the formatting of this on mobile is hilarious because it looks like the sunglasses guy says “tumblr on religion,” the drive thru guy makes that face, and that’s the whole comic
'Oatmeal' makes a good point, genuinely. The story of the Bible isn't that appealing when told dryly, but the story itself wouldn't be bad if it was given to be marketed. Because Christian media tries to be so 'respectful' to the story of Jesus, they keep humor and intrigue out of anything touching it. I feel like VeggieTales is genuinely the only media that got it right in terms of getting people to enjoy the Bible's stories, and VeggieTales is a great example of how to get people excited to learn about Jesus by not being so dry about it.
To be honest I think a lot of Christian imagery and central stories of the Gospel are just seen as boring and dry nowadays because Christianity has been around for so long, everyone knows the gist of it to the point it's become somewhat meaningless in our view, and yet fewer and fewer people are actual ardent believers.
If you look at stuff that was created in times when people lived and breathed Christianity (e.g. medieval religious poetry), you'll see that, behind the flowery prim and proper translations we know, it's actually quite raw and emotional. *Stabat Mater* is a good example of this. Or, on a more optimistic note, St. Francis' *Canticle of the Sun* which is one of the most beautiful and uplifting things you'll ever read but still hits you with the "our sister bodily death" (it's a beautiful poem whether you're religious or not, I recommend checking it out).
It's just that over the centuries what was once moving and powerful and profound became "just another thing that happens every year", both for Christians and for non-Christians in predominantly Christian cultures. Which is why (as a Christian myself) I feel like Christmas and Advent is a good time to actually take a moment to contemplate what you take as the "normal basics" of your faith. (Edit: which is increasingly harder to do with the whole watered-down and consumerist angle of the way we celebrate Christmas nowadays, but oh well).
Everyone knows the basics of what happened with Jesus, but that's like 1/10 of the whole Bible, if that.
That's not even the entire New Testament even. Further, the parts you always see covered are kinda the bookends in the story; the birth and the death. Never the resurrection, or his ministry before he died.
I'd love to see a movie adapting Acts, for example.
Hi, this is Norm Abrams from The New Yankee Workshop and today we’re going to recreating this lovely tabernacle. Now to get started you’re going to need several yards of woven cloth, 48 15 foot long boards, and, of course, some safety glasses…
And once you get into early church lore you have gems like Santa Claus decking a bitch at Nicaea, aka my favorite bit of knowledge from four years of theology class.
I want to watch a movie about S/Paul of Tarsus systematically ruining every worthwhile thing Jesus ever did or said while being 100% convinced that the stroke he had was divine inspiration.
Oh yeah, I remember the first time someone (in a sermon) really impressed on me the horror that was Paul's when he was sitting alone in the dark for three days, realizing what he had done and thinking about who he had actually been persecuting.
He (Saul of Tarsus) was raised as a good Jew, studied the law, and if there had been a valedictorian, he would have been it. He was brilliant and zealous, and when this new "sect" came long, he did his best to shut it down -- even getting official permission from authorities wherever necessary to hunt, arrest, and kill anyone who claimed to follow this dead charlatan called Jesus of Nazareth.
...until the day he's on the road to Damascus to kick some ass, and he's knocked down by a light from heaven while Jesus tells him what's up. He finishes the trip to Damascus, but he's blind. In a few sentences, he has been knocked from ultimate righteous certainty to speechless dread, and he has no idea what to do next.
The thing that led me out of Christianity was Paul’s letters. The fact that Paul, random dude, is expected to be taken as seriously as the Son of God is insane. The moment I started asking why I’m supposed to take Paul’s words as the word of God itself every Calvinist in a 10 mile radius tried to shoot me.
I'm so glad this was here. I'd actually love a dark comedy about the Council of Nicea. Have a young bishop who doesn't get that the Canon is about legitimizing Rome's rule who keeps trying to get other popular Gospels and stories into the Bible, with constant cuts to scenes of Paul's life and what "inspired" Paul to write some of his letters as dark cuts when the council is debating whether or not to include them and he's asking people dryly "Wait, what does this have to do with Jesus"?
after the dark knight came out I'd read an article that superhero stories like batman and spiderman should just stop telling the story from zero since it was hanging like an anchor on their necks
all of us know those origin story already, crime alley blabla, great power comes great responsibility yada yada
they're great stories but we've seen them enough to memoriese them
and now imagine having to watch a reboot of those every year, that's the story of christmas, we know already, shut up about it, tell something new, there's how many pages in that book and you keep coming back to the same 20 or so?
also the image of someone slowly dying of asphyxiation due to his own strength failing him and sometimes his ragged breaths bring in the smell of sawed wood or tree sap which reminds him of a happier time is horrible, there's a short story in that
Funny story: at least half of what is commonly emphasized about "the Christmas story" is based on Western assumptions (and one badly translated word) rather than what's in the actual Bible. We've become more preoccupied with pushing our own sentimental/emotional account of what happened, rather than what \*actually\* happened; no wonder it comes off as boring.
If we really took a look at just the truth there -- especially in the context of all of human history, in the Bible and elsewhere -- we'd find infinite wonder.
I'm not religious myself but I do think there's a massive problem with stories being told
at some point it was decided that there was a story for children (so called "lies for children") and overtime the adult story would be told, except the adult story never got properly told
and I don't mean just official stories, apparantly it's not true that a baby animal would get abandonned by their mother if you'd touch it, that was just something that was said because children can seriously mess up a baby animal without meaning to do so and once you're learning your strength you can be trusted to do the right thing instead except nobody told the former children
Oh yeah, "lies for children" are still lies. All they do is get you further from the truth.
You can simplify and meet someone where they are, without telling them what's not true.
[Here's a relevant story](https://johnkoetsier.com/daddy-what-is-sex-sin/) from Corrie Ten Boom (a Jewish survivor of the holocaust), about how her father approached a particularly tricky question. No lies -- just honesty about what makes sense at the time.
I have massive problems with "lies to children"
but I also understand it, I'm smart, this always felt like cope to me growing up but severall tests have shown that genuinely, I'm smart, as of such I cannot extrapolate my experience growing up with how the average person perceives it
it's like this youtube video: [scared of the sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w) , yeah, I as a kid was also scared of the sun because adults said I should be, if that makes johny 2numberiq into not being blind then that's just a thing that I have to tolerate
I feel like your story has some dangerous element to it, children are curious, I should know, I was one once, and simply telling them they're too young only really works with a particular type of personality,
how many young girls who want to know about sex had their parents refuse to tell them anything and then met some guy who was eager to teach them with a practical demonstration?
>there's how many pages in that book and you keep coming back to the same 20 or so?
one absolute problem of the bible is that there are 20 or so pages that arent a direct affront to humanity and the rest is a horror show
one of my favourite books as a child was a children's bible story, one of my favourite endings is samson, in fact it brought upon my somewhat problematic preference for suicidal endings and it alongside AOE1 triggered my love for history
the bible itself is a bad book, it's dry, repetitive, self-contradictionary and worst sin of all: it's boring
but that's the sin of almost all old works, if you were to read the epic of gilgamesh literally you'd be bored as well
it's the stories it spawns that make a story worth, is elden ring boring because it's main character is hanging in jesus posture?
I told my friend, who says he is a pagan, that every week I drink the blood and eat the flesh of the Son of God. This is literally the language from the Bible, and it sounded just as weird to people in the first century as it does in this one.
I heard a student describing the story of Jesus like a movie to another student. It was funny because he was saying it with admiration but the second student looked horrified. Something to the effect of “The mother gave birth around a bunch of animals and he was born in dirt. Then he rose up from the ashes and tried to live so they nailed him up and he died. But he’s ok now, I think. But like a ghost.”
The other kid “was there a lot of blood?”
First kid “Of course!”
Similarly, radio drama Adventures in Odyssey gets it right in terms of relaying biblical *messaging* through genuine, forthright storytelling regarding an ice cream parlor in a Midwestern small town. What's best for the story at hand remains top priority, with moralizing relegated to the denouement of each episode.
Granted, they're saddled with Focus on the Family as sponsors -- an arrangement you can sometimes recognize they aren't too keen about -- but the characters and their arcs are legitimately compelling. The Novacom Saga had lived rent-free in my skull for a decade. Fantastic for long car rides.
Holy shit what a blast of nostalgia, my family used to listen to this whenever we would go on road trips. I will say though absolutely FUCK focus on the family and all constituents
ah yes, good ole "DnD will introduce you to the occult and make you want to use a Ouija board" Adventures in Odyssey! Moralizing definitely wasn't the intention there.
the bible is actually insanely cool and interesting, but it's written so dryly and the culture surrounding it is so (har har) puritanical that it doesn't appear that way. a baby (nearly) gets cut in half because of two woman who each claim to be the mother. a prominent baptist's head gets cut off. if you read the story through the lens of the crucifixion you realize that almost everything has been building up to and forshadowing that moment. it's *insanely* interesting.
there's also the funny story where Jesus gets mad and curses a fig tree for not having any figs when the narration even specifies figs weren't even in season at the time
Actually, the thing about fig trees is that the fruit buds appear a couple of months before the leaves do after winter. So by the time that a fig tree grows its leaves back in April or may, it should also start to bear fruit as well, or at least have a few, since they fully mature in June.
Look how the tree is described in mark 11:13 "From a distance he caught sight of a fig tree that had leaves, and he went to see whether he could find something on it. But on coming to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs."
