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This is one of those shadow boxing christians threads. Yeah, maybe you all look cool in the mirror but they’re going to wake up tomorrow with no idea you insulted their entire belief structure.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved it when my dad asked, “when did you stop being christian” because I vehemently am against his every belief. I loved turning the tables on him and asking the same with regards to everything trump has said and done. End of the day though he’ll just go back to his hidey hole, and myself too.
If you have religious friend you should try it. Call them on trumps shit and the when they invoke god, which they always do, ask, “who’s god” because Jesus doesn’t want this shit.
So they rationalize it that god is money
I would have gone sideways and said “Willem Dafoe”!
Jesus literally REFUSED to be dragged into ideological politics of his time (John 6:10-15)
He even defied those who tried to put him to test and force a political statement come from him against the current political leader, the Caesar, by trying to have him a forced position on taxes (Mark 12:13-17)
All this makes sense, as he himself said about himself and his followers that they are not part of this world (John 15:19)
He LITERALLY made his teaching revolve around god’s kingdom, not any human ideology (Matthew 6:9, 10)
I mean FUCK, even Satan himself offered him to be the ruler of the whole FUCKING world and he rejected it flat out (John 14:30)
He did care about people, and alleviated the physical suffering of many, but he made clear his and his followers priority should be preaching and teaching God’s word (Mark 1:32-38)
And why wouldn’t he, after all, part of his teachings are that all the world governments and ideologies are to be destroyed. (Revelation 16:14) Every. Single. one.
So anyone using his teachings to attack whoever and linking him to your ideology, calling him a representative of brand of collectivism, should get down from any high horse they think they are, it’s not doing you or them any favor and they clearly don’t know what they are talking about.
Case in point, people talking about a hell existing in the bible when there is none. That’s basically all it takes
This has got to be one of the most disturbing posts I’ve seen in a while. You’re actively warping the Bible and trying to bend it to fit your narrative. You constantly leap to conclusions that are at best farfetched, or downright blasphemous…
John 6:15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
This comes in the followup of the feeding of the 5000. The crowd, amazed at his power, looks to Jesus as a national savior - someone who will overthrow the Romans and restore Israel’s power. Jesus shows very clearly that he does NOT want to seize worldly power - his mission is to change people’s minds and hearts. Literally, his is an ideological mission, the opposite of what you wrote.
Mark 12:17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him.
Jesus doesn’t say politics don’t matter. He masterfully draws a line between what are worldly concerns, and divine allegiance. Paying taxes doesn’t threaten your relationship with God, but confusing political loyalty with spiritual devotion can.
It pains me how the core of Jesus’ message here is being missed: in Genesis, we are told that humans bear the image of God. What Jesus is saying is that the coin has Caesar’s image - give it to him. But WE bear God’s image - so we should give ourselves to God. The Pharisees and the Herodians understood this, and were amazed, and yet somehow the best we can do nowadays is to completely miss the beauty and the meaning in his message, and instead mistake it for “Jesus doesn’t do politics”.
John 15:19 “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
Again, you disregard the context and you’re try to make it sound like Jesus is arguing that him and his followers are not involved in the affairs of this world, when the very opposite is true. Jesus is speaking to his followers just before his arrest, so he is preparing them to face the persecution and hardships that are to come. They are very much a part of this world, and they want to change it - because of that, they will suffer greatly. What Jesus is telling them is to not compromise their values for the sake of fitting in; to be faithful even when they are criticized or mocked; that they are not without a tribe, but instead they are part of a very different one.
Matthew 6:9, 10 “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”
Again you keep pushing your narrative that Jesus is talking about something other than human ideology, when your very quote says the opposite: “[Father’s] will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. What this prayer says is we want Jesus’ teaching to shape the world, and our lives, right now. This isn’t some abstract wishful thinking, this is a pledge that we will work so that God’s will be done through us, now, everyday, in the real world.
Please, spend some time reflecting on the context of the words and why they were spoken. If you pull them out of context and mishmash them in the way you want, then sure, they may have come from the Bible, but they’re are no longer God’s word - they are your own, so don’t misattribute them to Jesus.
Don’t worry, blasphemy is just a way to control workers or peasants.
Fuck jesus! Jesus is an asshole! God is evil!
See, nothing happened…
Use of undeclared identifier 'jesus'. Unused variable 'Jesus'. Undefined type 'evil'.That didn’t compile.
