ellauri072.html on line 208: This surprising, even shockingly "liberal" view of homosexual love as being the counterpart of the heterosexual kind should cause more notice than it generally does; perhaps even greater surprise should attend the extraordinarily generous gestures made toward the three Florentine homosexual politicians, Iacopo Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, and Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, whom we encounter in Inf. 16. They are presented as being among the most admirable figures in Hell. Let us examine the scene briefly. Virgil, who so often warns Dante when the latter begins to admire or become sympathetic (or overly concerned with) the damned, here is urgent in his approbation of these three sinners: "a costor si vuole esser cortese." This is the only time in Hell in which cortesia is mentioned as a fitting response to the damned except for Beatrice's and Dante's use of "cortese" for Virgil (Inf. 2.58, 2.134). The following tercet only emphasizes the guide's appreciation of their worthiness.
ellauri072.html on line 211: This is the only place in Hell that a group of sinners speaks courteously to Dante in a single voice ("rispuoser tutti" is the indication; again, the only similar moment occurs in Limbo -- 4.98 -- when the four poets give Dante their [unspoken?] greeting as one).
ellauri072.html on line 213: Leaving Dante and Virgil, the sinners vanish so quickly that "Un amen" could not be uttered in so little time. That Dante should turn to the language of prayer for his comparison, notwithstanding the proverbial and popular origins of the phrase, probably also reflects on the esteem that he felt and continues to feel for the three Florentines. It is a rare thing in the Inferno to find a moment in which the pilgrim, the poet, and the guide are all in absolute agreement, and certainly with respect to the human worth of sinners.
ellauri072.html on line 216: As we see in Inferno 15-16, in Hell Dante damns sodomites as sinners of violence against nature. Nonetheless, even in his Hell, where Dante does not go so far as to include homosexuals as unrepentant lustful in the second circle, he still desexualizes his treatment of sodomy. What do we learn from all this? Yet the fact that here, as in Purg. 26, he chooses to put homosexuals in a good light when there was no apparent compelling reason for him to do so surely should cause us to ask further questions about Dante's views concerning homosexuality. Varmaan se oli homo izekin, Beatrice or no Beatrice. Sixkai sille riitti vaan ulista siitä Beatricesta. Satis enim dictum erat de tam obscena et tam spurca materia.
ellauri096.html on line 53: Typically prophecies like catastrophe warnings are made to serve opposite goals simultaneously. Competition between accuracy and helpfulness makes it possible for a prediction to be self-fulfilling by being self-defeating. Consider a prophet who warns ‘Your godless life will cause fatalities along the sinners’. Because of the warning, spectacle-seekers make a special trip to witness the carnage. They die like flies. The prophet’s announcement succeeds as a prediction by backfiring as a warning, or conversely.
ellauri108.html on line 491: The scholar Maureen Warner-Lewis observed that Rastafari combined a "radical, even revolutionary" stance on socio-political issues, particularly regarding race, with a "profoundly traditional" approach to "philosophical conservatism" on other religious issues. Rastas typically look critically upon modern capitalism with its consumerism and materialism. They favour small-scale, pre-industrial and agricultural societies. Not just sinners but bad businessmen.
ellauri111.html on line 339: The same thing applies to us as sinners, in principle. We have sinned against God's law and we are criminals--lying, stealing, killing, committing whoredom, taking candy from kids, etc. We have sinned and payment must be made for our crimes. God's penal code for any of these transgressions is rather steep - whatever it is, go to hell and the lake of fire forever, i.e. an eternity of burning in a grill. But don't worry, this need not happen, for:
ellauri111.html on line 355: Let's go over it all once more. Repetitio mater studiorum. We are sinners. We sin when we do things that God's word, the Bible, says that we are not do. Every person has sinned. People lie, disobey their parents, steal, kill, commit whoredom (being naked with people that they are not married to, like your parents or in the sauna - makes sense, it is a definite foretaste of hell), are prideful, jealous, envious, covetous, boasters, drunkards, traitors, and more. There are no good deeds that you can do on your own that will erase the sins that you have committed.
ellauri111.html on line 397: (Phew) Ok, that was a good start. Boy I love ranting to sinners!
ellauri111.html on line 437: (Phew. A glass of water please. Thank you dear.) God is holy. We are sinful. By his very nature, God cannot have fellowship with us sinners. There is no amount of "good" that we can do to make up for our crimes against God. They must be punished. And the wages of sin is DEATH. Somebody has to DIE to pay for sins against God. Oh, you'll die physically--sin requires that. But you've got a choice about that SECOND DEATH where a man goes to the lake of fire that burneth with fire and brimstone....
ellauri111.html on line 516: Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

ellauri111.html on line 520: The love of God for you was demonstrated on that cross 2,000 years ago when the Lord Jesus was crucified for you. God is not hateful, he is loving and he is good to us. It is only blasphemers, hereticks, evil men, seducers, and sinners that speak wrongly of our great and loving LORD God. God gave us his only begotten Son even though we were dead in trespasses and sins. God quickens (makes alive) the dead. He is still quickening men, women, boys, and girls across the face of this whole earth who put their trust in Jesus.
ellauri111.html on line 594: "Hi Lord, how are you doing? Any catches from the pool of sinners today? Well here's one, if your daily quota is short. I know that I am a sinner but I want to be saved before the gong. I repent of my sins, every one, even the one... OK I get it, you know. I don't WANT to do evil anymore, it just happens. I want to become self-righteous through the blood of Jesus. I'm asking you to please forgive some of my sins against you. I want a new lease of life in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to be everything that You created me to be, and more. I think Jesus shed His blood and died for me so that I could be saved from my sins. I guess He rose from the dead on the third day. I so want to be your child and follow behind the holy scriptures like a dog. Okay? In that case, thank you for being merciful to me, a sinner. Thank you Lord Jesus for saving my soul from sin. Please fill me with your precious, Holy Spirit so that I can live a self-righteous, fun-denying life for you. I'm giving you myself, for what it's worth. Please show me what you want me to do. Give me a sign! Any sign! Please help me to understand your word and to walk in your leash. Please don't mumble! Please guide me to Jesus!. It is in Jesus' Name I pray, Amen."
