chat

We can talk about racism and that's definitely a huge part of it and for that matter the capitalist "greed is good", and alienation and settler cruelty and judgement but going back further and to the base nature of things, even without Calvinism Christianity logically would not have a great view on this.

After all it is the purview of the CHURCH to do these things. If the SECULAR STATE does these things then what use is the church? If the secular state provides safety, health, food, clothing, shelter, etc and meets peoples needs then historically they stop going to church, they stop listening to the preachers, they stop caring so much about the fundamental, literal (and really the only logical way to interact with a religion like this is treating it as entirely true and therefore literal) text.

They call it a religion for the poor but without the poor it's in trouble and it knows this. It wants the downtrodden and miserable not to cure them, not to abolish this situation and possibility to but to give them temporary comfort in exchange for being preached at, in exchange for embracing the religion, in exchange for extolling its virtues and propagating it. It is not free, it is not true charity. There are and always have been members of the religion who push for a state of things that would engineer its weakening to irrelevance but there also always have been those who understand on some level the need for these conditions and in the west they hold great sway and power.

Jesus said the poor you shall always have. If you are a Christian, if you KNOW therefore he is the son of and part of a triumvirate god that is all knowing then to work against something he has stated is to work against god, it is to say you do not believe god, it is to challenge god, it is to say you know better than god. You are to work to alleviate the suffering within the context of preaching, of proselytizing, of small church groups but attempting to abolish it is either folly or blasphemy. And just handing it out without handing out preachings and trying to save souls is no good at all, as after all what is 60-100 years of pain on this earth compared to the dueling possibilities of either a long time in hell then obliteration OR eternal life in paradise, it's nothing and so healthcare is less important that getting you baptized because once you die your suffering will be at an end and you'll be with Jesus and really this is god's plan for you so the believer can keep their stingy wallet closed.

More than this Christians in the west especially do subscribe to prosperity gospel notions, the idea that if you're wealthy it's because god wants you to be and is rewarding you, that if you tithe to god he'll repay you. If you are a good Christian he'll protect you. If you've fallen on really hard times you must be a bad Christian because a good Christian would have a church family who would help them and a god who would open doors to save them. So Christians can at a very small scale be charitable, if someone is seen as a working, valuable member of society and is part of a small church (less than thousand members) and they fall on hard times very often the church members will pull together, they will give them charity, money, help with a place to stay, some food, etc. So the feeling is if that didn't happen it's because you're not right with god.

More-over, Christians have this view that god places challenges in front of believers but that true believers are always uplifted, that god has a plan[tm] for them and will usually save them.

Someone else posted Lenin who observed that religious people are taught to practice charity on earth as a ticket into heaven. That's a rather greedy and self-centered way of looking at things, that's not the kind of selflessness that Marxists would practice, you're exchanging one thing for another, making payments. So it's no surprise that over time, especially in the capitalist west someone decided to simply cut out the step of making those payments, to offer the eternal salvation and your only requirement is be a good slave for your masters, protestant work ethic, don't worry about being exploited on earth, we'll even let you be greedy and not give to charity, just keep your head down and you'll have this amazing eternal life. Though to be fair there is in most cases still token amounts of going through the ritual of making charity payments. Christians give to the church and the church it is supposed takes care of the needy to the extent necessary. But as churches are not taxed and those like the Catholic Church which do run healthcare networks run them in a profitable or cost neutral way and within the context of a capitalist system where they have to pay capitalist system prices for drugs and so on. (And be thankful they don't have total control of the healthcare system either as if they did not only no abortion but no contraceptives to unmarried women, no contraceptives to married women without her husband's signature and so on and on)

These are just a sampling of scattered thoughts, if I really wanted to I could sit down and write a long thing with citations to Christian biblical doctrine explaining and exploring the roots of this.