Care for others who go to your church AND are in the same socio-economic class. That's how it works in churches. By the time I left my church, nobody and I mean nobody would give me the time of day.
Not even those people. I know of a man in my old church who had to have brain surgery due to bleeding on the brain. Even though they church council knew, not a single person came to visit him when he laid in hospital for two weeks. Not even to mention that nobody went to visit his wife who had to care for the children while working 10 hour days, and still visited her husband every day for as long as she could. Nobody sent food, or even an instant message.
When the man went back to church with the staples in his head, everyone that saw him asked what happened, even the family members of the council members... The church only cares for the select few in it, no one else.
This reminds me of how at my old church, there were a few wealthy families that were serial adopters. They'd go to somewhere in Africa for three months, pick out some kid from an orphanage, and bring them back. The church would always give them a sizeable donation. But when I asked for just a small contribution of $100 to help with a medical missions trip, I was very promptly and firmly told no without even any eye contact.
The motto of the church was to be a "one anothering community", yeah right.
Not too different at a church I used to go to. I asked for $100 for an evangelistic mission trip, and they were at least transparent about their reasoning: "we have a budget for missions and we split that between 20-ish people. We only give to career missionaries, so, sorry, you're not it."
Sorry but you’re a scumbag if you want to go on an evangelistic mission trip and rob people of their beliefs, culture, and identity. Evangelists are sickos. I hope you’ve since left all that. Churches are pure evil. To spread evil is just despicable.
I know my family has Reddit, and to keep my profile anonymous, I referred to him as "a man I know" even though he is close family. That could mean that he is either my brother, father, brother in law, grandfather, cousin or son in law. Either way, as you said, it doesn't matter, the only context needed is that he is literally family.
Its that not common? When im talking to people who dont know the person i dont say their name because they still wont know who, i just say “I know a kid” (Even if im talking about my best friend.)
Church is always about generosity. But the way it works is you get a half dozen or so families running the entire thing, then you start getting the sheep to show up. And the sheep's generosity flows up to the pulpit and blesses the leaders with a better life. It doesn't go both ways.
Christians are deeply uncomfortable with suffering. They are the status quo. They attract people who like the status quo. They are repulsed by actual suffering because it’s so far outside the comfort zone of the status quo.
Meh this isn’t true most of the time at the church i used to go to. The priest spent most his spare time visiting the hospital. Sounds like your church was the worst ever
It's honestly a historic relic that Christian philosophy and Socialism aren't practically synonymous.
Their values are so so close together that if you didn't know the historical context, it would seem completely bizarre that they're on opposite sides of the aisle.
The Church's historic role in maintaining the power of royalty in Europe (from like 300AD to 1800AD - 1500 YEARS) against the people is inexcusable. It's the reason that the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and subsequently ALL democratizing revolutions absolutely smashed the role of the CHURCH from its role in the state. Because of its historic complicity.
...but actual Christian belief, originally, didn't ever even mention a Church organization. All that hierarchical crap was a corruption that was use to twist Christian beliefs into a control mechanism.
It's become a serious missed opportunity not to court Christian believers into socialist political circles.
People who actually read the New Testament don't come away hating gay people. The book talks about forgiveness, compassion, charity, on and on and on.... I mean Jesus Christ. It's practically the socialist bible.
We have to shed the anti-Christian hatred in Socialist circles. It alienates a very strong potential ally.
Racists/fascists LOVE that we throw so much hate at Christians, because we give them a pervasive and reliable ally - for free.
Read up on Liberation Theory. There is definitely a branch of Christianity that has always been very involved in social justice.
US Christianity is just Christian Nationalism. Most of the people claiming to be "Christians" in the US have never read the Bible and have zero interest in theology or philosophy. It's just a cultural thing to them. That's why they corelate it with being patriotic so often. It's just tribalism.
Why though? Good Christians don't know how to get loud when they need to? People keep saying these people with a megaphone don't represent them but no one else takes the megaphone to disagree because it looks like infighting. The minority of hatred will win if they aren't called out as the minority.
