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I can't speak for the Lourdes water, but it is a mighty thing that the great negative event of a premature and sudden death is now also the site of great positive events, such as your own healing. Give thanks to that person and post honorably in their name.
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Jan 30, 2021 08:14
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What does miracle mean? It doesn’t have to mean there was some supernatural event. In a literal sense it’s that which astonishes or that which causes wonder. The inexplicable doesn’t have to make us feel happy or grateful even. When I was at the academy, after we got recognized as plebs they have the parents weekend and they got to come visit us in Great Neck, they watch a few ceremonies, then they spend the weekend in NYC. Basically everyone in my class’ parents were flying back from NYC to their homes on 9/10 or 9/11 in 2001. It’s hosed up but I still am in wonder about it and I am astonished by it. I don’t think that state is one where one has to be happy or that everything that happened was good.
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Jan 30, 2021 08:16
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so i have a weirdly personal question. can something be a miracle if someone had to suffer/die for it to happen. so like 12 or so years ago, i was on dialysis for like 3 years because my one kidney had decided to eat poo poo and stop working. basicaly the whole experience was awful and hellish and one of my moms catholic friends gave us some Lourdes water because gently caress it. my mom does it to me and a couple weeks later, i get a kidney, a perfect matched one genetically or some poo poo. its been working for 13 or so years now and shows no signs of stopping and all my religious friends and relatives say its a miracle i feel like i should be happy and i am but someone died so i could have that kidney ai know they chose to give up their organs after death and it was there time and such. but it feels hosed up to call it a miracle and such. i will never know who that person was and i always feel bad thinking about how it could have been some mother or some father and that my "miracle" was the worst day in someone's life. i guess i still feel weirdly guilty about it. Well, people die every day regardless. It's not like someone died specifically on God's orders to give you a kidney. I don't know that I would call it a miracle, as nothing supernatural happened. It was a fortunate chain of events that started with someone choosing to donate their organs when they died. That could involve the Holy Spirit inspiring them. That person's kidney was going to go somewhere, and it happened to be you. God does not cause bad things to happen. He finds a way to make good things happen as a result of them. You were blessed. Be grateful for the gift. You need feel no guilt over it.
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Jan 30, 2021 17:28
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One thing to consider is that everyone who donates an organ does so willingly, so at some point the original owner of your kidney must have reflected, however fleeting it may have been, that their eventual death would be of benefit to someone else. So it's less that you're selfishly benefitting from someone's death than that you received a gift, and miracle or no, that's something to be celebrated, not to feel guilty about.
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Jan 30, 2021 18:16
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docbeard posted:One thing to consider is that everyone who donates an organ does so willingly, so at some point the original owner of your kidney must have reflected, however fleeting it may have been, that their eventual death would be of benefit to someone else. I'm an organ donor and my exact words to my wife, my parents, and anyone else who might conceivably be making that kind of decision for me are "take everything you can, I want to be parted out like a stolen new model Civic in a chop shop. Throw my rear end skin or whatever else they can't use in a cheap box, burn that, and do whatever makes you happy with the ashes." Believe me, I like being alive. If I have it my way I'll end up being cremated with all my organs because no one will want my wrinkly 100 year old kidneys. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow? At the very least I want the maximum good to come from my early death, so pretend I'm a buffalo and use every damned part of me.
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Jan 30, 2021 18:36
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm an organ donor and my exact words to my wife, my parents, and anyone else who might conceivably be making that kind of decision for me are "take everything you can, I want to be parted out like a stolen new model Civic in a chop shop. Throw my rear end skin or whatever else they can't use in a cheap box, burn that, and do whatever makes you happy with the ashes."  I just hope I'm taking good enough care of myself to make my organs worth donating. Probably everything but my liver.