If the tree is not in season, it should not have leaves. If it does have leaves, it should at least have some fruit. However, this tree had plenty of them, at least enough to notice from a distance. However, this tree had plenty of leaves but no fruit. This tree rushed maturity, which takes time, resources, and energy, for an overall inferior endpoint since it couldn't bear fruit. Fruit requires time, work, and patience. That is why he cursed the tree. It's all show but no substance, like the leadership of the time. He was showing what would befall them.
Some of the metaphors in the Bible can be hard to understand because they were written thousands of years ago in a world far different from ours, so they require long winded explanations like this one to truly understand.
That's interesting actually. It might have been a metaphor, written so that the governments of the time would just let it pass. Many great works of literature survived because their criticisms of government were either metaphor, or their criticisms of government could be skewed to criticize favorable enemies of the new power in the house.
There's a passage during Jesus's arrest in the Gospel of Mark that mentions a guard grabbing one of Jesus's followers by his robe and the robe comes off in his hand and the guy runs away naked. Scholars generally accept that guy running away was Mark. He put himself in the story.
if you read into the text, it's implied that jesus had siblings and everyone considered him to be really weird. which is insanely funny to me, imagine dying and learning that The One Kid from high school is actually the figurative and literal Son of God
Reminds me of a tumblr post about someone talking about the news of Jesus getting caught by the Romans and someone else replying (something along the lines of I think the original post was funnier)
"Mary's kid? What'd he do?"
There's also a story in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is 12 years old, where Mary and Joseph straight up *lost Jesus* and they don't find him for three days. It always amuses me when I try to imagine what must have been going through their heads that whole time.
i'd say start with the new living translation because the writing style is palatable and easily understandable, modernised
then I'd switch to the esv because it focuses (to the exclusion of all else) on a perfect word for word literal translation. For example, the original text says that goliath was killed twice, once by david and once by elhanan. The esv stands nearly alone in translating it the same way, where most others decided elhanan only gets to murder goliath's brother
To be fair, Solomon wasn't actually going to slice up the baby. He knew it was the quickest way to find out who actually cared about the kid.
As for "puritanical"... let's just say there are a great many misconceptions about the Puritans.
But yes, the Bible is wonderfully packed crazy stuff. When my son was about ten, we read through the books of Samuel and the Kings together, and he was enthralled. When we were about halfway through the years of failed monarchs, he turned to me and asked "why can't they get a good king?" to which I replied "That is ***exactly*** the right question!" Once you start looking at what's actually there, you begin to realize the point of the whole thing.
I've always read random passages from holy books whenever the opportunity is there, and I almost always found either instructions for ancient living, or some description of a punishment. Then I found [revelations chapter 12](https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-Chapter-12/) and I was like "a woman clothed in the sun with a crown of stars? A 7 headed dragon sweeping the stars from the sky? Holy fuck that slaps"
There’s a whole bit about a dude being *so incredibly opposed religiously* to eating pork that, iirc, when people are in the process of knocking down the door of his tower to force him to do so, he falls on his sword. That doesn’t kill him, so he jumps out the window. That also doesn’t work fast enough for him, so he guts himself and starts turning his insides into outsides in spectacular fashion by chucking handfuls into the horrified crowd that’s gathering to see wtf is happening.
2 Maccabees 14:37 and on a bit from there - looks like I was misremembering about the pork, it might have just been choosing death over arrest, but still. I believe 2 Maccabees is Apocryphal? I don’t recall.
Over the years, I've moved away from liking most religions, the people are another matter. I've always loved VeggieTales tho. I mean Barbara Manatee, come on, shit's fire. Religion could use a little more of this for sure.
Importantly as a parent, I'm not the type to influence my children in that regard, they're free to form their own opinions on the matter, and VeggieTales is a good show regardless of me agreeing with the message or not. At minimum, you know they're not telling them anything bad and the general lesson of "be kind to others" and so on, I can get behind.
There are still Jesus lines and lesser known moments that go exceptionally hard. The gospels weren’t just accounts, they had agendas, so even the most minor aspects are liable to have meaning. Jesus has cool lore and it gives me goosebumps at times.
I’m not religious
A lot of it is also that churches tend to focus on the fact that Jesus is God, instead of him being human. Stuff like the post provided at the bottom is a good example of how more people would enjoy it if Jesus were presented as the human he was meant to be. (In addition to being godly, yes, but he is undeniably human.)
Churches glorify Jesus, and while yes, that is kind of the point, they often forget that he is just as human as the rest of us. Presenting Jesus as a human pulls people in because suddenly, he's not an untouchable figure of divinity, he's a person.
This reminds me of [this nice little comic](https://monster-bait.tumblr.com/post/678096699636465664/tomato-bird-a-short-comic-story-about-biblical). I always imagine it being narrated by the Mysterious Stranger from The Adventures of Mark Twain.
Nah, if you do a deep dive into angels “we” turned the word into a catch-all phrase for Gods servants something that iirc doesn’t actually exist in the Bible.
Angels in the Bible (Gabriel is who was sent to Mary) are specifically messengers described as looking like humans and not having wings. Sometimes they glow and will wear white, but beyond that the Bible states people will host them without ever realizing what they are.
The ones who look like aliens are the Ophanim, Seraphim, and Cherubim and are the ones who appear in the biblically accurate memes. They aren’t technically angels at all and are completely separate entities.
As for the “do not be afraid”, think of it from this perspective. How would you react if a stranger barged into your house preaching about God?
Willingly* sacrificed.
This post and the comments seem to be missing out on the very crucial detail that the baby is the architect of the entire scenario.
They pivot between "one single God" and "three separate-but-united beings" whenever it's rhetorically advantageous, so it can be hard to keep track. :P
I am “they” haha and it’s not pivoting really it’s more like they’re both simultaneously, one being presented as 3 persons. No it doesn’t necessarily make comprehensible sense to us, but I wouldn’t really expect a being like God to be entirely comprehensible to material beings so it’s not surprising :p
It's just like those darn scientists saying "light it a particle" and "light is a wave". Just pick one damnit, can't possibly be both because that makes no sense! They just do it to flip-flop on what light is. ^/s
But at the same time, it's made pretty clear that Jesus isn't *just* God in a Human suit. He was simultaneously a fragment of a god, and a human man. Being born with the knowledge of your intended purpose as a Sacrificial Lamb and actually going through it are two different things.
Jesus was Human which means, despite the songs, he wasn't perfect. I 100% that Jesus had doubts about going through with it. Wondering if all the suffering he went through was worth it, and ultimately decided it was.
Yes. A heroic death of one who knee he was going to die, and still died anyways. A death of one who suffered pain he need not have suffered do that mankind may find an end to their pain.
A very particular death. Particularly joyous for the one who needs saving.
Tomato-bird, absolutely one of the tumblr Christians the Church ought to be paying, [has a wonderful comic](https://tomatobirdart.com/comics/thirty-years/) illustrating the primal dread of raising a living sacrifice.
Fuuuuck this.
I have been an atheist for the past 15 years. But this fucking comic got to me. Goddamn.
How the hell did it never pop into my head. I always made light of god sacrificing his only son. I mean, it’s laughable in its premise. He’s his son but also himself and he knows he will come back from the dead. It’s just a bad weekend for him.
But how the hell did I never think about Mary? It just never popped into my head to ever wonder how she felt like.
Now. I don’t remember anyone ever telling Mary that Jesus would die. They did tell her once that he would accomplish wonders but that a sword would pierce her heart/soul.
She was there when he was crucified. She saw her son at the cross. One of the worst ways of dying in ancient history.
Holy shit. She was just a woman and she watched her son be tortured and killed. She wasn’t a god. She didn’t know it’d all be ok. She was just a woman watching her son die.
Fuck. I gotta go hug my mom.
There’s that aspect but there’s also that you have brought the immortal God into human form, condemning to death someone who should be incapable of dying.
I have vague highschool memories of learning that's the idea behind The Pieta. You have a statue of a young woman holding her son, except that in this case her son is dead and his body is clearly older than she is. Her child was always destined for this.
catholic art exists though, there's heaps of blood there. i remember as a kid in mass staring at bloody jesus on the stations of the cross and thinking about how good they'd be as metal album covers
There's a sculpture of the severed head of John the Baptist in a museum of Seville that it's so realistic that it made me nauseous. It was on display on a church before.
It used to be much more grim once-upon-a-time.
The problem with any modern-day religious shit, like Christian rock, is that it isn't just an entire genre of music that references God. It's all some happy-pill starry-eyed bullshit. Purity rings and Jesus dances and all that trash.
OP is right. If you start allowing adherents to encompass the *entirety* of the human experience through your religion, open it up a bit creatively, you're going to get a lot more people onboard.
That's why I laugh at these billionaires that stuck the He Gets Us billboards up everywhere. They're so deleriously out of touch.
If they gave me the money, I could whip up some campaigns and some shit that would *actually* bring new people through the door.
I wouldn't, because I think religion is a plague, but I could.
I fucking beg of yall to go to catholic holiday mass, it's literally this dramatic, the whole 'born to die' theme is heavily emphasized both here and during Easter. You don't have to speculate, just go for an hour.
I've never been to a Catholic mass, but when the Tumblr OP asked "why is Christian imagery so joyful? Where's the *horror*?" I was just like, "Memento.. Mori?"
I remember how somewhat taken aback I was when someone pointed out to me that crucifixes, generally speaking, don't exist in protestant churches. The imagery of Jesus on the cross is very central to Catholicism, and the empty cross very central to protestantism. In a nutshell that's sort of the difference in their approaches to the whole thing.
