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Was Jesus a loser? By the standards of the age, the human standards, he was most certainly viewed as a loser, with the exception of his followers. That was the point of crucifying someone in that period. The Roman authorities used the practice as a form of humiliation as well as capital punishment. The point of displaying the condemned as they suffered and died was to let the rest of the population know that the guy on the cross was at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Modern Christians would take exception to calling Jesus a loser, but early Christians would not have been offended. The humiliation of Jesus was integral to both understanding the life of Christ and the message of Christ. If the Romans or the Jews had executed Christ in the fashion reserved for prominent people, then the life and message of Christ would mean something quite different. The stripping of all human dignity at the end was essential to the life of Christ.
Therein lies the problem for modern Christians. By the standards of this age, Christ is a loser, just as he was two thousand years ago. The message of Christ not only runs counter to the way in which modern people live and are expected to live, but the bad end runs afoul of how modern people expect the life of a hero to end. The modern person expects the hero’s life to end in a great triumph and universal acclaim or at least the acclaim of the major characters in the story.
Of course, the message of Christ does not work too well either. Eschewing material prosperity is just not a thing people do in this age or for a long time. In fact, the point of life for a long time has been to increase your material wealth. All of the heroes of the modern age are those who either got rich for their own sake or got rich for having upheld the modern morality. The way around this for the modern Christian is some form of the prosperity gospel, but that often looks like a grift.
More important, the message of Christ was aimed at the losers. From the start, Christianity was a religion for losers. Its appeal assumed that the audience was composed of people who were losers and would remain losers until they died, which would probably be soon. For them, investing in this life made little sense, so they should invest in the next life. Their time on this plane of existence was best used to prepare for everlasting life in Christ.
It is a powerful message if you are a loser and most people in the late Roman Empire and post-empire Europe were losers. Nasty, brutish, and short is a famous line from Hobbes to describe pre-society man, but it was also a good description of life for most people in the early Christian era. It was true for many people when Hobbes was writing in the 17th century. The typical person was subjected to violence, disease, and the constant fear of running out of food.
A religion that tells the losers that their suffering is part of a transition from this life to everlasting life and bliss is going to find a lot of interest. The folk religions of the age were not so rosy about what comes next. Worse yet, if you were going to get any sort of reward in the next life, it meant living this life heroically. That did not offer much for the peasant farmer or the man tied to the land. It is not hard to see why a religion for losers would spread rapidly through Europe at the time.
This insouciant description of Christianity as a religion for losers is not intended as an insult to Christians or Christianity, but to make a point. The rise of Christianity in the West was due to two things. One is the majority of the population, even the upper classes, lived harsh lives. Therefore, a promise of relief from suffering and everlasting life had a strong appeal. The second factor was the embrace of this life as a means to an end, rather an end in itself.
Fast forward to this age and you see that poor people live lives of luxury relative to just a century ago. The typical poor person in America is obese because he has unlimited cheap food. His home is full of conveniences and entertainments. Even in the most terrifying modern ghettos, violence is a fraction of what people experienced even a few hundred years ago. A religion aimed at people living a life of misery is not going to sell to a population living in luxury.
Compounding the problem is a new religion of sorts has evolved in the West that celebrates material success. The point of life, according to the new religion, is to increase your material wellbeing. The point of the state is to foster those conditions and measure success by society-wide material increase. In every election, the economy is the top issue because in this age, we worship stuff, so the promise of more stuff is a sign of virtue. The point of life is more stuff.
A much bigger problem for Christianity is the fact that the ruling elites of this age have no use for Christianity. In the Middle Ages, not only did the ruling elites have lives of struggle, but they also saw utility in a religion that shifted the focus of their people from their current squalor onto what comes after this life. Marx was not entirely wrong when he wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Probably the biggest challenge for Christianity is the modern Christian, who like the modern grammarian, refuses to evolve. The grammarian clings to the rules of grammar as if they are timeless truths. Any thought of ignoring them for the sake of clarity is treated as a crime against humanity. The fact that most of what he clings to is a relative new invention is lost on him, because what matters most to him is wielding the blue pencil like nuns used to wield the ruler.
This is the problem with the modern Christian. He is ossified in a mode of thought that is relatively new. Transport a modern Christin back to medieval England and he would be burned at the stake as a heretic. Plop him down among the early followers of Christ and they would be baffled by his Scriptural dogmatism. The early proselytizers charged with converting the pagans would find the modern Christian to be a rigid and irrational burden on their work.
Christianity, as we understand it, is the result of a long evolutionary process that adapted the life and message of Christ to the audience and times. The inability and unwillingness of modern Christians to evolve and adapt is probably the biggest challenge facing Christianity. Put another way, the problem with modern Christianity is not its opponents, but its most dogmatic defenders. They have made failure their security blanket and refuse to let go of it.
If Christianity is going to survive, it will have to adapt to this age and repurpose itself as a replacement for liberalism, rather than an enabler of it. Christianity gave birth to liberalism, but it does not have to sink under the waterline with it. Instead, it will have to either replace it with a new Christianity or give rise to a secular alternative that cannot just coexist with Christianity but allow it to once again flourish. Otherwise, Christianity will go into the dustbin of history along with Western civilization.
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The two ways that Christianity evolved in the 20th century – Christian Zionism and Prosperity Gospel – are, to put it mildly, a total disaster, both for the religion and for civilization. They were, though, a reflection of the rising tide of post-WW2 America and the Jewish century. All that is coming to an end though. Young people are angry that they don’t have as much as their parents and grandparents did, and they are lashing out and going to lash out, but at some point they will realize that wealth is gone. We aren’t going back. Supporting the people… Read more »
That is quite possible. Among the reasons Corporate America embraced Wokeism is that it serves as an opiate for the dispossessed young. It is at best a short-term patch. The Great Awakening gives some insight into what the future may hold once the realization occurs that trannies will not restore prosperity.
I disagree with Z. The greatest danger to Christianity is not liberalism, wealth, etc. It is Islam. All experiments to “modernize” Christianity have ended up in failure. In the Catholic Church, Council Vatican II proclaimed the “aggiornamento” (the modernization) of the Catholic Church. People voted with their feet and the Catholic Church is a shell of its former self. The Anglican church modernized Christianity and has disappeared from England. In USA, when a church is captured by the progressive people, it starts waning dramatically. In addition, woke people are not reproducing xirselves. Modern people are living a birth rate catastrophe.… Read more »
And then there is the negro who, regardless of his religious belief, outbreeds them all
Probably, but religious black people outbreed secular black people.
Breeding IS his religious belief.
We are living in extraordinary times. In most of the human history, we had two types of people: 1) People with high fertility rate. They often have lots of kids and they don’t invest too much in anyone of them so many of them don’t survive. High fertility – high mortality. 2) People with low fertility rate. They often have few kids but they invest in them so they have better chance to survive. Low fertility-low mortality. The first class of people thrives in hot countries, where life is easy. The second class in cold countries, where life is hard.… Read more »
His race is his religion, expressed in the most pithy of terms.
That’s alright. They butcher and abort one another to beat the band, too.
Alas, the poor negro is so stupid that he cannot be convinced that his children are a burden rather than a blessing. Fortunately, those brilliant white people have proven easy to convince [sarcasm alert].
Just so. And this gives the lie to Z’s assertion that Christianity has refused to “evolve.” On the contrary, it has practically evolved itself out of existence. For Christianity to survive, it will probably have to return to its roots. And if the promise of salvation for losers is the essence of Christianity, that’s alright because there are still plenty of “losers” in the postmodern world. They are losers relative to their fellow inhabitants of this planet here and now, if not necessarily compared to those who lived centuries ago. And we measure ourselves against Kaylib in the C Suite,… Read more »
Yes. Evolved out of existence. Certainly true of most of the formerly predominate denominations of Christianity in the West.
Its always been evolving. The church used to burn people at the stake, but that wouldn’t have been acceptable in the 19th century where some on this forum would like to go back to. So you don’t like 20th century Christianity? So why not go back to the 14th century or even further back? Now we get to the heart of the dilemma of those complaining it’s evolved too far. You don’t want to admit that there is very little in the way of “eternal values” outside of some very basic stuff like the resurrection. Most of what is thought… Read more »
Burnings at the stake were actually fairly rare in Medieval times, and usually happened to people who more or less deserved it. Modern Wokes are our analogue to their witches and sorcerers. I’m not saying we should bring back witch burning, but it’s something to think about.
On the other hand, tarring and feathering, riding undesirables out of town on a rail, and similar healthy customs deserve to be revived. I’ve got a little list of society offenders who would benefit from such attentions.
