346

God’s grace
Posted on March 26, 2024 by David M Willis

346 thoughts on “God’s grace”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    couldn’t believe what was on her phone and had to rush to the desktop to verify, huh

    (if that’s a laptop, it’s HUGE)

    1. Ana Chronistic

      (the other reason I decided never to look anyone up, too much likelihood of exactly NO OTHER CONCERNS)

      1. Kimi

        Always a joy when you see a former classmate’s name in the news for being arrested. That is like a forced lookup that you didn’t want to know but also probably expected.

        1. Johan

          Honestly, there were some arrests that I was shocked by.

        2. Ana Chronistic

          Former classmates, nothing

          We heard of our TEACHERS getting arrested, before we even had time to be alumni

        3. Jonathan

          A college roommate of mine was arrested for some 19 counts including arson and indecent exposure. Granted this was not years later. It was while we were roommates. I was in the common area a few floors up playing mahjong, and had no idea that was why there were so many cop cars outside.

        4. Freemage

          Arson AND indecent exposure? That sounds like a rather… risky combination.

        5. David DeLaney

          it’s just ‘liar liar pants on fire’
          taken to the logical conclusion

        6. Tan

          Only if there’s also fraud involved.

        7. RassilonTDavros

          Look, I’ll take that over seeing a former classmate’s name on the news because they’ve been beaten to death. Which I really wish were a hypothetical.

        8. elebenty

          I am so sorry, that’s horrible.

        9. Kimi

          That is definitely worse.

        10. Ana Chronistic

          That’s horrifying =(

        11. Time Sage

          Closest I’ve had is hearing about former classmates commenting suicide.
          Thankfully we were at best acquaintances that took the same class and hadn’t been in touch since.
          Though years later thinking back and and realizing he was one of the first guys I found physically attractive made it stick with me

        12. Skorpeyon

          I’ll never forget the day I was visiting my gf at the time’s grandparents and saw an old classmate on TV in an orange jumpsuit on trial for infanticide. It was shocking for sure. Kinda hard to focus on the visit after that.

        13. Kazuma Taichi

          It’s only a forced lookup if you keep on top of the news

      2. HueSatLight

        scroll down more for repentant Sonic crying at the foot of the cross.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          also it’s an AI image of it

      3. Jeremiah

        I never look anyone up because I don’t know anyone enough to look the up.

      4. Needfuldoer

        I’ve discovered some politically concerning things posted by former school friends.

        In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

      5. Kamino Neko

        This is why I regret accepting friend requests from several relatives on Facebook… I have multiple relatives who are hardcore Trump supporters. (I don’t even really use Facebook…I just needed it for a game I used to play.)

        … We’re Canadian.

        1. Yumi

          I only accepted my aunt’s Facebook friend request because she was about to make a Thing about it at my grandma’s birthday party. And she’s one of my family members who’s generally okay– a blanket “not accepting older relatives” position felt best overall. Alas.

        2. Dave

          Wow – I can relate! Fellow Canadian and always stunned when I speak to people I know and find out they support the Orange Idiot. It’s fairly rare, but creates a sick feeling and a caution when I’m around them. I mean, HOW?!

        3. Opus the Poet

          Yeah I went to HS in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and pretty much all of my classmates are MAGAts, except for the one that got pregnant senior year. She was actually pretty cool.

      6. Max

        I stopped hanging out with my former childhood best friend when we were teenagers. He was going down a bad path. Several years later I saw his name in the paper for armed robbery. Not cool.

      7. zee

        I mean my highschool classmates were such assholes we cycled through three science teachers and the whole school apparently hated us. They caused a scandal (granted I blame the administration more for greenlighting their dumbass idea) so huge it made the news. I’m really curious what those assholes are up to now… Sadly I’m 23 so I don’t have Facebook and I doubt many of them do either

    2. HueSatLight

      She has both a laptop and a desktop. oops, linked two strips that are both kind of about boning Joe.

      1. DinaJoyce

        These both look like laptops to me?

        1. june gloom

          Look closely in the strip with her mom, you can see the PC tower to the left of the monitor.

      2. Woop de doop

        Wow I wonder why she has both instead of just one or the other.

        1. TheKelliestKelly

          To give more options for panel composition

        2. HueSatLight

          shhh

        3. june gloom

          Desktops are easier to work with IMO but laptops are portable. Both have their uses.

        4. Mr D phone posting

          One is for work, the other one is to watch cartoons (and Joe boning Roz) in bed.

        5. zee

          Simple: Joyce is a student AND a gamer

        6. Mark

          Because they don’t make laptops with 25″ screens.

    3. anon

      this is either legit or just to keep up appearances so any religious acquaintances/relatives would get off his back lol

  2. shadowcell

    Dumbing of Age Book 14: What’s in the Bible is Very Important!

    1. Ana Chronistic

      Dumbing of Age: Very Few People Are Saying This!!

      1. Aura

        Dumbing of Age Book 14: Feeling His Love Today 😉

        1. Samniel

          Dumbing of Age Book 14: Vaccines are a globalist [REDACTED]

  3. Thag Simmons

    Yeah, that’s not very surprising.

    1. anon

      i wonder if he knew abou beck’s dad or if he’s long since moved away lol

  4. IntangibleMatter

    And here we watch Joyce realize the true horror of someone you used to know turning out to be a far-right nut.

    Fs in the chat, so sorry for her loss

    1. IntangibleMatter

      Well, I guess not so much turning out to be as having maintained that status.

      Still… disappointing¸though.

      1. drs

        He was “who cares what’s in the bible” when younger. https://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2024-03-04-tara.png

    2. Dara

      Ex-gf of mine turned into a MAGAt and I found out when I saw her going off about how it should be legal for her to kill protestors with her car. We had a very brief discussion and then I blocked her. I presume it was mutual.

      1. Kimi

        I would offer my condolences but I am also glad that you escaped that.

        1. Dara

          We were never serious but it was fun for a while. (And we also shared a boyfriend for a while. Like I said, it was fun. ^_^ )

          but yeah at the same time kiiiiiiiiiiiiinda dodged a bullet

    3. Mollyscribbles

      childhood acquaintance reached out on facebook. I check his profile. First post: BLUE LIVES MATTER. Blocked.

    4. Kelli

      Yep. My niece went full qool-aid. A shame.

    5. foamy

      There, but for the grace of God…

      1. HueSatLight

        ; )

    6. Woop de doop

      Now you’re just somebody that I used to knowwwww

      1. IntangibleMatter

        Reminded me of this gem

        1. Woop de doop

          Well I hated that lol

    7. Yumi

      Reconnected with a childhood best friend a few years ago after interacting with her brother. She was the sweetest kid when we were little, but I didn’t take into account the effect “both her parents are cops” would have on how our views diverged…

      Also, she very much styles herself a “country girl,” which is harmless, really, and she has moved to a more rural area, but I’m still like… we very much did grow up in the same suburban city. At the time, she definitely hadn’t been out of it for more than five years.

    8. thejeff

      It’s even worse for Joyce since it’s a reminder of how close she was to going down that path.

    9. zee

      My highschool crush was homophobic (most people in school were tbh..) and very begged me to just “become a Christian”. Yea idk why I liked him either I was 14 and the pheromones were strong ig. I’m mad curious what he actually grew up to be like bc it’s equal chances he’s a right-wing shithead or going to college in likely a different country opened up his tiny lil brain to new things and he became normal

  5. NGPZ

    Oh no. They got him. And countless other friends from Joyce’s childhood. T_T

    *plays “Meinya” from Made in Abyss OST on hacked muzak*

  6. paleotectonics

    He tried something hinky/youth-pastory with her. My guess.

