A friend of mine went to high school with Adam Lambert and wanted him to win American Idol, but others correctly pointed out that coming in second as he did may have been better for his career.
I believe that the winners end up in a contract of some sort, the runners up don’t, so the runners up would be free to make a deal with the highest bidder. If I’m right about that, then that suggests that American Idol’s contract isn’t as good as it could be.
Veronica Mars had a guy get tied up in a bathroom of a stadium that was about to be imploded, but that dude most definitely did NOT get stripped naked.
If Willis had a Kickstarter campaign to make Joyce canonically “break”, it would, for reasons neither explainable, nor questioned, end up being completely funded before the campaign was even published, or possibly more interestingly, before it was even publicly mentioned.
A blooper reel of all your pervy thoughts is a terrible thought. A terrible thought that could make for a shit ton of money and a billion youtube views.
The scary thing is that, relatively speaking, Joyce isn’t messed up. I forget the strip where it was mentioned, but she’s the best socialized of her youth group.
Yeahhh that type of religion can really mess you up, Joyce while annoying as shit could have honestly been me if I had turned out just a little bit different and had swallowed all the super oppressive religious honkey my old church used to force feed me 🙁
Man, the name sounds kinda like an old-timey actor, so I assumed Joyce had seen him in a movie once. Nope! He’s one of those One Direction guys. Whoops.
The cracks started when she started wishing she could believe that there was a nice part of Hell for Dorothy. When she gets to, “Dorothy is a wonderful person. God is supposed to be love and forgiveness. How could He not be loving and forgiving enough to spare Dorothy from Hell? I wouldn’t send her to Hell. Am I more loving and forgiving than God?”, that’s when it all breaks down.
She’s already stood up to her parents for Dorothy. One of these days, she’s gonna stand up to her god for her.
Which is kind of the point of religion in some traditions. It amazes me how many judeo-christian sects don’t take a handy lesson from Jacob’s wrestling match with G-d or an Angel. If you disagree with G-d, just beat on him (rhetorically). Either you’ll lose and learn, or you’ll win and G-d’ll make a nation of your progeny, or something else neat like that.
Does it count if I’M not ashamed? Do my ancestors and family have to feel shame for me? Would my wife be considered my family? Or is it a blood relative thing?
Can the formerly dead guy speak here? When I was there it was BORING! with a capital BOR. Seriously all there was for me was this guy telling me I was going to become one with eternity which is sort of like meditating, and that was IT! Of course I was only dead for about 2 minutes which might have been a test to see if I was “ready” to be dead (news flash – still not) and what I went through may be NOTHING like what people who are not hit with a truck but die from natural causes go through.
Dying actually was formative [or solidifying] for my outlook on life, serious. It’s like being switched off, and that’s kind of a relief, considering all the shit I’d have to keep caring about if there were an afterlife. [The idea of still being “alive” but just not caring about the bad stuff is boring/horrifying to me.]
Are you kidding? You think God wants to have to replay these a gazillion times on grainy shit as people crowd around a tiny projector? Fuck no! God shills out for the good stuff. When the world sees your secret shames, they’re gonna see it in 70mm hi-def on an IMAX screen. Dude only offers his followers the very best.
“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I – I did an original sin – I – I poked a badger with a spoon.”
“I’ve never heard of that one before! Five Hail Mary’s and two Hello, Dolly’s.”
“Oh, all right…”
“Bless me, Father, for I have slept with my next door neighbor’s wife.”
“Heard it. I want an ORIGINAL sin.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”
Stand in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional,
There, they guy whos got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original;
If it is, try playing it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
Reverse chronological order. More embarrassing that way.
That way they just funnier and more confused as it goes on. I really don’t need my relatives to see six year old me having weird thoughts about the Baroness from GI Joe.
Ah, no, I meant in terms of the interperson list, rather than the order in which one specific person’s shame is shown. Because, see, Joyce’s last name is Brown, and Sarah’s is Clinton, so Joyce’s would be shown before Sarah’s, and…
Really? Even that bit with the dump truck full of whipped cream, the mariachi band, and the guest appearance from that chick who sang Groove is in the Heart (hey, it was 1990)?
Glad to know everyone has that particular fantasy, and I’m normal.
That’s a lot of sin to keep track of, and for the types that would qualify for heaven it sure doesn’t sound like my idea of heaven. Or what I would imagine to BE anyone’s idea of it.
“Alright, time to finally go to my eternal rest. But first it’s time to watch my children get it on! Mmm… divine.”
No, you see, the way it works is that you avoid looking at pornography all your life, and your reward is that you get to watch porn. Involving all your relatives. Which admittedly is mildly creepy, but after all, we’re all related in the end.
I’m pretty sure the assholes that denigrate women for their sexuality (whether it be for being a ‘prude’ or ‘slut) go to hell. And heaven too I suppose… Shit even the afterlife is a lose/lose situation for women.
I’m pretty sure that a whole lot of the dudes through history who claim a place in Christian heaven were horrible about denigrating women for their sexuality. Part of that whole women-being-second-class-citizens thing that that religion had going for, well, ever.
I seem to recall that the “true” Hell is not the fire and brimstone place in cartoons and shit, but merely the complete absence of God [where Heaven is getting to sit with Him].
So, not really.
[You can tell that the threat of Hell really doesn’t hold much water for me.]
I can’t tell that there is any “presence of Gawd” around here at all so that makes Hell pretty much like Earth except you don’t need to eat, or possibly many other things that living people need but don’t after you die. So, AFAIK Hell is just Sunday without the dinner.
I believe that God is supposed to be omnipresent on earth, like, watching you while you pee and stuff, so earth isn’t the absence of God. Sure it seems like he’s not here due to the lack of regular murder that he practices in the bible, but allegedly yes, he’s watching you pee.
But then what’s the difference? If he’s there but you can’t tell or if he’s not there and you can’t tell, it doesn’t seem like an existence of a god actually matters. Which then makes a Hell who’s primary source of punishment is the absence of a god kinda silly.
(Playing along with the fiction here.)
Air’s all around you now, and until you learn about it by being told or being sent to some airless place of air-sinners (swimming pools are hell. You always knew it) you’d never be able to tell it doesn’t exist. But being punished by its absence can get nasty in a hurry.
Actually it’s more like saying that (within the fiction) God is in some way necessary to out happiness, but since he’s always been there, we don’t know what it’s like without him. Sort of a “you can’t appreciate something until it’s gone” thing.
And if you’re going to bring in the fact that God doesn’t exist, then, duh. I’m just saying how it *could* work, if God actually existed, which we know he doesn’t because Vegas hasn’t been hit by meteors every weekend. We’re discussing the physical rules of Mordor here.
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
— “Applied Optics”, vol. 11, A14, 1972
Willis, having read your post which somehow mirrors this story, all I can say is… hats off, and, for some reason, thanks. Your stories are full of human content, from the silly comedic aliens to the college drama. I will keep on coming here and to your future sites.
My family wasn’t anywhere NEAR as hardcore religious as that (Hell, my dad’s an atheist), but I somehow managed to absorb that kind of neurotic terror about sin (not even of the sexual kind, just in general) as a kid and I am SO glad I’m out of that state now.
Joyce, the shame of your family seeing you masturbate would be nothing compared to the crippling embarrassment of them seeing you pick your nose with a vibrator.
This is supposed to be dark humor but it is a quarter till 1 AM or thereabouts, and my brain’s not fully functional anymore…
I’ll trust in Willis and his decision as to whether posts exist I suppose.
I’m not sure if you’re referencing previous Walkyverse comics (of which I have little knowledge), but if you’re just saying this avatar should be judged… I hate this avatar too. Mary rarely shows up– and when she does, it’s just to yell at people.
I once came home to a friend who’d made a big posterboard sign that said in giant letters “Everyone, I’m sorry”. I asked “Why do you have that?” And he replied, “Last night, I got thinking about judgment, and I was afraid that when people watched my life, they’d be so ashamed for me, so I made this sign to apologize to them and held it up for a minute last night.”
I think that’s when I started to really question why I followed a religion that essentially said “Your secret shame will be on display for all your friends and loved ones to see.” Humiliation is not a great motivator after a while.
I just can’t even imagine believing in ‘Judgement Day’ or the afterlife as being concrete things so much. I mean, I get the shame part; I feel that way about this kind of stuff all the time (which is weird, ‘cus my parents are so sex-positive that I’m a super-prude by comparison). But this is just so foreign to me, even though I know people think like that.
So all the people in Heaven will be able to watch the sexual sins of everybody who ends up in Hell, this will make what porn we have on the internet seem pretty weak in comparison.
Of course it’s nothing, there’s no afterlife, you know that. But honeslty, Joyce’s fear up there? I sounds great. Because here’d be what happens:
Scenario 1:
1) Everyone is slammed with images of everyone’s sins at once. That’s like, twenty billion people’s sins. From all eras. Murders. Rapes. Genocides. By the TRILLIONS. All slamming in at once.
2) Everyone (but a few) notices that the petty little shit they did? Not that bad. No biggie. Everyone relaxes and realizes that the people who tried to give them guilt over this were huge jerks. This happens in the first half-millisecond.
3) Everyone is also instantly desensitized to all horrors, having been inundated with them so thoroughly. This takes the next half-second.
4) Everyone stops caring. Possibly about everything, forever. I mean, seeing all that horror can’t be good for the brain.
Scenario 2:
1) Nearly everyone goes to hell.
2) The few thousand people in heaven all see each other’s minor momentary bad thoughts, and few rude actions.