Also, “Jesus” and “jesus” are different.
Fuck jesus! Jesus is an asshole! God is evil!
I have no issues with that, that’s a legit opinion. Also 100% agree on blasphemy being a tool of social control, there’s no shortage of historical examples to prove it.
My issue is with misrepresenting something to try to prove a point, like the guy I replied to was trying to do.
Fair enough!
Still, don’t forget it’s just an old book, interpreted by people over the ages too…
Indeed it is, but it’s a fascinating book regardless. Unfortunately it has been used to justify horrendous things almost from the moment it was written, and as shown above, continues to be used to try to just anything up to this day.
There are way more interesting books out there …
Man, I wish you’d offer bible courses
I suspect maybe you wouldn’t want that! I’ve spent some time learning about religion and the Bible, and yet I’m an atheist, I don’t believe God exists.
While I don’t see the Bible as the literal word of a god, I do see it as a remarkable book that contains many important teachings, and it has definitely shaped a big part of my morality. I just wish it didn’t focus so much on blind obedience and faith in some higher power, so that we could look more closely at the ways in which it shows us how treating each other with love and respect would create a wonderful place for all of us, without having to wait for some future heavenly reward. I can see how that would hurt its success as a religion though…
In any case, I’m sure there’s people out there that share the mindset, and that are much more eloquent than me. Personally, my red flags are preaching about obedience, trust and faith. For me these are NOT the core of the gospel, quite the contrary. Jesus constantly refers to the “kingdom of god”, but to me this isn’t some place where god is the ruler: it’s a new reality, here on earth, where the poor, the meek, the broken, the sinners, the “lepers”, the outsiders, are all worthy of love and respect. It’s about accepting suffering and sacrifice, not in the hopes of getting out of here and being rewarded elsewhere, but because we all need to be willing to share our part of the burden and the work of making the world a better place.
Urgh, that sounds a lot like preaching, so I’ll shut up. You do you. But if we’re kind to each other, we’ll all have a better day.
Yeah you just made me double down on my statement. An atheist who actually finds value in the moral code in the bible while acknowledging its faults and negative influences without just yelling Bible Bad Religion Bad Fuck God. I’ve always wanted to read the bible with better context and explanations like in a literature class, but I never found this balance.
He was absolutely not adverse to fucking some shit up when he wasn’t happy either. Not big into Forex.
Why would jesus even be swayed by satan if he is fucking god?
Christians are so weird
I presume the question was mostly rhetorical, but since it was asked, allow me to indulge myself:
The point of the story was precisely that, to affirm Jesus identity as god. This story starts out when Jesus is baptized, and a voice from the heavens says “this is my son”, and Satan then challenges his identity: “If you are the Son of God…”.
There’s more nuance to how the Bible sets this up, for example there’s the throwback to Adam, who was also tempted (the whole apple thing), but failed. Here Jesus is under much more strenuous circumstances yet resists, implying that he is not just a common mortal. However, this isn’t asserted through magnificent displays of power, which would be the simplest way, but by being steadfast and humble. This aims to establish the kind of philosophy that Jesus will preach, which isn’t about magic or ego or political control - just by resisting Satan, he defeats him.
Arguably, this also aims to enshrine values like obedience, humility and trust in a higher power, and thereby establish the basis of the power that the Church wants to exert over humanity.
The Bible is a remarkable work. Granted, the writing and analogies are a bit dated so it doesn’t read as well as a modern book, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
This is a lot of mental gymnastics going on here. Reading John 6:10 and Mark 12:13 as “Jesus wouldn’t agree with Marx because Marx is of this world and Jesus is only about heaven” is a hell of a leap.
Your analysis would come off slightly less disingenuous if not for the fact that you’re a very active poster in the conservative groups and not once have you raised any objection to the religious right being neck-deep in the running of the country. Seems like “don’t co-opt Jesus to push your politics” only applies to leftists in your world.
You make Jesus sound like a socialist
The Bible describes them as a good person. What you imagine as socialist is probably just bring a good person.
Well, socialism is pretty specific about helping the sick and the poor, so was Jesus. Jesus hated taxes, but if they actually went towards helping others, I’m sure he’d be all for that too.
How did he hate taxes? He hated corrupt taxes.
When have taxes not been corrupt?
