TRIGGER WARNING this entire post is about sexual assault and sexual violence. drugs and pregnancy are briefly mentioned.
I (31F) was sexually assaulted for the first time when I was 15 years old. I’d gotten drunk at my ex boyfriend’s birthday party, and after he put me safely to bed, another man I’d met that night came into the room. He was 21. I don’t remember very much of what happened, but I do remember the feeling. The next day, I woke up at home, and did everything in my power to lock that memory away tight. I’ve always been good at compartmentalization, so I was very efficient, even if it wasn’t healthy.
Two years later, I’d just gone through a really horrible breakup and I was crying outside my high school. A good friend of mine (M, 18 at the time) saw me crying and offered me a ride home. I took it as a gesture of kindness and accepted, feeling relieved that I didn’t have to walk. When we got to my house he asked if he could come in and use the bathroom so I said sure. That’s not why he wanted to come into my house. He assaulted me, then got up, and left me crying and bleeding in my living room.
Two months later I still hadn’t gotten my period, so I went to one of my close friends and asked her if she’d come with me to buy a pregnancy test. It turned out positive. So, the following week, I ditched school and went to have an abortion. It was a horrendously traumatizing experience, it was painful, it was emotional, it was all around awful. I was in pain for weeks, and even now (14 years later) I’m still not over the combined trauma of the assault and subsequent procedure.
Several years later, I was hanging out with a friend (17F), her brother (14M), and her brothers friend (15M). All of them enjoyed smoking pot but I really wasn’t a fan, weed makes me sick and dizzy and I generally don’t care for it, but they ragged on me and ragged on me trying to get me to smoke with them, so I finally caved. They got me extremely high, to a point I was very very uncomfortable with. The brothers friend led me into a bedroom, I thought to go to bed, but that was not the plan. That whole experience is really hazy for me because I do not handle marijuana well, which all of these people knew.
Then about six or seven years ago, I drunkenly texted my ex, who I had been trying to maintain a peaceful friendship with. I asked him to come out to the town I was in and bring me cigarettes, because I couldn’t drive to get some for myself. I remember him getting there to drop them off and each of us lighting a cigarette, and then it’s blank. I woke up 18 hours later, bleeding and bruised in his bed, with hundreds of missed calls and texts from people wondering where I was. It had been almost an entire day that I’d been missing and nobody had been able to find me or figure out where I was.
I suffer every day from C-PTSD and PTSD. I suffer every day from these events. I question myself every day, I doubt myself every day, I judge myself every day. Truth be told I’ve never fully dealt with these traumas, I’m only just beginning to do so in therapy, but they’re always there inside me. I don’t really know what I thought I’d gain from posting this, but I just wanted to get it out. Thanks for listening.

I (30F) need to vent about this. Since I couldn't just rely on my wife who keep supporting me of my job. But I'm at my wits end.
So, I'm a game developer (I'm not privy to discuss what role I'm in) in Canada, working on a well known game from a company (first-letter U, which I guess you all can guess). 5 days ago, we announced Codename Red and as all you can guess on social media these days, Codename Red garnered....a heavy criticism to say the least.
First off, I'm not involved anything on the story and the whole thing. But I enjoyed working there and everybody is nice. I'm aware some of the company reputations in the past, which yeah...it's bad. But not with these people that I'm currently working on.
Now, several of my friends are also game developer in other company, have strong views on Project Red, that like in social media, they disapprove stuffs that was made in the game and it's content. They have problems with the company and always brought up the issues of how bad it is now.
My friends are good people, but they're recently went indie and others recently got laid-off and they always brought up that they would rather die than working the company I'm working on. They told me I should quit too, because "It's gonna be dead on arrival". Maybe it is, but it's not even launch day. After I told them I working my ass off to get paid because it's my job. They got pissed off and left.
I feel bad about telling them that. I still feel I could've handled it better. The only friend and support I have is through my wife and she tells me that my friend is only overreacting.
AIW?

So ik it’s a heavy topic that a lot of people have strong feelings for on both ends, and this is a long one, I apologize in advance. So I’m 22, F, and my new bf is 25, M.
I have a lot of insecurities about myself and I fully admit that. I also have borderline personality disorder, which adds to the insecurities within a relationship. With that being said, I have been in intensive therapy for years and my bpd isn’t necessarily an issue. I’ve had issues with my weight, and finally just dropped 30 lbs.
My new bf is very sweet, I adore him, and I am fairly happy with him. But. There’s one red flag I can’t get passed no matter how hard I try.
I think he’s a sex addict. We talked about sex before we started dating and I told him due to trauma, I sometimes go through phases where I don’t want to be touched sexually. His response “Don’t get upset if you find porn on my phone.” Not the best response, but hey as long as I don’t see it, it can’t hurt me, right? Wrong. We’ve been sexually active very frequently, but as time goes on it’s definitely changed. Going from multiple times a day, to him going off the first try after 10 minutes. But he’s always making sexual comments at me, always hinting for sex, grabbing me sexually. It was off putting but not horrible till the other day. We showered together, I had a mental health moment regarding sex and I told him I sometimes feel like I’m being used for my body, to where I legitimately bawled my eyes out, which I never do in front of people. Fast forward I get up to get dressed and do my thing, he has the door shut, and I realized I forgot my socks. Go to open the door for them and I look down to look at him and see his phone, porn. Straight porn.
I felt sick, not even minutes after I bawled about my sexual trauma and how I’m feeling used, do I open the door to see a girl giving head on his phone.
He claimed it was from the other day and he accidentally left it open, but he’s always on his google so I originally didn’t believe him, now I kinda just brushed it off as a possible tab that was opened.
Fast forward again, I felt sick all day at work yesterday, and had a bad day at work. He picked me up, and got me kinda annoyed with some jokes (non sexual) that he was making towards me so I kept to myself for a bit and laid down to calm my stomach. I knew he was outside in the garage fixing up his car so I got up, walked outside; and was going to tell him I was starting to feel a bit better and wanted to just sit with him. I walk inside and he turns around, belt buckle undone, pants undone, and very visibly aroused. He claimed he went pee and never buckled it back up.
I went to go throw up inside. I was more hurt than anything. He doesn’t ever ask for pictures or videos of me, other than 2 he took before we even started dating. We can’t even have one full session anymore because he goes limp right away and claims it’s because he’s sweating.
I’ve had this uncomfortable feeling in my stomach since, and it’s making the nausea 10x worse. I close my eyes and I see him watching those videos and I don’t know why it makes me feel so awful. I have a very specific build. I’m shortish (5’5) but have very small breasts and upper body, but a larger lower body.
When im in love with someone, I can’t find other people attractive, and I’m even bisexual. The idea of porn grosses me out. My thought process is that you have a partner, why do you have to look at someone else’s videos sexually when you can easily get your partners. But that could also be the fact I have bpd as well. Lastly, as of right now, the reason I’m writing this is because he’s in the shower for work, and he thinks I’m asleep. I hear a women’s voice from inside the bathroom (his phone obv) and the more I try to understand it the more it sounds like moaning. I’m trying not to throw up or cry. I don’t understand why it bothers me so much but it does. I don’t want to seem controlling but it’s absolutely steering me away from him, to the point where when we do have sex, if he closes his eyes I immediately dry up because i just get this thought of him imagining other women.
Am I the AH for being upset over this?

