Yeah see a lot of people blame Calvin for the idea of God "setting people up to fail" but that idea has always been there in Christianity, it's a straightforward reading of what Romans 9 just straight up says https://twitter.com/lura_groen/status/1194612502446911488?s=19

This is Paul directly saying that God created some people for the purpose of eventually being punished and destroyed

And it's AMAZING that so many lay Christians are in denial that this, to put it mildly, "challenging" concept is right there in the heart of their sacred text - Romans being probably the oldest or one of the oldest sources on Christian theology in existence

They get so mad when you just straight up say it

"God intended people to sin and to be punished for sin in order to prove he has the authority to punish sin"

I had a roomful of people yelling at me over this when I was a good Christian teen at a Christian school

I mean, look, for better or for wise, Christianity is a very challenging religion, and Jesus and Paul were very challenging guys

You kinda gotta own that if you're gonna call yourself part of this tradition

(I say this with a certain amount of affection as well as criticism:

Christianity is an incredibly bipolar religion and Paul, the actual effective creator of Christianity, is an absurdly obviously extremely untreated bipolar patient

It's right fucking there, he tells us he is)

All that stuff about "I am the greatest of the Pharisees and the apostles BUT I am the lowliest and most wretched of sinners"

Romans 7:15, one of the most eloquently ineloquent religious quotes in history - "I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do"

"But what I do do, I HATE"

Yeah I feel you man

A lot of stuff that, yes, sure, is part of the universal human condition but a lot of stuff that's also associated with certain kinds of mental illness

These sudden flooding emotions of megalomania and euphoria followed by utter worthlessness and despair

God loves the human race but he's also disgusted with us, furious with us

We're the most precious things that exist in creation and we're also stinking piles of shit who deserve nothing better than the fire

The external locus of control, being unsure you're in control of your actions, unsure if you even have a self

All your decisions this war between two alien forces within you

The Spirit of God vs. the dead flesh (a much more visceral metaphor than what most translations make it)

If you actually just translate the Greek word "sarx" for what it means, "flesh", the Pauline epistles become a lot more metal and at the same time a lot more obviously mentally ill than if you use genteel theological translations like "the sinful nature"

If you want to be *slightly* more genteel, "the body"

If you want to be slightly more blunt and visceral, "the meat"

Paul's original rants aren't all that different from some Thomas Ligotti/True Detective shit

"I'm trapped in the meat, I can't escape the meat, it's not me doing this shit IT'S THE FUCKING MEAT

WHY WON'T GOD JUST KILL THE MEAT"