Ask Lemmy

Christianity is not about compassion and peace.

Forget utilitarian ethics altogether. Think of a twisted version of virtue ethics, where the only virtue is power.

Narcissism and sociopathy flows downwards from the top, submission and people-pleasing flows upwards from the bottom.

From the top down, having power makes you virtuous, and exercising power reflects that virtue.

If you are in a position of privilege and power, if you can kill people and take their stuff and get away with it, that marks you as powerful and to-be-feared, and therefore admirable.

If you are some kind of peasant, the opposite applies: you must be a submissive people-pleaser or face severe punishment.

If you're somewhere inbetween, you do both: oppress those below you, and grovel to those above you. This is virtue on both fronts.

That's conservative morality in a nutshell.

Christianity endorses this structure wholesale. It pats the peasants on the head and tells them they'll be rewarded (one day, not today) for being good little people-pleasers, and puts a final boss at the very top of the org chart so that the powerful can do some token groveling-upwards, and so the peasants have someone else to grovel to when nobody's around. It fits hand-in-glove with everything conservatives love.

Compassion-mercy-and-peace is just marketing spin clipped from the instructions for people-pleasing. Go along to get along, be helpful, don't rock the boat.

You'll notice that the core concept of christianity is earning tolerance from the powerful despite complete degradation. You are utterly worthless garbage and deserve to be tortured with fire forever; only via the sacrifice of an actual god can you can be promoted to salvage - though of course this status remains a completely undeserved gift that you should be overwhelmed with gratitude for.

Like a cop deciding not to murder you this time round: you are so blessed, now pick up that can.

Of course they love it.

In my experience lefties in America only claim to be about helping the most vulnerable. When it actually comes down to it, the lefties are perfectly willing to screw over a vulnerable person so long as they are of a certain race or political affiliation.