Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.
I’m a fervent anti religion.
But your arguments are your own interpretations of the passages that you quoted. And I gotta say, it’s just as bad as the interpretations of the Christian nationalists.
I didn’t even interpret these passages in the same way you did. I see them as plain metaphors.
And to say that this is directly connected to what’s happening with Christian nationalism and zionism, that’s a bit much. There are way more Christians and Jewish people globally that reject these movements and denounce them as nothing more than a misinterpretation to fit a violent narrative.
I’m saying it’s unsurprising that christian nationalism crops up because Jesus- the figure head and literal christian god claimed to be a judean monarch and was himself authoritarian in nature.
That there’s other people who chose to ignore that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about Jesus saying some abhorent shit.
If you ignore all the awful shit Hitler said, you’ll find there’s a few times he talked about communal welfare and social responsibility in a way that isn’t entirely offensive. The difference here is that we don’t literally ignore all the awful shit Hitler said and recognize him as an utterly vile example of human awfulness.
For example, In Mark 7 and Mathew 15, Jesus criticizes the pharisees for not stoning disobedient children. Do you think it’s appropriate to kill children who disobey their parents?
So you’re saying Hitler was right???
I’m kkidding!!!
It’s all good. I get your point. Maybe you interpret it that way. Maybe it was just a metaphor. But the truth, really, is that the English translation is a translation of a translation of old English of a translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic translation and it might even go beyond all that. It could have been a story ripped off of another story, etc.
But the core principle is, like I said, to have empathy and to be nice to each other. This has always been the message.
I just want to touch on this… because for most modern translations, this is not the truth. As an example, the NSRVue is effectively based three sources:
The BHS is a sort of compendium of all the old manuscripts and fragments more or less patched together into a cohesive edition. It’s not a translation, it’s still in the original Hebrew, and is roughly consistent.
The Septuagint is used for the christian apocrypha because we don’t have original-language manuscripts for them… which is one of the reasons they’re considered apocryphal (another being that they’re sometimes just batshit crazy)
The NT was originally written in Koine Greek, and the UBS is the gold standard for those original manuscripts. So they use that. (i believe we’re on the sixth update to that? things change as we find more manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts.)
If you pull out whatever bible you use, it should have an introduction explaining what the original materials were found, choices were made in that selection, and the translation philosophy they used to translate it. for the NRSVue, you can find that here, even though it’s revision of the NRSV (which I can’t find the intro to, grrr.) You’ll also note they tell you who comissioned it, who over saw it, and how the editorial process went. (IIRC, there’s resources where you can see the arguments for changes, but that could be for a different version and the reasoning for it, or against it.)
While there are old translations that don’t always use good translation philosophies… modern translations have a great deal more scrutiny and reliability. They’re still going to be updating and improving those translations- in part because we’re still finding new manuscripts, and also in part because languages are constantly changing. As an example, when Isaiah was translated into the Septuagint, the greek word ‘Parthenos’ just meant ‘young woman’. by the time the authors of mathew were rummaging around looking for things they can wedge jesus into… ‘parthenos’ became ‘virgin’. We have the same kind of shifting use of language, too.
Generally, most modern translations are going to be reasonable to just trust that when they translate the words of Jesus, the meaning isn’t somehow being perverted. as I side note, I’m just using NRSVue as the example because it’s what I generally use myself.
And then there’s the “or else”. which kinda sours me on the “be nice” part. Like. mat 25:31-46. On the surface, this sounds cool right? But…Jesus is an all powerful and all knowing being (at least according to the trinitarian view,) who absoultely could have, when he created the world, created the world in such a way where it was unnecessary because destitute people simply don’t exist. Or baring that for some bullshit reason, absolutely could have fed everyone and clothed everyone and gave everyone shelter… and didn’t.
and in that same passage, Jesus is saying that he will throw people who may or may not have the capacity to do so, into the eternal torture of hell, for not doing the same thing he did not do, but- according to himself- had the power to do.
People are people, and everyone is some sort of chaotic mix of good and bad tendencies. We’re complicated like that. I’m not saying Jesus is all-evil. I suspect he was- mostly- just a typical guy for his time and place. the ‘mostly’ is because pharisees felt that maybe we shouldn’t stone teenagers for being, you know, typical angsty teenagers and he was. (he’s referencing Deut 21:18-20 here. My opinion of him is that he was an iron-age fundamentalist trying to bring back a bronze-age legal code. and there’s tons of baggage there that we just don’t talk about.
Ok bro. I don’t know if this is an AI generated response or you’re autistic, but this is too long. I’m not going to read all of this. I’m sorry.
And the part about “be a good person OR ELSE”? Like that’s a bag thing? Honestly if that can scare some motherfuckers into doing good, there’s nothing wrong with that.
If you can’t see why an eternal and unending punishment is not just, I really hope you don’t have kids.
Especially because Jesus tells you to stone them when they get into the teenage-angsty phase. (Or else)
Also don’t wear blended fabrics. (Or else)
Don’t eat the wrong kind of food. (Or else.)
Mutilate the dicks of your infant sons. (Or else.)
If a punishment doesn’t fit the crime, the punishment is unjust. And eternal torment cannot eve or be appropriate for a finite crime.