Political Memes

It's so God damned rare these days. Literally the only positive religious group experience I have had my my adult life was the day after the first George Floyd riots, I spent 8 hours on emergency overtime at my dispatch center. The next day I was out in the area and a local mosque decided to go around cleaning up broken glass and boarding up looted stores because "our brothers and sisters are hurting". I wish more people acted that way.

The only pastor from my parents church who had any interest in helping the community ended up getting ousted over a differing interpretation of some Bible verse or other. I had stopped going for almost a decade by then so who knows.

Now they're more interested in remodeling and expanding the church building to make it more gaudy.

You know, like Jesus said when he helped the merchants at the temple maximize their earnings potential, "rule of acquisition #10, bitches!"

the teachings Jesus actually preached

Except that we really don't know what those would have been, and there's a pretty decent likelihood that many of the most popular sayings like "blessed are the poor" and "easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle then a rich man to get into heaven" were additions after Paul and what later becomes the canonical church shift their splinter of the tradition to start collecting money from people.

"Want salvation? Too bad you have all that money - maybe we can help you out with that."

For example, in apocrypha that has a decent chance of also dating to the first century, it depicts a Jesus ridiculing the very idea of prayer, fasting, and charity as necessary for salvation, instead characterizing it as a birthright for all people and those who give money to the church as being like people who take off even their clothes to give to someone else in order to be given what is already theirs.

This is arguably an even more transgressive tradition and version of Jesus than the one Paul offered up, and was more in keeping with the pre-Pauline attitudes about "everything is permissible for me" and the resistance to his rights to profit as an apostle discussed in 1 Corinthians.

There's a significant survivorship bias in modern Christianity - for example, a tradition that changed the prohibition on carrying a purse and collecting money from people when ministering (Luke 22:35-36 - absent in Marcion's version which was likely the earliest copy) was more likely to survive and thrive than ones that had limited fundraising capabilities as originally directed.

So while yes, he may have been all about helping the poor and downtrodden, it's also entirely possible that a lot of it is a load of BS meant to separate fools from their money by an organization claiming to do those things on people's behalf (you'll notice in the Epistles vs gospels that Paul, who is supposedly collecting money for the poor back in Jerusalem, mentions a gift of a nice aromatic in Philippians 4:18, and then in the gospels written later on there's a scene where Jesus is given an expensive aromatic and chastises those who criticize him for accepting it rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor).

Personally, I prefer the nuance in something like saying 95 attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: "If you have money, don't lend it at interest. Rather, give [it] to someone from whom you won't get it back." There's a bit more nuance in that this addresses not an obligation for everyone including those struggling with money to give to the poor via the church but rather the inherent wisdom of recognizing the diminishing returns on personal wealth for the rich and the value in directly enriching one's environment rather than hoarding a resource you can't take with you (the point of the parable in saying 63 in the same work).

So while I'm inclined to think that a historical Jesus probably was against hoarding wealth stupidly given the overlap between unique extra-cannonical and canonical sentiments, I'm quite wary that the extreme degree of bleeding heart asceticism we see promoted canonically is much more than a sales effort by a parasitic organization that went on to build the Vatican off its back.

WWJD is actually a great moral role of thumb, the problem is that so few self-proclaimed Christians follow his teachings.

All that stuff about turning the other cheek and going the extra mile-- it’s not saying to just put up with abuse, mistreatment, and injustice. It’s talking about what people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi did, using oppressors violence and mistreatment against them.

Doesn't it? I think when Jesus said "But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." Matthew 5:39 he meant put up with abuse, mistreatment, and injustice - do not resist an evil person and do not retaliate when attacked.

I think when Jesus said "love your enemies [...] Be perfect" Matthew 5:44, 48 he meant love your enemies and be perfect.

I think when Jesus said "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor" Matthew 19:21 he meant sell your possessions and give to the poor.

A lot of supply-side Jesus followers say Jesus supports the troops, and that the eye of the needle the camel needs to go through isn't actually the eye of a needle - but a gate.

I think the above quotes are good things to do, eventho I'm not an ethical enough person to do them. I also think all the supernatural things Jesus is quoted as saying is bullshit, and that it's better to be honest than to repeat a bunch of stupid fairy tales.

