Aidan Rhiannon

but see, according to my belief system, im not a sinner.

but having been called a "sinner" a number of times, the word tends to have a certain connotation. now, if you were to tell me that im a human and make mistakes, then i could agree....altho i rarely make mistakes. ;) im perfect. ;)

this is shaky ground tho because not everyone has the same belief system nor does everyone believe in god or sin. ive always hated being called a sinner because well, im not. in my eyes, sin doesnt exist. and anyone who has ever called me a sinner did so looking down on me, regardless of their own "sins".

Saying somebody's a "nigger" does not automatically equate bigotry and prejudice, okay? (the literal meaning of the word means "slave") but say that to a black person and see what happens.

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Have I ever gone and said "Harli, you're a sinner!"

I try to not judge. But somebody asked me if I thought something was a sin, and I said yes I did. And with only that answer, with no other information, I got jumped on and called a bigot, told I was discriminating and being prejudiced.

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i never said that you said such a thing. in fact, i know that you havent.

now see that person blew shit all out of proportion. your beliefs system or religion deems that one thing a sin. THEY flipped out and only see one side of this. my thoughts? if someone wants to be a tard, and throw a fit because theyre only looking at one viewpoint, so be it, but they wont get very far with that outlook on life.

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You're spiffy, you know that?

Even if you are one of those godless sinners that's going to hell. (kidding!)

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spiffy? yeah i know it B)

oh noes im such a godless sinner! sex before marriage, eating unclean animals, not respecting my mother! what will bcome of a heathen like me!? XD *chuckles* ill survive somehow ;)

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aazhie.livejournal.com

If you directly call someone a sinner for no reason, that can be a little rude, depending on who you are saying it to. But wehen someone asks your opinion of say a fursuit they made and you say it is not very well made (in your personal opinion) it looks to same to me ask asking you what sin is. There is NO accounting for taste and while I also don't beleive in sin, you shouldn't ask if you don't really honestly want to know. Everyone has different beleifs and as long as they don't go cramming it up my butt in a bastardly fashion, i can't hold it against them for beleiving it, so long as they aren't hurting others with it.

<< this is why i don't comment on fursuit stuff (and other things) unless i really LIKE the suit, because otherwise people seem to get really bitchy about their work, and I don't know enough to critique and help them fix it>>

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taking your example and running with it, if someone were to ask me what i thought of a suit, id point out what i liked, if anything and then list what i think could be better and offer advice on how to fix it if they so desire.

but then again, there will always be people who cant handle critique, even tho they asked for it...*cough*mollymargay*hack cough* ;)

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*laughs* Yeah. She finally left my forum.

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woohoo! hopefully she dropped off the face of the internet but more than likely shes taken on a different identity once it became apparent that she wasnt getting pity as a victim or money as a suit maker. XD

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She went out with a HUGE explosion of drama, though this was some time ago. Apparently telling somebody honestly that I think she's a spaz is totally unforgivable and evil.

It was a little rude, but it's not like I went around campaigning against her. Somebody was asking about her on artist's beware, and I answered that in my experience she was unprofessional.

She attacked me on Christian furs, calling me un-Christian, then deleted that post, and then started a thread complaining about how I'm out to get her on my forum, which was kind of silly of her, really. I run the place. If I'm out to get her, why wouldn't I just delete her thread? (I didn't, of course, I let her dig her own grave there.) Then she just stopped replying and I haven't seen hide nor hair of her since.

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well, good riddance to bad rubbish anyway. so sad the lulz are gone, but honestly shes a freaking time bomb.

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jfoxfire.livejournal.com

im not a sinner.i do not do any of that at all.

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starkruzr.livejournal.com

This is tough because what is actually happening is that the person in question is offended not by being called a sinner, but by being told that a certain action is really a sin.

We all know that we're not perfect, but many (most?) of us try to live our lives in the best possible way we can. Being told that something we honestly believe is morally okay is "a sin" creates a tension between our moral code and our friendship with you.

(That said, you've NEVER said any of this to me, I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and help explain what I think might be going on.)

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Yeah, I know there's probably good reasons behind the reaction I got here. It just aggravated me considerably.

