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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

What is hell? What sorts of views of hell have there been within the history of Christianity?

What is the nature of evil? What gives it power?

This was a great October horror addition. I was pleasantly surprised with the directions that the movie went and it sparked good conversations.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

All in all, it sparked great convos with the high schoolers:

What does it mean to have true faith? Is it more than not cussing and good behavior?

What is spiritual bypassing? Why is it not only unhelpful from a clinical perspective but also theologically problematic?

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

Derrickson also explores the idea of hell, and that was the most interesting conversation that came the movie for me and my kids and their high school friends. Annihilationism seemed to be the concept being explored, so we talked about the various articulations of hell throughout church history.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

Probably my favorite part was the incisive critique on religious hypocrisy. The religious characters with religious “right speak,” are the cowards who do not have the moral fortitude to do much in the face of evil. Our center of Christlike behavior is the owner of the camp, Armando.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

This is a movie that explores how these kids might cope with the trauma after the first movie, and some are more using more effective coping techniques than others. The family trauma from the first movie is still very much there and very much wreaking havoc on Finny, Gwen, and their dad.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

If you don’t like that sort of “What are the rules of evil,” exposition, then yeah, you may be disappointed, but I love that sort of stuff.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

The first movie delves into the supernatural, but this movie explores it from some new and interesting angles. Whereas the first movie just has some established supernatural elements to that just are self-evident to the universe, this movie explores more of the bounds and rules of the supernatural.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 2d

Review of #BlackPhone2.

I am a huge fan of the first movie, and generally of all of Scott Derrickson’s work. I was not sure how they were going to do a sequel of this one, so I went in order to skeptically to the movie.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 3d

I’m seeing a lot of “the dialogue is corny,” in Black Phone 2, but have these critics ever been in a conservative evangelical context with a high level of spiritual bypassing? Because some of that dialogue was very accurate.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 7d

I’m so boring at this point because the thing I’m most anticipating this week is my 2026 planner that is arriving in the mail this Saturday.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 12d

One thing about being a boss that is fun is that you can encourage a culture of sweet treats.

Did today go badly? Go get a sweet treat.

Did you do something awesome today? Award yourself with a sweet treat!

My team would tell you that I am really into a culture of sweet treats.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 14d

If anyone is wondering how I’m doing, I bought TWO of these on Saturday at 930pm, thinking I would be a healthy girl during my pumpkin spice era.

My 9year old warned me that this was a bad idea and it wouldn’t be good and I went against his judgment.

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Reposted by Rachel Hastings

Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 15d

Can’t decide what to buy on Prime Day?

Try: absolutely nothing, and then go support indie bookstores instead 📚

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 18d

So I’m reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, and I cannot stress enough that if you’re a human alive today, you should read this book.

Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 25d

www.thetimes.com/business-mon...

I was curious to see if any notes from Thiel’s private lectures would be made public.

Super convenient interpretive framework that sees any form of external regulation of his hoarding of
capital as the hastening of the antichrist.

Regulating AI hastens the Antichrist, says Palantir’s Peter Thiel

Tech billionaire claims in a lecture about religion that the devil promises peace and safety by strangling technological progress with regulation

www.thetimes.com

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · 29d

Pro tip: if you make your cold foam at home, you can put in as much as you want.

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Rachel Hastings @racheldhastings.bsky.social · Sep 17

Authors miss deadlines all the time. It happens! However, some deadlines are more squishy than others, and the ramifications are different.

Laura-Portwood Stacey had a great breakdown today on academic book publishing deadlines.

newsletter.manuscriptworks.com/posts/extens...