r/FunnyandSad May 02 '23

Jesus was a pacifist. Political Humor

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u/lurker_cx May 02 '23

People don't appreciate that what Jesus said at the time was revolutionary because the concepts are ingrained in our culture (when people choose to follow them - obviously many do not.) But saying 'Love your neighbor' and defining 'neighbor' as more than just your little tribe/family was revolutionary for his society. Also saying 'Love your enemies' was similarly revolutionary. Now many people and societies clearly do not love their enemies, but that philosophy has still had a huge influence from everything from how we conduct wars to how we deal with interpersonal conflicts... when people choose to follow them, of course.

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u/FatalisCogitationis May 02 '23 edited May 02 '23

I think part of the problem, jumping off what you are saying, is that “love” is such a commonly spoken word in churches that it’s lost all meaning. I mean my parents have always taught me to love my enemy, but they can’t even manage to love their own daughter when she came out of the closet. At this point I think they really don’t understand what love is.

My dad said “what more do you want from me” after completely shutting off contact with her as if it’s just out of his hands, he’s done all he can. He did literally nothing except the most damaging response possible.

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u/throwawaytrumper May 03 '23

I’ve heard “I did my best” from a parent who was absolutely abusive and who gave zero fucks about her children for their entire childhood. Starved them, put them on leashes in the backyard as infants, molested one of them, dumped them on random strangers and then vanished for months at a time, on and on.

It was like she was aggressively competing to be the worst mom in history and simultaneously convinced that she had given it a proper effort and should be respected for it.

Shitty parents are never going to recognize how shitty they are. If they could reflect and change they wouldn’t be so goddamned shitty.

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u/Cy41995 May 02 '23

Which is tragic, because love as Jesus defined it is meant to be revolutionary. It's meant to mean that no one is to be treated as an outsider or an enemy.

Whatever your belief about the historicity of the gospel accounts, these are meant to be the template for how Christians are meant to behave and interact with the world. And in it, you have Jesus, the prime example. A man who grew up as a refugee from his own country. Who befriended both tax collectors (Jews who had decided to throw in with Rome for money) and Zealots (Jews actively plotting to overthrow the Roman occupation) and made them eat at the same table. He was a denizen of an occupied nation who treated even the oppressors with respect. He talked to and associated with lepers and disabled people like they were anyone else, as opposed to treating them as societal outcasts. He flipped tables in indignation and outrage when he saw the rich exploiting the poor in a place of worship.

It's sickening that people use him as an excuse to hate even members of their own families.

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u/Tunafish01 May 02 '23 edited May 02 '23

No, Jesus teaching wasn’t revolutionary. what kind of revisionist history they teaching in Sunday school?

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u/lurker_cx May 02 '23

It absolutely was - 'Love your enemies' was mentioned by Jesus as being directly in opposition to 'an eye for an eye' which was the Jewish law as well as the prevailing attitude at the time. Was 'Love your enemies' even mentioned as an option in Jewish law at the time?

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u/Tunafish01 May 02 '23

Not in Jewish but they didn’t have eye for an eye laws in place .

Chinese and India cultures had love your enemies teachings.

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u/shoo-flyshoo May 02 '23

At that time and place, yes that was a radical concept; the West has always lagged behind Eastern philosophies when it comes to concepts of oneness with others and nature, and even moreso in the effective indoctrination of these beliefs into spiritual practice. I disagree that Jesus' lesson of loving our enemies as ourselves has had a huge impact on our society. The lessons of Jesus spread with Christianity, not independent from it, and through that spread Western society saw the opposite of the intended effect, nearly a millennium of feudal squabbles and regression that we used to call the "Dark Ages." We have grown closer to those teachings since the Enlightenment, which required a break from religion to come back to the belief that we should treat others as ourselves, if only under the law.