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.
American Christianity is basically Christians doing everything they accuse us Jews of doing....but it takes on a classy reskin because it's Christians doing it. Look at the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and every bloated pig-in-a-suit that calls itself an oil CEO and most of AmeriKKKa's citizens.
lol, yeah
perhaps the most glaring inversion of the right-wing trope is the history of America's support of Israel. After World War 2, a buncha old senators, congressmen, and businessmen all pushed for the formation and funding of the Israeli state. There was a "shadowy cabal" (in the loosest sense of the term), but it was White Anglo-Saxton Protestants leveraging the powers of state and capital to manufacture the conditions for New Testament prophecies. Plus, also, they didn't want Jewish refugees moving into their neighborhoods.
This is a really interesting comparison that I would have never made on my own. It’s very true
Matt has a lot of rants that don't seem to make sense initially but the more you think about it the more you realize he's right. That man talks in so many layers of abstraction it's hard to follow sometimes.
This is why I dug into the Buddhist message of compassion against the Christian church's that I'd been exposed to up to my early teens. The other benefit then was that I could become atheist while learning about it.
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:
Same in Romania. They also have the audacity to build a state-funded megachurch. Why are my taxes paying for this monument to orthodox christian grifters?
We can keep the fanciest churches, and turn them into science libraries and museums.
Oh yeah, those make good mead. Perfect for blasphemous events :sicko-crowd: and actions :sicko-yes::sicko-fem:
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.
Thanks for saying this. The way these people use their religion to justify their ill deeds is more blasphemous than anything an atheist could ever say or do, IMO.
The Bible has a part where Jesus says "judge not lest ye be judged." If it's all real a lot of Christians are going to be roasting alongside my atheist ass in hell.
What's the line Jesus delivered, something like hate your neighbour, absolutely despise them and have a plan to kill them at a moment's notice, be ready to entirely obliterate your fellow man at all times
Ring a bell?
It's easy to view this as an aberration, some corruption of the true Christian faith by some outside force, but the cruelty has always been the point. Look at "Mother" Teresa. She's seen across denominations as an exemplar of the faith, but, in reality, she hoarded donations meant to help the poor, withheld palliative care from the dying, and provided inadequate care to the treatable. She has the suffering of thousands at her feet, suffering dealt out because she thought it was necessary given the parameters of her religion. That the eternity of bliss that surely awaited them on the other side could be purchased with a lonely and agonizing death. The whole enterprise is rotten from first principles. Burn that shit down.
After she blew up and gained international prominence and again when the church began the canonization process, people looked into the conditions in the houses of the poor and what they found wasn't great - treatments administered before the diagnostics were done, lack of painkillers stronger than aspirin, untrained nuns doing medical work, inconsistent sanitation and hygiene. Conditions didn't really start improving until after her death, by which point her order had amassed hundreds of millions in donations, some of which were used to open up facilities elsewhere but most of which ended up unaccounted for and likely ended up being absorbed by the Catholic Church. A lot of the criticism out there comes from Christopher Hitchens, who defenders argue had a chip on his shoulder and twisted the facts, and Hindu nationalists, who argue that she was engaged in forced conversions, but even her softer critics describe someone who was fundamentally well intentioned but who ended up with a twisted worldview as a result of her religion:
CW slight ableism: ::: spoiler spoiler Mother Teresa was, without question, the most dedicated, self-sacrificing person I’ve ever known, but not one of the wisest. Mother Teresa wasn’t interested in providing optimal care for the sick and the dying, but in serving Jesus, whom she believed accepted every act of kindness offered the poor. She had her own doubts and feelings of abandonment by God, but her spiritual directors urged her to interpret these “torments of soul” as signs that she had come so close to God that she shared Jesus’ passion on the cross. Under the sway of such spin, Mother Teresa came to glorify suffering. This resulted in a rather schizophrenic mindset by which Mother Teresa believed both that she was sent to minister to the poor AND that suffering should be embraced as a good in itself. Mother Teresa often told the sick and dying, “Suffering is the kiss of Jesus.” Mother Teresa’s sisters offer simple care and a smile, not competent medical treatment or tools with which to escape poverty. One could argue that Mother Teresa’s faith both facilitated and tragically limited her work. With the enormous resources at her disposal, Mother Teresa could have done more, but she always saw helping the poor as a means to a supernatural end, never a good in itself. :::
I personally trend more toward the opinion that she should have known better and her presence in Calcutta did substantial harm, but, even if you disagree, the amount of good she did was severely limited by an ideology that praised intentions over outcomes and didn't require her to inform herself or incorporate the improvements that were happening in the secular medical field while she was active.
