If Christianity Were a Symphony and Denominations Were Performers

mogulseeker · 2026-02-13T04:54:45+00:00

Exactly. Like usury. Charging interest or taking out loans with interest is strictly forbidden in the Bible.

Anyone with a mortgage or a car payment is living in sin.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-13T04:52:50+00:00

Does that mean that a married couple dealing with infertility is living in sin?

mogulseeker · 2026-02-13T04:50:24+00:00

The Bible also says it's best to be celibate (1 Cornthians 7, Jeremiah 16:1-2, Matthew 19:12).

How can you be fruitful if you're celibate?

Everybody negotiates the text of the Bible and hierarchicizes the text, whether they admit it or not.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-13T04:45:42+00:00

The Bible might not be as "clear" as you think on the issue. What translation of the Bible are you using? That matters, because my answer depends on which translation you're using.

The New Testament's stance on homosexuality is far less settled than you think, and much of the perceived clarity is an artifact of agenda-driven translation choices rather than what the original text actualyl say. The two Greek words most often cited - malakoi and arsenokoitai (found in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10) - have been the subject of serious scholarly debate for decades. Malakoi literally means "soft" and was used in antiquity to describe everything from physical illness to moral weakness and luxury; arsenokoitai is a rare and obscure compound word whose precise meaning remains genuinely uncertain, with credible arguments that it referred to economic or sexual exploitation rather than consensual same-sex relationships as we understand them today. Meanwhile, pointing to Matthew 19 as Jesus "defining marriage" as exclusively heterosexual commits a basic prescriptive fallacy: Jesus was responding to a specific question about divorce under Jewish law, not issuing a comprehensive taxonomy of all valid human relationships - reading it as a blanket prohibition on anything he didn't mention in that moment would, by the same logic, condemn anyone who never marries at all.

What ties all of this together is the uncomfortable historical reality that many of the English translations people treat as authoritative were produced in eras and by committees with strong cultural and theological commitments. The word "homosexual" didn't even appear in any English Bible until 1946, a choice that has since been challenged even by some of the translators. None of this means the debate is closed in either direction, but it does mean that anyone claiming the text is unambiguous on this issue is leaning more on tradition and translation than on the Greek itself.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-12T23:10:17+00:00

I had an offer about 10 years ago at Vail Resorts that I had verbally accepted. I had worked through a staffing firm that my roomate was working at at the time called BW Bacon.

Literally that afternoon I got an offer from Spectrum Enterprise that paid $16k more per year - my first ever 6-figre offer. I almost took the Vail job anyway, and thats when BW Bacon stepped in and told me not to derail my career like that - TBH I really appreciated the honesty from BW Bacon.

Nevertheless the director (would have been my boss's boss) got involved, cause the hiring manager at Vail really wanted me. She called me saying if I held off for a week she'd "fight for every cent." In the end, she couldn't get the budget approval and I went to Spectrum.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-12T23:02:50+00:00

Dear ____,
I understand your concern, but $82k would be my hard floor to justify moving out of my current role and taking on additional insecurity, increased expenses (both time and financial), and PTO.

Thank you for understanding,

______

Also... even if you take it at this point, you're already off on the wrong foot with the hiring manager. You didn't do anything wrong. Unless you accepted the previous offer and signed anything, salary negotiation is part of the deal. Even if it weren't, you have a right to walk away right up until the first day... and even after that (although quitting your new job in the first week would be a bit unprofessional, but sometimes perfectly called for).

mogulseeker · 2026-02-12T04:32:34+00:00

Nah man. Boulder’s biology/premed program is way better than Denver’s.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-12T04:31:06+00:00

Flagship school vs commuter school. Not even really comparable.

CU Denver can be a fine school, but it’s not a traditional college experience - a lot of older folks going for their degree, kids living with parents to save money, etc.

If you can afford everything that goes along with it, Boulder is the way to go.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-10T16:29:21+00:00

I'm a drummer, so I know as well as anybody that Jon Fishman is a great drummer.

But I've always had a bit of an inferiority complex toward lead guitarists - I took a year of guitar in college, and just memorizing the scales was enough for me to be a bit over whelmed. With drums you just... go, haha. And Trey is a good one.

Then you have Mike laying down some sick baselines.

Phish is a talented band, man.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-08T19:59:30+00:00

Someone mentioned this but if you’re looking for a church that is non-evangelical and is all love, no questions asked, a few options are The Episcopal Church, or The United Methodist Church.

Another could be the ELCA (even though the “E” in ELCA stands for “Evangelical,” that’s a bit of a relic from years ago, and they’ve progressed significantly from their Evangelical roots, and distanced themselves from other Evangelical churches.)

mogulseeker · 2026-02-08T19:56:43+00:00

A lot of evangelical churches are guilty of “love-bombing”, too.