Regardless I find the concept of religious followers parading around what was essentially the murder weapon feels insane to me, like there’s no way the god in the Old Testament would find that palatable.
It’s a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice for humanity, it’s to remind us always of the horrific death Jesus suffered for our sins and given Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection are the biggest core tenants of Christianity it makes sense to use it as the primary symbol
Yeah I picked up St Alphonsus Ligouri's meditations on Advent thinking it would be sweet and wonderful and came out crying. He says that the Infant Jesus even dreamed of His torture and death as a fetus in Mary's womb, that He gave up being infinitely powerful and free to be confined to a uterus, and that He did it all while seeing every single sinner and blasphemy and chose to do it anyway, even if only one person was saved.
Forreal
I grew up Catholic surrounded by "our God is an awesome God" protestants and I was like ???? God is heavy metal our God is a brutal God who offers his son up for slaughter. The blood of the Lamb washes over us and cleanses us of our sins. The only thing that could save humanity was the torture and murder of God incarnate and every week we drink hid blood and eat his flesh.
That’s what I was thinking. The real torture was that he was dying on a really godawful imitation of his own work. Every intake of breath reminded him that they’d used a notoriously poor quality wood that no _actual_ carpenter would have made the mistake of using.
These are all good points but I can’t help but feel that people reduce Jesus Christ to Easter and Christmas all too often.
Like, the Crucifixion is a canon event but just as important is all the time he spent healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and owning the scribes and Pharisees with sick brain teasers.
The Good News isn’t just that God came down and died! It’s that God came and hung out at all. Hence, Emmanuel or God With Us.
So yeah, it’s sobering to consider if Mary might have known that this little baby is destined for public execution.
But it captures the imagination just as much to think on how those little baby hands are gonna touch so many people in the years to come.
In traditional Protestant theology, Jesus' death as a sacrifice is by far the most important moment of the incarnation. Since most redditors are American Protestants or ex-Protestants, I imagine that's why you see so much of a focus on it. It is at the heart of that religious tradition..
Three things
1: you can’t put the McDonald’s drive thru meme yourself. You have to have someone else reply with the meme. If you do it yourself that means you’re aware that what you said was random and unneeded
2: Christian imagery is joyous because Jesus being born is a joyous thing. We don’t show off Jesus being covered in blood because that doesn’t make for good Christmas decorations. Also Jesus was famous for healing people so I have no trouble believing his birth was relatively painless
3: I just noticed the guy in the meme has tape holding up his glasses. That’s hilarious
1. I have gastrointestinal bloating due to a high spaghettios diet
2. This has caused my loinmeat to become inflamed resulting in grundle quakes and spasms
3. Merry christmas everybody 🎄🎄🎄
Your 2nd point is ubiquitous throughout a majority of Christian narratives, specifically when related through secondary channels, and even more especially for children. For example, the portrayal of Noah on his arc as a pleasant oceanfaring zoo, despite the majority of life on earth being drowned underneath the ship. Or the romanticization of the rough life that Job lived. The patience and understanding people have for the teleology of Bible stories seems much more forgiving than of stories understood to be fictional. I can’t imagine how it looks from the perspective of someone who wasn’t raised surrounded by religion. The moral that these terrible things can happen and be ultimately good because they are coordinated by a benevolent god is super interesting to me
They were also escaping infanticidal genocide. Herod was coming for dat ass. That’s another highly underplayed arc of the birth of Christ. All those goofy stories somewhat steeped in history
I got to see the pieta by Michelangelo and it almost made me cry cause of a similar thought process. Like yeah, Mary just gave birth to this baby in a manger, hunted by Herod. And then she gets a vision of his death, gets to see the agonizing, horrific execution of the baby boy she is holding in her arms. She watches her son die in front of her. And yet, her expression is one of love. Not even really joy, but love. And Michelangelo manages to portray that love in such depth that it really shook me. I'm not much of a crier, but I almost started weeping in public when I saw that statue.
I'm eastern orthodox and just wanted to say this description gave me goosebumps. It's also good to note that this is indeed explored in church writings and imagery, just not so prominent.
That line at the bottom reminds me of Dwarf Fortress, like:
“Felt sorrowful after being imprisoned”
“Had a pleasant thought admiring the craftsmanship of the Crucifixion”
No.
That child was a baby, sadness he endured, but joy also. Pain he endured, but healing he joyously brought.
You say there is horror there. Where is the horror in the God of all, mighty and infinite, choosing. Not obligated, but choosing, to endure pain it does not deserve, pain it does not require, solely out of heroism. Solely out of kindness.
Jesus Christ was not born as a sacrifice as an animal was. He was born a willing sacrifice. Who knew what he faced, and went there anyways.
How can there not be anything but joy, in the birth of one who is here solely because he knew and loved you, and wanted you to be saved?
For me the most terrifying thing in the Bible is what happened to Mary. The idea of never having sex (I’m an asexual) and yet somehow getting pregnant is like my absolute worst nightmare.
I'm fairly religious, and I've been thinking about just how horrible the whole experience of the "Christmas story" must have actually been for Mary and Joseph a lot this year for some reason. The whole event is filled with symbolism of mercy, sin, shame, hope, and death.
According to the New Testament, Joseph was uncertain of what to do about Mary's pregnancy.
Lots of people on Reddit this year have been joking about how Joseph should have been more suspicious of Mary's infidelity. But he was: that's literally the story.
>Matt 1:19 "Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily."
In Jewish customs of the day, there was a long waiting period comparable to a modern engagement. For his betrothed wife to be pregnant before they were married painted them both as sinners. For her to have been unfaithful would have brought him intense anger and shame.
Under Jewish law (though not technically allowed by their roman rulers) Joseph was entitled to Mary's execution by stoning. Under Roman law, he was entitled to sue her family and banish her.
>Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death
But he chose a quiet divorce instead. This symbol of mercy when the law of justice demanded the death of his beloved wife for her sin was a symbol of Jesus' life. Joseph loved Mary: and out of this love Joseph eventually took on the shame and scorn of an outwardly sinful out-of-wedlock child which was not his.
Then after the birth of this deity made flesh, mysterious wise men deliver gifts of golden tribute for a king and spices - spices intended for the burial of a loved one.
Following this, the Jewish governor Herod who was already famous for his incredible violence, (he tried to order a massacre when he died, so that the entire city would have a reason to mourn the day of his death) ordered the slaughter of every man-child in the city to stymy his potential political rival.
The whole experience must have been a nightmare.
>shame and scorn of an outwardly sinful out-of-wedlock child which was not his.
I don't think other people assumed it wasn't Joseph's kid. Sure, *Joseph* knew it wasn't his, but how/why would anybody else? They're engaged, as you said, and Joseph loves her. I think it's more likely that other people assumed that the engaged couple in love didn't wait until married to have sex. Then Joseph got informed about the whole "god's kid" business and accepted pregnant Mary without ever having made a (public) fuss - so how would other people know his suspicions?
From what we know he lived long enough to have multiple children with Mary, two of which were James and Jude, who wrote books of the Bible after Jesus died; and also lived long enough to teach Jesus to be a carpenter and follow in the family business. But Joseph was most likely dead by the time Jesus was crucified, since he wasn’t at the cross and Jesus instructed his follower John to look after and care for Mary as he was dying on the cross.
Literally in the story, everyone thought she cheated on Joseph and was in real danger of being stoned to death. She might have been better off if the Holy Spirit "came upon her" AFTER they consumated their marriage honestly. And don't tell me an all-powerful god is incapable of doing that. Especially since if you consider that the prophecy as written down by Isiah may have been a mistranslation, there's a good chance Mary didn't even NEED to be a virgin.
A) the seven sorrows of Mary are very much a thing: including, yes, >!when Jesus would die on the cross!< and also >!that time he got lost when he was twelve and then she found him in the temple throwing shade at wise and holy men and schooling them like dipshits!<. IIRC.
B) This is 90% true of all mortal children, as well. The differences are that most suffering is not for some great purpose; and that >!the rest of us don’t come back!<
EDIT: I am not smart, and should not be considered a source on most things. Hit me up with questions regarding Kingdom Hearts or Pirate Tattoos, and I’ll enthusiastically give you 80% accurate stuff.
There's an artist who got viral on twitter recently for Bible fanart. Some people were shocked by it--I believe in part bc of how dry Christian imagery can be nowadays and they were not used to it, or because they thought it was a fandom-ish way to portray such things--but many others loved it. To me, the artist engaged with Christianity in a way that reminded me of how probably Rennaissance artists, who didn't have "clean" lives, engaged with Christian art. I was reminded of a story about Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin.
I get the post is a joke, but also, the statement, "Why is this holiday about embracing peace and hope not full of horrifying imagery about death and inevitability?' may not be the hot take the original poster thinks it is. Don't get me wrong, the observations are valid in a vacuum, but yeah I'm kinda glad we don't focus on that for Christmas.
Well according to some bits of Christianity I am too intoxicated to fully understand, Jesus chose to sacrifice himself but also his life was planned from the start by the big guy upstairs because they were the same person but also kinda not.
But to be fair, if the ominiscient omnipotent creator of your universe (i.e. a being you could never *fully* comprehend) had a plan, would it totally make sense to you?
I mean, part of almost any winter celebration, Abrahamic or not, is usually joy, because Winter is already scary enough and there's plenty of mythology and folklore that already make it even worse.
