Despite a long track record of anti-LGBTQ+ comments and advocacy, he has insisted he can’t be a hateful person because he’s a Christian.
I think he’s got it backwards. He can’t be a Christian because he’s a hateful person.
No True Christian
I totally get your point, but I think there is validity in calling into question your right to identify as a member of a given religion when you go directly against your religion’s teachings.
There is no such thing as a religion having objective “teachings.”
It’s always been subjective.
Normal people are Jews and Muslims, and extremists like the genocidal Israeli colonizers, and the similarly genocidal Wahhabist/Salafi terrorists are still Jews and Muslims.
There is no “true” understanding of these religions.
There is no such thing as a religion having objective “teachings.”
So what is the Bible? Or the Qur’an?
Aggregations of objective teachings which contradict each other (within the same book).
The Bible is an assembled collection of curated religious stories and traditions. I can’t speak to the history of all of it but the first books of the OT were drawn from religious stories and traditions of north and south Judah and adapted to create religious (and thus political) unity by the king at the time in the face of the threat of rival, neighboring countries. Of the many gods worshipped at the time the OT books essentially retcon two of them to be one god, denounce polytheism, and create a mythical historical narrative of the country’s population. Mythical because archaeological evidence contradicts a great deal of the stories.
The NT is a collection of Epistles, gospels, etc., chosen from a large pool of similar sorts of writings and assembled into what we have today. I don’t know a great deal about what drove those selections and only vaguely know that some of the other writings were quite different theologically.
Fiction.
If someone claims to be “a Christian,” they are. There is no other qualification. Whether such a person adheres more or less to common Christian principles is a separate issue, let alone that there are so many splinter groups of “Christians” that the phrase “common Christian principles” barely has any meaning anyway.
I understand your point and generally agree, with an aside: The actual Nazis weren’t socialists, just because they added that to their faction’s official title.
It’s weird to me that you agree and yet have provided an excellent example disproving the entire point.
Because it’s an immature understanding of life to vote anything as black and white. Life is full color, and a bazillion shades of gray, besides. Grow up.
No one is “voting” anything as black and white, especially with regard to a question from an objective claim. If the claim is that someone is something simply because they tell you they are and you’ve disproved the claim with your example then the claim is objectively false.
Maybe you should stop telling people to grow up until you’ve done so first. In the words of Jesus, take the log out of your eye first.
Then why are things like excommunication (where you get kicked out of the religion for going directly against beliefs) a thing?
Excommunicated Catholics can still be Christians. The term means someone who believes in Christ, and everything else is negotiable. No one Christian or sect can decide what Christianity is for everyone else.
The term means someone who “follows the teachings of Christ”, not simply that someone believes in Christ. There are plenty of people/figures that believe in Christ who are not Christians. Satan, for example, is a believer in Christ who is also not a Christian.
That sounds like semantics to me, because everyone gets to interpret the teachings of Christ for themselves.
Satan is a good example, considering that the character is an amalgam of several biblical references to evil forces like the evil spirit tempting Christ, the Snake in Genesis, and the Red Dragon in Revelations. Most of the mythology of Satan is an invention of Catholic writers.
Also, not for nothing, but Satan (presuming he’s real) would not be a “believer” as much as a colleague. Satan would know for sure that Jesus was real, was really God, and was the only path to Heaven. Of course, if we presume Satan is real, and the Bible is the literal word of God, then the only rational conclusion is that Jesus is Satan. But that’s an entirely separate discussion.
It is similar to me calling myself Afro-American (I’m not). No one can stop me, but does it mean anything at that point?
Technically, yes. It’s a fallacy to call all of the hateful christians “not real”. Since there’s just so many that identify and are identified as christians that are hateful, it’s mostly an academic distinction.
It IS interesting that so many christains don’t follow their own faith. For it is true that to be an overtly hatefuly or bigoted person is to ignore the core teachings of christianity.
to be an overtly hatefuly or bigoted person is to ignore the core teachings of christianity
And yet the history of Christianity is filled with hatred, and bloodshed. It’s almost like the “core teachings” are a smoke screen for the accumulation and abuse of power.
Also fun is technically, while it is a fallacy in the general sense, in the Christian religion they actually talk about false Christians as part of Christianity. So in a general sense it is a fallacy, but by its own rules they can be called as such and technically isn’t a fallacy. False prophets, pharisees, antichrist and whatnot.
I think the people downvoting you might not be familiar with the “No true Scotsman” fallacy.
