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Goodbye Jesus

Liberal Jesusism Is Not Christianity


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AM - so how much does a liberal Christian have to reject before he's not really a Christian at all anymore? How much morally reprehensible stuff does he have to discard before he gets to the bare bones of his faith? How far must he rebuild his spiritual outlook before its made-up Messiah vanishes? The basic "don't be a dick" rules aren't unique to that religion at all, or even to any religion. With a thousand thousand religions out there, it seems to me that after rejecting some 99% of the Bible's claims, demands, and outright fabrications that one might do better to find a religious system without quite so many things to reject. Or go with none at all.

This is a good question outside it being cherry picking or not. Does it have enough 'truth' in it for them to find it appealing enough to use in their lives, once you sift the wheat from the chaff? Well, obviously to them it does. :HaHa: I went out to coffee not too long ago with one of the scholars who is part of the Jesus Seminar (if you're familiar with them). Talking with her she explains how she puts it to people that the Nativity story, for instance, is true to her because it resonates with her of something about herself and the world. Is it historical true, she retorts? 'Probably not, but its not about that'. That's how she takes the 'message' of the Bible in her faith. This is a very different paradigm than a literalist who says these things have to factual in order to be believed. It is not even in the same ballpark.

 

So to your question is there enough 'nuggets' in there they can find to make is useful this way to them, that no other religion does. First, we have to bear in mind that Christianity is like a primary language for them. It's myths and stories are engrained into their culture, and so to talk of these sort of 'inner truths', that will defacto be the religious language of choice. It's the simplest and most effective for them simply by virtue of cultural immersion with it. To adopt another culture's symbols is not so simple. They don't translate over very easily. That's why in all honesty, for an American to say "I'm a Buddhist", is sort of like a second language. You really have to be raised in an Eastern culture to really get the symbols. So this reason alone makes it appealing when looking for some language of 'spirit', for them.

 

As far as Jesus being an ass, supposedly that I've seen a lot of people like to point out in quoting such things as "unless a man hate his mother and father he cannot be a follower of me,", or other such verses, I will say that in fact a lot of these "evil Jesus" verses are highly suspect in their interpretation. I have to say that myself, as I've read some of these 'debunker' sites. So to those who have a different understanding of what that may have meant culturally in that day, I don't really see that as cherry picking there. It's simply a different point of view, and that is not illegitimate to have, and does not violate something so obviously blatant as God ordering genocide. And even so, even if there is stuff in there they see like "a woman shall keep silent in the church", and they outright disagree with it, again to them the underlying truths are valid enough to overcome these glaring cultural artifacts. They see a baby in that bathwater that to them is meaningful and helpful.

 

To me Buddhism is a hell of a lot more clear, but again for the West I think you have the whole 'native tongue' issue as a large factor in why they choose Christianity. Becoming Atheist is not a choice for most mainstream folks because they want a language, some home for these things, and atheism simply says God doesn't exist at all, leaving them with nothing on that order. Personally, I do see Eastern influence making its way into the mainstream more and more, and it's my view that eventually that will open up the typical Christian mind more to the point that the appeal of fundamentalism wanes and dies. Liberal Christianity is an attempt to make traditional Western Christianity more accessible to the Modern mind. Anyway, I'm rambling now....

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AM - so how much does a liberal Christian have to reject before he's not really a Christian at all anymore? How much morally reprehensible stuff does he have to discard before he gets to the bare bones of his faith? How far must he rebuild his spiritual outlook before its made-up Messiah vanishes? The basic "don't be a dick" rules aren't unique to that religion at all, or even to any religion. With a thousand thousand religions out there, it seems to me that after rejecting some 99% of the Bible's claims, demands, and outright fabrications that one might do better to find a religious system without quite so many things to reject. Or go with none at all.

This is a good question outside it being cherry picking or not. Does it have enough 'truth' in it for them to find it appealing enough to use in their lives, once you sift the wheat from the chaff? Well, obviously to them it does. :HaHa: I went out to coffee not too long ago with one of the scholars who is part of the Jesus Seminar (if you're familiar with them). Talking with her she explains how she puts it to people that the Nativity story, for instance, is true to her because it resonates with her of something about herself and the world. Is it historical true, she retorts? 'Probably not, but its not about that'. That's how she takes the 'message' of the Bible in her faith. This is a very different paradigm than a literalist who says these things have to factual in order to be believed. It is not even in the same ballpark.

