You gotta remember, despite everything we say, everything we've written, the laws in place, the rapidly growing atheism, the US is a theocracy first and foremost. The religion is just as important as the economy, employment rate, or the opinions of the ruling class.
The only thing that has really kept religion in check in this country is, ironically, their enmity toward each other due, ostensibly, to differences in eschatology. That has melted away as they have come to the realization that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Fortunately, the laity is extremely stupid and easy to manipulate (religion will do that to you) and have no idea what they really believe or what the differences are, so they are being led as if they are more monolithic by focusing their worship on what they all agree they love: money. They are also too stupid to realize that this is ironic.
A theocracy that only believes in Supply Side Jesus and ignores the real teachings of Jesus. The GOP would look a lot different if their religion wasn't just a tool to manipulate their Christian base.
Yeah. I am Chicano but identify more with my indigenous side and am friends with plenty of Native Americans. I've always personally blamed Judeo-Christian thinking. The whole manifest destiny mindset is insane.
I mean read just a piece of how different things were before those religions came to this land.
A second, related factor was the absence of large domestic animals in North America, which meant that instead of the 'intensive', ploughing-and-manuring agriculture practised in Europe, Native American farmers used 'extensive' techniques, cultivating an area for a few years and then moving on to let the soil recover. Most groups - hunters and plant-gatherers as well as agriculturists - viewed land as a common resource rather than a commodity that could be owned. Tribes and families had the right to hunt, fish or grow crops in defined places, but the concept of a fenced-off parcel of land being the exclusive property of an individual would have been utterly alien to most, if not all, Native Americans.
The Indian attitude towards land was part of a broader, more fundamental understanding of reality which underpinned the whole of native life. Although, again, there were enormous local variations in mythology and ritual, some of the essentials of this world-view were shared by many, if not most, cultures. Perhaps the most basic element was the belief in sacred power: the idea that everything in the universe was interconnected and possessed a spiritual force or energy that could affect the lives of 'the people' and of all other living things. Gaining power and the aid of powerful beings was absolutely vital: for success in hunting, plentiful crops, good health, thriving children and victory in battle. But power was also dangerous.
Source: Chapter 2 of The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson.
I have a pet theory, I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist or historian so I don't know enough to claim it valid. I feel that Europe did to the world what Dark Souls did to gaming.
Here's this tiny section of the world, the weather is awful most of the year, the ground is barely fit for food and the only reliably edible plants are just variations of mustard. The wildlife is awful, wolves can drag off grown men, boars take whole parties to hunt, rats will eat and poison an entire grainhouse over night. Every few years a new power rolls in to wreck the place, if it's not people it's diseases, if it's not diseases it's climate shifts. Everyone lives in shit hovels relying on next to no nutrients, without enough to feed everyone, crammed in together with farm animals and listening to every other member of their family fucking as they're trying to sleep. And they persist like that for longer than recorded time.
That's life on the hardest possible difficult for generations. So when they finally scrape together enough to get out of there they find out that every single other civilization was living in literal verdant utopias. They respond the same exact way a diehard Dark souls fan does, everyone else needs to git gud and get learned up because how the fuck are these Stardew players surviving without an 800 page manual on stats? Europeans literally couldn't comprehend the idea of a forest that gives you unlimited food because all of their forests eat your fucking chicken just to laugh at your suffering. Living without defined boundaries? How do you stop your neighbor from taking all your grain and leaving you to starve to death in the winter? Picking up your whole community to follow buffalo? Are you insane?! There's probably a group of bandits right over the hill waiting to gut you for everything you own! Put your big hairy cows in a paddock so they aren't stolen too! Europe had to make use of every square inch of land to survive, they couldnt fathom the idea of so much land that you'll never need to see another human again without choosing to. And the hording, lifetimes of eating the same dozen plants and never having enough for everyone to be full, winters that kill you if you don't spend every second farming to survive it. Land so scarce you have to kill for it.
All of this ignores the social aspects of this mindset becoming a political system. Now several hundred years later, we still have to deal with it because generically we're the equivalent of dogs scarfint down anything they see because they get used to not being fed regularly. Of course they're going to be vastly over powered and over equipped compared to a world of people playing on a sane and reasonable difficulty level.
