Last Watcher
Is that a 'Key' Belief ...... See what I did there......I'll get my coat....
Spirituality, beliefs and other stuff
- Thread starter Blair
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L
Living Dead Boy
Guest
So, I was raised Baptist, and for the first 10 years of my life, the church, and God, were mainstays. Then I started being a little curious (and not just about my sexuality) about religion. So I decided to read the Bible, from top to bottom. It took me about 5 years to finish it in total (I started at 13, didn't finish until like 17), and honestly, I still don't know what to think of it. I did realize that Christianity wasn't for me, especially after I realized I was attracted to the same sex. I thought to myself, why do I call myself a Christian, when God supposedly "hates" me, or what I'm doing, or whatever? I realized I liked girls, but I also liked guys, at a very young age, and these things you really can't control. So it made zero sense to me that a holy being would punish you for something you have absolutely no control over. So that's when I started experimenting with different religions. The Episcopalian church was something that fascinated me for a while, especially because of how supportive they are of women, the LGBT community, and minorities. I also went full on Buddhist for about a year, "nam myoho renge kyo" and everything. Since then I figured nothing of that nature really worked for me, so I became a stalwart atheist. Now, in 2017, I guess you could call me agnostic. Meaning I'm not as rigid with my atheism anymore, yet I still genuinely believe that there are things that no man on Earth could possibly know, and all we're doing is speculating. I totally understand the need for religion, though. So I will never be ignorant and shun a man for believing what he believes in, but I can't believe in something blindly, and I think that blind faith is the basis for every religion there is. So, I get religion, but it's not for me.
See, I dont believe for one second that God hates gays. I think that was a bit made up by the church... the part I dont necessarily agree with is taking the word and meaning of "marriage" and changing it for the changing times. We still have the chance in Australia to change this - everyone can have a civil partnership or whatever legal word they want, and leave the "sacred marriage" as some religions like, to the religious. I wont be married, its never interested me.
I was sent some brilliant Catholic books by a fellow BBer, and that really helped put me on the right path to forgiveness, self love and self acceptance. I feel, The core teaching of Christ is to be authentic to yourself. Be the real you, because you're pretty amazing and were created with love. The human society needs to be challenged for change to happen, and human society is very, very good at bringing people down.
Ethiopian Bible is oldest and most complete on earth / OrthoChristian.Com
This was what I based my "oldest fanfic" remark on, in regards to the life of Jesus Christ. The stories all say, he tried to keep quiet, as he lived he knew the human reaction would be fear. It was his fans, his 12ish mates, that wrote the story of his life, and he said spread the word. And they spread that story across the world - which is pretty amazing in those times! The monk in this link is said to have copied the gospel in one day - I interpret this as some kind of solar eclipse and the monk went with no sleep (uhoh mania!). People flocked to church to hear the stories of the life of Christ, because its a pretty great story (possibly equivalent to Game of Thrones in those times, I still get sad about John the Baptist being beheaded!), and reading was not so widespread among those who needed Jesus most. I start to wonder if the mass production of the bible was perhaps not such a great idea - many dont feel the need to go to church now, they know the story and can read it in their own home. They forget the spiritual aspect of receiving communion, and the community aspect of belonging. I believe in that, especially because after I took communion for the first time in many, many years, and that night I slept, and the next day I did my first solid poop in a year. The body of Christ is healing.
I was brought up to believe in science (we left the catholic church when I was 8), I did very very well in school when it came to science (specifically Biology) and have been to uni twice for science degrees... I didnt last more than 6 months either time, it sounded like a crock of shit to me (especially social science - cognitive neuroscience) - but the school leavers ate it up! I love nature, I always have, and always will. The earth was made with everything we need to survive, it was human nature that turned us from it.
Off to google more old stories - were any as widespread in their time as Christ was? I really love listening to the dreamtime stories of the aboriginals, but for a long time they were forbidden to be written down, so while some are solid, others are stories an old drunk guy made up.