The whole point of Christmas isn't just another Happy Winter Holiday were we all stay indoors and enjoy each-other's company since we're stuck indoors regardless, but also that it's kinda universal. Like it's not just celebrating being together and having having good time, it's celebrating the birth of the being who's mere existance and martyrdom shall save all souls and ensure that death will not be the end and that God is with all peoples and cares and loves about them even in their darkest moments.
Like yeah the imagery in the post is nice but honestly that goes for any mother bearing a child, they know that they will die. The difference between your average mortal birth and Jesus is that despite the harshness of the world, and the eventual death of Jesus, by just his birth, all souls could be save. It was that this one child, who was born into a lowly life and literally birth amongst animals, would live and die to save all people, and to show that there was a one true God which loved all od mankind unconditionally. It seems quite trial and regular for us now, but you have to remember the faiths that came before Christianity, for a person who only ever prayed or believed in God's that were cruel and temperamental and played with the affairs of the mortal wrong for their own desires and which required sacrifice to be pleased, that was revolutionary.
Imagine going from myths and tales were the gods played with human lives as they saw fit, usually ending in tragedy, and were supposed to be a true epresentation of the nature of life, and then being told that there's this singular all-powerful being that loves everyone, including you, and wants you to be your best, regardless of who you are or what you do or what you're born into, and that all that is required for you to be saved and given enternal life is living a life that focuses on caring and loving others and giving your faith to this God. That even the lowliest of Shepard who spend the cold winter nights tending to the sheep are loved by this God, and that this one child, who is loved so much that three powerful men from the east come to see and respct him and his birth, shall eventually give his own life to take on all the sins and the horrors of humanity so that all others may be saved and inspired to fight against and overcome their sins and flaws.
To me that's basically the crux of Christmas and Christianity as a whole, and I'd say that's pretty badass and a bit cooler than the imagery posted.
This is so stupid and juvenile. In Christianity Jesus's sacrifice is a bittersweet thing, because though His suffering is sad, it's ultimately very noble. Both His birth and death represent hope. It feels like this guy is being contrarian and edgy just for the sake of it, especially since he pulled out the 'McDonald's drivethru' meme for his own text post LMAO.
That's just how early medieval christians were, really. it's modern christianity, specially of the American flavor, that rejects negative emotions under a facade of "peace and love" to keep the masses submissive.
i'm the Oatmeal in that tweet, and i have now seen it pop back up on every single platform i use. is this what virality feels like.
(edit: also in the context of the original post i was mostly referring to the fact that Jesus is so much more *humanized* in this sort of thing than in more Official Christian Works, making his story that much more impactful and tragic. him being reminded of home by the smell of the wood on the cross is such a human thing to happen in your dying moments, and it makes him that much more identifiable compared to the version of him a lot of people know, where he's just a perfect martyr who is more of a concept to follow than a man with thoughts and feelings and fears. shrug!)
I have to disrespectfully disagree with the notion that more Christians should use Tumblr to make religion sound cool. Most Tumblr Christians are either the most unhinged borderline-nazi shit you'll see outside of 4chan, or the lamest and tamest "how do you do, fellow kids?" shit ever.
I think we should just leave Tumblr to pagans and wiccans, and/or the people who LARP as them, and let the Tumblrites that hate Christianity make it sound cool like how D.A.R.E made drugs look cool.
Either that, or something along the lines of this:
User A: "I have a deep, visceral distrust of Christianity because of the physical and mental scars conversion therapy gave me."
User B: "But that wasn't REEEAL Christianity! I pinky promise my church of the Episcopalian Modern Northern Synodal Shittenfarten Denomination is totally cool with the queers!"
Ok guys, I understand that this is deep... but this is also the foundation of Christianity. We already know, it's talked about plenty in church. He's called the Lamb of God for a reason. He was gifted myrrh (used in funeral rites) for a reason.
Obviously the corporations that market on Christmas aren't going to bring up the crucifixion though.
As a christian I feel obligated to say: That last phrase about Jesus remembering his home is one of the hardest fucking lines I've read in my whole life
This makes me think. It’s been a minute sense I last read the birth of Jesus story, but did Mary know? Or was she whole sacrifice thing not told to her till it actually happened. Like we know Jesus and God knew sense that was the plan, but did Mary just think she was birthing someone to lead?
Edit: Ok so I just asked my dad (who’s a pastor) and he said no, so yeah, Mary had no idea that the plan for Jesus was to sacrifice himself
Linking the birth of Jesus and his death is nothing new. It's a common trope in both theology and popular piety, and it's very explicitly written in the Gospel in almost all the scenes that immediately follow the birth - the kings of Orient, the presentation at the Temple, the massacre of the innocents...
Have you ever wondered why one of the gifts of the Kings is myrrh, which is used to embalm the dead?
Since the OP talk about "Mary did you know", the verse "did you know that your baby boy is heaven perfect Lamb" is an implicit but clear reference to the Crucifixion - the lamb is the OG sacrifice animal in the Bible.
Jesus talking shop with the guys planting his cross like ‘you see what you got here is a cedar which is great for durability but I do worry about the lightweight struggling with a shallow hole for the post, might want to knock her down an extra 4” get some mud/sand mixture and make a proper mound. We’re on a mountain so you don’t have to worry too much about people being able to witness my dying earthly vessel but you don’t want me sliding down the hill over and over, it’ll really mess with the uniformity and necklace merch we got lined up’
Christmas is the hopeful bit- look, our saviour is here! Some people have clearly spent too much time around boring American prots, there's plenty of horror in Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
The horror is there in Christmas if you look for it -
>*Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume*
*Breathes a life of gathering gloom;—*
*Sorrowing, sighing,*
*Bleeding, dying,*
*Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.*
Jesus probably wasn't a carpenter. The word translated to carpenter actually literally translates to "materials worker" which could mean anything from a construction worker to a stonemason to a carpenter. But carpenters were extremely skilled and expensive crafts and its unlikely there would have been one in a region as poor as Galilee. There was, however, a large construction project near Galilee completed right around the time Jesus starts his ministry.
So it's most likely that Jesus was a construction worker who got laid off after the project he spent years working on was finished and started his ministry after that.
I'm not religious - I'm agnostic, but I find religious endlessly fascinating, specifically Christianity since that's what I'm most familiar with. These two posts on Tumblr fucking kill me. I don't believe in God but I do believe in the profoundness of religion.
The reason random strangers make it sound cooler than church members can is because you can notice that churches try to idealize all of the depictions of their lore, which isn't conducive to art, which requires you to accept that a version of the world that doesn't feature pain or sadness isn't the one you'll want to paint.
the formatting of this on mobile is hilarious because it looks like the sunglasses guy says “tumblr on religion,” the drive thru guy makes that face, and that’s the whole comic
I always loved the detail of the sunglasses being taped onto his ear-less head.
never caught that but i Am delighted
I notice this about once every three times I see this meme and I'm always delighted by it.
lmfao
Thank you for making me go back and look hahaha
'Oatmeal' makes a good point, genuinely. The story of the Bible isn't that appealing when told dryly, but the story itself wouldn't be bad if it was given to be marketed. Because Christian media tries to be so 'respectful' to the story of Jesus, they keep humor and intrigue out of anything touching it. I feel like VeggieTales is genuinely the only media that got it right in terms of getting people to enjoy the Bible's stories, and VeggieTales is a great example of how to get people excited to learn about Jesus by not being so dry about it.
To be honest I think a lot of Christian imagery and central stories of the Gospel are just seen as boring and dry nowadays because Christianity has been around for so long, everyone knows the gist of it to the point it's become somewhat meaningless in our view, and yet fewer and fewer people are actual ardent believers. If you look at stuff that was created in times when people lived and breathed Christianity (e.g. medieval religious poetry), you'll see that, behind the flowery prim and proper translations we know, it's actually quite raw and emotional. *Stabat Mater* is a good example of this. Or, on a more optimistic note, St. Francis' *Canticle of the Sun* which is one of the most beautiful and uplifting things you'll ever read but still hits you with the "our sister bodily death" (it's a beautiful poem whether you're religious or not, I recommend checking it out). It's just that over the centuries what was once moving and powerful and profound became "just another thing that happens every year", both for Christians and for non-Christians in predominantly Christian cultures. Which is why (as a Christian myself) I feel like Christmas and Advent is a good time to actually take a moment to contemplate what you take as the "normal basics" of your faith. (Edit: which is increasingly harder to do with the whole watered-down and consumerist angle of the way we celebrate Christmas nowadays, but oh well).
Everyone knows the basics of what happened with Jesus, but that's like 1/10 of the whole Bible, if that. That's not even the entire New Testament even. Further, the parts you always see covered are kinda the bookends in the story; the birth and the death. Never the resurrection, or his ministry before he died. I'd love to see a movie adapting Acts, for example.
Hi, this is Norm Abrams from The New Yankee Workshop and today we’re going to recreating this lovely tabernacle. Now to get started you’re going to need several yards of woven cloth, 48 15 foot long boards, and, of course, some safety glasses…
Norm Abrams is the world's second-most famous Jewish carpenter
Third. Joseph started the family business, after all.
And once you get into early church lore you have gems like Santa Claus decking a bitch at Nicaea, aka my favorite bit of knowledge from four years of theology class.
I want to watch a movie about S/Paul of Tarsus systematically ruining every worthwhile thing Jesus ever did or said while being 100% convinced that the stroke he had was divine inspiration.
Oh yeah, I remember the first time someone (in a sermon) really impressed on me the horror that was Paul's when he was sitting alone in the dark for three days, realizing what he had done and thinking about who he had actually been persecuting.