    1. furubatsu

      My moneys on this

    2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

      He is a peer not a youth pastor

      1. paleotectonics

        “Youth-pastory” = molesty

  7. C.T. Phipps

    Did Tristan learn to believe in God?

    Or did Tristan discover white CIS het dudes get rewarded if they claim to be religious?

    1. HueSatLight

      I don’t think we saw him not. Low effort at devotion doesn’t mean not believing in the Christian god, or the god(s) of whichever religion someone’s brought up in/near.

    2. Radiance

      FYI, “cis” isn’t an acronym or anything. There’s no reason to capitalize it unless you’re just yelling about cisgender people in general I guess.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        Thanks for the correction!

      2. Vanessa

        Christian In Status maybe, like a televangelist caught grifting or Trump with his multiple divorces and hookers who is somehow more Christian than a man who is still married to his first wife and loves all of his offspring unconditionally.

        1. Bridgebrain

          And actually goes to church ever

      3. Aura

        Or you’re talking about the Confederacy of Independent Systems! That’s always what I think of first when I see all-caps cis

        1. RassilonTDavros

          TIL that the separatists in the prequels had an actual name other than “the separatists.”

          …So who’s gonna tell the anti-woke Sequel-hater crowd that their beloved Prequels literally had villains named the “Confederacy”

        2. C.T. Phipps

          I didn’t want Revenge of the Sith to become good because it suddenly became topical.

        3. LeafletErin

          From Merriam Webster dictionary:

          Confederacy (noun):
          : a group of people, countries, organizations, etc. joined together for a common purpose or by a common interest

          It’s not an inherently bad word. It’s only in America that we most commonly associate UT with something so short lived.

        4. C.T. Phipps

          I mean it was absolutely who George Lucas was invoking.

        5. Thag Simmons

          I would hope that he wasn’t. The Prequels are a little muddled on the issue, but a major part of this is that the Separatists absolutely have a fair point and ultimately their desire to secede from the Republic gets extremely vindicated by the end.

        6. C.T. Phipps

          The Prequels only show the Confederacy as a cover for an alliance of evil corporate interests. The SHOW makes them have a point.

        7. BBCC

          And even the show had it so that those super nice Congress critters who may have valid reasons to dislike the Republic are not actually in charge. As soon as they vote a way Dooku and the Separatist council don’t like, they pay lip service to it and then promptly ignore and sabotage it. THEY are the ones who really run the Separatists and they are committing atrocity after atrocity (which the Congress critters apparently either don’t pay attention to at all or are so sheltered from the war it can be hidden from them. Neither of which speaks well to their authority).

        8. Thag Simmons

          I’ll be honest I associate it as much with tribal confederations like the Iroquois as I do with the Yankee Civil War

        9. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Not the Yankee Civil War.
          Yankees were the Northerners. We didn’t have a Civil War.
          It was Rebels v Yankees, the American Civil War.

        10. thejeff

          “To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
          To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.”

        11. Thag Simmons

          Since your country has decided to call it’s citizens “Americans” as though it was the only country on the continent, I’m going to keep using Yankee

        12. Zero

          Two continents!

      4. clif

        I thought CIS was a Latin acronym for On the Side Of.

        I have no idea why I thought that.

        1. Liara

          Cis does mean that, it’s just not an acronym

        2. eh, whatever

          cis = on this side
          trans = across, to the other side
          Gallia cisalpina = northern Italy = Gaul on this side of the Alps
          Gallia transalpina = France = Gaul on the other side of the Alps

        3. milu

          Which of course is a funny word in that it presumes which side the speaker is on. So that when people in france (well, journalists) write something like “transalpine politics” they mean Italian.

        4. HueSatLight

          or Transatlantic means on that side of the Atlantic. Doesn’t France have a Banc Transatlantique ?

        5. milu

          does it? what is it?
          …oh wait you meant banque. “Banc” means bench haha.
          also, i didn’t know about that bank. but in that sense it should probably mean, like, spanning or connecting both sides of the atlantic.

        6. HueSatLight

          I did not minor in French, so I went off translations in the dictionary 😛
          banc (de sable, I expect) was listed as cognate for bank (shore or sandbar).

        7. thejeff

          In modern (non-gender) usage it tends to imply crossing rather than just on the other side.
          A transatlantic flight would be one that crossed the Atlantic, not one between two points on the other side.

          But yeah, originally it was based on where the important people lived. In Rome.

    3. thakoru

      Oh he definitely seems like a grifter who uses the performance of piety to gain trust and social capital from other Christians without actually being at all pious. Good thing Joyce doesn’t have any trauma relating to exactly that kind of guy, otherwise this could get very upsetting!

      1. thejeff

        He’s 18. If he’s doing this performatively on FB, he’s likely doing it to keep his parents off his back, not actually grifting.

        Or he’s actually sincere, like Joyce was a few months ago.

        1. Li

          Yeah, I mean, it COULD be fully sincere, or he could be pulling a Liz.

    4. Mark

      Hey, when did that happen and where’s my reward?

    5. anon

      well, one of joyce’s brothers (the one that got married in india) did get a car outta it i believe

  8. Animedingo

    Thats a yikes bro

  9. Jo_cubstar

    So he’s an anti-vaxer. Sounds about right

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Times they are changing

      I grew up among fundamentalists in West Virginia and that’s one of the few states that mandates all children be vaccinated. Because they have experience with disease and think people against them are morons.

      1. Bittersweet

        It’s the weirdest thing because I swear that the anti-vaxx demographics flip flopped from when I was growing up. When I was little it was the little hippy liberal moms that opposed vaccines, I moved from a blue state to a red state and got to experience the trauma of 7 new mandatory shots in one doctor visit (also the core memory of having a towel thrown over my head and being restrained because holy shit doctors are terrible with children). Like, I distinctly remember everybody Republican being ultra pro vaccines until like, the HPV one and even then it was just “oh that one specifically is bad.”

        Now it’s the exact opposite and I get looked at like I’m insane for having given my daughter all her vaccines. They’re always like “YOU ACTUALLY GOT HER VACCINATED?” And I’m just like… yeah, my mom grew up with smallpox, we get all vaccines as soon as they’re available. Shoot me up with that anti-sickness stuff we love it.

        1. Bittersweet

          (Gonna add here that I am also presently a little liberal hippy parent. The hippy moms also did weird demographic shifting, but that became more like splitting into factions of Crunchy and Free Range. I like shiny crystals, cutting back on ultra processed stuff and plastic clothes, and human rights)

        2. Vanessa

          That is quite weird, isn’t it. Now the right-wingers are spending money on scam supplements and the hippies have learned to eschew homeopathic remedies because they are scammy products made so carelessly that they kill babies. Speaking personally as an organic-food-buying Democrat.

        3. DinaJoyce

          YES! I grew up homeschooled and pretty conservative (not to Joyce levels though). I got all my shots. My doctor (who went to our church) even talked my parents into letting me get the HPV vaccine. Now people I grew up with are surprised that my family (which includes as severely asthmatic child) gets the new covid boosters as soon as we’re eligible. I have been back with literally the same doctor I used my entire childhood (until he retired a few months ago, alas). My entire life, when he says get this shot, I roll up my sleeve and let him give me the shot. Why would I suddenly start doubting him? When he says I qualify for the new booster, I roll up my sleeve just like I did for my kindergarten shots. It’s not that complicated!