After 2 years, I (M24) broke up with my girlfriend (F22). It was a beautiful and healthy relationship at the beginning, but it changed beyond recognition. Over time, she began to show her toxic, manipulative, and narcissistic nature. The whole world revolved around her, she could never admit her mistakes, and she blamed others for everything. She constantly blamed her parents for her anxieties, saying they didn't listen to her, understand her, or care if she was sad during her childhood. This is not true at all.
To clarify, we lived together in an apartment for about 6 months. The first two months were great, and she helped with household chores and cooking. But after those two months, something broke. When she came home from work, she would lie in bed all day watching TikToks and reality shows. I took care of the entire household—cooking, cleaning, and everything else. The only thing she occasionally did was laundry, and even then, I had to push and beg her to do it. Our sex life suddenly ended, and we didn't have sex for about 2 months. I've always been the type who likes to cuddle and have close contact with my partner. I could only cuddle her when she wanted to; if she didn't, she would just say that she was comfortable and didn't want to be touched.
She was nice only when she needed something; on those days, things were okay with her. But the next day, when she didn't need anything, she was withdrawn and indifferent. I tried to do everything for her, often driving her to and from work, buying her gifts, and getting her whatever she craved. I tried to be her support, but toward the end, she started rejecting it. It's weird because she kept telling me she loved me. About a month ago, she told me she loved me but couldn't fall in love with me. She said the problem was within her and that often, even when I did or said nothing, I annoyed her. This hurt me deeply, and I considered ending it back then.
Meanwhile, she started chatting with her ex-boyfriend, whom she met at a bar while out with her friend. They had a bad breakup, but they supposedly cleared things up and became friends, chatting every day since then. I felt strange and bad about it. Her relationship with me felt like it was out of principle, and she was just using me. She was only nice when she needed something. A week ago, she went on vacation to Turkey with her family, a trip I couldn't attend. We got her passport and everything ready together. On the first day of the vacation, she texted and called me, and I saw she was happy, which made me very happy. But after the first day, she only messaged me once every two days. When she returned from Turkey, I was on a hike with her dad. When I got home, I went to take a nap, and she was at her parents' place. I woke up to her knocking, standing there with three friends. I didn't get a kiss or a hug. She immediately left with her friends to go to a bar. I heard some quiet mocking and smirks but didn't address it. She closed the door, and everything hit me—all the sadness and melancholy of the past months. I felt like crap. I unpacked her suitcase with tears in my eyes, packed my things, and called my dad to come get me. I had a few beers on the hike and didn't want to risk driving. I texted her that I was going home. Her response was that she fully understood.
She had already told me that she was sorry for her behavior but didn't know any other way and that I didn't deserve this. Yesterday, I went back to clarify things and get the rest of my stuff. She told me that during her time in Turkey, she didn't miss me at all and didn't feel the need to text me. She realized then that this wasn't how it should be. We shed a few tears, and she asked if she could cuddle with me one last time, which broke my heart. I felt like crap. She helped me pack my things, and I left. She's probably going to stay with a friend. We were renting this apartment, so we'll just cancel the lease.
On the hike, her dad told me he was very happy that she found a guy like me and that he was sorry for how she was treating me. Even though she's his daughter, he said I didn't deserve this and should pack up and leave. He said she was like her mother and that I didn't want to end up like him. He told her the same thing when she came home—that she shouldn't treat me like trash and should either start acting normal or break up. Her mother told her she hoped she'd find another tyrant who would bully her and make her life hell like all her previous boyfriends.
Sorry for the long text, but I needed to vent and also put my thoughts together in case I need to remind myself why this was the right decision. There are probably many mistakes, so I apologize. English is not my first language, and this is my first experience with Reddit. Thank you for your feedback.

Okay so whenever I have tried to discuss this issue it either gets trivialised or sexualised.
It has been a hassle for me to find clothes that have more than 8-9 inches gap between bust and waist. There are 2 primary issues :

1. If you buy a cloth with the other proportions aligning with your body, then your cleavage is always visible. Don't get me wrong, if we were living in an utopian liberated society - this wouldn't bother me a bit. But sadly we live in a society where people legit keep on staring at your bust even if some bit of cleavage is visible.
   
2. If you buy a cloth with the bust sizing in proportion to your body then it's so loose and baggy that it looks ridiculous. It makes you look 2x larger than your original size.
   

I have to layer something under my dress or wear full coverage blouses at work to keep the dressing professional. Add to that the ridiculous heat!!
The same issue exists with jeans, they keep a 4-5 inch difference between waist and hips. That's a fairly eurocentric design. But well that rant is for another day.
What do you all do? It's so friggin frustrating 😡😡

Hi girls!
I am having a problem with finding a bra that fits well. I have PCOS and my upper part of body is pretty weird and has a more fat from the side of my breasts. I simply cannot find any bra that fits. The problem is, I do not have that big breasts but the fat on the side is driving me crazy. I need a bra that has wide straps and maybe a bra that can be modified to my body. All of the bras I found have big enough cups but the straps are simply to short and they are always hurting me and the fat spils everywhere😅 Sorry for my English, it is not my native language. I really need some advice P.S. I live in Croatia

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Relative novice here. Don't get me wrong - I have a ton of appreciation for Golden Hive for cracking the scrolling algorithm and getting my foot in the door of a hobby I would've never otherwise considered. I know he catches a lot of flak for things like high pricing / odd kit exclusions, misleading simplification of the craft and sometimes questionable subject matter authority. And I know some of that is warranted. But I'll always appreciate him for leading me and a lot of others into the shallow end of the pool, and FWIW I think he deserves more credit than he gets for generating that traffic.
But holy cow do I owe one heck of a thank you to Doin' the Most, Man Made Mead and the other long-form passion-project creators out there (please highlight any lesser knowns in the comments). I was barely two weeks in by the time they transformed what likely would've been a one-and-done forgettable weekend project into what I know for a fact will be an enthusiastic hands-on hobby for years to come.
From the day I started, every single minor question I've had and every oddball recipe idea that's entered my mind has yielded at least one 15+ minute deep dive video breaking down the topic from every helpful angle in simple and approachable terms that anyone can follow. Often there's two or three. Sometimes there's a whole ass podcast episode to listen to on my way to work! (shoutout What's New With Mead)
It's sadly been years since I've regularly had the attention span for this type of denser informational content. But man, once I sat down and got through that first crash course video that made it all start to click it was like gasoline on a lit match. A few short months later and I'm still devouring hours of new info every day, constantly itching to scale up my production gear to meet my neverending rabbit hole of future brew projects.
I know I'm not the first to praise these guys... I'm sure a lot of you are actually sick of hearing it lol. But I'm very grateful for everything they do and I hope they know how deeply appreciated it is. Thank you for the insane hours you've poured into educating others and unlocking this wonderful obsession that I didn't know was missing.

