Which is why leaving the church is one of the most christian things I have done.
I wish we could all leave capitalism.
Clean your links please : https://youtu.be/jjeUuakHsLw
🧼🧽🫧💦
My church squared that circle by only caring about others in the “eternal souls damned to hell” sense. If your physical needs weren’t being met, that was a personal failing as far as they were concerned. What’s that? Jesus did a lot of caring for the physical needs of others? Nah, see, that was as only as a metaphor for their spiritual needs. Get your hands off my stuff, dammit.
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32-35)
Wow, those apostles and primitive Christians completely missed the metaphor!
It’s always fascinating to go back and re-read the Bible without the blinders of dogma on. For instance, Paul was held out as a divinely-appointed guide to the early church, but if you don’t take his conversion story at face value it’s quite clear that he’s a conservative trying to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus. That fun children’s story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho (remember the French Peas from VeggieTales)? That was the opening act of a years-long campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing that God commanded the Israelites undertake to claim the Promised Land!
My favorite, though, is Song of Solomon. It’s straight-up erotic poetry, right in the middle of a book handed out to children! I know they claim it’s metaphorical, but come the fuck on… the author spends whole chapters describing his lover’s naked body, that ain’t a metaphor for anything other than “I want to bone you.”
I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s good erotic poetry, though. I’ve tried “your breasts are like fawns, twins of a gazelle” on my wife and was immediately ejected from the bedroom. YMMV, though.
to take control of a nascent religion and steer it away from the more radical ideas that some of the other early followers took away from the teachings of Jesus.
tbh authentic Paul was in many ways more radical that Jesus… Jesus told people to give to the poor because the end was near, and so did Paul. Jesus chose all male disciples, Paul refers to Phoebe, Prisca, Euodia and Syntyche (all women) as his “fellow workers” or “ministers”. Jesus affirmed “for this reason a man will leave his parents and be united with his wife”. From Paul we have “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”. Jesus followed synagogue traditions (male only), Paul allowed women to pray and prophesy in his churches. Jesus taught the Jews to follow a loving version of the Torah, Paul pushed the utterly radical idea that Jews were freed from the Torah and united with gentiles in “one body”.
(The conservative line taken in later letters attributed to Paul are believed by academic scholars to be from his later school of disciples, not from him himself.)
There are some aspects of Paul which tick the conservative box in that he comes across as a sex negative asexual who uses part of his soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad and linking the idea of anything but purely reproductive sex with a spiritual uncleanliness and immorality. It fuels a lot of bad shit from purity doctrine to anti-same sex relationship rhetoric.
Not that sexual control over women and reproduction particularly hasn’t been a worldwide phenomenon but instilling pleasure and sex directly to sin really linked in to all the conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained so I feel like there’s a bit of a “depends on your definition of conservative” thing.
Oh both Paul and Jesus were morally conservative, no doubt about that. I was replying to someone I felt was implying Paul was somehow co-opting Jesus’ liberal movement into something more conservative and respectable. Whereas I think the opposite is true. Paul pushed frontiers Jesus never mentioned.
soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad
I don’t think this is quite the right angle though. He was certainly disgusted by same sex acts and the contexts in which likely had in mind: cultic practises, orgies and temple pederasty.
But he is never against sexual pleasure within heterosexual monogamy as if there was something distasteful about pleasure itself. He never states that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Never condemns solo masturbation for instance (which one might have expected since he had a non-jewish audience). Also, neither he nor any other NT writer calls into question sexual pleasure once a couple can no longer bear children. (Which you would expect if they were against unproductive pleasure in a puritan way). On the contrary, his assertion that a wife’s body belongs to her husband and a husband’s body belongs to his wife and that couples were to not deprive each other of sex except by mutual agreement has to be seen as being both radically democratic in how relationships are conducted by also acknowledging that pleasure in sex serves a purpose in itself. (One only has to imagine a would-be prayerful monastic husband, perhaps emulating Paul himself, being told, no, you have to have sex with your wife, to realise that Paul was not some acerbic prude)
Paul’s view he explicitly links to his expectation that the world is ending soon (forgive me I can look up references at the moment). He wishes that everyone was as he was (single and celebrate). But this appears to have been born out of a controversy over whether or not travelling apostles could expect churches to bear the cost of a wife travelling with them. Given his other statements on wishing to never cause stumbling blocks of cost on already very poor communities this seems to be born out of practical mindedness rather than any kind of general anti-sex view. He regards the better practice to be celebrate and await Jesus return. But that if people felt they’d otherwise be too tempted, then they should marry and that was fine. He explicitly notes that married people will suffer a lot in life, which has to be read in the context of the ongoing persecution of Christians. And the use of torture of one’s loved ones as a psychological weapon.
conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained
Yes. I believe Paul was visionary and radical. But I also think he felt his innovations were partially justified given “time was short”. If there weren’t enough male ministers and gospel workers then he was ok with talented women breaking the social mould. (And not begrudgingly, he sings their praises many multiple times). But it’s impossible to tell how he would have felt or spoken had he known his system would be used for 2000 years not 20.
A later generation of disciples apparently decided Jesus’ return was delayed didn’t have the same appetite as Paul for breaking the mould and fell back on traditional gender roles more firmly.
I think you are looking too narrowly at explicit mention of specific things and missing the forest for the trees a bit. It’s smaller and in places but look at his appeal to widows and the unmarried in Corinthians
“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
Marriage and sexuallity is a failure state for Paul. A lack of control over one’s Holy Temple of a body. He outlines the only circumstances one can have sex that isn’t a complete affront to God because he veiws the desire and need for it at all as weakness that is a tough sell a lot of his followers. It’s not so much a guidebook to pleasure, it’s creation of a roped off private circumstances to indulge a shameful human desire.
If you’re interested I recommend going back and reading his letters again but from the imagined perspective that Paul is a sex repulsed asexual who holds his own perspective on sex as the most sacred option. There’s some interesting queer discussion on the matter out there.
but look at his appeal to widows and the unmarried in Corinthians
you are missing that barely a verse earlier he attributes people’s different ability in this regard to the grace of God…
“I wish that all men were as I am [single and celebate]. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” - 1 Cor 7:7
he recognises people are given different abilities by God. this is not “failure”. Yes, if God has decided that you aren’t for the single celebate life it is better to get married than burn with desire. As Paul makes clear “But if you do marry, you have not sinned” (1 Cor 7:28)
I understand your hypothesis, but Paul neither says what you want him to say (that sex itself is shameful), nor does it stand up as an explanation when it comes to other things Paul says…
to follow on from your verse above…
“If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” - 1 Cor 7:12
This is a far cry from the “original sin” and polluting effect of sex espoused by the later catholic church. it’s the exact opposite. a christian women might be having sex with a heathen husband. but far from this polluting her in any way, it does the opposite - she sanctifies (makes holy) her unbelieving husband! and similiarly, children of such a marriage are not polluted by this act of sex with a non-christian. rather “they are made holy” (v14).
these are not the words of a man who thinks sex is a dirty and pernicious problem.
later on this same passage, Paul makes it clear that his preference for people to not be married is due to the persecution the church is experiencing:
"26Because of the present crisis, I think it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27Are you committed to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you free of commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. " - 1 Cor 7:26-28
Paul is not acting like someone who finds sex itself shameful. He is acting like someone who has seen the additional suffering caused by persecution to married people (and by natural consequence, people with children). He is echoing Jesus’ words on the matter: “How dreadful it will be in those days [the end times] for pregnant women and nursing mothers!” (Matthew 24:19)
In this time (the late 50s AD), Nero has taken over from Claudius and had begun his severe persecution of Christians (Tertullian quoted by Eusebius). This was on top of a famine seen during the time of Claudius (Acts 11:27-29), which you can read in Joesphus caused some families to be in such a desperate state that they resorted to canabalism of children.
This, together with the expectation that Christ would return soon (“Brothers, time is short… this world in its present form is passing away” - 1 Cor 7:29-31), meant that being single and free to spread the gospel was a priority.