3) Weeping and wailing and guilt forever.
4) Hell sets up a disco ball.
Well, being the afterlife, I think you’d exist as pure energy or something. So you would transcend the limitations of the human brain in like…the worst possible way.
Heck, I’d be all for it if any gay/bi male friends of mine did that with me. It might alleviate some of my crushing lack of self confidence in how look.
“…And shall my sword sleep in my hand.” Not a good idea! You’re gonna roll over and cut your bits off, aren’t you.
And, and it ends up with, “And shall Jerusalem be builded here on England’s green and pleasant land.” No! Leave it where it fucking is! It’s in Jerusalem. It’s weird, we sing it. You know if you’ve ever sung a hymn you don’t pay attention to the stuff but it’s saying, “And we’re going to build it here…”It’s all… What is it, Jerusalem 2? The sequel? Fucking leave it there, otherwise people will wake up in Jerusalem and they’ll go, “What? Where? Where?”
In some cases. Then again, quite a few Christians don’t quite believe in the idea of your sins being put on a reel for all to see. The particular judgement (that’s the Catholic term for it, anyway) is between you and God.
You have to successfully repent. The version of repenting was a near-impossible process that included both “specifically and fervently regret the act” and “never do it again” as rules: thus if you ever repeated the sin, the previous repentance was undone. Meaning that you, say lied as a child, and then repented… and then lied again when you’re eighty, you’d have to remember every prior lie you’ve told and then repent for each individually. Which would be pretty time consuming if it were even possible. So yeah. The way I was taught it, repenting is impossible unless you’re basically perfect all the time.
That aside, I can empathize with Joyce to a degree, only my experience with religion was less sexual shame and not understanding how clinical depression works. I was 9, maybe, and the physical pain that comes with depression and the sheer amount I was overwhelmed, I thought was a manifestation of God’s will and that I was being punished. I don’t even know where I came to that conclusion, given I didn’t even go to church much, but I guess I used God as some kind of explanation for something I could not understand.
Yeah, pretty much. It does make me empathize with the origins somewhat, though so much of it is still blatant manipulation of people that it makes me reluctant to give it too much of a free pass.
I feel bad for most of everyone else because they’ll haft to sit through every last wet dream Joyce has had about Ethan the past month and the rest that she’ll continue to have.
Somebody needs to make a hair salon called Hairy Styles. And then when they ask for it to be parted to the left, they’ll say “We’re sorry, but we can only do that in one direction…”
It’s been my impression that that’s how most of religion works. There’s the carrot, and there’s the stick. The carrot’s is how they make the sale, and the stick is how they keep your business.
To be fair, that’s now *brainwashing* works. That’s a lot of religious groups, sure…but I’ve met some very reasonable, kind, loving Christians. And there are plenty of atheist groups that play “carrot and stick” with your brain.
And employers. And political groups (on all sides) and…
Really, that’s just a thing shitty humans do to each other. Religion (Christianity in particular) is just a really apparent example because it’s so pervasive in our society.
Well, I did say the phrase “my impression”. And it’s also been my impression that virtually all (or all all) nice christians are nice because they have nice personalities and would be nice without the religion too. So I don’t really consider “there are nice christians” to be a selling point for religion.
And yeah, religion (well, organized religions) have a lot of common with various secular organizations throughout society. Up to and including shitty ones.
To be fair, it’s less “the losing side” and more the “pretty much everyone dies and just about everything is destroyed, but we manage to save enough to start again, and then we get Baldur back” side.
Actually I am Ásatrú. It’s the religion I have chosen. It’s very inclusive. You don’t have to believe in the gods. They’re around anyway. You don’t need to sacrifice to the gods, they can live on their own. But if you sacrifice to them you might receive their help.
There’s no need to proselytise, as like I said, belief is irrelevant. There are no sins, no commandments, just advice for your life. There is no holy text. There is the Edda, but it’s just considered a collection of songs/poems about the gods.
And for the afterlife? Well, there is Valhall of course, but it’s not heaven. It’s a place for warriors to train for Ragnarök. There’s Fólkvangr, but not very much is known about it, it’s assumed that it’s a training place like Valhall. And everybody else goes to Hel. Hel is not a bad place, but not a good place either. It’s just the end.
When my father was in the military, you were constantly filling out forms, and religious orientation was always a question, and you had to answer it. So my mother would say she was reformed druid. And the few times that someone would actually read the form and ask what a reformed druid was, she would inform them that as a reformed druid she still worshipped oak trees, but didn’t sacrifice virgins anymore. At that point they would usually go away and leave us alone.
I have a T-shirt around somewhere that says “ORTHODOX DRUID” on it, with a picture of Stonehenge. A few times, people have asked me what the difference between an orthodox druid and a reformed druid was. I tell ’em it’s the virgin sacrifices.
Actually…damn that is a legit scary proposition. No wonder poor Joyce is so terrified. I couldn’t imagine my sweet old gran seeing half the stuff I’ve done…or me seeing any of the stuff she’s done.
Wait, Christian fundamentalists believe the afterlife doesn’t happen until the fucking apocalypse, and even then everyone sees everyone else’s embarrassing private stuff? That’s worse than nothing!
Depends on the denomination. The Shame Reel is pretty standard, but “waiting until the apocalypse” thing varies a great deal. If there’s one thing that fundies are not, it’s a unified bloc.
I should mention that it’s really only fundies and other over-zealous christians that believe in the whole “Shame Reel” schtick. If God loves all of us, why would he show our family members things that would just hurt everyone involved?
Yeah, I had nightmares for awhile when I was a kid and really had the ‘Jesus see’s everything you do” contemplation. I was embarrassed to go to the bathroom till I decided that what the heck, He’d seen it all already, so why worry about it.
Seriously glad I’ve followed my roots to being, a halfway happy person and maybe more sane, Pagan. Christians may have a lot of nice folks on their side, but I personally think they are crazy.
Went through the same thing m’self, though I cycled in and out of paganism/agnosticism before finally ending up as an athiest. Less trouble, though the amount of nakedness was drastically reduced xD
It depends on how you choose to read the Bible. Paul talks about how at the end of the world, the dead will rise first, then followed by the living people, which suggests that dead people stay dead until the end of time. And then it’s not Judgment Day if there’s no actual judging! And judging requires…. evidence.
It’s kinda like the Egyptian belief that after we die, our souls were weighed before Anubis and the rest of the gods. Good was measured against bad, and those who did more good went to the blissful afterlife, and those who did more bad…well they went to the devourer of souls.
Difference being, the Egyptians were judged based on their acts, were as modern day christianity is more a measure of faith.
I think.
Been a while since I’ve read up on the Christian thing.
The Greek afterlife judgement: reincarnation until Elysium vs. Tartarus.
The Egyptian afterlife judgement: afterlife vs. having your heart devoured by a hippo/croc/lion hybrid called Ammit.
I’m a big fan of Greek mythology, but I think the Egyptians have the best punishment for dead sinners.
I see. However, I thought it was commonly accepted that the soul is separated from the body, which dies, then during the Resurrection the soul returns to the body? The impression I got from Revelations was basically “Okay now that everyone’s awake, everyone who’s good goes to this side and the rest of you can go jump in a lake. Of fire.”
The idea of a distinct soul isn’t one that would have been familiar to the first-century Hebrews when the Bible was written; it’s more of a Greco-Roman idea that held on when gentiles started converting to Christianity. So it’s the common idea, but not one that gets a lot of textual support if you’re into the sola scriptura thing.
The presumption that people don’t get judged until the end, I get. But where’s the implication that your “evidence” needs to be broadcast to all and sundry? God already knows it all already anyway. All he needs to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. And then set the chaff (people) on fire, as gods are wont to do.
“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” –Revelation 20:12
Yeah, but as bad as this sounds, would you want to be judged but never get to hear the accusations? I guess this is the ultimate trial before a jury of your peers…
And that reminds me of issue 7 of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Nny managed to build a machine to shoot himself (it makes sense in context), and winds up in Heaven, probably due to a bureaucratic error. St. Peter starts reading the book of Nny’s life, with comments like, “What?” “Mighty Christ, why??” “Oh Lord, I’m going to be sick!”
(After annoying God for a while, Nny finds himself banished to Hell, where Senor Diablo (his preferred title) explains what’s been up with Nny’s life. He then sentences Nny to continue living, as “I’ve no need for a soul I can’t take.”)
I guess that depends on whether it’s true what I once read – that until just a few centuries ago, reading was commonly done (by those few who were actually literate) both aloud and standing. The lack of standardized spelling was probably a factor; you’d want to sound out the words. A person who could supposedly read silently might be suspected of trickery, or worse.
(Of course, with God and his angels, all bets are off. Just tossing in a back-when-all-this-was-written-down factoid.)
I really, really, really, really, really, really don’t want any trial I’m subjected to, be it in heaven or elsewhere, to be run under the rules of the time the bible was written down.
Okay, now that one does firmly support the open-court theory. Of course it also supports the “after seeing all the murderin’ and rapin’ that’s happened nobody* will care about your petty sins” theory I mention above, so Joyce is still probably overreacting.
* Everyone except God, that is; he’s not the type who would let perspective and relative levels of badness distract him from his chosen duty of burning people. But nobody else will possibly care.
You seem to know the bible very well, have you ever considered a career in teaching theology or something? Exploring the rich European religious offshoots and the effects they had on culture that was brought forth from the Holy Land into the world is a great subject.
