reading and still conclude God is guilty, i’m not gonna tell you you’re definitely wrong.

Anyway. Like i said, you’re not alone in wanting answers for why God -- however, i don’t know that i’ve seen anyone else with your determination to find and kill God!

(Except, and i hate that i know this lol, that’s apparently the plot of the final season of Supernatural -- they find out God’s a total ass who not only is guilty of negligence but also directly responsible for a lot of suffering for his own sadistic enjoyment. so. they kill the bastard.)

Still, while i don’t know that i’ve seen too many people who want to take God out, the idea of wrestling God is pervasive -- especially within Judaism, but also among some Christians.

i’m very into wrestling God, myself, finding it far more faithful to the God who gifted us free will and invites us into true, mutual relationship than unquestioning obedience.

i have a whole #wrestling God tag over on my other blog.

For the most intense example of wrestling with God i’ve yet seen, with God put on trial and found guilty, keep reading.

_________

cw: discussion of the Shoah / Holocaust below

You might connect to Elie Wiesel’s play The Trial of God, or the movie that was made based off it. Wiesel survived Nazi concentration camps but ceased to believe in God after what he suffered. His play was inspired by something he witnessed while a teen at Auschwitz:

"I witnessed a strange trial. Three rabbis—all erudite and pious men—decided one winter evening to indict God for allowing his children to be massacred. I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But nobody cried."

Robert McAfee Brown wrote more about this trial Wiesel witnessed:

“The trial lasted several nights. Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered, conclusions were drawn, all of which issued finally in a unanimous verdict: the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, was found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind.”

Note that in 2008 when commenting on this event, Wiesel clarified that “At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty.’ It means ‘He owes us something.’”

In the chapter “No God, Only Auschwitz” of his book Embracing Hopelessness, Miguel A. De La Torre comments on this verdict by explaining that if God wasn’t going to intervene, then God must at the least speak -- but instead, God was silent:

“God must be held accountable for refusing to speak to those yearning for God’s voice. Something. Anything. A note of solidarity. A testament of love, accompaniment. But they hear and receive nothing. The trial...ends with God owing us something.

De La Torre goes on to describe the play Wiesel wrote based on this memory, which actually takes place in a 1649 Ukranian village, rather than at Auschwitz. The Cossacks raid the village and kill all but two of its Jewish residents.

“In Wiesel’s play, he has the inkeeper Berish voice the same questions those sitting in death camps centuries later asked, if not audibly, then silently:

‘To mention God’s mercy in Shamgorod [Auschwitz] is an insult. Speak of his cruelty instead. ...I want to understand why. He is giving strength to the killers and nothing but tears and the shame of helplessness to the victims. ...Either he is responsible or He is not. If He is, let’s judge him; if He is not, let him stop judging us. ...

‘[I] accuse Him of hostility, cruelty and indifference. ...Either He knows what’s happening to us, or He doesn’t wish to know! In both cases He is...guilty! Would a father stand by, quietly, silently, and watch his children being slaughtered?’”

De La Torre continues with his own thoughts on all this:

“The horrors humanity faces indict God as being less loving and attentive than sinful parents. I hesitate to make any pronouncements as to the character of God because in the final analysis, I lack any empirical knowledge upon which to base my study. Still with all my heart and being I want to say: my God is the God of the oppressed who incarnates Godself among the least of these.

I want to make this bold claim based on the testimony of the gospel witness. But in the midst of the dark night, I confess this hopeful belief is at best a tenet accepted by faith, lacking any means of proving the truth or falsehood of the claim. In the shadow of Auschwitz, though I am not Jewish, nonetheless I am left wondering if the precious Deity who notices the fall of a sparrow is blind to God’s children crushed in the winepress. Do I dare wonder if God is the God of the oppressors?

...Or maybe this is a God who really wants to do good, but lacks the power to do anything in the face of inhumanity. ..."

There’s one more piece to this tale of Wiesel’s witness of the trial of God at Auschwitz. And that is that, after declaring God guilty (or chayav)...

...after what Wiesel describes as an "infinity of silence", the Talmudic scholar looked at the sky and said "It's time for evening prayers", and the members of the tribunal recited Maariv, the evening service. (McAfee Brown)

...That ending is the part that astounds and awes me. These Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz find God guilty -- and then proceed to pray as they always do. I am reminded of what my Jewish friends as well as various Jewish scholars have told me: that Judaism is totally compatible with wrestling with God and even with disbelief. Whether these Jewish prisoners believed God even existed, they prayed -- because that tradition of prayer is what unites them to one another, to their people.

As De La Torre closes his telling of Wiesel’s story,

“At the conclusion of the movie God on Trial, based on the events Wiesel described, shortly after the barrack inmates find God guilty, and those chosen are marched to the gas chamber, they cover their heads and pray. ...

Believers and unbelievers who took the audacious act of placing God on trial do what is totally illogical -- in the midst of their hopelessness they demonstrate their faith as they march toward the gas chambers, or they defiantly embrace who they are while still remaining in heated conversation, damning God. It matters not if God still hears their prayers, or if there even is a God to hear; they still pray, they still debate -- not for God’s sake, but for their own.”

And that brings me to the one bit of actual advice I’ll give you, anon:

If you want to spend your life “hunting God down,” as I said, all power to you! But I do suggest you ponder for whose sake you do so -- and whether you do so for justice or just revenge. What good does such a quest do for those who are suffering now? Are their other paths you could follow that would bring more good? What about your own healing? I imagine you’re not interested in repairing any relationship with religion -- would walking away from God rather than hounding God be a more healing and fruitful path for your finite life?

I’ll close with one more quote from De La Torre, from the very end of his chapter:

“As I stroll through what was once the concentration camp of Dachau, I am cognizant that this space witnessed the unspeakable horrors that befell God’s children at the hands of Christians hoping for a better, purer society and future. ...So do not offer me your words of hope; offer me your praxis for justice. ...In the midst of unfathomable suffering, the earth’s marginalized no longer need pious pontifications about rewards in some hereafter. Nor do they need their oppressors providing the answers for their salvation. What is needed is disruption of the norm to push humanity toward an unachievable justice.

When there is nothing to lose, when work does not set you free, not only are multiple possibilities opened up with new opportunities for radical change unimaginable to those playing it safe; but also a venue is provided by which to get real with whatever this God signifies. ...”

[smajudaism]

Judaism: The one and only God exists.

Religion plays a big role to all of us as a human, so in this blog, let’s have some time learning about Judaism specially the beliefs, principles, celebrations, & such. Let us start learning about this religion by knowing who are some of the important people.

IMPORTANT PEOPLE ON JUDAISM.

First on the list we have, Abraham - There is a song called “Father Abraham” that goes, “Father Abraham had many sons, Many sons had Father Abraham, I am one of them and so are you, So let's just praise the Lord.” Abraham, or the father of many, founded Judaism. Judaism’s history began in the Middle East during the Bronze Age, when God promised Abram, a nomadic leader, that if he did as God said, he would be the father of a powerful people. He was then renamed Abraham and known as the first patriarch of the Jewish. Abraham was the first to preach that there was only one God; prior to this, people believed in multiple gods. The second one on our list is Moses - Moses is regarded as one of the most important prophets by Jews. He is credited for writing the Torah and bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. In the book of Exodus, he is born at a period when Egypt's Pharaoh has ordered that every male Hebrew be drowned.

Now that we already know some important people in Judaism, let us now be more knowledgeable about their Tenets, beliefs and principles.

TENETS, BELIEFS, AND PRINCIPLES.

Jews, whom religion is Judaism happened to have no official jewish creed, but they have central beliefs. According to Moses Maimonides, a jewish medieval philospher, the central beliefs/principles includes on believing in one God, who is formless, and all-knowing. They also believe that God is the creator and judge, both loving and just. There’s also more to learn about the beliefs of the Judaism religion, let’s know more of it!

Jewish people believs to YHWH, they believe that he rules all nation. “You are my witness, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.” (Isaiah 43:10, NRSV). This text shows how YHWH created and ruled the world.

Another belief that the jewish have is their dietary practices. “Food consumption and handling must be done according to religious laws.” (Molloy, 2005). Such laws were originally designed for those who works and serve in the temple, but some rules also applies for the common people.Jews’ believes that all blood must be drained before the meat is cooked and eaten, because blood, which gives life, is sacred to God (Malloy 2005). It is part of the jews’ culture to not eat pork and shellfish because they believe that these animals are contaminated by what they eat. There are also specific rules on how to slaughter animals & cook the meat.

There is also one of the most fundamental belief of the jews which pertains to the belief that a Messiah or savior will come. (Morrison and Brown 1991). During the time of Jesus, the jews believed that they were living in the end times. They were expecting a messiah who would be poilitical or military leader to liberate them from the romans. (Molloy, 2005). The belief in the coming of the Messiah is one of those doctrines that changed across different versions of Judaism. Some believes that the messiah will be a political leader, while others believe that the Messiah will bring peace and love among the nation that may not be originate from Israel. (Morrison and Brown 1991).

Jewish people also have principles, wherein they believe that being a Jewish marks an important and critical part of their bein. Many believes that Judaism tells them the meaning of life and how to live it. Israeli Jews argues that being jewish necessitates a political identity and a nation worth fighting for. As a whole, Jews do not seem to agree on what Judaism is all about. Since being Jew are authorative, and even representative of Judaism, thus the many forms of Judaism and ways of being a Jew.

With such beliefs, tenets, and principles, Jews are able to have their celebrations which gives reflection on what they believe in. Let us continue to know more about it!

CELEBRATIONS.

Now that we understood some of the beliefs of the Judaism, let us now know more about their celebrations.

The first one on the list is the “Sabbath Day”, The observance of the sabbath day can be traced back to the creation myth, when God rested on the seventh day. "Keep holy the sabbath day," according to one of the ten commandments. So, how does a Jew spend the Sabbath? Depending on a Jew's beliefs, different practices are followed. By Friday afternoon, he has showered, put on his sabbath garments, and set aside the activities of the week, according to a set of principles. His wife will have cleaned, cooked, and set her best table at home. The Sabbath begins with sunset and ends with the appearance of three stars on Saturday night. Following a brief liturgy, the family gathers for their greatest dinner of the week, a meal that includes specific sabbath delicacies.

The next celebration would be “The feast of passover.” The feast of the passover, which commemorates the deliverance of the hebrews from Egypt, is one of the most important for the jews throughout the year. The Passover is a week-long festival thathighlights a memorial meal. The meal involves unleavened bread, lamb meat, and a saladof nuts and fruits (Molloy 2005). The Jewish liturgical year begins in the spring with the month of Nisan, and the Passover begins on Nisan 15th, lasting eight days (demann 1961). The seder of the paschal meal, which is shared by the family on the eve of the first day of the feast (demann 1961), is an important moment during the passover. Traditionally, firstborn sons fast on the day leading up to the seder to commemorate the killing of Egyptian children by the angel of death as narrated in the book of Exodus (de lange 2000).

With such celebrations, Judaism also have rituals that must be done during a celebration or such events.

RITUALS.

Rituals mark important stages in the life of a Jew, so here are some of them -

During the passover, matzah is the primary food which was consumed during the exodus, when there was no time to prepare decent bread. In connection to this, all leavened items must be remove in preparation for the festival (Trepp 1982). Wine is also served where participants should drink 4 glasses all throughout the ceremony. Jews also believes that they should set a table for Elijah, whom the jews believe will come again to prepare the way of the messiah. (de Lange 2000)

Jewish people consider themselves bound to God by a series of covenants, which started with Abraham, on that note, God established a covenant with Abraham, and God stipulated thatas a reward for Abraham's loyalty, he was to have many descendants to inherit the land.  As a sign of this covenant, all the male members of his household were to be circumcised. In such belief,  Jewish boys are still circumcised eight days after their birth nowadays. This ritual is  performed by a trained professional named mohel.

A QUOTATION TO REMEMBER.

Before we proceed on our next topic, let’s have some ice breaker and read some quote from Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a, the creation story. God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." This was on the 6th day where God created humankind in his image, male and female, he created them.

Now, let us proceed on knowing some images that are inclined with Judaism. (Proceed to the photos shown below.)

[cptsdstudyblr]

Cults & Religious Abuse PART 2: So you’re in a cult?

If you don’t want to see this series, you can block #cptsdstudyblrreligion

tw// cults, religion, religious abuse, religious trauma, mentions of other types of abuse

PART 1: Q & A

In this post I will be speaking somewhat specifically about my experiences that led to religious trauma, so please be cautious when reading this post. The tips and resources are at the bottom and are bullet points, so feel free to skip to there if you aren’t comfy with the post itself.

Maybe you were raised in a religion, maybe you or your family joined a religion later in your life, or maybe you’ve gotten involved in a cult in some other way. But one day you wake up and you realize that you need to get out. But how? In this I’ll be sharing the basics of my experiences in a cult-like fundamentalist religion, how I got out, and some resources I think are helpful for people in similar situations.

Before I get into the details, I want to make one thing clear: I am not a woman. I am non-binary. However, I was raised a woman and that was a huge part of the way these experiences affected me, so I will be including that perspective in this post.

I also want to make it clear that I am not against religion in general or against people practicing religion. This post is not intended to attack religion as a concept, but to shed light on specific extremely harmful religious practices.

My family’s relationship with religion is on the complicated side, but I’ll briefly explain it for context. Both of my parents were raised fairly generically Catholic. My grandparents on my dad’s side are now loosely Catholic, but don’t explicitly practice religion. My grandmother on my mom’s side has since converted to protestant Christianity at my mom’s suggestion. My dad has been either apathetic or even hostile towards religion for as long as I can remember and rarely attended church with me and my mom, but my mom has always been religious. These are the primary influences in my life, as I’m not close enough to any other family members for their religious beliefs to have had significant impact on me. 

My mom is where it gets complicated. Although she was raised Catholic, she explored protestant Christianity starting a few years before my birth and quickly converted. For most of my actual childhood my mom was a pretty average protestant Christian. We moved a lot, so we attended churches in a variety of denominations, including several more charismatic and prosperity-gospel based megachurches, but when I was around 9 years old, my mom fell down a rabbit hole of Messianic Christianity through one of these churches, which I believe is where it all started to fall apart. Just to clarify, although this group of beliefs is technically referred to as Messianic Judaism, I refer to my experience with it as Messianic Christianity as I am in no way Jewish (and thus feel uncomfortable calling my religious experiences Judaism) and the messianic movement is harmful to actual Jewish people.

This move into Messianic Christianity pushed my mom to start rereading and reinterpreting the Bible and she consequently decided that she was not enamored with the teachings of the church we attended at the time. I strongly believe that her understanding of that study was also heavily influenced by the domestic violence and instability going on in our home at the time, as she was unable to connect to the overwhelmingly positive messages that our church preached. So, she moved us to another church. This was a church we had attended some in the past while trying to find a home church after a move, but hadn’t really stuck with, so it wasn’t an entirely new church. Because of this, I generally say that I attended this church from the age of 9 although we did not attend this church consistently until I was around 11. This church was a nondenominational Bible church closely associated with Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, which is pastored by John MacArthur. I’d encourage you to take a look at the basic teachings of John MacArthur and of this church in some depth as they are already quite problematic. The linked article is really just one example of the kind of teachings that are prevalent here, and I’d encourage you to follow this rabbit hole as far as it takes you because it’s fascinating. 

The church that we moved to was extremely fundamentalist. Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable linking the actual church for fear of doxxing myself, but the teachings of this church are pretty much exactly in line with those Grace Community Church and the other organizations I will mention soon. This church also unofficially followed the teachings of the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP). When I say unofficially, I mean that my church was not publically associated with IBLP, but they were definitely associated with IBLP in reality. And again, I’d really encourage you to browse through their website to get a feel for their teachings. However, as a basic summary, if you’re familiar with the Duggar family from the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, they are members of IBLP and everything they teach was taught fairly similarly at my church. I won’t go into the details of what the teachings were, but they were about as fundamentalist Christian as you could come up with. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, abuse, etc. but turned up to 11/10. And it was a very closed circle. So how did I get out and end up where I am now - a bi-romantic asexual non-binary university student studying STEM at an incredibly liberal university?

It wasn’t easy. But I did get somewhat lucky. Unlike 90% of the kids at my church, I was not homeschooled after 8th grade. Instead, I went to a private Christian school - this was definitely still harmful and contributed to my trauma but it did give me opportunities to be exposed to people and ideas outside my fundamentalist Christian bubble. It also encouraged me to attend university, as it was expected of all graduates from that school. My dad wasn’t religious, and he and my mom divorced right before I graduated from high school. Additionally, my mom did encourage me to continue my education despite the teachings at our church. I’m not sure why she encouraged this, but she did. So I got lucky that things in my life pointed me in a direction of further education. And I got further lucky that the main school in my state is the school it is. It’s a school that is incredibly left-leaning and secular, and ultimately it pushed me extremely far outside my comfort zone.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that made it easier for me to get out of this situation, but I did still have to work for it. Here are my suggestions for surviving a cult-like environment and for eventually getting out:

Do everything you can to expose yourself to other ideas and beliefs. I assume that if you recognize you’re in this type of situation and want to escape, you already know that you disagree with the beliefs that are being forced on you at some level. But it’s important to further educate yourself where possible and figure out your beliefs. Figuring out what you believe and being committed to it is key in being able to stick to leaving your environment. If you know you disagree, but you can’t articulate why you disagree or what you believe and you aren’t committed to your beliefs, you will be very easy to convince that you are wrong and you will be very easy to manipulate. 

If you’re on tumblr reading this, you probably have access to the internet, so use that to your advantage. Research things, read articles, and involve yourself in discussions. If you struggle with internet access, you can read books, magazines, and newspapers at your local library and potentially even join clubs through your library or school. Not everything you learn has to be political or about religion. Reading and learning will broaden your horizons, give you concrete interests outside religion, encourage you to learn about things that make you uncomfortable, etc. 

If you are involved in a religion that has a text, read it critically and read nonreligious analyses of it. You don’t necessarily have to agree with these analyses, but thinking critically about the text you’ve been raised to take as complete fact will help you realize what you actually believe.

Find others who agree with you. In high school, I had a couple of friends at church who were “rebels” too, and we’re still friends to this day. We moved on together, and it really helped me be able to get out because I wasn’t doing it alone.

If you have to physically leave to get away, make sure you have enough money and have a backup plan. If you leave and are forced to come back for any reason, leaving again will be infinitely harder. If you leave, make sure it can be for good. It doesn’t necessarily have to be permanent, but if you come back it has to be on your own terms and not out of necessity.

Don’t get yourself kicked out and be safe no matter what.

Some resources I think are helpful:

Find an LGBT Center (US only) - LGBT centers are incredibly helpful for issues that go beyond being LGBT+, and if you’re eligible to use them they can be a great resource

The Trevor Project - LGBT+ resources and crisis lines

Tumblr post describing what to do if you’re homeless - It’s from Tumblr, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like pretty solid advice.

How to leave a cult - Very basic guide, but has some good advice.

Quiz to help you figure out your political beliefs (US based, but has some other countries as well) - I’d suggest taking this a few times as you develop your beliefs, and I’d also suggest clicking “more questions” as many times as possible in every category to ensure that you cover a broad range of topics.

How Ideology Colors Morality - about how morality frames US politics

Ethics - a good place to start when looking at different ways of analyzing ethics. My high school ethics class is a huge component in why I questioned my own beliefs. Ethics is an eye-opening topic.

List of all the religions - exploring different religions and belief systems helped open my mind to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world

If you want me to help you research something or find resources for a specific situation, feel free to message me or send me an ask and I’m happy to help (you can also ask me other questions, my asks and DMs are always open!)

And as always, if I made a mistake or linked a bad resource, please feel free to let me know so that I can correct the issue ASAP. I always try to do my research thoroughly, but things can slip by since I am but a human. Thank you!

[revlyncox]

Always Becoming

The changing of the seasons reminds us of the seasons and cycles of life. We are always becoming who we are. This was written by Rev. Lyn Cox for the Spring Festival at the Washington Ethical Society (4/18/2021) and references the story of Demeter and Persephone.

We are always becoming who we are. Two weeks ago, I spoke a little about what that means for us on a community level. And community is an important part of identity. As Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti wrote in African Religions and Philosophy (1975) with respect to the concept of Ubuntu: “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.” We are always becoming, partly because the communities of which we are a part are always becoming.

Today, I’m going to talk a little about some of the experiences that move our process of becoming in new directions. These might be things that we think of as individual experiences, yet I think they are also communal, and I think the line between individual and communal might be fuzzier than some of us were led to believe. The experiences we’ll talk a little about today are things like grief, longing, rage, curiosity, hope, and love. We will keep exploring those things our whole lives, and I’ll need to be relatively brief today, because we want to make sure to have time to celebrate life with a Baby Naming ceremony after the regular Platform.

Grieving feels especially relevant today. In the WES community, we’re grieving for some of our members, and we are particularly heartbroken for our beloveds who have lost a loved one recently due to trauma. Nationally, we’re still reeling from the anti-Asian violence that claimed eight lives in Atlanta, and then that grief was compounded by the tone of the trial of Derek Chauvin and our renewed grief for George Floyd, and then that grief was compounded by the deaths of 20-year-old Daunte Wright and 13-year-old Adam Toledo at the hands of police, and then our grief was compounded again by the deaths of eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, four of them members of the Sikh faith. The grief can be overwhelming, especially for those among us who see a reflection of close friends or family or selves in those who have died.

Grief is part of what makes us who we are. By sharing that experience of grief in community, we can bear witness to the people and the hopes that have been lost. There are some who think grief needs to be hidden, that it’s unseemly to be so human in public. Yet when the losses are so profound, how else can we honor life except to cry out.

At the Revolutionary Love online conference this weekend, grief has been a big theme. Micky ScottBey Jones and Rabbi Sharon Brous had a conversation on Thursday on just this topic, and it’s been a continuing thread on some of the other panels I’ve been able to catch. Micky ScottBey Jones spoke about grief for her mother who died of COVID and grief over mass violence and grief over what’s been lost due to health disparities and racist systems, she said, “Grief opens up our imagination and bolsters our courage.”

I think what she was saying is that when we feel and express our mourning together, the seeming impossibility of continuing with life becomes possibility. Maybe not right away. Shock and numbness might come first. But, together, we have a collective capacity that transforms us, that makes it possible to gather the energy to return to life.

Rabbi Sharon Brous responded that “public grief is an act of rebellion against the world as it is, because we are not willing to forget.” Brous noted that there are deep roots in her Jewish faith drawn from collective experiences of trauma, grief, truth-telling, and adaptation. From the transformation of Judaism from a Temple-focused culture to a diaspora culture, to survival through various pogroms, Brous remembered that there is grief woven into everything, but that doesn’t stop the existence of life and joy.

