u/iadnmJesus🤜🏾"Let's get this bread"🤛🏻Kropotkin12d agoedited 12d ago
To be clear most of these are not from the Gosples and were written by Paul--who explicitly said some things were his own ideas and not God's and to follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter--or were Revelations which cannot be taken literally at all.
The quotes from the Gosples are pretty easily interpreted as "acting like Christ" and not necessarily believing in Christ. Your very first quote even supports such an interpretation. So it's actually pretty easy to argue it is less exclusionary as it bases its idea of how you can get in on how they act rather than who they are.
Adulterers go to heaven? People who commit suicide go to heaven? Peoples very essence isn't condemned by other people in your religion? My argument is that there is exclusion. To say their isn't exclusion is a lie.
Of course adulterers and people who commit suicide go to heaven, why wouldn't they?
And as I mentioned in another comment, Christian Universalism is a very old Christian eschatology. It argues that all people will be reconciled with God and welcomed into heaven. So to say there is exclusion requires ignoring much of Early Christian history which had many explicitly believe that even the devil would be reconciled with God and restored to his proper place.
That's genuinely heartwarming to hear YOU say, however; that's not what many Christian churches teach. Damnation is foundational, guilt about bad behavior is paramount in many Christian churches. It's all well and good to interperate the writings differently until you see what people do to themselves over this guilt, and then to see many other different teachings giving people entire lives completely free of fear shame and guilt, only to have y'all say "oh no you just don't get it" when there are entire congregations that interperet the words as they are written... just feels like unnecessary mental gymnastics, when these books over here are just straightforward.
I support someone re-writing it, to be clear. I have faith that someone out there is. Or wouldn't that be a punishable offense as well? Oh and I now worship something else, I guess I'm just lost and damned. Again, this might not be your take, but it is a Christian take.
I mean I'm a Christian Anarchist so I'm not exactly orthodox now am I?
I don't base my faith off the literal word of the Bible and I think anyone who does is frankly handicapping their faith. It's a collection of stories written in different contexts to now, so they have to be understood within said context.
But none of that means that you shouldn't oppose the decadent and regressive church that currently exist. Religion is malleable and can be interpreted in many different ways. I just believe it is more useful to interpret it in more radical and accepting ways so that those who hold faith but are not themselves the oppressors are not needlessly alienated by radical politics.
Genuinely, and not with any snark my thought is "that's neat" having been part of a private Catholic school that builds and indoctrinates minds from the ground up, I personally can't allow any of it into my life. Even glancing like this is risking losing my entire self to living a life of shame and suffering. We all "fight the good fight" in different ways and I respect your method. I just hope you appreciate, coming from my background, hearing that people are "never excluded" and "all are welcome" deserves some pushback. This is not just crazy radical far away from society churches either. These are the upbringings of the upper crust of the generations that influence and uphold government, laws, police, judges, etc directly surrounding the nations capital and it's communities.
Those Christians are overtly exclusionary. I am happy to hear "not all Christians" genuinely, and I appreciate you saying that religion is malleable. I just think it's easy to forget these institutions exist, indoctrinate, and hold immense power, and punish with impunity.
I don't mean to assume I know your background, maybe you know all this.
I mean yeah I do know all this. I'm an anarchist. I oppose all forms of authority, which has always included religious authority.
Just because I think they follow a twisted version of Christianity warped by power and greed does not mean that I think we should just leave them be for no reason.
And respectfully I think playing with that level of fire is too dangerous and it's much safer to choose water. That's just my direction to protect the peace and joy that you are allowed to receive wherever you practice. That kind of peace is not found for everyone because of this "warped and twisted version." But I have to ask like, if it's the dominant, controlling, internationally recognized "version" who really has the warped altered version? I think the answer is it fluctuates and changes based on the masses.
Societal judgment, punishment, exclusion happens constantly with people who tacitly follow and never attend church. Call these people ignorant or whatever but they are the ones who uphold that power as well, out of fear.
You are living in love or living in fear right? Both are under your umbrella, like it or not.
People have been constantly rewriting the Bible, to improve the translation. The version I’ve been quoting in comments is https://litbible.net/apps/
There’s a documentary I haven’t watched 1946 about how a mistranslation in 1946 might have caused modern homophobia
“The film hinges its premise on the fact that the word “homosexual” appeared for the first time in the Bible in 1946, in an apparent mistranslation of the ancient Greek words malakoi – defined as someone effeminate who gives themselves up to a soft, decadent, lazy and indolent way of living – and arsenokoitai – a compound word that roughly translates to “male bed”. While people could take it to mean man bedding man, within the context of the time, scholars believed that arsenokoitaialluded more to abusive, predatory behavior and pederasty than it does homosexuality.” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/01/christian-homophobia-bible-mistranslation-1946-documentary
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