The Rants of a Wise Old Llama Enby

A queer minister who hosts a leftist Bible study podcast @thewordinblackandred. They/them.

[wiseoldllamaenby]

I don't know how to Tumblr, so please excuse me as I try to do a thing.

My name is Micah, and I am a queer minister for folks left on the outside. I have an alternative church for folks like that, particularly queer folks, leftists, and people who don't believe Exactly The Right Things™ for other spaces. I like to joke that we're called the Llama Pack because the sheepfold wouldn't have us. We do a lot of deconstruction of harmful stuff and work to reconstruct a faith that helps us to love others better. The Llama Pack doesn't really have an agenda, but I do hope that people know they are Loved. Where I *do* have an agenda is the leftist Bible Study podcast I host, The Word in Black and Red. The Bible is implicitly read from a capitalist perspective in most places you'll hear about it, but we purposefully read the Bible from an anticapitalist perspective to elucidate the fact that "justice is what Love looks like in public." I'm using this platform as an excuse to write a little more poetry, look at ttrpg stuff, and occasionally go on a rant or two. If any of that sounds good to you, I hope you'll join me!

[rimonoroni2]

the christian veneration of the lamb has always been terrifying to me in ways i can’t explain

[rimonoroni2]

here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!

[wiseoldllamaenby]

A friend of mine likes to say that witchcraft is just another person's religion. That is to say, if you take a central metaphor out of its context, it's going to look weird.

This framing of the metaphor implies that the lamb is just a lamb, which results in the sacrifice of the weak for the good of the strong. And, to be fair, there is a tradition within Christianity that takes this image and teaches people made weak by our society that they need to shut up and take it for the good of those on the top.

But that understanding of the metaphor is missing the central theological claim: The lamb is not worthy of praise because it is weak. The lamb is worthy of praise because it has given up all the power in the universe to come as simply one of us. And not just one of us, but the quintessential human, the human so completely human that in dying, he took on all of us that is separated from God by death and brought us back to God.

The lamb isn't suffering for suffering's sake. The lamb is God taking on the kind of body that is vulnerable, that is breakable, that is weak despite the fact that God is infinitely powerful and could have done anything. The lamb is worthy of praise because God knew that loving us in this way would result in the death of God. Yet God loves us enough to do it.

And one area of misunderstanding is that Christianity holds onto the idea of impassivity. People misunderstand impassivity as meaning that God cannot feel anything. Impassivity instead means that God cannot be caused to feel anything involuntarily. You and I can't throw rocks at God or call God names that will hurt God. Yet God chose to feel pain.

And, I think, creating the world was an act of God choosing to feel pain. Like any mother, God gave up of God's self so we could grow. God gave of God's self by limiting God's self back so God would not overwhelm us. God gave of God's self by creating something separate from God's self, something that had never before existed in reality. And when God made us, God gave of God's self by being love itself, which means crying when we cry and dancing when we dance and feeling all of the complex emotions of humanity with us in every moment.

Our existence causes God's suffering.

Yet God loves us enough to suffer for and with us.

And that's why we venerate the lamb that was slain and, more importantly, came back to show us what unification with God will look like.

[guerrillatech]

[depsidase]

[redbannerbutch]

Fascists use your status as privileged in these categories to blind you to the fact that class wise you are disenfranchised.

The elite want you to see any change to the status quo as negative when thats so far from the truth. The only group that losses from a change to the status quo are the elites!

Every disenfranchised group fighting for rights is fighting for you as well. Progressive movements are natural allies of the working class.

[gayleviticus]

this meme is a holy icon to me

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

ID: Meme edited with Christ's head at the top, and text reading: "Born to save / World is a gift / save em all 33 AD / I am God-man / 410,757,864,530 redeemed souls"

[jesusisgodintheflesh]

[wiseoldllamaenby]

Well, no.

It really annoys me that people will quote Romans 3:23 without having ever seen to have read Romans 3:24.

23 All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, 24 but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.

- Romans 3:23-24, CEB.

Beverly Roberta Geventa wrote an excellent commentary entitled, When in Romans, which highlights that the concept in Paul's theology in this letter that sin and death are not just facts of things that occur, but in fact powers at work in the world. They might better be identified as characters in the narrative he's telling, not merely sin and death, but rather Sin and Death.

So Paul is here building this case, illustrating that the Law of the Old Testament highlights that we are all subject to Sin. It's like Sin has kidnapped all of us and is holding us ransom. But Jesus pays that ransom to free us by dying himself. He surrenders himself to Sin's buddy Death, and in so doing, pays the cost to free us from the kidnapping we're experiencing. The Christian religion is that those of us who believe that Jesus has freed us from this situation get to experience that freedom through loving others now. That's salvation: the freedom to live into who God is, Love.