        4. Alanari

          I’m from Europe. Can confirm. My hippie mom who skipped a few vaccines for me when I was little (not all of them, thankfully) is vaccinated against covid, while the far right are still fuming about “the dna poison”.

        5. Da Boy

          It’s just a personal opinion but my issue with Covid vaccine is that it was so quickly pushed through while using a technology that has never been tested on a large scale. Basically taking risks with a not entirely tested tech.

        6. milu

          Right! The rational consequence of which ought to have been a campaign for open-source, publically funded, universal medicine! Nationalize Big Pharma now!

          But that’s hard and scary. Conspiracism is more convenient.

        7. Da Boy

          Well my country already has universal healthcare and Big Pharma companies are not from my country so… not really anything I can do.

        8. drs

          The alternatives were (a) letting everyone get hit by an “untested” vascular virus that killed lots of people and was having random crippling effects on even more or (b) masks and lockdowns for even longer.

        9. Da Boy

          That is true

        10. thejeff

          And now it’s been more tested than nearly anything else in medicine. Field tested, but still.

          If you were uncomfortable in early 2021, that’s one thing. Now it’s just conspiracy theory.

        11. Da Boy

          The fact that Pfizer and Moderna are apparently immune to lawsuit from side-effects Is Kinda shitty though.

        12. Bittersweet

          That part does suck because I did actually suffer a side effect that was not known but not told to me as a result of the COVID vaccine. But stuff that changes your period length and heaviness only affects women, so nobody cared. As for me, I now need to be on BC for the rest of my life because extending my period by a week meant it never ended. Screwed up all my chances of ever having more kids, etc.

          But like… my mom got cancer and my dad was diabetic, and I myself have always had weak lungs. I’d get the shot in every universe, it just sucks hard that we weren’t warned about that side effect because scientists decided it didn’t change our quality of life.

        13. Bittersweet

          Known but not told to me*, it was in literature and in testing, but they didn’t report it until basically forced to.

        14. Nicoleandmaggie

          It was bipartisan idiots even then. It’s just Jenny McCarthy was in the news and not the right wing nut jobs. (Looked it up when I was on a crazy mama forum).

        15. Daibhid C

          I feel like that’s happened with a lot of things, because the right has to be against anything the left is pro, and vice versa. Like, it’s far more trivial, but I remember when Disney+ released The Muppet Show and the right was fulminating about the content warnings because this was the WOKE LEFT trying to CANCEL the Muppets, and why would anyone want to cancel the Muppets?

          And I thought “Dudes, it’s less than a decade since they did that ABC show, and One Million Moms was literally trying to cancel it. They made a joke about it on the show.”

          As far as vaccinations go, my Mum was a bit hippieish (she was the secretary of the local folk music club and protested various things) but absolutely pro-vaccination. Although when I got my autism diagnosis, while the knowledge that Andrew Wakefield was a big fat liar was still perlocating through the media, I had to reassure her that there was no connection, and even if there was, it would still have been the right decision.

        16. Daibhid C

          Just realised “the right has to be against anything the left is pro, and vice versa.” is ambiguous. I meant the right also has to be pro anything the left is against, not the left also has to be against anything the right is pro. As a lefty, I believe that the left is usually (but not always) pro or against things for actual reasons.

        17. thejeff

          Yeah and that’s a terrifying development. When they were a bipartisan fringe thing, antivaxxers weren’t too dangerous. Now that it’s a partisan tribal identity marker in the culture war, the numbers have exploded.

          I think the crunchy liberal ones are still around, they’re just massively outnumbered by right-wingers radicalized by Covid conspiracy theories.

        18. Dorje Sylas

          The horseshoe bends into a circle. The Far Right and the Far Left will jump the gap and cross-pollinate through Conspiracy idolization. And a big ugly narcissist threw his ego down as a wide bridge during 2020.

      2. AbacusWizard

        I think the one thing that has *most* flabbergasted me in the last four years is how many people have joined the war against germs on the side of the germs.

        1. Dara

          yeah. I mean, AIDS, and people cheering it on, but that was other people. now it’s themselves

          Party of Plague gonna plague-party on apparently

        2. Jon

          Seanan McGuire (as “Mira Grant”) wrote an excellent series of novels and stories in the previous decade based on the idea that two genetically-engineered viruses (a modified Ebola virus to cure cancer that wasn’t supposed to be transmissible, and a viral cold cure that wasn’t supposed to be released) met in the wild and became a zombie virus. Every mammal is infected, and any mammal over 40 lbs will become a zombie when it dies. If your viral colony is exposed to another, say by a bite, it “amplifies”, and you go zombie too. The first novel, “Feed”, opens about 20 years after the first outbreak; most people are okay because they undertake moderately-elaborate precautions to avoid amplification.

          Seanan has said that she can’t revisit that universe any more because it seems too optimistic now. She never thought there’d be people demanding the right to be bitten by zombies, and utterly refusing to use the testing machines or take bleach showers after potential exposure.

      3. BarerMender

        I grew up in West Virginia, but my people were Catholic (5% minority in W.Va.), which was better in some ways and worse in others. I became an atheist at 14, but I had nightmares of going to hell until I was 35. I got my polio vaccine in 1954, which makes me one of the test group. I’m terribly proud of that.

      4. Rabid Rabbit

        Hell, even in early DoA Joyce was busy getting her flu vaccine because you have to get it every year. Even if you don’t believe in evolution.

        I wonder if Sarah ever got her popcorn that time.

    2. Nono

      Remember it wasn’t that long ago that Joyce didn’t believe in evolution (except for flu viruses clearly that’s different).

      If the comic was written like ten years ago Joyce might be antivax at the time too.

      1. thejeff

        Yup, retroactively there’s almost no way that the Browns didn’t go antivax during Covid.
        Anti-mask too.

    3. butting

      Even uglier: antisemitic antivaxer.

  10. TJ

    You can never go back. Upside is usually by the time you realize this you don’t want to.

  11. HueSatLight

    You don’t have to capitalize any god’s pronouns, Joyce, that’s a religion thing, not a grammar thing.

    1. Nathan

      Tristan does capitalize His though, so it would make sense to have consistent style.

      1. HueSatLight

        I have to concentrate to have a consistent style. I accidentally capitalize nouns sometimes, on account of minoring in German, where that’s the norm. There’s even a famous book about it.

        1. AbacusWizard

          “a famous book about it”

          This joke is so brilliant that I am going to have to steal it.

        2. Vanessa

          Tristian is not a very good writer, is he? Grammar and logic are not his strong points.

        3. BarerMender

          I guess it stands to reason his education would be raggedy.

        4. AbacusWizard

          Update: I told this joke to my spouse, who speaks German, and in response I got a glare and a slow thumbs-down. Calling this a success!

        5. HueSatLight

          A Kapital offense.

        6. butting

          DAMN YOU WILLIS HUESATLIGHT

        7. Felian

          haha, nice one.

      2. bemisawa

        Arguably, it would make sense to be consistent about a lot of things, but that never sees to stop anyone. :/

    2. HueSatLight

      Also, Tristan, you don’t capitalize “God” in “a god”. It’s just like sometimes there’s a guy, and his name is Guy, but you don’t start capitalizing every time you write the word guy.

