To say that the Desolation of Smaug was better than its predecessors is, I believe, listed in the dictionary as example#1 of “damning with faint praise”.
Also, the *original* Hobbit movie was the animated one from 1977, and all three of the recent ones are pure unbridled shit compared to it. So, yeah.
As someone who loved the new Hobbit movies I will never the less stand by your side. The 1977 animated version is far superior. Here are the problems I personally have: 1. Legolas. I understand that it can from the lore stand point make some sense that Legolas would have been involved in the Battle of Five Armies but he should have been a cameo at the most, not a secondary or at times primary character. 2. Tauriel. They should have nixed that dwarf/elf romance subplot from the get go. 3. Unnecessary padding. Things like the fight/chase with Smaug in the mountains that goes on for much too long. 4. Bolg should have been the big bad Orcish instead of Azog. Azog is supposed to be dead. Not arm cut off. Straight up dead, with his head on a spike and a bag of coins shoved in his mouth. Give his son Bolg more screen time and a believable motive (serving Sauron in exchange for vengeance against the dwarves who killed his father), and you have a great villain. 5. They tried fitting in too much supplemental lore. The War of the Dwarves and Orcs was necessary to be covered, but they added in too much stuff about Sauron. It was nice to know why Gandalf was absent (and the reasons are lore accurate at times) but we easily could have cut out most of the Dol Guldur scenes involving Gandalf. 6. Those motherfucking goats. Tolkien’s dwarves have no form of cavalry, and actually prefer walking to riding anything. In fact the ponies are msinly used as pack animals in the books. Fucking goat cavalry my ass. 7. Not enough Beorn and no explanation for the eagles. Firstly, I know that everyone always complains about those deus ex machina eagles, but at least in the book it’s explained that Gandalf saved their king/chief from an eagle wound, so they like to help out Gandalf whenever they’re in the same area. And Beorn is supposed to be the one who kills Bolg not Legolas!!!! And he’s not even the last of his people, because in LotR his son Grimbeorn is the chieftain of the Beornings, who are protecting the settlers of the Anduin Vale. And like I said, I really enjoyed and still enjoy the Hobbit trilogy. It could have been so much better though, if the studio hadn’t decided they wanted another trilogy!!!
Just adding in that MAN I couldn’t agree more on Beorn. I was so disappointed that they turned him into a… I don’t even know what to call it. Angst plot? When he was far from that. I know they tried making it more action-y and gritty than the original Hobbit book (which was, one must remember, a book that Tolkien had written based on a story he was telling his children). But Beorn was warm and welcoming once Gandalf cleared the way, not a hostile grump who almost killed his guests.
Yeah, dang it, and Beorn in the books had a family. I was looking forward to his sons and daughters, the other werebears, and his buddies who were just plain bears. Like, Beorn’s Steading is supposed to be this happy little island of cute clever animals and big hairy cheerful vegetarians and SET FOOT ON OUR LAND, ORC, AND WE WILL KILL YOU AND THE WARG YOU RODE IN ON. If Jackson wanted to angst it up, he could have them remark that they all lived together not because they wanted to but because the %^^&&&%^% goblins wouldn’t let them spread out.
Also I totally wanted a subplot in which Beorn’s missing wife is dead, OK fridge, but he runs into one of the gutsy women of Laketown during the battle and she decides she likes him fine. And he’s all d’awwwww shucks and his big hairy daughters and sons are grinning because look, Berserko-Dad is blushing. And it turns out that the Beornings come from marriages between Beorn’s family and the people of New Esgaroth.
I do have one nitpick with the 1977 cartoon, though. We have a family tradition in our house: When Thranduil says, “Our peep-l have suffurd much from da worrrmmm troo da yeahhhs,”we turn to one another and recite in chorus, “Yeah, he beat you with the Ugly Stick!”
Well, in a brief passing mention in the LotR, Beorn had a family or at least one son – Grimbeorn. It’s not clear if he was also a shapechanger. In fact, basically nothing is known about him.
In Beorn’s actual appearance in the Hobbit, there’s no hint at family. Just Beorn and the animals.
@The Jeff: There are throwaway lines about “the Beornings” here and there in LOTR. They’re all skinwalkers, and they’re either a really big clan or a small culture-group that happens to share the same magical power. But you’re right, Beorn himself lived alone.
I felt Desolation of Smaug was the worst of the prequels. Theatrically. The Extended Edition, on the other hand, actually made it the BEST of the prequels by adding in the information we needed, including more Beorn scenes and an actual reason for Gandalf to go dicking around Sauron’s crib. All Five Armies Extended added were goat chariots.
You forgot ripped and tall in that description. Also, sexy. If there is a painting of a scene involving Jesus, just look for the sexy one and you’ve found him.
I’ve heard before that the KJV was specifically translated to emphasize the values of the Anglican Church, although I’m not sure to what extent that’s possible or true.
It’s certainly the most different from the originals. Oddly, many fundies consider it the -least- tainted by interpretation, which makes baby scholars cry.
You’re not sure it’s possible to skew a translation (from Greek, a language notorious for its words having multiple meanings) to promote a specific set of views? For example “word” in “In the beginning was the word” was “logos” in the greek version, which other than “word” can also mean “reason” (both meanings), “ratio”, and “speech”. Also consider that what currently constitutes scripture as it is accepted by most was decided by various committees over a long period of time (look up “synods” if you are interested).
Back when the C of E was having it’s most recent debate about woman bishops (where the right side finally won), I read a fascinating webpage about how if you compare the Letters to the Corinthians in the original version and the KJV, there’s a ton of references to women priests that have mysteriously vanished. The page said it was possible these were accidental mistranslations, but it was a weird coincidence how they all went the same way.
I am not going to pretend to be even remotely well read on the subject, but I would very strongly doubt it was accidental. A while ago I read that the conflation of Mary magdalen and the immoral woman that washed Jesus’ feet into the same person eas done many centuries later by a specific pope. You have to wonder, what else has changed or been omitted (e.g. the stories -no joke- about dragons etc)?
I’m far from an expert either, but I don’t really buy this. Not that I’d put it past the translators of the KJV, but that I don’t think they were there to start with. I don’t think any of the more modern scholarly translations have those references and those don’t rely on the KJV.
By “original” are you referring to the Vulgate or Greek versions they were working with or to the oldest versions we actually have?
It is thought that some of 1 Cor. might be later interpolation, but that would have been long before King James.
I’d need to find the webpage again – it was 2014 when I read it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I was misremembering and the mistranslation came earlier.
The thing I always felt weird with the KJV only folks is that many of them are also the folks that aren’t to hot on gay people. Meanwhile, King James himself is generally considered by most historians to likely have been homosexual or bisexual. Of course they deny it fervently, despite rumors of relationships with multiple male courtiers, plots of blackmail directed at revealing such scandalous affairs. The rumors were so prevalent that Sir Walter Raleigh joked that King Elizabeth had been succeeded by Queen James.
Nothing against King James for being gay of course, what he, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Somerset did in the privacy of their bedrooms was their own affair. Just appreciating the irony.
In a book about what we know about Shakespeare (not really much) there was a rumor mentioned that the KJV translation was fine tuned after actual translations by (several) someones skilled in writing, so to make a more readable text.
I didn’t know that you could get executed for blasphemy for (unauthorized lay) translating the bible in those days…
This is also the same bunch of people who fervently believe that the KJV was divinely dictated and therefore perfect even though the first printed copies include a translators’ foreword that describes the actual process as a bunch of fallible human beings doing the best they could.
If you want to consider the irony of secretly homosexual people being the loudest homophobes, you don’t have to point the finger at King James. Just look no further than the Catholic Church and all the scandals of its priests forcing themselves on the altar boys.
Note that in general pedophilia and homosexuality aren’t particularly linked. Not just that homosexuals aren’t generally pedophiles, but that attraction to young boys isn’t tied to attraction to adult men. It’s a separate thing, could be someone not attracted to adults at all or to adult women.
“Oh please — the King James Version was specifically supported by a prayerful and divine providence which permitted the Lord to have his true message properly laid out in the vernacular of all true Christians without misconception, whereas desecrations like the New Standard Version or the Greek versions which Apostates point to as ‘proof’ that there are mistranslations (since the true original versions without contradiction have been totally found and everything else are corruptions and tricks laid out by Satan) do not count as divinely inspired and are therefore suspect at best. Don’t get sidetracked!”
(Not an argument I am making up. A Real Thing. I believe there are also versions of the argument that claim the NSV was divinely inspired to correct the errors Satan slipped into the KJV.)
Sigh… do you think that Greeks who do read the New Testament in its original Greek are any more tolerant than Americans who read the New Testament in English?
I don’t really get this argument. I don’t think its an argument at all, I think it’s a *distraction*. You have no reason, none whatsoever, to believe that the original Hebrew & Greek were any more tolerant than the English translations thereof.
It’s not really an exercise in tolerance. It’s an exercise in interpretation coupled with Rules Lawyering, by attempting to use ‘infallible authority’ to support doctrine and invoking authority that is ‘more’ infallible to prove or disprove your position.
In effect, it’s arguing the capacity for Charisma to exceed 18 in the case of Player Characters because Comeliness could go to 25, with earlier and earlier editions being pulled out dating all the way back to Blackmoor and Chainmail. None of it’s about tolerance because every position is inherently intolerant of the others. And none of it is actually relevant to the stated and enacted philosophical or theological bases of the sects in question — Northern Convention Baptists are going to continue to emphasize diversity more than Southern Convention Baptists, Episcopalians are going to continue to have broader and more open doctrines regarding the whos and whys of priesthood than Catholics, and everyone’s going to stare at Westboro Baptist and say “they aren’t with us.”
Which is to say that biblical interpretation and theological foundation are two different fields, but there are always those people who think that the former can trump the latter. Which is true enough, I suppose, if it leads to the inevitable schism of sects.
I get that you were being funny, but I’m kinda into languages so.. Here’s your daily Scandinavian word!
“Bæ”/”Bae” is Danish, not Swedish. The Swedish word for poo is “bajs”. And, funnily enough, the Norwegian word is “baejs”.
Speculations:
Disregarding the fact that people usually don’t go bilingual in a forum where there’s one established common language/lingua franca.. well I don’t know about the Danish (or Norwegian), but I’ve never heard a grownup Swede use the word “bajs”. Everyone says “skit” (meaning “shit”). If I were to say “Jacob is [poop]”, I’d say “Jacob is skit”.
Finally, a strip centering around biblical exegesis! David Willis read my Christmas list!
Also, as a nondenominational/Presbyterian, I 100% agree with Jacob here, and it’s nice to see a fictional representation of that specific ontology. It’s … oddly affirming.
Heck, I’m a Roman Catholic and that jibes with my upbringing. I was unfamiliar with the concept of any virtuous folk going to Hell just for not being Christian until age 8, when a catechist(teacher of Christian doctrine) had to very delicately correct one of my co-students whose Baptist aunt preached Hellfire for the Jews.
Well, no, it does matter, because they’re not arguing about whether or not this is reality. They’ve already accepted that, and it’s not up for debate. Instead they’re arguing about which interpretation of those stories is the correct one in context.
I mean, maybe it doesn’t matter to YOU, but there are lots of things that don’t matter to me too. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
Have they accepted those things as reality? Maybe I’m projecting, but I haven’t seen Jacob express beliefs on that count so much as operate within the bounds of an assumption that they are for purposes of discussion and raising “what if”s with someone who does.
He’s called himself a Christian. That means, at the least, he believes that Christ was the son of God and died for everyone’s sins, then rose from the grave. Or that he pays lip service to it, but in the absence of evidence that he’s full of crap I’ll assume he’s sincere.
This idea that Christ “died for everyone’s sins” has not actually been universal to Christianity.
Or, to be more clear, not everybody reads the Nicene Creed as supporting the idea of Penal Substitution. There have historically been multiple interpretations of the meaning of the Crucifixion.
Considering the Chronicles of Narnia series was an allegory for the Bible, yeah, I would imagine C.S. Lewis knew exactly what theory he was portraying :p
Jacob is a little more up on different theologies than Joyce (not surprising since he dates a Muslim). As I understand it, Jesus is a very important figure in Islam as well.
I think I’d categorize religious texts considered to be holy books separately from fables; seems to me people associate them a lot more strongly with spirituality.
Besides which, comparing interpretations of things like this is fun, and therefore I think it matters as an entertaining way for people to have meaningful conversation and connect.
Bookstores of a large enough size generally have a section called “religious fiction” from what I’ve seen. Which is still enough to give some people apoplectic fits, but any fandom can give people those.
A recipe for a fun night. Take one history major, one theology major, and one philosophy major all of whom love Tolkien. Take them to a bar. After a couple steins of Bavarian Dunkel or an Irish Malt, ask them about spiritual status of orcs in Arda. I can guarantee you at least four hours of the most intense debate ever known to man, and one very angry bar proprietor.
The spiritual status of orcs is one of the major things Tolkein himself was conflicted about in the mythos, because he didn’t want to imply a life form was doomed to evil just by nature of its birth.
Given that, it’s not surprising other people can argue about it
As I understand it, that’s not quite the conundrum he faced. More that he wanted them to be creations of Morgoth and thus completely evil, but Morgoth couldn’t actually create life so any such creatures would just be puppets and Tolkein never wrote them that way. They had to be real independent creatures to be interesting, so they had to be corruptions of something created by Eru.
You would never be able to find two nerds arguing over whether Han shot first, because anyone even remotely nerdy enough to be qualified to have that conversation would already know that he did indeed shoot first.
Aye, and if people can argue so vehemently about something that there is physical, documented and date-stamped evidence of… what’s the likelihood of reconciliation among the many (many!) differing stances on the truth/reality of this particular giant, invisible best-friend?
As a Christian I take offense to your description of God as “giant”, Jesus was a perfectly normal-sized human being, possibly on the short side if Shortpacked! is to be believed
Atheist heresy is so much fun, since you don’t have to worry that you’re getting your fundamental beliefs about reality wrong.
For example, I can theorize that angels are all aspects of God, to the extent that God and the totality of angelkind are exactly the same thing. The rebellion was actually an internal struggle God had over how to handle the universe, ending with him basically lobotimizing himself of all of the aspects that would prevent him from making the world and humanity as it currently is. In particular, getting rid of Lucifer, his arrogance, was necessary for God to be willing to let humans have free will.
the thing I find most interesting about modern Christianity is how much of it is based on Middle Ages fanfiction.
I mean, let’s just consider the fact that the word “Lucifer” does not appear in the Bible.
And can you show me, chapter and verse, where the fire and brimstone lake of fire that sinners are thrown into is located?
With those two core pillars of modern Christianity removed, all my thinking about the religion I was in crumbled, to the point that I denounced Christianity and religion as a whole a year or two ago, and live by a Treebeardish mix (I am on nobody’s religion’s side because nobody is on my side) of the philosophies and doctrine of the Jesus of the New Testament as best I can.
To be honest I consider it more of a relationship with an invisible zombie sky god who enjoys being inside me, peers down at me while I’m masturbating, and is constantly judging my performance than a religion.
…..this could, mayhaps, be considered a lifestyle?
you’re saying this on the webcomic of a dude who obsessively edits a wiki about space robot cartoons, you know that, right? and has been involved in multiple internet blood feuds about whether or not a particular plastic robot paperweight is from a specific plastic robots timeline or not?
I think she’s saying that it should be possible to deduce the existence of Christianity from first principles, and become a Christian, even if no-one’s told you about it. Which, um…
Hell, I doubt it would be possible to recreate anything like modern Christianity from the Bible, much less without it.
Religion seems to be a common invention and monotheism a likely late stage of religious thought, but beyond that the differences are huge.
Strictly speaking, you CAN derive a Christianity-like ontology from first principles and some reasonable assumptions (I should know, I’ve done it), but you certainly can’t derive Christianity without Jesus because Christ is kind of a big deal in Christianity.
You MIGHT be able to get some of the tenets of Judaism, maybe even the 10 commandments, but you wouldn’t be able to even approach the vast body of doctrine that underlies all Abrahamic religions.
I’m definitely shipping Joyce and Jacob now! They both have big hearts, positive outlooks, super friendliness, and deep passion about Christianity.
The only thing is that I’m wondering if he might be asexual based on his comments about possibly preferring a relationship without sex, but he could just be a sexual guy who is feeling pressured. Don’t have enough information on that yet.
Well, keep in mind that in a previous comic, he was talking to Sarah about how people should be allowed to “enjoy butts without shame”. Granted, he wasn’t specifically talking about himself, but its not what I would expect an asexual person to say.
Sexuality is constant, and in another universe he was a literal sex addict. I don’t know if that addiction will hold true here, or if it’s the reason he made those comments, but he probably isn’t asexual.
Cue an asexual sex addict to come into the comments and prove me wrong.
NIV is my personal choice, because the language is both relatively clear and somewhat precise, though I prefer annotated editions that can indicate ambiguities and historical background. The bible I used for the longest time was also highly cross-referenced, which was pretty handy for that whole “context” thing.
Joe, thinking: “I am a good wingman, I am a good wingman…. I don’t know which part of this situation annoys/disturbs me most but I’m not saying anything. I am a good wingman…”
Sarah, thinking: “Thank God things didn’t get awkward around here…”
Joyce seems not the sort to choose a friend/boyfriend her parent’s wouldn’t like as a conscious rebelling thing. (As with Dorothy, Joyce likes whom she likes, and at IU she’s growing.)
However if she became fast friends or even went on a date with Jacob, and it upset her mom, I don’t think I’d mind.
“Our son wants to go to church! What should we do?”
“We can take him to the Unitarian church”
“He said he wanted to go to church not a lesbian potluck”
I answered my door to find a couple standing there. I thought they might be Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I knew they were Unitarian when I asked if I could help them, and they said that they weren’t really sure why they had knocked in the first place.
This reminds me of the joke about (Unprogrammed) Quakers: Why are they so bad at singing hymns? They’re too busy thinking about whether they agree with the words. (I heard this joke at a Quaker meeting.)
I had the fun privilege of Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a friend when his brother, a UU minister, was present as well. He was asked to say the blessing, and started, “God is great, True or False?”
I’m part of a Hippie church myself (We were part of the effort in our state that got the ban on Gay marriage lifted on the grounds that banning gay marriage violated our religious freedom :P)
The church is called UCC (United Church of Christ) but everyone jokes that it actually stands for Unitarians Considering Christ.
Sometimes not even that. Self-shipping is apparently a thing, though not one I’ve often seen, closest thing that comes to mind is Garnet from Steven Universe. She’s an odd case in that she’s technically a single fused being made up of two seperate beings (Ruby and Sapphire) who are in a relationship with one another. Because of that relationship, they generally prefer to stay fused together as Garnet.
Because of this you could technically say that Garnet is in a relationship with herself, while simultaneously existing as the embodiment of Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship. It’s complicated because of the nature of fusions, who generally are considered simultaneously a single entity while also being a synthesis of their components. So for instance Garnet is generally content exist as she is, a single individual, with her own dreams and desires, but you can clearly see how parts of her come from her components, and she can even disagree with herself to the point where Ruby and Sapphire separate, until they reconcile.
In general, the fanbase and creators generally characterize Garnet as an individual that is the entirety of a relationship, without any external partner necessary. (Mostly because she displays next to no interest in pursuing any kind of romantic relationship while fused.)
My first experience with “Self shipping” has been with an animated movie, “Rise of the Guardians,” because it has a lot of background story. It’s a movie based on a series of children’s books by William Joyce, but it had a lot of production background, which lead us to four versions of the main villain, Pitch Black. They are simply known as Book!Pitch, Movie!Pitch, Proto!Pitch and Wangst!Pitch, the fourth being a version of said villain, from a fancomic by Hurtanminttu on tumblr.
Needless to say, things are very weird, but at the same time also rather fun.
Her interpretation has issues.
So no one has any excuse not to know about god via the existence of creation.
But the only way to get into heaven is via knowledge of Jesus?
And she thinks that system is just?
I disregard both as a form of delusion attempting to give form and meaning to a churning maelstrom of chaos without care or concern. But at the very least could the people claiming to believe in a benevolent god create a mythos that supports such a supposition?
The way my Southern Baptist cousins explained it to me as a child, Jesus is the only way. Therefore as good Christians, they *must* convert as many people as possible in order to bring them to Jesus. It has nothing to do with fairness, but something about making sure humanity doesn’t abuse its free will to accidentally go to hell… Something… It was a long time ago. In any case it didn’t stick.
Well, that’s better than what I learned in the Baptist school I went to for two years: When everyone in the world has heard about Jesus and had a chance to choose, then Jesus will come back. Thus, we should proselytize as fast as possible so Jesus will come back sooner.
Those too young that die without hearing of God also go to limbo. Or so Dante tells it in his Comedy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the general opinion of some sects.
I dunno about nowadays, but from what I recall (heard it in an exposition about death during the medieval times) the limbo part of the mythos has been added especially to appease those good christians who just couldn’t accept that their too-young-to-be-baptised dead children were going straight to hell (and didn’t deserve a good, christian sepulture nearby their mother either).
I really wonder why… But I can’t say I’m surprised St. Augustine was the kind of person to send babies into eternal suffering, even though he was soft on this one considering his tendencies to think we all deserve hell from the get-go anyway.
What I was surrounded by was “Jesus is coming back and soon so proselytize to as many people as possible, so you can ‘save’ them from his fiery torment (which will be awesome to watch from your front-row seat in Heaven” which was also combined with “everyone who hasn’t accepted Christ is a hell-bound sinner who is inherently not a good person and can never be a good person and so is mostly just interested in deceiving you by acting nice so you’ll be tempted away from Christ and thus miss out on the awesome Rapture”.
Hell, it’s basically the main plot of Left Behind. The members of the family “left behind” did so because they were swayed into living lives of mediocre worldliness instead of devoting their life 24/7 to the right church.
If Joe was to date someone, I think it could work. Sarah can keep him in check, and doesn’t seem like someone who would get jealous if he mentioned things he did with previous partners (annoyed if it went on for long, maybe), which I think is likely part of his understanding of being open with each other.
Or seeing as Sarah’s at least somewhat fine with casual sex, they could just hook up.
It’s funny how Sarah views Joe as a sexual predator, yet she herself basically wants that in her life right now (as in just sleep with Jacob, not interested in a serious relationship – like Joe.)
Okay, no. What she wants is casual sex. She does not want to be creeped on by someone with questionable understanding of consent.
Just because someone wants casual sex does not mean they want to accept all comers nor that they do not want someone safe and who is personally sexy to fulfill that desire.
And let’s be frank, the type of man Joe is tends to be the type of man who gives shitty sex because he’s so fixated on “game” and “the goal” that they are very unlikely to be generous and mutual-pleasure focused lovers, so most women looking for casual sex would be better served on average passing on a Joe, because the risk/rewards are just too skewed.
This is not to say that every encounter Joe has is unfulfilling for his partners, just that on average those who act like Joe tend not to be worth the time of day even if you just want a quick lay (and there’s some hints in comic and in Slipshine that Joe’s worthwhileness as a lover is pretty much that he’s got good stamina and needs to be shut up first to be worth a damn as a lay and even then only as something to ride).
My use of “sexual predator” was bad. Still, that’s how he views Joe – at the same time, that isn’t what Joe is. I do not care for his life style, but he seems to be a bit stand up about it. If he is rebuffed, he stops pursuing – that’s more then what most people can say.
Still, my point was: Joe is all about casual sex. Sarah wants casual sex. Yet she despises Joe for going after what she also wants. I sort of see it as projecting.
Sarah does not despise Joe for wanting casual sex. She despises him for being a creeper about it. He goes out of his way to get around ‘no’s, ignores body language, and doesn’t back off until he’s screamed at.
The insistence that Sarah has somehow not yet been clear enough that she doesn’t want to have sex with Joe is honestly kind of… eeeugh.
Like, really? She really needs to spit on him every time she sees him for you to remain convinced that she isn’t interested? That’s a bizarrely high bar, and it absolutely reflects the real-world tendency to treat anything except a screamed NO as negotiable.
Except she did scream no, and apparently that’s… still negotiable. She might change her mind, folks! Stop being so closed-minded!!!!!!
