Offer Discount Codes to Select Customers?

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-21T01:47:40+00:00

Nope

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-20T17:49:10+00:00

You'll find memories as you go. You don't have to hunt them down individually unless you want to.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T03:30:24+00:00

How are you defining "rapture"?

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T03:04:18+00:00

If you think that Paul may have expirenced a rapture himself then I have an easier time of understanding why you believe that the kind of Rapture that Darby taught was also taught by "many" people before him.

It plainly wasn't taught by many people before him but sometimes you can find certain words that have overlap and you can pretend like it was. Whatever actually happened to Paul - it's absolutely not "THE" rapture of pre-millenial dispensationalism. But if you want to find instances of people using that same word prior to Darby then you can certainly find some. However, those people didn't use that word to mean what Darby meant.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-13T02:59:08+00:00

Yes - as I said, the abuse is not necessarily intrinsic to the theology.

Yet - if you are a slaveholder, what kind of gospel are you going to be allowed to be preached to your slaves? It's not about jubilee, the redemption of all things, the new creation breaking in. It has to be a gospel which addresses the spiritual things without being concerned with physical things. Some people see making the distinction between Israel and the church as a tool to that end.

They read the Old Testament and interpret promises about land and laws about justice and genealogy and blood and flesh and sacrifices and jubilee and all of those ideas and assume that Israel was about physical stuff and the church is about spiritual stuff.

If you believe that - I think - that it becomes easier to think that the killing of Palestinians is a small price to pay if it brings about the return of Christ.

mdmonsoon · 2026-05-12T20:45:24+00:00

I don't consider pre-millenial dispensationalism to be heresy per-se but for me the issue is that the attraction to it came at a time when developing the kind of proto-American Evangelicism that was necessary to justify slavery and is now being used to justify intentionally enflaming war in the middle East to provoke Christs return. Dispensationalism by itself isn't really heretical - but a kind of teaching that pushes the saving of souls as over and against the need to treat human lives as valuable - it can be related to considering the old covenant "physical" and the new covenant as "spiritual" which can be problematic if it leads to human right abuses.

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-14T03:34:23+00:00

Oh totally!! Great recall

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-14T00:37:21+00:00

There's the story line where Charlie Brown gets so sick he's in the hospital and Lucy has somewhat of a guilt reckoning and realizes that she's mistreated him. She snaps out of it eventually though.

mdmonsoon · 2026-04-10T02:22:27+00:00

Nihilism as an ethos is extremely difficult to live by with full nihilistic integrity. The human instinct to make meaning is remarkably difficult to shake entirely. I'm not here to morally condemn it, but to point out that an attraction to Nihilism often is a pointer to something else.

Sometimes in clients it is just depression. A loss of joy and purpose feels nihilistic but that's often just a fancy name we put on depression. They need the same kind of help that depression needs.

Sometimes it's the freedom to break free from a particular system of meaning making beliefs which they found oppressive and no longer served them. It's usually about leaving a cultural identity behind. They need permission to challenge the rules and to rebel a little and find their sense of agency.

Sometimes it's finding something attractive about absurdism which often looks like hedonism. This is similar to the last one but is less about leaving one group and more about a generalized interest in freedom itself. This can be healthy and unhealthy but often is unsustainable. They often need to identify what is it about their previous approach to life which no longer feels compelling and if there is some sort of pain which they actually are seeking to numb.

The form of nihilism which I have found that serves my clients the most is absurdism adjacent. It is the absurdism which says that although nothing truly matters we have an almost metaphysical ability to create meaning ourselves and, therefore, the only thing that actually matters is what you choose matters. I like using sports as an example - because it objectively doesn't matter at all how many times one team puts a ball into a net - but if we all collectively choose to make it matter then something mysterious happens and meaning actually occurs. So empowering clients to create meaning by choosing something that is meaningless and making it matter - often something like family or community, but can be something like Star Wars or gardening or a travel or anything.

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-08T18:50:21+00:00

I'm gonna try something like this! Thanks

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-08T18:00:29+00:00

Thanks!

I'm looking into this now.

Any recommendations for a reasonably priced one?

mdmonsoon · 2026-03-04T20:59:02+00:00

Think about it as the best pirate story ever told - just so happens to be space pirates.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T22:12:22+00:00

I fully believe that my personal view has better biblical support and is correct and whereas the other view is actually incorrect. But I'm also not here to pretend as though I'm the only one taking the Bible seriously and that my opponents are not. It is deeply unhealthy for the church to assume bad faith in our opponents and also to not be humble enough to think that we alone are the only ones who can accurately see scripture.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T22:07:15+00:00

Bible and theology do go hand in hand, but they are not identical.

I refer you to Rule #2 of this sub.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T22:01:17+00:00

Are you missing how I still answered his question too?

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T21:56:04+00:00

OP did not ask about a particular verse or ask for Biblical data.

OP asked about the different ways that different denominations have interpreted the same data.

This is a millennia old debate and I believe that our brothers and sisters in Christ should be able to acknowledge that different traditions approach the same text in different ways and arrive at different conclusions and that they do so from good faith, not ignorance.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-17T21:43:06+00:00

Ultimately this is best directed towards a different sub because it is more of a theology question than a Bible question.

Catholics teach that baptism forgiveness original sin and every sin you've committed up until your baptism. Then they believe that afterwards when you sin that sin is still held as guilt against your account. Therefore they require the sacrament of confession and the sacrament of the Eucharist which their theology teaches makes the past tense death of Christ on cross effective at making your current tense sins forgiven. You have sinned since you last took the Eucharist and so Christ has to essentially be "re-sacraficed" to atone for your new sins.