      1. Rabid Rabbit

        Except you do, because there’s only one real god! And it’s his name! Except for that thing the Jews are always going on about that you’re not allowed to say! But they’re Jews, so what would they know about the god of Abraham???

        It’s like saying “Jerome stopped me from going dancing on the train tracks at freight-train o’clock when I was drunk that one time. I’m glad there was a Jerome there to stop me.”

        Except, y’know, about his imaginary friend.

        1. eh, whatever

          Funny how you’re picking Jerome. Hieronymus is literally “the one of the holy name”.

    3. Felian

      i trained myself to stop capitalizing god and their pronouns. SOMEHOW THAT’S STILL HARD.

      1. milu

        FUCK yOU, gOD

  12. Armadillo

    Also vaccines. Because it’s always also vaccines.

    1. Kimi

      And oddly enough guns. I don’t know what in the world Jesus has to do with guns since he even seemed to be against violence against an oppressive regime that was arresting him, but what do I know?

      1. HueSatLight

        He came not to spread peace, but the sword.

        And mixed messages even about violence against the Romans arresting him, he told his buds to sell their coats to have money to buy swords if they didn’t have enough.

        1. Kimi

          There are some theories that owning the swords was just to help justify them arresting him and not to actually perpetrate violence, hence the rebuke at the garden of Gethsemane and the “not to spread peace, but the sword” as allegorical in context. I don’t know for sure, but it just seems odd to me to link up things like letting them hit the other cheek or pray for those who persecute you with guns and violence. The old testament is quite full of violence though, and I tend to hear that quoted more by gun toting Christians. That or revelations, which is like a weird fever dream that some people take literally rather than a symbolic reference to someone’s thoughts on the Roman empire, which qould make more sense in historical context. It is not unusual for fables to be used to make a political point when political points can result in your death or worse.
          I just find the idea of Jesus being a gun toting marine wrapped in the US flag, like they have put on shirts and other things, to be a bizarre understanding of a person that supposedly went willingly to his horrible death. Just one of those things where it feels like a completely different religion depending on which faction you look at.

        2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          It’s worth noting that the kindness and mercy positions of Jesus were derived from concepts in the Hebrew Bible as well. Those were not new.

        3. Kimi

          Yeah. If I recall right, stuff in the dead sea scrolls was even more similar than other information we had before that.

        4. HueSatLight

          there’s always theories to try to make an anthology, written by different authors who had contradictory views, somehow 100% consistent. Always popular: the parts someone doesn’t like are a metaphor.

          “Sell your cloaks and buy swords” is from Luke.
          “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword” is from Matthew.

        5. Kimi

          I was more thinking of Luke 22:50-51, one of the disciples struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear and Jesus responds in saying, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him.” than Matthew.

        6. Mark

          Not peace, but the sword: well, it was gonna happen. Like, we don’t engage in a particular chemical reaction because it creates an unwanted precipitate; it just does and we do this because we want some other result of the reaction.

          I read that line as “don’t expect everything to be sweetness and light now, but good will come in spite of strife and many will eventually get over it.”

      2. Amelie Wikström

        Well, Historical Jesus was a Jewish nationalist revolutionary and that message gets sort of confused in the Bible as it puts him on a mission of peace for all mankind, but somehow I don’t think it’s out of a desire to free Palestine from the Romans that these people want their guns. . .

        1. RonF

          Jesus was a Jewish nationalist revolutionary? “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s” doesn’t sound like a Jewish nationalist revolutionary to me. I don’t recall him telling people to resist or attempt to overthrow the existing civil power structure at all.

        2. Amelie Wikström

          You can read all about it starting here https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/sapphoris

        3. thejeff

          You know he basically make that up, right? The events may well be real, but we have no reason to think Jesus was involved. We know nothing about his early life beyond the very likely invented birth and childhood narratives.

          His message seems to have been apocalyptic, but it’s not clear that it was revolutionary. Take care of the poor and follow the Torah Law so that you are counted as righteous when God sweeps the unrighteous away and establishes the Kingdom.

        4. Amelie Wikström

          Yes, the book is very clear about how its Historical Jesus is a hypothesis built on the most likely course of events. I recall specifically a line about how unlikely it would be to think he would be “uninvolved” in the political issues that every other itinerant apocalyptic preacher who went around doing miracles and gathering followers in this period got crucified for.

        5. HueSatLight

          The Romans crucified non-Romans for insurrection.
          The people who wrote the Bible decades after Jesus died, if he existed, were trying to convince the Empire they weren’t with the people who were rising up.

    2. True Survivor

      Yet in his deplorable ignorance, he is *technically* right on vaccines: they are globalist.

      They work best when used world-wide to provide herd-immunity across populations thus eliminating pockets which foster mutation, they are often created and sometimes provided by institutions funded by multinational corporations (like the Gate Foundation in its attempts to eradicate polio), and have proven a powerful means of fostering transnational cooperation (such as when the USSR and USA worked together via the WHO to eradicate small pox).

      1. BarerMender

        Unfortunately, “globalist” has replaced “cosmopolitan” as a dog whistle for “Jewish.”

        1. NGPZ

          Same goes for just about all the other catch-all snarl words conservatives use to refer to everything they hate about the left.

          See also: “postmodernist”, “elitist”, “Cultural Marxist”, “funded by George Soros”.

        2. RonF

          “Funded by George Soros” has nothing to do with his religion or nationality and everything to do with the policies promulgated by the people he supports.

        3. milu

          oh you sweet cupcake. or raging antisemite. it’s one or the other

        4. NGPZ

          Yee, it don’t follow no logic with them reactionaries.

          They spread these snarls around like 12-year-olds who just discovered the word “communist” ?

        5. milu

          i mean, possibly what Ronf meant to say is “the alt-right focus on Soros not because he’s jewish but bc he supports progressive politics, that’s what they’re mad about”.

          except it absolutely can be, and is, both

        6. NGPZ

          hence the concept of a dog whistle — it’s so only their fellow antisemite “dogs” can hear it ?

        7. Bryy

          ….. dude you might want to fucknig clarify that statement.

        8. Mark

          Perhaps “Jewish” is (for those who use it pejoratively) itself a dog-whistle for “everything that is not exactly like us.”

        9. milu

          No, using Jewish pejoratively is not a “dog whistle”. It’s just antisemitism

      2. David DeLaney

        and they are THE greatest advance in medicine in the last few _hundred_ years

        –Dave, I personally rank them above anaesthesia even

        1. thejeff

          Second only to making doctors wash their hands.

        2. drs

          Oral rehydration therapy is considered up there, helps keep people dying from diarrhea diseases like cholera. Less of a big deal in the West because we have clean water and don’t get cholera. So clean water should be up there on the list of big life-savers, too.

      3. Felian

        The global conspiracy to keep everyone alive and healthy.
        THIS IS THE FUTURE THE LEFTISTS WANT.
        <3

        1. milu

          Except that is literally what the bigots hate. The “everyone” part.

        2. Felian

          Which is odd, because the bigots are PART of EVERYONE.
          I want THEM to be alive, healthy, even HAPPY. Social justice is benefiting everyone.

        3. milu

          well, but that’s not quite true, now is it? as the name implies, “social justice” will require arbitrations.

          Should we prioritize drinking water for all, or the convenience of golfers and agrobusiness profits? You can’t have both. A lot of bigotry is about material class struggle.