I was sent some brilliant Catholic books by a fellow BBer, and that really helped put me on the right path to forgiveness, self love and self acceptance. I feel, The core teaching of Christ is to be authentic to yourself. Be the real you, because you're pretty amazing and were created with love. The human society needs to be challenged for change to happen, and human society is very, very good at bringing people down.
Ethiopian Bible is oldest and most complete on earth / OrthoChristian.Com
This was what I based my "oldest fanfic" remark on, in regards to the life of Jesus Christ. The stories all say, he tried to keep quiet, as he lived he knew the human reaction would be fear. It was his fans, his 12ish mates, that wrote the story of his life, and he said spread the word. And they spread that story across the world - which is pretty amazing in those times! The monk in this link is said to have copied the gospel in one day - I interpret this as some kind of solar eclipse and the monk went with no sleep (uhoh mania!). People flocked to church to hear the stories of the life of Christ, because its a pretty great story (possibly equivalent to Game of Thrones in those times, I still get sad about John the Baptist being beheaded!), and reading was not so widespread among those who needed Jesus most. I start to wonder if the mass production of the bible was perhaps not such a great idea - many dont feel the need to go to church now, they know the story and can read it in their own home. They forget the spiritual aspect of receiving communion, and the community aspect of belonging. I believe in that, especially because after I took communion for the first time in many, many years, and that night I slept, and the next day I did my first solid poop in a year. The body of Christ is healing.
I was brought up to believe in science (we left the catholic church when I was 8), I did very very well in school when it came to science (specifically Biology) and have been to uni twice for science degrees... I didnt last more than 6 months either time, it sounded like a crock of shit to me (especially social science - cognitive neuroscience) - but the school leavers ate it up! I love nature, I always have, and always will. The earth was made with everything we need to survive, it was human nature that turned us from it.
Off to google more old stories - were any as widespread in their time as Christ was? I really love listening to the dreamtime stories of the aboriginals, but for a long time they were forbidden to be written down, so while some are solid, others are stories an old drunk guy made up.
Blair
Vamp Blair
First off, I loved learning about the Dreamtime at school. I still remember my favourite story- about why the crow never got colours. One of my friends who is Aboriginal and a teacher takes her students once a year down here to Buno to visit her parents so they can hear stories about Bunyips and the Dreamtime and such. I think it's awesome.
The amrriage thing. I have two stances on it.
One. Scrap the whole thing and make it ONLY for practicing religious people. And then everyone else can have basically a civil partnership where it is literally the same thing as marriage but different word, separating by the stance on religion.
Two. Just get it over and done with and flow with it. If it's literally the same thing as marriage, which it pretty much is, embrace it. There's still religious gay people out there who would love to get married in God's name. At the moment people in defacto relationships do not have the same rights as a married couple, so unless if they make civil partnerships the same thing as marriage then I more stand by my first stance.
thrasherpix
Scooby
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You reacted a lot better than many. I personally took to reading the Bible as I was curious about the book that shaped western civilization (especially the USA) so and I was amazed at how much the Old Testament god came off like the evil deities in the fantasy novels I liked to read...ironically, as I was reading through sections of god-commanded wars, misogyny, and and commanding spirits to deceive people, I was also reading through a fantasy novel of a goddess acting in the same exact way who led demons (the only real difference was this was a goddess that wanted males put in their place, otherwise that goddess could've found a lot of common ground with the god of the Old Testament--ETA: both were also jealous deities who didn't want other gods worshiped, so that would be a problem between them as well). It actually scared me for awhile until I realized the legion of "Bible Believing (and it's all literal)" Christians didn't actually read it.
And the woman who loaned me a Bible with a Concordance to read it with for when I was unsure about what was meant had gone to seminary school, became a nun (I met her long after this), and was an editor of published religious books...I'd have thought she must know the Bible really well, and she said she thought she did to. But one day she decided to read the Bible from front to back, and quickly becoming disturbed she even begin to make heavy use of the reference books that revealed the exact meanings of the words used. By the time she was done, she left her monastic order (that she had been part of for several years) and stopped being a Christian. Lots of others also stopped being a Christian after they finally read their Bibles all the way through from front to back, though I still marvel that doing so even destroyed the faith of a nun.