Picture this: a roguelike mode, not unlike Wargames in HW3, but you progress aslong a tree of encounters in the vein of Slay the Spire or Inscription.
The crucial part is, there are several enemy factions you can fight, each with significantly varied rosters. It doesn't matter that these armies are balanced or always viable: you could have a faction which dominates the long-ranged game but gets bodied up close, because their point isn't to be viable as player factions in skirmish, it's to offer a varied challenge to the player and to be a buffet to pick your next addition to your collection. I'm emphasizing this because I know coming up with new player factions that are balanced against each other is significantly more work, and I'm trying to convey how this is doable both for hypotetical devs working on updates or DLC for Homeworld 3, or Indie devs trying to put their spin on the formula.
For balance reasons, you also need a unit cap of sorts, but not necessarily in the classical sense of "you can have x amount of units of y type": I think it would be more intresting to give them an upkeep cost in resources: each ship has an upkeep which you need to pay before deploying it in a mission. Just as in the existing games, you can mine resources, or get them by scuttling your ships, which means a stolen ship you can't deploy can still pay for others.
This way, you can't just keep a doomstack forever, but if you play well you can keep your fleet a bit bigger than it could be by default, or use your whole stockpile to deploy a doomstack for the next mission only if you think it will especially hard.

TW: discussion of ED Please note that this is my own (rambly) personal experience; I’m putting it out there in hopes it resonates with others. I am also not discussing any specifics of my ED.
Lately, I’ve become aware of the impact my Mothers shaming has had on my development. I (F19) recently started seeing someone, and they met my Mother. I’ve seen people in the past, but this is the first time that I genuinely feel there is good potential, and they were the one to ask to meet my Mother which I happily obliged too. At various intervals throughout their dialogue, my Mother put me down. It was nothing serious, but little comments; for example she had just come back from the supermarket and started unpacking. As she unpacked, she made comments along the lines of me eating most of it, and just generally being unhealthy. Now, the guy I’m seeing appeared unfazed by all this (which makes sense because why would he care about the exact foods I am eating) but I was deeply uncomfortable. I am now recovered but have a history of insecurity regarding food and body image, culminating in about 2 years of ana. This dialogue got me thinking about my Mothers propensity for putting me down around others.
Another recent example not related to body image is I’m interested in solo travelling, albeit just in the research stage. My Mother brings this up to most new people we meet in a negative light, even when it is completely irrelevant to the topics at stake.
This same kind of propensity occurred throughout when I had ana. She would brag to family members about her current diet, slim shakes, whatever she was taking, and within moments comment on the meal plan I was on in an attempt to recover.
When I had ana, other people’s perception of me was the worst part. I didn’t want to be perceived as skinnier, so much so I would wear baggy clothing and avoid situations such as sport where more revealing clothing would be required. I didn’t want people to be concerned; I was deeply insecure about taking up space in general. I believe she was frustrated with this; and drew attention to my issues in hopes that would make me get over them.
Thinking about this stuff made me go back further. To when little me, initially oblivious to my appearance, started covering up. And I thought about why that was. And I remember that my entire life, around strangers, she was always commenting something. When I was a kid and she’d joke about my arms being chubby. So I started wearing bomber jackets, even during summer, to cover up. I believe she was the biggest cause of my ED.
For as long as I can remember, when I am around strangers, or I am introducing my mother to new friends, she makes comments like this. Not just related to food, but generally small comments aimed at diminishing my presence. But, I notice that around old friends she doesn’t feel the need to act out in this way.
What all these things have in common is they are not so individually significant as to be abusive, but when they pile up they are exhausting. As a result, I was painfully shy as a kid in fear of being judged. For a long time I lived with so much internalised hatred of myself.
Looking at the big picture; it’s because of this behaviour I don’t unhealthily crave external validation. Unlike other friends whose parents brag about them and I notice fish for complements, I don’t feel the need to draw attention to myself in an excessive way. I am able to hold myself accountable and go after realistic goals. If I’m sick of tired I continue working hard (for better or worse). In the long run, I think it’s instilled me with resilience and a level headed outlook.
But I still struggle with introducing her to new people because of this. I’m aware that most people aren’t aware of my insecurities, and likely don’t pay attention to her comments. I also know that anyone truely right for me will see me well enough to know these comments are not a reflection of who I am.
I have this self awareness, but it doesn’t change that in the moment, her behaviour is exhausting. When I have confronted her about this in the past respectfully, I’ve been met with gaslighting and a complete lack of accountability on her part.
I apologise for the ranty nature of this all. In many ways saying it openly is therapeutic. I hope that if you’re in a similar situation you understand their behaviour is not a reflection of who you are; and those that care about you know that.

