Well, it’s a simple question. Where do your loyalties lie? Like one of your guitar guys (Johnny Mellencamp) said back in the 1980’s…‘You’ve gotta stand for something or you’ll fall for anything’.
Jesus: Did I fucking stutter?
Jesus: Jesus, did I fucking stutter?
Jesus:Jesus fucking Christ. Did I stutter?!? -Jesus, probably
I’m curious what the replies to him were.
The scribe quoted “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and then, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“You have answered correctly” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
The scribe then asked “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied “It is whoever you are hoping I don’t say it is.”
with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind
That’s the problem right there.
While I love this humanitarian part about loving everyone, the important part is that who is being excluded here.
Because obviously maga wants to exclude foreigners, everyone else here wants to either exclude maga folks or religious folks.
So the question to you, my friend, are you really ready to start loving maga folks or are you trying to set up a standard that even you are unable to reach?
Or maybe you are even worse – a real scum of the earth trying to expose contradictions in others, and using them as a proof for your moral superiority
Who is excluding maga? I want everyone (including maga) to have Healthcare, education, workers rights, etc. I wouldn’t go as far as “loving” but sure as he’ll not excluding them.
If you throw the social contract out the window, I’m no longer under any obligation to apply it to you.
Thats an interesting not-quite-straw-man .
Pointing out that someone isn’t following the teachings they are claiming to follow doesn’t require the accuser to be an adherent to those teachings.
I could call a self professed vegan a hypocrite if I saw them eating a steak, regardless of whether or not, I myself were a vegan.
Tu quoque fallacy.
“You said drinking is bad for people but I saw you drinking the other day”
Oh no no no, you can call everyone a hypocrite today. This doesn’t change things a bit. This leads to a spike in moral superiority in your bubble and that’s it.
If you’re struggling with the distinction between pointing out hypocrisy and a claim of moral superiority then you’re going to spend a lot of time being confused and/or upset.
That’s a part of his identity
Impotent anger at things beyond his ken
Has anyone told you that you’re stupid recently?
Just in case they haven’t, I’m going to take this opportunity, right now, to tell you that you’re stupid
That’s an achievement, given that it comes from someone in s/Atheist
It’s quite literally impossible to stress how much you don’t matter
If someone told me tomorrow that you killed yourself because of this interaction, I’d be struggling to recall it, let alone care
Have a short and lonely life, loser
How about you do something right now to find out how St Peter would judge you?
I think it’d make the world a better place
I don’t believe in the bible or jesus or any other fairy tales
Sir, this is Wendy’s
c/therightcantmeme
Even the old testament has plenty in this. For example:
Exodus 22:21. “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt."
My point being they don’t even know what the book they claim to praise so much even says.
That doesn’t count because I’ve never been to Egypt
The coptic Christians also skating by on a technicality
To the rest of us, this tells us that xenophobia and animosity against immigrants have been social problems for a very long time.
Tribalism seems to be an inate part of human character.
Not to say it’s a good thing, just that we all have a tendency at a level which is not rational to find comfort and safety in the similar and familiar whilst distrusting and be uncomfortable with the dissimilar and unfamiliar.
You see this shit at all levels of human groups, not just “nations” and “races” but even “small town hostility towards strangers”.
IMHO, NOT being a Racist (genuinelly so, not the performative shit of some people who think they’re not Racist because, say, they support specific races which are a minority where they live because in their social circle that’s what you’re supposed to do and yet at the same time implicitly distrust people from other specific races for which there is no social approval - for example, “supporting Jews” whilst thinking that “Muslims are violent”) is actually an active thing were one has to spot one’s own internal tendency to make prejudicial assumptions based on people’s appearance (both positive and negate assumptions) and stop oneself from making such assumption or at least from acting on them.
They are more concerned if they will become pariahs in their own group. They aren’t really asking what the right thing to do is, they are asking “will this get me in trouble?”
Beni: It is better to be at the right hand of the Devil than in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune.
What’s wrong, it’s exactly what the book says:
11 And Jesus said unto them, “Verily, blessed are the rich, for they have earned their righteousness, but away with the poor, for they are a burden upon the realm. And if a stranger cometh from across the border, seek not to break bread with him, but demand first his papers and cast him out into the wilderness. For I say unto thee: Worship Mammon above all else, for Compassion yieldeth no return on investment.”
we gotta get chatGPT to re-write the entire bible like this. Call it the King Trump edition.
There are, in fact, online efforts to revise the bible to reflect post-Fifield conservative values. I’ll leave it to the reader to find them by websearch.
