Statistics and wagering aside, IMO, he'd fair poorly (like the previous visit). His teachings are universally not just ignored, but the opposite seem to have completely taken over.
The "seven deadly sins" are the basis of our economy, politics and relationships. Quick reminder: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. (YMMV)
And the Beatitudes? To put it in proper latin: fuggedaboutit.
I've always been amazed at how hard Christianity has tried to retcon the camel and the needle thing. The metaphor is a bit mixed but the message is clear: rich people aren't getting into heaven. Period.
It is important to contextualize this statement. It appears in three gospels, but in each it is in response to a rich man asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Each instance of the story is told with slightly different emphasis (or they could be similar stories - i.e. this was his standard "line" for rich people), but Luke's account includes 18:27 He replied, "What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God" NET
This does not mean it's okay to hoard wealth at the expense of others, of course.
I think that Saint Basil the Great's sermon to the rich[1] is instructive for a historical and reasonable Christian instruction on the rich.
Let me add an excerpt I really appreciate:
But how do you make use of money? By dressing in expensive clothing? Won’t two yards of tunic suffice you, and the covering of one coat satisfy all your need of clothes? But is it for food’s sake that you have such a demand for wealth? One bread-loaf is enough to fill a belly. Why are you sad, then? What have you been deprived of? The status that comes from wealth? But if you would stop seeking earthly status, you should then find the true, resplendent kind that would conduct you into the kingdom of heaven.
And one more because I can't help myself:
Since, then, the wealth still overflows, it gets buried underground, stashed away in secret places.... A strange madness, that, when gold lies hidden with other metals, one ransacks the earth; but after it has seen the light of day, it disappears again beneath the ground.
(The whole thing is worth a read, Basil just went hard non stop)
The message IS clear...but I don't see the same message as you. Solomon was /beyond/ rich. So was David. So were countless people that are destined for heaven(as in, Jesus describes them being in heaven in the new testament).
Those people all did some things we can see and talk about - and possibly many things we did not see, do not know, and can not talk about. At the very least, those people we know are in/destined for heaven: followed God, feared God, obeyed God.
I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said. Being rich may make you less likely to do those 3 things though, in which case you would correlate richness with not getting into heaven.
'I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said' -> I think viewing that some rich people go to heaven as Jesus not explicitly condemning rich people (which he clearly does multiple times) and not him showing the unlimited power of God's grace is a misreading of the text.
The subsequent verses are much less quoted but very explicit about this:
And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
This is supported by other text where Jesus says explicitly what people should do with money:
Jesus said to 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"
So anyway it's very clear that using money selfishly (which is what many Christians do) is clearly not what God wants from us, it's just that God can love us for our imperfections and sin, which in my view is sorta the main idea behind the New Testament. God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that.
> God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that.
I love how you put that, and wholeheartedly agree.
It is not that easy. If we look at historical context we can see that for example in judaism they have this midrash:
"The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and camels."
Sounds familiar? The meaning of that saying in jewish context is that we cant really understand Gods abilities.
Could the christian saying mean something else? Sure. We dont even know if jesus even said that exact phrase.
My point is more that there are often more than one interpretation of vague sayings from 2000 years that been through an oral tradition, translations and copying.
In your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event like a rich person going to heaven in the traditional Christian saying.
It is incredibly clear and without nuance nor is there a reason to suppose it's an issue with translation. Its also consistent philosophically nor is it the sort of thing that the powerful would want inserted when they compiled works.
If you disregard it then it makes more sense to disregard the entire bible.
I find it interesting that they attack the camel and needle analogy when the previous line is: "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That is a pretty definitive statement and makes it clear that the camel and needle line is metaphor for the difficulty.
No, it is not "incredible" clear what ancient jews meant by that saying. Hence the wildly different interpretations. Are you really saying that it is incredible clear that the jewish understanding of the jewish saying is wrong and only your christian understanding is correct?
Half the planet either explicitly or implicitly believes in the just world hypothesis and America especially valorizes, empathize s with, and seeks to emulate the rich even when they do nothing to earn their wealth and on average do enormous harm.
It is therefore hardly shocking that some fail to see the plain meaning of the language and their confusion needn't imply actual credible controversy.
It is pretty clear that the saying you provided and the Christian saying are different sayings with different meanings that share the metaphor about a Camel going through the eye of a needle.
The surrounding context is Jesus telling a rich person to give his material wealth away because it is barrier to salvation. It is clear that focus on the temporal comforts privided by wealth stunts ones need for spirituality. The man cannot give up his attachment to wealth and gives up on salvation in the Christian sense.
It is hard for me to get from this that the rich are especially virtuos and therefore the only lesson was intended to be taught is that not even the rich can be saved without god.
It seems very clear that wealth was a direct impediment to salvation.
You have not provided any evidence for your claim that there is no connection between the "christian" saying and the prexisting jewish saying. The schoolars disagree with you that there exists only one single historical intepretation of the saying. You are just reading in what you personally want the text to read. Just like all fundamentalists.
You don't need to prove a negative. For any trillion combination of sayings which share 4 or more words in common no evidence exists for the connection of one to the other. The words are manifestly different save for using the same idiom about a camel through the eye of a needle.
They are again different in meaning with one being that attachment wealth is a barrier to being saved and the other being through god all things are possible. If you believe a plain interpretation of the text is in accurate the onus is on you to prove why and you haven't.
There’s a whole sect who believes the opposite- that you are more spiritual and blessed by God the wealthier you are. Somehow being material wealthy is now a signal of your spirituality. :shrug:
You just need to employ the right strategy to deal with it. Possible options include:
1. Claim that "camel" or "needle" are a mistranslation or symbolic.
2. Separate financial life from your spiritual beliefs to avoid inner conflict.
3. View wealth as a sign of God’s blessing or something used to do good, making it feel morally acceptable.
4. Emphasize other passages that support generosity or success.
In general, it's easy to overcome cognitive dissonance in religion. You just accept additional beliefs that soften it.
5. Interpret that the passage, especially in the context of the subsequent verses, is about the need for God to get into heaven. That is; it's claiming that wealth cannot empower people to find their own route in, absent spirituality.
In the flavor of religion in which I grew up, it's easier to just quickly pray for forgiveness than to bother justifying anything. The most vile genocidal maniac could pray for thirty seconds right before death and get into heaven. Why bother following rules when someone already served the punishment?
