I'm truly blessed to have Fr. Mikael as my priest!

I've been seriously looking at Orthodoxy. I have a great church here in Ireland, but I move back to Sweden in August, about an hour south of Göteborg, so I may pop in to meet Fr. Mikael to chat to him. Den Svenska Kyrkan is a bit vanilla as I recall from when I last lived there, but there's so much that I don't know about the Orthodox Church either.

GREAT CHANNEL BRO! Thank you so much!

I'll grant that Sweden may be the least Christian nation in the West, but I wonder, with Islamic immigration, if it's still the most secular.

@ManiphestoMen

8 ай бұрын

Good question. I was also surprised to find, according to this Gallup survey: www.gallup-international.bg/files/2023/03/7-3-730x1091.jpg, 54% of Swedes do not believe in God, putting them in the nr 1 spot globally.

@ChillAssTurtle

8 ай бұрын

​@@ManiphestoMenits far less than that, everyone born there is automatically added to the church n they have to go out of their way to remove themselves from that list.

Imagine bending the knee to someone/something that actually can make things better but chooses not to.. thats evil

@ManiphestoMen

8 ай бұрын

This is a simple distortion and a bad argument which completely removes human agency. God gives humans free will. If God intervened in the world to "make things better" then we would just be robots, programmed to do one thing only - which would completely remove our humanity.

@ChillAssTurtle

8 ай бұрын

@@ManiphestoMen we now know that mentally ill ppl arent possessed by demons and physical illnesses are caused by germs not demons.. primitive ppl came up with a primitive god and it shows, fortunately we're more knowledgeable and also far more wise than anyone in the bible. Besides god made everything n even brags about how hes the creator of evil. We gotta grow up outta these things you know. If god makes ppl and he makes them born with the brain of a pedo or psycho killer he did that.. not humans.. 0 human agency.. we dont create ourselves thats just silly.

@ManiphestoMen

8 ай бұрын

These are even more simplistic and misguided arguments. I am happy to talk apologetics with well considered and informed atheists, but this is too childish to even engage with. Go check out someone like Jay Dyer: kzread.info/dron/nt7Iy8GlmdPwy_Tzyx93bA.html or at least Jordan Peterson www.youtube.com/@JordanBPeterson and come up with some intelligent arguments.

@ChillAssTurtle

8 ай бұрын

@@ManiphestoMen I completely agree that its childish. God sacrificed himself to himself to circumvent laws he created and has the means to override. Very very childish indeed.

@ManiphestoMen

8 ай бұрын

Ah, that was a better one. I agree that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement does not make sense. It is no part of the Orthodox faith but is unfortunately is believed by many misguided "Christians" - often taken even further to mean that, "God has done all the work, so I dont have to do anything", which is an even more dangerous idea, connected to the idea os Sola Fide, or that just by saying "I believe in Jesus", that somehow all your problems get solved. I would not call it childish, but rather a typical example of excessive intellectualism, which becomes disconnected from logic and reality.