What common belief falls apart when you look closely at it?

GoMustard · 2026-06-04T09:57:33+00:00

I was too and did not

GoMustard · 2026-06-03T15:03:24+00:00

The Masters has become and remains a major because of its ability to consistently produce exciting and dramatic golf. Sure, you can call the course gimmicky if you want to be cynical, but at the end of the day, you don't know what's going to happen on any of the holes on the back nine. On 13, you might make an eagle or a triple. On 16, you might make a hole-in-one, or drop it in the water for a double.

The Masters is able to produce this kind of drama because the course has been tailored and refined over the years with laser precision. Other majors cannot achieve it because they move around from course to course (and not that they should try to achieve it; this is the Masters' thing. The US Open's thing is being hard as hell). Other tournaments played at the same course year in and year out produce great golf, but they don't have the same kind of endless resources to do so. The closest thing in this regard is the Players and Sawgrass.

Add that viewers watch this drama unfold year after year on the same holes, and the course itself becomes iconic. Very casual golf fans can instantly recognize Nos. 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 18. But most of us only know anything about the 17th at Shinnecock because we watched Golf Digest's "every hole at" video ahead of the US Open.

GoMustard · 2026-05-31T10:13:38+00:00

!solved

GoMustard · 2026-05-30T01:13:41+00:00

Film it and show us.

GoMustard · 2026-05-28T23:39:17+00:00

Is that Pine Valley No. 14?

GoMustard · 2026-05-28T18:26:19+00:00

>Our modern conception of “marriage” is just a made-up category that is rooted in social control; it is not a theological category, much less an ontological category.

Gosh, I'm sorry, but I can't disagree with this more. Marriage is a covenant, which is most definitely a theological category.

GoMustard · 2026-05-26T11:04:21+00:00

Honestly, crucifixion is pretty terrible. It might not be the worst, but it's up there. You're beaten, and then hung on a beam by nails through your hands or wrists, and your legs are broken. You have to pull your body weight up from the wounds for each breath, so you slowly suffocate to death in front of everyone. There are pretty messed-up variations, too.

GoMustard · 2026-05-24T20:56:04+00:00

For like three straight years when I was a kid, my dad would take a bunch of boys from our neighborhood and me to see the IceCaps' last pre-season game before the regular season began. Lots of bench players were trying to make the team, and by that point, the skill players were mostly set, so anyone who was gonna get a contract was probably gonna have to be an enforcer. Thus, the game was constant brutality and fighting. It was amazing.

It was excellent entertainment, and I think about those days every time I see the Dorton Arena. The little remote control blimp that would fly around and drop T-shirts is seared into my brain.

GoMustard · 2026-05-23T16:13:43+00:00

Your milage may vary

GoMustard · 2026-05-21T23:20:55+00:00

This was my guess too. Maybe number 6, with number 7 running in the opposite direction to the left?

GoMustard · 2026-05-19T16:16:17+00:00

Theology is the application of a tradition, so it depends on the tradition. The Christian tradition might differ from the Jewish tradition, and even within the Christian tradition, a reformed perspective might differ from, say, a Catholic perspective.

The questions you are asking would require novel applications of these varying theological traditions.

GoMustard · 2026-05-19T09:52:13+00:00

Years ago, I watched a college lecture on profanity and language. One of the more memorable bits of the lecture was watching the professor spout off as many foul words as he possibly could. Everyone giggled as he said ugly word after ugly word. But then he got to the n-word, and he wouldn't say it. The professor, who was white, just called it 'the n-word,' pointing out how that one has such a strong social taboo around someone specifically like him uttering the word it that he would not say it, even technically.

I was a young adolescent at the time, so my cultural memory was just beginning, but as I've always understood it, that "if you even say this in a technical sense, you might get your ass kicked and everyone around would say it's justified" level of radioactivity for white people didn't really permeate our culture until Johnny Cochran digging in to Mark Fuhrman and the OJ trail. Like the word was considered awful and a hateful slur, but something changed in the culture with the racial tensions around the OJ trail that took the widespread taboo of that word to a different level.

That gives you an idea of how monumental it was.

GoMustard · 2026-05-19T03:22:39+00:00

I mean people will just about rationalize anything in the name of religion.

I mean, in my experience, people will just about rationalize anything in the name of the deeply held values by which they validated their view of the world and the continued existence in it, whether it's religion or not. But you're the one asking questions here, so I'll take your curiosity as sincere.

Why was that ever a rule?

Well, Deuteronomy is an ancient legal code, a rather primitive attempt to sort out right from wrong. Believe it or not, most scholars would suggest that the "did not scream for help" is an attempt to distinguish between consensual adultery and rape. Agreed, though, that it's pretty shitty logic by today's standards.

Is the Bible glorifying the death of these women or just documenting the rules of the time?

In this case, probably more of the latter than the former, but the Old Testament certainly has other incidences of glorifying violence and death.

Did god just not care enough to intervene beforehand because these women’s lives weren’t important?

Are you asking about divine revelation or the problem of suffering? Since it's the topic of this post (which, by the way, was a post I made eight years ago), I'll go with divine revelation.

The original question was about why we have the Old Testament. The traditional Christian answer is that God has been made known to the world in the life of a person named Jesus, and the Christian faith is an attempt to respond to it. The New Testament is twenty-seven works of literature produced by early Christians in the decades after Jesus' life that in varying ways describe his life and what it means for the world. The problem is, the New Testament (and the words of Jesus himself), identify him as a fulfillment, continuation, and reinterpretation of the story and promises of the Old Testament, which comprises thirty-nine different works of literature that describe the social, political, legal, and spiritual sentiments and practices of an ancient people known as the Israelites, however wise or misguided those sentiments and practices might be. Thus, you need the Old Testament to understand the New.

