My step sister from my dad is currently 18 years old and she has been under my mother’s care (her step mother) since she was 2 since she doesn’t want to stay with her own mother even though she always claim to be mistreated in here. She’s living the most comfortable life under this very own roof that’s why she never decided to move back with her mom.
She have done a lot of awful things to my mother such as stealing 500+ dollars from my mother just to spend on her boyfriend, talking rude things about her behind her back, telling my mom’s friend exaggerated fake stories that makes my parents look bad
Last year, she moved out of here to live with my grandma (which she always disrespects as well) because our father and her had an argument because of her being too hardheaded, she wasn’t talking to our dad the whole time she was there and only apologized when my grandma kicked her out for also being hardheaded and rude.
My mom pitied her so she let her back into our house and now she moved out again because of an argument with my mom.

First of all, this is going to be a long post. apologies for any grammatical or spelling errors. It's very late at night and I just needed to get this off my chest. Also, I'm doing this on my phone, so...
My friend, whom I've been very close to for about a year and four months, has removed me from his life for the time being and claims I am a horrible person and a narcissist. This started during a small event about a year ago when we were playing Call of Duty with a particular friend. One of my other friends, whom they are not familiar with, started razzing on them, teasing, and making fun of them a little for not being very good at the game because they were brand new. (I know the fact that they didn't know each other had a lot to do with how he viewed this interaction.) I realized it affected him badly, and I apologized profusely.
I acknowledge that talking shit to your friends on Call of Duty is pretty par for the course for me, so I didn't recognize the problem immediately. Teasing and shit-talking your friends on Call of Duty is very normal for me, but for them, it really struck a chord. They thought they were being bullied and targeted directly for some reason, but they didn't exactly tell me why. At the time of the interaction, I didn't take it seriously because I knew the person and knew he wasn't doing it maliciously. He had also been drinking, which made him a bit more rowdy. Explaining that it wasn't malicious wasn't good enough during the confrontation later on. Apologies weren't good enough either. I didn't know what they wanted me to do other than go back in time and address it at that moment. I wish I could have.
The friend who did this was someone I usually only hung out with during Call of Duty. But afterward, I got closer to him over the months that followed. My friend who was hurt didn't tell me about his feelings until much later. I learned later that he was getting offended that I was getting closer to this person as well. When he eventually told me about it, I brushed it off, saying that that's how people act on Call of Duty. No, I'm not condoning the terrible things people say in Call of Duty, but my friend is not like that. I know some of you might be thinking about Call of Duty and the worst of the worst things said there, but it definitely wasn't that.
I didn't take it seriously at the time, and we got into an argument. He still never fully explained what exactly I did wrong, just that I didn't defend him or that I brushed off his feelings. He thinks my friend is a brash drunk person and basically just a bad person. He told me all of my Call of Duty friends are garbage. I admitted that my friend was struggling with alcoholism but has been taking huge steps to improve his life. He's still improving every day. But he still talks shit on Call of Duty, and I talk shit to him too. For us, talking shit to your friends is kind of how you express your friendship. It probably sounds crazy, but my hurt friend still felt extremely bad about it and threatened to cut off our friendship if I didn't apologize correctly or cut off my Call of Duty friend. We eventually worked through this argument.
This brings me to another argument we had later on. For the past few months, my friend has been extremely depressed. He's going to therapy again, but every time we talk, he talks about how depressed he is, how his dating life is terrible, how everyone in his past has treated him awfully, his dating prospects are horrible, and nobody likes him. He's depressed because he might have to move and he's currently out of a job. I feel for this man terribly. I love him and wish I could help him with everything he needs. But it's like he's flipped a switch in the last few months and suddenly hates me. He has called me a narcissist or said that I have narcissistic traits, or that I'm just terrible. He says I have some sort of mental disorder. He constantly tells people I need to work on myself and that if I can't acknowledge my problems, I must be damaged. To be fair, everyone has problems they need to work on.
He also told people that I trick people into liking me and told my boyfriend that I manipulated him into being with me. Every single conversation he's had with people about me has been either awfully negative or bizarrely positive about how I'm such a wonderful person. It's honestly starting to get god-awfully annoying.
I had stopped hanging out with him one-on-one because every time we talked, it was so depressing or overly positive about how happy he was about my relationship with his best friend growing. It was honestly very strange. I used to confide in him about my relationship with his best friend, but I do not do that anymore. It would always devolve into the depressing things I mentioned above and how everyone in his past has treated him terribly. So I would only hang out with him in social settings because he wouldn't share like that when there were other people around. That’s a stark contrast from the many hours we used to spend speaking one-on-one, playing games, and just chatting and watching videos for hours on end. We were very close.
I’m aware that only spending time with him in a group setting was a messed-up thing to do. I should have talked to him about my feelings, but I was honestly scared that he would get mad at me because of how he had reacted in the past and how reactive he had been to everything anyone had said to him recently. He has been overthinking every single thing that I say. He takes everything I say out of context and misunderstands every single thing I say to him.
One day, I burned my hand badly and couldn’t play anything, so I ended up just watching a show with my boyfriend. My friend messaged me and asked if I wanted to play games with him. I told him about my hand and that I wasn't going to be playing any games. I had made plans to play games later that night with another friend, but I told him those plans were canceled. He accused me of trying to ostracize him. I told him that if I felt up for it, I would invite him if my hand felt better and I could play games later that night. He lives on the East Coast, and I live on the West Coast, so if I play later at night, he might be sleeping, but I told him if he was awake, I would invite him. I ended up not being able to. My hand was very badly burnt, and I had an ice pack on it all night. And he never said it directly. But the way he was like, if you don't want me to hang out you can just tell me. Was very telling that he didn't believe me and he thought I was just excluding him. I ended up taking a picture of what I was doing and sent it to him, which he said was ridiculous and unnecessary of me to do, but it was the only thing I could do to make him stop. It’s like he’s looking for bad things to think and say about me.
He even snapped on a very long-term friend, calling him a terrible name. It was incredibly cruel and extremely out of character. I know he’s going through serious mental issues and depression, and he has recently started going to therapy again. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s just hard at this point. I have apologized dozens of times, but he constantly says that I don’t apologize correctly or that I’m not apologizing the right way. I don’t know what that means. I’m so apologetic, and I know I have a terrible way of expressing myself and saying the right words. He knows that. He deleted me on all platforms except for a couple. He said he left those avenues of contact open as a way for us to try and work through this. We called each other a few days ago and had a pretty good conversation. I think this is going to end positively. I think our relationship and friendship are going in a positive direction at this point. But I’m just feeling crazy about all of this and wondering if maybe I am crazy. I’m an overthinker and I overthink everything. And now that I can’t stop thinking about this, maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe I am a horrible person. I kind of just wanted some outside perspective on it. If you have any questions or need me to explain anything further, please ask. I’ll be more than happy to answer.
I know I should have defended him properly and I did not communicate well enough. I know I should have expressed my feelings to him and tried to work through them properly. I’m a very bad communicator and tend to over-explain because I hate being misunderstood. I know that can get on people’s nerves, and they can see me trying to explain my point as just making excuses or justifying my actions when I’m just trying to make sure I’m understood so they know exactly why I did something and understand my point of view. I do this even when I have acknowledged that I’m wrong. I just want to be understood. That is something I’m actively working on. It’s a terrible quality, I know. But if this doesn't get better, what should I do?

I am not even talking about scriptural problems within the bible, You don't have to open a single bible to start seeing the problems,
1-) The Problem of Salvation and Faith (Why the plan of salvation is ridiculous, and has failed)
I.The ridiculousness of the plan
A. Demanding blood for remission of sins Heb 9:22 - Why is this the terms that god insists upon? Isn't he the architect of the parameters regarding sin, punishment, and forgiveness? Is he not able to forgive sin without blood sacrifice? Can he not say, “No blood sacrifice necessary, I just forgive you?”
B. God sacrificing himself to himself to save us from himself by creating a loophole in the architecture for condemnation he engineered in the first place? This is your solution for a problem in which you yourself are the problem. It’s like a doctor stabbing people to be able to operate and save them.
C. Dying for someone else's crime does not equal justice in any court.
D. The sacrifice was not a sacrifice at all :

1. Jesus is said to be eternal
2. He spent a few days in misery out of his billions of years plus of existence
3. He spent a minutiae of a fraction of his existence suffering knowing he would be resurrected after the ordeal and spend eternity in divine luxury, and that somehow provides him justification to sentence us to trillions of years of eternity suffering without end?
4. Jesus is a supernatural immortal who suffered temporary mortal punishment and then sentences mortals to supernatural eternal punishment if they do not receive his sacrifice.
5. Why is three days of punishment followed by eternity in glory sufficient for all the horrible deeds any man has ever committed, but billions of years suffered in hell by a good moral person who does not believe due to lack of evidence is not sufficient?

2-) Nature of The Christian god
I. He is supposed to be an all Powerful and All mighty being and yet he died on a cross by his own creation (If you see someone claiming to be god and then you saw him hie before your very eyes, How on earth are you supposed to conclude anything else other than "This guy is a liar"?)
Modern Christians would respond to this saying "Only the Human part died, The Divine part wasn't affected"
Which again, doesn't make any sense :
A. Even when assuming a human sacrifice is somehow necessary for salvation, The sacrifice of 1 Human being can never be Enough to atone for the sins of all of mankind since Adam and Eve till the return of jesus.
I found a Coptic pope explaining this issue in detail, Here is a link to his book, https://st-takla.org/books/en/pope-shenouda-iii/nature-of-christ/propitiation-and-redemption.html
Quoting from it : "The belief in the One Nature of the Incarnate Logos is essential, necessary and fundamental for redemption. Redemption requires unlimited propitiation sufficient for the forgiveness of the unlimited sins of all the people through all ages. There was no solution other than the Incarnation of God the Logos to offer this through His Divine Power.
Thus, if we mention two natures and say that the human nature alone performed the act of redemption, it would have been entirely impossible to achieve unlimited propitiation for man's salvation. Hence comes the danger of speaking of two natures, each having its own specific tasks. In such case, the death of the human nature alone is insufficient."
It's very clear that saying only the human part died doesn't make any sense, Even according to the Christian theology itself.
B. The Trinity is based on a false idea
I know, It's a classic Argument against Christianity but you can't deny that it's an actual damning argument against the Christian theology.

1. God is all knowing but Jesus wasn't all knowing (mark 13:32)
2. Jesus is supposed to be god, but he is praying to himself to save himself with cries and tears?? (Luke 22:41-44)
3. Jesus is god but we can't say he is good because only god is good?? (Luke 18:18-19)
4. God can't be tempted by evil (James 1:13) but yet jesus was tempted by satan?? (Matthew 4:1)
5. Jesus is god but he can't do a thing on his own?? (John 5:31) 6.Jesus is supposed to be the same as the father, But their teachings are different? (John 7:16)

And so many more, Throught the bible i can't help but notice the intense number of verses which clearly states Jesus can't be god.
3-) The Problem of a Historical Jesus (Why we don’t know the actual historical Jesus)
I. No contemporary historical evidence,
A. No historian alive during Jesus day wrote about Jesus despite ample opportunity

1. The kings coming to his birth
2. Herod’s slaughter of baby boys
3. The overthrowing of money changers
4. Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem where he is declared king by the whole town.
5. Darkness covering the whole earth for hours on Jesus’ Death
6. The earthquakes at Jesus’ death
7. The rending of the temple veil at Jesus’ Death
8. The resurrection of Jesus that was seen by 500 witnesses.(Only Paul claims that, even tho he never met jesus)

II. The Gospels are contradicting, late hearsay accounts
A. Mark, the earliest gospel, was written at least after 70 A.D. (referencing fall of temple) by a non-eyewitness, and makes numerous cultural and geographical errors that a Jewish writer would not have made such as locations of rivers, cultural customs regarding divorce, locations of towns or Jesus quoting from the greek Septuagint etc. (see geographical and historical errors in this link, https://holtz.org/Library/Philosophy/Metaphysics/Theology/Christianity/Criticism/Bible%20Problems%20by%20Packham%201998.htm#ERRORS )
B. The other gospels all copied from Mark. Luke and Matthew contain over 70% of Mark and mainly make changes in attempts to fix blatant errors made in Mark and to correct Mark’s poor grammar.The writer of Luke even reveals to us in Luke 1:2 that he was not an eyewitness, but that the story has been passed down to him.
C. Four where chosen by the church father Iraeneus because he believed the earth was founded on four pillars and so too, should the gospels be founded by only four accounts.
Iraenus also revealed the names of the Gospels in the late second century, without any reason to assume they where the authentic authors - no one knows who actually wrote them!
D. John was initially considered heretical by the early church because of its variation from the synoptic but was overwhelmingly popular amongst Christians and so was included.
E. The book of Revelations was also considered heretical by many :
For centuries The Revelation was a rejected book. In the 4th century, St.John Chrysostom and other bishops argued against it. Christians in Syria also reject it. The Synod of Laodicea: c. 363, rejected The Revelation. In the late 380s, Gregory of Nazianus produced a canon omitting The Revelation. Bishop Amphilocus of Iconium, in his poem Iambics for Seleucus written some time after 394, rejects The Revelation. When St.Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, producing the Vulgate bible c. 400, he argued for the Veritas Hebraica, meaning the truth of the Jewish Bible over the Septuagint translation. At the insistence of the Pope, however, he added existing translations for what he considered doubtful books: among them The Revelation. The Church in the East never included the Revelation.
4-) The early church did not seem to know anything about a historical Jesus. Huge amounts of disagreement over Jesus in the first hundred years :

1. Some churches didn’t even believe he had a physical body, prompting Paul to write about that very issue.
   
2. There was an enormous debate between all the major early churches as to whether Jesus was divine or not, this was settled at the council of Nicea by the Roman Emperor Constantine.
   

5-) Which Bible?
A. Over 450 English versions of the bible All are translated using different methods and from entirely different manuscripts
B. Thousands of manuscripts disagreeing with each other wildly in what verses and even books they contain.
C. Different translations teach entirely different things in places, some often leaving out entire chapters and verses or containing footnotes warning of possible error due to uncertainty about the reliability of the numerous manuscripts.
Take a look at this example, 1- Revised standard version 2- Revised standard version Catholic edition 3- NEW revised standard version Updated edition 4- NEW revised standard version Catholic edition 5- NEW revised standard version, Anglicised 6- NEW revised standard version, Anglicised Catholic edition
How many attempts would it take to finally get it right ?!
6-) The Morality of the bible
I don't like using Morality as an argument because i believe it's a subjective thing, But I cannot help but notice how the morals of the OT and the NT are completely contradictory
In the OT god was Angry, Vengeful, Demands war, order genocides, Ordered the killing of children and even the ripping open of pregnant women.
But in the NT he somehow became loving, a father figure, saying if anyone hits you you shouldn't even respond back.