Jones went on to observe that we cycle through mourning, lamentation, truth-telling, and rebuilding. All of those things are part of the continuance of life, the re-imagining of life. We learn and we teach truth in the process of public grief. We figure out together what happens next in adapting and rebuilding because of how we form and strengthen relationships in the process of public grief.

Grief is part of who we are, it is part of our process of becoming. Grief is not all of who we are in the long run, though it might feel like our whole world in some moments. This is something that we might overlook about the story of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter’s public grief and rage, and the way her mourning brings the entire economy of her mythological world to a halt, feels true. A story where life eventually goes on -- radically different from what had come before, but it goes on -- that feels true. Persephone being called to comfort and lead the souls of the underworld, but not knowing what to say to them until she got in touch with her own grief, that feels true.

Our story this morning is about grief, but it’s not only about grief. It’s also about re-orienting ourselves and our communities. It’s about the power of love to find a solution that subverted rules of division. It’s about entering into a new way of being, even when we don’t know what that new way is going to look like in its fullness.

Grief is one thing that urges the characters in the story to continue with the process of becoming, but it’s not the only thing. Beauty and longing are also forces in the story. In some versions, Hades takes Persephone to the underworld without her consent, yet even in those versions, she finds beauty in roots and jewels and pomegranate seeds; even in those versions, she is transformed into a queen. In the version I shared this morning, Persephone chooses to follow beauty and curiosity. She continues on her journey through uncertainty. If we can stay with this version of the story for a moment, it leads me to wonder what calls us forward to become the people we can become with authenticity and ethical values.

Curiosity seems to be a powerful force for becoming. Sometimes we try things, not knowing what will happen next. That’s been what a lot of the last year has been like. Moving together through the next year will be more experimentation. We will try some things, and then try some more things. Let’s travel on that journey together in the spirit of adventure and curiosity rather than perfectionism. My hope is that our curiosity will involve open hearts as well as open minds, Let’s be curious about how the people around us are feeling, what’s lifting us up, and how we can show up for one another.

Beauty is another thing that calls us forward, and I’m grateful for the beauty of spring that is providing some comfort and counterpoint in these difficult days. For me, the progression of snowdrops to daffodils to cherry blossoms to strawberry blossoms has helped me to keep track of the days, to remember that there is a past and a future, and that more growth is ahead. The music offered today is yet more beauty, more reason to remember that we are better together, more inspiration to find centering and peace. Perhaps some of us are hanging on, awaiting the possibility of encountering the beauty of a loved one’s face in person, or the beauty of art, or the beauty of a home-grown tomato. Beauty is something that can call us forward, can motivate us to continue becoming the people we could be.

One more thing that feels relevant right now about the journey of becoming is the role of building relationships, both strengthening current relationships and being open to new ones. Last night, one of the panels of the online Revolutionary Love Conference was about Lessons Learned in Ferguson, convened by my colleague James Croft from the Ethical Society of St. Louis and three of his local St. Louis interfaith colleagues about how their community came together after the murder of Michael Brown. Koach Baruch (KB) Frazier, a Jewish activist and drummer, and the Rev. Dietra Wise Baker both spoke about moments when music brought together activists with different viewpoints and who had been through harrowing circumstances, and how their ability to come together was built on the hospitality of leaders in the interfaith community. Making a place of sanctuary in their buildings, being invited into each other’s homes, being concerned with each other’s wellbeing, all of those things made it possible to organize for change and make meaning. Rev. Erin Counihan on the same panel talked about being brand new at her congregation, and deciding to show up for an interfaith meeting, even though she didn’t know what her role would be or what the plan was or what might happen. She talked about confronting her whiteness, including the attachment to certainty that goes with whiteness, and emphasizing relationships over plans. KB Frazier added that people had to unlearn their perceptions of others with different identities and from different communities, because all people have dignity and it is important to leave stereotypes at the door when everyone is together in striving for liberation. James said that whenever nonsense is going on in St. Louis, there is already a community of people who are trained, supercharged, and ready to respond together. Something in Ferguson, something in the larger St. Louis community, something all over the world, was and is ready for change. And the way it was and is going to change, is (at least in part) about relationships.

All of this reminded me of the Washington Ethical Society and our relationship with the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN). Something that is different about building power in a coalition like WIN than working with other organizations on a particular issue is the place of relationships. There are encounters where it doesn’t seem like there is a plan, or it’s not clear what our individual roles might be, or where our preferred way to do things might not prevail. Staying in relationship anyway matters. Power is built not only in the victories, not only in the visible parts of the protests, not only in the legislative visits, but also in the trust that grows from people who show up for each other in the absence of certainty. Power is built around drum circles and kitchen tables and solving mundane problems. We as individuals and as a community are always becoming, our community of communities is always becoming, DC and its environs and all of our neighborhoods are always becoming because we are drawn forward by relationships.

The power to care for one another effectively works the same way. We have some current and recent examples of people taking care of each other within the WES community, but it’s not new. There has not been a moment since I arrived when we didn’t have a meal train or a check-in plan or greeting cards going out to someone. Grief and struggle are facts. But we don’t have to face them alone. Put aside conflict and tension and gossip and arguments about the right way to do things or the right words to use. Take care of each other and let other people take care of you. Being in a values-centered community can bring out the best because we want to be our best for each other, not because of patronizing efforts to teach or reform others. Love is what makes the whole thing work.

People are always changing. Communities are always changing. There are things we can pay attention to, things we can nurture, that move us toward becoming who we could be, who we hope to be. We pay attention to the communal experience of grief, because feeling the reality of that grief leads us to human connection, truth-telling, and the drive for a re-imagined future. We pay attention to curiosity, which leads us to be courageous when we don’t know what might happen next. We pay attention to beauty. Beauty helps us to find peace and meaning, and energizes us for the journey onward. We pay attention to relationships, because who we are always has a context. We may not be able to control the changes that accompany loss, risk, and the onward progression of seasons, but we don’t have to go through those changes alone.

We are always becoming who we are. May we join together with others in such a way that we grow into the best version of who we could be, authentically and fully ourselves while still true to our values and ready to be part of a re-imagined future.

May it be so.

[sunday-school-lessons]

The Church is United in the Essentials

(Note to readers: “If” you would rather watch a video of this lesson, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/jB7BcEjS2mQ ).

Today we're going to begin a new series of lessons under the general heading of:

Don't Forget.

 We will be drawing Scriptures from the 15th chapter of the Book of Acts.

  We're going to be discussing the nature of salvation with a focus on the subject of "justification."

 Now, even though we have discussed this subject of justification before, I think it would be a good idea to revisit the theological definition of the word again.

 In Christian theology,

justification is God's righteous act of removing the condemnation,

the guilt,

and the penalty of sin,

by grace, while, at the same time,

declaring the ungodly to be righteous,

through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice.

 Lots of words get thrown around by the "religious" crowd.

Sometimes, when we get all in to it and use words like justification, sanctification, glorification, and others, and without realizing it, we’re talking over the heads of lots of people.

But before we get into the lesson, I'd like to talk briefly about something that often happens among groups of people who are "trying" to get something..... spiritual to happen.

We’ve all heard the word, "ritual"

casually used in conversation.

And, all of us perform rituals without giving them a second thought.

When you habitually do the same things every morning preparing for your day, it's said to be a ritual; you’re “routine.”

Yet, there are lots of rituals people perform in an effort to experience something......supernatural.

If you're watching this video, more than likely, you do believe in the supernatural.

And it's a good thing to believe in the supernatural.

In 1st Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 18 Paul writes:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

But it's not "just" the message of the cross that the church is projecting to the rest of the world.

Thanks to modern technology, people from every culture can watch as Christians perform a variety of rituals throughout the year.

Rituals, defined, are solemn ceremonies that incorporate a series of actions that are performed according to a prescribed order.

It's kind of like following a recipe to end up with a dish you want.

I mean, you don't use tuna to make a strawberry cake.

It wouldn't be fair to single out any particular group here.

However, to the world at large, religious folks do some pretty strange things at times.

Here's a few of them.

This video that’s playing in the background here shows the holy fire ceremony of Easter in Jerusalem, …. Jewish people at the wailing wall, also in Jerusalem,… and a baptismal ceremony in the Jordan River.

I'm not condemning any celebration that lifts up our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

But at the same time, there's a big difference between commemorating a holy day and trying to perform something........ well..... magical.

There are tons of people in this world that know full well that magic, real magic, exists.

Magic is where you apply beliefs, rituals, or certain actions so that you can control and manipulate natural or supernatural beings or forces.

Magic's something that's not really science or religion.

But, the most important thing to remember about magic is that God hates it!

In Deuteronomy 18:10-12, Moses is inspired by God to write:

"Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens,

engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD;

because of these same detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you."

(people really did offer their babies to Baal...through the fire; and they really did, and still do practice all of the things I just read to you...... and God hates it!)

On the surface, it would appear that God detests these sorts of things because they lure people away from Him.

And, I’m sure that’s part of it. But it goes much deeper than that.

Where do you think the power behind magical abilities comes from?

Right!

It comes from the ultimate liar!

It comes from Lucifer himself.

And, just in case you didn't already know it; Lucifer hates you!

On the other hand, God created man to ultimately be His companions far beyond time itself.

Lucifer is not invited to that party!

He had already been thrown out of heaven long before God created man.

And it's because of Satin's work to sully the purity that Adam and Eve lived in, that sin, ….. that rebellion entered the world of humans.

Now, God has made the way for individuals to make their way back to Him.

He has made a way to justify us.

 So, once again,  

justification is God's righteous act of removing the condemnation,

the guilt,

and the penalty of sin,

by grace, while, at the same time,

declaring the ungodly to be righteous,

through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice.

  Section 1:

 The Church Debates the Nature of Salvation

 Acts 15:1-5;

 Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers,

"Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses,

you cannot be saved."

 After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate,

Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this issue.

 When they had been sent on their way by the church,

they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria,

describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles,

and they brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters.

 When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church,

the apostles, and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them.

 But some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said,

"It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses."

 From the very beginning, different people had different understandings about salvation. It’s important that we be constantly vigilant of the things we accept as truth. We just can’t afford to allow things like legalism to creep into the church. So, what’s legalism look like? The 1st verse I just read to you: Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers,

"Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses,

you cannot be saved."

At the very heart of legalism, is the idea that ’unless you add so-and-so to your faith, you cannot be saved. The Bible teaches us that we are graciously accepted by God as righteous by faith alone in Christ alone; nothing else. I have attended churches over the years who preached and believed that unless you…… well, they were hanging

customs, rituals, and “procedures” onto this simple salvation that the Lord offers us. So, always remember, salvation comes ”by faith alone in Christ alone.” Nothing else. Seriously, adding any other means of seeking God’s acceptance is misguided, wrong, and, quiet frankly, it’s downright dangerous. That group of Jewish Christians that spoke up were insisting that the Gentile converts had to   become Jews through the rite of circumcision in order to become Christians. These Jews who resisted the idea that Gentiles were converting to Christianity without becoming Jewish believed that salvation was something that had been offered to the Jews alone. These very same people believed Jesus was the Messiah, and that salvation was in Jesus alone. Yet, they were trying to add ritual or custom to salvation in demanding the converts become Jewish as well. We just studied the subject of “unity.” Legalism is a device of the devil. When people among the congregation go down that road of legalism, their words and actions rob the members of their joy and unity. In adding their demands to the gospel of grace, these legalists begin to pass judgment on everyone who does not meet the new demands. Then, the legalists criticize the leadership for not imposing their standard on the rest of the body. Then, division begins as the legalist tries to gain support for their position. Now you have two sides. The demands and judgments of the legalists continue to tear the church apart. Never let your guard down. It’s so easy to be drawn in, and the truth is still as simple as I’ve already stated. Salvation is in faith alone, in Christ alone.

Legalism distorts our Biblical view of God. The root of legalism is our own distorted view of God. When we have a wrong view of God, we WILL have a wrong view of salvation. A wrong view of God is why sinners are still sinners. The world does not see our God as we do. This is why it is so very important that we live our lives in a way that others can Jesus in us.

 Section 2:

 The Church Affirms Justification by Faith Alone

 Acts 15:11, 14-18;

 The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter.

 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them,

"Brothers, you are aware that in the early days God made a choice among you,

that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the gospel message and believe.

 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit,

just as he also did to us.

 He made no distinction between us and them,

cleansing their hearts by faith.

 Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples' necks that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?

 On the contrary, we believe that we are saved thorough the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are."

 ..................................

 Simeon has reported how God first intervened to take from the Gentiles a people for his name.

 And the words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written:

 After these things I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent.

I will rebuild its ruins and set it up again,

 so that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord..... even all the Gentiles who are called by my name.....

declares the Lord who makes these things

 known from long ago.

 What’s being described in these verses was the 1st church council; the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostles and the church elders convened together for the purpose of making an important decision concerning a matter of salvation through justification. In all, there have been 22 councils held. By the year 325, the year the Council of Nicaea was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine, the church was already calling itself “Catholic” (a word that means all-encompassing, universal, or all-embracing). The Council of Nicaea, and the following 20 councils were convened primarily because of, you guessed it, legalism that had entered the church. There was great division within the body of Christ on a variety of subjects that the church “fathers” felt they had to over and over again to settle the matters. By 1517 the German monk, Martin Luther, nailed his proclamations onto the church doors and started the Protestant movement. Today, there are those who claim that as many as 38,000 different denominations of the church exist. Churches have split over things as simple as whether to use the word, “is” or “as.”

 One that I’ve toyed around with for years, is often quoted from the pulpit. It’s: 2 CORINTHIANS 5:8 KJV "We are confident, [I say], and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

Preachers will misquote the Scripture and say something along the lines of: ”To be absent from the body IS to be present with the Lord.” The words “is” and “and” are not equal and they do not mean the same thing. But I’m not telling y’all this to divide us; it’s just an example. An example that illustrates how easily you can be drawn in to a “legalistic” argument. But, before moving on, I would like to point out that the example I just used has absolutely nothing at all to do with salvation. The important thing to always remember is that salvation comes by grace alone, in faith alone, in Christ….ALONE! This is not double-speak; it follows a very logical progression of thought.

This message of salvation is for everyone; whether Jew or Gentile.

 Section 3:

 The Church Advocates Freedom in Love

 Acts 15:19-21;

 Therefore, in my judgment, we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles, who turn to God,

 but instead we should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols,

from sexual immorality,

from eating anything that has been strangled, and from blood.

 For since ancient times, Moses has had those who proclaim him in every city, and every Sabbath day

he is read aloud in the synagogues."

 If memory serves me right, Moses issued a total of 613 laws.

There was a reason God gave these to Moses. It was to show the children of Israel that no matter how hard they tried, they could not save themselves, because they could not keep the law in its entirety. So why did the Jerusalem Council tack on four of the Mosaic laws? (abstaining from things offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from eating things that have been strangled, and from blood?) For one thing, these four things were tied to the pagan temple practices of their day. This was certainly the case for the people of Corinth at that time. It was there that some in the church believed that since they were saved by faith, it freed them to actually continue to sin. And, there are folks out there today who believe that justification by faith frees them to continue to sin. The Apostles mentioned these things because they understood that the gospel still has expectations for holiness and for love in the lives of believers. There’s a section of Scripture in the 1st chapter of 1st Peter entitled:

Living Before God Our Father.

 In it, Peter quotes from the Law of Moses by saying, As Christians, we’re to seek, to strive to live our lives in love and holiness; not because we’re attempting to gain God’s favor, but because He has clearly told us to be holy because He is. Paragraph from lesson: …………………………………………… The apostles and the elders, with the help of the Holy Spirit, maintained the unity of the church by not adding anything to the gospel of grace. But with their four commands, for the sake of the Jews, they did ask the Gentiles to obey the “law of Christ”, or ”the royal law”…… ”Love your neighbor as yourself.” Our obedience to God and His Son, Jesus, is out of love. If we love God, we will obey Him.

 If we love Jesus, we will keep His commandments. The doctrine of justification by faith does not free us to sin; it empowers us to love….. to love God and to love others. ……………………………………….

 The thing is, the Jews had been dispersed throughout the known world of their time. These people, God’s chosen people, though scattered, continued to take part in their traditions and their law-keeping in their synagogues. So, to maintain a faithful witness to the Jews and to maintain loving fellowship with their Jewish-Christian brothers, the apostles asked the Gentiles to abstain from those things that most offended the Jews. So, out of love, Gentiles were

To pursue holiness and leave off their old pagan ways. The gospel of grace frees us to love one another. We are no longer under the Old Testament and it’s myriad of laws. However, the Mosaic Law still has implications for believers because it’s God’s Word. The 10 Commandments were given under the law. Just because Christ came and fulfilled the law, does that mean it would be okay to murder, to steal, or to lie on your neighbors? Of course not! The Scriptures are an infallible guide to salvation. The Bible does use round numbers here and there, and varying perspectives of different events, but it is still completely truthful. As for Christianity, until Christ returns, there will always be disagreement over issues; both small and great. We really do have the freedom to disagree with one another over some things in our faith and understanding. But I like to think these are things that, in no way, affect our salvation. Our understanding of God and of the gospel of Jesus Christ just can’t be a point of divisiveness. Eternity lies in the balance. We should all be determined to contend vigorously for the foundational doctrines, like justification by faith alone. From Jesus to the apostles to us, the Holy Spirit has safeguarded the Christian faith over many, many generations. That’s how the Spirit keeps us united in faith and united for our mission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Let’s pray….

[qm-vox]

Let The World Never Falter - Playing Paladins in D&D

(Pictured: Anastasia Luxan, Knight of the Tainted Cup, one of only two people in her friend group that are not evil-aligned. Her wife Aisling is not the other good-aligned person. Characters are from my novel Mourners: Scum of Shatterdown; art credit goes to J.D)

Paladins are one of Dungeons and Dragons’ most striking, and most controversial, character classes. Few character classes and character concepts capture the imagination as quickly or start arguments of such ferocity. I’ve been in this game awhile - I remember when D&D 3e was released - and paladins have been one of my most loved and most hated parts of D&D and its legacy systems that entire time. So here I am again, about to write a long-ass article offerin’ my perspective on paladins through the ages (hopefully highlighting the strongest parts of each vision of them), talk about their pitfalls and problematic elements, and offer some advice on bringing your own paladin to life.

While this article draws on my long experience with D&D and will be citing specific sources, it would not be possible without the help of some other people in my life. I mention Afroakuma a lot in the context of D&D, and our friendship has once again been invaluable here. @a-world-unmasked , also one of my oldest friends, has long been a source of ethical discussion and debate, especially about thorny questions of justice & mercy, amends, redemption, and punishment, and provided information on D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes. SSG Jacob Karpel, United States Army, brought a Jewish perspective on paladins and their themes into my life and has borne questions of faith, dogma, and tradition with remarkable enthusiasm and patience. @swiftactionrecovery provided further perspective on D&D 4e, and her current paladin (”paladin”; it’s complicated), Aurora, is a great example of a non-traditional take that is at the same time very on-brand. Emerald has long provided the service of beating my ass when I start getting stupid about my own values and beliefs, and @ahr42p‘s fascination with fantasy ethics has informed a lot of my own thoughts on the same. None of this would be possible without you folks.

This article’s title is drawn from Maverick Hunter Quest, written by Cain Labs & Hunter Command. It appears as the motto of the 10th Urban Unit; dedicated soldiers whose specialty was preserving lives, preventing collateral damage, and steering disasters away from the innocent.

None of my articles are quite complete without Content Warnings; the following will contain mentions and descriptions of violence (including state-sanctioned violence such as executions), mentions of high crimes such as slavery and forced conversion, discussion of religion in both fictional and non-fictional contexts, and discussion of fascism and fascist ideology. It is also the end result of more than 20 years of both passionate love for paladins and equally passionate hatred of the same. If you’re wondering what some of that has to do with paladins...well, you’re in for a ride.

So, without further ado, let’s get into...

The Order Of The Kitchen Table - Paladins Through D&D’s History

I hope you like walls of text because I am about to fuck you up with some.

D&D and Pathfinder have a long history with paladins, and they’ve changed a lot through the ages. The following is an overview of the different editions of paladins, what each introduced, and their strengths & weaknesses as a vision of paladinhood. Though the advice in this article is weighted towards 3.PF and 5e, it should in theory be applicable to any of these editions; I should also note that while Pathfinder 2e has its own version of paladins, I am not familiar enough with its vision of paladins to be able to speak on it in good faith. Let’s start with the oldest first, shall we?

AD&D 1e & 2e: Rise A Knight - 1e and 2e were fucking wild. The original incarnation of the paladin showed up as a sub-class of the cavalier, a warrior-group class which had an aura of courage, rode a horse, and had other ‘knightly’ abilities. Paladins had to be a cut above and beyond cavaliers, but unless they also violated the code of the cavaliers in addition to the paladin code, they would become cavaliers when they Fell rather than fighters, which was a bit of a better spot to be in. These paladins were very specifically part of the military arm of a feudal state, with all that entails, and had restrictions on what they could wear and what weapons they could use that were rooted in their social status. In point of fact, in 1e? Paladins couldn’t use missile weapons at all; bows, crossbows, and their kin were for “peasants”. These paladins had to tithe 10% of all income to a ‘worthy’ institution (usually a Lawful Good church of some kind, but other examples include hospitals, charitable initiatives, orphanages, and monasteries), had sharp limits on how many magical items they could own & of what kind, and were beholden to a strict code of conduct rooted in medieval feudalism & romantic ideals of chivalry. While the very original paladin had many of the iconic powers associated with them today (laying on hands, curing disease, an affinity for holy swords), it was not until AD&D 1e proper that paladins developed the ability to cast spells for themselves.

AD&D 2e’s vision of paladins was similar in many ways; they had the same powers, similar ability score requirements, and were similarly rare and elite. They had wealth limits, had to tithe from their income, could only own certain numbers and kinds of magical items, and had to be of Lawful Good alignment. Where things get interestingly different here is who becomes a paladin, and why. In both editions, only humans could be paladins, but where 1e required paladins to be drawn from or else become nobility (because they were derived from cavalier, which was all about status), 2e opened up many origins for paladins. The majority of these can be found in The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, just under 130 pages of nothing but paladins. Reading that book is a fucking trip; it was published in 1994, and while I am not gonna pretend that it’s woke or unproblematic, it has some stunningly modern takes. Do you expect to open up an old D&D supplement about paladins and find it defending poly relationships as valid? NEITHER DID I.

