The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. -Tim Keller

To me, one of the most compelling arguments for both the resurrection and the Godhood of Christ is James.

No, not the disciple.

No, not the other disciple.

I mean James, the half-brother of Jesus, who wrote the book of James.

James was not a believer when Jesus was doing His ministry, pre-crucifixion. He grew up with Him. He knew Him as a member of his family. And that’s all he saw Him as for a long time. It wasn’t until AFTER the resurrection that he came to believe in and follow Christ. You mean to tell me that someone who knew Jesus PERSONALLY would be easily tricked into thinking his idiot, delusional brother was actually legit? No. If there had been a ruse, he would have seen past it. If Jesus’s weirdo rag-tag followers started saying “He’s alive!” you think he’d just take that as fact? No. No, something had to convince him, just like Thomas, just like the rest of them. He had to see that He was really there. James went from a non-believer to a believer to a follower to a leader. That doesn’t happen to someone who hasn’t been completely convinced.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that Christianity did not guarantee political power. This was not a movement that preached guaranteed success in this life. There was no “manifesting wealth” or anything like that. There was nothing to gain here. There was so much to lose. And those who believed in Jesus for eternal life - the true treasure - proclaimed the truth, anyway. In spite of the high potential for danger and virtually no guarantee for success. They proclaimed Christ because they had been convinced that this was TRUTH. And that truth has remained the same ever since.

I don’t tend to see Christians talk about this much, or in a very nuanced way, and I think it’s worth talking about. and that is that suppression and surrender are two different things.

suppression is the refusal to acknowledge feelings you’d rather not feel. it’s stuffing them down out of shame or guilt, or the belief that you’re not “supposed” to feel them, in favour of pretending that you don’t experience them at all. suppressing anger, for example, leads to long-term bitterness, grudges, and burn-out from pretending you’re a happy peppy optimistic Christian all the dang time. it is deeply unhealthy.

surrender is the active, honest acknowledgment of your feelings, desires, and temptations, without attaching undue shame to them, and then bringing them to the feet of Jesus and choosing to live by His Word anyway. it is not a dismissal of feelings but the very act of bringing them to light so He may show you what to do about them. 

surrendering to God’s way does not mean shoving feelings of anger or bitterness or anxiety into a dark crevice, or acting like you can brush off years of pain in a moment.

surrender is telling God you are hurt, letting yourself feel the pain of being wronged so that your pain may be healed by Christ’s tenderness and love. 

surrender is telling Him you are anxious, you are desperately frightened, and letting Him be present in your trembling, letting Him be peace and steadiness and unconditional love while you breathe and count and grounding-technique through the wave of panic.

surrender is allowing yourself to say you did not deserve the abuse, you will not stand for abuse, you will not return to your abusers, and working day by day to forgive your abusers and pray for them anyway. 

surrender is telling Jesus you are sorely tempted- to cheat on the exam, to cheat on your partner, to objectify your cute coworker, to talk shit about your boss- and allowing Him to lead you away from acting on it and into doing the right thing anyway.

surrender is the exact opposite of suppression.

I so often see this message online, explicitly and implicitly, that whatever you’re feeling is valid– and it is!– but then it just… stops there. if you’re angry, good, stay angry. you shouldn’t have to forgive anyone. you shouldn’t have to treat people with dignity if you don’t like them. nobody has the right to tell you to act in a way that doesn’t completely indulge your feelings. treat yourself. you do you.

I disagree. indulgence may seem like the right fix because it’s surely the polar opposite of suppression. but being a slave to your thoughts and emotions is no better than being a slave to shame. it is good to express anger. it is also good to place limits on your anger so you express it in healthy ways. it is okay to have a mental illness. it is also important to not let that illness define your very being, to remember you are more, to fight for recovery. it is completely normal to be tempted in a thousand ways. it is important to resist temptation and seek to do the right thing, and run to the grace and overwhelming love of God when you don’t.

true freedom in Christ comes when you are open with Him about all you are, and willing to let Him lead you through the maze. true freedom makes room for limits and boundaries, ones that will help you grow and flourish.

