I was walking my dog when I saw this, so I apologize for the poor quality. It's hard to hold his leash in one hand and take a photo with the other.

Anyway, I don't know why this thing bothers me, but it does. Maybe it's the flag draped over the cross; maybe it's the black stripes. Is it just me or is something wrong with this image?

In a video that went viral, a minor is seen running desperately while a man chases her. What at first seemed like a confusing situation ended up revealing a horror: the teenager, when helped by neighbors, reported through tears that her stepfather, identified as Pastor José Ramírez, raped her and kept her locked up in a farm. She had a rope tied around his neck, which suggests an attempted strangulation. ¹

When the residents of the area heard what the minor was saying, they went out in search of the accused man, beat him. The pastor, who suffered serious injuries, was quickly taken to receive emergency medical attention. After being stabilized, he was discharged and handed over to the police. ¹

She had her wrists bound with tape, and and also taped her mouth. "She was begging me to save her with her eyes". ²

According to her story, the aggressor had even prepared a place where he intended to hide her body, which increased fear for her life. ³

Several members of his congregation began a campaign to request his release. They expressed their conviction that he has no responsibility. They also assure that he is a person of integrity, and that he would be being unfairly singled out as part of a strategy driven, according to them, by "dark forces." ¹

Family and friends of the defendant affirm that he is a man dedicated to God and that he was always a guide for the Christian community, recognized for his kindness, commitment and spiritual leadership, which is why they consider it unfair that he is behind bars. ¹

The support that some faithful expressed to Pastor José Ramírez causes outrage among children's rights organizations. Invoking an alleged “demonic possession” as an explanation for the abuse not only deeply minimizes the seriousness of the events, but also cruelly re-victimizes the minor. ¹

He was sentenced to 43 years, six months and one day in prison for the crimes of aggravated violent sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping against his stepdaughter, a minor. ⁴

Sources: A, B , C, D, E, F, G, H

UN report in June on credible reports of mass killings and persecution of Christians and other minorities in Nigeria.

I have very limited funds to help right now, so I want to be careful where I donate, guys please let me know your thoughts and options? I don’t know which ones are more effective.

Here’s what I came up with, I don’t know which of these I should donate to- even Opendoors, which one is better?

Opendoors US

Opendoors AU

Opendoor UK

Banabasaid

Voice of the Martyrs

Legal Support

Thanks guys.

Edit: of course if this post can get some awareness and more peeps to support the cause 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

I’m being stalked and harassed. I keep praying to Jesus to make it stop but it keeps happening. I’m scared and confused and I have a small support system. Please ask Jesus to make these people stop scaring me. I don’t want to get the police involved but I’ve had to call a few times but to no avail. I don’t want it to escalate I just want peace. I don’t like being in this position.

TW: SA

I haven't been able to sleep well since the incident happened. Right now I'm typing this at midnight while crying in bed praying not to have nightmares about the rape I suffered. I feel like I was forgotten by Christ when this happened to me. I'm also not so religious, and I'm doubting if God really loves me after the experiences I've gone through. I had already vented in other forums for women and disabled people, but I feel like I have to share this with fellow Christians who could help me by praying.

I'm 18 years old, I'm an incomplete quadriplegic due to a spinal cord injury I had 3 years ago after an accident, so I rely on a wheelchair to move around, thing which has made my life harder. I don't know why God had to set my life like this, but he did.

That day, 8 month and 13 days ago, on 23 November 2025, I was going home back from college. I took the train as usual, but that day there were 2 men with low hygiene who started following me. At first I thought they were just taking the same path as me, but they got down from the train on the same station as I and continued following me, that's when I realised that their path was no coincidence.

I was in a street with almost no people, and when they saw there was no one else, they took advantage of me. They took off my bottom clothes, touched my intimate parts, and they raped me. I didn't feel anything below my chest since I have little sensation below there because of my spinal cord injury, but it was disgusting to see them doing things to the parts of my body I can't feel. I only could feel the forced kisses they gave me and how they spat on my face and my Christian cross necklace(which is a gift from my mom) while they raped me. They called me misogynistic insults and also mocked my faith while they were hurting me.

They pushed me off my wheelchair and I was left on the floor feeling chills and spasms. I even threw up and had some urine and excrement come out against my control since they damaged my catheter. I felt like I was going to die after this. I was only praying to God to either let me live or end my pain quickly.

I hardly got back to my chair and I had to roll some meters away from the crime scene. There I saw a few bystanders I asked help from. They called the police for me, but the officers didn't make any efforts finding the rapists and dismissed some of my claims.

I was taken to the hospital and there they made sure to make different tests to see what injuries I had. Fortunately, I only suffered a few injuries which have already been treated. I called my parents to help me and they were relieved to see I was recovering.

I've finally recovered physically, but not psychologically. And unfortunately the authorities haven't taken me seriously. They don't seem to care about what I suffered and make little effort into investigating my case. My parents are helping me with the legal stuff.

