I was raised in a very devout liberal Episcopal family, most of my associate priests growing up were lesbians. Im an atheist but I grew up around a lot of theological discussions.
Christ’s message is neither liberal nor conservative as it is not political. Your “job” as a Christian is to love everyone and do everything you can to care for those that need help. It’s nothing more than that. It isn’t a political take to say you should feed/clothe people who are naked or hungry and avoid judging others.
I had a very similar upbringing but I fundamentally disagree that Christ’s message isn’t political. Christ was a political figure in his era, executed for political reasons. Early Church history is full of Christians being tortured and executed by sovereigns.
I think you’re correct only to the extent that Christianity won’t tell you how to set budget priorities for FY2024, but Christ’s message will almost certainly inform certain decisions made in that budget, like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, welcoming migrants, and pursuing justice and mercy. And to the extent that we have one political party who consistently claims to represent Christ’s teachings and similarly rejects Christ’s message as applied to the policies they support, it’s inherently political right now as well.
Idk man, “help those in need” is basically a liberal only position these days.
Matthew 15:24
That is cherrypicking a single verse if I’ve ever seen it. (For reference: “Matthew 15:24 But He answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.””) You gotta look at some context elsewhere as well - Jesus couldn’t be everywhere at once and had to start somewhere, and Israel was really supposed to be a shining example to all people, the priests for all nations showing love to everybody.
Sure the context. A women comes to beg for her son. Jesus tells her he can’t help. She grovels at her feet and calls herself a racial slur. And only then does he agree to spend a minute helping.
I agree I should definitely mention the groveling and bigotry of the story. Thanks for the correction. I would hate for people to think that fictional character wasn’t a bigot.
To expand a bit, Christ said, "“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
My favourite passage. Matthew 22: 36-40
It’s not so much about Jesus himself being a political figure, it’s more a question of which ideologies more closely align with his teachings. So it’s probably more accurate to say “liberal ideology is significantly more similar to Jesus’s teachings than conservative ideology.”
Yeah I hear you. I was raised Episcopalian/Anglican and I was always shocked at the horror stories I heard from other kids coming from more conservative denominations. I was like “I don’t believe any of the supernatural stuff but youth group is fun and it’s not like they’re preaching bad things…”
That said, the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. Essentially no modern denominations get it right. Essentially all Christianities today are extremely Westernized as opposed to Semitic.
Yeah, take all of the Pauline texts and you have a group of jewish guys trying to reform their faith
I’m about as atheist as it gets, not like the angry kind but I firmly don’t believe any kind of higher power exists, at least in the way religions do. I grew up in a Christian family and went to church in my early years. I guess the message got through to me because that’s basically my philosophy just without all the spiritual stuff.
I have to ask this. How is feed the hungry not political. I jist don’t get how there can be apolitical morality, or laws. What isca politic what makes something’s political
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I guess they didn’t read the Gospel of Matthew in that case.
“now”
They’ll just write a Murican Bible with guns and pickup trucks.
That is a really, really good fucking idea. We should make a Bible that is adapted to modern American vernacular and interprets some of the stories in insanely biased and hateful ways. You could make a massive amount of money.
Calm down there L Ron Hubbard.
/k
Why bother? No one reads the Bible that we have and the few that do just make the verses say what they want to say.
Ah so this is how the obscenely rich get rich, by not having a conscience.
This combined with failing upwards and having a modest inheritance of millions of dollars.
probably taking place in Texas and back when open containers were legal
Don’t forget that Jesus is no longer this peace preaching hippie, but mister superstar with real red blood who don’t take no shit from no pharisee. Oh, and no more free healings
Reminds me of this, haha
Don’t forget that Jesus is no longer this peace preaching hippie,
Suppose ye that I have come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three”
-Luke 12:51-52
Hmmm
I know, the bible is full of inconsistencies. Weird that the same guy also preached something along the lines of “when someone slaps your face, offer the other cheek” and told one of his apostles (Judas) to distribute the money he collected among the poor. The same hippie that also expelled the merchants from the temple with a whip. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
And that is “just” the philosophy ones. The biography details are massively different.
Which isn’t surprising given that it was all made up by illiterates. Of course they couldn’t keep the details straight. Heck I have problems remembering what I had for breakfast last week and Peter was supposed to remember how many imaginary people went to an imaginary tomb and what they saw?
The book of latter, latter day saints?
murican trinity, God, Trump and the American Spirit
That version sounds a good deal like Mad Max films.