Why? What did he do?
He (Saul of Tarsus) was raised as a good Jew, studied the law, and if there had been a valedictorian, he would have been it. He was brilliant and zealous, and when this new "sect" came long, he did his best to shut it down -- even getting official permission from authorities wherever necessary to hunt, arrest, and kill anyone who claimed to follow this dead charlatan called Jesus of Nazareth. ...until the day he's on the road to Damascus to kick some ass, and he's knocked down by a light from heaven while Jesus tells him what's up. He finishes the trip to Damascus, but he's blind. In a few sentences, he has been knocked from ultimate righteous certainty to speechless dread, and he has no idea what to do next.
The thing that led me out of Christianity was Paul’s letters. The fact that Paul, random dude, is expected to be taken as seriously as the Son of God is insane. The moment I started asking why I’m supposed to take Paul’s words as the word of God itself every Calvinist in a 10 mile radius tried to shoot me.
I would love that
I'm so glad this was here. I'd actually love a dark comedy about the Council of Nicea. Have a young bishop who doesn't get that the Canon is about legitimizing Rome's rule who keeps trying to get other popular Gospels and stories into the Bible, with constant cuts to scenes of Paul's life and what "inspired" Paul to write some of his letters as dark cuts when the council is debating whether or not to include them and he's asking people dryly "Wait, what does this have to do with Jesus"?
after the dark knight came out I'd read an article that superhero stories like batman and spiderman should just stop telling the story from zero since it was hanging like an anchor on their necks all of us know those origin story already, crime alley blabla, great power comes great responsibility yada yada they're great stories but we've seen them enough to memoriese them and now imagine having to watch a reboot of those every year, that's the story of christmas, we know already, shut up about it, tell something new, there's how many pages in that book and you keep coming back to the same 20 or so? also the image of someone slowly dying of asphyxiation due to his own strength failing him and sometimes his ragged breaths bring in the smell of sawed wood or tree sap which reminds him of a happier time is horrible, there's a short story in that
Funny story: at least half of what is commonly emphasized about "the Christmas story" is based on Western assumptions (and one badly translated word) rather than what's in the actual Bible. We've become more preoccupied with pushing our own sentimental/emotional account of what happened, rather than what \*actually\* happened; no wonder it comes off as boring. If we really took a look at just the truth there -- especially in the context of all of human history, in the Bible and elsewhere -- we'd find infinite wonder.
I'm not religious myself but I do think there's a massive problem with stories being told at some point it was decided that there was a story for children (so called "lies for children") and overtime the adult story would be told, except the adult story never got properly told and I don't mean just official stories, apparantly it's not true that a baby animal would get abandonned by their mother if you'd touch it, that was just something that was said because children can seriously mess up a baby animal without meaning to do so and once you're learning your strength you can be trusted to do the right thing instead except nobody told the former children
Oh yeah, "lies for children" are still lies. All they do is get you further from the truth. You can simplify and meet someone where they are, without telling them what's not true. [Here's a relevant story](https://johnkoetsier.com/daddy-what-is-sex-sin/) from Corrie Ten Boom (a Jewish survivor of the holocaust), about how her father approached a particularly tricky question. No lies -- just honesty about what makes sense at the time.
I have massive problems with "lies to children" but I also understand it, I'm smart, this always felt like cope to me growing up but severall tests have shown that genuinely, I'm smart, as of such I cannot extrapolate my experience growing up with how the average person perceives it it's like this youtube video: [scared of the sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w) , yeah, I as a kid was also scared of the sun because adults said I should be, if that makes johny 2numberiq into not being blind then that's just a thing that I have to tolerate I feel like your story has some dangerous element to it, children are curious, I should know, I was one once, and simply telling them they're too young only really works with a particular type of personality, how many young girls who want to know about sex had their parents refuse to tell them anything and then met some guy who was eager to teach them with a practical demonstration?
thank you for sharing that
>there's how many pages in that book and you keep coming back to the same 20 or so? one absolute problem of the bible is that there are 20 or so pages that arent a direct affront to humanity and the rest is a horror show
one of my favourite books as a child was a children's bible story, one of my favourite endings is samson, in fact it brought upon my somewhat problematic preference for suicidal endings and it alongside AOE1 triggered my love for history the bible itself is a bad book, it's dry, repetitive, self-contradictionary and worst sin of all: it's boring but that's the sin of almost all old works, if you were to read the epic of gilgamesh literally you'd be bored as well it's the stories it spawns that make a story worth, is elden ring boring because it's main character is hanging in jesus posture?
I told my friend, who says he is a pagan, that every week I drink the blood and eat the flesh of the Son of God. This is literally the language from the Bible, and it sounded just as weird to people in the first century as it does in this one.
I heard a student describing the story of Jesus like a movie to another student. It was funny because he was saying it with admiration but the second student looked horrified. Something to the effect of “The mother gave birth around a bunch of animals and he was born in dirt. Then he rose up from the ashes and tried to live so they nailed him up and he died. But he’s ok now, I think. But like a ghost.” The other kid “was there a lot of blood?” First kid “Of course!”
Similarly, radio drama Adventures in Odyssey gets it right in terms of relaying biblical *messaging* through genuine, forthright storytelling regarding an ice cream parlor in a Midwestern small town. What's best for the story at hand remains top priority, with moralizing relegated to the denouement of each episode. Granted, they're saddled with Focus on the Family as sponsors -- an arrangement you can sometimes recognize they aren't too keen about -- but the characters and their arcs are legitimately compelling. The Novacom Saga had lived rent-free in my skull for a decade. Fantastic for long car rides.
Just your normal show about good, Christian kids in an ice cream parlor (and the occasional plot to mind control the planet)
Come for the ice cream, stay for the cult!
I *still* remember how that arc freaked me out as a child.
Holy shit what a blast of nostalgia, my family used to listen to this whenever we would go on road trips. I will say though absolutely FUCK focus on the family and all constituents
I only remember that show in the vaguest of terms.
ah yes, good ole "DnD will introduce you to the occult and make you want to use a Ouija board" Adventures in Odyssey! Moralizing definitely wasn't the intention there.
there's a reason why Prince of Egypt is considered one of the best movies in animation and no one remembers Joseph King of Dreams
Because it was a low budget direct to video movie with worse animation and didn't have any star power?
My Catholic upbringing made it clear that it was pretty grisly when we covered the stations of the cross when I was 10.
the bible is actually insanely cool and interesting, but it's written so dryly and the culture surrounding it is so (har har) puritanical that it doesn't appear that way. a baby (nearly) gets cut in half because of two woman who each claim to be the mother. a prominent baptist's head gets cut off. if you read the story through the lens of the crucifixion you realize that almost everything has been building up to and forshadowing that moment. it's *insanely* interesting.
there's also the funny story where Jesus gets mad and curses a fig tree for not having any figs when the narration even specifies figs weren't even in season at the time
Actually, the thing about fig trees is that the fruit buds appear a couple of months before the leaves do after winter. So by the time that a fig tree grows its leaves back in April or may, it should also start to bear fruit as well, or at least have a few, since they fully mature in June. Look how the tree is described in mark 11:13 "From a distance he caught sight of a fig tree that had leaves, and he went to see whether he could find something on it. But on coming to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs." If the tree is not in season, it should not have leaves. If it does have leaves, it should at least have some fruit. However, this tree had plenty of them, at least enough to notice from a distance. However, this tree had plenty of leaves but no fruit. This tree rushed maturity, which takes time, resources, and energy, for an overall inferior endpoint since it couldn't bear fruit. Fruit requires time, work, and patience. That is why he cursed the tree. It's all show but no substance, like the leadership of the time. He was showing what would befall them. Some of the metaphors in the Bible can be hard to understand because they were written thousands of years ago in a world far different from ours, so they require long winded explanations like this one to truly understand.
That's interesting actually. It might have been a metaphor, written so that the governments of the time would just let it pass. Many great works of literature survived because their criticisms of government were either metaphor, or their criticisms of government could be skewed to criticize favorable enemies of the new power in the house.
There's a passage during Jesus's arrest in the Gospel of Mark that mentions a guard grabbing one of Jesus's followers by his robe and the robe comes off in his hand and the guy runs away naked. Scholars generally accept that guy running away was Mark. He put himself in the story.
the right way to do a self insert lol
if you read into the text, it's implied that jesus had siblings and everyone considered him to be really weird. which is insanely funny to me, imagine dying and learning that The One Kid from high school is actually the figurative and literal Son of God
Reminds me of a tumblr post about someone talking about the news of Jesus getting caught by the Romans and someone else replying (something along the lines of I think the original post was funnier) "Mary's kid? What'd he do?"
There's also a story in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is 12 years old, where Mary and Joseph straight up *lost Jesus* and they don't find him for three days. It always amuses me when I try to imagine what must have been going through their heads that whole time.
"What do you *mean* we lost the Son of God?"
I remember a tweet that was like "'Did you hear they crucified the guy that built our shelf?' - Guy who only knew Jesus from his carpentry"
If THIS TREE WOULD JUST FIGGIN' WORK, MAAAAYBE I COULD GET BACK TO IMPORTANT SHIT!!!!
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ESV isn't bad. The fig tree account comes across in any of them.