With modern technology you can probably liquefy a camel sufficiently that you force it through the needle. Jesus ain't said nothing 'bout no hydrochloric acid and pneumatic presses.
This. There are a lot of biblical teaching about money and how to handle it, and to multiply it. Unfortunately people tend to make that an end unto itself and that was never the point.
No. Similarly, God cannot make a married bachelor, because this is nonsensical. The conversation then turns to questions about how we define God’s omnipotence: Doesn’t the existence of any sort of limitation placed upon God imply he is bound by higher principles and thus not omnipotent?
Possibly; but this may just be a lack of imagination on our part. For example, can God abanlqhgfznsjks? Probably not, because that particular string was just a random assortment of keys that I pressed; it conveys nothing meaningful, so to ask if God could abanlqhgfznsjks might not really be asking anything at all.
The bible portrays God as explicitly being able to do nonsensical things, like creating a burning bush that is somehow not consumed. That it was on fire, but also not on fire, at the same time, was proof of a miracle.
And more generally, that's just the nature of the supernatural in any religion. If what was going on was entirely logical, it wouldn't be a miracle.
some people freak out about the idea of a burning bush talking at people
i freak out about what the bush said: I AM THAT I AM
the first recorded instance of recursion, spoken in a language famous for its lack of abstraction, to an uneducated goat herder, communicating an idea that even the greeks struggled with thousands of years later in a much more sophisticated and leisured culture
"I don’t know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, ‘That bird has no idea what he’s looking at.’ And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can’t really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he’s so ignorant? Well, he doesn’t really have a choice. The bird is okay even though he doesn’t understand the world. You’re that bird looking at the monitor, and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can figure this out.’ Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that’s the best you can do.”
That’s not what that means at all, your inserting modern values into the parable. In the culture of that time, the rich were viewed with high regard. The understanding was that if you were rich, then clearly you were in a favorable relationship to God because he was blessing you with wealth. With that understanding, the sentence that directly follows the parable makes a lot more sense: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’” A modern telling of the parable would replace the rich man with a monk who’s taken a vow of poverty to run an orphanage in a God-forsaken third world country. The parable was intended to portray an absurdly impossible standard to entry; the whole point being that human merit, status, or morality, regardless of however the cultural context may define that, does not afford one any distinctive advantage before God.
The rich is firmly attached to wordly things, they would rather sink with their gold than let it go. The monk that you've described is attached to his self by training it with sophisticated hardships. He hoards inner peace just like the rich hoards gold. Both are practicing the culture of personality. They need to leave that baggage behind, their self-centered life and their polished personas, and reorient their life around helping others. Once they do this, an enormous internal conflict will emerge - the struggle between their selfish and selfless sides, and at the end of this path they'll enter the kingdom of God.
Those who want to climb to the mountain top need to leave everything behind. The higher they climb, the longer will be the fall if they look back for a moment and slip on this narrow path, longing for what they left behind.
The whole invention of the “Eye of the Needle” gate fiction is an attempt to rewrite a Gospel statement by Jesus that it is difficult-to-the-point-of-impossibility into one that it is merely difficult-in-the-sense-of-mild-inconvenience.
"Religion" doesn't have the slightest thing to do with Jesus coming. Religion human thing. Jesus didn't say "go and spread religion to every man"...he said "go and spread the GOOD NEWS to every man".
Religion is the word we use to describe how us human's have managed to twist and warp and misunderstand that good news. We use it for gate keeping: "sorry this event is for church members only". We use it to put down people based on their behavior: "He seems like he needs religion". We use it to interfere with the law of the land: "Sorry, that law doesn't apply because of religious freedoms". And so on....
I don't think the big man gives one fiddly flying fig leaf about "religion". His son said(over, and over, and over!) that "I desire mercy, not sacrifice.". That means NOT excluding people over religion, insulting or belittling them with religion, or creating an unfair situation with "religious freedoms" in law. He wants MERCY.... that means instead of telling the beggar that religion would help him get clothed, fed, and generally happy - you should be giving him or her your clothes, sharing your food or drink, and welcoming them to your home where they can be safe. Will they abuse your trust? Who knows - and it's not important - your mercy to them was the critical action. You don't get into heaven for being discerning and clever...there is no award for actions like "I didn't invite him home, because he looked like a criminal and I don't trust him...". That's not mercy, that's you finding a human excuse to ignore the least of your brethren.
Jesus founded a church in Matthew 16. He literally said go forth and make disciples of all nations. I could go through scripture and demonstrate why almost every claim you said here is false, but you don't care about scripture, just emotion.
Churches are fine - there are endless letters and instructions to them in the scripture you mention. "Religion" is not the same word as church. If you feel compelled to "demonstrate why almost every claim you said..." etc, feel free - it's ok! Christianity is about mercy and compassion, and you mention "emotion" - that's absolutely true. I'm very emotional about it, because my message is an emotional one, and emotions were high when it was given to me. It's not going to end my little universe if you disagree, or make fun of, or try to embarrass me about it. My sincere hope is that you are happy, and that through "emotion" or any other medium, you make others around you happy.
So Jesus:
1. Founded a church
2. told the apostles to make all nations disciplines and baptize them, bringing them into that church
3. The apostles wrote letters to those churches instructing the people on how to live a christian life
4. The successors of those apostles carried on their teachings, spreading more churches all over the world and convening councils to clarify doctrine
sounds a lot like a religion, how do you define religion?
Religion (to me) is defined as a codified subset [or even superset] of beliefs, rituals, and culture.
The letters you speak of (penned by apostles of Jesus) are exactly as you describe. They were humans, trying to do what a divine being told them to do. It appears they went about it(at least partially) by writing letters. The passage I believe you are referring to, where Jesus instructs his disciples is:
> Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
This doesn't say to "spread religion", it literally tells them to teach and baptize all nations. They went and wrote letters, and here we are thousands of years later calling that "religion".
What is important to you? I see this conversation as attempting to make disciples of all nation. If it's successful for anyone(not you necessarily, maybe someone reading)...then hoo-ah! That's a win! If not, the instructions that preceded the passage you refer to say that I should "shake the dust from my feet", and leave the metaphorical house(s) that will not listen.
I don't know how we got from 0-50 A.D. to where we are now, regarding "religion", but I don't see even the most remote connection from the behavior of Jesus' disciples and their letter writing, to whatever the heck is going on in modern day.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I feel people like you pretend Europe's colonial era didn't exist or the American slave trade didn't exist or the holocaust didn't exist, etc... etc... etc... The only response to the millennia long list of atrocities Christians have committed, often times to other Christians, is the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy.