It’s important to note that in both of these editions, paladins lacked magical avenues of attack entirely; Smite Evil was a later invention, and paladin spells, in addition to coming online late in their career (9th level), were sharply restricted to a specific list that included no offensive magic whatsoever. Therefore, any paladin origin had to explain from whence one’s martial skills came, since you are in many ways a warrior more than anything else. There’s some expected ones; religious patronage, which ignores social status but requires an organized church that’s permitted to raise men under arms. Government sponsorship, generally conducted in urban areas where you can actually retain recruiters. Inherited title, if you wanna run a paladin that really hates Mom for forcing them into this. Mentors, for running paladins that are just straight-up shonen protagonists, and my personal favorite, DIVINE INTERVENTION, where one day your god starts talking to you but instead of filling your soul with martial skill she makes you sew training weights into your clothes and miraculously makes a bear live in your house so you can learn courage. It’s fucking amazing.

From those origins, anyone who manages to swear their oath and become invested with the power is essentially part of the nobility from then on; paladinhood marks them as an exemplar of noble ideals, which even in a non-romanticized culture sorta grabs the bluebloods by the short hairs. It’s a bit hard to argue divine right if you try to throw the embodiment of your supposed ideals out of your house. Since these paladins were often, though not necessarily, members of militant organizations they were generally expected to have superiors to whom they answer, a chain of command of which they are part, and to eventually construct a stronghold of some kind and put its services at the disposal of that organization in addition to utilizing it to serve the needy and defend the weak. 2e was a lawless and strange time in D&D, in which building such a stronghold and hiring followers was a class feature of warrior-group classes, and one of the paladin’s key benefits was the opportunity, but not the promise, to acquire some manner of holy sword, which which she gained powerful protections against evil that let her stand toe-to-toe with powerful spellcasters.

Tying all of this together was an in-depth exploration of the most complex and probably the most nuanced code published for paladins in any edition. Though the default was a rigid and inflexible code which defined acceptable behavior, associations, and even employees for the paladin, The Complete Paladin’s Handbook introduced an alternate method of handling code violations that ranked infractions by their severity & intent, and assigned penalties accordingly. Was it perfect? No. Not even a little. The Code was, is, and probably forever will be the most trash part of paladin. But it was a damn sight better than basically any incarnation before it, and most of them after. This code was broken down into (in order of importance), Strictures, Edicts, and Virtues. Strictures are the things a paladin must do and have simply to be a paladin; they must be Lawful Good, they must tithe to a worthy institution, they must abide by their wealth limits, and they must not associate (here meaning ‘serve, be friends with, or knowingly hire’) with evil people. Edicts are the commands of those to whom the paladin is sworn to obey; often this will be a church, a government, or both, but a paladin might instead or also swear to obey edicts given by their family, their mentor, their secular philosophy, or even their wider culture. Military commands and orders are edicts, but so are daily practices such as keeping a kosher diet, maintaining a family burial ground, or obeying a system of formal etiquette. A paladin freely chooses the source of her edicts, but once she’s sworn to obey she cannot selectively turn down a given edict unless it would conflict with one of her Strictures (for instance, if her king orders her to beat a helpless prisoner) or with a ‘higher’ source of Edicts (in general, a paladins religion or philosophy takes precedence over her liege or mentor, who in turn takes precedence over family or culture).

Virtues are where we get real interesting. Lemme quote The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, page 32:

Virtues are traits exemplifying the highest standards of morality, decency, and duty. They comprise the paladin’s personal code. Although not specifically detailed in the PH definition of a paladin, a paladin’s virtues are implied by his strictures as well as his outlook, role, and personality. Just as a paladin must obey his strictures, he must also remain true to his virtues.

Though most paladins adhere to all of the virtues described below, exceptions are possible. For instance, a paladin from a primitive society may be so unfamiliar with civilized etiquette that including courtesy as part of his ethos would be unreasonable. All adjustments must be cleared by the DM at the outset of a paladin’s career.

No system was attached to virtue ‘violations’, because they weren’t oaths to keep as such. Rather, virtues represented commitments to a paladin’s ideals and worldviews; they were the behaviors and values which someone serious about being a paladin would live by because that’s the kind of person they are. They were very Christian and very European in nature, tied up in Catholic ideas of knighthood from which paladins as a class were originally drawn, but there’s definitely a point to be made here. If you don’t walk your talk, can you call yourself a paragon? We’re gonna get into this specific topic more later in the article, when I start discussing other the virtues extolled by other kinds of warriors, but the ones listed and expanded on in this book are as follows:

Fealty - A paladin swears loyalty and service to, at minimum, a faith or philosophy that is lawful good in nature. This forms the foundation of her convictions and informs the kind of good she tries to do in the world. A paladin remains conscious of the fact that she is seen as an embodiment of those ideals, takes joy in her service, and pays respect to those to whom she has sworn her troth. Notably, this is not classic feudal fealty; a paladin swears service to institutions, not people, with some exceptions (generally in the form of paladins who swear fealty to their mentors).

Courtesy - Paladins strive to show respect by following social customs, being polite and well-mannered, and treating even enemies with dignity. A paladin responds to insults with grace, considers the feelings of others, and does not stoop to insults or slander. Remember the Kingsmen gentleman rules? That. This is just that.

Honesty - A paladin speaks the truth as she knows it. She is free to withhold information (especially from enemies), and may state that she would prefer not to answer when asked questions - or that she is ordered, enjoined, or otherwise required not to answer, if that is the truth - but does not intentionally mislead or deceive others. If you ask your paladin friend a question and they say they would rather not answer, think real hard about how bad you want their opinion.

Valor - Paladins display courage in battle. Given a choice between many enemies, a paladin chooses the most dangerous. If someone has to take a risk to defend the innocent, cover a retreat, or ensure the success of the mission, the paladin volunteers for that risk. A paladin only retreats from battle to fulfill a higher part of her ethos.

Honor - A paladin conducts herself with integrity even when no one is watching or when it is of no benefit to herself. She shows mercy, refuses to inflict undue suffering even on such wretched beings as demons, does not cheat or cut corners, and does not compromise her principles. The description of the virtue of honor contains the rawest line in the entire book: “It is an admirable act to comfort a dying friend, but an act of honor to comfort a dying enemy.”

The above are the ‘universal’ virtues a paladin is meant to embody. The book briefly touches on the idea that a paladin might also choose to uphold other virtues and work them into her Code of Ennoblement, the ceremony by which she is invested with the power of a paladin...or isn’t. The sample ‘bonus’ virtues provided are humility, chastity, celibacy, and my absolute favorite, industry, in which you swear to have no chill at all, ever, until the day you finally die, and instead spend all of your waking moments in some effort of self-improvement or work such as reading, building houses for the needy, repairing tools & equipment, and otherwise being completely incompetent in the art of self-care. It’s great, I absolutely love it.

Together, this code and the paladin’s abilities present a vision of classical knighthood, something like, oh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35GUTY_Gr14

That. A defender and paragon of medieval virtues, who lives to help others.

“Alright Vox, surely you’re reaching the end of AD&D 2e now?” you ask. “We’ve been through the mechanics, we’ve been through the vision of paladins as members of feudal states who are figuratively and legally ennobled by righteousness, we’ve even gone into more detail about the code than was strictly necessary. 3e time right?” AFRAID NOT, MY WILD RIDE DOES NOT END. AD&D 2e didn’t have feats, didn’t really have spell selection in this context, and while it had a sort of skill system (the Proficiency system, greatly utilized and suggested by The Complete Paladin’s Handbook) that was hardly a way to make one paladin feel mechanically distinct from others. So how did players do that? Ability score rolls and loot drops?

Nope! We had Kits.

Kits modify a class or multiclass combo (not relevant to this article, but as a f’rinstance, the original Bladesinger was an elf-only Fighter/Mage kit found in The Complete Book of Elves); they give it additional features and additional restrictions. They could, but did not always, have ability score requirements above and beyond the typical ones for their class, and they might also have backstory or roleplaying requirements. A kit might who your character is in the society of the game world, the abilities they brought to the adventuring party, or both. Like Pathfinder’s Archetypes, some kits would strip abilities from the standard class, but not all of them did so.

So what did paladin kits do? In short, they changed the kind of knight you were. An Errant, for instance, is kept on a long leash by their liege and does not often have to fulfill edicts - but in exchange, she’s on her own and cannot expect funding from the state. Ghosthunters, who specialize in the destruction of the undead, gain the power to dispel evil, immunity to paralysis, turn undead just as well as a cleric does, and get access to a holy sword a minimum of 2 levels earlier - but they can’t lay hands, cure disease, cast priest spells, or enjoy immunity to disease. Inquisitors (I know) are paladins who see magic as a good and benevolent force, which is corrupted - profaned, even - by the practice of evil magic; they’re similar to ghosthunters in a lot of ways, but also represent an organized philosophy. The Complete Paladin’s Handbook has 22 pages of kits for standard paladin alone, which you can mix and match to create your own unique take on the concept, plus information on “demi-paladins” - non-human fighter/clerics who slowly gain paladin powers in addition to their own. This was back in the day when certain races just could not be good at certain classes due to level restrictions or being unable to take those classes in the first place, but here was the first glimmer of D&D confronting some of its own bullshit; before this book, the implication was that no non-human race was moral enough to be a paladin.

There’s so much more in this book but I’m not gonna get into all of it or this article’s just gonna be a review of one supplement; if you can get your hands on a PDF or even a hard copy, I highly suggest it as a read. It’s not that I endorse its vision for paladins as being the best or as being objectively correct, because I don’t; the potential of paladins is much broader than this narrow vision of Christian feudalism. It’s that no other book, before or after, has paid such loving attention to who paladins are in the game world, including thought given to details like their mortality rate (paladins that manage to survive to 40 are forcibly retired in the hopes that they can teach the youngbloods to do the same), the economics of knighthood, meta-commentary about how the class’s aesthetic and presentation is built to enhance themes about the game and the setting, and even a chapter on weaving faith into your game world and thinking about your paladin’s relationship to her own. The great strength of AD&D 2e’s paladins is that they, more than any others, have this loving care devoted to them that makes them feel like a real part of the worlds in which they live, and their great weakness is a vision that is more narrow than it wanted to be. You can see the author grasping for something broader, something more inclusive, only for it to slip between his fingers.

D&D 3.5: Up From The Gutter - Ah, D&D 3.5, the demon that will not die. This game spawned a million spin-offs and heartbreakers, love for it contributed to the rise of Pathfinder, and it remains incredibly popular and played. It’s also garbage, but c’est la vie, c’est la morte. Its vision of paladin is not as detailed as AD&D 2e’s was, and its main innovations were mechanical in nature. However, 3.5 did offer some in-depth explorations on what it means to be Good-aligned that previous editions did not, and given the context that’s about to be important to talk about.

3.5′s vision of paladin mechanics was remarkably similar to 2e’s, with the most notable change being race selection (anyone can now be a paladin as long as they’re Lawful Good) and the addition of Smite Evil, which can be used a certain number of times per day to gain more accuracy and damage when attacking evil-aligned creatures. Paladins are still warriors, they still cure disease, lay on hands, detect evil, and own a horse; in other words, they barely changed. Unfortunately, the game changed, and this left paladins high and dry. I’m not gonna mince words: for most of 3.5′s run, paladins lagged so far behind in terms of combat prowess, skill selection, and general utility that they were essentially unplayable, including and in some ways especially against classic foes such as demons and dragons.

I’m not gonna get into why, because that is a separate and much angrier article that will spark a lot of controversy due to people who run their ignorant mouths like they know what the fuck they’re talking about, not that I’m bitter. The relevant part of this is that over 3.5′s run, paladin did in fact slowly improve. The Serenity feat, published in Dragon 306, (and much more easily available to you in Dragon Compendium) helped clean up the dizzying amount of attributes upon which they were dependent. Battle Blessing (Champions of Valor) made it easier to incorporate their native spellcasting into their play (though nothing ever quite solved their sharply limited spell slots), and Sword of the Arcane Order (Champions of Valor again) both opened up an alternate vision of paladins as a different kind of magical knight & offered broader utility in paladin’s spell list. The Prestige Paladin in Unearthed Arcana converted paladin from a base class to a prestige class, which let you build it off of more mechanically viable classes - further enhancing your ability to customize your paladin, especially since as a PrC you could stop taking Prestige Paladin at any time you felt you were sufficiently knightly. Access to these and other options eventually made paladin, if not good, at least viable, able to be played in most campaigns and pre-made adventures without undue worry or getting chumped out of basic encounters.

In all of their forms, these paladins still had a code. Observe:

Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates

While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

Ex-Paladins

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities.

You know all the horror stories you’ve read of DMs maliciously making paladins Fall, or miscommunications in groups leading to alignment arguments? The ones about youth-pastor paladin characters sucking all the fun out of a party? Meet the culprit. 3.5 did not have The Complete Paladin’s Handbook’s discussion on same-paging with your group to prevent these problems, and this vague code wording paired with immediate and extreme consequences didn’t do it any favors. That’s not to say that this code is unworkable, exactly, but trying to sit down and agree with 4-6 other adults on what ‘gross violations’ actually means is essentially the world’s shittiest round of Apples to Apples and your reward for it is resenting the character you just built.

And that’s the paladin part, which means we have to get into the “being good-aligned” part. Lemme tell you about Book of Exalted Deeds, a historically significant garbage fire of a book that is somehow both the best supplement released about Good and the worst supplement released about Good at the same time.

For those of you with the fortune to have never played 3.5, its books are like that a lot.

So, bad parts first: all the mechanics. Just all of them. The prestige classes? Bad. The feats? Generally bad. The redemption rules revolving around Diplomacy? Sloppy. Magic items? Bad. Spells? Look up an online discussion about sanctify the wicked and then get back to me on that one; they’re bad too. Ravages and afflictions (good-aligned poisons and diseases) were a bad idea that were also a case of stunning hypocrisy from a book whose stance was that dealing ability score damage is ‘needless cruelty’. Even the write-ups for the planar NPCs kinda make them into these basic bitch pushovers, which, you guessed it, is bad. There’s a lot to say against this book and you can find someone saying it in most open web forums if you want to take a journey into the godawful design of the liminal space between 3.0 and 3.5.

But the good stuff was real good. D&D had/has long been stalked by ‘ethical dilemmas’ such as the so-called Goblin Baby Problem, where players would ask if it’s good to let goblin children live since they would only grow up to become goblin adults. Book of Exalted Deeds was the first D&D publication to make a hard stance against racial genocide (hell of a sentence, I know), and it doubled down on The Complete Paladin Handbook’s implied stance that all forms of romance and sexuality are valid as long as they’re between consenting adults that respect one another. BoED strove to define Good not just as the avoidance of evil (”The utter avoidance of evil is, at best, neutral.”) but as actively striving to respect life, practice altruism, and make the world a better and more just place. While its take on ideas like forgiveness, redemption, and justice were not necessarily perfect, it went out of its way to try to offer nuanced takes on those ideas and to note emphatically that practices such as slavery and racism do not become good just because certain historical cultures thought they were at the time.

The other notable thing that Book of Exalted Deeds did for the idea of a Good alignment was firmly state on the record that NG and CG are just as valid and Good as LG is. The existence of paladins and their alignment-locked nature had long implied that Lawful Good was the “best” Good, or the “most” Good, but Book of Exalted Deeds didn’t just introduce material for characters that were paragons of other Good alignments, it provided examples of such characters in action. D&D is still somewhat stalked by that “Law is Good and Good is Lawful” problem, but BoED and other books in its niche (notably including Heroes of Horror - I know, it doesn’t sound like it but trust me - and Champions of Valor) helped push back against that problem and open the floor to other heroes.

I wouldn’t be wholly done talking about 3.5 paladins without mentioning Unearthed Arcana, which introduced the paladin of freedom (CG), paladin of tyranny (LE), and paladin of slaughter (CE). Their hearts were in the right place here, but all three of them were...better ideas than executions, as it were, without much to talk about for them. Still, they make good examples of 3.5′s great strength in paladins: breadth of concept. Ideas that were previously impossible as paladins became commonplace, including paladin-like characters who were not members of the class and which I would absolutely consider paladins myself. It didn’t stick the landing on the mechanics, but that’s just 3.5 for you; if you weren’t a dedicated spellcaster, chances are you were gonna have some manner of bad time. This idea of paladins from all walks of life, from all levels of society and all peoples, has become a cherished part of the popular conception of paladins and it absolutely should be brought forward to other editions.

Which, honestly? It was.

Pathfinder 1e: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back - Pathfinder 1e’s baseline paladin release was essentially 3.5′s in many ways. The key mechanical differences were a revamped Smite Evil (which finally made it effective against its intended targets), the aura line of abilities that begin adding additional effects beyond Aura of Courage at 8th level and up, and Mercies - riders for the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability that cause it to also cure status effects, which in turn greatly enhances the paladin’s utility as a support class. Pathfinder also cleaned up some of 3.5′s attribute problems by orienting all of paladin’s magical abilities to Charisma instead of splitting between Wisdom and Charisma. Another small but significant note is the alteration from ‘gross’ violations of the code to any violation of the code. “Gee Vox, that doesn’t sound like it would really help code problems,” you say, to which I reply: it absolutely fucking did not.

Once we leave core, we get quite a few quality-of-life improvements. Though Pathfinder 1e lacks Battle Blessing, it replicates some of its effects by having many swift-action spells in-house for paladin, notably including the Litany line. Pathfinder’s archetype system for class customization offers options for the paladin that further customize its concept, though on the balance it’s harder to mix and match archs than it was to do so with kits. Archetypes always trade something, so in taking an arch you will lose some part of the base paladin kit and gain something which replaces it.

Narratively, things get more specific outside of core as well. Paizo’s one-and-only setting, Golarion, is one in which paladins must swear fealty to a specific god they serve above all others, and their power is derived directly from that god, who can grant or withhold it as they see fit. These gods (generally LN, LG, or NG in alignment, though certain specific CG deities sponsor paladins who must still be LG themselves) offer their own codes of conduct, which their paladins must follow. A paladin may be obligated to oppose ‘heresy’ as vigorously as chaos or evil, which is an awkward fucking feel, and paladins in Golarion’s setting can be found working for organizations such as the Hellknights, or in the armed forces of nations that practice slavery and forced conversion. That’s not to imply that they’re not also depicted in unambiguously good contexts, but when it comes to establishing paladins (or, well...anyone...) as good-aligned people Paizo has a bad habit of dropping the ball.

Like 3.5, the great strength of the Pathfinder 1e paladin is customization, and in this case a more solid mechanical base in comparison to the rest of the game. Pathfinder similarly flounders in that its vision of paladins is narrow and not fully realized in the game world.

Discussion of Pathfinder 1e’s paladin wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Anti-Paladin, the only “alternate class” to see mechanical support beyond its initial publication. Baseline anti-paladins must be chaotic evil and have abilities that are the inverse of the baseline paladin; similarly, anti-paladin has archetypes available that change it to different kinds and methods of evil. It has its fans, and in terms of playability it’s as good, if not a little better, than paladin, but on the whole I tend to break on the side of thinking that Good and Evil are not mirror images of one another, and thus an anti-paladin is inappropriate as an idea. At least, one done in this way, as an explicit reaction to a supposed paragon of virtue, as things are about to get real interesting in...

D&D 4e: The Knight Unshackled - D&D 4e built off of the foundations laid down by the Book of Exalted Deeds and Unearthed Arcana by completely removing all alignment restrictions from both paladin and its counterpart class, blackguard. This section will also need to talk about cousin classes to paladin; specifically, the Avenger and the Invoker. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Paladins in 4e are predicament dommes defenders; they use their abilities to place Marks on enemies, who then suffer damage if they choose to engage someone other than the paladin (all defenders in 4e force choices of a similar nature, though the penalty for failing to make the ‘right’ choice is not necessarily damage). In 4e, paladins are not granted their power by gods, nor are they empowered by their faith in righteousness alone; in point of fact, 4e paladins have no restrictions on their alignment whatsoever and are the first paladins to be open in this way. Instead, a paladin in D&D 4e is invested with power in rites kept secret by individual churches. Once invested, that’s it, no take-backs; the paladin remains a paladin even if they forsake that church entirely. The other classes I’m gonna talk about - avenger, blackguard, and invoker - are similarly invested, with invoker being the exception in how they get invested, but not in their no-takebacks status.

So, what powers a paladin after that investiture? Virtue; specifically, caring about others in some way. An LG paladin empowered by their belief in justice might be a classic knight in shining armor, defending her allies in righteousness’s name, but an LE paladin empowered by the same virtue might easily turn totalitarian, determined to establish justice no matter who has to suffer and die. In this model, evil-aligned paladins are those who care too much about something, to the point where they trample and harm others to see it fulfilled.

Paladin’s inverse, blackguard, is a striker class focused on direct damage. They gain their power through vice, inward-facing desires such as greed, selfishness, lust, or five pounds of nachos in one meal (don’t @ me). Blackguards are also not restricted by alignment. A classically selfish blackguard, out for their own power and safety, might be an amoral mercenary who kills because they can’t be bothered not to, but a good-aligned blackguard who’s selfish is, well, Tiffany Aching: protecting the world because it’s her world and how dare you fucking touch it.

Avengers have more in common with barbarians than paladins, but are notable here for their commonalities with paladin as a divine warrior concept, and also for having bones in with the later Oath of Vengeance concept in D&D 5e. Avengers are invested to smite the enemies of their church; they tap into their power by swearing an oath against specific enemies, and then dissociate until those enemies in particular are dead at their feet. Are you really into Alexander Anderson from Hellsing? Do you want to explore the terrible consequences of power, consequences that might not have been clear when you signed up to become an avenger? This could be for you.

Lastly we have invokers, the odd duck out. They are ranged controllers who fight with pure divine power. Invokers are created directly by gods, but unlike the previous three have no associations with churches; instead, their job is to look out for threats to all of existence and make sure that they don’t happen. Even evil-aligned gods create and tend to respect invokers, because you can’t conquer the world and rule it as its Dread Master if there’s no world left to rule. Because invokers are invested by gods directly, they tend to have a lot in common with the divine intervention paladin origin mentioned waaaaay up there in the 2e section; you’re minding your own business when one day God goes “TIME TO LEARN HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD” and that’s just your life now.

D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes fully realize the breadth of concepts and characters that paladins could fulfill; they offer intriguing possibilities for roleplaying, engaging character and plot hooks, and mechanically distinct interpretations of divine power. In unshackling paladins from alignment, 4e opens them up to questions of heroism, conviction, and belief that were in many ways previously closed, especially because paladins in other editions were often made to Fall for asking those questions. Their big weakness is, well, being in 4e. It’s not that D&D 4e is a bad game - in many ways it’s the most honest edition of D&D, and certainly the most tightly-designed - but rather that 4e’s context is highly specific. It can be hard to find players or DMs familiar with it, might be frustrating to gain access to its books, and once you do adapting its material requires significant narrative changes if you remove it from the context of the Points of Light setting.