I wonder if the following is generally true: those most prolific sub-groups may be the strongest upholders of the religion/culture’s traditions, but I bet that, as a group, they are the worst in terms of upholding the secular machinery that keeps their world alive, much less lets it advance. The Ultra-Orthodox men can spend all their waking hours studying Torah while the women keep house and pop out babies. But you won’t find them doing “real” work, I bet. I suspect a similar finding holds for die Muselmänner. Now, granted that just because one has (or comes from) a big… Read more »
If you look at the oil wealthy Mussulman countries its notable that they import Indians to do all the work, so they track with Jews in terms of using goyim rather than using their own two hands.
Young people are angry that they [feeel that they] don’t have as much as their parents and grandparents did
What they feeel is right. They have much less hope of getting a decent paying job that will enable them to buy a house, get married and raise a family. Just look at housing prices. And then look at Shadowstats.com for the honest info on just how high the real unemployment rates and inflation figures are. Young people today are screwed, and they know it.
You forgot about the 3rd way they evolved, social justice. You’re forgetting the cancer of “lesbian priests” marrying same sex couples and trannies all with the gay flag covering the cross. You forget about all the SJW churches who worship blacks and whatever other minorities they can find. Homo chomo priests being moved around from church to church to avoid dealing with this scourge of Vatican II. I find Z’s saying the church failed to “evolve” very confusing. They’ve failed to maintain, they have over-evolved and taken on the cancer of globohomo. Walk into just about any church in the… Read more »
Correct. For Leftist clergy (Are there any other kind?), Christianity is merely a vehicle for their own noisome ideology, and their denomination simply a political action group. Christianity, properly understood, really has very little to do with it.
Parasitism and (satanic) inversion.
The lowest-cost, least energy invested method.
No wonder their playbook is so simple and so effective.
Why build anything if you can just steal it?
Removed
“priests being moved around from church to church to avoid dealing with this scourge of Vatican II.” Vatican II enabled the Roman specific church to speak in the language of the people, rather than babble at them. It made the Catholic Church a much more honest place. I would say the priests being shuffled around is a by product of not taking Vatican II seriously enough. That especially in America, already liberal clergy ran with silliness is not the fault of a particular council. Everything about it’s reforms was common sense. Yes, we all dislike the modernist hot takes and… Read more »
The intent hardly matters. The results are self-evident.
I know this might seem like a cop out, but I hesitate to call those churches. They’re just organs of the American empire’s propaganda ministry. I’ve watched the TikToks from their “leadership.” And, it needs to be said, nobody is going to listen to those “social justice priests.” The attendance has totally collapsed. On some level, it makes sense, why take an hour of your Sunday to go listen to the same things you hear every waking moment?
Prosperity Gospel – A religion based around ‘muh GDP, line go up’ economics, can’t imagine who’s behind this grift. This must be what they’re talking about when they use the term Judeo-Christianity
In its social role, Christianity supports fidelity, fecundity, and solidarity. Our modern overlords hate all three. Christians who think they can adapt Christianity to the modern ideologies of our overlords (and they are legion) are fooling themselves.
Without elaborating as to what form or forms Christianity should evolve too I don’t see the point of this essay. You are right on one thing, modern Christians of every type wouldn’t last long if they were confronted early Christians.
Maybe evolving is not needed but reverting is, at least on main tenets.
Yeah, Christ on the Cross and His resurrection appealed to early Christians – after all, it was the sole focus of St. Paul’s ministry – and the closest thing we get to understanding that suffering and resurrection is, I hate to say it, the plight of minorities, particularly blacks and Jews. It’s no surprise that the lowest whites (in drug recovery, ex-cons, the newly divorced or otherwise badly damaged) are the most unapologetically Christian. But how can functional whites, or functional people generally, identify with Jesus? I don’t know. American ones have seemed to develop an attitude where he’s your… Read more »
Identifying with Jesus depends on the spectrum.
Liberals are mimicking the hardship and suffering of history’s majority, the “losers”, thus their overwrought moralizing and playacting.
Kiddies playing dress-up.
Yes, that’s an excellent insight. Woke-ism, or choose your own example of liberal movement, often had many if not all the aspects of a secular religion-equivalent. Let us use the recent example of an Antifa rioter from 2020. He participates in radical organizing discussions. He marched in the George Floyd “Defund the Police” protests. He may even have thrown rocks at cops or burned down a building. But it turns out that he is actually a trust fund baby attending a famous school for a useless degree. Or maybe just a middle class ne’er-do-well. Point: with near certainty one can assume… Read more »
Gotta’ contend with the writings of the non-European Church Fathers and the Early Councils of the Church discussing all of that to get past the gate. Tough sell.
Yep. If it really is a European invention, it’s from early 2nd Century Europe at latest, because it had sufficiently spread to be adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
Reincarnation was also part of early Catholic teaching, up until the third century I believe.
I believe so. The early church was a crazy hodge-podge of ideas, which He warned us was going to happen…
No, the early Church was not a crazy hodge-podge of ideas. I get that’s a convenient idea from the evangelical POV. The early Church was fighting heresies that can still be found today in different forms.
The early Church was very clear on who it was and why it was. The mess comes from the outside and the half believers, as it does today.
So Augustine of Hippo was not bringing in hitherto unincorporated ideas?
There’s difference between ideas not existing and their exploration and formalization. We in the West like people who write stuff down. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist because someone had not yet written them down. To the extent he added anything it would be detail to already existing ideas, which is called development. It’s like having an early map of North America but it’s rough. It’s still clearly North America. Then someone explores say Florida in detail and we get better shape of it, with more features. However, Florida always existed whether or not we had a map of it… Read more »
PS – Jesus never warned us about a crazy hodge-podge of ideas. He did pray for unity, so that everyone could see who was a Christian and who was not.
Yeah, pretty sure you have no idea of what you speak. Bible specifically warns about perverting its words, and Augustine introduced the idea of the afterlife, which was not a part of early doctrine.
Yes, the Bible does warn about changing words. Augustine in no way introduced the idea of the afterlife. That information comes to Jesus of Nazareth, although it actually appears before the appearance of Jesus
Please read any of the Gospels in the New Testament. You will find Christ talking about judgement and an after life.
I don’t know why people make weird statements like this. I’ve read the Bible AND some of St. Augustine’ work. Rumors that you heard in an anti-Catholic Bible study does not constitute reading either one.
He’s called Plato. You don’t know what I’ve read. I do know that even Catholic scholars acknowledge that the concept of an immortal soul would be foreign to Old Testament tribes. Eternal life is not the same as an immortal soul.
Excuse me? Jesus himself spoke about the afterlife on more than one occasion: “Amen, amen, I say to you: today you will be with me in Paradise.”
He did, however, warn us of false prophets would lead his sheep astray.
No, reincarnation was never part of early Catholic teaching.
Cappadocian Fathers. Eastern Romans, Greek speakers iirc. Kind of European?
Darn tootin’. Close enough that in a nighttime alley with hooting negros chasing you, there would be no questions asked.
They might not have been in Europe’s current borders, but they were still majority white. Whites were the dominant majority in the Middle East some 3000 years ago, as well, as nearly all the architecture of that time was ours. Even the recently uncovered Hellenic mosaics showing *gasp* white people.
The suffering Jew, huh? Heh. Well alright…
The doctrine of the Trinity was defined long before Europe was even a thing. ca. 325 A.D. Heck, Rome hadn’t even fallen yet, officially.
What’s needed is a new Savonarola.
A savvy assertion, Krull…
I’d say the point of the article is quiet encouragement, to reorient along European Christian lines rather than alternative ascendent lines such as Judeo-corporatist (Mammon), Islamic (rape), or Chinese (Imperial).