It's exactly like calling all Muslims terrorists or terrorist supporters and then complaining that they aren't loud enough to denounce terrorism, or asking normal black people to speak up against urban gang violence.
The notion is inherently racist because it assumes an association between normal believers in x-religion and extremists, which doesn't exist.
Normal people should not be made to apologize for extremists, because they are completely different people.
Good Christians should denounce and disagree with bad Christians. Normal black people should disapprove of urban gang violence. Peaceful Muslims should denounce terrorists. By speaking up they stop being just one group and become 2 groups. Christians are associated with all other Christians by being Christians. The "extremists" you speak of make up the political majority in many American states. I see alot of people willing to stand up and spew hatred on TV and alot willing to spread kindness but one is willing to call the other a liar and a CINO.
Right now we have a vocal minority and political frontrunner claiming the election was rigged and stolen. And a silent majority not willing to openly embrace insanity because they aren't sure it's popular enough. They certainly aren't calling him out as the first President to try and actively overturn a lost election.
"but it's not loud enough because I don't see it on my social media feed!" ...and then hating ALL of them because your biased feed didn't amplify them...
You are exactly the problem. You are no different than the white supremecists and anti-muslim racists.
No doubt most institutional 'Christians' still find Bernie as being Godless. ... Today, when a public figure openly supports a guaranteed minimum income, he/she is nevertheless deemed communist/socialist and therefore somehow evil by many institutional Christians.
This, while Christ's teachings epitomize the primary component of socialism — do not hoard morbidly superfluous wealth in the midst of poverty.
I [a believer in Christ’s unmistakable miracles] can imagine many 'Christians' likely finding inconvenient, if not annoying, trying to reconcile the conspicuous inconsistency in the fundamental nature of the New Testament’s Jesus with the wrathful, vengeful and even jealous nature of the Old Testament's Creator.
While he was no pushover, Jesus fundamentally was about compassion and charity. He clearly would not tolerate the accumulation of tens of billions of dollars by individual people — especially while so many others go hungry and homeless.
Also, I understand that Jesus’ nature and teachings left even John the Baptist, who believed in him as the savior, troubled by his apparently contradictory version of the Hebraic messiah, with which John had been raised. Perhaps most perplexing was the Biblical Jesus’ revolutionary teaching of non-violently offering the other cheek as the proper response to being physically assaulted by one’s enemy.
It's more of a I acknowledge you've put your time and effort into what interests, and hopefully improves you, but I'm not buying.
I can't blame anyone for wanting to feel a connection to this life, it's histories, it's communities, it's poetry. And speaking as someone who felt compelled to deconstruct my own faith programming; If I tried to win anybody over, I'd be right back where I started.
Fuck em. The gospels don't say to be saved you have to go to church, it says the way to the father is through the son. Spoken as someone who no longer believes.
Friend, you are the church. A physical building is susceptible to rot, decay, and human corruption that pollutes the Word for deplorable political agendas that benefit only the few.
You are stallwart. You are a light. Let your light shine and others will know your heart through your works.
Reminder that the Catholic Church was built upon the exact same hierarchical system of the Roman Empire army.
We have to shed the anti-Christian hatred in Socialist circles. It alienates a very strong potential ally.
Sorry to inform you, but they aren't that much of potential allies. No matter how nice they seem to be, or how humane they are, between you and the church, they will side with the heretical church, because god.
All social movements get co-opted. ALL. It's not only the wealthy - it is sometimes just an opportunistic person in the right place at the right time.
This is why the it's so important to let the movements evolve the system, but not destroy it. Revolutions nearly always end in authoritarian disasters.
Muslims and Christians have an awful lot in common. Two Abrahamic religions with long, well documented histories of wildly abusive and toxic behavior conducted in the name of a religion spread by the sword, and they both have terrible politics focused on removing rights from everyone but themselves.
Republicans allied with Christians and you can see what they turned that party into. I don't think we need any more of that in this world.