D&D 5e: This I Vow - D&D 5e’s paladin is, in many ways, a combination of and refinement upon previous elements. Like 4e’s, it is not restricted by alignment (though the three Oaths in core do suggest particular alignments). Like 3.5′s paladin, it combines magical power with martial skill, though 5e’s paladin is both more overtly magical and gains access to better spells, faster, than its predecessor. Though the paladin gains some warrior-type abilities (notably including their choice of Fighting Style and the Extra Attack feature), the majority of their abilities are supernatural in nature, including Lay On Hands (in the form of a pool of hit points that can also be expended to remove poisons and diseases), immunity to disease, an array of defensive and utility spells (as well as the Smite line for bursts of damage), a Divine Smite that trades spells for damage directly, and native auras that protect the paladin’s allies as well as herself. Their defining feature, however, is the Oath they select at third level, which defines what sort of paladin they are.

Your selection of Sacred Oath nets your paladin 2 utility abilities at 3rd level, an additional aura at 7th, a strong upgrade of some kind at 15th, and a capstone at 20th that neither you nor any other living being will ever see because 5e campaigns barely get to 14th, God forbid 20th. Each Oath also provides a set of tenets that you are meant to live up to, but unlike previous incarnations of a Code of Conduct 5e’s relationship to these tenets is more...human. The following passage is from the Player’s Handbook, page 83 (”Creating A Paladin”):

As guardians against the forces of wickedness, paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most of them walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colors the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behavior you have not yet attained.

Emphasis mine.

The baseline assumption for 5e’s paladins are believers in righteousness, whose faith in virtue empowers them to protect the weak, but more than any other edition, 5e recognizes that paladins are still people, who have flaws, strengths, and ambitions. Its Background system helps flesh out your character both mechanically and narratively, and material presented both in the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything encourage you to think about the things that drive and oppose your paladin. Importantly, though the books say that evil paladins are rare, no actual alignment restriction on paladins exist, which opens up some interesting possibilities in terms of character creation. We’ll get more into that down the article a bit, when I talk about same-paging and refluffing.

Because Oaths come with both mechanics and an ethos, there is a strong incentive to create new Oaths for 5e if you want to embody a new ethos, but this may not always be strictly necessary. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook implies that paladins who flagrantly fail or abandon their oaths might become Oathbreakers (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 97, under “Villain Options”), but this too may not be the correct move, especially in cases where a paladin abandons one set of high ideals for a different, but no lower, form of belief. We’ll get into that later too.

5e’s paladins are in the best mechanical position they’ve ever been in; they’re one of the strongest classes in the game line, easy to build and play, and difficult to fuck up. They have strong thematics with their abilities and especially their Oaths, and the way 5e encourages you to make your characters helps you realize them as people in the game world. The great weakness of this vision of paladins is customization; 5e lacks player options in many senses, and quite a few of those options are gated behind rules that may not be in use (such as Feats). It can be difficult, in many cases, to make two paladins of the same Oath feel different when the dice hit the table.

And at long last, we have finished the establishing-context section of this article, and can move on to the actual fucking article. I did warn you, way up top, that you were in for a ride.

Raise Thy Sword - Paladins At Your Table

The following section is meant to help you in making and fleshing out a paladin concept to play or even to use as an NPC. Most of the advice will be edition-agnostic; advice that isn’t will be marked as such. Also covered herein will be the related topics of same-paging, refluffing, and the common pitfalls that paladins have fallen into over the years (and how to avoid them).

Same-Paging - In Which We Communicate Like Adults

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. In the specific case of paladins, you want to talk to your group and DM about topics like alignment & alignment restrictions, your code of conduct or oath, and whether or not the group wants to handle things like ethical dilemmas and moral quandaries. Though paladins are famous for those last two, they’re certainly not a requirement; you can just as easily play a paladin in a campaign like Expedition to Undermountain or Princes of the Apocalypse where there is a very clear bad guy who needs to be stopped with enormous applications of violence and guile. However your group wants to play it is fine, but you want to be sure everyone’s on board for it and that you’re ready to rock. If your group signs on for a kick-in-the-door dungeon crawl and then the DM decides to make you pass a series of ethics tests, that DM is an asshole; likewise, if you agree that you want to explore the morals at the heart of your paladin’s ethos and then you just don’t do that, you’re causing the problem.

Who Is Your Deity, And What Does She Do? - Making Your Paladin

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other (and, again, same-paging is something all groups should be doing regularly, not just ones in which you want to play a paladin), it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There’s many ways to start this, and while I personally tend to start at the roleplaying end (with ideas about who they are as a person and the themes I want to explore with them), starting with mechanical ideas, with questions, or even with specific dramatic scenes in mind, are also viable. That is to say, “I’m interested in how Aura of the Guardian (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 39) can help me play a damage mitigation tank,” is just as valid as, “Kass, my character, was lifted from a life of crime by a paladin who reformed her neighborhood and campaigned against a corrupt system, and she’s striving to become a paladin in his image.” That said, if there’s one thing D&D and its related communities are good at it’s mechanical guides, so I’m not gonna try and write one here. We’d be here all day; instead, the following questions are things to consider for fleshing out your paladin’s backstory, personality, and goals.

Why did you become a paladin? The origins of your paladin will probably color how they think of their virtues, as well as how they think of evil. A beaten-down girl from the slums understands that kicking the shit out of muggers doesn’t give the downtrodden food, medicine, or roofs that don’t leak, while the third son of a noble family is in a position to understand the damage done by corrupt leaders and faithless lords. In addition to your background and home life, think about what motivated your character to become a paladin specifically. Were they mentored by an older paladin who saw potential in them? Recruited by the militant arm of a church? Did they grow up with stories of paladins and yearn to become the sort of person those stories were written about, or were they, perhaps, seemingly called to paladinhood without much conscious understanding of what it was?

Where did you learn to fight? Paladins are warriors, and even a paladin that Falls (for those campaigns that use Falling as a concept) remains a warrior. 5e paladins, the most overtly magical of all the available options, still spend a lot of time randomizing the atoms of evil with sharpened metal, and that’s a skill you only get through training and dedication. Who taught your paladin to fight? What’s their relationship with that teacher or organization, and how did it shape their ideas about violence? We all catch things off of our teachers, and your paladin’s instructor in combat will, for better or worse, be as big an influence on their life and ideals as their faith and family are. Don’t be afraid to get wild here; AD&D 2e had full-blown godly training montages where the voice of a god ran you through drills, and paladins join warlocks and sorcerers for being fertile ground for some of the weirdest shit. Did you fight daily duels against a stained glass knight only you could see? Did you find a scimitar in the gutter and pick it up to defend your friends from gangs? Were you bankrolled by an old man who later turned out to be a lich, whose motives you still don’t understand? Live your best Big Ham life if that’s the life you wanna live, this is the class for it.

How do you imagine good and evil? What does your paladin’s vision of a Good world look like? What is the face of wickedness that comes to mind when they’re asked to think of Evil? A knight from a kingdom plagued by portals to the Abyss is going to think of both of these things very differently from a gutter rat whose ascension came with a prosthetic hand to replace the one she lost to gangrene, to say nothing of differences in ideals when one factors in Law and Chaos. Your paladin doesn’t have to be perfect, or even, honestly, correct. Your classic ‘noble, but kind of a dick’ paladin (such as Corran d’Arcy in the novelization of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, who we’re gonna talk about more later because he’s a weirdly great example of an adventuring paladin) thinks of evil as evildoers, who must be Brought To Justice, which while not entirely wrong is lacking in important nuance. He may conflate manners with virtue, or allow his prejudices to color who he does and doesn’t think of as ‘good’, but that doesn’t change his fundamental desire to Do Good - a desire that could be the catalyst for personal growth. A flawed understanding of virtue and wickedness could be a great character arc for your paladin, especially if it dovetails with the themes of the campaign.

What do you enjoy? Paladins are still people (shocking, I know) and people tend to have hobbies, preferences, and goals. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some nice material to quickly flesh out some of those aspects of your paladin (a personal goal, a vice that tempts them, a nemesis that dogs their footsteps), and I highly encourage you to think about such things as well. Does your paladin crave glory, wealth, or revenge? What sort of things do they turn to when they want comfort, or to have a good time? Do they still practice a trade from their youth, such as painting or blacksmithing? The archetype of a knight looking for their true love (or at least a series of whirlwind romances that always seem to end in someone’s bedroom) is a staple, of course. These things don’t necessarily need to be sinister temptations that lead you away from justice; they can just be nice things you like, or comforts that sustain you in your long fight against evil.

How do you relate to your faith? Many settings (notably including Forgotten Realms & Points of Light in D&D, and Golarion in Pathfinder) explicitly link paladins to churches and patron deities, and even in ones where this explicit link does not exist you see paladins who fight in the name of their faiths, serve in the militant arm of their churches, and otherwise seek to live their lives in accordance with their religion. D&D’s history is also full of paladins whose relationship to their faith is more distant, more questioning, or even outright rebellious. In Eberron, for instance, a paladin might dedicate herself to the Kraken - an evil god embodying sea monsters and catastrophes - with her understanding of that faith being preventing monster attacks and protecting the innocent from hurricanes and tidal waves. A paladin might be retained by the Church of St. Cuthbert as a barometer for their own morality, trusted to leash his peers when their retribution grows out of hand & play the devil’s advocate against them, or a knight might simply try to live their lives in accordance with the ideals of beauty, joy, and wonder espoused by Sune Firehair, without being for or against the actual church. What or whom does your paladin believe in, and why? Remember as well that not all, or even most, faiths are particularly similar to Christianity, and as a result your paladin’s relationship to that faith might just be business as usual. A Jewish paladin arguing with God is Judaism working as intended; similarly, a paladin dedicated to the Aesir doesn’t get to act surprised when they come home one day and Freya is chilling in their bathtub with a glass of wine and a ‘small request’.

You Wouldn’t Download A Class Feature - Refluffing & You(r Paladin)

So: you’ve come up with your concept, you’ve asked yourself all the relevant questions, but damn, some things just seem to not be fitting. What do you do? It may be the case that refluffing - changing the flavor of a mechanical option to better fit your campaign or setting - may be the right move for you. Refluffing gets a lot of pushback from a certain school of tabletop gaming that believes the flavor of an option is part of its mechanical balance. These people are wrong and I encourage you not to associate with them, in particular because the first party publishers often refluff material for similar reasons. For instance, the setting of Eberron has ‘anything published in D&D has a home here’ as one of its meta-tenets, and in the process of giving many of those things a home it changed their identity. Those hordes of angry ancestor-worshiping elves? That’s refluffing elves. In 3.5 you can see explicit discussion of refluffing in Oriental Adventures, which...well...it’s a book that exists, let’s leave it at that. Oerth having an entire alternate Material Plane where all the mirror of opposition copies come from? Refluffing.

So, when do you refluff? An obvious example is when your group is comfortable with an option being on the table, but is not playing in the setting that option comes from (for instance, the Sword of the Arcane Order feat from Champions of Valor when you are not playing in the Forgotten Realms). Refluffing is also great for when the narrative you’re building for a character implies or requires certain mechanics, but the flavor of those mechanics does not fit that narrative. In the ancient past I briefly GMed a game where one of the PCs was a ‘barbarian’ - a mean-streets kid looking to make a better life for himself, whose Rage was just the fight-or-flight kicking in from living in the garbage parts of Waterdeep. The important things to keep in mind when you choose to refluff an option is to stay on the same page as the rest of your group, and also to not replace the original fluff with nothing; mechanics do help define flavor (they’re the tools with which you interact with the game world), but you still need some reason that your paladin casts wizard spells, or has the abilities of the Oath of Vengeance when the original version of that Oath doesn’t exist in this setting. A very common school of refluffing is changing the origins of one’s power; rather than pure faith, for instance, a paladin’s powers might come from her innate spiritual energy, or from the favor of kami rather than gods.

Refluffing is also great for playing paladins that don’t have levels in the class named paladin. This option is especially relevant in the context of 3.5 and Pathfinder, when it may be more suitable to the needs of the campaign for you to be playing a more powerful or versatile class. In this context, clerics especially make very competent ‘paladins’, as do wizards (you wouldn’t think so, but I’ve seen that campaign played), inquisitors, crusaders, and even druids depending on how your concept is. You don’t need Fall mechanics to follow a code, after all.

For What The World Could Be - Defining Your Paladin’s Ethos

More than almost any other aspect of the class, possessing and following an ethos has defined paladins through the ages. For many years, this was a very specific ethos based on European ideas of chivalry and Christian virtue, and there’s something to be said for it when done well (certainly the Arab warriors from whom Europeans acquired the code of chivalry were lauded for their honor and virtuous conduct, so at a bare minimum one set of folks following these ideals in the real world absolutely nailed it). This is not, however, the only set of high ideals to which a paladin might cleave or aspire, and many fine homebrewers, players, and dungeon masters out there have chosen to craft their own, or to represent their own beliefs in the game world. Many cultures throughout history and all over the world have retained elite warriors held to high standards of conduct, and those traditions are rife for representation as paladins.

I fully intend to provide some specific examples of ethea (evidently this is the plural of ‘ethos’, no I didn’t know that before I started writing this, yes it looks wrong to me too) beyond the ongoing D&D default, but before I do you may want to consider how your paladin relates to those high ideals. After all, these are virtues that your character holds dear, but not everyone does so in the same way. Does she believe that everyone would be better off if they tried to live up to her standards, or does she believe that only certain people should (or must) do so? Does she consider her virtues an impossible ideal, something to strive for rather than fulfill, or does she not harbor such doubts? Is your paladin an idealist, who believes in the power of Good in itself, or is she more cynical?

The answers to these questions don’t necessarily make your paladin less Good as a person. A warrior who believes that there’s always a selfish bastard reason to do the right thing, who sees Evil as suboptimal, could still be a paladin if they work to bring Good into the world. An idealist who still needs to learn about the real consequences of barging into complex problems in a morally complicated world is equally valid, to say nothing of just...playing a genuine in-the-bones Hero, here to Do The Right Thing. Each speaks to a different kind of virtue, and a different life that has led them to these choices, and each deserves their day in the sun. You might have a lot of fun playing someone whose view of what Good is, and why, is different from yours!

Some specific examples of ethea (god that looks so wrong) follow. For the sake of convenience I’m gonna skip anything that’s actually showed up in a paladin entry before, or I’m gonna be here until I die. I am also very much not a member of just about any of the cultures and/or religions I’m about to talk about, and while I have sought the advice and review of those who are, I’m not about to claim that I’m an expert. Any errors in what’s presented are mine, and not those of my friends & readers; I welcome correction and discussion.

Irish Celtic: Blood & Troth  - The ancient Celts were not a people shy about death, and excellence - skill, improvement, and genuine growth - in all of your crafts was one of their high virtues. In addition to excellence, a Celtic warrior was expected to be honest (to never tell a direct lie, and to keep all promises given), hospitable (to be a gracious host & and honorable guests, and defend the sanctity of the home), to be charitable with their skills and their worldly possessions (to give to the needy, defend the weak, and fight for the helpless), to display loyalty to their family, clan, and gods, and to be courageous. That last virtue is an interesting one, because it dovetails with excellence; it’s less about acting in spite of fear, and more about enjoying fearful situations and the call of battle. A paragon of Celtic warfare should love her job, perhaps even revel in it; she relishes combat and the mayhem of the killing fields. Paladins following these virtues are likely to be Chaotic in nature, skewing towards Chaotic Neutral as D&D thinks of these things, and prone to contemplation on concepts of obligation, truth, and the nature of political violence. The crows know that there is always a final answer to injustice.

Irish Celtic paladins are likely to look towards Fionn Mac Cumhaill as a role model; as warriors with magical powers of protection, defense, and healing, they would be valued as keepers of lore, wisdom, and art, more warrior-poet than berserker. If your paladin is part of a wider culture from which she derived this ethos, she was probably expected to both learn knowledge and pass it on to others, and to restrain more eager warriors in favor of cunning plans and clever tactics. Imagine the look on your party members’ faces when they meet your family and realize you’re the sane one; that’s the exact emotion you wanna look to create if you really want to bring this out in the classic vein.

Jewish: We Shall Serve The Lord  - Judaism places a lot of emphasis on the sanctity of life, restorative justice, and doing the good you can do here, and now, with what’s in front of you. Though there is no tradition of elite Jewish warriors in the vein of knights or samurai, Jewish citizens tend to serve under arms slightly more often (about 5% more often) than their countrymen, and defending the innocent & helpless is certainly one way to do good now. A Jewish paladin would be expected to uphold the sanctity of life (preservation of life is the highest calling; a Jew may do anything except deny God in order to preserve life), to practice the principle of Tikkun Olam (’repairing the world’, working actively to make the world around them a more just, peaceful, and pleasant one), to show compassion and generosity to others, to uphold and defend hospitality, to know the Torah and the Law, and, where necessary, to practice intelligent and purposed dissent and skepticism. In the context of D&D, such a character is not likely to be particularly scholarly (paladins haven’t needed a decent Intelligence score at any point in the class’s evolution), but they’re probably conversant in the techniques of reading and research, critical thinking, argument, and debate, if only through exposure. Jewish paladins are most likely to be Good, leaning Lawful, as D&D thinks of these things.

The Jewish ethos describes a set of minimum standards for a righteous person, the Noahide Laws, and greatly encourages you not to associate with any person or culture that can’t meet that standard. They’re honestly not hard to meet either; you basically have to not be a dick about God (don’t try to stop folks from worshiping, don’t spend your time mocking and blaspheming their faith), know that lying and murdering are wrong, don’t be a sexual predator, don’t eat animals that are still alive, and bother to establish a system of laws for self-rule. Though Judaism lacks an elite warrior tradition, you might look to people like Joshua, Judah Maccabee, or Solomon as inspirations for a Jewish paladin character; warriors known for their wisdom, determination, and and in many cases, self-sacrifice. Solomon is also notable as an example of someone who swore the Nazarite Oath, a promise to God to fulfill a mission or task, and to not rest until one has done so. Nazarites are held to higher standards than their peers, notably including the expectation that the object of their oath becomes their only goal until they get it done or die.

As stated before, I am not Jewish and while this information was provided to me by Jewish friends, it is far from complete. @oath-of-lovingkindness might be by to expand on it, if they’re comfortable doing so.

Kemetic Pagan: The Power Of Truth - It’s difficult to talk about how the ancient Kemetic faiths were practiced; there was a lot of strife between the various cults of the gods, sometimes backed by pharaohs who were willing to revise history to get their way about thing, and then the English got a hold of the records. The English getting a hold of your culture’s history rarely ends well for just about anyone. The modern practice of Kemetic worship places great emphasis on service and identity as a member of the community, the promotion and preservation of knowledge, learning, and education, opposing is/fet (’chaos’, here also very much including the breakdown of social bonds and the systems which sustain life), and truth. A Kemetic paladin would be expected to oppose chaos by sustaining or creating such systems (funding schools, founding a neighborhood watch, finding or creating jobs for the poor), defend the defenseless, further her own education and knowledge & teach the ignorant, to be honest and forthright in word and deed, and value strength and justice. They are likely to be Lawful, skewing towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things. For a society to be just, it must first be a society; preservation of the order (both natural and artificial) which sustains human lives comes first.

Kemetic paladins are unlikely to be priests or even to be formally part of a religious heirarchy, again because they have traditionally had issues being scholarly people; instead, they uphold ma’at (what is true, what is just, what is necessary; ma’at is the principle that establishes a community, that relates one person to all other people and defines obligations between them, and opposes chaos) by fulfilling roles that assist their community. Such a paladin might look to one of their patron gods as an example of both the behavior they wish to emulate and their role in the community. A defender and guardian who supports the rural folk might look to Sobek, whose great strength guards the Nile; a would-be hero who craves power and the glory that power might buy her could instead look to Set, who guards the sun-barge and tests the established order so that it can grow strong. This is an ancient faith with quite a few gods, and I haven’t even gone deep enough to say I’ve scratched the surface; if they’re comfortable doing so, @merytu-mrytw may be by to expand on this topic for those interested in learning more.

Samurai: Reaching For Heaven  - You knew we were gonna go here eventually. As famous as knights, and perhaps even more known for their strict code of honor, the samurai were the elite warriors of feudal Japan and members of its ruling class. A samurai was expected to be a warrior, to cultivate an appreciation for high arts such as calligraphy, poetry, and sculpture, to be a scholar or patron of scholars, and to otherwise serve their lord and establish justice in that lord’s name. Today the samurai ethos is often called Bushido (”the way of the warrior”), but that name and conception of their code of conduct is actually a relatively recent invention, dating back only as far as the 20th century. It has its bones in with a 12th century dramatization of a war between two proud clans, and the ideals embodied by the warriors of those clans. Notably, these ideals were considered unattainable; something to strive for, and in striving grow as a person, but not a realistic expectation for a living human in a physical body. I’m gonna go ahead and quote the breakdown of this code that was given to me, because I feel the long form is going to be helpful here. These were the things to strive for, if one wished to call oneself a samurai:

Your duty calls on you to die if necessary. Your honor is more than your life; to live in shame is worse than death. You are expected to be righteous - to have integrity, sincerity, and honesty. To display heroic courage - to be intelligently aware of risks, but to face them boldly, not rashly or foolishly. To be benevolent and compassionate - for you have strength of arms that others cannot fathom. To show respect, even to your enemy. Cruelty, mockery, showboating, boasting, these are against the samurai code. Your strength and stature come through how you stand in adversity, unyielding. To understand that there is no such thing as a promise, or "giving your word" - you do not speak unless you mean what you say. Meaningless words are for shameful people. To safeguard your own honor, for you are its judge - and you will know what will cause you to live in shame, which as noted above, is worse than death. To show loyalty and be dutiful - if you give your service to another, it is theirs to command, and if you set someone's life above yours, you cannot keep honor if you live and they die. To demonstrate self-control - excesses and wants are openings to great shame. Moral character lies in the desire being sublimated toward the better self and higher standing among men.

As the politics and culture of Japan evolved through the years, so too did attitudes towards, and understanding of, this code of conduct, but most dramatic and romantic depictions of the samurai ethos root back to something a lot like this. A paladin dedicated to this ethos is likely to be Lawful Neutral, bending towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things; it emphasizes the virtues of loyalty, duty, and the obligations of both lord and vassal to one another. It is particularly appropriate for characters who see high ideals of virtue as being an unattainable goal to strive for anyway, or for character-driven campaigns looking for high drama that comes from tensions between personal desires and societal expectations (you can see it used for this to wonderful effect in the Legend of Five Rings RPG, most recently published by Fantasy Flight Games).

There are of course many other potential sources for a paladin’s ethos; check out D&D 5e’s homebrew materials and the DM’s guild for just a few. If I didn’t include something here, I promise you that it’s because I’m either ignorant or not confident of my ability to speak on it even in this limited context, not because I was trying to deliberately leave anything out. As I said above, any errors here are mine, and I welcome corrections. I’m also eager to hear about other ethea and how they might be adapted for paladins, so if you’ve got some thoughts there, please, slap ‘em on! I’m quite literally begging to read your paladin takes!