Yes, they both want casual sex, but Sarah has not shut that door because of some judgment about casual sex. She shut that door because Joe ignored body language noes and creeped on her relentlessly after completing dismissing what she said and saying some creepy ass predator shit.
That is not the same thing and I refuse to entertain the notion that not wanting to be creeped on is somehow a judgment on casual sex in general.
And the reason I refuse to entertain that notion is because I get creepers creeping on me all the time who like to use that argument that refusing to get with their creeper bullshit is being “sex negative” and against casual sex like I don’t volunteer some of my free time making casual sex spaces safer and as if creepers don’t make it harder for a lot of women who like to sleep with men to feel safe getting into casual sex.
Out of curiosity, are there going to be any Lutherans here or are there any Lutherans here? My friend is one and she was explaining some of the recent rulings in the ECLA to me and it seemed cool, namely that the ECLA approves of gay marriage because otherwise gay pastors would be living in sin with their partners and that is no good, and also that God appears in many forms to many peoples at many times, which legitimizes other religions as paths to salvation. This is just what I remember and admittedly I am not super invested because I have no faith, but since Willis has been so kind as to lay these things out for us, I can’t help but be curious 🙂
Well, I can’t vouch for and and all Lutherans. I know there are two main heirarchical bodies. The one is more conservative but the other not…
Look. I attention a small Lutheran Church in Alberta with a lady pastor, multiple gay couples (at least one of whom was married in there), signs and declaration of affirmation at entrance and around church, and an intern pastor now fully … Whatever the word for graduated is… Who is queer and married. They are awesome. I like it there.
Ordained? I think that’s the general term most denominations use for a pastor/priest/whatever getting their stripes. I’m not Lutheran though, so maybe you guys use a different word for it than Congregationalists and Methodists do.
No, it’s ordained. I just drew an entire fucking blank. I don’t really consider myself a “Lutheran.” I dunno. I was raised Catholic. Teen and early 20s into more non-denomenational “Charismatic” or Pentecostal churches. Not so far off some of what’s been presented in doa, albeit I was never quite so ensconced with the fundamentalist parts (never had that intense parental pressure of raising kids as such, perhaps). Years of stupid rock show or whacked churches have left me only really comfortable at all in more traditional liturgical churches (do Methodists fit in there? I don’t know.).
Combine that with a need to find a gay affirming church, I’m stunned I even have options in a city of a million. There’s an Anglican Church here.
I digress. Exhausted. Couldn’t even remember the word ordained. But we have a queer lesbian pastor whose pronouns are they/their so suck it, homophobes!
ELCA member here! It’s a little hard to say that the ELCA “approves” or “disapproves” of something, because we’re the big denomination that’s got many flavors of congregations, liberal and conservative, so the leadership kind of has to tiptoe around to not offend too many congregations. Like, we almost universally agree on ordaining women being a good thing, and Martin Luther having a lot of good ideas, but that’s basically it.
Re: gay marriage, in 2009, we voted to officially condone ordination of gay pastors who are in a committed monogamous relationship and blessings of gay marriages. So if a given ELCA church decides to call a gay pastor or marry gay couples, they don’t have to hide it from the higher-ups. But there’s still plenty of ELCA churches that would never do these things. Some of them broke off and formed their own synod as a response. Sucks for them. 😛
Re: salvation, I might have this wrong since I don’t have a definitive source at hand, but as best I remember, the ELCA stance is more like, we’re pretty sure that there’s salvation through Christ, bla bla bla theological details. So yay Christianity! If you’re not Christian, though… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The ELCA doesn’t know if you’re saved. Maybe you are! That would be cool! But the ELCA’s not going to claim to know either way. Literally, their website admits that ELCA doctrine doesn’t answer every religious question. There’s probably a fair number of ELCA members who would agree with what you said, though, klept0.
Okay, I think that’s all the awkward writing about Lutheran doctrine I’ve got in me tonight. 🙂
TL;DR: individual Lutheran churches vary a lot, even in the ELCA. The “Reconciling in Christ” tag is our attempt to identify the ones that are at least trying not to be dicks.
I’m a Lutheran who *almost* completed Pre-Seminary coursework for LCMS (had a crisis of faith and major depressI’ve episode), and is probably ELCA in everything but name now. LCMS is the conservative one that “politely” hates LGBTQ people, and thinks women as pastors is “cute, but heretical.” Then there’s WELS, which is Michelle Bachmann – conservative.
I used to ship Jacob/Amber because Shortpacked! and I think they’d have a good go-around this time, at least if Jacob’s still a nerdlinger anyway.
Then I pulled for Jacob/Raidah to stay happening, because I really want to see Raidah more and I think she and Jacob are nice and healthy, plus Raidah’s Muslim and it’d be super great to see positive Muslim representation in this series.
Only now do I see that I have been blind to the majesty of Joycob.
Judging from his spam comments about Mike, Spencer really has no room for morally questionable behavior by lead characters, evil characters who aren’t outright villains, or any other sort of nuance or complex questions about right and wrong. So it’s no surprise he doesn’t like Jayne either.
Firefly being complete trash; we’re talking about a dude who’s planning on seducing and humiliating a frightened gay kid for no reason other than that he feels like it.
That you consider that “morally questionable” instead of, y’know, obscene is alarming at best.
If Mike actually does that, that would be obscene and horrific. If that even is what he is planning – I don’t remember Mike doing a big Bond-villain rant outlining his plans in detail, he just gave evil grins and started acting in ways that seem to be setting up something like that.
Until then, he is just trolling people on the internet which is morally questionable, and toying with people’s emotions which is evil. Neither behavior is new.
We get it bro, you’re super-triggered and don’t like that other people don’t feel the same way. You don’t have to post a long rant every time someone mentions Mike. I think there was a post from you in every single comment thread for his recent appearance.
I know “triggered” gets thrown around as an insult, but that’s not what I’m going for here. Mike’s behavior resonates with you and makes you angry, and that’s fine.
However, before you chastise others for not being as angry as you are, remember that you are upset about the theoretical outcome of what you assume Mike is planning. If things actually happen the way you think and people aren’t upset, THEN you have a reason to complain, because Mike would have crossed a line into irredeemable bastard territory.
That was meant to be “Firefly being complete trashaside;”
You know, because it’s awful. It’s just Buffy in space starring a bargain bin Han Solo and Joss Whedon’s crowning achievement of turning his fapbait into an on-screen presence, River Tam. Every character has the exact same voice and exchanges depth of personality for quirks like playing with toy dinosaurs and wearing a silly hat.
Is it just me, or is Panel 5 Joyce’s expression very reminiscent of Hank’s when she and he were arguing about the Keeners during Freshman Family Weekend?
I just assumed Joyce was enjoying the ability to have a decent debate about the bible with a fellow believer who is both intelligent and a decent human being (i.e. not one like Mary).
Mike is actually, genuinely, a total sex predator and a horrible piece of shit who deserves a tire iron in the face, but Sarah just wants a booty call. She objectifies Jacob, and now she’s feeling guilty for it.
She probably already stopped that some time back, when she decided that she would -not- be a fake “happy” Sarah just to try and “win” Jacob from Raidah.
She may not have stopped fantasizing about Jacob (who would?), but she doesn’t want to play games about it. In fact, when Joyce tried to make her play this game just a few strips back, it made her severely uncomfortable and distressed.
I really wouldn’t call Sarah a sexual predator. The term does not apply to everyone who is one-sidedly sexually attracted to someone because then it would needlessly vilify people who don’t deserve that term and eventually end up meaningless. Being sexually attracted to someone you don’t know that well is not bad, that’s just biology.
She’s just a woman who is attracted to Jacob, mainly because she hasn’t really got to know him as a person yet, and she has fantasies sometimes but there is a huge difference between having fantasies and forcing them on people without their consent. Not everyone who dates or has sex with other people started that relationship as friends.
She is struggling with the hurt of really wanting to be his girlfriend, not being able to do that, and letting him go vs. staying “friends” with him when she knows she wants more with and wind up hurting him, Radiah, and herself in the process.
Plus, she’s backed off from Jacob instead of doing the Joe or Mike thing. Like, she still checks him out from time to time and fantasizes, but that’s pretty typical for sexual folks (as far as I’ve heard) and she’s pretty good about keeping it more or less respectful and not trying to hint for more or cheat her way into more though she’s thought about it and abandoned at the last minute several times.
As someone raised secularly, this is fascinating to me, and I didn’t know about that argument about “existence of creation”. My parents are from China, and they knew (and still know) very little about Christianity because (1) the government was trying to keep Christianity out, and (2) it’s never been that big in China, though it’s growing nowadays. I always wondered what Christians thought happened to people who would likely never hear of Christianity/Jesus/the Bible in their lives, just because of their geographic location. “You just know” seems like a cheap excuse, but that also brings into question the Bible- if the text is so important to Christianity, what does that mean for people who would have never had the opportunity to even see one? Surely they don’t expect that all people just inherently know the content of the Bible, but also expect that you need to read it strictly anyway?
That’s a big question in Christianity! Different sects answer it differently.
Iirc, some sects say you go to purgatory forever, you’re denied a chance at heaven but hey you didn’t actually do anything evil so you don’t go to hell, either.
Sometimes they’re unflinching on the hell thing, which makes evangelism REALLY important, and which seriously calls God’s justice into question. Like, WTF, God.
…and other ones say that everyone goes to Heaven anyway. And others, like Jacob represents, say those who were overall good and would’ve accepted Jesus, are saved. And others say that everyone will learn sometime between death and judgment. And…so on.
It really depends on the sect, the interpretation, and personal feelings. There’s dozens of different answers.
I am reminded of this pentecostal pastor I know, who used to hold that Jesus appears to the dying (or dead) and gives them a final choice about accepting him.
From your “everyone will learn sometime…” remark I gather that that’s a more commonly held viewpoint.
Digression: There’s a related tension there I’ve found really interesting for a while. At least in the Protestant church, there’s a heavy expectation that you’ll spend a lot of time reading the bible, and this is seen as like, an indicator of your devotion to God. And yet, for much of the church’s history, the majority of people were illiterate, scripture was unavailable on a widespread basis, and the act of reading and interpreting scripture was restricted to the priesthood. Granted, that’s a large part of why the protestant movement came about – people got fed up with having to take the word of a (largely viewed as corrupt) priesthood for it, and that same priesthood having authority over the fate of their souls. So you can sort of see why it’s so important to protestants that each person reads the bible for themselves. But somewhere along the lines it’s become more of a moral requirement than anything else.
In regards to people who never even come into contact with christianity/the Bible, one of the pivotal points of the New Testament for christians is the Great Commission, in which Jesus instructs his followers to go and spread the word to all the world. So each person or culture yet to hear the gospel (literally, “good news”) is seen as a failure of the church. Our failure, not theirs, but they suffer for it. Of course, that doesn’t quite fill the whole gap – there are all the cultures that the Jews hadn’t even come into indirect contact with until long after Jesus’ advent, that literally couldn’t have heard the news for several lifetimes afterwards. Conversely, there’s all the people that died before the commission was even made. The argument Joyce is making here is pretty much the only one I’ve seen in regards to them, which has never really seemed very convincing to me, either. Although there was an interesting moment in I think the last of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I can’t remember it well, but Aslan essentially says to a character who protests he’s not worthy of mercy because he spent his life in service to the evil god(?) Tash that anything he’s done for good in the name of another god, he really did in service of Aslan whether he knew it or not, and conversely any evil acts performed in the name of Aslan were really serving Tash. Basically meaning that the good-hearted belong to him, and the evil to Tash.
if you’re Jack Chick’s flavour of born-again-Christian, you can spend literally your entire life building charity schools and hospitals, spend all your money to help others, forsake your personal life to make the world a better place BUT IF YOU DON’T SAY YOUR SOUL BELONGS TO JESUS then you’re going to Hell for eternity
On the other hand, you can sin right up until the last minute, commit murders left and right, steal from the destitute, force orphans into prostitution, and as long as you sincerely repent and accept Jesus on your deathbed, you’re in.
(still talking about Chick, who Joyce seems to follow or at least she likes his tracts)
on the flip side you can be a literal child rapist but if you repent and say you surrender to Jesus then it’s alright
And yeah, that’s the version I grew up around. It was all about the magic spell to Jesus and that basically was all that mattered.
Heck, concentrating on works to help others was often seen as a negative because a) you were disrespecting God by not trusting him to save you simply by your identity as a “good” Christian and trying to bribe him with good works and b) Works in service of goals like peace, aiding the poor, showing tolerance to marginalized groups, and so on were actually in service to the Antichrist.
According to the sect my friends belonged to, that part doesn’t count because of the line Joyce quotes in Panel 3. As such, that clearly takes precedence. And is proof that faith is the only means by which to be saved.
More fun is that they were also big on Prosperity Gospel as well, which basically holds that God is responsible for rewarding people in life who are favored by him. Thus, everyone rich is a true man of God and by praying well enough to God and being enough in his favor (say by donating a lot of money to the man with the fancy jet), you would also be rewarded in life with monetary riches as proof of your devotion.
The lines where Jesus constantly rants about how the rich are fucked and people should care for the poorest usually get ignored or interpreted as being about how one should give the gift of Jesus to the poor at best and about “evil globalist jews” at worst.
Well, that line of reasoning just answered my question concerning how so many people are willing to accept a certain citrus-hued millionaire as divinely ordained. Despite well cited evidence to the contrary.
There are different views on this among Christians.
Catholics historically believed that you went to Limbo, which is kinda like Heaven-lite. (Now, the official teaching is “We’re not sure, but we know God works it all out somehow in a way that is merciful and just”.)
Some Christians believe that all good people still get to go to Heaven, or they get to go to Heaven if they could not possibly have known about Jesus (like little babies or people in North Korea).
Some Christians don’t believe in a literal Hell in the first place. Good Non-Christians might not go to Heaven, but they just stop existing.
Mormons have a very interesting approach – they think you can convert after death! That’s why Mormons are big into geneology – they want to baptize their ancestors by proxy so their ancestors can convert to the right religion. (Not just their own ancestors get caught up with this, as it happens, and it’s pretty controversial among non-Mormons who know about this, but it certainly is a novel way of squaring that circle.)
And some Christians do believe that if you don’t know Jesus, you go right to Hell, no matter how good you were. “Faith, not works”. (Some of this group make an exception for small children and babies. Others don’t.) To this group, spreading the good word is an urgent mission, because you are going to be held personally responsible in the afterlife for all the people you could’ve converted but didn’t.
Following the Second Vatican Council, the official teaching of the Catholic Church is much closer to Jacob’s views. Of course, a lot of people don’t know about that section, and the conservative wing of the church has never been very comfortable about the idea.
Being Episcopal, we have as many opinions on that as we have members. One of the most common I hear actually reconciles with the scripture Joyce quotes, “No man comes to the Father but by me.” We believe that, but who knows by what criterion Jesus accepts ways to God as “by him”? He also said “if you seek me, you will find me.” How many adherents of non-Christian religions spend their entire lives in the search for God?
I was raised Southern Baptist, and I have asked many an old friend or family member still in that church, “So you think that you can and do understand the inscrutable will of God sufficiently to declare its limits?” I can’t, so the belief I described above may be complete hooey, but at least I know that.
Lord, yes. It’s funny how many theologians have no problem pointing out Peter’s flaws, but after his conversion Paul is a Model Christian. Not “haha” funny, mind you.
Most of the people I talk to about the subject think Paul was a self-loathing gay man who never came out of the closet or even accepted he was in the closet.
Go Jacob! Use religion to alter perceptions and reduce other’s negativity and bigotry toward other religions! If only such a thing helped us non religious folks with the Christians. I’m still happy about it though. Gotta love less hate in the world!
Well there are some Christians, myself included, that think that God doesn’t really care if you believe in him or not, the important thing is if you’ve been a good person. If that’s the case, then he’ll let you in. After all, you guys are doing it without even expecting to be rewarded for it, out of the goodness of your heart.
Frankly it kind of works out either way for me. If I’m right, we all go to heaven as a reward for doing our best to make the world a better place. If you’re right, we still made the world a better place, and that’s reward enough even in oblivion.
Interestingly, as an atheist, that’s pretty much my view as well. I mean, I figure there’s probably no afterlife, but if it is, and the afterlife is sorted out in some just manner, then people who mostly tried to be good people will get into the good one. (And if it’s not done according to some just manner, then it doesn’t really matter what we do, does it? Whatever the rules are, if they’re not just then they’re completely arbitrary and for all we know the folks in charge might change them just on a whim. “You have to believe the right way” is just as nonsensical as “Only if you were born on a Thursday and died on a Tuesday, unless you were born with a cowl in which case you had to die at midnight any day of the week.”)
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” — Marcus Aurelius
It’s trickier, in a way. That whole “If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them” is powerful and not really something a traditional Christian could come up with. God is just by definition.
So, Jacob, how about faiths that could not possibly have been created by the Abrahamic god and fit that framework unless you jam it in with a hammer, like Hinduism or the Hellenic pantheon?
I feel like Jacob is saying that all faiths are valid and lead to the same path, rather than suggesting that he’s right and everyone else just got the cliff notes.
That’s a pleasant thought. Nobody is wrong for their religion, everyone just focuses on leading good lives and making the lives of others better. In a perfect world, people would not suffer anymore for their beliefs.
That’s my general view. Most of it is all just nuts and bolts, the substance of “be a good person” is what gets you into heaven (in whatever form it takes). From that perspective, most any religion will get you into heaven (so long as you’re not an asshole while following it) plus plenty of moral philosophies and humanistic ideals, so not even non-religious folks are excluded.
I don’t follow- a lot of pre-abrahamic religions and pantheons didn’t encourage being a good person at all. Hell, the greek wrote all sorts of plays about how that doesn’t help you.
I’m told Hellenic polytheism focuses more on reciprocity (here summed up as ‘don’t be a dick to the gods, they won’t be a dick to you’) more than any sort of commandments list, at least these days.
I’m pretty sure that’s what he means too, but his wording for it is…off putting. Because by their own religious narratives, a lot of faiths are precluded from being ‘placed in creation by God’ unless you’re jamming them into a Christian mould, which usually involves a lot of ignoring and dismissing what those religions actually teach.
Or just go the opposite spectrum – Satanism, how does THAT fit in?
On a side note, I’ll never care for Hinduism just because of how easy it is to see how changes in religion reflect government control. Same goes for the Roman Catholic Church, what with the Middle Ages.
I’m not gonna go into what I think about the behaviour of religious followers or the doctrines themselves, because that’s irrelevant here. I’m just saying you can’t really fit some of these religions into a Christian framework.
Yeah, it does, but it’s own religious narratives still preclude it from being a creation of the Abrahamic god, which is what I was trying to get at. It doesn’t mean Christians can’t achieve salvation in Hindu thought, but Hinduism is still not a creation of their God, by Hinduism’s doctrine.
oh, absolutely. Hinduism is far older than Christianity anyway, in fact I’m pretty sure it predates any of the Abrahamic faiths. So it’s not going to be concerned with what all Christians believe happened in the Middle East sometime around ~20 AD
Look at Joyce! Look at how much she’s grown! Havin’ a debate about religion in which the the point isn’t to be right, but to discuss and enjoy the discussion; look at how much fun she’s having!
Strongly Agree. Christianity was so much better before he was all ‘oh dang the world might not end tomorrow, we have to make something that doesn’t rock the boat so much, also let’s concentrate less on just not being jerks, that’s a good idea’. Friggin Paul!
I like to think the first thing Jesus did when Paul died was bongo slap him and say, “What the hell Paul?!?!? I did NOT tell you to use your cultural baggage to be anti-gay!!!” “But Jesus, some of those Greek guys are straight up pedophiles!” “So you targeted gay people? What is wrong you? I should have left you blind for life!”
If it helps, most of the early church, including the actual disciples felt that way too. But they were to nice to kick him out, and he and Peter did agree about Gentile converts that one time, so they sent him on a missionary trip instead of excommunicating the former Pharisiac zealot and Roman Citizen. And he never gave up that cultural baggage.
Ugh.
I was given a color comic at around age 9 which basically says what Paul apparently did “how do you know God is real? look at the wonderful world! that’s the proof!”
9 yo me thought, “what a load of BS. One doesn’t mean the other AT ALL”
Is it bad that I remember those days, the days where I used to debate theology, despite it not being one of my strong suits? I was a devote Anti-Paulite, which was frowned upon in my church, and it was only after debating my pastor about such things that I decided that the church and I had philosophical differences.
…okay, doesn’t Islam say that Jesus existed and was a prophet or something? A person clearly blessed by God even if he’s not the son of God? Wouldn’t that make Islam covered by that whole thing, at least far more than Judaism?
But yeah, this? This strip is why I get frustrated at religious discussion so much. The Bible, the Quran, the Torah, they are not the word of God, they are the word of God WRITTEN DOWN BY MAN. AND EDITED BY MAN.
Oh, and translated! Dear lord the translations, the bible was not written in English assholes!
Even by their own rules (I’m agnostic >_>), Religions are inherently fallible, because all of their scripture and rules and ideas have gone through the filter of “Roman-era jackasses who happened to know how to read and write”, or some similar such thing… and yet they treat the whole business as sacrosanct.
What I find hilarious is that if you look at the original name “Christian” it is basically the Greeks calling the followers of Jesus dopeheads. Kristos was a word for drug user. The interpretation of “anointed one,” was basically “crap, everyone knows us as the Christians now, we need to come up with a name that doesn’t suggest we are drug using wackos.”
Jesus (Isa in Arabic) is one of the big four prophets in Islam. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad in that order chronologically, but reversed in Eder of importance. Heck Islam even recognizes Jesus’s virgin birth, and at the end of the world Jesus comes back to announce Muhammad’s successor as the final prophet. However, it is also believed in Islam that the Quran is the unfiltered word of God that has existed since the dawn of time. At the same time, it’s difficult to read Arabic poetry and certain passages can be interpreted multiple different ways do to one word having many meanings.
See, that I just don’t get. Wouldn’t it make far, far more sense to say that a divine being’s wisdom cannot be perfectly captured in a mundane form? Stuff gets ignored all the time for the sake of changing times (unless you really want to not wear mixed fabrics), it’s a perfect rationale for it.
It was actually part of a very large century long debate within Islam from circa 800CE to circa 900CE between two schools of thought in the Sunni group (Shi’a have normally been the more liberal sect of Islam due to not having this debate because they split with the Sunnis very early on). One school of thought was the Mutzalite school which very much liked reason and logic, and believed the Quran had to be just another regular creation of God, as the Quran being God’s words would logically have had to been created later. The other school was the Ashari school of thought which preferred piety even if said piety was blind, thinking that as long as one had faith they did not need to understand their faith. Ignorant faith was still faith to them. And they believed that Quran had existed, in it’s current form, since the beginning of time. The Jewish Old Testament and Christian New Testamemt were of course expected to be flawed, but the Quran was immutably, literally the word of God, using a Muhammad as a mouthpiece whereas the old prophets had acted as translators. In the end, the Ashari school of thought won, and became the basis for most of Sunni Islam ever since.
…I… really don’t have a lot to say about this. That’s actually just a really fascinating exploration about the split in the Sunni Muslim faith and where it came from.
Just wanted to give you a thumbs up and let you know that this sort of description is fascinating to us Agnostics. 🙂
“If you’d come today you could have reached the whole nation!
Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication!”
That, and the supporting cast with the Lazaruses and the Elijahs and the Hammolekeths.. But all the A-Listers… The ‘important’ cast… all the English Gospel-ers…
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, Simon (all those good Middle-Eastern names…) don’t cast doubt on it’s veracity at all!
I ship it. I don’t know that this relationship would last a very long time, but I think it could be good for the both of them. Clearly they want both want a chaste relationship. Plus, his being black and having blasphemous ideas would piss off Joyce’s mother, that’s a plus in my book!
Dating her room mate’s crush, her ex-boyfriend’s room mate and her former first date’s (and current “it’s a complicated, text-based, kinda friendship”) friend WOULD be consistent with expected level of awkwardness for Joyce so you might be onto something.
Of course Bagge’s going to give it a full on skin-application. Anything drama so severe that it might end with a major character’s base ostracization counts as a low-shun.
Ooooh, ooooh, and they really hit off while the girl who is heartbroken over Joyce served their table (aka NOT ALLOWED to not be there). I’m really glad we didn’t get a closeup on a sad Becky-face.