You cite Revelation, but I’m fairly sure Hell is described in Revelation. Otherwise decent addition
I disagree strongly with it being a decent addition, and in fact argue (in a post here) that it’s a horrible and very disingenuous misrepresentation of what the bible actually says.
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If Jesus came to the US he would smack the shit out of all of us
Was Jesus a political man?
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According to the internets, “Liberation Theology” is a Christian movement that started in Latin America in the 1960s, that preaches against oppression. They sound like the opposite of right-wing “Christians”.
Yeah the right wing Christians were training death squads to murder Liberation theology priests in Latin America.
As far as I’ve understood, that is precisely one of the reasons the current pope has such a strong base in Latin America and so many in that part of the world wanted to see him as pope.
The Jesuit University System (SUJ) actively promotes liberation theology through curriculum in Mexico, and I would expect the Jesuits have similar structures and programs in other countries and parts of the world.
Interesting, I never knew that, even though my parents sent me to a Jesuit high school in Portland OR. All boys sadly, but academically fantastic.
Also worth noting that the US is not and never has been a “Christian nation.” Not only did the Founding Fathers specifically separate church and state for that reason, but they also didn’t declare a national religion and enshrined religious freedom as well for that same reason. Plus, half of them were agnostic or atheists. Anybody who says we’re a “Christian nation” is just using religion as an excuse for bigotry.
If God truly exists, he more so loves the atheist who questions the world around him than the Christian who blindly follows.
-Thomas Jefferson
I mean, the US has obviously become a “Christian” nation, it matters not if it was founded as one or not. Simply, like, look around.
Yeah, it’s the fruit of almost a century of anti-communist propaganda.
To be fair over many many centuries, Christians aren’t exactly very following of the ways of Christ.
Yeah, it’s what led me to leave the faith. What I read in the NT wasn’t what was practiced in the church.
Does anyone have that slide deck? Asking for a friend
Oh man! I want that presentation for an Easter dinner I have coming up!
Original (requires X account) · Nitter (doesn’t)
Embed:
“Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?” (James 2:6)
“Do not rob the poor” (Proverbs 22:22)
“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7)
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:9)Finally, I used the “Who said it: Jesus or Marx?” image specifically to introduce Luke 6:20-26
This is awesome!
Glad you like it! I edited it to add a transcript.
I don’t know where that candid jesus image is from but it has so much Dicaprio Raising Drink energy that if it hasn’t been memed already then it should
Ready for that
It’s a pretty funny scene, too.
“There’s not enough wine!”
“What’s in there?”
“That’s water, I put it there myself.”
“Look again.”
[Checks. It’s wine.]
[Jesus delivers face above]
Pretty sure that is Willem Dafoe from The Last Temptation of Christ.
And yeah, it has Buddy Christ energy.
I know there were a lot of things about Last Temptation that were very difficult for a lot of people to cope with, but to me the most challenging thing is Willem Defoe as Jesus H. Christ.
All those NY accents among the disciples lol
He is risen.
wink
Precisely from the scene where the disciples realize that the water has been changed to wine at the wedding. John looks over at Jesus and sees that image. Jesus also gives a wink iirc. As one devoted to our Savior I feel like that shot absolutely captures what Jesus was like when He walked our earth.
He’s something of a messiah, himself.
Yeah but he also said to love each other, and people quickly realized that he was wrong.
Shut up!
Fuck arbitrary value. There, I said it.
Uh, question. How does one put their penis in this? A-asking for a friend…
Just gonna say for those uninitiated, if memory serves right this little comic is from Chick Tracts. Which are fucking wild basically if you can think of an Evangelical bigotry or conspiracy theory they are all fucken in. As for how a bunch of them became memes my money is on The Bible Reloaded, though I think they were already memes before then.
Check out a Tijuana Bible if you want to see some wild shit
That one about roleplaying games alone was destined to be a meme.
Yeah I’m pretty sure that one in particular dates back to either somethingawful or YTMD.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…
Relevant quote from St. Basil:
"Who is the covetous man? One for whom plenty is not enough. Who is the defrauder? One who takes away what belongs to everyone. And are not you covetous, are you not a defrauder, when you keep for private use what you were given for distribution? When some one strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not—should not he be given the same name?
The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All you might help and do not—to all these you are doing wrong"
"Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’
Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
I have always loved how simply Jesus spells it out.