The lolcat bible is now defunct, but the Wikipedia page has a link to the wayback machine copy.
Dont. They’ll believe it.
Let’s add some passages about mutilating your own genitails then.
Local man learns of circumcision
Babies aren’t very good at that
Uh. So. That’s already in there
I can’t wait for supply side Jesus to stop being relevant, but I’m fearful that I’m going to be left waiting anyway.
And they wonder why so many of their kids have fucked right off and joined the opposition. It’d be funny if it wasn’t such a mess.
I don’t know if I’ve told this joke in this community before, but here goes. A man is driving through Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He comes across a fallen tree and stops. Before he knows what’s happening, men in balaclavas and with automatic rifles are shouting at him and banging on the window of his car.
“Are you a catholic or a protestant?” One of the masked men asks. The man in the car, knows the wrong answer could get him shot.
“I’m an atheist.” Says the man.
“Are you catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?” Shouts the masked man.
I strongly suspect a lot of American Christians aren’t particularly religious. Instead they’re using religious affiliation, and Christian symbols, as signifiers of an ethnic/sectarian identity. That’s why the man in the post above, doesn’t care about non-white Christians, doesn’t care about what the bible says he should do, and likely doesn’t care that his leaders are often immoral people who regularly commit blasphemy and heresy. For him being a Christian means belonging to a white protestant American ethnic group, that God is on their side, and not much more.
It’s fundamentally not that different to Ratko Mladić, who had previously been a longstanding and reputable member of the communist party, and who people said wasn’t religious, claiming he was defending Christianity against Islam when he became the Butcher of Bosnia. Or Putin, the former KGB operative, claiming he’s defending Christian values against Western decadence in Ukraine.
That reminds me of my favorite Emo Philips joke:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
“Are you catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?” Shouts the masked man.
xD
Poly-religious groups take a page from the LGBT+ community:
Someone is what they identify themselves as. In the last decade or so, with the internet came an enormous lexicon of terms describing different kinds of sexual and gender identities. Sometimes we have to remind someone that the list it to help figure out what they, themselves identify as, not to correct other people based on looks, behavior or disposition.
In fact, Russel T. Davies created a series, Bob & Rose about a gay man who falls in love with a woman, and how they, neighbors, relatives and onlookers process the dissonance between identity and behavior. It’s a thing that happens.
When it comes to Christians, they’re very fond of accusing each other from different denominations of not-really being Christian. Sometimes they’ll suggest a certain behavior or accompanying identity (such as gay or liberal) excludes them from being a real Christian, but I remember in the 1970s and 1980s that a difference in denomination was more than enough for accusations of being deceived by Great Satan (All hail!)
So, non-Christian and poly-religious groups can assume that anyone who identifies as Christian counts. No matter what their actual doctrine is. It also keeps us in the habit of not presuming they adhere to the passages and creeds we expect or have seen elsewhere.
Church is by far the biggest third place. It’s Christian Club where people hang out with other community members a couple hours a week, and in a healthy Church it can result in very powerful, positive, and effective community building. You can have millionaires and grocery bangers treating each other as equals prepping for a BBQ or singing in the choir.
The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don’t know what replaces the Church for the non-religious. I’ve been to gatherings of like-minded people that weren’t Church, but the regularity and diversity of people in a healthy Church (regardless of the specific faith) is something I haven’t seen elsewhere, and I do think it’s something that can be good for society.
I knew the CEO of a pretty big corporation who was in Sunday School classes with ex-cons and burger flippers, and that experience made them all see each other in a different light that was good for everyone. It taught the poor and the powerful that they were all just people. It made the powerless more willing to stand up to their “betters” and the powerful more empathetic to people who weren’t as fortunate.
Yeah as an outsider, the big welcoming social club aspect of religion is a big appeal.
I wonder if part of the reason it works when regular social clubs often don’t is because of the “obligatory attendance” part. A lot of people have some great memories of school for instance, which is another place where all the attendees are obligated to attend even though the actual events that are hosted there are often boring as fuck. Maybe there’s some kind of camaderie due to that, “We’re all stuck here together with him/her” *gestures up at the teacher/pastor*
While at an actual social club, the socializing itself is the main reason for being there, and that means socializing can easily become a chore, rather than an escape.
The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don’t know what replaces the Church for the non-religious.
What can act as community hubs are very dependant of the community, but really don’t need to relate to religion. Especially if they serve as hub for people from different religious backgrounds
Aside from the places linked to religious activity, from any religion, the places that come to my mind, partly from my own experience, are:
- Local dedicated community centers, where they exist.