But I’ll say again - Paul never calls sex in a monogamous marriage “shameful”. In fact he goes to the extraordinary lengths of saying a wife has the right(!) to demand sex from her husband (1 Cor 7:4b).
Any hypothesis of Paul’s internal thoughts has to accomodate this behaviour and being a “sex repulsed asexual” does not cut it. He was a self confessed “zealous Jew” (Gal 1:14) when it came to Torah defined sin (male homosexual acts, orgies, cultic practices, adultery), but as for lawful marriage, he acknowledges it is what some are called to by God and within which women ought to have conjugal rights.
Right wing starlet Erick Erickson likes to wax poetic about how Jesus’ parable about the good Samaritan wasn’t insisting people help those in need, it was about helping only other Christians in need. There was some Bible code or some shit that went into explaining how that worked.
That’s a lot of mental gymnastics, given that Jesus’ selection of a Samaritan was specifically made because Jews and Samaritans loathed one another as a rule. The point was to treat everyone as your neighbor, not just those who were part of your in-group. It takes some incredible brain damage to argue “actually, it means the exact polar opposite of its plain meaning.”
That’s a lot of mental gymnastics…
Well, you see, the eye of the needle was really a gate on one side of Jerusalem, so if you wanted to get into that gate with your camel fully loaded with your trade goods and gold coin, you were probably going to need to get down and lead it by hand and therefore humble yourself before God as you brought your wealth into the city. Only some kind of Commie bastard would suggest that there was something literal about that story in the Bible. Duh!
What. Literally the entire point of it was that the good person helped a stranger who was different when the people who weren’t different and had an expectation and responsibility to help. That’s not interpretation anymore than deciding it’s likely to rain tomorrow is interpretation of a weather report calling for rain on Tuesday.
So many Christians jump through hoops to ignore the explicit message. But these are the people who fetishize guns and excuse police murder while putting the words “thou shalt not kill” on government buildings
Organized Religon is a control mechanism that humanity no longer needs.
Never ever need
no longer needs✅ Shouldn’t need.
I agree with you however it sadly is a self perpetuating cycle fueled by those who look to gain and those who accept exploitation of the working class regardless of whether it is knowingly or unknowingly.
Your care is limited to Thoughts and Prayers.
But not money or action.
I remember multiple Christian authority figures growing up espousing the importance of kindness, natural wonders and thinking for yourself. Deeply ironic in hindsight! Perhaps no one was more hypocritical than my parents though.
I was kicked out of home for being gay. My parents have never grown a vegetable or had a house pet - which I think says a lot about their ability to love something other than themselves. Despite being immigrants, they both love Trump and extreme right wing beliefs. They are also very racist towards immigrants from other countries, dismissing them as “lesser”.
Reminds me of Supply-side Jesus. https://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp
“Jokes on you idiot that was just so we could take advantage of you” oh.
Yeah the hypocrisy is deeply baked into the culture.
Whenever I watch a true crime show where they start out with “and they’re good, churchgoing people who could’ve expected this?” I’m like 🙄…me, that’s who.
Even the Bible talks about the ‘deserving’ poor. Dealing with people and power and motivation and rights has been a swamp since the beginning…
It’s because they are trying to worship the merciful God of Jesus and the wrathful, nationalistic god Yahweh at the same time.
I wonder if people are telling kids to care about others as much as in past generations.
They meant other Christians.
Only if they’re the right kind of Christians.
You care about others? You socialist monster, that means you want to slaughter millions.
Bring this up to Christian an that’s when they go "Old Testament " on you. Bitch what about the New and Improved Testament?
New testament god still supports slavery
“We didn’t think that included caring about people who weren’t cishet, white Christians! That aren’t poor! And don’t annoy us for whatever reason!”
deleted by creator
Cishet has been around for quite a while. It’s a contraction of cisgender (meaning one’s genitals and gender roughly match and have not been altered) and heterosexual (meaning one is primarily sexually interested in the opposite gender)
cishet is a combination of cisgender and heterosexual. both terms have been around for quite a while.
Congratulations on being one of today’s 10,000.
