/lit/ - Literature

What must come before grace?

>>15785201
>>A house on fire requires lots of gasoline to put it out
This, but unironically. If there's no house, there can be no fire. Destroy the house quickly and build a new one on top of the ashes.

>>15381327
There's more than just realism and aggressively ugly.

Lucifer never rebelled: him and his demons are just the divine equivalent of the CIA. This will be a big part of the Revelation.

Someone posted a fascinating vignette recently about their time in prison and a spiritual experience they had there. Basically, they were in a cage with a bunch of niggers hooting and hollering, and suddenly the whole scene turned into paradise. Nothing changed per se, but instead of unbearable chaos, everything seemed like heaven.

You still here my dude? Or did someone save it? I want to read it again.

>>14926523
big brain post
>>14926406
How do you know what goodness is OP? What if what you think is badness is actually a process by which the whole world is redeemed to a greater state of goodness than could be logically achieved any other way?

Maybe this?

>>14766456
It's not like the only choices are photorealism and aggressively ugly.

>>14580913
>tfw you finally understand things like this after years of having Christianity being forced onto you, becoming an atheist, then rekindling your relationship with God years later
Feels blessed, man.

I don't know why, but whenever I listen to certain songs and look at icons of Mary and Jesus, I feel very comforted, but also sad in a way.

>>14232009
>The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.

>>14143118
>t.seethe

>All the pseuds in this thread
Jesus, what happened to this board. Pride is generally acknowledged as the greatest sin due to the fact that all sin comes from pride. Through pride alone does man act out against God, as satan did. Pride is the reason why sin exists in the first place. Adam and Eve bit the fruit because they trusted their own selves over God. Also, take note how the goal of Buddhism is to overcome the ego, and how that relates to the Christian view of pride.
>>14136522
Blasphemy against the Holy spirit is rejecting God. The reason it is unforgivable is due to rejecting God, not because God is unwilling to forgive.
>>14136492
Pride is most definitely on the top of the ladder in sin, I've heard this in Catholic lectures repeatedly.

>want to be a Christian
>want to be a Catholic specifically
>incredibly interested in the saints, mysticism, history, and theology
>start asking Mary to pray for me
>fail NNN today

Should I just hang myself? I'm pretty worthless.

>If ever a tiny child began life with nothing in his favor it was Joseph of Cupertino; he had only one hopeful and saving quality—that he knew it. Other boys of his own age were clever, he was easily the dullest of them all. Others were winning and attractive, nobody ever wanted him. While they had pleasant things said to them, and nice things given to them, Joseph always wrote himself down an ass, and never looked for any special treatment. He went to school with the rest of the children in the village, but he did not succeed in anything. He was absent-minded, he was awkward, he was nervous; a sudden noise, such as the ringing of a church-bell, would make him drop his schoolbooks on the floor. He would sit with his companions after school-hours, and try to talk like them, but every time his conversation would break down; he could not tell a story to the end, no matter how he tried. His very sentences would stop in the middle because he could not find the right words. Altogether, even for those who pitied him, and wished to be kind to him, Joseph was something of a trial.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/joseph.htm

more stuff like this?

>>12792257
Growth of the Soil
>>12792274
The Sleepwalkers
>>12792400
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
>>12792460
Sweetbitter
>>12792503
I Am A Cat
>>12792527
Annihilation
>>12792535
San Manuel Bueno, Mártir
>>12793329
Petersburg
>>12793353
The Master and Margarita
>>12793491
"Herodias" by Gustaver Flaubert
>>12793619
Inherent Vice
>>12793675
The Double (Saramago)
>>12793689
Gravity's Rainbow
>>12793709
True History of the Kelly Gang
>>12795056
The Wine-Dark Sea by Robert Aickman

>>12692525
>Shakespeare also seemed too intelligent to truly believe in an afterlife, as I think most people are

>>12143583
>fiction characterized by supernatural elements
>the Hierogrammates and the Jesus-powers of Severian aren't supernatural
>religion isn't supernatural, especially since the fifth book is all about the Kabbalah
There's nothing worse than being pretentious, except being pretentious and wrong.

>>10718762
you'll notice that as the number of monks residing together increases a few things happen: respectability and courtesy towards Gentiles vanishes; productivity increases; loyalty becomes an excuse to form a brotherhood among the people in the abbey; anyone's SO is non-existent and the existence of one will get bombarded with accusations of faithlessness and evil intent; filth and disease spread quickly (outside the monastery, that is); degenerate psychotic explosive outbursts are lovingly tempered by the Lord our God; Drama becomes a currency for the morality plays of Hildegard, which keeps them from the path to venial sins. Basically, if you desire to live with anyone that isn't your fellow brother in Christ, you're an infidel and you need to purify your soul. People who seek strangers to have in their fucking places of worship are the most enlightened kind of disciples imaginable. Nothing could be more dulcet than fellow neighbors and nothing could be more rewarding than fulfilling Christ's commandments in your home, especially more than one of them. You delight me

>>10635494
Really? You thought this up yourself?

Are you sure you haven't seen it anywhere like... I don't know... the works of Plato, father of Western philosophy?

>>10321796
after a long spell of indolence, his books got me back into reading. he was a pretty good christian, desu.

ranked:
>Three Stigmata
>Ubik
>Flow My Tears
>A Scanner Darkly
>VALIS trilogy
>Now Wait for Last Year
>High Man in the Dick Castle
>Dr. Bloodmoney
>A Maze of Death
>Do Androids Dream...?
<<<power gap>>>
>Martian Time-Slip

>>10322013
psh... there *might* be one PKD thread a week.

>>10024880
>>10024880
>No, it's not a joke, I'm a Christian.
Alright, maybe I'm getting too prying at this point, but if you're willing to continue, are you sure you aren't pulling my leg?
>Matthew 6:24 "...You cannot serve both God and mammon"
>Matthew 19:23-24 "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
>1 Timothy 6:10 "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
>Ecclesiastes 5:10 "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity."
>James 5:1 "Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you."
>Matthew 4:19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal...."
How are you reconciling all this stuff with your pursuit for money? Not to mention the fame, power, pussy, or the willingness to deceive...how many levels of antinomianism are you on right now?

>>9452246
>if you want to understand
>read rousseau