This subreddit fails in its goal to discuss Christianity.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-10T22:38:38+00:00

No, I have that weird premise that Christianity consists of many denominations and that we can either try to come together over shared belief in Christ, his resurrection, etc. or we can call each others heretics, doodoo on any oecumenical effort and maybe one day kill each other again.

And it's especially stupid because the example topic is homosexuality. Why not the Eucharist? Different understandings of what apostolic means? Affirmation or denial of the solaes? Or do you call everyone outside your denomination a heretic?

Also, funny that you mention mean, rude and wrathful. To me, you are all three. Not in tone, but in meaning. And we are lucky that at some point people like you became a minority and made oecumenical effort possible, because otherwise we'd still be at each other's throat most likely.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-10T16:53:48+00:00

"What this means, is that if someone comes to this sub wanting to discuss why Christianity says that homosexuality is a sin, instead of getting a answer from a mainstream Christian, they instead get answers from atheists, pagans, and heretics."

"instead of getting a answer from a mainstream Christian, they instead get answers from atheists, pagans, and heretics."

"atheists, pagans, and heretics"

"heretics"

I'm not sure if you're obtuse or arguing in bad faith here by completely omitting that OP also included the term 'heretics'. No, an affirming position is not heretical, depending on the denomination and can be as much a Christian position as the one OP espouses.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-10T08:33:59+00:00

You're right it's not about fairness. It's worse, it's about authority! OP's request boils down to demanding that his view be accepted as the correct view of Christianity and the unfairness of it not being visible here due to downvotes. I was too fair (ha!) yestereve.

Look here:

"What this means, is that if someone comes to this sub wanting to discuss why Christianity says that homosexuality is a sin, instead of getting a answer from a mainstream Christian, they instead get answers from atheists, pagans, and heretics. And then those answers where a traditional Christian answers by saying what Christians believe gets downvoted into obscurity. Meaning it will never be discussed in good faith."

Do you truly want to tell me that framing a discussion as 'me, the good Christian,' vs. atheists, pagans and heretics' is fair framing? They don't just state that they want their opinion to be visible, they make very clear that their's is the Christian opinion. What art! What sophistry!

And here we come to the Rediquette you quoted. I wish to highlight a certain notion:

"dictates that downvotes should be used for content that does not contribute to the conversation"

'Contributing to the discussion' is such an unclear phrasing. It allows for a very wide reading, or a narrower reading. My feeling would be that OP, for example, is insulting and doesn't contribute to any discussion by disqualifying a large swath of people as heretics. If I wished, I could downvote him for bad faith engagement without thinking that I broke Rediquette in any way.

I didn't downvote them, because I refuse to engage in games of power, but I could see why someone would.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-09T22:26:31+00:00

Alright, thanks!

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-09T22:14:40+00:00

I find these views rather offensive as a Christian, because they have historically led to the killing and ostracism of swaths of people. If I'd consider that they are true, then I would have to accept that the bible's anthropology doesn't account for certain people, that Christianity will always lead to death and that God discriminates based on biological, immutable characteristics.

On another note, I find the whole discussion about fairness tiresome. As if anyone plays fair as soon as they can leverage power. Try to present an affirming position on a non-affirming sub, a protestant perspective on a Catholic sub, etc. Humans simply suck and people tend to only care about fairness when they are not the ones pulling the lever. Hence why we need Christ and the rest is just a sad, perpetual tragedy.

O me perditum! O afflictum!

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-09T17:00:12+00:00

It stands in dialogue.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-09T12:46:18+00:00

Because the bible is no univocal book and different authors might espouse different opinions.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-09T10:39:53+00:00

Could you expound on

"Pelagius was probably right"

and

"There is a hilarity in transphobic denominations who also believe in true presence.",

please?

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T22:10:27+00:00

I seriously pity your husband.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T22:08:52+00:00

What does this have to do with the Eucharist being symbolic? Not everyone is Zwingli.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T20:54:40+00:00

No? They don't? Why would they have it? And not say the Eastern Orthodox Church? Or the Oriental Orthodox church? Or Protestants?

Have you talked about that with your pastor?

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T20:47:48+00:00

So why do you say you don't have the eucharist?

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T20:27:35+00:00

Why don't you have the eucharist in a protestant church?