I think those were evil people doing evil things. Who calls the people who perpetrated these things "Christians"? If I am king, and direct my armies to slaughter another country's people because "<anything> cannot be tolerated by us, the Christians"....then I am a liar, and masquerading as something I am not. The people that did these things wanted to do them for one or more reasons, and none of those were because God told them to, or Christianity demanded it of them.
There's nuance and interesting bits of history that are missing from the orthodox pov, but that get bulldozed by the absolutism of "Religion has always been a tool for the powerful to control the masses," which, while true, is as interesting as saying "stairs are often used to ascend buildings." Power does what it always does: it grabs whats lying around and sharpens it into a spear of control.
If you know a little about the history of Christianity, you see a gradual centralization over a period of hundreds of years. Christianity obviously didn't start centralized. Religious orthodoxy burned a lot of manuscripts and rewrote history to appear to be a powerful unbroken lineage in order to justify their legitimacy.
We have to remember that the concept of heresy was invented. Hellenic and pre-hellenic cultures didn't demand compliance to doctrinal orthodoxy. Instead they practiced ritual orthopraxy. Ritual orthopraxy's sphere of influence begins and ends at the ritual. The sphere of doctrinal orthodoxy on the other hand made belief itself the battleground. The Greeks didn't care if you believed Zeus was literally real or metaphorically useful, as long as you poured the libation and didn't piss off the city.
Christianity became not just "do you love God," but "is your metaphysical model of the Trinity exactly consistent with the Nicene formulation from 325 CE." Anything but that became heresy. And that rejection of the pluralistic orthopraxis and the inability to live in harmony with Hellenic culture is exactly what made Christians so unlikable at the time and incidentally created a bunch or martyrs.
What gets lost is the weirdness of those early centuries before doctrinal orthodoxy created heresy in order to monopolize plurality of belief. We can learn important lessons from this and extrapolate to how heresy and orthodoxy get used today and why matters of doctrine end up being so encompassing and totalizing. If anything it gives us an additional point of view on our own culture.
religion (that is, an objective morality) has always been the only thing the masses have when confronted with the great pagan principle: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"
> religion has always been the only thing the masses have
This is broadly speaking true because religion is one example of a coping mechanism at cultural scale. If you trace the genealogy of morals, these precise beliefs - humility, temperance, kindness, patience - are all survival strategies of people being oppressed. At a large enough scale, it becomes embedded in moral reality itself ie: in religion.
I can see how that's appealing. One of the most common human behaviors is creating rules or in this case moral rules, and then doing a mental switcheroo where they forget that they made the rules and attribute them to universal principles, reality, truth, etc.
In general, the process of believing concepts are real objects - simply observations of reality - is called reification. Every society does it and the result is that human constructs feel as if they are inalienable truths about how reality works. The only problem is that it's culturally specific and as we know, each culture works differently and yet feels as if they've gotten it right - their concept of how things works happens to match reality.
One of the downsides to this is that we often project our own ideas of reality onto strangers especially from other societies. "Of course they protect the weak," we tell ourselves, when in fact, they're operating on a completely different set of moral relations. When our projects override objectivity, we deny ourselves the beauty of seeing the world in a new way. We rob ourselves of appreciating the magnificence of the diversity of human experience.
Is the powerful taking advantage of the weak part of the magnificence of the diversity of human experience?
I mean, I can see the powerful claiming such a thing. To return to my original quote, which is certainly a consistent philosophy: "strong do what they like the weak suffer what they must"
I agree, it feels absolutely true that the strong shouldn't exploit the weak.
But here's the thing, most societies have felt that way about something, and often, the "something" turns out to be radically different each time.
Romans felt it was universally true that honor must be defended with blood. Medieval Christians believed letting heretics speak freely was morally wrong. Victorians were convinced it was immoral not to civilize "savages."
They didn’t think they were rationalizing cruelty. They thought they were being good.
The discomfort comes from realizing that we're not standing outside history, just inside a different historical moral context that feels just as inevitable. The desire to protect the weak might be deeply human, but even how we define "weak" or "harm" changes more than we like to admit.
What if we recognize our certainty is also part of this context, not part of the conclusion?
i'm saying it is that way, and i also think you know it to be true, but don't want acknowledge that due to further conclusions that can be drawn from that truth
so we aren't agreeing at all, in any way: you don't want to believe in an objective morality for your own reasons, I acknowledge it despite the inconveniences it presents me
The point is that I sometimes wonder, if I were born in ancient Rome, wouldn't I have also felt, just as deeply, that defending family honor with violence was righteous? Not in a barbaric way, just in a 'this is obviously the right thing to do' kind of way?
It's not that there's no such thing as right and wrong, it's that what counts as 'moral clarity' seems to shift, and everyone thinks they're the ones seeing it clearly. That includes people we now think were totally wrong. What do we do with that?
Imagine someone 500 years from now looking back at us with horror and clarity, seeing our blind spots as clearly as we see slavery or witch-burning. Don't you ever worry, like me, that you might be the one taking a stand for what will one day be unthinkable? Not because we didn't believe that right and wrong didn't exist, but because we were so certain that we had it correct?
Pointing out the lack of precision and accidental aspects of custom in discussing morality is typically used as an excuse for immoral behavior, often personal.
Today, I don't view moral certainty as a primary or even secondary moral problem. Instead, I view it our primary moral problem as the idea that: "there are no absolute moral principles."
This is a self-contradictory statement, as a moments reflection will make apparent. Most people who advocate it either haven't thought about it or are sophists attempting to smuggle in a different absolute moral principle: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
Say what one will about this latter absolute moral principle, but at least it's a self-consistent ethos. I can understand why the rich, powerful and debased should prefer to see it established, as they have. A (bad) part of me certainly prefers it.
> Pointing out the lack of precision and accidental aspects of custom in discussing morality is typically used as an excuse for immoral behavior.
I guess I just don't see it the same way. When I examine the most immoral acts, I see moral certainty being a necessary component.
The Spanish Inquisition: "For the good of their souls."
Stalinist purges: "To protect the revolution."
U.S. manifest destiny: "To civilize the savages."
Terrorist movements: "In the name of God."
When I examine the faults of moral relativism I see the blandness of inaction at worst - "I suppose that's what works for them."
