let's close out the year with some bespoke religious takes:

I'll start with:
- JS Bach is the telos and apotheosis of Lutheranism
- the people that Luke names in the Gospel & in Acts whose stories he recounts are people he interviewed

Hell, the actual eternal torment of those separated perfectly from God, is to experience His light & warmth not as glory & consolation, but as blinding light & scalding pain & irrevocable loss

what could be worse than to be loved perfectly by one you despise & be unable to love?

in response to "God doesn't love us as we are"

we're bad at accepting His love for us & have always to grow in THAT - that's what it is to grow in holiness, to accept His love and to grow in love for Him

His unconditional love is eternal ("His mercy endures forever")

the fact that folklore/mythology from all sorts of cultures around the world has stories of a great flood testifies to the historicity of the flood as an actual world event

the Resurrection, not the Creation accounts in the beginning (get it?) of Genesis is the central mystery of Christianity, and so evolution isn't something I spend time thinking about as a threat to my faith

one of the many things I love about St Bernard (in addition to his writing & deep love & knowledge of the scriptures & his obvious love for the souls in his care) is his wariness toward scholasticism

any purported "Benedict option" not founded upon observance to some degree or other of the Rule of St. Benedict is not an option

having knowledge of the Septuagint is vital for achieving a full understanding of the New Testament

the Lord of the Old Testament and the New Testament are the same Lord (i.e. "nice guy Jesus" vs. "mean vengeful OT God" is a falsehood)

Marcionism is bad, in fact

widespread textual literacy seems to have come about at the expense of visual literacy

viewing and interpreting sacred art requires knowledge & literacy that many of us moderns desperately lack

I've no difficulty accepting exegesis that Mary Magdalene is both the unnamed sinful woman in Luke who washes Jesus's feet with her tears & with the Mary who is the sister of Lazarus & Martha & people who get scandalized by the suggestion that she was a prostitute need to examine

the fact that Stephen & Paul are together in heaven is a tremendous source of hope

honoring father and mother does not equate to being docile to abusive parents

parents are called to love their children as children are called to honor their parents

maintaining distance from an unrepentantly abusive parent is good for both child & parent

the prayers of monks and nuns tucked away in cloistered anonymity keep us all from being completely overrun and destroyed

the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are the greatest contribution of Americans in the history of world religion

and it necessarily arose in the US