Someone RPing his Paladin “Deus VULT” with an irrational contempt for other beliefs other than his is straight bad RP for me… Unless one is a Scarlet it’s hardly fitting for a paladin to act like a Christian crusader.
I just pretend the interaction never happened because that’s certainly not how they are portrayed in lore and they go on ignore.
humans don’t even believe in a god to begin with
they believe in the light, which is a force not a god
besides while their belief is similar to Christianity
it focus solely on the “be good and understanding”, as well as “help those in need” parts
draenei on the other hand believe also in the light but their light is spread by god-like alien beings, if anyone were to go “deus vult” it should be them.
The existence of the word “ain’t” is my pet peeve.
Especially when it’s combined with double negatives.
Azshara for warchief, for extra nigt elf outrage.
I ain’t doin’ nothin.
My peeve is that they don’t tbh.
Ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. Ain’t s’pretty great.
This is just it though. The Light religion is not that similar to Christianity. People mistake the faith as being similar because paladins have some basis on the crusader archetype, but it doesn’t follow that therefore the faiths of each (Crusaders and Paladins) are thus the same.
Let’s see:
Christianity:
The Light:
So they’re only similar in the sense that they’re both faiths that a) advocate for a “good” b) Emphasise peace over conflict and c) Have employed knights to defend what they see as just causes.
a) and b) are applicable to literally almost every human religion however. It’s very difficult to find a religion that doesn’t advocate for a generally “compassionate” or “morally good” end, that’s kind of their lookout.
So really, they’re only distinctly similar because they both employed knights.
So no, using Christianity to “fill out” how to RP your light-wielder is incorrect. Their worldviews are different, and their reasons for doing so are different. If you’re using “but they both believe in righteousness and goodness tho” as your base, you may as well use Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism etc as your base as well because they all generally reference such ideas.
ofc, it was badly worded
what I mean was (at least in my eyes) the light seems to be a heavily watered down version of christianity without any of negative aspects, keeping only the “good”
basically the light is just a “flawless” religion which is all about being a good person without any divine punishment to scare you in case you don’t follow its guidelines.
Inspiration =/= the thing, just look at it as what it is, not what it inspired from
Agreed. I’d say it’s a watered down “human religion” rather than Christianity specifically, because it contains the “recommended behaviour” element of most human religions, without the “why you should” threats of punishment many of them employ. That is not to say all human religions do this - Buddhism doesn’t, rather it’s better for you overall if you do follow the guidelines, but the consequence of not doing so is simply not benefitting/being trapped in the normal world of very human problems.
I think the only time we start to see “flaws” with the Light is with Locus Walker where he talks about the Light in a much more cosmic sense in that it represents a force that embodies a “single unified truth”, that is to say, it does not fathom deviance from itself. This brings it closer to the Buddhist/low-church protestant Christian view of punishment which is “being estranged from the good is torture enough”. Why would you want to be outside the Light? This is why we see Lightbound forcibly converting Orcs in the AU, because they don’t see what they’re doing as wicked or evil, they’re “saving” them. Because the Light in this sense represents a single reality, eventually everything has to be brought under it for this to be correct.
So the issue is the variance we see. The human tradition seems to very much take a “live and let live, just don’t be EVIL” whereas if Locus Walker and the Lightbound are correct, then the Light is potentially extremely evangelistic because all others paths than itself are ontologically wrong and they need to be brought into the Light. These followers don’t see a problem because they cannot fathom why anyone would not want this, because to them, they are upholding the only truth in the universe. it’s similar to Rousseau’s “force them to be free” in the circumstance where someone appears to want to do their own thing rather than the Greater Good- you take charge on their behalf because it’s in their ultimate interests, and they simply cannot see it themselves.
The issue is the human paladins who do RP evangelistic Light RP do not pay heed to the above at all. So one of your original statements I totally agree with. Human Light faith is very relaxed, it’s the Draenei( Lightbound/Lightforged) who would be the extremists because their conception of the Light is very close to what Locus Walker suggests, as we’ve seen with Xe’ra as well.
The key thing is though it’s under the notion of Universal Salvation “saving everyone” rather than just killing heathens.
I actually prefer them channeling the Light. It remains logical that they would identify the Light as something related to the Earth Mother, and that beliefs can be flawed because of their lack of meta-knowledge. Some prefer the individuality of each race having their own source of unique divine power, but I like that they believe they have, and that it manifests differently, but it is still the same power.
I like to see it this way too. What they call it (An’she/Mu’sha/Earthmom) and what it actually is (Light/Void) are two different things. It’s just cultural terms for something objective.
In this way, despite their wording I think Tauren have a conception of the universe that is extremely close to how it is objectively stated to be in the Chronicles. In their creation myth they see Light and Shadow as being very closely related and neither is good or evil, but necessary when discussing how the Earthmother cast a shadow over the lands and it’s from these shadows that life first stirred. So Shadow is not objectively wicked, but you mustn’t stand in it for too long because then you forget the light and sun and that the world is composed of both.
I hate to nitpick but this is completely wrong.
It depends on the time period and sect of christianity, no doubt.
Maybe in Catholic church it does, I don’t know, but not in Orthodox Christianity.
I applied the caveat “usually” to indicate it is not the only rule. As a general rule though it is belief in Christ as Saviour that warrants salvation in most westernised forms of Christianity. The concept of “works” as a salvic concept is far less pronounced than it once was. In most if not all forms of Protestanism, and again most forms of Roman Catholiscism, as well as many of the fringier denominations like Anabaptists etc it is belief that determines whether you’re saved or not (some of themset the bar even lower than that and say everyone will be saved anyway).
The idea that you have to “do” stuff as in actively do things, a certain way, to be saved is on the whole less typical. So whilst my phrasing was perhaps cavalier, to say it is completely wrong is incorrect, numerous examples of Christianity where belief alone saves you exist. It’s where the whole deathbed confessions and conversions thing arises from.
My peeve came to me in the night, where for some reason I was thinking about the two short stories released before BfA about the War of Thorns.
Why are rogues suddenly able to appear as races that they aren’t? Has that always been a thing? Did someone at the Blizzard writing desk see the faceless men from GoT and think; “Oh hey, that’s cool, maybe rogues can do that.” without any real explanation?
Maybe there is an explanation, but I don’t remember seeing it.
Fair enough. I’ve no idea how the western Christianity works. Orthodox Christianity works differently.
Admittedly I’m less up to speed on Orthodox (Russian, Greek and others) so yeah I kinda missed that out in my original post which is my bad for appearing to generalise more widely than I intended!