Hank would probably be ok. And by “ok” I mean “probably sit in stunned silence for a couple hours before being supportive while simultaneously saying something really awkward”. Carol would melt and then combust. And then part with something really awful and probably racist.
I’m Canadian. The one year I actually had a Quebecois french teacher (most teachers I had either could just follow the textbook, or at most had high school or first-year college level french), he spent a class trying to teach us to laugh like we were french.
I’m hoping for them to just end up friends. And it might even lead (eventually, in like a decade real time) to a partial reconciliation Sarah between Sarah and Radiah. But that’s just optimist me think. Cynical me will be along to squash that hope in a little bit.
Doubtful. Jacob is into serious relationships. He is most likely serious with Raidah, which is what allows him to have friendly conversations with others of the opposite sex: he isn’t talking to Joyce to scope her out as a potential girlfriend, he’s just being nice and trying to connect to her outside complaining about her behind her back.
There are so many contradictions in the Scripture. I’m not religious, but I think it’s important to take in context and stuff like that. I once had a debate with a Christian acquaintance about religion vs. science. I learned then that some sects don’t approve of modern medicine, but then I thought, why can’t the existence of cells and the processes of animals and nature be thought of as God’s Perfect Design? Why must it be one or the other?
And in the Christian sects that believe in Christ, why is there so little focus on the Golden Rule and so much focus on using the Scripture to condemn others?
Furthermore, considering the religious zealots currently running the country, isn’t it blasphemous in and of itself to presume that one knows more than God, since that pride is a characteristic of Lucifer in particular? To clearly discount Christ’s words so you have an excuse to hurt people and obtain earthly power?
It makes me think back to the needle and the camel, where it was said that it was easier to get a whole camel through a needle than for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And yet there they are, looking down on others and doing the exact opposite of alms in the highest positions in the country, truly believing that because they have money and they’re white they are better than everyone else in the world, literally.
My smartass take on this is that it is about the tension between growing the market and brand loyalty.
Coke and Pepsi both believe greatly in cola-flavored soda drinks, and want everyone to drink more. But they also fundamentally disagree because Coke is not Pepsi, and each knows how profoundly wrong the other is.
It’s funny/sad how some religious people think the world of their religion but can’t accept it to be a bigger, better think they’ve been taught it is. Like… yeah, we’re good and going to Heaven but fuck these guys and those other guys too. They’re not us. Can’t be us.
This is why I feel lucky to have been raised Jesuit.
Anyway… I also find it funny that every time two characters get along people start shipping it. Seriously guys, there’s a thing called friendship. It’s not a stepping stone to something else all the time, most often than not it’s its own thing. Joyce and Jacob feel completely incompatible as a pair to me.
Of course, drama and shenanigans demand certain someone gets the wrong idea.
But seeing two people getting along and shipping them is a part of real life too. It’s not as though shipping is something that only happens in fiction. 🙂
One: fellow Jesuit raised high five.
Two: Someone can ship people without having them be romantically or sexually involved. The verb of “shipping” in that sense just means two put two or more people in a relationship together, and friendship counts as a relationship.
Really makes you feel like you lucked out when you realize that being sensible and understanding is not a widespread teaching huh? Not that I am really religious anymore, but my formative years were in good hands.
Joyce and Jacob (other people beat me to this one)
Sarah and Joe (they’ve got the cynical bit from different angles, they’re both growing in different but similar ways, they could really be compatible in ways that Jacob and Sarah wouldn’t be.)
My attitude towards Christianity is what I call the “Ghandi Rule.” If Ghandi is in hell, I want to go to hell, because if god cares more for what people believe than how they act towards their fellow man, screw god.
Of course the christians who want to convert me are always in the group that believes Ghandi is in hell, so it is a great rule to drive away proselytizers!
She laundered money for cartel bosses and brutal dictators, opposed using pain meds even during surgery claiming that suffering brought people close to Jesus, and used the poor conditions of her clinics as a ploy for fundraising but left the clinics in unsterile horrendous conditions and sent the money to the Vatican to buy the Pope another solid gold toilet.
But is that any reason NOT to make her a Saint? She can be the saint of self-righteous shitbags who trick the masses into thinking they are helping others while actually only spreading misery!
Also hideously hideously anti choice, but that’s pretty SOP for the Catholic church. Which is probably why I had the biggest problem with going along with my religion class tbh – any faith that’s anti choice will not include me among its followers.
See also, Che Guevara. When I was in college, many of my fellow students considered that guy a sort of saint or martyr for a cause that frankly confused the hell out of me anyway.
Ghandi isn’t the best example, a far better one is “a religion where Hitler could be in heaven is one that I wouldn’t want to join.” If anyone ever hands you a chick tract, tell them that, because Jack Chick has stories where serial killers repent and go to heaven and has at least one story where someone who commits suicide goes to heaven.
I like that this discussion is happening. I like that Willis is recognizing the complexity of and internal debates within Christianity. Seeing a lot of these kinds of debates (and also the Sarahs and Joes who don’t see them as meaningful) among my students. In short, I’m once again really impressed by this comic. It’s awesome.
I’ve had a lot of fun reading DOA, and also just kinda being able to see things in general, but this comic gave me flashbacks to my days at a Christian college and I just finished tearing out my own eyes 🙁
Oh snap, we are going into Kirk Cameron Saving Christmas logic here.
“Its ok to believe X because Jesus created X.”
“Yea, people worship X instead of Jesus… but who do you think created X. Checkmate sucker!”
I suddenly really wish Joe was more religiously observant. Some of Joyce and Jacob’s discussion seems like it would be slightly bonkers from a Jewish perspective, and I’d like to hear that perspective in-comic. Just for fun/friendly discussion purposes.
Ah Yes, liberal Christianity: the stepping stone to outright non-belief; easier to swallow than conservative religion for the more progressively minded but even more nonsensical from a logical standpoint.
Panel 1: Oh wow, this takes me back. Yep, this is part of the hand-wave that Rapturists use to avoid the central flaws of their ideology of faith not works and God’s coming back soon to torment a planet of people with hellish disasters that we’re all going to frig ourselves silly watching from a cloud in Heaven.
The proof of God is in Earth existing, so if they don’t already have a clue in their hearts, well, they probably have it coming.
Since that doesn’t sit well with everyone though, it’s usually paired with the “great work” of proselytizing. After all, if they don’t believe, that’s just because they haven’t been ministered to yet, and shown the clear obvious way of a weird interpretation of the Bible as filtered through a couple of John Birch Society members. And if they have been ministered and still reject, then it’s because they are heathen demons trying to corrupt you personally.
And thus, it’s important to go everywhere and minister to everyone so they have the “best chance” to be saved and why it doesn’t matter what evil you perform to force people to join the church, what deceptions you use, because you’re saving that person’s soul from a very imminent doom at the hands of an angry God.
Panel 2: And that worldview really doesn’t like the idea that there’s more than one path to salvation, because that opens the door to it mattering more that there be good works rather than it just being about faith and saying the right words and trying to keep yourself “pure” enough to ride out the clock on the world.
And a lot of other questions that religions like Joyce’s do not want to dwell overly long on.
Panel 3: The irony here of course being that the God in Islam and the God in Christianity are the same deity. Islam just believes there was one more prophet than Christians believe in. But then, there’s a large swath of middle American protestantism that is heavily invested in viewing Islam as some sort of devil-worshipper cult of death rather than a religion born out of Christianity.
Also, I suspect Jacob’s major romantic turn-on might be theological discussions. Especially as that’s the subject he seems to really come alive on when talking about Raidah.
On panel two – even Jacob’s position isn’t exactly nice. Sure, other religions get to be paths to salvation (at least some of them), but in classic fashion we get the liberal christian throwing the nonreligious under the bus while suggesting that there is no problem in doing so.
… ruling out some manner of philosophy of ethics as a path through his particular savior.
🙁
Seriously though? I’ll give Jacob heaps of credit for actually making an effort to get through to a fundie. That’s doing more to blunt the damage of the religion than most liberal Christians do.
It’s really sad that so many people forget about Allah and Yahweh being the same deity. Especially the Wahabists who think that the “Judeo-Christian” God is a false idol. Islam is actually super respectful and venerable to Jesus and Mary, they’re written into the Quran, Jesus is the second most important prophet according to Islam, and when the world ends it’s Jesus, not Muhammad who comes back. Granted he comes back to announce Muhammad’s successor as final prophet but still.
Sure, but telling fundamentalist Christians that “don’t worry, Muslims like Jesus, too, but they put him second place after their guy, and he isn’t really the Son of God” is kind of like saying, “Yeah, we believe in Superman, but he’s not invulnerable and he can’t fly and also he was born in New Jersey and he’s a dentist.” At that point he’s a different dude. Thinking Jesus is the Absolute Bestest is the entire point of Christianity, and putting him second place is probably worse to some folks than not putting him anywhere at all. Churches have literally split over way more trivial stuff.
I agree with everything you said there, but “churches have literally split over way more trivial stuff” is about as low a bar as you can get. Name almost any level of triviality, and I guarantee that some church somewhere has split over something more trivial.
But that’s exactly what I’m saying. “Jesus is the Son of God” is kind of major. When churches split over stupid stuff, why would the big stuff be shrugged off?
…. now I’m thinking that often domestic abuse and worse is shrugged off, and the problem is more that many churches just can’t tell the difference between what’s trivial and what’s important.
I feel like a lot of the history of feminism is trying to get the public at large to treat major issues like the major issues they are rather than a pointless background thing not worth even thinking about compared to say whether or not a Church thinks the holy day is Saturday or Sunday.
I feel like I accidentally antagonized you. I’m sorry. That wasn’t the intention. I also realized that my comment is easily very…ignorant and condescending. I apologize for that. Is there a delete function? I really don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable because I said something stupid.
As far as I can tell, the only delete function is saying something MIND-NUMBINGLY stupid to the point of insensitivity or outright hatred. Don’t ask me how I know this.
This reminds me of the apocryphal story of when the first Christian missionaries met the Norse and the Norse were like, “ooh, hey, that’s a cool god, we’ll add him to our pantheon” and the missionaries were like “what, fuck no, he’s the only god” and the Norse were like “uhhh, okay, now we have an issue”.
That’s one of the things that got the Jews, and later the Christians, in trouble with the Romans.
The Romans had no problem with letting conquered peoples keep their gods. As polytheists, they had no investment in the “our god is real; yours aren’t” idea that Paul and Joyce are pushing. When you’ve already got dozens of gods, what’s another one, more or less? Letting people keep worshipping their native gods keeps them happy, and a lot of those gods ended up spreading through the Empire, far from their origins.
But people had to recognize the Roman gods, because that was the basis for the legitimacy of civil authority.. Adding YHWH to the rolls of the gods of Rome is not a problem. Insisting that YHWH is the only god is a problem. That denies the legitimacy of Roman civil authority, which is not just blasphemy, but treason and rebellion. And that’s what gets you crucified.
It’s not that people forget the position Jesus has in Islam, but that they are genuinely uninterested in hearing about it. However in medieval times, a time primarily known for its religious intolerance and genocide, there were actually numerous occasions where this wasn’t the case. Depending on the century, this was seen in places like al-Andalus, Sicily, Greece and even the Crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem and Antioch. There are in fact numerous accounts of young knights on pilgrimage to Jerusalem being reprimanded by their senior peers for harassing Muslim religious practices. What did all of these have in common? That they had coexisted in relatively peaceful conditions long enough to no longer consider each other as foreign or heathens or ‘the other’.
When compared to the amount of hostility and murder in medieval times, it could be argued that these were exceptions to the rule, but that doesn’t change the fact that they occurred. What we see today, especially in religious communities but also some secular groups, is that people would rather remain ignorant. By secluding themselves in very exclusive commumities, they create an environment that prefers to ridicule other beliefs based on their own assumptions rather than take them seriously enough to learn what other people actually believe.
I shouldn’t be bothered by this, because it’s a much nicer pluralistic way of interpreting the scriptures than Joyce’s leaden interpretation, but I’m not the biggest fan of the way more pluralistic Christian doctrine has of looking at the rest of the religions of the Earth as “incomplete” or “imperfect” forms of Christianity. Like they are all just secretly in service to “the one true faith”.
Part of that is because I was raised in fundie land with public school textbooks with definite influence from those beliefs and as a kid super into mythology, I was always bothered by the attempts to shoe-horn a fake version of “no no, they all secretly knew Christianity was right” by lying about what other religions believed. (The one most infuriating to me was the passage about how the Pyramids were built to point towards Heaven, which is wrong on like 5 different levels).
And another part is just the other disrespect to other faiths and what they actually believe in order to shoe-horn in this “they’re all secretly talking about us” garbage. I mean, I was raised secularly by a Wiccan and I’ve always been good to note what the internal mythologies of any religion are even though I do not actually believe in any of them.
And so it doesn’t feel a lot to ask of Christians even when they don’t believe in other religions to respect the internal arguments of those religions and faiths instead of trying to shoe-horn them into their own to make it feel more universal than it is.
I dunno, minor pet peeve.
Also, hello there Jacob eyebrow. Do I need to remind you that you are in a committed monogamous relationship?
Panel 5: Those eyes, the teasing about blasphemy (and she’s definitely half-teasing, we’ve seen her shocked by blasphemy face before and that is not it), yeah, there’s definite chemistry between them and it makes sense they would get along so well especially as both think so much about their faiths.
And that’s another reason why Sarah and Jacob wouldn’t work. Sarah doesn’t have those interests and definitely is not the type to enjoy hours of friendly debate on theological matters.
Panel 6: A secular jewish person having to listen to a sectarian debate on Christianity where the choices for folks like him are “hell because reject Jesus” or “well, all that jewish stuff growing up was really just another way of praising Jesus”. Yeah, I can see why Joe’s face is stuck in permanent “oh fucking shut up already” mode.
And Sarah, oh Sarah. No. You don’t get to be mad about this. Yeah, you have a crush and it sucks seeing your crush flirt with others and get along with others (or at least that’s what friends tell me, I’m more the type who likes seeing people I love flirt and be happy with others because I like seeing people I like be happy even if I’m not directly responsible for that happiness).
But you’re a terrible fit for Jacob. And Raidah and yes, Joyce, are much better fits. They both like theological discussion and have compatible ideologies and viewpoints towards sex. And Joyce finding someone who can have a good spirited debate on matters of faith and have nice chemistry with isn’t a bad thing (though I’m still wanting to cheer on Jacob and Raidah some more).
So just let your roommate enjoy a bit of chemistry and a good conversation. It isn’t doing you any harm.
I’m actually kinda expecting Joyce and Radiah to meet up again through Jacob, become sorta friends and (Joyce being Joyce) Joyce trying to get Radiah and Sarah to reconcile or at least hate each other less. But that’s just the hopeful part of me. The naive hopeful part that the cynical part comes by later to snuff out. And on the Christian shoe-horning part I totally agree. I’ve actually adopted a more Sikh-like view of religious pluralism as a result: there is one ultimate end goal and truth, but many different but equally valid and valuable paths to that truth. Which I guess is what you get when you mix liberal Jesuit views with the liberal Sikh views that pervade your environment. About a quarter of my adopted hometown in California is Sikh and it is a really really nice experience, because Sikh temples actually let anyone attend their worship services and actually encourage non-Sikhs to come to them, if for no other reason than to celebrate and interact as a community.
I can’t believe you got this wrong, but pyramids were actually built to store grain. A neurosurgeon said so. And he is now your Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, so he would know what buildings are for, mmkay?
…
The real sad part is that he’s like the second least objectionable pick of the whole bunch.
Your first point about panel four is a part of why I ended up moving in an areligious direction. Organized religion, especially the abrahamic ones, is way way too prone to view their path as the one right path and other religions and even other denominations of the same religion as, at best, inferior paths to the same end and, at worst, as enemies trying to lead them astray and thereby deserving of anything between scorn and derision to out and out destruction while I personally subscribe to the notion that each of us have a path that is right for us and no religion is absolutely right for everyone.
About panel 4: Let’s be real, most people who think one thing believe that people who think another thing are at least somewhat wrong or else they wouldn’t think that thing. Asking a Christian to affirmatively assert that all other religions are just as good would be like asking a Star Trek fan to affirmatively assert that Star Wars and Doctor Who is just as good. They’ve made their choice clear, and they obviously believe that for a reason, so regardless of the truth of that, it’s unreasonable to expect them to declare that truth.
As a secular Jew reading that discussion, I think you nailed my feelings about it quite succinctly! 😛 Sometimes I just feel like Christians ought to drop the Old Testament entirely – at the end of the day, it’s just not their book; and on top of that they cancel out/try too hard to rationalize most of it to force it into a bizarre sort of continuity with the New Testament.
why does Joyce’s cast keep not immobilizing her wrist
like, she gestures with that hand like it’s just a fingerless glove
am i mistaken and is it just a fingerless glove??? but there isn’t one on her other hand so it’s probably still the cast??? just. not immobilizing somehow
I think that’s a wrist brace, or possibly an ace bandage; the later of which I’ve worn before. It’s a little stiff, but you can in fact move your joints unlike with a cast.
Wow I like this a lot. I love love love the idea of Joyce being able to get into a friendly debate about religion with another open-minded Christian and have FUN with it. Both as a Christian and as an atheist I’ve really enjoyed healthy debate/questioning, and I think it’s both practically good and an interesting, enjoyable pursuit. And hers and Jacob’s smiles. Bless these kids.
I’ve never really thought about the “the proof is in the earth” thing since leaving the faith, but…yeah, it sounds like BS now. I used to believe it pretty hardcore, and it sounds nice in its way, but as cool as our existence is I don’t think anything about the natural world proves there /must/ be a higher power. And also there’s a lot about the natural world that sucks, so. The thing is, I’ve come to see the idea of God not as an answer to the question “where did life come from” but another, and perhaps bigger question. I ask “where did we come from”, religious people say “God created us.” Now my question is “wtf? Well where did GOD come from?” And no one can answer that. There is no easy answer, because each potential answer leads to more questions. Yes, scientific answers, too.
Also the ‘they have no excuse thing’…no. If God is like “you have no excuse not to believe in me, fuck you” God is an asshole. There’s plenty of reason NOT to believe, or else there wouldn’t be so many people who didn’t. Like. Duh. That many people aren’t just ‘denying his existence’ or ‘closing their heart to him’. There’s just literally no good evidence.
Given time only exists as a reflection of space, it’s actually a nonsequitor question, “Where does God come from” as technically speaking, all things having beginnings and ends is the outlier rather than the standard. Humans have beginnings, middles, and ends in their bodies but from outside the universe, we’re actually eternal because all moments exist simultaneously.
Yes, God or any Q-like being which may exist is Doctor Manhattan.
The thing that’s always weirded ME out about that argument (besides the fact that it’s a God of Gaps fallacy, which is inherently untenable in the face of the march of science) is that they never seem to use the phenomenon of consciousness — which, it can be determined inductively, cannot be explained by observation-based science (see solipsism) or by any physical mechanism that is not itself conscious — as the main sticking point.
And in comes a physicist/philosopher to prove me wrong. I know the drill.
Panels 1 and 3 contradict each other.
In panel 1 Joyce claims that everyone should know god even if they don’t know Jesus.
In panel 3 Joyce says that the only way to know god is through Jesus.
The contradiction is due to your simplification. Knowing someone and coming to someone are two different things. It’s the difference of looking someone up on wikipedia as opposed to meeting them in person and having a dialogue to get to know them.
Something I thought of back when I cared, for those who care to chew on.
1) Jesus pretty much says, “yo dawgs, Abraham is in heaven.”
2) Jesus also says, “there’s only one way into heaven, and it’s gonna be me.”
3) Abraham died way before Jesus lived.
Conclusion, in order for the Bible to be internally consistent, that whole “Jesus is the only way into heaven” bit literally cannot mean what most modern Christians interpret it to mean.
So, did Jesus shut the backdoor into heaven then? The evangelical teachings of my youth would *not* be ok with someone backdooring into heaven. Could people *still* get into heaven if they had a nice little goat farm and were regular, one might even say religious, about their blood sacrifices?
Jesus removed the requirement of blood sacrifice with his own death, that was the point of sending Him down to the slaughter. Law and blood sacrifice are no longer required because Jesus is the fulfillment of both. Now the way is relationship with Jesus – which boils down to conversation with Him and attempting to be a decent human being.
I’m not going to get into the more controversial things like homosexuality and such because…well to be frank, I’m more liberal on that. Still, the point is Jesus changed the rules, which is why Judaism and Christianity split at that point.
Hmmm, the Evangelicals haunting my metaphysical musings would *not* approve of Jesus changing the rules. But I guess it would be perfectly fine for there to have been one way into heaven, then there is another way. But if that is the case… why *not* assume there are paths through all other major religions? I mean, I assume the obvious reason of being kind of demeaning to those religions wouldn’t bother a hardcore Christian 😉
Here’s a thought. What if Abraham got into Heaven because, X number of years later, Jesus was GOING to die for his sins? Jesus’ salvation transcends time itself!
You know now that I think about it the hole idea of having a pairing of Jacob and Joyce isn’t all that out of place, I can’t believe I didn’t stop to think that they have so much in common until they point it out.
While we’re discussing theology in minute detail here, I’m going to throw out something that I’ve become fascinated with over the last couple years:
The Coptic Orthodox Church.
For those who don’t know, Egypt was a major theological hub in the early church–home of the very first monasteries (google or wikipedia search “Desert Fathers” The oldest still-functioning-since-founded monastery can be found in Egypt), until they were cut off from the main church following political moves by the Byzantine emperor.
A few hundred years later, everything changed when the Fire Nation–er, when the Arabs invaded Egypt. Interestingly, the Coptic people basically stepped aside after a few battles, and let the Byzantines get thrown out of Egypt. And thus they lived under Islamic rule for the next thousand years.
They were actually treated rather well. They had to pay a tax, and couldn’t serve in the military (until a couple hundred years ago), but the Copts and the Coptic Christians survived. They even survived the prosecution brought about by European Christians trying to make sure that the Coptic Christians were the right *kind* of Christian.
Interestingly, they have their own Pope, the very first one in the world, and the very first Pope on record was named Heraclas.
That’s right, the Coptic Church had Pope Hercules!
Not only that, their popes aren’t picked in a secret ceremony in their headquarters.
They’re elected. And the group of people that vote for him *are elected by the laypeople*
That’s right, they have a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED POPE.
Plus they have a requirement that the pope has to be a monk for at least 15 years, so you know he’s got MAD hand to hand skills, and is probably at least level 10.
The great thing about religious dogmata is that they are completely arbitrary. So religious debates may be a fun pasttime but they are ultimately pointless. Just like many nerd debates.
I would not ship Joyce/ Jacob. If they have too much interaction with one another, they’d probably create a wedge between themselves via theological debate. It’s civil now, but Joyce is super passionate when it comes to her core beliefs.
I dunno, my Catholic mom got along swimmingly with my Presbyterian dad and had a liberal son and we all got along fine. Also I think I may have altered their personal doctrines quite significantly.
Basically, they could easily carry on a civil discourse until the heat death of whichever one of them dies first, or they could reconcile, but they could do either one whilst being romantically involved.
[nitpicking]
Technically, Joyce should say it’s ‘heretic’ rather than ‘blasphemous’ since Jacob isn’t being irreverent of god or something sacred, but proposing a religious view that’s greatly divergent from Joyce’s.
[/nitpicking]
But maybe she isn’t entirely clear on the difference between the two.
Just to clarify: The KJV was written at the behest of King James to be a translation for common people. In order to assure a simplicity for the semi-washed masses King James declared that only the 10000 or so most common words could be used. Which is not a lot of words.
Yes indeed! Even better, one of the printing skills erroneously removed the word “not” from the adultery commandment. Hiking sand serious fines ensued.
Oh sure, the argument falls apart at even the slightest bit of analyzis and can only be salvaged by repeating “God is omnipotent” ad naseum, but I’m sure it’s still a perfectly viable way to live.
Don’t worry Joyce, no one can get into Heaven. Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple.” John 3:15 “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” The game is rigged, either way, you lose.