Though that said, there's a brilliant (IMO) view on the "dark side of the Bible" called The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible. Unlike many it doesn't try to whitewash (like say Jephthah sent his daughter to a non-existent monastery rather than kill her in a blood sacrifice to Jehovah, and btw, St. Paul lists him as a good example for all good Christians to follow!) or apologize for it, and the author did admit that it was his mistake to think he could read the entire Bible to his small child as he had meant to. He still explained that it made it more relevant to the world, and I thought he made a good case for that, which I say as a non-Christian.
AnthonyCordova
By suffering, learning
I don't believe you can separate spirituality from community; I think spirituality properly understood and practiced uses ritual and social bonds to bring people together in an effort to find answers to the types of existential questions that people have. Many religions can offer help with these things; the important point about true spirituality is that useful help is offered. Like in the ancient world, where it was commonplace to see other people's gods in the form of your own, where you could go as far west as Ireland, as far east as Mesopotamia, as far south as Egypt, etc. and you could easily translate the moral and religious language of the native religion into your own, the issue was never about who's religion had it more right; that would be an irrelevant question to ask from the perspective of the practices of ancient religion. The Gods and their stories are symbolic of our collective human condition. Issues like who was more right were not important. In more recent history, with the advent of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, this became more complicated, but it didn't need to be.
I'm not here to start an argument, but from my point of view, I am emphasizing the unavoidable social component because humanization in philosophy or spirituality always invokes a duality: the individual and the individual in the context of community. All humanization happens within this context. I get very skeptical of discussions about self-created, make-up-your-own individually inspired spiritualities because it seems to me that they are an attempt to do without the community component, and I don't personally believe there is anything you can learn, no matter how small the philosophical or spiritual topic, that can be truly learned apart from its greater context of community, the social element in which all human problems occur.
I also don't personally think science can ever be a substitute for religion. Science doesn't address spiritual concerns. Some people try to make it, but to me it always feels like a hammer being used in place of a screwdriver: it wasn't created or fashioned for that purpose.
Debates are popular now about whether we no longer need religion. At the moment, I am suspicious of that too. The west is just now entering its proper secular phase. The era of secularism hasn't been around for very long to prove conclusively that people don't need it. Meanwhile, spirituality and practiced ritual and religion have been around for as long as there have been people; from the moment humans started drawing on cave walls, spiritualism and religion have been right there with human beings. It seems premature and presumptuous to think that, as modern secular human beings, who have just now recently entered a secular post-spirituality in the west, that we can be done with religion when for thousands of years it was a given. You can point to all the bad things that religion has started but that doesn't change the fact that for thousands of years religion was the only source for moral thinking and spiritual grounding for the average human being. Is the modern average Joe better off without its usefulness? Can he afford to lose his old primary source for humanization like spirituality? What has taken its place? What has filled the void for Joe to be better off now? For me, the issue has been how to make spirituality address our urgent human concerns again, not to get rid of it and toss it in the trash. And this has been the failing of our modern spiritual thinkers, because they have been slow to change and they have allowed themselves to be roped into debates about religion's veracity and proving their God as opposed to focusing on the metaphor of religion and how those metaphors are powerful lessons and tools with which to cope with life. Our spiritual teachers failed themselves, but I don't think religion therefore is innately corrupt or unnecessary.
I'm not here to start an argument, but from my point of view, I am emphasizing the unavoidable social component because humanization in philosophy or spirituality always invokes a duality: the individual and the individual in the context of community. All humanization happens within this context. I get very skeptical of discussions about self-created, make-up-your-own individually inspired spiritualities because it seems to me that they are an attempt to do without the community component, and I don't personally believe there is anything you can learn, no matter how small the philosophical or spiritual topic, that can be truly learned apart from its greater context of community, the social element in which all human problems occur.