 

So to your question is there enough 'nuggets' in there they can find to make is useful this way to them, that no other religion does. First, we have to bear in mind that Christianity is like a primary language for them. It's myths and stories are engrained into their culture, and so to talk of these sort of 'inner truths', that will defacto be the religious language of choice. It's the simplest and most effective for them simply by virtue of cultural immersion with it. To adopt another culture's symbols is not so simple. They don't translate over very easily. That's why in all honesty, for an American to say "I'm a Buddhist", is sort of like a second language. You really have to be raised in an Eastern culture to really get the symbols. So this reason alone makes it appealing when looking for some language of 'spirit', for them.

 

As far as Jesus being an ass, supposedly that I've seen a lot of people like to point out in quoting such things as "unless a man hate his mother and father he cannot be a follower of me,", or other such verses, I will say that in fact a lot of these "evil Jesus" verses are highly suspect in their interpretation. I have to say that myself, as I've read some of these 'debunker' sites. So to those who have a different understanding of what that may have meant culturally in that day, I don't really see that as cherry picking there. It's simply a different point of view, and that is not illegitimate to have, and does not violate something so obviously blatant as God ordering genocide. And even so, even if there is stuff in there they see like "a woman shall keep silent in the church", and they outright disagree with it, again to them the underlying truths are valid enough to overcome these glaring cultural artifacts. They see a baby in that bathwater that to them is meaningful and helpful.

 

To me Buddhism is a hell of a lot more clear, but again for the West I think you have the whole 'native tongue' issue as a large factor in why they choose Christianity. Becoming Atheist is not a choice for most mainstream folks because they want a language, some home for these things, and atheism simply says God doesn't exist at all, leaving them with nothing on that order. Personally, I do see Eastern influence making its way into the mainstream more and more, and it's my view that eventually that will open up the typical Christian mind more to the point that the appeal of fundamentalism wanes and dies. Liberal Christianity is an attempt to make traditional Western Christianity more accessible to the Modern mind. Anyway, I'm rambling now....

 

How can she believe the nativity story is true, while doubting it happened historically? That's a contradiction isn't it?

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Been enjoying watching this thread unfold and it has reached a place where I'll throw my two cents in.

 

On occasions I attend a very liberal Christian church, that I'm comfortable in saying that they do not take the Bible literally. They are accepting of gays, women preachers, etc - everything I was raised to believe was wrong. But at the end of every Scripture reading before the sermon, they always recite some phrase about "hearing what the Spirit is saying to the church". I have not been able yet to wrap my mind around the literalist vs. non-literalist either. To me, it's just easier to think of myself more as a humanist. I think some type of non-literalist non-theistic "belief" would be good for me; I just haven't been able to get my mind going in that direction yet.

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I went out to coffee not too long ago with one of the scholars who is part of the Jesus Seminar (if you're familiar with them). Talking with her she explains how she puts it to people that the Nativity story, for instance, is true to her because it resonates with her of something about herself and the world. Is it historical true, she retorts? 'Probably not, but its not about that'.

 

How can she believe the nativity story is true, while doubting it happened historically? That's a contradiction isn't it?

This comes to the power of mythology. Myths are about a message, not a fact of history. They are vehicles to talk about something inside of us that help us to see that and relate that to in an external form, a figure, a symbol, a story. It is that inside humans which is given a certain 'flesh and bones' to be seen and experienced through these means that is truth to us, because it resonates with us. It takes the immaterial and gives it form for the mind to attempt to visualize and experience it through.

 

So to her with her example, the Nativity, would speak symbolically of how she feels an internal connection to God in envision him reaching down to meet her in the world by becoming a human. It is a symbolic representation of an internal truth, something that has meaning to her on a spiritual level. It is a truth about herself to herself. Being factual in history is not only beside the point, but actually beneath the point, or lower than the point. To someone like her it reduces the high value of the symbol by making a mere event in history. And to argue it on that level guts it of that symbolic value. For her, the fundamentalist 'doesn't get it' in their trying to prove it in order to have faith. In fact she might argue it is a lack of faith that motivates such 'evidence' seeking.

 

Does that help clarify?

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Reconstructionist paganism does something similar with myths, AM, so I get that idea pretty well. It may not have happened exactly like the story, but it's all still true, as a Native American I heard say once.

