Yes please , can I have seconds ? <| sep |> rfootballdownloadTurn off social media and whatnot and head straight there <| sep |> BTW , Baby Yaga ' s 3 hours is actually just over 1 hour if you do everything . <| sep |> ApatheismHmm , interesting , I ' ve never heard of it before . However I have to say , it ' s interesting that you still think there might be an allpowerful being out there with allknowing plans for your life , with the power to decide the fate of your eternal existence , and yet you think it ' s not important to know more about whether that is true or false . they should at the very least ask what the signs were . Well , yeah that ' s expected . But you ' re saying it like they should be allowed to debate the signs . When God has hit me in the past it ' s been in overwhelming and inexplicable bursts of emotion and understanding , so it is very hard to explain to the nonreligious who haven ' t felt thatbasically , once I know the answer , it is final . Another religious person who has felt God will understand that when God hits you , God hits you , and there ' s not much you can do about it . People who say the universe is speaking but won ' t use the word God for it sort of confuse me as well . and yeah as you say there are sometimes cumulative changes as well , where I will repeatedly encounter the same sign that I should do something especially for me bc I can be slow to jump to the conclusion that something is definitely God until it becomes a persistent thorn in my side , but again I don ' t want a husband who is trying to talk me out of following God because he doesn ' t feel the signs are logical . Yeah , because they ' re usually not , lol . You ' re right , I don ' t get how that ' s any different than anyone else ' s ups and downs through life . Because for most people their first experience with having total faith in another person is in a first romantic relationship , whereas for Christians having faith in God is almost like being married , in that you are kind of stuck with him for life , haha , even more so than in a real marriage . Being Chrisian is often easy when you are a kid , just like at the beginning of romantic relationshipsyou give God the benefit of the doubt and hold back your criticisms . But as you grow older it becomes more complicated . You start to notice God ' s flaws , or at least the flaws of your religion . You have to remember to communicate with God through prayer , to read your Bible at least sometimes , to get to church on Sunday mornings , to reach out to others , etc . If you stop doing these things , you will often stop feeling close to God . It ' s analogous to a marriage where without communicating with your partner and maintaining the daytoday duties of a relationship , it will fall apart . Through loving God you learn that relationships take hard work and learn exactly what that means . Many people in today ' s world don ' t really understand that relationships work because of our romcom culture we think it ' s supposed to just be happily ever after . It ' s possible some nonChristians have a different understanding than others but I still trust someone who has had a longterm relationship with God lol over someone who hasn ' t . Like I said previously , to me that ' s all of the world ' s religions appropriating this basic human impulse to devote themselves to those they call family . Out of curiosity , is your definition of a loving relationship the same as the one I gave ? I ' ve talked about things like this with Christians before , and while of course we agree that anyone regardless of beliefs FEELS love the same way , the difference would lie in Christians understanding better what that feeling of love obligates them to do for the other person . I think secular people still get the feeling of I want to take care of them , because that is the emotion love provokes , but like I explained above I think from loving God Christians have a better understanding of the range of obligations attached to that feeling . Well for Catholics you have to do your confirmation choose at 12 for my parish and it ' s part of the church ' s institution . Let me also say that forcing someone to go to church against their will is totally counter productive , people either want to believe or they don ' t . Yep I was raised Lutheran aka renegade Catholic haha and we all were confirmed at like the end of 9 th grade IIRC ? But that ' s the thing most kids just go through it because their parents want them too , and then immediately after that their parents let them quit church . So my class went from 7 kids to 2 right after we were confirmed . I think kids should be able to choose what time they get confirmed , because too many kids go through it before they ' re ready and then simply leave the church . If they haven ' t completed their spiritual development yet they should still be there , and again I think the teen years are the most difficult time to have faith and that there ' s basically no chance of it developing if you leave church at that age . Now I will say that raising a kid in the Catholic church is a little different because the Catholic church is genuinely harmful in a lot of their beliefs , so forcing a kid to continue going there would be wrong . Even if it was the only church around I would not raise my daughter in a Catholic church , I would never raise an LGBTQ kid in a church that didn ' t support them wholeheartedly , I would not raise a kid of any gender in a church whose youth program was focused on remaining abstinent above all else . The church I grew up in like I said never said anything negative about sex , we had gay couples in our congregation , our pastor was friendly towards everyone and even reached out to establish connections with a nearby mosque , and our high school group on Sunday mornings would just talk about current events and share our opinions on them . Having a youth group with friends and leaders you can trust for moral support is REALLY important during the middle schoolhigh school years , and can often give you the opportunity to do community service mission trips to poor areas , which is super beneficial to anyone , regardless of their faith in God . I understand if you ' re not getting anything useful from the church service , but it ' s 1 hr a week , school ' s like 25 hours a week and I think maybe 50 % of those hours were useless to me and some of them were even harmful bc of bullying and such . But no one thinks it ' s immoral to force your kid to go to school . Church is 12 hrs a week and I consider it a form of education , and as long as it is treating you and your children with total respect I don ' t think requiring my kids to go until age 18 is morally wrong , even if they see it as useless . Yeah from what I ' ve seen in the US atheists are somewhat demonized and presented as far removed from what a normal person should be . Well that ' s not quite fair , I ' m not at all trying to demonize atheists . All my closest friends from college are atheist or agnostic and of course I still think atheists can be good people . I ' m not even totally sure I believe that atheists will go to hell the way I see it , positive emotions like kindness , love , generosity , all stem from a connection with God in some form . I think the closer you are to these emotions in life , the closer you will be in death . Yes that means a lot of Christians aren ' t actually very close to what I see as God . I ' m just saying that for me personally , I want a husband who can both challenge and support me in all aspects of my life . I want someone who challenges me intellectually , who challenges me to be a better person , who challenges me to try new things , etc . , and I could get all of that from an atheist . But I also need someone who challenges me in my faith . I need someone who I can sit down with and say I read this Bible verse last night and have no idea what it means , what do you think ? I need someone who will pray with me when things aren ' t going well . I need someone who , when I ' m overwhelmed , will remind me that God is there for me and I need to listen . The way I see it , marriage must be a balancing act between every aspect of living , you must find a mental balance , an emotional balance , a financial balance , a social life balance . and that includes a spiritual balance . There ' s a verse 2 Corinthians 614 about not being unequally yoked with nonbelievers , referring to having two oxen using the same yoke and having to walk together at the same time . All Christians practice their faith slightly differently unless you literally meet someone within your own church and finding a spiritual balance between two of the same faith is difficult enough . I really do not think I could find a spiritual balance with , say , someone who is apatheistic or agnostic , because I would have to maintain my faith entirely on my own with no help from them , and I would be the only one to teach my kids about my faith . It would not be an equal spiritual partnership , even if the partnership was perfect in all other things , and it ' s just a dealbreaker for me . That ' s why I would take a slight imbalance in expectations about a physical connection over a massive imbalance in the spiritual connection . Most other imbalances can be worked on and improved especially in terms of physical connections , but if my husband is not going to believe in God regardless of what I do then we ' re always going to have a spiritual imbalance . probably getting closer to something like dating would be step 1 Yeahhh I know lol . We ' re good friends at this point . We ' ve gone from coworkers who would try to be casual about like oh I guess I can get lunch with you if you ' re the only one around to texting each other to ask to hang out oneonone about weekly . I saw him yesterday and he actually paid for my lunch for me , so we ' re getting somewhere . We ' re both just real shy X