Considering that the majority of vocal Christians vote Republican, Jesus being very explicitly leftist presents an opportunity to nudge them left. It certainly won't convince all of them, but there are those who actually value their prophet more than their politicians.
Anyone who cares about diminishing the Republican stranglehold on America should care that Jesus was a leftist, even if they didn't personally care about Jesus.
The fact that weʻve seen a few MAGA pastors openly say stuff like "Well, Jesusʻ teachings were more applicable in the first century and we have to adapt now" is proof enough that itʻs not Jesus they believe in. I want to see this pushed more and more to get them to finally admit that theyʻre not actually Christians, but are actually like Cartman in the South Park episode where he starts a Christian band ("You donʻt know the first thing about Christianity!" "I know enough to exploit it.")
Not really. Pastors are being pushed out for being too woke and replaced by a more right wing figure. The congregation gets what the congregation wants. They've gone supply-side Jesus.
The U.S. reminds me of when I worked retail and a mentally unstable customer would come in and start getting loud and knocking things off the shelf and acting entitled and asking for discounts and special treatment.
Just speaking as someone who grew up in a hyper conservative cult, I think sowing cognitive dissonance in the minds of religious youth is a great way at getting them to realize they are being taught bullshit. Hearing that Jesus's views didn't align with the views that had been forced upon me made me want to read the Bible and make my own decision about God and religion. I started my read fully expecting to end up with deeper faith and ended up crashing out and losing all religious belief, which was my first step towards me being a leftist today. All because of people pushing back on what Jesus would think of religious conservatism.
This. I went through a similar thing, but wound up in a different place (grew up in fundie-leaning Southern Baptist world with a pastor that turned out to be a sexual predator and abused people I am close to; decided to revisit the Bible and all that and wound up a priest in the Episcopal Church). Regardless of how folks end up, breaking people free from their control is paramount. If a meme manages to dent the armor, so be it. And if it annoys OP, they can always just mute it and move on. I do it a lot with posts that are openly hostile to my beliefs.
I think you misunderstood what the meme says nobody "cares" about. It says that nobody cares which side of a specific poilitcal argument a 2000-year-dead apocalypse predictor would have taken if magic were real. It is saying that everybody wishes they would shut up about that. I am not required to care which one of the two bumblefucks is "correct" to want them to STFU, nor to talk to others about how we would all like those two idiots to STFU.
Jesus wouldn't have had politics we would find legible to us today, because the political landscape is contingent on the material conditions of a given place and time.
It's certainly interesting that the Bible is a series of documents written on the margins of empire, and that might inform how to think about it today. But Jesus himself would have had political opinions that do not map onto our modern, post-French Revolution, ideas of "left vs right".
Early Christianity was nothing anyone would recognize today. It might have been more like if Diogenes was blissfully happy instead of being a little shit.
we can't really understand the social influences that shaped individual experience and personality in an age with such low literacy. whatever we know is a pixel in a 4k video.
I have long ago reached the end of my tolerance for religious nonsense. I will not engage in any serious discussion about religious fairy tales. If I want to discuss fictional world building, I'd rather talk about Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek, or Star Wars, all of which are far more interesting works of fantasy fiction than any religious lore.
We have to stop allowing religion to be an influential force on our government. If people want to embrace religion in their personal lives, that's their free choice to make, but they should be considered the oddballs that they are, and should be dismissed as serious political candidates, since they proudly believe in, speak to, and get advice and guidance from imaginary beings in their head.
That weirdo should not be making decisions about the future of our country. It's like the olden days, when they would take the ravings of a schizophrenic as messages from God.
Maybe someone like Luther King, someone super charismatic could create change. People tend to follow these characters. We could use someone like that against datacenters...
The culture war was designed to keep us fighting amongst ourselves while the rich techno fascist pedo freaks continue to steal everything that isn't nailed down.
I mean, at least two billion people are Christian, so presumably they care. And that doesn't even include the rest of us who get screwed over by Christian-conservative doublethink bullshit.
Yeah it's not like the majority of people in the wealthiest and most powerful parts of the world (and a plurality elsewhere) literally worship the guy.