As a kid, I always felt it was so implausible that the Jews would kill Jesus. Yes he claims to be God, which is a no-no, but how can a message of peace and love be so divisive? As an adult, I’ve come to realize that it’s divisive to people who are angry and filled with hate, to people who hate peace and love. The Pharisees of 30CE are the exact same as most Christians today. If you walked in to some Trump country Baptist church today and flipped over the collection plates and told everyone there they were going to hell because the want to deport immigrants instead of help them, you’d be shot for sure.
I am sending this to all my neo-lib and conservative leaning friends who go to church every day while people are being imprisoned and having their lives and rights taken away.
Where I’ve come in regards to the Pharisees is that they were willing to make violent concessions for the sake of a tenuous status quo. Passover was often a flash point of rebellious activity in Jerusalem (which is why Pilate is there in the first place; to keep Jewish people suppressed and to put down any riots or revolutions from would-be messiahs). Violence was not infrequent at the time. And every time there was violence, Rome would take away more freedoms from Jews.
So the Pharisees are put in a position to see Jesus as a potential catalyst for Roman violence. So they figure that if they help hand over another would-be messiah then they can have a quiet Passover. But this mentality winds up being a sort of Leopards-eating-faces situation because Rome destroys Jerusalem a few years later anyway (due to a would-be messiah—just one that the Pharisees thought might be the real deal this time).
I don’t think it was the message of love that did it, more the implied message of “Jews are no longer the only people with the right to heaven and god - everyone is”
The Jewish people who saw the value/truth of this message became Christians. The ones who didn’t like the idea of not being The Chosen Folk anymore were the ones who called him a heretic
you’d be shot for sure
Do you think it’s a coincidence that MLK was only shot once he started speaking out against the rich and unifying the lower class (of all races)? I’m not saying there was a conspiracy (though I wouldn’t rule it out) or that MLK was the second coming or a prophet, but it’s pretty clear he started making the ruling class nervous once he started talking about class war.
It’s always a good time to remind people that MLK’s family proved in civil court that the government killed MLK (either through intent or negligence) to enough of a degree that the judge was convinced and awarded them restitution on the charges. And the only reason that the case didn’t go to a criminal court was because every judge who read the case refused it.
Hell we have a copy of the letter the FBI sent to Dr. King instructing him to kill himself and save them the trouble.
Whoa, TIL about this.
Yeah, but you knew, deep down.
There absolutely was a conspiracy! Never forget the FBI murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Never forget what the FBI did to the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.
Everyone needs to know about COINTELPRO
Mario Luigi King
That’s not Jesus, that’s Willem Dafriend.
You know, I’m something of a saint myself
Even better
Jesus is looking friendly, but also like he could totally go crazy and flip a money lenders table. It’s hard to tell if he is dafriend or dafoe.
Weird how kings re-writing the Bible over and over again for thousands of years got rid of all the good stuff and left all the horrible shit…
The good tidbits are there. The bad was always there. Even early christians thought so.
Before the religion organized into a hierarchical orthodoxy, communities distant from the emerging establishment (not particularly attached to jewish traditions) in places like Alexandria were left to their own devices to figure out christianity: they formed loose households & study circles to interpret texts in the context of their own traditions & culture, and they drew their own conclusions.
- Reading the older jewish scriptures & newer texts quite literally, they concluded there were 2 deities. 1 of whom, the unhidden Demiurge (Yahweh of the old testament) who had created the material universe, was a vengeful and ignorant deity inimical to human welfare. Consequently, material existence is flawed & evil, and they must escape that realm by seeking personal knowledge of the other, hidden deity: the transcendent spiritual entity, the Silent Depth (or the Monad), who briefly inhabited Jesus with that revelatory wisdom or logos found in the newer texts. In other words, there’s cool god (Jesus’s god) & evil genocidal god (Yahweh).
- Moreover, they concluded that church authority isn’t needed: Jesus had awoken a spark of divinity in matter that would find its way back to its transcendent source with little need of episcopal authority or sacramental practice.
This interpretation became known as gnosticism.
Sticklers with the evil trash god of older jewish scriptures didn’t like this idea, became early church authorities, denounced it as heresy, & purged all the texts they could of it. Nonetheless, early christians thought there was bad in those texts & tried to handle it.
You can read Codex Sinaiticus online, it’s from around 400 AD.
