This whole business sounds like a justification for the "Prosperity Gospel" that Joel Osteen and others like him are promoting. It's a natural for them, too, because they are busy soaking their congregations to cement themselves among the millionaire class and insure that, while they may be poor in morality, they are seriously rich in the monetary department.
Still, it makes me wonder how they feel about that parable about the rich man, who was told to give away all that he had, if he wanted to follow Jesus. I guess camels and eyes of needles aren't supposed to be mentioned in those churches, eh?
I actually have heard their excuse for that. They claim that there is a narrow, low gate called the needle into old Jerusalem that a camel can get through if they crawl on their knees and have their packs removed. Since a camel can theoretically get through, a rich man can go to heaven.
They claim that the reason Jesus told the rich young ruler to give all that he had to the poor was that wealth had a claim on his soul, so they claim it is specific, not general advice.
I watched him out of curiosity a couple of times. He went on and on about how everyone could have his riches or blessings, but never told the suckers how.
Part of the appeal of religion, especially Christianity, is that it allows for interpretation, rather than providing hard and fast rules and obligations. The mere fact that two people can have vastly different interpretations of religious text is evidence that it's essentially opportunistic in nature.
It is true. Who could forget Jesus most famous sermon, "For you who stand before hast asked me, how shall we enter the kingdom of heaven. Is it by following the laws, even those contradict each other, is it by serving our fellow man, or loving God with all our heart? No, I say. Ye can enter the gates of heaven for three easy payments of 99,999,999.99.
It originated as a recurring phrase in the song "Doot Doot (6 7)" by the Philly rapper Skrilla. The slang expression has no real meaning. It's just used humorously by kids along with a hand gesture to feel a sense of belonging. 😎
Pastors who point to the bible when they want to condemn abortion need to re-read their book because their own god, his earthly armies and his priests all gleefully practice that abortion.
If those pastors need help locating that scripture, athests will be only too happy to guide them to it.
Notice that in the Bible abortion is performed by and at the behest of men. That is why it is wrong to do it nowadays, because the property, sorry, women are making the decision for themselves.
Cherry-picking, goalpost shifting, extreme mental gymnastics, claims of "out of context" when calling them on their bullshit, all to make religion serve them instead of religion making them serve others. Seems to me that dropping the religious nonsense altogether and just being a decent human is a much better way to live.
It is, but sheltering and feeding the poor is such a strong theme AND a commonly accepted 'general good' that mainstream Christianity rarely tries to twist it. The far more common approach in the mainstream is just to accept what the NT says at face value and read from it that we should all generally be more charitable than we are...which is probably not a bad lesson for nonbelievers, either. :)
It's not like the other massive Christian twist (justifying war or violence in self-defense), where there's a strong self-preservation component involved. Asking someone to give up self-defense is hard because it creates an immediate visceral personal risk, not to mention a risk to loved ones. But here, by definition, the people being asked to give stuff up are exactly those who can afford to do so.
The twist that Christianity tends to put on sheltering and feeding the poor is to require the poor to listen to their proselytizing before getting help. They can't just help with no strings attached.
And I suspect a lot of these churches ship money offshore to help poor people there... I'm sure a little of that money goes to 'show' missions' and the rest into overseas tax havens.
I asked google about tax havens (I was indulging a fantasy about the MegaMillions and what my first steps should be) and apparently the U.S. has strong-armed foreign banks into reporting U.S. citizens deposits. Even the Swiss.
You should also see the punitive tax rules for relinquishing U.S. citizenship even if you've never lived in the U.S. and didn't even know you were a U.S. citizen.
As a follower of Christ myself, this has not been my experience, even in a more "liberal" denomination. Ultimately, I was pushed out because I insisted on interpreting the teachings of Christ literally, and was told I was "putting the church in danger" by doing so. I left and my faith has gotten stronger because nobody is gaslighting me now about the words I read with my own eyes.
No, mainstream US Christianity might give lip service to caring for the poor, but that's as far as it goes.
Judging by the staggering number of Christian tribes in the world, it's obvious that what the Bible says isn't exactly clear. I've long felt this should be a bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a divine being who could will the universe into existence, but when it came to the most important message imaginable, couldn't make himself understood. Jesus is nothing if not flexible. There's a flavor for everyone with more being created all the time.
This is what started my deconstruction. I went to several different (Christian) churches looking for a philosophy after my near death experience. I was raised with Christian beliefs but my mother was Mormon and my dad was Methodist. They settled on Lutheran and I became a charter member of a new Lutheran church. My conclusion as I struggled through my 20s was that no one church had all the answers and therefore they were all grifting.