It’s a fire alarm a/k/a a wake-up call. Christianity is being replaced as surely and completely as the Greco-Roman pantheon was replaced once it became clear you could hike up Mt. Olympus and not find the Gods. Without a Christendom there is no mechanism to form a collective consciousness. Without a collective consciousness, Christianity ceases to be a religion and becomes an individual affectation. Traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox still speak about “the Church” but the Church no longer occupies anything like the kind of psychic space it did for a medieval peasant or tradesman in Constantinople. (This analysis applies to… Read more »
The Church does not need to exist in the headspace of Europeans or serve it’s current political to survive and fulfill it’s purpose. It has God’s protection regardless. Serving the political needs of Europe is about Protestant idea on the nature of Church and state. What’s difficult about conversation about religion in dissident circles is that the conversation is secular in nature. “Why isn’t the Christianity fixing things?”, largely from people who maybe have not been to any church in years and would never dream of being there. “Why isn’t the Pope perfect political leader from my POV?” is the… Read more »
A passel of bishops must be wondering where their copes have gone. Zed’s Dead, Baby. Zed’s Dead. We’re the slow learners. Centuries late to the party. Those weird and wonderful Unitarians, hell even Matthew Arnold smelled it miles off. Solid, serious, sensible folk — not just sneering Encyclopaedists and salon sophisticates. It’s Over, Red Rover. Always Has Been as the two spacemen meme goes. And the quondam high civilization this utterly bizarre (and no amount of Chesterton or Lewis Very Smart Takes can wallpaper the foundational cracks) religion underpinned is an aneurism about to pop and take many of us… Read more »
We live an age of a strange sort of honesty. Communal rituals that are faked because we need it (and we do) are not going to cut it. We need faith and reason to believe that Christian rituals matter. More plastic in plastic world has zero appeal. Christianity has not passed it’s expiration date. Nor was it built on shaky ground. It’s more that Christianity has fallen out of fashion, as God Himself has fallen out of fashion. Only rubes pray, am I right??? That said, it is better that people are honest about their relationship (or non as is… Read more »
There are very important parallels between early Christianity and today. In Christ’s day, merciless, self-righteous Jews controlled the power structure in Judea and manipulated the Roman empire into executing the guy who called them out on their hypocrisy. Today, the Jews control the narrative and the moral codes of contemporary life and manipulate the American empire into dispatching their enemies. Yes, Christ was a “loser” inasmuch as he had no power and no status like most of us. Christ sought truth, while both the Roman empire and the Jewish Pharisees were motivated by material greed and desire for status. The… Read more »
Apropos to your post, the losers of the postmodern world are we dissidents, and to a certain degree, white people in general. No, we are not impoverished, either by today’s standards or yesteryear’s. However, from an ideological and cultural standpoint, we are at the bottom of society’s hierarchy. Being a “loser” isn’t just about wealth. Status is also a key factor, and status and wealth don’t correlate absolutely.
I default to economic determinism as sloppily as the next guy, but you are absolutely correct that wealth is just a component of status. In a caste system, including our own racial version, you can be incredibly wealthy yet be an untouchable. Returning to economic determinism, I hope not sloppily, when wealth is stripped from Heritage Whites, the racial caste system and the larger society that imposes it will become threatened. As things stand it is wealth and not religion that is the opiate of the masses.
There might be an example here for the white/European nations. Perhaps in order to resurrect them, we need to finally let them die. After all, as long as you have the proper people and territory, you can have the Nation, this great collectively imagined community. A collapse will be remembered as a great Tragedy as was His death, but a seed of hope and Salvation will remain. Just as Jesus paid for our sins with his death, so will the death of post-modern West pay for all the treachery and negligence of our generations. And just as the Apostles went… Read more »
Why, Z! You despicable rascal! How dare you troll your adoring fans like this? I can literally hear you rudely smirking over the internet! 😂 Look here fellas. The church has survived Phillistines, Babylonians, jews, Romans, moslems, pagans, the Norse, the Nazis, communists, and countless others. And you propose that God’s people will get wiped out by the faggots, trannies, shrewish women and the unholy perverts of Clown World??? Oh ye of so little faith… And the fans! Oh my goodness, the fans! I simply LOVE the hysterical gobbling fright! “The church has to change!!! It has to evolve!!! Or… Read more »
really like your post.
“it rejects the modern mainstream world”
Yes, this is a key point. When Christianity tries to be more like the rest of the world, it eventually withers and dies, even though it might attract large numbers of fans of insipid rock-like music for a while. When churches try to be more like the world, they go further away from God.
For the purposes of our discussion, it probably helps to distinguish between “christianity” and “the church.” The former might be in better shape than the latter. By a little.
Agreed. My personal belief is that there are good Christians within the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches. Many churches have declined in numbers, in belief and in practice, yet I don’t believe that Christianity itself will die. There is a revealing book about how the Left has aggressively infiltrated and damaged American evangelical churches recently–Shepherds for Sale by Megan Basham. People paying attention would have seen this for a while, but at least it’s more in the open now. These kinds of problems might lower the numbers in such denominations, but, considering the broad sweep of history, I think… Read more »
When the holo-cough began, the church I eventually joined shut down for a bit. But after a few months they decided to open back up and hold in-person services again. When they did, a lot of people who were scared of the coof did not come back. The church lost a lot of people, but over time membership increased and it’s almost back to pre-coof levels. Between the remnant and the newcomers, the church has become more conservative as a whole.
Good example. Yes, that separation of wheat from chaff, or sheep from goats, is sometimes pretty interesting.
Effiminization is the cancer that infects all of modern society. A carpenter… working in a era where construction involved beams the size of your torso was in fact a 90 pound, soft spoken weakling? Violence is not the solution? Yet He sat and braided His own whip, for one simply bought or borrowed would not do. Premeditated, reflective and distilled violence is The Way. He Wept. Because he could see ahead to how far and how deep we would stray, and even then the tally was due and He paid it. Please Lord let me help in this reckoning. Since… Read more »
From the looks the fire is going to be of the nuclear variety.
Nah. By Flood, again, because the lefties think the seas are rising.
Nice confession.
If you could only see you’d be weeping too and you sure as hell wouldn’t be edgy and provoking. I’m done with you and yours. Deus Vult.
This weekend I watched a parade of modern humanity walk past me and I thought “Bring on the cleansing fire…”
GF Handel scored that bit for a Castrato. Ironic.
Most adult white males should be able to sing it then…
Christianity hasn’t “evolved” for the modern age?
All of the major denominations are lead by SJWs. Most of them celebrate homosexuality and are deeply ashamed of the scriptures. Many, at least in the US worship diversity, not Christ.
To me, it looks like Christianity had the opposite problem than failure to adapt. It has all the appearance of having had a failure to maintain.
The spirit of Christianity will always overcome its letter. We know when St Paul says “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek” doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as ethnic Jews or Greeks, but that epistle will never survive some Unitarian getting ahold of it and declaring racism a sin.
st paul adapted christ’s message for roman citizens hence the de-racination and focus on following the rules. some of the best aspects of christianity were borrowed from the old religions.
christianity was subverted and made palatable for non-jews so i wouldn’t place much faith in its ability to withstand cultural fads
I think it would be more fair to say that they borrowed the cultural references of the society, and applied them in different ways. Paul’s interaction with the temple of the Unknown God is a great example. Whether it happened is irrelevant. It was the repurposing of the story that mattered.
And that’s a variant of the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal. Without a pretty good understanding of the Ugaritic texts you likely miss the point, but in Elijah’s day, in a semi-arid climate, everyone understood the importance of the god of rain.
Nice handle you have. Do you subscribe to the arguments of Julian the Apostate?
Christianity has evolved more than most other religions. Last I checked there were 20K Protestant denominations and counting. So either God is okay with so many interpretations of him, or the Devil really has confused us.
Christ came to save sinners, not build megachurches with private jet “pastors”.
The idea of ” judeo-christian” is a modern construct that should be debunked.
Reevaluate the crazy dispensationalism espoused by the likes of Charles darby.
All would go far in strengthening today’s Christians for todays world and the next.
I think dispensationalism could be the work of Satan.
Of course it is, look at the publishers who funded Darby and Scofield and their careers.
Although, typically, the Dispensationalist idea was stolen.
It was first proposed by a Baptist ancestor of the Bush family in 1854, and yes, that Bush family.
Much older than that. The key idea, that the old rules don’t apply to us, was inherent in abandoning temple sacrifices because His sacrifice ended that. Hebrews before that came up with all kinds of reasons why the this covenant or that covenant no longer applied to them.
Holy-moly Batman.
Would any Christian here seriously take advice from a non-Christian on how to “fix” Christianity? Not the least of which being that advice is “you distorted the message” so “now you must adapt it more to stay relevant.”
Stop writing about religion. You sound like a high school atheist. Literally. Plus like you have some weird agenda.
Stop trying to censor. If you don’t like such thinking, rebut it. Or don’t read it. Or keep the hell out of the conversation, i.e., ignore it.
There was a point made and the point was a valid one. The point being, should the Christian Church adapt to modernity in order to survive/expand. The retorts posted here show a poorly reasoned/supported initial argument. But the point remains valid and much can be learned from the back and forth of the community to the question.
The Christians of today are carriers of the world’s most deadly virus. This must be accounted for and stopped before it takes not only civilization as we know it, but the literal soul of the world as well. Since you child-like dipshits have no idea- no fucking idea- of how any of it works or what you’re actually facing, maybe you might consider pulling your puling heads out of your arrogant, pious asses and listening to a second opinion for once. What you have kept alive is killing us. Without us whites, the Gates to Heaven are closed. Forever. Heaven… Read more »
Written like a true Jesuit product would write it, Z!!!