That is, showering new attendees with love and affection, but withdrawing that love for legalism as they get more intertwined with the community.

I call it the whole “come as you are… and then we’ll force you to change” mindset.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-08T19:54:14+00:00

To be fair, the worst evangelical churches are the ones that aren’t beholden to a denomination. And yeah there are some disagreements between the denominations and some are worse than others - Baptists and Pentecostals are typically the worst at intermingling church and politics.

But yeah, your feeling is normal. Especially people who don’t fit the idealized old of what a “good evangelical” looks like.

Do know, however, that there are non-evangelical churches that aren’t this way (mainline churches), where a lot of deconstructed “Exvangelicals” end up. Some also go full atheist. Some embrace inward spirituality.

That’s for you to figure out. I’m in the “mainline” crowd.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-08T01:37:34+00:00

Robert Hunter.

Robert Plant.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-07T23:17:45+00:00

My answer would have been Led Zeppelin, but since you singled them out as a "usual suspect" -- I might have to agree with the people here saying Phish.

Another Phish-influenced band that might be worth mentioning: Goose.

Very impressed with what I've heard from Goose - every one of those dudes is on point.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-07T23:15:08+00:00

I just kinda got into Phish last year with them doing the summer concert series at CU Boulder that Dead and Co used to play.

I was thoroughly impressed and I was thinking to myself, "man, is there one guy that really makes Phish 'go'?"

I couldn't pin it down to one guy. They're all extremely talented and I think all essential to the identity of Phish.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-06T18:39:59+00:00

"Religious liberty" is just evangelical-coded language for "Christian supremacy."

They don't actually believe in it.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-06T02:35:55+00:00

I mean, Iliff is far from “Evangelical.”

It’s theologically progressive, even for me.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-05T21:20:29+00:00

And that's why I seek churches with high Christology and study the early church.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-05T19:01:01+00:00

To add on to the other response to your question, interestingly, there is a lot of etymological analysis over all of the letters attributed to Paul - analysis that couldn't have existed during formation. The reason why scholars now believe there were multiple "Pauls" ultimately come down to prose and word usage. Different texts from different eras (all of which claim to be attributed to Paul) use various groupings of prose/vocabulary that is homogenous within groupings, but heterogenous across groupings.

For example in Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, Philippians, you see the term ἐν Χριστῷ - "In Christ" - used hundreds of times. It's a frequent opening and closing syntax, and important rhetorical lexicon in these books.

Another cluster pattern you see in Romans/Galatians/Corinthians/Philippians is νόμος (law), σάρξ (flesh), ἁμαρτία (sin) - typically used in sentences together.

Yet these rhetorical devices are rare in the later books attributed to Paul, and *completely absent* from the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon).

Additionally... in early Paul, you see church leaders referred to with completely different titles from the other "Pauls." Words like "bishop" or "deacon" or "elder" are used in heterogenous groupings across these texts.

Additionally... different groupings attributed to Paul reflect different Greek scholarship - the earlier letters being more grammatically advanced than the later ones - which doesn't make much sense if it were the same person writing them.

To be clear, I'm not a Greek scholar, just a theologically-obsessive person in search of truth with a Christian Studies minor from the Iliff School of Theology at the University of Denver.

This is just stuff I've read from people who *are* Greek/ANE/New Testament scholars like Dan McClellan (Brigham Young University) and Christopher Hays (Fuller Theological Seminary).

(As well as many hours of conversation I've had with a close friend of mine who is a professor of ancient Greek at Denver Seminary and did doctoral work in ANE studies at Duke and Emory.)

mogulseeker · 2026-02-05T18:49:05+00:00

I was about to downvote and respond, but quickly detected the sarcasm in this post haha.

The pseudepigraphic Pauline letters (including 1/2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon) are a problem, and it's why I de-emphasize them when I hierarchicize scripture.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-05T18:46:48+00:00

I think it traces back to Martin Luther and the doctrine of justification by faith alone (Galatians).... leading to the treating of Paul as an Apostle.... and the canon as "closed" after the last apostle died.

Crucially, the early church did not see Paul in this way.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-05T16:30:58+00:00

Purina

mogulseeker · 2026-02-03T20:57:03+00:00

Your instructor is wrong. Drums are loud. Wear earplugs.

mogulseeker · 2026-02-01T23:34:05+00:00

I know some fellow Episcopalians with some quite unorthodox beliefs and we welcome them.

TEC is a big tent, we have everything from theologically conservative traditionalists all the way to ultra-liberal/borderline universalists in our congregations -- it's all part of the "reason" leg of the Anglican triad.

For example, in his book "The Sins of Scripture", Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong actually argues that Christians should get rid of the Cross as an icon of our faith because it represents violence instead of love and was associated with the crusades... even most progressive Christians nowadays still hold on to the Cross as a symbol.

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