That said, remember that these are real beliefs, that real people follow. If you’re looking to explore an ethos from a culture that is not your own, you should do so with respect and especially with consideration for others that might be affected. It’s one thing to realize 12 sessions into a campaign at your own house that you’ve been accidentally blaspheming someone’s religion; it’s quite another thing to realize that if you’ve been playing in a public place such as a library or a gaming store. Ask folks from the culture or faith in question about it if you can at all do so, and just...if you wouldn’t want someone to be depicting you in a particular way? Don’t depict them that way.

The Trolley Problem And Other Forms Of Psychological Torture - Paladins, Falling, & Alignment

All editions of paladins except 4e have some kind of rule for Falling; losing one’s paladin status and powers, generally because of violations of your code of conduct or a failure to maintain your alignment. 5e sorta-kinda has those rules in a “well if the DM says so” way, which is, in some ways, a worse situation to be in since it leaves the matter unclear. In particular, many editions of paladins require that you have and maintain a Lawful Good alignment, and completely strip you of all powers if you ever change alignment for any reason. If the above sections of this article didn’t make it clear already, I tend to break towards 4e’s school of thought and support unshackling paladins from both alignment and Falling mechanics for general play; they certainly haven’t been powerful enough in the meta to mechanically justify additional restrictions.

This isn’t to say that you can’t use Falling or the threat of Falling for interesting stories and excellent character moments, just that I personally feel that it’s not as necessary as some schools of thought seem to think it is. If you want to incorporate this idea into your campaign, make sure you bring that up when you’re same-paging with your group; it’s definitely one of those topics everyone wants to have a clear understanding about. From there, it’s on the DM to not be a dick about things. Using paladins to explore ethical dilemmas can be very rewarding, but putting one in an ‘impossible’ scenario is rarely any fun. For some great examples of using ethical dilemmas as a form of character growth and to explore the concept of morality, check out The Good Place if you haven’t already. Remember: it’s a game. The goal is to have fun, yeah?

Genocide Is Not An Ethical Dilemma - Common Paladin Pitfalls

This is the part of the article where I get very angry about things.

As I alluded to before, there have been some common pitfalls when it comes to paladins both in the history of their formal writing and in the way the fanbase has chosen to play and relate to them. This section is going to discuss those and what you can do about them, so without further ado:

Fascism  - Paladins have some unfortunate bones in with fascist ideology, particularly the Third Reich’s obsession with ‘will’, as well as the fascist preoccupation with the Crusades, the Crusades themselves, and with being members of social classes which are often oppressive in nature. You really do not have to go far to find some jackoff posting DEUS VULT memes about their paladin, and that’s a problem, first because fascists are bad, and second because that definitely misses the fucking point by a country mile. All editions of D&D and its legacy systems have struggled with this, but a shout-out goes to D&D 5e for publishing the Oath of Conquest, because we definitely needed to respond to this problem by creating an option that gives you heavier, more ornate jackboots to put on people’s necks.

So, what do you do about this? Well, for one thing if you find a fascist at your gaming table you throw them the fuck out into the street, and beyond that mainly you just...try not to play a fuckin’ fascist character. This isn’t really a problem you can solve at the table level, since it’s buried into the writing; all you can do is be aware of it, and not play into it. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to not make a paladin who’s into kicking poor people and undermining the rights of sapient beings, yeah? Paladins tend to fall into these sorts of problems when they’re depicted as supporting strongmen, or as being the Special And Exalted People to whom the rules do not apply - basically the same situations that give superheroes as a genre their ongoing fascism problem. Keep a weather eye out.

Genocide - The two-for-one combo! Paladins have had a genocide problem as far back as AD&D 2e, where several had racial or religious genocide in their backstories. Sometimes those paladins Fell as a result, sure, but a disturbing amount of them didn’t. We also have such gems as, “A local paladin has started a crusade against half-breeds” (a plot hook published in Draconomicon for 3.5), that greentext story about the paladin and dwarf ‘bros’ who spend their free time murdering orc children, and everything that’s ever been written about how drow are characterized and treated by others. Now, in fairness to paladins, Dungeons & Dragons itself has problems with the themes of race and with its depiction of the morality of genocide, and paladins could be merely caught up in that. On a basic level, solving this issue is easy; don’t endorse genocide, don’t make edgy racist concepts to see if you can ‘still be good’. Even if that wasn’t already tired and worn, someone else already took that concept and went pro with it.

For more information about fantasy’s troubles with race and racial coding, I highly suggest this article & its sequel, as well as Lindsay Ellis’s Bright video.

Youth Pastor Syndrome - This one’s not as dire a problem as the other two; there’s a tendency to play paladins in a way that sucks the fun out of the rest of the group, either because you’re being a judgemental asshole in-character (and possibly out of it), or because they’re constantly having to tiptoe around you to get things done or do what they want in the campaign. In theory, same-paging should help solve this problem before it starts, and it honestly mainly stems from the various ‘association’ clauses in paladin codes through their history. An uptight paladin isn’t necessarily a bad concept, but make sure it’s the right concept for your group before you just go there. Your desire to run a particular character is not an excuse to shit on everyone else��s fun.

Sir Dumbass the Just - So this topic isn’t so much a ‘pitfall’ as something that doesn’t get talked about a lot. There has not been a single incarnation of paladin that is rewarded for investing in Intelligence; instead, they tend to crave Strength or  Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom and/or Charisma (depending on edition and build). Once your main three are solved, Wisdom is the next-most important ability score for an adventuring paladin, because it directly relates to detecting threats, seeing through illusions, and resisting mind control, which leaves Intelligence in the dust next to whichever one of Strength or Dexterity you didn’t pick. This means, more often than not, that paladins are going to struggle in scholarly pursuits, be bad at Knowledge-type skills, and otherwise be uneducated in many ways, which most assuredly influences both their internal culture and the sorts of people who become successful paladins. Give the matter some consideration when you’re making your own.

Lady Natasha Pointe-Claire of the Dust March - Paladins as NPCS

Related to what was discussed just above, not all paladins are necessarily adventurers. Though the image of the paladin as a knight-errant, wandering the world in order to defeat foul plots and punch demons in the asshole, is both valid and probably very relevant to paladin player characters, there are other roles that a paladin might fulfill in your campaign setting. Such paladins are still members of a warrior class, and will thus have things in common with player character paladins, but their different roles will encourage investment in other kinds of abilities and skills which might not lead to a successful adventuring paladin, but will lead to a pretty good life in the other job. The following examples are by no means exhaustive, but they should provide a good place for a DM to start if they wanna incorporate paladin NPCs into their games in roles other than fellow (or rival) adventurers. Mentor - Probably the most straightforward; this paladin was a successful adventuring paladin who ended up retiring due to age, injuries, or just to enjoy time with their loved ones/family/children rather than getting mauled to death by undead birds. Take a normal paladin build, ratchet them up into Middle Age or Old Age, call it a day. Such paladins are likely to be a lot calmer and more pragmatic than the younger set, with a combination of painful experience and perspective guiding the advice they give on how to fight evil and how to dodge the fireballs that evil be throwing.

Knight-Hospitaller - Hospitallers are healers, caretakers, and guardians of the sick, injured, and infirm. Such a paladin might help maintain a home for those who have been traumatized (abuse victims, soldiers, people laboring beneath magical curses), be employed at or run a hospital, or maintain a temple dedicated to a god of healing and medicine. Hospitallers tend to choose options that enhance their Lay on Hands ability, memorize more healing spells than attack or defense ones, and value Wisdom and Intelligence more highly than their peers, often at the expense of their Strength or Dexterity (or even their Constitution; paladins, being immune to disease, can afford to be surprisingly frail of body in this role).

Fortress Knight - These paladins have a lot in common with adventuring paladins, but are for one reason or another posted in one spot from which they do not leave. They might be the guardians of a frontier village, soldiers watching over a sinister portal, the personal bodyguards to a powerful noble, or any other role in which they take on a defensive, reactionary stance rather than actively seeking out new and exciting forms of evil. Fortress knights need a higher Wisdom and to invest in Perception-type skills, and will tend to focus on utility-type spells with a strong subtheme of attack; they need to be able to rouse the alarm, dispel magic on their allies, and keep an enemy pinned down.

Example Paladin - Corran D’Arcy

I promise you, your long journey through my article is almost over. I wanna talk about a specific paladin to kinda tie things together, as an example of some of these principles and ideas in motion and because Corran d’Arcy is just weirdly legit when he has absolutely no fucking reason to be. Corran appears in the novelization for Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, written by Carrie Bebris. The book is based on the videogame of the same name, which in turn was made to celebrate the release of D&D 3.0. “Should I play this game?” you ask, to which I reply: absolutely fucking not, the game was a rough ride when it came out and it has not aged remotely well. 3.0 was rapidly updated to 3.5 because of deep and wide mechanical flaws that made the play experience almost physically painful, and converting it to a CRPG did not help that experience at all.

The book though? Excellent. Legitimately one of the best D&D novels. Spoilers for it follow, but I’d still suggest reading it if you get the chance.

The novel is told from the perspective of Kestrel, a petty thief trying to raise enough money to quit her life of crime and, ideally, die in bed of old age rather than of blood loss in some gutter. A series of poor and alcohol-related decisions leads her to volunteer to guard an evil pool of soul-stealing water, which is where she meets Corran d’Arcy, a paladin of Tyr and the third son of a noble family. The two get on like water and oil; to Kestrel, Corran is a pompous, classist piece of shit who judges her without knowing her, and to Corran, Kestrel is the exact kind of criminal and evildoer he so often fights in his day job. When another team opens a portal to beg for help while they’re being slaughtered, Corran quite literally throws Kestrel through it when she’s trying not to go, nearly killing them both.

This puts their professional relationship off to a bit of a distant start, as you might imagine.

Corran’s prejudice, as well as Kestrel’s more-justified-but-still-unhelpful resentment, hinder the party as they attempt to survive in Myth Drannor and defeat the Cult of the Dragon’s schemes there. Corran’s life of privilege has left him unfamiliar with Kestrel’s skills, and he consistently misuses those skills or forgets to ask for her opinion and expertise - to the detriment of the group. This painful oversight aside, however, Corran proves surprisingly practical; he works with the party’s wizard to create effective combat tactics, utilizes invisibility for surprise attacks against powerful foes, and coordinates well in the heat of battle; after all, the Cult of the Dragon is not taking requests for formal duels, and the fate of the world is at stake. Corran is polite even to his enemies, and openly negotiates with the minions and allies of the Cult in order to avoid combat - notably including drow houses that have made their homes in Myth Drannor. Through the course of the novel, he and Kestrel go from being openly antagonistic towards one another to developing a newfound respect, starting when Kestrel calls Corran out for endangering the party by refusing to retreat. Corran, in turn, forces Kestrel to confront the fact that she has been unhappy living her life with no purpose other than to die another day, a revelation that shakes her to her core.

Things come to a head when one of Corran’s decisions gets a man killed. Kestrel calls him out on it, accusing him - correctly - of hurting those he’s trying to protect by misusing her skills and ignoring the advice of his companions. Seeing his genuine anguish over these events softens Kestrel’s rage towards the paladin, enough that they essentially start their relationship over from the top with genuine change from both of them. A scene late in the book where Kestrel helps Corran find the confidence to attempt divine magic (a gift given only to ‘truly worthy’ paladins) cements what has finally become a trusting friendship.

Corran d’Arcy is an excellent example of a classic paladin archetype with life and humanity breathed into it. He has prejudices and insecurities; he feels pressured to live up to a long legacy of knighthood that intimidates him. At the same time, the virtues he lives up to reward him over and over again, from his bold valor (which sees to the defeat of many evildoers) to his courtesy and honor in social situations (which wins him unlikely allies in a ruined city overrun by wickedness). Though he starts out as a dick, Corran is not malicious, and it’s his genuine desire to do good by others that motivates the change in his behavior; when he learns that he is hurting his friends, he knows that he must change.

That’s the end of the article proper! I hope you found it informative and, more than anything, helpful in creating paladins for your game and campaign setting. I absolutely welcome questions, comments, critique, additions, and the like; my Ask box is open, and the Reblog button is right there.

That said, if you’re interested, Mister Vox’s Wild Ride is not yet over. I got bit by the homebrew bug halfway through this damnable thing, so here’s a paladin oath based on a family from my first completed interactive story, Dungeon Life Quest. Constructive critique of this material is also very welcome!

Oath of the la Croix (D&D 5e Sacred Oath)

(River la Croix, journeyman necromancer and demonologist, ex-mercenary. Character is from Dungeon Life Quest, art provided by Domochevsky.)

The la Croix family have been necromancers for longer than they’ve been the la Croix; they laid down much of the foundations of modern necromancy, and have, through the ages, been tyrants, villains, refugees and, these days, heroes. To be a la Croix is not a matter of blood, but of commitment to the family’s ideals; one must be willing to help those in need, to serve the community, be a level head in times of trouble, to show respect for death and the dead, and to make hard choices with a calm heart.

Though most la Croix are necromancers, alchemists, healers, or summoners of various kinds, every now and again a paladin-like warrior emerges from the ranks of the family, often by adoption. Whether or not such cousins are ‘real’ paladins is a subject of languid internal debate in the family - no la Croix has ever fallen to the point where she lost her powers, but a few have managed to go mad enough with that power to end up hunted down by the rest of the family. The question doesn’t really need answering, but it’s fun to argue about after three cups of wine.

Tenets of the la Croix The high standards expected of la Croix paladins are also expected of anyone who chooses to bear the family name. You can give up the name at any time, but most la Croix children - by adoption or by blood - try to wear it with pride.

Life is for the Living, Death is for the Dead. No one chooses to be born, and very few people choose to die. Respect these truths. Take life when you must, but not cruelly, and never for personal gain. Remember that you, too, are alive, and deserve the chance to enjoy that life as all people do.

Your Name is ‘Somebody’. If there is a call for help, you are the one to answer; when you hear ‘somebody do something’, ‘somebody help me’, you are Somebody, child of Anyone. If you can’t help directly, do everything you can anyway. None of us deserve to be alone.

Serve, Not Rule. A la Croix’s place in her community is service to that community. We are not nobles, tyrants, or generals; we dwell among the common people to protect and shelter them, and to remind ourselves of all the ways in which we are alike. Our power makes us different, not better.

They, Too, Are Victims of Life. You do not know the struggles others go through, just as they do not know yours. All are condemned to live and to die, and deserve your compassion even when you are moved to strike them down for the greater good. Bury your enemies and give them their last rites as if they were your own family.

Oath Spells You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

3rd - bane, false life 5th - darkness, gentle repose 9th - bestow curse, fear 13th - phantasmal killer, shadow of Moil* 17th - danse macabre*, planar binding

*appears in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Channel Divinity When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following Channel Divinity options.

Ancestral Protection - You can use your Channel Divinity to call upon your la Croix ancestors for protection. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level; this damage cannot be prevented or reduced in any way. Then, you and all allies within 30 feet of you gain a bonus to armor class equal to your Charisma modifier for 1 minute.

Balefire Blast - You can use your Channel Divinity to scourge an enemy with death-in-flame. Make a spell attack against a creature within 30 feet. If you hit, that creature suffers necrotic damage equal to your paladin level, plus fire damage equal to your paladin level. If it dies within 1 minute of being hit, it counts as dying of old age in addition to its actual cause of death (usually meaning that it is much more difficult to bring back from the dead).

Necromancer’s Aura Beginning at 7th level, you radiate constant necromantic wards that protect you and your allies. You and allies within 10 feet of you have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage, and you make saving throws against effects which would kill you outright with advantage.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Friend of Death Starting at 15th level, you regain 1 spell slot of 3rd level or lower whenever a creature within 30 feet of you is reduced to 0 or less hit points. You can regain a number of spell slots this way equal to your Charisma modifier; once you reach this limit, you must finish a long rest to use this ability again.

Aphrael’s Chosen At 20th level, you gain the ability to enter a state of heightened necromantic power, in which you can channel far more sorcery than usual. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level, then begin channeling raw death magic for 1 minute. While in this state, you gain the following benefits:

- You are immune to all effects which would kill you outright - Whenever you cast a paladin spell, you can make a weapon attack as part of casting that spell. You are not required to make this attack. - Creatures make their saving throws against your spells with disadvantage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 11th after Pentecost (Dominican rite)

1 Cor 15:1-10; Mark 7:31-37

The Lord has loosened the tongue of the mute man, and he has opened his deaf ears too. From the earliest days, this miracle which Jesus did in the Decapolis, that is, a non-Jewish region among Gentile peoples, has been linked to the Sacrament of Baptism. For through this sacrament, God comes to us; the missionary Church goes throughout the nations of the world, and through the gift of holy Baptism, God opens up men and women to his grace, his friendship, his praise, and thus, indeed, to salvation. Hence, within the rite of Baptism in both old and new forms, the distinctive Aramaic phrase, that is only recorded in today’s Gospel from St Mark, is said: “Ephphatha”, which means “Be opened!”

In the old rite Baptism, this word is said after the priest moistens his fingers with saliva, and places them on the ears and nostrils of the one who is to be baptised. Why the nostrils and not the mouth as Jesus has done in the Gospels? Pope Benedict XVI links it to the deep groan that Jesus makes before he cures the mute and deaf man. In doing so, Jesus is invoking the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God whom St Paul says “prays for us with groans too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26) So, Pope Benedict says, “through Baptism, the human person begins, so to speak, to ‘breathe’ the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus had invoked from Father with that deep breath, to heal the deaf and dumb man.” Hence the nostrils are touched and opened, to prepare the one who is to be baptised to breath the Holy Spirit; to live and move and be inspired by the Spirit of God.

In fact a similar act is found in the new rite Baptism even though the word ‘Ephphatha’ is said just after the Baptism has taken place. Here, the priest touches the mouth and ears of the newly-baptised, directly following the actions of Christ in the Gospel, and praying that the newly-baptised will have his ears opened to hear God’s Word, and his tongue loosened to profess the Faith and to give glory to God with one’s words. For, as Pope Benedict XVI says, Christ “became man so that man, made inwardly deaf and dumb by sin, would become able to hear the voice of God, the voice of love speaking to his heart, and learn to speak in the language of love, to communicate with God and with others.” And this communication of love, of course, is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So, there is no contradiction between the two rites, but they harmoniously express the same end, which is that the baptised Christian should be opened to the divine action of God and should communicate his love, his peace, his Gospel of salvation. Hence St Paul says: “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3b) for it is the Holy Spirit who directs the words of the Christian, and the Holy Spirit who opens our ears and our intellects to hear and to understand the Scriptures.

Therefore, when we consider the actions of Christ in today’s Gospel, and the incorporation of these actions into the Church’s liturgical rites for the Sacrament of Baptism, we realise that our human faculties are given to us for a reason – our hearing and our power of speech is meant to be directed towards our salvation. So, in his letter to the Romans St Paul says: “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” (10:17) Since faith is a divine gift, a theological virtue, we depend on the graced activity of God to open the ears of sinners, to open our own ears, so that we may hear his Word being preached; so that we might arrive at a deeper faith in Christ who is the Word of God, so that we might be attentive and sensitive to those times when God speaks to us through the soft promptings of his Holy Spirit.  For this reason, before I preach a write a sermon, I ask God to open my ears to his Word, but also, just before I deliver the Homily in church, I make this prayer: “Lord open the ears of those who listen that they may hear what you want them to hear, and open my lips to speak what you want me to speak.” Amen.

So, the Holy Spirit must open our ears and our lips for our salvation. It is he who opens our ears to hear him for our power of hearing has been given us so that we can hear the Gospel of salvation. And it is the Holy Spirit also who opens our lips to speak God’s praise and to proclaim the faith, that Jesus is Lord! The Proper chants of today’s Mass thus gives voice to this praise of God, and declares the Lordship of Christ: “I will give praise to him. Unto thee have I cried, O Lord… sing aloud to the God of Jacob, alleluia… I will extol thee, O Lord… I have cried to thee, and thou hast healed me.” Through these chants, which is the voice of the Church at prayer, and thus our voice, the Christian declares, like the man in today’s Gospel, that it is the Lord who has healed us, and so, we praise him, we extol him, we sing aloud to him. For our lips have been loosened. “Ephphatha”, says Jesus, be opened. And so, our tongues have been made to give praise and thanks to God; our tongues have been opened to proclaim the good news of salvation; and our tongues have been loosened to bless God’s holy name.

At this time there has been much concern over the reverent and worthy reception of Holy Communion, and on whether we should receive on the hand or on the tongue. I do not wish to comment on this right now except to note that the most important aspect is our interior disposition. However, as we have been thinking about the tongue, and given the actions of Jesus in today’s Gospel, we should note what Scripture teaches and indeed, warns, concerning the tongue. St James says: “the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things… the tongue is a fire. The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body… With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so.” (cf James 3:5-10) Therefore, as we receive the Lord in Holy Communion in our mouths, and on our tongues, let us be chastened by these words of Scripture, and remember what the tongue is for: it is made for blessing.

So, ask the Lord to open our lips to speak well of him and of our neighbour. The tongue is not made for gossip, or insult, or slander, or to speak ill of others. Hence St Paul instructs the Ephesians: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” (4:29) Thus the Holy Father Pope Francis often decries gossip, for, as he rightly observes, “the person who gossips… destroys with their tongue, they don’t make peace.“ Therefore St James says: “If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is vain.” (1:26) As such, my brothers and sisters, let us be extremely vigilant about our speech. The Lord has opened our tongues to speak (and sing!) his praises, and to build up and encourage one another, and to speak the truth in charity. As St James says: “the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits.”

As Christians who have received the grace of Baptism, as God’s beloved children who have been healed and opened to the gift of the Holy Spirit, as disciples and friends of Jesus Christ who acknowledge Jesus to be our Lord, let us therefore be mindful that we use our faculties of hearing and speech to God’s glory; that we hear the voice of love speaking to us, and that we speak in God’s language of love. Then, all who hear us Christians will praise the Lord saying, “he has done all things well! He has made both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.” (Mk 7:27)

[skamfrance]

Imane’s disappearing hijab

Warning: this is going to be a loooong post.

Some of you have been wondering why Imane is often seen without her hijab in Skam France. As many of you have pointed out, a hijab is something women who choose to wear it always have on in public spaces. To French viewers, the answer is obvious: Imane simply isn’t allowed to wear her hijab when she’s at school. If she came to school wearing it, she’d be asked to remove it. If she refused, she’d be sent home.

What you have to understand first is the French notion of laïcité, which is sometimes translated as “secularism”. It is a principle stated in the very beginning of the French Constitution (”France is a [...] secular Republic”. It is the principle of separation of State and religion, the State cannot recognise any religion above the others. You wouldn’t hear a French politician end a speech with a “God bless France” or anything like that.