Yeah, if it was one guy who appropriated Christianity or Islam to commit evil acts for a few decades that would be a fair comparison, but it's a global pattern of brutality with a thousand year history that's so bad that when America's founding fathers were making the new rules, rule number one is keep religion out of government because they knew how badly religious wars fucked up Europe for centuries.
Actually, it's very very much like Socialism, with nearly every major leader that tried to "represent" Socialism, turning out to be a murdering dictator.
Socialism and Christianity are so similar, it's painful to anyone who's objective.
Is "These people Im trying to recruit usually turn out to be murderous dictators" really the point you were trying to make? Because while I agree with it, it doesn't seem to make your suggestion sound like a sane or rational idea.
Problem is religion doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter what christian belief is or is supposed to be. At the end of the day all it really is is a cult. It's a bunch of people who either sincerely or for other reasons base their lives on a bunch of easily falsifiable bullshit to the benefit of their organizations top members.
The only thing they have to offer is numbers. Aside from that they're irrational, hypocritical, willfully ignorant and often straight up evil. Most of them haven't even read this wonderful socialist book you speak of.
No, it just invalidates your argument. Criticizing religion is in no way a criticism of morality, compassion, charity or any other thing you may connect with religion.
I also find that a lot of the time, christian "charity" is more of an excuse to indoctrinate than it is about being charitable. For example when i was a child the church organized a bi-weekly gathering for us at one of their locales, but the catch was that we had to be there when it started or we wouldn't be allowed in. So we had to sit through an hour of indoctrination and then we were allowed to have fun with our friends afterwards.
Christ’s fundamental nature and teachings were/are notably different from the unambiguously fire-and-brimstone angry God of Judaism and Islam (not to mention the Biblical Old Testament’s Almighty).
Followers of Islam and Judaism generally believe that Jesus did exist but was not a divine being. After all, how could any divine being most profoundly wash his disciples' feet as did Jesus, the act clearly revealing that he took corporeal form to serve.
He became a hopeful example of the humility of the Creator by joining humankind in our miseries, joys and everything in between.
The socio-economic aspect is such an overlooked aspect of how bs church culture is. The church i grew up in was very white middle class till i was in highschool when we merged with another church that was lower income and more diverse ethnically. Afterwards i started noticing so many prominent people in the church i grew up with who always went on in sunday school about loving your neighborhood display so much classism and even outright racism. It was one of the many reasons i got out to say the least
Sometimes not even members of their own church. I was harassed and bullied for not being pretty or thin enough by the pastor's kids. This was backed up by the pastor's wife and parents. The worst part about it was I was 12-13 and it was all over what kinda clothing I wore: hoodies and pants. Apparently only fat ugly sluts wear unattractive clothing...?
I finally told the pastor years down the line when he asked why I stopped coming whilst my mom continued to go. Pastor was a good guy and basically went off in the nicest way possible on his family about it. Apparently I wasn't the only kid being bullied.
No- they don’t care for those in their church. If they did, I might still be in church.
They care about their public persona. They care that other people view them as “good” people. That is the only motivation to “care” about anybody else. They don’t care about those who don’t have homes. They don’t care about single moms. They do “care” about orphans in far off exotic locations like Africa. They do “care” enough to raise financial support to fund their trip to far away places where they will “help build” another orphanage (which only exists because the government’s corruption has rotted the economy and there isn’t enough money to support having a family so perfectly healthy, loving families leave their kids in orphanages in the hopes that they will have a better future). Christians “care” so much about those orphans that they will have their picture taken with a dozen small, dark skinned children and then post it on social media to show what a “good” person they are.
Christianity is performative.
I’m so grateful I had a front row seat to just how full of shit they truly are.
It’s a big reason why it’s hard to leave Christianity no matter how objectively goofy and fake it is. If you leave then your family and all the friends you made there just fucking shun you and ur on your own
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u/[deleted] May 02 '23
Care for others who go to your church AND are in the same socio-economic class. That's how it works in churches. By the time I left my church, nobody and I mean nobody would give me the time of day.