One wife.

Two mistresses.

Three dead.

I met him too. He wanted $1000 for hospital bills. Ugandan hospitals cost around $14 USD. He got rather angry at the revelation.

Scammer.

Well, Fire Wand, for starters. xD

Jokes aside, probably anything affected by the Heart of Fire Arcana, though I don't have any data behind that.

We choose him because he first chose us. We seek him because he first sought us. Our free-will desire for God to save us was given to us by God, so it is God who deserves all the credit for our salvation.

So continue to pray for that person's salvation. It is in God's hands. :-)

As I understand it, "chivalry" is more about protecting the weak and the people in our care, of whom women happen to be a significant proportion. Perhaps back in the day it was an exclusively sexist ideal, but nowadays, I'm more than happy to open doors for belabored men, walk on the street-side to protect my friends, and perform feats of valor for those who most need my aid, regardless of their gender.

Back in the day, just living life normally was still an unmitigated disaster, and it took great effort just for one person to support himself, so labor tended to get divvied up in gendered ways to maximize efficiency. Housework was just as laborious as field work and was a full-time job. Women frequently and easily died from childbirth, and children rarely lived to adulthood. Men were generally replaceable; women were much less so. Household roles tended to be assigned in ways that reflected these grim realities.

So it stood to reason, then, that the most useful division of labor back then was to assign the role of Protector to the man and Supporter to the woman. That, I think, was the motivating impetus behind the rise of chivalry.

But things have changed since then. Ever since WWII, technological and social advances have liberated both men and women from the workplace and improved standards of living across the board. The value of women's labor has shifted away from child-related efforts toward more of the same endeavors men have traditionally worked toward.

Now, women are actually in a sufficiently powerful position to work as "protectors and providers" too. When a man falls on hard times and loses his job, the family needn't starve to death like they once would have; his wife can provide for the family in the interim. If an intruder enters the home, she can physically protect her family with tasers and firearms just as well as a man. And when social conflicts arise, she can defend her family just as well as a man. She is in a position to do these things much more freely than she used to.

The core principles of Chivalry haven't changed: the strong must protect and provide for the weak and for the people in their care. It was primarily a man's thing only because men were in a strong enough position to enact it. Because men and women are now stronger and more free than they were back then, women may now step beyond being beneficiaries of chivalry and join the ranks of the chivalrous - and men, in turn, may now become beneficiaries of female chivalry when the need arises.

That's my two cents.

Oof. Thank you!

Each Revival gives Phieraggi +1 Amount and +1 Base Damage, capping at +10 each.

I thought Phiera Der Tuphello and Eight The Sparrow received revival benefits, but maybe not?

But you can create an air force! That has to count for something.

It's alright, brother. God just took the training wheels off. Every Christian catches feelings for God at first, but when the honeymoon phase is over, we'll mature and learn to love him more deeply than transient emotions could ever carry.

It is now time to walk by faith.

It's natural. Nothing to be scared of, my friend. :)

All the DLC weapons seem to take their sweet time evolving. From what I've seen, you pretty much need to max out all your weapons and passives before the evolutions start rolling in.

Gratitude is the primary motivator behind our service to God. Focusing on what he's done for us is thus an important precursor.

I get what you're saying, though. God's not a Divine Vending Machine (not like some isekai anime *ahemreincarnatedasavendinmachineahem*). We're here to serve him, not for him to serve us. It's just that...even though he doesn't owe us anything, he still deigned to come down to earth and serve us anyway. He sought us, saved us, and loved us first. And it is our gratitude for his service to us that motivates our desire to serve him back.

That's my two cents.

I'd wager it's because God is particular about efficient use of his power. Think about it: when 120,000 Moabites came to attack Israel, God used a slight tweak to the Moabites' morale that allowed Gideon to trick them and whittle their numbers down to 15,000. And when evil men wiped out most of Gideon's family, all God had to do was sow a few seeds of conflict, and the villains ultimately destroyed each other.

Electrons always settle to their lowest stable energy configuration. Water always settles to the lowest point. Electricity always finds the shortest path.

God is efficient, even with his own power.

So if evolution is true, I wouldn't be surprised by it. It seems rather in-character for him to use the minimum necessary power to achieve his ends.

