* "Rina Sawayama - This Hell (Official Music Video)", Rina Sawayama ( youtube.com/c/rinasawayamaofficial ), June 15, 2022,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekauErew4Bs ,
https://web.archive.org/web/20220726024 ... 07ag0.webm .
An ape-hell. Still a fundamentally dissatisfactory state, and therefore a sort of hell. There are various forms of hell: psychological hells, personal hells, and then this present mortality.
There's no need to go to hell. We're already there.
Though I don't doubt that it gets worse. The trick is finding our way out.
One of these days I just might get around to developing a methodology on how to do that. I might not even keep it to myself. Shoot, I'm liable to do something crazy and post it on the Internet.
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In other theological news, there's been this recent interesting development:
* Michael Gryboski, "Mennonite Church USA passes resolution allowing pastors to perform gay weddings", Christian Post, June 7, 2022,
https://www.christianpost.com/news/menn ... dings.html ,
https://archive.ph/RTIs7 .
This is perhaps not as surprising as it might seem at first, given that it comes from one of the largest groups of Anabaptists. The Anabaptists are strict pacifists, as I am. In their "A Resolution for Repentance and Transformation" (Mennonite Church USA, Mar. 24, 2022,
https://www.mennoniteusa.org/wp-content ... ev-2.0.pdf ,
https://megalodon.jp/2022-0726-1029-40/ ... ev-2.0.pdf ) in which they approve of gay marriage, they state that violence has been done to gay people by their church. In the context, it reads clear that what they're talking about is the distance unnecessarily put between people due to a failure to understand Christ and abide by his Way.
So, it's not direct violence that they were enacting. Rather, they're pointing out the inevitable violence that occurs in relegating that which is innocent as being unworthy. It's appropriate to distance oneself from those who will not respect others' autonomy, but to castigate those who are in no actual state of sin is to distance oneself from Christ. The greatest of horrors are often inflicted upon feminine males, and the world hardly cares. Maybe these folks are starting to care.
Due to their commitment to nonviolence and their desire to understand Christ's Way of overcoming this mortal world, perhaps these Mennonites of the Anabaptist confession resonate a bit more with the message that Christ imparted.
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