TW for mention of critical illness, hospitals, parental strife
This story spans over a few years so I'm sure I'll have to edit this to clarify.
When I was 17 years old I got diagnosed with a thing in my brain* through an MRI.
^\The shorthand is "AVM" for arteriovenous malformation, a tangle of blood vessels that irregularly connects arteries and veins. In the brain, it can cause brain bleeds which affect cognitive and motor function and can also result in death. The way i explain it is that you've got the blood pressure and flood of an artery going into a deformed clump of capillaires and veins with thin walls, deforming them further. The risk of rupture increases every year. Idk if it sounds scary enough like that, but it's like a ticking time bomb.)
I got gamma radiation shortly after, which is only relevant because they use a metal frame with metal spikes they drill against your skull so you can’t move your head during radiation. I chose this method of treatment because it was supposed to be quick and painless with no general anaesthesia but it turned out that the treatment experience was completely traumatising and I’m still living with a clinical PTSD diagnosis following that.
This mode of treatment aims at calcifying the inside of the veins in a specific zone and the gradual closing of vulnerable veins can take from 6 m to 3y.
I have siblings and we’ve all always been afraid of our dad. He was always extremely authoritative and we were very well behaved because of that. He got angry very easily, and the smallest thing would send him storming off screaming and breaking things, preceded by silent treatment (which was somehow the scariest all). He’d punish us extremely strictly, and would often drive up to 40km/h over the speed limit to scare or punish us, the reasoning was something like « if we all die it’s your fault because we made me angry).
All this to say my relationship with my father has always been extremely vertical and our relationship never grew into something like equal footing and I always got extremely nervous and scared whenever I was about to meet with him.
This being said, there is no amount of words I can use to describe the depth of my love for him. He drove us around without a protest for hours and hours and hours, gave us a beautiful luxurious life and never missed any of our important dates. Birthdays and chistmases were an avalanches of gifts and we were completely spoiled. He was extremely involved and I know he loves me so much. I’ve stopped speaking to him a few years ago but it truly breaks my heart because I love him so much and I miss the smell of his aftershave and I know he misses me very much too.
When the MRI result came back, my dad was there. He was the one who walked up to me and said « everything is fine, there is just a *little* thing.
I’m sure this was hard for him because his mom died of cancer when he was 28, but he never mentioned it in relation to my illness.
Pretty quickly, my dad stopped me whenever I mentioned illness and made sure I amended any mention of the experience by adding a sweetened positive twist at the end like « I’m glad I learned so much » or « but I grew so much from the experience ».
Gradually and too seamlessly for me to really notice, he decided I was « cured » and would no longer tolerate any mention of illness. He’s get impatient, tell me off, and even genuinely angry when I did. He’d say « you’re cured now » and « idk why you keep talking about this, it’s in the past now, you need to move on and live life ». Important note here : he is not a doctor, just a regular dad in the world with zero medical knowledge.
I don’t know if it was his own version of « manifesting » healing for me or a symptom of his fear. I wonder if he misunderstood the neurologist saying it could take up to three years to see if the treatment was effective. Before the 3 year mark, with no tests and MRIS to back it, he’s managed to completely convince himself and the rest of the family that I was cured and only still talking about it for attention. He even invented a pseudo-psychological term he dubbed the « syndrome of the sick child » to belittle my fear and worry and terror and loneliness, which if I understand his concept correctly meant I was clinging to an expired diagnosis in order to be babied and gat my parents attention. IDK maybe this can give you insight into his personality, how convincing he could be.
And it was just a really lonely experience for me. All of the « why are you still talking about this you ‘re cured and you need to move on now », while still trying to cope with so much fear of dying at all times, without having anywhere to talk about it. I wonder if the lack of parental support I experienced thought such a traumatising experience as a teenager and then as a young adult was what contributed to transform the trauma into clinical PTSD (diagnosed).
Eventually, I got my 3-year mark MRI. The radiologist was my dad’s BIL and he called my dad and gave him the result directly instead of contacting me directly. I was a legal adult and ab. 22 by then. My dad then called me on the phone, I remember the conversation so clearly, he said I was cured and I proceeded to call my mom and grandparents and best friend to share the news.
yay now you can move on. When he got home he popped a bottle of champagne open in celebration.
This was so tough because something didn’t quite sit right with me. Because of growing up hypervigilent I’m usually good at telling when someone is lying and twisitng the truth.
He seemed off on the phone, and in person, and I couldn’t tell if it wasn’t just that I couldn’t imagine life ebbing cured.
A few days later the BIL called me and said there was a lil persisting on the MRI. I wonder if I’d been brainwashed by my dad already by the time BIL called because when I asked dad if there was anything he didn’t tell me, he said « well you can’t expect to be 100% cured with things like this », and « 99% cured is the same as 100% » and other things of the sort. It was like he’d twisted the results in favour of his opinion.
By that time, I was stuck and really confused, and everyone was already convinced I was cured. And it got really hard for me to know what to do and where to turn because I was till so young and the hospital system was so confusing.
It took two years for me to decide to get a second opinion. Someone else looked at the MRI and said there was still something left, but since I’d heard my dad assure me it meant I was cured, it took considerable effort for me to reach out to my service in the hospital again for an appointment with the specialist I’d seen back when I was 17. This alone was extremely challenging because no one took be seriously, and I had to call the secretary office on a daily basis for a couple weeks to ask what I should do to get a confirmation I was cured. I’m quite headstrong and I wanted to hear from the specialist directly that I was cured do as to have no doubts at all. Throughout this, dad tried to discourage me and then eventually accepted it might be the only way for me to move on.
The MRI happened and I sat in the neurosurgeons office at the hospital of my nightmares asking if my results were conducive with full recovery. He confirmed there was something left, and then that the aim of treatment is to be completely cured. That the malformation should not be visible on an MRI once it was cured. He added that the risk of rupture increased each year. I soon had another more intrusive san done and it confirmed there was a little left, which meant I needed to get another round of Gamma radiation.
This hit me like a ton of bricks.
The second round of treatment was just as traumatising as I’d remembered the first round to be.
I don’t know what to do with how angry I am with my dad. He lied to me and invited all of us to live in a fiction of his making, thus endangering me. Every insistence I’d been cured and needed to move on when I wasn’t, and in fact the risk of me having an aneyrism was growing with every day.
The worst is that he never apologised. He instantly switched up his story and started pretending he’d never said I was cured. He created a whole new fiction where « he’d always insisted I’d get a more thorough MRI checkup ». It’s so unfair. How he can’t embrace a world where he’s wronged me, and not because it destroyed me but because he can’t be wrong. He has to be perfect. How unfair.
I most likely wouldn’t have mede it past the age of fifty if I’d believed of indeed obeyed him.
I used to check my memories again to make sure I hadn’t made it up, and eventually I accepted I’d never get an apology. And that I was wronged and I didn’t deserve that. And that I should’ve gotten the support I needed.
I’m cured now, I sat in another doctors office a year ago and he said my MRI came back normal and the AVM was no longer on the scan. I’m really proud I was so headstrong.
And eventually I decided to take distance from my dad, and life improved when I stopped talking to him. I know it hurts him, and that he’s extremely angry. He expresses this to my siblings, and I know they get punished in my stead and I feel so guilty. But I can’t be around my dad, I’m too angry. I’m trying to live with the love I have for him in my heart, with my childhood memories and the guilt and missing him and then more guilt for being happier now that I don’t have to talk to him and listen to his tirades. And I worry for my siblings who still talk to him, because he doesn’t treat them kindly and they deserve so much love and admiration and support, which he’d never give them.
I used to want to press charges and I wonder if he shouldn’t be in prison for what he did but he’s a vicious man and he’s go to much money and friends in high places that I couldn’t take him on. And things would get ugly, I know. I just wish he could pay for what he did.
I’ll update later for typos and clarifications :)