I liked IMBeggar. The guy is very quiet, serious, and subdued.

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

Top left is Marriage of Convenience. Spoiler

I love Bianca.

(new commenter)

"Suicide is obviously different from killing another person."

I'm not seeing how that's "obvious." First of all, the commandment is actually "You shall not murder." Murder is taking a life that you had no right to take. That's what makes murder wrong - it's stealing from God, essentially. Suicide is no different; your life is not your own, but God's, and you have no right to take it from him without his consent.

What makes a story Christian-themed, in my opinion, is one that gets you thinking and fantasizing about godly things. There's an anime called The Faraway Paladin, for instance, in which, despite having little overt Christian nomenclature or symbology (except for, you know, literally praying for one's daily bread lol), conveys decidedly Christian ideas of gratitude towards God for salvation and admiration for his mercy and way of life. I came away from that anime loving my God more and increasingly motivated to serve him.

So I would call that anime Christian-themed.

On the flipside, I've seen enough "Christian" movies without a godly bone in their bodies to swear me off them for a long time to come. Just because a story uses names like "God" and "Jesus" in a positive light doesn't make them Christian-themed.

Your story should have godly morals to it and get people thinking and fantasizing about godly things. That's one of the reasons I agree with many parents that young children shouldn't read Harry Potter, for instance - it's not that it's morally wrong to read or enjoy the series, but that children who read it won't be fantasizing so much about the power of friendship as they will about casting spells, doing cool magical things, and maybe getting back at bullies, which aren't very Christian ideas. Adults would probably find more meaning in the deeper stuff, but that doesn't mean the magical themes won't dig into their brains too.

Good stories will shape your thoughts for ages to come. The Lord of the Rings may have been a story about good vs evil and the power of friendship beating the odds, but it pulled a whole bunch of tropes along with it - elves, wizards, swords, magic, and all that stuff that has come to be regarded as "typical fantasy" popularized almost entirely by Tolkien. With one good series, he single-handedly changed the "cliche" tropes of the fantasy literature landscape across the world for decades.

Why did it change like that?

Because Tolkien thought it was cool and wanted everyone else to think so. In one of his letters to his editor, he bemoaned the lack of English mythology and sought to make up something uniquely English. You could say that one of the core "seeds" that sprouted his books was the desire to "make English mythology great again."

He succeeded, suffice it to say.

What your story's seed? What is the core attitude, the igniting spark, that inspires your story? Is it a Christian theme? Because no matter what else you season your story with, the core seed that sprouted your story is the theme that your readers will remember.

That's the part that needs to be Christian: the attitude in your heart.

My two cents.

Jesus has promised that all who seek him shall find him. The very desire itself is a gift of God and is the primary means by which the elect are identified. If you were not granted the gift of salvation, you would not be seeking it.

Your tone, choice of words, and lack of rhetorical charity were rude. I believe that you have the ability to read what you wrote and assess the same.

Now that I'm calmer, I can see what you're saying. Yeah, I do think I was rude. Condescending, to be specific. I apologize. It was inappropriate of me.

Somewhat unrelated: do you take an honest account of your actions and behaviors, ask for forgiveness, and repent during at least one of the times you pray each day?

Not as regularly as that. I probably should, huh?

Okay. What was it you found rude.

OSAS don't believe he forces anyone either. Force isn't part of the equation. I don't know why people keep acting like OSAS is about "force."

Those whom God holds onto do not willingly live in sin. That's part of the mechanism for how he holds onto you.

Your "I can jump out" snip was a blatant twist on a passage that was supposed to be reassuring of our salvation. It was a blasé and disrespectful way to treat that verse.

And yes, it was also naive. The idea that God is so apathetic about your soul that you could "sUrE aS HeLL jUmP oUt" says a lot about your life experience with God. Even if I agreed with you that losing one's salvation is possible, can we not at least agree that it isn't so easy??

Good God, man! Have a little respect for the Scriptures!

This designation has the drawback of making it sound as though God forces people against their will to come to him

No it doesn't. That's a misrepresentation of OSAS, in which God's grace is irresistable because it operates natively on our will. Making us want or "will" to come to him is how his grace is irresistable.