At an individual level, I see cynicism as the defining feature of immorality - "No one else is doing good, so why should I?" or "If I don't do bad, someone else will," but these aren't based in relativism. Relativism or absolutism simply isn't part of the moral calculus.
If anything the relativistic approach is harder than then absolutist one. An absolutist may have the burden of knowing what actions are right and wrong within a moral framework, but someone who is a relativist wanting to do good doesn't even have that. They have the additional burden of having to perform meta-ethics from which to derive ethical positions. I hate to turn this into an "I have it worse," discussion, but the grass ain't always greener.
It may be surprising to learn that moral relativists even have a history of taking moral positioning and opposing atrocities. Franz Boas opposed scientific racism, eugenics, and the use of anthropology to justify colonial domination and publicly condemned anthropologists who collaborated with the U.S. military. Ruth Benedict argued that morality is culture-bound and opposed Western ethnocentrism and the moral superiority claimed by colonial powers while critiquing the racism behind Nazism in her wartime work The Races of Mankind. Finally, Margaret Mead promoted tolerance of cultural diversity and critiqued Western sexual and gender norms. She used her platform to oppose war, advocate for civil rights. My point is that one can be a relativist and take a strong moral position - one I'd be surprised either of us would be opposed to.
you can dance around The Choice with as many words as you like
“We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt of God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far contempt of self."
I don't know anything about hinduism, but I assume there is a base morality that the strong may not take advantage of the weak, in contrast with the athenian dictum I quoted.
"Religion" literally means, 'the device which binds people into one', and is not the only form of this very same device.
Latin religare ‘to bind’.
We are all bound "in legion" (literally, by the strong, cured ligaments of a foot) here on HN, for example. Ligament and Legion and Religion are all based on the same common root: a way to bind people together, strongly.
So forget about trying to make the human capability to become an egregore exclusive to those who organize around religion. We humans don't get anything done unless we are bound together, as one, around a common purpose.
This is an incredibly common and frustrating bit of bad theology. There's no textual or archeological basis for it, and the really interesting mystery is where exactly this myth even came from.
I, too, used to be a “preachermon”. I never found evidence that this argument was anything but apocryphal.
It would make a better argument to find a text describing how Jesus referred to a rich person (real or parable) and said, “this rich person gets it, be like him”. Direct, and without the mental backflips.
it is, however, very easy to find other ways jesus has phrased the idea "the rich don't get into heaven". In matthew he says the last shall be first and the first shall be last, in acts he has his disciples sell all of their stuff and pool the money, and in several other places he tells the faithful to give all of their stuff away.
none of this is at all true, none of it is supported by the historical record, none of it is supported by the rest of jesus's teachings (which explicitly and repeatedly state that the rich are not welcome in heaven), there never was an "eye of the needle" gate, no one even posited the existence of such a gate until the 9th century CE and the other gospels use different phrasing of "a camel passing through the eye of a needle" that indicate that "the eye of a needle" isn't a proper noun referring to a singular entity with a commonly-known name.
This is literally not true by scripture; Abraham was very rich, and is considered righteous because of his faith. He did not withhold even his own son from God. Money did not own Abraham's faith.
Job refused to curse or condemn God even when he lost most of his family and all of his holdings - his friends tried to tell him that because he lost his riches, he had obviously sinned, but he refused this. He gained back the things he lost, because of his faith in God.
Job 1:20-22
20 Then Job stood up, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground, bowed very low, 21 and exclaimed:
“I left my mother’s womb naked,
and I will return to God naked.
The Lord has given,
and the Lord has taken.
May the name of the Lord be blessed.”
22 Job neither sinned nor charged God with wrongdoing in all of this.
In those times, rich people were considered blessed by God, poor people or those afflicted with disease were considered cursed by God. People afflicted from birth were said to have been "born in sin" due to the sins of their parents.
The Pharisees and Sadducees were wealthly, influential people who preached exactly this. The Sadducees in particular didn't believe in an afterlife, and so were focused on only the "here and now" and material things of this world. Jesus specifically called them out to let them know their wealth wouldn't get them into heaven, and their success was not a sign of righteousness.
Jesus distinctly preached that money could not buy salvation, and that those whose focus was on money could not focus on God, and would therefore be condemned. He explicitly called out Zaccheus, a tax collector, when Zaccheus promised to repay any money he'd taken in bad faith four times over and to give away half of what he owned to the poor:
Luke 19:9-10:
9 Jesus said to him,"Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."
Zaccheus probably had a lot of money left even when he was done, but the point is that money was no longer the priority in his life.
God may choose to bless people with prosperity, but your wallet doesn't make you righteous. It doesn't make you unrighteous either - your actions and your faith, or lack thereof condemn you. The whole of the Law is:
Matthew 22:34-40
34 When the Pharisees learned that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and, to test him, one of them, a lawyer, asked this question, 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 Everything in the Law and the Prophets depends on these two commandments.”
> Statistics and wagering aside, IMO, he'd fair poorly (like the previous visit).
If I remember correctly...his first visit was prophesied to end exactly as it did. His next visit is prophesied to be a little different - to paraphrase...he is coming with an army to make war on the beast and all [humans] who follow him. Instead of a spotless robe like earlier depictions - this robe is drenched in blood, and he has a sword coming out of his mouth. Here's the passage immediately following description of this second coming(Revelations 19).
“Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”
I don't think this visit is supposed to be like the previous one. I strongly encourage you all read this book(the bible) and take it to heart. You aren't my friend, or someone that I know - but it would give me no pleasure at all to know you were spending eternity in hell. We don't get down seeing people suffer, or "you'll all be sorry when you see I'm right!!!" style feelings. If those true believers seem like a bunch of elitist jerks who are always putting you down instead of helping you up, those are /NOT/ true believers. Those are true assholes.
I propose a corollary to Godwin's Law whereby as any internet discussion of religion progresses, the chances of a Christian trying to proselytize approaches 1. Call it God-Botherers Law.
> I strongly encourage you all read this book(the bible) and take it to heart. You aren't my friend, or someone that I know - but it would give me no pleasure at all to know you were spending eternity in hell.
IMO, you are also an elitist jerk by telling non-believers that they will be going to hell for not believing your religion, a religion which 69% of the entire world does not believe.
What kind of god creates beings only to punish the majority of them with hellfire? Why would god allow alternative religions to be created just to "trick" his creations into believing the wrong thing? And why would I want to worship that god if that's all true?
