this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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There is The Church and then there’s the church - once Christianity becomes large, structured, and hierarchical it strays from the actual words that Jesus spoke. If you ever have the chance, have a read through the Gospels without any of the other bullshit. Just read the stuff that Jesus himself supposedly said. Those words are full of love, care, kindness, sacrifice, giving, sharing, and fully giving up oneself in service of others. The example he set was a great one. I no longer identify as Christian, but Jesus is a damn good role model and actually taught us how to love one another exactly how we are.
I wouldn’t recommend my fellow comrades join some random church, but don’t discount Jesus’ teachings as a philosophical text. I honestly believe that if all Christians were actually Christ-like it would truly be a religion of peace, love and acceptance.
"I love your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ"
I feel this in my bones
Jesus was fine with slavery 😬 most of the good stuff he's said has been said in better ways and before him
Fair call my dude, there are plenty of great role models out there. Out of curiosity, what specific bible verses are you referring to with regards to Jesus being pro-slavery? I’ve had a couple of reads through the New Testament and didn’t get that idea myself, but I’m acutely aware they’re long and cumbersome tomes and I might’ve missed the parts you’re referring to. I know Paul was a fucked up dude who twisted Jesus’ words into his own weird Church, but did Jesus himself ever condone slavery? I can’t remember anything like that in the Gospels.
Jesus himself never direcly mentioned slavery afaik, however, the old testament explicitly condones it and provides instruction on how to get slaves (including ones who count as your property for life) in the law, and jesus did say he didn't come to abolish the law, so...
Hey man, fair call - take from that information what you will. As a philosophical entity though, I tend to focus on the words that were attributed to Jesus and not the words he didn’t speak. If your reading of the Gospels has you believing that he was pro-slavery, there’s little I can do to convince you otherwise, but I guess I read them in a different context to you. We all take what we want from the written word. I think you’ll find that deep-diving the Gospels would convince you otherwise, as Jesus’ messages of love, care, sacrifice and hope are entirely incongruent with the idea that a person can own another person, but that’s probably just my own interpretation.
iirc from growing up in a church school and all the Bible study bits I did growing up, there's a bit in the bible where jesus says that if someone tries to kidnap and enslave someone they should pay a fine to the parents in addition to the punishment they'd receive from the law which some people twist around into trying to imply that jesus was saying kidnapping and enslaving people is ok as long as you pay a fine to the parents.
Amen! (sorry i couldn’t stop myself.)
I haven’t identified as Christian since reading the bible and realizing god is portrayed as some fucked up attention craving psycho.
But fictional Jesus is like the OG embodiment of woke. He doesn’t need to be real for the philosophy to be. If only more people followed his literal example.