A pastor, citing the murder of political activist Charlie Kirk, has called for his neighbors to take down their “Hate Has No Home Here” signs, claiming those messages endorse political violence against people like him.
Yet, at the same time that he called upon his critics to tone down their rhetoric, Andrew Isker escalated his own language, angrily demanding vengeance against those he perceives to be his political enemies.
Very clearly this guy knows hes spreading hate. And is terrified hes next.
The inversion and active turning away from Christ’s message by Christians is insane to me.
Christianity in this case is only superficially a religion. It’s really a signifier of in-group status. Say the right words and appear to submit to the authority of god and you’re in the club. Actually reading and following the manual is optional, or actually an impediment in carrying out the right’s political project.
I think there’s truth in that in modern America. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago. Growing up, religion was a big cornerstone of social life & had very specific impacts to your upbringing: confirmation, Sunday school, etc.
I think Evangelicals likely represent the main example of your critique. As someone who reads the Bible often & someone who respects the focus of Christ’s works, a lot of sermons against empathy that I’ve seen have felt disgusting. Christ washed the feet of prostitutes. He was angry at the money lenders / capitalists in the Temple. The story of treating the poor man equal to the rich man (or maybe better) is another example.
In Luke, people turn the disciples away, and they ask Christ to smite them. He reprimands the Apostles for wanting to enact vengeance.
I’m a Unitarian Universalist. I’m informed by Christ, I go to church every Sunday (went earlier today), and I do consider my faith a meaningful aspect of my life. I was an atheist for the 20 or so years prior. I do think religion can have greater importance than surface level, but I also believe that what Christianity was 30 years ago has mostly eroded or been hijacked by monied interests.
Great song about this.
So if the prostitute was turning a trick in the temple, do you think he’d have whipped her, too?
He wasn’t angry because they were “capitalists” he was angry that they were doing their capitalist thing in the temple.
Keep in mind the money lenders were there as a service to people basically on a pilgrimage to make temple offerings- from around the entire region. People who wouldn’t know where to trade money and get sacrificial animals. It was probably like the money changers at the airport- catching people who needed to change money and didn’t mind the convenience tax.
Most likely.
I mean that’s why Bible study is basically a church leader selecting approved materials for group reading.
They truly don’t read the one book that they say has all the truths of reality in it. I almost want to ask them if they think they really know there Jesus. It’s like a phantom religion.
It would seem that way if you were raised on ideas like tolerance and acceptance, but if you look at the Bible’s messaging, there’s enough vaguery and conflicting messaging that you can use it to justify one ideology over the other. There’s Jesus who preached the beatitudes, and then there’s Jesus who preached bringing a sword, hating your family that “holds you back,” and comes back on a promised judgement day bringing fire and death.
As Bart Ehrman put it, “It’s a matter of which Jesus you [want to] choose.”
That’s why multiple guest writers for sequels never work as well as the original author who was actually present.
I read the New Testament twice earlier this year in prep for this administration coming. While there are some verses where Christ speaks of violence and division, I understood it as “These messages & the things I say will cause people to argue.” The verse about leaving family for Christ means something like “I’m going to teach you about love, and if your family turns away from those teachings, they are turning against love.”
Overwhelmingly, I found Jesus within the New Testament to be a pretty tolerant person. Some passages such as Matthew 25:32 show how the Republican party is completely misaligned with the grand message of the religion. It explicitly states that you go to heaven for helping the poor, helping the alien in a foreign land, helping those in jail. I’m sorry, but that’s not what the Republican party does. :/
And that’s the thing about religious texts: we interpret them, even if we do our best to read them as written. I agree that the case for a vengeful Jesus is probably weaker than the tolerant one, but it is nonetheless there. If that’s the Jesus you want, nobody can stop you from cherry picking and emphasizing specific texts to make your own vengeful god.
Sounds a lot like what they have been saying muslims are like forever.
/shrug
The one in green actually read her holy book?
The lady on the right probably knows how to cook.