I just went and read through them the other day. Neat, but uh, don’t take this the wrong way buuuuut maybe you could practice drawing penises a bit? I’ve seen a fair few of them and yours just look off in a way I can’t really explain. Also in the first comic the vagina seems to open a bit too high.
Other than that they were pretty cool! Good job! I’d be cool if you could do one about a trans character or maybe featuring Sal.
Fun Fact! Joyce probably has masturbated before, but just can’t remember it. Small girls masturbate from early toddlerhood sometimes. They just do it cause it feels good. DOHOHOHOHOHO GRANDMA’S ALREADY PLANNING YOUR GOING TO HELL PARTY
I’m wondering if Joyce’s mom caught her masturbating and decided to slut-shame Joyce in front of the rest of the family. Like “Your grandma in heaven will be so ashamed that you touch yourself for pleasure.” …Or words to that effect.
Dude, Joyce’s logic reminds meof the Omni in “Life on Forbez”
In that story science will let us look into the past and our descendants will be really bored I guess and look at their ancestors so gosh darn it you better be good and rich and successful or your descendants will be shamed. Their entire life revolves around this.
Then some Omni realize that its stupid and slowly try to change the system.
Thank you Joyce (and Willis) for explaining that. Basically every version I have heard says you go straight to Heaven upon death but that made no sense to me because Judgment day blah blah blah.
I thought everyone hung out in Limbo but then I remembered that they closed down Limbo a few decades ago. Still don’t know what happened to all the souls in it when it was shut down.
What was closed was just the Limbo for unbabtized infants. Now everyone goes to Heaven after they die by way of Purgatory. (Hell had been razed a while earlier.) Note that that is only the Catholic version, Protestants can still misinterpret the literature however they please. Most of them choose to believe that only Protestants go to Heaven by virtue of believing all the right things, and everyone else can go to Hell, including all those other Protestant heretics from the other sects. And then there’s Nestorians who believe that God in his infinite wisdom has decided who will go where before their conception, as reward and punishment for what they will or won’t do. And other Christian Orthodoxies as well. Thank God for atheism.
Yeah, I made a simple decision a long time ago. I will *not* worship a god(s) with less empathy and kindness than I have as a human. That decision cut out a lot of the crap.
Leaves only a couple possibilities:
1. god(s) exist, and will forgive me for doing my best in the world without reference to them for morality.
2. god(s) exist, and have no empathy for a view other than their own…in which case, they are bullies and sociopaths, undeserving of my devotion. I take my chances against their lack of goodness.
3. god(s) exist, but don’t care, in which case I still did the best I could and nothing changed but that I was a good person.
4. god(s) don’t exist, in which case I still did the best I could and nothing changed but that I was a good person.
It frees me up a lot. I don’t have to care about what’s up there…just what’s down here, and what I choose to do about it with my amazing, powerful, and awesome monkey empathy.
I was a Christian for about 9 years, but I never heard about anyone but God knowing all your sins. That is a seriously terrifying thing to believe. Poor Joyce.
I wonder if that’s worse than (or possibly related to) the old-timey belief of Female Hysteria, curable through the use of bizarre and hilarious sex implements.
ROFL your school’s claims. (Though, hmm, Amber has a bandaged spot on her inner thigh…)
Gigafreak: There was also a “treatment” using only the hands. I think it was called something oddly generic like “pelvic massage”.
It takes more courage than most people have to be the one who stands up in front of their peers to admit to something extremely personal that they’ve just been told they’re weird for doing. Especially in high school.
Hello, Other!John. And you’re right. In my case, even though I’m physically female, I was young enough I didn’t realize it was a lie. I learned, in the end, from an x-men fanfic of all things.
At this point mine would basically be “Locke”: the main character sits alone in an enclosed space for 90 minutes while listening to all the real action take place elsewhere.
There are parts of the NT, like Luke 12, that can be read to mean that everyone will know everyone’s sins. But it’s not the only interpretation, of course.
“Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs”
That’s not how it works. Sin is between you and God as He is the one judging. Thats the whole point of the whole forgiveness thing, the things you did wrong are wiped out of existence. Incidentally thats a big difference between the Christian religions, how the whole forgiveness thing works.
People think we will have the same wants/needs in the afterlife as we have in the here and now. That’s kinda silly if you think about it since our wants and needs are the primary reasons for suffering on this world.
Well that’s kinda weird philosophy. What are we without wants and needs? And how can anything be good without the bad stuff? I think the best kind of heaven would be the kind in “what dreams may come”, where everyone still gets to do stuff, and that’s stuff actually matters, but everything just kinda works out and everyone’s contented. That said, I still think I’d rather die.
Yeah, you don’t earn the right to be smugly superior until you grow up and realise everything the kids these days are listening to is crap, especially compared to what you listened to as a kid.
So if everyone watches everyone else’s sins, you can bet that some of those people will find pleasure in watching the voyeuristic porn of others’ sins. So then would those people then have that sin watched? (Hey! You just sinned again! Get back in the sin-viewing line!) If that were the case, it would, at some point, degenerate into a never-ending stream of people viewing mind-porn as watching people mentally get off makes other people mentally get off.
I can just picture a lot of exhibitionist thinking, “Wait a minute, you mean everyone I know will be forced to watch every secret naughty thing I do over my entire life? Well, damn, I haven’t been doing nearly enough. I’d better dial it up a few notches!” 😀
IMO, it doesn’t matter if your life was judged in the open or not. Do you honestly think you would have time to watch, worry & ponder about other people’s feats & shames when your own are being judged at the same time?
To use an analogy, a thief being judged in one courtroom wouldn’t think about a trial for a murderer in the next courtroom, they’ll be too preoccupied worrying about their own verdict, even if the murderer is their own family.
Okay, so… having your secret shame on display for everyone who ever lived seems pretty bad… but is it, really? I mean, everyone else is also having their secret shame put on display. So it’s not so much an individual Hell as a great evening of the metaphysical playing field. If everyone knows what a giant perv everyone else is, it seems like that could be extremely liberating. Maybe Judgement Day and Heaven wouldn’t be so bad after all!
Dumbing of Age has been really informative so far about christians.
Having been raised as a staunch atheist in a slightly “culturally catholic” part of the world, I keep getting amazed by Joyce’s views on the world.
To me, her fundamentalistic christian views are totally unbelievable, and I find it really interesting that this is actually what life is all about for many people down there in the US of A.
Hope I’m not offending anyone with this. It’s just totally not something I’m used to.
Actually, I’d say Joyce’s views are pretty spot on for many Christians I know. They just have the idea that their ancestors are always watching them, or will be able to see everything they’ve done at the end of their life/Judgement Day.
Actually, isn’t the concept of ‘honoring your ancestors’ — or at least not shaming them — more a tenet of eastern theology than what we consider to be western Christianity?
It’s not so much that Joyce is worried about her ancestors because they’re venerated above more contemporary people in her life, it’s just that they’re the ones who are dead, so they’re the ones who are suddenly omniscient. If her parents or one of her siblings had passed away, she’d be even more worried since she knows them even better.
And Joyce is relating the Sane! version of Xtianity in my part of the world. There are people just down the street who are much worse. Hell there’s a woman living in my house who’s much worse, to the point that when the president of our local association of churches came to speak she left the building because he was gay. And the entire membership with the church that week. When she joined the church she claimed to be Pagan, even publicly prayed to Aphrodite for a man (which is why we allowed her to rent a room from us, who can resist a woman asking your deity’s wife for help?). Then she joined the Tea Party…
I’ve known a number of people who believed really, really strongly, but weren’t really sure what. A friend’s recently-ex wife was a New Age crystal Wiccan when they met and married, all up to her eyeballs in woo, and is now a batshit Christian, far enough out there to make Joyce’s family look normal. Her beliefs have changed radically, but her ways of believing haven’t. It’s like she’s a sheet that doesn’t change, but has no shape of its own, just that of whatever it’s draped over.
It’s actually pretty common for people who are radicals in some respect to, when they do change their mind, switch all the way to the other side. Like people who were hippies in the ’60s ending up hardcore right-wing conservatives.
I don’t understand any belief system you fleshlings have. My god is literally Cybertron, occasionally he transforms into a robot to kick Unicron’s ass.
I sometimes have to wonder, was my Christian upbringing unique? I don’t really remember anything about “if you touch yourself, your grandma will see it”. I don’t even remember anything about hating gay people or Pokemon are evil or anything. The philosophy I always was taught was a ‘ask for forgiveness and you shall receive it’ type thing. Was I in some weird off shoot church or something?
No, that is actually more common. Love God, love your neighbor, try to do good, ask for forgivness when you realize you did somthing wrong and try not to do it again. The rest is just details to most Christian churches and since you can be forgiven when you realize you did wrong, details really don’t matter.
This is why I’m a Post-Dispansationalist. Jesus ascended into Heaven after spending some time with his followers, put Heaven and Hell to order, and now it’s DONE.
The Book of Revelations HAPPENED. The judgement happens NOW in Heaven.
Everything else is on us. Which means we can worry about the environment, nukes, and other stuff.
Yes, it’s an actual thing. Because more or less it means the difference between one of three things.
1. You believe Jesus is coming back and the end of the world is a thing.
2. You don’t believe Jesus is coming back and the end of the world isn’t a thing.
3. You believe Jesus is coming back NOW and that you don’t have to worry about the environment because the world is going to end and that you need to convert all non-believers so they don’t get damned to hell.
4. EVEN MORE SO. That it can be brought about by sending all the Jews to Israel and fulfilling other Biblical prophecy elements which were probably metaphorical in the first place.
Some branches of my religion strongly resemble cults of Great Cthulhu.