• In Conclusion: I don't think Christianity can be accepted as the truth by any logical person (Even most convert stories i heard were basically "I saw jesus in a dream" or "The holy spirit held my hand")

There is so many Theological confusion, A salvation idea that makes 0 sense, Lack of any form of historical critirea of knowing what is true manuscripts and what is hearsays (The authors of the gospels are all Anynomous),
There is even disagreement within Christianity itself about what stories go into the bible (Many stories have been found out to be false like John 8:1-11 and Mark 16:18)
https://textandcanon.org/does-the-woman-caught-in-adultery-belong-in-the-bible/
The lack of consistency on literally everything makes it one of the least convincing religion in my opinion.

"Why Did Jesus Die on the Cross?"

The main reason Jesus died on the cross was to defeat Satan and set us free from his oppressive rule. Everything else that Jesus accomplished was to be understood as an aspect and consequence of this victory (e.g., Recapitulation, Moral Influence, etc.).
This understanding of why Jesus had to die is called the Christus Victor (Latin for “Christ is Victorious”) view of the atonement. But, what exactly was Christ victorious from, and why? To find out the answers to these questions, we have to turn to the Old Testament, as that's what the apostles would often allude to in order to properly teach their audience the message they were trying to convey (Rom. 15:4).
The OT is full of conflict between the Father (YHVH) and false gods, between YHVH and cosmic forces of chaos. The Psalms speak of this conflict between YHVH and water monsters of the deeps (an ancient image for chaos) (Psa. 29:3-4; 74:10-14; 77:16, 19; 89:9-10; 104:2-9, etc).
The liberation of Israel from Egypt wasn’t just a conflict between Pharaoh and Moses. It was really between YHVH and the false gods of Egypt.
Regardless of whether you think the aforementioned descriptions are literal or metaphorical, the reality that the Old Testament describes is that humanity lived in a “cosmic war zone.”
The Christus Victor motif is about Christ reigning victorious over wicked principalities and Satan's kingdom, and is strongly emphasized throughout the New Testament. Scripture declares that Jesus came to drive out "the prince of this world” (John 12:31), to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), to “destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14) and to “put all enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25). Jesus came to overpower the “strong man” (Satan) who held the world in bondage and worked with his Church to plunder his "palace" (Luke 11:21-22). He came to end the reign of the cosmic “thief” who seized the world to “steal, and to kill, and to destroy” the life YHVH intended for us (John 10:10). Jesus came and died on the cross to disarm “the principalities and powers” and make a “shew of them openly [i.e., public spectacle]” by “triumphing over them in [the cross]” (Col. 2:15).
Beyond these explicit statements, there are many other passages that express the Christus Victor motif as well. For example, the first prophecy in the Bible foretells that a descendent of Eve (Jesus) would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). The first Christian sermon ever preached proclaimed that Jesus in principle conquered all YHVH's enemies (Acts 2:32-36). And the single most frequently quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament authors is Psalm 110:1 which predicts that Christ would conquer all YHVH’s opponents. (Psalm 110 is quoted or alluded to in Matthew 22:41-45; 26:64, Mark 12:35-37; 14:62, Luke 20:41-44; 22:69, Acts 5:31; 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, 1st Corinthians 15:22-25, Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 1:3; 1:13; 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11, 15, 17, 21; 8:1; 10:12-13, 1st Peter 3:22, and Revelation 3:21.) According to New Testament scholar Oscar Cullman, the frequency with which New Testament authors cite this Psalm is the greatest proof that Christ’s “victory over the angel powers stands at the very center of early Christian thought.”
Because of man's rebellion, the Messiah's coming involved a rescue mission that included a strategy for vanquishing the powers of darkness.
Since YHVH is a God of love who gives genuine “say-so” to both angels and humans, YHVH rarely accomplishes His providential plans through coercion. YHVH relies on His infinite wisdom to achieve His goals. Nowhere is YHVH's wisdom put more on display than in the manner in which He outsmarted Satan and the powers of evil, using their own evil to bring about their defeat.
Most readers probably know the famous story from ancient Greece about the Trojan Horse. To recap the story, Troy and Greece had been locked in a ten-year-long vicious war when, according to Homer and Virgil, the Greeks came up with a brilliant idea. They built an enormous wooden horse, hid soldiers inside and offered it to the Trojans as a gift, claiming they were conceding defeat and going home. The delighted Trojans accepted the gift and proceeded to celebrate by drinking themselves into a drunken stupor. When night came and the Trojan warriors were too wasted to fight, the Greeks exited the horse, unlocked the city gates to quietly let all their compatriots in, and easily conquered the city, thus winning the war.
Historians debate whether any of this actually happened. But either way, as military strategies go, it’s brilliant.
Now, there are five clues in the New Testament that suggest YHVH was using something like this Trojan Horse strategy against the powers when he sent Jesus into the world:
1) The Bible tells us that YHVH's victory over the powers of darkness was achieved by the employment of YHVH’s wisdom, and was centered on that wisdom having become reality in Jesus Christ (Rom. 16:25, 1 Cor. 2:7, Eph. 3:9-10, Col. 1:26). It also tells us that, for some reason, this Christ-centered wisdom was kept “secret and hidden” throughout the ages. It’s clear from this that YHVH's strategy was to outsmart and surprise the powers by sending Jesus.
2) While humans don’t generally know Jesus’ true identity during his ministry, demons do. They recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, but, interestingly enough, they have no idea what he’s doing (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7, Luke 8:21). Again, the wisdom of YHVH in sending Jesus was hidden from them.
3) We’re told that, while humans certainly share in the responsibility for the crucifixion, Satan and the powers were working behind the scenes to bring it about (John 13:27 cf. 1 Cor. 2:6-8). These forces of evil helped orchestrate the crucifixion.
4) We’re taught that if the “princes of this world [age]” had understood the secret wisdom of YHVH, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8 cf. vss 6-7). Apparently, Satan and the powers regretted orchestrating Christ’s crucifixion once they learned of the wisdom of YHVH that was behind it.
5) Finally, we can begin to understand why the powers came to regret crucifying “the Lord of glory” when we read that it was by means of the crucifixion that the “handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us [i.e., the charge of our legal indebtedness]” was “[taken] out of the way [i.e., canceled]” as the powers were disarmed. In this way Christ “triumph[ed] over” the powers by "his cross” and even “made a shew of them openly” (Col. 2:14-15). Through Christ’s death and resurrection YHVH's enemies were vanquished and placed under his Messiah's feet, and ultimately His own in the end (1 Cor. 15:23-28).
Putting these five clues together, we can discern YHVH's Trojan Horse strategy in sending Jesus.
The powers couldn’t discern why Jesus came because YHVH's wisdom was hidden from them. YHVH's wisdom was motivated by unfathomable love, and since Satan and the other powers were evil, they lacked the capacity to understand it. Their evil hearts prevented them from suspecting what YHVH was up to.
What the powers did understand was that Jesus was mortal. This meant he was killable. Lacking the capacity to understand that this was the means by which YHVH would ultimately bring about the defeat of death (and thus, pave the road for the resurrection itself), they never suspected that making Jesus vulnerable to their evil might actually be part of YHVH's infinitely wise plan.
And so they took the bait (or "ransom"; Matt. 20:28, Mark 10:45, 1 Tim. 2:5-6). Utilizing Judas and other willing human agents, the powers played right into YHVH’s secret plan and orchestrated the crucifixion of the Messiah (Acts 2:22-23; 4:28). YHVH thus brilliantly used the self-inflicted incapacity of evil to understand love against itself. And, like light dispelling darkness, the unfathomably beautiful act of YHVH's love in sending the willing Messiah as a "ransom" to these blood-thirsty powers defeated them. The whole creation was in principle freed and reconciled to YHVH, while everything written against us humans was nailed to the cross, thus robbing the powers of the only legal claim they had on us. They were “spoiled [i.e., disempowered]” (Col. 2:14-15).
As happened to the Trojans in accepting the gift from the Greeks, in seizing on Christ’s vulnerability and orchestrating his crucifixion, the powers unwittingly cooperated with YHVH to unleash the one power in the world that dispels all evil and sets captives free. It’s the power of self-sacrificial love.

Why Penal Substitution Is Unbiblical

For the sake of keeping this already lengthy post as short as possible I'm not going to spend too much time on why exactly PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is inconsistent with Scripture, but I'll go ahead and point out the main reasons why I believe this is so, and let the reader look further into this subject by themselves, being that there are many resources out there which have devoted much more time than I ever could here in supporting this premise.

"Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:"-1 Corinthians 5:7

The Passover is one of the two most prominent images in the New Testament given as a comparison to Christ's atonement and what it accomplished, (the other most common image being the Day of Atonement sacrifice).
In the Passover, the blood of the lamb on the door posts of the Hebrews in the book of Exodus was meant to mark out those who were YHVH's, not be a symbol of PSA, as the lamb itself was not being punished by God in place of the Hebrews, but rather the kingdom of Egypt (and thus, allegorically speaking, the kingdom of darkness which opposed YHVH) was what was being judged and punished, because those who were not "covered" by the blood of the lamb could be easily identified as not part of God's kingdom/covenant and liberated people.
Looking at the Day of Atonement sacrifice (which, again, Christ's death is repeatedly compared to throughout the New Testament), this ritual required a ram, a bull, and two goats (Lev. 16:3-5). The ram was for a burnt offering intended to please God (Lev. 16:3-4). The bull served as a sin offering for Aaron, the high priest, and his family. In this case, the sin offering restored the priest to ritual purity, allowing him to occupy sacred space and be near YHVH’s presence. Two goats taken from "the congregation” were needed for the single sin offering for the people (Lev. 16:5). So why two goats?
The high priest would cast lots over the two goats, with one chosen as a sacrifice “for the Lord” (Lev. 16:8). The blood of that goat would purify the people. The second goat was not sacrificed or designated “for the Lord.” On the contrary, this goat—the one that symbolically carried the sins away from the camp of Israel into the wilderness—was “for Azazel” (Lev. 16:8-10).
What—or who—is Azazel?
The Hebrew term azazel (עזאזל) occurs four times in Leviticus 16 but nowhere else in most people's canon of the Bible, (and I say "most people's canon," because some people do include 1 Enoch in their canon of Scripture, which of course goes into great detail about this "Azazel" figure). Many translations prefer to translate the term as a phrase, “the goat that goes away,” which is the same idea conveyed in the King James Version’s “scapegoat.” Other translations treat the word as a name: Azazel. The “scapegoat” option is possible, but since the phrase “for Azazel” parallels the phrase “for YHVH” (“for the Lord”), the wording suggests that two divine figures are being contrasted by the two goats.
A strong case can be made for translating the term as the name Azazel. Ancient Jewish texts show that Azazel was understood as a demonic figure associated with the wilderness. The Mishnah (ca. AD 200; Yoma 6:6) records that the goat for Azazel was led to a cliff and pushed over, ensuring it would not return with its death. This association of the wilderness with evil is also evident in the New Testament, as this was where Jesus met the devil (Matt. 4:1). Also, in Leviticus 17:1-7 we learn that some Israelites had been accustomed to sacrificing offerings to "devils" (alternatively translated as “goat demons”). The Day of Atonement replaced this illegitimate practice.
The second goat was not sent into the wilderness as a sacrifice to a foreign god or demon. The act of sending the live goat out into the wilderness, which was unholy ground, was to send the sins of the people where they belonged—to the demonic domain. With one goat sacrificed to bring purification and access to YHVH and one goat sent to carry the people’s sins to the demonic domain, this annual ritual reinforced the identity of the true God and His mercy and holiness.
When Jesus died on the cross for all of humanity’s sins, he was crucified outside the city, paralleling the sins of the people being cast to the wilderness via the goat to Azazel. Jesus died once for all sinners, negating the need for this ritual.
As previously stated, the goat which had all the sin put on it was sent alive off to the wilderness, while the blood of the goat which was blameless was used to purify the temple and the people. Penal substitution would necessitate the killing of the goat which had the sin put on it.
Mind you, this is the only sacrificial ritual of any kind in the Torah in which sins are placed on an animal. The only time it happens is this, and that animal is not sacrificed. Most PSA proponents unwittingly point to this ritual as evidence of their view, despite it actually serving as evidence to the contrary, because most people don't read their Old Testament and don't familiarize themselves with the "boring parts" like Leviticus (when it's actually rather important to do so, since that book explains how exactly animal offerings were to be carried out and why they were done in the first place).
In the New Testament, Christ's blood was not only meant to mark out those who were his, but also expel the presence of sin and ritual uncleanness so as to make the presence of YHVH manifest in the believer's life. Notice how God's wrath isn't poured out on Christ in our stead on this view, but rather His wrath was poured out on those who weren't covered, and the presence of sin and evil were merely removed by that which is pure and blameless (Christ's blood) for the believer.
All this is the difference between expiation and propitiation.

