Christian Mystic

Matthew 5:44 🕊️

[christmist]

Call me Misty

I'm a Christian mystic/folk Catholic

Ex atheist, pagan, satanist

Sharing Christian love (including to those marginalized by mainstream Christianity)

The Holy Bible is man's interpretation of man's interpretation of the word of GOD

Looking at scripture through a feminist lens

This is a sideblog so you won't find me in your followers

[hammer-and-rosary]

christian zionists say they want to level Gaza and build the third temple so Jesus can return, but what do they plan to say when they look Him in the eye?

"do you like the temple we built You? we built it on the bones of children. we built it by denying food to the hungry, and medicine to the sick. we killed the healers and the truth tellers, and we killed them for You. that's how much we love You, don't you see?"

but the Lord will not see, for His eyes will be too filled with tears.

[christmist]

The idea that pregnancy pain is our only punishment for the original sin is kinda funny. Adam has to labor in the field but people (anti-christians and christian misogynists alike) love to ignore that part. Everyone has to work hard, whether that be in childbirth, the field, or your career is irrelevant.

[christmist]

My favorite part about Genesis is that the first human is so explicitly intersex and gender neutral. GOD exists above human concepts of gender and sex, but the closest we will get is both male and female. I take such an issue with the rib story because it doesn't align with the context or other translations of the word.

[christmist]

Returning to GOD is such a complex experience. The closest way I can describe it is if the church is your father and GOD is your mother. The church raised you and told you that you are damned, that GOD hates you. Then you grow up and you leave the church. But now you're missing your parents so you look for them in something else. You turn to atheism or satanism or paganism. They treat you well, but it's never enough. You never feel fully welcomed, fully loved. You don't belong with them. Eventually you try to find your mother. You stalk her facebook page, still afraid to reach out. What if your father was right? What if she truly hates you? But you see how she interacts with the children she had later in life. You see her kindness to everyone. You decide to reach out. You're still scared, but you need to talk to her at least once. It turns out, she's kinder than you could have imagined. She welcomes you into her home, her arms, her bosom. You apologize for not reaching out sooner, she understands. She forgives you. She will always forgive you. She loves you unconditionally and wants the best for you. You're home.

[christmist]

“God made trans people for the same reason they made wheat but not bread, and grapes but not wine. So that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

-Julian Jarboe

[unknown-k4dath]

One Sunday, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, gave a sermon as follows:

"Last night a woman with a child came to this church. She was in trousers and with no headscarf. Someone scolded her. She left. I do not know who did that, but I am commanding that person to pray for her and her child to the end of his days to God for their salvation.

Because of you she may never go to church again'.

He turned around, head down, and entered the Altar. That was the entire sermon.

[hail-holy-queen]

A child who is thankful that God made cats and flowers and prays at night for sweet dreams is so much more holy than I ever will be. A child who prays for a sunny day to play with their friends is the holiness we all yearn for.

May we all be childlike in our faith.

[religiousextremist]

Even if you are not what you should be, you should not despair.

It is bad enough that you have sinned; why in addition do you wrong God by regarding him in your ignorance as powerless?

Is he, who for your sake created the great universe that you behold, incapable of saving your soul?

And if you say that this fact, as well as his incarnation, only makes your condemnation worse, then repent; and he will receive your repentance, as he accepted that of the prodigal son (Luke 15:20) and the prostitute (Luke 7:37-50).

But if repentance is too much for you, and you sin out of habit even when you do not want to, show humility like the publican (Luke 18:13): this is enough to ensure your salvation.

For he who sins without repenting, yet does not despair, must of necessity regard himself as the lowest of creatures, and will not dare to judge or censure anyone.

Rather, he will marvel at God's compassion.

— from A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, St. Peter of Damascus; "That We Should Not Despair Even If We Sin Many Times"

[allegraforchrist]

Christian orthodox priests/monks holding cats <3

[animentality]

[prokopetz]

Since we're getting into "did you know that Santa's eight tiny reindeer are a reference to the eight legs of Odin's steed?" season once again, remember: while there are some elements of Christmas (or Hallowe'en, or Easter, or...) observations that are probably pre-Christian in origin, before one believes any of that this-is-really-100%-just-a-Pagan-holiday-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off stuff, one must consider all of the following possibilities:

Our earliest known records of the cited pre-Christian practices were written down by some random Christian monk centuries after the fact, and we genuinely have no idea how accurate this account is, to what extent the apparent similarities with Christian practice are due to the author deliberately or unwittingly putting a Christian spin on it, or indeed, whether they were just making shit up.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Christian writers who were bent for prefiguration theology (i.e., the idea that the Bible echoes backwards in time and pre-Christian religious practices were unwittingly imitating future Christian practices).