I would expect Trump at some point to “write” a book narrating his struggle in life, an inspirational narration of his hardships, to elevate his followers and supporters.
It would make a nice companion book for this one.
Maybe they’ll lock him up and let him work on it undisturbed for a ‘few’ years.
You know a convicted felon sitting in prison can still run, win, and serve as sitting president
The Byeeeble
Buyble sounds more Murcian
Buyyybull…
In fact, forget the Bible!
Actually, Phyllis Schlafly’s kid was trying to crowdsource a “conservative bible” translation back around 2009, claiming that modern translations were done with a “leftist bias” and that several passages were added by “liberal scholars”, including the story of the adulteress in John (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”), and editing any mention of the Pharisees to either “intellectuals” or “the elite” depending on which ‘translator’ you wanna go with. Oh, they also get rid of Christ’s prayer on the cross, because, and I quote, “it implies that Jesus forgives unrepentant people.”
That’s hilarious. Not sure why they would need to crowdsource it however. As a good Christian scholar dont they already know the biblical languages fluently?
This is the apotheosis of Reagan’s cynical exploitation of Evangelical voters. They were always going to end up rejecting the very deity they claimed to follow as the culmination of their path astray.
Like, as soon as “Christians” started voting to cut social welfare programs and programs to help children, they were on the road to apostasy (in their religious framework).
It started long before that. When Pope Sylvester threw in with Constantine is when I place it, but probably before that.
Conservative Christians praise Jesus and follow the example of God. Liberal Christians praise God and follow the example of Jesus. One judges, the other forgives. One smites, the other saves. One says “praise me”, the other literally says not to worship him but to follow his example.
Or they just make up shit as an excuse to do whatever they please for their own personal benefit while easing their conscious.
“Conservative Christians praise Jesus and follow the example of God. Liberal Christians praise God and follow the example of Jesus.” This is a very interesting insight, does it come from your own observation or from e.g. the bible?
And I am assuming USA, is that correct?
It was a quote from someone I heard on the internet a long time ago. Can’t remember from whom, so I guess it is my quote now. USA definition of liberal and conservative.
“When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”
Half this story is about the idiot SBC constituency. The other half is about top SBC officials who have somehow come to believe that the teachings of Jesus were anything but subversive to begin with.
Jesus were anything but subversive to begin with.
Can you cite an example of an idea that Biblical Jesus said that was subversive to established Jewish thought?
You probably are just trying to be quippy but actually Jesus was quite subversive to established Jewish doctrine. You can see it in the parables.
One can see it in the Parable of the Woman called out for adultry. To deeply paraphrase with a shit condensed version : A bunch of Jewish scholarship - the folk who basically serve as biblical laywers - try and cast a woman in front of Jesus for judgement for her supposed flagrant overstepping of the rules with the prescribed punishment under Jewish law. This law is one of the actual commandment breakers and these community leaders demand Jesus judge her by their rule book. Jesus refuses. This is where we get the whole “he who is without sin cast the first stone” thing. Jewish law contained the punishment for adultry was not written by god, it was written by priests. Jesus does tell the woman not to do it again so God’s will is communicated so one could read this as a message to be wary of the laws of priests because they do not reflect the will of God. “Do not kill” and “do not covet” which means something closer to “be jealous of/desire” superceed those laws. It’s not on humans to take it upon themselves to render judgement. That is up to God.
This made the teachings of Jesus ridiculously unpopular amongst Jewish priests because they got a law for everything. One could look at the inclusion of Leviticus - a description of Jewish laws in the Christian Bible as a reminder that priests made those laws. They were unauthorized human expansions on the simple directives that came straight from the source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery
Other parables to look into were “The unjust judge”. But yeah. Jesus was about as anti authoritarian as you could get.
One can see it in the Parable of the Woman called out for adultry.
3rd century forgery. Not found in early manuscripts of John or any other Christian works. Also not aligned with other things he said. Such as in Matthew where he talked about how he wasn’t subtracting from the law. Also doesn’t align with the incident with the “lepord” found in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Where Jesus shows absolute respect for the legal authorities.
Jewish law contained the punishment for adultry was not written by god, it was written by priests.
I agree. God wrote nothing.
s not on humans to take it upon themselves to render judgement. That is up to God.
I thought we were talking about Jesus. Why are you bringing up Rabbi Hillel. You know the guy who said things like this, lived in that area, and died decades prior?
This made the teachings of Jesus ridiculously unpopular amongst Jewish priests because they got a law for everything. One could look at the inclusion of Leviticus -
So did Jesus. You don’t remember your Sermon on the Mount.