Not really, no. America is unique among wealthy and powerful countires, it's the only theocracy on the "west", and it's almost the only one where christians are majority. Except Vatican maybe.
I mean first theocracy implies rule by the clergy, which isn't the case in America even de facto. The only theocracies in the world are Iran and the Vatican. That aside, 66% of EU citizens are Christian. The "our Christian way of life is under attack" rhetoric isn't in any way unique to America, and there's merit to tackling that on theological ground. For true believers (admittedly rare in the West), this can actually get them to change their minds about things.
It's not the case in the US de jure, because there are several christian denominations working together and against each other, so there is no one official clergy. However, de facto the US is ruled by and for Christians, every important decision, almost every elected official, a lot of the laws, all of the customs revolve around Christianity and exclusively Christianity-related. It's impossible to overstate how it's not like that in every other western country. The two closest examples I can think of is Polland and Ireland, two traditionally very Christian countries, and even then it's not even close to the levels of jesusness US exhibits.
When a EU citizen answers that they're christian on a poll, more often than not they're doing it because their parents did and that's the extend of their religiocity.
Even assuming that's true (which it's not; absolutely nothing about Wall Street is Christian), that's not what theocracy is. Again, theocracy is rule by religious authorities; even religiously motivated decisions in the US are ultimately made by lay people with little to no input from actual Christian clergy. Put another way, de facto theocracy would be a church or group of churches acting as kingmakers and consistently steering policy. That's not what's going on; Christianity in US governance, when it appears (outside of Utah where the Mormon Church does wield significant political power), is a solidly bottom-up phenomenon that doesn't go through or depend on particular religious leaders. Rule by and for Christians, assuming it's the case in the US—which again it's not; America is ruled by capital regardless of its religion—would be exactly what we'd expect since Christians make up a solid supermajority of the population of America. Calling America a theocracy would be like calling Singapore (or another competitive autocracy) a monarchy; it's wrong in both kind and degree.
That’s nah that’s some Old Testament stuff. Jesus specifically calls for the ending of old Jewish traditions. Thats why Jews don’t hold him in high regard. Most traditions of the Old Testament Jesus would have told people to do something else.
On the topic of the op Jesus would have been a straight socialist. He believed in giving to the state what belonged to the state but also believed that the rich had an obligation of helping the poor.
We don't really know what Jesus thought about basically anything, because the only sources we have for his opinions are a bunch of texts written long after his supposed death, and they all contradict each other in various ways.
Jesus today: "For god sake, I kept saying to these 4 retards that men have to find the way by themselves and they basically wrote an How To you guys blindly followed for the last 2000 years ?!"
☕️ Jesus wasn’t a real person but an amalgamation of several different holy men and ideologies cobbled together hundreds of years after the fact to help specific groups of men wield more power and advance their agendas, change my mind
So part of the reason to believe he was a real figure was that, crucifixion was a humiliating punishment at the time. The fact that people were worshipping a guy who was crucified was ridiculous at the time. Lots of people were talking about a guy Jesus who got crucified, and they weren't friends of Christians.
You had early Christians talking about Jesus, and early enemies of Christianity talking about some charlatan who got humiliated by being crucified and then for some reason people still worshipped him, which would have been ridiculous.
Is this a concern anywhere other than USA? WTF is wrong with those guys? "This guy from 2000 years ago would have been on my team".... WTF. He would have lived in the middle east and preached to all these people that they're all wrong. Might as well debate what football team he would have supported as well.
Jesus was a pro-banking, pro-capitalism, pro-rich, pro-slavery asshole based on the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
I'm not religious anymore and I'm not making a defense of Christianity, but before all of this the Bible explains that when Jesus comes and starts teaching, he's going to teach in parable (metaphor) so most of his teaching needs to be seen through that lens. So this should more properly be seen as a teaching saying to take your gifts (compassion, love, wisdom) out into the world and use them to become a better person. There's also some deeper meaning here that usury was frowned upon at the time so this would have been a very provocative thing to use as a metaphor.