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Jan 30, 2021 21:29
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Antivehicular posted:Apologies if this is straying too far off-topic, but can anyone recommend any good books on the topic of German immigration to the US, particularly the Upper Midwest? My mother's family is German Catholics in Minnesota (and my grandfather spoke German as his first/home language, which I only learned a few years ago). I'm going to ask my mom about what family history she knows and if anyone on that side has done any genealogical work, but a general book on the history of those immigrants would be really interesting. It isn't a monolithic group, a lot of different German and German-speaking people immigrated to the upper midwest over the years. For your mom's family it will depend on where they settled and when if you want to get real specific about it. That said, two areas of Minnesota that I know have strong German Catholic heritage are Saint Paul and Saint Cloud.
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Jan 31, 2021 03:41
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ThePopeOfFun posted:We DESPERATELY want to fit a narrative on events that happen. Miracles, God's will, blessing or curse, etc. This can order the world from a perspective, but completely falls apart in these circumstances. And we want to inflict our narratives on others. Did God kill someone to provide you a kidney? This is the silliness that crops up. The fact is we do not know WHY you received a kidney, only THAT it happened. i only call it a miracle because so many around me have, i know my mother thinks that but you know, shes my mom. Deteriorata posted:Well, people die every day regardless. It's not like someone died specifically on God's orders to give you a kidney. thanks.
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Jan 31, 2021 04:35
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Dapper_Swindler posted:i only call it a miracle because so many around me have, i know my mother thinks that but you know, shes my mom. My apologies, I was meaning to talk about those around you.
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Jan 31, 2021 04:51
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What are some 21st century miracles?
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Jan 31, 2021 05:43
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I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads.
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Jan 31, 2021 19:41
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You're not alive because the donor died, you're alive because an incredible chain of communication and transportation networks, technology, and medical skills all born from the blessings of mankind's inquisitiveness and compassion allowed good to be salvaged from that death.
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Jan 31, 2021 20:31
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About miracles in general: I have experienced things in my life that I classify as miracles. I don't think there's usually any real use in telling about them to others though. I have done so occasionally, but those events are mostly meaningful to me or a very limited group of people. They also have perfectly plausible "natural" explanations, which actually is my entire point. Miracle is not necessarily the same as supernatural. Besides: It is way more impressive to cure a disease through centuries of scientific development than divine intervention. It is way cooler to topple a mountain through billions of years of erosion than by an unexplainable invisible force. It is way more impressive to time a cosmic event to coincide with the birth of your son than to create a temporary star from nothing. I already belive in the resurrection and that's awesome. Now, what if that entire thing was, after the fact, completely explainable by science after all? Wow. Fake edit: I really like Miracles by Newsboys, too. It is a good take on which miracles really matter.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:54
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Valiantman posted:Fake edit: I really like Miracles by Newsboys, too. It is a good take on which miracles really matter.
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Jan 31, 2021 23:37
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BattyKiara posted:I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads. Anything in particular we should pray for, for you?
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Jan 31, 2021 23:55
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BattyKiara posted:I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads. God bless you and know that God is with you. I have a stupid prayer request. I have a couple of creative projects I’m trying to do and I get stuck in a feedback loop of the highs and lows of my bipolar so I end up not doing anything at all. I think this would be good for my health and overall well-being so I appreciate your prayers.
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Feb 1, 2021 01:35
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Dapper_Swindler posted:so i have a weirdly personal question. can something be a miracle if someone had to suffer/die for it to happen. so like 12 or so years ago, i was on dialysis for like 3 years because my one kidney had decided to eat poo poo and stop working. basicaly the whole experience was awful and hellish and one of my moms catholic friends gave us some Lourdes water because gently caress it. my mom does it to me and a couple weeks later, i get a kidney, a perfect matched one genetically or some poo poo. its been working for 13 or so years now and shows no signs of stopping and all my religious friends and relatives say its a miracle i feel like i should be happy and i am but someone died so i could have that kidney ai know they chose to give up their organs after death and it was there time and such. but it feels hosed up to call it a miracle and such. i will never know who that person was and i always feel bad thinking about how it could have been some mother or some father and that my "miracle" was the worst day in someone's life. i guess i still feel weirdly guilty about it. Nah you should not feel guilty about it at all. This is what hermeticists would call the outcome of ritual (if it had been performed), Christians and others will call it an answer to prayer, atheists will call it the outcome of a good donor program. Whatever explanation that best brings meaning to your life is "best". Only one might have evidence that could be gathered to "prove" it but who gives a poo poo. You have a new lease on life, enjoy your time! But also honor those that live on in you too, if that helps you.