Oh, Joyce is REALLY enjoying herself in this debate. This may be the first time that she has been able to really work at defending her religion with someone who either didn’t already believe or who is willing to listen. In my mind, this can only lead to good things since she is going to be force to really think about her beliefs and it may begin to encourage her to actively call into question some of them without some traumatic experience. Even if she doesn’t change any of her beliefs, it will help her grow as a person.
I mean, torturing people forever is an act of unfathomable evil no matter how bad they are, and worshiping a god that does so is basically equivalent to being a Cthulhu cultist. Still, I guess it’s better to be a nice Cthulhu cultist? At least, as long as He doesn’t actually exist.
(Though having just read Exodus, it strikes me that ‘God is Evil’ is a fairly consistent interpretation of the Bible. The God who murdered a bunch of children just to show that he could seems like the kind of God who would torture people forever because they didn’t spend their lives talking about how great his son was.)
For the record, Cthulhu itself was a cultist, not an actual god. He was the high priest of whatever religion the star spawn had. Being a cultist of Cthulhu, meaning that you worship Cthulhu instead of being in the same cult as Cthulhu is just silly, and the equivalent of christians worshiping the leader of a congregation.
I feel at this point the concept of an unthinkable mind destroying chaos god has been so overdone that actually seeing a Great Old One would result in mild shock at best.
at the risk of beating another overdone trope, many things that would cause a parochial, xenophobic New Englander of a hundred years ago to wet himself in gibbering terror are no big thing to us today. Some because we’ve become more tolerant as a society, some because we’ve expanded our horizons of knowledge, and some because the century between us has seen horrors perpetrated on humans, by humans, with no need to bring the supernatural into it.
I have always wondered what Lovecraft, who was already changing his views on, well, everything when he died, would write after the Nazis were defeated. He didn’t make it, but either Lovecraft would rebound to his racism or he would think the Nazis – especially as their interest of the occult by some members would overtake them as a stereotype – might had been modern day cultists for some thing, especially if he heard about them in the far Antarctic.
To be fair only the Esoteric Order of Dagon actually worship Cthulhu and do so along side Dagon and Hydra. As EOD is ultimately derived of the Deep One religious practices and their worship of Cthulhu only started after the fall of R’yleh as a result of them being especially sensitive to his dreams it’s perfectly understandable they think of him as a god rather than as an exceptionally long lived being.
At least in Lovecraft’s own works most of the cults worship Nyarlathotep and act to achieve his goals which do include the waking of Cthulhu for whatever reasons.
Nyar-nyar is actually the UNDERSTANDABLE one of the Mythos entities, if any of them are. He’s also the biggest bastard among them – most of them don’t really care about humans, but Nyarlathotep is actively evil, or so one can surmise from the actions of his identities throughout mythos history. His job description is to usher in the return of the elder gods, so Cthulhu and him share a goal. One might theorise that he focuses on Cthulhu because old squidface, not being a god and being physically present on Earth, would be easier to reach and awaken than the cosmic entities lying beyond time and space. He has, after all, already done so in relatively recent times (at which point he took a ship to the chest and promptly went back down).
Yes, I like Joyce having fun with a religious dispute.
Lots of other times up until now when she discussed her religious beliefs it was as if somebody tried to threaten what she is or believed – be it the secular people that are around her or – on the other hand – her family or other fundie persons. (That being said, I’m really glad that a part of Joyce’s fundie beliefs is gone, and being among her secular friends has done a lot to accomplish that!)
In this dispute, she enjoys herself just for the sake of sophistcated arguments. She doensn’t feel threatened by Jacob’s different beliefs. (so she is more likely to learn a few new things here)
GAH!! WILLIS!!! Now I’m shipping Joyce and Jacob in my head as a natural couple!! I must cleanse my mental pallet with doses of “It’s Walky!!” because of this…ahh..
Ugh, this argument… The way I see it is pursuit of faith and ideals to save. Besides, Paul wasn’t a prophet he was an early preacher, and like all priests, pastors, and popes he isn’t infallible.
I ship Joe and Sarah so much. Neither of them are looking for a distracting, long-term commitment, both are sexually comfortable with themselves, and they have a lot in common personality-wise if not goals-and-interests-wise.
Other than her hating him because he’s a creepy sexual predator and never having shown any interest in him, sure. That’s no barrier to shipping people.
In a way it’s a shame, because she is looking for a casual sexual outlet and he would happily fill that need, but I think that ship sank way back in their first encounter when he talked about fixing Joyce with his penis.
Mind you, I ship them more than I ship him & Joyce. He’d still have to change a lot and face up to his creepiness, but far less than he would to be a good match for Joyce – despite their text conversations.
I think they make far better friends than anything else (Joyce and Joe).
Personally, I get put off by a lot of shipping, because it’s so evidence-resistant. Even evidence that two characters shouldn’t be together, or aren’t interested in each other, is taken as “evidence” that they “should be together”. The more two characters argue, the more two characters hate each other, the more two characters are obviously bad for each other… the more their shippers will moon over them being an “OTP”.
Nah, see, that’s part of the ship. I don’t think Sarah hates him, for one thing – I think she’s annoyed by him… but then, she’s annoyed by everyone, and Joe is the one person for whom that’s not a barrier to be overcome when it comes to NSA sexy times. It wouldn’t quite be a hate-fuck, but I think it would be in the same ballpark with a lot of the same kind of energy.
To be clear, I don’t ship them as a couple and I don’t think they’re destined for twu wuv. I just think they could both enjoy some horizontal shenanigans with each other, and be the kind of people who can do that without needing to drag feelings or politics or mental health problems into it.
As an Hindu I would argue that Jacob is perfectly right. It is widely accepted in some branches that Buddha and the Christ is the same phenomenon, stemming from the same universal energy. Just different traditions and mythology associated with it, but facets of the same thing altogether.
Guess you cut Jacob off before the obvious response:
Why would a kind and loving god continue to send good and devout people to hell for centuries after Jesus died to atone for their sins just because missionaries hadn’t reached them yet?
That seems to be what Joyce is arguing in the first panel – that proof is in creation, so they have no excuse.
Personally, I’d like to know who died and appointed Paul arbiter of all future Christian doctrine. I’d think the Apostles and Jesus’ family would know better than him what he’d want.
Right, except until missionaries got to them, they couldn’t know what it was “proof” of. While it can be argued that there is proof of creation and the divine, there ISN’T specific proof about the nature of the divine. “Jesus Saves” isn’t written on the face of the moon in letters all can understand, after all. They had the answer, but didn’t know the question until someone came and told them.
I actually just saw a great video from Number0neSon explaining that there is actually a specific Hebrew term for this: Raz-Pesher. A “Raz” is a mystery presented by God or the scriptures, and a “Pesher” is the solution provided by a prophet or divinely inspired interpreter. Both are needed before the divine can be understood.
It’s usually used these days to retcon Old Testament passages into prophecies about Jesus, but it applies here as well. Even with the argument that the proof is in the creation, without the context provided by the gospels the proof alone is not enough to bring someone to Jesus, and so continuing to punish innocent people even after Jesus died to atone for their sins is problematic.
Oh, I’m with you there. I’m going by what the go-to argument for Joyce’s sect seems to be from the strip.
It’s also a problem to know how to worship properly – sects like this tend to have specific rules on that. Just because creation is proof of the divine in this train of thought, doesn’t mean they know how to worship properly. ….Which is why they have missionaries I guess.
I wouldn’t have expected Joyce and Jacob to both be enjoying a conversation like this, but judging by their facial expressions, they’re both having fun. The conversation has a weird sort of chemistry.
I remember my uncle saying something like what Joyce is, that even if you’re born and die somewhere and never hear of Jesus… lol, oh well, basically. And I remember that never sat right with me.
I don’t think my/my mom’s church ever had a specific answer for the issue more than “no, that’s not fair to condemn those people to hell”, so it’s interesting to read Jacob’s argument. A lot of the “flavors” of Christianity in this comic are very familiar to me; this one is not.
Ugh. Please never show me evil Joyce again. Make Mary look like that all the time, but never Joyce. Made me think of her mom. Shudder!
This type of thing actually does piss me off. If you are truly a literalist and sola scriptura (the Bible is the source of your religious beliefs and nothing else), then you have to consider any interpretation that doesn’t violate the text. You cannot say that one interpretation is “blasphemous” unless the Bible itself says it is blasphemous. If you do, you’re adding to the Bible.
The Bible already allows for at least two different religions that worship the same God to make it. There is the Old Covenant with the Israelites which never can be rescinded, as God can’t lie. And then there is the New Covenant that requires Jesus.
So you first have no reason to leave Muslims, who are going after the same God, and even view Jesus as a prophet, just not God (and the Bible never mentions the Trinity.) Then you can get to other religions that are seeking God, and the fact that God says he will be found if you seek Him. Seek and ye shall find.
If you are a true literalist and don’t have any other scripture to tell you otherwise, you cannot deny this interpretation as a possibility.
Technically, no part of the Bible says God can’t lie, just that he keeps his promises. Unless he was lying when he said he keeps his promises. #EgyptWasAnInsideJob
This puts such a smile on my face 🙂 In times well past, I used to debate things just like this. It was friendly testing of the minds and spirit. But that was before…well, I’ll leave the depressing part for the third day.
Panel One: Ahhhhhh, my favourite gross ‘they should’ve known’ excuse from Christianity. This is a fun one! Because, as has been pointed out above – HOW? Sure, you might be able to ascertain divinity from the majesty of the world, but it doesn’t teach you WHAT divinity or how to ‘properly’ worship it, or any of the relevant mythology, narratives, or doctrine. And besides, if ‘faith in Jesus alone’ was good enough, fundamentalists wouldn’t harp on doctrinal differences so much. They all believe in Jesus and God, so who cares, right? Noooooo, believe me, fundamentalists care. They care quite a bit. So it’d seem you do need all those doctrinal points, which people can’t possibly know. I guess that’s the point of ministry and missions, but then you have to wonder what happens if people die believing in said divinity, but not knowing the details necessary.
Panel Two: Ooh! Religious pluralism time! I went to a Catholic high school and while they had some iffy parts about it (for instance, saying that Catholicism wasn’t better than anything else, only the ‘most perfect or most correct choice’, blech) the general rule was ‘all faiths/spiritualities have some kind of religious truth to them and all philosophies have some kind of moral truth, so as long as they don’t hurt anybody you should leave them alone, as everyone can achieve salvation if they’re a good person (whatever salvation there is)’. I remember one of my religious teachers really liked my idea that whatever afterlife you believed in was what was waiting for you (including none if you didn’t really want/believe in one).
Somehow I think my school would’ve been considered hippie by Joyce’s (you know, in addition to heretical and evil because “Pope/Saint/Mary worshippers/slutty/cannibalistic/Whore of Babylon popery/papist” nonsense and also corrupt because we allowed school counsellors to help with LGBT+ issues and let Muslim students use the chapel to pray during the day). Although she probably would’ve had to have a long long chat with the spirit counsellor (who was basically a guidance counsellor for religious stuff) for insisting everyone else was going to hell, so. Y’know.
And yeah, see, this is the issue with the ‘faith alone’ thing. Other folks with faith are still ‘doing it wrong’. Yet they also insist it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you have faith. So which is it, Joyce? Is how they worship important or not?
Also – Joyce’s face is adorable.
Panel Three: ….Joyce, Muslims DO believe in God and Jesus. They don’t believe in them the same way, but they do believe. Also, Buddhism is considered by many to be more of spirituality than a religion, and many believe in both Buddhism and Christianity.
And, again, you also say these things about Catholics and Mormons and other religions that DO have Jesus. This whole thing is a mess of contradictions. I like Jacob smiling at her patiently though. He seems to be enjoying this.
Panel Four: …..Wording, Jacob. I’m pretty sure you meant something closer to the ‘all paths have a chance of salvation’ type thing, but this is….iffy. Because, again, there are several SEVERAL religions that, by their own narratives and mythology, preclude being creations of the Abrahamic god. Like, again, Hellenic polytheism or polytheistic religions. Those tend to have very firm creation narratives and they don’t involve Him.
Panel Five: Joyce’s teasing face here is very fun, especially how it reminds me of how smug early Hank was when he was talking about Dorothy. Both were smugly dismissing other religious (or lack thereof) outlooks as blasphemous. I’m not as mad at Joyce though, as I’m sure she’s (partly) kidding, though I’ll be watching this holier than thou stuff.
Panel Six: Yeah, if I were Joe, I’d be irritated too. “My choices are hell or condescending ‘it’s okay cuz your religion was put here by god, so I’m sure you can get to heaven, even though you do it wrong’ or worse ‘you’re an incomplete Christian, it’s okay’. shit? Fuck me, shut up.” – that’s not fun. I’d want them both to zip it by now too.
Also, oh Sarah. Jealousy isn’t fun. She knows they don’t fit well and that hurts, but even if she knows rationally that that’s true, it still can suck when you see the person you like is better for someone else, especially when they’re your friend (or bully in the case of Raidah). It hurts and yeah, people can be jealous they aren’t as good for them. Especially while they still have feelings for them. And double especially when the idea was to hook you up, over your objections. I might be a bit pissy too.
I’m not overly concerned about this – I don’t think she’ll do anything irredeemable because of it and I think she’ll get over it when she gets over Jacob, at which point she’ll be happy for them. As happy as Sarah gets for anything.
Assuming this IS jealousy and not just Sarah being bored to tears by the religious discussions (another point where she and Jacob are out of synch!) or by Joyce being overly cheery as usual. I doubt this is about her monopolizing the conversation because Sarah didn’t want to converse – she didn’t want to be involved in crashing their lunch at all. She told Joyce they could not do that. Joyce went over anyways.
Jesus may be the only way to God, but he’s got an unconventional ego: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40 King James Version) …so Jesus isn’t some skin bag (conventional ego). He’s in everyone, even the “least of these.”
Not only that, he tells a story where a Samaritan is the good guy! There are literally passages forbidding good Jews marrying a Samaritan. Samaritans are certainly heretical (only Psalms and the Pentateuch in their Bible), and are believed to be collaborators who stayed behind during the Babylonian exile.
So…making the heretical traitor into a good guy, and then letting people know that the least of these is me… The ground fairly shifts beneath your feet. You can’t just “believe in Jesus” any more, you need to believe in the least of these, and treat them well.
Jesus even councils settling any quarrels before you pray, so the path to the transcendent is fairly consistently through other people, even the least, most heretical get a shot here, too.
Christ, Joyce, which one is it? Are non-Christian religious traditions that know God through the existence of creation also valid, or does it have to be your preferenced form of Christianity which you exclusively equate with “through Jesus” meaning people ARE with excuse? You can’t have it both ways.
Also, Jesus is totally a big-shot prophet in Islam and a lot of Buddhists consider Jesus as (potentially) having been a buddha, so nope on both accounts.
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“and I’m saying did you read the ENGLISH TRANSLATION or the ACTUAL BIBLICAL HEBREW to be making such a bold declaration of misread blasphemy”
This is the New Testament. It’d be the Biblical Greek.
Have I already played “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks”?
Stephen, you must be an “old fart” like me.
The sequel is never as good as the original.
The Empire Strikes Back.
The Desolation of Smaug?
To say that the Desolation of Smaug was better than its predecessors is, I believe, listed in the dictionary as example#1 of “damning with faint praise”.
Also, the *original* Hobbit movie was the animated one from 1977, and all three of the recent ones are pure unbridled shit compared to it. So, yeah.
As someone who loved the new Hobbit movies I will never the less stand by your side. The 1977 animated version is far superior. Here are the problems I personally have: 1. Legolas. I understand that it can from the lore stand point make some sense that Legolas would have been involved in the Battle of Five Armies but he should have been a cameo at the most, not a secondary or at times primary character. 2. Tauriel. They should have nixed that dwarf/elf romance subplot from the get go. 3. Unnecessary padding. Things like the fight/chase with Smaug in the mountains that goes on for much too long. 4. Bolg should have been the big bad Orcish instead of Azog. Azog is supposed to be dead. Not arm cut off. Straight up dead, with his head on a spike and a bag of coins shoved in his mouth. Give his son Bolg more screen time and a believable motive (serving Sauron in exchange for vengeance against the dwarves who killed his father), and you have a great villain. 5. They tried fitting in too much supplemental lore. The War of the Dwarves and Orcs was necessary to be covered, but they added in too much stuff about Sauron. It was nice to know why Gandalf was absent (and the reasons are lore accurate at times) but we easily could have cut out most of the Dol Guldur scenes involving Gandalf. 6. Those motherfucking goats. Tolkien’s dwarves have no form of cavalry, and actually prefer walking to riding anything. In fact the ponies are msinly used as pack animals in the books. Fucking goat cavalry my ass. 7. Not enough Beorn and no explanation for the eagles. Firstly, I know that everyone always complains about those deus ex machina eagles, but at least in the book it’s explained that Gandalf saved their king/chief from an eagle wound, so they like to help out Gandalf whenever they’re in the same area. And Beorn is supposed to be the one who kills Bolg not Legolas!!!! And he’s not even the last of his people, because in LotR his son Grimbeorn is the chieftain of the Beornings, who are protecting the settlers of the Anduin Vale. And like I said, I really enjoyed and still enjoy the Hobbit trilogy. It could have been so much better though, if the studio hadn’t decided they wanted another trilogy!!!
Just adding in that MAN I couldn’t agree more on Beorn. I was so disappointed that they turned him into a… I don’t even know what to call it. Angst plot? When he was far from that. I know they tried making it more action-y and gritty than the original Hobbit book (which was, one must remember, a book that Tolkien had written based on a story he was telling his children). But Beorn was warm and welcoming once Gandalf cleared the way, not a hostile grump who almost killed his guests.
Yeah, dang it, and Beorn in the books had a family. I was looking forward to his sons and daughters, the other werebears, and his buddies who were just plain bears. Like, Beorn’s Steading is supposed to be this happy little island of cute clever animals and big hairy cheerful vegetarians and SET FOOT ON OUR LAND, ORC, AND WE WILL KILL YOU AND THE WARG YOU RODE IN ON. If Jackson wanted to angst it up, he could have them remark that they all lived together not because they wanted to but because the %^^&&&%^% goblins wouldn’t let them spread out.
Also I totally wanted a subplot in which Beorn’s missing wife is dead, OK fridge, but he runs into one of the gutsy women of Laketown during the battle and she decides she likes him fine. And he’s all d’awwwww shucks and his big hairy daughters and sons are grinning because look, Berserko-Dad is blushing. And it turns out that the Beornings come from marriages between Beorn’s family and the people of New Esgaroth.
I do have one nitpick with the 1977 cartoon, though. We have a family tradition in our house: When Thranduil says, “Our peep-l have suffurd much from da worrrmmm troo da yeahhhs,”we turn to one another and recite in chorus, “Yeah, he beat you with the Ugly Stick!”
Well, in a brief passing mention in the LotR, Beorn had a family or at least one son – Grimbeorn. It’s not clear if he was also a shapechanger. In fact, basically nothing is known about him.
In Beorn’s actual appearance in the Hobbit, there’s no hint at family. Just Beorn and the animals.
@The Jeff: There are throwaway lines about “the Beornings” here and there in LOTR. They’re all skinwalkers, and they’re either a really big clan or a small culture-group that happens to share the same magical power. But you’re right, Beorn himself lived alone.
I felt Desolation of Smaug was the worst of the prequels. Theatrically. The Extended Edition, on the other hand, actually made it the BEST of the prequels by adding in the information we needed, including more Beorn scenes and an actual reason for Gandalf to go dicking around Sauron’s crib. All Five Armies Extended added were goat chariots.
Terminator 2.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
I liked fellowship better but I also was a sucker for the on-the-run scenes
Weekend at Bernie’s 2
… hey, taking the absurd premise of the original film, and cranking it up to 11 takes talent.
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.
The Bible: Be bi-lingual or go to hell.
sounds a whole lot kinkier than the church I grew up in.
Duh– she read the English translation, of course!
English: the official language of Jesus™.
White, blue eyed, sporting fancy ombre styled blonde hair Jesus.
He was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, Sweden.
His father was a humble furniture assembler on Ikea.
It all makes sense now.
For the temptation in the desert part, recall that deserts don’t have to be hot, just dry.
It is barrenness + a lack of rain that denotes a desert. Polar deserts are cool.
Oceans can also be deserts. Featureless, no drinkable water – people die of thirst floating on the surface of the largest body of water on the planet.
Ha!
You forgot ripped and tall in that description. Also, sexy. If there is a painting of a scene involving Jesus, just look for the sexy one and you’ve found him.
Bishie Jesus is totally a thing.
“Let Me Speak Unto Your Manager” Jesus.
Specifically, King James English.
To some, KJV is closer to what God really meant than the original texts.
I’ve heard before that the KJV was specifically translated to emphasize the values of the Anglican Church, although I’m not sure to what extent that’s possible or true.
It’s certainly the most different from the originals. Oddly, many fundies consider it the -least- tainted by interpretation, which makes baby scholars cry.
It’s the Editor’s Pick edition.
You’re not sure it’s possible to skew a translation (from Greek, a language notorious for its words having multiple meanings) to promote a specific set of views? For example “word” in “In the beginning was the word” was “logos” in the greek version, which other than “word” can also mean “reason” (both meanings), “ratio”, and “speech”. Also consider that what currently constitutes scripture as it is accepted by most was decided by various committees over a long period of time (look up “synods” if you are interested).
Back when the C of E was having it’s most recent debate about woman bishops (where the right side finally won), I read a fascinating webpage about how if you compare the Letters to the Corinthians in the original version and the KJV, there’s a ton of references to women priests that have mysteriously vanished. The page said it was possible these were accidental mistranslations, but it was a weird coincidence how they all went the same way.
I am not going to pretend to be even remotely well read on the subject, but I would very strongly doubt it was accidental. A while ago I read that the conflation of Mary magdalen and the immoral woman that washed Jesus’ feet into the same person eas done many centuries later by a specific pope. You have to wonder, what else has changed or been omitted (e.g. the stories -no joke- about dragons etc)?
Well, there’s “Bel and the Dragon” in the apocrypha.
The dragon doesn’t get a very good role though.
I’m far from an expert either, but I don’t really buy this. Not that I’d put it past the translators of the KJV, but that I don’t think they were there to start with. I don’t think any of the more modern scholarly translations have those references and those don’t rely on the KJV.
By “original” are you referring to the Vulgate or Greek versions they were working with or to the oldest versions we actually have?
It is thought that some of 1 Cor. might be later interpolation, but that would have been long before King James.
I’d need to find the webpage again – it was 2014 when I read it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I was misremembering and the mistranslation came earlier.
The thing I always felt weird with the KJV only folks is that many of them are also the folks that aren’t to hot on gay people. Meanwhile, King James himself is generally considered by most historians to likely have been homosexual or bisexual. Of course they deny it fervently, despite rumors of relationships with multiple male courtiers, plots of blackmail directed at revealing such scandalous affairs. The rumors were so prevalent that Sir Walter Raleigh joked that King Elizabeth had been succeeded by Queen James.
Nothing against King James for being gay of course, what he, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Somerset did in the privacy of their bedrooms was their own affair. Just appreciating the irony.
In a book about what we know about Shakespeare (not really much) there was a rumor mentioned that the KJV translation was fine tuned after actual translations by (several) someones skilled in writing, so to make a more readable text.
I didn’t know that you could get executed for blasphemy for (unauthorized lay) translating the bible in those days…
Yep, just ask
That should have said “Just ask William Tyndale.” with a wiki link.
This is also the same bunch of people who fervently believe that the KJV was divinely dictated and therefore perfect even though the first printed copies include a translators’ foreword that describes the actual process as a bunch of fallible human beings doing the best they could.
They have to have divine inspiration in there somewhere so they don’t have to say “Because I Said So.”
If you want to consider the irony of secretly homosexual people being the loudest homophobes, you don’t have to point the finger at King James. Just look no further than the Catholic Church and all the scandals of its priests forcing themselves on the altar boys.
Note that in general pedophilia and homosexuality aren’t particularly linked. Not just that homosexuals aren’t generally pedophiles, but that attraction to young boys isn’t tied to attraction to adult men. It’s a separate thing, could be someone not attracted to adults at all or to adult women.
