Recent content by FireDragon76

Neither being autistic nor being gay are a sin or something one should feel shame for. Everybody has some gift to offer the world. It is worldly to think that these things make a person of lesser dignity. Part of the reason that churches are declining, at least in the US, is that too often...

In the US, quite a few women pastors in mainline churches are older and no longer have children at home.

That's a big cause. The other is this country's unaddressed legacy of racism that is still ongoing. Now that alot of the older generations have gotten even older and no longer participate in gainful employment that would bring actual social responsibility, many have become loud and obnoxious...

You aren't the Inquisition. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/trump-mexico-rapists/index.html

One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, actually. By analogy, I suppose, the verse could be understood as the apocalyptic expectation that the world to come will be rid of all exploitation that defaces the creation. But that wasn't the original author's intent. Understanding the...

When did mainstream media lie about something Trump said? Trump plainly said that most people crossing the border, for instance, were murderers and rapists, despite having no good evidence to support that notion. It's not hard to conclude from that, he has prejudice against non-whites and is...

Yesterday I just did low intensity cardio at the gym for about 45 minutes. My heart rate was only about 40 percent intensity. It was sort of an active recovery day, more or less. Getting the blood and joints moving helps to get rid of soreness, and keep up some endurance, but it's not so...

He's a thoroughgoing demagogue.

Gluttony might still be pertinent to the ethics of meat consumption, however, since gluttony refers to eating greedily and/or immoderately. When considering the amount of the planet's resources used to supply many advanced, industrialized nations with animal flesh, it's not hard for me to...

I was in the ELCA and it was never quite that extreme, however, there's a tendency for Lutherans of all kinds to view their religion and theology as very much insular and self-contained. If Lutherans in the US do break at all in any particular direction, it's usually towards American...

This is lazy, unimaginative thinking.

Are you unfamiliar with semitic parallelism? The verse is expressing a single concept through two concrete images: wine and meat are joined in that verse, with the second part of the verse amplifying the first part.

It's more at the denominational level, that you see wildly different politics from Mainline Protestants. Depending on the denomination, you can find congregants that are Evangelical-adjacent in many Mainline Protestant churches.

NPR's focus on DEI doesn't seem any different than usual, and I've been listening off and on for decades.

I think this verse is really about gluttony.