Public schools in France are extremely secular. I was in public school my whole life, and I remember one time I visited a Catholic private school, and I was sat in class for two hours staring (and I mean staring) at the crucifix above the blackboard as if it had offended me - to me, it just didn’t belong in a school (and I was raised Catholic). Teachers aren’t supposed to know about their students’ religion and vice versa. Kids talk about religion between themselves, of course, but never really in detail (in my experience). The idea is that if people don’t know your religion, they can’t discriminate against you because of it.

The hijab issue started in september 1989, when three female students (aged ~13) were banned from their middle school for wearing the hijab. The school principal stated that the goal of the school was to limit the exteriorization of any particular religion, and urged the parents of the girls to respect the principle of “laïcité” in the school (which had a majority of Muslim students, btw). This was very controversial at the time, and it is still controversial now. Following this, there were a series of similar cases, some girls who didn’t usually wear the hijab came to school wearing them as a form of protest. The three girls were able to return to school when they agreed to take their hijabs off, but after about a month they started wearing them again and were banned from class. At the time, those who sided with the principal argued that if you lived in France, you had to conform with French traditions and principles (and follow “laïcité”). A lot of people also viewed (and still view) the hijab as a symbol of female oppression. Those who defended the girls didn’t argue with laïcité, but said that it was wrong to ban the girls from school, because that meant excluding them because of their religion. Petitions were signed, columns were written, everyone was talking about it.    

The government had to do something, so they asked the Conseil d’Etat (which is an instiution that advises the government on passing new bills) for their opinion in november 1989. The CE said that the “islamic veil, in a public school, was compatible with laïcité”, and that you could only expel or ban a student if they were a direct threat to the school or if they disturbed the activities of the school. So the Ministry of Education told teachers that it was their responsability to accept girls wearing the hijab or not, that it varied from one case to another. Of course that didn’t stop anything, students were still being banned. High school kids started protesting against the new policy, and several of them ended up being expelled from school. Between 1994 and 2003, about 100 girls were expelled from middle and high schools for wearing the hijab.

That’s where the law comes in. In 2003, the government organized a Commission (The Stasi Commission) on the subject. After about six months, they came to the conclusion that France had to establish “strict rules” so that people could live together in a multicultural society. So on March 15, 2004, the law was adopted. It states that all ostentatious signs of religion are banned from schools: that includes “the islamic veil, whatever name is given to it”, the kippa and large crosses (which no one wears anyway). Discreet signs are allowed (small chains with crosses, religious medals, star of David pendants, etc.). The law applies to both students and faculty members. It does not apply at the university level. In march 2012, Luc Chatel, the Minister of Education, allowed schools to ban veiled women from accompanying students on field trips (usually a few parents can come with their kid’s class on field trips). His successor, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said that parents should only be excluded if they were being disruptive, but that mothers couldn’t be banned simply for wearing the hijab. 

All public employees are banned from showing religious affiliation on the job (so no hijab for them either). In the private sector, a company can put restrictions on the hijab “if it goes against it’s image or commercial interest” (link is in French, sorry). Since 2010, full face veils have been banned from all public spaces, not because they are a religious sign, but because it is forbidden to cover your face in public, for security reasons. The penalty for wearing such a veil is a 150 euro fine. During the summer of 2016, there was another ridiculous debate on the burkini (swimming gear that covers the whole body), women were being banned from beaches for being too covered up. People argued that they were showing they belonged to another community, and that’s unacceptable for many French people.

Conclusion: the reason for banning the hijab is that France is obsessed with “integration” (if you come to France, you do as the French do). There is a desire for conformity that is omnipresent in French society in that everyone should adhere to a certain set of values, and laïcité is at the top of them. Religious affiliation is seen by some as slightly anti-French - are you first and foremost Christian? Jewish? Muslim? Or are you French? For some people, these are mutually exclusive. But of course, Catholicism is the “tradtitional” French religion, so while it’s still perceived a bit negatively to be too religious even for Catholic people, they don’t have to deal with the same discrimination as Jewish or Muslim people do. 

Don’t hesitate to ask if you have further questions!

[ad360com]

Building 7 - Engineering consent

The official story is that a group of guys, after a few flight lessons, took over five commercial airliners with boxcutters, flew those planes in various directions. One of the planes flew at ground level into the very section of a building where investigators were looking at a 2.3 trillion dollar bookkeeping error (lucky for some). NORAD appeared to take no notice (even better), even though that system was designed to address a soviet missile strike and the Washington corridor is surrounded by air force bases (freaky lucky). Then a couple headed off to attack a couple of buildings with no military value, but intense cultural significance (killing yourself for artistic merit). These buildings in turn collapsed like pancakes (there that strangeness again) into their own footprint (neat) in less than a day (fast, 100 storey buildings)…causing 18 years of non stop war. All of this took place on the day that signifies “emergency” to people in the USA. The whole opera was supposedly directed by a man who was a known US intel asset, who later hid out in a cave (in the 21st century).  What I call fear porn seems to be the official narrative. You could probably pull a million threads out of that ball of string. I always thought a NY beat cop could have solved it in five minutes by questioning Junior, without even using "enhanced interrogation techniques." Remember when he couldn't take a piss without cheney being there.

This week was the anniversary of the twin towers bombing. The media was overflowing with admonitions to "never forget."Some of you may understand the hypnotic value of such a phrase, repeated over and over with the same sparce imagery. It's a message to keep bleating. It reminds one of the moon stuff (but let's not get distracted, shall we, people love to shout "conspiracy," "birther" or "truther"over and over).   I'd guide your attention with the attention to one trick...one of the premiere objectives is to use the pubic purse to fund all of these events, to then use public money to drive a pre-conceived agenda and in doing so to destroy Christianity and western civilization by it's own hand (this is a central conceit). It's a very pretty death blossom (if that's your perspective). To bleed a country dry. It's very simple stuff, Bush and Co. have been working for Satan, not America. Another point of attention is how "intelligence" agencies set up their own terrorists and events to control outcomes. This is common practice. Honey traps, blackmail, coercion, payoffs, cut outs, traitors, military coups, military subversion and assassination have all been used with this method. Here is a central conspiracy theory; building 7 (the story goes it fell into it's own footprint (again)), not from plane strike, but from a massive internal fire." The official theory established that the 47-story colossus collapsed on its base after the tragic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, at 5:20 p.m., when it was affected by the fire coming from the Twin Towers—Buildings 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. The building was completely destroyed in just seven seconds. (note: 7 seconds, complete destruction) However, after investing four years in computer simulations, the FAU scientists published a draft report that concludes that the collapse of the third WTC skyscraper on Sept.11, 2001 was not due to any fire, but “the almost simultaneous failure of every column in the building.” https://thebl.com/us-news/fire-did-not-destroy-world-trade-center-building-7-on-sept-11-scientific-study-reveals.html

At the same time as they are saying "never forget" the online personas are as adroitly as possible trying to forget all about building 7. Why? I had someone die, etc., don't bring up the "bad" memories. Don't hurt my feelings with your inconvenient facts. When 3000 engineers say something is a bit fishy... Some time ago, more than 3,000 active and retired architects and engineers called on the U.S. Congress to conduct a new investigation into the three WTC skyscrapers that were destroyed on Sept. 11. Under the name ‘Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,’ they said there was “sufficient doubt about the official story to justify reopening the 9/11 investigation.” “The new investigation must include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7,” they said.https://thebl.com/us-news/fire-did-not-destroy-world-trade-center-building-7-on-sept-11-scientific-study-reveals.html

I know that no matter what I pull up, you'll say, not an "official source,"meaning one of the raggle taggle mob of official sources. The same rags that are being tossed into the air by Trumpie on a daily basis. On the one hand you're obsessed with following your command and control narrative and yet when Trumpie tells you they are pure bullshit fake news outlets, you mock Trumpie (an actual patriot), who was there on the day, is a native new yorker, property development billionaire and quite clued into how buildings are constructed, said, explosives did it, when interviewed at the time. https://www.disclose.tv/trump-was-one-of-the-first-who-said-only-explosives-could-have-brought-the-wtc-down-312592 "Donald Trump: It wasn’t architectural defect. The World Trade Center was always known as a very very strong building. Don’t forget that took a big bomb in the basement (1993). Now, the basement is the most vulnerable place because that’s your foundation and it withstood that and I got to see that area about three or four days after took place because one of my structural engineers actually took me for a tour because he did the building and I said “I can’t believe it”. The the building was standing solid and half of the columns were blown out. This was an unbelievably powerful building. If you don’t know anything about structure it was one of the first buildings that was built from the outside. The steel, the reason the World Trade Center had such narrow windows is that in between all the windows, you had the steel on the outside, the steel on the outside of the building." Which is it? Your loyalty is to another king, isn't it? you'd willingly concede any deception to stay asleep. You're so patriotic drapped in your false flag, yet you're unwilling to investigate? Riddle me ree. Another deflection is to honor the dead by continuing to follow the official narrative. An official narrative which has laid waste to Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan, created a refugee crisis in most European countries, killed millions of people (brown skinned Muslims and their sovereignty don't matter according to your narrative), vilified one of the world's great religions of over 600 mln people, created a massive war industry bonus system and sent militarized american youth off on a multi billion dollar worldwide goose chase. On one hand, you're not supposed to hurt the feelings of grieving "family" members and on the other hand you're supposed to forget the "feelings" of the ordinary people in the middle east in countries that didn't bomb your building (in the official narrative the pilots were a Saudi based terror group).  You don't question anything? Ever?

  Muslims = bad. That seems a little simplistic...unless you're being pushed into this position intentionally, then you're just a dupe, everybody's fool. In all cases the admonition is to stick to the official line. In the first instance because you'll hurt "feelings." In the second to propagate a revenge narrative x1000. In both cases, they keep the script firmly on the "burning twins." The images are always the same, the same loop, the same sequence, the same fragment of time. What is always tried in these circumstances is to move the conversation into the "conspiracy theory" basket. The mocking, "truther" cat calls and the "you're either with us or against us" nonsense.  My argument is fairly straightforward, "a group of people did something."The reasons varied in terms of motive, but the overall purpose was satanic. Pure evil. The tool of lucifer is deception. There were proximate and strategic objectives and everyone had their own angle. The "intelligence" angle was one big winner in all of it, the "patriot" act (mirror), operation iraqi freedom (mirror) homeland security (mirror). All the other legislation to turn the US (and the world) into a police state. The jewish angle is another obvious win for one "side" over another.  That is not over quite yet, is - real-is will receive a knock on the door one of these days.

Who was head of the C_A? Geroge Tenet "Tenet appealed to the original mission of the agency, which had been to "prevent another Pearl Harbor" Who was Poppy (Heroin) Bush? Former head of C_A. Who was Cheney? Former boss of Halliburton (military contractor). Who was President? Baby bush. Who was head of security in twin towers? Marvin Bush.  When was FBI director appointed?  When did Larry take over the lease?  Connection of Rummy to Cheney? Wolfowitz? Perle? "Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century  One theory is that the towers were built with the satanic sacrifice in mind by the Rs in R plaza. This makes sense on a construction level (nothing is designed to be permanent, especially in a major city). The twin towers were old and their infrastructure was creaking. To take down the buildings in a conventional manner would have involved lots of public consultation, reports and working with the surrounding owners over a protracted period of time. The towers were every well built with an exceptionally strong steel outer-casing augmented by an inner pile (take a look at Japanese anti earth quake technologies for reference points). So the traditional path of demolition was going to be expensive. Why not demolish it anyway and blame ...a whatever? Collect the insurance? Rebuild with on the same site after banking a profit. The twins were taken down on a specific day. A day that ties to a calendar. It was a scripted event. It’s a show of power and a trigger (quite literally, a smoking gun). They even removed the evidence and threw it in a river (figuratively) by shipping all the steel off and melting it down.

You were pre-programmed for years by Hollywood and MSM for this event. If you’re looking for proof on that one, there are lot’s of sources (you don’t even need to dig really). All day long on that day they re-ran the same sequences (imprinting) and the same interviews from the same angles (remember a major city has many viewpoints). We only have four still images from the pentagon, one of the most secure buildings in the world. In fact that has been the pattern for these types of "happenings," low quality grainy images from only one view point and people being asked to “hand in” their footage for investigations that go nowhere, even now, with the quality of everyone's camera. We all know: https://twitter.com/rmthompson07/status/1172099449847463936 Three towers: https://twitter.com/DrutangAtHome/status/1171652481144766469 Same day: https://twitter.com/MemoryHold/status/1171897368964476929 NYFD: https://twitter.com/dontnwid/status/1172022723859615745 Dancing Israelis: https://twitter.com/MemoryHold/status/1171504832500264962 Gen. Wesley Clark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNt7s_Wed_4 This individual took a timely walk into a museum recently: https://twitter.com/VincentCrypt46 A few days ago Jeb Bush got some blowback on his “disgusting” tweet response: https://twitter.com/JebBush/status/1171955174065283072 Larry Silverstein: https://youtu.be/WXgpB-3xKKk  “Pull it” Pre-programming:  https://gfycat.com/ru/advancedalarmingarrowana-fight-club-movies

"As the New York Times ' David W. Dunlap points out, Virgil's "you" actually refers to the characters, Nisus and Euryalus, two warrior-lovers who "have just slaughtered the enemy in an orgy of violence, skewering soldiers whom ambushed in their sleep." And for this massacre, Nisus and Euryalus are killed, their heads impaled on spears. Of the inscription at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Helen Morales, a classicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the Times, "If we take into account its original context, the quotation is more applicable to the aggressors in the 9/11 tragedy than those honored by the memorial…So my first reaction is that the quotation is shockingly inappropriate for the U.S. victims of the 9/11 attack." https://jezebel.com/quote-on-the-9-11-memorial-is-shockingly-inappropriate-1560975808 Read the full article

[pamphletstoinspire]

Lent

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’”

Origin of the word Lent

The etymological meaning of Lent is ‘long days’. It comes from ‘langgitinaz’, a prehistoric West Germanic compound formed from ‘lanngaz’ ‘long’ and an element ‘tina’-denoting ‘day’. This signified originally spring, an allusion to the lengthening days at that time of the year. It passed into Old English as lencten, which became Middle English Lenten, but in the 13th century the en-was dropped from the noun, leaving Lenten to function as an adjective. By this time too the secular sense of spring was fast dying out, having been usurped by the application of Lent to the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

This Teutonic word Lent from the Anglo-Saxon period translates to the more significant Latin term quadragesima meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the ‘fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times. This etymology is of some importance in explaining the early development of the Easter fast.

Biblical Reference

Lent is one of the oldest observations on the Christian calendar. Early Church father Irenanus of Lyons (c. 130-200) wrote of such a season in the earliest days of the Church, but back then it lasted only two or three days, not the 40 observed today. In 325, the Council of Nicea discussed a 40-day Lenten season of fasting, but it is unclear whether its original intent was just for new Christians preparing for Baptism, but it soon encompassed the whole Church.

How exactly the churches counted those 40 days varied depending on location. In the East, one only fasted on weekdays. The Western Church’s Lent was one week shorter, but included Saturdays. In both places, the observance was both strict and serious. Only one meal was taken a day, near the evening. There was to be no meat, fish, or animal products eaten.

Until the 600’s, Lent began on Quadragesima (Fortieth) Sunday, but Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) moved it to Wednesday, now called Ash Wednesday, to secure the exact number of 40 days in Lent-not counting Sundays, which were fast days. Gregory, who is regarded as the father of the medieval papacy, is also credited with the ceremony that gives the day its name. As Christians came forth to the church for forgiveness, Gregory marked their foreheads with ashes reminding them of the biblical symbol of repentance (sackcloth and ashes) and mortality: “You are dust, and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).

By the 800’s, some Lenten practices were already becoming more relaxed. First, Christians were allowed to eat after 3p.m. By the 1400’s, it was noon. Eventually, various foods (like fish) were allowed, and in 1966 the Roman Catholic Church only restricted fast days to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. It should be noted that practices in Eastern Orthodox churches are still quite strict.

The forty day period has symbolic importance in religion. Moses and Elias spent forty days in the wilderness; the Jews wandered forty years searching for the Promised Land; Jonah gave the city of Nineveh forty days’ grace in which to repent. Jesus retreated into the wilderness and fasted for forty days to prepare for his ministry. It was for him a time of contemplation, reflection, and preparation. So by observing Lent, most Christians join Jesus on His retreat.

The Lenten period of forty days owes its origin, as noted, to the Latin word Quadragesima, originally signifying forty hours. This referred to the forty hours of complete fasting which preceded the Easter celebration in the early Church. The main ceremony was the baptizing of the initiates on Easter Eve, and the fast was a preparation to receive this sacrament. Later, the period from Good Friday until Easter Day was extended to six days, to correspond with the six weeks of training, necessary to instruct the converts who were to be baptized.

A strict schedule was adhered to in the teaching of the converts. In Jerusalem near the end of the fourth century, classes were held throughout the seven weeks of Lent for three hours a day. With the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of Rome in the 4th century, its character was endangered by the great influx of new members. To combat the hazard, the Lenten fast and practices of self renunciation were required of all Christians. The less zealous of the converts were thus brought more securely into the Christian fold.

Sometime before the year 330 the duration of Lent had been fixed at forty days, to correspond to Christ’s forty days in the desert. It was evident quite early that a six-week Lent contained only thirty-six days-since Sunday is never a fast day. Gradually four more days were added at the beginning of Lent and became known as Ash Wednesday. The first evidence of this increase is in the Galasian Sacramentary of the early eight century.

In Mark’s Gospel, the desert marks the beginning of Jesus’ battle with Satan; the ultimate test will be in Jesus’ final hours on the cross. In a similar way, our Lenten observances are only a beginning, a preparation for and a reinforcement of our ongoing struggle to resist the temptations we face in our lives. During Lent, we are led by the Holy Ghost to remember the vows of Baptism in which we promised to reject sin and to follow Jesus. Just as Jesus was ministered to by the angels, God also supports us in our struggle against sin and temptation. We succeed because Jesus conquered sin once and for all, in his saving death on the cross.

While, over the years, modifications have been made to the Lenten observances, making our practices not only simple but also easy, Catholics have been taught, “If you gave something up for the Lord, tough it out. Do not act like a Pharisee looking for a loophole.” Moreover, an emphasis must be placed on performing spiritual works, like attending the Stations of the Cross, attending Mass, making a weekly holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament, taking time for personal prayer and spiritual reading and most especially making a good confession and receiving sacramental absolution. Although the practices may have evolved over the centuries, the focus remains the same: to repent of sin, to renew our faith and to prepare to celebrate joyfully the mysteries of our salvation.

While Lent is about giving up (i.e. fasting), it is also about putting something positive in its place. The best way to remove vice is to cultivate virtue. Lent has been a traditional time of helping the poor and doing acts of charity and mercy...Giving alms can be done in more ways than just giving out money to people on the street. It can be done by helping your family, friends and neighbors...One of the best ways to give alms is to get out of your comfort zone and volunteering for a charity or shelter...Lent is a perfect time to discern a call to these or any other ministry…

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[scriptlgbt]

Catholicism-Related Homophobia Masterpost

Hello!

Mod Deryn here, as your local Roman Catholic gal, here to talk to you about some common comments/’arguments’/views/ideologies held/made by homophobic Catholics, and what your characters can say back to them.

TW for transphobia, homophobia, religion, and general bleh-ness.

I want to start off by saying that any self-respecting Catholic that actually practices what they preach would not be homophobic, because it literally goes against the 10 Commandments (basically the ten rules that you’re not supposed to break ever because they’re especially bad sins), and violates the second-most important commandment, which is to love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:39). We as laypeople explicitly do not have the right to judge (much less punish) anyone, no matter what. We are called to love everyone. 

Anyway, your homophobic Catholic is likely to be more of a ‘conservative Catholic,’ so to speak, rooting their arguments in traditionalism and condemning more progressive stances in Catholicism that are pro-LGBT. (Please keep in mind that while many Catholics refer to God as a He, I refer to Them as They, and will thus refer to Them as that).

Common Arguments that your Homophobic Catholic Character May Use and How to Confront Them:

1. The Genesis Argument (AKA Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve) This is a very common “argument,” and basically centres on the idea that in the first creation story (and yes!! there are two included in Genesis!!) God creates Adam (the first man) and then Eve (the first woman). In the second Genesis story, God tries to find the perfect ‘companion’ for Adam, and when nothing works, They make Adam fall asleep and pull out Adam’s rib and make a new human (Eve) out of that rib. Implausible as it sounds, it is one of the two possible explanations of creation that exist in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, as well as the first book of the Torah.

It is important to realize that in the original Hebrew text, the first human is referred to as Ish, which means ‘humankind,’ and then, when Eve is created, they are then referred to as ish and isha (man and woman). Basically, men weren’t created first because just ‘humanity’ was created first. (To be fair, this is more of a side-note than anything, but I do find it important to note).

How to Confront this Argument:

A) Have your character point out that this creation story is, quite frankly, just that. A story. The Bible includes two separate accounts of creation for just this reason, to make it clear that the creation story is a story, not an actual account of reality. (And no, I’m not being a heretic, this is literally what’s taught in religion class. Ask my religion teacher with a Masters in Religious Education). The use of repetition in the first story (i.e. “And there was evening and there was morning, the [x] day”), the largely symbolic language, and other, subtler hints are meant to clue in the readers that the creation story is largely symbolic and not an account of real events. Most of Genesis is like this; stories and things that must be taken into the context of the time they were written in in order to fully understand what the messages are.

Almost all (Old Testament) Bible stories are not meant to be taken literally, and your Catholic homophobe will likely be the die-hard ‘the bible said this so it must be true.’ If that is the case, your character could mention some other things the bible mentions that are somewhat ridiculous in a modern context and have to be taken in the context they were written in - for example, in Leviticus 19:19, God instructs the people that “[they should] not wear clothing woven of two types of material.” Given that that includes most fabric nowadays, something has to give.

2. “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong!!” (AKA - I’m going to pretend I read this passage so I have a reason to be uncomfortable with you).

Your character is likely to be referencing either the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) or that one line from Romans (You Know What I Mean).

(Rape Mention TW)

To sum up, in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the people there are like, super sinful, so God wants to destroy them all a la flood style. But Abraham (God’s Main Dude - Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic people all trace their lineage back to him, I believe) was like ‘hey, wait a second there God, I have family there, don’t kill them.’ So to ‘test’ Sodom and Gomorrah, God sent two angels in disguise as humans to go visit Abraham’s family, who welcomes them in. However, the rest of the residents of Sodom all go to Lot (Abraham’s family - I can’t remember the exact relation), but they go to Lot’s house and demand to be allowed the permission of sleeping with Lot’s guests (the angels). Lot, being a good person, doesn’t do that.

