this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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Quite frankly, Christianity can be used as a motivator for left wing philosophies helping the poor. If you actually read what Jesus' said, it's pretty good and damning for many self proclaimed american "christians"
Sort of, but you need to remember that his teachings were an individual philosophy and he didn't want anything to do with government (render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's).
Jesus taught that you should give all you have to the poor and follow God. Failing that, you should be generous in helping the poor. So I think he would advocate for charities, not taxation, since charitable giving is a choice and he wants people to choose to do the right thing. He would also criticize the very wealthy because they obviously have more than enough to share with the poor.
Good point, especially with 2 Corinthians 9:7
Thanks.
IMO, just paying your taxes doesn't make you a good person, giving what's left does. Ebenezer Scrooge's big transformation wasn't adopting progressive policies or anything, but giving abundantly.
Christianity doesn't say anything about politics, it's an individual thing.
Exactly, Paul tells Christians to leave those outside of the Church to be dealt with by God as well.
1 Corinthians 5:12-13
I agree with your point generally (limit judgment to those within the church), I just urge caution about how far to take that.
Context
Paul is talking to a fledgling church (not ready for meat: see chapter 3), so they need to be extra careful about getting led astray. Corinth was known for sexual deviance, yet the Christians were accepting of something even the local non-Christians would see as wrong (sexual relationship with step mother), yet the Christians there seemed to accept it. Tolerance of that behavior is destructive to the church, so they need to actively push against it. Pushing the individual out of the church would encourage them to repent and also protect the church from further compromising their principles.I know to urge caution, but what do you mean? Like we should punish murder because society sees it as bad as well. But when it comes to a topic such as same sex marriage, I think if it's what the majority of society want, it should be legal and not hurting anybody, even if it's not something that the Church should accept within religious life.
I agree with that.
The caution I'm talking about is twofold:
My caution is about understanding the context to avoid just pulling random verses. Perhaps you won't do that, I just like to be extra clear in case someone else finds the conservation. I've seen people do terrible things in the name of religion, and this feels like a passage that could get misused.
Heard of Christian Marxism?
Marx generally opposed religion so it sounds like an oxymoron
Yeah that's always been the point of religion. They needed some way to control people in the 1400s, so they told them that if they didn't do what they were told, and incidentally pay the church a lot of money, then the big man in the sky would be unhappy. That was about the level of sophistication that a con required back then.
Even as recently as 200 years ago pastors didn't really believe in god, it was just a convenient job to do if you were relatively well off but still needed employment, and didn't want to do any laboring. That's why a lot of them ended up being scientists, they were rich and bored.
Christianity predates the 1400s
That's not really pertinent to my point.
Also I'm thinking more of all of the people paying patronage to country parsons which absolutely is a product of the 1400s onwards.
Are you saying that year 0 was a thing?
You can't get rid of superstitions nor politics. The most important thing that will help is education. A more educated populace is less gullible, but you can't fix stupid. Stupid will always exist.
Yup. Ideology is religion and religion is ideology. We tend to want to be a part of something bigger, but the people in charge of those bigger things can use it to justify hurting people "for the greater good".