        4. Taffy

          Mmmmfuck golfers. Not even a valid sport. No skill involved. Even I can put a ball in a hole very easily, they’re just making it difficult for themselves on purpose. Simply walk up to the hole and put the ball in, idiots. You don’t need an entire field for this.

        5. Felian

          I don’t even want to hate on the *sport itself*, what i criticise about golf is basically “look, i can afford to keep all this lawn instead of planting crops on it“, and creating a wasteland of english lawn where biodiversity or a publicly used space could be instead.

        6. HueSatLight

          Fie on wasteful irrigation too. If your crop needs that much irrigation, you’re growing the wrong thing in the wrong place.

          Also lawn.

        7. Felian

          Yeah, sure, *social justice* does mean giving away unreasonably high living standards. Sure, it’s not true that we wouldn’t *take anything from them*.
          But we’d start at the top 1% where they wouldn’t *actually* notice all that much whether their bank account has a 0 more or less…

  13. Savail

    “Joyce, who cares what’s in the Bible?”

    “What’s in the Bible is very important! Very few people are saying this!! but it’s a position I’ve always maintained.”

    Always doing a lot of lifting there.

    1. Savail

      Grah, I didn’t put “Always” in quotes. This bugs me.

      1. thakoru

        Old boyfriend: “Always” doing a lot of lifting
        New boyfriend: Always doing a lot of lifting

    2. KM

      Presumably he is still of the generation whose youthful indiscretions are not plastered all over the internet for all the see, forever.

    3. Vulcanodon

      I don’t remember the phrase “… very few people are saying this!” before Trump. Could be that puts him in the Trumpy camp as well.

      1. Schpoonman

        The irony of “…very few people are saying this!” being a completely true statement, because the rest is a lie that he’s propagating, sometimes for the first time, so it wouldn’t be said by many people at all.

        1. Bryy

          Also, “very few people are saying this” is indicative of just how small someone’s worldview is.

    4. Mark

      This gives me furiously to think about classmates who seem to have turned into unthinking channels for cheap plastic propaganda reposts.

  14. Bittersweet

    Well yeah, Joyce, God’s pronouns are case sensitive.

    (I’m no longer a Christian yet I also constantly capitalize God pronouns and I know it’s not necessary, but it also doesn’t feel like correct English to stop. Such are the side effects of going to private Christian school in early elementary I guess.)

    1. Jamie

      I like capitalizing God’s pronouns because I think it’s funny. It’s a choice that only really makes sense in English, anyways.

    2. NGPZ

      “Correct” (White Christian) English in America — is it vanilla? No, it’s nothing but milk and sugar. Apparently where other English dialects are flavors, theirs forms the base.

      Same reason why “God” by itself in English can be almost always trusted to express the concept of the Christian God in particular, without the other person asking “which god?” — social privilege.

      1. Vanessa

        As we have found out whenever “politics” is suppressed (like Facebook is doing now) the status quo is never “political”. The Wall Street Journal is not ever “political” but Mother Jones, ProPublica, and NPR are. Skating along celebrating the slaughter of the natives on Columbus Day is status quo, asking if George Bush and the British monarchs might have done some bad things is “politics.”

        1. NGPZ

          Yeah, as knee-jerky as it is for many people, there’s really no such thing as “keeping out of politics”, all issues are political issues, for the simple fact that creating a free, fair government is an ongoing process and always will be.

          Those who hope to reconcile some kind of “neutral point of view” do so because they cling to the tired premise that most democracies in the world having a right and left wing makes both sides equally moral and valid somehow. There’s no demonstrable or empirical pathway that supports this notion at ALL. Just Old Liberal sentiment that saying the contrary aloud is being closed-minded and ungracious. A standard the right does NOT hold themselves to in return.

      2. Jonathan

        Just like “America” can be reliably interpreted as meaning “The United States of America”

        1. NGPZ

          Irony acknowledged.

    3. Daibhid C

      Given how important God’s pronouns seem to be, it’s amazing how many Christians are convinced their god doesn’t have any.

      1. thejeff

        If pronouns are biological, does God have biology?

        1. milu

          I mean Jesus is carbon-based.
          Therefore, God acquired pronouns when He was made flesh.
          Therefore the deniers of Jesus’ divinity (ie the Jews) need the fiction that pronouns can be non-biology-based otherwise they can’t refer to God, and that’s really impractical.
          Therefore, the trans agenda is a Jewish conspiracy.
          This all makes total sense!

        2. HueSatLight

          I’m a bad ally, He/Him are the Christian god’s neopronouns, and I don’t respect them.

  15. JessWitt

    It’s times like this that make me grateful she’s with Joe.

    1. Reltzik

      I can see that. But for me, it’s the times when Joyce freaks out and Joe has to poke her with a broom to get her down from the ceiling that make me grateful.

  16. Matticus

    Oof. You know that he says “globalists” with a hard “J.”

    1. JR

      I have never heard this expression before and it is fantastic.

    2. Schpoonman

      That’s actually kinda hard for me to say, but losing the first L guves you “Jobalists” like the Biblical Job, and that’s funny to me.

      1. june gloom

        That’s… not what Matticus meant.

        1. Schpoonman

          I know, “globalist” is a dog whistle for Jews, it’s anti-semitism, I just find “Jobalists” funny.

  17. GreedOfGram

    Reminds me of when I unfollowed a former roommate because he kept flooding my feed with bible verses.

    1. Mark

      Sometimes I think that sort of behavior reeks of desperation. Like, “if I repeat this stuff until everyone goes numb maybe I will actually believe it.”

  18. DailyBrad

    The “globalist” thing, hmm, maybe Joyce’s mom was even further off the mark in thinking Tristan was part of a pattern of Joyce being into Jewish dudes just due to Tristan being Polish.

  19. Moon

    oh no this bongo is going to show up and give everybody JN.1

    1. RassilonTDavros

      JN.1? What’s that?

      1. drs

        The globally and nationally dominant strain of covid-19 at the moment.

        “The CDC estimated that the variant accounted for 44% of cases in the US on 22 December 2023 and 62% of cases on 5 January 2024.[114]

        As of 9 February 2024, JN.1 was estimated by the WHO to be the most prevalent variant of SARS-CoV-2 (70–90% prevalence in four out of six global regions; insufficient data in the East Mediterranean and African regions)”

        So you know, nothing big. /s

        1. DinaJoyce

          *plugs ears* la la la la la COVID WENT AWAY OBVIOUSLY. ITS ALL DONE!!! Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree its all over, so obviously there is no reason to know anything about it anymore! *continues plugging ears and avoiding looking at any data anywhere*

          (As far as I can tell, this is how we have all collectively agreed to behave about covid now? Including the CDC and maybe the WHO?)

        2. Daibhid C

          And the UK governnment, who’s current policy appears to be summed up as “Covid vaccines are a great British achievement that we should all be pround of but you can’t actually get one.”

        3. RassilonTDavros

          Ah, thanks for the info. I can’t keep all the variants straight, and when I tried to Google it I instead got results about “John 1” for some reason. (Didn’t do it when I searched it again just now— weird.)

        4. Mark

          That was my first thought: the first chapter of the Gospel of John. In context it made juuust enough sense….

          (For those who are wondering what all this is about, the four Gospels are abbreviated Mt, Mk, Lk, Jn.)

        5. Mark

          Is it just me, or do the names they give the various strains seem to be generated by some random process to guarantee that you can never tell which is current?