Other parables to look into were “The unjust judge”. But yeah. Jesus was about as anti authoritarian as you could get.
Proverbs and Leviticus.
Again, everything Biblical Jesus said was establishment.
I love how I cannot tell from this message whether you are a koolaid-drinking Christian Fascist or a Dawkins-huffing New Atheist. Both have a strong interest in this particular version of Jesus that you are pushing.
Most of us take it for granted that Jesus forgave the adulterer, and further, that only by his forgiveness can we enter the kingdom of heaven, according to contemporary vernacular Protestant American Christian Mythology. The Biblical Scholars like yourself - amateur or professional, earnest or polemical - will always debate like Talmudic rabbis about it, but we’re out here in the real world where people are alive and living their various gospel truths.
I love how I cannot tell from this message whether you are a koolaid-drinking Christian Fascist or a Dawkins-huffing New Atheist. Both have a strong interest in this particular version of Jesus that you are pushing.
Attack the argument and not the person.
Most of us take it for granted that Jesus forgave the adulterer
3rd century forgery.
and further, that only by his forgiveness can we enter the kingdom of heaven, according to contemporary vernacular Protestant American Christian Mythology.
And? There is an entire branch of Christian thought dedicated to figure out how to be saved. That source has just as much justification as Calvinism. Of course none of it is true, the only place we go when we die is the ground.
The Biblical Scholars like yourself - amateur or professional, earnest or polemical - will always debate like Talmudic rabbis about it,
I have discussed facts only.
but we’re out here in the real world where people are alive and living their various gospel truths.
So you are naked, barefoot, and demanding the rich to give up all their money?
Why are you acting like this.
I used to think logic was enough too.
Of course logic isn’t enough. Logic can tell you how to do something, but it can’t tell you why. In other words, logic can’t tell you why one outcome is better or worse than another. You need emotions for that.
In that case I am happy that you are now considering evidence instead of symbol shifting games.
3rd century forgery
When the specific bit of fiction was added to the book of fiction seems entirely irrelevant when it is the compiled book, including the later bit of fiction, upon which modern people claim to be basing their moral philosophy. I don’t believe the vast majority are reaching that verse and going “oh well this was added late so let’s skip over this part.” “Legitimate” (feels a funny concept for this topic, tbh) or not, it is included in most modern Christian’s interpretation of Christ
I think it is important to note what the truth is of the situation.
If the Bible can have one fictional story in it, it can have two, if it can have two it can have three.
The whole thing is allegorical fiction; debating which is most historically fictional is pointless when the vast majority only consider the thing as a whole, not individually. It isn’t that you’re not correct, it’s that your correctness is wholly irrelevant to how the Bible is consumed
The Bible is not allegorical to the vast majority of believers.
Ah, but the proof that you mention that it was a 3rd century forgery was actually a 6th century forgery! You can always disprove something, but proving something is much harder if you don’t share the same base truths. But as Pilate said “What is truth?”… or was that a forgery as well?
It isn’t found in any of the earlier manuscripts and is not aligned with other actions and sayings that he said. All the gotchas wont change that.
The passage where the man expels the people from the temple, accusing them of betraying the teachings seems very much subversive.
Here is a single man going against status quo and establishment. If that is not a good exemple of subversion, there is none.
Wasn’t it because they were commercialising the temple as well? US mega churches could learn something from that.
Don’t really know. I’m aware such a depiction exists but precise details are moot, for what I care.
I think it revolves around the temple grounds being used as a market and/or being a place where moneylenders were present, thus, again, going against the teachings advising against greed and materialism.
oh how i fuckin WISH they’d ‘learn something’ alright. I wish they’d learn it HARD and BITTERLY.
There is a lot of argument about that incident in the “Jesus was not supernatural but he existed crowd”. A few main solutions:
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It was understood that the next Messiah would build the 3rd temple, but you can’t exactly rebuild the temple if there is a temple. So he was trying to bring about the events.
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Roman coinage was dicey for strict monotheistic people to use hence the need to change it before you entered. It was a sore point for the holier-than-now crowd. Oh you use forbidden currency normally but change it at the temple? Morality when it suits you.
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The temple had a dual-aristorcracy structure. The outside was run by one and the inside by another. The outside was more politically acceptable to attack. It definitely wouldn’t have been the first time one of the other Jewish factions had gone after how the Temple was run. By attacking the outside one he could set himself up as the quite a few “restorers of the Temple”.