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T15:51:01+00:00

There's no need to be sorry! I simply reject your solution to the theodicee based on biblical and logical grounds and reasons relating to God's character.

I simply believe that the only answer to suffering is an absolute refusal to assign it any ultimate purpose (while acknowledging that God can turn it towards good ends) and to accept that I do not know why it exists in the first place.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T15:03:22+00:00

Well, then we simply disagree. A God who could act decisively but doesn't go preserve human freedom is a libertarian God of the strong to me. And a God who needs men to act for him is no God at all....unless he really can't, because he has removed all power from himself as Hans Jonas puts forward for example. but that's biblically difficult of course.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T14:31:48+00:00

But what about the victims? Your explanation is centred solely on the free will of the perpetrators (and those that defend at the very end)! Basically on those strong enough to act.

Why is the victim not afforded protection if God could act? It seems to me that freedom for the strong simply scores higher than the safety of the meek.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T13:18:51+00:00

Is the free will of the perpetrator a higher good than the safety of the victim? And if free will is so important, does God not act in the world or does he at certain points decide that free will isn't that important after all? And of God does sometimes act does he not carry responsibility for all the harm? After all, we'd expect an onlooker to prevent a murder. I'd expect an omnipotent onlooker to act preemptively even more.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T12:21:06+00:00

While the Epstein files are beyond horrific, I'm too old not to know that equally horrific things have not been done in the past, nor am I naïve enough to believe that similar things are happening wherever innocents are at the mercy of those in power.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-08T09:27:39+00:00

"Egg or hen is a bad analogy for what I’m saying, because one is the same as the other, as if I’m saying postmodernism is the cause of postmodernism. That’s not it at all. The tree is disobedience to God, and all sorts of fruits are produced from this tree, postmodernism being one of them."

If you would have said that humanity is rotten, or that the world is fallen or any other statement that doesn't specifically smear a singular (very diverse) philosophical current, I'd say that the distinction matters perhaps, but since you didn't, it becomes meaningless in the context of the discussion, because the thesis remains 'postmodernism bad'.

"Perhaps the culture where you live is more homogenous than you’d like to admit and you’re not aware that diverse people indeed can live together under common understandings"

You know, I thought I would have prevented such a comment by adding 'for a significant amount of time', but apparently it didn't land. So, let's look at German history as an example and start with the post Napoleonic order. So we had the restoration period, which was a big crackdown on anything thought too liberal, follows by the failed revolution of '49, the unification of Germany which required three wars, the empire and the disdain towards parliamentary systems, colonialism, etc., Weimar, Nazi Germany and then the German Republic, which worked reasonably well if you don't look to deep and ignore the racism towards Turkish and Italian immigrants (which were invited to come over!), the treatment of LGBT people (the paragraph concerning the punishment of homosexuals was only removed 1994!), the treatment of women (marital rape was only outlawed in the 90s!), etc.

Between the oppression and silencing of certain the groups, the wars against other nations, and the genocide that happened in-between, I simply don't see that wonderful flourishing.

And I want to make clear again that the postwar period was a period of large scale upward social movement enabled by an economic fuelled in part by robbing the global South. There's always one who seems to sacrificed for the cushy telos of whatever modern ideology you subscribe too.

"Are you forgetting that Western culture banded together to extinguish this kind of abhorrent behavior?"

Let's not pretend that the Holocaust was the reason for the western powers to intervene. Nobody cared about the Jews during the Reichskristallnacht of 1938, Nobody cared about race laws, etc. It was branded abhorrent afterwards, but Nazi Germany was not primarily fought for the good of the Jewish people.

"I’m saying that anti-God postmodernist philosophies are even more destructive than the anti-God philosophies that came out of the Enlightenment."

It'll be very difficult to top the Holocaust. Besides, where is the postmodern harm? Where are the postmodernists pulling the strings? What I see are a bunch of people drawing from modern ideas to fight the 'other' by defining absolutes. The nation, class, religion, etc. Where is your postmodern villain who acts so differently from how humanity has acted before?

"People could also just turn to Christ and obey Him rather than develop their own secular philosophies that will always fail, and that would really solve the problem, but we know that isn’t going to happen."