The Content of Paul's Gospel Message

When the New Testament writers talked about “the gospel,” they referred not to the Protestant doctrine of justification sola fide–the proposition that if we will stop trying to win God’s favor and only just believe that God has exchanged our sin for Christ’s perfect righteousness, then in God’s eyes we will have the perfect righteousness required both for salvation and for assuaging our guilty consciences–but rather they referred to the simple but explosive proposition Kyrios Christos, “Christ is Lord.” That is to say, the gospel was, properly speaking, the royal announcement that Jesus of Nazareth was the God of Israel’s promised Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
The New Testament writers were not writing in a cultural or linguistic vacuum and their language of euangelion (good news) and euangelizomai would have been understood by their audience in fairly specific ways. Namely, in the Greco-Roman world for which the New Testament authors wrote, euangelion/euangelizomai language typically had to do with either A) the announcement of the accession of a ruler, or B) the announcement of a victory in battle, and would probably have been understood along those lines.
Let’s take the announcements of a new ruler first. The classic example of such a language is the Priene Calendar Inscription, dating to circa 9 BC, which celebrates the rule (and birthday) of Caesar Augustus as follows:
"It was seeming to the Greeks in Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: Since Providence, which has ordered all things of our life and is very much interested in our life, has ordered things in sending Augustus, whom she filled with virtue for the benefit of men, sending him as a savior [soter] both for us and for those after us, him who would end war and order all things, and since Caesar by his appearance [epiphanein] surpassed the hopes of all those who received the good tidings [euangelia], not only those who were benefactors before him, but even the hope among those who will be left afterward, and the birthday of the god [he genethlios tou theou] was for the world the beginning of the good tidings [euangelion] through him; and Asia resolved it in Smyrna."
The association of the term euangelion with the announcement of Augustus’ rule is clear enough and is typical of how this language is used elsewhere. To give another example, Josephus records that at the news of the accession of the new emperor Vespasian (69 AD) “every city kept festival for the good news (euangelia) and offered sacrifices on his behalf.” (The Jewish War, IV.618). Finally, a papyrus dating to ca. 498 AD begins:
"Since I have become aware of the good news (euangeliou) about the proclamation as Caesar (of Gaius Julius Verus Maximus Augustus)…"
This usage occurs also in the Septuagint, the Greek translations of the Jewish Scriptures. For instance LXX Isaiah 52:7 reads, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news (euangelizomenou), who publishes peace, who brings good news (euangelizomenos) of salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.'" Similarly, LXX Isaiah 40:9-10 reads:

"…Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos) to Sion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos); lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Ioudas, “See your God!” Behold, the Lord comes with strength, and his arm with authority (kyrieias)…."-NETS, Esaias 40:9-10

This consistent close connection between euangelion/euangelizomai language and announcements of rule strongly suggests that many of the initial hearers/readers of the early Christians’ evangelical language would likely have understood that language as the announcement of a new ruler (see, e.g., Acts 17:7), and, unless there is strong NT evidence to the contrary, we should presume that the NT writers probably intended their language to be so understood.
However, the other main way in which euangelion/euangelizomai language was used in the Greco-Roman world was with reference to battle reports, announcements of victory in war. A classic example of this sort of usage can be found in LXX 2 Samuel 18:19ff, where David receives word that his traitorous son, Absalom, has been defeated in battle. Euangelion/euangelizomai is used throughout the passage for the communications from the front.
As already shown throughout this post, the NT speaks of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a great victory over the powers that existed at that time and, most importantly, over death itself. Jesus’ conquest of the principalities and powers was the establishment of his rule and comprehensive authority over heaven and earth, that is, of his Lordship over all things (again, at that time).
This was the content of Paul's gospel message...

Justification, and the "New" Perspective on Paul

The following quotation is from The Gospel Coalition, and I believe it to be a decently accurate summary of the NPP (New Perspective on Paul), despite it being from a source which is in opposition to it:

The New Perspective on Paul, a major scholarly shift that began in the 1980s, argues that the Jewish context of the New Testament has been wrongly understood and that this misunderstand[ing] has led to errors in the traditional-Protestant understanding of justification. According to the New Perspective, the Jewish systems of salvation were not based on works-righteousness but rather on covenantal nomism, the belief that one enters the people of God by grace and stays in through obedience to the covenant. This means that Paul could not have been referring to works-righteousness by his phrase “works of the law”; instead, he was referring to Jewish boundary markers that made clear who was or was not within the people of God. For the New Perspective, this is the issue that Paul opposes in the NT. Thus, justification takes on two aspects for the New Perspective rather than one; initial justification is by faith (grace) and recognizes covenant status (ecclesiology), while final justification is partially by works, albeit works produced by the Spirit.

I believe what's called the "new perspective" is actually rather old, and that the Reformers' view of Paul is what is truly new, being that the Lutheran understanding of Paul is simply not Biblical.
The Reformation perspective understands Paul to be arguing against a legalistic Jewish culture that seeks to earn their salvation through works. However, supporters of the NPP argue that Paul has been misread. We contend he was actually combating Jews who were boasting because they were God's people, the "elect" or the "chosen ones." Their "works," so to speak, were done to show they were God's covenant people and not to earn their salvation.
The key questions involve Paul’s view(s) of the law and the meaning of the controversy in which Paul was engaged. Paul strongly argued that we are “justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law” (Gal. 2:16b). Since the time of Martin Luther, this has been understood as an indictment of legalistic efforts to merit favor before God. Judaism was cast in the role of the medieval "church," and so Paul’s protests became very Lutheran, with traditional-Protestant theology reinforced in all its particulars (along with its limitations) as a result. In hermeneutical terms, then, the historical context of Paul’s debate will answer the questions we have about what exactly the apostle meant by the phrase "works of the law," along with other phrases often used as support by the Reformers for their doctrine of Sola Fide (justification by faith alone), like when Paul mentions "the righteousness of God."
Obviously an in-depth analysis of the Pauline corpus and its place in the context of first-century Judaism would take us far beyond the scope of this brief post. We can, however, quickly survey the topography of Paul’s thought in context, particularly as it has emerged through the efforts of recent scholarship, and note some salient points which may be used as the basis of a refurbished soteriology.
[Note: The more popular scholars associated with the NPP are E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N.T. Wright. Dunn was the first to coin the term "The New Perspective" in a 1983 Manson Memorial Lecture, The New Perspective on Paul and the Law.]
Varying authors since the early 1900's have brought up the charge that Paul was misread by those in the tradition of Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers. Yet, it wasn't until E.P. Sanders' 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, that scholars began to pay much attention to the issue. In his book, Sanders argues that the Judaism of Paul's day has been wrongly criticized as a religion of "works-salvation" by those in the Protestant tradition.
A fundamental premise in the NPP is that Judaism was actually a religion of grace. Sander's puts it clearly:
"On the point at which many have found the decisive contrast between Paul and Judaism - grace and works - Paul is in agreement with Palestinian Judaism... Salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works'...God saves by grace, but... within the framework established by grace he rewards good deeds and punishes transgression." (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 543)
N.T. Wright adds that, "we have misjudged early Judaism, especially Pharisaism, if we have thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism," (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 32).
Sanders has coined a now well-known phrase to describe the character of first-century Palestinian Judaism: “covenantal nomism.” The meaning of “covenantal nomism” is that human obedience is not construed as the means of entering into God’s covenant. That cannot be earned; inclusion within the covenant body is by the grace of God. Rather, obedience is the means of maintaining one’s status within the covenant. And with its emphasis on divine grace and forgiveness, Judaism was never a religion of legalism.
If covenantal nomism was operating as the primary category under which Jews understood the Law, then when Jews spoke of obeying commandments, or when they required strict obedience of themselves and fellow Jews, it was because they were "keeping the covenant," rather than out of legalism.
More recently, N.T. Wright has made a significant contribution in his little book, What Saint Paul Really Said. Wright’s focus is the gospel and the doctrine of justification. With incisive clarity he demonstrates that the core of Paul’s gospel was not justification by faith, but the death and resurrection of Christ and his exaltation as Lord. The proclamation of the gospel was the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, the Messiah who fulfilled Israel’s expectations. Romans 1:3-4, not 1:16-17, is the gospel, contrary to traditional thinking. Justification is not the center of Paul’s thought, but an outworking of it:
"[T]he doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’. It is implied by the gospel; when the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people. But ‘the gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved. It is, as we saw in an earlier chapter, the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ….Let us be quite clear. ‘The gospel’ is the announcement of Jesus’ lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him. ‘Justification’ is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family, on this basis and no other." (pp. 132, 133)
Wright brings us to this point by showing what “justification” would have meant in Paul’s Jewish context, bound up as it was in law-court terminology, eschatology, and God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant.
Specifically, Wright explodes the myth that the pre-Christian Saul was a pious, proto-Pelagian moralist seeking to earn his individual passage into heaven. Wright capitalizes on Paul’s autobiographical confessions to paint rather a picture of a zealous Jewish nationalist whose driving concern was to cleanse Israel of Gentiles as well as Jews who had lax attitudes toward the Torah. Running the risk of anachronism, Wright points to a contemporary version of the pre-Christian Saul: Yigal Amir, the zealous Torah-loyal Jew who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for exchanging Israel’s land for peace. Wright writes:
"Jews like Saul of Tarsus were not interested in an abstract, ahistorical system of salvation... They were interested in the salvation which, they believed, the one true God had promised to his people Israel." (pp. 32, 33)
Wright maintains that as a Christian, Paul continued to challenge paganism by taking the moral high ground of the creational monotheist. The doctrine of justification was not what Paul preached to the Gentiles as the main thrust of his gospel message; it was rather “the thing his converts most needed to know in order to be assured that they really were part of God’s people” after they had responded to the gospel message.
Even while taking the gospel to the Gentiles, however, Paul continued to criticize Judaism “from within” even as he had as a zealous Pharisee. But whereas his mission before was to root out those with lax attitudes toward the Torah, now his mission was to demonstrate that God’s covenant faithfulness (righteousness) has already been revealed in Jesus Christ.
At this point Wright carefully documents Paul’s use of the controversial phrase “God’s righteousness” and draws out the implications of his meaning against the background of a Jewish concept of justification. The righteousness of God and the righteousness of the party who is “justified” cannot be confused because the term bears different connotations for the judge than for the plaintiff or defendant. The judge is “righteous” if his or her judgment is fair and impartial; the plaintiff or defendant is “righteous” if the judge rules in his or her favor. Hence:
"If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. For the judge to be righteous does not mean that the court has found in his favor. For the plaintiff or defendant to be righteous does not mean that he or she has tried the case properly or impartially. To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works." (p. 98)
However, Wright makes the important observation that even with the forensic metaphor, Paul’s theology is not so much about the courtroom as it is about God’s love.
Righteousness is not an impersonal, abstract standard, a measuring-stick or a balancing scale. That was, and still is, a Greek view. Righteousness, Biblically speaking, grows out of covenant relationship. We forgive because we have been forgiven (Matt. 18:21-35); “we love" because God “first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8, 10, Gal 5:14, Jam. 2:8). Paul even looked forward to a day when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10), and he acknowledged that his clear conscience did not necessarily ensure this verdict (1 Cor. 4:4), but he was confident nevertheless. Paul did in fact testify of his clear conscience: “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation [i.e., behavior] in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward” (2 Cor. 1:12). He was aware that he had not yet “attained” (Phil. 3:12-14), that he still struggled with the flesh, yet he was confident of the value of his performance (1 Cor. 9:27). These are hardly the convictions of someone who intends to rest entirely on the merits of an alien righteousness imputed to his or her account.
Wright went on to flesh out the doctrine of justification in Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. The “works of the law” are not proto-Pelagian efforts to earn salvation, but rather “sabbath [keeping], food-laws, circumcision” (p. 132). Considering the controversy in Galatia, Wright writes:
"Despite a long tradition to the contrary, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is not the question of how precisely someone becomes a Christian, or attains to a relationship with God….The problem he addresses is: should his ex-pagan converts be circumcised or not? Now this question is by no means obviously to do with the questions faced by Augustine and Pelagius, or by Luther and Erasmus. On anyone’s reading, but especially within its first-century context, it has to do quite obviously with the question of how you define the people of God: are they to be defined by the badges of Jewish race, or in some other way? Circumcision is not a ‘moral’ issue; it does not have to do with moral effort, or earning salvation by good deeds. Nor can we simply treat it as a religious ritual, then designate all religious ritual as crypto-Pelagian good works, and so smuggle Pelagius into Galatia as the arch-opponent after all. First-century thought, both Jewish and Christian, simply doesn’t work like that…. [T]he polemic against the Torah in Galatians simply will not work if we ‘translate’ it into polemic either against straightforward self-help moralism or against the more subtle snare of ‘legalism’, as some have suggested. The passages about the law only work — and by ‘work’ I mean they will only make full sense in their contexts, which is what counts in the last analysis — when we take them as references to the Jewish law, the Torah, seen as the national charter of the Jewish race." (pp. 120-122)
The debate about justification, then, “wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.” (p. 119)
To summarize the theology of Paul in his epistles, the apostle mainly spent time arguing to those whom he were sending letters that salvation in Christ was available to all men without distinction. Jews and Gentiles alike may accept the free gift; it was not limited to any one group. Paul was vehement about this, especially in his letter to the Romans. As such, I will finish this post off by summarizing the letter itself, so as to provide Biblical support for the premises of the NPP and for what the scholars I referenced have thus far argued.
After his introduction in the epistle to an already believing and mostly Gentile audience (who would've already been familiar with the gospel proclaimed in verses 3-4), Paul makes a thematic statement in 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” This statement is just one of many key statements littered throughout the book of Romans that give us proper understanding of the point Paul wished to make to the interlocutors of his day, namely, salvation is available to all, whether Jew or Gentile.
In 1:16 Paul sets out a basic theme of his message in the letter to the Romans. All who believed, whether they be Jew or Gentile, were saved by the power of the gospel. The universal nature of salvation was explicitly stated. The gospel saved all without distinction, whether Jew or Greek; salvation was through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Immediately after this thematic declaration, Paul undertakes to show the universal nature of sin and guilt. In 1:18-32 Paul shows how the Gentile is guilty before God. Despite evidence of God and his attributes, which is readily available to all, they have failed to honor YHVH as God and have exchanged His glory for idolatrous worship and self-promotion. As a consequence, God handed them over in judgment (1:18-32). Paul moves to denunciation of those who would judge others while themselves being guilty of the very same offenses (2:1-5) and argues that all will be judged according to their deeds (2:6). This judgment applies to all, namely, Jew and Greek (2:9-10). This section serves as somewhat of a transition in Paul’s argument. He has highlighted the guilt of the Gentiles (1:18ff) and will shortly outline the guilt of the Jew (2:17-24). The universal statement of 2:1-11 sets the stage for Paul’s rebuke of Jewish presumption. It was not possession of the Law which delivered; it was faithful obedience. It is better to have no Law and yet to obey the essence of the Law (2:12-16) than to have the Law and not obey (2:17-3:4). Paul then defends the justice of God’s judgment (3:5-8), which leads to the conclusion that all (Jew and Gentile) are guilty before God (3:9).
Paul argues that it was a mistaken notion to think that salvation was the prerogative of the Jew only. This presumption is wrong for two reasons. First, it leads to the mistaken assumption that only Jews were eligible for this vindication (Paul deals with this misunderstanding in chapter 4 where he demonstrates that Abraham was justified by faith independently of the Law and is therefore the father of all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike). Second, it leads to the equally mistaken conclusion that all who were Jews are guaranteed of vindication. Paul demonstrates how this perspective, which would call God’s integrity into question since Paul was assuming many Jews would not experience this vindication, was misguided. He did this by demonstrating that it was never the case that all physical descendants of Israel (Jacob) were likewise recipients of the promise. In the past (9:6-33) as in the present (at that time; 11:1-10), only a remnant was preserved and only a remnant would experience vindication. Paul also argued that the unbelief of national Israel (the non-remnant) had the purpose of extending the compass of salvation. The unbelief of one group made the universal scope of the gospel possible. This universalism was itself intended to bring about the vindication of the unbelieving group (11:11-16). As a result of faith, all (Jew and Gentile) could be branches of the olive tree (11:17-24). Since faith in Christ was necessary to remain grafted into the tree, no one could boast of his position. All, Jew and Gentile alike, were dependent upon the mercy and grace of God. As a result of God’s mysterious plan, He would bring about the vindication of His people (11:25-27). [Note: It is this author's belief that this vindication occurred around 66-70 AD, with the Parousia of Christ's Church; this author is Full-Preterist in their Eschatology.]