Of course the main way that people corrupt Christianity is by taking things literally, and if you do that you can take any meaning away you want. That's how you get a branch that literally only exists to promote the institution of chattel slavery (Southern Baptist) along with pacifist, community-centric, anti-slavery Quakers. And how people are OK with driving BMWs to church and engaging in the crusades and thinking Trump was sent by God. It's all in there if you want it to be, which makes it easy to exploit.
Oh also if you haven't read The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, I highly recommend those
Ah yes, the Romans commissioned "The Bible" as if there aren't 450+ versions in print in English alone with wide variations of included, excluded and revised content. I'm so glad that you personally were able to find the clear meaning of the text in a book that has entirely passed through 3-5 languages and been through a 2000 year whirlwind of competing theological and political forces. Shut it down everyone, this guy solved it
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You gotta remember, despite everything we say, everything we've written, the laws in place, the rapidly growing atheism, the US is a theocracy first and foremost. The religion is just as important as the economy, employment rate, or the opinions of the ruling class.
The only thing that has really kept religion in check in this country is, ironically, their enmity toward each other due, ostensibly, to differences in eschatology. That has melted away as they have come to the realization that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Fortunately, the laity is extremely stupid and easy to manipulate (religion will do that to you) and have no idea what they really believe or what the differences are, so they are being led as if they are more monolithic by focusing their worship on what they all agree they love: money. They are also too stupid to realize that this is ironic.
A theocracy that only believes in Supply Side Jesus and ignores the real teachings of Jesus. The GOP would look a lot different if their religion wasn't just a tool to manipulate their Christian base.
That's what religion is
Yeah. I am Chicano but identify more with my indigenous side and am friends with plenty of Native Americans. I've always personally blamed Judeo-Christian thinking. The whole manifest destiny mindset is insane.
I mean read just a piece of how different things were before those religions came to this land.
Source: Chapter 2 of The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson.
I have a pet theory, I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist or historian so I don't know enough to claim it valid. I feel that Europe did to the world what Dark Souls did to gaming.
Here's this tiny section of the world, the weather is awful most of the year, the ground is barely fit for food and the only reliably edible plants are just variations of mustard. The wildlife is awful, wolves can drag off grown men, boars take whole parties to hunt, rats will eat and poison an entire grainhouse over night. Every few years a new power rolls in to wreck the place, if it's not people it's diseases, if it's not diseases it's climate shifts. Everyone lives in shit hovels relying on next to no nutrients, without enough to feed everyone, crammed in together with farm animals and listening to every other member of their family fucking as they're trying to sleep. And they persist like that for longer than recorded time.
That's life on the hardest possible difficult for generations. So when they finally scrape together enough to get out of there they find out that every single other civilization was living in literal verdant utopias. They respond the same exact way a diehard Dark souls fan does, everyone else needs to git gud and get learned up because how the fuck are these Stardew players surviving without an 800 page manual on stats? Europeans literally couldn't comprehend the idea of a forest that gives you unlimited food because all of their forests eat your fucking chicken just to laugh at your suffering. Living without defined boundaries? How do you stop your neighbor from taking all your grain and leaving you to starve to death in the winter? Picking up your whole community to follow buffalo? Are you insane?! There's probably a group of bandits right over the hill waiting to gut you for everything you own! Put your big hairy cows in a paddock so they aren't stolen too! Europe had to make use of every square inch of land to survive, they couldnt fathom the idea of so much land that you'll never need to see another human again without choosing to. And the hording, lifetimes of eating the same dozen plants and never having enough for everyone to be full, winters that kill you if you don't spend every second farming to survive it. Land so scarce you have to kill for it.
All of this ignores the social aspects of this mindset becoming a political system. Now several hundred years later, we still have to deal with it because generically we're the equivalent of dogs scarfint down anything they see because they get used to not being fed regularly. Of course they're going to be vastly over powered and over equipped compared to a world of people playing on a sane and reasonable difficulty level.
("One Dollar - In God We Trust")
So weird for one of the world's youngest nations to hijack one of the world's youngest religions from a place they so frequently fear, hate, and bomb.
They really are just the plebeians of an empirical nation that never quite got to empirical level, unless your factor corporatisation of the society.
And they accuse the English of not speaking English...