One of the ones given by Jesus was the Kingdom of Heaven or the Empire. The kingdom of heaven looked after and empowered the forgotten, the oppressed, the poor, the rejected. The Empire looked after its own power and wealth and ability to dominate.
Since the first slave was brought into America, the church had that choice. Many, if not most of them, chose Empire, domination, oppression. Slaveholders never heard a word that made them uncomfortable. KKK members never heard a discouraging word. Lynch mobs never heard a condemnation. Wealthy oppressors of workers were greeted with warm handshakes and special pews.
Same as the old tyrants of Europe, but with even less social and legal obligations to their fellow man.
Before Christians got cozy with the Empire and decided being part of the oppressors was a grand old party, they used to get this...
"You are not making a gift of your possession to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his." - Ambrose of Milan, 340-397.
"The property of the wealthy holds them in chains . . . which shackle their courage and choke their faith and hamper their judgment and throttle their souls. They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves." - Cyprian, 300 A.D.
"The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help." - Basil of Caesarea, 330-370 A.D.
"Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours but theirs." - John Chrysostom, 347-407 AD
"Instead of the tithes which the law commanded, the Lord said to divide everything we have with the poor." - Irenaeus, 130-200 AD
"The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally." -John Chrysostom, 347-407
"How can I make you realize the misery of the poor? How can I make you understand that your wealth comes from their weeping?" - Basil of Caesarea, 330-370 A.D.
"When you are weary of praying and do not receive, consider how often you have heard a poor man calling, and have not listened to him." - John Chrysostom, 347-407
OT, I had to drive by our Capitol just a bit ago and saw lots of flashing lights. Getting closer, I saw the bomb squad truck and a large area taped off. That was the site of the No Kings rally. There's a news report of a suspicious item, but no other details. I seriously doubt there's a connection but I suspect someone will try to make one. I imagine Barasso will turn it into a photo op if he's around.
If not him, then another Trumpy toady will. I'm thinking maybe JD Vance, because he's as big an attention whore as his orange boss, and seems to feel the need to keep reminding people of his worthless presence.
“At this church, that passage isn’t about hoarding wealth at all. It’s just making sure you’re not directly hurting others with it.”
But hoarding money does hurt others. There’s a meme going around about someone spending $10 on something and the business owner spends that $10 on the next thing and the next and the next and by the end of the day the $10 produced $50 of economic benefit. But when a wealthy person gets the $10 it just sits in a pocket (or bank account) not moving through the economy, hoarded. So by not spending their wealth, they are actually harming everyone by hoarding their wealth.
But to these folks, that’s wealth redistribution and harmful to the rich and no way to improve other people’s lives, blah blah blah. Screams of socialism and Marxism and communism can be heard through the land.
They also complain that if you tax the wealthy they leave cities or states, but many places have increased taxes and the millionaires and billionaires don’t actually leave. And even if they did they still improve the cities and states by taking away the drains on the cities’ money and no funding was lost because they don’t pay into the system in the first place.
Anyway, the propaganda spewed by these churches and even the oligarchs themselves is just that, propaganda, designed to keep their gravy train running off the backs of the poor and impoverished. Poverty is a systemic failure, not an individual one. It has been studied to death and still the propaganda is so powerful it keeps everyone believing in the fantasy.
This type of “religion” is not new or unique to modern society, but a foundation of the system. If you think about it for a minute you can see that the church uses the teachings of Christ regarding charity as a tool to keep the tithes coming in. Just think of it as George Santos’ animal charity, only much much larger. Sure some churches actually spend a lot of money on charity, but doing so still enriches the people running the church itself. Besides, they almost always expect the 10% as a minimum then ask for more when they want to spend on charities. Sure they got to keep the lights on and pay staff, but since we never get to see the distribution of the church funds realistically, they can use it however they want.
Then churches, especially the mega churches but also smaller ones, spend a lot of time, effort, and money on promoting government policies that keep the status quo (at best, sometimes make it worse for the vulnerable). So that they always have that charity cash cow to lean on.
I'm an atheist because I see no evidence of the supernatural and no evidence forthcoming.
Even if scientists were to somehow show evidence that the supernatural exists, it wouldn't resemble anything ever conceived of by humans up to this point.
When I lived in Georgia (state) for a bit, a friend of mine kept trying to get me to go to their church. Just once please, she begged. So I did and I almost threw up and/or walked out halfway through. It was a modern mega church of sorts with a Christian band and all. All I remember is they projected a big map of the world onto a screen and highlighted all the different countries they needed to send missionaries to. The ones not Christian enough. My friend is also quite poor. She would explain it to me as though it was a virtue. How convenient for those with the power.
