Christians against the redistribution of wealth and other things I don't get

[mothwentbad]

So... where's the part of the Bible where it says "thou shalt not tax me for working hard" or "blessed are the poor, for they have an extra-special opportunity to work harder", or whatever it is that correlates so strongly with fundamentalism? I'm really confused

Comments

[skepanie]

Hahaha. IKR!!! I find it ASTOUNDING how far the majority of today's Christians have strayed from Jesus' teachings as set forth in the very Bible they thump. Astounding and revolting. Jesus is a good role model, but most Christians are not.

Also... yeah, that's the catch in the "let people help others if they want" model for social programs: when it comes down to it, nobody wants to help others as much as they want to keep all their money.

Jesus is a good role model...?

[mothwentbad]

Maybe on some stuff. I mean, campus preachers get a lot of their act from Jesus too... it's just never any of the parts that are good for anything, somehow.

[mothwentbad]

I guess there's some Old Testament stuff about how lazy people are supposed to starve to death and it pleases Yahweh or something, right next to the stuff about sleeping in a tent when you have your period and sacrificing pigeons or something.

Just fuck everything.

[skepanie]

Well, interpretation seems to be everything. Jesus had some good teachings about being a decent person that have been translated and retranslated and extra translated. I haven't read the Hebrew version, of course, but it seems to be a thing that its meaning has been heavily skewed in the course of translation and interpretation. Like, words like "abomination" were translated slightly amiss, and some scholars say that passage in Leviticus (I think?) about how a man lying with a man is an abomination was just listing things that were against social norms at the time - so therefore the whole "god hates fags" thing goes pretty much out the window. I'm not a Bible scholar, but with the poor reading skills of people in general, it seems pretty much inevitable that average people would get the Bible wrong.

Also, I don't think Jesus was in the Old Testament since that's the Jewey part of the Bible.

[mothwentbad]

Sure, but not all of the Jesus parts are good, either. He introduced Hell to the Bible, and he doesn't really give any indication that worshiping him is optional or otherwise anticipate modern notions of religious tolerance. And the Doubting Thomas stuff is bullshit, too, encouraging everyone to pretty much preach that atheism is the worst thing that can happen to anyone and that you should feel bad if you doubt your pastor

[skepanie]

I'm sure he had his flaws, and I should confess that I haven't actually read the entire Bible, but his overall message was love, peace, acceptance, forgiveness, etc. If Christians today would at least follow those tenants, the world would be crazy different. Likely in a good way.

Isn't it true that parts of the Bible are just historical records? Like the lists of who beget whom and all. I think a lot of it has been imbued with "religiousness" that wasn't there when it was written. (But technically, that can really be said of the whole thing, har har har.)

[mothwentbad]

Yeah, if it's all (pseudo)historical records, then I'm cool with everyone taking it like that. But then there wouldn't be any reason to be talking about it in the first place.

[skepanie]

It is still a piece of literature, barring any "truth" or whatevs. And it's the most reference work of literature EVA.

[skepanie]

(which is likely because people believe it is true, but that's the world we live in.)