Theologists pretty much agree that the Bible remains quite unchanged since it was first compiled (centuries after supposed New Testament events). Of course, the religions that use it have since become quite selective in what parts they read and preach.
I mean, it still has the good stuff. Churches just focus on the parts that blame the working class.
I started going to a progressive church (mainly bc my dad made me lol) and it’s SO INTERESTING learning about how the Bible is literally just the most basic “be nice to each other, you dumbasses” and people will take it and start beating each other over it
A few weeks ago they had the head of the local mosque to talk about Palestine along with an Activist that visited there. It was mainly educational where you could ask questions and stuff.
I personally am not particularly religious in the idea that God personally effects everything but it’s damn neat once you stop nitpicking every little thing like other churches and look with an open mind.
For example, the first depiction of a baptism in the new testament was someone who didn’t fit in the binary man/woman social standards. He (iirc) had his balls removed for religious reasons. The proper ‘old testament’ way of getting baptized wouldn’t let him in, so they went to a river instead. Most churches tell it like this, but you can interpret it as the new testament is open to people outside the social rules (specifically gender) and is saying to accept all.
Probably not 100% accurate as I’m telling a retelling that I forgot part of (thanks, ADHD) but that’s just an example.
I really don’t feel too strongly about religion though. I don’t want to sound like a full Bible supporter in every way, ethics and just being nice are way more important than what an old book says to me.
I was essentially shoved through a normal church and learned to shut it all out as… trans …, but it’s been super cool to learn about how its not what conservatives say it is.I love that story about the first New Testament baptismal. It’s so weird to think that that person was (after a fashion) Nonbin. It conjures this weird scene to me where Jesus is in some kind of board room and the Apostles are bringing him polling data.
“Jesus, I know we have a mission statement. I know, I know. “Love thy neighbour” “Love everyone” “We’re all Gods children”. No, totally love that, very cutting edge. No, we’re so onboard. I just think we really need to consider not loving some specific groups. Like, Nonbins, or Trans people, or the Gays. First century Judea is just not very progressive and some of these demographics are…”
Jesus flips whole fucking boardroom table
"What THE FUCK, Paul!? Are we going to have this fight every Dad-damned week? Listen to me. Listen. It’s core to the brand. Do you understand me? The whole brand! We don’t love SOME people. We don’t love JUST the Hebrews, or JUST the Romans. EVERYBODY. If it’s not EVERYBODY, then what the fuck are we doing here? Seriously.
It’s the whole goddamn brand. I promised a “New Way”. You want to take my vision - my divine purpose- and make it just like every other religion on the block. Totally dilute our entire brand image. Why would anyone choose the son of a carpenter, if I was going to be picky? Ok? That’s the core question here. We are doing this for EVERYBODY.
No. No, of course I forgive you. I always forgive you. Just… get the fuck out and lay off the Queers."
A lot of the last half of the New Testament (the books that are “A letter to [the churtch at] <place>” ) spends a decent amount of time on “don’t trust someone just because they say they are holy” and “please stop trying to police other people’s faith and behavior”.
Nothing will make you more frustrated with self-righteous Christians, especially Republican/right-wing christians, than reading the Bible.
Here’s the thing though. A lot of the first two books of the New Testament is about how awful the Jews are and how Jesus was a cult leader who got his followers to abandon their families for him and even got his followers to steal for him. Reading Matthew and Mark in the light of today’s politics, Jesus looks like a right-wing grifter. Seems like they’re reading it right to me.
Would a right-wing grifter tell you to give to the poor?
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
(Matthew 19:21)
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
(Luke 12:33)
A right-wing grifter would twist these words to make it so he is the poor, but the OG doesn’t have to twist anything. If he wanted money, he could have asked for money. Instead he explicitly tells everyone to do good deeds, over and over. And it confused a great deal of people for thousands of years.
He had them steal a donkey for him, dude. And accepted the full cult leader treatment. Matthew 21:1-11
But we could play verse quoting all day. I encourage you to go back and actually read the first two books from start to end, as I did recently. They’re super fucked-up.
“Watch me backflip onto this this market table to make space for the MAGA hats” - Jesus ‘The Donald’ Christ.
why is jesus white in this pic. are we whitewashing ancient history? pick a struggle my dude.
Because Willem Dafoe is white.
Check out “Little Buddha” sometime. Keanu Reeves in blackface staring as Siddhartha Gautama " Buddha "
