I am going to say something very uncomfortable. Read before you react please.

Purity culture encourages pedophilia, a thread:

We live in a society that misunderstands boundaries and consent. Most people think the former is about just saying no, and the latter is about sex. And while that’s a part of it, they are about agency, autonomy, respect and interpersonal relationships.

1/

Unsolicited advice without consent is crossing a person’s boundaries. Even if the advice is good advice, even if the person giving the advice is a pastor or a parent, even if the advice is important. Most people aren’t talking about their life so that we may solve it.

2/

It is an honor to be trusted with someone’s life story*, with their thoughts and their challenges, with their struggles and their musings. But it is not an open invitation to try and solve their problems, control their behavior, tell them what to do.

3/

For a group of people that speak often of free will and claim to follow Jesus, Christians are some of the worst at boundaries and consent in general, and advice giving in particular. Think about how many sermons are not sharing spiritual truths, but just giving advice.

4/

Think about how much pastoral counseling is just advice giving. Think about the many books that tell you how to parent, how to be a good wife, how to be a good Christian, how to... and how much of it is general advice as though our lives were interchangeable?

5/

When I say that so long as nobody is being harmed people’s decisions, choices, and actions are always acceptable and should be respected; conservative Christians often ask me: but who decides what harm is?

1/

They do this to invalidate ‘harm,’ because if we can obscure the notion of harm, and they can decide that people going to hell is really the harm we should be worried about; then they are justified in crossing every possible boundary to keep people from hell.

2/

They are “helping,” “saving,” not really harming.

That’s one of the main ways in which the concept of sin is weaponized against people; because they decide what sin is, which is what will send us to hell (except not because all we have to do is repent and then we are safe).

3/

It doesn’t matter how we define harm, how much logic we apply to explaining that when people say they are being harmed we should believe them; or how much evidence we have of harm caused. It doesn’t matter that people are literally and metaphorically bleeding. It’s not harm.

4/

I mean they justified the genocide of Native people, the forceful taking of our land, the abduction of children with sayings like “kill the Indian, save the man.” By their logic they haven’t caused harm, they have “saved” us. There is no evidence of this, but they say so 🙃.

5/

Christianity has been a weapon used by systems of oppression to call that which is harmful and abusive; good and God’s will. It has been a weapon to normalize hegemonic power, and keep people from questioning it or challenging it because “it comes from God.”

1/

Gender “norms,” harmful ideas about sexuality, social hierarchy, the construct of race, notions of nuclear family, toxic ideologies of work, bodies, finances, government, relationships, parenting, or criminal justice; are all rooted in Christianity and...

2/

backed up by verses of the Christian Bible taken out of context, to assert that this isn’t just normal, but what God desires. And who dares challenge God?

Christianity has allowed for people w/power to use the idea of god, and *his* “word,” to pass their ideas as God ideas.
3/

This is one of the reasons why people react so violently when we say the Bible is not the word of God, they can’t accept that everything they’ve been given as normal, good, ideal, God’s will... may just not be so.

4/

Their nervous systems tells them it is better to maintain the certainty of what is in their hands; even though it causes harm; than to give into the uncertainty of imagining a different world where equity is possible.

And then their ego gets involved, and admitting they’ve

5/

“Don’t leave the church because of the people who hurt you. Nobody is perfect, only God”

I’ll explain why this comment is not only not helpful at all, but also very harmful.

1/

The comment assumes we can’t tell the difference between people and toxic theology, it assumes our issues are with a few people who are outliers and misrepresented God, and we just seem to think that’s the totality of divinity. Which makes us appear unintelligent and petty.

2/

But, that’s not the case at all. I didn’t leave because a few people hurt me in the name of God, in fact I stayed long enough to get hurt again, and again, and again, and again. Because it’s not a few bad apples hurting people in the name of God what we are dealing with.

3/

Instead we are talking about systemic abuse due to toxic theology that is taught as righteousness.

Go to any white evangelical church today and conduct all the tests you must to ensure only those who are “good Christians,” remain. I guarantee you people will be harmed there.
4/

Not because people just hurt people, not because Christians have good intentions but sometimes make mistakes; instead because the harm is caused due to indoctrination into toxic theology and a belief that their social and theological framework is not only good,

5/

Well, folks, the reason I haven’t been sharing many short clips from my morning readings lately is that, well, I’m in chapters 11-17 of Ezekiel. They involve complicated visions that don’t lend themselves to Twitter threads. But at the end of my reading today in Ezek 17,

God delivered a word to the prophet depicting a theme that may be uncomfortable but it’s not incomprehensible.