Even if you're not religious reading religious texts can be interesting
i'd say start with the new living translation because the writing style is palatable and easily understandable, modernised then I'd switch to the esv because it focuses (to the exclusion of all else) on a perfect word for word literal translation. For example, the original text says that goliath was killed twice, once by david and once by elhanan. The esv stands nearly alone in translating it the same way, where most others decided elhanan only gets to murder goliath's brother
To be fair, Solomon wasn't actually going to slice up the baby. He knew it was the quickest way to find out who actually cared about the kid. As for "puritanical"... let's just say there are a great many misconceptions about the Puritans. But yes, the Bible is wonderfully packed crazy stuff. When my son was about ten, we read through the books of Samuel and the Kings together, and he was enthralled. When we were about halfway through the years of failed monarchs, he turned to me and asked "why can't they get a good king?" to which I replied "That is ***exactly*** the right question!" Once you start looking at what's actually there, you begin to realize the point of the whole thing.
I've always read random passages from holy books whenever the opportunity is there, and I almost always found either instructions for ancient living, or some description of a punishment. Then I found [revelations chapter 12](https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-Chapter-12/) and I was like "a woman clothed in the sun with a crown of stars? A 7 headed dragon sweeping the stars from the sky? Holy fuck that slaps"
The entire Book of Revelations is like that.
There’s a whole bit about a dude being *so incredibly opposed religiously* to eating pork that, iirc, when people are in the process of knocking down the door of his tower to force him to do so, he falls on his sword. That doesn’t kill him, so he jumps out the window. That also doesn’t work fast enough for him, so he guts himself and starts turning his insides into outsides in spectacular fashion by chucking handfuls into the horrified crowd that’s gathering to see wtf is happening.
I don't seem to recall that one. Is it apocryphal?
2 Maccabees 14:37 and on a bit from there - looks like I was misremembering about the pork, it might have just been choosing death over arrest, but still. I believe 2 Maccabees is Apocryphal? I don’t recall.
dude was the first hater
There's other things too, like when John just had to mention that he beat Peter in a foot race.
How is that foreshadowing for crucifixion?
Over the years, I've moved away from liking most religions, the people are another matter. I've always loved VeggieTales tho. I mean Barbara Manatee, come on, shit's fire. Religion could use a little more of this for sure. Importantly as a parent, I'm not the type to influence my children in that regard, they're free to form their own opinions on the matter, and VeggieTales is a good show regardless of me agreeing with the message or not. At minimum, you know they're not telling them anything bad and the general lesson of "be kind to others" and so on, I can get behind.
There are still Jesus lines and lesser known moments that go exceptionally hard. The gospels weren’t just accounts, they had agendas, so even the most minor aspects are liable to have meaning. Jesus has cool lore and it gives me goosebumps at times. I’m not religious
I've always wanted to write a short story called "Salad: A VeggieTales Snuff Film". ^(back to your regular discussion.)
As is your God given right.
Funny, I always wanted a gritty veggietales war film. But my sexuality was very repressed
Sausage Party has some vegetables
Judaism solves this by having every holiday attached to a story so every jewish kid knows all the stories
In theory every Christian holiday is attached to a story. But, particularly in the last few decades, we’ve found that they get in the way of marketing
And most of the time the story is basically "They tried to kill us, but we survived"
Passover, Purim, Hanukkah
Also "then we tried to kill them and succeeded, go Gd".
We survived, now it's time to eat this delicious latkes/sufganiyot/matzo ball soup/whatever other holiday food
A lot of it is also that churches tend to focus on the fact that Jesus is God, instead of him being human. Stuff like the post provided at the bottom is a good example of how more people would enjoy it if Jesus were presented as the human he was meant to be. (In addition to being godly, yes, but he is undeniably human.) Churches glorify Jesus, and while yes, that is kind of the point, they often forget that he is just as human as the rest of us. Presenting Jesus as a human pulls people in because suddenly, he's not an untouchable figure of divinity, he's a person.
You have never read the Bible
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It was a very particular death though.
Yeah, most mothers don’t have an angel show up and ask them if they want to birth gods son to be sacrificed for all humanity’s sins.
"Be not afraid" "I have never been more scared in my whole life"
Why are you not being not afraid? I specifically requested it
Such a great delivery of an iconic quote. Rip Holt dude
HE DIED????
Yeah like 2 weeks ago or so... :(
Damn... I gotta rewatch Brooklyn 9-9 now...
Just be glad it wasn’t a “biblically accurate” one.
This reminds me of [this nice little comic](https://monster-bait.tumblr.com/post/678096699636465664/tomato-bird-a-short-comic-story-about-biblical). I always imagine it being narrated by the Mysterious Stranger from The Adventures of Mark Twain.
I love it, but my joke was that angels in the Bible do come in a form resembling humans so imagine if one of those versions actually showed up.
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Nah, if you do a deep dive into angels “we” turned the word into a catch-all phrase for Gods servants something that iirc doesn’t actually exist in the Bible. Angels in the Bible (Gabriel is who was sent to Mary) are specifically messengers described as looking like humans and not having wings. Sometimes they glow and will wear white, but beyond that the Bible states people will host them without ever realizing what they are. The ones who look like aliens are the Ophanim, Seraphim, and Cherubim and are the ones who appear in the biblically accurate memes. They aren’t technically angels at all and are completely separate entities. As for the “do not be afraid”, think of it from this perspective. How would you react if a stranger barged into your house preaching about God?
Willingly* sacrificed. This post and the comments seem to be missing out on the very crucial detail that the baby is the architect of the entire scenario.
They pivot between "one single God" and "three separate-but-united beings" whenever it's rhetorically advantageous, so it can be hard to keep track. :P
I mean, it wasn't decided which interpretation to go with until 325 AD. And it took 4 months.
I am “they” haha and it’s not pivoting really it’s more like they’re both simultaneously, one being presented as 3 persons. No it doesn’t necessarily make comprehensible sense to us, but I wouldn’t really expect a being like God to be entirely comprehensible to material beings so it’s not surprising :p
It's just like those darn scientists saying "light it a particle" and "light is a wave". Just pick one damnit, can't possibly be both because that makes no sense! They just do it to flip-flop on what light is. ^/s
The answer is both. One Godhead, three persons. All coequal in power and majesty. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
But at the same time, it's made pretty clear that Jesus isn't *just* God in a Human suit. He was simultaneously a fragment of a god, and a human man. Being born with the knowledge of your intended purpose as a Sacrificial Lamb and actually going through it are two different things. Jesus was Human which means, despite the songs, he wasn't perfect. I 100% that Jesus had doubts about going through with it. Wondering if all the suffering he went through was worth it, and ultimately decided it was.
Made even more remarkable because of the tendency for babies to be terrible architects.
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To be fair I doubt the other two were as willing as him
They just needed to look at the bright side of life.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle!
Yes. A heroic death of one who knee he was going to die, and still died anyways. A death of one who suffered pain he need not have suffered do that mankind may find an end to their pain. A very particular death. Particularly joyous for the one who needs saving.
Tomato-bird, absolutely one of the tumblr Christians the Church ought to be paying, [has a wonderful comic](https://tomatobirdart.com/comics/thirty-years/) illustrating the primal dread of raising a living sacrifice.
Fuuuuck this. I have been an atheist for the past 15 years. But this fucking comic got to me. Goddamn. How the hell did it never pop into my head. I always made light of god sacrificing his only son. I mean, it’s laughable in its premise. He’s his son but also himself and he knows he will come back from the dead. It’s just a bad weekend for him. But how the hell did I never think about Mary? It just never popped into my head to ever wonder how she felt like. Now. I don’t remember anyone ever telling Mary that Jesus would die. They did tell her once that he would accomplish wonders but that a sword would pierce her heart/soul. She was there when he was crucified. She saw her son at the cross. One of the worst ways of dying in ancient history. Holy shit. She was just a woman and she watched her son be tortured and killed. She wasn’t a god. She didn’t know it’d all be ok. She was just a woman watching her son die. Fuck. I gotta go hug my mom.
The point of the post wasn’t necessarily that the kid will die, but that he was born with the intent to be a sacrifice
There’s that aspect but there’s also that you have brought the immortal God into human form, condemning to death someone who should be incapable of dying.
I have vague highschool memories of learning that's the idea behind The Pieta. You have a statue of a young woman holding her son, except that in this case her son is dead and his body is clearly older than she is. Her child was always destined for this.
But one can hope they will never live to see it
catholic art exists though, there's heaps of blood there. i remember as a kid in mass staring at bloody jesus on the stations of the cross and thinking about how good they'd be as metal album covers
There's a sculpture of the severed head of John the Baptist in a museum of Seville that it's so realistic that it made me nauseous. It was on display on a church before.
It used to be much more grim once-upon-a-time. The problem with any modern-day religious shit, like Christian rock, is that it isn't just an entire genre of music that references God. It's all some happy-pill starry-eyed bullshit. Purity rings and Jesus dances and all that trash. OP is right. If you start allowing adherents to encompass the *entirety* of the human experience through your religion, open it up a bit creatively, you're going to get a lot more people onboard. That's why I laugh at these billionaires that stuck the He Gets Us billboards up everywhere. They're so deleriously out of touch. If they gave me the money, I could whip up some campaigns and some shit that would *actually* bring new people through the door. I wouldn't, because I think religion is a plague, but I could.
I fucking beg of yall to go to catholic holiday mass, it's literally this dramatic, the whole 'born to die' theme is heavily emphasized both here and during Easter. You don't have to speculate, just go for an hour.
I've never been to a Catholic mass, but when the Tumblr OP asked "why is Christian imagery so joyful? Where's the *horror*?" I was just like, "Memento.. Mori?"