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

I think I've said this before, so, sorry about that. But I was taken aback when I read LOTR because I'd heard that it's a foundational work to the fantasy genre, and I was expecting it to be somewhat basic and cliché. I got the opposite experience. It read to me like a thoughtful and detailed deconstruction of the modern fantasy genre instead of the thing that spawned it. Mostly it's because Tolkien took things through to their logical conclusion where many of his imitators did not (the scouring of the shire, the lasting irreparable psychological damage to frodo, the fact that frodo actually can't bring himself to throw away the ring, etc)

JRR Tolkien’s world was shaped by war. He knew firsthand that battles are not glorious, that heroes always pay a price, that sometimes you can’t return home because either home was ruined, or you were.

He KNEW it, knew it intimately, the loss and fear and sorrow behind the propaganda. And he knew that what helped, in his time, was kindness and community and small joys and undying friendship.

Tolkien didn’t belive in epic heroics, he believed in simple humanity. Ordinarily people persevering against all odds.

His imitators missed that. Much like Sauron at the end of the trilogy, they were distracted by armies and kings and wizards.

They never really saw or understood the hobbits at all.

I dont know who needs to hear this today.

"Soulmates do not exist in real life."

Its a fun idea in fiction, but it needs to be clearly understood that there is no such thing as a soulmate. There is not a person that will help you feel complete once you met them.

Loving is an action. To love someone is something that must be done with intention. Love is work. It doesnt just happen.

The person that you are with does not need to be in sync with everything you do. The person does not need to have the perfect understanding of your mannerisms and habits from the jump.

The idea of soulmates in real life is one of the most dangerous ideas to the concept of Love.

Now does that me you cant find a good loving relationship? No. In fact, removing the idea of a soulmate makes getting one easier. Those impossible expectations will be removed and you will be able to see the person for who they really are.

Do not look for someone that guesses your favorite color and likes your favorite foods. Look for someone that will ask what they are.

You make yourself a soulmate by living a life with someone you love and they love you ❤️

its been said many times before but the joy of having a little beastie that loves you in your house all the time is unparalleled

I’m not usually one to do digital art, but @lunaescribe ‘s Helen and Menelaus inspired me!!

Here’s some Achaean designs // Part 2

My favourite type of movie is “period piece romance but fantasy-horror hijinks happen and now everyone has to adapt to the new genre or die,” ala Curse of the Black Pearl, Anastasia, The Mummy (1999)

I like the way Diana Wynne Jones writes about love. While it's not how Hayao Miyazaki potrays relationships, where two people mentally inspire each other to live and grow and mature, it is still something more closer to my heart. She writes relationships in a way where both characters are inherently flawed and imperfect, and that that shouldn't stop them from chasing their happily ever afters. She writes love in a way where it's something that exists for everyone, in different ways, as a reassurance that no matter where you are, or what you may look like, you can be the most cherished existence to someone else.

And that someone else can be just some guy from Wales who will summon demons from hell just because of a bad hair day, will insist he's cone sold stober when he's clearly not, and will lovingly cure your arthritis. Or it can be a fierce woman who will not hesitate to yeet weed killer in the face of her feelings, likes to cut up suits to teach you a lesson, insists that the root of all her problems is her being born the eldest of three sisters, and can bring things to life with her love. And those are perfectly okay qualities for seeking a happy life.