We all know that Progress trumps truth any day, right?
Uh-huh…….
I know our host is fond of saying reality is that thing which doesn’t go away simply because you stop believing in it. I think of this when I hear comments that Christianity will have to “adapt” etc. Seems that Christianity “adapting” to society has been a large part of the problem for both Christianity and society.
Exactly. We need (from Z-man) a few examples of what “adaption” means in his missive. Then we can have some give and take. Catholic here. Does adaption to modernity mean “female priests” or “liturgy” in English rather than Latin? Should priest marry? Why did they once and then not be allowed. Does the prohibition hold in modern society. Anyway, the concept I’m getting at is that not all changes are of equal effect. Some go to the very essence of what it means to be a moral person in a fallen world. Not sure that changes with time, and probably… Read more »
The main reason they can no longer marry is due to several popes willing their sons the papacy. I believe it was the Borgias who were responsible for that.
Yes, but that certainly is not the case today. So what is the reason to retain and what is the benefit of doing away with such. One benefit would have been the elimination of a refuge for homosexual priests in the last century to prey upon young boys.
It’s only priests of the Roman Rite and it’s right there in the catechism that’s an all single priesthood is a discipline changeable at any time. Modernly they make exceptions for Anglican converts. In any event, your Catholic history is very colored to say the least.
I’m with you on your conclusion.
On one of your other notes: Female priests have been road tested by the Episcopalians/Anglicans. You don’t want to go there. Married priests work in the Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic churches and maybe in the Anglican Ordinariates of the Roman Catholic Church. (The Church may be ready for married priests, but it doesn’t need divorced priests)
One of the benefits of all single priesthood is not worrying about the wife. That said, in both Catholicism, Eastern Rites and Orthodox, the wives of the clergy go through much training and take the equivalent of their own vows. They know that divorce is off the table if their husband is ordained.
How about “adapting” by reading it like an adult?
All this tiresome moralizing, as if everyone is to be an incredulous child. Yes, we already get how to behave pretty early on.
Catholic girls and Protty boys moaning, “Be nice, be nice, be nice…” as if Heaven means candy for the good kiddies and a whipping for the bad kids. And don’t get me started on the precise magic rituals.
“r “liturgy” in English rather than Latin? ” To be Catholic means to accept all the ecumenical councils, not just all of them until the 20th century. The most Catholic thing someone can do is show up at Mass and be part of it. That requires the vernacular for most people and from personal experience. Latin was chosen because it was widely understood at the Council of Trent. If Vatican II made the same decision, everyone would have an English Mass. Indeed, Vatican II was only about 100 years out from Latin being no longer in widespread use as a 2nd… Read more »
Dad29: I agree, the Jesuits corrupted the Z-man’s thinking of the truth with nature and theology – certainly undermining the organization the Jesuits themselves belong (of course that is a different rabbit hold).
I have met many other lapse Catholics who their high-school Jesuit education “freed their minds” and they are either atheists or agnostics, most all have severed relationships from any “organized religion”.
This is a Cope (non ecclesiastical fashion accessory type). It avoids the central dialectical issue which is that it’s possible for any belief system or a civilization to reason itself into contradictions / self-negations / absurdities. Being far smarter than the average bears, the Jesuits simply got there faster than most. Now there *are* religious systems which can pull off a hyperspace jump around the whole Goedel’s Pretty Kettle of Fish which crops up at the most inconvenient times whenever you try to build a vast edifice upon a set of axioms. It’s just that our Judaeo-Hellenic-Germanic misch-masch of a… Read more »
Christianity is one of the pillars upon which Western Civilization rests: if it dies, so too will the west. A fatal flaw within Christianity, however, seems to be its universality. Since all one needs to do to be a Christian is follow Christ, there is no ethnic component which means anyone can be a Christian, no matter how incompatible they are with Europeans and their descendants. Christian Nationalism has always struck me as an oxymoron for this reason. What the west most needs right now is to become extremely ethnocentric like all the other peoples of the world, but I… Read more »
The problem is not the universality, but simply that we’ve lost sight of what “following Christ” means.
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14) Did He ever command anyone to believe in His death and resurrection? Where? The closest you will ever find is things like “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”(John 20:29) But being “blessed” is not the same as “following Christ”, any more than one blessed by good genes is guaranteed fame and fortune.
Did He ever command anyone to believe in His death and resurrection? Where?
It’s doctrinal to all three Christian churches. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a Christian.
Exactly.
[EDIT]
Not to be misunderstood, who was it that established those “doctrines”? Man or God?
This is where inspiration comes to play. “Inspired”—to be touched (influenced) by the hand of God. We believe men were moved to write these things down. In essence, God’s words.
I get that. It seems odd to have a faith in man to create doctrine, but not enough faith that a man wrote a story down correctly. Particularly when I see what the scribblings of man hath wrought on the modern church…
Your dilemma is well taken. My thought’s were always that the Devil was at play and that many of man’s scribblings were not inspired. Such that we had to get together to decide as best as humanly possible between the wheat and the chaf.
“If you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a Christian.” Wrong. Muhammadists believe that Yoshua of Narcissism is the masih (moshiach) of Israel, that he didn’t die on Earth, and that he ascended to the shamayim—which never was. Never mind that Moe’s idea of “Christ” is uttlerly bonkers when judged by the criteria of Levitism. The Trinitarian story, too, was never coherent. So Muhammad was a Christian and, you ought to note, his idea of Christianity is much closer to the crass, brutal materialism about which Yoshua was fantasizing when he told the parables of the minas and the… Read more »
Muhammadans are not Christians, you numpty.
And it’s “Jesus”, not “Yoshua”.
“J” is a 14th century creation.
It’s not “J”, it’s “Jesus”.
Say it!
No, the letter “J” is a 14th century creation. Germany, I think. The story’s probably on the internet somewhere. 😉
Iesous is the Greek rendering. It’s almost certainly the phonetic rendering of how He would have pronounced His name. Which was passably close to what some render as Yeshua, though Hebrew didn’t use vowels.
You’re not allowed to say “Jesus”, are you?
What? In the immortal words of Mr. Hand, “What are you, people? On dope?”
Maybe you could get your shabbos goy to write it for you?
I guess I only wrote it once so far. So for the idiots who can’t seem to get it through their heads that He could not have been named Jesus because the letter “J” didn’t even exist yet, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Happy now?
The test of whether someone is a believer is whether he calls his Savior by something other than His name? That’s just fucking stupid. Not even Latin Mass calls Him “Jesus”.
I wonder — can you call Him by His real name?
My bad, I got you mixed up with the other Jewish guy.
And I’m not a believer, so I’m fine with God or Jesus.
I thought God was from the German, “Gott”, or “Good”.
“Good mitt uns”…well, yeah, a rose by any other name.
The other guys aren’t allowed to speak His name, period.
(El- the god. Elohim- the gods. Al-a, the god. Ha’Shem- the Name. YHWH, ya hod va he, because speaking the name of the god of Set-Moses was banned by the Egyptian authorities.)
I once had a bit of amusement with Chabad’s Ask a Rabbi service because I wondered if it’s OK to delete computer files containing the unhyphenated name of God (Bzzzzzzzzt! Dang I did it again… slightly charred here. Never learn!). Apparently it’s OK because there’s no danger that deleted bits could be used as toilet paper or fish wrap. So no need for anything like the Cairo Geniza for our surplus bits. Refrained from asking what if those precise bits were overwritten by some scatological text or a porn image. Doubtless Maimonides has an answer for that, too, though. Whether… Read more »
I’m afraid that a sincere enough evangelical starts to blend with reform Judaism, even if accidentally. Thus the “Yeshua” nonsense.
There’s everyone’s favorite Jew (Moldbug) out there blaming globalism on Protestant while calling our overlords the cathedral (the church building of the local Catholic bishop). He oddly didn’t mention the Jews. However, decayed Protestantism aligns people with the Jewish view of the world.
It was a both and. He just conveniently left out the proper term, which was synagogue.
Look, the anti-Catholicism and the “Yeshua” stuff puts you right in league with the Jews. You have more in common with Jews by insisting Hebrew and OT and Catholics are the thing of the devil than vast majority of Christians living or dead.
I’m not anti-Catholic. I’m more a skeptic of all human creations, which Churchianity of all flavors definitely are.
He tells us that to whom much is given, much will be expected. It’s probably fine for anyone with a 70 IQ to turn in a plagiarized paper. But get into the range of most of the people here, I think you are probably going to be expected to understand the material and show your work.