I think they took their religion from europe. As a starting point.
Considering that the majority of vocal Christians vote Republican, Jesus being very explicitly leftist presents an opportunity to nudge them left. It certainly won't convince all of them, but there are those who actually value their prophet more than their politicians.
Anyone who cares about diminishing the Republican stranglehold on America should care that Jesus was a leftist, even if they didn't personally care about Jesus.
The fact that weʻve seen a few MAGA pastors openly say stuff like "Well, Jesusʻ teachings were more applicable in the first century and we have to adapt now" is proof enough that itʻs not Jesus they believe in. I want to see this pushed more and more to get them to finally admit that theyʻre not actually Christians, but are actually like Cartman in the South Park episode where he starts a Christian band ("You donʻt know the first thing about Christianity!" "I know enough to exploit it.")
I'm not one to wear tin foil hats, but I think if I wanted to obliterate a society, I'd focus on the family.
Not really. Pastors are being pushed out for being too woke and replaced by a more right wing figure. The congregation gets what the congregation wants. They've gone supply-side Jesus.
And so fucking loud
Me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me... me
The U.S. reminds me of when I worked retail and a mentally unstable customer would come in and start getting loud and knocking things off the shelf and acting entitled and asking for discounts and special treatment.
Like a chimp with a shotgun. Does it know what it’s doing? Absolutely not. Will it kill people? Most certainly.
Honestly it isn’t like a lot of us care other than pointing out the insane levels of hypocrisy the right engage in while claiming to love Jesus.
Just speaking as someone who grew up in a hyper conservative cult, I think sowing cognitive dissonance in the minds of religious youth is a great way at getting them to realize they are being taught bullshit. Hearing that Jesus's views didn't align with the views that had been forced upon me made me want to read the Bible and make my own decision about God and religion. I started my read fully expecting to end up with deeper faith and ended up crashing out and losing all religious belief, which was my first step towards me being a leftist today. All because of people pushing back on what Jesus would think of religious conservatism.
This. I went through a similar thing, but wound up in a different place (grew up in fundie-leaning Southern Baptist world with a pastor that turned out to be a sexual predator and abused people I am close to; decided to revisit the Bible and all that and wound up a priest in the Episcopal Church). Regardless of how folks end up, breaking people free from their control is paramount. If a meme manages to dent the armor, so be it. And if it annoys OP, they can always just mute it and move on. I do it a lot with posts that are openly hostile to my beliefs.
You cared enough to make a meme
“Yet you participate in society”
curious.
curious.
Jesus lives rent free in their big, empty head.
Do you think Jesus is going to pay market rate?
I think you misunderstood what the meme says nobody "cares" about. It says that nobody cares which side of a specific poilitcal argument a 2000-year-dead apocalypse predictor would have taken if magic were real. It is saying that everybody wishes they would shut up about that. I am not required to care which one of the two bumblefucks is "correct" to want them to STFU, nor to talk to others about how we would all like those two idiots to STFU.
Mate, the meme literally says to shut the fuck up. Yet you fucking Yanks keep mass spamming comments on the topic we want you not to voice.
I’m not American
Just curious, are you opposed to politics being discussed?
In the words of grandson, "Jesus was a 5'4" brown-skinned socialist, nothing like the man on that crucifix"
No no. Top right panel is 100% correct and top left desperately needs to hear it.
Jesus wouldn't have had politics we would find legible to us today, because the political landscape is contingent on the material conditions of a given place and time.
It's certainly interesting that the Bible is a series of documents written on the margins of empire, and that might inform how to think about it today. But Jesus himself would have had political opinions that do not map onto our modern, post-French Revolution, ideas of "left vs right".
Early Christianity was nothing anyone would recognize today. It was more like if Diogenes was blissfully happy instead of being a little shit.
Wtf don't ever belittle the greatest and wisest shit in history. Now stand out of my sun.
I meant "little shit" as a single descriptor, which I believe is apt (in modern parlance). I concur that Diogenes was a great and wise "little shit".
Early Christianity was nothing anyone would recognize today. It might have been more like if Diogenes was blissfully happy instead of being a little shit.we can't really understand the social influences that shaped individual experience and personality in an age with such low literacy. whatever we know is a pixel in a 4k video.
