They've hired a PR firm to address, in the firm's words, the problem of "How did the world's greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?"
More like how did "my dad's gonna torture you forever unless you believe this hogwash" turn into "the world's greatest love story?"
You’re not seeing this right. He’s not going to do it, the devil is. And yeh he is all powerful so technically yes he is also allowing it to happen under his watch. But it’s only to teach you a lesson because he loves you so much. And he agrees on at least some level that burning in a pit of fire for all eternity is a fair, just and effective way for people to learn how to love him.
Actually, in Christian lore the devil will be another inmate in hell, not the leader of it.
Growing up, the justification for hell I always heard was this:
No one is torturing you in hell. Hell is just the complete separation from God, which is in and of itself tortuous. God doesn't want to separate you from him. But if you're sinful, and haven't accepted Jesus's washing away of your sins, he doesn't have a choice!
I don't really think this holds up, and honestly I've kinda forgotten why I was writing this comment in the first place.
They made up their own story because they didn't like the original with its reality of there being no afterlife + hell being a graveyard on earth for people mourning those they failed to respect, honor and love in life / heaven being a place on earth accessed via a mindset of what essentially boils down to communism - all of which is hard to exploit for power and profit without some switcheroo...
And to answer the articles question: turning on fellow christians might have something to do with it.
Their art is so bad. If they don’t make Jesus look 60, then he just looks indiscernible. The lighting is all over the place, the stripes on the flag are so narrow there’d have to be thirty original colonies, and Jesus looks like he has double decker mouths with the OCD that makes you pluck your eyebrows bald.
Any absolutist statement is inherently false - I've marched in pride parades with leftist Christians who use the Bible as a philosophical foundation of love and tolerance, the way it should be.
This breed of Evangelical fascists you're talking about are a scourge upon both Christianity as a whole and society at large, and have become the biggest government supported terrorist cell in the world. They are why I no longer believe in the "goodness of Christ" anymore.
I'm as anti religion as it gets, but calling every Christian a terrorist is way over board. Most are simply brainwashed and never actually spend any time thinking about religion critically, but a good percentage of them (those leading them) absolutely are evil and are exploiting the credulity of their followers for personal gain and hate.
Half are brainwashed, but the other half are just really thick. They actually think the Bible is real, and even when you point out that even the church doesn't claim that every aspect of the bible is real and that quite a lot of it was written either after the fact (as in centuries later), or was always just a story to serve as a theoretical example, they don't believe you. So they don't actually understand their own religion.
Christians are not victims here. They are all, and let me be fully clear here, all terrorists who will tell you to your face that they have authority to take over the entire world, by force if necessary.
It's absolutely a mental illness. The entire religion is full of sociopaths that want nothing more than themselves to be in control and everyone else who isn't on board to be killed.
Why in the actual fuck do we as a society continue to give them cart blanche to attack anyone who doesn't share their mental illness? Why are they a protected group? Why do they get tax free status?
Just watch and see what they're going to do in this election cycle. Time to take off the blinders and get real, because they're destroying the country for their beliefs and they're not going to stop.
For every atheist I've met who's kind and empathetic, I've met a Christian who's kind an empathetic. For every Christian I've met who's an ignorant, egocentric absolutist, I've met an atheist who's an ignorant, egocentric absolutist.
The problem isn't religion. It's people who don't prioritize empathy. Being an atheist doesn't make you a good person. Being a Christian doesn't make you a good person. Being kind makes you a good person.
For a lot of the Christian audience a reminder that Jesus didn't teach hate is something well needed that they aren't getting in church. Maybe my expectations were too low but I was pleasantly surprised with the message considering how it could have gone regardless of any issues around who funded it.
Honestly, I thought the same thing. I got really apprehensive the moment that I saw the foot washing begin, but so many different types of people were depicted having their feet washed (girl in front of a Planned Parenthood, white dude washing the feet of a Native American activist, cop washing the foot of a black dude in an inner city alley, white family washing the feet of who I assume are meant to represent immigrants because its a bus full of Hispanic people, etc), that I felt like they were doing their best to remind everyone to love even those that "society" (Republicans) deems "unfit". Now, were some of those depictions made with underlying racist undertones? Yes. But I honestly cannot determine if it was purposeful, or if this was one of those "they tried their best. More work to be done, but the effort was there" moments. Maybe I'm still just not jaded enough.
By being shown washing the feet of the "unfit" we are still being reminded that they are infact "unfit". They are still other, lesser than and to be saved. The target audience, the Christian viewer, is the white person doing the washing, and is meant to feel empowered and that they are good like Jesus for showing compassion to these poor other people.
Noone will actually wash the feet of someone in need. They will translate their Christian compassion to help them by saving them from themselves, i.e. restrictive laws.
I've said this before, you cannot combat a lie with a lie.
Jesus and all the things said about him are made up stories. Pretending to discuss the "real" Jesus, who we want to be nice and accepting, is a losing battle.
It's like arguing which Saiyan is the most powerful, when they are all not real.
Making better Christians means ridding them of nonsensical beliefs not trying to replace the lies in their head, with the nicer lies you would like them to believe.
Here "real" refers to "the character that's really in the Bible". It doesn't matter if it's fictional.
Same as criticizing a bad fan fiction with "real Harry Potter wouldn't have done that", with "real" meaning "in the actual source material".