The last sentence came out kind of like a Bidenism. I have no idea what you said, and I don’t think you do, either.
We get all types around here these days…
“Jesus” is English, “you numpty”, and Moe’s Christianity prevails over your own flavor in North Africa and the Anatolia peninsula, where yours once held power. Moe’s Christianity has returned to Spain, it’s overrunning the British Isles, nw Europe, and the Scandinavian peninsula. Yours is doomed in all of those areas. Then there’s the problem that the foundation is false.
This is an English website, we use English words, and Mohammadans are not Christians.
What’s in a name? There are many names for God in religion and world languages. Since there is only one God, I’ve always considered we are talking about the same thing. Reminds me of a cute SciFi story I read many years ago. The “Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke, 1953. This short story follows a group of Tibetan monks who believe that the universe was created for the purpose of discovering and listing all of God’s names—nine billion of them, at which point the Universe will end. The monks hire a pair of Western computer technicians… Read more »
Yes, but if you’re of the Talmudic persuasion, names mean everything, as they tend to do in primitive religions.
Haven’t read that Clarke-story, but it goes on the list. I’m the biggest Clarke-fan and rather surprised I haven’t heard of it.
Best book on gods: Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett.
Hm. In the movie Pi, a group of Chassids apprehend an ingenious young number theorist and computer wiz to help them discover the true name of God and usher in the messianic age. Wouldn’t be surprised if that Clarke story were the basis for that plot-line.
If there’s no quantum tunneling in that tale, I’d ask for a ticket refund.
After these here Nika Riots calm down (Nice Work Z in stirring up reader engagement in a quiet week, BTW) assigned reading for next Monday’s class is Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.
Then we can start all over again. Rioting, I mean.
Tremendous novel.
Wrong.
You just contradicted yourself – if Muslims believe He didn’t die, then how could they believe He rose from the dead? Got to be dead to rise from the dead. Muslims don’t believe in the resurrection.
Straw man attack:
I never claimed that Moe’s flocks of dupes believe in a resurrection of Jesus. I wrote that they believe in the ascension.
Next time, slow down and comprehend what you read before reacting to it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but someone else on the board posted Christ’s message in two sentences. That’s what He commands. That’s what it takes to be His friend. Read John 14. He makes the point several times. Pay particular attention to verse 21.
If you cannot reconcile Christian doctrines to what He says, why would one want to be what you think of as Christian?
Who wrote the Bible? Man or God?
Again, exactly.
If there’s anything to your doctrines, they either originate in something your holy men read or had revealed to them. Or dreamed they had revealed to them. Or possibly fabricated, but that’s a whole ‘nother rabbit hole.
I guess it all depends on what source you find authoritative. I think there’s probably a reason so few will find the gate. Cheating off the smart kid’s paper only works if the smart kid gets the right answer.
Then why do you use man-made Bible to prove that man-made doctrine is wrong about the Resurrection?
Very Jesuitical of you.
I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying there’s no reason to believe that was what He thought the religion was about, apart from some holy men whose interpretations differed greatly even in the first 30 years. Some of those church fathers, including the Apostles, had to get the message wrong.
Which ones? He says if we search diligently, we can figure it out. What would “search diligently” mean if not that there was a way we could figure it out for ourselves?
And more relevantly, why would that be more important than the Two Great Commandments? Indeed, why bother with the commandments at all, if all you have to do is believe in the Resurrection?
Removed
Jesus, without His Resurrection is a fool. An impoverished loser issuing bad advice and suffering a horrible fool’s death by believing his own nonsense. Anyone following Jesus as one of the “Great Teachers” without believing in His divinity and Resurrection ought not to have their ethics taken seriously… or in the extreme should have their heads examined. There are plenty of great teachers and maxims to follow if you believe the crucifixion of Jesus was just an unfortunate end to an otherwise nice fellah. Eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. It is better to be feared… Read more »
I’m mostly not disagreeing with you.I kept it brief because I hate to click on “Read more” unless the point absolutely cannot be condensed. My faith largely did not come from Apostles, but from the acceptance of the omnipotent Father who meets us where we are.
Because some people could not accept the idea of salvation without a sacrifice, the belief pattern of all history, He arranged for the ultimate sacrifice. Not for His benefit, but because man had preconceived notions he could not let go.
Same now.
“My faith largely did not come from Apostles, but from the acceptance of an omnipotent Father” Then you are one of the fortunate ones Brother. My journey was more labyrinthine and confusing. I needed steps and a slap. I agree with you on the Sacrifice as a needed recognition of past practice. He was the lamb, the ox, and the dove people were used to as offerings. The four leaf clover for the pagan. But I would offer that you may have skipped past the most important aspects. Christ gave His Resurrection as proof of divinity. That should almost read… Read more »
I was nominally Lutheran growing up, but it didn’t take. In part because I saw the direction Lutheran Social Services was pulling the doctrines.
I’m not big on emotionalism, so it’s hard for me to get too worked up about His suffering. Yeah, it must have been terrible, but the fact is it’s beyond my imagination. Next.
What bothers me is why. Why would He want our company so much that He’d bother allowing a hangnail, let alone a crucifixion?
Well said.
This is a problem I wrestle with as a Christian. Given how wealthy our “poor” people are, the only truly poor people to help in a Christian way are the brown people of countries who would overwhelm us if we let them all in. I think the answer is that you can be a Christian nationalist country that obeys a civil authority that honors the desire of the majority to greatly restrain immigration. Christian citizens can then help whomever they want wherever they want, but its not the role of government. Our predicament is that our civil authority hates its… Read more »
Why does “helping them” = “letting them all in?” The passage most cited for universalism is the no Jew or Greek in St. Paul’s letter, which is fine as far as that goes, the key being “in Christ.” Thus salvation is open to all, and you should treat coreligionists with respect and each coreligionist is equally loved by God (even being loved equally does not mean being loved in the same way – i love my parents, my wife and my children equally, but not in the same way). That does not mean “outside of Christ,” that is in the… Read more »
I agree with you. It’s not my position that “helping them” = “letting them all in.” I was trying to say that is the position of a significant number of US Christians. Catholic Charities is one of the main NGOs facilitating illegal immigration. My point was the opposite, that if some missionary wants to go to Africa, more power to him, but let’s not bring Africa here.
He shouldn’t be lauded for going to Africa.
Also, the various ecumenical Charities receiving millions for human trafficking may have Christian names, but someone looked into their boards of directors, and guess what they found?
Indeed. Those boards of directors are distinctly over-represented in regards to a certain unmentionable ethnicity.
The fundamental intellectual error of modern times is the failure of the faculty of discrimination. Every other abomination, from feminism to mass immigration, follows from that. We should have paid more attention when they made “discrimination” a bad word and then a crime.
So very true. And the visceral equivalent to intellectual discrimination is the gag reflex. Alas, the gag reflex, which is a component of the survival instinct, has been machined out of us by six decades of relentless lies and propaganda.
It is our Christian duty to help our brethren. You may even.sacrifice yourself in pursuit of your Christian duty. You may not sacrifice others in service of your pursuit. That is not your choice to make for them. Help needy strangers abroad. You can give drowning men a lifeboat, food and water, sail cloth and a map to safety. It serves no purpose to bring on so many stranger that your own ship sinks. There are alternatives to flooding your homeland with hordes. You may not sacrifice your own people and family in misbegotten feats of charity. “But if anyone… Read more »
I wrote my longer post before I read yours, so I just want to say that I am in complete agreement with your critique of modern Christianity.
Traditional people had no problem to combine ethnocentrism with Christianity. See all the ethnic wars between Christian nations throughout history.
Until 1975, Generalissimo Franco regime was founded on National Catholicism, where serving the nation was a way to serve God. One of its slogans was “Through the Empire towards God”.
Christianity is universalist about salvation, but it is agnostic about universalism in the earthly realm. Traditional interpretations of Christianity, like St. Thomas Aquinas’s, emphasize the importance of nations and helping your own in the earthly realm.
We had science long before we had Christianity.
We had justice and mercy too.
Christianity is a modified expression of what is already in us, not some lesson we subheathens learned from an enlightened elder race (of genocidal slave raiders.)
The Roman-era whites took a political mythos and tried to bend it towards the good.
The slaveraiders bent it back towards their ends. Time to take back what was ours, and write new chapters as well.
I don’t think “losers” is really the right descriptor for the ordinary working people of pre-modernity.
I think it’s pretty right. Though “loser” has a connotation that you chose to be a loser, and most pre-modern people didn’t choose their life.