The next morning, the angels tell Lot and his family to clear out before they destroy the two cities, they do so (although Lot’s wife looks back and gets turned into a pillar of salt), and are thus saved.

(End Rape TW)

This story has been interpreted in two major ways - one is that it is a warning against homosexuality, the other being that it’s a warning against inhospitality. The second one, in context, makes more sense. Lot is spared, not because he didn’t display any homosexual tendencies, but because he was a good host and tried to protect the angels. His wife, despite being not described as gay in any way, is turned into a pillar of salt because she disobeys their guests’ wishes.

Basically - the main biblical story that Catholics use to preach against homosexuality is a misunderstanding of the text.

The line in Romans about homosexuality is based off this story, in most interpretations, and is thus also based on a misunderstanding of the text, and thus unreasonable to take into consideration.

How Your Character Could Confront This Argument:

Assuming your character had read the passages in question (which isn’t necessarily untrue to life - when I first began realizing I was gay, I started scanning as much of the bible as possible to find out what the Bible actually said about homosexuality. However, I will admit that that’s a rather uncommon reaction, especially if your character has not been raised in a very faith-immersed environment. A character with less knowledge about this background could instead point out the inadequacies of the Bible as a set of rules to live one’s life (Jesus Himself did not follow all the rules that the Pharisees had set - for one example, He would heal people on Shabbat, regardless of the fact that it was supposed to be a day where you did very little - I don’t know the exact rules, but He wasn’t supposed to be healing people).

Not only that, but Jesus (who set out the New Commandments and basically was sent out into the world to create a new era of Love and, depending on who you talked to, basically voided the majority of the Old Testament) never actually said anything about homosexuality, and the Old Testament is where the majority of homophobic arguments are found, showing that a lot of people who use these arguments are ignoring the part of Bible they’re arguably supposed to be paying the most attention to.

3. God Hates X Group!

Nope. God is Love. The two words are literally interchangeable throughout the Bible. Remember that passage from Corinthians - Love is patient, Love is kind?

Now think... God is patient, God is kind. Slow to anger, rich in kindness...

In the Beginning, Love created the heavens and the earth.

It goes on.

The spiritual embodiment of love literally cannot hate. It’s just... not possible. Not only is this person presuming to know what an all-powerful and presumably omniscient deity believes in and thinks, they are also presuming to believe that God would hate Their own creation.

Again in the New Testament, there are a startling amount of parables about tax collectors. Why? Everyone hated tax collectors. They were often corrupt, took money for themselves, and sometimes left families destitute. It was a pretty common feeling among the people that these collectors were destined for hell (and good riddance!). However, Jesus goes on up there and tells them that tax collectors, prostitutes... all these people who are condemned by the public? They’re going to heaven first. Why? Because they’re still God’s children, no matter what, and God doesn’t hate them.

How to Have Your Characters Refute This Argument:

“Oh, I thought your God was a loving God?”

Listen, God literally sent Their own progeny, their only child, to be humiliated, tortured, and then killed. Why? To save everyone. No matter who, or what, or how, or why, they’re ALL being saved. Anything else violates Catholic teaching.

4. “You must be fruitful and multiply!” (AKA: Being gay is wrong because you can’t naturally reproduce).

Transphobia aside, this view is (again) based heavily on Genesis, which was written in 1400 BCE. It’s worth keeping in mind the context in which this was written (child mortality rates were high, people didn’t live very long, having lots of children was almost necessary because of mortality rates, etc). Using hermeneutics (the modern study of the Bible, taking into account context, storytelling format, authors’ bias, and so much more), we are able to make better judgements in relation to what the Bible says.

Now, it is generally understood that people aren’t required to have twelve children in order to obey God because that doesn’t make sense within a modern era. There are blessed single people who do not choose to be nuns but choose to live single and are thus sanctified (my grade six teacher is one, though I forget the exact title). All members of the clergy do not have children - priests because they represent God, and nuns and monks because of spiritual obligations to God. Obviously, if so many members (and important members!) of the church - both lay and clergy - are considered just as sacred as those who did have children, it stands to reason that the only thing that truly matters is their dedication to God, not the number of children they had.

Besides that, adoption is a thing, surrogacy and artificial insemination is a thing, and this is ultimately an outdated worldview.

How To Have Your Character Refute This:

If your homophobic character uses that exact line, consider having your character point out how long ago that part of the Bible was written. Alternatively, they could point out the number of LGBT+ couples/families seeking out adoptions and other methods of having children, point out the transphobia in their statements, or otherwise find flaws in their logic as seen.

-

TL;DR: In my opinion, while there are absolutely many interpretations of the Bible, hatred is not one of them, and using Roman Catholicism to justify homophobia is upsetting, to say the least, because using God to promote hatred goes against the whole point of a religion based on love.

Most of these arguments can be easily refuted by someone reminding the prosecutor that Roman Catholicism is about love, not hate.

And if refutation isn’t enough, maybe hitting them over the head with a bible will do it (but I generally don’t endorse doing that. Violence doesn’t really work).

Best of luck writing!

-Mod Deryn

All bible transcripts come from the New Revised Standard Edition Bible.

[pooma-bible]

Pas. Johnraj Lamech

⭐

Greetings in the matchless Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Topic: A Worldwide Ministry (Par 1) – Breaking Down of Prejudice Resulting Into Opening of the Door to Gentiles!

Rhema Word (1): Acts 10:15 (NIV) “The voice spoke to him (Peter) a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Rhema Word (2): Ephesians 3:6 (NIV) “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s pray. Our Gracious Loving Father, thank you for giving us an opportunity to meditate Your Word today along with your children who have been called to live a holy life Father. I commit everyone who are all meditating this message into your mighty hand Father. Bless them and give them the oneness of Spirit and make their heart as a good land to receive each and every Word which is living and active Lord. Thank You Holy Spirit for helping us to understand the in-depth treasure of Your Word and helping us to live a life as per Your Word Lord. We give all the Glory and Honour to You only Father. We pray in the mighty Name of Your beloved Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

Peter was staying at Joppa on the Mediterranean coast. It was the city where the prophet Jonah had fled to board a ship to Tarshish. He was trying to run from the Lord’s command to go and preach at Nineveh, the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria. About 30 miles north of Joppa and some 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem, was the Roman provincial capital, Caesarea, where the governor lived. Under his authority were some 3,000 troops, including the Italian cohort. Serving with this unit was Cornelius, a centurion who commanded 100 soldiers. The Jews despised the Roman occupation of Palestine; they hoped that Messiah would come and deliver them from the Roman oppression.

And so, the stage is set: you have a Gentile Roman soldier, representing the despised occupation of Israel, residing in the main city of the Roman occupation. Thirty miles south you have a Jewish apostle, temporarily residing at the spot where Jonah had taken off in disobedience to his commission to preach to Israel’s enemy. And behind the scenes, God is orchestrating the events to bring these two men together in a way that shocked both of them by breaking down the wall of prejudice between them. The result of the story is that today you and I who are Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the church with the Jews, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Eph. 3:6).

Prejudice (discrimination) existed from the beginning of time (Cain & Abel, Genesis 4:11). Yes, prejudice is everywhere in the world – in every nation, state, city and neighbourhood and even within families. There are atleast two basic reasons for prejudice:

a) People differ in nationality, beliefs, religion, speech, looks, behaviour, ability, energy, position, status, social standing, possessions, wealth, birth and heritage. Yes, prejudice arises when people feel they and their differences make them better than others.

b) Mistreatment causes prejudice, both mistreating others and being mistreated. When a person mistreats others or is mistreated by others, his nature is immediately aroused to become prejudicial and judgemental. The mistreatment that gives rise to prejudice covers a wide range of behaviour: ignoring, neglecting, joking, gossiping, opposing, cursing, abusing, persecuting, segregating and enslaving.

This passage recorded in Acts 10:1-33 strikes a fatal blow against prejudice. It shows forever that Jesus Christ has erased all prejudices and barriers between people. Jews and Gentiles are now one in Christ Jesus.

Let us try to understand the breaking down the prejudices between Gentile Cornelius and the Jewish minister Simon Peter in the following three parts today with the help of Holy Spirit:

1] Prejudice – Jew Vs Gentile – Breakdown of Prejudice in the Gentile, Cornelius:

2] Prejudice – Jew Vs Gentile – Breakdown of Prejudice in the Jew, Simon Peter:

3] The Confrontation and Lessons Learned by the Jew & Gentile:

1] Prejudice – Jew Vs Gentile – Breakdown of Prejudice in the Gentile, Cornelius:

Remember, it is God who breaks down prejudice as it is so deep-seated in the heart of man. Yes, only God can erase it and reconcile man.

a) Cornelius was a soldier, a military officer, a Centurion in the Roman Army. The Bible says in Acts 10:1 “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment.” He is stationed in Caesarea which was a Gentile city, a place in which Jews would never set foot.

b) Cornelius had an unusual reverence to God. The Bible says in Acts 10:2 “He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.”

Yes, he was a devout man: one who worshipped the true and living God.

Yes, he was a God-fearing man: one who sensed the presence of God in the world and knew he was responsible to God to live righteously, justly and morally toward all men.

Yes, he was a benevolent and charitable man: one who gave to charity generously.

Yes, he was a praying man: the word “deomenos” means “begging of God. Note, he was regularly praying.

He had looked at nature and at the world around him and seen that there was bound to be one God who had created all things as Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

c) Cornelius was given a vision from God. The Bible says in Acts 10:3-6 “One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked. The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

Please note five points here:

(i) Cornelius was in prayer when the vision came.

(ii) The vision involved an angel bringing a message from God.

(iii) Cornelius “stared at him” (atenisas) - that is, fastened his eyes, gazed, focussed his attention; he was startled, frightened.

(iv) Cornelius realized the angel of God was a messenger from God.

(v) The message to Cornelius was two fold:

(a) His prayers and charity had come before God as a memorial (Acts 10:4).

(b) He was to send men to Joppa to see Peter and ask him what to do (Acts 10:5). Now, note a critical point: despite Cornelius’ enormous reverence and faithful service for God, he was still not doing enough, something else was missing and one-thing was still lacking.

Yes, Cornelius was aware that he still lacked something, very aware of the fact. He had asked God what he still needed. Despite all his reverence and good works, he still felt a lack, an emptiness; and he was begging God to fill that emptiness, to show him what he still had to do.

d) Cornelius was obedient to the heavenly vision and instructions. He sent two trusted household servants and his most trusted military orderly to find Simon Peter. Cornelius would seek the answer to his heart’s need from a Jew.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”

He further said in John 7:17 “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.” And He said in John 15:10 “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

The Bible says in Revelation 22:14 “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”

2] Prejudice – Jew Vs Gentile – Breakdown of Prejudice in the Jew, Simon Peter:

Let us see how God has broken the prejudice in the Jew, Simon Peter. Yes, the servants from Cornelius had almost reached the city of Joppa where Peter was. They would be approaching Peter soon with the request to visit and help Cornelius. However, Peter was not ready – to welcome these men, to return with them to visit Cornelius, to stay and share in the home of Cornelius.

Why? Cornelius was a Gentile and Peter was a Jew. Yes, there was a deep-seated racial discrimination between the two. Welcoming and visiting and sharing in the homes of each other was out of the question. And on top of that, there was a religious difference, a difference that was even more deeply seated in Peter’s mind than the racial difference. Peter was just not ready for these Gentile men to approach him with the request to visit Cornelius the Gentile, not yet.

BUT GOD WAS READY. And it is God who makes the difference by breaking down the prejudice. God can reconcile the Jew to the Gentile and the Gentile to the Jew. God can reconcile man to man; He can bring peace to men and between men. Note these THREE FACTS:

Fact 01: Peter prayed often every day. This is seen in the fact that he was praying about the sixth hour (12 Noon Jewish time). This was one of the three prayer hours practiced by Jews. Peter got alone and prayed at least three times daily.

Yes, Peter was such a man of prayer that God could intervene in his life and direct him, give him specific instructions. It was while he was praying that God spoke to Peter.

Fact 02: Peter was mere man, very human. Despite his being the leader of Jesus’ apostles – the great apostle to the Jews, a man of great spiritual maturity and depth, a great servant of the Lord, a minister highly esteemed – Peter was still just a man, a man who hungered and thirsted, ached and hurt, was weak and frail, prejudiced and too often wrong just like the rest of us.

The significant point is this: being saved and spiritually mature and called to serve God did not make Peter perfect. It did not free him from need and lack, nor from sin. Yes, Peter as a mere man was subject to hunger just as all men – subject to the prejudices until God changed him. And praise God, He was about to change Peter’s prejudice against us, the Gentiles! If God had not changed him and his prejudices, we would still be lost and without Christ in this world.

Fact 03: Peter experienced a trance. The Greek says that “a trance (an ecstasy) came upon him”; that is, he was transported out of himself (ekstasis). His mind was so concentrated, so focussed that Peter lost all sense of the world around him. He was swallowed up in the thoughts of God, transported mentally out of this world. It is something like a daydream, but a daydream so concentrated and focused that all contact with one’s surroundings is completely lost. It is a time of ecstasy in the presence of the Lord, receiving His Word, whatever He has to say to one’s heart.

Let us further explore “What God did through the vision to break down Peter’s prejudice in his daydream?

a) The trance (ecstasy) was of heaven. Peter saw heaven open. The Bible says in Acts 10:10 “Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance.”

Peter’s prejudice was encrusted and hardened. He had never known anything but prejudice within his environment except what Christ had demonstrated. Yes, Peter did not think or know that he was prejudiced. He thought he was only standing against the unrighteousness and injustices of men, that he was to ignore and have nothing to do with ungodly and unjust men. If Peter was to change and begin to reach out to the heathen, the ungodly and unjust, he had to know that the instructions were from heaven, from God Himself.

b) The large sheet upon which a meal was served was huge. The Bible says in Acts 10:11 “He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.” The sheet contained all manner of animals.

c) The instruction to Peter was, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat” (Acts 10:13).

d) Peter refused, for the animals were common and unclean according to the laws of Jewish religion (Acts 10:14-16). Note the enormous spiritual struggle Peter was going through.

e) Peter was clearly corrected. The Bible says in Acts 10:15 “The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

f) Peter experienced the event three times and then the trance ended with the platter being received up into heaven (Acts 10:16).

g) Peter was perplexed. While Peter was thinking about the trance and wondering what it meant, the men arrived downstairs and asked for him (Acts 10:17).

h) Peter’s sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s leadership is clearly seen from this point on. Yes, it was the Holy Spirit who told him (i) that the men were downstairs; (ii) to go “with them” (Peter did not yet know that they were Gentiles); (iii) not to hesitate – do not waver, wonder, doubt, question the thing to be done; and (iv) that He, the Holy Spirit, had sent the men after him.

Yes, Peter did not know the men were Gentiles. But the Holy Spirit had just told Peter exactly what to do. Peter could not question this fact and he was now ready to have his prejudice against Gentiles erased.

i) Peter received the Gentile servants. He obeyed the Holy Spirit, did exactly what the Spirit said. Peter even invited the men into the house to be his guests, an unheard of thing.

Psalmist David says in Psalm 25:5 “Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Saviour, and my hope is in you all day long.” He further said in Psalm 27:11 “Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors.”

Again Psalmist David says in Psalm 143:10 “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”

Yes, finally, God could break the prejudice seated in the hearts of Peter which enabled us to have Christ in our lives, today. Hallelujah!!!

3] The Confrontation and Lessons Learned by the Jew & Gentile:

The confrontations and lessons learned by the Jew and the Gentile, the prejudiced of the world are as follows:

Lesson 01: The preparation by Peter: Peter took six Jewish believers, orthodox Jews, with him (Acts 10:45; 11:42). He knew he was treading troubled waters by associating with Gentiles; he sensed he would need witnesses to what he was doing. Therefore, he was preparing himself against attack (Acts 11:11).

Lesson 02: The preparation by Cornelius: Cornelius was expectant, excited, eagerly waiting for their arrival. He had “called together his relatives and close friends”. There were many present. Note also the faith of Cornelius. He knew Peter would be coming, that God would fulfil His Word and do what He had promised.

That is why Psalmist David says in Psalm 34:22 “The Lord will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.” He further said in Psalm 37:5 “Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.”

Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 26:4 “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD HIMSELF, is the Rock eternal.”

Just see the faith of Cornelius: He was already witnessing by bringing people to hear the messenger from God. How about our faith? Let us check our hearts.

Lesson 03: The confrontation of the Jew and the Gentile, two men humbled by God.

Yes, Cornelius had been humbled by the vision from God. He had been mulling over the experience for four days now, being humbled and prepared more and more to receive the Jewish messenger. When he confronted Peter, he was so humbled he prostrated himself before Peter in an act of deep reverence.

Yes, Peter also demonstrated humility. It was the custom to bow before men of high honour, showing reverence and respect for them. But God had humbled Peter too. Peter forbade the act, disallowed it. No man is to be idolized or reverenced in the sense of being held in awe. Peter rebuked Cornelius: “I am only a man myself” (Acts 10:26).

Jesus accepted such reverence and worship (Matthew 2:11; 8:2; 9:18), and He accepted it from Peter himself (Matthew 8:2; Luke 5:8). But Peter says no man is to bow or reverence another man, no matter who they are. We are all mere men, each one saved by God’s wonderful grace.

Jesus said in Matthew 18:4 “Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Apostle Paul said in Romans 12:3 “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.”

Apostle Paul while writing to Philippians says in Philippians 2:3-4 “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

That is why Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 5:5 “Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Lesson 04: The lesson learned by Peter as explained by him in Acts 10:28-29 “Then he said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore, I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. I ask, then, for what reason have you sent for me?” Yes, Peter now knew that no man was impure or unclean. He now knew:

That Christ had abolished the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

That Christ had abolished the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile.

That Christ had abolished all distinctions between men, whether racial, social or some caste system.

No man was to treat any other man with anything but love and care, mercy and forgiveness, concern and compassion. Peter’s prejudice was wiped out, erased, and overcome. It had been overcome by God. The door of salvation was about to be thrown open to the Gentiles forever.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:44-45 “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

That is why Apostle Paul while writing to Romans said in Romans 10:12 “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.”

While writing to Galatians, Paul said in Galatians 3:26-29 “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

While writing to Ephesians, Paul said in Ephesians 6:9 “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him.”

Lesson 05: The lesson learned by Cornelius was THREEFOLD:

a) The man who truly seeks God moves God. Cornelius declared that God answered his prayer (Acts 10:30-31).

b) The man who seeks God must listen to God and obey God. Cornelius declared that he listened and did exactly what God said, and that he did it immediately (Acts 10:33).

c) The man who seeks God must be receptive to the Word of God (Acts 10:33).

The Bible says in Acts 17:11-12 “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.”

That is why Apostle Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”

Thus, we’ve seen that we all are prone to prejudice, but that God is gracious to gently break us of this sin so that He can work through us. His purpose is to spread the gospel among the nations for His glory, and He does it through His servants who are willing to cross cultural barriers. When He confronts our prejudice, we must yield in obedience to Him. What is the result?

When we yield to the Lord and put to death our prejudice, He will use us mightily in His service. As we’ve seen, God had prepared the listeners and He had prepared the preacher. Cornelius had invited in all of his friends and neighbours, who had gathered, as Cornelius puts it (Acts 10:33), “before God to hear all that [Peter] had been commanded by the Lord” to say. That’s a ready situation for God to work, when the hearts of the people are prepared and the heart of the speaker is prepared and they gather in God’s presence to hear a message that God commanded him to give! As we see, Peter didn’t even get a chance to finish his message before the Holy Spirit fell upon everyone there and they all got saved. And, of course, this was just the beginning of the gospel moving out into Gentile territory. Yes, the same gospel that saved the apostles was mighty to save the Gentiles who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of Peter’s obedience in putting to death his prejudice, the gospel has come to us who otherwise never would have known God.

Shall we ask God to show us our prejudices? When He does, let us obey Him by putting our prejudices to death and by showing His love and offering His gospel to those whom we might not naturally be inclined to like. Surely, He will use it to exalt His name among the nations!

Let us introspect ourselves.

Shall we always pray to our Lord like Cornelius?

Shall we not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart?

Shall we obey to God’s instructions immediately like Cornelius?

Are we allowing God to intervene in our lives when we are so deeply seated on some religion beliefs or doctrines?

Are we obeying to God when He instructs us to come out from our deep rooted behaviours which are against our Lord’s teachings?

Are we blocking our Lord’s plans in reaching the unreached souls with our own selfish plans which are contrary to God’s Plans?

Are we thinking that we are only standing against the unrighteousness and injustices of men, that we need to ignore and we have nothing to do with ungodly and unjust men?

Shall we obey to the Holy Spirit and do exactly what the Spirit says like Peter even the instructions are entirely opposite to our customs?

Are we having our faith on Jesus while going for sharing the gospel to Gentiles or preparing ourselves by taking fellow believers along with us like Peter?

Are we so excited, expectant, eagerly waiting for God’s presence and miracles while doing God’s gospel work amongst Gentiles like Cornelius?

Shall we commit our ways to the Lord, trust in Him so that He shall bring the desired results according to His perfect will?

Shall we humble ourselves like Cornelius and Peter keeping our Lord’s purpose in mind?

Shall we look for the interests of others instead of looking out for our own interests?

Shall we treat everyone with love and care, mercy and forgiveness, concern and compassion?

Shall we yield to the Lord and put to death our prejudice so that He can use us mightily in His service?

Shall we ask God to show us our prejudices and obey Him when He does?

Let us Pray: Our Heavenly Gracious Father, we thank You for helping us to understand about “Breaking Down of Prejudice Resulting into Opening of the Door to Gentiles” today Father. Father, please help us to do good always without losing our hearts, help us to Your instructions immediately like Cornelius, help us to allow Yourselves to intervene in our lives when we are seated on some religion beliefs or doctrines Father. Father, please help us to obey You when You instruct us to come out of our deep-rooted behaviours and our plans which are contrary to Your Plans Father. Please help us to obey to the Holy Spirit and do exactly what the Spirit says like Peter even the instructions are entirely opposite to our customs, help us to commit our ways to You Father and trust You completely so that You shall bring the desired results according to Your perfect will Father. Please help us to treat everyone with love and care, mercy and forgiveness, concern and compassion and look for the interests of others instead of looking our for our own interest Father. Father, please show us our prejudices and help us to obey You and put to death our prejudice so that You can use us mightily in Your service Father. Father, please help us to understand Your wisdom, Your will and Your mercy and try to seek Your perfect will besides seeking Your power to do the miracles and use the miracles to make people believe and glorify You Father. We give all praise, glory and honour to Your Holy Name. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

God bless you all.