The Scriptures seem to imply that the kingdom of God isn't exactly synonymous with what is called "the Church." The Church was a temporary eschatological community of believers that existed on earth in preparation of a kingdom where God Himself would reign, and said community had Christ reign over them in the meantime. The head of the Church was Christ, with the Father serving as his head (1 Cor. 11:3). The Scriptures teach that, when all Christ's enemies were to be made his footstool, he was to give back all authority to the Father (Psa. 110:1, 1 Cor. 15:22-28), and it is this page's belief that this happened in 70 AD.
The following quotation is from the above hyperlink:

As for the "1000 years" mentioned in Revelation, they are apocalyptic metaphor for the 40 years Christ "reigned" (triumphed) over his enemies both human and spirit, with the final triumph being the judgement of apostate Jerusalem. The "1000 years" began with his ascension, and ended with this judgement.

Thus, the community to replace the Church on earth was to be the kingdom of God. But, what even is the kingdom of God, and why did God have to reclaim authority of His own creation in the first place?
To be as succinct as possible: man sinned, and so the great level of authority God initially granted us ourselves over the creation was stripped. As a result, the human condition has suffered and it must be redeemed for God to allow us to reign with Him in the way that He originally intended for us. God has always been sovereign, of course, but He seeks the good of man to make us stewards over His world with Him, as that was His original plan and this was His original view of what a kingdom of His truly looks like: a kingdom characterized by man's love for Him and love for others.
A Biblical understanding of Adam's sin, contrary to popular thought, isn't that we are guilty of what he did personally. We simply inherit his fallen nature and a fallen world as a result of his sin, the same way a baby could leave the womb already addicted to certain substances because the mother abused said substances while pregnant. It's not the baby's fault for its condition, it was the parent's. But the baby is born with this condition and enters the world like this nonetheless.
The implication of this is that we are all only guilty of our own sins, and whether or not we ever seek to treat (or possibly cure) our condition in the first place is on us. We were dealt a bad hand due to Adam, sure, but God doesn't hold us responsible for what our forefather did. God only holds us responsible for what we do, and whether or not we seek to be liberated from the dark forces which keep us in bondage to our sinful condition (Gen. 4:6-7, Deut. 24:16, Jer. 31:30, Ezek. 18, Matt. 9:9-13).
The whole Old Testament is essentially a record of God's people constantly breaking their covenant(s) with Him. There are individuals mentioned throughout that were, of course, commended by God and the Biblical authors for their righteousness in honestly pursuing to remain faithful to their covenant with Him. But even the best of these people often faltered and, in fact, did rather heinous things in their lives at one point or another. One of the greatest examples of this is king David, who was literally called by the Scriptures "a man after God's own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14, Acts 13:22). Yet, this same man at one point committed adultery and then murdered the man he stole the wife of to try and cover it up. This was a heinous thing, and David repented of what he did with genuine sorrow and guilt toward God. God ultimately forgave him, but not without a heavy hand of chastisement and earthly consequences for his actions.
All throughout the Old Testament, you see various men of God who were deemed righteous, but these same men were usually shown to have some major flaw that prevented them from living a life that could be characterized as consistent obedience to the commandments to love God and love others as themselves. There is something deeply wrong with man's heart, according to the Bible. Something so wrong, in fact, that a whole prophecy had to be given that promised to address the issue of man's seeming incapability to accomplish fulfilling the commandment to love consistently on their own without some sort of divine help from above:

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."-Ezekiel 36:26

Naturalistic philosophies see the physical world as all that exists. Humans beings are the result of mindless, chance causes and processes. Humans are essentially animals – highly evolved, but no different in significance than any other living thing. Thus naturalistic views demote humans. But this view leaves a lot unexplained. Why do humans practice altruism, benevolence, or acts of heroism? And what explains acts of incredible evil? Sure, naturalistic arguments have been made that true altruism doesn't exist, and that "unconditional love" is really just an illusion that's been disguised very well by our survival instincts that we've developed over a long period of time at certain stages of our evolutionary process. However, many people have found such arguments to be unpersuasive and naive when compared to their actual experience of the world as they mature in their lives and have what they know to be truly meaningful experiences that can't simply be reduced in the way that the naturalist wishes them to be. This realization was ultimately why I transitioned from hard atheism to agnostic spiritualism at one point or another.
On the other extreme of these things, transcendental worldviews and philosophies say that the physical world is illusory. Only the spiritual world is ultimately real. Humans are an expression of the divine spirit that is the essence of all things. If naturalistic views demote humans to the level of animals, transcendental views promote human beings. God is not “out there” somewhere; we are God. God is all, thus God is us. But this view doesn’t explain real evil. Why are people selfish? Why do they hurt others? What accounts for personal acts of evil like rape or terrorism? If we are all truly "God," then why would we ever do such things to what is ultimately "ourself"? And why can't a person who practices the belief that we are all actually "God" be only loving? There are so many people who adopt this view of reality who are constantly, day by day, finding that they struggle to be as truly loving as they wish to be because they will still sometimes find themselves thinking and doing rather evil and selfish things. I can speak from experience here, remembering throwing myself into the New Age movement when I was desperately seeking what I did not know at the time was forgiveness for and redemption from my sins because of who I was as a person up until that point. I was seeking the mythic "ego death" that promised me that I could truly be loving and find the forgiveness and redemption I was searching for, because I thought that if only I truly realized I was "God" all along, I could then accomplish these things all at once and simultaneously. I eventually found even this philosophy unsatisfactory when I came to the aforementioned conclusions concerning our great capacity for evil, and also realized that forgiveness can only exist if there are two parties: forgiver and forgivee. Such a thing is impossible if there is only really one being at play at the bottom of reality, and I knew deep down that forgiving oneself (at least, on its own) will never satisfy one's pursuit for redemption that we all inherently take part in whenever pursuing to mend even our own relationships with each other as humans. Further, love would be an illusion in this philosophy too, being that there is only really one party behind and in all of existence if "everything is God." Such an idea would make true altruism a farce, as well. There would be no such thing as real sacrifice for another, because there is no "another."
The French mathematician and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “Man’s greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach both.” Any philosophy that cannot fully account for human greatness and human depravity at the same time should be abandoned because it misses something obvious about the human condition. The religion of the Bible has a valid explanation for human greatness: people are made in God’s image. Thus we have dignity, value, and capacity for good. The Bible also explains human evil: the image of God has been defaced by sin. Our great capacity gets used for the wrong purposes. Our creativity is placed in the service of evil and our best intentions twisted for selfish gain. Something has gone terribly wrong. While other worldviews unduly demote or promote humanity, the Bible gets the tension just right.
Thus, human nature is puzzling and conflicting. Other worldviews—both secular and religious—struggle to account for this enigma, and don't offer satisfying solutions to the problem itself. The Bible, however, explains what happened when it tells us that man rebelled against God in the paradise that was prepared for him called "the Garden of Eden." We fell into temptation and estranged ourselves from God by tarnishing the image we were created in, and now are born with a natural proclivity to do evil, despite our best efforts to do good (that is, to do good consistently).
And so, the Bible promised a solution in the prophet Ezekiel that God will literally change our natural human condition, if we simply choose to humble ourselves before Him in faith to allow for such a change. While as unbelievers our inner disposition towards God is often rebellious, we at least still have the capacity to choose to do the righteous thing in seeking God that He may change us and forgive us if we so let Him. This is one reason why Jesus, (the one who made the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy even possible by his coming, sacrifice, ressurection, and outpouring of the Spirit upon his ascension), said that only faith the size of a mustard seed was required for something so miraculous as moving a mountian to happen, because so little is required from us to allow God to change us into the kind of person He's always wanted us to be, and yet changing the condition of our own heart can be compared to literally moving a mountain if we were to try and do so on our own strength alone. The mustard seed was the smallest of seeds, and yet if one simply planted it and nurtured it, it could become a bush so large that it was comparable to a tree with branches that stretched to the heavens for the very birds of the air to rest on.
It was when I came to these realizations that I prayed to God for the first time again, having been years since I did so, going so far back as to when I was a little child even. I prayed in the dead of night in my room, and asked God to show me the truth and to reveal Himself to me if indeed these things were true, and in an instant I felt His very presence in my room, and my heart was changed. To describe such an experience would be like trying to describe the taste of something to the man born without tastebuds, the color of something to the man born blind, or the sound of something to the man born deaf; there are no words, and it is only something you can know by experiencing it for yourself. Suddenly and all at once, I knew right then and there that Jesus really was who he said he was, that the one true God is the God of the Bible, and that I have been forgiven. As the time of this post, it's been 5 years since then, I'm 23 now, and I'm still walking with God.
My prayer for anyone reading this that may not know God for themselves yet is that one day, you will too.
Back to the topic at hand.
When Adam sinned, we fell under the tyranny of death, corruption, evil heavenly powers, and sin itself. When Jesus came, Jesus was the new and exalted human, the new Adam, through whom humanity could now realize their original destiny that was laid out for them in the Garden of Eden. Because Jesus, being a man, obeyed unto death, he has defeated the powers which held us so long under bondage; we are now promised liberation so long as we simply place our faith in his sacrifice to wash us of our sins and receive the Spirit of God that is also promised to all who exercise this faith.
We often think of ‘the gospel’ as the part that brings the forgiveness of sins (and of course, that is part of the idea), but ‘gospel’ is the announcement that everything has changed in the coming of Jesus and it leads us to a new kind of living.
The gospel Jesus preached and the gospel the apostle Paul preached were different, in that Jesus preached of a kingdom where God reigns directly and with all His faithful subjects as participants in that reign. The gospel Paul preached was about the exaltation and reign of Christ, and because Christ reigned, the consummation of the kingdom of God with earth could now finally take place (Col. 1:12-13). This consummation was put on hold during Christ's "millennial" reign, which transpired between his ascension and his return. However, the consummation has come to full fruition since that return.
We will be arguing for some of these claims by pointing out how central the kingdom of God actually was to Jesus' earthly ministry and message, and demonstrate what Jesus taught about how it actually looks like.
The term 'kingdom' appears 53 times in 42 places in Matthew, 17 times in 13 places in Mark, and 41 times in 29 places in Luke. When the 'kingdom' is qualified, Luke always refers to the 'kingdom of God' (32 times) and Mark follows this pattern (14 times). Matthew, on the other hand, prefers the term "kingdom of heaven" (31 times), using the phrase to refer to the same idea "kingdom of God" only four times: 12:28, 19:24, 21:31, 43.
The Gospel of Luke records an event where Jesus responds to the population that lived near Simon Peter's house who believed in him after he had done his miraculous work there, but saw that he was leaving them:

"And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought him, and came unto him, and stayed him, that he should not depart from them. And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore [i.e., for this pupose] am I sent." (vss. 42-43)

The Greek word euangelion is often translated as the word “gospel.” In the Bible, this word is always used whenever it concerns the announcement of the reign of a new king. And in the New Testament, the Gospels themselves use this word or the phrase "good news" to summarize all of Jesus’ teachings. They say he went about “preaching the gospel [good news] of the kingdom [of God]” (Matt. 4:23).
There’s this beautiful poem in the Old Testament, and it’s in chapter 52 of the Book of Isaiah. The city of Jerusalem had just been destroyed by Babylon, a great kingdom in the North. Many of the inhabitants of the city have been sent away into exile, but a few remained in the city, and they’re left wondering, "What happened? Has our God abandoned us?" This was because Jerusalem was supposed to be the city where God would reign over the world to bring peace and blessing to everyone.
Now, Isaiah had been saying that Jerusalem’s destruction was a mess of Israel’s own making. They had turned away from their God, become corrupt, and so their city and their temple were destroyed. Everything seemed lost. But the poem goes on. There is a watchman on the city walls, and far out on the hills we see a messenger. He’s running towards the city. He’s running and he’s shouting, “Good news!” And Isaiah says, “How beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings [news]” (vs. 7a). The feet are beautiful because they’re carrying a beautiful message. And what’s the message? That despite Jerusalem’s destruction, Israel’s God still reigns as king, and that God's presence is going to one day return with His city, take up His throne, and bring peace. And the watchmen sing for joy because of the good news that their God still reigns (vs. 10).
Jesus saw himself as the messenger bringing the news that God reigns. Jesus also claimed to be the Son of man. This was Jesus' favorite self-designation, being used some 80 times in the Gospels. Notice, not just a son of man, but the Son of Man. Jesus was directing our attention to a vision described by the prophet Daniel:

"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him:"-Daniel 7:13-14a

At Jesus' trial, the Jewish high priest accused Jesus: "Art thou the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed [God]?" His answer left no room for doubt. "I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:61-62). Because Jesus' was rejected and killed for threatening the power the religious authorities had over the people, the consummation of God's kingdom with earth had been put on hold until all of Christ's enemies would be put under his feet after his ressurection and ascension.
But again, what is the kingdom of God? What does it look like exactly?
Well, the way that Jesus described God’s reign surprised everybody. I mean, think about it. A powerful, successful kingdom needs to be strong, able to impose its will, and able to defeat its enemies in physical combat. But Jesus said the greatest person in God’s kingdom was the weakest, the one who loves and who serves the poor (Matt. 23:11-12). He said you live under God’s reign when you respond to evil by loving your enemies, and forgiving them, and seeking peace (Matt. 5). To us, this is an upside-down kingdom. But to God, it's right-side up. This was what God had originally planned for us: a kingdom where God reigns in our hearts.

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."-John 3:3

Jesus was being quite literal here. You can’t see the kingdom until you’re born again and have the life of that kingdom. When you’re born again, you start 'seeing' differently. You see what others don’t see, you hear what others don’t hear, you know what others don’t know. And yet you may be physically in the same earthly location as they.
The kingdom of God is the totality of God’s influence that covers the world and heaven. It’s everywhere, but its manifestation isn’t everywhere. It manifests on earth wherever there are those who are born again and live as if God reigns in their hearts.
Before Jesus, John the Baptist announced to all people, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:1-2), as he saw a soon coming kingdom of God that would be ushered in by the Messiah. Notice that John the Baptist didn’t say that something “like” the kingdom would come and he didn’t say that the real kingdom might be thousands of years away. He said over and over that THE kingdom was at hand! Do you believe him? Did God inspire him to give a clear and accurate message or a mistaken one? If we dare to believe him, things might become surprisingly clear, simple and exceedingly optimistic.

