Sientir's Blog

When I think about things I'd like to be different in my life, the most significant changes are relational. I want to get to know a few more people, but to also have deeper relationships with the people I do know. However, I've identified something that gets in the way of both of those things, which is an assumption that others are judgmental. This assumption leads me to try and present myself to others in ways that I think will get their approval; often, this is through censoring my actual thoughts and likes. In other words, I find myself hiding parts of who I am from others to try and manipulate them into not socially rejecting me or otherwise enacting socially-devastating (albeit nebulous in specifics) consequences on me. Needless to say, this underlying, emotionally-driven perspective impedes my ability to develop relationships with others. If I want to find those with whom I can connect, I have to reveal myself. This revealing of my personality feels scary, sure, but what ...

It was on a Sunday morning—that of August 25, 2024 to be exact, when church was starting—that God gave me a revelation, not unlike others He has given me in the past. It's the kind of revelation that gave me understanding of something about myself that had been eluding me. In this case, it was the way church and church culture, at least in the ways I've experienced them, have been a stumbling block in my ability to know God, desire Him, and feel desired and loved by Him. We Christians represent God to the people. I think He's chosen to make us His ambassadors because He's a big fan of free will—it's kind of necessary for love, after all (you can't force genuine love). So in a very real sense, Christian culture, and more directly church culture, paints a picture of God. Unfortunately, this picture is often inaccurate in many ways, as it's affected by the world; for me, the most warped part has been the way the church has so often adopted the world's conce...

Imagine you're Satan, fighting against God. Your goal is to make as much of God's creation His enemy as you can. You especially want to turn God's chosen people against Him. At first, you led His people Israel into idolatry, and that was going great (overall) until He punished them with the Babylonian Exile. They came back more dedicated to Him than ever, so it was time to change tactics by switching to Legalism. By getting them so caught up in the appearance of "holiness" (though it's really just a fabrication of your own design that you've convinced people is holiness, clever you), you fill them with self-righteousness and judgmentalism—the self-superior judging of others. And then God sends His son, Jesus, to earth in the form of a human being. You don't want Him to reestablish the Kingdom of Israel, with Jesus sitting on David's throne, so you hatch a scheme to tempt Him, to make Him fall into sin. That plan fails, but it was always kind of a l...

In this episode, I talk extensively about the concept of Legalism. A few notes: 1. This episode is much longer than I want episodes to generally be. My target is 10-12 minutes or less, with an allowance for the rare 15 minute episode of a topic can't be split up very well. On the bright side, this episode and its length has given me a lot of good data to draw from that'll help me be within my desired time limit on future episodes! 2. I'm trying out a "cold open" in this one, where rather than starting right away with the greeting, I instead open with a relevant Bible quotation. Let me know what you think! 3. Speaking of requests for feedback, one of the side effects of the length of this episode is that I went for a much simpler video style than I did with the previous episode. Let me know what you think! Do you prefer this simpler style? Did you like all of the text in the previous episode? Would you prefer something in between? As always, thanks for watching and...