I’ve been feeling more and more frustrated about it as I feel like I’m constantly at his beck and call. We had an argument about it a few days ago via msg and spoke about it again today.
I suppose it’s because of the nature of the dynamic but it will always be unbalanced.
For my context specifically MM has a flexible office job and I’m currently at college. How we see each other has changed but as of recent, on days he goes to the office he will leave early and come and see me. We have one day a week where we get to spend the whole day together but he has to still work and take calls throughout. On days he’s WFH, I specifically aligned my schedule so I had college on those days and would go see him either in the morning or during break (I would try to leave as early/late as possible). On the weekends he can maybe see me a couple hours for one day, the other day is not an option.
I tried to explain how I felt, I know he tries to see me as much as possible, but I can’t help but feel like I just follow everything he says. Everything is according to when he’s free, he will say when he can come and when he can leave. His argument was that he never forced me to do anything and he will always try to ask for my input about where we go and that he never demands me to meet right at a specific time. But I honestly don’t understand what he didn’t get - I made it clear that yes I am doing everything cuz I want to (I’m not being forced), but if I don’t see him at this specific window he is free I won’t see him at all for that day.
I just want to know if I’m going crazy lol. I tried to be fair and say I’m not 100% right, that it’s just my perspective and I’m sure he has a different view. At the end of the day I understand that to be honest I did this to myself by choosing this path, but it makes me want out. I guess I understand that things can’t change because it’s the dynamic but a little understanding that some of the sacrifices I make would be appreciated.
Just looking for any advice or opinions, if I’m in the wrong etc. Thank you

