The root of Christian behaviour is doing really sinful things, then feeling really bad about it, which makes it ok. Actually trying to change things so that we can eliminate the sinful things is a worst act than actually sinning.
*pretending to feel bad about it
Fuck, was I supposed to be pretending back when I was a christcuck?
well you weren’t supposed to actually feel bad
Nah if you’re a kid or a poor you’re supposed to actually feel bad, because that makes you more vulnerable to manipulation.
I mean, the majority of USAan Christians are hypocrites who have never studied (let alone read) their holy texts
It’s not surprising that they instead follow the civil religion of the USA where the apostles are the founding fathers and the body and blood of Christ is cold hard cash
I usually place this into a different perspective.
Many Christians in the U.S. do study their holy texts. However, it is extremely, extremely rarely that they do so with an attempt to understand the context in which it was written and how to understand and apply the advice that it gives in a modern context, and almost always about agreeing and confirming their in-group biases, often relying on increasingly absurd justifications as to how their religion is in fact historically universal, and simultaneously trying to argue that faith is the only thing necessary for salvation, but also to that there is a bunch of historical evidence that everything that happened in the Bible is real, and that the prophecies will come true.
It’s basically like trying to argue about if Goku could beat Superman. People will throw out hundreds of citations, contradict themselves with the canon, as the canon is also contradictory, but it ignores the fundamental issue that neither Superman or Goku are real, therefore it is completely up to the individual’s imagination who would win, and arguing about it is an exercise in futility.
Like there are Christians out there who will openly profess to studying ‘apologetics’, not realizing that that was the term their detractors historically used to make fun of them, because they are constantly ‘apologizing’ for issues from the scriptures.
But again these are often people who think that the Bible is the Word of God, but also reject the entity (the Catholic Church) that compiled it.
It doesn’t matter how much they study their holy book because they aren’t actually interested in a rational discourse around it.
the entity (the Catholic Church) that compiled it
this particular view is professed only by the Catholics themselves. Orthodox and Miaphysite Christians see the Roman Church as having split from the original Christian community, viewing themselves as the unbroken continuation.
most Protestants, meanwhile, though accepting the Western dictum of seeing the Eastern churches as schismatics, usually believe that the Latin Patriarchate has been corrupted over time or, in the case of some more radical groups, is the product of usurpation altogether.
This is very true.
However, my overall point still stands. The Orthodox and Miaphysite Churches, while viewing themselves as non-schismatic, still don’t make the fundamental error of viewing the Bible as the end-all, be-all document on what it means to follow a Christian tradition, that American Protestants do. They at least understand that a document, even one as important and foundational as the Bible, that comes out of a human institution, one that could produce a schism such as the Catholic Church, is probably not the sole end product which only then requires interpretation to receive divine knowledge.
true, true. i agree with you, just couldn’t stop myself from bringing up that particular quibble, sorry.
It’s all good, I should have expected someone would bring that up, I just rarely deal with believers in the Orthodox Church and never the Miaphysite Church, here in the U.S., even though I used to regularly attend Orthodox mass for about a year (had a buddy who grew up in the Church and didn’t have a car).
Hi. You bring some relevant information, but I believe your initial point is misleading. Another poster already argued, but I want to add that the Eastern schism occurred much later than the compilation of the Bible. Also, the doctrinal differences between East and West are much smaller (AFAIK) than the difference between Catholics and Sola Scriptura literalists. I used this expression because AFAIK not every Protestant is literal in their Sola Scriptura.
true, both the Chalcedonian schism (split between Monophysites and Miaphysites) and the great schism of 1054 (split between the Orthodox and Roman Churches) occurred long after the Bible was completed. however, all resulting entities view themselves as the unbroken continuation of what they consider to be the one true church, seeing all other branches as offshoots. i was talking less about theological (dis-)similarity and more about conflicting historiographies and claims of universal legitimacy.
the various Protestant currents do in fact have vastly different approaches to sola Scriptura, with differences being primarily along the lines of what should count as scriptural authority in the first place, how doctrine is derived, and what role (if any) traditions/confessions ought to play. though, honestly, Protestantism is such a broad umbrella term encompassing such a vast array of conflicting teachings that generalisations are impossible. Baptist/Evangelical and Anglican views are essentially wholly incompatible, despite theoretically being based on some common principles.
generally, i think were broadly in agreement here, i just couldn’t control my inner pedant, sorry.