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Better Harry Styles than Hairy Palms eh?
or Rosie Palm and her five sisters?
Actually, someone below commented that he’s in One Direction, so no, not better.
(Is that a 6-way? 7-way?)
But yeah, the boy band that came in 3rd on X Factor then immediately was signed to a contract for more than the winner got.
A friend of mine went to high school with Adam Lambert and wanted him to win American Idol, but others correctly pointed out that coming in second as he did may have been better for his career.
I’m curious. How?
If you look at the winners, exactly one of them has been more successful than the runners-up.
Or, I guess that’s the reasoning, since I never watched the show. I’ve only really heard of Carrie Underwood out of the list.
I believe that the winners end up in a contract of some sort, the runners up don’t, so the runners up would be free to make a deal with the highest bidder. If I’m right about that, then that suggests that American Idol’s contract isn’t as good as it could be.
(that’s just a guess)
I didn’t know who that is, so I briefly mixed him up with Harry Knowles.
If Joyce is into THAT, her lust will be forgiven a hundred times over for her charitableness.
I thought she meant Ryan Styles
I thought she meant Julia Styles.
One day Joyce will break. Let’s see it happen.
Here’s hoping it’s in a natural, overcoming-self-imposed-limits kinda way instead of a mental breakdown, suck a billion dicks way.
Yeah. I mean, that’d take serious time away from her studies. (Or her husband-hunt, I guess, given that that’s why she’s really here.)
Might help with her husband-hunt, actually. It’d at least give her a metric for selection.
Or the stripped naked and left to die in a locked washroom of a condemned sporting arena about to be imploded.
…”about to be imploded WAY.”
Oops.
Well reading THAT made me feel gross.
????????
what?
I think it’s from an ep of Veronica Mars?
Veronica Mars had a guy get tied up in a bathroom of a stadium that was about to be imploded, but that dude most definitely did NOT get stripped naked.
serial killer alert
someone call the FBI
Unless she genuinely came to feel that sucking a billions dicks was overcoming her limits in a natural way.
Which would result in her experiencing a deluge of overcoming.
Eeeeeeeeewwwwwww
Or a deluge of incoming, if you know what I mean. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
The billion dicks way would make for a great Slipshine comic, though.
“Great” as in “huge”, at least.
Was your avatar chosen for this very moment?
In a row?
37?!!!!!
I’m guessing that pinup of Joyce and Sarah doing laundry is going to become cannon soon.
If Willis had a Kickstarter campaign to make Joyce canonically “break”, it would, for reasons neither explainable, nor questioned, end up being completely funded before the campaign was even published, or possibly more interestingly, before it was even publicly mentioned.
Wild About Harry?
A blooper reel of all your pervy thoughts is a terrible thought. A terrible thought that could make for a shit ton of money and a billion youtube views.
No, because Youtube doesn’t allow nudity.
xHamster maybe.
If I’ve learned anything about internet videos, pixelization censors in the right place and the right soundtrack can make anything more funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM
yeah basically.
It’s a classic.
So that’s why I knew what it was before clicking. (Well that and contextual clues…)
It does, actually, sometimes. In weird ways…
Hell, actually seeing my thoughts isn’t necessary. Reading off my internet history would be humiliating enough.
Now my parents are gonna know I’ve got a taste for beautifully coifed hair.
And dorothy
and Sal’s motorcycle, my ONE TRUE LOVE
What if Sal gives her a ride, and she loses her “purity” that way?
She’ll probably decide she has to marry the motorcycle. I doubt she’ll have too much of a problem with that, though Sal likely will.
If Sal’s bike gets Joyce pregnant, is that how Kiss Players are formed?
+1
Her sins will be .1% Harry Style, 9.9% Dorothy, 90% Sal’s Bike.
It’s canon!
Only because 90% of her life is going to be these next few months, at Willis’s rate
If that’s the case then I guess it’s fair, since you get to see you gram’s sins too.
All the weird shit your gran did in bed…
Can you still claw out your eyes after you’re dead?
Heaven sounds an awful lot like hell now.
In heaven it’s possible to see everything that has ever happened.
In hell, it’s mandatory.
Given 7 billion people are around. I imagine most of judgement time will be watching adverts, since that’s all that seems to be on TV these days.
ALso, really starting to hate how messed up Joyce is. Really, really hating it.
The scary thing is that, relatively speaking, Joyce isn’t messed up. I forget the strip where it was mentioned, but she’s the best socialized of her youth group.
Having met real-life Joyces, I believe it.
Yeahhh that type of religion can really mess you up, Joyce while annoying as shit could have honestly been me if I had turned out just a little bit different and had swallowed all the super oppressive religious honkey my old church used to force feed me 🙁
Plus there are at least a million billion more dead souls to be ‘judged’.
That’s bad.
OK, I’m old and had to look up who Harry Styles was. I’ll admit, he’s kinda dreamy looking.
I could get lost in that hair.
I mean I could.
MOE: What thick brush! I think we might have to hack our way through that!
Man, the name sounds kinda like an old-timey actor, so I assumed Joyce had seen him in a movie once. Nope! He’s one of those One Direction guys. Whoops.
My demo reel would be long as fuck and wierd as shit. Also it’d have terrible production values.
Killer soundtrack though
If you’re going to make the best possible comment on the strip in the ALT tags, I don’t see what there is left for the rest of us to do, here.
It’s cute that Joyce assumes all her relatives will be in heaven.
good point.
I think it’s pretty optomistic. I mean I’d like it if all my relatives were in heaven. The ones I know anyway.
Wouldn’t you get pretty lonely?
As in everyone’s in heaven and gone so I’m alone here? Or that I’d be in hell. Cuz I don’t like any of those.
And she’s completely overlooking that Dorothy, who she knows and loves, is going to Hell.
(I think that’s what’s going to break Joyce in the end.)
I hope she takes it as an opportunity to re-evaluate her beliefs.
Just because she believes it’s going to happen doesn’t mean she wants it to happen or would choose that fate for her.
The cracks started when she started wishing she could believe that there was a nice part of Hell for Dorothy. When she gets to, “Dorothy is a wonderful person. God is supposed to be love and forgiveness. How could He not be loving and forgiving enough to spare Dorothy from Hell? I wouldn’t send her to Hell. Am I more loving and forgiving than God?”, that’s when it all breaks down.
She’s already stood up to her parents for Dorothy. One of these days, she’s gonna stand up to her god for her.
Which is kind of the point of religion in some traditions. It amazes me how many judeo-christian sects don’t take a handy lesson from Jacob’s wrestling match with G-d or an Angel. If you disagree with G-d, just beat on him (rhetorically). Either you’ll lose and learn, or you’ll win and G-d’ll make a nation of your progeny, or something else neat like that.
Well, they were all good Christians, right? (in her mind)
And that’s how you get in! (the only way)
Well… I really hope that’s not how afterlife works. That shame list is going to be a looong one.
Yeah, that’s a really… awkward way to kick off eternal paradise.
The shame list is not part of paradise, it is purgatory, which comes before.
Essentially, you are being brainwashed/tortured into being fit for paradise. (And you better be grateful!)
Then again, one man’s hell is another man’s valhalla.
Does it count if I’M not ashamed? Do my ancestors and family have to feel shame for me? Would my wife be considered my family? Or is it a blood relative thing?
Can the formerly dead guy speak here? When I was there it was BORING! with a capital BOR. Seriously all there was for me was this guy telling me I was going to become one with eternity which is sort of like meditating, and that was IT! Of course I was only dead for about 2 minutes which might have been a test to see if I was “ready” to be dead (news flash – still not) and what I went through may be NOTHING like what people who are not hit with a truck but die from natural causes go through.
tl;dr
YMMV when you die
I found the time I spent dead strangely comforting, and would not hesitate to do it again. YMMV indeed.
5 stars. Would expire again.
Dying actually was formative [or solidifying] for my outlook on life, serious. It’s like being switched off, and that’s kind of a relief, considering all the shit I’d have to keep caring about if there were an afterlife. [The idea of still being “alive” but just not caring about the bad stuff is boring/horrifying to me.]
Well said.
How Joyce now thinks about the afterlife and Final Judgement sounds pretty much in agreement with the SDA’s view on those subjects.
I saw the similarity, too; I went to an SDA university. (I think we’ve discussed this before, PM.)
Sarah has more shame about the “reel” part than the “sex” part. Does God keep it all on Super-8?
Sex Reels, in CinemaScope!
Are you kidding? You think God wants to have to replay these a gazillion times on grainy shit as people crowd around a tiny projector? Fuck no! God shills out for the good stuff. When the world sees your secret shames, they’re gonna see it in 70mm hi-def on an IMAX screen. Dude only offers his followers the very best.
I feel like that would’ve helped Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged cope with his immortality a bit.
“Any filthy secrets I haven’t seen thirty thousand times already?”
“No. There’s “Joyce Brown’s lustful thoughts about Harry Styles”. You’ve only seen that 33,517 times.”
“Wake me for the second reel.”
Sins ought to be original.
“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I – I did an original sin – I – I poked a badger with a spoon.”
“I’ve never heard of that one before! Five Hail Mary’s and two Hello, Dolly’s.”
“Oh, all right…”
“Bless me, Father, for I have slept with my next door neighbor’s wife.”
“Heard it. I want an ORIGINAL sin.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”
Stand in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional,
There, they guy whos got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original;
If it is, try playing it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
– Tom Lehrer, “Vatican Rag”
Yeah, but then you have the IMAX upcharge. I’d rather just get the standard ticket. The 3D glasses don’t fit over my real glasses either.
