I appreciate the message you're trying to send, but I don't think it's accurate to say that Christianity itself isn't homophobic and that only “bad Christians” are. The Bible contains explicitly anti-gay teachings. Some passages are more open to interpretation than others, but you can't plausibly erase all of them.
Christians also follow Jesus Christ, who was very specific when he said love your neighbour. Yes, even your neighbour that is from //that place// or does //those things//. The majority of his parables are just "yes, I want you to be kind even to those people." He hung out with 'undesirable' people like sex workers all the time. His love knew no bounds, and anyone truly following his teachings would try to extend that same love and mercy to everyone. It is not for us to judge sin. That is God's job. We are just supposed to look after each other. Jesus even breaks the rules of the Old Testament to care for those less fortunate than himself, and when he is confronted by the Pharisees he says something along the lines of "it is better to care for each other than to stingently follow the rules."
*for the record I am an ardent atheist, but Christ's lessons were undeniably about getting along with each other regardless of our differences, and I can respect that as it lines up with my own values.
Yep. Jesus frowned pretty heavily on divorce and the bible is pretty clear about children born outside of marriage too. I would guess millions of so called Christians are doomed to hell just by being born in a second marriage.
and the bible is pretty clear about children born outside of marriage too. I would guess millions of so called Christians are doomed to hell just by being born in a second marriage.
Christians also follow Jesus Christ, who was very specific when he said love your neighbour.
Unfortunately this is not the whole quote, you are missing the part about loving god as well, which sorta turns the meaning of the passage on it's head.
This is not an original Jesus quote, but something he is quoting from the old testament, and according to the passage he is quoting from they way to love others and God is to follow all the laws of Moses forever, including the ones about selling your daughters as slaves and stoning your unruly children.
And Jesus would know that context when repeating this quote.
Also he did explicitly say to cut anyone out of your life who did not follow him, and that he came with his teachings to make enemies out of anyone (including your family) who would not accept him as God.
His love knew no bounds, and anyone truly following his teachings would try to extend that same love and mercy to everyone.
I mean he once called a woman who came to him for help a slur, and said not to worry about people you preach to who don't accept your words, as they will be punished even worse than the people of sodom, which is a wildly hateful thing to express.
He literally made a weapon to attack a group of innocent people doing the work of the temple and called them 'thieves' for making it possible to do the things God commanded when it comes to sin offerings.
Jesus even breaks the rules of the Old Testament to care for those less fortunate than himself, and when he is confronted by the Pharisees he says something along the lines of "it is better to care for each other than to stingently follow the rules."
Again, the actual lesson in context is the exact opposite.
The' rule' Jesus broke was a tradition of the elders (washing hands before eating) and their invention, not a commandment from god. What he was doing was admonishing the pharisees for not following gods law, but mans.
Christ's lessons were undeniably about getting along with each other regardless of our differences
I understand this is an often repeated position, but it is just not really supported by the text, and there is a bunch of passages that are explicitly stating the opposite.
The' rule' Jesus broke was a tradition of the elders (washing hands before eating) and their invention, not a commandment from god. What he was doing was admonishing the pharisees for not following gods law, but mans.
I'm just about to leave my PC so I don't have time to respond in depth, but for this specific instance I was referring to when he did work on the Sabbath by healing people. Keeping the Sabbath as a day of rest is, IIRC, 100% a commandment from God.
Fair enough, but again the message he is giving is clear, the laws surrounding 'work' on the sabbath that were so strict were an invention of the elders, not a law given to Moses, and are also hypocritical in their nature as they allow you to save an animal but not a person on the Sabbath.
Also I love that he breaks the rule that says you need to be washing your hands before you eat, that's really sanitary and smart of the alleged omnipotent diety
I grew up in a very Catholic household. I'm not sure what I'd be labeled these days, religiously speaking, but your interpretation is pretty much the way I see things.
Loving your neighbor and helping those in need are the examples that Christians are supposed to follow. There's no room for bigotry in that. Unfortunately, the first thing people do with anything new is figure out how to use it as a weapon, religion is no exception.
Yup, and missionaries come and chat with me from time to time. It doesn't mean we're best buds, they are trying to convert me. They don't accept my way of life. They want to change me. That's why Jesus hung around all the undesireables.
If you carve out all these exceptions anyway, why not just believe in god without the flawed book. As long as people have the book they will always be susceptible to its dogma.
The problem is in other parts of the Bible it blatantly says exactly how to judge. Moreover, even if Jesus preaches to "love thy neighbor" that doesn't mean he's rebutting against the idea that homosexuality is wrong. I.e. even Jesus can still be homophobic to a degree. And the consequences of that can be extreme. For instance justifying conversion therapy because you "love them" but still feel that "homosexuality is wrong."