this is almost certainly a post ive made before but when a character's grief is so strong it fully alters the form of the narrative itself... moby dick being so much longer than strictly necessary because ishmael's grief made him stall for time in the telling of the tragedy... harrow the ninth being in second person because harrow was so grief-stricken that she herself was not capable of making narrative sense of the events of the novel and so someone else had to do it.... do u know what i mean

ok WAIT. SO TRUE

     "That’s what attachment is, isn’t it?“ Ben [Skywalker] began pacing again, and words finally poured from him like water running through a shattered dam. "It’s not loving somebody. It’s not marrying somebody. It’s not having kids. It’s being where, if something goes wrong, there’s nothing left of you. It’s where if she goes away, you start functioning like a droid with a restraining bolt installed. Mom wouldn’t want you to be this way. So why are you?”         (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury | by Aaron Allston) Saw this quote from Ben Skywalker to Luke after Mara’s death on my dash again and was emotionally destroyed all over again, because the conversation is about how Luke has quietly given up on everyone and everything after her loss, how he doesn’t just miss her, but he wants to be with her, where she is.  In death. It illustrates that the struggle against attachment isn’t just a one time thing in your life, you don’t rise above it once and you’re good forever, you have to keep going every single day, you have to hold true to your discipline, that’s the only way to resist the dark side, when you’re a psychic space wizard. And it hurts me all over again because that’s exactly what happens with Obi-Wan after the Jedi genocide and the loss of Anakin.  That Obi-Wan didn’t just love him, but that when something went wrong, there’s nothing left of him!  The only parts of him that aren’t buried in the desert with Anakin’s lightsaber is the part that still feels responsible for watching over Anakin’s child, the part that yearns to be with Anakin and the other Jedi in death.

“Sometimes I wondered… if I should have gone with them.” He’s walking through every day of his life, from his job to his cave and back again, like a droid with a restraining bolt installed.  Like he’s little more than a dead man, because there’s just nothing there beyond loss and pain and hurt. Obi-Wan was destroying himself because he was so attached to Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi that he had to work all over again to let them go.  And of course he does, he rises above it again, but that’s what made the show so beautiful for me, that’s why it worked–Obi-Wan has a lifetime of working on mastering himself and still he stumbles and has to get back up again.  Because that’s how it works!  He’s a Jedi, they never stop learning, getting back up, rising above as much as they can.  Sometimes they fail.  But they get up again.  Even when the weight on their shoulders is so massive it would have crushed many, many other people. And even characters like Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, two of the greatest Jedi who ever were, can stumble again and have to get back up.

I hate when ppl call og thor (thor 1/avengers1) boring !! he wasn’t boring!! he was an alien prince who’d been groomed to be king who spoke in a shakespearan accent and thought u could ride a dog into battle and was a bit cocky and a lil boisterous and a lot dangerous whose moods changed as fast as the weather and loved to party but was still so quick to laugh and smile! he was so genuine and kind & along for the ride! he wasn’t edgy or terribly witty or “cool” and that was ok.

i'm so ready for a ladrien scene where ladybug rescues adrien and he's panicking about marinette give it to me i need it injected into my veins

If this becomes a routine greeting for Adrien and Marinette I’m gonna foam at the mouth if his solution is to eventually just kiss her hand  

Please please please pleasseeee

Rewatching The Clone Wars over a two week period with an eye towards the recurring situations and themes of the political landscape of the GFFA has just really hit me hard in how absolutely fucked everything was, where war is taxing people to their limit and is a horror of never-ending suffering, but not fighting was leaving innocent people to die, to be used as human shields, to be experimented on with bio-chemical warfare, to be taken for slave labor in mines, where pretty much the only times the Republic goes to a planet is when they have been asked for help, the Republic isn’t invading places, they’re going where they’re asked when the Separatists invade, but at the same time you can’t reason with the Separatists, because you’re caught between that they’re droids whose programming won’t allow it or they’re straight up horrific people who enjoy using people as defoliator subjects or are mad the Jedi Order took down their slave empire and have a grudge or they’re Count Dooku who specifically helped engineer the war and will never back down versus that eventually Palpatine makes it illegal to negotiate with the Separatists because it would legitimize them and like a lot of those systems just wanted to leave the Republic, but you can’t divorce that from that their army is committing atrocity after atrocity, especially because the Separatist senators don’t seem to actually be paying attention to what their army is doing, which means the CIS isn’t the better alternative, the Republic is still the only line of defense against the things Dooku and Grievous and Loathsom and Trench and such are doing, but also you can’t remain neutral, that’s turning your back on people who genuinely need help, there are like four separate arcs of the show that say “actually neutrality in the face of evil you have the ability to do something about is bad, you need to help people”, and it didn’t even work, if you tried, because if you were in Palpatine’s crosshairs, there was nothing that was going to stop you from that, both other worlds’ innocent people and your innocent people were going to die.  That’s the thing about the situation engineered here, that there were no good options, every choice cut away pieces of you or let innocent people die, and pretty much the only way out was the galactic public actually standing up, which they refused to do again and again.  "All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea … What kinds of things push people and institutions into this direction?“ –George Lucas, the galaxy was fucked because the general population decided they didn’t want to help each other and the few people that were trying could keep those plates spinning for awhile but they were not enough, there just really wasn’t a way out of this on an individual level or even a few thousand people’s level. 