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ekmahal.livejournal.com

There's a big difference between:
* "If I did that, I would feel that I was committing a sin under my religious tenets"
* "You did that, and you are a sinner under my religious tenets"

It can be very hard to separate "what I believe" from "what I think about you" linguistically, unless you are a back seat driver to your own mouth. Which very few people are.

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Quite true.

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sparkindarkness.livejournal.com

Meh, most people who call me a sinner do hate me, so it usually takes me time to double check to make sure that anyone calling me that isn't one of the squishing crowd.

Of course, I disagree with anyone who calls me a sinner, but I don't necessarily assume hate

It all depends on context. If I sought someone's opinioon, for example, that's a far cry from someone deciding to wave a Bible and announce just how long I'm going to spend getting toastie warm in an afterlife of their choice.

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Hmm... Now see, when someone calls you a sinner, it's almost a reflex to protest it. But everyone is guilty of judging, or thinking things that aren't pure. Everyone does sin. It's simply a matter of trying to minimize it and to seek forgiveness for it, whether that be by praying (for Christians), or perhaps trying to make ammends for it, or whatever suits your belief structure.

(Sorry, just popping in with a little odd comment. Feel free to say I'm being nosy and I'll go away! :)

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sparkindarkness.livejournal.com

It's reflex to protest it mainly because most people who say it do so for less than pure reasons

Everyone judges, but there is a difference between applying one's belief system to others and judging IMO. And again, there is a difference between an opinion and overt judgement, I think.

I don't necessarily follow that everyone does "sin." I dislike the word. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we do evil, sometimes we do wrong - and yes, we must always endeavour to make wrong right as much as that is possible if we have hurt another, but I don't follow that atonement is essentially necessary - or even forgiveness. In fact I'm a little leery of forgiveness - we have evolved something of a culturte where forgiveness is mandatory - expected and required and an easy escape route (but that's another topic)

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I hate the word sin, but by Christian standards, it's nearly impossible not to, even for a day, because the way we think, the way we act, even things that are accidental... There are so many tiny details that there's no way a person can live a full life without 'sinning'. (This is part of why I shied away from Christianity in general)

If somebody was hurt by your actions, then I do believe you should make ammends for it and seek forgiveness in some way. Especially if the cause of it was either deliberate or thoughtless. But it should be done because it is right, not because it's the easy out.

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Yeah, I know it's a sort of "trigger" word for a lot of negative things for people, so I generally try to not throw it around too much.

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*nods* It is, but as it isn't part of my belief structure, I can sit back and look at it a little more objectively. By Christian beliefs, I'm very much a sinner, and as I don't believe in the same god and pray for forgiveness, I'm doomed to burn in hell. But as those aren't my beliefs, I don't get riled up over it so easily.

Hope you don't mind having a 'heathen sinner' as a friend though! *grins*

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Well, you can join the crowd, I think most of my friends are of some "alternative" spirituality, if they're religious at all.

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By Christian standards, all humans are sinners, yeah. Heck, even by my own beliefs (very much Pagan), all humans are flawed and you accept that of yourself and others. Nobody is perfect, and if they are then they're lying.

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sarahbubble.livejournal.com

I just want to chime in here with a random voice of support, having gotten here from the christianleft community where I thought you were being completely unfairly maligned and misrepresented. I thought you managed to maintain a level of reasoned discourse in the face of knee-jerk presumptive responses to the use of certain buzz words (both "sinner" as you discuss here and "left", as though that means something uniform because there's a manifesto we all have to sign before we can identify ourselves as left-wing) when I would have wimped out plenty earlier.

So I absolutely get what you're saying here, and I can see a big difference between the way you say it and the sort of lip service some pay to the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin". The analogy in the first comment to a racial slur is, I think, a radically different situation--um, the literal meaning is slave, which, even if you don't consciously equate it with hatred, involves violence, control, condescension, subhuman status, etc. "Sinner" or even the attributive, non-absorbing of all one's characteristic "someone who sins" is not in the same ballpark here.

Sometimes I think I should stay out of lj communities entirely, but there always seems to be one person there who manages to avoid crazy intellectual arrogance and finger-pointing, and it gives me hope. If you don't mind, I'm adding you to my friendslist.

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