- Associations & clubs (the sport of school kind, not gentlemen’s clubs)
- Sometimes shops.
- The best community hub I used to go to was actually a “booksshop” dealing in mangas, anime, video games, and tabletop games. They often organised nocturnal tabletop gaming events. The shop served as a social hub even outside of these events, and the community was a safe place for some us not “misfits” (special interest nerds, LGBTQIA+ teens and adults, etc).
In other words, any community driven or community focused place or organisation can serve as a meaningful cosmopolitan social hub. People will gravitate naturally toward the hub·s centered around their interests. (Be it a religion, a sport, a social cause, a subculture, etc.)
But the thing is they dont.
As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven’t replaced that by attending other community groups. And the “interest” part also fundamentally changes the nature of it. People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation. Parents don’t drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.
Sometimes they use it as a “I’m a good person” billboard.
Used to know someone like that. Cut them off for other reasons (basically the reasons they were on a “I’m better now” campaign), but he even bragged to me (not religious at all and don’t pretend to be) about going to church multiple times a week. The whole time he was making his situation worse because he’s an asshole and just going to a building with other people and doing cult stuff doesn’t stop you from being an asshole (hell, some seem to think it gives them permission and that righting their wrongs can be done by talking to a priest that has nothing to do with the people who were actually wronged).
Yup. Some people go to church because they know something’s wrong with them, but there’s a lot of churches out there whose approach to people like that is to validate them and tell them they’re de facto in the right because they’re Saved. Makes them ten times worse.
For NI It comes down to politics culture and religion. The IRA wasn’t blowing up Belfast and London because they rejected the pope and the shankil butchers weren’t asking if the men they picked up if they would consider going to a bible study. People found an excuse to carry out there tasks and used religion as an excuse to justify it.
It’s also because of religion being an easy stand in for an existing class system because religion had been used as a signifier of class by the oppressors.
That’s not to say protestants and Catholics haven’t massacred each other solely over religion, but that’s more the 30 years war
American Christians are insane. All the churches where I live (Sweden) are pro immigration and were a huge help during the 2015 immigration crisis. They point to the parable of the good Samaritan where Jesus meets a Samaritan who is not just a foreigner, he believes in a blasphemous religion to boot. But nevertheless Jesus helps him. If Jesus helped a foreigner of a rivalling religion then why shouldn’t the modern day church help muslim syrians.
Christians in the US used to be this way. All the way through the first half of the 20th century the majority of protestants in the US were Socialist or Socialist adjacent as you describe. It was only through the state co-opting their movement and the radicals within it merging with the “America First” crowd around WWII that we got the current Christan nationalist movement…
then why shouldn’t the modern day church help muslim syrians.
A lot of Syrian immigrants in the US are christian…
The average american isn’t aware that arabic-speaking christian cultures have existed for well over a thousand years…
The average American knows nothing about the middle east beyond Israel and what little they know of the bible. Trying to explain to them that every country in the region has an ancient and generally at least somewhat protected Christian population is gonna be really difficult.
Churches aren’t generally like that here in Australia. Although that is a generalisation.
I could really get behind a community group that practiced Jesus more socialist teachings, even though I’m not into the spiritual aspects.
Churches here do support local communities but it’s usually very targeted: we might give you some frozen meals provided that you play along with the spritual & religious stuff.
You might be crossing some stories there’s the Samaritan woman at the well, which he has a conversation with a Samaritan woman and asks for help getting water from Jacob’s Well. There’s also the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story jesus created about a who stops and helps the person on the road beaten by robbers after 2 jewish people, a priest and a levite, pass the beaten man by, citing ritual cleanliness or thinking the guy is bait for more robbers.
Still your point stands about both being about treating everyone kindly regardless of nation or religion.
A woman talking to a woman about a well? The Bible passes the bechdel test?
Ahahahaha no.
Jesus talks to the woman.
Admittedly, it’s not perfectly clear in the comment you answered to.
Thank you. I certainly mixed it up a bit. It was around 9-10 years ago that I read the bible for fun.
On a scale of your choosing, what level of fun did your project achieve?
7 out of 10 dugong skins.
