Posts Tagged ‘religion’

When your religion tests the limits of my nose.

I don’t mind who practices what (even Satanism!) as long as they do not aggressively try to evangelize or proselytize to my children or me. You are free to practice how you want as long as you leave my children and me out of it — I’ve even saved you, the “in general theist who might do this” you, the trouble of claiming, “But you’re a Satanist! So you have to be raising your children to be little Satanists!” by stating that I have not introduced any form of religion to them, not even my own, and that I do not intend to do so for as long as they are minors under my care.e The more I think about that, the less comfortable I am with the idea of it.

You may have the right to free speech, as they say, but that doesn’t mean that I have to abide by what you say, like what you say, or continue to subject myself to what you say no matter how many souls you claim you want to net — convert — to Jesus. The more aggressive or rude about this you are to me, the less likely I am to even entertain the notion of your claims, and the more likely I will want to distance myself from you. This does not matter who you are, although my friends are respectful enough regarding any differences in our religious ideologies not to try to “net one, two, or three for Jesus” or to push their religious ideologies and worldviews on me unless I’ve explicitly asked them something about those ideologies and worldviews and make it clear that I consent to them doing so. You don’t get any points here being loud about this or violent.

Shit Satanists Actually Say, volume one.

Them: Satanic canals are planning on world domination and ritual abuse and sacrifice.

Satanists: Which Buffy universe is better.”

Quoted from a friend as they were debating Buffy in a Discord chat.

“Because Satan gives us eternal life through Lucifer Morningstar, the true believer is secure in that salvation for eternity. If you have been genuinely saved, you cannot “lose” it. Salvation is maintained by the grace and power of Satan, not by the self-effort of the Satanist.

It is the grace and keeping power of Satan that gives us this security.”

This was a friend putting Satan in place of God and Jesus ripping a church bulletin… or whatever you call it.

“If I’m a Satanist but I can’t be “unsaved” does that mean I can fistfight God when I die?”

Another friend.

The moral is that we’re not as bad of a lot as people think we are. But peculiar, some of us, loud and proud.

Coming up with the perfect pen name.

Truth be told, I haven’t exactly needed to come up with a pen name because I’ve found myself using two monikers more than anything else when I’m not using my own name: (Oerba Dia) Vanille or Serah (Farron), depending on where you find me. This might surprise some people given that I’m… a bit more careful than most about what I publicly post, but I haven’t conclusively come up with a “pen name” that is uniquely mine as much as I use monikers that pay homage to favorite characters of mine from, up until this point, video games that I love. My Discord name happens to be Vanille, and that one was easier to snag because Discord assigns numbers after your name (Name#Numbers), which means that you can probably get the “name” that you want on Discord without having to work hard at it. As for my domain, I was actually surprised that this URL wasn’t registered. Both happen to be favorite characters of mine in the Final Fantasy XIII series.

At any rate, a lot of Satanists have come up with pen names for themselves because they are not in positions to where they can “out themselves” as such — they may not have supportive family members, it may be perilous for their job if that information were to become public knowledge attached to their real names, or for any number of reasons. I wish that we didn’t have to live in a world where one’s religious views, or even lack thereof, meant that we had to safeguard ourselves against others’ criticism, but we still do, even though I would like to take the time to point out the irony in Christians claiming to be persecuted because of their religious views when they are anything but in today’s world. I don’t feel like I can openly wear my necklace from The Satanic Temple in a lot of situations, or even a shirt. I don’t quite feel like I can openly wear some of my other Satanic jewelry (over my shirt, of course, since my skin allergies are that bad) because someone might recognize the lore it comes from and attempt to start something with me “in the name of Jesus”. I don’t feel like I can tell a whole lot of people what my religious views honestly are. So I definitely get the appeal of having a pen name, and have begun to give it some thought, just to have one in the back of my mind in case I ever do authentically need one. (Some people call them “Satanic names”, heh.)

I suppose something will come to me in due time, something that just sounds so right I go, “That’s the one!”

Is this me channeling my inner Lumina, or not?

So, when a friend of mine told me about it, I decided to join a second Satanic Discord.

Although I haven’t been the absolute best at keeping up with membership in multiple Discords, I’m willing to make an exception for being a member of Satanic ones because I like being around like-minded people. This one also seems alright because it has to do with a left-leaning Satanic podcast (so I’m sure those of you who might be of like religious mind may know which one I’m talking about, assuming that you didn’t find your way here because of my blog URL being in the status bar beneath my username… for those of you who are wondering what in the world I’m talking about, I have my blog URL in the status bar beneath my Discord name on all servers that I am a part of because I don’t mind the people that I talk to finding, or reading, my blog). More Satanic blogs to read? Podcasts to listen to? Other ways to engage in Satanism? I am all in, here.

And the great thing about this media is that I can come to it, or come back to it, when I’m not busy with other things. I can read these blogs at my leisure, listen to these podcasts with my headphones on when the boys are in bed. I suppose that is a great thing about living in the technological age that we currently live in. I don’t have to be present “now” to get the benefit out of a lot of these things. I can come to them, or engage in them, when I have the time to do so. That seems to be the greatest thing about today’s Internet. Even Discord, the chat server that it primarily is, is particularly good about that. You can just scroll up if you’ve missed things, and you can catch yourself up on what you might not have been around to participate in.

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