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That’s why my parents took us all to a Methodist church, where they don’t disagree with Jesus out loud, they just scowl, scoff, walk away, get in the car and go mistreat a teenage server being paid slave wages at their favorite restaurant after church to get out their frustrations
I think my southern baptist church growing up might have been started by a Methodist then. Thought you were talking about them word for word. Except it was immigrants who opened a Mexican restaurant not teenagers.
Oh the southern baptists were much worse around here at mistreating servers and workers in general, it’s the one thing the Methodists I grew up around could use to feel superior out loud. Nothing like hearing someone’s nanna tell a 14 yo girl trying to afford her school supplies that she’s going to hell for forgetting to bring the silverware
Running the gauntlet that was the Sunday, after-church rush at the Golden Corral in the 1990s southeastern US.
“What does this part say, Grammaw?”
“This is my commandment that you love one another, that your joy may be–hey! You! Yeah, you! We’ve been waiting here for ten minutes! Maybe it’s siesta time were you come from, but here in America, we work for a living! I expect bread on the table or you can forget about a tip and I’ll be talking to your manager! Now…where was I? Oh, yes…that your joy may be full.”
Same with the Pentecostals
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“I ordered blueberry pancakes. Do you call these little purple specks blueberries???”
My parents only seemed disappointed that I didn’t believe any of the dumb magic shit because I do actually try and be the kind of person the teachings expect you to be otherwise (not because of the religion but because it’s just generally good advice most of time).
I don’t need god and the threat of hell or reward of heaven to not be a dick or do things that will knowingly harm others.
Literally my exact experience. Parents hounded me for years about going back to church and “finding a good christian girl” despite the fact that I live the values taught by the church moreso than them and moreso than any other family member. They’ve gotten so much more stubborn as they’ve gotten older. More political too…it’s sad to see.
Former Catholic school kid here - yeah, that was kind of a rude revelation. I musta missed the part where Jesus says, “Payest thou not for somebody else’s health care, let the freeloading bastards fend for themselves!”
Care for others. And by “others”, we mean fellow tithe-paying church members of the same skin color, language, and specific denominational sect as us, not those apostate rogues whom we will exterminate once our brothers and sisters reproduce to become so numerous that we take over the government. Unless they repent, of course. Then we’ll let them serve us as one of the lower caste tribes from our Canaanite fanfiction we pick out-of-context inspirational quotes from.
Don’t try bringing logic to a dingleberry convention!
Listening to Dan McClellan, I was surprised how much care for the stranger is a running theme in both the NT and OT. Of particular note is the sin of the city of Sodom for which it was firebombed, which was not about homosexuality, as per modern interpretations, but about mistrust of the stranger, mistreatment of them, and failure to feed them and show them hospitality while holding an abundance of material wealth.
Not only does the US have a problem with internal disfavor of immigrants, but so do most industrialized nations, and as the bible shows us, this has been a problem for a very, very long time. (I hypothesize, today, public animosity towards migrants in the US is exacerbated by the oligarch-owned massive far-right propaganda machine, as a means to distract common Americans from the excesses and abuses of the ownership class, but that’s another convo.)
In fact, I think I remember McClellan noting that kind treatment of the foreigner is part of the ancient Babylonian doctrine that inspired the OT.
You can see why a modern Christian fundamentalist might want to creatively interpret certain messages in the bible.
Yes. And in doing so, by showing that their doctrine can be creatively interpreted to mean whatever and affirm their own ideology, they demonstrate that their foundational text is not divinely inspired; if it were, it would have a singular meaning understood by anyone and everyone who read it.
Instead we have 40,000-ish separate denominations of Christianity, most of whom see themselves as uniquely valid and the other branches as deliberately false.
I got a mixed message in my upbringing. On the surface, love others. In practice, act like you love others when you’re in public, talk mad shit behind closed doors. Not just on people with substantial differences, even your same faith, same color, same politics neighbors you just spent the morning at church with. Gossip, talk about their dirty laundry (or what you think it might be). It was incredibly two-faced and by middle school I was realizing how mean and hateful my parents were (also starting to realize I was in an abusive home).
“Hate the sin not the sinner” is a phrase that gets thrown out a lot, but it’s a misdirection. It excuses the act of judging another as righteousness, but in practice it’s moral projection and often seeks to find someone’s struggle (like addiction) and make that the entirety of the person. Humans have some moral relativity in terms of “immoral acts”- murder, theft, deceit, the kinds of behavior that makes communities and societies unsafe. But there’s plenty of “sin” that is not the business of anyone but those consenting to it.
Extremely conservative religion can find any reason to ascribe judgement to anyone it chooses because it’s adherents default to answering to a higher power that inevitably favors their interpretation of their scriptures and human prophets/saints/apostles/leaders. And while the big three are some of the worst about abusing that, I’ve seen secular moral hot takes and humanist-driven moral absolutism get dangerously close to similar judgement as in-groups form.
Jesus only really goes full “Good people go to Heaven and evil go to Hell” on one occasion. It’s in Matthew 25, and the criteria is based on treatment of the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the imprisoned.
My little rant about “Jesus died for our sins.”
God sends his son Jesus, who is also Him, to Earth to sacrifice himself… to himself… to persuade himself to forgive humans for Original Sin, which happened before they were born but was somehow a reason to ban them all from eternal salvation. Yeahhhh, easy to see how a Supreme Being intelligent enough to create the entire universe would think this made sense.
That’s basically what cured me of evangelical Christianity.
I shelter in place on sundays and this is why. They are out in force. And my perimenopausal ass has a strong sense of justice and no filter. I’ll get in a fist fight.
I was raised church of christ. My father always made a distinction between church beliefs and what he thought was necessary. That’s how they did it. Everyone else is evil and you can’t have morals when fighting against that evil. The church tends to make up its own rules as it needs to.
