20h ago

(CW: All forms of bigotry) The New Testament is also filled with nasty bigoted shit! Christianity is rotten to its core and is incompatible with a Marxist frame of thought

This pissed me off so fucking much when people defend Christianity by saying that all of the bad shit is in the Old Testament and that the New Testament is totally fine.

1 Corinthians 6:9

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,"

Gay people and gender non-conforming people are not allowed in to heaven

1 Peter 3:1

"Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands;"

It's still an extremely misogynistic book even in the new testament

Romans 1:26-27 ... 32

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

...

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."

Both homophobia and misogyny

I could go on and on, and I probably will in the comments, but it's pretty fucking clear that all the nasty bigoted shit in the book just doesn't go away in the New Testament

You cannot separate the bigotry from the Bible. The Bible is very clear that you cannot pick and chose, that you have to accept the full book or none of it, you can't just take the verses you like and still be Christian. To be a good Christian who follows the entire Bible you must be bigoted

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Personally, I'm of the opinion that all of Paul's letters should be considered non-canonical. He was just a dude who claimed to have found Jesus and then spoke for him, and because he was a Roman citizen, he could travel freely throughout the empire, so his version of Christianity was the first version most people heard of. His ideas carry far more weight than someone like Mary Magdalene, or most of the apostles. Which is just absurd to me.
- Yeah, I'm of the belief that what was taken as "canonical" was selected through the Romans finally giving in and creating a hollowed-out state religion version of Christianity after they couldn't ignore the popularity of Christianity. The Nicene council was convened and after we got what we consider as the Bible today. The early Christian writing were much more radical and esoteric than what came later (and most likely had fuck all to do with what Jesus actually taught). The early Christians weren't a monolith either, there were literally hundreds of sects, with a lot of crossover with pagan "mystery cults" and neo-platonism. The early Christians didn't all agree on who Jesus was or what exactly was the "true" teaching of Jesus. If you take a look at the Gnostic writings Jesus comes across as more an eastern-style sage figure ala Lao-Tzu or the Buddha, hell there's a few passages in the Gospel of Thomas where he straight up is speaking some esoteric, sage-like stuff:
  (3) Jesus says: (1) “If those who lead you say to you: ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. (2) If they say to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fishes will precede you. (3) Rather, the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you.” (4) “When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father. (5) But if you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty.”
  (22) (1) Jesus saw infants being suckled. (2) He said to his disciples: “These little ones being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.” (3) They said to him: “Then will we enter the kingdom as little ones?” (4) Jesus said to them: “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below — (5) that is, to make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female — (6) and when you make eyes instead of an eye and a hand instead of a hand and a foot instead of a foot, an image instead of an image, (7) then you will enter [the kingdom].”
  In the late 80's a group of scholars actually made a committee and voted on what they considered to be the authentic sayings of Jesus by comparing the four gospels, and using the earliest gospel (Mark, I believe) as a frame of reference. There's also this idea of the "Q" gospel, which was the main document that all the other gospels took their content from, but has been lost to time, but believed to have existed from speculating on various allusions to a central text. The findings of the committee were released in the form of a book "The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.
  Thomas Jefferson (yes, that Jefferson) even wrote his own Bible, referred to as the "Jefferson Bible", because he believed many of the sayings and doings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament to be forgeries, obscuring the true sayings of Jesus.
  I'm not a Christian myself, more of a armchair philosopher/spiritual seeker, but it's my view that Jesus was a very real person, that's name was used in an opportunistic way by powerful people to create a system of social/political control. If you look at what is considered to be his original words, he doesn't claim to be "the" son of god, but claims that *we are all sons and daughters of god". There are many times where Jesus actually rebukes those people for holding him up as some type of godly figure.
  I think Jesus was an enlightened figure (possibly with far east spiritual training, which has been speculated by some, perhaps venturing to India in his youth) that preached a very, very different spirituality than the one that co-opted his name and popularity. Of course, one can only speculate, but from the available evidence I assume it to be a pretty good chance that was the case. Which, if you are to believe that idea, makes it pretty tragic that such a teacher could have their name and ideas used and twisted into something far different, and worse, than what they were actually teaching.
  
  Seems like Thomas was the apostle who knew where to find the really good shit, probably made top tier Bethelem brownies.
  But yeah, early Christian writings are a fascinating topic, just so radically different from the codified stuff that came later, and a lot more like other "cults" at the time (not in the modern sense of the word).
  
  Haha, possibly. The early conception of Thomas, throughout the Gnostic writings, Thomas was seen as Jesus' favorite disciple, even drawing the ire of the other disciples because of Jesus' supposed favoritism of Thomas. And interestingly, Thomas was seen as Jesus' "twin", in the Gospel of Thomas he is referred to as such, and John even mentions it in the Gospel of John:
  In the Syriac-speaking culture of upper Mesopotamia and Syria the apostle was called Judas Thomas. Thomas (Tau'ma) means twin in Syriac, a form of the Aramaic which was the language of Jesus and his followers. And Didymus, a name by which the apostle is also called in the gospel of John, means twin in Greek. Perhaps some regarded the two as blood brothers. Perhaps the twinship was regarded as spiritual or symbolic. Sometimes, as in the Christian Gnostic systems, Thomas seems to be the this-worldly reflection or image of a divine savior-figure, an earthly body inhabited by a spirit like the savior's. In any event Thomas became a focus of special reverence.
  So, Thomas was definitely seen as a special figure in the early Christian writings, which is interesting as he is now commonly remembered as "doubting Thomas", the disciple who doubted the resurrection initially. Seems like there was some in the early church that disliked Thomas' original prominence (perhaps due to the association with being an important figure to the gnostic sects) and basically character assassinated him in retribution.
  Yeah, the early Christian development is quite fascinating. I was first exposed to it by Elaine Pagel's book "The Gnostic Gospels", which led to me doing a deeper investigation. It was interesting, since I was also heavily into reading Taoist philosophy at the time, and I could immediately draw the parallels between the Gnostic and some Taoist ideas. The Gnostic version of Christianity seemed to have far more in common with eastern spiritual traditions than other western religious thought. I very much see Gnosticism as a western spiritual kin to eastern systems of thought. It makes a lot of sense too, as I have no doubt that there was a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between the east and west at that time, leading to a synthesis of western thought with the ideas it encountered from the east.

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