/lit/ - Literature

I am ready to accept Christ in my heart. I have wanted to for a long time now.
I'm tired of the way media has reduced Christ to a caricature, I'm tired of how faith is looked down upon and the smug satisfaction that overcomes people by dismissing religion without even understanding it.
What are the best books on Christianity, Christendom, Jesus...

There are lengthy works of exegesis from some of the greatest minds the Church has ever produced, including Aquinas. But the extreme tl;dr version:

https://youtu.be/3-S_gOsm7CE

>>17496761
Why not read the Gospels yourself and find out? They're not long.

Anyway, Jesus advocates against divorce, states that those who divorce and remarry are committing adultery. He also says even looking lustfully at a woman is adultery, and Mark 7:20-23 qualifies adultery as 'evil'. The same passage also talks of sexual immorality, fornication, or sensuality, depending on the translation; however all these words have their root in the Greek original word 'porneia', which is used to donate ANY sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage (Matt 15:19 is another example).

So that's a no to premarital sex, no to divorce, no to looking lustfully at women. Jesus talks about hell more than almost any other topic in the Bible, and he doesn't talk vaguely about a gloomy room like CS Lewis would have us believe, either - it's 'eternal fire' (Matt 25:41) with 'eternal punishment' (Matt 25:46) in the form of 'unquenchable fire' (3:12) filled with 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' (13:42). Hell is so severe that Jesus recommends plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin, rather then end up there (Mark 9:43-48) and emphasises it is a place that should be feared (Matt 10:28). Fire is constantly used to describe it - a 'hell of fire', 'Lake of fire', 'unquenchable fire', 'fiery furnace' - and this must be taken at least in part to mean actual fire, or at least heat, because Jesus describes the experiences of a wealthy man in hell and says he yearns for a single drop of water to cool his tongue, 'for I am in anguish in this flame' (Luke 16:19-31). You get the point.

The reason I emphasise hell is because this is how severely Jesus judges sin. He forgives freely and willingly, but admonishes the woman caught in adultery to 'to and sin no more' (John 8:11), rather than giving her carte blanche to act however she likes without fear of judgement. Indeed, the 'judge not, lest ye be judged' soundbite often misses the next part: Jesus is saying the same measure you use to judge will be used against you, so to avoid accusations of hypocrisy 'first cast out the beam out of thine own eye... then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye' (Matt 7:1-5).

So Jesus confirms the existence of hell as severe punishment for sin, lists those sins as evidence of objective morality, gives special emphasis to sexual sin and the sanctity of marriage, and instructs us to live morally virtuous lives so that we might serve as an example to others as the 'correct' way to live. On moral issues, Jesus manifestly tends to the right. (1/2)

>>17239878
God literally strikes 2 people dead in Acts because they withhold some of their money from Peter and the early Church. The literally doctrine they were following was 'from each according to ability, to each according to need'. Christ repeatedly rebukes the wealthy, tells a man who has lived an otherwise exemplary moral life that he would never be perfect unless he sold his possessions and gave his proceeds to the poor, warned that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, and used a parable to put a rich man in hell while the beggar lazarus went to heaven.

It's a bit complicated, though. Money helped the early Church in spreading their word and is vital today in doing the same. However, as we see through Acts and the formation of the Church following Christ's ascension, wealth was always distributed to a central purse where it was expressly used to help the poor and advance teaching of the gospel, while Church members individually detached themselves from physical possessions and professed poverty.

>>16954098
You never know, anon, it's worth a try. It's either an ulcer of some sort or cancer. Obviously hoping for the former. But even if it were the worst case scenario, I wouldn't blame God. We all leave sooner or later and I'm blessed to have been given an opportunity to know Him in some small way, even if I'm only 24.

>>15327432
Become a police officer and write on the side. You will have opportunities to directly help people in a concrete way every day (whether you choose to take them/are resilient enough is another thing). Your experiences will directly fuel your art and improve the chances of you writing something that will help the world.

Most police officers are exposed to the true nature of reality in a way few others are, yet few police officers possess the creative spirit to transform the raw experience into meaningful art. Conversely many poets and writers lack the constitution for real world experience, therefore their work tends to lack depth. Detectives are realistically the people out there actually catching murderers, rapists and serial child predators, if you get to that level there is no doubt you are having a net positive effect on the world. It's the active love Dostoevsky talks about, and it's hard. It's incredibly difficult to think of the merits of active love when you're shivering cold at 4am in the middle of a bleak winter breaking up a fight between stinking, pus-ridden drug addicts. But luckily the Truth, the real Truth, has never been dependent upon feelings.

It's also worth noting that the sense of Justice you feel is a good thing, and a noble calling. More people feel that than you know. You've just got to be realistic about it; there's a difference between being realistic and being disillusioned. I used to want to change the world, but if on my deathbed I know that I've changed only one person's life for the better, given them one small helping hand towards redemption, I'll die happy. Even in my own filth, when I'm consumed by my vices, I think back on the time I persuaded a coworker not to cheat on his girlfriend as one of the finest moments of my life, and proof I can be saved.

What are some religious philosophers with bleak outlooks on life? We all know about guys like Arthur Schopenhauer, Emil M. Cioran, and Philipp Mainländer but I've always been curious if there's been philosophers with a similar mindset but in the context of God and religion.

>>14240748
Mfw human arrogance just wont die

I'm going to turn 20 in a week. I have never felt so scared and alone in my life. I don't know what I'm doing with my life, and to think that I'm already 20 scares the shit out of me. I feel like a dead leaf floating through the stream of life. There's so many things I wish to do but, almost all are out of my hands. This portrait is an equivalent of what I'm going through.

Any books for this feel?

Ok /lit/, I'll cave. I want to see what all this Christianity stuff is about. How should one go about picking which version of the bible to read/study? Are there any other texts I should look into to aid in interpretation? Any historical texts I should check out concerning the development of the religion/church? Any prerequisites?

I’m giving up this godforsaken board for Lent. See you all on Easter. Happy Fat Tuesday, anons.

>>12352571
You can do it Anon. I believe in you

>>12287900
Terrible bait.

>>12279171