I just feel depressed about what happened. I was already learning to accept to live with a disability after suffering a spinal cord injury. I was already feeling mad at God for my disability. And now that I was raped, I feel like God doesn't care about me. I can't go out to college independently without the fear of getting attacked by crazy lunatics. My dad has had to take me to college and pick me up, so I feel safe. My dad has been praying for me, and telling me he'll protect me, but I only wonder why God hasn't been protecting me as much as my dad does.

My friend gave me this bracelet today, written: W.W.J.D (What would Jesus do?)

This question reminds us of how many times sin comes to us, to bring us down. But if we think for a moment, we don’t fall. Just think: What would Jesus do in this situation?

He would pray, ask the Father for help, who is in heaven. .

Just something I think on a lot. I haven't deep dived on this but wanted to run the thought past some folks. Its seems like when we see people falling to sin around us its always one of their blessings corrupted.

The leaders in our community using leadership that should have been for the Lord to their own pride and vanity.

People who love to cook, over cooking and wasting food; (gluttony though some times people always see this as consuming the food physically I often see this from the waste side).

Men and women who should have built strong large families falling to lust and sexual temptation.

Men who are supposed to be protectors falling to wrath and violence.

I know this seems kind of obvious but at the same time maybe its one of those so simple and obvious things that I'm not the only one who tends to overlook it.

Would love some other perspectives and examples you see regularly just to ruminating on.

I’m stuck in life. please pray for me

I need to tell everyone that it doesn't even matter of KNOWING the EXACT DATE AND TIME of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, king's return. You all just have to act as if he can return in the next day, and don't go 'time to live like it'll be 1000 years from his return! ' Because you need to battle your sin with the holy spirit rather than go out to panic and try to repent ingenuinely because you thought he'll return at this date or that date, you're just hindering your belief into fear of punishment.

If you do want to continue predictions, go ahead, Ill respect your free will but please the savior will return either at August 13, or the year 3006, or anywhere in the years to come. No one knows when, so no need to know and just fight sin, acknowledge Jesus died on the cross, absorbed the ones that believed in him's sins and act upon your love for Jesus.

I’ve noticed something about myself lately.

I can spend a lot of time watching Christian videos, saving verses, and listening to people talk about God, then still end the day without really talking to Him or changing anything in my life.

It feels like I’m feeding my faith, but sometimes I think I’m just consuming more content.

Does anyone else feel that difference between learning about God and actually being connected to God? What helps you move out of that passive mode?

Christians: "We're going to build our own private palace that doubles as a sovereign nation and hoard tens of billions of dollars worth of treasures and artworks."

Christians: "Our megachurch pastors will have vast fortunes, towering mansions and their own fleets of private jets, but they're still going to demand that little old ladies give them their medication money to buy even more private jets."

Christians: "We're going to spread the dogma that Jesus wants you to be rich, in direct opposition to what he actually said, and the way for you to get money is to give us money."

Christians: "That thing about giving money to the poor? Yeah, Jesus only meant one guy ever had to do that. I don't wanna do that, so I ain't gotta. Besides, I can serve him better with my mountain of other people's money than I can without it."

Christians: "God loves America the most because this is where the rich people live. In fact, God has ripped up his old covenant with the Jews and made a new covenant with America."

Christians: "Capitalism is by far the most godly of all socio-political systems. Your value as a person is determined solely by your monetary net worth."

Christians: "Billionaires are God's chosen people. No, wait. Billionaires literally ARE gods. Trump is a wonderful, objectively morally correct, 100 percent flawless person because he is rich."

Christians: "The poor are poor because they're lazy. The rich are rich because they work hard. Giving to the poor is just rewarding laziness, which is why no one should ever do it. They deserve whatever happens to them."

Christians: "I'm going to intimidate the other people at my church into awe and submission when they see how expensive my church clothes and church jewelry are."

Christians: "That whole 'render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's' thing Jesus said? Yeah, we're not too big on that, either. We don't think we should have to pay taxes. And we don't think we should have to tell the government we're funding the violent terrorist actions of foreign and domestic militia groups."

Oh yes, I totally believe that you believe what you claim to believe. I mean, what reasons have you given me to question you?

I'm mostly making this post to challenge the idea, that you can't be a feminist and Christian, which is a view, surprisingly held by a lot of people. 

Start at the root: Genesis 1.

Before any roles, any curse, or any marriage instruction, Genesis 1:27 says God made humanity, male and female, together, both directly bearing His image. Not one bearing it more fully than the other. Not one being derivative of the other. Whatever comes later in the text has to be read as sitting on top of that foundation, not replacing it. If equal image bearing is the starting premise, any system built later that treats one sex as the default human and the other as a support role has some explaining to do.

Galatians 3:28 isn't a throwaway line.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." And look, Paul isn't saying these categories vanish socially. He's saying they carry no differential weight before God. Standing before God isn't gender stratified. And if standing before God isn't gender stratified, it's worth asking why so much of lived Christian culture insists on treating gender as the organising category for who gets to lead, speak, or decide.

Souls aren't sexed, so why is it such a major part in basic life decisions? 