I wonder what proportion of their money comes from poor people and what from the wealthy, because I know poor people do contribute to these idiots more than they should. I bet rich people don't though.
I also wonder how they cope with the rich man eye of needle verse. Because if I remember correctly that's a direct quote from Jesus.
I imagine it’s both the poor being told to give up their meager life savings and also a strategic targeting of wealthier vulnerable folks like widows (at least throughout history). Hell, witches burned at the stake were often older noncompliant women/widows who owned property. Yes, that property was seized after.
I wasn’t raised with any religion so I’m not familiar with the verse you mentioned.
This whole business sounds like a justification for the "Prosperity Gospel" that Joel Osteen and others like him are promoting. It's a natural for them, too, because they are busy soaking their congregations to cement themselves among the millionaire class and insure that, while they may be poor in morality, they are seriously rich in the monetary department.
Still, it makes me wonder how they feel about that parable about the rich man, who was told to give away all that he had, if he wanted to follow Jesus. I guess camels and eyes of needles aren't supposed to be mentioned in those churches, eh?
I actually have heard their excuse for that. They claim that there is a narrow, low gate called the needle into old Jerusalem that a camel can get through if they crawl on their knees and have their packs removed. Since a camel can theoretically get through, a rich man can go to heaven.
You will not be surprised to learn that there is zero evidence that a "Needle" gate ever existed.
This is my shocked face. :-|
Thank you. I needled to know that
Heard that one as well. It's all about deflection from their own financial status, when you boil it down.
Wouldn't you just love to see Joel Osteen's tax return?
What tax return? He has a religious tax exemption.
I'll bet it does not document his lifestyle.
Oh, HELL, yeah!
They claim that the reason Jesus told the rich young ruler to give all that he had to the poor was that wealth had a claim on his soul, so they claim it is specific, not general advice.
I watched him out of curiosity a couple of times. He went on and on about how everyone could have his riches or blessings, but never told the suckers how.
Luck, orthodontics, and a complete lack of morals. Same as any rich person. Well some substitute talent for orthodontics.
Part of the appeal of religion, especially Christianity, is that it allows for interpretation, rather than providing hard and fast rules and obligations. The mere fact that two people can have vastly different interpretations of religious text is evidence that it's essentially opportunistic in nature.
In its case it is why 'christianity' is the most fragmented religion on Earth.
They call it “interpretation”. I call it cherry-picking.
“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.” - Oscar Wilde
It is true. Who could forget Jesus most famous sermon, "For you who stand before hast asked me, how shall we enter the kingdom of heaven. Is it by following the laws, even those contradict each other, is it by serving our fellow man, or loving God with all our heart? No, I say. Ye can enter the gates of heaven for three easy payments of 99,999,999.99.
And if you act now, we'll throw in a set of Ginsu Steak Knives, absolutely FREE! 🤪
Thank you, Ron Popeil.
Wait, aren’t you dead?
WAS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFHqTzeIuKE
Al and his band channeling The B-52s. :)
How many installments of $66,666,666.66?
6-7?
Saw that on South Park and asked my kids, well the one in school who actually socializes, and it means nothing. I still don’t get it.
Me neither. I saw a “news” article that supposedly explained it, but it didn't help.
It originated as a recurring phrase in the song "Doot Doot (6 7)" by the Philly rapper Skrilla. The slang expression has no real meaning. It's just used humorously by kids along with a hand gesture to feel a sense of belonging. 😎
Just keep sending the payments, you just stop when your in heaven.
What's that old saw? When pastors need help, they ask their congregations. When their congregations need help, those pastors tell them to ask God.
I hadn't heard it put that way, but that's it in a nutshell.
Pastors who point to the bible when they want to condemn abortion need to re-read their book because their own god, his earthly armies and his priests all gleefully practice that abortion.
If those pastors need help locating that scripture, athests will be only too happy to guide them to it.
Notice that in the Bible abortion is performed by and at the behest of men. That is why it is wrong to do it nowadays, because the property, sorry, women are making the decision for themselves.
Isn't twisting the bible to serve their own needs SOP for Christians?
Cherry-picking, goalpost shifting, extreme mental gymnastics, claims of "out of context" when calling them on their bullshit, all to make religion serve them instead of religion making them serve others. Seems to me that dropping the religious nonsense altogether and just being a decent human is a much better way to live.