"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."-Matthew 6:10

Jesus taught his followers of his generation to pray that God's kingdom come and that His will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Why pray for something that will just inevitably come by force, unless it was actually through our willing participation? That is, unless God's will is carried out through us "in earth, as it is in heaven"?

"Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel."-Mark 1:14-15

It's very telling that these are the very first words the Gospel of Mark chooses to record Jesus as saying.
The kingdom is NOT something to wait for. Jesus says the kingdom is NOT something visible, and it is NOT something in the sky. The Kingdom Jesus taught is a spiritual reality that comes into the world through us. Considering that Jesus even said the kingdom was in and among the Pharisees in Luke 17, which seems almost offensive to consider, perhaps it is like a spiritual seed that has been planted inside each of us, and that activating faith in God makes it grow.

"Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it."-Luke 13:18-19

Jesus talked about the kingdom as if it would be a present reality, yet one that was growing in the world like a seed grows into a tree.

"And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."-Luke 13:20-21

To Jesus, the kingdom was something growing in us like yeast through dough, increasing in effectiveness.

"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."-Romans 14:17
"For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power."-1 Corinthians 4:20

Paul says the kingdom isn’t something you taste or touch like physical food. It’s not even saying the right words. But rather the kingdom comes in the realities of righteousness, peace, joy and power that flavor our lives when we live empowered by the Spirit of God and God's Spirit in us.
Since Jesus the Messiah returned only 40 years after his earthly ministry, putting all enemies under his feet, the complete consummation of earth with the kingdom of heaven has finally taken place.
The kingdom of God has come, and it continues to come through us as believers. It makes progress like light shining into the world and dispelling the darkness.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 5:14-16

Hello all. I recently read a fic and it inspired me to write up a drafting of a similar premise and I wanted assistance in making a couple decisions.
The fic I read’s basic premise was that a member of house reyne survived the rains of castamere and fled north, taking refuge with the Stark’s of winterfell. The girl was betrothed to Jon snow and would become a house sworn under the starks (the fic was only one chapter, but I liked the premise and so wrote up notes of my own.
The question I have is this, if this were to have happened and Jon snow was bethrothed to the last scion of house reyne (nevermind the reasonings to justify such a thing) what land/castle would they most likely be allowed to claim and rebuild. I’ve heard arguments for a lot of the castles such as sea dragon’s point or queens town, and while Jon snow alone I could agree to such, with a house as proud/rich as the reyne’s tacked on for size, which would they most likely be willing to settle for?
(This is with the assumption they could smuggle enough gold as they need for whatever castle needs building/rebuilding/expanding, so no suggestions would be turned away)
I can imagine Ned not wanting to give away most Cailin to a foreign house, but they would have enough gold to rebuild it to its former glory, and they would essentially be marrying into a new house (no way would Tywin accept the reynes surviving, and would work to destroy the house as best he can) with Jon being the lord.
Queens crown on the other hand might be easier to sell to Ned, but it’s such a small keep with poor lands that I don’t see the reyne’s accepting such a place without a lot of concessions.
Sea dragons point doesn’t have any castles that I know of, so that could be a good place for a new castle and town/city, a sort of western version of white harbor and Newcastle.
I’m not aware of any named ruins other than those, so suggestions would be appreciated.
Also, for reasons of plot, I would prefer a castle on the western half of the north, or at least accessible from the western side via rivers and such, like most Cailin. (As in accessible to the ironborn).

I started a save with King’s Lynn in conference National. Got promoted first season with real life chairman. Then second season in conference national (top of league) the chairman kept trying to sell the club. There was one failed local business man one but never got as far as a transfer embargo so guess it was never close.
I then got the elusive “things might never be the same” media message. Claimed a South Korean business man tycoon wanted to buy the club and would make £11.2m available for transfers. This went on for a month or two with the “deal close” and “deal close to falling apart” media messages repeatedly coming up…then a transfer embargo set in and it happened.
I have screen shots on my laptop but there was a media message using the words “tycoon” and the landmarks tab now says the club was taken over by a tycoon. However a message was received saying he was making 100k available for transfers. I mean 100k at conference level was handy but not ground breaking as a tycoon take over should be in my opinion. Our wage budget went up but only to 7th highest in national league. The original media message did the usual “he will stop at nothing to make Kings Lynn the biggest team in the land”.
Either way I got promotion again in record breaking style to league 2. Budget released for that season 60k transfer budget and 60k salary budget which is ok but again not spectacular for league 2 by any means.
The question I’m asking is anyone with experience of tycoon take overs, I know there is 3 different types of tycoons but if you’ve had one at lower league do they sometimes take time to start investing money. I mean my side like all conference sides bleeds money despite me never going over salary budget etc and operating carefully. The owner put £1m in to help with running costs at the end of the national league promotion season when the overall balance was £300k in the red (still no actual debt etc). He usually after an argument accepts requests to improve youth recruitment but any improvement to facilities gets rejected “because of the clubs financial situation” which I find odd as he’s a tycoon and the club balance is positive and no debt.
I’m now at a stage where championship clubs are coming in for me. I always play my journey man saves as real as I can (virtually no rep, badges etc). I move when it’s realistic to etc. I didn’t know I’d get a tycoon take over but when I’m on £950 p/w and clubs are offering me £6,750 p/w wage in real life I’d surely jump to a massive club (derby and Coventry for context) but I’m tempted to stay because of the tycoon aspect.
Playing round on the skin I use I noticed on the finances tab it tells you if which ever club your looking at, has a tycoon an what type (underwriter, foreground) etc. on my Kings Lynn save it just says Tycoon and no description of which. Only one I can find with no description as well.
Is this normal for a tycoon save to be like this. I don’t want to leave and suddenly after over a year he starts acting like the announcements at his take over claimed he would be 😂. Basically what I’m saying is, after 30 plus years of playing fm and never getting a tycoon take over, if he’s about to give me a truck load of money randomly I will stay put lol.

If we're trying to prove "at least as likely as not" which means at LEAST 50%, how am I denied? Or am I just crazy. I've been fighting with the VA since 2015. I was sent for C&P exams for radiculopathy in both legs secondary to already SC back. The first examiner, who was a VA employee done at a VA facility, diagnosed me with radiculopathy in both legs secondary to my back (I have the records from my C-file). I was sent to another C&P exam at a private facility (both were nurse practitioners, if that means anything). She said it was NOT at least as like as not to be SC. So I was denied.
Shouldn't I have been approved if 2 C&P examiners, checked the same thing, and at least 1 said I'm SC?
I'm doing an HLR and am disappointed that I couldn't write that much to explain my argument or at least point to the evidence that I believe the rater ignored or didn't see. I filled out statements and uploaded them via quicksubmit (I had 6 denied and i also just found out the VA C&P examiner diagnosed me with radiculopathy in both arms secondary to my SC neck).I know they can't accept new evidence but I wanted to at least explain my rationale.
I know I shouldn't complain. I read on here a lot, a ton of you guys have it way worse than me and I'm currently at 91%. But I thought for sure this would be the end of my fight. Now I'm looking at the possibility of an HLR denial then having to do a supplemental claim after.
Maybe this was just a way for me to vent, and thank you to whoever made it this far.

This is pretty light hearted imo (Also I have literally never posted on Reddit, lmk if I need to change this post in any way!)
So I follow the Tumblr AITA blog and recently there was a post from a film bro. He was asking if he was an asshole for calling his coworker stupid for liking Avatar (the blue people one).
To summarize his initial submission, he gave brief information on how he and his coworker (emphasis on him calling this guy his coworker) had movie nights. He made a point of saying his coworker had terrible movie taste which was why he often chose movies. This one time, though, his friend suggested watching Avatar.
This dude DESPISES the movie. Enough that, when his coworker gave reasons for why he liked the movie, this dude called him stupid. Multiple times. And then got into an argument bad enough the coworker slept on the couch. I'll get to that in a second.
Dude was very clearly expecting Tumblr to be on his side.
When I say this guy was an asshole, I'm saying that around 97% of people voted him an asshole. The poll ended recently, but the guy decided to make a response post. The AITA blog will usually reblog additional info posts, but this guy for most of this response was antagonizing the people who called him an asshole (myself included - some of the comments he addressed I had made in my initial judgement). He also doubled down on his friend being stupid because of having a bad taste in films.
The ONLY reason the AITA blog reblogged the response is because he - very briefly - clarified the couch comment.
Apparently, the guy wasn't just his coworker. He was his roommate too. (He never clarified if they share a bed.)
This is where I decided to be petty.
At the end of his response post, he claimed that people online couldn't think critically. And something about just how insufferable this guy was, not only in how he talked about media, but how he had no remorse for how terribly he spoke about and to his friend.
So me, being an English-loving and majoring college student who has been feeling a void at the lack of essays I have been required to write now that classes are out, decided to write a critical analysis of the post.
I initially focused on the response post, figuring that I would just implicitly write about the initial one. He had bullet points of the various comments the Tumblrinas made so I bullet pointed my analysis too. - I spoke about EACH of the points he made. - I applied rhetorical analysis to his response and, eventually, his initial submission (because this man did not comprehend that people were not, in fact, just mad at him because he disliked Avatar). - I analyzed the hell out of his tone. - I quoted exact sentences from the post to analyze specifically. - I CITED which paragraphs the sentences were from. - I brought in STATISTICS - twice! (I wasn't expecting this when I started writing the analysis, but got excited when I realized I could include it.) - I wrote a CONCLUSION too!
This man implied he wanted people to think critically about his post. So I chose to do a critical analysis of it.
I don't know, I stumbled upon the response late at night and the small idea to point put flaws in the logic of the response spiraled into an essay on a Tumblr post. But I actually did have fun! It's only been a couple weeks since classes ended, and while essays aren't the most fun, I've found myself missing doing critical analysis essays.
My professors and high school English teachers would be so proud. But also so sad that I never spent this much effort on my essays but spent it on a post the op will likely never read :')

When I was first exposed to Jordan Peterson’s arguments, back around 2019 or so, I noticed an apparent contradiction in the conservative worldview.
Conservatives tend to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs on human nature simultaneously.
First, they believe that human behaviour is fixed and unchanging.
As a consequence of our static human nature, social hierarchies and such are simply inevitable.
But conservatives also usually believe in free will.
They value self-improvement and personal responsibility very highly.
This doesn’t seem to make much sense.
If human nature is fixed and unchanging, then how can we have any free will, or be able to improve ourselves?
Apart from extreme far-right outliers such as incels who hold to a strict deterministic viewpoint, the vast majority of right-wingers seem to have an incoherent philosophy.
I’ve never gotten a satisfying explanation from the conservative side on how one can reconcile a fixed human nature with free will.
EDIT: If the conservative merely makes a weaker claim that hierarchy is easier because of human nature, and that over time social entropy causes people to follow the path of least resistance, one can argue hierarchy is inevitable if people don’t continuously put in the effort to resist hierarchies forming.

I have a 2.5 year old daughter with my ex fiancé. We split about 2 years ago and have agreed to keep our daughter as 50/50 as we can. I lived on my own while he moved back in with his mother. The original agreement had me having my daughter after work until the next morning while he got his time with her from whatever time I dropped her off (example if i worked 9am to 5pm, he would get her at 9am.) His work schedule is very set (3pm-11pm) while mine varies (example: 9-5, 10-6, 7-3 etc). He would drop her off at daycare at 2pm and I would pick her up as soon as I got off work (3pm, 4pm 5pm…etc) and keep her during the night and repeat the next day. We do alternate weekends as well.
Long story long, my house was sold and I moved to an apartment in the town I work in which is a good 15 minute drive from where my ex lives. This wasn’t an easy place to find and it worked with my budget so I agreed and moved in. Since I’ve moved my ex claims it’s “easier” to pick up my daughter at 11pm at night on his way home from work for “gas reasons for me and him” and “so he doesn’t have to meet me halfway anywhere early in the morning if I work at 7am”. He works in the same town I live and work and drives that 15 minutes home. Of course I was very irate about these reasonings and we did have an argument about it. I have brought up child support in the past and he claims he can’t afford it if I proceed with filing. At this point, I want my daughter back the way I had her before the move. I don’t think it’s okay to have her disturbed from sleeping. She has a hard time getting on a schedule and I want her to be on a healthy sleep schedule.
I finished filling out the papers for child support and have guilt about it. Like I said, I don’t want to do this for the money. I am alone. I pay rent, a car, utilities and other things for this apartment. I have no financial help (Medicaid, Food stamps etc.) My job pays well but that only goes so far. He has told me to my face that “people he has spoken to about this situation think I sound crazy for wanting child support when we share our daughter 50/50.” I just want my daughter back. If I do end up getting child support money, I will go as far as driving my daughter to him directly and use that money for gas. I just know this will ruffle some feathers to put it nicely. Any words of advice is greatly appreciated. Ask any questions if you would like. I just want to validate my thoughts on this. Thank you.

I broke up with my boyfriend, but I think he's just angry right now and doesn't truly want to end things. I'd like to understand why we keep fighting.
Everything started about ten days ago when we went on holiday. We've been arguing constantly over trivial things. The fight that ended our relationship began because I got jealous of his inappropriate jokes with other girls during the trip. We were both very drunk, which didn't help. During the argument, I threatened to jump off the boat, not because I wanted to, but to get his attention since he was already talking about leaving me.
The argument escalated, and he told me to leave him alone and he never wanted to see me again. It turned physical as he tried to call my family, falsely claiming I was suicidal. In trying to take the phone from him, I hit him under the eye, giving him a bruise. I also ended up with a few bruises. He had kicked me out of the room a few hours earlier, and I spent the rest of the day trying to talk to him, even though he repeatedly told me to leave him alone. I was following him and and knocking repeatedly at his door .
We've been together for four years, and despite these conflicts (we occasionally have very bad fights like this), I've never been happier with anyone else. I truly believe he's the one for me because he's sweet and caring. However, our relationship has become toxic, especially in the past year or two. I have to admit that most of our major fights happen when we're drunk, and I often contribute to the escalation.
I love him deeply, but I know our relationship needs to change if we want to make it work.
What do you think this constant arguing is due to ? How can I be fixed?

