Saying Something Is A Metaphor And Then Proceeding To Ignore What Was Meant By It Is Still Disagreeing

Saying something is a metaphor and then proceeding to ignore what was meant by it is still disagreeing with it!

If I say 'don't worry that 30kph sign is a metaphor' and then proceed to gun it through a residential area, I have still ignored the meaning of the sign!

Saying 'oh Jesus' sinlessness is a metaphor' 'the resurrection is a metaphor' 'the final judgement is a metaphor', and proceeding to live in sin/unrepentance still means you're ignoring the teachings of the Christian faith!

If you're gonna be Christian, actually believe the Christian faith. Heresy packaged as textual criticism is still heresy.

On Sanity

Chesterton has already pointed this out, but I was struck anew today after talking with a robin and feeling wind in my hair, that it was the irrational, not the rational, that makes us sane.

To love, to befriend, to laugh, to think philosophically, to write, to play, to dream. Poetry, music, dancing, nature. As I watched the sunset and whistled, feeling more sane than I ever had in my weeks of studying for exams, I remembered it is the neglect of these that leads to madness. For it is not the dancers and florists who go mad, but mathematicians and chess grandmasters.

Aquinas says that the nature of a human is to be a rational animal. He said that, of course, to distinguish us from animals. Unlike them we have the power to reason, and it is a terrible power and beautiful responsibility. But even Aquinas from his ivory tower doesn't dare eliminate the animal inside us.

There is something deep in the bones of our nature quite apart from rationality. We are animals still, and we must love that. The primal, the guttural, the free and the wild. This too makes us human.

maybe I am tumblr, maybe I am

Jesus Christ is Lord

Elmer Gantry is a really amazing example of a book that does this well - I read it specifically because it was banned across America (for being too accurate). But it knows what it's about! It's a critique of performative religion, nominal cultural Christianity, sensationalist prosperity gospel preaching, etc.

Iron sharpens iron, and awareness of the issues in the church is much more useful, and narratively satisfying, than 'Christianity Bad' media.

I mean if we're really getting into it, most problems with people creating stories to critique Christianity boil down to either a. They do absolutely zero research and think "why do bad things happen" is unanswerable for anyone who believes in a fundamentally good deity, b. They assume that the religious beliefs of two churches in Missouri run by an abusive pastor are the religious beliefs of 3 billion people, or c. They're actually critiquing cultural systems which utilize Christianity to uphold oppression (good! Critique that!) but they conflate that with the religion itself which often leads back to the first two points, meaning they make factually incorrect statements about actual religious teachings and approach faith as inherently evil (wrong! Read the Book!)

I do believe you can write a story critiquing faith or religious systems or religion and do it well but unfortunately 90% of the time this is how people do it. Which is poorly done and useless.

Desperately need a book set in the fens of old England, following a family's experience of the enclosure act and industrial revolution ripping their community and way of life apart over the course of maybe a century, perhaps with a time skip to their descendants living in the now dry, industrial, unrecognisable Norfolk. Maybe with a hopeful glimmer at the end or something.

Seriously. This setting is incredible I don't know why more people's imagination aren't captured by this. People lived in cottages miles apart and used stilts to walk across swampland between homes, most were subsistence herders. Think of the folklore, the culture, the community, the oral, ancient practices still alive in that strange land. And this is only what, 400 years ago?

England had 'natives' once. And what happened to them is happening to all the other natives still left around the world.