"Jesus helps those who help themselves. Pretty sure that includes elementary school kids in poverty." - conservatives

For some of them, I think it's because they feel a thing first, and then reach for justifications second. If you say something that contradicts their feelings, it won't feel true to them and they won't believe you. It doesn't matter how true it is. They're driven by emotion. It is extremely ironic that the right wing is the one that says stuff like "facts don't care about your feelings".

If you want to change minds, you probably need to make them make emotional connections to the thing you're trying to get them to believe.

Belief is also social, so if you want their beliefs to stick you need to get them away from the group that's believing nonsense/hate/whatever, or they'll go right back.

A brown person that advocated for caring for those around you, and fought against greed? Looks like the sinister Jewish cabal are sending the illegal immigrants to take over our country with communism - git em!

They hate him already. There are maggats who seriously believe that Jesus was too "woke" and so disregard the new testament completely.

they'd call him a commie and hate him with passion for sure

No, they got persecuted two thousand years ago for challenging the power dynamics of a conservative theocracy dependent on revisionist religious orthodoxy.

Which is very ironic given the embracing of the tradition today by a group hell bent on establishing a conservative theocracy dependent on a revisionist version of that tradition which brought it more in line with said religious orthodoxy.

Evangelists use The Bible as a shield and scripture as a weapon. I like to think actual Christians aren't these people.

We already know, they'll pretend it was the democratic president's fault

Their plan is to have full fascism in place of democracy by then

8-12 years from now when people who were effectively left behind on purpose are of voting age.

The plan is for them to not be able to vote in 8-12 years. They're already wanting to raise the voting age.

OP's argument has to be made. You want to shave off as many of the fools following that twisted ideology as you can, via any argument that rings true. Which means your argument also needs to be made, but I don't think it's going to convince a lot of conservatives or undecided voters. Hell I think pointing out the hypocrisy as OP is doing is more likely to convince them to become atheist, than your argument is.

Removing religion altogether is a long term goal that sounds nice. Not having the world's superpower go fascist is a short-term one that is essential. Turning a fundamentalist christian into a compassionate christian makes the danger go down significantly. And you can get decent traditions of charity and even activism from the compassionate side of christianity.

And on a final note, I've been in atheist circles long enough to see some of them go bad. Like racism, mysogyny, etc. Atheism does not cure all. Religion makes things worse but is not the source of our problems.

What I'm trying to get at, is society's problem run deeper than religion vs atheism, it's just one dimension, and not the most important.

Wherever it's going, step 1 is, if possible, engaging on their own terms with material they have accepted. No one is going to be receptive to just rejecting the belief system they grew up with just because someone said so.

If the scam artist is tapping into the material they were fed growing up and framing what they want in those terms, and your counter point is "well everything you were fed growing up with was stupid", guess who wins?

I thought it was ain't no hate like Christian love

Texas and Mexican border. Whole fiasco is happening there right now

Some issues have gotten confused. There were buoys that texas floated in the water. A few drownings went on around them and they were ordered removed. There's some international law there. I'm not sure how much razor wire was in their construction, but it was definitely a safety hazard

The razor wire is another issue, and the ruling for it is really the bare minimum and appears to be misrepresented by the right. Texas had been putting it everywhere for years. This was not an issue for the federal government in most situations. However the federal border patrol has to do their job (regardless of the fact the right pretends they don't to smear political rivals). If they see something on the other side of the razor wire that requires their attention, they need to get to it. To do that they cut the wire to get to the otherside. Texas, not wanting to have to replace the wire everytime, sued to make them stop. The federal government basically argued blocking them was obstructing justice and other official business(including things like rendering medical aid). Courts have found on the federal side. Texas is trying to ignore it. If someone is on Texas' side you can always accuse them of obstructing justice. They kind of are in cases where there is actually justice to be done. In other cases they are just sadistic.

Except all that pesky other stuff like "the worker deserves their wages", and "treat the alien(/immigrant) and poor among you as one of your own".

No, I think they equally abuse both Testaments. Woman, submit to thy husband. ~~Husband, submit to thy wife.~~