This fic flows out of me way too easily, so I'm riding the waves while I can. Glad to see people enjoying it too! We continue where we left off, trying to figure out where to go, both with universe at large and with poor, lost child...
As usual, thanks to SpacePaladin15 for his own great work and letting fanfiction flow, and everyone who supported and enjoyed the fic thus far. So, let's see where this goes from now.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Dr. Erin Kuemper, SETI Researcher
Date [standardized human time]: July 15, 2136
Before entering the conference room, I adjusted my dress suit. Even for official meetings, I usually just prefer simpler official outfits, but this time is different. Being invited to observe the first official diplomatic meeting between humanity and aliens, I wanted to be perfect for it, even if it was meeting the baby-eating monster aliens over a video call.
Stepping inside, I see the other people that would be present for it. Normally, as a SETI researcher, I would object to the presence of any military heads at such a meeting, on purely conceptual level, much less two. But with what we have learned I can’t help but almost feel like even entire room filled with generals wouldn’t be enough for this.
“Ah, Dr. Kuemper. Come in, take a seat. We plan to start hailing them in ten minutes.” Secretary-General motions towards one of free seats, so I take the one that’s further away from both generals. As I do though, General Jones starts talking to me.
“So, Dr. Kuemper, how’s our rescue doing? Were there any further incidents?”, she asked.
“No, not yet. She still hasn’t woken up since that last sedation. While we don’t understand nearly enough about her biology yet, drawing some parallels with biology of Earth life we can infer that while her life is no longer threatened, she will likely take a while to fully recover from blood loss and malnutrition. Much bigger problem will be communicating our intentions to her, as well as regaining her trust after... everything.”
“Is it really smart to assign Noah Williams as one of her main caretakers then?” She asked, raising her eyebrow.
“From analyzing the footage of the incident, she reacted the same way to all the humans in the room. I doubt it was Williams’ specific appearance that was the source of such intense fright. And that assignment is not just for the sake of the alien, but Williams himself. Him and Rosario are both, frankly, on suicide watch right now. They need a chance to try and do something to relieve their guilt.”
To that General Jones just hummed, before turning to the screen. I could also hear General Zhao, the Chinese general, snorting in amusement. I am not sure what he found funny about this, but I’d rather not know at all.
It wasn’t a rational call, I knew it, but if there’s anyone who can project most empathy possible towards our alien rescue, it’d be Noah. I have asked Sara if she wished to participate as well, but she struggles to even look at the child without throwing up, so for her, distancing might be for the best.
“We’re beginning to hail the Arxur Dominion now.” Secretary-General announced, standing in front of the screen, facing it. “Not sure how long it will take.”
“I bet time zones get a ton more complicated on interstellar level...” General Zhao grumbled.
Afterwards, there were long twenty minutes of silence, interrupted by an occasional cough or shuffle before finally screen shifted, and displayed the aliens. It appears they also were in a private conference room, like us. In the middle, standing tallest and looking at us was none other than Chief Hunter Isif from photos the Odyssey crew took. Behind him were two more arxur. One was similar to Isif in build and stature, though not quite as tall, and the other was notably shorter and scrawnier, with lighter scale coloration. Part of me almost assumed that was a female, before I remembered that in the data dump there were no signs of easily notable sexual dimorphism among the arxur. An adolescent then, perhaps?
“Humans. I am glad you responded to our invitation. I believe an introduction is in order. I am Chief Hunter Isif of Arxur Dominion.” The alien spoke, translators working already, translating the noises unlike anything human makes into discernable speech.
“Greetings, Chief Hunter Isif. I am Secretary-General Elias Meier. I represent the United Nations, or UN for short, a governing body meant to represent combined interests of all individual nations of Earth. Before we proceed, I need to ask. Will I not be speaking to your leader, Prophet-Descendant, today?”
That was on the agenda for the meeting, if I remembered correctly. Trying to interact with arxur other than Isif. To gauge just how far this goes. Though it doesn’t seem like it’s happening, considering Isif is the one who picked up and how now he was emitting a low hiss that almost felt like it was carrying amusement.
“No. No offense meant to you, humans, but we Chief Hunters are expected to conduct all business in our sectors on our own. You technically fall within my territory. Plus, why would I give up an advantage I have over other Chief Hunters so easily? We may not ever have war against one another, but the competition is fierce, and you might just be the edge I need to curry more favor.”
I noticed General Zhao scoffing at shameless honesty in arxur’s intentions for this ‘alliance’ they proposed in the databanks. Yeah, just use us to gain more advantage over his rivals. I can’t believe Secretary-General elected to deal with them after all.
“I see. I expected that. Still, even if we were granted an audience, our answer would have remained unchanged. Sorry to disappoint, Chief Hunter, but humanity simply cannot afford a full alliance with the Dominion.” Secretary-General spoke in neutral tone, but I could sense the strain in his voice.
The arxur on the screen had his facial features harden.
“I see. You’re still unconvinced of the prey’s threat to your unprepared world. You believe you may parlay with them.”
“Quite the contrary, we’re more than convinced and have no reason to believe you’re lying. However, while an alliance with you would grant us protection... It would also drag us into the war we wish no part of. We’re... grateful to you for showing hospitality to the crew of Odyssey, and for warning us of the threat, but we will not be diving into war we have no interest fighting.”
“You will not be able to hide forever.” Isif kept insisting, seemingly almost growing agitated. “We knew of you because they did, long before us. They may believe you dead, but all it’d take is one stray vessel for you to be doomed.”
Part of me wanted to be relieved that, despite the tense tone, the negotiations so far were going exactly as planned. Another part of me wept that we were intentionally alienating and putting distance between ourselves and the aliens. And a third part of me was disgusted at the fact that we were talking to them at all.
“Trust us, Chief Hunter, we do not plan to merely sit and wait to be discovered and exterminated. We will be preparing. We simply don’t wish to enter the fight without a good reason.” Elias continued, pushing on to the next topic. “That said, just because we don’t wish for alliance, doesn’t mean we can’t mutually benefit from one another still.”
I could see that the shorter arxur behind Isif was about to speak up, but flinched when the larger one glared at them. Isif himself narrowed his eyes at Elias.
“And what benefit do you see that isn’t us joining hands in battle for survival, Elias Meier?”
I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel Secretary-General smiling at Chief Hunter.
“Trade. Your people are, by your own admission, starving. We could provide a solution. What we lack, however, is information. In this universe, we’re blind, and just sending out probes risks discovery. If you’d be willing to supply us with intel on Federation, we’d be more than glad to relieve your hunger. Maybe not the whole Dominion... But definitely all of your sector’s arxur.”
Arxur behind Isif both slightly opened their mouths, eyes widening in almost human-like expression. Even Isif seemed to be taken slightly aback, though he composed himself much quicker, glaring at his subordinates to make them collect themselves. On our end, I could see General Zhao smirking, and General Jones tapping at her chin in contemplation, while I twiddled my thumbs nervously, waiting for rug to be pulled from under us.
“You promise a lot. Producing food in such quantities with just one planet, even if it were filled with cattle, is impossible. Simply unsustainable.” Isif replied.
“We have our ways, Isif. We solved hunger once, we can do so again. Not immediately, it will take time to ramp up production, of course... But once that happens, all you need to do is name your price in how much meat you need and we will provide. And all we want in return is information to better defend ourselves.”
There was a long pause of contemplation. When looking closely, I could see something that was either agitation... or excitement among Isif’s posse, but Chief Hunter himself remained unimpressed. Eventually he did speak up.
“Don’t think I will fall for such a trick, Elias Meier. You humans are still young, still naive to the cruelty of the universe. We were once like you, and were nearly wiped out for it. I will not have it happen to the only other True Sapient in the galaxy. I will trade information. But I can already sense what the first request will be, and you will not be getting translations for Federation languages.”
That made every human in the room except Elias tense up. I almost flinched at the accusation, Jones hid her mouth behind her hand and Zhao’s smirk turned into a frown. Only Secretary-General remained unshaken. Isif, in meantime, continued speaking.
“If you prove yourself capable of helping us, and manage to provide as much sustenance as you claim you can... I will consider it. But until then, I will not be accelerating your desire to commit extinction by Federation’s hands.”
“Then, if you need to benefit from us first before putting us at risk, we can only thank you again for your concern, Chief Hunter.” Secretary-General replied. I was surprised at how collected he remained despite the arxur completely seeing through our intentions with this ‘trade deal’. “Trust us, we have no interest in getting annihilated in antimatter fire, but we are willing to work to earn your trust. We will be sending lists of information we desire. I hope that partnership can strengthen the bonds between us further.”
“Indeed. We will review and return to you the amounts of food we will require for it. Show us what you are capable of, humans. Now let’s get this over with. Conversing like that is... tiring.”
Right. Arxur are naturally solitary, according to the databank they gave us. A species of biologically predisposed introverts...
“Farewell, Chief Hunter Isif.” Meier replied curtly, before the screen dimmed and camera light disappeared. Contact was over.
I let out a deep sigh of relief, realizing I’ve been holding it in for a while now. There... was a lot to consider about what just happened. I was told footage would be saved, so we can better analyze the arxur nonverbal cues later.
Elias turned to us and put his hands on the table.
“So, that didn’t go as bad as it could have. Any thoughts?”
General Zhao was first to speak up.
“We’ll need information on Federation tactics and weaponry. We’ll have to prepare a strong l space military regardless of whether they can be talked down, but it’s much easier to convince someone not to kill you when doing so risks their own life.”
“I’m more interested in whether there is any technology that could allow us to send spy drones into Federation space without leaving obvious trail back to us.” General Jones countered. “We might not even need arxur translators if we can decode the language via our own surveillance.”
Elias turned his eyes on me expectantly. I considered everything that happened, things Isif said and ways his presumably-lieutenants reacted to conversation, things we learned from their data bank... And it dawned on me.
“They... see us the same way we have seen them before learning of their horrid acts. First contact with someone who treats you like a person, and first people in the galaxy whom you can see as friends. We sought the stars seeking to not be alone in the universe, and while their ways are repulsive to us... It’s not true the other way. This cooperation to them is much more sentimental than it is to us. They want to be able to trust us and rely on us.”
Elias smiled and nodded at my assessment.
“Thank you for your input, everyone. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Dr. Kuemper, I hope you’re ready for tomorrow’s announcement and your promotion?”
Right. Tomorrow we’re revealing that First Contact has occurred to the public. It took a lot of effort to make it presentable without triggering mass panic, and some details will be omitted. That and I’m receiving a new position in the UN related to handling alien affairs. What a joy...
“As ready as I can be.”
“Then let’s get to it. It won’t be easy, people, but our entire civilization is at stake. We need to get this right, and in a way that won’t have our descendants condemning us.”
Right. Cooperation with arxur, this trade... I didn’t like the idea of it, but I understood. We needed their help. Perhaps through this cooperation, rather than them influencing us, reverse can be made true, unlikely as it may seem. Worst part was failing to secure any translators at all. While I’m sure generals are salivating at idea of cyber-espionage against the Federation, I just wanted to be able to communicate with the rescued child, and make sure we could properly help her recover. Still... We will do our best, even without them.
Memory Transcription Subject: Stynek, Venlil Test Subject
Date [standardized human time]: July 15, 2136
Second time I woke up; the memories came to me much faster. How I was captured during the raid. How I spent months in cattle pens. How I was used as a meal for mystery predators. How they took me with them. And how I was now in their laboratory, or whatever closest thing predators have in their feral science.
Of course, my first instinct was to try and escape, but I couldn’t. I found myself actively strapped to the bed. I was panicked at first, trying to break through the restraints, but to no effect. So I let my head fall back onto surprisingly soft pillow and lay there... Awaiting my fate. But fate wasn’t coming, and I found myself getting a bit bored. So I raised my head and examined the room.
It seemed different from the room I was in before. Most of the machinery was gone, and the only big machine beside my bed wasn’t actually hooked up to me anymore. There was a large, predator-sized closet in the corner, and two big tables with seats. Of course, there was also bed itself. If not for the fact that I was slated to be butchered on this bed soon, it’d be the most comfortable place I got to lay down on since my capture. As is... It felt like cruel irony. I felt my eyes watering again. Did predators want to taunt me? Give me this sense of near-comfort as one last cruelty?
Subconsciously I tried calling out for mom, but felt my throat burn and ended up coughing instead. I think all the screaming recently wasn’t good for it, and with how dry my mouth was it didn’t help. Looking around I spotted it. A glass of water on a small stand beside the bed! Except it was completely out of reach. I tried shifting my tail under me, to try and extend towards it, but I’d need to have the bed flipped to have the chance at reaching. They probably left it like that intentionally... Letting me feel thirst, see the answer, but not be allowed to take it, all to make me suffer more.
I attempted to shift and wiggle against the restraints some more, when it hit me. It finally hit me that my leg was gone, gone for good. Even if I could somehow miraculously break those restraints... And get out of predator captivity... And make it back home to Venlil Prime... It wouldn’t be the same. I’d never live a normal life. My vision blurred with tears again. Why couldn’t they just end it... Why did... they have to make me suffer more.
Then the door opened and my heartbeat quickened. I realized just what I asked for, and looks like the universe itself wanted to give me that. Through the door stepped a figure... No longer clad in big rubbery suit. They probably realized such deception won’t work on me. But which of predators it was made my blood freeze.
It was the same one again... The dark-colored one that was there in meeting with arxur, and when I first woke up... Why was it always this one showing up over and over? Did all those predators look like that? He was wearing different outfit, maybe it was a different predator? No, it’s too similar, it must just be... assigned to me. My personal warden. Just like the pens had specific wardens assigned to them that were in charge of picking out meals.
This is it then. They must have done everything they wanted to do with me while I was unconscious and now that I was awake to feel it, were ready to finish me off. I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as the predator approached. I lost count of how many times I was anticipating death recently, but this was it... This must be it, finally, right? Universe can’t be cruel enough to do more to me, can it?
And as I waited for my demise, with held breath I lay. And lay. And waited. Until I realized that by now predator would long be within reach of my throat. I slowly opened my eyes, and blinked a few times to get the tears out. Sight of predator right beside me made me flinch, as it sat down by the bed, looking over me with its hungry, binocular eyes. I could see its mouth, lips quivering in hunger. And yet it did not lunge... Why?! Why can’t they just finish me off already? I felt so exhausted and fatigued by it all...
Predator seemed to lock its horrid eyes with my own eye. The gaze was intense, and I felt frozen. I couldn’t move, not even a muscle, as it just stared at me and I stared back. I felt a tear roll down my face, contributing more to the clump of matted fur, grown stained with so many tears. And that’s when the predator reached its hand for my head. I closed my eyes, recoiling away to the best of my ability. I... I didn’t want it... Please... Why can’t I just wake up back home, why can’t it all just be a nightmare...
I was prepared for its claw to grasp my face, to twist my neck, to scratch at me... But the only thing I felt was a small caress right under my eye, where the tear ran, wiping it off and rubbing at clumped fur, getting bits of dirt out in process. And then it was over. There was no attack. It was just more prolonging of the inevitable. It was so... tiring. I opened my eyes again, to look back at the predator. Really look back in those cruel eyes, to try and understand why the universe would have such evilness exist at all. The binocular gaze was horrible, but no amount of my instinct telling me to flee could help when I had neither the limbs nor freedom to move. So I just looked back. Into those small eyes when they suddenly blinked. And what could only be a tear rolled down the predator’s face. This made me mentally recoil.
How? Did a predator just shed a tear? But that’s... impossible. Only creatures with empathy can cry. That’s the textbook prerequisite for crying! You need to feel things to cry! Predators don’t have that! Arxur don’t have that. We learn that since before school. One of first things parents teach their kids is always the dangers of predators. But this is... Maybe it’s something in the room? Some noxious agent irritating its eyes? Then why can’t I feel it? Is it simply copying me? But why would it do that? Can you even copy something you can’t understand, like feelings? I didn’t understand. Maybe their biology was way more alien? Their skin was naked and had no fur or scales or feathers, maybe their tears are different too? I tried to find any explanation at all, any possible answer to questions swirling in my mind, but nothing made sense. It’s like this one little tear shattered everything I knew about predators. Maybe... They were different somehow? No! That can’t be it. If they were, they wouldn’t... They wouldn’t have been ones to take part in eating me! They wouldn’t deal with arxur! It’s a trick... it must be... But tears are a sign of empathy...
“W-Why...”, I asked in my confusion. My voice came out as ragged and hoarse and I was reminded of how dry my insides felt. I glanced over to the glass at the bedside, still out of reach and now with a predator near it... I stood no chance at reaching it.
Then suddenly, the predator looked over at it as well, and picked it up. I was almost about to cry at the idea that it would drink it in front of me, taunting my thirst further. But it didn’t even bring the glass close to its horrid mouth, instead moving it towards my face. Naturally, I tried pulling back from predator reach, but still restrained, I couldn’t move much. And once the glass was in front of me, predator just tilted it and... left it hovering there.
Was it... offering me a drink? Does that mean the water is poisoned? Why else would it give me some? I didn’t open my mouth, but the predator kept hovering the glass in front of me... Clear liquid inside swishing a bit with unevenness of the movements. Tantalizing... My throat felt drier just looking at it. In the end, base instinct prevailed over reason-based self-preservation. Even if it is poisoned... I was as good as dead in this den of predators, this won’t matter, and at least I’ll die not feeling as dry as a piece of old tree bark. So I let my mouth open and I raised my head as much as I could within the restraints, putting the glass’s rim into my mouth.
That first sip was probably the most heavenly water I’ve ever tasted. It was just normal water, of course, but with how dry I felt, I couldn’t get enough as I started quickly gulping it down. The predator actually helped, tilting the glass, keeping up with how quickly I emptied it. Every gulp was a relief... It was no stale water of arxur pens. It was actually fresh water! But as quickly as it started, the happiness ended, glass fully tilted and empty. I smack my mouth, gathering little bits of moisture gathered on it with my tongue, while the predator moves the glass back onto the counter.
Well, if that had poison in it, I didn’t taste any. And if it was somehow tasteless... It was worth it. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the predator and its actions, so instead I did my best to just ignore it as I savored the feeling of hydration. If I somehow live through this, unlikely though it may be, I will never scorn water again. Though I will probably still prefer some good juice over it...
The predator started moving again, removing the blanket-like sheet that was covering most of my body and reaching to where my restraints connected to the bed itself. It locked its eyes with me again, and this time it at least didn’t cry, but it did start to growl something. It was quiet and subdued, and of course I couldn’t understand any of it, but it didn’t lunge or reach for me directly and didn’t seem any different from earlier. Was it trying to say something?
Then I heard a small click. The light pressure I felt on my arms and chest from the restraints relaxed. Then the predator just tossed the restraint over me, revealing that they released me. I tested it by raising my arms slightly. Why...? Did they plan on taking me somewhere? I could try running but the feeling of lightness, of hollow emptiness where my leg used to be reminded me of how fruitless the endeavor would be, so I just kept laying in bed. The predator’s mouth curved in some wicked expression before they growled out some more of their crude words and got up.
They moved towards the exit, turning around to give me one last creepy staredown before stepping out of the room. And, unsurprisingly, I heard a soft click from the door itself. Right. I was just free to explore my new pen. But even with the freedom granted, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. The shock of learning that a predator just shed a tear and fed me water was still too much. What is even happening?
It’s all so confusing. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it over my head, hiding in the dark. I tried to desperately convince myself to not get my hopes up, to remember what those predators did to me... But somewhere I felt like maybe things here will at least be better than they were in arxur pens. At least there’s that to comfort me. That’s right, they probably just... don’t want me to die yet because they haven’t finished experimenting on me... And the tears were just... I don’t know. It makes no sense! It’s stupid!
I let out a breath and snuggled tighter into the blanket. As long as it was dark and quiet like this, I could at least pretend that I was back home... That everything makes sense... That I am just fine... That I'll be okay...
First - Prev - [Next]