“Oh please — the King James Version was specifically supported by a prayerful and divine providence which permitted the Lord to have his true message properly laid out in the vernacular of all true Christians without misconception, whereas desecrations like the New Standard Version or the Greek versions which Apostates point to as ‘proof’ that there are mistranslations (since the true original versions without contradiction have been totally found and everything else are corruptions and tricks laid out by Satan) do not count as divinely inspired and are therefore suspect at best. Don’t get sidetracked!”
(Not an argument I am making up. A Real Thing. I believe there are also versions of the argument that claim the NSV was divinely inspired to correct the errors Satan slipped into the KJV.)
Sigh… do you think that Greeks who do read the New Testament in its original Greek are any more tolerant than Americans who read the New Testament in English?
I don’t really get this argument. I don’t think its an argument at all, I think it’s a *distraction*. You have no reason, none whatsoever, to believe that the original Hebrew & Greek were any more tolerant than the English translations thereof.
Tolerance, nothing–if you’re gonna be snarking that something’s against the rules, you maybe should know what the rules actually say
It’s not really an exercise in tolerance. It’s an exercise in interpretation coupled with Rules Lawyering, by attempting to use ‘infallible authority’ to support doctrine and invoking authority that is ‘more’ infallible to prove or disprove your position.
In effect, it’s arguing the capacity for Charisma to exceed 18 in the case of Player Characters because Comeliness could go to 25, with earlier and earlier editions being pulled out dating all the way back to Blackmoor and Chainmail. None of it’s about tolerance because every position is inherently intolerant of the others. And none of it is actually relevant to the stated and enacted philosophical or theological bases of the sects in question — Northern Convention Baptists are going to continue to emphasize diversity more than Southern Convention Baptists, Episcopalians are going to continue to have broader and more open doctrines regarding the whos and whys of priesthood than Catholics, and everyone’s going to stare at Westboro Baptist and say “they aren’t with us.”
Which is to say that biblical interpretation and theological foundation are two different fields, but there are always those people who think that the former can trump the latter. Which is true enough, I suppose, if it leads to the inevitable schism of sects.
Jacob is bae~
Quit objacobtifying him.
Jacobjectifying?
Yup.
…Jac-
ob . tifying?
Objaketifying.
Be is Swedish for poop.
It’s also korean for inspiration. Your point ?
Quite an a-muse-ing coincidence.
I get that you were being funny, but I’m kinda into languages so.. Here’s your daily Scandinavian word!
“Bæ”/”Bae” is Danish, not Swedish. The Swedish word for poo is “bajs”. And, funnily enough, the Norwegian word is “baejs”.
Speculations:
Disregarding the fact that people usually don’t go bilingual in a forum where there’s one established common language/lingua franca.. well I don’t know about the Danish (or Norwegian), but I’ve never heard a grownup Swede use the word “bajs”. Everyone says “skit” (meaning “shit”). If I were to say “Jacob is [poop]”, I’d say “Jacob is skit”.
That’s not QUITE true, Sarah, your face also does complete hatred.
Called it! 🙂
Oh, I like where this is going… 😉
Finally, a strip centering around biblical exegesis! David Willis read my Christmas list!
Also, as a nondenominational/Presbyterian, I 100% agree with Jacob here, and it’s nice to see a fictional representation of that specific ontology. It’s … oddly affirming.
Heck, I’m a Roman Catholic and that jibes with my upbringing. I was unfamiliar with the concept of any virtuous folk going to Hell just for not being Christian until age 8, when a catechist(teacher of Christian doctrine) had to very delicately correct one of my co-students whose Baptist aunt preached Hellfire for the Jews.
I’m an agnostic/atheist and, as far as I’m concerned, Joyce and Jacob both are discussing their invisible friend.
I’m Christian, and from my point of view, that’s not INcorrect…
Jacob’s right, by the way
or, like, it doesn’t really matter, because they’re both expressing interpretations of a two-thousand-year-old collection of fables
Well, no, it does matter, because they’re not arguing about whether or not this is reality. They’ve already accepted that, and it’s not up for debate. Instead they’re arguing about which interpretation of those stories is the correct one in context.
I mean, maybe it doesn’t matter to YOU, but there are lots of things that don’t matter to me too. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
Have they accepted those things as reality? Maybe I’m projecting, but I haven’t seen Jacob express beliefs on that count so much as operate within the bounds of an assumption that they are for purposes of discussion and raising “what if”s with someone who does.
He’s called himself a Christian. That means, at the least, he believes that Christ was the son of God and died for everyone’s sins, then rose from the grave. Or that he pays lip service to it, but in the absence of evidence that he’s full of crap I’ll assume he’s sincere.
This idea that Christ “died for everyone’s sins” has not actually been universal to Christianity.
Or, to be more clear, not everybody reads the Nicene Creed as supporting the idea of Penal Substitution. There have historically been multiple interpretations of the meaning of the Crucifixion.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/08/there-is-more-to-christianity-than-penal-substitutionary-atonement.html
I read the whole page and I STILL snicker every time I read the word “Penal.”
heh.
Considering the Chronicles of Narnia series was an allegory for the Bible, yeah, I would imagine C.S. Lewis knew exactly what theory he was portraying :p
I’ve met people who call themselves Christians who did not believe those points.
Not saying whether they WERE Christians, just that them someone calling themselves a Christian doesn’t necessarily mean they believe those things.
But yeah, that’s the way to bet.
Jacob is a little more up on different theologies than Joyce (not surprising since he dates a Muslim). As I understand it, Jesus is a very important figure in Islam as well.
I think I’d categorize religious texts considered to be holy books separately from fables; seems to me people associate them a lot more strongly with spirituality.
Besides which, comparing interpretations of things like this is fun, and therefore I think it matters as an entertaining way for people to have meaningful conversation and connect.
Bookstores of a large enough size generally have a section called “religious fiction” from what I’ve seen. Which is still enough to give some people apoplectic fits, but any fandom can give people those.
As both an atheist and someone who has obsessively argued about the correct interpretation of fictional stories, I can tell you, it f***ing matters.
Have you ever seen two nerds argue about whether Han shot first?
A recipe for a fun night. Take one history major, one theology major, and one philosophy major all of whom love Tolkien. Take them to a bar. After a couple steins of Bavarian Dunkel or an Irish Malt, ask them about spiritual status of orcs in Arda. I can guarantee you at least four hours of the most intense debate ever known to man, and one very angry bar proprietor.
The angry bartender becomes a happy bartender when he realizes that he can charge them for the extra napkins they’re writing on.
Better that then those damn engineers drawing blueprints on the tablecloths.
The spiritual status of orcs is one of the major things Tolkein himself was conflicted about in the mythos, because he didn’t want to imply a life form was doomed to evil just by nature of its birth.
Given that, it’s not surprising other people can argue about it
As I understand it, that’s not quite the conundrum he faced. More that he wanted them to be creations of Morgoth and thus completely evil, but Morgoth couldn’t actually create life so any such creatures would just be puppets and Tolkein never wrote them that way. They had to be real independent creatures to be interesting, so they had to be corruptions of something created by Eru.
Not only did Han shoot first, but Han shooting first was shot first.
You would never be able to find two nerds arguing over whether Han shot first, because anyone even remotely nerdy enough to be qualified to have that conversation would already know that he did indeed shoot first.
Aye, and if people can argue so vehemently about something that there is physical, documented and date-stamped evidence of… what’s the likelihood of reconciliation among the many (many!) differing stances on the truth/reality of this particular giant, invisible best-friend?
As a Christian I take offense to your description of God as “giant”, Jesus was a perfectly normal-sized human being, possibly on the short side if Shortpacked! is to be believed
Atheist heresy is so much fun, since you don’t have to worry that you’re getting your fundamental beliefs about reality wrong.
For example, I can theorize that angels are all aspects of God, to the extent that God and the totality of angelkind are exactly the same thing. The rebellion was actually an internal struggle God had over how to handle the universe, ending with him basically lobotimizing himself of all of the aspects that would prevent him from making the world and humanity as it currently is. In particular, getting rid of Lucifer, his arrogance, was necessary for God to be willing to let humans have free will.
the thing I find most interesting about modern Christianity is how much of it is based on Middle Ages fanfiction.
I mean, let’s just consider the fact that the word “Lucifer” does not appear in the Bible.
And can you show me, chapter and verse, where the fire and brimstone lake of fire that sinners are thrown into is located?
With those two core pillars of modern Christianity removed, all my thinking about the religion I was in crumbled, to the point that I denounced Christianity and religion as a whole a year or two ago, and live by a Treebeardish mix (I am on nobody’s religion’s side because nobody is on my side) of the philosophies and doctrine of the Jesus of the New Testament as best I can.
To be honest I consider it more of a relationship with an invisible zombie sky god who enjoys being inside me, peers down at me while I’m masturbating, and is constantly judging my performance than a religion.
…..this could, mayhaps, be considered a lifestyle?
Eh. don’t care about the labels.
Religion, and christianity especially, is basically just a millenia long game of telephones anyway.
A tale of the Buddha passed from culture to culture ending up with him canonized as the christian St. Josaphat.
Amen! …eh … or … bha, you get my meaning!
Couldn’t said it better myself!
“Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Revalations 20:15
Strictly speaking, Lucifer does appear in the Bible, but as an appellation given to a human king.
you’re saying this on the webcomic of a dude who obsessively edits a wiki about space robot cartoons, you know that, right? and has been involved in multiple internet blood feuds about whether or not a particular plastic robot paperweight is from a specific plastic robots timeline or not?
you left out “Internet Porn Lord.”
Yeah, just shit all over the faith of someone you’ve never met before, that’ll win you pals.
They’re both wrong, by the way
Joyce’s interpretations of the quotes kinda contradict each other. She can’t have ’em both.
I think she’s saying that it should be possible to deduce the existence of Christianity from first principles, and become a Christian, even if no-one’s told you about it. Which, um…
Hell, I doubt it would be possible to recreate anything like modern Christianity from the Bible, much less without it.
Religion seems to be a common invention and monotheism a likely late stage of religious thought, but beyond that the differences are huge.
Strictly speaking, you CAN derive a Christianity-like ontology from first principles and some reasonable assumptions (I should know, I’ve done it), but you certainly can’t derive Christianity without Jesus because Christ is kind of a big deal in Christianity.
You MIGHT be able to get some of the tenets of Judaism, maybe even the 10 commandments, but you wouldn’t be able to even approach the vast body of doctrine that underlies all Abrahamic religions.
Two ships sailing in the night…
I’m definitely shipping Joyce and Jacob now! They both have big hearts, positive outlooks, super friendliness, and deep passion about Christianity.
The only thing is that I’m wondering if he might be asexual based on his comments about possibly preferring a relationship without sex, but he could just be a sexual guy who is feeling pressured. Don’t have enough information on that yet.
Well, keep in mind that in a previous comic, he was talking to Sarah about how people should be allowed to “enjoy butts without shame”. Granted, he wasn’t specifically talking about himself, but its not what I would expect an asexual person to say.
Sexuality is constant, and in another universe he was a literal sex addict. I don’t know if that addiction will hold true here, or if it’s the reason he made those comments, but he probably isn’t asexual.
Cue an asexual sex addict to come into the comments and prove me wrong.
This is turning into one weird double-date.
Willis there are nipples in the side bar! D:
They’re man-nipples, so by Facebook rules, they’re a-ok.
I see no issue
Also, my gravitar is perfect for this
And your complaint is that these are not tagged?
Well, <a href="http://www.shortpacked.com/searchcomic.php?search=nipple"unlike Shortpacked!, this webcomic has no option to search for nipples.
“but which english translation? theres at least 10,000 of them”
Joyce is probably using the King James Version, which is the worst.
(New Standard Revised 4eva.)
Wills said she’s NIV.
NIV is my personal choice, because the language is both relatively clear and somewhat precise, though I prefer annotated editions that can indicate ambiguities and historical background. The bible I used for the longest time was also highly cross-referenced, which was pretty handy for that whole “context” thing.
the NSRV is the one i used for my bible class back in college
Is there a NSFW version?
Well for starters, there’s Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb.
Joe, thinking: “I am a good wingman, I am a good wingman…. I don’t know which part of this situation annoys/disturbs me most but I’m not saying anything. I am a good wingman…”
Sarah, thinking: “Thank God things didn’t get awkward around here…”
Oh MAN, this is beautiful. Jacob is absolutely the person Joyce needs right now. I’m shipping it hardcore but will also accept a fast friendship.
Same!
Joyce seems not the sort to choose a friend/boyfriend her parent’s wouldn’t like as a conscious rebelling thing. (As with Dorothy, Joyce likes whom she likes, and at IU she’s growing.)
However if she became fast friends or even went on a date with Jacob, and it upset her mom, I don’t think I’d mind.
Hey, at least Jacob’s a male Christian (as far as we know). If she REALLY wanted to annoy her mom, she’d go out with Dorothy.
Yes, while Dorothy is dating Walky. That would just annoy Carol even more.
I knew I liked Jacob.
Jacob is sounding like a UU there except we don’t actually believe in heaven. When we die we go to the discussion group about heaven.
Never in my life have I made a sound I would describe as a guffaw.
Until I read this comment.
I just plain laughed out loud. Fortunately didn’t wake my wife up.
Same
so, hell
And a second guffaw.
I think it’s the mild intoxication.
Except for UUs, who think it’s heaven provided that the chairs are comfortable, the company is convivial, and the caffeinated beverages hold out.
This is actually where everyone goes when they die, whether it’s heaven or hell depends entirely on your enjoyment of masturbatory exigesis
I’m also a fan of the joke that if a UU church was burning down, we’d save a conference table so that the board could sit and discuss what to save.
My favorite UU joke is from the Topatoco guy:
“Our son wants to go to church! What should we do?”
“We can take him to the Unitarian church”
“He said he wanted to go to church not a lesbian potluck”
I answered my door to find a couple standing there. I thought they might be Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I knew they were Unitarian when I asked if I could help them, and they said that they weren’t really sure why they had knocked in the first place.
This reminds me of the joke about (Unprogrammed) Quakers: Why are they so bad at singing hymns? They’re too busy thinking about whether they agree with the words. (I heard this joke at a Quaker meeting.)
Heard the exact same jokes about UUs from a UU.
I had the fun privilege of Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a friend when his brother, a UU minister, was present as well. He was asked to say the blessing, and started, “God is great, True or False?”
False, he was of average build, possibly on the short side
I’m part of a Hippie church myself (We were part of the effort in our state that got the ban on Gay marriage lifted on the grounds that banning gay marriage violated our religious freedom :P)
The church is called UCC (United Church of Christ) but everyone jokes that it actually stands for Unitarians Considering Christ.
…Is it too early to ship it?
…don’t care I ship it
Never too early.
Son, if Shipping has taught me anything, it’s that if the characters exist, they can be shipped together.
I’m not sure that’s a strict requirement.
All shipping requires is two characters.
Sometimes not even that. Self-shipping is apparently a thing, though not one I’ve often seen, closest thing that comes to mind is Garnet from Steven Universe. She’s an odd case in that she’s technically a single fused being made up of two seperate beings (Ruby and Sapphire) who are in a relationship with one another. Because of that relationship, they generally prefer to stay fused together as Garnet.
Because of this you could technically say that Garnet is in a relationship with herself, while simultaneously existing as the embodiment of Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship. It’s complicated because of the nature of fusions, who generally are considered simultaneously a single entity while also being a synthesis of their components. So for instance Garnet is generally content exist as she is, a single individual, with her own dreams and desires, but you can clearly see how parts of her come from her components, and she can even disagree with herself to the point where Ruby and Sapphire separate, until they reconcile.
In general, the fanbase and creators generally characterize Garnet as an individual that is the entirety of a relationship, without any external partner necessary. (Mostly because she displays next to no interest in pursuing any kind of romantic relationship while fused.)
I think Steven said it best “She is a relationship.”
My first experience with “Self shipping” has been with an animated movie, “Rise of the Guardians,” because it has a lot of background story. It’s a movie based on a series of children’s books by William Joyce, but it had a lot of production background, which lead us to four versions of the main villain, Pitch Black. They are simply known as Book!Pitch, Movie!Pitch, Proto!Pitch and Wangst!Pitch, the fourth being a version of said villain, from a fancomic by Hurtanminttu on tumblr.
Needless to say, things are very weird, but at the same time also rather fun.
All aboard the Joyce Jacob Jingleheimer Ship!
If there is a God, he will get you for that.
You left out “a present” after the “you” in that sentence.
….. okay, the ship WAS called Joycob, but I will accept this as alternative nomenclature.
…and that is the story of how Joe and Sarah hooked up.
They could probably build a relationship around Sarah having zero expectations for Joe, but I don’t think it’d last.
Joe and Sarah, bonded by a common threat.
There’s something wrong with me…
I read that as “Joe and Sarah boned, by a common thread.”
Seems perfectly normal to me.
huh, Jacob reminds me if my mom and a younger me with egalitarian, non bellicose readings of the Bible
Bellicose is a weird word because it sounds so nice but means something so bloodthirsty. /tangent
Her interpretation has issues.
So no one has any excuse not to know about god via the existence of creation.
But the only way to get into heaven is via knowledge of Jesus?
And she thinks that system is just?
I disregard both as a form of delusion attempting to give form and meaning to a churning maelstrom of chaos without care or concern. But at the very least could the people claiming to believe in a benevolent god create a mythos that supports such a supposition?
The way my Southern Baptist cousins explained it to me as a child, Jesus is the only way. Therefore as good Christians, they *must* convert as many people as possible in order to bring them to Jesus. It has nothing to do with fairness, but something about making sure humanity doesn’t abuse its free will to accidentally go to hell… Something… It was a long time ago. In any case it didn’t stick.
Well, that’s better than what I learned in the Baptist school I went to for two years: When everyone in the world has heard about Jesus and had a chance to choose, then Jesus will come back. Thus, we should proselytize as fast as possible so Jesus will come back sooner.
Are people supposed to stop having babies or something? Or do infants and toddlers just not count? What about people in long-term comas?
Those too young that die without hearing of God also go to limbo. Or so Dante tells it in his Comedy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the general opinion of some sects.
Not that they would say it outright nowadays.
I dunno about nowadays, but from what I recall (heard it in an exposition about death during the medieval times) the limbo part of the mythos has been added especially to appease those good christians who just couldn’t accept that their too-young-to-be-baptised dead children were going straight to hell (and didn’t deserve a good, christian sepulture nearby their mother either).
Per St. Augustine, the suffering of unbaptized infants is the least of those in hell.
That never flew very well.
I really wonder why… But I can’t say I’m surprised St. Augustine was the kind of person to send babies into eternal suffering, even though he was soft on this one considering his tendencies to think we all deserve hell from the get-go anyway.
What I was surrounded by was “Jesus is coming back and soon so proselytize to as many people as possible, so you can ‘save’ them from his fiery torment (which will be awesome to watch from your front-row seat in Heaven” which was also combined with “everyone who hasn’t accepted Christ is a hell-bound sinner who is inherently not a good person and can never be a good person and so is mostly just interested in deceiving you by acting nice so you’ll be tempted away from Christ and thus miss out on the awesome Rapture”.
Hell, it’s basically the main plot of Left Behind. The members of the family “left behind” did so because they were swayed into living lives of mediocre worldliness instead of devoting their life 24/7 to the right church.
I’d rather go to hell than go to the heaven filled with those people because it sounds like the real hell.
Good news then, I doubt most of those people are going to heaven anyways
Or if they are, then heaven is just designed to trap those people and keep them away from everyone else
Well, I guess now I’m shipping Sarah!Joe. I didn’t mean for this to happen, Sarah is self sufficient and Joe is icky, but here we are.
If Joe was to date someone, I think it could work. Sarah can keep him in check, and doesn’t seem like someone who would get jealous if he mentioned things he did with previous partners (annoyed if it went on for long, maybe), which I think is likely part of his understanding of being open with each other.
Or seeing as Sarah’s at least somewhat fine with casual sex, they could just hook up.
On paper it could work, but Joe is a creeper and Sarah is like the opposite of turned on by his whole shtick, so yeah, not gonna happen.
Bets she hasn’t forgotten about the swing?
It’s funny how Sarah views Joe as a sexual predator, yet she herself basically wants that in her life right now (as in just sleep with Jacob, not interested in a serious relationship – like Joe.)
Okay, no. What she wants is casual sex. She does not want to be creeped on by someone with questionable understanding of consent.
Just because someone wants casual sex does not mean they want to accept all comers nor that they do not want someone safe and who is personally sexy to fulfill that desire.
And let’s be frank, the type of man Joe is tends to be the type of man who gives shitty sex because he’s so fixated on “game” and “the goal” that they are very unlikely to be generous and mutual-pleasure focused lovers, so most women looking for casual sex would be better served on average passing on a Joe, because the risk/rewards are just too skewed.
This is not to say that every encounter Joe has is unfulfilling for his partners, just that on average those who act like Joe tend not to be worth the time of day even if you just want a quick lay (and there’s some hints in comic and in Slipshine that Joe’s worthwhileness as a lover is pretty much that he’s got good stamina and needs to be shut up first to be worth a damn as a lay and even then only as something to ride).
My use of “sexual predator” was bad. Still, that’s how he views Joe – at the same time, that isn’t what Joe is. I do not care for his life style, but he seems to be a bit stand up about it. If he is rebuffed, he stops pursuing – that’s more then what most people can say.
Still, my point was: Joe is all about casual sex. Sarah wants casual sex. Yet she despises Joe for going after what she also wants. I sort of see it as projecting.
Sarah does not despise Joe for wanting casual sex. She despises him for being a creeper about it. He goes out of his way to get around ‘no’s, ignores body language, and doesn’t back off until he’s screamed at.
yeah, I call all the people I hate and despise “Hon” too. Sarah is well know for it.
“Hon” is not a term of endearment.
Also basic civility is not a sign of interest or forgiveness for trespass.
It isn’t a sign of hating or despising, either. Awfully strong language there. Seems to get thrown around a lot. it doesn’t ring true. At all.
My friend married a German so no matter his mood, he could call her “Hun.”
Yeah, same here. Usually I’m being sarcastic – kinda like how Sarah is here.
Awful lot of wishful thinking going on there.
If you read it differently, fine. However, that is my reading of her dialogue here.
The insistence that Sarah has somehow not yet been clear enough that she doesn’t want to have sex with Joe is honestly kind of… eeeugh.
Like, really? She really needs to spit on him every time she sees him for you to remain convinced that she isn’t interested? That’s a bizarrely high bar, and it absolutely reflects the real-world tendency to treat anything except a screamed NO as negotiable.
Except she did scream no, and apparently that’s… still negotiable. She might change her mind, folks! Stop being so closed-minded!!!!!!
Different readings seem to be all the rage here.
Who said any of that?
Yes, they both want casual sex, but Sarah has not shut that door because of some judgment about casual sex. She shut that door because Joe ignored body language noes and creeped on her relentlessly after completing dismissing what she said and saying some creepy ass predator shit.
That is not the same thing and I refuse to entertain the notion that not wanting to be creeped on is somehow a judgment on casual sex in general.
And the reason I refuse to entertain that notion is because I get creepers creeping on me all the time who like to use that argument that refusing to get with their creeper bullshit is being “sex negative” and against casual sex like I don’t volunteer some of my free time making casual sex spaces safer and as if creepers don’t make it harder for a lot of women who like to sleep with men to feel safe getting into casual sex.
I love Joyce’s “can’t you see I’m tut-tutting you?’ face in panel three.
Out of curiosity, are there going to be any Lutherans here or are there any Lutherans here? My friend is one and she was explaining some of the recent rulings in the ECLA to me and it seemed cool, namely that the ECLA approves of gay marriage because otherwise gay pastors would be living in sin with their partners and that is no good, and also that God appears in many forms to many peoples at many times, which legitimizes other religions as paths to salvation. This is just what I remember and admittedly I am not super invested because I have no faith, but since Willis has been so kind as to lay these things out for us, I can’t help but be curious 🙂
Well, I can’t vouch for and and all Lutherans. I know there are two main heirarchical bodies. The one is more conservative but the other not…
Look. I attention a small Lutheran Church in Alberta with a lady pastor, multiple gay couples (at least one of whom was married in there), signs and declaration of affirmation at entrance and around church, and an intern pastor now fully … Whatever the word for graduated is… Who is queer and married. They are awesome. I like it there.
So, yes? Go Lutherans?
