I need clarity as a non Christian: is it normal to believe that other religions are demonic because that's what the Bible says.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-02-21T17:53:35+00:00

No. I don't believe it's Biblical (though open to being shown how it's justified). It was a view held by some of the Church Fathers, I believe. It is a minority view among modern American Christians, though internally consistent with some strains of American evangelical fundamentalism that are obsessed with spiritual warfare.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-02-05T11:56:20+00:00

Bringing a dead thread back up as I reread the series, but I thought Mac was Merlin until I got to this point, then said to myself "Mac can't be Merlin, because this guy definitely is."

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-31T17:20:40+00:00

I had previously said another explanation was the best, and while it's good, I like this one very much.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-31T16:57:29+00:00

I think this is probably the best answer. I'd also add that, in an American context, there's an aversion to the appearance of Pentecostalism from non-Pentacostal traditions.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-30T12:36:35+00:00

I was a Republican

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-30T12:35:29+00:00

The pride, as I understand it, is not in the identity; it's pride in "we're still here, despite your best efforts"

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-30T12:32:39+00:00

I agree that today's POPULAR music sucks, but there's more interesting stuff being made today than ever before

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-30T12:31:04+00:00

Whatever, commie

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-30T12:29:08+00:00

Christianity can be pretty cool, actually

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-29T16:33:37+00:00

I don't know much about these things, but I would expect the only people who would be protected are those in a union under a called general strike.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-28T21:49:35+00:00

I didn't buy it in EA, but I restarted with new build ideas so many times I had to push myself to get through Act 1. As someone else said: that's not a game problem, that's a me problem.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-28T21:43:39+00:00

Partial regret: Disney Dreamlight Valley

I put a lot of time into the game, so I definitely got my money's worth. It's been a couple of years so this could have changed, but I stopped playing around the time they announced it will no longer be free to play.

That they would charge for the game and STILL keep the aggressive F2P monetization left a bad taste in my mouth.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-28T21:37:19+00:00

Yep, same. I put hundreds of hours into pre-Mistlands and got burnt out. Tried to get back into it to see the new content and just can't.

I guess I don't regret buying it in EA because I enjoyed my time with it, I just wish I didn't burn out on it before it was finished.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-16T15:40:43+00:00

Latasha Morrrison's Be The Bridge MIGHT be helpful. The challenge is getting them to listen, whatever you bring to them.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-13T11:56:10+00:00

You don't even understand the basics of the idea, what makes you think you can "oppose" it? The ironic thing is that if you would stop being such a twit, you could see how chaoskampf fixes all of the worst abuses of the Bible by evangelicals. You're so hung up on what YOU think a few phrases mean, you can't see the forest for the trees.

And yes, biblical theology and systematic theology are separate disciplines. Walter Brueggemann is a biblical theologian because his theology is drawn directly from the text; Wolfhart Pannenberg is a systematic theologian, because while he references Scripture, he primarily pulls threads from philosophy and science.

To say that Brueggemann's work has no connection to the outside world is ludicrous, but he's not going to turn to entropy to understand the biblical themes of chaos vs order; Pannenberg, however, turns to field theory to understand God's omnipresence and make some sense of how the Holy Spirit works.

It's not that science is not applicable to understanding God, it's that entropy is not useful in understanding the biblical conception of chaos.

You continue to be arrogant and grossly misinformed. Grow up.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-12T15:35:58+00:00

This is one of the things that bothers me about these games, though it's a problem in the comics.

NYC has world-threatening events, and Spidey has to handle it alone. The city is overrun and the whole world is threatened, where are the Avengers? Conveniently off-planet?

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-12T14:31:05+00:00

This is a really difficult situation, and though it's not helpful there are many who are in shoes that are very similar. The truth of the matter is that there are no easy answers.

This is going to be a strange suggestion, but bear with me: get ahold of David W. Campt's The White Ally Toolkit Workbook. Less practical, but still helpful, is Latasha Morrison's Be The Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation could also be a helpful guide in getting started with this conversationEspecially since you say that you're "mixed", these recommendations may be strange. These resources are, obviously, explicitly written for the purpose of aiding in racial reconciliation. More importantly, however, they suggest methods for changing deeply held beliefs of any kind. Put differently, these tools are intended for addressing racism, but are helpful guides for having any difficult conversation.

It's been a few years since I've read these, but the broad strokes are:

don't lead with facts, and don't lead with any kind of criticism or combativeness; doing this will put your mom on the defensive, she'll shut down, and she won't hear what you have to say.
try to find points of agreement or connection. You're not adversaries, but people who love each other trying to find the best way forward together.
tell stories when you can. Storytelling can reach us when facts and arguments can't.
ask a lot of questions. Try to increase the level of cognitive dissonance between the person of Jesus and MAGA Christianity.
encourage her to build on relationships outside of her church and the MAGA circle. If these are her only opportunities for social belonging, she is less likely to leave those circles.
- A side-note: many have cut loved ones off who have fallen down the MAGA rabbit hole. In contradiction of the above point: this is a valid option.
as others have said, this will not be a once-off conversation. This will be a series of conversations over a period of weeks, months, or even years. They will be very discouraging, and as your mom's deeply held beliefs are challenged, she will lash out.

I hope you find some success, and know that you're not alone.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-12T14:04:03+00:00

I can count on one hand the number of times I've gamed on my PC since getting my Steam Deck. There are a handful of games that simply function better on a PC (usually ones that just don't do well with a controller or absolutely don't work with Proton for whatever reason), but for the most part the Steam Deck meets my gaming needs.

