“To many Christians their immense privilege seems invisible. They don’t understand how much of our society panders to their unspoken power. The churches on every corner, the holidays and celebrations structured around Christian dates, the pandering of politicians, the ceremonial deism that acts as a placeholder for state-sponsored religion. Even our vernacular is colored by Christianity: “God bless you,” “we’ll pray for you,” “I’m in heaven,” or even “go to hell.” Yet despite this, many Christians, particularly conservative Christians, have a major investment in seeing themselves as part of a persecuted minority. This was reinforced for me in the comments section of a recent post at the journalism commentary site Get Religion. There, I was informed that Michele Bachmann was part of a religious minority, and that due to mainstream media criticism “one has to speculate that perhaps Christians are a small minority in the United States.”
Where does this inaccurate perspective come from? How can a group see itself as a minority when it holds so much power?”
“They say Jesus was a friend of sinners, but he didn’t describe himself that way. His motto wasn’t “eating and drinking with prostitutes and tax collectors.” Those were the labels used by the religious community, by the disapproving onlookers. What’s amazing about Jesus is that when he hung out with sinners, he didn’t act like they were sinners. They weren’t a “project,” a “mission field.” They were his friends. People with names. Defined as beloved children of the Creator, not defined by their sins. Icons of God’s image. His brothers and sisters.”
“They say Jesus was a friend of sinners, but he didn’t describe himself that way. His motto wasn’t “eating and drinking with prostitutes and tax collectors.” Those were the labels used by the religious community, by the disapproving onlookers. What’s amazing about Jesus is that when he hung out with sinners, he didn’t act like they were sinners. They weren’t a “project,” a “mission field.” They were his friends. People with names. Defined as beloved children of the Creator, not defined by their sins. Icons of God’s image. His brothers and sisters.”
My mom said that today in church her pastor said in the sermon that Jesus told us to help the poor, and taking money away from public schools to give to charter schools only widens the gap between the rich and the poor. She then added that Jesus spoke against adultery and lust and would not have approved of bragging about sexually assaulting women. According to my mom, people got up and walked out.
The pastor also started the sermon by noting that she’d heard of another minister who read the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount at the pulpit, to be told by the so-called Christian parishioners after the service that it was offensive and they didn’t agree.
The Sermon on the Mount is straight up the words of Jesus.
I recently read an article that said, hypocritical Christians in America don’t actually worship Jesus. They worship America, and even then, it’s a very specific, self-centered idea of America.
YES. EXACTLY.
My mom’s church talks almost every Sunday about how Christians are called to welcome strangers and foreigners and does tons of stuff to help refugees because HELLO, IT’S RIGHT THERE. IN THE RED TEXT, NO LESS.
I don’t believe everything they believe, but I REALLY like those people.
What a lot of these people are is idolators.
Not in terms of the realness or unrealness of who they worship, but in terms of how they’ve warped their focus away from the reality and turned it towards a fantasy of their own construction.
By definition, an idol is an image with no god behind it.
What they have done is taken the idea of Jesus and created a false image of him, nothing like the reality, to carry around in their back pocket, or to wave around on signs, and pull out and shove in people’s faces to justify all manner of unChristlike behavior.
It is a “worship” that is fundamentally self-centered rather than deity-centered, wherein the deity in question is more of a pocketbook get-out-of-jail-free card than directive to live by, and more of a status symbol than a guiding light.
That people will, without a shred of self-awareness, rest themselves assured that Jesus would want them to tip their waitress with a Jesus pamphlet made to look like folded-up money (to take only one example out of many) is the ultimate dismissal of everything the original stood for.
There is a line in the Bible about Jesus meeting his false worshipers and saying “I do not know you.” It seems like plenty of so-called Christians have beaten him to the punch with how quick they are to say they don’t know him.
A lot of churches and organizations in America that call themselves Christian churches are in fact Christianist cults. They no more represent Christianity than Daesh represents Islam. In addition to the usual nonsense of so-called Christians being pro-war, anti-immigrant, racist, and so forth, there are a lot of sects/movements that are just completely toxic and not Christian at all, even though they use that label. If you are Christian and want to have some fucking nightmares, google “christian dominionist,” or “prosperity gospel.”
Still think this is the most realistic diagram of the difference between the theological Jesus and the Comfortable Reinterpretation of Jesus.
American Christianity is, at this point, like the Cult of the Emperor in ancient Rome, which is simultaneously both ironic and appropriate given the history involved
I’ve been saying for too long now: “Too many Christians want to be the Romans”
Have you considered letting people be? Money is something that takes ages and tons of effort and work to get, ain’t my fault ya ain’t happy with whatever you’re doing. Sloth is a sin, too, by the way.
yeah, sure glad there are no major sins involving money and its glorification
1)”The Seven Deadly Sins” were just made up by some rando monk in, like, the 4th century. They’re headcanon and there’s nothing inherently more ~Biblical~ about them than any other interpretation of the text like, say, Arianism. They aren’t From “God” or anything.
2)Being born wealthy, which is how most rich people get rich, takes little effort on the birthee’s part. Certainly not enough to justify distribute resources and ordering society on its basis.
3)”Arbitrage” is the selling of a currency for a greater value than you purchased it. It’s money-changing, basically. What did Joshua(Jesus) think of that, again? It’s also, though, a good metaphor for capitalism in general, because essentially all relationships in capitalism can be described through the term and its mechanics.
