Are thoughts ever sins?

According to the Bible, absolutely (e.g. even looking at a woman with lust in your heart is considered adultery). 

Which I find pretty messed up; it’s basically making thoughtcrime a thing.

That sounds like an excuse to sexualize and objectify another person.

@progressofthepilgrim So long as it's all in your head and it doesn't affect someone by being turned into an action what goes on in your head is no one's business but your own.

To say that you've cheated on your spouse if you've ever thought someone other than them is hot is ridiculous.

ALT

@pollinationtechnician69 Why would you hide such a gem in the tags

I don't think it's necessarily that most people forget that he didn't invent Christianity, but rather that most Christians aren't very well-versed in the history of Christianity and the Bible. You'd think they would be, because why would you ascribe to something you know so little about, and yet...

this is making me lose it

excellent pic choice

Bible Plotholes 4/?

“This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.” — Genesis 17:10

“…if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” — Galatians 5:2

@gfx9up Do you know what "to fulfill" means in the context of Matthew 5:17? It means "to follow the law as prescribed".

Which is why what Jesus explicitly says, when translated to modern English, means "Don’t think that I have come to destroy the law of Moses or the teaching of the prophets. I have not come to destroy their teachings but to do what they said."

In other words, "I didn't come to change the law, I came to obey it."

Are you saying Jesus is wrong, then? That he DID come to change the law when he explicitly said he didn't?

And the OT never says that all you need to do is get circumcized to be saved, it says it's one of the many things you must do to faithfully follow God.

The concept of Hell isn't even present in the OT, so "needing to be saved" was not a concept even in consideration.

In fifth grade a boy tried to impress me by swallowing a whole tadpole live and I punched him so hard that he puked and the tadpole was fine.

I kept it in a terrarium and it became a normal 🐸 despite everything. About a year afterward (I thought) it died, so I sadly put it in a shoebox in the shed until the ground thawed enough for a proper funeral but when that day came I opened the box and the frog was fine.

This is funnier than anything I have ever said.

This post is to Easter what a Geiger counter is to radiation.

I don’t like crucifixes where it’s ambiguous how Jesus is attached to the cross. I also don’t like statues of a tortured dying man, but the unpleasantness of that mitigated somewhat by seeing it so much. But this?

What’s keeping him there

I assume it's like with the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz.

Brazilian Colloquialisms, Sayings, and Slang #54

Eu devo ter jogado pedra na cruz (numa outra vida, só pode ser)… - I must’ve thrown rock[s] at the cross (in a [past] life, I must have)…

The more-or-less equivalent of “what did I do in a past life to deserve this?”

The idea is “my karma’s just so bad that in order for me to deserve this I must have thrown stones at Jesus’ cross.” Which is pretty ironic, if you think about it. I mean, Christianity’s supposed to be a “you only get one Earthly life” type of religion. Brazilian logic, I guess. ;P

Numa is the colloquially shortened version of em uma (the female form of in one/in a/in another depending on the context)

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And God’s supposedly the one speaking in that passage, by the way. 

God literally explicitly says “You may acquire male and female slaves.” in Leviticus too.  (Leviticus 25:40-46)

Okay, first off, you’re deliberately taking things out of context.

This is right after the Jews left Egypt. Where they were slaves. So this part is laying down the laws of how to keep slaves- including the fact that slavery is temporary. That’s literally the rest of the highlighted sentence. YOU CANNOT KEEP A SLAVE LONGER THAN SIX YEARS. This is usually a form of debt repayment- if you run afoul of huge debts, you would be a slave to your debtor, working for them without pay until your debts are repaid through that labour, or for 6 years if it’s not enough. And slaves had rights.

The end of the chapter mentions how someone could become a permanent slave by choice. I’ll admit that that one’s new to me, I don’t think I’ve read this part before. I’d suggest bringing that one before Jumblr.

But slavery isn’t always the same as colonialist slavery, it often wasn’t an enslaved people with no rights. Each culture had its own laws on slavery, might even have had multiple different kinds.

@sandsbuisle​ I don’t recall responding to your comment, so apologies if I already have.

I’ll break down my answer into a numbered list to make it easier to follow (not that your answer was hard to follow, but I find numbered lists help me make sure my writing’s easier to follow and that I haven’t missed any important points you made).

1. “[Y]ou’re deliberately taking things out of context ... YOU CANNOT KEEP A SLAVE LONGER THAN SIX YEARS”.

a) So you think that it’s moral to own a slave so long as it’s for up to six years? 

You understand that means you’re saying you think owning another person as property for any amount of time is moral, right?

b) Indentured servitude is also immoral.

It’s a step up from slavery, sure, but it’s a reeeeeally tiny step. Like, a chihuahua could easily climb it, it’s so tiny. 

And what the Torah/Old Testament describes in that passage isn’t even indentured servitude, it’s a midway point between slavery and indentured servitude, because the text explicitly says slave but with a time limit, whereas an indentured servant is never a slave (that is, they are never considered to be property like a chair or donkey)..

c) You’re the one taking things out of context: You cannot keep a MALE HEBREW slave for longer than six years (conditions apply).

It’s literally the highlighted words, my dude.

Hebrew women and non-Hebrews? That’s an entirely different story.

i) The rules for Hebrew women

So how can Hebrew women earn their freedom?

Even if she was given as a gift to a Hebrew slaveman, she is not to go free when her husband is set free (Exodus 21:4). The only way she can gain her freedom is by sexually pleasing her master/master’s son and being selected to be the wife of one of them or by displeasing her master when he has sex with her.

Totes moral, right?

ii) The rules for non-Hebrews

2. “slavery isn’t always the same as colonialist slavery, it often wasn’t an enslaved people with no rights”

a) It was just as bad.  

b) According to the Bible, you could beat your slave nearly to death and it was okay because the slave was your property.

c) There is no permutation of slavery that is ethical. Ever.

No exceptions.

d) Yes, slavery was slightly different back then, but not because it was nice slavery unlike colonialist slavery.

It was just as brutal, the difference being that it wasn’t focused on one racial group -- anyone could become a slave. That’s it. That’s the major difference. And yes, you’re right in that there were different kinds of slaves (e.g. in the Roman Empire you could be a government slave or a personal slave). But guess what? They were still slaves. And slavery is always immoral.

3. Just so you know, Jesus was pro-slavery too. 

In the Parable of the Unfaithful Slave, Jesus concludes that a misbehaving slave should be severely beaten: