Christian tropers, join together!

I treat most of the Old Testament the way I treat stuff like the Odyssey or the Ramayana, which is to say how fast I read heavily depends on how my mood is on that day.

The New Testament, however, I read veeeeeeery slowly because I'm constantly double-checking everything with online sources so I can find all the nuances lost on a text translated from a variation of a language from about a millenia ago.

For instance, here's a pair of texts about a often quoted passage of St. Paul on homosexuality, and whether or not you agree with the author's conclusions on the subject, at least you'll make a more informed judgement than you would otherwise do.

Edited by HailMuffins on Nov 20th 2019 at 11:24:37 AM

You linked the same thing twice.

Apologies. It should be fixed now.

I don't read it everyday although I know I should, but I've been trying to change that. I at least read from the New Testament every few days.

I attempt to read it everyday, but can fall into ruts where I go for shorter, simpler parts by default unless I have some plan. I did follow up on a recommendation to read Romans in one sitting, and I think I understand it a lot better since then (same with Mark), so I might try that with some of the other books.

I don't read it nearly enough. It's the word of God so it's something we should be studying all the time, but it's easy to let fall by the wayside. Same with prayer.

I'm bad at it. Having ADHD means your brain doesn't stay on task easily and it's even harder to start things you know you should do.

I don't read the Bible every day but I tend to read bits and pieces of Revelation of St. John (or Apocalypse as it is more commonly called in my neck of the woods) rather frequently. It is my favorite book of the Bible and my academic thesis was structured around it, so I practically know it back and forth these days.

Edited by Gaon on Nov 21st 2019 at 5:06:59 AM

I've read it cover to over a few times over the years so I don't frequently read it. I'm the obsessive analytical type, so when I do read it now it's a supplement alongside history books or language studies.

On that note, I'm currently reading Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid Mac Culloch and while I'm only half way through, I'd think that I'd highly recommend it. The author puts a lot of focus on some overlooked branches of Christianity like The Church of the East and tries to piece together their history from what bits of archaeological evidence we have. It's pretty heart wrenching now, hearing the author talk about their survivors in Aleppo, given that it was written just as the Syrian civil war was kicking off.

So, as Christians, do you have any particular do's and don't's for when it comes to writing? Like, what is acceptable for a Christian to write and things that are off limits?

My writing tends to be pretty tame. At worst, there is the occasional mild swear and maybe some violence and blood, but no real gore. The lack of gore is due to my squeamishness rather than conviction.

I've wondered about that a bit and kinda came to the conclusion that real life doesn't hold back so why should I. In practice I still prefer not to put actual swear words down or depict scenes of a sexual nature, but that's because I'm too self-conscious of what others would think.

I believe you can write about deep and serious topics with out getting into graphic details. The power of writing is in the skill of the author to evoke emotion and critical thought.

Carbon-mantis, are you referring to the Eastern Catholic Churches like the Maronite or the Syro -Malabar? They’re Catholic, but not *Roman* Catholic. Or else they’re Orthodox.

I don't think there should be writing topics that Christians should avoid, we live in this world, and might as well write about it.

I don't read the Bible as much as I should.

Happy Advent. 24 days until Christmas.

~Christmas Christmas Christmaaaas~

~Christmas Christmas Christmaaaas~

I like Christmas

I have mixed feelings about Christmas.

On one hand, the way paganism and capitalism corrupted Jesus' birthday bums me a bit.

On the other hand, despite all that, it's a wonderful day for Christians and non-Christians to get a rest, get together with family and friends, and generally be charitable and festive.

I think Jesus might approve this to some degree.

The paganism thing is a myth. And even if Christians did use similar elements with different meanings, look up the term "triumphant reclaimation". There does seem to be two holidays with one being secular materialism and the other being a religious observation of Christ's Nativity.

Merry Christmas, all!

As for the writing thing, I personally just gauge the maturity of the content that I want to write with the kind of story I want to tell.

My latest, biggest writing project as of late is an Avatar: The Last Airbender Dark Fic that is going to be a canon divergence for a critical event before the start of the show, and it's going to explore the fallout on the kids that we know and love.

War, all of its spoils and glories, all of its triumphs and tragedies, is going to heavily affect the characters and I want my readers to see the full extent of the damage, the development, and the changes that the characters go through.

War doesn't hold back, so I'm not going to hold anything back.

But I can distinguish moral lines for the heroes and the villains.

The villains will commit straight up war crimes just For the Evulz.

The heroes will commit some war crimes, but only because they feel like they have no choice and they've been definitely provoked into doing so.

The villains will curse like sailors. However, I'm leaving out words like sh*t, f**k and c**t. The strongest swear word in my story is gonna be bitch.

The heroes, while they will say some mild language whenever stressed, won't ever use the most vulgar of profanities as their enemies do. The most strongest words they'll ever say will be along the lines of damn and ass.

And to make it clear, while in real life, I do sometimes speak the mild calibre of language that the heroes are gonna use, I NEVER use any of the explicit vulgarities that the villains are going to use.

The violence of war crimes will be explicit whenever it serves the flow of the story, and the points that I'm trying to get across in certain scenes.

If I'm going for horror, I will focus on the bloody horror. The characters can use the elements as weapons, after all.

If I'm going for tragedy, I'm not going to be as explicit so that my readers can focus more on the drama and on feeling sorry for whoever the victim is gonna be.

As for sex scenes, I prefer to focus more on the emotions rather than the... physical descriptions.

Anyhow, I hope this is useful info for any interested writers out there.

By the way, I'm gonna give a shout-out to Golden Kaos.

Nice to see you on here, and thanks for giving me advice on my own writing all those months back.

Your advice has been really helpful and useful!

Edited by BrightLight on Dec 3rd 2019 at 11:05:38 PM

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. Even when I was an atheist (or identified as one), I loved it. I have such warm memories associated with it. It is very gauche that what is ostensibly a celebration of Christ has become a capitalist bonanza, but if it's about giving gifts to our loved ones and making them happy, is it really that bad?

Why the heck do feminists see Jezebel as a positive figure? My problems is that everything about her character is 100% evil to her core. They try to paint as unjustly scrutinized but she try to transform Israel into a pagan nation and as shown in the passage about Naboth's vineyard she was not above abusing her power to get what she wanted.

Same reason why Milton wrote a poem that made Satan out to be the hero and influence pop culture portrayals for decades to come: what an author wants people to get out of their work and what people actually get is often not in sync.

It's a better alternative to the modern maxim "All Art is Political™": "People Will Interpret Art as Political Regardless of Wheter or Not It Was Meant to Be, And Even If It Was It Won't Necesserily Be Interpreted The Way The Author Intended".

...it's a work in progress, I'm open to suggestions.

"Jezebel" became a general term for a woman deemed to be immoral, wicked, or scheming; there's a lot of misogyny wound up in such usage. Feminist usage would be a reclamation from those stereotypes. Then again, the only actual feminist usage I know of the term is the name of the pop-feminism publication formerly of Gawker Media, now of G/O Media.

I know some people want to fight stereotypes, but then they go into the other direction and praise women that should deserve to be seen as good.

...you did mean to write "shouldn't", right?