 

I'm glad your friend is getting something out of her weird version of Christianity (one might argue that Paul himself thought that the historicity of his myths was also irrelevant, so maybe she's not so weird), but it's still a toxic, misogynistic old religion that needs to die. I mean, how does she reconcile the myths about Yahweh demanding the destruction of entire races? About his demands that people take little girls as sex slaves? About his demands that rapists marry their victims? About Christianity's claims that anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus will be tormented in flames for ever and ever? What kind of kind, gentle, loving God comes out of that shit? She wants a God who'll "reach down to meet her in the world by becoming a human." Aww, what a nice widdle deity. How does that reconcile with this same deity killing every man, woman, and child in the world with a flood? Where do you stop and say "Wow, I've had fuckin' enough of this," and go find somewhere else to play?

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AM - so how much does a liberal Christian have to reject before he's not really a Christian at all anymore?

 

Only Jesus, Akheia. All that you need is a relationship with Jesus. Everything else can be overlooked. We'll know the truth when we meet Jesus. ;)

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But that's not what Jesus said in the Bible. He sort of outlined a bunch of things people need to do to be saved. And all we have to go on about this mythic Jesus IS the Bible. He's not mentioned anywhere else but in Biblical texts and gnostic gospels. I mean, the Romans and Jews of his day never once wrote about him or anything he talked about, so a contradiction-riddled, self-incoherent fake history is all we've got to go on here. If the words that people put in the mouth of Jesus aren't correct, then what in the world else can you do to have a "relationship" with him?

 

At what point do people start to wonder if "all you need is a relationship with Jesus" creates a mythical Jesus that has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual Bible words about him? That the term "Jesus" becomes just a catch-all imaginary friend who can take on whatever attributes his daydreamer wants him to have?

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

 

G 28......G 28.........BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

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TF, they really don't have a choice. Paul's teachings take up most of the Bible. There's not much in the gospels to really base a religion on. Without Paul's nuts-and-bolts theology, I'm not sure Christianity would have survived. It'd just have been Yet Another Jewish Messiah Cult like the half-dozen floating around at the time. Paul turned it into a separate religion from Judaism.

 

If Christians wholesale rejected Paul, they'd have a bit of an issue on their hands. Without him, you're just looking at a Jews for Jesus sort of sect.

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If Christians wholesale rejected Paul, they'd have a bit of an issue on their hands. Without him, you're just looking at a Jews for Jesus sort of sect.

Exactly. Christianity has always been based on Paul's message of grace and atonement, not on Jesus' Judaism. So to be a Christian, all that you have to do is believe. To follow Y'shua as the messiah would be a different story. You would probably need to be circumcised... :o

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Well, and you'd be worshipping a fake Messiah. I've been reading EvilBible's writeup of how Jesus can't possibly be the Messiah and it's rather eye-opening. I thought I knew my Bible, but there are entries on that list I didn't even know about. At this point I can't even say that worshiping *just* Jesus would that great--if the guy existed at all, he was a Grade-A conjob. A worshiper who has that "omg RELAYSHUNSHIP with Jesus" has a relationship with a guy who is either a flat-out liar or a demented idiot. If he wasn't the Messiah, then that leaves Christianity pretty high and dry.

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

 

G 28......G 28.........BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hope you're not saying Jesus is better here. Reading the gospels made me feel hella more guilty than Paul ever did when I was an xian. They both suck.

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

 

G 28......G 28.........BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hope you're not saying Jesus is better here. Reading the gospels made me feel hella more guilty than Paul ever did when I was an xian. They both suck.

No! Christianity would never have gone anywhere if it was based on Jesus' teachings! Paul's teachings were infinitely more palatable to the Roman gentiles making up the founding Christians, just as they are so much more acceptable to current Christians.

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

 

G 28......G 28.........BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hope you're not saying Jesus is better here. Reading the gospels made me feel hella more guilty than Paul ever did when I was an xian. They both suck.

No! Christianity would never have gone anywhere if it was based on Jesus' teachings! Paul's teachings were infinitely more palatable to the Roman gentiles making up the founding Christians, just as they are so much more acceptable to current Christians.

 

That may be true, but it doesn't make Jesus any less loathsome. You'll have to forgive me, but I really can't stomach the 'Jesus was a nice guy' crap.

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I can see how the whole idea of "the message/myth resonates with me" can be appealing, but its also equally appealing the myth contained in shrek, but I don't consider my religion to be shrekist. I can appreciate the whole "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" message without a religion, same with the myths of Cinderella, Hansel and Grettel, etc...

 

This is coming from someone who loves mythology for the timeless messages they contain, same is the reason I love scifi. But in otherwords, though not stating such explicitly, you're implicitly saying you don't believe.

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I mean, how does she reconcile the myths about Yahweh demanding the destruction of entire races? About his demands that people take little girls as sex slaves? About his demands that rapists marry their victims? About Christianity's claims that anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus will be tormented in flames for ever and ever? What kind of kind, gentle, loving God comes out of that shit?

