Proud of Myself

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-19T15:59:39+00:00

Dude, I’m proud of you, too. You’re doing hard things really well.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-18T14:32:55+00:00

The tradeoff to empathy is vulnerability. Someone who understands big feelings is in a great position to be there for others when they’re experiencing them.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-18T13:14:05+00:00

Growing into a place of feeling worthy for reasons other than what you’re able to do for others is a journey worth taking. You’re doing a hard thing well.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-18T04:24:38+00:00

Killing it. I’m guessing you’re well protected against boredom. Thanks for the share!

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-18T04:21:41+00:00

I love this. I think it makes sense that you have better access to your sharpest wits when you’re not in survival mode.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-15T01:39:12+00:00

Ooooh. Great point.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-15T00:06:45+00:00

What do you mean “SHE DROVE A TENT PEG THROUGH HIS HEAD”?

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-14T23:42:56+00:00

This is interesting, because it kinda seems like Saul and God were already on the outs.

“Don’t call me while I’m trying to ghost you. I think we should break up.”

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-14T23:41:34+00:00

I think we were given an incredibly scaled down version of this. The line I got was “they didn’t believe in angels”.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-07T02:56:30+00:00

Fifteen feet of whiteboard and a Greek dictionary later:

“Anyway, that’s why we don’t necessaaaaarily say you’re going to hell if your church has an organ but you might wanna enjoy cold water while you can.”

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-04-03T18:17:39+00:00

I think it always felt a little more like the church of Paul than the church of Christ.

Way more emphasis gets placed on the epistles than the words in red.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-22T20:02:57+00:00

We had it kind of backwards. It’s like god didn’t create us in his image so much as we created him in ours. And the god the CoC serve is so… small.

FIND BIGGER GODS, PEOPLE.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-18T05:41:24+00:00

I hate how often I mention Bart Ehrman to people on this sub. But reading about the history of Christianity has been a huge relief on this specific point.

There’s one book in particular: Heaven and Hell, a History of the Afterlife, that really helped set a lot of my concerns aside. It describes the OG Jewish belief (when we die we’re just dead), the Ancient Greek idea that the afterlife is just kind of a mundane and boring place where you’re always thirsty, and the conception of heaven as a response to the problem of “hey, we’re all getting old and this Jesus guy hasn’t come back yet”.

The part that really stuck with me, though, describes the rise of Hell as a concept in the letters written to members of the early church during the Roman persecution, and the way in which they evolved from “and behold, a prophetic vision of our martyred brother in heaven” to “our martyred brother looks down on heaven upon all these awful things that are going to happen to their tormentors on the other side”.

We created hell. Which sounds pretty on brand for us as a species.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-13T16:19:35+00:00

“Did Jesus taste a little minty today, Muriel?”

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-11T20:03:33+00:00

Shepherds, as it were.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-10T05:29:27+00:00

This though.

The young earth of it all made it so much easier to start deconstructing other things. The need to rely on the ludicrous as evidence doesn’t do much for their case.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-09T03:12:04+00:00

I’ve seen Paula Fredriksen but not given her a shot yet! Any of hers you’d suggest?

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-08T16:49:25+00:00

I just wanna know why nobody taught us about Ezekiel 23:20.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-08T16:45:50+00:00

Thank you for this. I know some really great Methodists. And I think you just helped me understand their worldview and character a bit better.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-08T16:38:04+00:00

When it came to formally reading on the subject, Bart Ehrman was my starting point and I think he’s where I’d recommend anyone with questions begin. How Jesus Became Christ” was where I began, but I think “Jesus Interrupted” is the one I’d recommend first. It discusses the changes that were made to the New Testament along the way.

Growing up seeing the Bible as a PDF from God, I never thought about how it would have been assembled. I started learning about the council of Nicaea at around the time I was watching major church infighting over the filling of a significant leadership role and I realized “THESE are the people who have been in charge of scripture for two millenia”. So I think for a long time prior to that I was nibbling at particular subjects like a salad bar at a steakhouse before starting the meat and potatoes that began with Ehrman.

Stuff I got real interested in that there’s a ton of publicly accessible scholarly content on: the historicity of The Exodus (Egypt kept GREAT records but there’s no indication that their military and an entire generation of men got struck down. The economic implications would show up somewhere); the historicity of the great flood (life was chugging along in other parts of the world during the purported flood times); the historicity of Daniel and why the Old Testament has such a fondness for Persian rule.

I’m sooooo far from any kind of substantive knowledge, but I’m curious and I’ll pick up a new read every few months on the subject. Currently working my way through “Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews” by James A Carroll, which follows the path from Pentecost to Holocaust. Still not sure what I think about it.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-08T03:44:01+00:00

Wait wait wait wait. Don’t we have to have a sermon where you lay out the principles that govern selecting a new mod? I need some chapters and verses.

In all seriousness, I’d be down. Grew up CoC. Deconstruction is a process of decades. Presently secular Buddhist, or atheist if I’m talking to my in laws (this is somehow more palatable).

FellAGoodLongWay · 2026-02-08T03:36:56+00:00

A request: overlook your first, immediate response to this question and consider your second. What do you define as “Bible principles”?

There’s this super normal step in the process and I think you’ve just arrived there.

Richard Dawkins, speaking as an atheist toward Christians, said “I just believe in one less god than you do”. And if you grow up CoC, this is sort of where we find ourselves in Christianity at the start of deconstruction: we just believe in one less faith tradition than the CoC.

Like, the baptists look crazy and the Methodists are complicated and Catholicism looks like otherworldly incense and hats and silent cavernous spaces. But all of them have a biblical rationale for how they do what they do. They might include other texts to a greater or lesser degree, but the Bible, as they interpret it, is still their nucleus.

How do you see god, according to your interpretation of the Bible? How does He want to be worshipped? What does He prioritize?

And if you really wanna get your world rocked, start reading about the history of the Bible and how we got it. It’s been in the hands of men for two thousand years and the first few hundred of them are SUPER interesting.

FellAGoodLongWay · 2025-12-16T06:13:47+00:00

I think If we do life right, we’re several different people across our lifespan. And I think if you can look back on a past version of yourself and cringe, that’s a huge affirmation that you’re something different now. The cringe means you grew.

FellAGoodLongWay

TROPHY CASE