Maybe a better descriptor would be “unfortunates”. Because there were a lot of unfortunates in Europe prior to the modern age…probably 95% and above had a life we’d consider worse than poverty. Nowadays, I’d say less than 20% are permanently unfortunate (and those are mostly the mentally ill and the plain stupid), and the middle 60% are unfortunate at times, and 20% are pretty fortunate all the time.
In Z’s conception, losers are simply the poor. It’s all about material wealth and always has been.
I thought the whole point of any human society was to improve its well-being. I would counter that Z’s conception of “loser” might be a nod towards those not ruthless and amoral enough to seize power.
More simply, “loser” has a connotation of losing, which doesn’t really apply to people born into their station in life.
Crucifixion was a punishment for slaves. When the Romans defeated the slave revolt led by Spartacus, they lined the Appian Way with crucified slaves for 100 miles. Imagine riding your mule down the road and seeing crucified people for a hundred fucking miles. Imagine how brutal and ruthless the “authorities” must have been to crucify that many people.
Slaves were society’s losers. The point of Christianity is that everyone’s life has value in God’s eyes. The society that casually snuffs out life is a corrupt and degraded society unworthy of honor and moral authority.
As an aside, Vlad Tepes (Dracula) lined the roads of his domains with impaled enemies, the better to scare off invading Turks. He was also known to take his meals in a courtyard ringed with his victims and to sop up their blood with his bread. Perhaps not the kind of guy little Suzie ought to bring home to mom n’ dad…
Crucifixion was punishment for any non-Roman citizen. No slave was a citizen.
Perhaps “Salt of the Earth” types.
The death of western civilization is Christlike in nature.
Jesus was the supposedly immortal and omnipotent god who was humiliated, strung up on a cross, and murdered by mere mortals.
Likewise, white civilization sat atop all others, dwarfed the rest with achievement, and was on the cusp of exploring the stars. Now whites will be conquered and destroyed by backward savages without even a shot being fired.
I certainly don’t hold with your conclusion, but I can’t gainsay its validity.
People are upvoting this dreck? Slow day LOL…
As screwed up as what is called Christianity has become, and it has certainly become a mess, the fundamental question remains.. Did this Jesus fellow rise from the dead or not? Is He God or not? Whomever wrote the New Teatament certainly thought so. I attend a Christian service where only men are allowed to lead the congregation and the minister sticks to Biblical lessons, most of the people in that congregation are not me and don’t read the Z Man but I am comfortable around them. It all depends on the “who” Whom are we talking about? Some of… Read more »
I certainly agree that one fundamental question is whether Jesus is God. (And for those who doubt, I can’t see how to reconcile things without Trinitarianism, though I haven’t really tried, either.)
And while I believe in the Resurrection, I think it’s mostly irrelevant. (If you start with the premise of an all-powerful God, that’s too trivial to even be called a gimmee.) When He says, “believes and is baptised”, He had not yet died and risen, so that can’t have been what He meant.
Trinitarianism was a political balance-of-power compromise between the international Jewish merchants, the Christian cities, and the pagan suppliers.
Good gods I wish people would stop looking for magical power spells in what is a political history. Good catch on the “believes and is baptised” part, I had never noticed that bit before.
Why do I emphasize the political? Because that is what we’re dealing with, exactly as the Jesus and His Apostles, the early Christians, and the Council of Nicea were all dealing with.
Oh, puh-leez. It dates to absolutely no later than 2nd Century, and a good argument can be made to be fairly prominent in 1st Century. It wasn’t some conspiracy, it was an attempt to reconcile the Scriptures. To explain why, for instance, He speaks of Himself in the OT in the plural. I in the Father and the Father in Me. That He will send the Spirit to guide us, and that He is the Spirit who will always be with us.
Spoiler: It’s not because He was gender-confused.
Now maybe you have a better explanation. I’m all ears.
I certainly agree that one fundamental question is whether Jesus is God. (And for those who doubt, I can’t see how to reconcile things without Trinitarianism, though I haven’t really tried, either.) Trinitarian theologians often argue that God is the only necessary being. This god is supposed to be perfect by itself, lacking nothing. Since it was under no compulsion to make the world, fishes, bears, humans, etc., we are justifed in supposing that humanity and other allegedly created beings were not necessary categories of being as of the end of the 5th day. Then humans were made on the… Read more »
Maybe you noticed that I omitted a possible resolution. It would allow you to retain your slavish reverence for the nation (not the state) of Israel and its alleged god. Suppose that Jesus never became a necessary being and that the hypostatic union can be annulled. Now it follows that faith in Jesus is not a necessary condition for salvation. (Presumably another plan could be implemented, given the god’s omnipotence.) Trinitarians are unlikely to go along with such a theology, but at least it provides a quick fix to your imperfection problem and the necessary being problem. The perfect god… Read more »
You might have noticed I don’t have a whole lot of respect for expert pronouncements of any kind. I think over the last few years, my skepticism has more than proven justified.
Have you read The Blind Man And The Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe?
Three is the smallest number of aspects that can reconcile the Scriptures, but I think only a very foolish person would insist that is all the aspects of God there are.
Are you a Palestinian? Deliberate misstatements like “slavish reverence” are present in EVERY such discussion with Palestinians. They are more dishonest than Democrats.
So that you don’t think I’m just being dismissive, a discussion of whether God is the only necessary element seems irrelevant. I got to the end of your post and thought, “So what? How does any of this answer why it’s phrased, “Let Us make man in Our image”?
“Trinitarian theologians often argue…” reads exactly the same way as, “Anonymous sources at the CDC revealed…”
Not to get preachy, but I don’t know any other religion that can be summed up in two sentences: Mark 12:28-31. That is why ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Winning and losing, success and material possessions are irrelevant. If we look after each other none need suffer; that is the message of the feeding of the five thousand.
Perhaps. However, there are a lot of “those who suffer”. That is a dilemma I have. To what extent should I suffer along side others and share their plight, and to what extent should I remain strong and therefore netter able to *alleviate* their plight. Taking this out of the personal and into the national level. For example, we as a nation could “open our doors to the world” and have them come and partake of our abundance—that is—to share what we have such that we now all “equally” suffer. One can easily imagine how 3-4+ billion people of the… Read more »
I don’t know any other religion that can be summed up in two sentences You don’t know that your religion can be summed up uniquely with those two sentences, but I can think of two other religions which come closer to your ideal of succinctness. Jesus’ own religion, Israelism (for lack of a better term) is one, and Judaism is another. Here is your problem. Your derivative of Jesus’ religion plays a game with the meaning of the word “neighbour” in the 2nd commandment. You want to make it inclusive and universal to all primates who can be plausibly counted… Read more »
Jesus was a reformer of Judaism and his teaching is stunningly simple and profound. Paul extended it to the Gentiles.
I don’t quite know what to make of this post, since I’m a Presbyterian lapsed into apostasy. But was Jesus really a loser? The point of Christianity is that he was resurrected. Christianity is a surviving example of a Mediterranean mystery religion, centered around the Jewish scriptures as they existed in the First Century AD. But it’s not at all clear that early Christians were losers. Paul’s authentic letters, and the canonical Gospels, were written in very sophisticated koine Greek, and were evidently intended to appeal to elites in a number of cities in the eastern part of the Roman… Read more »
Amen.
Kinism gets “Ordered Affections” perfectly.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in nearly two decades of extreme hardship for the Slavic peoples of that region. That gauntlet purged a lot of deadweight and spawned a rebirth of the evolutionary human spirit, and with it, a resurrection of Christianity in that society. If religious morality and practice is to return to the West, a similar collapse is a necessary precursor. Nothing changes until the environment changes. And we have way too much deadweight holding us down. Which side of the purge do you want to be on?
i think that people want to be called Christian without the burden of listening to Christ.
I notice a parallel between how interpretations of Christianity and the Constitution have evolved.
Although Christianity says that all are equal in Christ, Christianity only recently demanded open borders and race mixing.
Although Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” only recently has that become a demand for equal prosperity and the destruction of standards.
Those who control how we interpret written history are responsible for these desecrations. Our greatest enemy is the group that controls the hegemonic media.
Like Stalin said – it’s not the votes that count but who counts the votes. Likewise with Scripture or the Constitution – it’s not what they say, but who interprets them.
Meh. The group who control the media (and finance, and law, and education and on and on) are merely the servants of our greatest enemy. Whether they know it or not. Whether we acknowledge it or not.
Whaddya mean, “meh”? That’s the whole problem, innit?
Of course not. Like Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
What kind of a tactician would counsel more hacking at the branches? Even the JCS could probably figure out it isn’t working very well so far, and no chance of that changing. Wait. The JCS are exactly the kind of tacticians who would counsel that.
My experience with Amish and orthodox Catholics is that they will inherit the earth. Women in a secure, male, society have children. LOTS of children.