“I bring down the tall tree and make the low tree tall. I cause the green tree to wither and make the withered tree thrive. I, the Lord, have spoken and I will do it.”

God’s got this thing about pride. He does not let it go unchecked. When his people continue in arrogance after multiple warnings, he is going to bring them down. He will turn the tables. That which has been high will be brought low. This is why we are told by both James and Peter

in the NT that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We need his grace so badly. Repentance is our only real way forward. He also views idolatry as spiritual adultery. This was the case in the judgment that was coming to his people through the Babylonians.

We are caught in a cycle. We keep repeating the same offenses and keep excusing them the exact same ways. Study even just the last century. I beg you to. Face how we evangelicals have bedded down with worldly systems for power. See how every time prophetic voices confronted us

Let me talk about something
I consider myself qualified to discuss: a film director, Oliver Stone. OS is a great political director & a very clever man, one of the best in the industry. My view is that he did not simply take the Russian vx because he didn't want to wait for US 1

He's a very clever man, he made a judgement for his own life, for his family, & he chose the Russian vx instead of any of the Western ones, because he wanted the vx & considers Sputnik V the safest one.

I can see the logic:
1 No accountability for any of the Western vx, nobody can sue for any damage etc.
2 Those who made Sputnik V know they are always personally accountable to Vladimir Putin
3 S5 is based on a pre-existing vx with minimal changes so safety tried for many years

So if the Russians could find a safe way to adapt a tried & tested technology & only alter what is required, using adenovirus vectors, a technology in use for 50 years, experimented on for vx since the 1980s, why were Western Big Pharma so keen on something completely new: mRNA?

That is the question that Oliver Stone is indirectly asking us all to look into & answer: why were Western Big Pharma all at once suddenly so keen on using mRNA when there were much safer & tested directions available (adenovirus vectors), what is it that Western Big Pharma want?

@curaffairs The author doesn't know enough about search to have written that article and the reason he's having those problems is AI algos like Rank Brain and Google's attempts to use natural language processing nothing to do with SEOs.

1/x

YMYL is not evaluated at the site level, but the query level.

Again this is on Google, not SEOs because they want to surface better sites.

And those devaluations are part of Core Updates which SEOs like me recover sites from.

2/

Featured Snippets are not optimized for - you can use certain HTML to be pulled in one but there is no definite use case where Featured Snippets are shown or that your site's will show for it. Also doesn't always come from the #1 result.

& that's Google not the SEO.

3/

Also there are many times when an SEO doesn't want their site in the Featured Snippet cuz it doesn't result in a click to the website. But we have no control over what Google pulls as Feature Snippets except to put in a meta tag to exclude us from them

4/

And Neil Patel is not an SEO. Most senior level SEOs see him as nothing more than a scammer because reportedly he's ripped them off by stealing their content and articles and passing them off as his.

5/

Amongst my absolute favourite musicians of all time, one name that is certainly near the top is of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sahab. I don’t know if any such data exists, but I am pretty sure he would also be among the most widely sold international artists in India. (1/43)

This is a thread about Nusrat sahab’s connections with India - his first performance here, songs blatantly copied from his compositions, his non-film albums done here, and also his work in Bollywood. So buckle up, coz this is gonna be very very loooong. (2/43)

The story starts in 1979, when a certain legend by the name of Raj Kapoor was invited to a Qawwali show in Birmingham, and heard Nusrat sahab performing there. So impressed by his music was Kapoor sahab, that he made up his mind to invite Nusrat sahab to India. (3/43)

Soon after, in early 1980, Rishi Kapoor was getting married to Neetu Singh, and Raj Kapoor promptly invited Nusrat sahab to perform at one of the sangeet ceremonies. The invitation actually was sent through Pakistani actor Mohammad Ali, a mutual contact of the two. (4/43)

Nusrat sahab accepted the invite, and was apparently excited with the prospect of also visiting Ajmer Sharif. His performance at the sangeet was attended by the who’s who of Indian film and music at the time, and he is said to have performed for hours through the night. (5/43)