I initially started reading it because it’s the most read book in the world and I found it fascinating how old it is. Take into account I was 16-17 and atheist since birth so no religious baggage at all. Some parts were very boring like the one-two pages where it lists the name of every single worker who rebuilt the temple, or the genealogy of Jesus from Adam to himself. But most stories in there were actually quite good and a few made me emotional. I think the book is completely fine if you’re simply interested in reading some 2000-3000 year old stories. At the same time you learn to understand western society more as a lot of western morality, even secular morality, is based on things in the bible. A worthwhile read. Can’t say the moral of every story is any good though. Like I still think it’s insane how god just told the Israelites that they can genocide the whole promised land of the people already living there. It really reminds you of something else happening today… But if you read the bible as stories and not as morals then it’s totally fine!
A couple years later I tried reading the Quran but I sadly have to put that at 2/10 dugong skins. The chapters are out of order and Mohammeds personal war conquests and ramblings take up far too much of it and the classic old testament stories are all shortened down and changed. Can’t recommend that one too much, but reading another person’s summary of it can be enjoyable. Apparently the Quran is written in beautiful Arabic poetry but that’s all lost in translation.
It puts it even more into context when you realize the old testament was before the Romans had written laws etc - so it also acted as a standard what to do and what not.
A law book, if you will, but without the clear separation from other stuff, and the threat of a magical being being angry at you for not following it probably helped with a tribe of people being in remote places on behalf of being sheepherders etc.
(Clapping emoji)
Banana
In Jesus’s parable it’s the Good Samaritan who helps out the Jewish man who’s been beaten and robbed and left for dead, after two supposedly-pious Jews walk on by. So where they weren’t even willing to help their “neighbor,” the Samaritan helps his “enemy.”
I suppose a nitpicking Evangelical could claim it only means they should have helped the person of their own religion, and that particular Samaritan was “one of the good ones” like the few people who are useful to you and semi-exempt from your general racism. They’d be wrong, of course.
The Catholic Church and several of the mainline Christian denominations (Episcopal, UCC, Presbyterian, plus Unitarian which isn’t 100% Christian) have been helpful to immigrants, including undocumented people, in these trying times. Not to say they don’t have their own problems, in history and the present.
My daughter will learn the most scary fucker out there is a White Christian Conservative.
Let me know if they start accepting refugees from America, lol.
you either give or gtfo. if you choose gtfo, you can resign yourself to never getting in
Nationalist Chrstians
Nat-C’s, if you will
more like white supremcist christians.
YOINK!
Seconded
A few months ago they were talking about “committing the sin of empathy”. Nothing will surprise me after that.
BOO!
What? Just seeing if you were lying. ;-)
That was close , I almost helped an innocent child with the equivalent of some lost pocket change… Thanks Jesus.
Interestingly they never ask for the kid’s immigration status before raping them.
When you’re MAGA, or white Christian nationalist, or part of any exclusive cult, really, then everyone on the outside is an NPC.
Seriously. Dialog among MAGAs and Christian nationalists is dipping into discussions of genocide and evacuations rather than deportation. Liberals are very much on the list.
They’ve driven off the #IVotedForThis cliff and are now plummeting into the abyss.
Presumably they know the immigration status of their own kids.
Well because that is taking something from someone they hate. Its the giving they have a problem with.
So why were those lists in Spanish? Honest question, I don’t get it. Or were they in both English and Spanish and this person has “conveniently” missed the English version?
The list was:
Rodriguez
Martinez
Garcia
Delgado
Hernandez
Sanchez
…
All names of American citizens!
A close friend is a Lopez. She’s Puerto Rican and Taíno. When she joined the fire department, when filling out forms, under race they resorted to Hispanic surname.
Also a decent chunk of the country used to be part of Mexico. I don’t know why someone would be surprised that a Martinez would be an American citizen when Los Angeles is an American city
maria, Diego, margaritia.
100% what he means.
“Written in Spanish” LMAO fucking 🤡
I assumed it was a list of supplies to buy? I’m confused about this whole enterprise it seems.
Because the parents who wrote the lists of birthday presents and school supplies are Spanish speakers and perhaps not really English speakers.
It was certainly a list of names. You can’t function in another country without being able to use basic vocabulary for everyday things.
I’m pretty sure this comment is bait, but 🤷♂️.
These kinds of organizations intentionally withhold the names of the donees from the donors.
These kinds of organizations intentionally withhold the names of the donees from the donors.
Yeah, it is very important, no matter who the donee is, or why they are getting help. Who the fuck wants it known, that they need aid? Especially now society is incredibly cruel to those, struggling with misfortune. That might even prevent people, from seeking help, which then leads to all sorts of issues - and not only for that individual. And one of the other reasons obviously being, it gives the ones, like that moron pictured, possibility of finding them, with evil intent.
Parable of the good WASP.