It seems like they're really doing this. Just dropping the last few pretenses of having anything to dowith Christianity.
Give it 4 years and you'll hear
"The woke mob is trying to destroy America's proud satanic values!"
I’ve never dug the western leftist thing of trying to make Jesus a hippie socialist, as if you could project modern politics onto some dude from 2000 years ago. We’re so far removed from the real Jesus that you could credibly project any politics you wanted onto him and find a bible passage to support it. Conservatives get to cry about leftists making Jesus woke and leftists get to do the same about conservatives making Nazi Jesus.
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.
"Huh, I wonder why some people see my religion as a bunch of lies for me to cynically grab power for myself."
Reddit atheists come back.
Imagine being an atheist in a Christian majority country and giving a fuck about Islam. Dude that’s simply not your fucking problem, deal with the delusional fanatics in your own backyard first.
atheists in Muslim societies should support the destruction of Islam
As an atheist from the Muslim world I'm telling you with all my heart that is the perfect formula to never see a lick of progress in the region ever
The Muslim world ain't the west with a grand state backed secular ideological canon of anti-communism, it's literally just the atheism accusations that prevents millions from picking up a hammer and sickle, which is pretty clever on the part of muslim capitalists
But if that instrument disappears from the hands of the regimes you'd see million strong communist parties all over the Muslim world
White Evangelical Christianity exists to help prop up the structure of white privilege and supremacy. Start from there and work backward, then it all makes a lot more sense.
For example, in 2023 most Evangelicals have basically abandoned any sense of trying to “preach the gospel” and convert non-Christians. Instead, they are now laser-focused on “raising families” and having as many kids as physically possible, despite this emphasis on familial ties being absent from the Bible at best and heretical at worst (Jesus clearly tells people that families don’t actually matter, you should ignore them to follow him)
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony G*D's blessing, but because of the copious amounts of Estradiol.
Yeah I think middle school me was right about Christianity, it should be loudly and violently opposed and destroyed
This shouldn’t be controversial in a leftist space, but I still see people trying to save it because Jesus said some basic ass populism shit
I think that take is controversial because it's obvious utopian nonsense detached from any material reality, the majority of the working class globally are religious, that's not an endorsement that's just a fact and there's hasn't been any configuration of atheism that would make a convincing dent in it
Obviously nobody actaully gives a fuck about the theology, not even the believers, there's only one real God and one real religion out there and its name is Capital
And in a fundamental way it's already killed these religions and turned them into corpse puppets
What would religion look like without any capital scaffolding it, that's the question commies should be asking, not "hOw cAn wE dEsTrOY iDeAS iN PeOples hEaDs"
The USSR made quite a convincing dent until capitalism came back and propped the church back up. You can’t make Marxism religious you can only accommodate religion as necessary. If ever your glorious revolution should succeed, it’s time to start chipping away at it. Not that you should throw your devout grandma in a gulag, but religion will naturally start to recede even if it takes two hundred years to be meaningful.
That's my point, it wasn't the atheism that did that it was socialism
And socialists did it by tackling the root behind why people need religion, not bludgeoning people over theology that most of them don't actaully believe or even have an education in
I would go so far as to say anyone claiming anything dogmatic should be opposed and destroyed. The only dogma is there shall be none.
Reddit atheists come back.
They are back, except they found 
or have bought into "Cultural Christianity" and/or "Secular Calvinism" ideology like Richard Dawkins did.
Technically it's hypercalvinism but trying to tell prots they're misinterpreting their own theology is almost as hard as trying it with tradcaths.
If you're not pushing every person in a wheelchair you come across down a flight of stairs, you're on the side of satan.
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 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
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.
The way I heard it IIRC their justification is the gate is small but not that small so it's a bit hard to get a camel through but not, you know, that hard and definitely not impossible
Why would he even say this then though lol
"Peace, love, God, but also have you seen that oddly named gate? It's crazy small! Like, a camel could probably get through, but it'd be tough. This is like a rich man going to heaven for some reason"
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.