Hey Reddit! This may become a lengthy post, so I will add a TL;DR at the bottom. I changed everyone's names in this post to keep their privacy.
I (23f) have been friends with Larry for roughly 3½ years. We met at a hospital and became temporary roommates in 2021, after I went through a long-term treatment and had nowhere to go. We decided to stay roommates and rent a bigger apartment together, which we moved into in Nov. 2022.
Larry and I have a shared friend circle and have been getting along great for almost 3 years. We never really had any fights before (which I now realize was mostly due to us both being scared of conflict and me leaving minor red flags uncommented). But many things changed when I started dating my (now-)fiancé.
Here are the reasons I think Larry may have turned into a toxic friend (I'm going to try to stick with the major things + examples):

• 1.) POTENTIAL GUILT TRIPPING; (I am writing "potential", since I obviously can't be 100% sure whether Larry's intention really is to make me feel guilty, but it feels a lot like it.) There are quite a few situations where I felt guilt-tripped, but it would be too long to list them all so I will tell you about a recent situation:

My fiancé and I were at my grandma's on mother's day and ate there. Larry asked us about dinner plans when we returned, to which we both replied that we were currently full and we'd just throw a pizza in the oven in case we'd get hungry later. Larry said he would also eat later then, so we could all have dinner together. We told him he didn't need to wait for us and to just eat if he was hungry but he insisted on waiting. That same evening there was a huge argument between Larry and us over a plastic wrapper that had fallen out of the trash can (Larry lashed out on us out of nowhere, accused us of leaving the trash there on purpose and complained that he had to crouch down to pick it up when he was in pain, instead of just asking for help). My fiancé and I avoided Larry for the majority of the evening, because we were still upset and the conflict was not resolved. We went to the kitchen to drink something and Larry came in, sat down and after a couple minutes of silence asked something along the lines of: "Didn't we want to have dinner together? I waited the whole time, but you didn't come!" I told him that the fighting spoiled my appetite and I didn't want to eat anything to which my fiancé agreed. Larry then said something like: "Great, then I won't get to eat tonight. Actually I am super hungry, but I can't eat alone, so if you don't eat I won't get to eat anything either."

• 2.) HYPOCRISY; I already mentioned that Larry and I have a shared circle of friends and whenever Larry and I get into an argument, he is quick to call our friends and vent to them. However, Larry told me that he doesn't want me to talk about those conflicts with my family members or people he doesn't know. He says he is "scared they may turn me against him and ruin the friendship". He never asked me whether I am okay with him ranting to our shared friends though and I usually avoid dragging our friends into it, because I don't want to make them feel awkward or put them in a position where they may have to pick sides.
  
• 3.) INTENTIONAL MISUNDERSTANDING/OVERSTATEMENTS AND ACCUSATIONS; Larry has a tendency to present his assumptions and interpretations as facts. An example: Larry was at work and I was up in my room. I didn't hear when he came home (I was playing a video game, I think) and he didn't come upstairs to greet me. He later told his daughter Bonnie (15f), that I had locked myself in my room, since I wasn't feeling well. At least that is what Bonnie told me, but it is very believable to me, because he also said things like that about me to or in front of me in the past.
  

What I mean by intentional misunderstandings is this: I always choose my words very carefully to prevent misunderstandings and accidentally hurting or offending people. Larry, often times, tells me that I said certain things to him, which I know I didn't and/or would never say. For example:
I went to the hospital for psychogenic issues and had to stay there overnight. During that time he often had huge fights with Bonnie and the constant screaming and general turbulence at home stressed me a lot. I told him that if I noticed myself getting too stressed out due to the situation at home, I would consider staying at my mom's or fiancé's place for a couple days to avoid ending up in the hospital again. His reply was (I don't remember the exact wording, but the key message is the same): "So you are just gonna abandon us when Bonnie raises her voice? Great, I thought we'd go through everything together and you'd always help me, but if you want to leave as soon as Bonnie gets upset, sure!" I told him that wasn't what I said or meant and explained again that I need to prioritize my health and that next time I wouldn't ignore my psychogenic symptoms until it escalates, but retreat to a place where I could get a breather. After hearing my explanation he, once again, accused me of planning to abandon him and his daughter at the first "opportunity that presents itself". I told him once more that that wasn't what I said or meant, but he stuck to his version and brought it up multiple times in the days following that conversation.

• 4.) DISRESPECTING BOUNDARIES; I remember an incident where I walked into the kitchen after waking up and Larry instantly started complaining about his ex-wife and the way CPS handled their case etc. I told him: "I just woke up, can I please have breakfast in peace, before talking about such hefty topics? I am still too tired to listen or give advice properly." Larry said that was okay, but as soon as I had prepared my bowl of cereal he continued ranting and asking me for my opinions on the matter. I was too tired to argue, so I just did my best to follow what he was saying and gave half-hearted, short answers. Another example: During the last big fight we had, he wanted to hug me. I told him I didn't want to, but he insisted and kept walking towards me. My fiancé, who was right next to me, snapped and shouted at Larry for not respecting my boundary and that I clearly said no. Larry later claimed that he had respected my boundary and had neither tried to verbally pressure me into hugging him, nor taken another step in my direction.
  
• 5.) LYING (AND GASLIGHTING?); Larry lies very very frequently and gets really aggressive and defensive whenever someone points that out. An example:
  

We have two dogs that usually sleep in my room. One night I got really panicked, cause I kept hearing noises in the hallway outside my door, so I locked myself in my room for the night. The next day I was sitting in the kitchen with Larry and at some point I looked at the clock and said: "Oh shit, I need to walk the dogs!" Larry was confused and said I didn't have to do that, because he had walked them early in the morning as he "always does". I told him that was impossible, cause the dogs were locked inside my room with me. At first Larry insisted he had been outside with them, but after telling him again that it was just not possible he did a full 180 and lashed out at me for "constantly locking the dogs in my room with me, which made it impossible for him to walk them". I don't lock myself in overnight regularly, it was a one time thing. In another conversation Larry actually admitted to not walking the dogs every morning, but only after he had claimed to be walking them every morning earlier in that same conversation. According to Bonnie and my fiancé he doesn't go outside with the dogs every morning, as he claims. They have witnessed him leaving for work without walking the dogs multiple times, yet he always said he had done it when somebody asked him about it.
This infuriates me so much, because I told him at least twice that I was grateful he walked the dogs in the morning but that there was no shame if he didn't have the time or energy to do so on some days. I asked him to just inform me in that case, because the doggos need to pee. His reply was that walking the dogs in the morning was something he enjoyed doing and it was therapeutic for him - he never once texted me or left me a piece of paper saying that the dogs have yet to be walked. Why the borderline animal abuse??? Why not just be honest?
Larry also constantly tells me how much I've changed, that I am not the person he initially befriended etc., since I have been dating my fiancé. He also told me in an argument that all my friends were distancing themselves from me because I had changed so much. I once asked him to define this grave change he was describing, which he couldn't. I ended up asking my other friends about it and they told me I had been a little different in the beginning of the relationship, but it all went back to normal after a couple weeks and that, to them, I was still the same likeable person.

• 6.) DELIBERATE PROVOCATION; Larry often does things, that he knows make me angry. He knows that, because I told him about it insanely often and I continue to do it every time it happens. One of those things is constantly asking me whether "everything is okay between us". And by constantly I mean CONSTANTLY. I tell him everything's fine and he says: "I don't believe you." over and over until I snap and raise my voice. He then asks me why I'm so angry all of a sudden. He uses situations like these as a reaction to being criticized by saying: "You are also bitchy sometimes, like last time when I asked you whether everything's alright." I told him that this behaviour infuriates me, but he told me he just is like that and that I have to accept it, that I never had a problem with it before (which is not true) and that I also have flaws.

I don't know if these are just normal behaviours in conflict, if Larry is really toxic or if what he does is borderline abusive. I am terrified of losing our shared friends if I move out and that the 3 months we have to stay in this apartment after canceling the rental agreement will become hell for me. What if he turns Bonnie against me with his manipulation tactics and I have to spend 3 months in an apartment where it's 2 against one? I am also terrified of Larry not giving up my dog, since his name is also in the purchase contract.
TL;DR: The friend I share an apartment with is behaving in various ways that I think could be toxic and I don't know how to get out of here without losing everything.

He’s basically been lying about everything. I just found out the ex who he claimed he blocked and his family hated is planning an event and his mom was asking details and acting as if she’s bringing them along (saw on social media)
Around this same date he went through my phone and started a bogus argument saying because he found nothing I must delete it all after I cheat. I know realize he was trying to find an excuse to fight so we can be broken up by then.
I broke NC after he’s been sending empty promises daily and once he saw my proof he’s now ghosting me. I blocked him after hours went by, and debating on blocking his mom who has suspiciously been concerned and acting like she has some newfound interest in me.
The lengths people will go through and the fact that their own parents will smile in both peoples faces is just sickening!