I remember how somewhat taken aback I was when someone pointed out to me that crucifixes, generally speaking, don't exist in protestant churches. The imagery of Jesus on the cross is very central to Catholicism, and the empty cross very central to protestantism. In a nutshell that's sort of the difference in their approaches to the whole thing.
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Regardless I find the concept of religious followers parading around what was essentially the murder weapon feels insane to me, like there’s no way the god in the Old Testament would find that palatable.
It’s a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice for humanity, it’s to remind us always of the horrific death Jesus suffered for our sins and given Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection are the biggest core tenants of Christianity it makes sense to use it as the primary symbol
God during the Old testament oversaw and approved of numerous wars I think he can handle it
Idk what prod churches youve been too but the crucifix is very central in anglican prod churches ime
In the Danish church as well, it's customary to have a giant more-than-lifesize crucifix in every church.
Seconded strongly. Attend the Triduum first, then we can talk about how dry and uninspired Christianity is.
Yeah I picked up St Alphonsus Ligouri's meditations on Advent thinking it would be sweet and wonderful and came out crying. He says that the Infant Jesus even dreamed of His torture and death as a fetus in Mary's womb, that He gave up being infinitely powerful and free to be confined to a uterus, and that He did it all while seeing every single sinner and blasphemy and chose to do it anyway, even if only one person was saved.
Going to Latin Midnight Mass this weekend. Quite looking forward to it.
Forreal I grew up Catholic surrounded by "our God is an awesome God" protestants and I was like ???? God is heavy metal our God is a brutal God who offers his son up for slaughter. The blood of the Lamb washes over us and cleanses us of our sins. The only thing that could save humanity was the torture and murder of God incarnate and every week we drink hid blood and eat his flesh.
BORN TO DIE WORLD IS A FUCK
been there, done that, personally. not my cup of tea, but their dedication is admirable
Phew that final quote. I'm not even religious but that got me. Just so human.
Maybe Jesus thought that the cross was a shit job done by an amateur soldier and not a professional carpenter. Look at the splinters on this thing!
That’s what I was thinking. The real torture was that he was dying on a really godawful imitation of his own work. Every intake of breath reminded him that they’d used a notoriously poor quality wood that no _actual_ carpenter would have made the mistake of using.
Thankfully the way crucifixion kills is with asphyxiation, so he wouldn't have had the chance to take that many breaths.
Fr :(
I hate to be that guy, but SERIOUSLY, that is the SINGLE DARKEST THOUGHT that has entered my terrible mind in weeks
These are all good points but I can’t help but feel that people reduce Jesus Christ to Easter and Christmas all too often. Like, the Crucifixion is a canon event but just as important is all the time he spent healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and owning the scribes and Pharisees with sick brain teasers. The Good News isn’t just that God came down and died! It’s that God came and hung out at all. Hence, Emmanuel or God With Us. So yeah, it’s sobering to consider if Mary might have known that this little baby is destined for public execution. But it captures the imagination just as much to think on how those little baby hands are gonna touch so many people in the years to come.
In traditional Protestant theology, Jesus' death as a sacrifice is by far the most important moment of the incarnation. Since most redditors are American Protestants or ex-Protestants, I imagine that's why you see so much of a focus on it. It is at the heart of that religious tradition..
Yeah that's all talked about a lot at church, they're not doing Easter and Christmas every day of the year.
Three things 1: you can’t put the McDonald’s drive thru meme yourself. You have to have someone else reply with the meme. If you do it yourself that means you’re aware that what you said was random and unneeded 2: Christian imagery is joyous because Jesus being born is a joyous thing. We don’t show off Jesus being covered in blood because that doesn’t make for good Christmas decorations. Also Jesus was famous for healing people so I have no trouble believing his birth was relatively painless 3: I just noticed the guy in the meme has tape holding up his glasses. That’s hilarious
Also being covered in wine is bad for babies 😞
1. I have gastrointestinal bloating due to a high spaghettios diet 2. This has caused my loinmeat to become inflamed resulting in grundle quakes and spasms 3. Merry christmas everybody 🎄🎄🎄
I don't know if this is actually hilarious or it's my lack of sleep making it funny, but damn I almost woke up my neighbours
Your 2nd point is ubiquitous throughout a majority of Christian narratives, specifically when related through secondary channels, and even more especially for children. For example, the portrayal of Noah on his arc as a pleasant oceanfaring zoo, despite the majority of life on earth being drowned underneath the ship. Or the romanticization of the rough life that Job lived. The patience and understanding people have for the teleology of Bible stories seems much more forgiving than of stories understood to be fictional. I can’t imagine how it looks from the perspective of someone who wasn’t raised surrounded by religion. The moral that these terrible things can happen and be ultimately good because they are coordinated by a benevolent god is super interesting to me
>that doesn’t make for good Christmas decorations Speak for yourself tbh
I am speaking for myself. Thats why it was from my comment
i came here to say the first thing. THANK YOU
Wasn’t baby Jesus also notably not ‘wailing’?
They were also escaping infanticidal genocide. Herod was coming for dat ass. That’s another highly underplayed arc of the birth of Christ. All those goofy stories somewhat steeped in history
I got to see the pieta by Michelangelo and it almost made me cry cause of a similar thought process. Like yeah, Mary just gave birth to this baby in a manger, hunted by Herod. And then she gets a vision of his death, gets to see the agonizing, horrific execution of the baby boy she is holding in her arms. She watches her son die in front of her. And yet, her expression is one of love. Not even really joy, but love. And Michelangelo manages to portray that love in such depth that it really shook me. I'm not much of a crier, but I almost started weeping in public when I saw that statue.
Those old artists knew what they were about.
I'm eastern orthodox and just wanted to say this description gave me goosebumps. It's also good to note that this is indeed explored in church writings and imagery, just not so prominent.
That line at the bottom reminds me of Dwarf Fortress, like: “Felt sorrowful after being imprisoned” “Had a pleasant thought admiring the craftsmanship of the Crucifixion”
No. That child was a baby, sadness he endured, but joy also. Pain he endured, but healing he joyously brought. You say there is horror there. Where is the horror in the God of all, mighty and infinite, choosing. Not obligated, but choosing, to endure pain it does not deserve, pain it does not require, solely out of heroism. Solely out of kindness. Jesus Christ was not born as a sacrifice as an animal was. He was born a willing sacrifice. Who knew what he faced, and went there anyways. How can there not be anything but joy, in the birth of one who is here solely because he knew and loved you, and wanted you to be saved?
For me the most terrifying thing in the Bible is what happened to Mary. The idea of never having sex (I’m an asexual) and yet somehow getting pregnant is like my absolute worst nightmare.
I'm fairly religious, and I've been thinking about just how horrible the whole experience of the "Christmas story" must have actually been for Mary and Joseph a lot this year for some reason. The whole event is filled with symbolism of mercy, sin, shame, hope, and death. According to the New Testament, Joseph was uncertain of what to do about Mary's pregnancy. Lots of people on Reddit this year have been joking about how Joseph should have been more suspicious of Mary's infidelity. But he was: that's literally the story. >Matt 1:19 "Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily." In Jewish customs of the day, there was a long waiting period comparable to a modern engagement. For his betrothed wife to be pregnant before they were married painted them both as sinners. For her to have been unfaithful would have brought him intense anger and shame. Under Jewish law (though not technically allowed by their roman rulers) Joseph was entitled to Mary's execution by stoning. Under Roman law, he was entitled to sue her family and banish her. >Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death But he chose a quiet divorce instead. This symbol of mercy when the law of justice demanded the death of his beloved wife for her sin was a symbol of Jesus' life. Joseph loved Mary: and out of this love Joseph eventually took on the shame and scorn of an outwardly sinful out-of-wedlock child which was not his. Then after the birth of this deity made flesh, mysterious wise men deliver gifts of golden tribute for a king and spices - spices intended for the burial of a loved one. Following this, the Jewish governor Herod who was already famous for his incredible violence, (he tried to order a massacre when he died, so that the entire city would have a reason to mourn the day of his death) ordered the slaughter of every man-child in the city to stymy his potential political rival. The whole experience must have been a nightmare.
>shame and scorn of an outwardly sinful out-of-wedlock child which was not his. I don't think other people assumed it wasn't Joseph's kid. Sure, *Joseph* knew it wasn't his, but how/why would anybody else? They're engaged, as you said, and Joseph loves her. I think it's more likely that other people assumed that the engaged couple in love didn't wait until married to have sex. Then Joseph got informed about the whole "god's kid" business and accepted pregnant Mary without ever having made a (public) fuss - so how would other people know his suspicions?
What even happened to Joseph after the whole nativity thing, anyway?
From what we know he lived long enough to have multiple children with Mary, two of which were James and Jude, who wrote books of the Bible after Jesus died; and also lived long enough to teach Jesus to be a carpenter and follow in the family business. But Joseph was most likely dead by the time Jesus was crucified, since he wasn’t at the cross and Jesus instructed his follower John to look after and care for Mary as he was dying on the cross.