Ordained? I think that’s the general term most denominations use for a pastor/priest/whatever getting their stripes. I’m not Lutheran though, so maybe you guys use a different word for it than Congregationalists and Methodists do.
No, it’s ordained. I just drew an entire fucking blank. I don’t really consider myself a “Lutheran.” I dunno. I was raised Catholic. Teen and early 20s into more non-denomenational “Charismatic” or Pentecostal churches. Not so far off some of what’s been presented in doa, albeit I was never quite so ensconced with the fundamentalist parts (never had that intense parental pressure of raising kids as such, perhaps). Years of stupid rock show or whacked churches have left me only really comfortable at all in more traditional liturgical churches (do Methodists fit in there? I don’t know.).
Combine that with a need to find a gay affirming church, I’m stunned I even have options in a city of a million. There’s an Anglican Church here.
I digress. Exhausted. Couldn’t even remember the word ordained. But we have a queer lesbian pastor whose pronouns are they/their so suck it, homophobes!
ELCA member here! It’s a little hard to say that the ELCA “approves” or “disapproves” of something, because we’re the big denomination that’s got many flavors of congregations, liberal and conservative, so the leadership kind of has to tiptoe around to not offend too many congregations. Like, we almost universally agree on ordaining women being a good thing, and Martin Luther having a lot of good ideas, but that’s basically it.
Re: gay marriage, in 2009, we voted to officially condone ordination of gay pastors who are in a committed monogamous relationship and blessings of gay marriages. So if a given ELCA church decides to call a gay pastor or marry gay couples, they don’t have to hide it from the higher-ups. But there’s still plenty of ELCA churches that would never do these things. Some of them broke off and formed their own synod as a response. Sucks for them. 😛
Re: salvation, I might have this wrong since I don’t have a definitive source at hand, but as best I remember, the ELCA stance is more like, we’re pretty sure that there’s salvation through Christ, bla bla bla theological details. So yay Christianity! If you’re not Christian, though… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The ELCA doesn’t know if you’re saved. Maybe you are! That would be cool! But the ELCA’s not going to claim to know either way. Literally, their website admits that ELCA doctrine doesn’t answer every religious question. There’s probably a fair number of ELCA members who would agree with what you said, though, klept0.
Okay, I think that’s all the awkward writing about Lutheran doctrine I’ve got in me tonight. 🙂
TL;DR: individual Lutheran churches vary a lot, even in the ELCA. The “Reconciling in Christ” tag is our attempt to identify the ones that are at least trying not to be dicks.
(Also, R., your church sounds super kickass 🙂
I have the best proof that ELCA is liberal. They’re in full communion with us Episcopalians.
I’m a Lutheran who *almost* completed Pre-Seminary coursework for LCMS (had a crisis of faith and major depressI’ve episode), and is probably ELCA in everything but name now. LCMS is the conservative one that “politely” hates LGBTQ people, and thinks women as pastors is “cute, but heretical.” Then there’s WELS, which is Michelle Bachmann – conservative.
I used to ship Jacob/Amber because Shortpacked! and I think they’d have a good go-around this time, at least if Jacob’s still a nerdlinger anyway.
Then I pulled for Jacob/Raidah to stay happening, because I really want to see Raidah more and I think she and Jacob are nice and healthy, plus Raidah’s Muslim and it’d be super great to see positive Muslim representation in this series.
Only now do I see that I have been blind to the majesty of Joycob.
Soooo…. You’re shipping Jacob with Jacob because nobody else is worthy of that majesty? :p
(I know that’s not what you meant, but your last comment made it look that way for a second.)
That portmanteau makes me picture Joyce and Jayne.
I’m… not sure how well that’d work.
Jayne is a terrible character in a garbage overrated show so no.
Wow, harsh. But tell us what you really think!
Everything Joss Whedon has made is terrible.
Judging from his spam comments about Mike, Spencer really has no room for morally questionable behavior by lead characters, evil characters who aren’t outright villains, or any other sort of nuance or complex questions about right and wrong. So it’s no surprise he doesn’t like Jayne either.
Firefly being complete trash; we’re talking about a dude who’s planning on seducing and humiliating a frightened gay kid for no reason other than that he feels like it.
That you consider that “morally questionable” instead of, y’know, obscene is alarming at best.
If Mike actually does that, that would be obscene and horrific. If that even is what he is planning – I don’t remember Mike doing a big Bond-villain rant outlining his plans in detail, he just gave evil grins and started acting in ways that seem to be setting up something like that.
Until then, he is just trolling people on the internet which is morally questionable, and toying with people’s emotions which is evil. Neither behavior is new.
We get it bro, you’re super-triggered and don’t like that other people don’t feel the same way. You don’t have to post a long rant every time someone mentions Mike. I think there was a post from you in every single comment thread for his recent appearance.
I know “triggered” gets thrown around as an insult, but that’s not what I’m going for here. Mike’s behavior resonates with you and makes you angry, and that’s fine.
However, before you chastise others for not being as angry as you are, remember that you are upset about the theoretical outcome of what you assume Mike is planning. If things actually happen the way you think and people aren’t upset, THEN you have a reason to complain, because Mike would have crossed a line into irredeemable bastard territory.
Mike says that’s his plan right here:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/.
Spencer is not jumping the gun on what Mike’s planning.
That was meant to be “Firefly being complete trashaside;”
You know, because it’s awful. It’s just Buffy in space starring a bargain bin Han Solo and Joss Whedon’s crowning achievement of turning his fapbait into an on-screen presence, River Tam. Every character has the exact same voice and exchanges depth of personality for quirks like playing with toy dinosaurs and wearing a silly hat.
So many warm fuzzy religion-major feels. I’d love to send them into a texts-in-historical-contexts class together.
Like, look how Joyce is actually having fun talking about this, it’s delightful.
And they’ve apparently been doing it all through the pizza, which makes it even more delightful. Except for Sarah & Joe.
Is it just me, or is Panel 5 Joyce’s expression very reminiscent of Hank’s when she and he were arguing about the Keeners during Freshman Family Weekend?
No, you’re right, I think.
It’s one part petty satisfaction combined with one part moral superiority.
Just, I think Joyce is a bit more benign in her intentions here than Hank was in that situation.
I just assumed Joyce was enjoying the ability to have a decent debate about the bible with a fellow believer who is both intelligent and a decent human being (i.e. not one like Mary).
As long as it gets Sarah to stop playing the same sexual predator game Mike is, I’ll take it.
Mike is actually, genuinely, a total sex predator and a horrible piece of shit who deserves a tire iron in the face, but Sarah just wants a booty call. She objectifies Jacob, and now she’s feeling guilty for it.
She probably already stopped that some time back, when she decided that she would -not- be a fake “happy” Sarah just to try and “win” Jacob from Raidah.
She may not have stopped fantasizing about Jacob (who would?), but she doesn’t want to play games about it. In fact, when Joyce tried to make her play this game just a few strips back, it made her severely uncomfortable and distressed.
I really wouldn’t call Sarah a sexual predator. The term does not apply to everyone who is one-sidedly sexually attracted to someone because then it would needlessly vilify people who don’t deserve that term and eventually end up meaningless. Being sexually attracted to someone you don’t know that well is not bad, that’s just biology.
She’s just a woman who is attracted to Jacob, mainly because she hasn’t really got to know him as a person yet, and she has fantasies sometimes but there is a huge difference between having fantasies and forcing them on people without their consent. Not everyone who dates or has sex with other people started that relationship as friends.
She is struggling with the hurt of really wanting to be his girlfriend, not being able to do that, and letting him go vs. staying “friends” with him when she knows she wants more with and wind up hurting him, Radiah, and herself in the process.
Plus, she’s backed off from Jacob instead of doing the Joe or Mike thing. Like, she still checks him out from time to time and fantasizes, but that’s pretty typical for sexual folks (as far as I’ve heard) and she’s pretty good about keeping it more or less respectful and not trying to hint for more or cheat her way into more though she’s thought about it and abandoned at the last minute several times.
…what does a Christian fightfuck look like?
(…looks up Cadfael fanfic…)
//highlights
//right-click-searches
//sends you a box of internet chocolates with a thank-you card
As someone raised secularly, this is fascinating to me, and I didn’t know about that argument about “existence of creation”. My parents are from China, and they knew (and still know) very little about Christianity because (1) the government was trying to keep Christianity out, and (2) it’s never been that big in China, though it’s growing nowadays. I always wondered what Christians thought happened to people who would likely never hear of Christianity/Jesus/the Bible in their lives, just because of their geographic location. “You just know” seems like a cheap excuse, but that also brings into question the Bible- if the text is so important to Christianity, what does that mean for people who would have never had the opportunity to even see one? Surely they don’t expect that all people just inherently know the content of the Bible, but also expect that you need to read it strictly anyway?
That’s a big question in Christianity! Different sects answer it differently.
Iirc, some sects say you go to purgatory forever, you’re denied a chance at heaven but hey you didn’t actually do anything evil so you don’t go to hell, either.
Sometimes they’re unflinching on the hell thing, which makes evangelism REALLY important, and which seriously calls God’s justice into question. Like, WTF, God.
…and other ones say that everyone goes to Heaven anyway. And others, like Jacob represents, say those who were overall good and would’ve accepted Jesus, are saved. And others say that everyone will learn sometime between death and judgment. And…so on.
It really depends on the sect, the interpretation, and personal feelings. There’s dozens of different answers.
I am reminded of this pentecostal pastor I know, who used to hold that Jesus appears to the dying (or dead) and gives them a final choice about accepting him.
From your “everyone will learn sometime…” remark I gather that that’s a more commonly held viewpoint.
God’s justice is obviously a crock for a million reasons. God is a dick.
Digression: There’s a related tension there I’ve found really interesting for a while. At least in the Protestant church, there’s a heavy expectation that you’ll spend a lot of time reading the bible, and this is seen as like, an indicator of your devotion to God. And yet, for much of the church’s history, the majority of people were illiterate, scripture was unavailable on a widespread basis, and the act of reading and interpreting scripture was restricted to the priesthood. Granted, that’s a large part of why the protestant movement came about – people got fed up with having to take the word of a (largely viewed as corrupt) priesthood for it, and that same priesthood having authority over the fate of their souls. So you can sort of see why it’s so important to protestants that each person reads the bible for themselves. But somewhere along the lines it’s become more of a moral requirement than anything else.
In regards to people who never even come into contact with christianity/the Bible, one of the pivotal points of the New Testament for christians is the Great Commission, in which Jesus instructs his followers to go and spread the word to all the world. So each person or culture yet to hear the gospel (literally, “good news”) is seen as a failure of the church. Our failure, not theirs, but they suffer for it. Of course, that doesn’t quite fill the whole gap – there are all the cultures that the Jews hadn’t even come into indirect contact with until long after Jesus’ advent, that literally couldn’t have heard the news for several lifetimes afterwards. Conversely, there’s all the people that died before the commission was even made. The argument Joyce is making here is pretty much the only one I’ve seen in regards to them, which has never really seemed very convincing to me, either. Although there was an interesting moment in I think the last of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I can’t remember it well, but Aslan essentially says to a character who protests he’s not worthy of mercy because he spent his life in service to the evil god(?) Tash that anything he’s done for good in the name of another god, he really did in service of Aslan whether he knew it or not, and conversely any evil acts performed in the name of Aslan were really serving Tash. Basically meaning that the good-hearted belong to him, and the evil to Tash.
if you’re Jack Chick’s flavour of born-again-Christian, you can spend literally your entire life building charity schools and hospitals, spend all your money to help others, forsake your personal life to make the world a better place BUT IF YOU DON’T SAY YOUR SOUL BELONGS TO JESUS then you’re going to Hell for eternity
On the other hand, you can sin right up until the last minute, commit murders left and right, steal from the destitute, force orphans into prostitution, and as long as you sincerely repent and accept Jesus on your deathbed, you’re in.
(still talking about Chick, who Joyce seems to follow or at least she likes his tracts)
on the flip side you can be a literal child rapist but if you repent and say you surrender to Jesus then it’s alright
The prodigal laborer is worthy of his son and all that.
Ah, yes, “Lisa’s Father”.
And yeah, that’s the version I grew up around. It was all about the magic spell to Jesus and that basically was all that mattered.
Heck, concentrating on works to help others was often seen as a negative because a) you were disrespecting God by not trusting him to save you simply by your identity as a “good” Christian and trying to bribe him with good works and b) Works in service of goals like peace, aiding the poor, showing tolerance to marginalized groups, and so on were actually in service to the Antichrist.
So, did your Sunday School just… ignore the part about clothing the naked and feeding the hungry?
According to the sect my friends belonged to, that part doesn’t count because of the line Joyce quotes in Panel 3. As such, that clearly takes precedence. And is proof that faith is the only means by which to be saved.
More fun is that they were also big on Prosperity Gospel as well, which basically holds that God is responsible for rewarding people in life who are favored by him. Thus, everyone rich is a true man of God and by praying well enough to God and being enough in his favor (say by donating a lot of money to the man with the fancy jet), you would also be rewarded in life with monetary riches as proof of your devotion.
The lines where Jesus constantly rants about how the rich are fucked and people should care for the poorest usually get ignored or interpreted as being about how one should give the gift of Jesus to the poor at best and about “evil globalist jews” at worst.
Well, that line of reasoning just answered my question concerning how so many people are willing to accept a certain citrus-hued millionaire as divinely ordained. Despite well cited evidence to the contrary.
Don’t forget literally pissed on.
That *could* explain the weird hair colouring…?
There are different views on this among Christians.
Catholics historically believed that you went to Limbo, which is kinda like Heaven-lite. (Now, the official teaching is “We’re not sure, but we know God works it all out somehow in a way that is merciful and just”.)
Some Christians believe that all good people still get to go to Heaven, or they get to go to Heaven if they could not possibly have known about Jesus (like little babies or people in North Korea).
Some Christians don’t believe in a literal Hell in the first place. Good Non-Christians might not go to Heaven, but they just stop existing.
Mormons have a very interesting approach – they think you can convert after death! That’s why Mormons are big into geneology – they want to baptize their ancestors by proxy so their ancestors can convert to the right religion. (Not just their own ancestors get caught up with this, as it happens, and it’s pretty controversial among non-Mormons who know about this, but it certainly is a novel way of squaring that circle.)
And some Christians do believe that if you don’t know Jesus, you go right to Hell, no matter how good you were. “Faith, not works”. (Some of this group make an exception for small children and babies. Others don’t.) To this group, spreading the good word is an urgent mission, because you are going to be held personally responsible in the afterlife for all the people you could’ve converted but didn’t.
Following the Second Vatican Council, the official teaching of the Catholic Church is much closer to Jacob’s views. Of course, a lot of people don’t know about that section, and the conservative wing of the church has never been very comfortable about the idea.
Being Episcopal, we have as many opinions on that as we have members. One of the most common I hear actually reconciles with the scripture Joyce quotes, “No man comes to the Father but by me.” We believe that, but who knows by what criterion Jesus accepts ways to God as “by him”? He also said “if you seek me, you will find me.” How many adherents of non-Christian religions spend their entire lives in the search for God?
I was raised Southern Baptist, and I have asked many an old friend or family member still in that church, “So you think that you can and do understand the inscrutable will of God sufficiently to declare its limits?” I can’t, so the belief I described above may be complete hooey, but at least I know that.
That last panel reminds me of when moms would tell their kids that if they made a face for too long, it’d get stuck like that.
Now they just remind their children to change their avatars every now and again.
Well too bad I’m never changing my gravatar.
That’s okay, you could be making any face under that paper bag. You could even be a sheep, for all I know. Look, he’s gone to sleep!
In conclusion, Paul was an asshole.
Yup.
Lord, yes. It’s funny how many theologians have no problem pointing out Peter’s flaws, but after his conversion Paul is a Model Christian. Not “haha” funny, mind you.
Because he, and the authoritarian ****s who came after him, got to define what the model was.
Most of the people I talk to about the subject think Paul was a self-loathing gay man who never came out of the closet or even accepted he was in the closet.
Go Jacob! Use religion to alter perceptions and reduce other’s negativity and bigotry toward other religions! If only such a thing helped us non religious folks with the Christians. I’m still happy about it though. Gotta love less hate in the world!
Well there are some Christians, myself included, that think that God doesn’t really care if you believe in him or not, the important thing is if you’ve been a good person. If that’s the case, then he’ll let you in. After all, you guys are doing it without even expecting to be rewarded for it, out of the goodness of your heart.
Frankly it kind of works out either way for me. If I’m right, we all go to heaven as a reward for doing our best to make the world a better place. If you’re right, we still made the world a better place, and that’s reward enough even in oblivion.
Interestingly, as an atheist, that’s pretty much my view as well. I mean, I figure there’s probably no afterlife, but if it is, and the afterlife is sorted out in some just manner, then people who mostly tried to be good people will get into the good one. (And if it’s not done according to some just manner, then it doesn’t really matter what we do, does it? Whatever the rules are, if they’re not just then they’re completely arbitrary and for all we know the folks in charge might change them just on a whim. “You have to believe the right way” is just as nonsensical as “Only if you were born on a Thursday and died on a Tuesday, unless you were born with a cowl in which case you had to die at midnight any day of the week.”)
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” — Marcus Aurelius
Beautiful, thanks for that one.
Obviously, it’s all been spelt out for everybody for a very long time, and it’s easy, too…
It’s like bizarro pascal’s wagar, but in a good way?
Side note, Marcus Aurelius seems like on of the more interesting Roman leaders.
Tangent: Blaise Pascal literally invented the roulette wheel. He should’ve known better than to come up with that little wager.
It’s trickier, in a way. That whole “If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them” is powerful and not really something a traditional Christian could come up with. God is just by definition.
Welp. Now I ship it.
So, Jacob, how about faiths that could not possibly have been created by the Abrahamic god and fit that framework unless you jam it in with a hammer, like Hinduism or the Hellenic pantheon?
I feel like Jacob is saying that all faiths are valid and lead to the same path, rather than suggesting that he’s right and everyone else just got the cliff notes.
That’s a pleasant thought. Nobody is wrong for their religion, everyone just focuses on leading good lives and making the lives of others better. In a perfect world, people would not suffer anymore for their beliefs.
That’s my general view. Most of it is all just nuts and bolts, the substance of “be a good person” is what gets you into heaven (in whatever form it takes). From that perspective, most any religion will get you into heaven (so long as you’re not an asshole while following it) plus plenty of moral philosophies and humanistic ideals, so not even non-religious folks are excluded.
I don’t follow- a lot of pre-abrahamic religions and pantheons didn’t encourage being a good person at all. Hell, the greek wrote all sorts of plays about how that doesn’t help you.
I’m told Hellenic polytheism focuses more on reciprocity (here summed up as ‘don’t be a dick to the gods, they won’t be a dick to you’) more than any sort of commandments list, at least these days.
I’m pretty sure that’s what he means too, but his wording for it is…off putting. Because by their own religious narratives, a lot of faiths are precluded from being ‘placed in creation by God’ unless you’re jamming them into a Christian mould, which usually involves a lot of ignoring and dismissing what those religions actually teach.
Or just go the opposite spectrum – Satanism, how does THAT fit in?
On a side note, I’ll never care for Hinduism just because of how easy it is to see how changes in religion reflect government control. Same goes for the Roman Catholic Church, what with the Middle Ages.
I’m not gonna go into what I think about the behaviour of religious followers or the doctrines themselves, because that’s irrelevant here. I’m just saying you can’t really fit some of these religions into a Christian framework.
Hinduism has the “multiple paths to moksha (salvation)” thing as part of doctrine. Dharma Yoga, Karma Yoga, Gyaan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, etc. etc.
Yeah, it does, but it’s own religious narratives still preclude it from being a creation of the Abrahamic god, which is what I was trying to get at. It doesn’t mean Christians can’t achieve salvation in Hindu thought, but Hinduism is still not a creation of their God, by Hinduism’s doctrine.
oh, absolutely. Hinduism is far older than Christianity anyway, in fact I’m pretty sure it predates any of the Abrahamic faiths. So it’s not going to be concerned with what all Christians believe happened in the Middle East sometime around ~20 AD
Look at Joyce! Look at how much she’s grown! Havin’ a debate about religion in which the the point isn’t to be right, but to discuss and enjoy the discussion; look at how much fun she’s having!
Religious people are nerds.
I fucking hate Paul.
You’re no prize yourself.
Now kiss.
Strongly Agree. Christianity was so much better before he was all ‘oh dang the world might not end tomorrow, we have to make something that doesn’t rock the boat so much, also let’s concentrate less on just not being jerks, that’s a good idea’. Friggin Paul!
He was the walrus, right?
You and me both. Just had that argument with somebody today, as it happens.
Me: Jesus never said anything about gays.
Him: Well, Paul says –
Me: This may surprise you, but Paul is not Jesus.
I like to think the first thing Jesus did when Paul died was bongo slap him and say, “What the hell Paul?!?!? I did NOT tell you to use your cultural baggage to be anti-gay!!!” “But Jesus, some of those Greek guys are straight up pedophiles!” “So you targeted gay people? What is wrong you? I should have left you blind for life!”
If it helps, most of the early church, including the actual disciples felt that way too. But they were to nice to kick him out, and he and Peter did agree about Gentile converts that one time, so they sent him on a missionary trip instead of excommunicating the former Pharisiac zealot and Roman Citizen. And he never gave up that cultural baggage.
Ugh.
I was given a color comic at around age 9 which basically says what Paul apparently did “how do you know God is real? look at the wonderful world! that’s the proof!”
9 yo me thought, “what a load of BS. One doesn’t mean the other AT ALL”
I love this so much.
Is it bad that I remember those days, the days where I used to debate theology, despite it not being one of my strong suits? I was a devote Anti-Paulite, which was frowned upon in my church, and it was only after debating my pastor about such things that I decided that the church and I had philosophical differences.
sorry, Pauline is the proper term, not Paulite, and yes I am correcting myself in a reply to hopefully save my skin.
…okay, doesn’t Islam say that Jesus existed and was a prophet or something? A person clearly blessed by God even if he’s not the son of God? Wouldn’t that make Islam covered by that whole thing, at least far more than Judaism?
But yeah, this? This strip is why I get frustrated at religious discussion so much. The Bible, the Quran, the Torah, they are not the word of God, they are the word of God WRITTEN DOWN BY MAN. AND EDITED BY MAN.
Oh, and translated! Dear lord the translations, the bible was not written in English assholes!
Even by their own rules (I’m agnostic >_>), Religions are inherently fallible, because all of their scripture and rules and ideas have gone through the filter of “Roman-era jackasses who happened to know how to read and write”, or some similar such thing… and yet they treat the whole business as sacrosanct.
Graaaaaaaaah.
What I find hilarious is that if you look at the original name “Christian” it is basically the Greeks calling the followers of Jesus dopeheads. Kristos was a word for drug user. The interpretation of “anointed one,” was basically “crap, everyone knows us as the Christians now, we need to come up with a name that doesn’t suggest we are drug using wackos.”
Yes. Not Muslim, not an expert,, but my understanding is that Islam does hold that Isa (Jesus) was the last prophet before Muhammad.
Jesus (Isa in Arabic) is one of the big four prophets in Islam. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad in that order chronologically, but reversed in Eder of importance. Heck Islam even recognizes Jesus’s virgin birth, and at the end of the world Jesus comes back to announce Muhammad’s successor as the final prophet. However, it is also believed in Islam that the Quran is the unfiltered word of God that has existed since the dawn of time. At the same time, it’s difficult to read Arabic poetry and certain passages can be interpreted multiple different ways do to one word having many meanings.
See, that I just don’t get. Wouldn’t it make far, far more sense to say that a divine being’s wisdom cannot be perfectly captured in a mundane form? Stuff gets ignored all the time for the sake of changing times (unless you really want to not wear mixed fabrics), it’s a perfect rationale for it.
