oh! I know about this lore too!

so, fun thing: Shaggy actually is (or at least was) a vegetarian! and it wasn’t the Cartoon Network short that made that happen - it was the voice actor that played him.

the reason the CN short mentioned the vegetarian thing was because Casey Kasem (the original voice actor for Shaggy) was a vegan. and he actually quit playing Shaggy in the 90s because he didn’t want to be in a burger king ad (which, that’s legit).

so for those CN shorts, Shaggy was voiced by Scott Innes, and the mention of vegetarianism was a reference to Casey Kasem, who wasn’t voicing the character anymore.

however! Kasem agreed to come back to voice Shaggy for the 2002 show “What’s New, Scooby Doo?”, so long as they made Shaggy a vegetarian! so from 2002 - 2009 (in WNSD and a variety of movies), Shaggy really was, canonically, a vegetarian.

whether he still is, I have no idea - but I think it’s a fun part of his character that he had a vegetarian phase in the 00s.

oh! okay, sure!

so, I’m not a biblical scholar of any kind - I’m just an ex-religious kid who was really into theology, but then turned 16 and was like, “oh wait, I’m gay and you people hate me, why am I even here?” and gave up on all of that. but, I can do my best to explain my understanding of the different terms.

(I threw some other words in there too for good measure to help clear things up, but now this post is kinda long. whoops.)

Sacrilege: this is when you say or do something that’s disrespectful or irreverent to god or something sacred. so, for example…vandalizing a church would be sacrilege. like that scene from Leverage - murder in a church would definitely be sacrilege. or burning a bible; that’s sacrilege for sure.

Blasphemy: this falls under sacrilege, and is specifically about the stuff you say. like, this is sacrilege, but it involves words, not actions. so if I say, “hey, who gives a shit about the holy spirit? not me.” - that’s blasphemy. (and according to the bible, that may even be worse blasphemy than talking shit about jesus!)

Desecration: this is also sacrilege, but this is about actions, not words. so like, the examples I gave about vandalizing/murdering someone in a church - those are sacrilege, but more specifically, they are also desecration.

Deconsecration: this just means making something not sacred anymore. I put this in because it can be confused with “desecration” easily, and I wanted to be clear about it. if you buy an old church to turn it into a coffeeshop, it’s probably been deconsecrated.

Apostasy: this is when you leave a religion and say that you’re not going to do what they say anymore. people use this word outside of religious context a lot? like, when someone leaves a political party, sometimes people call them an apostate.

and finally, the big one:

Heresy: this is when you believe something that goes against the established beliefs of your religion. like, if your church says, “This is what The Bible says, and this is what we believe!” and you go “oh, but…I believe this completely different thing, and I don’t think that’s what The Bible says,” then you’re committing heresy.

(in the church I left as a teenager, I’m pretty sure I would have been considered a heretic for being gay and not trying to change or go to conversion therapy. but would I have been kicked out for this? probably not. that church doesn’t really excommunicate people, but they do use shame and manipulation to try to get people to change their ways of thinking.)

in the Gen Z Bible specifically, there are some verses that I think go beyond blasphemy/sacrilege and start leaning into heresy, simply because the translations are bad. like, let’s look at John 1:1 (NIV Version):

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

and then let’s look at the Gen Z version:

“Since Day Uno there was Cap G. Big J was chillin with Cap G. And Big J was Cap G.”

so, they interpret “the Word” as being Jesus - that’s fine. I’ve seen that one before, that’s generally not regarded as heresy.

the problem here is that they messed up the order of their words. what they should have said is:

“Since Day Uno there was Big J, and Big J was chillin with Cap G, and Big J was Cap G.”

^ that would have been okay. but because of they way they arranged the words, their translation got messed up, and they ended up translating “the Word” (“Logos” in the original Greek) as both “Jesus” and “God” depending on where it is in the verse.

the proper translation and interpretation of this verse (like many verses) has been hotly debated by biblical scholars and churches throughout the years, and I’m no expert? but I’m pretty sure this translation mishap is technically heresy, because of the way they conflated “Logos” and “Theos” in their translation.

so, yes! not only are these Gen Z verses blasphemy, which is a form of sacrilege - some of them are also (probably) heresy!

[the_more_you_know.gif or something]