I’m kind of assuming the Rapture is post-scarcity, given that you’ve got no material possessions and all. Admission is
freecompulsory.I don’t think Joyce’s life movie will earn anything past a PG-13 rating.
Heaven has strict censorship rules regarding tummy rubbing.
It’s only ok to see a man’s tummy being rubbed, not a woman’s. She needs to wear a top.
But it’s okay if she doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it.
That really only works out if the secret sexual shame reels are not shown alphabetically.
Reverse chronological order. More embarrassing that way.
That way they just funnier and more confused as it goes on. I really don’t need my relatives to see six year old me having weird thoughts about the Baroness from GI Joe.
Ah, no, I meant in terms of the interperson list, rather than the order in which one specific person’s shame is shown. Because, see, Joyce’s last name is Brown, and Sarah’s is Clinton, so Joyce’s would be shown before Sarah’s, and…
*sigh*
Nothin’ weird about those thoughts.
Really? Even that bit with the dump truck full of whipped cream, the mariachi band, and the guest appearance from that chick who sang Groove is in the Heart (hey, it was 1990)?
Glad to know everyone has that particular fantasy, and I’m normal.
The mariachi band’s a little unusual, I’ll give you that.
It provided excellent background music for Groove-Girl’s…interesting dancing.
Which I found pretty hypnotic at the time, though watching nowadays I kinda wonder if she took lessons from Elaine Benes.
That’s a lot of sin to keep track of, and for the types that would qualify for heaven it sure doesn’t sound like my idea of heaven. Or what I would imagine to BE anyone’s idea of it.
“Alright, time to finally go to my eternal rest. But first it’s time to watch my children get it on! Mmm… divine.”
No, you see, the way it works is that you avoid looking at pornography all your life, and your reward is that you get to watch porn. Involving all your relatives. Which admittedly is mildly creepy, but after all, we’re all related in the end.
Two steps forward, one step backwards then? Sounds about right.
Nobody sex-shames you in Hell. Clearly this means it is the superior place to end up.
Plus, everyone interesting goes there!
Heaven for the weather hell for the company.
I’m pretty sure the assholes that denigrate women for their sexuality (whether it be for being a ‘prude’ or ‘slut) go to hell. And heaven too I suppose… Shit even the afterlife is a lose/lose situation for women.
…Should I hashtag yesallwomen this post?
But in hell there’s probably also lots of serial murderers who kill people based on their treatment of women. So, who knows.
Then let us pray for a net zero.
Might as well. Except you can’t because the commenting system doesn’t have an edit function.
I’m pretty sure that a whole lot of the dudes through history who claim a place in Christian heaven were horrible about denigrating women for their sexuality. Part of that whole women-being-second-class-citizens thing that that religion had going for, well, ever.
But you would need a fuckton of SPF 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 lotion to live in Hell.
Oooh yeah, and I burn super-easily, too. Maybe I should look into religions whose afterlife is at the bottom of the ocean.
Davey Jones Locker for you
Wait, I’m scared of the dark too. Crap.
Asgard’s an option. In the middle of a huge field.
Oh, it is in North Dakota. Yup, I’d need to fight and drink a lot there too.
I figure Asgard is basically killing the time ’til Ragnarok at an SCA event. I can get behind that.
I seem to recall that the “true” Hell is not the fire and brimstone place in cartoons and shit, but merely the complete absence of God [where Heaven is getting to sit with Him].
So, not really.
[You can tell that the threat of Hell really doesn’t hold much water for me.]
“that THAT threat of Hell”
for clarity
I can’t tell that there is any “presence of Gawd” around here at all so that makes Hell pretty much like Earth except you don’t need to eat, or possibly many other things that living people need but don’t after you die. So, AFAIK Hell is just Sunday without the dinner.
I believe that God is supposed to be omnipresent on earth, like, watching you while you pee and stuff, so earth isn’t the absence of God. Sure it seems like he’s not here due to the lack of regular murder that he practices in the bible, but allegedly yes, he’s watching you pee.
But then what’s the difference? If he’s there but you can’t tell or if he’s not there and you can’t tell, it doesn’t seem like an existence of a god actually matters. Which then makes a Hell who’s primary source of punishment is the absence of a god kinda silly.
(Playing along with the fiction here.)
Air’s all around you now, and until you learn about it by being told or being sent to some airless place of air-sinners (swimming pools are hell. You always knew it) you’d never be able to tell it doesn’t exist. But being punished by its absence can get nasty in a hurry.
That analogy doesn’t work, because we know air exists and would definitely notice the absence of air.
It’s like saying Hell is an absence of unicorns. Well…
Actually it’s more like saying that (within the fiction) God is in some way necessary to out happiness, but since he’s always been there, we don’t know what it’s like without him. Sort of a “you can’t appreciate something until it’s gone” thing.
And if you’re going to bring in the fact that God doesn’t exist, then, duh. I’m just saying how it *could* work, if God actually existed, which we know he doesn’t because Vegas hasn’t been hit by meteors every weekend. We’re discussing the physical rules of Mordor here.
That’s a pretty common theological answer, but Biblically, “hell” is a lake of fire and brimstone. Or burming refuse.
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
— “Applied Optics”, vol. 11, A14, 1972
Well, I like warm weather better than cold weather, so I guess I’d better lay off the masturbation.
Willis, having read your post which somehow mirrors this story, all I can say is… hats off, and, for some reason, thanks. Your stories are full of human content, from the silly comedic aliens to the college drama. I will keep on coming here and to your future sites.
What was that, Joyce?
You thought about doing it “Hairy Style?”
…what does that even mean??
You must be Way Deaf.
You’re damn right I am. In fact, I’m the Deffest brother on this block!
It’s similar to Gangnam Style, but the riders are naked, with their naughty bits being covered by strategically placed hair.
She really, really, really likes Sal’s hair.
… Oh, JOYCE.
My family wasn’t anywhere NEAR as hardcore religious as that (Hell, my dad’s an atheist), but I somehow managed to absorb that kind of neurotic terror about sin (not even of the sexual kind, just in general) as a kid and I am SO glad I’m out of that state now.
Harry Styles, who-
*Googles*
Oh. Well, it’s One Direction, Joyce. Your mom’s gonna be disappointed no matter what. 8D
But probably because he’s a foreigner, and not for a legitimate reason.
Like the fact that he might be racist.
As opposed to “cute mouse boys”?
Twist, turns out the members of One Direction are genetically engineered lab mice designed to be attractive to hetro teen girls.
Joyce, the shame of your family seeing you masturbate would be nothing compared to the crippling embarrassment of them seeing you pick your nose with a vibrator.
“Shit…maybe we should have….at least taught her what THAT is…”
Best comment? Best comment.
YES.
+1
Interesting how Joyce chooses to qualify her beliefs with “how the afterlife PROBABLY works”
This may be what David Willis actually believed, but it’s only what Joyce Brown kinda-sorta believes.
No, I think she’s humble enough to realize nobody can definitely know what it’ll be like.
that
And that one! Delete that one about deleting the comment!
And this one!
Mistakes are forever!
It’s too late! It’s gone!
I don’t even remember what he said! I remember I didn’t think it was especially embarrassing!
What happened? Did it get too personal up in here, up in here?
No Joyce, you’re going to find out about that time your Mom thought about Harry Styles! *dun, dun, duuuunnn*
That would be disturbing.
“Man, I would take that kid into my van,
rip his clothes off,
tie him to the bed,
start whipping him
and generally torturing him…
once he’s bruised enough,
I’d douse him with some petroleum jelly–
pretty sure it’s a good accelerant…
–then just throw a match on there, you know?
I guess I just can’t help those urges…”
o.O
This is supposed to be dark humor but it is a quarter till 1 AM or thereabouts, and my brain’s not fully functional anymore…
I’ll trust in Willis and his decision as to whether posts exist I suppose.
*discrretion
Your shame is laid bare for us all to see. Consider it a preview to your own judgment day.
Appropriate, given the avatar you got. JUUUUUDGE.
I’m not sure if you’re referencing previous Walkyverse comics (of which I have little knowledge), but if you’re just saying this avatar should be judged… I hate this avatar too. Mary rarely shows up– and when she does, it’s just to yell at people.
I once came home to a friend who’d made a big posterboard sign that said in giant letters “Everyone, I’m sorry”. I asked “Why do you have that?” And he replied, “Last night, I got thinking about judgment, and I was afraid that when people watched my life, they’d be so ashamed for me, so I made this sign to apologize to them and held it up for a minute last night.”
I think that’s when I started to really question why I followed a religion that essentially said “Your secret shame will be on display for all your friends and loved ones to see.” Humiliation is not a great motivator after a while.
:O
A better use of that posterboard would be to block the screen, I think.
I just can’t even imagine believing in ‘Judgement Day’ or the afterlife as being concrete things so much. I mean, I get the shame part; I feel that way about this kind of stuff all the time (which is weird, ‘cus my parents are so sex-positive that I’m a super-prude by comparison). But this is just so foreign to me, even though I know people think like that.
Some people find the idea of this life not being the last as comforting. (The irony of Joyce being worried about what happens in it is not lost on me)
Humiliation is a pretty great motivator for me. Maybe too good of a motivator… uh oh, that’s going on the shame reel for sure.
Congrats, you actually horrified Willis.
In truth, my friend “Naked” Dave horrified Willis. I just told the story.
It must take a lot of willpower for Sarah not to say: “Joyce, that is @%&* crazy!”
hey, at least she’ll have a doozy of a gossip session with jacob when next they meet.