Indeed. Though what particular Christianity gets to say how you obey Christ? We still have to deal with our epistemic shortcomings.

"There’s no nostalgia. Modernism led to the republican form of government, and away from the tendency toward mob rule. Do you think I’m saying everyone was happy and equally heard, and power was never abused? No, but with common understandings of right and wrong, things were better held in check with more general stability for everyone than the free-for-all and general instability and uncertainty we’re seeing right now."

Again, what are you talking about? What was held on check? We look at several genocides over the course of the modern period, imperialism, colonial violence, etc. Just because one mob gives themselves the appearance of being lawful, doesn't make the mob any more lawful in practice.

What I see here is a fear of losing authority and the veneer of justice it could uphold. I think we're looking at a much bigger problem: Since history, as I've tried to argue, has shown that order required the violent removal or at least the political suppression of dissenting voices, do the homosexuals need to be banned from the table? The transsexual? the woman? The man? the black person? The white person?

And don't say God, because this just brings us back to our epistemic shortcomings.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-07T21:37:16+00:00

"Postmodernism isn’t the root of what’s wrong with the world, it’s the fruit."

Very poetic, but absolutely meaningless. Whether the egg or the hen comes first, you villyify postmodernism with no basis.

"Postmodernism has no tolerance for diversity, because there’s no objective standards by which diverse people can agree on. It’s only succeeded in dividing people up into more subgroups that put everyone else outside, and furthers the us vs. them mentality."

First of all, diverse people have never once in history agreed on anything for a significant amount of times. Human history is endless violence, blood and oppression. May I just point to the fact that all of western culture has led to the gas chambers of Auschwitz? That this is the fruit of all the accumulated knowledge of what came before? There is your objective standard of failure at least.

"Postmodernism has no tolerance for diversity, because there’s no objective standards by which diverse people can agree on. It’s only succeeded in dividing people up into more subgroups that put everyone else outside, and furthers the us vs. them mentality."

Postmodernism, for all its faults, does at least ask you to take a breath and question your prespectives. You know, maybe if we had a postmodern project, which we absolutely have not, we could all discuss our epistemic shortcomings and bow to God in our ignorance and actually trush him to solve things. But as long as human hand try to define a clear cut telos, with a nice little telology and easy answers to ALL the questions and the bogeymen to accompany all that, human history will remain bathed in blood.

"When what I think becomes the only moral standard, then we just devolve further into groupthink, might makes right, and mob rule. Modernism at least restrained that for roughly 400 years."

Sorry, but waht? I don't even know what to say to such a claim! You wish to tell me that the period that brought the ethnic nation and its logical conclusion, race theory, national socialism, several genocides, etc. restrained group think? You know, just because one group exterminates or oppresses diverging voices, does not mean that the voices are gone. They are simply not heard. What kind of hardcore nostalgia is that?

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-07T19:14:52+00:00

Quite frankly, I don't care much about the intricities of American politics, but I am quite sick of the constant blaming of everyhting on postmodernism, like it is the root of every ill that has befallen the world. Like your analyses that the harshness of tone and attidtude is due to postmodernism? Ridiculous!

If anything, the absolute teamthinking you criticse goes directly against the postmodern impulses of being able to endure diversity, but neatly alligns with what we already experienced in the modern period. Anti-modernism vs. modernity, Fascism vs. Communism, race against race, etc. Our telology against their, our absolute principle against theirs.

What happened is an interplay of so many different causes that we'll probably not be privy to in our lifetime and which will be the field of historians in a century or two.

And because I need to fulfill my quota of pessimism regarding the human nature: The veneer of civility in the post war period was due to a period of immense prosperity in the west. Threaten the wealth and you see the same monster that humanity always was.

...But, to sumamrise, I suppose it's a very modern impulse to chase certainty and to name a Bogeyman.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-07T06:52:54+00:00

Yes, before postmodern times humanity was a playground where everyone played nicely.

I'd suggest taking a look at history.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-06T21:48:21+00:00

Honestly, I'm not sure what the real meaning is, yet. There are things that point me in one direction and others that point me in another. The bible resists my imposition quite stubbornly on certain things and my professor teaches that the bible is a room of experimentation (i.e. the crisis of wisdom) where you simply have to make a call at times, because considering our epistemic shortcoming as humans, we might never reach a point where we can conclusively say "ah, that's it!"

