Sincerity Post Alert - Sorry in advance for the cringe.

This honestly hurts my heart.

I'm an atheist now, but I grew up in church, I attended a tiny, private Christian school from 8th grade through 11th (and only left because they weren't chartered to give diplomas), I literally had formal Bible class 6 days a week and happily attended evening services - because I was a naive kid who truly believed that "love everyone" and "do unto others" stuff was as important to everyone else as it was to me.

I was always a weird kid without many friends my age, and the kindness and friendliness of the adults at church was a big deal for me. Coming to terms with the hypocrisy in the adults around me - realizing how judgemental and shitty most of them actually were - made my late teens extra lonely.

Nobody's perfect, but - Jesus Fucking Christ, I don't know why, but I still get surprised at the depths of awful behavior done in his name, and the ways his message of empathy and compassion gets twisted to justify it.

His message of empathy. That is the core of his message. Mark, Chapter 12:

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[f] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[g] There is no commandment greater than these.”

32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Versus

Enticing Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion

This is truly evil. The antidote for the prosperity gospel brainworms is empathy and compassion. Honestly, I truly, deeply believe in my stupid little naive heart that the antidote for most societal ills is empathy and compassion.* How do you actually, really solve the diseases of greed and selfishness without them?

This demonization of caring is just evil. How do I talk my evangelical boomer parents out of their brainworms if they're getting this kind of messaging in church? Idfk. I guess I just keep reacting with the appropriate level of disgust to this sort of thing and ask questions and hope they're not too lead-poisoned to someday see the contradiction between the message of Christ and the message of church.

This is a real bummer, but I guess it's better to know than not. yuck.

/* - I understand there are also problems that require math and/or guillotines.

My parents were atheists, but my grandma took me to church and raised me to be Southern Baptist. And coming from that background, I have never seen Christianity as being any sort of positive force in any way. As soon as I realized all the vile shit they said wasn’t true and terrifying, I turned 180 and became the most annoying middle school atheist you’ve ever seen.

It’s only as an adult that I’ve even really been able to understand why the fuck even people largely on my side on things would still make positive claims about Christianity, how the church they went to didn’t spew the evil hatred that mine did, and come to accept “maybe not all churches, not all Christians”

But no, after the last few years I think middle school me was right. Christianity is a dangerous death cult that should be banned and persecuted. Churches should be razed and Christianity should only be spoken of in history classes in the way we currently talk about Aztec human sacrifice. Christianity has probably been the largest force for cruelty and evil for the last 2000 years, and is incompatible with a compassionate human society.

So many of these sick people clamor to get to the parts where God punishes and say "see, I'm doing God's will!". But that's just the thing, they skip any part that might call attention to their pride and hubris, they think they have devine judgement because they are God in their own hearts - the highest blasphemy a person could ever commit.

What's the line Jesus delivered, something like hate your neighbour, absolutely despise them and have a plan to kill them at a moment's notice, be ready to entirely obliterate your fellow man at all times

Ring a bell?

It seems like they're really doing this. Just dropping the last few pretenses of having anything to dowith Christianity.

It's easy to view this as an aberration, some corruption of the true Christian faith by some outside force, but the cruelty has always been the point. Look at "Mother" Teresa. She's seen across denominations as an exemplar of the faith, but, in reality, she hoarded donations meant to help the poor, withheld palliative care from the dying, and provided inadequate care to the treatable. She has the suffering of thousands at her feet, suffering dealt out because she thought it was necessary given the parameters of her religion. That the eternity of bliss that surely awaited them on the other side could be purchased with a lonely and agonizing death. The whole enterprise is rotten from first principles. Burn that shit down.

you know, the moral dilemma usually involves time machines and baby hitler, but I sometimes think baby martin luther is a more interesting subject for that specific hypothetical

"Huh, I wonder why some people see my religion as a bunch of lies for me to cynically grab power for myself."

Reddit atheists come back.

Christians conveniently ignore the part where Jesus violently throws all the merchants out of the church

Going to hell for helping a guy in a wheelchair cross the road

And Jesus said onto his flock "lo, and fuck them poor people, lmfao"

Lord said fuck you got mine Beggars, lepers can whine Rip the food from the mouths of the hungry, that's fine

James Cone quotes as a timeline cleanse:

“The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.... Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for 'pie in the sky.'"

"We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God’s love.... If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer, and we had better kill God."

Christianity was literally the state religion of the Roman empire. Basically every cool Christian in history was murdered by other Christians.

Charity is literally one of the seven virtues which are thought of as opposites to the seven vices or sins (or to take a page from Buddhism, "antidotes" to the "poisons" of the vices).

It's not exactly " charity" as we know it. The Latin word is "caritas" which means "caringness" basically but the Greek word is "agape" which is a saintly kind of love. Compare the increasing intensity of love involved in sympathy/empathy/compassion or love for a friend/family/partner/all beings.

Compassion is literally the thing of saints and which allows one to sit calmly while being tortured to death as a martyr. One of the most haunting things I have seen is that image of Thích Quảng Đức so calmly protesting the South Vietnam government's persecution of Buddhists (CW: suicide by self-immolation). I imagine that is how the Christian martyrs must have held themselves in their last moments

8deadlysins 😔

I mean it was here the whole time: Matthew 25:40

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for satan.’

Truly demonic. American Protestants are Mammon worshippers

Good to see the evangelicals questioning controversial theologians such as checks notes Jesus.

Originally written in 2019 for your reading "pleasure".

My brother in Christ, the New Testament is basically composed of Jesus going around, telling people to not be assholes and to believe in God. If you take him out there's no religion, Qur'an itself says you can't be a Muslim without believing in the prophets so that's ruled out and I know these people won't all convert to Judaism. Are they gonna start worshipping money? Ford?

Zero surprise. When you look at the history of christianity, and where it's currently headed, this was an inevitability.

What if greed and selfishness are morally justified actually?

Strap in folks because I know the lore here.

tl;dr this article is doing fan-fiction ala CS Lewis on a hyper-calvinist, misogynist evangelical site so it's both worse than you thought and also just insider nerd shit

I think evangelicals should be shot

I see American Christians have reached the point of actual unambiguous heresy and sprinted past it without looking back.

I guess the next step is turning all their crosses upside down and introducing a golden idol of Og-Baeth, the great pig father of Gomorrah.

Ah yes empathy, the eighth deadly sin apparently

well that's as close as you can get to the exact opposite message as Christianity. It's very rare for theology to be exactly wrong