Hey I don't know what works for everyone, but I know what works for me. I'm encouraging you to let it work for you, but that's a personal choice and I wouldn't force it on anyone.
I don't think God wants to "trick" anyone. I also don't believe there is any hard set of "rules" he applies to 100% of humanity without exception. Take little children for instance...tragedies happen every day, and they are too young to know what those rules are, or have a chance to follow them. Those children aren't destined for eternal torture - that would be cruel and heartless - and I don't believe God is cruel or heartless.
I apologize for coming off as an elitist jerk. I didn't realize it would be read that way, and it was not my intent at all. I'm not better than you, I don't /think/ I'm better than you, and I'm too inexperienced/ignorant/prideful to even be able to know what "better" is, much less which one of us it would apply to.
All my comments, posts, and intentions are that 1 person is positively influenced by them. Maybe they go on to influence someone else, and it spreads throughout people - I have no idea what will happen that is influenced by things like my post. However, I don't think my post is going to hurt anyone - my hope is that it will help someone. Think of it like throwing seeds(in the parable!)... some of them, maybe just /one/ of them, will fall in fertile ground - and lead that person(s) to the same peace with God that I feel.
FWIW I don't think you were being elitist at all. In fact I think you've come off as very humble and full of genuine care and interest for your fellow humans. Our world could use a whole lot more of that from believer and non-believer alike.
I've read the Bible cover to cover multiple times though, and nothing makes me believe the Bible less than actually reading and studying the Bible. The book of Job alone was pretty hard to reconcile, but even just harmonizing the four gospels on the important details of Jesus life and crucifixion is very, very difficult (or even impossible depending on who you talk to). I won't even get into Song of Solomon :-D
Honestly if you want people to find faith, I wouldn't recommend reading the Bible. I would recommend a mix of the New Testament (minus the Book of Revelation) plus Church attendance.
> IMO, you are also an elitist jerk by telling non-believers that they will be going to hell for not believing your religion, a religion which 69% of the entire world does not believe.
Catholics don't believe that you have to be Catholic to go to heaven. In fact, believing that you do is explicitly condemned as a heresy (Feeneyism).
That is the same with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We do not believe church membership is required to receive the glories of heaven; we do not even believe that church membership is a guarantee to get there.
As for "going to hell": we believe that everyone goes there after death, as a temporary state. It's akin to the Catholic concept of purgatory, before the resurrection, final judgment, and placement in either outer darkness or the kingdoms of heaven. Thankfully, most people that have ever lived on earth are destined for the latter, not the former.
Interesting! So in Catholicism, what are the belief requirements? Would that mean that some Protestants could go to heaven even if they've never had (Catholic) communion? (Genuine question)
> IMO, you are also an elitist jerk by telling non-believers that they will be going to hell for not believing your religion, a religion which 69% of the entire world does not believe.
Dude, that's pretty harsh and I would say quite unfair given what they've said. If he/she/they/whatever believes that we are going to Hell, wouldn't the right thing to do be to tell us and try to save us?
I do think that plenty of people saying similar things can be elitist and requires a certain level of hubris/arrogance, but I don't think that's always the case, and GP definitely didn't strike me as one of those assholes.
> What kind of god creates beings only to punish the majority of them with hellfire? Why would god allow alternative religions to be created just to "trick" his creations into believing the wrong thing?
These are excellent questions/arguments and are on my top five list of "reasons I am not a Christian," and I'd love to hear an explanation from any believers if they'd like to tackle them.
But what evidence supports the theory of heaven and hell?
I mean, according to the Hindus and Buddhists, we’ll be reincarnated rather than going to heaven/hell.
We could read the Bible, or the Qur’ān, or the Vēdas, or the Buddhist scriptures, or any other religious text… but how would we know whether any of them holds truth?
There are approximately 10,000 religions in the world. What brain damage do I have to receive in order to believe that I have any realistic statistical chance of picking the right one?
you don't pick one at random. you pick one that makes sense. what makes sense for example is the positive impact a religion has on the world. which religion is doing the most good? that alone will narrow down the selection to a few dozen if that many. besides the good it does, another question could be: what makes sense to you? which religion has the better answers to explain the world in which we live in today? take the issues and questions that matter to you, and then look at the answers and see if they are satisfactory. keep searching until you find the answers you seek.
This is the "by their fruits you shall know them" argument (which I think is among the stronger arguments for the record), but I've personally used this to try and find a "correct" religion and what I discovered (personally of course) is that there is good and bad in essentially every religion. Using this as a standard is basically impossible.
But if you took it at a high macro level and did narrow down to a few dozen, those are still terrible odds. If I have a 1 in 36 chance of picking the wrong religion and being damned, I think we need a better standard of evidence to narrow this field a bit. Unless of course you believe that a loving (some would say omni-benevolent) God would think it's reasonable to torture 97% of his children who are actively searching him out, just because they picked the wrong church. (that's not even considering all the others of course).
for me the standard of evidence is the search for the truth. that means, keep searching until i am satisfied. it could take a lifetime, and maybe that's the point. don't just make a choice and then blindly accept everything from then on.
Your comment is a manifestation of this weird double standard that gets applied to atheists/agnostics where they’re supposed to be burdened to “find answers” and it’s a problem that they don’t have that religious burden.
It also manifests in this sort of insulted vibe that religious people get when their faith is questioned.
Basically, it’s socially not okay to question the faith of someone in a particular religion because it’s their culture, it’s their belief system, but the atheist/agnostic “belief” system isn’t respected in the same way. The person who has not found any evidence of god as described in various religions is told to seek enlightenment as if they are the ones who are incomplete.
People who use the scientific method don’t “pick at random” when there is no available answer. They test for answers and wait until they observe the answers and have the ability to reproduce those observations.
In short, the religious expect the non-religious to be afraid of dying and to be looking for a solution, when it’s completely valid and logical to have determined that there is no solution and therefore it is not worth spending time dwelling upon.
i expects everyone who questions any religion to do that search. whether they believe in god or not. if you question something, then it is on you to go find answers. even if you found your belief system that works for you. maybe especially if you found one you should always keep your eyes open and investigate your own beliefs, and not just blindly accept it.
This is still kind of backwards. The person who doesn’t accept something blindly has no obligation to question anything. There is no obligation to obtain a belief system. Someone who is agnostic is not blindly accepting anything.
The person who doesn’t accept something blindly has no obligation to question anything
not accepting something blindly IS the same as questioning something.
or reverse, if you do not question your beliefs then you are accepting them blindly.