“We’re a meat family,” my dad would proudly tell strangers. He’d wait for the quizzical look, then launch into detail, starting with how many freezers we had, how long we could sustain ourselves on the contents. It was just his way of starting a conversation, which made sense when you considered that raising and home-killing animals for food was, for want of a better term, his life-long hobby. His prize possession was one of those industrial-sized vacuum sealers: you could put half a pig inside and wrap it in plastic so tightly that every wrinkle and skin fold waxed unreal with shiny detail.
If we hadn’t lived in a rural area, albeit semi-urbanised, I guess it would have been pretty weird. But the mostly farming-stock locals only found his extra enthusiasm a little bit odd.
When he wasn’t being a bit embarrassing talking about it, I never really paid much heed to his hobby. I had a child’s vaguely grateful awareness that though our family went through some lean financial times, our stomachs never suffered like some of the families around us. All the beef, pork, ham and bacon in those big old chest freezers passed down from his dad really could have fed us for years.
I should preface all this by saying that I wasn’t a particularly bright kid, though neither was I dumb. I didn’t fail badly at anything in school, I just never achieved beyond a pass. I didn’t know it yet back then, still quietly dreaming about being a ballet star or a dressage champion, but mediocrity was my destiny. And I think that’s why I got on so well with my Aunt Liz.
Liz was my dad’s live-in youngest sister. She was one of those women who get described as ‘bubbly’ — not really pretty, not really smart, not a lot going on besides just being… well, all Liz. But she was salt of the earth; kind, caring, and great with kids. She was the only person who would willingly mind my two older brothers, who fought like hellcats and caused more trouble than the whole last generation of my family combined. People would privately lament to my parents that it was a shame Liz didn’t have kids of her own, but dad would just shake his head and say Liz liked it that way – that all the fun of looking after kids is being able to give them back to their parents.
I guess she was like me; nice, but mediocre. Lovely, but somehow forgettable when she wasn’t doing something for you.
But when Liz left us, I couldn’t forget her.
In hindsight, it was pretty weird timing that we had a big fortieth birthday party for Liz right before she disappeared. She was radiant that night; she’d hired a local girl to do her hair and makeup, and it was honestly the first time I’d ever seen her look pretty. She’d even worn a push-up bra under a tight red dress, which flattered her very plump curves well enough that the neighbour’s farmhand was spotted disappearing into the woolshed with her for a snog. In my dawning awareness, that gave a plain girl hope: if Aunty Liz could get a guy at forty, maybe things would turn out okay for me.
Anyway, I couldn’t forget how her pink cheeks, her eyes, her whole self, glowed that night before Liz went to bed. She said it was the best birthday ever, and that she was very much looking forward to the next stage of her life.
Would I have done anything different, if I had known? If I had realised what, exactly, that next stage was?
The week after the party, Aunt Liz said she was going on a little holiday up north, to visit some old school friends. She packed her things – she didn’t honestly have that many – and drove her little orange mini out onto the main road. And with a wave of one fleshy hand, she was gone. Nobody really thought much of it when she didn’t call, because nobody rural had cellphones back then. And Liz was, as I said, somehow kinda forgettable when she wasn’t right in front of you.
When we hadn’t had contact for six weeks, Dad tracked down the land line numbers for their old school buddies. They were surprised to hear from him — Liz had never arrived, so they had just assumed she’d cancelled her visit. No-one had thought to check. I eavesdropped on the conversation, and it sounded for all the world like *they* had forgotten about Aunt Liz, too.
From there it became a missing person case. The local cops came and talked to all of us; the farmhand who’d been seen snogging her was briefly detained, then let go, dad got grilled at length, even my hellion brothers were questioned thoroughly to see if this was one of their wild and dangerous pranks gone wrong.
But everything was a dead end. Nobody knew where Liz was, or what had happened to her.
The remains of her old mini were found halfway across the country, burned out on a beach, on a derelict stretch of ragged, rocky coastline. The police assumed murder and combed the area for remains. But even the most expert divers couldn’t conquer the incredible undertow and fast-shifting seabed of that coastline to look for evidence, so none was forthcoming.
Eventually the cops collectively shrugged and said that there was really nothing more they could do unless more information suddenly came to light. The locals knew nothing, no witnesses had come forward, and the trail was cold. As far as anyone knew, poor aunt Liz had been murdered on some desolate beach, far away from her home.
It didn’t feel fair to me. She’d once mentioned wanting her remains buried on our farm, in the graveyard plot beside grandma and grandad.
So, in my grief, I went into her room to look for something of hers to bury beside them.
Like I said, Liz didn’t have many things. Her room was pretty spartan, and her wardrobe was mostly sensible farm stuff. There was one exception: she, like me, did like to read, and she had a pretty good collection of well-thumbed books. I think it’s the escapism – even the most mediocre girl can lose herself in the plot of some trashy romance novel, imagine there’s still hope of being swept off her feet by that handsome stableboy, his inexplicable yearning for chubby plain girls.
So I set myself the task of going through the books, to find the right one to bury in the graveyard plot.
Most of them were exactly what you’d expect, but some of them were racier than I was used to. I felt various parts of my body flushing and tingling, as I read breathless prose about calloused hands touching the softest flesh of the protagonist. Okay, if I’m honest with myself, I might have got a little *too* invested in my project at that point. But that was also why I persisted going through her entire collection, until I found the ragged paperback from 1970, entitled Tawny Sands. And inside that trashy cardboard romance cover, I discovered not the tale of Tawny Sands, but some carefully hand-cut, stitched-in pages. A handwritten story in my Aunt’s rounded penmanship: Memoirs of a Long Pig.
I read her story twice in a row, utterly gripped.
Aunt Liz was no Stephen King – heck, she wasn’t even the Goosebumps guy – but her story was gripping and compelling, and I couldn’t put it down. Even if I hadn’t known her, I think that would have been true.
The gist of it was that Liz, when she was sixteen, had discovered that our family had a very long history of eating what she described as ‘Long Pork’. It’s an antipodean term, anglicised from the Pacific Islands: human meat.
Like me, young Liz still had some hopes and dreams. In one of her many failed attempts to find a special talent, she’d taken up cooking as a hobby. Naturally, with our family’s overabundance of meat, she’d scoured the freezers in the shed for ingredients: the racks of ribs and stacks of pork chops, butcher-paper wrappings all neatly labelled with the first letter of the name of the animal they came from.
She found familiar meat from Rodney, one of the pigs that had been recently slaughtered, emblazoned with an ‘R’ in her father’s strong, blocky lettering. There were cutlets labelled ‘M’ for Mary, from one of the lambs she’d hand-reared, and ‘F’ for Ferdinand, the steer they’d killed the month before. But she couldn’t explain the many, many curious parcels of meat on one side of the huge freezer, all labelled ‘J’ – at least, not until she took it all out and assembled it as well as she could on the scoured concrete floor of the killing shed. A big, frozen jigsaw puzzle without the box, her best attempt to discover what kind of beast the pieces had come from.
The animal, she quickly realised, was a Long Pig. Her own Aunt Jenny, who had died the month before – just after her fortieth birthday.
Fortunately, or perhaps not, for Liz, her father entered the shed right at that moment and realised his daughter had discovered the family secret. He sat down calmly on the lid of the freezer, and explained to her that this was a long-running family tradition, dating back to at least before his grandfather had been born.
“There are always people in life, Liz,” he’d said, “who won’t really amount to much. They want to be useful, want to be more. They strive and they strive, trying job after job, hobby after hobby, trying to hit on something they’re really good at. Something that makes them special. Those people can waste their whole lives, chasing dreams that never come true. Eventually they die unfulfilled, knowing that all their time has been wasted. That what they leave behind will fade quickly.”
His voice was oddly gentle as he leaned down and patted one of the neatly wrapped cuts of Aunt Jenny, still sitting frozen on the shed floor.
“Your Aunt Jenny was one of those people. So was my Aunt Irene.” He paused to gaze at his daughter, his next words peppered with emphasis. “But you see, my sweet Liz, they did find a purpose in life. They did find a way to be special, and they left this world utterly certain of their gift.” He stood up, stretched his back. “Let me show you.”
Liz waited while my grandad meticulously stacked the meat back into the freezer, all but one J-marked parcel that looked for all the world like a thick venison steak. He took her back to the farmhouse, and reverently unwrapped the deep red, heavily marbled meat to let it thaw. Then he laid it in the family’s ancient, cast-iron pan, basting it with butter and rosemary until a heavenly scent filled the kitchen, and Aunt Liz couldn’t stop her mouth from watering.
“Just try it. Let her show you. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.”
Even though she knew it was her aunt, Liz couldn’t stop herself from taking that first bite. There was something transcendent about the smell, overriding her natural revulsion that this was human meat, not one of their farm animals. For the first time, she truly realised it: we’re just another kind of animal. And weren’t her memories of Mary the lamb almost as fond as her memories of Aunt Jenny?
Liz explained then, in her curly handwriting, the explosion of taste that had assaulted her when she tried the steak. It was tender, it was succulent, it was rich beyond imagining. The fats melted on her tongue, lingering somewhere between pork and beef, but oddly neither. The flavour of the meat defied identification; something familiar, yet not.
But one thing she couldn’t deny; it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. Tears dripped onto her plate, mingled with the juice, the grease — not grief, but a pure, real, giddy delight.
“You’re tasting your aunt’s love for this family,” my grandad explained. “Her entire life was carefully curated, to eventually make unforgettable moments for us, just like this. This was her way of being special. This was the greatest gift she could possibly bring to our world – and because she realised that, she died with not a single regret. She knew her life had purpose. She was perfectly, completely fulfilled.”
I felt those words. I felt them lodge in my own belly, settling uncomfortably deep. I knew Aunt Liz, probably better than anyone else in the family. I’d seen how fucking happy she’d been on her fortieth, how goddamn fulfilled she was, despite apparently being a *nobody* and achieving *nothing*. Somehow, in the space of a single day, she had gone from being a forgettable background character to becoming the *main character*, immortalising herself in our family’s history with her sacrifice. Quite literally becoming part of all of us, forever.
I went to the killing shed after I finished with the book. I looked inside the freezers.
But there were no vacuum-sealed packages labelled ‘L’, no matter how deep I dug into the frozen stacks of plastic-wrapped flesh. Panicked now, not sure if I wanted to connect all the dots or unconnect them, I tried to think back over the last few months, recall any meals that had been unusually good. A few Sundays ago, we’d had a stew that really hit the spot and left me craving more. And I realised that the family had a really good night that night; my brothers behaved themselves, my parents didn’t fight, and grandma and grandad had been there. Hadn’t they looked far more… expectant than they should have?
I strained my brain, trying to recall if I’d seen the homekill bag on the kitchen bench – if I’d registered what letter it was. I knew it wasn’t an L. I would have remembered if it was an L.
And then it hit me, the memory, the connection, sizzling as if branded with a hot iron.
It had been an ‘E’.
E for Elizabeth. Not for Edward the pig.
I snorted at my own stupidity – of *course* Liz was short for Elizabeth – and as I comprehended my lack of smarts, I felt something give inside me.
I wasn’t clever, and nothing, nothing would ever make me smart. I had no big talents. I wasn’t beautiful, or even cute – and even if I had a million plastic surgeries, it still wouldn’t fulfill me. It wouldn’t be real.
I was a Liz.
I was a Jenny.
I was whoever the first aunt had been, the aunt who had dedicated her life to making her flesh as delicious as possible, who had worked every damn minute to be the best Long Pig she could ever be.
I wondered how many magical family evenings had been spent eating Aunt Jenny. How many glorious, satisfying, memorable dishes had been made out of her.
And… I wanted that. I wanted to finally know I had a *purpose* in life. One so simple, and so easy to achieve.
I wanted what Aunt Liz had.
***
It's my fortieth birthday today and I’m so fucking excited. For the last twenty-four years, I’ve dedicated myself to this moment; I’ve eaten exactly what I needed to, I’ve exercised just enough, but not too much, to maintain that perfect balance of marbling vs tenderness. I’ve relaxed and meditated to keep all those amazing flavours inside of me. I’ve researched all the greatest meats in the world, from prime Angus beef to A5 Wagyu. I really think I may have outdone myself.
I’m having my hair and makeup done at the local salon this afternoon, and I’m going to look so pretty; all prize piggy on show at the fair. I’m even going to have a big red ribbon in my hair, in memory of Aunt Liz.
Maybe there’ll be a cute boy I can snog in the wool shed, maybe there won’t – I don’t really care; because the most important, most certain thing is that I’m going to be the most delicious Long Pig in the history of our entire family.
I’m going to make everyone so damn happy, and I’m just so glad I can share my story with you all, instead of hiding it in a grubby book like poor Aunt Liz.
My only real disappointment? That you won’t get to taste me.
Reader, I have loved, loved my life. My Long Pork will be out of this world: once tasted, never, ever forgotten.

