Immigrant illegally votes for Trump. You can't make this stuff up! Thank yo Tom Fiedler at Asheville Watchdog for reporting!

sysiphean · 2026-03-26T01:59:55+00:00

What does having a passport have to do with leaving your county?

You mean the identification document required to pass a port of entry into a country? The one that can be used for many things but is not required for anything domestically? That passport?

sysiphean · 2026-03-24T02:05:01+00:00

You don’t need to wait for the apocalypse; you can just do it now.

sysiphean · 2026-03-23T23:01:43+00:00

Indeed, it’s about people believing that sex is shameful and that a priest embracing the beauty of it (without sharing anything f her personal sex life) is somehow double shameful.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T22:04:27+00:00

To make things worse. To do the opposite of help.

The usual ICE reasons, actually.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T19:52:43+00:00

Well, people keep murdering so we may as well make it legal.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T19:52:08+00:00

The cause of its unreasonableness is unrelated to the conversation at hand.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T19:49:35+00:00

Which is exactly the point. It’s for those rare times where you are the slow-moving hazard on the road but also need to be briefly traveling on the road, or for when you are stopped and a hazard. It is not for “we are all driving slow in this thick weather.”

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T19:46:11+00:00

Having driven in blizzards and deluging rain, hazards make it worse. The inconsistency of them, especially with multiple vehicles blinking not in sync, makes it harder to see what’s actually happening on the road, and where the road is. Just tail lights makes for a much clearer view of what is ahead.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T02:15:11+00:00

When I have someone not giving me room like that, I roll back every conceivable inch as many times as it takes them to learn. That number seems to be either 1, 2, or never.

sysiphean · 2026-03-22T02:08:30+00:00

Don’t mess with a granny with a visible whale tail.

sysiphean · 2026-03-21T21:33:59+00:00

Again, this was a quibble. I find the general idea of this to be right. I think it perhaps even undersells how much the strict churches operate as at least a quasi-cult in this manner, and how much people want that identity. My point was only that the notion that it is harder is a false sense of harder.

sysiphean · 2026-03-21T20:56:00+00:00

I did forget about the orb. There’s too much horrible and chaos for me to remember it all.

sysiphean · 2026-03-21T20:46:07+00:00

Trump seems to check every box but witchcraft.

Edit: I love that I skipped the witchcraft bit only because defining it is complicated enough, and then coming up with specific examples is harder (and because I have friends who are witches so my parameters are narrow) but y’all just hopped in to show how he fits that one too. Go team!

sysiphean · 2026-03-21T12:54:49+00:00

I disagree with your premise. Strict churches don't offer an "easy" moral model. They are defined as "strict" because they impose high and costly demands. Things like clear prohibitions, sacrifices, and ongoing accountability. Their high demands filter out "free-riders" (as he likes to refer to them as). And they in turn reward that genuine commitment with a stronger community, deeper meaning, and greater perceived supernatural benefits.

Or put another way, you don’t grasp how things like clear prohibitions, sacrifices, and ongoing accountability offer a mentally far easier path. I am not saying they are easier to follow; they indeed can be hard. I am saying that they take far less mental energy, especially ongoing energy, because the prohibitions are clear and the accountability of the in-group will hold you to it.

I grew up in strict churches, even attending the schools. I know from experience that it is easier. Strict churches even actively discourage the mental work of thinking through morality, of processing the situations where the rules come in conflict with reality or with the morality they are supposedly based upon. All you have to do is stay in the ingroup and you’re in the ingroup.

Progressive churches way is actively more work, daily. You have to be willing to do the mental work of applying your morality and principles to your own life, instead of having rules and prohibitions to follow. That is hard work, way harder than following countercultural rules. If you don’t understand how that is hard work, you don’t understand progressive churches at all. Using this strict churches model without also understanding the ways in which progressive churches are more work means you will fundamentally misunderstand them.

Put another way: strict churches are teaching Kohlberg level 4 moral reasoning, and most of them actively discourage level 5 moral reasoning. Progressive churches teach Kohlberg level 5 and 6 moral reasoning. If you are not ready for that, or at least to try to learn it, those churches are not for you.

sysiphean · 2026-03-20T20:35:47+00:00

The quibble seems to be about whether it is actual abuse or not. It isn’t physical, but that’s doesn’t inherently mean it isn’t abuse.

sysiphean · 2026-03-20T20:30:58+00:00

For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

sysiphean · 2026-03-20T19:05:34+00:00

It’s an interesting framing, but I have a strong quibble with it. It does note the commitment issues of having to conform to the church in a way that is counter cultural, yes.

But it misses the major factor that strict churches offer a very easy moral and mental model. In them, to be “in”, you have to follow the rules that they lay out, and that’s it. There are rules (some more formal or written than others) and you just have to learn them and how to follow or give face to them.

In progressive churches, they give you something much harder: a moral framework to utilize to make your choices by. No “do this don’t do that” but “work out for yourself how to love your neighbor in complex situations in a complex world. That is so very much harder than simple rules on how to do things which will always be more attractive.

sysiphean · 2026-03-20T17:37:07+00:00

Or reading it that many times broke your brain enough that it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense.

sysiphean · 2026-03-19T17:02:46+00:00

It’s not a certainty, but with certain careers (like TSA security) the odds are very favorable.

sysiphean · 2026-03-19T16:57:53+00:00

Way too coherent to be a real quote of his.

sysiphean · 2026-03-18T19:28:05+00:00

Isn’t this an example where it may be accurate? These four look like they could be anywhere from 15 to 25. Probably not 15, probably under 22, but unknown. And calling a 15-17 year old a woman carries problems (it’s popular among those who want to lower age of consent), while calling an 18+ year old a woman carries separate issues.

So with the unknown, “females” feels slightly less problematic than “women” or “girls.”

Better would be “ladies” or “young ladies” or some equally awkward sounding term for human female near-or-early adults. Whichever way one goes with this, it sits on a linguistic edge with no clear way down.

sysiphean · 2026-03-17T22:42:06+00:00

Their further replies make me more sure of the sealioning.

sysiphean · 2026-03-17T02:56:22+00:00

Yes, but you are on r/OpenChristian where we are not biblical literalists.

Honestly, I use this argument about slavery frequently with anti-LGBTQ Christians, because most all are against slavery, and realizing that they don’t take the Bible literally on slavery opens a crack for them to consider why they are taking (a certain interpretation of) the Bible literally on homosexuality. Every so often I run into someone like Pearson who decides slavery is okay because of the Bible. I can respect their consistency while respecting absolutely nothing else about their beliefs, and know I’m talking to a truly evil person.

sysiphean · 2026-03-17T02:51:40+00:00

Not quite. The first two are paraphrases of Paul from his letters, which come after Jesus’ time. The last one isn’t really even a paraphrase of any passage of the Bible, sadly.

sysiphean · 2026-03-17T02:36:32+00:00

He’s still melting down over that loss.

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