I’ve stuck Mint on two Apple machines (which I affectionately call my iMint and Mintbook, respectively). Ive been thinking about making a little green Mint logo for the laptop to either stick onto the bitten off part of the Apple logo, or just on the middle (to indicate “Mint inside”). But I also really like yours!
Aloha. Episcopal priest here. I applaud your valiant efforts at evangelism in this corner of the fediverse. It takes a degree of courage to be so open about your faith in a place that can be consistently hostile to the Christian religion. Thank God for people like you.
Now, I want to offer a little push-back on your soteriology (fancy term for the theology of salvation for those who don’t know). You’re espousing a version of substitutionary atonement theology as though it is the universally held view of Christianity in regards to the “mechanics” of salvation. It is not. Not only are there multiple views within substitutionary atonement itself, there are a plethora of ideas, stretching all the way back to the earliest days of Christianity, to try and make sense of how Jesus’ death on a cross and resurrection from that death serve to “save” humanity. So let me, humbly, offer my view (which, the more I read it, seems to be the most supported biblically), which I call the Expository view of the Atonement:
The death of Jesus is meant by God, primarily, to lay bare (that is, to expose) the true nature of sin. God, incarnate, chooses to become the “conclusion” of what sin is all about. Every sin, then, is defined by the murder of God, the murder of Jesus. This helps us better understand how wicked human sinfulness can be. Kids in Gaza being systematically starved? That’s being done to Jesus. Trans people being ostracized or driven to suicide? Being done to Jesus. Supporting a regime that kidnaps people off the street? Wealth-addicts who exploit entire societies and make a mockery of the Christian religion? You get the idea. Even “small” sins like lying and cheating are covered here because doing these goes against what is universally understood as “good” and all goodness originates in God. Therefore this is tantamount to telling God His expectations for us don’t matter and that He may as well be dead. Matthew 25 more or less lays this all out when it talks about what happens when we do things “to the least of these.”
This all needs to be exposed so that we can see the fullness of what we’ve done, that there is a theological dimension to our actions. God takes our evil actions personally. Jesus on a cross is a visceral symbol of all this. But it’s also a powerful thing because it is on the cross that Jesus declares that we are all forgiven. This is the literal sense of us being saved “from our sins” (which is the actual good news that is preached all throughout the book of Acts).
Salvation is not about Jesus saving us from God’s wrath. It’s Him saving us from our worst impulses. If Hell is a factor in any of this, then Hell is a thing of our own making and somewhere we effectively place ourselves.
The resurrection of Jesus goes beyond all of this to demonstrate that even our worst mistakes are not beyond God’s ability to overcome. This is why Saint Paul can declare in Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” And him also saying that “grace abounds” in inverse proportion to our sinfulness.
Now, this forgiveness is not equal to being “let off the hook” or “getting off scot free.” Rather it becomes an open space where the contrite heart can begin to find healing. And healing can be a painful experience—and it’s proportional; the more serious the disease, the more painful the healing process. So, there are those of us who will suffer even after death. But that suffering is in service of our healing and restoration, not so much our punishment. It’s consequential (in a literal sense), but not because God hates us or whatever. But because we need healing.
I would argue that the more conventional views of substitutionary atonement are logically inconsistent (at best) and/or outright heretical.
You’re in my prayers as a fellow servant of God. Keep the faith and test the spirits!
Makes me think of the sign I wish I’d made this past weekend:
Trump couldn’t get Greenland so he turned us into ICEland
Okay, so story time (and PSA, it’s going to get real and contains passing references to sexual abuse… I’ll put the whole thing behind a spoiler tag):
In May of 2002 I learned that the pastor of my church in Central Florida was unexpectedly resigning. I grew up with the guy, two of his kids were practically brothers to me; Thanksgiving and Christmas always involved a stop at their place, etc. The reason for the resignation was that he’d been caught on a hidden camera in his office in an act of “sexual indiscretion.”
The woman? My mom.
Turns out she was a victim of sexual abuse for nearly a decade, but none of us realized that for awhile (it wasn’t until counseling that my mom would have the language to articulate what had happened to her). Some church folks assumed the pastor was up to something, so a guy hid a camera in the office when he’d been tasked to install a security system on the property. (Of course, for them, this was just an affair and they blamed my mom just as much.)
Anyway, the night I learned about it, me and a group of friends (including the pastor’s son) just bolted for downtown Orlando and wound up on the banks of Lake Eola, which is in the middle of the city. I felt like my entire world was coming down, someone I loved and trusted had betrayed me and my family, the person that had helped shape my own faith, and I wasn’t sure what was next. Even with close friends around, I felt almost cosmically alone.
Then there was some impulse. I believe it was God, your mileage may vary on that, but that impulse directed me to all the lights in the windows of the buildings. And I had the clearest realization that each “light” (as OP puts it) was a person and living a life. Maybe they were working late and wanted to get home. Maybe it was a boss sleeping with his secretary. Maybe it was someone having the best day of their life, or maybe the worst.
Whatever the case, I suddenly realized that I was not alone and that my problems were not as earth-shattering as they felt—at least not in a literal sense. And those lights almost seemed to blend into the stars above and I had a great sense of perspective. My mom and I would get through this.