What really hits it home for me is the Genocide of the Jedi and how the general reaction to that seemed to be a load of… nothing. Because people were afraid? Maybe. Because people didn’t care? Because it was more convenient for them personally not to react? Because they agreed with the murder? Is it any wonder that the Empire began enslaving the Wookies without anyone reacting, and then discriminating against non-humans without anyone lifting a finger? Because again and again, people in the galaxy of Star Wars were only proptecting themselves, and the Jedi, the very representation of helping others, were so harshly persecuted. I think that’s why George Lucas says the Jedi are the most moral group in the galaxy. While there may be so many other interesting cultures in Star Wars, the Jedi are the ones who commit themselves to helping others while respecting their autonomy.

The star wars galaxy was made up of Owens. Nothing inherently wrong with Owens, but they believe non-intervention is going to protect them, they resent those who attempt to help, and then the authoritarian regime burns through their lives. All their inaction only ever creating an illusion of safety, which they never had because nobody is safeguarding their security. Nobody is safeguarding anyone else’s security.

So who opposes the Empire? The victims. The grateful. Those who survived the Empire’s multiple genocides: surviving Jedi, surviving Night Sisters, surviving Lasats, recovered Clones, and even some surviving Mandalorians (those who didn’t care about the profit of working for the Empire.) Then those who were inspired by the Jedi, who knew them and cared for them, and were grateful to them. People like Bail Organa. People like Luke himself, who only really becomes a Jedi by choice (because being a Jedi is sk much about belief and community.)

The Empire thrived in a universe that was more apathetic than caring. The Empire abused and abused until communities hit a breaking point and hit back. The Empire was never powerful- it just wasn’t opposed enough.

Of course, the ideal would have been that the breaking point was never reached. That they had all supported each other, following the example of the Jedi. That nobody would have stood aside as the good people were massacred. That nobody had agreed to close their eyes and forget and pretend.

(Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Why does nobody believe the Jedi exist anymore, after only twenty years? Because so many adults must have sat down with their children and ensured that they believed the Jedi were only a fairytale, because to believe otherwise was dangerous. And then, their children never had the choice to remember and cherish.)

The ideal would have been an universe where no one allowed themselves to forget. A universe where everyone remembered to be kind.

You can fight me on this but Nico's curly hair comes from his mom

Nico canonically has curly hair, since Leo describes Nico's curls sticking up like baby bat wings.

And Hades has greasy straight hair (fight me, his hair IS greasy despite him washing it, the underworld isn't great for your hair, it's very humid and hot so you sweat a lot, hence, greasy hair) so...

Where did Nico get his curls, hm? His mom.

Plus he totally takes after his Mom while Bianca takes after Hades. I don't make the rules.

nico takes after his mum in canon, it wasn't until HoO that he was compared to hades, but in PJO it's said he has maria's eyes and (presumably) her skin tone, too

The boy falling first trope always hits harder