There is no obligation to obtain a belief system
i didn't say there is, except maybe that rejecting all belief systems is also a kind of belief.
Someone who is agnostic is not blindly accepting anything.
again, i didn't intend to make that claim. if anything that was more targeted at those who do follow a particular religion and stopped asking questions.
Your arguments are a bit unsatisfying to me, though.
> what makes sense for example is the positive impact a religion has on the world. which religion is doing the most good?
I try to have a positive impact on the world by being vegan and donating to (secular) humanitarian organizations. I struggle to see how believing in a religion would improve on this (although I’m open to a good rebuttal!).
> which religion has the better answers to explain the world in which we live in today?
I think that the secular scientific tradition does better here than religion (even if it isn’t perfect, of course).
> take the issues and questions that matter to you, and then look at the answers and see if they are satisfactory. keep searching until you find the answers you seek.
I did that, and it doesn’t look good for religion, as explained above. And yet, here we are with one of the parent commenters telling us that we should believe in the Bible, lest we burn in hell.
Hence my comment above: what evidence shows this, and if there is no evidence, why should I believe it (or any other religious scripture) over my current ideals?
I struggle to see how believing in a religion would improve on this
that's not what i am asking. if you believe that religions are "wrong", then it's on you to verify that.
what evidence shows this, and if there is no evidence, why should I believe it
i can't tell you that. you need to look at each religion yourself and decide.
as i asked in another comment, have you looked at all the major religions (as listed on eg wikipedia), and can you say with confidence that none of them do better than secular scientific tradition?
first of all, i am not making the claim that religions are ‘right’ and/or have better answers. i am making the argument that if you want to find out if they are giving better answers or any answers for that matter, then you need to research them.
i can tell you what i believe but i am not here to represent any particular religion, and i can't speak for all the religions. you will get better results and answers if you look at each religion yourself, and come to your own conclusion.
Ah, but the original claim (not by you) that I replied to and that spawned this subthread was:
> I strongly encourage you all read this book(the bible) and take it to heart.
This seems to be somewhat different from what you’re arguing now, though.
For what it’s worth, I shared my beliefs (veganism, humanitarianism, and the scientific method), and I still think that if you believe that your beliefs (religious or not) hold more truth and/or usefulness than mine, you should be able to (at the very least) provide some pointers to relevant literature.
again, i don't want to make the claim that my beliefs are in some way better. that would be hubris, and that's a big reason why i want you to do your own research.
but here are a few points that relate to the current discussion:
science and religion must be in harmony. that is, they should not contradict each other. if there is a contradiction (in any specific point) then one of them is probably wrong. to resolve that difference science needs to do more research and religion needs to get a better understanding of the claim. perhaps there is an interpretation that can explain the discrepancy.
religion must be the cause of unity, harmony and agreement. if it is the cause of discord and hostility, if it leads to separation and creates conflict, the absence of religion would be preferable.
there will be a time when humanity will learn to live without meat. but today is not the time yet. that doesn't mean i'd believe that being a vegan today would be wrong, but rather that not everyone lives in a position where they can afford to give up meat because they have nothing to replace it with.
most religions are ill-equipped to deal with the problems we are facing today. religions need to adapt and renew themselves to be able to address the questions we are having today. the return of jesus plays a critical role here.
independent investigation of the truth. everyone should do their own research and study of religion. we can't leave that to priests or other studied leaders. those played a role in times when people where illiterate and depended on others to do the studying for them.
this is why i am hesitant to tell you what i believe, or what you should read, because in discussions like this it easily comes across as telling you what you should believe, as the example you are quoting shows. but that is precisely what i don't want to do, because that would be wrong. you need to find your own answers. that doesn't mean that i think reading the bible would be wrong. it's just not enough. you should also read about all the other religions, at least the major ones, if only to get a better understanding about the different beliefs that the people in this world today are holding. it is probably not necessary to read all the holy writings of each religion, at least not unless one of them piques your interest and you want to learn more.
> again, i don't want to make the claim that my beliefs are in some way better. that would be hubris, and that's a big reason why i want you to do your own research.
Well, we’re on a discussion forum, so the point is to discuss our opinions, not to claim that we’re better than another :) I think it’s unfortunate that you wouldn’t share some of your beliefs; we could have constructively criticized each other’s beliefs, and thereby sharpened our critical thinking skills. Alas.
> science and religion must be in harmony. that is, they should not contradict each other. if there is a contradiction (in any specific point) then one of them is probably wrong. to resolve that difference science needs to do more research and religion needs to get a better understanding of the claim. perhaps there is an interpretation that can explain the discrepancy.
My take is that religion is an encoding of human morality [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44127397], but that the prevailing religious texts are outdated compared to our current understanding of the world.
> religion must be the cause of unity, harmony and agreement. if it is the cause of discord and hostility, if it leads to separation and creates conflict, the absence of religion would be preferable.
Agree, but I think that the correlation between religiousness and harmony is not as strong as many religious people seem to claim. I think it is hard for many religious people to imagine a-religious harmony, because religion is such a foundational part of their worldview.
> there will be a time when humanity will learn to live without meat. but today is not the time yet. that doesn't mean i'd believe that being a vegan today would be wrong, but rather that not everyone lives in a position where they can afford to give up meat because they have nothing to replace it with.
Agree, with the caveat that most HN readers are in a position to replace meat, and that eating plants directly is more efficient than feeding animals plants and eating the animals (IIUC). However, I can’t possibly claim to know whether it’s possible for every culture on Earth.
> most religions are ill-equipped to deal with the problems we are facing today. religions need to adapt and renew themselves to be able to address the questions we are having today. the return of jesus plays a critical role here.
See above.
> you should also read about all the other religions, at least the major ones, if only to get a better understanding about the different beliefs that the people in this world today are holding. it is probably not necessary to read all the holy writings of each religion, at least not unless one of them piques your interest and you want to learn more.
Agree, but I don’t think this approach precludes not believing in any of them.
———
For what it’s worth, I do believe that most religions include many valid moral guidelines (‘love thy neighbor’, etc.), but I think most of them also include many infamously unproven teachings (the existence of a creator and afterlife/reincarnation).