“…and then *snorts with laughter* she put the clit vibe up her nose!“
So heaven is full of voyeurs then?
So all the people in Heaven will be able to watch the sexual sins of everybody who ends up in Hell, this will make what porn we have on the internet seem pretty weak in comparison.
Does that mean they have to watch The Human Centipede I and II? ’cause I would think that’s not Heaven at ALL.
No, it means the big guy up there is something like a serial flasher. Broadcasting images against your will directly into your brain.
Frankly, I’d be more embarrassed if my hetero male friends knew I imagined them in particularly intimate scenarios.
Shipping human beings is probably A-ok in heaven.
No one going to judge you but they are going to think,” wow you are fucking pathetic. “
lol, That makes me feel a lot better. And I was so worried over nothing (cue the atheists chiming in agreement).
Of course it’s nothing, there’s no afterlife, you know that. But honeslty, Joyce’s fear up there? I sounds great. Because here’d be what happens:
Scenario 1:
1) Everyone is slammed with images of everyone’s sins at once. That’s like, twenty billion people’s sins. From all eras. Murders. Rapes. Genocides. By the TRILLIONS. All slamming in at once.
2) Everyone (but a few) notices that the petty little shit they did? Not that bad. No biggie. Everyone relaxes and realizes that the people who tried to give them guilt over this were huge jerks. This happens in the first half-millisecond.
3) Everyone is also instantly desensitized to all horrors, having been inundated with them so thoroughly. This takes the next half-second.
4) Everyone stops caring. Possibly about everything, forever. I mean, seeing all that horror can’t be good for the brain.
Scenario 2:
1) Nearly everyone goes to hell.
2) The few thousand people in heaven all see each other’s minor momentary bad thoughts, and few rude actions.
3) Weeping and wailing and guilt forever.
4) Hell sets up a disco ball.
I think that pretty much covers the options.
RE: scenario 1
Well, being the afterlife, I think you’d exist as pure energy or something. So you would transcend the limitations of the human brain in like…the worst possible way.
Heck, I’d be all for it if any gay/bi male friends of mine did that with me. It might alleviate some of my crushing lack of self confidence in how look.
Oh, Joyce. You are clearly misguided, since obviously Zayn is where it’s at.
Obviously the best one is a genetic amalgam of all their greatest features into one insanely boyish talented singer.
Obviously the best one is Robert Downey Jr.
So much this.
Imagine if your sex reel in Judgement Day was anything like this guy’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSp1g_Vp6po
Thanks, now I don’t feel safe to touch Anything outside the comfort of my house.
You’re Welcome! ^_^
Wait…isn’t the whole point of being a Christian that Jesus *erases* sin?
Naw, it’s forgiveness. I don’t think erasure solves anything. You don’t learn by forgetting.
Whole lotta hymns gettin’ it wrong then.
Who listens to hymns?
“…And shall my sword sleep in my hand.” Not a good idea! You’re gonna roll over and cut your bits off, aren’t you.
And, and it ends up with, “And shall Jerusalem be builded here on England’s green and pleasant land.” No! Leave it where it fucking is! It’s in Jerusalem. It’s weird, we sing it. You know if you’ve ever sung a hymn you don’t pay attention to the stuff but it’s saying, “And we’re going to build it here…”It’s all… What is it, Jerusalem 2? The sequel? Fucking leave it there, otherwise people will wake up in Jerusalem and they’ll go, “What? Where? Where?”
I do, when Emerson Lake & Palmer does a kickass cover. The lyric is:
I shall not rest from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand…
Erasure doesn’t solve anything, but they want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony harmony oh love.
Become a Christain and avoid having everyone see your sintape on Judgement Day.
That might work as a recruitment video.
In some cases. Then again, quite a few Christians don’t quite believe in the idea of your sins being put on a reel for all to see. The particular judgement (that’s the Catholic term for it, anyway) is between you and God.
You have to successfully repent. The version of repenting was a near-impossible process that included both “specifically and fervently regret the act” and “never do it again” as rules: thus if you ever repeated the sin, the previous repentance was undone. Meaning that you, say lied as a child, and then repented… and then lied again when you’re eighty, you’d have to remember every prior lie you’ve told and then repent for each individually. Which would be pretty time consuming if it were even possible. So yeah. The way I was taught it, repenting is impossible unless you’re basically perfect all the time.
Sarah confirmed as least-pantsed cast member.
That aside, I can empathize with Joyce to a degree, only my experience with religion was less sexual shame and not understanding how clinical depression works. I was 9, maybe, and the physical pain that comes with depression and the sheer amount I was overwhelmed, I thought was a manifestation of God’s will and that I was being punished. I don’t even know where I came to that conclusion, given I didn’t even go to church much, but I guess I used God as some kind of explanation for something I could not understand.
“I guess I used God as some kind of explanation for something I could not understand.”
Origins of Religion 101, Lewis Hall 342, MWF 10:00-10:50, Staff
Yeah, pretty much. It does make me empathize with the origins somewhat, though so much of it is still blatant manipulation of people that it makes me reluctant to give it too much of a free pass.
I feel bad for most of everyone else because they’ll haft to sit through every last wet dream Joyce has had about Ethan the past month and the rest that she’ll continue to have.
Oh no, she thought about Harry Styles, the stylish hair dresser!
Somebody needs to make a hair salon called Hairy Styles. And then when they ask for it to be parted to the left, they’ll say “We’re sorry, but we can only do that in one direction…”
It’s awful how much religion can cause so much shame like that. =( So unhealthy and painful.
It’s been my impression that that’s how most of religion works. There’s the carrot, and there’s the stick. The carrot’s is how they make the sale, and the stick is how they keep your business.
To be fair, that’s now *brainwashing* works. That’s a lot of religious groups, sure…but I’ve met some very reasonable, kind, loving Christians. And there are plenty of atheist groups that play “carrot and stick” with your brain.
And employers. And political groups (on all sides) and…
Really, that’s just a thing shitty humans do to each other. Religion (Christianity in particular) is just a really apparent example because it’s so pervasive in our society.
Well, I did say the phrase “my impression”. And it’s also been my impression that virtually all (or all all) nice christians are nice because they have nice personalities and would be nice without the religion too. So I don’t really consider “there are nice christians” to be a selling point for religion.
And yeah, religion (well, organized religions) have a lot of common with various secular organizations throughout society. Up to and including shitty ones.
Twenty years from now, kids born today will be reading this comic and wondering why Joyce had a crush on the Prime Minster.
Jesus saves… all your sins in HD AVI form in his Heavenly Cloud.
I hear he prefers .mkv instead. Better compression and better quality.
They should make that a bumper sticker to go with the DnD Jesus one (‘Jesus saves… and takes half damage’).
Also, WWJD…FAKB?
[What would Jesus do… for a Klondike Bar?]
Satan’s the better coder… but Jesus saves.
Jesus saved us from sin, but there’s still sin around.
Thor saved us from the frost giants.
I know whose back I got.
Then again, in his end of days, Thor is supposed to be on the losing side.
To be fair, it’s less “the losing side” and more the “pretty much everyone dies and just about everything is destroyed, but we manage to save enough to start again, and then we get Baldur back” side.
Whenever someone asks me if I believe in God, I tell them: “Sure I do! I believe in Thor! You know, the blonde guy with the hammer? He’s awesome!” 🙂
I say Zeus. Easier to explain where I live.
Actually I am Ásatrú. It’s the religion I have chosen. It’s very inclusive. You don’t have to believe in the gods. They’re around anyway. You don’t need to sacrifice to the gods, they can live on their own. But if you sacrifice to them you might receive their help.
There’s no need to proselytise, as like I said, belief is irrelevant. There are no sins, no commandments, just advice for your life. There is no holy text. There is the Edda, but it’s just considered a collection of songs/poems about the gods.
And for the afterlife? Well, there is Valhall of course, but it’s not heaven. It’s a place for warriors to train for Ragnarök. There’s Fólkvangr, but not very much is known about it, it’s assumed that it’s a training place like Valhall. And everybody else goes to Hel. Hel is not a bad place, but not a good place either. It’s just the end.
When my father was in the military, you were constantly filling out forms, and religious orientation was always a question, and you had to answer it. So my mother would say she was reformed druid. And the few times that someone would actually read the form and ask what a reformed druid was, she would inform them that as a reformed druid she still worshipped oak trees, but didn’t sacrifice virgins anymore. At that point they would usually go away and leave us alone.
I have a T-shirt around somewhere that says “ORTHODOX DRUID” on it, with a picture of Stonehenge. A few times, people have asked me what the difference between an orthodox druid and a reformed druid was. I tell ’em it’s the virgin sacrifices.
Reform Druids don’t sacrifice the virgin – they sacrifice the virginity.
Once Joyce’s mother sees that fucked up ‘rub my tummy’ dream, Harry Styles will be pretty small potatoes in comparison.
Huh, thought that was a muslim thing. Guess I was wrong.
Actually…damn that is a legit scary proposition. No wonder poor Joyce is so terrified. I couldn’t imagine my sweet old gran seeing half the stuff I’ve done…or me seeing any of the stuff she’s done.
There’s a reason the baby boomers are such a large generation. People celebrated the end of WWII in the sack.
And the end of the Korean War, too.
For a second, I thought Walky was dressed up as the vibrator.
Best comment? Best comment.
Creepiest mental image ever? Creepiest mental image ever.