I apologize that this is very long but I felt like I needed to get this off my chest.
My first long-term partner (K) and I were together for about 3.5 years. K was the first person I had ever gone on a Tinder date with. She was so stunning, my first word to her was an awe struck “wow.” Both of us said we weren’t looking for anything serious but we were immediately inseparable.
She was married (though they weren’t intimate) when we first started dating, so we kinda began as a poly relationship. Her husband was dating other people as well and we would go on double dates occasionally. I was happy with the arrangement, but the underlying issues in their relationship resulted in their divorce.
We decided to be monogamous for about 2 years. She was the first partner I had moved in with. Our apartment was shitty; the first one we were put in within this community literally had a pipe burst and flood the week we moved in, but we made it ours. We had arguments occasionally but we always talked things out and never went to bed angry. We adopted an elderly dog and a hydroponic garden in our kitchen table. We challenged each other to grow, supported each other, and were study partners while we worked towards our degrees. We were happy.
We decided to explore polyamory again because we felt like we had a solid foundation but had always preferred enm. We agreed to a non-hierarchical ktp dynamic and were entirely on the same page. She went on a few dates before I got a match (amab problems 😂) but I was consistent in my compursion; I was genuinely happy that she was going out and having fun.
Then she started dating him (S). S was an alcoholic living in an absolute shit hole, but we took him in like a stray cat. A few of the 🚩’s we ignored were that he unironically liked Joe Rogan, had extreme trauma and refused therapy, and he (claimed to have) killed people as a mercenary overseas. He lived in PA and was planning on taking a greyhound back to pick up a car. I suggested we drive him down instead. The trip went great and shortly after we got back, we invited him to move in. They had only been dating for 3 weeks and I expressed concerns about NRE, but K convinced me she would somehow not experience it.
At first, things were surprisingly good. There was a little bit of getting used to. They often had difficulty communicating with each other so I predominantly settled into a mediator role, but we were able to work through things together.
K finished her degree but couldn’t find work where we lived, so we began looking in PA. The plan was for K and S to work while I finished the last year of my degree and did the majority of the domestic labor. Once we got there, there arguments began spiraling out of control.
For the first 2 months, they argued almost every single day. S would become irrationally angry and then suddenly dismiss the topic. At the same time, K put all of her energy into her relationship with S. I told her repeatedly that I was feeling neglected and that I couldn’t keep acting as their mediator while getting no support myself. I was spent.
Then K got fired. I put my education on hold to work until she was able to find something else, and S took a job where he’d be traveling out of town for weeks at a time. I had hoped this might allow her the space to refocus on our relationship some. Every time he left, K would message S in the middle of every conversation we had, including when we went on the rare occasion we went on dates together.
Sex isn’t everything; what I craved was intimacy, but to try and keep things somewhat equal, K asked us to keep track of how long it had been since we had sex. We only had sex 5 times in all of 2023, while they had sex 5 times the first week we moved to PA. It was hard not to compare relationships when we weren’t even intimate on our 3rd anniversary.
S was completely self absorbed. Once he came home from work and I asked how he was doing. He talks all about his day, walks off to the bedroom and asks K about her day like he didn’t care about me at all. I decided to see how long it would take for him to initiate a conversation with me, and we basically just stopped talking entirely.
His alcoholism was also getting worse. He began drinking while arguing with K and got so drunk he could barely stand. My father was an abusive alcoholic and I was getting worried that things were going to become physically violent, and I know I wouldn’t just sit by if he became violent with K. One or both of us would have died. When he screamed at K on the balcony from 9:30-11:00pm because I ate some leftovers he wanted to eat (not even all of it), I knew something needed to change.
I had made it clear by this point that I wanted S to move out while he gets into therapy, but K refused to ever broach the topic with him together or alone. I suggested couples therapy since my therapist was familiar with enm, but they both refused. The only other option that I saw was for me to move back in with my family to protect myself. K and I agreed to try a long distance relationship while things settled down. All I asked of K was a single 30 minute phone call each week.
I left at the end of Nov, and for the first couple months things were going as well as could be expected. I enrolled in school, began working out, and had a good therapist. I gave K nearly my entire final paycheck to help cover rent while they found a roommate and they agreed to take me off the lease once they found one. In therapy, I came to realize I was still harboring some anger because the way our relationship dynamic changed once we moved was basically cheating. I eventually told her that we couldn’t have a real relationship while they were still together. She didn’t really seem phased by it; she sent me a sweet gift for my birthday in Jan, we talked about how much we missed our life together every time they fought. We even planned for her to come visit when she got her tax return, partly to bring the last of my belongings and partly to visit and feel normal again.
In Feb, K confided in me the verbal abuse had escalated, that S was threatening to kick her out unless she began working despite dealing with serious medical issues (not to mention we were all 3 on the lease together months after they found a roommate). I didn’t have enough money to keep going to therapy and the phone calls became less frequent. I was becoming extremely worried for K, constantly checking the shared location data to make sure she was still alive. I would spend days crying at a time, unable to get out of bed. I fell behind in school and even confided to K I was beginning to feel suicidal.
In mid-March, K affirms that we can’t have a real relationship, that she is going to try to make things work and was in couples therapy with S. K cancels her plan to visit without explanation, trying to gaslight me that we had discussed it but refusing to elaborate. I contacted K’s cousin because I was worried that S was manipulating her but I also wanted to respect her autonomy.
The lease was set to renew in April and I still hadn’t been taken off the lease (despite having a roommate move-in back in Jan) so I told them I wouldn’t pay my portion of the phone bill until they took me off as we had agreed. It felt callous, but it seemed like the only way to make sure I was off the lease. Of course, once I made it a problem for them they finally acted, but I hate that I had to strong arm them. Regardless, I upheld my end of the promise as soon as I got the change in writing from the office.
I was sick of seeing their faces in family sharing every time I opened my settings so I told them I was planning on getting my own phone plan. I tried to transfer my number, but the account was in S’s name. I told a csr that I wasn’t comfortable speaking with S. They told me they would attempt to contact him and get him to authorize the transfer for me, but he refused to answer their calls and messages.
For the last 6 months, they had continued using my dashpass so it notified me every time they ordered food in, and I would breakdown missing the life K and I had built together. I told K I wasn’t comfortable with them using my account anymore. K immediately pushed my boundary, telling me she’s just not feeling good that day and politely asked if she could use it. I relent, but the next day, I changed the password to reinforce my boundary.
The next day I get multiple failed login attempts, clearly from them trying to use my dashpass without asking. K asks if I changed the password, which I affirmed. Then S shut off my phone line without notice. I was forced to get a new number which messed with many of my digital accounts because of 2FA.
We’ve barely talked since then but today she changed her pfp to a picture of them smiling together with a bottle in front of S and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I deleted every picture of us together. I unfriended her, her friends, and her family. I deleted the messages, I threw out the stupid fucking “hold this until you can hold me” pillowcase, and everything else that makes me think of our life together.
They still have my late grandfather’s speakers and records, all of my power tools, and a couple paintings I’d had for a long time. As hard as it is to accept that I may never see any of those again, I’d rather have my peace.
Maybe I’ll find that peace one day, but honestly all I feel is hate. I hate that K wouldn’t choose me over S, that she gave up on our life together. I hate S for stealing my life from me. I hate the thought of them laying together in our bed. But most of all I hate myself. I hate that I was too cowardly to confront S, that I was too timid about affirming my boundaries, that I had so much hubris as to think K and I could withstand anything together. I hate that I still love K as much as ever.
There’s a good chance K sees this, and all I want to say to you is that I deserve someone who treats me like a priority. I deserve someone who doesn’t tell me I’m hard to love. I deserve better, and so do you.

It's so sad that people can't raise their opinion on this sub. Too bad for a reddit sub. Edit:Now the comments are locked, good luck jasmine queendom miners. At least do the job in the right way😂. You guys locked the comments first then removed it, how pathetic😂😂😂. Got banned again 😂😂😂😂, pathetic clowns. Good luck to the queen for winning this season. Last edit: I have been permanently banned from this sub, they got real scared about my post. To the jasmine pr, jasmine supporters and jasmine suckers. People have free speech and opinions people will raise opinions and statements that would be against your interest muting them like permanently banning me from this sub is a dick move. For a reddit sub this sub is lower than an Instagram comment section.jasmine suckers can't take an argument, they get easily offended. They use the most vulgar language to address other contestants and ban me for using the word "suckers".If their queen's heart is so fragile that they can't even take a word like suckers , I would use it more to offend them more. I won't be back in this sub again with another account, I am done arguing with these jerks. By jasmine suckers, again wishing good luck for your queen.

I got a 2nd opinion ASD diagnosis from the Adult Autism Practice. This is a psychologist who specializes in adult autism. Am I really autistic?
In childhood my parents who are antivaxxers/believe in pseudoscience cures like hyperbaric chamber cures cancer were told by teachers and educational professionals --when I was 5 yo and in kindergarten-- that I am autistic and need to get a formal diagnosis. A speech language pathologist said that I had extensive speech delays as a baby. I have letters and report cards that confirm red flags of a developmental disordeautism traits (like not being responsive to social cues, not understanding boundaries, walking with a weird gait, not making eye contact, issue with tone and volume when talking, repetitive behaviors and interests, sensory issues) and even a letter proving that I had speech delays as a baby. I showed these to the 2nd opinion diagnosis team as an adult and got a diagnosis of autism btw. The school psychologist would have tested me for free when I was in kindergarten but my parents refused and sent me to private school instead. My parents also sent me to a clinic that claimed to cure autism by making kids listen to classical music and this clinic was run by a psychologist who had his license revoked. This revoked license was public info on google at that time so my parents knew but still sent me to the clinic to cure my ''weird traits'' aka autism.
I went back to public school for high school due to expensive tuition and closer location. The school staff insisted that I have autism yet again so my parents to me to a private psychologist. This one used no ADOS on me when I was still a child. My parents were the only two people who filled out surveys with numerical scales and on purpose under reported my symptoms. My dad literally laughed and admitted this to me later. My parents only wanted a normal child not an autistic one. So they got me tested to show that I am ''normal'' on paper and to make the school shut up. I had top grades but tons of social issues and otherwise clearly had autism so the school often wrote letters home about my issues.
Other teachers/school staff/classmates/peers/coworkers/siblings/family doctors said I have autism. Even when I told them nothing about my early childhood red flags and was in the self denial phase.
I got an OCD diagnosis when I was 17 yo from a psychiatrist who only diagnosed mental illness and only asked me about my current issues not childhood ones. The psychiatrist was not diagnosing any developmental disorders for anyone and did no testing for these as he only diagnosed mental illness. I got OCD meds which did not reduce my repetitive behaviors so I stopped taking these and my OCD diagnosis was overturned by the 2nd opinion autism diagnosis. Autism explains all of my symptoms yet OCD does not.
My 2nd opinion autism diagnosis had no ADOS but it was done by a recognized clinic that only does adult assessments. I am in my early 20s so my assessment was only me and the psychologist, as is standard in the clinic. There were no numerical scales about autism symptoms. I only described my autism symptoms starting from early childhood. Like an adult version of the ADI-R and using the DSM-5. Plus I showed the psychologist my old childhood letters and report cards which outline autism traits in detail from a young age.
I still 2nd guess myself despite the 2nd opinion autism diagnosis proving that I have autism. What do all of you think? Are 2nd opinion diagnosis valid? Were any of you misdiagnosed or had to get a 2nd opinion autism diagnosis?

I got a 2nd opinion ASD diagnosis from the Adult Autism Practice. This is a psychologist who specializes in adult autism. Am I really autistic?
In childhood my parents who are antivaxxers/believe in pseudoscience cures like hyperbaric chamber cures cancer were told by teachers and educational professionals --when I was 5 yo and in kindergarten-- that I am autistic and need to get a formal diagnosis. A speech language pathologist said that I had extensive speech delays as a baby. I have letters and report cards that confirm red flags of a developmental disordeautism traits (like not being responsive to social cues, not understanding boundaries, walking with a weird gait, not making eye contact, issue with tone and volume when talking, repetitive behaviors and interests, sensory issues) and even a letter proving that I had speech delays as a baby. I showed these to the 2nd opinion diagnosis team as an adult and got a diagnosis of autism btw. The school psychologist would have tested me for free when I was in kindergarten but my parents refused and sent me to private school instead. My parents also sent me to a clinic that claimed to cure autism by making kids listen to classical music and this clinic was run by a psychologist who had his license revoked. This revoked license was public info on google at that time so my parents knew but still sent me to the clinic to cure my ''weird traits'' aka autism.
I went back to public school for high school due to expensive tuition and closer location. The school staff insisted that I have autism yet again so my parents to me to a private psychologist. This one used no ADOS on me when I was still a child. My parents were the only two people who filled out surveys with numerical scales and on purpose under reported my symptoms. My dad literally laughed and admitted this to me later. My parents only wanted a normal child not an autistic one. So they got me tested to show that I am ''normal'' on paper and to make the school shut up. I had top grades but tons of social issues and otherwise clearly had autism so the school often wrote letters home about my issues.
Other teachers/school staff/classmates/peers/coworkers/siblings/family doctors said I have autism. Even when I told them nothing about my early childhood red flags and was in the self denial phase.
I got an OCD diagnosis when I was 17 yo from a psychiatrist who only diagnosed mental illness and only asked me about my current issues not childhood ones. The psychiatrist was not diagnosing any developmental disorders for anyone and did no testing for these as he only diagnosed mental illness. I got OCD meds which did not reduce my repetitive behaviors so I stopped taking these and my OCD diagnosis was overturned by the 2nd opinion autism diagnosis. Autism explains all of my symptoms yet OCD does not.
My 2nd opinion autism diagnosis had no ADOS but it was done by a recognized clinic that only does adult assessments. I am in my early 20s so my assessment was only me and the psychologist, as is standard in the clinic. There were no numerical scales about autism symptoms. I only described my autism symptoms starting from early childhood. Like an adult version of the ADI-R and using the DSM-5. Plus I showed the psychologist my old childhood letters and report cards which outline autism traits in detail from a young age.
I still 2nd guess myself despite the 2nd opinion autism diagnosis proving that I have autism. What do all of you think? Are 2nd opinion diagnosis valid? Were any of you misdiagnosed or had to get a 2nd opinion autism diagnosis?

I know that in political circles, there is a popular sentiment that "the left are always doing cancel culture if you speak your mind", but if you go back through history, you learn that the ideology most aggressively trying to ban anything has always been conservatism.
You get the first red scare in the late-1800's, then again around 1920, then again in the late-1930's with McCarthyism and HUAC (house un-american activities committee), which were all about fiding out who is a communist, or who is a labor unionist, and then hunting them down, jailing them, or in some cases, killing them. From this, you can also say that conservatives have been the only ones to actually enforce thought-crimes in the US.
Then of course you have the somewhat modern examples like men with medium-length hair, women in pants, punk music, heavy metal, anything with magic in it, hell you can't even get elected in any major election unless you belong to one of the Christian-based religions.
And some very modern examples, like Dixie Chicks, Sinead O'Connor, Kaepernick, Nike, Bud Light, or any Republican that spoke out against Trump about anything.
Meanwhile, whatever it is the right claims is "cancel culture from the left" is usually just people saying mean stuff on the internet (which is just how the internet is for every subject or opinion). Nothing more than mean words. So saying something mean is OK, because it is free speech, but then saying mean things about the person who said something mean, is cancel culture (but only if the person negatively affected is a conservative?); This seems to be what the formula is.
This video sort of explains my position even further, and I think this guy (Jon Stewart) might be the first person I've ever seen to actually say what I've always been thinking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwyyttqvE04
It is seriously worth the watch if you want a more well-rounded understanding of cancel culture, by hearing the other (lesser expressed) perspective.