I think it’s unfortunate that you wouldn’t share some of your beliefs; we could have constructively criticized each other’s beliefs, and thereby sharpened our critical thinking skills.
actually, i'd love that. i just had some bad experience doing that in public where uncharitable readers can chime in. my email is in my profile. how about we continue the discussion there?
prevailing religious texts are outdated compared to our current understanding of the world
it's not that the texts themselves are outdated, but that peoples interpretations of those texts is. for example when the bible claims that the world was created in seven days, we today know that this can't possibly be true, therefore this text can't possibly be meant to be taken literally. it also means that it was never meant to be taken literally, but the people who did take it literally lacked the scientific understanding to realize that.
but this problem may also occur with a religious text written today. when a discrepancy is found it doesn't mean the text is wrong, but our interpretation of it is. or maybe the scientific findings are faulty. it's no different than having findings that contradict a scientific theory. either the theory is wrong or the findings are in error. the interpretation of a religious text is just like another theory.
the correlation between religiousness and harmony is not as strong as many religious people seem to claim
well, that to me is an indictment of those religions, and rightly so.
most of them also include many infamously unproven teachings (the existence of a creator and afterlife/reincarnation)
well, the problem here is that these are by their nature either unprovable or we simply lack the scientific knowledge to verify or falsify them.
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. this is the leap of faith that a believer in science needs to do. it is fine to reject claims that can clearly be proven wrong (such as the age of the earth) but for anything that can't be proven we need to keep an open mind. that doesn't mean to blindly accept it. keep that skepticism, but at least allow that those claims are at least in the realm of the possible, specifically because we have no way to prove otherwise. to reject god or the afterlife without proof is just as much an act of faith as is to accept them.
Well as practiced by supposed believers. He said there will be many to whom he’ll say “I never knew you”. And I expect they’ll be actually surprised, until they really compare their actions to what he taught.
Hypocrisy is always easier to see from the outside. That said I do think non-believers (such as myself) often have unreasonable and unrealistic "standards" for what they expect from a Christian.
That said many Christians I know are much harsher critics of other Christians who don't live their beliefs than most of the atheists I know, and IMHO that's how it should be.
I can read, and I have read the whole thing, several times, I know what Jesus taught. And it's perfectly obvious that very few so called Christians even come close.
> If he shows up like he does in Revelation it's going to be a bit more dramatic than the first time around.
Yeah, for sure. They'd best hope that he don't return anytime soon if the Christian bible's description of his return has any validity to it, because he's supposed to return with a flaming sword and a host of angels behind him, and he's likely to be raging pissed at the majority of (Christian) humanity for the way they've twisted his words and teachings.
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I think the Carholic church has decided it's dangerous to accept parts of the Bible as metaphor, so they must force a literal interpretation on everything - even to the point of absurdity. Jesus said it's his body and blood so it must be. Because you know, everyone making a symbolic gesture always says that's what they're doing...
As a non-religious person, I wonder, if you reject a bunch of catholic ideas (the authority of the pope, the Eucharist, catholic social teaching, etc), why not just be protestant?
The Catholic Church is broadly accepting of metaphorical interpretation, but with respect to the blood and wine specifically they committed to that literal interpretation a very long time ago.
I say this as a Christian: most churches I've seen aren't really following what Christ teaches. They're often filled with some of the most hateful, spiteful, and conceited people I've ever met. Ask yourselves, when they talk about LGBT people are they saying things out of love and understanding or are they trying to throw stones? I generally agree, homosexuality is pretty easy to see as a sin in the Christian bible most Americans know, but in the end was Jesus going around and telling people to be mean and spiteful to those who practice different things? Did Paul tell Timothy to burn down the temples in Ephesus? Didn't he say Christians are to love Cesear despite the oppression? Did God tell Daniel to cast judgement and be hateful to the Babylonians and their diet, or was Daniel just supposed to continue to be faithful to his religion? So what is the real Christian response to those who practice different things?
And this is just one of many topics!
If Jesus came back today he'd be making whips and flipping tables all day long.
I have always thought that Jesus would not be too great fan of Churches as big buildings in general... Community centres probably, but the churches themselves... And specially not broadcasting it on tv...
"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. [...] And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full."
Paul and Daniel didn't have any temporal power, our religion teaches us Christians should seek to wield temporal power when possible to create more virtuous societies.
I didn't realize sending people to prison for paperwork issues and denying healthcare to the poor so wealthy people can continue enriching themselves is creating a more virtuous, Christ-like society.
Sadly, this is very true in my experience. We are all fallen to some degree, but few, including Christians, seem to have the humility to recognize this in themselves.
Regarding the Robert Morris reference, not going to defend any action, but I will point out his 'bad action' was 40 years ago.
Why does that matter? There are abuses happening now, every day, by high profile. Some (Epstein, Diddy) are starting to be caught. Others (Drake) may face judgement far into the future. Others (Chris Brown) never will.
If criticizing modern church culture requires referencing acts of 40 years ago, and criticizing secular culture requires references acts that happened recently, and will probably happen again tomorrow, that could indicate that the modern USA church is doing better than we think. Possibly a lot better.
Maybe the original action (the sexual abuse) happened 40 years ago. But he continued to lie about it until recently and pushed other people to lie on his behalf. This isn't 40 years ago, this is still very recently. This is still wrong and was a wrong that was ongoing. Had he actually been honest about these things and properly served whatever justice is right for these things and lived openly about it for the last 40 years, it would be a very different story.
And now he's suing the church for millions of dollars for some retirement he feels he's entitled to. This is church money,
which should be used to push the work of Christ. He's massively enriching himself, to continue living a lavish lifestyle instead of actually helping the people he was charged to help. Yet another wrong.
From what I've heard, he has disclosed actions years, possibly decades, ago but did not mention that involvement of a minor. I expect this is because a lawyer, or possibly anyone with a quarter of a brain, gave the same advice to him as they would any other human - shut your mouth. Is that a wrong?
> And now he's suing the church for millions of dollars for some retirement he feels he's entitled to.
One article [0] says "his attorney sent a letter to church lawyers [demanding] more than $1 million that had accrued in Morris's retirement account". Again, I suspect that he is getting advice from lawyers to do what they would advise any other human to do - collect on earned retirement benefits. Is that a wrong?
> He's massively enriching himself, to continue living a lavish lifestyle
If you'll forgive the crudeness of this comparison, I expect that running a church of 100,000 attendees to be of comparable, but not equal, complexity as a company with 100,000 customers. That could make running Gateway in the same ballpark as running Asana. The CEO of Asana gets 15 million a year for his trouble. Morris got, what, 5% of that? 3%? Is it self-enrichment to offer world-class leadership to a church at a 95% discount to its free market value?