        6. milu

          They’re named based on mutations, it’s a nomenclature that is meant to make sense for scientists, not the general public.

          Also, several of them will be current at any time

        7. Mark

          But they want the general public to take care of themselves, so we kind of have to be able to make some sense of it. This COVID 3.11, COVID NT, COVID 7, COVID Vista stuff is Not Helpful.

        8. Taffy

          The public can largely Go Fuck Itself™, as far as most organizations care, especially when it comes to information.

  20. Mollyscribbles

    did pre-DoA Joyce make a monkey’s paw wish for Tristan to grow up to be the type of godly man she wanted him to be?

    1. DailyBrad

      I feel like even back then, she’d be annoyed as shit about his misrepresenting his past.

    2. True Survivor

      1)This made me smile. Thank you.

      2)Unfortunately, I doubt it – asking a severed monkey hand for favors sounds pretty Satanist. However, maybe there is a God out there answering her prayers. He just has a sick sense of humor?

      1. C.T. Phipps

        *Willis looks up from drawing board*

        Hmm?

      2. NGPZ

        “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.”

        1. David DeLaney

          obOldOldReference: *the Incredible Mr. Limpet intensifies*

          –Dave, back then you’d’ve hadta go TO THE LIBRARY to look up what that was, and even then you’d need a helpful librarian who knew what category (films) it fell under to get started with

      3. Mollyscribbles

        tbh I was using “monkey’s paw” as shorthand for any form of wish that ended up being granted in a horrifying way. So, prayer counts.

  21. Zamperla

    I love how on top of everything else nightmarish here, the assertion of AND I HAVE ALWAYS CARED VERY MUCH ABOUT WHAT’S STRICTLY IN THE BIBLE is absolutely going to drive her nuts.

    1. Vanessa

      Haha, clearly he is a hypocrite too.

  22. JA

    Tristan turned out exactly as we thought he would.

  23. NGPZ

    Still thinking of looking up old crushes on FaceBook after this?

    Just know that once you start diving down that rabbit hole, we can’t help you.

    1. David DeLaney

      no, no. (oh no, oh no, oh no nonooo…) I stay the hell AWAY from Zuckerberg’s data-mining goliath.

      –Dave, the users have NEVER been its customers, or how it makes money

      1. Yumi

        I feel like the users are how it makes money? Harder to make money without something to sell.

        1. David DeLaney

          oh sweet summer child

          it has always had something to sell – to ADVERTISING COMPANIES

          namely, great heaping mountains of data on what people Like or Don’t Like, who they associate with, what groups they’re in, ages and weights and colors and genders and occupations and…

          He became filthy rich off _that_, not off selling Facebook Premium subscriptions or t-shirts

          same reason Twitter got so valuable: data for advertisers

        2. Yumi

          Hi, fuck off with that “sweet summer child” bit when you completely missed the point of my comment.

          I was saying that it sells its user base, not that it sells *to* its user base. Same as your point, without trying to be condescending about it.

    2. Yumi

      There might be better ways to learn about an old crush. For example, they might now have a podcast.

      1. HueSatLight

        Or they might call you out of the blue, when you’re kind of a mess and also are a day away from going to the ER with a giant kidney stone.

  24. Vukodlak

    Plot twist, it was Joyce’s unwavering devotion to god that converted him.

    1. Bryy

      A real C.S. Lewis-J.R.R. Tolkein situation we’ve got going on here.

  25. RassilonTDavros

    …Oh. Oh shit.

    …Joyce 100 percent told an Adult™ about what Tristan and Tara were doing and he got sent to the Intensive Brainwashing Unit for living in sin. Everything went horribly, horribly right.

    …I’d been hoping Tristan might have become someone Joyce could commiserate with, maybe even someone else who’d moved away from the faith.

    Guess not. Jury’s still out on Tara, though…?

    1. Schpoonman

      I don’t think she’d have been looking forward to seeing him when she visited La Porte before deconverting if she had got him sent away.

  26. Taffy

    Tristan is definitely into guro.

  27. Heavensrun

    Oh no Tristan is terrible

    1. AbacusWizard

      astronaut with gun: “Always has been”

  28. Aura

    Ok but why does he post like the boomer relatives you forever regret accepting friend invites from?

    1. Taffy

      He has the same disease as them.

    2. HueSatLight

      flashback time

      1. HueSatLight

        link fail: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/twitter/

        1. AY

          Oh my gosh they’re all so small and cute in 2010

    3. anon

      i mean, i shudder to think what “posting about religious faith in a gen z” way would look like tho i’m sure there are some unironic tiktoks about it and a handful of satire ones

  29. Sarah

    I was a little worried about Joyce looking up an old crush, but this feels more like, “oh no if I’d somehow ended up with Tristan, would I have become this kind of person, too?”

    1. Mark

      Or: “would I have gone through the same changes, and still been yoked to this?”

  30. thakoru

    There but for the grace of non-existent God go I.

  31. NinjaNick

    Tristan is one of those Losers now. Don’t waste your time on that Toeboy.

  32. ian livs

    I mean, Joyce knowing what pronouns *actually* are already puts her way, way, wayyy ahead of 99% of people like Tristan or her mom or Toedad.

  33. Cattleprod

    Tristan wearing what appears to be an orange shirt with a brown vest, what I think of as the ‘Classic Joyce’ outfit, feels symbolic.

  34. Icalasari

    😐

    Tristan…

    I will bite my tongue because I don’t want to go on a rant and contribute to potential comment section shutdown

    1. Schpoonman

      Fear is for the weak.

  35. Emil

    Am I the only one who’s completely lost as to what all the references to Tristan are all about? Why is he important all of a sudden?

    1. Vivvav

      I think it’s about Joyce reconciling the first person she ever thought impure thoughts about back during her fundie days with her newly liberated anti-religious mindset.

      1. thejeff

        Not just with her new liberated mindset, but also with her new actual serious boyfriend.

    2. Bash

      This is the first time she’s dated someone without the idea that they would be married someday. She thinks back to somebody else who had a similar idea in her childhood, and wanted to know how he turned out. The results were not great.

    3. DashWallkick

      Tristan was tiny Joyce’s first crush. She’s again being violently confronted with how much she’s changed now that she’s a masturbating atheist on birth control and is again horrified to discover she was right to leave that the community she once had

  36. GUIGUI

    How would Joyce feel if it turned out that the reason Tristan turned like this was because of her little “tantrum”when she saw him hang out with other girls and thought he should be more serious about being Christian so that Joyce would be willing to be his date?

    1. Bash

      And yet he never contacted her or tried to keep in touch via facebook or anything?

    2. Needfuldoer

      Nah. I think her crush on him was unrequited.

  37. Suet

    Kowalski, STATUS REPORT

    1. Schpoonman

      “Oh, you’re not gonna like this one, Skipper.”

    2. Hof1991

      In four seasons, Kowalski never got a first name or promotion. Just stayed Seaman Kowalski. But he was better off than Sparks who only had a nickname.

  38. Reltzik

    Plot twist: Tristan and Tara are actually now Wiccans, and he just posts shit like this on his old Facebook page to satisfy his family enough that they won’t take a closer look at his life and learn the truth

    1. Taffy

      It’s not real Wicca unless it comes from the Wicca region. Anywhere else and it’s sparkling wine.

      1. Mark

        🙂

    2. milu

      You’re just saying this because you want this to be a crossover with a BTVS AU where Tara is still alive.