I also don't personally think science can ever be a substitute for religion. Science doesn't address spiritual concerns. Some people try to make it, but to me it always feels like a hammer being used in place of a screwdriver: it wasn't created or fashioned for that purpose.
Debates are popular now about whether we no longer need religion. At the moment, I am suspicious of that too. The west is just now entering its proper secular phase. The era of secularism hasn't been around for very long to prove conclusively that people don't need it. Meanwhile, spirituality and practiced ritual and religion have been around for as long as there have been people; from the moment humans started drawing on cave walls, spiritualism and religion have been right there with human beings. It seems premature and presumptuous to think that, as modern secular human beings, who have just now recently entered a secular post-spirituality in the west, that we can be done with religion when for thousands of years it was a given. You can point to all the bad things that religion has started but that doesn't change the fact that for thousands of years religion was the only source for moral thinking and spiritual grounding for the average human being. Is the modern average Joe better off without its usefulness? Can he afford to lose his old primary source for humanization like spirituality? What has taken its place? What has filled the void for Joe to be better off now? For me, the issue has been how to make spirituality address our urgent human concerns again, not to get rid of it and toss it in the trash. And this has been the failing of our modern spiritual thinkers, because they have been slow to change and they have allowed themselves to be roped into debates about religion's veracity and proving their God as opposed to focusing on the metaphor of religion and how those metaphors are powerful lessons and tools with which to cope with life. Our spiritual teachers failed themselves, but I don't think religion therefore is innately corrupt or unnecessary.
Atheist, as unspiritual as they come, life after death and all that jazz means nothing to me. Raised in an evangelical lutheran setting however so I can see some good in terms of societal norms and ethics coming out of religious organizations and the beliefs people hold (as well as a lot of bad of course). If I had to pick a theory of religion to ascribe to I would probably lean towards the cognitive sciences and religion (including spirituality) as mental representations, which is about as unsexy as it gets if you're a spiritual person as it is reductionistic to its core 😉
Guess I'm over here, denying my basic humanity.
Like, what humanity? Amirite? 😛
Guess I'm over here, denying my basic humanity.
Like, what humanity? Amirite? 😛
Bluebird
Very Lilah of you ;)
L
Living Dead Boy
Guest
Bingo! And that, my friend, is the reason why I'm a misanthrope. How can you sit there and tell me to believe in this God of yours 110 percent and that he's all holy and mighty, yet you haven't even bothered to read the Bible all the way through? In my opinion, if you call yourself a Christian, you must believe in the Bible and everything it says, or else, what's the point? People love to pick and choose verses from the book to fit their own personal agenda. I lost count of how many Christians condemned me to hell for loving the same sex, yet didn't the bible condemn mixing fabrics? Eating shrimp? Hypocrisy at its finest, and it's the sole reason why I quit the church and religion in general. And you're so right when you said reading the Old Testament reminded you of fantasy novels. IMO, that's all the Bible is. People who had no idea what to make of this crazy universe of ours, so they decided to make stuff up. Especially if it helps the current social order of things, (men created everything, women are to be subservient, homosexuality is wrong). I don't believe the Bible to be all bad though, and some of the most caring, open minded people that I've met in my life were Christians. Yet most people love to follow blindly, regardless of the truth. It's security, it's comfortable. Everything in the world makes a little more sense if you follow a guidebook, which is why I understand the need for religion. But I'm sorry, I choose to be uncomfortable. 🙂
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
I'm stealing this. It's my new catch phrase.
L
Living Dead Boy
No problem! But all royalty checks go straight to me, got it? Haha!
Blair
Vamp Blair
The night before I ran away from my home town I read the bible from cover to cover (only the New Testament). Was the last book I packed before I left and I was amazed at myself for not reading it before.
But yes, love the cherry picking that people do. The whole "But it says in the Bible not to eat shrimp" etc. Why bring up the tamer things of the Bible? I love bringing up the whole if a woman has a baby boy she must be in isolation for 33 days and sacrifice two doves. If she has a baby girl she must spend 66 days in isolation and sacrifice two doves.