Speaking of who is having children, it is going to take some kind of unforeseen event (aka miracle) to prevent the negros, and the resulting inevitable increase in mulattos/quadroons that will follow the increase in negros, from inheriting the earth. Demographics, destiny etc. Even the Amish blossoming in northern Indiana has not been enough to prevent that state from slowly become darker over time, just to point to one illustrative example.
The grear bitter irony is that Africa’s burgeoning billions is done on the backs of generations of the so-called altruism of the white man/western civ..
The latest fertility numbers I’ve seen have blacks having fewer kids than ultra-religious groups like the Amish, Orthodox Jews, traditional Mormons, etc… Indiana probably had a fair number of blacks even early in the 20th century but how recent is the Amish invasion? If it’s fairly recent, the magic of exponential growth hasn’t kicked in yet. If it weren’t for the immigration disaster, the White population overall would be in decline but traditional factions like the Amish would be taking the places of the old secular Whites who die. Instead, most of the Whites who die are replaced by some… Read more »
Nah. When the great White Devil, John Deere, steps off his big green chariot for good, the food stops.
And the porch dwellers return to the dirt.
Many valid points in the post. You are actively thinking for yourself about this matter – I perceive; which I regard as the only valid way to develop any strength of religion nowadays. I think you might find: The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark (1997) Very interesting. I found it largely convincing (including when I first read it as an atheist). It takes a quantitative and statistical approach – looking at rates of increase (doubling times of church membership and the like), mechanisms of conversion, and the like. Stark challenges some of the above assumptions about how Christianity spread… Read more »
The early Christians were mostly dissident Israelis and therefore inclined to see themselves as an ethnocentric Nation through the rite of baptism. Recall the Apostles baptized entire households. BAM – You’ve been born again. No catechesis, no age of spiritual discernment. Just show up for the Sacraments and don’t be a drunken adulterer. If you make Christianity a matter of election I e. an ideological campaign, then don’t be surprised when your children vote the other way.
Excellent recommendation. I read Stark back in grad school, and he impressed me.
I just downloaded it. Recommendations are always welcome.
Bring back the Spanish Inquisition! Nobody expects it.
Their primary weapons?
Christianity, in all its various forms, built the West and the modern World, because it emphasized a few simple virtues…honesty, truthfulness, and treating strangers in the same way as the people you know..Rulers were appointed by God, but were nonetheless expected to abide by these virtues, at least much of the time…Now the rulers in much of the West are appointed by no one, and are effectively lawless pagan thugs…Outside of Russia and the Orthodox, it looks like a do over for the West…
“honesty, truthfulness, and treating strangers in the same way as the people you know”
These virtues were weaponized against us. The lesson that I take is that you only extend these virtues to those who reciprocate. Universalism left us blind and defenseless.
Then somebody started laying on heavy on that whole forgiveness thingie, so we’d let the opportunists try again and again.
Thank God my Catholic Church has retained priestly celibacy, despite so much nonsense going on under Pope Francis. That’s a real sacrifice, albeit impefectly attained for many. The good priests I know also suffered horribly after the abuse crisis struck in 2002. They had done nothing wrong, but became suspects. The NY Times even has become so alarmed at recent developments it lamented in July, “America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservative: In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices and politics.” Alas, the women’s religious orders have… Read more »
“How many have laughed at the Church, announcing that she was passe, that her days were over and that they would bury her? The Church has buried every one of her undertakers.”
Father Scott Emerson from the diocese in Madison
The problem with that thinking is that the Church is not the Church of yesterday. It also fails to capture all the groups that lost.
Do you really think the Church of 1800 would have moved pedophiles around from church to church to protect them? Or allowed some South American communist to become Pope?
The Church has suffered much over her long life
After enough genetic drift, we started calling wolves by a different name.
The Borgias called and wanted to have a word.
>South American communist
Liberals from Latin America are now communists?
Francis’s words against the neoliberal system are actually some of his worthy ones, but never going beyond the bourgeois sensibilities.
At least Leo the XIII tried to propose a new system with Rerum Novarum
At least the “Communist” had decency to oppose the war-fever that gripped the West regarding Ukraine and consistently has been calling for peace despite the brow-beating.
the pope and beauty queens will save us.
peace? bah!
Pachamama answered the Borgias’ phone.
A religion aimed at people living a life of misery is not going to sell to a population living in luxury… Probably the biggest challenge for Christianity is the modern Christian, who like the modern grammarian, refuses to evolve. To your point and also somewhat counter to it, Christianity is exploding in Africa and Asia*, which will represent more than half of the religion by mid-century. It continues to be stagnant and grow at a snail’s pace in the Global North, and especially in the cradle of what was once Christendom. The modern Christian therefore is much like his predecessor–poor,… Read more »
That’s funny. I live and travel a lot in Asia. Christianity is NOT exploding here at all. It’s carved out niches in various places, but there’s no big groundswell. The general shit hole hopeless case state of the Philippines is one of the bigger arguments against Roman Catholicism I can think of. Small pockets of weird sects (e.g. Adventists, Mormons) tend to prosper in the Philippines (just as in South and Central America) simply because their ‘religions’ are communal blueprints for not being drunken adulterous habitual gamblers. So there’s that. Christianity has little attraction for most of the rest, outside… Read more »
Ultimately Christianity only having appeal when material prosperity wasn’t an option for the proles just reinforces the idea that normies are biologically incapable of being saved. If the only reason Baldrick the peasant went to church was because he thought he’d get infinity blowjobs in heaven, he wasn’t really searching for higher meaning or spiritual awareness of any sort he was just being tricked into giving his copper pieces to the priest in a pre-modern equivalent of youtube grifting. If modern Christian denominations have to rely on prosperity gospel to get people to show up by telling them the Jesus… Read more »
There are some problems with heaven. Such as, I have to share it with every “believer”? Really? Are the dumb ones as dumb there as they are here? Not much of a heaven if so. And if they are smarter in heaven, then it’s not really them in heaven is it? It’s someone else. Of course Paul (or is it Saul, another hebrew changing his name) did write something about “being transformed by the renewing of your mind” but I don’t think that’s what he was getting at. Not that I’m exactly a disciple of his.
I just started following you and you’re an atheist – using Christianity like a chess piece? No thanks.
I don’t think Mr man is an atheist; but an indifferentist, or a Joseph Campbell type; or a modernist; all religions are all more or less good and praiseworthy; all religions are imminent to one’s heart, come from one’s heart.
Ah, or he thinks religion is like language that comes from a more or less isolated community. Religion is subservient to biology, and is an aspect of culture.
I call it a dialect. Good catch, Hi-ya, and thanks for the term “indifferentist”. I don’t quite agree, I’d modify that to “neutral” or “objective”, not a fence-sitter, but someone judging a tree by its fruit.
Joseph Campbell types don’t think all religions are all more or less good and praiseworthy, but modernists trying to square a circle certainly do.
These are the same lazy wimps that say, “All roads lead to the same God,” and other such womanly tripe.
I am not an atheist but you are clearly too dumb for this material, so you would be wise to move along.
How do you think Christianity should adapt to replace liberalism?
Be anti-liberal, which means non-universalist.
The story of Western Civ is a story of periodic collapse and reformation, beginning with the collapse of Germanic tribal life at the hands of the Huns imo. We’ll be OK, I think, not that it’ll be much fun. What will be tricky this time is that western expansion is no longer an option. The collapse dynamic is the thing that needs to be dealt with. A new way of being, after over 1500 years— the closing of that ancient wound that’s been driving us. (Maybe has something to do with Protestants identifying with Hebrews/Jews?) Does that mean a new… Read more »
“All of the heroes of the modern age are those who either got rich for their own sake or got rich for having upheld the modern morality. The way around this for the modern Christian is some form of the prosperity gospel, but that often looks like a grift.” It is a grift. We used to joke that our Bibles fell open to Malachi 3:10 at offering time, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse…”. Honestly, a militant Christianity is the only Christianity worth following.
We stopped going to a church because among other grifts they set up a baby crib at the entrance to the sanctuary for the most blessed to deposit offerings of diapers and formula for the literal needy bastards.
Works based. Done.
You have forgotten again to consult official Scribbling before posting authoritatively. Here’s a relevant passage on the topic of works: 14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. That’s a very long passage for… Read more »
Have you ever thought about that poem, Footprints in the Sand?
Works are very similar. When we look back, the footprints were merely the evidence that we had been living a righteous life, even though maybe not consciously. Indeed, most of our works we don’t even realize we did. Maybe it was inspiration, or encouragement, or whatever, but something we did impacted someone else.
The footprints don’t get you salvation. The lack of footprints prevent it.