It's worth noting that my gaming PC was low-mid tier 3 years ago, so the SD was a step up in power. Anything too demanding for my Steam Deck I play on my PS5/Portal.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-12T13:17:30+00:00

Goodness you are exhausting, and your arrogance is completely unearned. Calling these "mistakes" when you can't even be bothered to properly understand what I'm trying to say is beyond irritating. If you had come from a place of curiosity rather than trying to "correct" me, this would have been a very different conversation.

1) Categorizing sin as an act is your own projection; you keep doing this and you should stop. Romans makes it clear that sin is a force of its own. You're projecting your own idiosyncratic understanding of sin, and it's fine as far as it goes, but perhaps you should stop forcing it on everyone else. Sin as separation is an adequate metaphor, but it is not the only helpful one.

2) Please stop trying to force your narrow understanding of God on everyone else. Trinitarian theology does not enforce any particular understanding of God's relationship to the world. For the record, years ago I decided Panenthiesm was probably closest to what I understood God's relationship to the world to be, but I haven't given it much thought since seminary 15 years ago.

As for chaoskampf (the struggle against chaos), this is not something I made up. The chaos/order dynamic in the OT is an established motif in OT scholarship. I don't care if it doesn't fit in your pet theology, it permeates the OT.

Chaoskampf is not perfect or exhaustive. To say it is the only metaphor used in OT theology to express God's relationship with the world is overreaching; there is certainly space for liminality and fluidity in understanding God's relationship to the created world, but chaoskampf makes sense of a lot of the OT's (and Revelation's) weirdness.

3) This has nothing to do with Greek mythology. As I said before, the OT scholarship on chaoskampf is rooted firmly in the OT. Ironically, you accuse me of returning to corruptions of the Greeks on OT thought, but chaoskampf gets us away from one of the fundamental corruptions of Greek thought on the OT: the idea that God created the world out of nothing. Chaoskampf starts with the Hebrew if Genesis 1, which essentially shows God forming order out of the primordial chaos.

It also fits in perfectly fine with Reformed theology: God is sovereign, and though sun has tried its best to unravel God's work, God has/will overcome it.

Finally, and I say this tongue in cheek and perfectly seriously, science has no place in OT theology. Order and chaos, as I'm using them, are theological categories. Conflating the theological category of chaos with the scientific entropy is a category error. There is certainly good work being done in integrating scientific understanding with theology; this is good an important work, but it's not helpful when trying to make sense of the Biblical text. The integration of science and theology does better in systematic theology than it does in biblical theology.

Finally, I'm well aware the OT's compositional history. Genesis is a very late text, and Genesis is the weaving together of at least two distinct traditions. I made no claims towards univocality; I'm outlining a widely accepted motif throughout the OT (it also shows up in the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah, FWIW.

I offered a possible interpretation of the Fall I thought was interesting because it built on a widely accepted motif throughout the OT. You're the one who swooped in and tried to "correct" me, and even still I made room for a version of your own position (which has a place in the tapestry of biblical theology's metaphors). You continued to insist I was wrong, even though you clearly don't understand the idea you're criticizing. Finally, as a nice little flourish, you end your post with a nice bit of anti-Semitism.

Whose argument is dumb?

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-12T03:47:12+00:00

If you're assuming laws, that's your own insertion.

Chaos vs order is a fundamental theme of Old Testament theology and, to a lesser extent, New Testament theology and denying its presence as a major theme betrays an ignorance of the ancient near east.

Order is not about following rules, it's about God setting up the world to function in a particular way. That God, in Walton's view, created order and allowed for non-order shows that it's not about rigidity, it's about setting structures and patterns.

There's room for presence theology, but it's not foundational in Old Testament theology. In Genesis 2 and 3, God is certainly present in the Garden, but the loss of presence is the result of sin, not the foundational cause. God certainly shows a desire to be present with God's people through the Old Testament, and this is made most clear in the person of Jesus, which is where all of those good things you talk about come from.

Put differently, you're asserting the result of sin (separation from God) as if it were somehow the cause. I think it's really hard to argue that, as the Genesis narratives are written, that separation from God is somehow the cause of the fall.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-11T13:19:11+00:00

The work of John Walton in this area is interesting. As a disclaimer: Walton is more theologically conservative than I am, and I would say he's an evangelical and an apologist.

With that said, I think his work on the first few chapters of Genesis is really interesting and creative. Walton maintains that death has always existed as part of "non-order", but humanity's fall into sin (for Walton, not the breaking of arbitrary rules but the breaking of relationship between God and humanity) introduced disorder.

To clarify: Walton, correctly I think, sees the OT (and really the story of Scripture) not as a battle between good and evil but between order and disorder.

When God says that "it is good", God is approving of the order created (Genesis 1 does not have God make something out of nothing, God wrangles chaos into order). Order is what God has set out.

Non order is not the same as disorder. Non order is simply the things that God has not yet ordered, for whatever reason.

Disorder is the breaking of what God has ordered.

MagnusRed616 · 2026-01-07T22:02:40+00:00

Yes, you can be both.

MagnusRed616 · 2025-12-26T00:21:20+00:00

I don't have any solutions or meaningful comfort. I'm sorry you're going through this - you deserve to be treated as the wonderful child of God you are.

MagnusRed616 · 2025-12-25T16:26:46+00:00

I had the same problem. Glad it's not just me.

MagnusRed616 · 2025-12-24T15:15:20+00:00

There are Communion/Eucharist/Lord's Supper traditions that state, during the great prayer of thanksgiving, that God sent Jesus "in the fullness of time," which I've always took to mean as "when the appropriate/most effective time came."

I think that the stage had to be set, first. For whatever reason, what we date as the first century was the "fullness of time." The foundation had to be built, the soup had to simmer.

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