/lit/ - Literature

>>15758449
Push through and be stronger for it.

>>15642663
Would you really want God to make us all perfect, obedient slaves with no ability to reject Him? Doesn't that seem cruel? God gives us free will. We were free to Fall from the days of Adam. We are free to accept or reject salvation. God doesn't want automatons but men who accept him of their own volition. Doesn't that seem better than creating robots who are programmed to always love and accept him no matter what? Even the angels had to make a choice about whether to love God. If you can't choose to love something, do you really feel love for it? If you can't choose to HATE something, how can you say that you have truly chosen to love it? Of what value would our love for God be, if it were not freely chosen and freely given?

And how much greater is this case when we consider Christ, who was fully human and therefore was fully free to reject His Crucifixion, but who went to His painful death anyway, out of love for all men? How can you not love and cherish the freedom which God gives all humans?

>>15231225
If you thought Elf on a shelf was great, get ready for...... Kike on a Pike!

>>14783665
>There is only one sane and healthy relation to Christianity; perfect indifference.

Call me crazy, but I think this line is actually true. What's almost every normalfag's relation to Christianity? Bored indifference. They're all either agnostics, soft atheists, or they go to church but don't really let the true ideas and nature of Christianity alter their lives away from the standard mode of living in the West in the Modern age.

Meanwhile, if you HATE Christianity you become fueled by that hatred and it drives you into a kind of insanity. This winds up making you simultaneously wretched and amazing. Think of Nietzsche. Or Christopher Hitchens. Both brilliant men, both intensely hateful towards Christianity. Think of Lovecraft, who was literally terrified of the idea of an all-powerful deity. Hatred of Christianity is a pathway to greatness.

But LOVE of Christianity is also a pathway to greatness. Imagine truly loving Christianity, being driven so deep into your belief that it fundamentally alters the way you think and act. This can also make you wretched and amazing. Think of all the saints and their incredible lives and deeds. Think of artists who were devout Christians, like Dante or Mozart. Love of Christianity is a pathway to greatness, too. But it's also a path to suffering, as you reject the world and realize its emptiness when compared with Christ.

Basically: if you want to be healthy and sane, you DO need to regard Christianity with indifference. Because if you either hate it or love it, it will make you great, but it will also make you sick and drive you mad.

>>13374807
>My Kingdom is not of this world
>the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he
>the Son of Man must be tortured and killed, and He will rise again on the third day
>I go to prepare a place for you

Think about it a little, Anon. Read the Gospels again.

>>13317770
Most of them will do exactly what you say, but not ALL of them will. To quote Christ Himself: "Many are called, but few are chosen."

>>13300749
This is a dumb, jokey post; and yet, Christians, especially Catholics, have the only way forward of any people in this thread, and in the entire West.

Seriously, the Cross, the Crucifixion, is the only pathway to escape Ted's paradox. To die to the world, in order to receive it back; to lose everything, in order to receive it all again. That's how you solve the paradox of industrial society. All the Protestants don't know how to do this. A lot of Catholics don't, either; but not ALL of them have forgotten.

>>13252526
This. God, 100% this.

There's a funny story about the bishops of the Church in Europe in the 1810s, when Napoleon was at the height of his power. They were objecting to his treatment of the Catholic Church on some matter or another, and Napoleon angrily blurted out, "My dear bishops, don't you know that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?"

And, after this, the bishops looked at each other knowingly, and they then said to him: "My dear Emperor, we, the bishops, have been trying to destroy the Catholic Church for 1800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you."

Over and over we Catholics confront wicked people in the clergy and the hierarchy. Over and over we are forced to deal with corruption from bishops, archbishops, and cardinals.

But we persevere, because we believe that the power of God pushes through despite all these things, and because every time somebody's tried to break off and form a "purer" Church has ended in disaster, and because there's too much evidence on the side of Catholicism. Our Church is repeatedly a huge fucking mess. But, nonetheless, strangely and mysteriously, the Will of God is done through it. It's kind of weird and strange. The whole system seems to be a complete disaster, and yet it functions, and souls are saved, and baptisms are made, and the Eucharist is delivered, over and over, for 2000 years now, without end, without ceasing. And the saints rise up through the Church, and remind us all why it's worth saving, why it's a great and beautiful thing, hopefully.

>>13223688
This is just one more reason that the Koran fills me with rage. It's a fucking book of blasphemy, it tells lies about the Lord. It denies His glorious resurrection and it denies that He is God made flesh. I hate the Koran, all copies of it should be burned.