So many things in the Old Testament is like "Sacrifice two doves!" Where the hell did they get all these doves from?
The you got your other things like shaving beards is a big no no, no rounded haircuts (sorry all members of the Beatles, straight to hell for you) and ever read the chapter on periods? Hilarious stuff.
But the thing that confuses me most about the Bible is "Thou shall not kill" as a commandment, and then talks about stoning people to death if they commit sin. ...Like which is it? Do you follow one of God's top ten rule or the passage in that chapter?
I had to run a devotions class at a Christian school I used to work at (I was desperate for a job. You know how actors can be gay for pay? I was Christian for money) Trying to find one of those happy inspiring Christian stories was hard work!!
On a slightly different note, has anyone read the Satanic Bible?
Blaze
Christian for money lol I love it!
L
Living Dead Boy
Christian for money! Haha! I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
What? Why? How? This sounds like the opening to the greatest movie never made.
I was an assistant to a priest for a year. Two actually. One got ordained while I worked there. Loved one of them. Hated the other with a passion.
That is so very true. I used to be good friends with this girl that was Christian. Now she was open minded and never seemed to have a problem with my sexuality. Actually, she came on to me a couple times, but I do think she was just a straight girl "having fun". But one day I made the mistake of talking about the Bible in the context of homosexuality, and she started going on this tangent about how her religions says homosexuality is wrong, and she gave me a spiel about loving the sinner but not the sin. I was in absolute shock, because until then she had seemed completely open to it, and was friends with a lot of LGBT people. What shocked me more was that she was openly having sex with multiple people, getting drunk every week, partying, doing drugs, the whole thing. I always wondered what the Bible had to say about that one. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy when religious people are respectful and accepting of my sexuality, but sometimes it almost feels like a false acceptance. Their belief always seems to trump my well being.
There was this other incident where again, I was with a Catholic friend, and she invited me to camp. I was stoked, because I love the outdoors, so I agreed right away. The next day she tells me that her grandparents will be there (not a problem), but that they are very religious and we need to go to church with them (big problem). Now she knows I'm gay, and she also knows that her grandparents are homophobic (of course she had to mention this too). Yet, she expected me to be completely okay with this, and she was mad when I refused to go with her.
L
Living Dead Boy
False acceptance, that's soooo true.
thrasherpix
Scooby
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I don't want to share all the details as it's rather awkward, but I will share that my aunt tried to put me on the spot and to condemn gay marriage. My Aunt is on her third marriage, and she has children by all 3 husbands. So as she pointed out the Mark 10: 6 about one man, one woman, to justify outlawing gay marriage, yet just a few verses later it makes it clear that those who divorce and remarry (as my aunt did twice) commits adultery (and there are other Bible verses that say the same), and it's explicitly stated (unlike the verse they use to condemn gay marriage). Naturally, she did not believe her third marriage should be against the law, and she became downright violent (and her third husband called me later to issue some threats).
L
Living Dead Boy
Smh. I'm sorry you went through that. It's like, people say they love you, yet they try to put you on the spot just to embarrass you. I don't get it.
Blair
Vamp Blair
Ah young one, let me tell you the tale of The Move of 2012....
Twas during the month of May, a few days once my restraining order got overturned. Was a nice autumn day when I packed my car with boxes full of my possessions... I had previously bought a house up where I planned to live but hadn't made the move (I was working in two places, so I had half my crap already up there). Fueled by Bullet For My Valentine, a single CD players left in my room next to my boxes, I decided to read a book. What better book than the Good Book?
Took me four hours but I polished off, threw it back in my box and fled the next day. And thus started my adventure outside a small homophobic town where nothing ever happened...
Yes, I was going to the Andrew style commentary.
1 Corinthians around chapter 6 verse 10, off the top of my head... "Treat your body as a temple" covers the drugs and abusing your body with alcohol.