As I said, they don't need to reconcile it. They reject it as cultural artifacts. They don't accept it as something God really said, literally. The literalist, the fundamentalist is the one tasked with trying to reconcile it because they say it's all God's Word. They are either cherry picking (selectively ignoring), or force-fitting (rationalizing away) such verses. To the liberal, there is no need to.

 

Where do you stop and say "Wow, I've had fuckin' enough of this," and go find somewhere else to play?

The ones who would be confronted with that question of "how long do I have to try to make this fit what I believe, fuck it I've had enough", would be those who approach it literally as either literal truth or literally false. That's not the liberal. Different paradigm. Entirely different mindset than that.

 

I think the real question is at what point isn't there enough good wheat they can glean from all the chaff that they dump it as a system. That's what I said earlier is really subjective to the individual. To me, there's not enough there in order for me to build upon because of personal history along with the fact that IMO, they really have no "yoga", even in its tolerable more liberal forms. By that I mean they don't have really any practical means to develop spiritually. The whole thing is geared to maintaining a community of believers, not individual growth. To me it's really irrelevant whether the symbols are historically true or not. To me it's about whether they have personal value, and if as an organized religion that it works for me or not. It doesn't.

 

Does this help clarify?

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This thread I find very interesting, for I felt I had to re-examine thinking of Liberal Christianity. I have found that at least some do hold that there are two different Christianities with two different paradigms. Most of us come from the literal paradigm, that sees "myth equals fiction equals lies equals not to be believed". Others find myth to be non-literal truth. I am not sure what I think, but I know I have rejected literal, heaven and hell, external God Christianity.

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I think the real question is at what point isn't there enough good wheat they can glean from all the chaff that they dump it as a system. That's what I said earlier is really subjective to the individual. To me, there's not enough there in order for me to build upon because of personal history along with the fact that IMO, they really have no "yoga", even in its tolerable more liberal forms. By that I mean they don't have really any practical means to develop spiritually. The whole thing is geared to maintaining a community of believers, not individual growth. To me it's really irrelevant whether the symbols are historically true or not. To me it's about whether they have personal value, and if as an organized religion that it works for me or not. It doesn't.

 

 

Makes a little more sense. But liberal Christianity makes even less sense to me on a personal level than literal Christianity does. It feels like liberal Christians are straining to find nuggets of truth among the dungheap's contents. I can find far richer faith traditions elsewhere, and they have the benefit of not having so much in them that I must reject as a moral agent. If all that stuff I mentioned is stuff they don't believe God said, then it feels like what they're doing is forging a whole new take on Yahweh made up of their fantasies of what he's really like--because his holy book doesn't look like what they're describing at all. I guess that's how myths progress and evolve, but it makes very little sense to me. I can find a lot better out there in the spiritual marketplace.

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I can find a lot better out there in the spiritual marketplace.

That's because you don't have the history with them. smile.png You mentioned misogyny in Christianity? And we in the West look at Buddhism as a much truer path to enlightenment (and in very many ways they are light years ahead of Christianity in this), but they too have deeply male-dominant views in many of the Buddhist countries, using Buddhist traditions to support that as well. Many believe women cannot become enlightened. What is that?? There is always a blend of culture with religious teaching, and the same holds true in historical Christianity as well.

 

Something else I wanted to add as some food for thought for all of us regarding how liberals can more easily adopt their religion without having to work at redefining it for themselves. Honestly it comes naturally for them because of how their own surrounding culture or family 'believes' but not as those in your fundamentalist churches. In fact I believe your average believer, in the mainstream, majority, in fact hear and understand the stories of the Bible as stories. They don't really stop and say, "Oh, no.. that really happened. Yes sir, Jesus actually walked on water!".

 

The whole "God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!" crowd is a reactionary response that began with the birth of fundamentalism in the States. Prior to that people never really questioned matters of facticity of the stories, they just accepted them as 'truths', not necessarily weighed on the scale of historical or scientific facts. They were cultural symbols in how they functioned. Then along comes Modernity entering into the Christian religion out of these fancy seminaries out East, sending their sons back home to their churches in the Heartland with these new-fangled "Neo-orthodox" teachings. 'What's this intellectual hooey!', the cry goes out. "Give me that old-time religion!", was born and then the lines were drawn in the sand.