If Jesus were here now I'd be desperately trying to lick his washboard carpenter abs
I bet Jesus was hung AF 🍆
Did you even read the Bible? Jesus had a dad bod, like me!
I have long ago reached the end of my tolerance for religious nonsense. I will not engage in any serious discussion about religious fairy tales. If I want to discuss fictional world building, I'd rather talk about Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek, or Star Wars, all of which are far more interesting works of fantasy fiction than any religious lore.
We have to stop allowing religion to be an influential force on our government. If people want to embrace religion in their personal lives, that's their free choice to make, but they should be considered the oddballs that they are, and should be dismissed as serious political candidates, since they proudly believe in, speak to, and get advice and guidance from imaginary beings in their head.
That weirdo should not be making decisions about the future of our country. It's like the olden days, when they would take the ravings of a schizophrenic as messages from God.
you know, religion used to be an abstraction of politics, kinda, in the medieval ages. not sure what changed.
Jesus never used toilet paper.
Jesus could be here now and he would be seen as a conspiracy theorist.
Could be David Icke for all we know. But doesn't matter does it...
Pretty much any famous person from the past wouldn't matter one bit if they lived today.
Maybe someone like Luther King, someone super charismatic could create change. People tend to follow these characters. We could use someone like that against datacenters...
The culture war was designed to keep us fighting amongst ourselves while the rich techno fascist pedo freaks continue to steal everything that isn't nailed down.
I mean, at least two billion people are Christian, so presumably they care. And that doesn't even include the rest of us who get screwed over by Christian-conservative doublethink bullshit.
It absolutely matters.
Yeah it's not like the majority of people in the wealthiest and most powerful parts of the world (and a plurality elsewhere) literally worship the guy.
Not really, no. America is unique among wealthy and powerful countires, it's the only theocracy on the "west", and it's almost the only one where christians are majority. Except Vatican maybe.
I mean first theocracy implies rule by the clergy, which isn't the case in America even de facto. The only theocracies in the world are Iran and the Vatican. That aside, 66% of EU citizens are Christian. The "our Christian way of life is under attack" rhetoric isn't in any way unique to America, and there's merit to tackling that on theological ground. For true believers (admittedly rare in the West), this can actually get them to change their minds about things.
It's not the case in the US de jure, because there are several christian denominations working together and against each other, so there is no one official clergy. However, de facto the US is ruled by and for Christians, every important decision, almost every elected official, a lot of the laws, all of the customs revolve around Christianity and exclusively Christianity-related. It's impossible to overstate how it's not like that in every other western country. The two closest examples I can think of is Polland and Ireland, two traditionally very Christian countries, and even then it's not even close to the levels of jesusness US exhibits.
When a EU citizen answers that they're christian on a poll, more often than not they're doing it because their parents did and that's the extend of their religiocity.
Even assuming that's true (which it's not; absolutely nothing about Wall Street is Christian), that's not what theocracy is. Again, theocracy is rule by religious authorities; even religiously motivated decisions in the US are ultimately made by lay people with little to no input from actual Christian clergy. Put another way, de facto theocracy would be a church or group of churches acting as kingmakers and consistently steering policy. That's not what's going on; Christianity in US governance, when it appears (outside of Utah where the Mormon Church does wield significant political power), is a solidly bottom-up phenomenon that doesn't go through or depend on particular religious leaders. Rule by and for Christians, assuming it's the case in the US—which again it's not; America is ruled by capital regardless of its religion—would be exactly what we'd expect since Christians make up a solid supermajority of the population of America. Calling America a theocracy would be like calling Singapore (or another competitive autocracy) a monarchy; it's wrong in both kind and degree.
Jesus was pro-choice, though, there is a verse in the bible giving instructions on abortion (via beatings).
That’s nah that’s some Old Testament stuff. Jesus specifically calls for the ending of old Jewish traditions. Thats why Jews don’t hold him in high regard. Most traditions of the Old Testament Jesus would have told people to do something else.
On the topic of the op Jesus would have been a straight socialist. He believed in giving to the state what belonged to the state but also believed that the rich had an obligation of helping the poor.