Haha yeah power scaling is pretty dumb
American Evangelicals must first receive a christian education before they can receive an atheist reeducation
If you wanted to really commit to everything Jesus said, you’d basically have to give away all your shit and do charity work or something similar. A good chunk of Christian theology since then is why you don’t actually have to do all that, since being poor sucks and that’s no way to grow a religion.
A few more from here:
More obviously, we find in the Gospels a whole series of sayings and events that challenge Roman perceptions of private property, imperialism and exploitation of colonised areas of the empire. Let me give one example of each:
A challenge to private property, which the Romans had invented as a legal category in the late second century BCE. At one point, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’.
A challenge to imperialism: asked about a coin and whose bust was on it, Jesus replies, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s’. In other words, the emperor is due nothing, while God is due everything. ‘What has Rome given us?’ Jesus says. ‘Nothing’, is the reply.
A challenge to imperial exploitation: the best example here is a central item of the church’s liturgy. Each week at evening prayer, I recite the following, which are the words of Mary from the Gospel of Luke: ‘He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty’. I suspect that the radical sense of these words has been lost through two millennia of repetition.
I hypothesize that idealist ideologies (such as religion) tend to have a huge contrast between nice words and cruel reality. In feudal theocratic Tibet, monks would severely lash disobedient serfs then leave them to die in the freezing night. They still denied the reality that monks killed serfs, as Buddhism forbids capital punishment.
Edit: that was meant as one example. I didn’t mean to accuse buddhism in particular. Christianism has similar problems.
Speaking as Buddhist, Buddhism def has some reactionary strains, but interestingly also some hardcore anti-imperialist ones in the modern era too, especially in Sri Lanka.
I highly recommend reading a history of christian imperialism in sri lanka, by Walpola Rahula (a buddhist socialist who wrote probably the most famous modern primer on Buddhism, What the Buddha taught), called the heritage of the bhikkhu. It also gets into why Christians tried to depoliticize and de-fang the buddhist monastic movement, to silence it from making criticisms of european imperialism.
Unfortunately most of christianity’s anti-imperialist / anti-landlord strains died out by the middle ages, but there even are some in the modern era, like liberation theologists, and some anti-war christians.
Hi. Thank you for your polite reply. I clarify that my other comment meant to provide one example. I didn’t mean to accuse buddhism in particular. Christianism has similar problems. I edited my other comment.
It’s no probs! I agree with you also, we shouldn’t exempt any religion from criticism, Buddhism included.
In addition to BeanisBrain’s comment, I’ve always had people tell me that the “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” was primarily about paying your taxes and to a lesser degree, about being patriotic. It’s wild how Evangelicals try to explain and justify what they already believed.
A challenge to private property, which the Romans had invented as a legal category in the late second century BCE. At one point, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’.
Actually this upholds private property. The Eye of the Needle was a small gate in Jerusalem that camels had to be coaxed through slowly and carefully, meaning that it’s difficult but not impossible for a rich person to get into Heavasdofiaeropgjaerogjiaseroj
protestants are not real christians
gotta pay tithe to the pedo kings of rome or it doesn’t count
exactly, that’s what I’ve been saying
Aren’t the most important bible stories about rejecting god? They don’t want to be good, they want to receive divine punishment again.
Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land Hard working man and brave He said to the rich, “Give your goods to the poor.” So they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
Obligatory Jesus Christ by Woody Guthrie reference.
And here are some endearingly goofy church nerds singing it:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