(Considering Walky doesn’t look more than 10 in that picture… *eyebrow twitches*)
Wait, Christian fundamentalists believe the afterlife doesn’t happen until the fucking apocalypse, and even then everyone sees everyone else’s embarrassing private stuff? That’s worse than nothing!
Depends on the denomination. The Shame Reel is pretty standard, but “waiting until the apocalypse” thing varies a great deal. If there’s one thing that fundies are not, it’s a unified bloc.
I should mention that it’s really only fundies and other over-zealous christians that believe in the whole “Shame Reel” schtick. If God loves all of us, why would he show our family members things that would just hurt everyone involved?
Title for book 4? “Dumbing of Age Book 4: Sexual Shame Reel”
Bahahaha (please don’t)
Crumplepunch that is flat out funny.
Yeah, I had nightmares for awhile when I was a kid and really had the ‘Jesus see’s everything you do” contemplation. I was embarrassed to go to the bathroom till I decided that what the heck, He’d seen it all already, so why worry about it.
Seriously glad I’ve followed my roots to being, a halfway happy person and maybe more sane, Pagan. Christians may have a lot of nice folks on their side, but I personally think they are crazy.
I give you Joyce and family as a prime example.
Went through the same thing m’self, though I cycled in and out of paganism/agnosticism before finally ending up as an athiest. Less trouble, though the amount of nakedness was drastically reduced xD
I’ve never heard of that version of Christianity before. What group teaches that, Willis?
It depends on how you choose to read the Bible. Paul talks about how at the end of the world, the dead will rise first, then followed by the living people, which suggests that dead people stay dead until the end of time. And then it’s not Judgment Day if there’s no actual judging! And judging requires…. evidence.
It’s kinda like the Egyptian belief that after we die, our souls were weighed before Anubis and the rest of the gods. Good was measured against bad, and those who did more good went to the blissful afterlife, and those who did more bad…well they went to the devourer of souls.
Difference being, the Egyptians were judged based on their acts, were as modern day christianity is more a measure of faith.
I think.
Been a while since I’ve read up on the Christian thing.
Just about the same with the Greeks, except wrongdoers went to the Fields of Punishment and had a personalized torture set up for them.
Fun.
The Greek afterlife judgement: reincarnation until Elysium vs. Tartarus.
The Egyptian afterlife judgement: afterlife vs. having your heart devoured by a hippo/croc/lion hybrid called Ammit.
I’m a big fan of Greek mythology, but I think the Egyptians have the best punishment for dead sinners.
I see. However, I thought it was commonly accepted that the soul is separated from the body, which dies, then during the Resurrection the soul returns to the body? The impression I got from Revelations was basically “Okay now that everyone’s awake, everyone who’s good goes to this side and the rest of you can go jump in a lake. Of fire.”
The idea of a distinct soul isn’t one that would have been familiar to the first-century Hebrews when the Bible was written; it’s more of a Greco-Roman idea that held on when gentiles started converting to Christianity. So it’s the common idea, but not one that gets a lot of textual support if you’re into the sola scriptura thing.
The presumption that people don’t get judged until the end, I get. But where’s the implication that your “evidence” needs to be broadcast to all and sundry? God already knows it all already anyway. All he needs to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. And then set the chaff (people) on fire, as gods are wont to do.
“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” –Revelation 20:12
Nothing about that says the books are read aloud. Just sayin’.
Yeah, but as bad as this sounds, would you want to be judged but never get to hear the accusations? I guess this is the ultimate trial before a jury of your peers…
And that reminds me of issue 7 of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Nny managed to build a machine to shoot himself (it makes sense in context), and winds up in Heaven, probably due to a bureaucratic error. St. Peter starts reading the book of Nny’s life, with comments like, “What?” “Mighty Christ, why??” “Oh Lord, I’m going to be sick!”
(After annoying God for a while, Nny finds himself banished to Hell, where Senor Diablo (his preferred title) explains what’s been up with Nny’s life. He then sentences Nny to continue living, as “I’ve no need for a soul I can’t take.”)
I guess that depends on whether it’s true what I once read – that until just a few centuries ago, reading was commonly done (by those few who were actually literate) both aloud and standing. The lack of standardized spelling was probably a factor; you’d want to sound out the words. A person who could supposedly read silently might be suspected of trickery, or worse.
(Of course, with God and his angels, all bets are off. Just tossing in a back-when-all-this-was-written-down factoid.)
I really, really, really, really, really, really don’t want any trial I’m subjected to, be it in heaven or elsewhere, to be run under the rules of the time the bible was written down.
Here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/sexualshamereel/#comment-232989
Okay, now that one does firmly support the open-court theory. Of course it also supports the “after seeing all the murderin’ and rapin’ that’s happened nobody* will care about your petty sins” theory I mention above, so Joyce is still probably overreacting.
* Everyone except God, that is; he’s not the type who would let perspective and relative levels of badness distract him from his chosen duty of burning people. But nobody else will possibly care.
DUDE. “20:12”? :O
#themayanswereright
IT”S A CODE! Somebody, find Robert Langdon!
I see. Your interpretation is interesting.
You seem to know the bible very well, have you ever considered a career in teaching theology or something? Exploring the rich European religious offshoots and the effects they had on culture that was brought forth from the Holy Land into the world is a great subject.
Wouldn’t that cut into his slipshine pornlord time?
Teach? I make more money drawing porn.
And you worked very hard to get there!
I just went and read through them the other day. Neat, but uh, don’t take this the wrong way buuuuut maybe you could practice drawing penises a bit? I’ve seen a fair few of them and yours just look off in a way I can’t really explain. Also in the first comic the vagina seems to open a bit too high.
Other than that they were pretty cool! Good job! I’d be cool if you could do one about a trans character or maybe featuring Sal.
Fun Fact! Joyce probably has masturbated before, but just can’t remember it. Small girls masturbate from early toddlerhood sometimes. They just do it cause it feels good. DOHOHOHOHOHO GRANDMA’S ALREADY PLANNING YOUR GOING TO HELL PARTY
I’m wondering if Joyce’s mom caught her masturbating and decided to slut-shame Joyce in front of the rest of the family. Like “Your grandma in heaven will be so ashamed that you touch yourself for pleasure.” …Or words to that effect.
Dude, Joyce’s logic reminds meof the Omni in “Life on Forbez”
In that story science will let us look into the past and our descendants will be really bored I guess and look at their ancestors so gosh darn it you better be good and rich and successful or your descendants will be shamed. Their entire life revolves around this.
Then some Omni realize that its stupid and slowly try to change the system.
Thank you Joyce (and Willis) for explaining that. Basically every version I have heard says you go straight to Heaven upon death but that made no sense to me because Judgment day blah blah blah.
I thought everyone hung out in Limbo but then I remembered that they closed down Limbo a few decades ago. Still don’t know what happened to all the souls in it when it was shut down.
What was closed was just the Limbo for unbabtized infants. Now everyone goes to Heaven after they die by way of Purgatory. (Hell had been razed a while earlier.) Note that that is only the Catholic version, Protestants can still misinterpret the literature however they please. Most of them choose to believe that only Protestants go to Heaven by virtue of believing all the right things, and everyone else can go to Hell, including all those other Protestant heretics from the other sects. And then there’s Nestorians who believe that God in his infinite wisdom has decided who will go where before their conception, as reward and punishment for what they will or won’t do. And other Christian Orthodoxies as well. Thank God for atheism.
Yeah, I made a simple decision a long time ago. I will *not* worship a god(s) with less empathy and kindness than I have as a human. That decision cut out a lot of the crap.
Leaves only a couple possibilities:
1. god(s) exist, and will forgive me for doing my best in the world without reference to them for morality.
2. god(s) exist, and have no empathy for a view other than their own…in which case, they are bullies and sociopaths, undeserving of my devotion. I take my chances against their lack of goodness.
3. god(s) exist, but don’t care, in which case I still did the best I could and nothing changed but that I was a good person.
4. god(s) don’t exist, in which case I still did the best I could and nothing changed but that I was a good person.
It frees me up a lot. I don’t have to care about what’s up there…just what’s down here, and what I choose to do about it with my amazing, powerful, and awesome monkey empathy.
>Harry Styles
respect for joyce gone
Don’t blame her. Her absolute innocence does not allow her to realize how gross he is.
Maybe she DOES realize, which is why the shame…
Basically she just looks up the latest popular boy band and decides she’s in love with the lead singer.
I wonder what will be worse for Joyce, having her mom see that or seeing all of her mother’s sinful thoughts.
I was a Christian for about 9 years, but I never heard about anyone but God knowing all your sins. That is a seriously terrifying thing to believe. Poor Joyce.
That joke is going to be outdated soon.
Please elaborate?
That…. that’s such a horrendous way of living.
And people do this…
People teach these to their children!
WTF!
I thought nuns were fucked up.
Parents are worse.
Ah, if only Joyce had gotten my sex education…
My school literally claimed that women did not masturbate. Instead they would ‘rub a part of their thigh until the feeling subsided.’
Joyce ends up with a raw spot on her thigh anytime she sees Sal’s motorcycle.
I wonder if that’s worse than (or possibly related to) the old-timey belief of Female Hysteria, curable through the use of bizarre and hilarious sex implements.
ROFL your school’s claims. (Though, hmm, Amber has a bandaged spot on her inner thigh…)
Gigafreak: There was also a “treatment” using only the hands. I think it was called something oddly generic like “pelvic massage”.
That is funny. So there were no females who stood up and told them they were full of shit?
It takes more courage than most people have to be the one who stands up in front of their peers to admit to something extremely personal that they’ve just been told they’re weird for doing. Especially in high school.