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The passage where the man expels the people from the temple, accusing them of betraying the teachings seems very much subversive.
Please see: Jeremiah 7:9-15, Jeremiah 23:11-15, Isaiah 1:10-17, Isaiah 66:1-2, Isaiah 59:1-2, Isaiah 56:7-8, Amos 5:21-24, and of course Micah.
The Jewish theocratic state had divisions of power. At that time it was mostly Pharisees and Temple. If Jesus had existed, he would definitely been on Pharisees side. Biblical Jesus was at least. It’s a bit like claiming any political commentary is subversive. There is a difference between being willing to take pot shots at the other political team and being against established order. The references I gave are only the ones that have survived. Most likely there were quite a few authors being very critical of how the Temple was run.
Here is a single man going against status quo and establishment. If that is not a good exemple of subversion, there is none.
I thought you Bible literalists believe he had 12 apostles plus over 500 camp followers. Which is it?
Pharisees and Sadducees are, in very broad terms, like Democrats and Republicans today. Sadducees tended to be wealthy and conservative, while the Pharisees were more about the common folk. At least on paper. In practice, maybe not so much. Like the way a lot of modern leftists hate the Democratic party, historical Jesus could very easily have hated the Pharisees while aligning somewhat with their stated positions. That certainly comes through in the literary version of Jesus.
Yeah I am going to reject this analogy right off the bat.
Also not sure why you are bringing the Sadducees into this. They were a rival sect not a political faction.
Political and religious faction was not that separated at the time. Or even now, for that matter.
You are allowed to back down from an argument btw.
No the analogy between Pharisees and Sadducees and DNC and GOP does not work.
Saying he was the Messiah in and of itself was subversive to established thought.
The Jews at the time thought the Messiah would come in clad in armor, sword in hand, on a white horse, come to slay their enemies.
Instead he rolled up humbly on a donkey talking nonsense like “love each other, treat others kindly”
Saying he was the Messiah in and of itself was subversive to established thought.
They had a long long history of people making claims to kingship based on having a supposed message from God. Like Jeremiah which is clearly the story it was plagiarized from. Additionally, the narratives are contradictory on what exactly he said while interrogated. Which makes sense if you are just making it all up.
The Jews at the time thought the Messiah would come in clad in armor, sword in hand, on a white horse, come to slay their enemies.
Citation needed. Please use the Talmudic prophecies and the references of Josphius to back up your claim. There was a wide variety of different messiah prophecies in circulation at the time. Some of them yes we’re closer to warlike image you made, copying from the Maccabees and Samson. Others were much closer to Isaiah and Jeremiah. Just a guy going around preaching.
Instead he rolled up humbly on a donkey
Not according to Gospel of Matthew. In the Gospel of Matthew he was riding a horse and a donkey at the same time. The author of first Gospel liked to double stuff, made his lies easier to swallow I imagine. Or he just didn’t know Hebrew and Aramaic and misunderstood the last sentence repetitive structure of the poetry.
talking nonsense like “love each other, treat others kindly”
Like here?
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
-Matthew 10:34
Also all the nice stuff he said was from Hillel or Proverbs.
Wanna try again? Or just admit that he is a fictional character that con artists poured Jewish history and thought into.
The whole “camel through the eye of the needle” bit is likely as radical as it looks at first glance. It was tried to be explained away through the centuries as more rich Christians started to appear, such as by claiming it was a small doorway in the city wall that would be difficult to get a camel through.
These claims don’t appear to hold up. Meanwhile, there were sewing needles uncovered with a recognizable design to modern ones, and you ain’t getting a camel through it. The way we would plainly read it today seems correct: rich people aren’t getting into the Kingdom of God.
Pharisees lived on donations not via state funds. For him to tell a rich guy to give away all his money was basically him telling a rich guy to give himself all the money.
Soliciting donations isn’t exactly subversive.
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Explain please. I don’t quite understand your question.
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Christianity is syncretic - is that not inherently subversive of the source?
Oh I think I see what you mean. To one extent every religion is. No one starts from page 1. I am not quite seeing however what Biblical Jesus borrowed from Rome that the Jews of the area hadn’t already. Can you list some examples?
And in this way it created common ground regional cultures, but the direction of the syncretization was also that of Romanization - the new mythos served to legitimize the earthly authority of Rome (and their territorial claims) in a way the teachings of the Jewish tribes had not.
Really only discussing what Biblical Jesus is supposed to have said. He was clear that he was only there for the lost sheep of the Jews, not for the rest.