No, they are familiar with it. He just used it wrong. The idea of the entire fallacy is that there can’t be qualifications to being a “true” Scotsman because the definition of a Scotsman is simply “someone who was born in Scotland”.
Funny, I don’t see any. But yeah, that’s what I was driving at.
So you’re saying there’s a Nougat of truth there
No True Nougat
Maybe he doesn’t hate and he just loves killin’
Important to understand that there’s also a form of civil war going on within the Church in the US between the more liberal churches, which this pastor represents, and the conservative, evangelical churches, which Mike Johnson represents.
Can confirm.
In my town, a lot of the churches are more about peace and love and helping the community. They fly lgbtq+ flags. Their biggest outdoor events involve feeding homeless, or cleaning the parks.
They absolutely hate these mega church types, and often get lumped into the shit.
That sounds a lot more Christ-like (feed the hungry, give as much as you can to the poor etc) than whatever mutation the evangelicals are worshipping.
The Episcopalians do it right. They allowed gay ministers well over a decade ago.
Jesus also instructed us on how to properly beat our slaves
< nitpick >I could be operating with incomplete information, but I don’t think that was technically Jesus, I’m pretty sure that was in Exodus, which was much earlier.< / nitpick >
Far more than just Exodus
https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-slavery/
And yeah my mistake, it was NT but not Jesus. Southern states used all of these verses to justify chattal slavery in the US.
That being said, Jesus referenced slavery all of the time without condemning it (in fact I think he tells slave masters to treat their slaves well. That’s not ok). He used slaves and slavery as allegories in his parables, etc.
Jesus himself said that he came to fulfill the old law and that not a word of it will change (in so many words). He explicitly supports Old Testament law, and therefore supports slavery and the rules surrounding beating them. If he didn’t, he could have very easily had said so.
He tacitly approved of it. And I couldn’t care less about “the times”. Slavery is bad, period. No matter what/where it’s taking place.
There’s a church near me that flies a pride flag. Now, I’m not Christian (or LGBTQ) so I wouldn’t go to pray there, but I was happy to see it. Too many places of worship make the news for how hateful they are. It’s nice to see one advertising how inclusive they are.
Again, I’m not Christian and thus not an expert on Jesus, but from what I know his message was a pretty good one. Help the poor, the sick, and anyone else who needs assistance. If more churches actually followed Jesus instead of screaming that the Bible says you should buy more guns, assault immigrants, hate people different from you, and worship Trump while giving the pastor as much money as possible, then maybe they would be in better shape.
Viva Christo Rey
Important to note that the sides are in like a 5:1 ratio and Johnson is on the larger side.
Also the liberal churches are far older and are shrinking; denominations and mega-churches who act like Johnson’s are growing.
Young people see it all as a bunch of bs, except the radical ones, which drives religion to greater and greater insanity.
It’s also a simple matter of funding.
The megachurches preaching prosperity gospel, cramming 10,000 people into a building, and hoarding their wealth (most don’t pay apportionments to a larger denomination that is used to fund service projects) find it easier to keep the doors open than the little churches that focus on compassion and community service.
Righteous Gemstones vibes
So if theres a break between the churches… again. How long till we get some christian anarchist type beheading random pastors or some other John Brown type shit.
The divide falls between small churches that help their community, and large churches that help themselves…
It just dawned on me that evangelicals are the evangélicos in South America. Let me tell you, South America being 90% Catholic, we see evangelicals as crazy fanatics. If someone told me that an evangélico was part of the government in the country I grew up with, most people would immediately dismiss whatever they have to say about people going to hell or whatever.
I guess the only difference with this guy is that he’s wielding too much power, which makes him dangerous. But other than that, anything he has to say will be met with “sure, sure, old man, praise the lord whatever, go pray somewhere far away from me.”
You know, watching religion decline in the west largely as a result of the more fanatical like Johnson, I kinda hope their side wins so we can be done with it. There are few things that are more of a cancer on society (globally as well) than religion and the dogmatic approach to the world that it espouses.
The Devil having found no traction with drug addicts, thieves & prostitutes, and perl programmers has decided to use Christian leaders.
It would be believable if the first groups didn’t entirely compose last one.
I agree that the devil would go after perl programmers, as sloth is a sin.
Something something who doesn’t remember Black Perl?
And that Pontius Pilate wrote only in Lingua::Romana::Perligata
People called Javascriptum they go the house?
then python programmers came and literally made a hash out of everything
| Linux kernel 6.6.6 released
Coincidence?! I think not
It’s worse than that, he’s a Republican
If I believed in God or the Devil, I’d find claim that he’s controlled by the Devil more believable than Johnson’s claim that he’s working for God.