Ok for starters this is a throw away account since I know they have reddit and I DO NOT want them to see this. Also we are friends online! Don't judge I have a ton of friends in LDR 😭 Anyways. I have no idea what to think and I feel like I can't ask my friends since we are all in a big friend group and I'm afraid they will tell him. Recently, I will call him G, and I have been getting close. I will also start by saying we have been friends since December. There was some drama that happened and he blocked the whole friend group. He ended up only messaging me about coming back and everything and now we are all friends again. Since then we have been getting closer. We were still some what distant but since my boyfriend and I started having issues he's become less distant (I should also note that my boyfriend and I have basically separated after an argument). We started talking a lot more and he even opened up to me about some personal stuff. A few weeks ago I showed him a friend of mine and he decided he liked her. I tried to set them up, but it sort of fell through. I hate to admit it but I'm happy it fell through. This led to us talking even more. We are very similar in music taste, thoughts, and movies. This is where I am now wondering if he likes me or if I'm tripping. He sends me music and songs he likes all the time. He also talks about movies and we even have a list we should watch (admittedly a lot with our friends but there are a few he thinks would be better suited for just us). We also just bought concert tickets together and plan to meet up after I said I wanted to go but had no one to go with. Anytime I talk about how I want to do things he always says how he would do them with me. How he would love to go do this or that with me. But when others mention it, he sort of shys away from the idea. We also stay up late, even after our whole friend group is gone. We play games together even though I'm bad. He sends me funny messages all the time now too. To the point where if he's laughing I know I'll receive the video. He also has apologized to me before about how he wants to not be as rude to me (we make jokes for sure towards each other) and how he feels it isn't right of him to do so. He also likes my Instagram notes and comments a lot on them. I know those reasons may not make it seem likely that he likes me but there are 3 specific instances that I think of. The first is when I was complaining about how I would be bored by myself at this thing I was doing. He said he wouldn't be busy at that time and I joked we would probably just talk in our group chat. He sort of laughed then started to stutter saying, "Well you know...You know...haha" And then said, "Well if you wanted..." and stopped himself. I don't know what he was going to ask. But we spent 2 hours during said boring event talking and he showed me his guitar and how to restring it. The second is the other day we were talking about movies. There is this movie he LOVES so much. We have regular movie nights with the gang and the other day it fell through. I said I was sad and wanted to watch the movie. He started to say "well you know...if you wanted" again. After some time of talking he nervous laughed and asked if I wanted to watch another movie with him just him and I. I agreed. We got off track as we usually do and ended up on the conversation of his favorite movie again. He then asked "We could watch [name of favorite movie] instead...together if you wanted to..". That brings me to my third scenario of the fact we watched the movie together by ourselves. I should also say he almost never stutters over anything and has no issues asking me to do xyz in games we play or to watch this video ect. Those 2 stuttering moments have thrown me off completely. 

ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT, we had movie night today and he turned his camera on and my god He has the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. His laugh is contagious as well. I almost want to be around him The most of all of our friends because he is so kind and has the best laugh. But his smile oh my god and his eyes. That's the first thing I noticed about him. I think I may have developed a crush on him. But do you all think he may have as well?

So i’ve heard everywhere that once you become aware you are dreaming (during a dream) it is “so easy to wake up”. However that is not at all the case for me. If i acknowledge i’m in a dream everything goes absolutely horrifying and waking up becomes near impossible. No matter how hard i try i just can’t open my eyes! Always feels like they are glued shut. What the heck is going on?!?! The thing is i’m always aware i’m dreaming but if i even try reminding myself im in a dream, everything just goes wrong. I’m good with nightmares but man the feeling of freaking out over being “trapped” is crazy. I know it won’t happen, but when this does happen it just feels terrifying and horrible to wake up to. I would brush it off as regular sleep paralysis but i swear it lasts so much longer. I don’t feel like i can’t move i just can’t wake up!! It’s starts off as a normal great happy dream. I remind myself i’m dreaming and boom all of a sudden the whole vibe switches and it’s a fkn nightmare. Almost like i’m being purposely tourtured lmao. rip me