It is, but sheltering and feeding the poor is such a strong theme AND a commonly accepted 'general good' that mainstream Christianity rarely tries to twist it. The far more common approach in the mainstream is just to accept what the NT says at face value and read from it that we should all generally be more charitable than we are...which is probably not a bad lesson for nonbelievers, either. :)
It's not like the other massive Christian twist (justifying war or violence in self-defense), where there's a strong self-preservation component involved. Asking someone to give up self-defense is hard because it creates an immediate visceral personal risk, not to mention a risk to loved ones. But here, by definition, the people being asked to give stuff up are exactly those who can afford to do so.
The twist that Christianity tends to put on sheltering and feeding the poor is to require the poor to listen to their proselytizing before getting help. They can't just help with no strings attached.
And I suspect a lot of these churches ship money offshore to help poor people there... I'm sure a little of that money goes to 'show' missions' and the rest into overseas tax havens.
I asked google about tax havens (I was indulging a fantasy about the MegaMillions and what my first steps should be) and apparently the U.S. has strong-armed foreign banks into reporting U.S. citizens deposits. Even the Swiss.
You should also see the punitive tax rules for relinquishing U.S. citizenship even if you've never lived in the U.S. and didn't even know you were a U.S. citizen.
If you say so...
As a follower of Christ myself, this has not been my experience, even in a more "liberal" denomination. Ultimately, I was pushed out because I insisted on interpreting the teachings of Christ literally, and was told I was "putting the church in danger" by doing so. I left and my faith has gotten stronger because nobody is gaslighting me now about the words I read with my own eyes.
No, mainstream US Christianity might give lip service to caring for the poor, but that's as far as it goes.
https://ibb.co/LDx1Zv8s
Pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
To megapastors: Prove this meme wrong. You can't, can you?
Its the only goal of the xtian grift: part the sheep from their cash.
Not while refusing to let anyone shelter in their megachurch during a flood.
Was thinking that very thing when I posted.
Last panel is wrong, but it would be NSFW.
Wrong in what respect?
Likely, the last panel would have the good reverend humping his secretary! 😱
I guess not totally wrong, but there are many other options that would be much more (in)appropriate.
Judging by the staggering number of Christian tribes in the world, it's obvious that what the Bible says isn't exactly clear. I've long felt this should be a bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a divine being who could will the universe into existence, but when it came to the most important message imaginable, couldn't make himself understood. Jesus is nothing if not flexible. There's a flavor for everyone with more being created all the time.
This is what started my deconstruction. I went to several different (Christian) churches looking for a philosophy after my near death experience. I was raised with Christian beliefs but my mother was Mormon and my dad was Methodist. They settled on Lutheran and I became a charter member of a new Lutheran church. My conclusion as I struggled through my 20s was that no one church had all the answers and therefore they were all grifting.
The xtian cult, like all other cults, exists solely for its operators to acquire money and power and nothing else.
There are some choices presented in the Bible.
One of the ones given by Jesus was the Kingdom of Heaven or the Empire. The kingdom of heaven looked after and empowered the forgotten, the oppressed, the poor, the rejected. The Empire looked after its own power and wealth and ability to dominate.
Since the first slave was brought into America, the church had that choice. Many, if not most of them, chose Empire, domination, oppression. Slaveholders never heard a word that made them uncomfortable. KKK members never heard a discouraging word. Lynch mobs never heard a condemnation. Wealthy oppressors of workers were greeted with warm handshakes and special pews.
Same as the old tyrants of Europe, but with even less social and legal obligations to their fellow man.
Before Christians got cozy with the Empire and decided being part of the oppressors was a grand old party, they used to get this...
"You are not making a gift of your possession to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his." - Ambrose of Milan, 340-397.
"The property of the wealthy holds them in chains . . . which shackle their courage and choke their faith and hamper their judgment and throttle their souls. They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves." - Cyprian, 300 A.D.
"The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help." - Basil of Caesarea, 330-370 A.D.
"Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours but theirs." - John Chrysostom, 347-407 AD
"Instead of the tithes which the law commanded, the Lord said to divide everything we have with the poor." - Irenaeus, 130-200 AD
"The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally." -John Chrysostom, 347-407
"How can I make you realize the misery of the poor? How can I make you understand that your wealth comes from their weeping?" - Basil of Caesarea, 330-370 A.D.
"When you are weary of praying and do not receive, consider how often you have heard a poor man calling, and have not listened to him." - John Chrysostom, 347-407
OT, I had to drive by our Capitol just a bit ago and saw lots of flashing lights. Getting closer, I saw the bomb squad truck and a large area taped off. That was the site of the No Kings rally. There's a news report of a suspicious item, but no other details. I seriously doubt there's a connection but I suspect someone will try to make one. I imagine Barasso will turn it into a photo op if he's around.
