• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Oh, I get that the schisms are very political and complicated, but I still think there’s a bit of irony in “love God before arguing over details” being met with “but what is God, really?”

    It’s not like, hypocritical or anything, just a bit ironic.

    • rottingleaf
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      7 months ago

      I mean, the first phrase kinda contains the answer that God is love. Well, at least for miaphysites it’s a perfectly good description. There is the Nicene creed yadda yadda, but generally Armenian and Coptic priests seem to be fine with such an interpretation.

      It’s depressing, not ironic. There’s the song “Wings” by Nautilus Pompilius (Russian rock band popular in the late 90s), this kind of depressing.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Eh, potato po-deep-theological-rifts. :)

        As a pretty nonreligious individual, I don’t have much connection to think of it as depressing.

        You profess to be less than an expert, but you’re definitely more knowledgeable than I on this topic, so maybe you could help me with a question?
        I seem to recall there’s a term for the various sects that eschew a lot of the more complex doctrines in favor of a “return to basics” or individual style, Quakers being the one that comes to mind.
        Do you know what that’s called? As a layperson nonbeliever, that particular thread has always seemed to capture the core of it, or at least the “love and kindness” part that appeals to someone who doesn’t need it for a deeper life meaning or purpose.

        • rottingleaf
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          7 months ago

          As a pretty nonreligious individual,

          I’m non-religious in terms of believing in magic and guys on the sky, but I understand what spirituality is and how it makes people different.

          I also deeply respect a few writers whose works I’ve read and people I’ve met, influenced by it.

          And I respect the fighting spirit. May not always have as much of it as I’d like.

          I don’t have much connection to think of it as depressing.

          It’s not about connection, it’s about in one case it being perceived as some emotion allowing you to come out against the whole world for what you consider good with your head up, and in another case it turning into some set of sophisticated mystical explanations why you are a slave, and the latter having somehow descended from the former.

          I seem to recall there’s a term for the various sects that eschew a lot of the more complex doctrines in favor of a “return to basics” or individual style, Quakers being the one that comes to mind.

          Protestant? Reformist?

          that particular thread has always seemed to capture the core of it, or at least the “love and kindness” part that appeals to someone who doesn’t need it for a deeper life meaning or purpose.

          Well, those include many branches which may not be always in that direction.

          I don’t know.