First, I am here because I did not go through with my plans to end my own life so many years ago at the age of 13.
When I was entering my mid-forties I became overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude. I would wake up every morning feeling so incredibly thankful to be alive with a loving partner and two beautiful young children.
After reaching out to my closest friends and family for advice, it became clear to me that spreading this thankfulness/gratitude outwards into humanity was the best option.
Fast forward a little bit until I discovered a niche interest group on Reddit. Namely, /r/AcademicBiblical where I could learn and contribute for several years until I founded /r/AskBibleScholars. Both subs have worked together in order to bring the best biblical scholarship, down from the ivory towers, to the general public.
With my interest in humanities and my background as a web developer, I decided to create https://askbiblescholars.com which has functioned as a blog for the aforementioned scholars.
Over the past 6 months Iāve been working with developers to build a Q&A functionality into that .com site. I am, currently, alpha-testing this on my own machine here at home.
But waitā¦thereās more!
Iāve been beta-testing stuff all the way back to Orkut and Gmail and I guess thatās why Iāve always found my self in these current circles such as Beeper.
Thatās what drew my attention to Tildes and why I spent considerable time there during testing phases. During that time, some of us that were using that site, decided to try something else.
We grouped together on Discord and did a lot of talkingā¦some have said that we talked far too long before taking action. Finally, we settled on Lemmy as a software platform in order to launch Beehaw.
Circling back around to why I am hereā¦
I am incredibly thankful to be here right now and I want everyone else to feel this way.
Thank you for sharing your story ā¤ļø I was in the same boat as you growing up, and I like to think by being able to show up in the world the best way you can in the present is the best way to honour those struggles and use it for good.
And look, itās brought random strangers all around the world together - what can be more serendipitous than that?!
Hello !! Glad and thankful that youāre here too ! šāØ
There were so many turns to this journey ~ so beehaw spawned from a Bible scholar community? Wild ~~
I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist church, which is kind of a closed community like Mormonism , but more biblically like the Baptist church , also folowing kosher and Jewish traditions and a hint of doomsday conspiracy theories~ but after all of that I feel they are very obsessed with scholarship - every week Ā½ of the Sabbath is the sermon/service, and thres a āSabbath-Schoolā where everyone in the world follows a Bible study guide following either a topic all through the bible or one character / book of the bible ~ very uni-vibes but for church ~ (also thereās a prophet ~ )
Alas I have no faith as of 2012 ā¦ šµš«Ø
Alas I have no faith as of 2012
You may not have faith in religious circles understandably. However, you can have faith in your self as a new beginning.
Yeah ! šļøšļø
Thank you for starting the instance!
I recently got myself a set of Robert Atlerās translation of the Hebrew bible. Iām an atheist, but I thought his footnotes would be my best chance at appreciating the old testament in the way people talk about it. So far thereās some pretty interesting tidbits!
Thank you for sharing your story and thank you for running this community.
Thanks for the post and for kickstarting all of this!
Oh wow, /r/AskBibleScholars (and /r/AcademicBiblical) were instrumental to me years ago when I began to lose my faith, and helped me arrive to the much healthier place I am now. I had no idea the same person was, in part, responsible for Beehaw. Hopefully we can bring some of those communities here in due time - they do too much good to be lost.
Thank you, Chris. I am so thankful that youāre here right now, and itās a pleasure to be here with you.
Great to have you here Chris. And thanks for creating this wonderful community. Feels like the old web again in some way, which is a good thing.
