Yael's channel

1. Women: The Bible does not fundamentally devalue women. Even in the Old Testament, women such as Deborah, Miriam, and Huldah appear as prophetesses and figures of spiritual authority, and both man and woman are created equally in the image of God.
2. Abortion: The Christian rejection of abortion does not necessarily mean denying women their right to self-determination. Rather, the crucial issue is whether the unborn child possesses its own right to life. From this perspective, the guiding principle is:

Life takes precedence OVER self-determination when the two rights conflict.

It’s almost funny: The Children of God—led by David Berg—employed this exact same principle with their so-called "Flirty Fishing." Sex and romantic intimacy were deliberately used to recruit people for the movement and lead them to Jesus. That is precisely the crucial point for me: when I consciously use love or sexuality as a means to exert religious influence on someone, it is no longer free, unconditional love—it is manipulation. Love may lead a person to God, but it must not become bait.

@Yael Sexuality perhaps? But love cannot be used as bait or manipulation. Love is the purest intention. If you offer someone your love, you are offering them you, in your purest, most unassuming, most unconditional form. Therefore, if you truly love someone, having them come to god need not be an expectation of your love. You can accept them as they are, and love them anyway. Perhaps this is why you were convicted? The scope of your love was too conditional, not broad enough? I for one am capable of loving someone who does not mirror me, nor conform to my expectations. I just know this about myself. If I ever fall in love, I have no expectations of whom I fall in love with.

The philosophy of the Shadows from *Babylon 5* goes like this: "Nature is cruel; therefore, cruelty must be the engine of evolution." Yet therein lies the fundamental error: the fact that something exists in a fallen and transient world does not imply that it *ought* to be that way. The strong devour the weak—does that make strength the highest good? That is not realism; it is the naturalistic fallacy. The Shadows built their philosophy precisely on this premise: chaos, conflict, and suffering make the strong stronger. Christian thought, by contrast, argues: you observe a creation subject to transience and mistake this damaged state for the original design. It would be like looking at the war-torn galaxy in *Babylon 5* and concluding that the galaxy was created for war from the very beginning. The crucial point, then, is this: what exists now is not automatically what ought to be. That is precisely why Christian thought requires not only creation but also...