 

From this questions of science and Bible, history and the Bible were drawn into battle in the rise of conservative Bible schools, trying to prove matters of faith on the scales of science and reason. And it is in this arena that literalism was given a face and a name. It exists in an anti-intellectual or pseudo-scientific contrast to Modernity with its penetrating use of its tools in things like textual criticism, then with cultural studies, myth studies, anthropology, etc. And so large swaths of our culture is presented Christianity in this light: "The literal truth of God's Word over these unbelieving servants of Satan!"

 

Meanwhile, vast swaths of the mainstream are unconcerned with such questions and in fact do not define their religious experience in such ways. They simply 'just believe its truths'; 'God loves us, we need to be good, go to church, love one another'. The words of the Bible to them were more like ornaments around a good message to be good people; "love one another as I have loved you", etc. So in the mainstream, since they never were raised with such a black and white mindset, seeing the value of their religion is not so hard for them to do. They don't have to work at it. They just say, "yeah, those bad parts are in there, but we really don't believe that way now. That was back then". Very different approach to faith for them.

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Literalism doesn't seem to exist in many places besides the Abrahamic faiths. There's something about how it's being interpreted these days that encourages that sort of mindset. Buddhism doesn't have an awesome track record around women either, but modern Buddhism, at least as practiced in the West, seems to reject a lot of that malarkey--and can more easily adapt to that sort of cultural shift because it doesn't have that newfangled "old time religion" mindset. Not that it matters, really. America may have "vast swathes" of believers who don't "really" believe Jesus walked on water, but those same believers still make up the vast majority of the United States--a country where, for example, women make 70% or so of what men do for the same work, and where women must still fight and claw for representation and rights. Either these less literal believers are being very quiet and therefore complicit in the antics of their fundagelical loudmouth bedmates, or they're outright condoning the quiet takeover of our country's schools and government and the rollback and restriction of civil and human rights. Even these less literal Christians get upset and offended when their unwarranted privileges are revoked or when they're reminded that other faith systems (and atheistic mindsets) exist.

 

In short, I don't think that a lack of literalism makes a religion less toxic. I really want to believe that there are a huge subset of Christians who are genuinely nice, decent, tolerant people who wouldn't ever dream of pushing their faith onto others and who dream of (and vote toward) a true separation of church and state and full rights for ALL citizens, not just white men, but even my boundless perky optimism won't buy that.

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Define Christianity.

Westboro Baptist Church are Real Christians™ preaching the Real Jesus™.

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Christians don't follow Jesus' teachings. They follow Paul's.

 

G 28......G 28.........BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hope you're not saying Jesus is better here. Reading the gospels made me feel hella more guilty than Paul ever did when I was an xian. They both suck.

No! Christianity would never have gone anywhere if it was based on Jesus' teachings! Paul's teachings were infinitely more palatable to the Roman gentiles making up the founding Christians, just as they are so much more acceptable to current Christians.

That's right. The Christian church is not called the 'Pauline Church' for nothing! It is impossible to ever learn what Jesus taught because what is taught is what Paul believed, his version of the cult.

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I do find myself with Antlerman on this, but I still think that they don't really believe in what they say they believe in. Literalists are believers, because they believe that the Bible is literally true. Regardless of what sections they base it on over others, that's their fundamental belief. A nonliteralist might go so far as to say that all paths search for the same goal, and are hence equally true, while it sounds great, and I'm inclined in favor of it, its still not believing in Christianity. The fundamentals of Christianity are to believe that mankind is seriously flawed, and you need to follow Jesus, the one true path, to attain salvation.

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Eventually you brush up against the Great Commission and concepts of eternal damnation for those who don't buy into the extortion racket, ideas about God giving us morality (which is what converted that blogger I mentioned on my own blog here recently) rather than it being a freestanding concept humans have developed, humans' sin nature and general unworthiness without a divine helping hand, and a host of other things. Liberalism has to get pretty far away from those things before it can edge toward being non-toxic. Once a Christian rejects all that crap, once he defangs those toxic concepts, he's on his way to a far nicer religion, but one that doesn't look a lot like actual Christianity.

 

Maybe that's a good thing. I've got a neat scholarly book on Mithraism/Zoroastrianism that claims that there was a time when the worship of Mithras was a mystery religion more or less restricted to high-end nobility, and it eventually watered down and became a huge hit among rank-and-file soldiers. And shortly after this mission drift, apparently it died out right as Christianity got huge. Maybe it's time for Christianity to see some mission drift so we can make that next leap as a race. Once people see how far they must drift from those original concepts, maybe that's the time humanity wakes up and goes "oh shit, maybe we can be nice without all this extra crap!"

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