Sincerity Post Alert - Sorry in advance for the cringe.
This honestly hurts my heart.
I'm an atheist now, but I grew up in church, I attended a tiny, private Christian school from 8th grade through 11th (and only left because they weren't chartered to give diplomas), I literally had formal Bible class 6 days a week and happily attended evening services - because I was a naive kid who truly believed that "love everyone" and "do unto others" stuff was as important to everyone else as it was to me.
I was always a weird kid without many friends my age, and the kindness and friendliness of the adults at church was a big deal for me. Coming to terms with the hypocrisy in the adults around me - realizing how judgemental and shitty most of them actually were - made my late teens extra lonely.
Nobody's perfect, but - Jesus Fucking Christ, I don't know why, but I still get surprised at the depths of awful behavior done in his name, and the ways his message of empathy and compassion gets twisted to justify it.
His message of empathy. That is the core of his message. Mark, Chapter 12:
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[f] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[g] There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
Versus
Enticing Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion
This is truly evil. The antidote for the prosperity gospel brainworms is empathy and compassion. Honestly, I truly, deeply believe in my stupid little naive heart that the antidote for most societal ills is empathy and compassion.* How do you actually, really solve the diseases of greed and selfishness without them?
This demonization of caring is just evil. How do I talk my evangelical boomer parents out of their brainworms if they're getting this kind of messaging in church? Idfk. I guess I just keep reacting with the appropriate level of disgust to this sort of thing and ask questions and hope they're not too lead-poisoned to someday see the contradiction between the message of Christ and the message of church.
This is a real bummer, but I guess it's better to know than not. yuck.
/* - I understand there are also problems that require math and/or guillotines.
American Christianity is a truly baffling thing. I had a pretty similar upbringing to you, and after recognizing the hypocrisy I just couldn't bring myself to engage. Like, there's no way to make someone see what they refused to acknowledge, so why bother? Matt Christman likes to say protestantism has replaced a socially constructed understanding of God with the crass glorifying/worshiping of a person's own ego (ie a personal relationship with God). And... as much as that smacks of an "edgy middle-school atheist rant"... yeah, that unfortunately seems to be the most accurate description.
Agreed. Inserted into any pantheon Jesus would be the god of compassion. This is vile.
So many of these sick people clamor to get to the parts where God punishes and say "see, I'm doing God's will!". But that's just the thing, they skip any part that might call attention to their pride and hubris, they think they have devine judgement because they are God in their own hearts - the highest blasphemy a person could ever commit.
James Cone quotes as a timeline cleanse:
“The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.... Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for 'pie in the sky.'"
"We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God’s love.... If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer, and we had better kill God."
I love this quote!! I will search for answers, but I'm interested in your perspective first, especially considering your username - who is James Cone?
I do indeed live under a rock, I'm sorry.
No worries! He's an important figure, but not super well known outside of religious studies.
James Cone was the father of black liberation theology in the USA. He grew up in Arkansas and pursued his theological training during the heights of the civil rights movement. Once we got a job teaching theology back in Arkansas, he saw that his training had no connection to lived experiences. He wrote about his experience, "What could Karl Barth possibly mean for black students who had come from the cotton fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, seeking to change the structure of their lives in a society that had defined black as non-being?"
He was heavily influenced by Malcolm X and the black power movement and, later, MLK Jr. His writings began as more influenced from that secular thought than from moreso than liberation theologians writing at the same time like Gutierrez, Boff, and Segundo influenced by Catholic Vatican II. He started with black people and their experiences, not with academic theory. This actually allowed him to explore more his own material conditions and how his training fell short first vs diving deep into Marxist theory, which he did later in life. It also allowed him to work through some of his experiences that he owned up to and repent, like his latent homophobia and transphobia. He publicly apologized for this, repented, and spent the last decade of his life upholding queer rights in his work.
His last work The Cross and the Lynching Tree was his life's work. He'll argue that without the white church seeing the cross as a lynching tree, as a killing device meant to shame its victims and impart horror and fear into those like those victims. He says unless we see Jesus as experiencing this, and then see black people in America as identifying exactly with this experience, as an victim of oppression.
The Cross and Lynching Tree is critical reading, in my opinion, not only for followers of Jesus but for those interested in how liberation theology works. This lecture was given a few weeks before his death and summarizes his work.
you know, the moral dilemma usually involves time machines and baby hitler, but I sometimes think baby martin luther is a more interesting subject for that specific hypothetical
John Calvin is on my time travel hitlist right after Henry Ford and the guy who invented lawns.
Christians conveniently ignore the part where Jesus violently throws all the merchants out of the church
Also that quote in both the bible and the qur'an about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven; at least as far back as the 10th century, rich Christians have argued that there is a gate in jerusalem called "eye of the needle" and that's what the quote refers to. To this day some US christians believe this; there was never any such gate of course.
I was taught this at one point (though I'm not Christian), but isn't the existence of such a gate irrelevant since the meaning of the phrase is unchanged? Like, either way, the point is that a camel is too big to get through the thing.
I heard this one growing up. It was one of many examples that made me realize the version of fundamentalism I grew up was bullshit. We were taught the Bible was literal truth, no metaphors or interpretation allowed, but were also taught weird theories like this. Even as a kid it was obvious we were still just picking and choosing what to believe
If you really want to go for a loop on this point, Eckhart Tolle has this theory that Jesus' whole shtick was present moment awareness misinterpreted through the ages. When it comes to this line in particular, he had lectured to the effect that a rich man is a person who has abundant thoughts and therefore any attempt to find peace, God nature, cessation of mind made suffering, etc. is futile because you can't stop the mind machine from spinning. You'd have an easier time getting a camel through the eye of a needle than to think your way out of suffering.
I honestly like this interpretation and then I'd follow up saying that the bible would be a poor piece of theory for communist revolution. For every piece of Jesus kicking out merchants and line like this, you could find some cringe that has nothing to do with anything.
And Jesus said onto his flock "lo, and fuck them poor people, lmfao"
My parents were atheists, but my grandma took me to church and raised me to be Southern Baptist. And coming from that background, I have never seen Christianity as being any sort of positive force in any way. As soon as I realized all the vile shit they said wasn’t true and terrifying, I turned 180 and became the most annoying middle school atheist you’ve ever seen.
It’s only as an adult that I’ve even really been able to understand why the fuck even people largely on my side on things would still make positive claims about Christianity, how the church they went to didn’t spew the evil hatred that mine did, and come to accept “maybe not all churches, not all Christians”
But no, after the last few years I think middle school me was right. Christianity is a dangerous death cult that should be banned and persecuted. Churches should be razed and Christianity should only be spoken of in history classes in the way we currently talk about Aztec human sacrifice. Christianity has probably been the largest force for cruelty and evil for the last 2000 years, and is incompatible with a compassionate human society.
One day in Poland is enough to make anyone a virulent middle school atheist. My life mission is to destroy this religion and every church in this country.
"But muh historical buildings 😭"
Shut up cracker, I'll demolish them too :sicko-yes:
My brother in Christ, the New Testament is basically composed of Jesus going around, telling people to not be assholes and to believe in God. If you take him out there's no religion, Qur'an itself says you can't be a Muslim without believing in the prophets so that's ruled out and I know these people won't all convert to Judaism. Are they gonna start worshipping money? Ford?
There are a lot of American Catholics who think Pope Francis is a false Pope because he pays hollow lip service to poor people.
They are above hypocrisy. They'll simply redefine their religion, whether through splinter groups or on a personal level to make it consistent with their greed.