Continuing to lie and hide these things is wrong. Telling a few people and pressuring them to lie on your behalf doesn't make the lie better. It's incredible you're arguing otherwise and really points to your character.
And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do.
And yes, I think it's wrong pastors are paid millions of dollars, and that he's suing to try and continue the gravy train. And its asinine to compare counts of attendees to a church as the number of employees at a company. People attending a church aren't employees. And comparing the mission to the church to a for profit enterprise is once again just clearly missing the point.
If the person leading the congregation is making significantly more than the poorest of the congregation there's a real problem.
Your continued comments just further exemplify the things I find wrong in the modern Christian church.
> And its asinine to compare counts of attendees to a church as the number of employees at a company.
You did not comprehend my comments, because I did not.
> And while it might be sound legal advice to shut your mouth, it's not necessarily the moral thing to do.
I hope that you argue that the 5th amendment is immoral when anyone uses it, and not just pastors.
> If the person leading the congregation is making significantly more than the poorest of the congregation there's a real problem.
Ideally a congregation will include all of society, which will include people making zero, so your argument becomes that a pastor making significantly more than zero is immoral.
I would challenge you to find a moral basis for that in the Bible.
Apologies, I guess I did misread the employees and customers part.
> I hope that you argue that the 5th amendment is immoral when anyone uses it, and not just pastors.
Once again, you're not understanding man's law isn't God's law.
And also he wasn't just not bringing it up, he was actively suppressing his victim from coming forward with the truth, having his lawyers tell her she would face jail time for bringing up the truth. If you don't see that as morally wrong I don't know what to tell you.
And I'm not against pastors being paid. Absolutely, they should be compensated for their work. Paul says this. But they shouldn't be living in mansions with fancy cars and private jets and living a life of opulence. If those around them are living homeless and hungry while they pull down millions, there's a problem.
Sure, the actual claim is more of a vibe. A nebulous, anecdatal "Christians are the worst". A distinction, but hardly a difference.
> most churches I've seen aren't really following what Christ teaches. They're often filled with some of the most hateful, spiteful, and conceited people I've ever met
That's why Jesus said "Better pick up a stone otherwise you're just encouraging adultery!"
I'm not for encouraging people to get abortions. I think abortions are a terrible and sad thing. I wish for a world where nobody would ever need to have such a procedure done. I also think its terrible to have the state force people to carry risky pregnancies to term. I also think its bad for us to then go on and be hateful to those who have had an abortion, and I also think its wrong to firebomb places which give healthcare.
> That's why Jesus said "Better pick up a stone otherwise you're just encouraging adultery!"
Your implied argument is what, exactly? That JC opposed the death penalty for adultry, ergo he's against shaming single mothers, even if it leads to better outcomes? Bit of a stretch.
> I also think its bad for us to then go on and be hateful to those who have had an abortion, and I also think its wrong to firebomb places which give healthcare.
These opinions are shared by all mainstream Christian churches and the overwhelming majority of Christians.
My argument is Jesus taught us to not throw stones. Maybe you disagree, assuming throwing stones leads to some better outcome by your measure. Just because you're not arguing we should throw physical rocks doesn't mean you're not arguing for the stones, your stones are just different.
Like, what exactly are you proposing when you say shaming and disowning women and children? No food stamps or healthcare for kids born out of wedlock? No public education for kids born to single mothers? Trap people in abusive relationships or have those people be destitute without any aid? Very Christlike!
Tell me buddy, what stones do you propose we throw? Which are the most Christlike? After all, Paul says Jesus died for everyone, save for those single mothers and their illegitimate children!
What kind of shaming are you envisioning to prevent pregnancies? Have actual hard data to back that up?
If any of my kids have a child out of wedlock I'm not disowning my child or their kids. Don't get me wrong, I'd hope I instill virtues that lead to them never being in such a situation, but I don't think I'm called to disown my family for making a mistake. We all fail in life, we're supposed to be there for those who need help not push people away who are struggling. But I guess to you disowning them is your Christlike response. Be sure to let your kid know if they mess up they're on their own, after all that's the standard Christ holds us to right?
But hey, disowning and shaming is to you the Christlike response. And you wonder where are all these hateful Christians people talk about.
And to an extent, I do get what you're saying, and I do partially agree. I've definitely been around lots of people who say their Christian but in the end do nothing to actually push those around them, especially fellow Christians, to actually live a Christlike life. I think we should teach our kids Christian values. I think we should advocate for those around us to see our point of view. I think we should do what we can to convince society we're doing it a good way and they should follow. I don't think it's right to use government violence against people to force them to live our lifestyle though. I don't think it's right to be spiteful and mean to gentiles, to those who live a different life from us.
> These opinions are shared by all mainstream Christian churches and the overwhelming majority of Christians.
I guess you'd be surprised how many people I heard which were OK with the bombing of the fertility clinic thinking it was an abortion facility. I've had multiple people tell me they got what they had coming to them with all the embryos they've murdered. I guess you haven't seen the lines of people yelling at people going to clinics, calling people murderers and throwing refuse. I guess you haven't been in pews hearing the person up front cheering for laws that will cause people to die.
The political party allegedly being the voice for Christian views has an extremely anti-immigrant stance, sending people to pretty extreme prisons for little evidence of doing anything wrong but being someplace with questionable paperwork. They want to eliminate school lunches. They're trying to massively downsize Medicaid. All to help wealthy people build bigger barns. Seems pretty at odds to the things Jesus taught us to do.
Matthew Chapter 25:
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Leviticus 19:33-34:
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Luke 12:
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
I'm so happy that you put that scripture here(Matthew 25). I have an inner dialog constantly that involves a certain someone telling me that I did not feed them, shelter them, or visit them when they were sick or in prison.
We are all so worried that if we give strangers(or immigrants) our food, clothes, and shelter - there won't be any left for us! I think we are worried about nothing. If we all pooled our tiny fragments of mustard seed, nothing would be impossible...
15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
A lot of people see this as purely a supernatural thing Jesus did. As if the pile of broken bread pieces just kept growing and growing out of nothing. Maybe that's what happened. But maybe it was also that so many saw the charity that was happening and were also so compelled to share what they had. I think both possibilities are supported by this scripture.
The "seven deadly sins" are the basis of our economy, politics and relationships. Quick reminder: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. (YMMV)
And the Beatitudes? To put it in proper latin: fuggedaboutit.