For all their “christianity”, republicans in the US are pretty hypocritical.
Jesus actually teached that everybody deserves to get fed and housed. That everybody deserves healthcare. That people should care for other people in their community. That is essentially the core principles of socialism.
From my purely anecdotal experience, the people who actually want to follow Jesus’s teachings don’t go to church. Says a lot.
And how many have read at least one testament? Reading is not rare anymore
Didn’t go into so much detail with most people of faith I’ve met, but I know for a fact mum read both the Old and New Testaments and decided she didn’t* (still getting used to it…) want to have anything to do with the Church’s interpretations, because they focused on essentially anything other than empathy and being human.
On the other hand, grandma wasn’t that big on the Bible, but went to church weekly (for as long as she could). She was also domineering, aggressive, two-faced, and manipulative. Also loved to visit the village witch (no, I’m not joking), which was… kinda’ contradictory if one asks me, but nobody did, so that’s that…
Why contradictory? Jesus was a magician, even a necromancer. Turned water into fine wine, etc (I take these things as highly metaphorical, but stress emotions do horrible health damage. Love heals a lot of inner wounds, so maybe some conditions are
motivatedmitigated.Eh, Christian Orthodox traditions frown upon any sort of black magic and such, as Jesus’s divinity is held as THE factor for his performing miracles. Anything which isn’t Jesus-related is considered to stem from Lucifer.
Orthodoxy aims to keep individuals schismed, Jesus aimed to unite them. House divided.
Pretty much! I remember attending Sunday services several times at the behest of my grandmother, and half the time they consisted of mean gossip and fear-mongering.
Edit: of course, I’m not saying all Orthodox priests follow this script, but the Orthodox dogma in general seems to be VERY conducive to it…
It’s not just the Orthodox. It pretty much is the whole Church, which is now and was then very political. Schismed people are malleable and controllable, and expedient for rulers. That is why I read the Ethiopian Bible, complete with mistranslations, then go do weeks or months of tedious research to find the actual translations, and what that meant in the ancient Judaism and its parent religions. It’s also why I feel free to discard anything after Jesus ’ teachings.
You’d be surprised. I read the Bible cover to cover in high school (one of the reasons I no longer have faith), and it amazed me how many people in my life that were also Christian that were entirely unfamiliar with entire books or lessons…
Similar story here except for the longest time I didn’t realize that my fellow church goers didn’t know what the Bible said, and thus couldn’t distinguish between biblical lessons and purely made-up ones
That’s my point, I wouldn’t be surprised, unfortunately
To be fair, I couldn’t get through it either. But I’d guess if one decides to take something as their guidance, it would be a good idea to read it at least once
The bible teaches that slavery is a-okay. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re not faithful anymore. Many other fucked up shit like that. I’m betting that if more people ACTUALLY read the bible, there’d a shitload less christians.
It was okay for everyone at the time, indentured slavery was a thing. That was basically the closest way people in the past got actual job security
It’s also how Jacob got Leah and Rachel.