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You seem to know what you are talking about, can you recommend a good starting book for the history for Christianity (or Islam)?
You make it sound very interesting.
So, you have never heard the Bible fable of why Jesus was crucified? Come on 😀
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Can you repeat back what I wrote? Thanks.
No
Best response. This guy has all the worst aspects of a biblical literalist and just seems like a bit of a dick
Saying directly next time, makes you look weak otherwise. Just free advice
You’re just as bad as a biblical literalist and you seem like kind of a dick
|Can you repeat back what I wrote? Thanks.
“the monster we made is acting monstrous”
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
And when Jesus was asked what the greatest of the commandments was:
"The most important one is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these”
yep, Jesus really was a liberal hippy cuck
I dunno if I can love my neighbour as myself, is it alright if I just grab her by the pussy?
that sounds kosher
So they only follow the old testament? Isn’t there already a word for that?
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I read that there’s a group making a new version of the Bible that takes out all the “woke” stuff.
In my experience they have been doing this for at least 30 years.
More like 40.
centuries. jesus said friend up the hoes and queers. so christians burned the women and the gays.
Before his body was cold
I’ve said it before, but, (assuming he existed at all) Jesus was a brown-skinned non-English-speaking Palestinian Jew who healed the sick and fed the poor (and didn’t charge money for either thing) and encouraged his followers to do the same, supported paying taxes, and showed open contempt for wealth and the wealthy.
If only he had also been openly gay he would be every single thing modern Christians hate.
Pretty sure most historians agree Jesus existed. Was he the son of God and as described in the Bible? That’s the question.
Polls aren’t proof except what people are willing to say to pollsters. Show me the evidence.
I’m not the one saying it, the historians who are much more qualified than me or you are, so go argue with them not me.
Argument from authority < arguments from evidence
Don’t be lazy. If you want to see evidence then look at what the authorities say. Historians don’t argue by pulling shit out of their arse.
Pretty sure I have. Why don’t you cite literally any of this supposed evidence?
Because you’re an unfathomably lazy motherfucker who needs to be spoon-fed the most basic of research skills such as fucking opening wikipedia and looking at the sources section.
But the tl;dr is that his existence is attested by non-Christian sources and further details can be filled in by critical analysis (such as early Christians having no theological interest in making up him getting baptized by John). He was prominent enough as an itinerant preacher to be mentioned by the histographers of his time.
Frankly speaking Buddha is on more shaky grounds, though his historicity is also widely accepted.
One slight correction: he showed open contempt for the money-changers scamming people at the temple.
You mean the guy who kissed the person he put in charge of the group’s money right before Peter denies him three times (roughly the same number as the number of trials, which Peter allegedly was seen going into the area where proceedings were taking place for at least one)?
The guy who had an unnamed beloved disciple reclining on him when he fed the disciple he kissed dipped bread at his final meal?
Who at his execution told this unnamed beloved disciple to take Jesus’s own mother into his household as if the beloved disciple’s mother?
Jesus might have wanted to be careful about all of that, as technically being gay in Judea was a death sentence under Jewish law. Though they couldn’t carry out the death sentence at that time and would have needed to appeal to the local Roman authority to carry out capital punishment, which would have put the local authority in a pickle deciding on granting local barbaric legality to quell rising dissent even though the crime charged would have been a common Roman practice alleged even about the emperor at the time.
So you know, if the story was something like the Sanhedrin wanting Jesus dead and Pilate reluctant, and his most conservative follower who he was seen arguing with potentially denying him at trial right around the time he was kissing and feeding his closest companion at the dinner table - well there might just be more to the story after all.
(Though a number of the other things you said probably aren’t the case - for example, the “give to Caesar” taxation thing is anachronistic for Judea in 30s CE which had no personal tax and no coinage with Caeser on it.)
He didn’t show open contempt for the wealthy as long as they lived up to his standards for faith, charity, and humility. It’s just that there were, and are, so dang few of those.
and didn’t charge money for either thing
In Mark it was healing to get a free meal and in Matthew only after a women called herself a racial slur and begged at his feet.
Care to elaborate on his conservative teachings? Unless you’re stretching Jesus’ teachings to the letters of Paul.
Without Paul there really is no Christianity. Jesus would have just been one of the many minor prophets at best.
As for his conservative teachings, based on what he supposedly said and did he respected the laws of Moses. He argued over specific rulings but not the laws themselves.
“Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.” - Bara Dada c. 1920
Everyone’s a Christian until it’s time to do Christian shit