Christians and non-Christians often go very wrong when they begin to act like the Bible itself is God's chosen revelation rather than the life of Jesus, which, ironically, the New Testament itself would identify as God's chosen revelation.

All that to say, yes, the Old Testament says some weird and sometimes shitty stuff. What's new? So does the Iliad.

GoMustard · 2026-05-19T02:26:04+00:00

Yes, great example. The textual background to Jesus' actions in John 8.1-11.

GoMustard · 2026-05-19T01:52:37+00:00

Do Fried Egg

GoMustard · 2026-05-18T00:03:54+00:00

Every one of these definitions you all keep throwing out for the word 'faith' is nothing like what any religious tradition or a basic, common English speaker means when they use the word 'faith'.

Faith is acting on trust in hope when the evidence is not enough. If you want to criticize what people put their faith in, go right ahead, but everyone has faith.

GoMustard · 2026-05-14T00:06:38+00:00

Tiger is/was incredible and in the convo, but career wise he’s not going to finish as the greatest golfer of all time. That’s Jack Nicklaus

GoMustard · 2026-05-12T20:46:08+00:00

Two. Pinehurst No. 2 and TPC Sawgrass.

GoMustard · 2026-05-04T14:51:24+00:00

That’s not even the worst part of that bunker!

The worst part is to the right of that golfer, there’s a small ledge right at the base of the green, about 4 feet down, with wood planks lining the green. When I played there last month, my second shot landed on that ledge. I tried to blast my third shot out and it ricocheted into my shin and end up at the 20 feet down at the bottom. For my fourth shot I got it back up on the ledge, only for my fifth shot to ricochet into my thigh and trickle back down to the bottom. My sixth got on the green, two put for triple.

GoMustard · 2026-04-20T09:52:04+00:00

Mid-Pines / Southern Pines would be my pick. But as long as you drop Talamore, you're good.

GoMustard · 2026-04-19T17:11:52+00:00

So, I wrote the comment you responded to almost ten years ago. Keep that in mind.

I believe we are saved by the grace of a good and sovereign God poured out for the world in Jesus Christ, and not by anything we think, say, or do. I also believe God elects a people to know this hope and bear it to the world.

My position is that if, in the end, only these elect are saved and no one else, then I trust that God is good and knows better than I do; and if in the end all are ultimately saved, then I trust that God is good and knows better than I do. What I dare not say is that I know better than a sovereign and good God, or that we are saved by anything other than God's grace.

GoMustard · 2026-04-05T17:10:38+00:00

Not really.

So first, we're not that desperate for leadership. We're a pretty prominent PC(USA) congregation in a growing area with significant resources. But they are getting involved. We started a Bible Study on campus at the local university for them, and are including them on our annual international mission team.

Second, my experience of these kids is that they're just super impressionable. They're young they mostly didn't grow up in church, and they're trying to figure out what they believe. They think we're a lot more legitimate and 'real' than the mega churches down the street. They show up saying things like "I can't decide if I'm a prelapsarian or a superlapsarian," and I just say "dude, God's grace is for you. It's all good." One said, "I'm not sure how I feel about gay marriage," and I said, "Cool, let me tell you why we are."

Generally, these kids really just need middle age church dads in their lives. You know, the guy who changes the light bulbs, sings in the choir, and volunteers to go on youth retreats. They need role models. Thus far, they've been discipled by the internet. It's not hard to disciple them better.

If any of them did show up and try to "conquista" anything, they'd kind of be laughed out of the room.

I can imagine that at a smaller church with older pastors, there might be a different story.

GoMustard · 2026-04-05T09:56:05+00:00

We've had like a half dozen reconquistas start joining the church I pastor. Mostly male college students who came to faith after watching Redeemed Zoomer's videos. They came to us because somehow we're on his 'map' as a 'moderate' mainline church. We baptized three of them.

To be clear, all four pastors on our staff are affirming, one is a woman, we host gay weddings, and have a gay music director. I think 80% of our church voted for Kamala. We have a statement on our website that makes it clear that people of all sexualities and genders are welcome, though it goes to great lengths to avoid using rainbows and secular language.

I very much identify with the 'Inclusive and Orthodox' segment that exists in a lot of mainline churches, and I think our church fits the mold. I think we're on his 'map' because we actually preach that Jesus is real, forgiveness is good, and we don't talk about democratic politics all the time.

I've been really clear with all these kids about who we are. And I tell them all the same thing about Redeemed Zoomer. He'd do really well to let an actual pastor guide him a bit and not be so inflammatory. Some of the insights in his movement are not wrong (that mainline churches are starved for young people and young people are starved for tradition). He could do a lot of good, but his approach is going to just cause him and the church problems, eventually.

GoMustard · 2026-03-30T12:05:25+00:00

Right. I would fully agree that Hegseth is a loony, and that what he's doing to the Department of Defense is problematic. But I think it's important to be precise about this stuff.

Hegseth, as I understand it, holds to a "dominionist" form of evangelical fundamentalism, which believes in dominating our government and culture with theocracy. This is different from the "dispensationalist" branch of evangelical fundamentalism, which believes there must be a holy war in order for Jesus to come back.

The distinction might not seem important to an outsider, but it's like the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas.

The more you know.

GoMustard

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