1d 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

163 comments

I very nearly wrote a comment about this long or longer going off on religion in reply to a post here but decided against it.
Christianity is a slave religion. It is not revolutionary. It is for the status quo, it demands slaves obey their masters, masters obey the state (render unto Cesar) and dangles above them all this idea that submitting here and now doesn't matter because you're on this plane of existence for 60-100 years and then if you're a good Christian you go to heaven literally forever and get to live in a paradise so it's just not worth struggling over. You can sit there as a smug slave, as a smug serf, worker etc as you're beaten and starved because you know you have a ticket of this, you know you have a reward waiting for you so none of this matters. The Protestant work ethic is the Christian work ethic. It demands false peace instead of justice, says CSA victims must forgive their abuser in their church and says that abuser as long as they repent to god (not even the victim, they don't matter) they're golden and their ticket to heaven remains reserved and they can stand up in front of church, forgiven by god and cannot be judged.
You want to be a Christian and push for a better world? Fine I'm not going to go out of my way to make fun of you but I am judging you because you're a cafeteria Christian, I find it unserious, you're picking and choosing and ignoring parts of your religion to suit what you want it to say. You're not an ounce of a more genuine Christian than the reactionary Christians who never do any charity at all who also pick and choose and twist the religion to be what you want it to be to suit your way of thinking.
Additionally Jesus says by the way that the OT is totally valid until he returns. Matthew 5:17-20:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter,[a] not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
I get you know being afraid of death. I honestly think it's the task of a world communist government to create a new religion for people who need this kind of thing, one that's defanged and harmless, one that cannot be misinterpreted in any charitable way to support bigotry, one with equal rights for women at its core and which is simple and short in tenets and wildly progressive. And it should make all the wanted promises, eternal life, etc, etc, only you don't confess to Jesus in your head, you confess to the local commissar in a self-crit and then you're forgiven unless it's a serious crime in which case you're imprisoned or sent to reform labor or whatever but promised your spot in the afterlife is preserved as a result. The point being not to go out of our way to preach and convert the masses to worshiping the party or anything bizarre like that but having an out, an option for these people so they don't get drawn into ancient, patriarchal, homophobic, reactionary ideologies.
- masters obey the state (render unto Cesar)
  Is that really how you interpret that passage? It was "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's" Isn't it? So it's literally calling out the romans for thinking they own everything when they don't. It seems to be saying the opposite of what you think it is saying. Jesus was crucified by the Romans because he stood against the status quo and was a threat to their power in the region.
- masters obey the state (render unto Cesar)
  Just want to add an interesting note here regarding this line and one other that I learned from my favorite professor in college, absolutely brilliant scholar who was like an encyclopedia of New Testament studies. Supposedly this line is intended as a double entendre that only Jesus' audience of common people would have fully understood - on the surface it sounds like "give to Caesar what belongs to him" meaning taxes, fealty, etc. But it can also be interpreted as "give Caesar what he deserves", meaning revolutionary violence against the Roman state.
  Another example is the "turn the other cheek" saying. In the culture of the time, if you slapped a person with the back of your hand, that was a sign you considered them your inferior or subordinate. Slapping with the palm of your hand was reserved for people you considered your equal. (it might be the other way around but you get the idea) So if a Roman solider backhanded you, and you turned your other cheek towards them, they'd have to palmslap you if they wanted to hit you again, acknowledging you as their equal.
  Granted I learned this stuff well over a decade ago so take it with a grain of salt. The language, translation, and interpretation of the texts is a HUGE factor in how Christianity in particular develops. Similar to how:
  
  Not to detract from your other points about the modern Western understanding of Christian theology (esp among white evangelicals), I just find the academic study of the Bible very enlightening for these reasons. Ultimately reactionary forces will push whatever interpretation benefits them and the status quo the most. The "original texts" don't hold a lot of value for a dialectical materialist analysis.
  
  render unto Cesar
  I also want to beat the Caesar shaped dead horse.
  Some can even interpret it as an instance of Jesus supporting a separation of Church and State. As he says in the full phrase "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's", and a while later before getting railed and nailed 😉 on the cross he said to Pilate "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But now (or 'as it is') my kingdom is not from the world". Which more or less says the spiritual shit is separated from the material shit, or to say that desiring to create or enforcing the theocratic "Christian Nation" is directly heretical to the word of the Christian messiah as the only kingdom of God itself exists in heaven.
  Of course taking a more historical materialist look at it, one could simply say do unto Cesar is basically Jesus doing some squirrel shit to avoid getting tattled on by his religious-political enemies who'd want him to openly advocate for the tax resistance movement that active during the time and get thrown in jail before he was ready to get nailed to a cross.
  
  Is also why he says he is the Son of Man, instead of the Son of God. To avoid declaring a full blown insurrection.
- That's a fundamentalist interpretation of those two passages and not how Christianity is actually practiced today, or was practiced in the past. Does any Christian today obey all of the old testament laws because Jesus said to do so once, or use the render onto Ceasar passage to justify slavery? I think Samir Amin's Eurocentrism (which offers a Marxist analysis of the Abrahamic religions) offers a well rounded explanation about how Christianity has evolved from its beginnings in this regard and how it has been practiced, with a focus on those two passages. I seriously encourage you (and everyone else) to read it. To criticize religions, we need to understand how they prevailed outside of fundamentalist dogma. As an atheist, I found this writing from Amin really helpful, as I could never wrap my head around why people would be Christian or how it became the most popular religion in many parts of the world. Amin's writing here really helped me understand that.
- And it should make all the wanted promises, eternal life, etc, etc, only you don't confess to Jesus in your head, you confess to the local commissar in a self-crit and then you're forgiven unless it's a serious crime in which case you're imprisoned or sent to reform labor or whatever but promised your spot in the afterlife is preserved as a result.
  
  yeah wtf am I reading here. "let's trick religious people into thinking their forced labor is ok"
  "let's have state sanctioned interrogators investigating spiritual crimes"
  "let's literally make a cult but involve state authority"
  This is like if someone wanted David Koresh to have his compound but also he's the town sheriff.
  
  I mean idk if fascism is quite the right word but co-opting religion to superficially suit your purpose and manipulate people is quite the take.
- Christianity is a slave religion
- I get you know being afraid of death. I honestly think it's the task of a world communist government to create a new religion for people who need this kind of thing, one that's defanged and harmless, one that cannot be misinterpreted in any charitable way to support bigotry, one with equal rights for women at its core and which is simple and short in tenets and wildly progressive. And it should make all the wanted promises, eternal life, etc, etc, only you don't confess to Jesus in your head, you confess to the local commissar in a self-crit and then you're forgiven unless it's a serious crime in which case you're imprisoned or sent to reform labor or whatever but promised your spot in the afterlife is preserved as a result. The point being not to go out of our way to preach and convert the masses to worshiping the party or anything bizarre like that but having an out, an option for these people so they don't get drawn into ancient, patriarchal, homophobic, reactionary ideologies.
  Doing the Cult of Reason on the new revolutionary iteration?

163 comments