It was actually part of a very large century long debate within Islam from circa 800CE to circa 900CE between two schools of thought in the Sunni group (Shi’a have normally been the more liberal sect of Islam due to not having this debate because they split with the Sunnis very early on). One school of thought was the Mutzalite school which very much liked reason and logic, and believed the Quran had to be just another regular creation of God, as the Quran being God’s words would logically have had to been created later. The other school was the Ashari school of thought which preferred piety even if said piety was blind, thinking that as long as one had faith they did not need to understand their faith. Ignorant faith was still faith to them. And they believed that Quran had existed, in it’s current form, since the beginning of time. The Jewish Old Testament and Christian New Testamemt were of course expected to be flawed, but the Quran was immutably, literally the word of God, using a Muhammad as a mouthpiece whereas the old prophets had acted as translators. In the end, the Ashari school of thought won, and became the basis for most of Sunni Islam ever since.
Huh!
…I… really don’t have a lot to say about this. That’s actually just a really fascinating exploration about the split in the Sunni Muslim faith and where it came from.
Just wanted to give you a thumbs up and let you know that this sort of description is fascinating to us Agnostics. 🙂
“If you’d come today you could have reached the whole nation!
Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication!”
That, and the supporting cast with the Lazaruses and the Elijahs and the Hammolekeths.. But all the A-Listers… The ‘important’ cast… all the English Gospel-ers…
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, Simon (all those good Middle-Eastern names…) don’t cast doubt on it’s veracity at all!
The Quran is complete and perfect. It tells you so itself.
I ship it. I don’t know that this relationship would last a very long time, but I think it could be good for the both of them. Clearly they want both want a chaste relationship. Plus, his being black and having blasphemous ideas would piss off Joyce’s mother, that’s a plus in my book!
Her parents would combust on the spot, but Jacob and Joyce would make such a cute couple.
Heck, he’d even fit into their J-Name pattern! That’s got to count for something, right?
Dating her room mate’s crush, her ex-boyfriend’s room mate and her former first date’s (and current “it’s a complicated, text-based, kinda friendship”) friend WOULD be consistent with expected level of awkwardness for Joyce so you might be onto something.
Sal: “Daaamn, girl.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/damngirl/
Oh, and of course, her room mates’ bitter enemy’s current boyfriend. No way Sarah will be caught in the crossfire of THAT in any way.
You’re already preparing to rub the ensuing drama all over your skin, aren’t you?
It’s more like I’m furiously digging a bunker.
Of course Bagge’s going to give it a full on skin-application. Anything drama so severe that it might end with a major character’s base ostracization counts as a low-shun.
Ooooh, ooooh, and they really hit off while the girl who is heartbroken over Joyce served their table (aka NOT ALLOWED to not be there). I’m really glad we didn’t get a closeup on a sad Becky-face.
So…. yup. Expected level of awkwardness.
Hank would probably be ok. And by “ok” I mean “probably sit in stunned silence for a couple hours before being supportive while simultaneously saying something really awkward”. Carol would melt and then combust. And then part with something really awful and probably racist.
I can’t read ‘hon’ as anything other than an exaggerated french laugh and I’m not sure whether I prefer it.
JE VOULAIT LE CALL DERRIERRE HON HON BAGUETTE
Note: I’m French so I’m allowed to do this.
I’m Canadian. The one year I actually had a Quebecois french teacher (most teachers I had either could just follow the textbook, or at most had high school or first-year college level french), he spent a class trying to teach us to laugh like we were french.
Sometimes I think I missed out by not taking french classes. People always seem to have stories about them.
Then again, how many people can say they passed year one with flying colors, then shamelessly cheated through year two in Mandarin Chinese?
I love panel 5, like, a lot. I’m on board this ship.
… Hmm, I like Joyce and Walky as a ship a lot too. Maybe I’m just weak to Old Hollywood romance tropes.
Well those two seem to be hitting it off well. Incoming Raidah drama perhaps?
Poor Raidah. She’s a minor character up against the friendly outgoing protagonist. She never stood a chance.
She should become a minion of Sydney Yus.
Which is sad, because the relationship with Raidah seems really healthy for both of them.
I dunno, it seems fairly platonic so far.
I’m hoping for them to just end up friends. And it might even lead (eventually, in like a decade real time) to a partial reconciliation Sarah between Sarah and Radiah. But that’s just optimist me think. Cynical me will be along to squash that hope in a little bit.
Doubtful. Jacob is into serious relationships. He is most likely serious with Raidah, which is what allows him to have friendly conversations with others of the opposite sex: he isn’t talking to Joyce to scope her out as a potential girlfriend, he’s just being nice and trying to connect to her outside complaining about her behind her back.
There are so many contradictions in the Scripture. I’m not religious, but I think it’s important to take in context and stuff like that. I once had a debate with a Christian acquaintance about religion vs. science. I learned then that some sects don’t approve of modern medicine, but then I thought, why can’t the existence of cells and the processes of animals and nature be thought of as God’s Perfect Design? Why must it be one or the other?
And in the Christian sects that believe in Christ, why is there so little focus on the Golden Rule and so much focus on using the Scripture to condemn others?
Furthermore, considering the religious zealots currently running the country, isn’t it blasphemous in and of itself to presume that one knows more than God, since that pride is a characteristic of Lucifer in particular? To clearly discount Christ’s words so you have an excuse to hurt people and obtain earthly power?
It makes me think back to the needle and the camel, where it was said that it was easier to get a whole camel through a needle than for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And yet there they are, looking down on others and doing the exact opposite of alms in the highest positions in the country, truly believing that because they have money and they’re white they are better than everyone else in the world, literally.
My smartass take on this is that it is about the tension between growing the market and brand loyalty.
Coke and Pepsi both believe greatly in cola-flavored soda drinks, and want everyone to drink more. But they also fundamentally disagree because Coke is not Pepsi, and each knows how profoundly wrong the other is.
Ah, the excitement of finally being able to geek out about the thing you’re passionate about with someone just as geeky as you. <3
It’s funny/sad how some religious people think the world of their religion but can’t accept it to be a bigger, better think they’ve been taught it is. Like… yeah, we’re good and going to Heaven but fuck these guys and those other guys too. They’re not us. Can’t be us.
This is why I feel lucky to have been raised Jesuit.
Anyway… I also find it funny that every time two characters get along people start shipping it. Seriously guys, there’s a thing called friendship. It’s not a stepping stone to something else all the time, most often than not it’s its own thing. Joyce and Jacob feel completely incompatible as a pair to me.
Of course, drama and shenanigans demand certain someone gets the wrong idea.
But seeing two people getting along and shipping them is a part of real life too. It’s not as though shipping is something that only happens in fiction. 🙂
Yeah I’m just terrible at that sort of stuff. The stories I like the best are the ones with minimal, long winded, usually devoid of romance.
One: fellow Jesuit raised high five.
Two: Someone can ship people without having them be romantically or sexually involved. The verb of “shipping” in that sense just means two put two or more people in a relationship together, and friendship counts as a relationship.
Really makes you feel like you lucked out when you realize that being sensible and understanding is not a widespread teaching huh? Not that I am really religious anymore, but my formative years were in good hands.
And really? I guess that went over my head.
Shipping key
OTP – romantic
BrOTP – friendship
FamTP – family
FOETP – enemies.
New ships.
Joyce and Jacob (other people beat me to this one)
Sarah and Joe (they’ve got the cynical bit from different angles, they’re both growing in different but similar ways, they could really be compatible in ways that Jacob and Sarah wouldn’t be.)
My attitude towards Christianity is what I call the “Ghandi Rule.” If Ghandi is in hell, I want to go to hell, because if god cares more for what people believe than how they act towards their fellow man, screw god.
Of course the christians who want to convert me are always in the group that believes Ghandi is in hell, so it is a great rule to drive away proselytizers!
I’m afraid the image of Ghandi as some kind of saintly figure is a sadly whitewashed one, much like that of MLK Jr.
and Jesus himself, of course. (As the comic before this showed on many occasions.)
Mother Teresa anyone? Damn that woman was scary.
She laundered money for cartel bosses and brutal dictators, opposed using pain meds even during surgery claiming that suffering brought people close to Jesus, and used the poor conditions of her clinics as a ploy for fundraising but left the clinics in unsterile horrendous conditions and sent the money to the Vatican to buy the Pope another solid gold toilet.
But is that any reason NOT to make her a Saint? She can be the saint of self-righteous shitbags who trick the masses into thinking they are helping others while actually only spreading misery!
Also hideously hideously anti choice, but that’s pretty SOP for the Catholic church. Which is probably why I had the biggest problem with going along with my religion class tbh – any faith that’s anti choice will not include me among its followers.
Yeaaaah, Ghandi’s kind of hideously racist, sexist, and pro-caste system. He’s….not the kind of paragon of virtue people think.
He’s also very fond of nukes, which is why I make point of offing his ass post-haste.
Indeed.
See also, Che Guevara. When I was in college, many of my fellow students considered that guy a sort of saint or martyr for a cause that frankly confused the hell out of me anyway.
Ghandi isn’t the best example, a far better one is “a religion where Hitler could be in heaven is one that I wouldn’t want to join.” If anyone ever hands you a chick tract, tell them that, because Jack Chick has stories where serial killers repent and go to heaven and has at least one story where someone who commits suicide goes to heaven.
K, I guess I ship Sarah and Joe now?
Does this comments app email you on post replies, or do you just have to keep refreshing…?
Notifs are for the weak.
I like that this discussion is happening. I like that Willis is recognizing the complexity of and internal debates within Christianity. Seeing a lot of these kinds of debates (and also the Sarahs and Joes who don’t see them as meaningful) among my students. In short, I’m once again really impressed by this comic. It’s awesome.
I’ve had a lot of fun reading DOA, and also just kinda being able to see things in general, but this comic gave me flashbacks to my days at a Christian college and I just finished tearing out my own eyes 🙁
Oh snap, we are going into Kirk Cameron Saving Christmas logic here.
“Its ok to believe X because Jesus created X.”
“Yea, people worship X instead of Jesus… but who do you think created X. Checkmate sucker!”
I suddenly really wish Joe was more religiously observant. Some of Joyce and Jacob’s discussion seems like it would be slightly bonkers from a Jewish perspective, and I’d like to hear that perspective in-comic. Just for fun/friendly discussion purposes.
Am Jewish, can confirm, moderately bonkers. But, Jews are basically in love with having crazy arguments about religion, so it’s totally cool.
Ah Yes, liberal Christianity: the stepping stone to outright non-belief; easier to swallow than conservative religion for the more progressively minded but even more nonsensical from a logical standpoint.
I like the way you think, Jacob – with openness and consideration.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Oh wow, this takes me back. Yep, this is part of the hand-wave that Rapturists use to avoid the central flaws of their ideology of faith not works and God’s coming back soon to torment a planet of people with hellish disasters that we’re all going to frig ourselves silly watching from a cloud in Heaven.
The proof of God is in Earth existing, so if they don’t already have a clue in their hearts, well, they probably have it coming.
Since that doesn’t sit well with everyone though, it’s usually paired with the “great work” of proselytizing. After all, if they don’t believe, that’s just because they haven’t been ministered to yet, and shown the clear obvious way of a weird interpretation of the Bible as filtered through a couple of John Birch Society members. And if they have been ministered and still reject, then it’s because they are heathen demons trying to corrupt you personally.
And thus, it’s important to go everywhere and minister to everyone so they have the “best chance” to be saved and why it doesn’t matter what evil you perform to force people to join the church, what deceptions you use, because you’re saving that person’s soul from a very imminent doom at the hands of an angry God.
Panel 2: And that worldview really doesn’t like the idea that there’s more than one path to salvation, because that opens the door to it mattering more that there be good works rather than it just being about faith and saying the right words and trying to keep yourself “pure” enough to ride out the clock on the world.
And a lot of other questions that religions like Joyce’s do not want to dwell overly long on.
Panel 3: The irony here of course being that the God in Islam and the God in Christianity are the same deity. Islam just believes there was one more prophet than Christians believe in. But then, there’s a large swath of middle American protestantism that is heavily invested in viewing Islam as some sort of devil-worshipper cult of death rather than a religion born out of Christianity.
Also, I suspect Jacob’s major romantic turn-on might be theological discussions. Especially as that’s the subject he seems to really come alive on when talking about Raidah.
It’s all about brand loyalty.
Nonono, Allah’s not the same god as the Christian God, because Allah isn’t Jesus!
(Yes, people have said this.)
On panel two – even Jacob’s position isn’t exactly nice. Sure, other religions get to be paths to salvation (at least some of them), but in classic fashion we get the liberal christian throwing the nonreligious under the bus while suggesting that there is no problem in doing so.
Eh, he’s not…
… entirely…
… ruling out some manner of philosophy of ethics as a path through his particular savior.
🙁
Seriously though? I’ll give Jacob heaps of credit for actually making an effort to get through to a fundie. That’s doing more to blunt the damage of the religion than most liberal Christians do.
It’s really sad that so many people forget about Allah and Yahweh being the same deity. Especially the Wahabists who think that the “Judeo-Christian” God is a false idol. Islam is actually super respectful and venerable to Jesus and Mary, they’re written into the Quran, Jesus is the second most important prophet according to Islam, and when the world ends it’s Jesus, not Muhammad who comes back. Granted he comes back to announce Muhammad’s successor as final prophet but still.
Sure, but telling fundamentalist Christians that “don’t worry, Muslims like Jesus, too, but they put him second place after their guy, and he isn’t really the Son of God” is kind of like saying, “Yeah, we believe in Superman, but he’s not invulnerable and he can’t fly and also he was born in New Jersey and he’s a dentist.” At that point he’s a different dude. Thinking Jesus is the Absolute Bestest is the entire point of Christianity, and putting him second place is probably worse to some folks than not putting him anywhere at all. Churches have literally split over way more trivial stuff.
I agree with everything you said there, but “churches have literally split over way more trivial stuff” is about as low a bar as you can get. Name almost any level of triviality, and I guarantee that some church somewhere has split over something more trivial.
But that’s exactly what I’m saying. “Jesus is the Son of God” is kind of major. When churches split over stupid stuff, why would the big stuff be shrugged off?
…. now I’m thinking that often domestic abuse and worse is shrugged off, and the problem is more that many churches just can’t tell the difference between what’s trivial and what’s important.
… which, to be fair, isn’t unique to churches.
… okay, I’m just mindlessly pontifimoping now.
I feel like a lot of the history of feminism is trying to get the public at large to treat major issues like the major issues they are rather than a pointless background thing not worth even thinking about compared to say whether or not a Church thinks the holy day is Saturday or Sunday.
I feel like I accidentally antagonized you. I’m sorry. That wasn’t the intention. I also realized that my comment is easily very…ignorant and condescending. I apologize for that. Is there a delete function? I really don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable because I said something stupid.
As far as I can tell, the only delete function is saying something MIND-NUMBINGLY stupid to the point of insensitivity or outright hatred. Don’t ask me how I know this.
This reminds me of the apocryphal story of when the first Christian missionaries met the Norse and the Norse were like, “ooh, hey, that’s a cool god, we’ll add him to our pantheon” and the missionaries were like “what, fuck no, he’s the only god” and the Norse were like “uhhh, okay, now we have an issue”.
That’s one of the things that got the Jews, and later the Christians, in trouble with the Romans.
The Romans had no problem with letting conquered peoples keep their gods. As polytheists, they had no investment in the “our god is real; yours aren’t” idea that Paul and Joyce are pushing. When you’ve already got dozens of gods, what’s another one, more or less? Letting people keep worshipping their native gods keeps them happy, and a lot of those gods ended up spreading through the Empire, far from their origins.
But people had to recognize the Roman gods, because that was the basis for the legitimacy of civil authority.. Adding YHWH to the rolls of the gods of Rome is not a problem. Insisting that YHWH is the only god is a problem. That denies the legitimacy of Roman civil authority, which is not just blasphemy, but treason and rebellion. And that’s what gets you crucified.
It’s not that people forget the position Jesus has in Islam, but that they are genuinely uninterested in hearing about it. However in medieval times, a time primarily known for its religious intolerance and genocide, there were actually numerous occasions where this wasn’t the case. Depending on the century, this was seen in places like al-Andalus, Sicily, Greece and even the Crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem and Antioch. There are in fact numerous accounts of young knights on pilgrimage to Jerusalem being reprimanded by their senior peers for harassing Muslim religious practices. What did all of these have in common? That they had coexisted in relatively peaceful conditions long enough to no longer consider each other as foreign or heathens or ‘the other’.
When compared to the amount of hostility and murder in medieval times, it could be argued that these were exceptions to the rule, but that doesn’t change the fact that they occurred. What we see today, especially in religious communities but also some secular groups, is that people would rather remain ignorant. By secluding themselves in very exclusive commumities, they create an environment that prefers to ridicule other beliefs based on their own assumptions rather than take them seriously enough to learn what other people actually believe.
Panel 4: Mm.
I shouldn’t be bothered by this, because it’s a much nicer pluralistic way of interpreting the scriptures than Joyce’s leaden interpretation, but I’m not the biggest fan of the way more pluralistic Christian doctrine has of looking at the rest of the religions of the Earth as “incomplete” or “imperfect” forms of Christianity. Like they are all just secretly in service to “the one true faith”.
Part of that is because I was raised in fundie land with public school textbooks with definite influence from those beliefs and as a kid super into mythology, I was always bothered by the attempts to shoe-horn a fake version of “no no, they all secretly knew Christianity was right” by lying about what other religions believed. (The one most infuriating to me was the passage about how the Pyramids were built to point towards Heaven, which is wrong on like 5 different levels).
And another part is just the other disrespect to other faiths and what they actually believe in order to shoe-horn in this “they’re all secretly talking about us” garbage. I mean, I was raised secularly by a Wiccan and I’ve always been good to note what the internal mythologies of any religion are even though I do not actually believe in any of them.
And so it doesn’t feel a lot to ask of Christians even when they don’t believe in other religions to respect the internal arguments of those religions and faiths instead of trying to shoe-horn them into their own to make it feel more universal than it is.
I dunno, minor pet peeve.
Also, hello there Jacob eyebrow. Do I need to remind you that you are in a committed monogamous relationship?
Panel 5: Those eyes, the teasing about blasphemy (and she’s definitely half-teasing, we’ve seen her shocked by blasphemy face before and that is not it), yeah, there’s definite chemistry between them and it makes sense they would get along so well especially as both think so much about their faiths.
And that’s another reason why Sarah and Jacob wouldn’t work. Sarah doesn’t have those interests and definitely is not the type to enjoy hours of friendly debate on theological matters.
Panel 6: A secular jewish person having to listen to a sectarian debate on Christianity where the choices for folks like him are “hell because reject Jesus” or “well, all that jewish stuff growing up was really just another way of praising Jesus”. Yeah, I can see why Joe’s face is stuck in permanent “oh fucking shut up already” mode.
And Sarah, oh Sarah. No. You don’t get to be mad about this. Yeah, you have a crush and it sucks seeing your crush flirt with others and get along with others (or at least that’s what friends tell me, I’m more the type who likes seeing people I love flirt and be happy with others because I like seeing people I like be happy even if I’m not directly responsible for that happiness).
But you’re a terrible fit for Jacob. And Raidah and yes, Joyce, are much better fits. They both like theological discussion and have compatible ideologies and viewpoints towards sex. And Joyce finding someone who can have a good spirited debate on matters of faith and have nice chemistry with isn’t a bad thing (though I’m still wanting to cheer on Jacob and Raidah some more).
So just let your roommate enjoy a bit of chemistry and a good conversation. It isn’t doing you any harm.
I’m actually kinda expecting Joyce and Radiah to meet up again through Jacob, become sorta friends and (Joyce being Joyce) Joyce trying to get Radiah and Sarah to reconcile or at least hate each other less. But that’s just the hopeful part of me. The naive hopeful part that the cynical part comes by later to snuff out. And on the Christian shoe-horning part I totally agree. I’ve actually adopted a more Sikh-like view of religious pluralism as a result: there is one ultimate end goal and truth, but many different but equally valid and valuable paths to that truth. Which I guess is what you get when you mix liberal Jesuit views with the liberal Sikh views that pervade your environment. About a quarter of my adopted hometown in California is Sikh and it is a really really nice experience, because Sikh temples actually let anyone attend their worship services and actually encourage non-Sikhs to come to them, if for no other reason than to celebrate and interact as a community.
I can’t believe you got this wrong, but pyramids were actually built to store grain. A neurosurgeon said so. And he is now your Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, so he would know what buildings are for, mmkay?
…
The real sad part is that he’s like the second least objectionable pick of the whole bunch.
And then a nazi got punched in the face.
Joyce’s face reminds me of this chemistry: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/fine/
I really don’t see how Jacob’s raised eyebrow is indicative of him swaying from monogamy. He’s having an interesting conversation with Joyce.
I was more lightly ribbing him for the mutual chemistry. I don’t actually think he’s the type to cheat on a partner.
Your first point about panel four is a part of why I ended up moving in an areligious direction. Organized religion, especially the abrahamic ones, is way way too prone to view their path as the one right path and other religions and even other denominations of the same religion as, at best, inferior paths to the same end and, at worst, as enemies trying to lead them astray and thereby deserving of anything between scorn and derision to out and out destruction while I personally subscribe to the notion that each of us have a path that is right for us and no religion is absolutely right for everyone.
About panel 4: Let’s be real, most people who think one thing believe that people who think another thing are at least somewhat wrong or else they wouldn’t think that thing. Asking a Christian to affirmatively assert that all other religions are just as good would be like asking a Star Trek fan to affirmatively assert that Star Wars and Doctor Who is just as good. They’ve made their choice clear, and they obviously believe that for a reason, so regardless of the truth of that, it’s unreasonable to expect them to declare that truth.
As a secular Jew reading that discussion, I think you nailed my feelings about it quite succinctly! 😛 Sometimes I just feel like Christians ought to drop the Old Testament entirely – at the end of the day, it’s just not their book; and on top of that they cancel out/try too hard to rationalize most of it to force it into a bizarre sort of continuity with the New Testament.
why does Joyce’s cast keep not immobilizing her wrist
like, she gestures with that hand like it’s just a fingerless glove
am i mistaken and is it just a fingerless glove??? but there isn’t one on her other hand so it’s probably still the cast??? just. not immobilizing somehow
also love the ‘rrawr’ on Joyce’s face in the penultimate panel
is this how Christians flirt
Probably. I’m reminded of this Arthur King of Time and Space strip.
It’s only a brace, not a cast. It allows some flexibility, but ensures her wrist stays straight most of the time.
I think that’s a wrist brace, or possibly an ace bandage; the later of which I’ve worn before. It’s a little stiff, but you can in fact move your joints unlike with a cast.
Ah, okay, gotcha. Didn’t know about that!
“That’s blasphemous talk.
Dirty, blasphemous talk…”
I mean, that’s how I’m reading Joyce’s face, but what do I know?
Wow I like this a lot. I love love love the idea of Joyce being able to get into a friendly debate about religion with another open-minded Christian and have FUN with it. Both as a Christian and as an atheist I’ve really enjoyed healthy debate/questioning, and I think it’s both practically good and an interesting, enjoyable pursuit. And hers and Jacob’s smiles. Bless these kids.
I’ve never really thought about the “the proof is in the earth” thing since leaving the faith, but…yeah, it sounds like BS now. I used to believe it pretty hardcore, and it sounds nice in its way, but as cool as our existence is I don’t think anything about the natural world proves there /must/ be a higher power. And also there’s a lot about the natural world that sucks, so. The thing is, I’ve come to see the idea of God not as an answer to the question “where did life come from” but another, and perhaps bigger question. I ask “where did we come from”, religious people say “God created us.” Now my question is “wtf? Well where did GOD come from?” And no one can answer that. There is no easy answer, because each potential answer leads to more questions. Yes, scientific answers, too.
Also the ‘they have no excuse thing’…no. If God is like “you have no excuse not to believe in me, fuck you” God is an asshole. There’s plenty of reason NOT to believe, or else there wouldn’t be so many people who didn’t. Like. Duh. That many people aren’t just ‘denying his existence’ or ‘closing their heart to him’. There’s just literally no good evidence.
Also dang you guys for making me think about Joyce/Jacob and Sarah/Joe enough to start shipping them.
Given time only exists as a reflection of space, it’s actually a nonsequitor question, “Where does God come from” as technically speaking, all things having beginnings and ends is the outlier rather than the standard. Humans have beginnings, middles, and ends in their bodies but from outside the universe, we’re actually eternal because all moments exist simultaneously.
Yes, God or any Q-like being which may exist is Doctor Manhattan.