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Feb 1, 2021 03:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm an organ donor and my exact words to my wife, my parents, and anyone else who might conceivably be making that kind of decision for me are "take everything you can, I want to be parted out like a stolen new model Civic in a chop shop. Throw my rear end skin or whatever else they can't use in a cheap box, burn that, and do whatever makes you happy with the ashes." Same actually, except I want my bones on some dusty shelf to torment undergraduates in perpetuity
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Feb 1, 2021 03:49
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BattyKiara posted:I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads. 
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Feb 1, 2021 03:50
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White Coke posted:What are some 21st century miracles? have you not seen my posts?? 
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Feb 1, 2021 04:09
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Thirteen Orphans posted:God bless you and know that God is with you. My father has bipolar disorder so I know second hand how difficult it can be. Do you mind sharing what you're working on? Lutha Mahtin posted:have you not seen my posts?? Can't say that I have.
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Feb 1, 2021 04:21
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White Coke posted:Can't say that I have.
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Feb 1, 2021 04:40
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BattyKiara posted:I'm recovering from having had a total nervous breakdown. Happy to see you are all still posting. I love to read here, but scared of posting in virtually all threads. Hello mate.  Today I finished purging my Animal Crossing island of all traces of Christmas and there are ice pillars everywhere in varying colours. This passes for an achievement, especially for a Sunday.
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Feb 1, 2021 05:14
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Edit: never mind
Thirteen Orphans fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Dec 2, 2021 |
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Feb 1, 2021 05:28
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Thirteen Orphans posted:The first project is about making a martial art/martial pedagogy that marries the teachings of my late teacher and father Grandmaster Thirteen Orphan’s Dad 8th dahn Hapkido with the knowledge I’ve gained through my studies in the Chinese so-called “internal” martial arts, particularly Taijiquan and Baguazhang. Back in high school I did my black belt test for Hapkido under Grandmaster J. Park. Way back when I first started Taekwondo he wrote something on my Dobok in Korean that he told me was my name that was also apparently a joke that no one would ever tell me. Don’t meet a lot of people involved in Hapkido.
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Feb 1, 2021 07:18
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Back in high school I did my black belt test for Hapkido under Grandmaster J. Park. Way back when I first started Taekwondo he wrote something on my Dobok in Korean that he told me was my name that was also apparently a joke that no one would ever tell me. Hello, fellow Hapkido practitioner!
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Feb 1, 2021 07:30
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Hi all. Long time lurker, love this thread. I grew up orthodox (Russian), more culturally than anything else, stopped being religious as a teen but now seriously examining things. Views right now are some wishy washy weak Unitarian nonsense, but I'm re-examining Christianity. Came to it mostly through literature and philosophy, mostly - old Russians, Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Walker Percy. I've massively appreciate this thread, and especially find interesting the posts from conservative points of view (theologically grounded or otherwise). I live in a big Western city that's not in America, so it's not something I much encounter. I've found it it valuable to read good discussion with a diversity of opinion, especially opinion I don't hear much in my milieu (or in the SA zeigeist outside of this thread). No shade on my milieu, lots of good things about it. Bar Ran Dun posted:Personally I’ve never had a spiritual experience. I am a Christian for the reason Justin the Martyr gave: "This is the only philosophy which I have found certain and adequate." Thinking about this a lot lately. I've heard a couple of writers I like say the chief difference they've found between a Christian and unbeliever mindset (to paint a broad brush) is feeling of "at home"/"in correct place" in the world, as opposed to being a chip blown in by a cosmic wind. But I wonder how Christianity influences a Christian's external action, as opposed to internal thought and feeling, especially when this Christianity comes from a philosophical place. When is it loving your neighbour, when is it coming with a sword, what are striking differences between the secular humanist mindset.
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Feb 2, 2021 02:26
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Request for prayers, having a minor surgery tomorrow to fix an issue I've had for the past year.