Not only does it have pieces about nothing to do with anything, it also has parts about laying down and taking it on the chin because there's pie in the sky when you die.
probably not a good idea to throw aside the majority of humanity and liberation theology
Just because you have to work with Christians doesn’t mean you have to support Christianity. Liberation theology is seven people and their dogs and is a perfect example of trying to “fix” Christianity
love to discount marxist theology because they have a small number of followers today after they they were brutally murdered by the capitalists. damn I wonder why there are so few indonesian communists around today. liberation theology is very popular in latin america, and its influence is still felt in black american churches. jeremiah wright had to step down from his church for daring to speak out during obama's presidency run. cornell west is literally running for president right now. it is a popular movement to struggle against the dominance of capitalism within christianity, and it should be supported and commended
At the end of the day, Jesus (or the writings that his cringier followers left behind since I would like to think the historical Jesus was a lot cooler than what was in the Bible) would rather blame a bunch of collaborator Jews than the Roman oppressors who have their sandals on the Judeans' collective throats. It's very hard to read his trial with Pilate in the Gospel and not see how the received text constantly tries to downplay Pilate's role in Jesus's torture and execution, never mind that Pilate was a colonizer governor who could simply free Jesus with a snap of his fingers and crucify the entire crowd with another snap of his finger since as Roman governor, he had an entire Roman legion under his command. Who were the Pharisees going to complain to, the Emperor himself?
The Zealots were easily the coolest Jewish factions because unlike the Christians, Pharisees, and Sadducees, they understood who the enemy was and actually tried to do something to rid the people of Judea of the Roman yoke. Sadly, they failed in their historic task, and the surviving Christians and Pharisees would go on to spit on their graves for daring to free themselves.
he had lectured to the effect that a rich man is a person who has abundant thoughts
nope it's extremely clearly in context talking about a person rich in actual stuff and the message is that having tonnes of stuff while others have nothing is bad
personally I think being rich is incompatible with Christianity because wealth messes with your head and makes it harder to empathise with people and also the fact that rich people have money and resources that really would be better used making sure everyone has a roof and enough to eat etc
Lord said fuck you got mine Beggars, lepers can whine Rip the food from the mouths of the hungry, that's fine
Yo I love the scripture Gonna paint a picture You an me my man J.C. An NFT I get cha On my boat im the goat Feel fine with what I know They ain't trying that's fo sho Cake they eating cause they poor
Peace
Christianity was literally the state religion of the Roman empire. Basically every cool Christian in history was murdered by other Christians.
Huh, I guess you're right. I always thought of "the Roman Empire" as the period after the Republic, and ending around the East/West split. That doesn't seem to be the accepted view, though!
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.
I don't know how to adequately thank you for this - this was a beautiful read, and I'm really excited to dive into his work, this feels like something that could reshape a lot of how I feel about the world and The Word. Really - truly - thank you. ❤️ I appreciate your time and your care so much, thank you, thank you.
I hope so! His work is monumental, and I hope it can bring you growth and hope. As Cornell West said at James' funeral, James was a warrior of love. If you ever have any questions or just want to chat about it, feel free to make a post in c/christianity. You can always ping me, and I'd love to chat about whatever it is you're reading or finding!
Charity is literally one of the seven virtues which are thought of as opposites to the seven vices or sins (or to take a page from Buddhism, "antidotes" to the "poisons" of the vices).
It's not exactly " charity" as we know it. The Latin word is "caritas" which means "caringness" basically but the Greek word is "agape" which is a saintly kind of love. Compare the increasing intensity of love involved in sympathy/empathy/compassion or love for a friend/family/partner/all beings.
Compassion is literally the thing of saints and which allows one to sit calmly while being tortured to death as a martyr. One of the most haunting things I have seen is that image of Thích Quảng Đức so calmly protesting the South Vietnam government's persecution of Buddhists (CW: suicide by self-immolation). I imagine that is how the Christian martyrs must have held themselves in their last moments
I mean it was here the whole time: Matthew 25:40
The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for satan.’
that's a good point arguably this is so heretical that it is mistaking the holy spirit for the devil which is a pretty big no no
Pssh, how big a deal can denial of the holy spirit be? It's like the least important of the Trinity.
You're good, this is sorta theology inside baseball so the default assumption that someone doesn't know that is usually the safest.
Good to see the evangelicals questioning controversial theologians such as checks notes Jesus.
The biblical basis for American Evangelicalism is, in order:
1.) Paul’s letters (even though the historic Paul only wrote maybe half of what’s attributed to him)
2.) Selective interpretations of the Old Testament
3.) The Book of Revelations
4.) Stuff Jesus said (but also very selectively interpreted)
Don’t forgot throwing out every part of the Bible that did directly contradicts them no matter how established it is.