Aloha. Episcopal priest here. I applaud your valiant efforts at evangelism in this corner of the fediverse. It takes a degree of courage to be so open about your faith in a place that can be consistently hostile to the Christian religion. Thank God for people like you.

Now, I want to offer a little push-back on your soteriology (fancy term for the theology of salvation for those who don’t know). You’re espousing a version of substitutionary atonement theology as though it is the universally held view of Christianity in regards to the “mechanics” of salvation. It is not. Not only are there multiple views within substitutionary atonement itself, there are a plethora of ideas, stretching all the way back to the earliest days of Christianity, to try and make sense of how Jesus’ death on a cross and resurrection from that death serve to “save” humanity. So let me, humbly, offer my view (which, the more I read it, seems to be the most supported biblically), which I call the Expository view of the Atonement:

The death of Jesus is meant by God, primarily, to lay bare (that is, to expose) the true nature of sin. God, incarnate, chooses to become the “conclusion” of what sin is all about. Every sin, then, is defined by the murder of God, the murder of Jesus. This helps us better understand how wicked human sinfulness can be. Kids in Gaza being systematically starved? That’s being done to Jesus. Trans people being ostracized or driven to suicide? Being done to Jesus. Supporting a regime that kidnaps people off the street? Wealth-addicts who exploit entire societies and make a mockery of the Christian religion? You get the idea. Even “small” sins like lying and cheating are covered here because doing these goes against what is universally understood as “good” and all goodness originates in God. Therefore this is tantamount to telling God His expectations for us don’t matter and that He may as well be dead. Matthew 25 more or less lays this all out when it talks about what happens when we do things “to the least of these.”

This all needs to be exposed so that we can see the fullness of what we’ve done, that there is a theological dimension to our actions. God takes our evil actions personally. Jesus on a cross is a visceral symbol of all this. But it’s also a powerful thing because it is on the cross that Jesus declares that we are all forgiven. This is the literal sense of us being saved “from our sins” (which is the actual good news that is preached all throughout the book of Acts).

Salvation is not about Jesus saving us from God’s wrath. It’s Him saving us from our worst impulses. If Hell is a factor in any of this, then Hell is a thing of our own making and somewhere we effectively place ourselves.

The resurrection of Jesus goes beyond all of this to demonstrate that even our worst mistakes are not beyond God’s ability to overcome. This is why Saint Paul can declare in Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” And him also saying that “grace abounds” in inverse proportion to our sinfulness.

Now, this forgiveness is not equal to being “let off the hook” or “getting off scot free.” Rather it becomes an open space where the contrite heart can begin to find healing. And healing can be a painful experience—and it’s proportional; the more serious the disease, the more painful the healing process. So, there are those of us who will suffer even after death. But that suffering is in service of our healing and restoration, not so much our punishment. It’s consequential (in a literal sense), but not because God hates us or whatever. But because we need healing.

I would argue that the more conventional views of substitutionary atonement are logically inconsistent (at best) and/or outright heretical.

You’re in my prayers as a fellow servant of God. Keep the faith and test the spirits!

Makes me think of the sign I wish I’d made this past weekend:

Trump couldn’t get Greenland so he turned us into ICEland

Okay, so story time (and PSA, it’s going to get real and contains passing references to sexual abuse… I’ll put the whole thing behind a spoiler tag):

There’s those few Voyager episodes that deal with children’s holodeck programs, where they note that even Janeway and B’Elanna grew up with the characters and stories. I find that an interesting little addition (and shows that, thank heavens, Blippi is maybe one of those things that didn’t survive WWIII and the postnuclear horror).

Also, I just started revisiting Skyrim with my older kids and that Aela joke hit me hard. A+

Only the one button down for the four dudes?

Just yesterday I was at a cat cafe with two of my kids. My 9y/o is with me as we are petting a British “blue” shorthair and I tell it “you CAN haz cheesburger.” He laughs and is like “dad, what is that?” And I realize that that meme is practically ancient history for him. So I pull out the phone and show him the kernel of all he finds funny today.

It’s the dead eyes. Despite whatever emotion he attempts to convey, the eyes remain dead.

Going down it looks like that Mac and Me clip that Paul Rudd brings with him whenever he’s interviewed by Conan O’Brien

Say what you will about the movies and scripts, but Chris Pine was damn fine casting as Kirk.

I REALLY hope NYT doesn’t settle on this and goes to court. All the stuff that would need to be proved by Trump, like him NOT squandering his dad’s money, etc.

Argh! The painful reminder that my mom gave my cousin my Dreamcast while she was packing up the house because “I thought she might enjoy it.” The same cousin who was also given my pristine NES a few years before that.

Close cousin to the sort of science seen on NCIS that states that two sets of hands on a keyboard allow for one to hack a computer FASTER

“Forensic evidence.” So, like, bro said “he totes wrote a note” and then someone uses science to say “there was paper over here; must be where the note went!” Is this the kind of Keystone cops bullshit we’re being asked to believe?

Are you suggesting that he might be (puts on sunglasses) changing his mind?

For a split second I legit thought George Costanza had snuck onto the shoot lol

Chances are that the guys who posted this ARE racists though. So while this might not be racism, the comment still stands: these racists are embarrassing.

And giants are famous for their diminutive size.

Andre de Grande?

Arianna Giant?

Right. The shark is just a shark doing what they believed sharks did in those days (Peter Benchley himself later became an advocate for shark preservation and once said that if he’d known at the time what we know now, he’d never have written Jaws). The mayor is the one who sees truth as an inconvenience in the way of profit and so creates the situation. Even the shark is a victim, being killed because it stands in the way of capitalism.

The novel iirc goes further in revealing that the mayor is in debt to the mob and needs the money from July 4 to pay them off. So there’s two kinds of “sharks” swirling about…

I did all of this years ago and it is bliss lol

Another thought about read receipts, can’t spammers and phishing scammers use those to determine if a number is active in order to send more trash?