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Feb 2, 2021 02:36
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Request for prayers, having a minor surgery tomorrow to fix an issue I've had for the past year. St. Raphael the Archangel, patron of healing, pray for Crazy Joe Wilson.
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Feb 2, 2021 02:40
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Morning Bell posted:Hi all. Long time lurker, love this thread. I grew up orthodox (Russian), more culturally than anything else, stopped being religious as a teen but now seriously examining things. Views right now are some wishy washy weak Unitarian nonsense, but I'm re-examining Christianity. Came to it mostly through literature and philosophy, mostly - old Russians, Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Walker Percy. Any particular works you'd care to recommend? I'm trying to read more theology. Morning Bell posted:I've massively appreciate this thread, and especially find interesting the posts from conservative points of view (theologically grounded or otherwise). I live in a big Western city that's not in America, so it's not something I much encounter. I've found it it valuable to read good discussion with a diversity of opinion, especially opinion I don't hear much in my milieu (or in the SA zeigeist outside of this thread). No shade on my milieu, lots of good things about it. "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own milieu--such a person cannot be my disciple."
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Feb 2, 2021 03:21
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Morning Bell posted:. When is it loving your neighbour, when is it coming with a sword, what are striking differences between the secular humanist mindset. I wouldn’t cast in in opposition to a secular humanist mindset. Paul Tillich has an idea called the “Method of Correlation”. But to talk about that I need to talk about Barth first. If one takes a philosophy of religion course they often end with Friedrich Schleiermacher and the emergence of liberal theology and Christian modernism. Well Barth’s predecessors and professors were in a continuation of that line of thought. But WWI happens and these theologians, well they made arguments not particularly in line with the example of Jesus, arguments that were supportive of the horrors of that war. It’s in that context that Barth’s commentary of Paul’s Epistle is written. The most famous metaphor for what Barth does with that work, “like a bombshell on the theologians' playground”. Basically Barth blows apart the intertwining of philosophy and theology that got rolling in the German Enlightenment with Kant, Hegel, etc. Sometimes this gets called Barth’s “No”. It’s where dialectic neo-orthodox theology gets rolling and it breaks that intertwining of philosophy and theology. Tillich is a response to what Barth sets in motion. His not particularly gracious characterization of Barth’s evangelism is that the Gospel in it is “thrown like a stone (at the head)”. Dude ends a lecture series on the history of Christian thought given at Harvard basically with: and this (the whole preceding history of Christian thought that I’ve been teaching) is why Barth is wrong. Anyway Tillich in responding to Barth is basically saying, we live in this time and place and we have this set of question about our existence arising, in his time it was self critical radical humanism, existentialism. When we talk about God we should think about these questions from our time, from philosophy. Then we use our answer, the event of Jesus as Christ to answer the questions. That’s correlation in a nutshell. It’s not the synthesis of philosophy/ theology that liberal theology had that led to Barth’s no. But it’s not having them entirely separated and unrelated to each other. That’s the way I would think to try to answer and wrestle with those types of questions.
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Feb 2, 2021 03:42
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White Coke posted:Any particular works you'd care to recommend? I'm trying to read more theology. Walker Percy's Lost in Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book was a fun easy delight, though it's not theology at all, but a self-help-book parody, easy read. "Philosophical satire by a Catholic" is how it'd put it. Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard for actual theology! It Kierergaards through Abraham and Isaac, I'm still thinking about it. If you're into literature, one book I found super interesting - don't think I've heard this writer mentioned in this thread - is Jessica Hooten-Wilson's Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky. It goes over Brothers Karamazov, Wise Blood, and The Violent Bear It Away in a comparative lit sense from a Christian point-of-view. When I read it I'd not read any explicitly Christian comparative lit stuff like that and it shook my roof, covered my front yard in tiles, destroyed my chimney. In a positive way, the way books from unencountered perspectives can do — "this author believes the Devil is real" is not something I had much encountered in the non-fiction I read. Wouldn't tackle it without having read Karamazov and at least one of O'Connor's novels, though. Bar Ran Dun posted:words This is cool to chew on thank you. I read Barth's Epistle to Romans a long time ago though can't say I got it at the time; Tllich's high on the To Read.