[the-lgbt-youth-blog]

Hi I'm a Catholic teen. I come from a loving family and church. But I really feel like there's something wrong with me. Im pretty sure I'm bi. How do I tell my parents? My realitives? I love my family and religion so so so much but I also like girls and guys. Do I hide it? Or do I tell them? Advice? PLEASE PLEASE HELP. I'm really scared

Xynn says:

Hello there!

Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. As a disclaimer, I’m not catholic myself, so I might not be able to speak about your faith the way a believer would.

First off: being bisexual isn’t wrong. Maybe that’s what you’ve been told all your life, and you might really believe it. But I’m telling you, it’s not. Hitting someone? That’s arguably wrong (and even then, what are the circumstances? self-defense is a thing). Hitting on someone? Liking men and women? Doesn’t break my leg, does it? Who does it hurt? No one! If you’re feeling that way then according to your faith it’s in the grand scheme of things. So it’s good. God made you that way. Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee. Who can criticize the making of human creatures? It’s natural. More than your sneakers or your laptop.

I don’t think that religion, in your case catholic christianity, and bisexuality, are irreconciliable. Obviously if you are convinced bisexuality is wrong and evil you might have to do some work on yourself. I was in denial about my sexuality for a great long while and when I came to terms with myself I wasn’t doing ok at all. But it’s accepting that how I felt was real and fine that made me happy.

There are plenty of people out there who connect based on the intersection between their faith and their belonging in the LGBT community. I don’t know where you’re from but I would be very happy to help if you have difficulty finding such groups in your area or online (yet another masterpost huh?). They can probably recommend accepting parishes and the like.

1 Cor 7 literally says that what’s best is celibacy (be it for straight people or gay/bi/pan people), but if you can’t do that, it’s alright as long as everything you do is consensual. Jesus also pushes for acceptance for men who do not have sex with women in Matt 19:11, 12. I personally think that the strongest message of the New Testament is of love and acceptance towards everyone, not of behavior segregated morals and firm religious rules. Actually, historically speaking, strong, unchanging moral and social rules inside the Jewish community (or rather the elite) were actually what he was denouncing. Luke 10, 25-37 is literally about how two men following strong ritual-related rules are unable to follow the most important rule, helping your neighbor, whereas a “pagan”, an “unmoral” person actually does, precisely because they’re not following those black & white rules on what you’re allowed to do.

I invite you to read more on lgbt-friendly interpretation on the Bible here.

So that was the theological part. Now, concerning your family and friends, you have to remember that coming out is never an obligation. It’s your choice. Sexual orientation is both a very personal thing and something that we are used to share with people because it influences greatly our relationships. Which means you can choose to be very open about it or keep it for yourself: there’s no good or bad choice. You seem to have trouble accepting yourself so I think it would be best to first, in a way, come out to yourself, before talking about it with others. It’s important that you feel strong and proud before coming out to people, because that way even if they do not react the way you wish they would, it will not break you.

It sounds like you’re coming from an environment where LGBT people are not presented in a positive light. If you feel scared of coming out, it probably means you’re not ready yet. Pay attention to how your family talks about lgb people. If they use slurs, if they mock us, or if they condemn acting on this type of sexual attraction, I’d rather advise you to stay in closet for the time being. If you don’t feel safe to come out, don’t. Your security is the primary concern here. I know it’s hard to keep this kind of things to yourself, but if your family isn’t being lgbt-friendly and you do not have a plan b if things go sour - another relative’s house, a friend’s place, a job, money - then it’s not a good idea. Wait for the day you have that plan b and/or become financially independant.

On the contrary, if your family members (or some, you can choose to only come out to a few of them) have expressed lgbt-friendly political views (eg. approve of marriage for all, are ok with gay/bi/pan people working for the church or with children...) or support for positive representation in media (eg. they went to watch Love Simon and they liked it), then it might be a bit scary, but it will probably go well!

tdlr; bi is ok. christianity and bisexuality aren’t mutually exclusive. you need to accept yourself before coming out. observe and test the waters with people you want to come out to. if things look bleak, only come out if/once you have external, physical support. if things look good take a deep breath and go for it.

[claudinei-de-jesus]

The Nature of the Church

What is the church? The issue can be resolved by considering: 1) The words that describe this institution; 2) The words that describe Christians; 3) The illustrations depicting the church.

1. Words that describe the church.

The Greek word in the New Testament for church is "ekklesia", which means "an assembly of called outwards". The term applies to:

1) The entire body of Christians in a city (Acts 11:22; 13: 1.)

2) A congregation, (1 Cor. 14: 19,35; Rom. 16: 5.)

3) The whole body of believers on earth. (Eph. 5:32.)

2. Words that describe Christians.

(a) Brothers. The church is a fraternity or spiritual communion, in which all divisions that separate humanity are abolished.

- "there is neither Greek nor Jewish": the deepest of all divisions based on religious history is overcome;

- "there is neither Greek nor barbarian". the most profound of all cultural divisions is overcome;

- "there is no servant or free". the most profound of all social and economic divisions is overcome;

- "there is neither male nor female". the most profound of all human divisions is overcome. (See Col. 3:11; Gal. 3:28.)

(b) Believers. Christians are called "believers" because their characteristic doctrine is faith in the Lord Jesus.

(c) Santos. They are called "saints" (literally "consecrated or pious") because they are separated from the world and dedicated to God.

(d) The elected. He refers to them as "elect", or "chosen", because God chose them for an important ministry and a glorious destiny.

(e) Disciples. They are "disciples" (literally "apprentices"), because they are under spiritual preparation with instructors inspired by Christ.

(f) Christians. They are "Christians" because their religion revolves around the Person of Christ.

(g) Those of the Way. In primitive days they were often known as "os do Caminho" (Brazilian version) (Acts 9: 2) because they lived according to a special way of living.

3. Church illustrations.

(a) The body of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ left this world more than nineteen centuries ago; however, he is still in the world. By this we mean that his presence is felt through the church, which is his body. Just as he lived his natural life on earth, in an individual human body, so he lives his mystical life in a body taken from the human race in general. At the conclusion of the Gospels we do not write: "End", but, "Continue", because the life of Christ continues to be expressed through his disciples as evidenced in the book of Acts of the Apostles and the subsequent history of the church. "As the Father sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21).

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me" (Matt. 10:40). Before leaving the earth, Christ promised to take on this new body. However, he used another illustration: "I am the vine, you are the branches" (John 15: 5). The vine is incomplete without the sticks and the sticks are nothing apart from the life that flows from the vine. If Christ is to be known to the world, he will have to be through those who take his name and participate in his life. To the extent that the church has been in contact with Christ, its Head, so it has participated in its life and experiences. Just as Christ was anointed at Jordan, so the church was anointed at Pentecost. Jesus went on preaching the Gospel to the poor, healing the brokenhearted, and preaching deliverance to the captives; and the true Church has always followed in his footsteps.

"What he is, we are also in this world" (1 John 4:17). Just as Christ was denounced as a political threat and ultimately crucified, so too has his church, in many cases, been crucified (figuratively speaking) by persecuting rulers. But like her Lord, she is risen! The life of Christ within it makes it indestructible. This thought of the church's identification with Christ was certainly in Paul's mind when he said: "In my flesh I fulfill the rest of Christ's afflictions, through the body, which is the church" (Col. 1:24).

The use of this illustration reminds us that the church is an organism and not merely an organization. An organization is a group of individuals voluntarily associated with a special purpose, such as a fraternal organization or a union. An organism is any living thing, which develops through the inherent life. Used figuratively, it means the sum total of the interlaced parts, in which the mutual relationship between them implies a relationship of the whole. In this way, an automobile could be considered an "organization" of certain mechanical parts; the human body is an organism because it is made up of many limbs and organs animated by a common life.

The human body is one, although it is made up of millions of living cells. In the same way, the body of Christ is one, though composed of born-again souls. Just as the human body is quickened by the soul, so the body of Christ is quickened by the Holy Spirit. "For we have all been baptized in a Spirit forming a body" (1 Cor. 12:13). The aforementioned facts indicate a unique feature of the religion of Christ. Thus writes W. H. Dunphy: He - and only he - of the founders of religion, produced a permanent organism, a permanent union of minds and souls, concentrated around his Person.

Christians are not merely followers of Christ, but members of Christ and members of one another. Buddha brought his society of "enlightened" together, but the relationship between them is nothing more than an external relationship, from a teacher to the student. What unites them is their doctrine, not their life. The same can be said of Zoroaster, Socrates, Muhammad, and the other religious geniuses of the race. But Christ is not only a teacher, he is the life of Christians. What he founded was not a society that studied and propagated his ideas, but an organism that lives for its life, a body inhabited and guided by its Spirit.

(b) The temple of God. (1Ped. 2: 5,6.) A temple is a place where God, who dwells everywhere, is located in a certain place, where his people can find him "at home". (1Kings 8:27.) Just as God lived in the Tabernacle and in the temple, so he lives, by his Spirit, in the church. (Ephesians 2: 21,22; 1 Cor. 3: 16,17.) In this spiritual temple, Christians, as priests, offer spiritual sacrifices, sacrifices of prayer, praise and good works.

(c) Christ's bride. This is an illustration used in both the Old and New Testaments to describe God's union and fellowship with his people. (2 Cor. 11: 2; Ephesians 5: 25-27; Rev. 19: 7; 21: 2; 22:17.) But we must remember that it is only an illustration, and its interpretation should not be forced. The purpose of a symbol is only to illuminate a certain side of the truth and not to provide the foundation for a doctrine. ... A Natureza da Igreja

Que é a igreja? A questão pode ser solucionada considerando: 1) As palavras que descrevem essa instituição; 2) As palavras que descrevem os cristãos; 3) As descrições que descrevem a igreja.

1. Palavras que descrevem a igreja.

A palavra grega no Novo Testamento para igreja é "ekklesia", que significa "uma assembléia de chamados para fora". O termo aplica-se a:

1) Todo o corpo de cristãos em uma cidade (Atos 11:22; 13: 1.)

2) Uma congregação, (1Cor. 14: 19,35; Rom. 16: 5.)

3) Todo o corpo de crentes na terra. (Efés. 5:32.)

2. Palavras que descrevem os cristãos.

(a) Irmãos. A igreja é uma fraternidade ou comunhão espiritual, não foram abolidas todas as divisões que separam a humanidade.

- "não há grego nem judeu": a mais profunda de todas as divisões baseadas na história religiosa é vencida;

- "não há grego nem bárbaro". a mais profunda de todas as divisões culturais é vencida;

- "não há servo ou livre". a mais profunda de todas as divisões sociais e poupança é vencida;

- "não há macho nem fêmea". a mais profunda de todas as divisões humanas é vencida. (Vide Col. 3:11; Gál. 3:28.)

(b) Crentes. Os cristãos são chamados "crentes" porque sua doutrina característica é a fé no Senhor Jesus.

(c) Santos. São chamados "santos" (literalmente "consagrados ou piedosos") porque estão separados do mundo e dedicados a Deus.

(d) Os eleitos. Refere-se a eles como "eleitos", ou os "escolhidos", porque Deus os escolhidos para um ministério importante e um destino glorioso.

(e) Discípulos. São "discípulos" (literalmente "aprendem"), porque estão sob preparação espiritual com instrutores inspirados por Cristo.

(f) Cristãos. São "cristãos" porque sua religião gira em tomo da Pessoa de Cristo.

(g) Os do Caminho. Nos dias primitivos muitas vezes eram conhecidos como "os do Caminho" (Versão Brasileira) (Atos 9: 2) porque viviam de acordo com uma maneira especial de viver.

3. Ilustrações da igreja.

(a) O corpo de Cristo. O Senhor Jesus Cristo deixou este mundo há mais de dezenove séculos; entretanto, ele ainda está no mundo. Com isso queremos dizer que sua presença se faz sentir por meio da igreja, a qual é seu corpo. Assim como ele viveu sua vida natural na terra, em um corpo humano individual, assim também ele vive sua vida mística em um corpo humano tomado pela raça humana em geral. Na conclusão dos Evangelhos não escrevemos: "Fim", mas, "Continua", porque a vida de Cristo continua a ter expressão por meio dos seus discípulos como se evidencia no livro de Atos dos Apóstolos e pela subseqüente história da igreja. "Assim como o Pai me adicionou, também eu vos envio a vós" (João 20:21).

“Quem vos recebe, a mim me recebe” (Mat. 10:40). Antes de partir da terra, Cristo prometeu assumir esse novo corpo. Entretanto, outra ilustração: "Eu sou a videira, vós as varas" (João 15: 5). A videira está incompleta sem as varas e as varas nada são à parte da vida que flui da videira. Se Cristo há de ser conhecido pelo mundo, terá que ser aquele que tomam o seu nome e participa de sua vida. Na medida em que a igreja se tem mantido em contato com Cristo, sua Cabeça, assim tem participado de sua vida e experiências. Assim como Cristo foi ungido no Jordão, assim também a igreja foi ungida no Pentecoste. Jesus andou pregando o Evangelho aos pobres, curando os quebrantados de coração, e pregando libertação aos cativos; e a verdadeira Igreja sempre tem seguido em suas pisadas.

"Qual ele é, somos nós também neste mundo" (1João 4:17). Assim como Cristo foi denunciado como uma ameaça política e, finalmente, crucificado, assim também sua igreja, em muitos casos, tem sido crucificada (figurativamente falando) por governantes perseguidores. Mas tal qual o seu Senhor, ela ressuscitou! A vida de Cristo dentro dela torna indestrutível. Este pensamento da identificação da igreja com Cristo certamente estava na mente de Paulo quando falou: "na minha carne cumprido o resto das aflições de Cristo, pelo corpo, que é a igreja" (Col. 1:24).

O uso dessa ilustração faz lembrar que a igreja é um organismo e não meramente uma organização. Uma organização é um grupo de voluntários voluntariamente associados com um propósito especial, tal como uma organização fraternal ou um sindicato. Um organismo é qualquer coisa viva, que se forma pela vida inerente. Usado figuradamente, significa a soma total das partes entrelaçadas, na qual a relação mútua entre elas implicações uma relação do conjunto. Desse modo, um automóvel poderia ser considerado uma "organização" das certas peças mecânicas; o corpo humano é um organismo porque é composto de muitos membros e órgãos animados por uma vida comum.

O corpo humano é um, embora seja composto de milhões de células vivas. Da mesma maneira do corpo de Cristo é um, embora composto de almas nascidas de novo. Assim como o corpo humano é vivificado pela alma, da mesma maneira o corpo de Cristo é vivificado pelo Espírito Santo. "Pois todos nós fomos batizados em um Espírito formando um corpo" (1Cor. 12:13). Os fatos supra citados indicam uma característica única da religião de Cristo. Assim chamado W. H. Dunphy: Ele - e unicamente ele - dos fundadores de religião, produziu um organismo permanente, uma união permanente de mentes e almas, concentradas em torno de sua Pessoa.

Os cristãos não são meramente seguidores de Cristo, senão membros de Cristo e membros uns dos outros. Buda reuniu sua sociedade de "esclarecidos", mas a relação entre eles não passa de relação externa, de mestre para o aluno. O que os une é sua doutrina, e não a sua vida. O mesmo pode dizer-se de Zoroastro, de Sócrates, de Maomé, e dos outros gênios religiosos da raça. Mas Cristo não é somente Mestre, ele é a vida dos cristãos. O que ele fundou não foi uma sociedade que estudasse e propagasse suas idéias, mas um organismo que vive por sua vida, um corpo habitado e guiado por seu Espírito.

(b) O templo de Deus. (1Ped. 2: 5,6.) Um templo é um lugar em que Deus, que habita em toda parte, localize a si mesmo em determinado lugar, onde seu povo o possa achar "em casa". (1Reis 8:27.) Assim como Deus morou no Tabernáculo e no templo, assim também vive, por seu Espírito, na igreja. (Efés 2: 21,22; 1Cor. 3: 16,17.) Neste templo espiritual os cristãos, como sacerdotes, sem sacrifícios espirituais, sacrifícios de oração, louvor e boas obras.

(c) Uma noiva de Cristo. Essa é uma ilustração usada tanto no Antigo como no Novo Testamento para descrever uma união e comunhão de Deus com seu povo. (2 Cor. 11: 2; Efés. 5: 25-27; Apoc. 19: 7; 21: 2; 22:17.) Mas lembrar que é somente uma ilustração, e não se deve forçar sua interpretação. O propósito dum símbolo é apenas iluminar um determinado lado da verdade e não o de provador ou fundamento para uma doutrina.

[icephas]

Covenant Law (Sabbath to Tuesday)

Lesson 8, May 15-21

Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Exodus 19:6, Isaiah 56:7, Hebrews 2:9, Deuteronomy 4:13, 10:13, Amos 3:3, Genesis 18:19.

Memory Text: “Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.” Deuteronomy 7:9

One of the important phrases in Psalm 23 indicates where God desires to lead us. “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake,” David declares in verse 3 (emphasis supplied). Because of His own moral uprightness, God will never lead us astray. He will provide safe paths for our spiritual walk through life.

What are the safe “paths of righteousness”? A writer of another psalm answers this question through a prayer request: “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight” (Psalm 119:35, emphasis supplied). “All thy commandments are righteousness” (Psalm 119:172). God’s law is a safe, firm path through the treacherous swamp of human existence.

Our lesson this week centers on God’s law and its place in the Sinai covenant.

The Week at a Glance: What did Israel’s election mean? How does Israel’s election parallel our own? How important was the law in the covenant? Does the covenant come unconditionally? Why is obedience such an integral part of the covenant relationship?

Sunday, May 16

The Election of Israel

Jewish tradition has taught that God made the covenant with Israel only because other nations rejected it first. Though there is no biblical evidence for that position, it does, however, help bring home the point that for whatever reasons the Lord chose the Hebrew nation, it was not because they were deserving of the high honor and privilege the Lord bestowed upon them. They had no merit of their own that would make them worthy of God’s love and His choice of them as His people. They were few in number, a group of enslaved tribes, and politically and militarily weak. Plus, in terms of culture and religion, they were mixed, bland, and without much influence. The basic cause, then, for Israel’s election lay in the mystery of God’s love and grace.

At the same time, however, we need to be careful as we look at this idea of election, because it is fraught with the potential for theological misunderstanding. What did God choose Israel for? Was it to be redeemed, while everyone else was chosen to be rejected and lost? Or were they chosen to be vehicles who would offer the world what they had been offered? How do the following verses help us to understand the answers to these questions?

Exodus 19:6

Isaiah 56:7

Hebrews 2:9

As Seventh-day Adventists, we like to view ourselves as the modern-day counterpart of Israel, called by the Lord, not to be the only ones redeemed but to proclaim the message of redemption, in the context of the three angels’ messages, to the world. In short, we believe we have something to say that no one else is saying. This is, basically, the situation with ancient Israel, as well. The purpose of Israel’s election was not to turn the Hebrew nation into some exclusive club, hoarding the promise of salvation and redemption for themselves. On the contrary, if we believe that Christ died for all humanity (Hebrews 2:9), then the redemption the Lord offered Israel was offered to the whole world as well. Israel was supposed to be the vehicle by which this redemption was to be made known. Our church has been called to do the same thing.

Look at your own role in the church. What can you do to help promote the work that we have been called to do? Remember, if you are not actively helping, more than likely you are, to some degree, standing in the way.

Monday, May 17

Ties That Bind

“And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” Deuteronomy 4:13

However much we have been stressing that the covenant is always a covenant of grace, that it is only the result of God’s bestowing unmerited favor upon those who enter into a saving relationship with Him, grace is not a license to disobey. On the contrary, covenant and law belong together; they are, in fact, inseparable.

Look at the text quoted above. How tightly does it link the covenant and the law? How does it show how basic the law is to the covenant?

When you think about what a covenant is, the concept of law as an integral part makes sense. If we understand the covenant as among other things, a relationship, then some sort of rules and boundaries need to be drawn. How long would a marriage or a friendship or a business partnership last if there were no boundaries or rules, either specifically expressed or tacitly understood? The husband decides to take a girlfriend or the friend decides to help himself to the other’s wallet, or one business partner without telling the other invites another person to join their venture. These acts would be a violation of rules, laws, and principles. How long would these relationships last under such lawless circumstances? That is why there has to be boundaries, lines drawn, and rules established. Only through these can the relationship be maintained.

In fact, various expressions such as law (Psalm 78:10) statutes (Psalm 50:16), testimonies (Psalm 25:10), commandments (Psalm 103:18), and word of the Lord (Deuteronomy 33:9) are found parallel to or in closest association with (if not having almost the same meaning as) the word covenant. Evidently “the words of this covenant” (Jeremiah 11:3, 6, 8) are the words of God's law, statutes, testimonies, and commandments.

The covenant of God with His people Israel contained various requirements that would be crucial for maintaining the special relationship He sought with His people. Is it any different today?

Think of someone you have a close relationship with. Now, imagine what would happen to that relationship if you didn’t feel bound by any rules, norms, or laws, but believed you had total freedom to do whatever you wanted. Even if you say that you love this person and that love alone will decide how you relate to him or her, why is there still a need for rules? Discuss.

Tuesday, May 18

Law Within The Covenant

What are your first thoughts when you think of law? Police officers, traffic tickets, judges, and jail? Or do you think of restrictions, rules, authoritarian parents, and punishment? Or, perhaps, do you think of order, harmony, stability? Or maybe even … love?

The Hebrew word torah, translated “law” in our Bibles, means “teaching” or “instruction.” The term can be used to refer to all God’s instructions, whether moral, civil, social, or religious. It implies all the wise counsels God has graciously given His people, so they may experience an abundant life both physically and spiritually. No wonder the psalmist could call the man blessed whose “delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

As we read the law or Torah — the instructions and teachings recorded in the books of Moses that became a part of Israel’s covenant — we are impressed with the wide range of instruction. The law touches upon every part of Israel’s lifestyle — agriculture, civil government, social relationships, and worship.

Why do you suppose God provided so much instruction for Israel? (See Deuteronomy 10:13.) In what ways were these instructions for their “good”?

The work of the “law” within the covenant was to provide guidelines to the new life of the human-covenant partner. The law introduces the member of the covenant to the will of God, whom one comes to know in the fullest sense through obedience by faith to His commandments and other expressions of His will.

The part played by the law within the living reality of the covenant relationship showed that Israel could not follow the ways of other nations. They could not live by natural law, human needs, desires, or even social, political, and economic necessities alone. They could continue as God’s holy nation, priestly kingdom, and special treasure only through uncompromising obedience to the revealed will of the covenant-making God in all areas of life.

Like ancient Israel, Seventh-day Adventists have received a wide range of counsels pertaining to every phase of Christian living through a modern manifestation of the prophetic gift. Why should we view these counsels as a gift from God rather than a detriment to independent thought and action? At the same time, what dangers do we face of turning that gift into something legalistic, as the Israelites did with their gifts? (See Romans 9:32.)