But, you say, what about those people who aren't Christian but also experience Divine Love? Well, this other poster doesn't have a good answer. They can say that it's false love, but I've never really experienced the love of that kind of Christian to be better than the kind of atheist they claim doesn't really know how to love. And that's because the actual teaching of Paul in the letter to the Romans reveals that Christ's death didn't just save those who believe! Yes, it saves those of us who believe in this life, and helps us see how we can live a more loving life by Christ's example and the story of God's people. But Christ's death wouldn't actually defeat Sin and Death if they got to keep most of their kidnapped victims. No, Paul teaches that

23 All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, 24 but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.

It's a lot less about faith in Jesus than what the Greek preposition, most scholars now agree, really meant: the faith of Jesus. That's what saves us.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[belugalord]

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly type military strategy

[jewfrogs]

the change from AD to CE feels really emblematic of how surface-level and meaningless the supposed secularization of the western world is

[jewfrogs]

Common Era is definitely preferable over Anno Domini, if only because christ is no lord of mine, but it’s only less christianocentric in that it doesn’t overtly make reference to christ in its title. the benchmark is still the same. you’re still measuring when the common era began using the (supposed) birth of christ, separating history into “the period before jesus” and “the period after jesus”. this conception of history is no less defined by christianity than it was before, except that now it’s easier to ignore because you’ve draped it in a “secular”, “modern” veneer and done nothing to actually unpack the ways in which western society intrinsically centers christianity.

[iamemeraldfox]

Okay now I need a point in history that could be a benchmark to start counting the years from, and would be a common point for most of the world

What year would it be today?

[sarah-ankh]

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time.

The system by which every computer in existence now keeps count of the passing seconds.

And I mean that literally. To a computer system "now" is a number that represents the total number ov seconds that have passed since midnight on the 1st of January, 1960.

1960/01/01 00:00:01 is literally the beginning of time as far as a computer is concerned.

This would be the year 66UTC

[telewrenevision]

I like this idea but if we changed it now then next year would be the year 67 which would make a lot of people angry

[wiseoldllamaenby]

Get everyone on board by starting in 2029. It'd be nice.

[radiofreederry]

Cool

[am-josie]

Uhm,, sorry sweatie, but we have no principles and are glad to abandon your human rights for a handful of votes that we're not gonna get anyway bc we don't believe in offering anything to anyone either 😍🥰😘

[quasi-normalcy]

It seems like if you’re concerned about literal fascism, mass demonization and rollback of the human rights of unpopular subaltern groups is something that should the fucking well concern you.

[regicide1997]

first they came for the trans people, but I did not speak up, because I was too concerned with the abstract concept of opposing fascism to actually do anything

[regicide1997]

[whatevergreen]

"Israel is dropping white phosphorus bombs on civilian areas in the village of Arnoun, Nabatieh, South Lebanon.

These are internationally banned munitions — and Israel is unleashing them against civilians."

@sahouraxo May 30 2026

[cumdumpstiel]

homeless people are part of your community!!!!! get with it!!!!!!!!!!!!! they’re not outside interlopers they’re not invaders they’re not vermin. homeless people = people deprived of homes, they are Victims and you should be angry on their behalf because people are being deprived of shelter in Your Community

[socialmaya]

[jurakan]

[theconcealedweapon]

[maarvarq]

Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.

[theconcealedweapon]

Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.

[tiny-space-whale]

No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.

[anarchistmemedistro]

New Study Once Again Shows Trans Women Have No Physical Advantage Over Cis Athletes

Researchers analyzed data from almost 3,000 trans women.

Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Objective To compare body composition and physical fitness between transgender and cisgender individuals. Design Systematic review with met

[bobdylanyaoi]

“Subverting” Catholic art? Oh, okay. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You log onto the internet and you post about how “Wound of Christ” from Psalter and Prayer Book of Bonne de Luxembourg, attributed to Jean le Noir, c.1349, for instance, looks like a vulva because you're trying to tell the world that you enjoy Catholic art and imagery in an alternative, queer, risqué way that challenges Christian beliefs. But what you don't know is that that stigma isn’t just a vulva. It's not just a mandorla. It's not just yonic. It's actually intentionally erotic. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that around 1297, Saint Angela of Foligno experienced a vision of Christ himself, who called her to put her mouth to the wound in his side and lick the freshly flowing blood. And then I think it was Saint Catherine of Siena who drank blood and a clear liquid from the wound before receiving a ring made from Christ’s foreskin? And then graphically erotic encounters with the side wound of Christ quickly showed up in the writings of eight different mystics. And then the yonic interpretation of the stigmata filtered down through the illuminated manuscripts and then trickled on down into some pseudo-intellectual corner of the internet…where you, no doubt, fished it out of some Pinterest board. However, that interpretation represents hundreds of years and countless visions of religious ecstasy. And it's sort of comical how you think that you've come up with an idea that exempts you from Christian theology when, in fact…you're posting an image that was sexualized for you by the very Medieval saints you think you’re so different than…from “subverted” Catholic art.

[bowtiepastabitch]

@transingtheeucharist

[transingtheeucharist]

literally how i sound explaining eroticized theology to people

[anarchistmemedistro]