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Protestant writers who believe that all Pagan deities are Satan in disguise, so they think that if they can prove that Catholic practices are secretly Pagan in origin, that proves that Catholics are secretly Satanists.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by overzealous mythographers trying to prove that all mythology and religion throughout all of human history is secretly a single unified monomyth; if it's pre-Victorian, expect shades of prefiguration theology, while if it's post-Victorian, expect a lot of stuff about the Collective Unconscious.

A bunch of 19th Century proto-Fascists were trying to construct a pre-Jewish cultural identity (and considered Christianity to be tainted by association), but didn't want to give up any of the fun rituals, so they made some shit up about how it was still okay to do Christmas because something something Odin, or whatever.

A bunch of early 20th Century Pagan reconstructionists filled in the gaps in their understanding of pre-Christian ritual with culturally Christian assumptions, then turned around and pointed at their own accidentally Christianised reconstructions as evidence that Christian practices are derived from them.

A bunch of late 20th Century self-help manual authors tried to break into the occult bookstore market by uncritically repeating any or all of the above.

Someone on the Internet just made it up.

[thehairyclaire]

Friendly reminder that you are allowed to pray for your enemies and you SHOULD pray for your enemies!! It will change your heart like you wouldn't believe. Highly recommend

[traumacatholic]

"Pope Francis said during an interview one time that he fell asleep during prayer. The interviewer asked him whether that was allowed, and he said that fathers always love it when their children fall asleep in their arms. That always stuck with me. Rest in peace." [x]

[sacredlitany]

[quackysprouts]

guys jesus is trending on twitter

jesus and the samaritan woman at the well

[infamousbrad]

I warned you.

About 15 years ago, I had a minor moment of Internet fame when I wrote a lengthy essay series on LiveJournal called "Christians in the Hand of an Angry God." In it, I argued that right-wing evangelical "Christianity" was literally Satanic by scriptural standards, was literally the cult of anti-Christ that Jesus prophesied in Matthew 25:31-46, that they were literally worshiping a made-up guy with the same name to justify cruelty, just like Jesus predicted they would the week before the crucifixion.

And at least half of the people who read it and praised it called it excellent satire. They saw my point, thought I was onto something, but couldn't take seriously that I literally meant what I literally said.

"Do not commit the sin of empathy."

Jesus' prophesy that these people were coming was not especially miraculous, in hindsight. No philosophy or theological movement becomes a large organized church, let alone a majority faith of a nation, without needing rich people's money, and/or government funding, to pay for it all.

And rich people in general, and right-wing governments in general, get to be the way they are by believing that the poor and the down-trodden can never be shown anything but cruelty, should never be rewarded, or else they'll lose all motivation to obey, to work hard, to be good. (By contrast, they believe that the same thing would happen to rich, powerful, popular people if they were ever punished in any way, if they were ever anything but rewarded.)

And rich people and governments are not going to subsidize your church foundation funds, your church repair funds, et cetera if you tell them that they're evil. But someone definitely will come along and offer to take that money. The people who take that money and conform won't even all be lying psychopaths; if you truly believe that your organization matters, is doing irreplaceable good in the world, you'll sacrifice any principle of your faith to keep the bills paid, you'll look away from or excuse any sin. It's that or see it all shrink and crumble into irrelevance.

I've come to the conclusion that it may not actually be possible to be a good person while practicing the majority faith of the land you live in. Or, if it is possible, well, like the man said, "straight is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it."

The Episcopal Church has its own legacy of sin, they've long overlooked a laundry list of crimes to pay their own bills, so don't rush to congratulate a mainline bishop for preaching mainline Christianity or take too much pleasure from Trump and his fascist followers being surprised that that happened. But do remember this:

From the mid-1970s to the present, right-wing billionaires have poured a LOT of money into church expansion and maintenance conditional on them distorting the Bible's teachings to make it appear that Jesus was pro-fascist. "To deceive, if it were possible, the very elect." So when honest theologians tell you that this is literally anti-Christ, literally checks every box in the Bible's description of the future cult of anti-Christ, you need to hear us.

The modern book and movie image of "the Antichrist" was a well-funded propaganda campaign to distract you from the plain language of the scriptures. The biblical anti-Christ is not some socialist liberal peacenik. The biblical anti-Christ is everyone who tells you that Jesus wants you to be cruel to "the least of these, my brethren" so that they'll straighten up and fly right.