We don't really know what Jesus thought about basically anything, because the only sources we have for his opinions are a bunch of texts written long after his supposed death, and they all contradict each other in various ways.
Just shut the fuck up already
Most people appear to miss that I was quoting the meme from the post. But sure.
Are you sure you're not thinking of the dirt of the tabernacle ritual?
I was misremembering, it was Poison. Unless there are multiple entries about this. LINK HERE
That's the dirt of the tabernacle one. It's an abortion ritual/recipe if your wife cheated on you.
WAIT! There are multiple verses about it! Exodus 21 has another, but its also old testament.
I guess the consensus is that Jesus didn't specifically speak against it.
I wonder if people realize that lots of things are intrusive and annoying
Have you welcomed Linux into your life as our Lord and Savior?
Mostly religion, though.
"Faker than blue eyed crackers nailed to a crucifix" - immortal technique (lol)
Jesus today: "For god sake, I kept saying to these 4 retards that men have to find the way by themselves and they basically wrote an How To you guys blindly followed for the last 2000 years ?!"
Come on. Virgin pregnancy, yeah right. Her husband not even knowing and the 3 wise men coming to see the child, sure thing.
Jesus wouldn't be alive for long if born today. He would have been thrown into Lake Michigan shortly after birth.
☕️ Jesus wasn’t a real person but an amalgamation of several different holy men and ideologies cobbled together hundreds of years after the fact to help specific groups of men wield more power and advance their agendas, change my mind
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/roman-history-and-jesus-existence-extra-biblical-proof-that-jesus-was-real/
https://www.history.com/articles/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence
https://youtu.be/8NYnhoJ-RMM
So part of the reason to believe he was a real figure was that, crucifixion was a humiliating punishment at the time. The fact that people were worshipping a guy who was crucified was ridiculous at the time. Lots of people were talking about a guy Jesus who got crucified, and they weren't friends of Christians.
You had early Christians talking about Jesus, and early enemies of Christianity talking about some charlatan who got humiliated by being crucified and then for some reason people still worshipped him, which would have been ridiculous.
The guy probably existed as a historical figure.
Is this a concern anywhere other than USA? WTF is wrong with those guys? "This guy from 2000 years ago would have been on my team".... WTF. He would have lived in the middle east and preached to all these people that they're all wrong. Might as well debate what football team he would have supported as well.
Jesus was a pro-banking, pro-capitalism, pro-rich, pro-slavery asshole based on the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
I'm not religious anymore and I'm not making a defense of Christianity, but before all of this the Bible explains that when Jesus comes and starts teaching, he's going to teach in parable (metaphor) so most of his teaching needs to be seen through that lens. So this should more properly be seen as a teaching saying to take your gifts (compassion, love, wisdom) out into the world and use them to become a better person. There's also some deeper meaning here that usury was frowned upon at the time so this would have been a very provocative thing to use as a metaphor.
Of course the main way that people corrupt Christianity is by taking things literally, and if you do that you can take any meaning away you want. That's how you get a branch that literally only exists to promote the institution of chattel slavery (Southern Baptist) along with pacifist, community-centric, anti-slavery Quakers. And how people are OK with driving BMWs to church and engaging in the crusades and thinking Trump was sent by God. It's all in there if you want it to be, which makes it easy to exploit.
Oh also if you haven't read The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, I highly recommend those
I was also trained in the use of exegetical BS to contradict the clear meaning of the text.
The Bible is a Roman imperial project, commissioned by an emperor.
Ah yes, the Romans commissioned "The Bible" as if there aren't 450+ versions in print in English alone with wide variations of included, excluded and revised content. I'm so glad that you personally were able to find the clear meaning of the text in a book that has entirely passed through 3-5 languages and been through a 2000 year whirlwind of competing theological and political forces. Shut it down everyone, this guy solved it
A hit dog howls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/analogy
And he was racist.
Oh, are we still acting like everything bad that's ever happened is the U.S.' fault?
I need to really get on top of tagging people. I'm going to have so many mean things to say come midterms.
You know what nobody cares about?
The rest of the world.
USA!