Anyway, I know this random, but I’ve not seen anyone else talk about something similar before and this conjured a memory I return to often.
Only the one button down for the four dudes?
So, the term “Antichrist” is kind of complicated. It only appears in the letters of Saint John (never showing up in Revelation, despite popular belief), where it tends to refer to a spiritual power that is “anti” Christ. But prophecy people over the centuries have turned this spiritual power into a certain figure they call The Antichrist. The imagery of this figure makes use of the “Beast” in Revelation 13 (specifically the Beast from the Sea). Which is all to say that “the Antichrist” and “the Beast” are, in a sense, the same figure. Curiously, and more to your question, Revelation 13 also refers to another Beast (from the earth) making an image of The Beast from the Sea that can speak and convince people that the image is alive. And this image forces people to take on the “Mark of the Beast” in order to participate in the economy. So, AI Trump?
Argh! The painful reminder that my mom gave my cousin my Dreamcast while she was packing up the house because “I thought she might enjoy it.” The same cousin who was also given my pristine NES a few years before that.
Are you suggesting that he might be (puts on sunglasses) changing his mind?
And giants are famous for their diminutive size.
Andre de Grande?
Arianna Giant?
I did all of this years ago and it is bliss lol
Another thought about read receipts, can’t spammers and phishing scammers use those to determine if a number is active in order to send more trash?
I was raised by Southern women and you know what? This is accurate. The Southern style biscuit is basically an American scone. I’d never considered this before, but it is correct.
My best friend, in our late teens, once emphatically claimed that Eric Clapton wrote “I Shot The Sheriff” and that Bob Marley effectively stole the song from him. This was before the internet as we know it, so fact-checking took effort. He and I argued about this off and on for weeks. Until I wound up in a used record store and happened upon the Clapton album that had “I Shot The Sheriff”. Right there, plain as day, it stated “written by R. Marley.” So I bought the LP, even though I did not own a record player at the time, just so I could put it in front of his face and show him.
His reaction? “Well, I’ve seen a Cream album where it says he wrote it.” CLAPTON WASN’T WITH CREAM WHEN HE PUT OUT HIS COVER!11!
Similarly, my brother-in-law as a kid was quite assured that Elton John’s hit song was actually “Panty and the Jets” and refused to believe otherwise for years.
Both are pretty right-leaning guys these days and so maybe “confidently wrong” is just something that comes with a certain political persuasion? ChatGPT is just made in its makers’ image.
In college, many years back, I worked for a Home Depot that was chronically understaffed. I worked the lumber and building materials department, often during peak hours for contractors coming in to buy things for their projects and often completely by myself. Iʻd also work until like 11 at night and have to be in at dawn the next day. Keep in mind, I was also part-time (it was my senior year of college). I requested time off for Thanksgiving to see my family, something no other retailer I worked for objected to. They denied my request.
So, like Peter Gibbons, I just stopped going. I went home one night and just never came back (other than to sneakily collect my last check a few weeks later). Never answered the phone when they called. I just disappeared.
Years later I bumped into one of my former co-workers (he was working at a car rental place and I was renting a van). He said that he did pretty much the same thing not too longer after lol.
As a bit of an odd kid at a Christian school, I gravitated toward other odd kids, some of whom had behavioral issues (winding up in my school because their parentʻs thought it might reform them or whatever). So one of my closest friends in high school happened to be a prolific shoplifter and all around neʻer-do-well. I never condoned his behavior, but I enjoyed him as a person. I was too much of a church kid to do anything like what he did.
Almost fired? Twice (sort of). Most recently (about seven years ago) the school I worked at as a chaplain hired a new head of school who told me at my first meeting that he had lawyers look at my contract. It was complicated, but I was actually employed by a parish (Iʻm an Episcopal priest) that shared the schoolʻs chapel, contracted to serve as chaplain to the school. New guy basically wanted to clean house and also didnʻt like that he had someone as senior administration that he couldnʻt fire. I wound up being called to a parish in Hawaiʻi not too long after, so it didnʻt really matter.
My other close call came just out of high school. I had been working at a pet store for about two years and helped two classmates get jobs. Turned out they began running a multi-store scam involving stealing from one store, getting a receipt printed for their items at a second store, and then returning those items to a third store for cash. Managment thought I was in on it because I had got them jobs (and had a habit in those days of hanging out with criminals though never really committing crimes myself). I was able to convince management that I had no idea what they were doing.
Oh, wait. There was the other time, when working at EB Games, that I accidentally forgot to ring up a guyʻs Voodoo video card. Basically my remorse and my yearslong friendship with the staff saved my ass that day.
I was actually fired from being an RA in college, but thatʻs a whole other story…
This guy Floridas!
I think I read it somewhere in a trivia thing on Memory Alpha, but I honestly donʻt remember. But the Progenitors seeded common ancestors with their DNA. Which means that species like the Xindi wouldʻve had Progenitor DNA even though they have a multi-facted evolution with reptillian, primate, and arboreal humanoids…
iirc, in Star Trek the Klingons descend from a crab-like ancestor. I mean, yes, I understand what you’re getting at but I still think it’s kinda cool that Klingons are sort of humanoid crabs
The librarian at my grad school had a book cart in her house and would not let her husband put a book anywhere but on that cart once he was finished with it. Power move.