      I see you and I raise you the fact that Tara being canonically gay means Tristan is as well and their relationship itself is also a front to protect their sexual identity

      1. Reltzik

        In five years the front will have developed into a genuine heteroromantic relationship, but it will still be an open relationship so that they can satisfy their sexual desires. Neither of them explicitly acknowledges to the other that they have developed romantic feelings because they feel that making any genuine attempt at romance would be a betraying the arrangement they made when they first set up the facade. Instead, both of them engage in the romance with their full hearts while pretending it’s just for pretend, believing the other’s expressions of love are merely counterfeits, delighting in imagining those displays are true while deep down “knowing” that they are false and also feeling guilt over having fallen in love with someone they promised never to fall in love with.

        Since they are already in a relationship, the fandom shippers have no idea what to root for, and their brains all simultaneously overheat and short-circuit.

  39. DarkoNeko

    “who care what’s in the bible, Joyce” — Tristan

  40. Sneakystorms

    This actually reminds me of an observation i saw someone make recently – that often it is the most sincerely devoted members who end up leaving their church over ethical complaints, while the people who stay are those who are just there by default and don’t think about it too hard

  41. Bobbi

    I looked up my ex-wife the other day and discovered that’s she’s going to have a baby with her new partner. Y’know, the thing she said she was never going to do, and forced me to reconcile myself to when we were together…

    I’m now on HRT that probably reduces my fertility, have decided not to have kids because I have heritable mental health conditions that it would be immoral to inflict on a child, and am electing to remain single, so it’s not an option for me, unless I try to adopt (which, as I understand it, is harder for a single person, let alone a single trans person)

    Sorry, I just meant to make the first comment then my brain ran away with me

    1. Charles Phipps

      I’m so sorry. You seem like a wonderful nurturing person.

    2. milu

      I hope you find a way to be a parent outside the state-patriarchal biofamily.
      Lots of kids need good, caring adults, so if you’re so inclined you could be so precious to them.

      (And as an aside and stimulant, i recommend the short book “Against the Family” by Sophie Lewis, truly a delightful read)

  42. Amós Batista

    I wonder what if Joyce and Tristan could exchange their lives. If Joyce had entered Tristan school and if he joined Indiana University.

  43. Woop de doop

    His post from 3 days ago sounds like it could be a copypasta meme. Maybe even what Willis intended!!!

    1. Bryy

      Yup. This is almost exactly what happened.

  44. CianM1301

    Joyce didn’t just dodge a bullet, she dodged the whole damn firing squad.

    1. milu

      Being shot at her out of a 19th-century circus cannon!?

      1. CianM1301

        Yes, and they are also shooting at her as they’re being shot at her.

        1. milu

          also they are shooting poisoned bullets!!!

  45. PedanticJerkass

    Close down the tab. Delete the cookies. Uninstall the browser. Format your HDD/SSD and start over entirely. Maybe burn it with fire first/instead, just for good measure. In any case, run away, Joyce. Run far, far away.

  46. DashWallkick

    The one-two pattern of “Joyce, who cares what’s in the bible?” to being in your 20s and thinking gay people are going to Hell is entirely on point. It’s always the comfortable guy who is coasting and never has to try too hard who one day turns around and says gay people are satanic pedophiles because it’s the easiest path to more attention and comfort.

    1. Zaxares

      I feel like sometimes it’s also the other way around when somebody’s who’s been coasting through life suddenly runs into difficulties (because global macroeconomics are a big, scary thing and bad things can happen to anyone at any point) and suddenly their life is no longer easy and they’re desperately looking around for someone or something to blame because the other two alternatives (that God has withdrawn their blessings because either a) they are not a good person, or b) because God does not exist) are too terrifying to accept.

      1. DashWallkick

        It can be — in fact, one of the people who went through that story arc is the protagonist of this comic — but I’m very used to dumb spoiled kids hitting the slightest friction and giving up on empathy of any kind.

  47. Azhrei Vep

    Man, this just makes me slightly more glad than I normally am that I don’t use any kind of social media, or bother looking back at people I lost touch with.

    Just … leave the past in the past. It’s better for everyone.

    1. Sharaku

      I didn’t even use social media all that much and things went so much better when i switched it off for good.

      Had to log into facebook for the first time in years recently because a friend had sent some documents through chat there. The few moments i spent staring at the feed was like an alien world of nonsense and doom.

    2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

      What’s dead should stay dead

      1. milu

        Tristan is alive!!! Except he… *lighting crack* …came back wrong.

      2. thejeff

        “That is not dead which can eternal lie …”

  48. Needfuldoer

    Joyce must feel at least a little shame, since those easily could’ve been her posts if she drank just a little more of the Flavor-Aid.

  49. Emily

    Hypothesis: Joyce and Becky leaving the fold has led to several of the members clamping down on their own offspring, and Tristan has figured out that if he pious-posts on Facebook roughly once a day it keeps Mom and Dad off his back.

    1. staszu13

      Interesting idea

    2. Amós Batista

      Tristian is the Replacemennt Best Young of Church

      1. Bryy

        oh CALLBACK.

  50. Just_IDD

    So if everything belongs to god…
    doesn’t that imply vaccines also belong to god?
    Why are you denying god?

    1. Yumi

      But the illnesses also belong to God. If God wants you to die of a preventable illness, who are you to stop it? And if God wants you to get a vaccine, you’ll trip and fall into a needle or something, idk.

      1. Mark

        But we don’t like illness, so the Devil must have invented it. Resisting evil is pious — get the vaccine!

        1. milu

          No, illness is good actually! it separates the wheat from the chaff!!! If your faith is strong you’ll be okay!!! *frozen grin and lack of blinking*

  51. Big Z

    Facebook ChristianityPosting, at least as performed by people who aren’t me, has been the long-running antidote to any thoughts I’ve ever had about my own high school crushes/girlfriends, all of whom seem to live lives focused around mashing the “repost” button on anything that has the word “Jesus” in it.

  52. Vulcanodon

    I learned the hard way not to get into arguments online with old religious friends. Goes nowhere, ends up with slamming (virtual) doors, not a good experience.

  53. Pylgrim

    Fuck, so relatable. This is me looking at FB profile of my highschool classmates and church mates back in my days. They all used to take christianity quite lightly (even if they were all nominally christian, as it’s usual where I grew up) and have a laugh or eyeroll at me for taking it more seriously. Now they have all become the exact same kind of feel-good Bible-verse spamming, preacher-speak parroting Ned Flanders-wannabes.

    And for those of them who get to know I am not a believer anymore, the condescencion couldn’t be thicker: “oh I once too lost my way, but thanks to the mercy of the Lord…”Dude stop; I haven’t even looked at a Bible in a decade and I’m pretty sure I could still whoop your God’s-promises-only ass in Biblical knowledge. While you were fucking your girlfriend, I was studying hermeneutics. While you had a stint with alcoholism I was being inducted into the first rungs of leadership in the church where I got to get disillusioned by realising how the sausage is made.

    So don’t come to me with your patronising aphorisms now after you did everything you wanted with your life until you finally got a bad break or the consequences of your actions and all of a sudden are feeling very pious as a way to silence the incipient realisations of your own mortality.

  54. Steamweed

    “Tristan, it’s good that you’re following the church’s teachings, but, c’mon, man, what about the English class’s teachings?”