While I am mightily amused to see the God Squad fighting amongst themselves…
You should read the op-ed. It’s actually very good
Mike Johnson worships himself, like a lot of ignorant people who call themselves Christians right now… calls himself Moses and so on, because he’s full of pride… and yeah, that is the same as worshipping Satan, or “being controlled by the Devil” or however else you want to say it…
This just in: superstitious con artists engage in slapfight.
Film at 11.
I don’t know if this weird little man is controlled by the xtian devil, but I do know that like so many of today’s cons/GOP, he is one creepy weirdo. A party filled with creepy weirdos.
Imagine thinking your god (note the lack of a capital g the provincial xtians love to use) gives you a right to poke around in others’ lives.
Xtians? Are we serious? Good grief lol
Who is “we”? Do you have religiously passionate tapeworms that are politically engaged with these comments for whom you now speak in addition to yourself?
I’m just going to say yes.
I can’t tell what that means ?
Think of it as how the shorthand version of CHRISTmas is Xmas and it make a tad more sense albeit still a rather unnecessary abbreviation in this situation.
I mean, strictly speaking, are not all abbreviations unnecessary? Sticking-my-tongue-out
ASCIIAmerican Standard Code for Information Interchange symbol face.deleted by creator
I just want to pause here and say that this kind of thing, much like basically any bumper sticker ever, is stupid as fuck and I hate it. Whether it’s my dumb fucking cousin saying “Killary” or equally annoying mouth breathers talking about “Drumpf.” Like, I’m as atheist as the day is long, and holy shit does it make the parent comment annoying to read. Your super great “hillary lied, people died” bumper sticker, the “honk if Trump should go to jail,” just all of it. It sucks, I hate it, it’s the laziest form of persuasion (spoilers, it’s persuading no one, it’s just pissing off the people you want to convince.) Oh you didn’t capitalize the ‘g’? Well fuck it’s me the pope, let’s peace out and go get tacos this Jesus thing was dumb anyway.
Mike Johnson controlled by the Devil…so the Devil IS the reason we can’t have a nice government to meet our needs.
As an Atheist, I think it is awful that Mike Johnson works with the Devil.
He supports the Antichrist, of course he is evil.
Just in case you are unaware the entire concept of the anti-christ was supposed to be Nero. The last book of the Bible was very controversial partially because of this reason. Other stuff you can argue about but to me at least this is a proven false prophecy and really should not be part of Christianity. However, I am a non-believer so maybe you shouldn’t follow my advice.
This is just an op-ed piece that links to another op-ed piece.
Seriously.
Does anyone know if there are any political communities that don’t consider op-ed pieces to be news? For example, a community that has strict rules that news must be free of journalistic bias and only cite news that factually happened with no agenda?
Because that would be cool.
free of journalistic bias and only cite news that factually happened with no agenda
Does such news even exist anymore?
I mean, Reuters. AP News, BBC, PBS news… there plenty of non biased news sources that don’t tel you have to fee about what they’re shoveling.
Ground News may be what you are looking for. On top of claiming to you the story straight, they show you stats of whether it’s getting more press on the left or right. They have a bunch of stats in their paid tiers, I think.
I don’t know the reputation of the people behind it, and I don’t use it heavily, but I like to hit their site/app from time to TMNT.
Despite a long track record of anti-LGBTQ+ comments and advocacy, he has insisted he can’t be a hateful person because he’s a Christian.
Oh, what a relief.
The devil has seen better days. You would expect a devil controlled human to be some sorta uber-human ultimate fighter. Zipping around the battlefield, single handedly committing whole outrages. Not some schmuck in a suit who got his job because of political stalemate.
I mean the devil is literally the great deceiver. in all biblical portrayals the only thing devil does is lie essentially. the lies sow doubts and people lose their faith.
what you’re describing is more along the lines of demons. and they’re technically easier to deal with because it’s so obvious.
I’m not religious but the devil really is a clever construct in Christianity, and highlights the best “feature”: salvation is based on faith and faith alone and everyone can be saved.
it is so much more effective at brainwashing than materialistic control
The devil never lies in the Bible. In the garden of Eden story (yes retrocon) he is the only one telling the truth. In Job he got something wrong but didn’t lie.
In any case there is no god so you can move on with your life.
This little slapfight would be quite funny to watch from the sidelines if they weren’t fighting it with out rights.