The thing that’s always weirded ME out about that argument (besides the fact that it’s a God of Gaps fallacy, which is inherently untenable in the face of the march of science) is that they never seem to use the phenomenon of consciousness — which, it can be determined inductively, cannot be explained by observation-based science (see solipsism) or by any physical mechanism that is not itself conscious — as the main sticking point.
And in comes a physicist/philosopher to prove me wrong. I know the drill.
Panels 1 and 3 contradict each other.
In panel 1 Joyce claims that everyone should know god even if they don’t know Jesus.
In panel 3 Joyce says that the only way to know god is through Jesus.
A contradiction, among religion!? THE HECK YOU SAY!
The contradiction is due to your simplification. Knowing someone and coming to someone are two different things. It’s the difference of looking someone up on wikipedia as opposed to meeting them in person and having a dialogue to get to know them.
Now kiiiiiiiiiiss……….
Something I thought of back when I cared, for those who care to chew on.
1) Jesus pretty much says, “yo dawgs, Abraham is in heaven.”
2) Jesus also says, “there’s only one way into heaven, and it’s gonna be me.”
3) Abraham died way before Jesus lived.
Conclusion, in order for the Bible to be internally consistent, that whole “Jesus is the only way into heaven” bit literally cannot mean what most modern Christians interpret it to mean.
Also, they got pi wrong.
And bats.
And goat breeding.
And the church got capibaras wrong.
And ad nauseum.
And then a nazi got punched in the face.
Your avatar in this case looks confused thinking about the paradox.
I think the easiest way to rectify that paradox is this though:
Pre-Jesus, the way into Heaven was through following laws/ commandments and sacrifices. This work very little.
Post-Jesus, the way into Heaven was through relationship with Jesus, which should work 100% of the time.
Based on scripture that is.
So, did Jesus shut the backdoor into heaven then? The evangelical teachings of my youth would *not* be ok with someone backdooring into heaven. Could people *still* get into heaven if they had a nice little goat farm and were regular, one might even say religious, about their blood sacrifices?
Also, yeah, that avatar worked out.
Jesus removed the requirement of blood sacrifice with his own death, that was the point of sending Him down to the slaughter. Law and blood sacrifice are no longer required because Jesus is the fulfillment of both. Now the way is relationship with Jesus – which boils down to conversation with Him and attempting to be a decent human being.
I’m not going to get into the more controversial things like homosexuality and such because…well to be frank, I’m more liberal on that. Still, the point is Jesus changed the rules, which is why Judaism and Christianity split at that point.
Hmmm, the Evangelicals haunting my metaphysical musings would *not* approve of Jesus changing the rules. But I guess it would be perfectly fine for there to have been one way into heaven, then there is another way. But if that is the case… why *not* assume there are paths through all other major religions? I mean, I assume the obvious reason of being kind of demeaning to those religions wouldn’t bother a hardcore Christian 😉
Here’s a thought. What if Abraham got into Heaven because, X number of years later, Jesus was GOING to die for his sins? Jesus’ salvation transcends time itself!
(This is actual Catholic dogma, by the way.)
Catholic dogma does not get a say. Catholic dogma cannot tell the difference between bread and human flesh.
I am afraid Catholic dogma may try to eat me.
Catholic dogma might be a zombie…
You know now that I think about it the hole idea of having a pairing of Jacob and Joyce isn’t all that out of place, I can’t believe I didn’t stop to think that they have so much in common until they point it out.
While we’re discussing theology in minute detail here, I’m going to throw out something that I’ve become fascinated with over the last couple years:
The Coptic Orthodox Church.
For those who don’t know, Egypt was a major theological hub in the early church–home of the very first monasteries (google or wikipedia search “Desert Fathers” The oldest still-functioning-since-founded monastery can be found in Egypt), until they were cut off from the main church following political moves by the Byzantine emperor.
A few hundred years later, everything changed when the Fire Nation–er, when the Arabs invaded Egypt. Interestingly, the Coptic people basically stepped aside after a few battles, and let the Byzantines get thrown out of Egypt. And thus they lived under Islamic rule for the next thousand years.
They were actually treated rather well. They had to pay a tax, and couldn’t serve in the military (until a couple hundred years ago), but the Copts and the Coptic Christians survived. They even survived the prosecution brought about by European Christians trying to make sure that the Coptic Christians were the right *kind* of Christian.
Interestingly, they have their own Pope, the very first one in the world, and the very first Pope on record was named Heraclas.
That’s right, the Coptic Church had Pope Hercules!
Not only that, their popes aren’t picked in a secret ceremony in their headquarters.
They’re elected. And the group of people that vote for him *are elected by the laypeople*
That’s right, they have a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED POPE.
Plus they have a requirement that the pope has to be a monk for at least 15 years, so you know he’s got MAD hand to hand skills, and is probably at least level 10.
er, that is, they have their own pope. Period, full stop, and on to the next thought.
*sigh* Check your formatting next time.
And their Pope is a hipster. they had one before Roman Catholics made it cool.
Aaaaand I should mention that their pope is merely “first amongst equals,” not the “I’m right and I literally speak for God.”
Though apparently there’s some funky stuff about that from the Catholic pope He has to be sitting in a particular chair or something? I don’t know.
That IS rather interesting! Sounds like the Pope isn’t the equivalent of the Roman Catholic Pope, which is good in my book.
The great thing about religious dogmata is that they are completely arbitrary. So religious debates may be a fun pasttime but they are ultimately pointless. Just like many nerd debates.
Or sports teams.
>.>
I love calling the uber-sports fans nerds just to watch them splutter in fury.
Shipping Joyce/Jacob. Or Joe/Sarah. Or both.
I would not ship Joyce/ Jacob. If they have too much interaction with one another, they’d probably create a wedge between themselves via theological debate. It’s civil now, but Joyce is super passionate when it comes to her core beliefs.
I dunno, my Catholic mom got along swimmingly with my Presbyterian dad and had a liberal son and we all got along fine. Also I think I may have altered their personal doctrines quite significantly.
Basically, they could easily carry on a civil discourse until the heat death of whichever one of them dies first, or they could reconcile, but they could do either one whilst being romantically involved.
[nitpicking]
Technically, Joyce should say it’s ‘heretic’ rather than ‘blasphemous’ since Jacob isn’t being irreverent of god or something sacred, but proposing a religious view that’s greatly divergent from Joyce’s.
[/nitpicking]
But maybe she isn’t entirely clear on the difference between the two.
Just to clarify: The KJV was written at the behest of King James to be a translation for common people. In order to assure a simplicity for the semi-washed masses King James declared that only the 10000 or so most common words could be used. Which is not a lot of words.
Wait, so the KJV was the Up Goer Five
Bible?
Yes indeed! Even better, one of the printing skills erroneously removed the word “not” from the adultery commandment. Hiking sand serious fines ensued.
*runs, not skills
*Hijinks and, not whatever that was.
Speaking of printing skills…
Joyce and Jacob’s Slipshine should be called “Blasphemy harder!”
At least the sequel
Oh sure, the argument falls apart at even the slightest bit of analyzis and can only be salvaged by repeating “God is omnipotent” ad naseum, but I’m sure it’s still a perfectly viable way to live.
Joyce, stop looking turned on by a “gross, blasphemous thing to suggest”
Is Joe’s word bubble in the last panel missing an “If” at the beginning?
Oh dang it I used the wrong email
Don’t worry Joyce, no one can get into Heaven. Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple.” John 3:15 “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” The game is rigged, either way, you lose.
Well played.
Every time you guys post bible verses here I’m thankful the extent of my religious upbringing was “Jesus was way cool.”
Oh, Joyce is REALLY enjoying herself in this debate. This may be the first time that she has been able to really work at defending her religion with someone who either didn’t already believe or who is willing to listen. In my mind, this can only lead to good things since she is going to be force to really think about her beliefs and it may begin to encourage her to actively call into question some of them without some traumatic experience. Even if she doesn’t change any of her beliefs, it will help her grow as a person.
I mean, torturing people forever is an act of unfathomable evil no matter how bad they are, and worshiping a god that does so is basically equivalent to being a Cthulhu cultist. Still, I guess it’s better to be a nice Cthulhu cultist? At least, as long as He doesn’t actually exist.
(Though having just read Exodus, it strikes me that ‘God is Evil’ is a fairly consistent interpretation of the Bible. The God who murdered a bunch of children just to show that he could seems like the kind of God who would torture people forever because they didn’t spend their lives talking about how great his son was.)
For the record, Cthulhu itself was a cultist, not an actual god. He was the high priest of whatever religion the star spawn had. Being a cultist of Cthulhu, meaning that you worship Cthulhu instead of being in the same cult as Cthulhu is just silly, and the equivalent of christians worshiping the leader of a congregation.
…
Yog-Sothoth is the better elder god, anyway.
And then a nazi got punched in the face.
I feel at this point the concept of an unthinkable mind destroying chaos god has been so overdone that actually seeing a Great Old One would result in mild shock at best.
Worse, it resulted in him getting elected POTUS.
I kid. And I apologise for the insult to unthinkable, mind-destroying chaos gods.
at the risk of beating another overdone trope, many things that would cause a parochial, xenophobic New Englander of a hundred years ago to wet himself in gibbering terror are no big thing to us today. Some because we’ve become more tolerant as a society, some because we’ve expanded our horizons of knowledge, and some because the century between us has seen horrors perpetrated on humans, by humans, with no need to bring the supernatural into it.
I have always wondered what Lovecraft, who was already changing his views on, well, everything when he died, would write after the Nazis were defeated. He didn’t make it, but either Lovecraft would rebound to his racism or he would think the Nazis – especially as their interest of the occult by some members would overtake them as a stereotype – might had been modern day cultists for some thing, especially if he heard about them in the far Antarctic.
To be fair only the Esoteric Order of Dagon actually worship Cthulhu and do so along side Dagon and Hydra. As EOD is ultimately derived of the Deep One religious practices and their worship of Cthulhu only started after the fall of R’yleh as a result of them being especially sensitive to his dreams it’s perfectly understandable they think of him as a god rather than as an exceptionally long lived being.
At least in Lovecraft’s own works most of the cults worship Nyarlathotep and act to achieve his goals which do include the waking of Cthulhu for whatever reasons.
Nyar-nyar is actually the UNDERSTANDABLE one of the Mythos entities, if any of them are. He’s also the biggest bastard among them – most of them don’t really care about humans, but Nyarlathotep is actively evil, or so one can surmise from the actions of his identities throughout mythos history. His job description is to usher in the return of the elder gods, so Cthulhu and him share a goal. One might theorise that he focuses on Cthulhu because old squidface, not being a god and being physically present on Earth, would be easier to reach and awaken than the cosmic entities lying beyond time and space. He has, after all, already done so in relatively recent times (at which point he took a ship to the chest and promptly went back down).
They both look like theyre having so much fun, I’m so glad, honestly.
Me too. Smiley* Joyce is back! It’s such a relief after last week.
*) and a bit too bigot for comfort
Yes, I like Joyce having fun with a religious dispute.
Lots of other times up until now when she discussed her religious beliefs it was as if somebody tried to threaten what she is or believed – be it the secular people that are around her or – on the other hand – her family or other fundie persons. (That being said, I’m really glad that a part of Joyce’s fundie beliefs is gone, and being among her secular friends has done a lot to accomplish that!)
In this dispute, she enjoys herself just for the sake of sophistcated arguments. She doensn’t feel threatened by Jacob’s different beliefs. (so she is more likely to learn a few new things here)
“Hun”
Oh my god she’s southern.
I don’t know why that makes me as happy as it does.
GAH!! WILLIS!!! Now I’m shipping Joyce and Jacob in my head as a natural couple!! I must cleanse my mental pallet with doses of “It’s Walky!!” because of this…ahh..
Joyce should also become friend with Mary and discuss the big book together.
It would be nice
But I don’t think Joyce would be up for Mary anymore.
Though Mary has shown to be willing to at least talk to Joyce so maybe if anyone can get through to her, it’s Joyce.
Ugh, this argument… The way I see it is pursuit of faith and ideals to save. Besides, Paul wasn’t a prophet he was an early preacher, and like all priests, pastors, and popes he isn’t infallible.
I ship Joe and Sarah so much. Neither of them are looking for a distracting, long-term commitment, both are sexually comfortable with themselves, and they have a lot in common personality-wise if not goals-and-interests-wise.
Other than her hating him because he’s a creepy sexual predator and never having shown any interest in him, sure. That’s no barrier to shipping people.
In a way it’s a shame, because she is looking for a casual sexual outlet and he would happily fill that need, but I think that ship sank way back in their first encounter when he talked about fixing Joyce with his penis.
Mind you, I ship them more than I ship him & Joyce. He’d still have to change a lot and face up to his creepiness, but far less than he would to be a good match for Joyce – despite their text conversations.
I think they make far better friends than anything else (Joyce and Joe).
Personally, I get put off by a lot of shipping, because it’s so evidence-resistant. Even evidence that two characters shouldn’t be together, or aren’t interested in each other, is taken as “evidence” that they “should be together”. The more two characters argue, the more two characters hate each other, the more two characters are obviously bad for each other… the more their shippers will moon over them being an “OTP”.
Ugh.
Nah, see, that’s part of the ship. I don’t think Sarah hates him, for one thing – I think she’s annoyed by him… but then, she’s annoyed by everyone, and Joe is the one person for whom that’s not a barrier to be overcome when it comes to NSA sexy times. It wouldn’t quite be a hate-fuck, but I think it would be in the same ballpark with a lot of the same kind of energy.
To be clear, I don’t ship them as a couple and I don’t think they’re destined for twu wuv. I just think they could both enjoy some horizontal shenanigans with each other, and be the kind of people who can do that without needing to drag feelings or politics or mental health problems into it.
Edit: Kind of like what Sal and Jason have going on, but even less complicated.
This is almost word-perfect literally the conversation that led to me being banned from small group.
As an Hindu I would argue that Jacob is perfectly right. It is widely accepted in some branches that Buddha and the Christ is the same phenomenon, stemming from the same universal energy. Just different traditions and mythology associated with it, but facets of the same thing altogether.
Just ask the Christian Hindus.
Guess you cut Jacob off before the obvious response:
Why would a kind and loving god continue to send good and devout people to hell for centuries after Jesus died to atone for their sins just because missionaries hadn’t reached them yet?
That seems to be what Joyce is arguing in the first panel – that proof is in creation, so they have no excuse.
Personally, I’d like to know who died and appointed Paul arbiter of all future Christian doctrine. I’d think the Apostles and Jesus’ family would know better than him what he’d want.
Right, except until missionaries got to them, they couldn’t know what it was “proof” of. While it can be argued that there is proof of creation and the divine, there ISN’T specific proof about the nature of the divine. “Jesus Saves” isn’t written on the face of the moon in letters all can understand, after all. They had the answer, but didn’t know the question until someone came and told them.
I actually just saw a great video from Number0neSon explaining that there is actually a specific Hebrew term for this: Raz-Pesher. A “Raz” is a mystery presented by God or the scriptures, and a “Pesher” is the solution provided by a prophet or divinely inspired interpreter. Both are needed before the divine can be understood.
It’s usually used these days to retcon Old Testament passages into prophecies about Jesus, but it applies here as well. Even with the argument that the proof is in the creation, without the context provided by the gospels the proof alone is not enough to bring someone to Jesus, and so continuing to punish innocent people even after Jesus died to atone for their sins is problematic.
Oh, I’m with you there. I’m going by what the go-to argument for Joyce’s sect seems to be from the strip.
It’s also a problem to know how to worship properly – sects like this tend to have specific rules on that. Just because creation is proof of the divine in this train of thought, doesn’t mean they know how to worship properly. ….Which is why they have missionaries I guess.
*ahem* In conclusion…
(Paul delenda est.)
Wanted to make sure this was noticed here, as it might be of interest to some of my fellow commenters:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/24/511385718/im-intersex-a-supermodel-says-hoping-to-end-stigma
(hope that makes it through the spam filter)
I was glad to see that. Thanks for sharing!
I wouldn’t have expected Joyce and Jacob to both be enjoying a conversation like this, but judging by their facial expressions, they’re both having fun. The conversation has a weird sort of chemistry.
That’s what we call a “religious nerd”. Me and my friends used to talk about this stuff for hours.
Well, we’d segue between this stuff and our Homestuck text-based roleplay. But that’s another story.
I remember my uncle saying something like what Joyce is, that even if you’re born and die somewhere and never hear of Jesus… lol, oh well, basically. And I remember that never sat right with me.
I don’t think my/my mom’s church ever had a specific answer for the issue more than “no, that’s not fair to condemn those people to hell”, so it’s interesting to read Jacob’s argument. A lot of the “flavors” of Christianity in this comic are very familiar to me; this one is not.
Ugh. Please never show me evil Joyce again. Make Mary look like that all the time, but never Joyce. Made me think of her mom. Shudder!
This type of thing actually does piss me off. If you are truly a literalist and sola scriptura (the Bible is the source of your religious beliefs and nothing else), then you have to consider any interpretation that doesn’t violate the text. You cannot say that one interpretation is “blasphemous” unless the Bible itself says it is blasphemous. If you do, you’re adding to the Bible.
The Bible already allows for at least two different religions that worship the same God to make it. There is the Old Covenant with the Israelites which never can be rescinded, as God can’t lie. And then there is the New Covenant that requires Jesus.
So you first have no reason to leave Muslims, who are going after the same God, and even view Jesus as a prophet, just not God (and the Bible never mentions the Trinity.) Then you can get to other religions that are seeking God, and the fact that God says he will be found if you seek Him. Seek and ye shall find.
If you are a true literalist and don’t have any other scripture to tell you otherwise, you cannot deny this interpretation as a possibility.
Note, first paragraph is supposed to come off as a lighthearted joke. Rereading it might come off mean.
Shhhhh! Pointing out things like the bible not mentioning the trilogy might make her head pop!
TRINITY, GDI ME.
Technically, no part of the Bible says God can’t lie, just that he keeps his promises. Unless he was lying when he said he keeps his promises. #EgyptWasAnInsideJob
This puts such a smile on my face 🙂 In times well past, I used to debate things just like this. It was friendly testing of the minds and spirit. But that was before…well, I’ll leave the depressing part for the third day.
Guys you are all wrong the one true right religion is Raptor Jesus, your life is now saved, you’re welcome.
Joe and Sarah are totally about to hook up, united in their disgust at the happy religious people.
I think Willis meant Joe to say “or” in the last panel. Must stop listening OR face will freeze.
he doesn’t say “stop listening” he says “keep listening”
Joe and Sarah are getting closerrrrr
Is it just me, or are they walking like, REAL slow to be having this exchange and only going past the window at the end of it
Panel One: Ahhhhhh, my favourite gross ‘they should’ve known’ excuse from Christianity. This is a fun one! Because, as has been pointed out above – HOW? Sure, you might be able to ascertain divinity from the majesty of the world, but it doesn’t teach you WHAT divinity or how to ‘properly’ worship it, or any of the relevant mythology, narratives, or doctrine. And besides, if ‘faith in Jesus alone’ was good enough, fundamentalists wouldn’t harp on doctrinal differences so much. They all believe in Jesus and God, so who cares, right? Noooooo, believe me, fundamentalists care. They care quite a bit. So it’d seem you do need all those doctrinal points, which people can’t possibly know. I guess that’s the point of ministry and missions, but then you have to wonder what happens if people die believing in said divinity, but not knowing the details necessary.
Panel Two: Ooh! Religious pluralism time! I went to a Catholic high school and while they had some iffy parts about it (for instance, saying that Catholicism wasn’t better than anything else, only the ‘most perfect or most correct choice’, blech) the general rule was ‘all faiths/spiritualities have some kind of religious truth to them and all philosophies have some kind of moral truth, so as long as they don’t hurt anybody you should leave them alone, as everyone can achieve salvation if they’re a good person (whatever salvation there is)’. I remember one of my religious teachers really liked my idea that whatever afterlife you believed in was what was waiting for you (including none if you didn’t really want/believe in one).
Somehow I think my school would’ve been considered hippie by Joyce’s (you know, in addition to heretical and evil because “Pope/Saint/Mary worshippers/slutty/cannibalistic/Whore of Babylon popery/papist” nonsense and also corrupt because we allowed school counsellors to help with LGBT+ issues and let Muslim students use the chapel to pray during the day). Although she probably would’ve had to have a long long chat with the spirit counsellor (who was basically a guidance counsellor for religious stuff) for insisting everyone else was going to hell, so. Y’know.
And yeah, see, this is the issue with the ‘faith alone’ thing. Other folks with faith are still ‘doing it wrong’. Yet they also insist it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you have faith. So which is it, Joyce? Is how they worship important or not?
Also – Joyce’s face is adorable.
Panel Three: ….Joyce, Muslims DO believe in God and Jesus. They don’t believe in them the same way, but they do believe. Also, Buddhism is considered by many to be more of spirituality than a religion, and many believe in both Buddhism and Christianity.
And, again, you also say these things about Catholics and Mormons and other religions that DO have Jesus. This whole thing is a mess of contradictions. I like Jacob smiling at her patiently though. He seems to be enjoying this.
Panel Four: …..Wording, Jacob. I’m pretty sure you meant something closer to the ‘all paths have a chance of salvation’ type thing, but this is….iffy. Because, again, there are several SEVERAL religions that, by their own narratives and mythology, preclude being creations of the Abrahamic god. Like, again, Hellenic polytheism or polytheistic religions. Those tend to have very firm creation narratives and they don’t involve Him.
Panel Five: Joyce’s teasing face here is very fun, especially how it reminds me of how smug early Hank was when he was talking about Dorothy. Both were smugly dismissing other religious (or lack thereof) outlooks as blasphemous. I’m not as mad at Joyce though, as I’m sure she’s (partly) kidding, though I’ll be watching this holier than thou stuff.
Panel Six: Yeah, if I were Joe, I’d be irritated too. “My choices are hell or condescending ‘it’s okay cuz your religion was put here by god, so I’m sure you can get to heaven, even though you do it wrong’ or worse ‘you’re an incomplete Christian, it’s okay’. shit? Fuck me, shut up.” – that’s not fun. I’d want them both to zip it by now too.
Also, oh Sarah. Jealousy isn’t fun. She knows they don’t fit well and that hurts, but even if she knows rationally that that’s true, it still can suck when you see the person you like is better for someone else, especially when they’re your friend (or bully in the case of Raidah). It hurts and yeah, people can be jealous they aren’t as good for them. Especially while they still have feelings for them. And double especially when the idea was to hook you up, over your objections. I might be a bit pissy too.
I’m not overly concerned about this – I don’t think she’ll do anything irredeemable because of it and I think she’ll get over it when she gets over Jacob, at which point she’ll be happy for them. As happy as Sarah gets for anything.
Assuming this IS jealousy and not just Sarah being bored to tears by the religious discussions (another point where she and Jacob are out of synch!) or by Joyce being overly cheery as usual. I doubt this is about her monopolizing the conversation because Sarah didn’t want to converse – she didn’t want to be involved in crashing their lunch at all. She told Joyce they could not do that. Joyce went over anyways.
Jesus may be the only way to God, but he’s got an unconventional ego: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40 King James Version) …so Jesus isn’t some skin bag (conventional ego). He’s in everyone, even the “least of these.”
Not only that, he tells a story where a Samaritan is the good guy! There are literally passages forbidding good Jews marrying a Samaritan. Samaritans are certainly heretical (only Psalms and the Pentateuch in their Bible), and are believed to be collaborators who stayed behind during the Babylonian exile.
So…making the heretical traitor into a good guy, and then letting people know that the least of these is me… The ground fairly shifts beneath your feet. You can’t just “believe in Jesus” any more, you need to believe in the least of these, and treat them well.
Jesus even councils settling any quarrels before you pray, so the path to the transcendent is fairly consistently through other people, even the least, most heretical get a shot here, too.
Christ, Joyce, which one is it? Are non-Christian religious traditions that know God through the existence of creation also valid, or does it have to be your preferenced form of Christianity which you exclusively equate with “through Jesus” meaning people ARE with excuse? You can’t have it both ways.
Also, Jesus is totally a big-shot prophet in Islam and a lot of Buddhists consider Jesus as (potentially) having been a buddha, so nope on both accounts.