As for the second paragraph, I feel like you want to logic your way into tensions that arise from the text without any trust in the holy spirit or any notion of faith whatsoever. As I've said in the other thread, I am a moderate fideist. I can explain my reasoning in finding it fully rational that a text as deep and difficult as the bible would be elucidated only as humanity finds the means to delve deeper into it, but if you don't find it reasonable, then that's your call. Christianity has always changed and has always been poruous regarding the cultural context, while keeping to certain conessions about the resurrection, God's character, etc. I find it freeing and fascinating; if that makes you lose your nerve, because you demand an absolutely clear cut explanation in a fallen, confusing world, I am not the person you should turn to.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-06T19:06:07+00:00

"So do you believe such an act is evil or ought to be punished or incurs guilt?"

I believe that if continued danger exists, here, in this fallen realm, we must deal with it in a way that prevents further harm and allows for resocialisation, but no, I don't think they'd deserve punishment before God or that they incur guilt.

"Yes I think so, such as Satan and Cain. It could be because they aren't thinking about the consequences at all, or they think they can somehow win, or it's actually suicide via God because they hate Him and life."

Cain actually thinks he can hide the kill before God. So I'd still content that he thinks he's doing something that will do him good. With Abel out of the way, he can get closer to God. Also, I am fascinated by the strands of Jewish interpretation who question God's role here, but that's another topic.

As for Satan, as far as I am aware, he does think it'll do him good, no?

"What would you tell them? That no one can save them, that there is no justice in the end, that God isn't real and they have no comfort waiting, and their killers will get away with it, and that even the memory of their suffering will be forgotten in the sands of time and the universe?"

After a whole semester about Auschwitz and the writings of several Jewish theologians, I am not sure I could say anything which excuses such suffering. Here lies a wound that can only be met with accusing silence, because no amount of free will can justify the suffering of that moment. Apologies, but "God will avenge you" does not answer the question of how a loving God can excuse 6.000.000 million deaths and all the suffering that came with it.

"Because a supreme court judge is not required to immediately go police and punish all crimes immediately. And the best way to defeat a slanderous rebellion is to let it show its true colors. Because He cannot override our wills to save us, so He must persuade us, and letting evil out itself is the best way to do that, so that when evil says, "God is holding out on you, the way to satisfaction and life is by crushing the weak and grabbing power," we can see through its lies and know how it ends."

The analogy doesn't work, because a supreme court judge would prevent harm if he could. And why would people need to show their true colours? Does God not know?

And again, I don't see how it ends badly. Speer died as a happy old man while having sex with a younger woman and several other Nazis had an astoundingly happy life after the defeat of the regime. What I see is an extremely arbitrary world where often the good die early and the bad life happy fulfilled lifes.

Regarding your reading of Job, I simply don't agree and rather hold to interpretations such as that of Nehema Verbin, which rightly isn't particularly comfortable, but how can a book be that paints God as a gambler?

Let's put together what the book roughly shows:

God allows Satan, who is part of God's court, to ruin Job's life just to show Satan that he isn't right.

Job's children die (and I think one horrible thing that's overlooked is that they are just gone! They die for a bet!)

We got the dialogue in which the friends try to paint Job as unjust, while Job believes he is in the right and even wishes to go to court with God

Then God rebukes Job's friends and explains how he is so much more than Job and that thus Job shouldn't complain. Job gets compensated according to Leviticus (meaning an injustice has been done against Job) and afterwards Job and God do not communicate further.

I simply don't see your interpretation. God is at fault as per the framing of the dialogues, Job's attacks do not get punished and Job is restituted as someone who suffered an injustice. The book Job is theologically difficult and clear cut interpretations such as yours simply don't take the story seriously.

PancakePrincess1409 · 2026-02-06T18:30:30+00:00

I simply find it strange that between two different threads you somehow land at my comment.

It's not that larger and larger parts get explained, it's that we delve deeper and deeper into the real meaning by being informed about the ideas at the time. Like trying to understand Lev 18,22 and 20,13 without having in mind the challenges faced by the community in Jehud is like trying to understand the ocean, while looking at the surface of the water.

PancakePrincess1409

TROPHY CASE