For Instance: if the raw materials to make a burger cost $.50, employees are paid ~$.5 per burger(or the time it takes to make the burger) for their labor, and
it is sold for $4, then profit per burger to the “owner” is $3.45, or ~700%(I think that’s right, I’m terrible at math though). So where does that change in value come from? Well, no person wants to eat raw meat, veggies, and grains; they want to eat a burger. Few people want to process those raw materials into a burger every time they feel like eating one, they just want to buy and eat a burger. Does the owner do any of this?
No, it is Laborers who do that processing, and the work to offer that burger for sale, and the work to maintain a reliable, safe, and clean place to find and buy that burger. The owner “makes” profit through the “arbitrage” of “buying” the burger at $.55 and selling it at $4, a “profit” the owner “creates” by using their control of wages to set them far below the value created by the labor those wages compensate. All the “owner” does is provide capital, which they wouldn’t have nearly as much of if they weren’t allowed to arbitrage away all the value created by Labor as their own personal “profit” in the first place, by “farming” the value-to-wages imbalance they create.
4)Storytime:
Just then, a man came up to Joshua and inquired, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to obtain eternal life?”
Joshua answered, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.’
“All these I have kept,” said the young man. “What do I still lack?”
Joshua told him, “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.”
When the young man heard this, he went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth.
Then Joshua said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
Joshua looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
“Look,” Peter replied, “we have left everything to follow You. What then will there be for us?”
Joshua said to them, “Truly I tell you, in the renewal
of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne, you who
have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for the sake of My name will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
5)So here’s a little bit of biblical exegesis for you. Why is it difficult for a rich person to enter heaven? The passage tells you: “when the young man heard this, he went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth”. Wealthy people have Stuff, they have to give it away to get into heaven, they physically have more work to do.
But there’s more to that. They are tied, emotionally and mentally, to that Stuff. They care about that Stuff.
The young man grieves the thought of losing that Stuff. They care more about that Stuff than they do their fellow humans(the young man is sorrowful at the prospect of giving his Stuff to the poor), and they care more about it than they do God(the young man is sorrowful about giving away his Stuff to gain a closer relationship with God).
The wealthy pursue and seek that Stuff, Rather than God. So that’s also what makes it difficult: they’ve got to stop caring more for all that Stuff they’ve got than they do God, and they’ve got to get all that Stuff out of the way of their relationship with God. You’ve got to leave Stuff –lands, names, families, etc– behind, with no desire for reward, to get good with God.
So what is God? Well, that’s a big question, but we can at least tell from this passage that God is that which wants you to help your poor fellows; to not kill them; to not take, or deprive them of, what is rightfully theirs; to not lie(and that includes to yourself); to duly honor those who nurtured, cared for, and educated you; to love yourself, and love your fellows just as much. If, for the sake of gaining more Stuff, you’re taking for yourself the fruits of your fellows’ labor to “make” more “Profit” for yourself by “decreasing costs”(as if those are seeds or machines, rather than people), then you’re loving Stuff more than God. Specifically, You’re coveting the fruits of their labor, you’re stealing their possessions, and you’re treating them without love, all for your love of Stuff. And, even if your wealth is not the product of such arbitrage, if you are hoarding it to yourself while your neighbors and community suffer from want, then you are clearly not treating your neighbors with the love you are treating yourself with. These are yet more reasons why it is hard for rich people to get into heaven: wealth, in itself, is the product of injustice; of either taking from others what is theirs by right, or of denying aid to those in need, or of loving yourself more than others. That makes it the product of rejecting God’s commandments. God asks that you abandon and expunged this injustice –giving to the poor is a loving act, but it is also a Just one in that it gives away what was taken unjustly and creates balance(the essence of justice) by moving property from those who have too much to those who have too little– if you want to enter heaven. In other words to do these things, to follow God’s commandments, is to come to God.
6)Which one could say leads to a potential partial answer for the question “what is God?” as Joshua says, “with God all things are possible”; if, through doing Justice, it is possible to be saved, an impossibility for mortals on their own, and, through God, it is possible to do the impossible, then one can at least suggest that God is, in part, Justice.
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.— James 5:1-6
At first I thought this was an angry Tumblr post but then it turned out to be the Literal Bible and it got 1000x better
“Jesus never called for his disciples to Christianize culture. To make every aspect of culture about Christianity, and to marginalize and minimize those who were not Christian. He didn’t even call us to convert everyone to a new religion called Christianity- that’s not what the Great Commission is all about. No, Jesus called us to go into the world and proclaim good news- news of liberating love for everyone- and to make disciples, or in other words, invite people to follow in the example of Jesus. To emulate the life Jesus lived and work to create the world he dreamed of. And did you know that you can do that without ever making someone a Christian? In fact, did you realize that when Jesus told his disciples to go into the world and preach the gospel, there was no such thing as Christianity- it didn’t exist. He wasn’t telling them to make people Christian. He also clearly wasn’t telling them to make people Jewish- we find that out in the Book of Acts. He wasn’t asking them to ask anyone to convert from their religion, or their culture, or their social setting. Rather, he invited everyone in every culture and context to embrace a path of self-sacrificial love for the good of their friends, neighbors and enemies.”
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