  55. Aslan

    This dude isn’t getting a single like or comment on his posts

    1. milu

      Oh shit good point

      What is going on

      1. pope suburban

        I almost wonder if this isn’t another Liz situation, where this is a performative public facebook page to placate parents/family/church members, but really Tristan is a pretty normal kid who doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about church. I mean I don’t know how likely that is, and I know plenty of real young people are this passionate about…uh, this stuff, but something about how over-the-top it all is makes me curious.

    2. Amós Batista

      Guess who got shadowbanned?

  56. staszu13

    Disappointed much, Joyce?

  57. Dave

    So, uh, maybe this will be unwelcome, but for any that need to read this, and on behalf of the people who follow Jesus but don’t subscribe to ‘nationalism’ or fundamentalism, or worshiping politics, politicians or using the Bible to force others to be like them or generally seek to have power that way: I’m very, very sorry. Personally, I think Jesus is real. I think what he taught was amazing and still relevant today. But the selfish have co-opted it and perverted his message to their own ends. Such as Tristan here in this strip and all like him. Honestly – I’m very sorry for those who don’t understand the Jesus they claim to follow. Example after example shows he met with people and gave them the choice whether to follow him. He didn’t overthrow the government or try to lobby religious leaders to make more rules for others to follow. He genuinely loved everyone and wanted the best for them. But let them choose for themselves. I read this comic and love the characters and I’m taken back to that age in life and remember how hard it was. For all who have been hurt by religion and the zealots, I wish for you a good life and hope you overcome and thrive through the many challenges life throws at you.

    1. BorkBorkBork

      I’m also a person of faith, and have come to the conclusion that 99% of American “Christianity” isn’t Christianity at all, but a bastard faith of showboating and one-upmanship and dick-measuring contests on how close to God one is. And if Christ came back today, the religious right would crucify him all over again for “wokeness.”

      But, uh. You’re right, that I don’t think anyone here probably wants a “He Gets Us” message.

      1. thejeff

        As so many Christians have thought, rightly or wrongly, over the millennia. Those over there who call themselves Christians aren’t really Christians.

        Then you get persecutions of heretics and inquisitions and sometimes even actual wars.

    2. C.T. Phipps

      I love anarchist Jesus.

      Anarchist Jesus hated fundamentalists, war mongers, fascists, and wealthy people.

      He loved everybody but he hated these guys.

    3. Amós Batista

      Hi Dave.
      You don’t need to apologize. As a genuine Christian, you don’t need to.
      They, the people that use Jesus as a tool of hate and control, they are the people that need to repent from their sins.

      Our mission, as people of faith, is to admonish our own brothers. Yes, it have to be on us.
      I’m inspired by the prophet I’ve took his name. Amos, on Bible, dared to condone the evil the rich and powerful inside his comunity!

      1. Dave

        Well said – thanks for the encouragement. Good luck to you brother – I’ll try my best as well.

    4. Mark

      Hear, hear!

  58. Raen

    Let me guess, the most important verse to him is Revelation 2:9.

    1. milu

      “I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”

      Huh. Why?

      1. thejeff

        It’s used to paint Jews as the “synagogue of Satan”.

  59. Yeet

    Obviously the vaccine thing is awful but I wonder if Joyce also feels weird about all this… demonstrative Jesus-ing.

  60. UrsulaDavina

    Tristen’s upper head is very boxed shaped, no one has yet to say that and I feel obliged to point it out beacuse he is a bongo.

  61. milu

    I’ve just realised the chapter title is a pun on “Tristan”.
    Lol, i hate it

  62. Synnerman

    Wow… I genuinely did not expect this twist. Poor Joyce.

    1. Amós Batista

      Why this could be bad for Joyce?

      1. Sam

        It’s not directly bad like in the way a punch in the face is bad.

        It’s bad in that it sucks to know someone you used to have a crush on has changed in bad ways or possibly, hasn’t changed at all, while you have.

        We know Tristan was a hypocrite previously and a lot of people on Facebook behave performatively. So it could be that Tristan either a) grew to actually believe this stuff eventually or b) is still back home pretending he does and is stuck the way Joyce used to be, parroting beliefs to keep his community.

  63. milu

    Oh also re: “would you look at this Tristan is a hypocrite”

    Yes and no, frankly. Bigots have double standards, but they typically don’t say so openly. They just mean XYZ differently when it applies to them and to “others”. That only sounds like hypocrisy because they don’t say the quiet part

  64. RonF

    What’s in the Bible is very important. But there’s nothing in the Bible that says that vaccines are a globalist conspiracy to . God gave us brains to understand how our bodies work, how our immune systems work and how to develop and use vaccines.

    I will say that while I quite willingly took the initial pair of mRNA-based COVID vaccines and the first booster, analyses of the vaccines have shown that the manufacturers have had shoddy Q.A. and there’s things in them (e.g., liposomes containing DNA instead of mRNA) that should not be. But that doesn’t invalidate the concept, just the execution.

    I’ve got a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Biochemistry. I’m also a member of a mainstream Protestant denomination. Despite what both fundamentalists and atheists will tell you, there’s no conflict between the Bible and science.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      The Bible is a prop to a huge chunk of people. It says whatever they think it says and when it contradicts, often by the people in the text saying its a contradiction (like Jesus frequently did), they ignore it. Because it’s not a book of lessons, it’s a source of AUTHORTIYtm.

    2. Bryy

      The Bible is literally a supernatural story.

      1. HueSatLight

        ah ah ah… two anthologies containing many supernatural stories. And all the testable claims in the Bible that are false are just poetic metaphors.

        I was raised in a mainline protestant church, and there were absolutely young earth creationists among the congregation.

    3. Firseal

      Most Christians throughout history supported science. I remember one Christian Philosopher state that the Bible and Natural Science were both the books of the Lord. It only was once science became a threat to the faith of some of the more hardline (or, in some cases the power of the church) that some Christians decided to treat it as a threat. Christianity has no problem with science. Some Christians do, and they go on teaching their children that scism – not a scism of the church, but of faith or ‘faith’ and the rest of reality.

      1. HueSatLight

        Ibn Rushd had to tell Christendom causality existed.

  65. Pseudowolf

    “Also vaccines are a globalist…”

    Annnnnd there it is.

  66. milu

    Oh hey, talking about how Joyce is a total perv!!!

    GANGBANG IN THE SKY

    NSFW, babies ?

    (this is taking me forever, for real. turns out drawing realistic five-people sex is HARD)

    1. Taffy

      Floating sky sex sounds cool, tbh.

      1. milu

        i know right???!!!! (ridiculously pleased with myself) (i mean with Joyce) (whose fantasies i’m only the humble scribe of)

    2. thejeff

      Literature!

  67. Schpoonman

    Don’t scream into your own arm, Joyce. Scream into Joe’s arms. His big strong arms that could hoist you into the air like you didn’t weigh a thing…

    I’m sorry, what was the question?

    “You want my Bible, libruls? Well come kiss me for it!”

  68. Fred

    Just to put this out there: I grew up in a mostly red-state part of Ohio, and a while ago found the FaceBook posts from a high school associate. Jennifer (name a coincidence) posts nonstop about the joy she feels after transitioning (and occasionally about how trapped she felt in high school), and I think every new outfit or hairstyle gets a full photoshoot in her living room. Not every HS person found on Facebook has taken a turn to the right.

  69. Bryy

    welp i was wrong.

  70. BBCC

    Welp, that bullet got dodged!

  71. Reltzik

    Moral of the story: Don’t emulate Robin’s behavior.

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