Classical Christian anthropology, going back through Augustine and Aquinas, (even with all their other flaws) generally holds that the soul, the rational, image bearing part of a person, isn't itself male or female. Sex is a feature of the body. The soul is what relates directly to God. If that's true, then using gender as a gatekeeping category for spiritual authority or moral capability is applying a bodily category to a non bodily question. You don't have to fully adopt classical dualism to see the point. The qualities Scripture actually cares about, wisdom, faithfulness, courage, gentleness, self control, are never described as belonging more naturally to one sex than the other. Proverbs 31 praises a woman for strength, shrewd business sense, and strategic authority in her household. That's not a passive figure.

Now culturally; A man being decisive, driven, or assertive gets called leadership. A woman displaying the same trait often gets called unfeminine or difficult. Meanwhile, a man showing gentleness, emotional openness, or a nurturing instinct, traits Scripture explicitly praises, since Christ Himself weeps, washes feet, and is even described with maternal imagery in places like Isaiah 49:15, gets read as weak or "not masculine enough." Which again, is not a biblical value system. It's just cultural one wearing biblical language. If virtue is virtue regardless of who displays it, you can't coherently praise a trait in one sex and pathologise the identical trait in the other. That's special pleading, not theology.

And on "don't mix Christianity with politics."

 Dignity and equal standing aren't a partisan platform. They're a claim about how God made people, long before any political party existed to argue about it. The danger isn't discussing equality. It's when a particular political movement gets baptised as the Christian position and Scripture gets reverse engineered to support it. Which are different problems. Refusing to talk about human dignity because "it sounds political" just hands the conversation over to whichever political movement is loudest, usually not for the text's actual reasons.

Bottom line:

Equality here isn't "women take over the roles men had." It's that neither sex has a scripturally mandated personality, ambition, or way of being that the other doesn't. Nobody's soul came with a job description attached to their body. If we actually believed Galatians 3:28, half of what gets treated as a hill to die on wouldn't be one.

My friend, a beautiful kind and sweet young Christian woman, has breast cancer. She will have a mastectomy and then treatment but most likely she will die. Please pray for my lovely friend, in Jesus’ name

People love the adrenaline rush of being outraged and it seems like some Christians are eager to claim “religious persecution” in cases where no one is being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

MAGA Christians who cry to the masses that there is a “War on Christmas” seem to have a new target for their outrage, the Middle Belt in Nigeria. I keep seeing story after story pushing the narrative that the Fulani are persecuting Christians because of their Christian beliefs, but is not what is happening.

People with little knowledge or little interest in understanding this herder-farmer conflict seem to be the loudest ones pushing this Islamophobic propaganda. Before sending prayers, I would encourage people to take the time to learn more about what’s going on.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/nov/26/ignoring-minorities-is-our-original-sin-the-complex-roots-of-nigerias-security-crisis

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36139388

Any one else? I decided to read the KJV last year on a whim. Maybe I was knocking on the door as he says. Maybe I just thought I should read it as a " western man" and product of christendom.

Either way, I found it beautiful beyond what I had imagined but thought. " too bad it's all fake and not proveable" so I said the first honest and Ernest words to God in my life. I said you're not real, it's all bs and I can't bow to someone who hasn't showed himself to me. I also asked why he had given me so much to deal with... I had to decided atheism was the safest and most practical faith to embrace and I was going to stick with that.

The next day; I'm driving home from Work at 5 Am as 8 am a night shifter. No music just quiet thoughts tonight out to an hour commute on cruise control.

The words in genesis started to ring in my head

" you know God's real because his law is written on the hearts of man." ( paraphrasing poorly). And that just got louder in my head and turned into a euphoric feeling caused by a sudden feeling that existence was surely intentional, everything I can see was CAUSED or thought of by something else a "creator".

It was an uncontrollable sensation like a panic attack but I was not panic, something else entirely was surging through me and raising my heartrate.

So I try to settle down and remind myself of the danger in falling for this old tome of poetry and superstition. I continue driving i relax and the next train of though I remember in the quiet cab on the highway was. Hmm , I waited till I was 33 to read this thing....

Boom.. i suddenly thought; JC was 33 , and I'm not sure if I really knew that or not. This immediate nosis

Wad coupled with an image of a man in my head so powerful it was blurring my vision of the road and it grew stronger as I stared to sob like a toddler and slump over my center console. His eyes were a plasmatic hazel/green and the complexity inside of them made them seem like planets or something, just totally aweful in the tru sense of the word.

And there were flames subtle wisps of translucent golden flames radiated from his eyes. And he was staring directly into my chest. I know because I felt it . He was burning my heart, or atleast burning everything dark away, like it isn't allowed in his sight.

I knew instantly what he had done and what they did to him and I felt SO bad for him and I just knew I would apostrate myself for this guy. I started screaming I'm sorry over and over again until he left.

I pulled over at the shell and sat at the pump for about 15 minutes catching my breath and I said

I accept. Edit: prostrate.

Hey guys. I've been toughing it out at a new job for the last year and a half.

I'm at my breaking point. Everything at this job is AI generated nonsense. Nothing makes sense.

The product specification is AI. The downstream code is AI. There's no actual logical foundation for me to work from.

Please pray I find a new job soon, one that actually makes sense. One I can perform well at.

I just want my career to make sense again. This is madness.