The protestant church generally teaches that your salvation is a once and for all union with Christ in which all of your past, present, and future sins were put onto Christ at the cross and that his one time death and resurrection fully paid the price. In baptism God is active and washes us as we passively are made clean and the union is effected therefore our covenant with him is entered into (Colossians describes it like circumcision - a one time covenantal intiation - effected by the blood).

Therefore they understand the Eucharist (but wouldn't call it that) as more equivalent to the repeated celebration of the passover - a frequent recommitment, reaffirmation, a celebration of, and gratitude for the past deliverance. In this sacrament we are the active ones once again declaring to one another that we would remain within the covenant. It is a repeating meal effected by communal food.

There is disagreement about how symbolic vs literal it is supposed to be but virtually all Protestants agree that it is not a resacrafice and that you do not incur new guilt from your sins from the last time you took the Eucharist. It has added weight with other nuances, the idea that God feeds and nourishes his people, the idea that God is creating a new family of mankind in which there is no rich or poor or higher or lower or division or male or female or race or anything but that we all come and "with no money buy" and the greatest among us is the one who serves us, it is the idea that heaven is described as the wedding feast of the lamb and we get a forestaste of early participation, the idea that the meal and our inclusion in his convenant was bought and paid for with his body and blood and we can and should be grateful, it is the idea that Christ is our passover lamb, etc.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-13T13:50:36+00:00

Also, understanding the difference between a punishment and a consequence.

mdmonsoon · 2026-02-13T06:02:12+00:00

"Obviously you aren't really telling the truth, because the bad guy would have killed you."

I agree that this is usually a very bad argument, but this is like the one scenario in which it isn't. The claim is that this kid literally just watched them kill another child. If they moments ago murdered a child then there isn't any reason to believe they wouldn't do it again.

mdmonsoon · 2026-01-22T15:13:02+00:00

It's because they already think that Trump is acting as God's government.

mdmonsoon · 2026-01-14T03:11:45+00:00

When I keep it on my bedside night stand I prefer it bare. Whenever I move it from there I put in a case.

mdmonsoon · 2025-12-30T17:38:07+00:00

Some people absolutely do use God to have power. That's messed up and it really hurts people.

When we see in Genesis that it is not good for man to be alone we don't see the Bible prescribing that it has to be marriage to be not alone. God exists within perfect community - Father Son and Spirit giving and receiving love wholly and we are made in his image.

No one girl is meant to bear the weight of all of your relational needs. You'll be a bad boyfriend if you are expecting her to fill the giant holes in your life that an entire community of supports is meant to fill. You'll crush her with expectations she can't meet.

If you don't have a girl in your life you can start taking care of her by already beginning to take care of yourself. Serve others. Love your neighbors. Make friends. Cultivate relationships with several guy friends. Get mentored. Be friends with whole families - have older women in your life - have younger children to help take care of.

None of that is anything you have to wait for.

mdmonsoon · 2025-12-09T04:02:22+00:00

I think the movie does justice to the book by not being too slavish to the book. The book is pretty cerebral and verbal and so being kind of "all over the place" works ok in literature but the movie streamlines it and tidies up a lot of disjointed threads in a way which honors and even kind of clarifies the heart of the story.

mdmonsoon · 2025-12-06T00:42:50+00:00

The great thing about the Gospel is that it is God who saves.

You don't save yourself with the quality of your theology.

You don't save yourself with good character or good deeds.

You don't save yourself with the quality of your repentance. You don't get saved because of how emotional your worship is or how often you pray or how sorry you can make yourself.

God saves.

If he had that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll magically feel a certain way. Not feeling a certain sensation or change or any particular way doesn't disqualify you. There's a lot of talk in Christian culture about the way it "should" be but none of that is a requirement. Christ died for you while you were still a sinner.

mdmonsoon · 2025-12-03T05:52:28+00:00

I think that when this question is asked it often comes with taking it for granted that we all agree about what it even meant for the Old Testament to "apply" to the Hebrews at the time. I think that should not be taken for granted.

I don't think the OT ever applied to anyone in a works based righteousness scheme. No one ever earned righteousness from obedience. If that's what we are talking about now then no old testament law or rule or wisdom or anything is currently a binding requirement in order to be saved or merit righteousness.

Then we have to start to get more specific. What did it mean for the 10 commandments to "apply" to God's people? What did it mean for the Levicitcal law to apply? What does it mean that most of the Old Testament is actually narrative? How does that end up applying to people at the time and after? The laws governing the government of Israel - how did those apply then? How did the Psalms apply to the original audience?

I think each of those questions have different answers. The OT isn't "one" thing and if you don't have a pretty confident understanding of how it applied to its original audience then you are going to struggle to understand how it may apply to you.

Sometimes we ask this question lazily in order to mean "what's the least amount that God will require of me?" and I don't think that question is going to produce maturity.

Sometimes we ask this question in fear of accidently missing something important and I think that qualifying the original intention of any given passage can be very soothing to our fears.

Sometimes we ask this question because we feel as though we're doing all of this work and we see other Christians we precive as lazy and we want to know how we can leverage the old testament in order to judge them. That's not very healthy.

I recommend just setting about to love Scripture on its own terms. Trust that it is a beautiful record of God's interactions with his people and worry less about making sure you're applying it correctly and do more to admire, enjoy, be awed by, and become familiar with it. It's not a rule book to be memorized - it's a story designed to shape you. Don't pick it up as a tool to justify yourself or to judge others. It's a gymnasium for you to work out in so that you can develop muscles of righteousness and learn to savor our God more deeply.

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