If not him, then another Trumpy toady will. I'm thinking maybe JD Vance, because he's as big an attention whore as his orange boss, and seems to feel the need to keep reminding people of his worthless presence.
Barasso is our senator, although I don't know where he actually lives.
In the Cayman Islands with his offshore accounts.
“At this church, that passage isn’t about hoarding wealth at all. It’s just making sure you’re not directly hurting others with it.”
But hoarding money does hurt others. There’s a meme going around about someone spending $10 on something and the business owner spends that $10 on the next thing and the next and the next and by the end of the day the $10 produced $50 of economic benefit. But when a wealthy person gets the $10 it just sits in a pocket (or bank account) not moving through the economy, hoarded. So by not spending their wealth, they are actually harming everyone by hoarding their wealth.
But to these folks, that’s wealth redistribution and harmful to the rich and no way to improve other people’s lives, blah blah blah. Screams of socialism and Marxism and communism can be heard through the land.
They also complain that if you tax the wealthy they leave cities or states, but many places have increased taxes and the millionaires and billionaires don’t actually leave. And even if they did they still improve the cities and states by taking away the drains on the cities’ money and no funding was lost because they don’t pay into the system in the first place.
Anyway, the propaganda spewed by these churches and even the oligarchs themselves is just that, propaganda, designed to keep their gravy train running off the backs of the poor and impoverished. Poverty is a systemic failure, not an individual one. It has been studied to death and still the propaganda is so powerful it keeps everyone believing in the fantasy.
This type of “religion” is not new or unique to modern society, but a foundation of the system. If you think about it for a minute you can see that the church uses the teachings of Christ regarding charity as a tool to keep the tithes coming in. Just think of it as George Santos’ animal charity, only much much larger. Sure some churches actually spend a lot of money on charity, but doing so still enriches the people running the church itself. Besides, they almost always expect the 10% as a minimum then ask for more when they want to spend on charities. Sure they got to keep the lights on and pay staff, but since we never get to see the distribution of the church funds realistically, they can use it however they want.
Then churches, especially the mega churches but also smaller ones, spend a lot of time, effort, and money on promoting government policies that keep the status quo (at best, sometimes make it worse for the vulnerable). So that they always have that charity cash cow to lean on.
Or is I just a poor pervert?
https://scontent-dfw5-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/566218665_1915397712727321_536474686068560058_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=6Hq2fAurD3IQ7kNvwEuRowo&_nc_oc=AdkGeB-ajwvjM3IoXKQjNsFqzTSiBD1dfqxyf_YiH3Hzd3Z94Nzhfp816hTJ5D5wSEQ&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-3.xx&_nc_gid=1XHG_YBLSTFqaUQuTVjvyA&oh=00_AffrZ7ZHMZv3UM8HUeA-JF2Evtx3nso1H_DPCqcWU5RPew&oe=68FD5A53
I'm an atheist because I see no evidence of the supernatural and no evidence forthcoming.
Even if scientists were to somehow show evidence that the supernatural exists, it wouldn't resemble anything ever conceived of by humans up to this point.
If Yahweh exists, ze has an appointment at Nuremberg.
Once you can quantify the supernatural, it becomes part of the natural world.
𝑂𝑛𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑛'𝑠 “𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑐” 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑎𝑛'𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔. “𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙” 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Slave morality.
When I lived in Georgia (state) for a bit, a friend of mine kept trying to get me to go to their church. Just once please, she begged. So I did and I almost threw up and/or walked out halfway through. It was a modern mega church of sorts with a Christian band and all. All I remember is they projected a big map of the world onto a screen and highlighted all the different countries they needed to send missionaries to. The ones not Christian enough. My friend is also quite poor. She would explain it to me as though it was a virtue. How convenient for those with the power.
I wonder what proportion of their money comes from poor people and what from the wealthy, because I know poor people do contribute to these idiots more than they should. I bet rich people don't though.
I also wonder how they cope with the rich man eye of needle verse. Because if I remember correctly that's a direct quote from Jesus.
I imagine it’s both the poor being told to give up their meager life savings and also a strategic targeting of wealthier vulnerable folks like widows (at least throughout history). Hell, witches burned at the stake were often older noncompliant women/widows who owned property. Yes, that property was seized after.
I wasn’t raised with any religion so I’m not familiar with the verse you mentioned.
That’s what I love about the Bible. It says anything you want it to say.
That's what I hate about it. ; )
Like the Dagobah cave, you find what you bring with you.