The bible is full of calls to violence and justification for it including justification for divine genocide, for murder of children and the rape of women and children, all directly commanded by god.
The bible also states you will not suffer a witch to live. It is full of exceptions and I find this kind of cheap argumentation rather taxing as it misunderstands how complex a work it is. If you want to cherrypick you can find support for just about any position within the bible. But if you take it as a whole and seriously and literally you can only find a reactionary worldview there, admittedly one that does still include demands for charity... right after you've finished stoning rape victims who didn't cry out loudly to death and killing gay people.
and even then, only if you ignore the bit in the new testamant that explicitly states the coming of christ is a new covenant with man that replaces the old.
christians who quote old testament shit as if it was divine law are either arguing in bad faith, or fundamentally misunderstand their own religion.
usually both.
the whole thing is kinda fucked, but there absolutely are some christian comrades, so saying you can only find reactionary world views in a book whose protaganist preaches love and kindness is uhh... not accurate either
It's true of the accurate translations. I use NRSV as my primary reference as it is the preferred modern translation by theology scholars in terms of accuracy. Pulling that translation card is really lazy though and I find it personally annoying and typically a sign of someone either ignorant or arguing in bad faith and I have no time for either -- too many reactionary capitalists not enough time to waste on theological debates. Even if one were to accept that lazy attack one must contend with the fact that religion is not just a book. It simply isn't, it's institutions, practices, culture, etc and their centuries of tradition and history. Pulling the no-true-Christian card is also a bit like trying to pull the "no that's crony capitalism, you don't understand, according to the holy text of capitalism it should unfold like x". It doesn't really matter what some imagined pure, good Christianity looks like anymore than imagining what some pure, good hypothetical capitalism is and using that to defend it as it exists. We have centuries of examples of what it looks like, not just under capitalism but under feudalism. Christianity is very much a living religion. It has to be, it's 2000 years old and you need to find a way to apply the writings of people from that long ago to modern problems or people would just write you off. There comes interpretation, there comes scholarship, there comes theology. The base itself is wicked and poisonous and the resultant interpretations of it over the centuries have only made it more-so. But it's whatever you want, it's full of things that are on a surface textual level contradictory and can only be resolved through scholarship, theology, and interpretation.
and even then, only if you ignore the bit in the new testamant that explicitly states the coming of christ is a new covenant with man that replaces the old.
Wrong. https://www.biblehub.com/matthew/5-18.htm At best you can argue that the old covenant only applies to Jews. But that doesn't resolve a fundamental problem which would be the fundamentally bad nature of the OT and the divine commands (and acts) thereof. Also you have verses from the NT such as https://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-12.htm that deems women may not teach over men. I'm not going to list all the bad stuff from the NT but there's a lot of it. Saul of Tarsus was not a nice or progressive guy.
I mean consider what kind of character the Christian god is. First of all if it's perfect, all knowing, all powerful, then why would it ever change its mind? Why would it ever command or allow evil in its name at any point in time if it is also all good and loving? The only rational way out of that is saying that actually those hateful acts are good, that actually the god had mysterious ways. And that's just denialism at that point and you have no good argument which is why the fundamentalists just roll their eyes at and laugh at these "progressive" Christians because they don't have a solid theology to stand on.
And if you must know, yes I take umbrage at the patriarchy and sexism. I take umbrage at being told women are to submit to men in all things, that women are a help-meet, that at any point in time the god of this religion condoned murdering women and girls who were not virgins on their wedding not, condoned murdering rape victims if they didn't cry out loud enough, and condoned the slaughter of the men and non-virgin women the rape of the girls who had not known men.
yeah im not going to bother responding to this, because you make multiple bad faith assertions that any response i could make isnt worth listening to before ive even responded.
instead, ill just point at all the latin american christians who are comrades, and then moonwalk away from this conversation
The bible is full of calls to violence and justification for it including justification for divine genocide, for murder of children and the rape of women and children, all directly commanded by god.
The bible also states you will not suffer a witch to live. It is full of exceptions and I find this kind of cheap argumentation rather taxing as it misunderstands how complex a work it is. If you want to cherrypick you can find support for just about any position within the bible. But if you take it as a whole and seriously and literally you can only find a reactionary worldview there, admittedly one that does still include demands for charity... right after you've finished stoning rape victims who didn't cry out loudly to death and killing gay people.
this is only true of some translations.
and even then, only if you ignore the bit in the new testamant that explicitly states the coming of christ is a new covenant with man that replaces the old.
christians who quote old testament shit as if it was divine law are either arguing in bad faith, or fundamentally misunderstand their own religion.
usually both.
the whole thing is kinda fucked, but there absolutely are some christian comrades, so saying you can only find reactionary world views in a book whose protaganist preaches love and kindness is uhh... not accurate either
It's true of the accurate translations. I use NRSV as my primary reference as it is the preferred modern translation by theology scholars in terms of accuracy. Pulling that translation card is really lazy though and I find it personally annoying and typically a sign of someone either ignorant or arguing in bad faith and I have no time for either -- too many reactionary capitalists not enough time to waste on theological debates. Even if one were to accept that lazy attack one must contend with the fact that religion is not just a book. It simply isn't, it's institutions, practices, culture, etc and their centuries of tradition and history. Pulling the no-true-Christian card is also a bit like trying to pull the "no that's crony capitalism, you don't understand, according to the holy text of capitalism it should unfold like x". It doesn't really matter what some imagined pure, good Christianity looks like anymore than imagining what some pure, good hypothetical capitalism is and using that to defend it as it exists. We have centuries of examples of what it looks like, not just under capitalism but under feudalism. Christianity is very much a living religion. It has to be, it's 2000 years old and you need to find a way to apply the writings of people from that long ago to modern problems or people would just write you off. There comes interpretation, there comes scholarship, there comes theology. The base itself is wicked and poisonous and the resultant interpretations of it over the centuries have only made it more-so. But it's whatever you want, it's full of things that are on a surface textual level contradictory and can only be resolved through scholarship, theology, and interpretation.
Wrong. https://www.biblehub.com/matthew/5-18.htm At best you can argue that the old covenant only applies to Jews. But that doesn't resolve a fundamental problem which would be the fundamentally bad nature of the OT and the divine commands (and acts) thereof. Also you have verses from the NT such as https://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-12.htm that deems women may not teach over men. I'm not going to list all the bad stuff from the NT but there's a lot of it. Saul of Tarsus was not a nice or progressive guy.
I mean consider what kind of character the Christian god is. First of all if it's perfect, all knowing, all powerful, then why would it ever change its mind? Why would it ever command or allow evil in its name at any point in time if it is also all good and loving? The only rational way out of that is saying that actually those hateful acts are good, that actually the god had mysterious ways. And that's just denialism at that point and you have no good argument which is why the fundamentalists just roll their eyes at and laugh at these "progressive" Christians because they don't have a solid theology to stand on.
And if you must know, yes I take umbrage at the patriarchy and sexism. I take umbrage at being told women are to submit to men in all things, that women are a help-meet, that at any point in time the god of this religion condoned murdering women and girls who were not virgins on their wedding not, condoned murdering rape victims if they didn't cry out loud enough, and condoned the slaughter of the men and non-virgin women the rape of the girls who had not known men.
yeah im not going to bother responding to this, because you make multiple bad faith assertions that any response i could make isnt worth listening to before ive even responded.
instead, ill just point at all the latin american christians who are comrades, and then moonwalk away from this conversation
Oh believe you me, I know what a wild ride the thing is. 10 years of Catholic school will learn you good lol