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Feb 2, 2021 04:25
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Thirteen Orphans posted:St. Raphael the Archangel, patron of healing, pray for Crazy Joe Wilson. Thanks everyone, home and on the mend.
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Feb 3, 2021 14:27
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What is double predestination? And can people speak to what predestination actually is instead of just “rich people will go to heaven because God makes them rich because he likes them”?
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Feb 3, 2021 23:07
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Can I just say dealing with other Christians can be some extremely tedious poo poo sometimes? It's annoying trying to have an adult discussion and people feel the need to drop in with some passive-aggressive poo poo that amounts to 'Pray until you agree with me' or some infantilizing explanation of basic concepts that doesn't have much to do with what you're actually talking about.
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Feb 3, 2021 23:22
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White Coke posted:What is double predestination? And can people speak to what predestination actually is instead of just “rich people will go to heaven because God makes them rich because he likes them”? Predestination is basically the idea that since God knows everything that will happen, He also knows whether or not you will go to Heaven or Hell before you were even born (as this is a thing that can be known, and definitionally God knows everything). Double predestination is I believe the specific idea that God affirmatively sends you to Hell, as opposed to "allows it to happen, and could prevent it, but has opted not to for various reasons." (The various reasons are the subject of other theological debates.) I do not think the concept itself rests on the economic status of the saved person. I presume the theory is that if God has chosen you to go to Heaven, he likes you, and will therefore do nice things for you, as you are his little pogchamp, as opposed to that guy over there, who is damned to Hell and can only seek surcease at the dog temple. I do not believe that this is an orthodox theological view, although I imagine it is preached by many grifters.
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Feb 3, 2021 23:24
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I am not a Calvinist so I am probably messing some parts of this up but: Predestination is the idea that God would have no reason to send Jesus to suffer and die on the cross if it ends up that no human ever uses this act to gain salvation. So if we say that it's theoretically possible that all humans could end up rejecting the offer of salvation, and so then they all go to Hell, we are saying that God is both a) cruel, b/c the salvation God designed didn't make sense to people, or was too hard to achieve, etc, as well as b) kind of a dingus for creating this dud of a salvation package. And if you leave the door open for the idea that God is both cruel and and dingus, you're kind of failing to believe "God is love" and "God is all powerful" which uh are pretty core bits of Christianity. So it logically follows then that at least some people are going to use this salvation thing that God created, and thus we can say for sure that some people are going to get into heaven. Double Predestination is the idea that God is not only smart enough to know that some people will take advantage of this salvation thing, but that God is in fact so smart that God can know exactly which people will end up accepting salvation through Jesus and which will not. This has the unfortunate implication that God already knows the ultimate destination of where your soul will end up, perhaps even before you were born. In my opinion double predestination is kind of a logical trap because it assumes that we humans can understand how the mechanics of salvation and heaven and all that actually works, and we can make sense of it using whatever human rhetoric and logic we have currently developed/discovered up to this point time.
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Feb 3, 2021 23:50
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Depending on just how hardcore the Calvinist is, it's not so much "God knows who will be saved" as "God affirmatively wills that Bob Smith will be saved. Bob has no choice in the matter." Double predestination is similar, except replace "saved" with "damned".
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Feb 4, 2021 05:33
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Captain von Trapp posted:Depending on just how hardcore the Calvinist is, it's not so much "God knows who will be saved" as "God affirmatively wills that Bob Smith will be saved. Bob has no choice in the matter." Double predestination is similar, except replace "saved" with "damned". This is closest to how I was taught it in college.
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Feb 4, 2021 05:50
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Captain von Trapp posted:Depending on just how hardcore the Calvinist is, it's not so much "God knows who will be saved" as "God affirmatively wills that Bob Smith will be saved. Bob has no choice in the matter." Double predestination is similar, except replace "saved" with "damned". This is of course the natural implication of an omniscient God.
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Feb 4, 2021 22:55
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