Every accusation is a confession
revelations contains an account of how it happens. it was included in the holy bible to help provide guidance about how to recognize it early since it happens with every religious/moral doctrine about once a century. the deepest joke played on reality is the warning being misinterpretted and used as justification to do what is being warned against.
see also:
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I don’t put much personal stock into Revelations (it’s a very random author, much later than the main books). However, I believe there are many signs that could relate to our times.
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are you still alive, Nazi?
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It’s also important to note that Christ wasn’t actually a pacifist.
He just likes it when people obey the authoritarians. Mostly because he was also an authoritarian. (I mean, seriously. Look at what the messiah was actually supposed to do- ignore Paul and revelations, that has nothing to do with a Jewish messiah.)
To me, I think it’s more likely the motive behind “turn the other cheek” was more a warning to bide their time. Remember, Rome could rofflestomp them at any point they wanted to, and everyone knew it.
(Which they did end up doing in around 70ad, because an ex high priest, who had been high priest thanks to bribes, got out bid by another, and rumors were spreading that other died, so ex high priest made a bid for it again, pissing off Roman officials. This is what lead to the destruction of the second temple.)
Oh, I fully acknowledge Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who believed the end times were within a lifetime of his crucification. And like you mention, there’s a few pro authority verses (the one about “governments are ordained by God, so follow them,” is always funny to me when a Democrat is the president).
That’s just it. I don’t think he actually was any of that.
I don’t think the gospels are an accurate reflection of his actual teachings. The more peaceable are probably inserts- at best.
Keep in mind Paul was a Roman citizen, and benefited from that authority (even if Christianity wouldn’t be legal until 313, iirc, with the edict of Milan by Constantine)
But also the messiah absolutely was supposed to be a warlord, leading the extermination and subjugation of every kingdom in the world, as a descendent of David, the messiah was to be a high priest and king all in one.
According to Jesus, the nations of the world would be worshipping the same god, and coming under the law of Moses and all that. Paul decided to drop that, mostly because gentiles didn’t want to snip the tip, or give up comfy clothing or bacon. Or any of the other random ass commandments. (There’s a lot. 613 traditionally in the mitzvot.)
Keep in mind, the gospels were after the Pauline letters, and a lot of thing in them just didn’t happen.
Just to be candid with you, as a UU, I enjoy these texts but they don’t form the full picture of my faith. I find the general theology of the Gnostic texts more aligned with the reality around us (certainly seems like a demiurge fucks with us more each day right now).
As for Jesus’ message, the Pauline letters, and the prophesied role of the messiah, I’m prone to selective pulls as much as Christians. We know the gospels were not written immediately after the events, so there’s a telephone game. In the context of Jesus’ time and some of the horrible scriptures of the Old Testament, passages like John 13:34 feel radical. I also hold Matthew 25:32 as revealing of modern Christian hypocrisy. If we lived in a “Christian” society, we would be proactively eradicating poverty, hunger, helping immigrants, helping those in jail. Instead, we seem hellbent (pun intended) on war with one another.
For that aspect, I squarely blame Evangelicals more than the works themselves. You can use the Bible (and many other religious texts) to validate almost any opinion or belief.
Yeah. No. You can’t. Just to start things off, the catholic church’s wealth is north of 73 billion, and it owns some of the largest hedge funds in the world.
The Vatican itself is its own nation-state.
And throughout history, the Catholics have literally started more wars than any other sect- including crusades against others.m
And, let’s not forgo that the American diocese are full on maga asshats and fully supported Kirk, fully supports war in Gaza and trump in general.
This isn’t a modern thing, by any stretch. We can go through all the awful shit Jesus was apparently cool with, if you’d like. The point being here is that Paul retconned things a bit to make Jesus more palatable to Roman’s, but even then, it was all still quite awful.
Even if you’re quite studious about it, and pare off anything that’s awful, you’re still getting some questionable stuff and largely left with “shit we didn’t need to be told”.
Oh, the irony… The people who might hunt him are statistically likely to be far-right. He’s attacking the wrong signs.