Hello, Other!John. And you’re right. In my case, even though I’m physically female, I was young enough I didn’t realize it was a lie. I learned, in the end, from an x-men fanfic of all things.
Fun fact: I’m physically female and I *believed them.* I didn’t know otherwise until an X-Men fanfic. I had to learn from the streets, man.
It was like, sixth grade.
Harry Styles?! Shame on you, Joyce! SHAME! >:(
At this point mine would basically be “Locke”: the main character sits alone in an enclosed space for 90 minutes while listening to all the real action take place elsewhere.
Man. I remember being terrified of that exact thing at that same age.
I mean, not the Harry Styles thing specifically, but dang, that looming adolescent fear of the Sexual Shame Reel hits close to home.
Are there Christian religions that seriously believe everyone gets to know about everyone else’s sins? That, just, why?
Christianity has no monopoly on this concept.
Aren’t you curious what other people think? Wouldn’t it be great if there were no more misconceptions between people, and no more need for secrets?
Meh, secrets. I like secrets. They make me me.
Dude, I won’t even wear shorts because I think my legs look bad. You think I want everybody reading my bad-as-crap fiction?
I remember a very similar concept elaborated to me back in high school. Only it was that the sky would be like a massive TV screen.
I forget the reasoning behind it. Everyone knows, everyone forgives or something. I always figured it was silly because it would take forever.
I remember being taught it would be analogous to having everything broadcast over the school PA system.
Wait, no, that was what my high school taught me about e-mail.
There are parts of the NT, like Luke 12, that can be read to mean that everyone will know everyone’s sins. But it’s not the only interpretation, of course.
“Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs”
That’s not how it works. Sin is between you and God as He is the one judging. Thats the whole point of the whole forgiveness thing, the things you did wrong are wiped out of existence. Incidentally thats a big difference between the Christian religions, how the whole forgiveness thing works.
People think we will have the same wants/needs in the afterlife as we have in the here and now. That’s kinda silly if you think about it since our wants and needs are the primary reasons for suffering on this world.
That wouldn’t make a nice heaven now would it?
Well that’s kinda weird philosophy. What are we without wants and needs? And how can anything be good without the bad stuff? I think the best kind of heaven would be the kind in “what dreams may come”, where everyone still gets to do stuff, and that’s stuff actually matters, but everything just kinda works out and everyone’s contented. That said, I still think I’d rather die.
” That’s kinda silly if you think about it since our wants and needs are the primary reasons for suffering on this world.”
And also our primary reasons for happiness, for motivation, for relating to others, for friendships and relationships, for self-actualization…
Oh God, Joyce likes One Direction!
Isn’t this always the case – you catch someone playing with your sex toy and before you know it you have a theological idscussion
Joyce… she’s a bit of a special case.
Ewww, Harry Styles?
Ewww, One Direction in general?
Remember, you are reading about teenagers.
But I AM a teenager.
Hence the sense of being smugly superior to popular music.
Yeah, you don’t earn the right to be smugly superior until you grow up and realise everything the kids these days are listening to is crap, especially compared to what you listened to as a kid.
It’s stuff like this that make me think that Heaven, should it exist, is worth not going to.
So if everyone watches everyone else’s sins, you can bet that some of those people will find pleasure in watching the voyeuristic porn of others’ sins. So then would those people then have that sin watched? (Hey! You just sinned again! Get back in the sin-viewing line!) If that were the case, it would, at some point, degenerate into a never-ending stream of people viewing mind-porn as watching people mentally get off makes other people mentally get off.
Well, they don’t call it heaven for nothing 😀
(incidentally, the fetishizing argument is one that’s also used against the popular concept of hell)
I can just picture a lot of exhibitionist thinking, “Wait a minute, you mean everyone I know will be forced to watch every secret naughty thing I do over my entire life? Well, damn, I haven’t been doing nearly enough. I’d better dial it up a few notches!” 😀
“I kept thinking about it, and realized…” Yay, Joyce!!
But also, perhaps a major reason churches exist, to herd such ponderers back into the fold of unquestioning acceptance?
IMO, it doesn’t matter if your life was judged in the open or not. Do you honestly think you would have time to watch, worry & ponder about other people’s feats & shames when your own are being judged at the same time?
To use an analogy, a thief being judged in one courtroom wouldn’t think about a trial for a murderer in the next courtroom, they’ll be too preoccupied worrying about their own verdict, even if the murderer is their own family.
That moment you realize you are Joyce when it comes to your sexual frustrations.
Okay, so… having your secret shame on display for everyone who ever lived seems pretty bad… but is it, really? I mean, everyone else is also having their secret shame put on display. So it’s not so much an individual Hell as a great evening of the metaphysical playing field. If everyone knows what a giant perv everyone else is, it seems like that could be extremely liberating. Maybe Judgement Day and Heaven wouldn’t be so bad after all!
The fact that so many people actually believe this magical religious crap makes me cringe.
Dumbing of Age has been really informative so far about christians.
Having been raised as a staunch atheist in a slightly “culturally catholic” part of the world, I keep getting amazed by Joyce’s views on the world.
To me, her fundamentalistic christian views are totally unbelievable, and I find it really interesting that this is actually what life is all about for many people down there in the US of A.
Hope I’m not offending anyone with this. It’s just totally not something I’m used to.
Actually, I’d say Joyce’s views are pretty spot on for many Christians I know. They just have the idea that their ancestors are always watching them, or will be able to see everything they’ve done at the end of their life/Judgement Day.
Actually, isn’t the concept of ‘honoring your ancestors’ — or at least not shaming them — more a tenet of eastern theology than what we consider to be western Christianity?
It’s not so much that Joyce is worried about her ancestors because they’re venerated above more contemporary people in her life, it’s just that they’re the ones who are dead, so they’re the ones who are suddenly omniscient. If her parents or one of her siblings had passed away, she’d be even more worried since she knows them even better.
But why would her parents or ancestors or whatever, be ashamed of her enjoying some little sexy time?
Considering the very fact she exists means that sex happened.
Anyway. I don’t want to turn this into a religious debate.
Joyce assumes the best of her family and the worst of herself.
She needs a hug.
Especially after seeing today’s comic.
Odd how the girl who was probably my least favorite character originally ended up becoming so fascinating.
‘Honor they Father and Mother’ is still one of the Big Ten.
And Joyce is relating the Sane! version of Xtianity in my part of the world. There are people just down the street who are much worse. Hell there’s a woman living in my house who’s much worse, to the point that when the president of our local association of churches came to speak she left the building because he was gay. And the entire membership with the church that week. When she joined the church she claimed to be Pagan, even publicly prayed to Aphrodite for a man (which is why we allowed her to rent a room from us, who can resist a woman asking your deity’s wife for help?). Then she joined the Tea Party…
So basically what you’re saying is she’s a flake.
I’ve known a number of people who believed really, really strongly, but weren’t really sure what. A friend’s recently-ex wife was a New Age crystal Wiccan when they met and married, all up to her eyeballs in woo, and is now a batshit Christian, far enough out there to make Joyce’s family look normal. Her beliefs have changed radically, but her ways of believing haven’t. It’s like she’s a sheet that doesn’t change, but has no shape of its own, just that of whatever it’s draped over.
It’s actually pretty common for people who are radicals in some respect to, when they do change their mind, switch all the way to the other side. Like people who were hippies in the ’60s ending up hardcore right-wing conservatives.
I don’t understand any belief system you fleshlings have. My god is literally Cybertron, occasionally he transforms into a robot to kick Unicron’s ass.
Harry Styles? Joyce, I thought you had better taste.
I sometimes have to wonder, was my Christian upbringing unique? I don’t really remember anything about “if you touch yourself, your grandma will see it”. I don’t even remember anything about hating gay people or Pokemon are evil or anything. The philosophy I always was taught was a ‘ask for forgiveness and you shall receive it’ type thing. Was I in some weird off shoot church or something?
No, that is actually more common. Love God, love your neighbor, try to do good, ask for forgivness when you realize you did somthing wrong and try not to do it again. The rest is just details to most Christian churches and since you can be forgiven when you realize you did wrong, details really don’t matter.
I think this really depends on region of the country you’re from (and sometimes urban vs. rural).
So basically Judgment Day will be a huge archive dive?
Archive Binge moar like
This is why I’m a Post-Dispansationalist. Jesus ascended into Heaven after spending some time with his followers, put Heaven and Hell to order, and now it’s DONE.
The Book of Revelations HAPPENED. The judgement happens NOW in Heaven.
Everything else is on us. Which means we can worry about the environment, nukes, and other stuff.
Man, I mangled Dispensationalist.
Ok fleshling, I’m genuinely curious. Is this really a thing? Post-Dispensationalist? Like, do fleshling Christians really argue about stuff like that?
Yes, it’s an actual thing. Because more or less it means the difference between one of three things.
1. You believe Jesus is coming back and the end of the world is a thing.
2. You don’t believe Jesus is coming back and the end of the world isn’t a thing.
3. You believe Jesus is coming back NOW and that you don’t have to worry about the environment because the world is going to end and that you need to convert all non-believers so they don’t get damned to hell.
4. EVEN MORE SO. That it can be brought about by sending all the Jews to Israel and fulfilling other Biblical prophecy elements which were probably metaphorical in the first place.
Some branches of my religion strongly resemble cults of Great Cthulhu.
Whoops, four things.
“Neurotic Sexual Shame” sounds like a good name for a band.
No idea what genre they’d play though.
I would have spend the rest of my life correcting all the bullshit Joyce was taught lol.