It’s crazy what people in church leadership can get away with. Long mission story incoming…
I had just made it to my mission field in south america post-mtc and was of course still naive and learning the language. One thing I did pick up on was that when meeting the bishop of this area something felt off. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and didn’t really understand a lot of what was going on until after I’d left the area.
My follow up trainer and I remained close and emailed about the area after I’d left (since he’d stayed behind). Turns out, the ward clerk came across documents for use of ward budget funds for several youth activities. The problem was that these activities never happened. This started a series of investigations led by this ward clerk that proved that the bishop was using ward funds for himself and at least one of his counselors. And this wasn’t a recent problem. Apparently this had been going on the entire time the bishop had been ‘in office’ (which was about 2ish years at the time, with this being his second time serving as the bishop of the ward).
In order to keep this under wraps, the bishop stationed a ward member as a sort of ‘guard dog’.
So back to the ‘present’. Bishop realizes through this ‘watchdog’ member that the clerk is investigating. He takes the clerks keys, Ward clerk contacts my follow up trainer (who he’d been keeping up to date on the investigation), and uses the missionaries keys to continue getting into the church building.
Climax of this whole ordeal is when the bishop feels cornered. He starts getting real sour with the missionaries. My follow up trainer said that their relationship with a lot of the ward members was poisoned by the bishop. And finally, in an effort to ‘remove the evidence’, we theorize that the bishop ordered his watchdog to set fire to the church building…
Ward clerk went snooping again and found the church empty. Watchdog dude is missing… weird. Normally a window or several would be opened but this particular time it was all closed up. Smelled like propane. He heads in and finds all of the burners on the stove have their gas running while not a single burner is lit. They’d obviously been going for some time since the propane was noticeable from the entrance. Just then, the ward clerk hears shuffling and turns to see the watchdog member come in through the entrance holding something he couldn’t make out. (Follow up trainer says they bet it was some kind of way to light the gas filled building from a safe distance). Soon as watchdog sees clerk he turns right around and books it. (Now of course there could be some sort of explanation, this is all speculation. But based on the building layout they believe some sort of foul play was intended. The clerk/bishop offices were separated from the stove by just a 3-4 foot wide hallway
After all this the clerk brings his concerns up to the stake president and presents the evidence he’s collected. A disciplinary council is called with all of the stake leaders and high councilors. Not for the bishop, but for the ward clerk, who’s reprimanded for going against ward leadership. My follow up trainer reached out to the mission president. I’m not 100% sure of the reasoning, apparently the mission president was pretty vague. But from what I was told, the mission president wasn’t supposed to intervene and was supposed to uphold whatever the local leadership (i.e. the stake president) decided.
Following the whole ordeal the ward clerk and many strong members stopped going to church. The bishop was released and put on the high council, then assigned to a ward far from home where there’d be no drama. My follow up trainer and his companion were both transferred out of the area and a new elder was sent in to train and white out the area.
From what I was able to piece together, ward morale and attendance took a massive hit. The new bishop, (who was a real nice guy), unfortunately had a whole mess to deal with.
Haven’t kept much contact with the ward (mission ended 4 years ago and i’m coming up on 1.5 years exmo). In that ward during my time there were 3-4 families of recent converts that carried the ward and especially our missionary efforts on their backs. 2 Of those 3-4 families were preparing to enter the temple for the first time and get sealed. All of those 3-4 families stopped attending after the bishop situation and to my knowledge haven’t gone back since.
[TLDR: Ward bishop stole tithing money, Ward clerk investigates, Bishop attempts to set fire to church building, Stake president holds disciplinary council against the ward clerk, Bishop promoted to high council]

So I have been visiting the midwife who is currently helping me out with this issue and in yesterday’s visit she literally inserted her one whole finger inside me and also showed me how to insert a dilator which I thought it would never go inside. She motivated me and also told me there is progress and my muscles are way more relaxed than before. When I tried before the dilator never went in but she told me there is a certain angle to get it inside. I feel positive visiting her and there is hope always. I will now try inserting the first dilator and see if I can do it. But the feeling of dilator and the finger inside me had no pain and I was shocked. I always thought it would be painful or I will get blood something like that.

"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.]

We've been together for 7 years now. The fight itself stemmed from long term problems but was a small thing, ultimately. I have really serious trauma history and can sometimes project the feelings of neglect and abandonment I experienced on others. I'm pretty much always working on this, but it's also a reality of life currently. I was playing a co-op game with him and some friend when I had technical issues that made enjoying the game and communicating impossible. I asked my partner for help but from my perspective they were cold and short with me and not tolerant of my frustration and confusion when troubleshooting. From their perspective I was mean and didn't accept their help. Ultimately when I talked to my brother about it he reminded me that I should have helped my self and taken initiative for myself and that's most healthy. But I got upset and felt like he was abandoning me and having fun without caring about me so I froze and stopped playing before leaving entirely to go cry alone in another room.
After the game ended he came in, but from the outside of the door I heard him say "oh God not again" and he came in and asked if I was okay. Then when I said no and started talking about how I was feeling he berated me for supposedly not wanting to tell him anyway and tried to make an exit. I could tell he didn't want to be there but made the mistake of pining for his emotional validation and support anyway. He told me later that he would only have been able to do that if what I was upset about was something less hurtful than warped projections onto him. Since he was just trying to get through the game and give me space to advocate for myself. We've also talked on the past about not bringing these kinds of emotions to him. Yet I partially feel since I was mid meltdown by myself *trying* to regulate and he came in and tried to help but then became agitated, that he really should have stayed away!! Or left respectfully!! But he started arguing with me, and I just kept getting more upset and crying and accusing him of not loving me like he used to. When things escalated to shouting he got in my face. When I his opinion, I got too loud, he ran at me and grabbed my body and restrained it while placing his hand over my mouth to shut me up. I fought him off me and it took strength and screamed not to touch me!?! Ultimately we shouted until he ran out of the house and didn't come back for 6 hours.
During that time I called my brother and tried to make sense of it all. I realized I had done wrong and betrayed my commitment to not put my anxieties about him abandoning me on his plate and should of kept it all to myself. I reflected on my partners condition lately, which is very poor as he is depressed and recently fired. He has gained dramatic weight over the last 3 years and is basically miserable lately. Both the external world and our relationship have been sour for us leading to constant arguing.
The next day we reconciled and I was upset he wasn't immediately remorseful for grabbing me because it was serious. He said he doesn't think guilt or remorse are useful, only punitive. It's important to me though, I don't know if that's wrong. So I told him I didn't forgive him and asked if he even wanted me to forgive him. He said yes and asked me to be more specific about what showing remorse meant to me. I asked that he sit next to me and held my hands. I told him to say "I'm sorry. I crossed a line I should never cross and hurt you. I will never do anything like this ever again. I betrayed your trust." And he did and it seemed genuine but he also felt the need to keep bringing up why he thought in the moment it was ok to do. He said our roommate said we had been noisy lately so he did "for me" knowing it worries me to upset my roommate. I told him it was ridiculous to say it was for me, even if that was his reasoning and that I would never grab him to make him quiet.
I forgave him, and I think I really do but I want this to never happen again. We made new plans on how to interact when I'm processing big feelings that aren't best shared with him. I'm also making new plans to intervene in my mental and physical health to just take better care of myself to further prove personal responsibility for my own issues. He told me he didn't want to have any more sex for a while because of the seriousness of my accusations (that it was an assault against my physical autonomy) and that we would sleep in separate places and get space. I agreed but it's very bittersweet. The space helps me too but I'm also so sad and the gap between us is suddenly so wide. How do couples who have hurt each other build new understanding, love , and peace? Please, all I want is that.