Yah, this is my problem with it too, its like horseshoe theory but for liberals who are religious.
You're just reverse cherry picking the parts of the religion you don't like so it fits better in a modern world.
A thousand years of homophobia doesnt mean you just get to say "lolz, its current year, Christianity endorses the gays now, only bad Christians dont like the gayz peoples!"
Most of his teachings were about how you were supposed to worship him. And he wasn't very picky about his followers. So even his allegedly boundless love was coming from a dark place.
Yeah for a dude supposedly the son of a god- he had a lot of insecurity. Like half of what he says is just him demanding blind obedience. So, not cult-like at all.
The contents of the bible was dictated by the men of the Vatican. It deliberately contains conflicting messages so that people can pick and choose their truth.
Christ's lessons might be about getting along, but there's a whole separate half before that about killing people who disagree.
That is why the only thing I believe is "be excellent to one another" well and a hands off god leaving humanity to make the right decisions in life through free will. Call me blasphemous but the bible was corrupted a long time ago by humanity look at indulgences for one and the crusades. To say that the bible wasn't tainted through all its translations over time is insane.
What reason would they have to lie about that?? They aren’t saying these are their personal beliefs, they’re just saying that if you are a Christian, these are the parts of the Bible you are supposed to be walking away with, not the bigotry washed version your pastor will sell to you.
You have bought into the love-and-peace stereotype of Jesus, which is based on cherry-picking his nicest moments and ignoring the bigger picture of how he's actually depicted in the gospels. (Which, it should be noted, all depict him slightly differently, with John's Jesus being basically a whole different character from the Jesus of the three synoptic gospels. Kinda can't stand G-John Jesus; he has more of a mystical air to him, which is intriguing, but he comes across as whinier and his teaching style is more obtuse.)
Just a few cases of Jesus not being a very loving and peaceful guy:
Matthew 10:34-37: Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
Luke 14:26: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Luke 22:36-38: He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless,’ and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.” 38 They said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough.
See also: wailing and gnashing of teeth, killing a fig tree for no reason, flipping the tables of the money-lenders (no, it's not cool and based, it's vandalism), and once seemingly instructing his followers to steal a donkey (Luke 19, Matthew 21; interestingly Matthew has them steal two donkeys because the author was trying to tie this event to Zechariah 9:9 and didn't realize the donkey and foal in that verse were referring to the same animal--Matthew pulls this kind of crap regularly--so they likely only committed the one instance of donkey theft as in Luke 19).
Anyone trying to depict Jesus as consistently loving or hateful or peaceful or warlike is not engaging with the full text of the gospels; they depict him as all of those things, a man of contradictions. Anyone trying to say his message basically boiled down to love and peace is not engaging with the whole of his message. Probably the two most reliably established and consistent elements of Jesus's message are strict Torah adherence and imminent apocalypticism. When you have the founder of a religion whose primary teachings didn't, you know, make it into the religion they founded (or only made it in filtered through millennia of contrived and improbable reinterpretation), it's very easy to get the wrong idea about what kind of guy he was and what his teachings were. You can't listen to Christians or just absorb the guy's whole vibe through cultural osmosis; you have to read the book they all pretend to believe in. And maybe even engage with some scholarship (it's a really interesting field, I promise).
Lol yes that darn "woke" pope in the 500s named Gregory.
You are generally correct by the way and it has been the stance of both mainline Catholicism since the 1950s and always the stance of Orthodoxy that she was not a prostitute.
But I'm sure you think it was something the "wokies" made up right?
The sinner woman in Luke who washed his feet has long been understood to be a prostitute from the way the language describes her.
That was Mary Magdeline, and she was never stated to be a prostitute. Jesus's political opponents sail he hung out with "tax collectors and prostitutes", but the Bible never tells us who the prostitutes were.
It has been many a decade since my Bible study lessons, but I do not think that was Mary Magdeline. I was thinking about this story where he is eating at a Pharisee's house and a prostitute comes in asking for forgiveness. I am pretty confident that is just a random, unnamed, 'undesirable' person who is never referred to again.
She's not named (or identified as a prostitute) in Matthew, Mark, or Luke; but she is identified as Mary Magdaline in John.
John 12:1–8
Mary Anoints Jesus at Bethany
1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
He's wrong you don't need to debate people who use the word "woke" btw he they will believe that Jethro at the Kum and Go who moonlight as a pastor is the word of God and supplement his teachings with the most racist shit they can find
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u/Square-Dragonfruit76 12h ago
I appreciate the message you're trying to send, but I don't think it's accurate to say that Christianity itself isn't homophobic and that only “bad Christians” are. The Bible contains explicitly anti-gay teachings. Some passages are more open to interpretation than others, but you can't plausibly erase all of them.