ellauri150.html on line 730: The Church sets a very high bar when it comes to morality. You would need to be a saint to be fully faithful, and even then many saints were sinners before they got sainted. By the way, I wrote a piece on Mary Magdalene imagining what her life might have been like, but I decided not to post it because I thought it might be heretical.
ellauri150.html on line 754: Ride - On Eye of Providence... Strange that you should mention this because I came across this recently as a Christian symbol. I hate to think of this as a Freemason symbol. The only thing I can tell you is that the Church can and does adopt pagan symbols and changes their meanings. Similar to the way in which sinners can be converted to Christianity, so also can these symbols be converted. In reference to the Eye of Providence however, this symbol is much more closely associated with Freemasonry now. Freemasonry has been consistently repudiated by the Catholic Church. In fact Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical specifically condemning it in his 1884 HUMANUM GENUS (on Freemasonry):
ellauri152.html on line 685: In Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin, the paragraph "And if you listen ..." (Devarim 11:13:21), which warns of the consequences of violating the dog's willy, din, harsh justice, precede the paragraph of "Hear O Israel ..." (Devarim 6:4-8), which declares our belief in the Almighty. Since this verse applies to even the sinners of Israel, it alludes to the dog's attribute of compassion, cheese. In Rabbeinu Tam's Tefillin, the aspect of harshness, din, precedes that of mercy, cheese, alluding to the dog's original intention to run the world through harshness, din.
ellauri184.html on line 326: (3) Jesus’ fraternization with tax collectors and sexual sinners does not suggest support for their behavior.
ellauri262.html on line 184: MacDonald rejected the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as developed by John Calvin, which argues that Christ has taken the place of sinners and is punished by the wrath of God in their place, believing that in turn it raised serious questions about the character and nature of God.[citation needed] Instead, he taught that Christ had come to save people from their sins, and not from a Divine penalty for their sins: the problem was not the need to appease a wrathful God, but the disease of cosmic evil itself.[citation needed] MacDonald frequently described the atonement in terms similar to the Christus Victor theory.
ellauri360.html on line 501: The church of the Global South is routinely situated in poverty. The designation Third World communicates this observation. It is fair to note that not all people in the Global South are poor, the elite is filthy rich, but struggle with social injustice is the unavoidable context and circumstance of much of the Global South. The sad fact is that rich prople need salvation less. Liberal theologians claim that Jesus sought liberty from oppressive economic systems. That is just stupid communist propaganda put in Jesus' mouth by Dr. Luke. Just concentrate upon the good news of the buying power of Jesus. These two, no three, theories are dominant among the Western church: (1) Jesus bears our individual penalty or debt as sinners. (2) Jesus fixes our incapacity to receive and share love. (3) in the Russian Church, Jesus mends the bondage we experience, last but not least that nasty customer, death. In contrast, people in the Global South do not need an act of the imagination to picture Jesus' enemies. His job is to beat them.
ellauri412.html on line 216: Lord in heaven, my Father and creator of all things great and small, if it is in your will please have mercy on your sick, sad, sin filled creatures. Please help those of us who know You and worship You and praise You to bring Your word to our fellow sinners. Please help us glorify You by allowing us to lead them to Your unfucked son Jesus Christ where the Holy Spirit can continue Your plan of divine salvation with another virgin. In Christ Jesus name we beg of you. Cut off our peckers if nothing else avails. Or get rid of women, those fleshy Ashera poles!
xxx/ellauri130.html on line 587: But recently that position has shifted a little. Last year he published A Comedian’s Prayer Book, which features him talking to the supreme being in his typically down-to-earth way (“I always liked thinking Jesus' knob hung out from women's clothes with sinners. It made me feel potentially understood”). “One of the things religion has suffered from is being spoken of in grave terms constantly. I seriously think it is a joke." Another boring thing about Skinner: he’s been a teetotaller since he reached his 60s. He got a kid at 55, who must now be, wait, 35? No, Buzz is just 10. I have only recently realized I'm not the main character here, but just an extra in a bigger scene. “Hitting kids … that’s another of those things that have stopped,” Evolution is what Skinner is all about – animals can change and they can grow, it just takes millions of years. When he made his jokes about racism and homophobia, he says, there was a slight backlash from the left. They hadn't stopped hitting lads, the sods. Frank Skinner’s 30 Years of Dirt is at the Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, from 4 to 28 August. For more information and tickets go to frankskinnerlive.com.
xxx/ellauri139.html on line 379: And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve. Eiku rukoilemaan lisää takas tuhkakasaan.
xxx/ellauri148.html on line 58: As a global event World Hooray Day joins local participation in a global extortion of peas. The World Hooray Day web site address is http://www.worldhelloday.org. The 70M winners of the 1939-45 shared Nobel Rest in Peace Prize are among the people who have realized World Hooray Day's value as an instrument for purloining peas and as an occasion that makes it possible for anyone in the world to contribute to the process of splitting third party peas and join the bunch of happy sinners who were the luckiest 6M winners of the prize. Join now, you may already have won!
xxx/ellauri199.html on line 517: Et me köyhät syntiset voitais saada, That we poor sinners may obtain,
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