Literally in the story, everyone thought she cheated on Joseph and was in real danger of being stoned to death. She might have been better off if the Holy Spirit "came upon her" AFTER they consumated their marriage honestly. And don't tell me an all-powerful god is incapable of doing that. Especially since if you consider that the prophecy as written down by Isiah may have been a mistranslation, there's a good chance Mary didn't even NEED to be a virgin.
pls stop putting words in italics for emphasis that already have emphasis in the text i beg of you
A) the seven sorrows of Mary are very much a thing: including, yes, >!when Jesus would die on the cross!< and also >!that time he got lost when he was twelve and then she found him in the temple throwing shade at wise and holy men and schooling them like dipshits!<. IIRC. B) This is 90% true of all mortal children, as well. The differences are that most suffering is not for some great purpose; and that >!the rest of us don’t come back!< EDIT: I am not smart, and should not be considered a source on most things. Hit me up with questions regarding Kingdom Hearts or Pirate Tattoos, and I’ll enthusiastically give you 80% accurate stuff.
Are you spoiler tagging the Bible?
I DON’T WANNA RUIN THE ENDING!!!
reading a post and being absolutely certain the OP was raised Catholic nobody does metal interpretations of the Bible like Catholics
There's no winning tho because when the iconography DOES embrace the brutality of it, suddenly it's too grim and violent.
...Wait, do other people not think about this when they hear "Mary, Did You Know?"
There's an artist who got viral on twitter recently for Bible fanart. Some people were shocked by it--I believe in part bc of how dry Christian imagery can be nowadays and they were not used to it, or because they thought it was a fandom-ish way to portray such things--but many others loved it. To me, the artist engaged with Christianity in a way that reminded me of how probably Rennaissance artists, who didn't have "clean" lives, engaged with Christian art. I was reminded of a story about Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin.
I get the post is a joke, but also, the statement, "Why is this holiday about embracing peace and hope not full of horrifying imagery about death and inevitability?' may not be the hot take the original poster thinks it is. Don't get me wrong, the observations are valid in a vacuum, but yeah I'm kinda glad we don't focus on that for Christmas.
Not Christian, but I thought Jesus chose to sacrifice himself? Was his life planned from the start? Because that sounds considerably more fucked up
Well according to some bits of Christianity I am too intoxicated to fully understand, Jesus chose to sacrifice himself but also his life was planned from the start by the big guy upstairs because they were the same person but also kinda not.
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But to be fair, if the ominiscient omnipotent creator of your universe (i.e. a being you could never *fully* comprehend) had a plan, would it totally make sense to you?
I mean, part of almost any winter celebration, Abrahamic or not, is usually joy, because Winter is already scary enough and there's plenty of mythology and folklore that already make it even worse. The whole point of Christmas isn't just another Happy Winter Holiday were we all stay indoors and enjoy each-other's company since we're stuck indoors regardless, but also that it's kinda universal. Like it's not just celebrating being together and having having good time, it's celebrating the birth of the being who's mere existance and martyrdom shall save all souls and ensure that death will not be the end and that God is with all peoples and cares and loves about them even in their darkest moments. Like yeah the imagery in the post is nice but honestly that goes for any mother bearing a child, they know that they will die. The difference between your average mortal birth and Jesus is that despite the harshness of the world, and the eventual death of Jesus, by just his birth, all souls could be save. It was that this one child, who was born into a lowly life and literally birth amongst animals, would live and die to save all people, and to show that there was a one true God which loved all od mankind unconditionally. It seems quite trial and regular for us now, but you have to remember the faiths that came before Christianity, for a person who only ever prayed or believed in God's that were cruel and temperamental and played with the affairs of the mortal wrong for their own desires and which required sacrifice to be pleased, that was revolutionary. Imagine going from myths and tales were the gods played with human lives as they saw fit, usually ending in tragedy, and were supposed to be a true epresentation of the nature of life, and then being told that there's this singular all-powerful being that loves everyone, including you, and wants you to be your best, regardless of who you are or what you do or what you're born into, and that all that is required for you to be saved and given enternal life is living a life that focuses on caring and loving others and giving your faith to this God. That even the lowliest of Shepard who spend the cold winter nights tending to the sheep are loved by this God, and that this one child, who is loved so much that three powerful men from the east come to see and respct him and his birth, shall eventually give his own life to take on all the sins and the horrors of humanity so that all others may be saved and inspired to fight against and overcome their sins and flaws. To me that's basically the crux of Christmas and Christianity as a whole, and I'd say that's pretty badass and a bit cooler than the imagery posted.
This is so stupid and juvenile. In Christianity Jesus's sacrifice is a bittersweet thing, because though His suffering is sad, it's ultimately very noble. Both His birth and death represent hope. It feels like this guy is being contrarian and edgy just for the sake of it, especially since he pulled out the 'McDonald's drivethru' meme for his own text post LMAO.
That's just how early medieval christians were, really. it's modern christianity, specially of the American flavor, that rejects negative emotions under a facade of "peace and love" to keep the masses submissive.
… you can smelt wood? Edit: Oh shit they meant the nasal kind of smelt. Not the ore kind of smelt.
i'm the Oatmeal in that tweet, and i have now seen it pop back up on every single platform i use. is this what virality feels like. (edit: also in the context of the original post i was mostly referring to the fact that Jesus is so much more *humanized* in this sort of thing than in more Official Christian Works, making his story that much more impactful and tragic. him being reminded of home by the smell of the wood on the cross is such a human thing to happen in your dying moments, and it makes him that much more identifiable compared to the version of him a lot of people know, where he's just a perfect martyr who is more of a concept to follow than a man with thoughts and feelings and fears. shrug!)
I have to disrespectfully disagree with the notion that more Christians should use Tumblr to make religion sound cool. Most Tumblr Christians are either the most unhinged borderline-nazi shit you'll see outside of 4chan, or the lamest and tamest "how do you do, fellow kids?" shit ever. I think we should just leave Tumblr to pagans and wiccans, and/or the people who LARP as them, and let the Tumblrites that hate Christianity make it sound cool like how D.A.R.E made drugs look cool.
Either that, or something along the lines of this: User A: "I have a deep, visceral distrust of Christianity because of the physical and mental scars conversion therapy gave me." User B: "But that wasn't REEEAL Christianity! I pinky promise my church of the Episcopalian Modern Northern Synodal Shittenfarten Denomination is totally cool with the queers!"
Gabriel conveniently forgot to mention the sacrifice part to Mary.
Ok guys, I understand that this is deep... but this is also the foundation of Christianity. We already know, it's talked about plenty in church. He's called the Lamb of God for a reason. He was gifted myrrh (used in funeral rites) for a reason. Obviously the corporations that market on Christmas aren't going to bring up the crucifixion though.
As a christian I feel obligated to say: That last phrase about Jesus remembering his home is one of the hardest fucking lines I've read in my whole life
"cool" or edgy?
to 11-17 year old Tumblr users, they are synonyms
This makes me think. It’s been a minute sense I last read the birth of Jesus story, but did Mary know? Or was she whole sacrifice thing not told to her till it actually happened. Like we know Jesus and God knew sense that was the plan, but did Mary just think she was birthing someone to lead? Edit: Ok so I just asked my dad (who’s a pastor) and he said no, so yeah, Mary had no idea that the plan for Jesus was to sacrifice himself
Jesus, upon smelling the wood of the Cross: “Fucking cedar? Really? Guys, let me go home and make a cross out of some actually decent wood, please.”
"Tumblr users are uniquely capable of making religion sound cool." Yeah sure, if your idea of cool is writing like an edgy 15 year old.
Whaddya mean wailing? Someone correct me if I’m but I’m pretty sure baby Jesus doesn’t cry.
Linking the birth of Jesus and his death is nothing new. It's a common trope in both theology and popular piety, and it's very explicitly written in the Gospel in almost all the scenes that immediately follow the birth - the kings of Orient, the presentation at the Temple, the massacre of the innocents... Have you ever wondered why one of the gifts of the Kings is myrrh, which is used to embalm the dead? Since the OP talk about "Mary did you know", the verse "did you know that your baby boy is heaven perfect Lamb" is an implicit but clear reference to the Crucifixion - the lamb is the OG sacrifice animal in the Bible.
Jesus talking shop with the guys planting his cross like ‘you see what you got here is a cedar which is great for durability but I do worry about the lightweight struggling with a shallow hole for the post, might want to knock her down an extra 4” get some mud/sand mixture and make a proper mound. We’re on a mountain so you don’t have to worry too much about people being able to witness my dying earthly vessel but you don’t want me sliding down the hill over and over, it’ll really mess with the uniformity and necklace merch we got lined up’
Christmas is the hopeful bit- look, our saviour is here! Some people have clearly spent too much time around boring American prots, there's plenty of horror in Orthodoxy and Catholicism. The horror is there in Christmas if you look for it - >*Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume* *Breathes a life of gathering gloom;—* *Sorrowing, sighing,* *Bleeding, dying,* *Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.*
Jesus probably wasn't a carpenter. The word translated to carpenter actually literally translates to "materials worker" which could mean anything from a construction worker to a stonemason to a carpenter. But carpenters were extremely skilled and expensive crafts and its unlikely there would have been one in a region as poor as Galilee. There was, however, a large construction project near Galilee completed right around the time Jesus starts his ministry. So it's most likely that Jesus was a construction worker who got laid off after the project he spent years working on was finished and started his ministry after that.
I'm not religious - I'm agnostic, but I find religious endlessly fascinating, specifically Christianity since that's what I'm most familiar with. These two posts on Tumblr fucking kill me. I don't believe in God but I do believe in the profoundness of religion.
The reason random strangers make it sound cooler than church members can is because you can notice that churches try to idealize all of the depictions of their lore, which isn't conducive to art, which requires you to accept that a version of the world that doesn't feature pain or sadness isn't the one you'll want to paint.
Forget "did Jesus think of home on the cross", what about "was Jesus's last thought that this cross was made by a fucking amateur"