"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 6:24
Thank you. The best way to fight this is quoting scripture. Half these chuckles haven’t even seen a bible, let alone know what the words inside say.
If any of the chucklefucks actually gave a shit about what the bible says, they’d all be as socialist as Jesus and would’ve burned Trump at a stake for being the antichrist.
You can’t deprogram religious extremists with religion.
I’m Jewish, and thus not an expert on Jesus by any means. Still, even I know that Biblical Jesus would be a socialist today, not a Republican.
He gave out free healthcare.
He fed the hungry without charging them.
He hung around people who were on the fringes of society.
He worked against the wealthy.
If Biblical Jesus were to magically appear in modern society, the only reason he would enter a MAGA church would be to flip a few tables.
It doesn’t matter, they pick and choose what they want to believe. If you try throwing scripture at them they just contort themselves into a pretzel trying to explain why that particular scripture is not to be taken literally.
Just because they will be 100% unwilling to admit to you that they are actually physically experiencing the feeling of doubt, does not mean it isn’t actually happening.
Don’t expect them to be honest about what’s going on inside them though. They value fighting, never giving up, persistence, dedication, loyalty, strength, power, confidence and security. None of these things makes it more likely for them to admit to you when something they disagree with might sound reasonable.
It’s a defense mechanism. Can’t just give it permission to function though.
You do have to back off before you actually infuriate them though, as the emotion of anger will strengthen the defense mechanisms dramatically. Better to walk away having peacefully left some food for thought. You can’t convince them though, being so readily convinced would itself be unacceptable to them, just on principle.
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
Mathew 25: 36 - 40
I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Why does our country embody NONE of these ideals? Why do modern day Christians embody NONE of these ideals? How can we call ourselves a nation under god when we bomb innocent civilians, starve children for profit, imprison a population disproportionately then use them as slave labor, and shoot at immigrants for merely crossing an imaginary line.
What GOD would want us?
What GOD would want us?
The one that fell the walls of Jericho and asked Abraham to kill his son to show loyalty, and tested Job by murdering his family. That’s their god.
I agree in sentiment with this, but any serious reading of the Christian Bible shows the entire point of Christ is basically replacing the vengeful god with a loving and forgiving one. These people are just bad Christians.
What kind of god gets their own autobiography so wrong on the first try that it needs a revision?
So, the problem is that Jesus is also the one who is promised to come back riding on clouds of fire and lightning to exact vengeance against unbelievers. Which Jesus you believe in has obvious ramifications (and that doesn’t include the versions invented wholecloth from the minds of pastors with agendas).
Now, I’m an ex-Christian and would wholly support removing Revelation from the canon, but the issue is that it remains and informs the worldview of people who claim the name of “Christian.”
So I submit that they’re actually being good Christians, just not good people.
That’s the general shape of my reply when someone tries to tell me that it’s gay people or trans people or abortion or pornography that are ‘causing God to hate us’. You mean, it’s me and my husband and our trans friends, and not the hate and the murder and the greed and the privation of the downtrodden?
It’s never a productive conversation, let me tell you…
Motherfucker better not mix fabrics.
Also better not eat shellfish or pork. And he absolutely better not go back on his word. (The tale of Onan is sometimes misinterpreted as being about masturbation, but it’s really about God killing a guy for going back on his word.)
Back in the day, women couldn’t inherit property. So if their husbands died without leaving a male heir, they could become homeless. Instead of the obvious solution of “let’s give women property rights,” though, there was another system in place.
The brother of the dead husband could sleep with the widow. The child of this relationship would be considered the dead husband’s child for inheritance purposes.
Onan agreed to this arrangement. He had sex with his sister-in-law. Only, at the last second, he pulled out and “spilled his seed on the ground.” So, he got the benefit of the deal for him (sex) without giving the woman her side of the deal (a shot at a child). He went back on his word and was struck down by God.
Of course, many religious folks focus on “spilled seed on the ground” and declare this to be a ban on masturbation - completely ignoring all the context around those words.
He was supposed to sleep with his brother’s widow in order to continue the family bloodline and make the widow more a part of the family, IIRC. He didn’t want to do that, but was pressured so much that he said he’d try. This was more similar to the vibe of stealthing, but in reverse.
It is odd to me how many people claim to be guided by a 400+ year old European version of a 2000+ year old Middle-Eastern text.
A text that’s been edited and changed for political reasons since it existed
And several books that originally made up the Christian cannon were omitted because their message was profoundly anti authority/centralization and much more focused on the divine inside oneself and bringing it out. No hell and no judgement, we are all an aspect of god, and while I’m not a Christian of any variety anymore I find that’s a much more reasonable teleological explanation for our existence than the “live and believe exactly this way or you will go to hell” philosophy of modern day Christianity
Don’t forget that it may have plagiarized the story of Horus, which predated the Bible…
Nor should we forget that the basis for the Christian god originates in the polytheistic religion of the Canaanites. The Canaanite deity Yahweh, that eventually became known as the Abrahamic creator god, was merely a god of weather and war, rather than the supreme God. That was a different deity, ʼĒl, who eventually became conflated with Yahweh in the process of switching from polytheistic to monotheistic.
That’s such a classic answer because the bible doesn’t say shit other than what we decide it says. Our interpretation of it follows cultural norms, not the other way around. One thing it damn sure doesn’t say is abortion is wrong or that life begins at conception - it explicitly says the opposite and that hasn’t somehow changed anyone’s opinions.
I’m too lazy to try to find a citation for your claim about our morals guiding how we interpret religious canons (not vice-versa), but this was taught to me in multiple philosophy courses and is well-established.
Our morality is developed thru our upbringing and exposure, including being influenced by parents, teachers, peers, media, culture, etc. We then pick and choose passages from canons based on our pre-established moral beliefs.
I find Dan McClellan’s videos on TikTok to be informative and accessible. He’s a biblical scholar and Mormon but he makes very clear that the bible is not flawless nor univocal. That’s not a recommendation I make lightly because I’m an atheist and think Mormonism is a crazy cult, but he’s very clearly an expert on the matter (he has a doctorate) who speaks very matter of factly because he draws a pretty clear line between personal faith and the actual facts about the bible and pretty much only talks about the latter.
Edit: Here he is addressing this very issue: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8BN3gCR/