Actually that one makes it on God's top ten list... Like the whole saga with Kim Davis who wouldn't issue marriage certificates for gay couples but was up to marriage number three or four.
Blaze
Now I wanna read the bible just so I can quote it to ignorant Christians
thrasherpix
Scooby
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I have, and also The Satanic Witch.
I was offered the chance to read it when I was a kid, but I had no interest in worshiping anything of the Christian mythos, and the kids into it acted (and probably believed because they never read it, just like many Christians don't read their Bible beyond a few carefully selected passages promoted by preachers and sunday school teachers) that it was about worship. But as an adult someone I respected was a Satanist and she got me to read it, and I realized it was very different from what I had assumed...those kids worshiping Satan have completely missed the point of Satanism (at least as explained in The Satanic Bible). Now I wish I had read it as a kid, because there were adults who accused me of theistic Satanism, and I'd have loved to say, "You say [I'm a Satanist] as if it were a bad thing." 😀
W
WillowFromBuffy
Guest
I think I just had some sort of hipster orgasm to this. I mean, it sounds awful and it is horrible that you had to go through it, but it is also the coolest thing I have ever read.
Blair
Vamp Blair
Hahaha! I'm glad you think it's cool! It sucked at the time but I'm fine with knowing it's in the past. There's a lot of stuff around that era that I'm a bit fuzzy on but reading the bible before moving really sticks out in my memories. And I was really happy when I moved out of there!
Do it. It's enlightening. And if anyone tells you that the Old Testament doesn't count anymore, tell them to re-read Matthew 5:17-18. Basically Jesus says that he is not there to abolish old laws.
L
Living Dead Boy
Guest
OMG, this. I hate when people go, oh, the Old Testament isn't the Bible you should be reading, it's the New Testament. Um....which Bible should I be reading? Shouldn't there only be one? And furthermore, why are people even revising, and updating these "sacred texts", and then believing what the new version says without question? I get so irritated sometimes. Haha! The Bible was written by man, ladies and gentlemen! Although I am kinda curious about the Ethiopian Bible. Maybe I should give that one a read.
And another thing I hate is that when you declare yourself free from Christianity, or religion in general, you're automatically a devil and you're going to hell. Do people even realize that God and the Devil are a part of the same mythos, and that if you don't believe in one, you don't believe in either? Like one classmate in high school would literally chase me up and down the hallways screaming, devil worshiper! You're a spawn of Satan! I didn't even bother to try explaining the obvious to her, (because Catholic damage is real), but it's so annoying when ignoramuses are the majority of the population. 🙄
Anyanka Bunny Slayer
✨ Hail Hydra ✨
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There was a short period of my life where I decided to "be religious." I was unhappy and life SUCKED at the time, so I figured I'd try this Bible thing...I abstained from sex (!), wore only white linen clothing, went to church everyday, and at night before bed, I'd pray for an hour in this closet...there was a little altar, a Bible, and a large crucifix. This period lasted for about two weeks. I stopped because I started having HORRIBLE nightmares about the world burning, people screaming, and lots of fire. Every night. I couldn't deal with it, no no no.
BUT...for a few days I really felt like I'd discovered something wonderful. I don't know if it was the power of suggestion or what. Until those nightmares started, I really, really thought I was on a new path.
BUT...for a few days I really felt like I'd discovered something wonderful. I don't know if it was the power of suggestion or what. Until those nightmares started, I really, really thought I was on a new path.
Blair
Vamp Blair
But then they still reference stuff from the Old Testament anyway like creationism and the scripture for homosexuality?
Which bothers me that they haven't read their bible enough- I mean if you're going to be all "Homosexuality is bad" at least don't reference from the Old Testament! Because that's when douchebags like me will reference other things from the Old Testament like the shrimp thing or however creative and how much I want to dig down on Leviticus that day. Why does no one ever reference the scripture about homosexuality from the New Testament? Which is more direct than the Leviticus one. Give me something good to argue with! (Book of Romans by the way if anyone is interested. I think it's in chapter two)