Huh. Having read the new testament, ante-Nicene church fathers, Cappadocian fathers, and saints canonized in my life time, I don’t see any of what you wrote ever being true. Exact dogma has always been an issue. Look ar Paul taking Peter to task for adapting his behavior to his audience. Or how Irenaeus wrote against gnostics, or the treaties against Arieans, Nestorians, etc. And you see the same thing from St John of San Francisco.
I agree with much of this, but at the end it sort of falls into the fallacy of composition. If Christianity is totally eradicated from the lands formerly known as the West, there will still be a billion Christians. They just won’t be white. Whites existed before Christianity did. Whites existed before the West did. The quesiton seems to be: can (or will) whites exist after Christianity or the West are no more. Is the project simply one of ethnic/racial/DNA preservation? If self-determined whites exist after or without Christanity, is that enough? Or is there more to it? If so,… Read more »
Excellent questions. And I confess, ones I had not considered before.
As to Islam, the Judaic Reformation, I say no, it is a modern version of Abraham’s Bronze Age cult, a racial expression.
As to Buddhism, well, Gautama the Blue-eyed was high caste, that is, mostly white as was the Nazarene, Jesus. I accept both as racial expressions of what is in us, despite the nonwhite weirdness glommed into Asian religions. Buddhism, like Christianity, has a white root.
(And Abraham simply stole our stuff, his bunch were as chaotically polytheistic a bunch of pagans as the rest.)
hopefully, and a Christian state.
should Christianity evolve and compromise the moral code, the moral code that has raised a great god fearing nation? how is this progress? if anything, christians must revisit and strictly adhere to the moral code. christianity is not just a religion. it is the scientifically backed fact that every human on this earth is a lotto winner in the cold dark reaches of infinity. to compromise on the moral code and undermine christian moral code is a stark admission of cognitive dissonance when relating to how we treat fellow lotto winners. christianity is science backed revelation to the egocentric that… Read more »
“Even in the most terrifying modern ghettos, violence is a fraction of what people experienced even a few hundred years ago.” I’m not sure this is true. With modern medicine such as emergency care, more “victims” of violence in those modern ghettos tend to survive more than victims of violence would have in earlier centuries. This skews the statistics on violent deaths. Also, as others have suggested, attempts at “modernizing” Christianity fail, and result in fewer Christians. And Christianity tends to grow under persecution or other hardships. We’re not exactly living in a pro-Christian regime in the West now, which… Read more »
“Christianity tends to grow under persecution or other hardships.“
This is just a myth bordering on being an outright lie.
Christianity grew fastest in early modern times when it had a high fertility rate within cultures that forced everyone to be a Christian or be excluded from society. Then that excess population went out and conquered a large part of the world.
It’s certainly not “an outright lie” in China in recent years.
I look forward to Christianity subverting the Chinese world empire by filling it with Africans, Jew worship, and pederasty.
Well, when Christianity was much stronger in the West, we were not being subverted by “Africans, Jew worship, and pederasty.”
Most of what passes for Christianity in China is wealthy Wenzhou housewife cum wannabe prosperity gospel protestantism. You need a lot of up-to-date cultural literacy to even grok what this means. It’s not what some mission publication for Americans says it is. Syncretism is a very dangerous thing. When this alien religion meets that other alien culture, very strange things can happen. E.G. *** the @#$%ing Arab Conquests and the later ravages of then more recently Islamised Seljuks then Ottomans*** Turning the Chinese Christian may not be the good thing you think it is. Could make them far more expansionary… Read more »
Roman Catholics in China–those who have not succumbed to officialdom–would differ with you. Cardinal Zen, one among many.
The Taiping leader was soundly condemned as a heretic, complete with his pretty wacky ideas. It wasn’t the only time China was plagued by bizarre sects, many of which had nothing remotely to do with Christianity.
The point obviously flew past you by a wide margin. The issue is not what the Vatican says about syncretist heresies… it’s about what the Chinese masses DO with them when they inevitably arise because you’re trying to mix two completely alien cultural-religious conceptions… It’s like a binary explosive.
Children shouldn’t play with lighted matches in a gas station. Abrahamic Religions aren’t even safety matches.
Clearly way above the pay grade of most born in the egg Christians who cannot think outside their mental bounding boxes.
Christians, but Roman Catholics in particular, have a thought terminating cliche about how a long list of people have tried to destroy the church but failed. They never take the time to learn about all the Christian faiths that were wiped out. Copts live in a foreign society despite never moving. Nestorians were wiped out. The Middle East, birthplace of the faith has been scoured of the faithful IN THIS CENTURY. The Hagia Sophia is still a mosque and Gulf Arabs delight in turning more modern cathedrals into Mosques every day. But this never seems to bother them or they… Read more »
Or perhaps those lost churches are the reason that we remind ourselves that the Church still endures.
Survivorship bias isn’t a good hook to hang your hat on. If I were you, I’d go with Big-Brained Big-Egoed Taleb’s Lindy Effect to be more convincing.
The State’s COVID restrictions were the crucible, and every single one of the established churches–Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant–failed the test.
The Nestorians certainly did get around.
Call me a weirdo, but I never really saw the appeal in having more “stuff” beyond the modern base level of hot showers, comfy furniture and electricity. Most of the best things in life are (or were… it will be very difficult for me as a young person to ever afford a home at this point of inflation) free or inexpensive… :/ Family, friends, girls, sex, love. For the life of me, I was never able to wrap my head around what compels the niggerish behavior of spending $600 for a pair of rubberized plastic shoes that won’t last more… Read more »
I’m with you all the way. Nobody “needs” a 9K-square foot house that contains rooms its owner will never even see, let alone use. But most rich men require emblems of their wealth to satiate their overweening egos. It’s an idiotic and colossal waste, and it seems to have AINO’s seal of approval.
And I don’t need any of this. I don’t need this stuff, and I don’t need *you*. I don’t need anything. Except this. And that’s the only thing I need is *this*. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray… And this paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need… And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need… And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball… And this lamp…
lol, is that from something? XD
Yeah. Steve Martin in The Jerk.
Lol I have seen that one.
Born a young black child but forrest gumped his way to riches only to lose it all in a hilarious way before winning it back again. Inspiring film. The manifestation of the American dream really. I most enjoyed his white person dance, he was quite the dapper snapper.
Greed is not a virtue, no. Seems like it’s the only moral they push though huh? Greed, Gayness and you better not be racially loyal if you are white. No collective bargaining for the whites. No ADL, ACLU, NAACP, CAIR, LA RAZA, etc. for us. Encouraged for everyone else but banned, debanked and deplatformed for the second class citizen Whites. We alone are denied advocacy organizations. Wasn’t the first amendment supposed to guarantee Freedom of Association? Wasn’t the Civil Rights act supposed to prohibit unequal treatment based on race? Laws don’t matter all that much, they are just pieces of… Read more »
“Most of the best things in life are (or were… it will be very difficult for me as a young person to ever afford a home at this point of inflation) free or inexpensive… ” well said, and wise. please continue with the simple truths. dont worry about getting that home, you are a shoe in following your own wisdom.
I am pretty worried about getting that home though.
Could probably afford one soon enough if I moved far away from my family and everyone I know but.. I don’t want to do that man. I just don’t give a crap about luxury items. There is definitely a real problem with the housing market in this country. It is hyperinflated to hell. 30 years ago a normal house cost about 5 years avg salary (with no expenses or taxes) now though… It’s almost quintupled relative to wages. We are all really getting screwed hard by the bankers.
The Zman’s last rumination on religion did emphasize something supremely important; a religion won’t have the fire in its belly unless it can personalize said religion. My own beliefs, the attempt to delineate and define what people call “God” and its attendent aspects as a natural science, are too cold and distant for most. Mass action requires passion’s heat. That passion is born in ethnic pride, and ours has not only been severely diluted, but made immoral, which is much worse than merely criminal. Citizen, as always, solved the dilemna: my race is my religion. That is the lens through… Read more »
the twelve tribes of israel.
Yes, similar to the ethnic Orthodox churches, or say an Irish, German, French, or Spanish Catholic.
Yep, it surely seems as though modern prosperity and Christianity aren’t a good fit. That and the fact that most of the various Christian religions have adopted the degeneracy of our current age to one degree or another. Regarding the “fatty poor” in our day, that could be coming to an end if the inflation rate keeps inflating. I don’t do a lot of grocery shopping but bought a smallish bag of chips the other day for six freaking dollars – I couldn’t believe it – and that was the cheapest I saw. The porkers are going to have some… Read more »
Less fat poor people will be a good thing, genuinely
A significant factor in the fat poor is that crappy carbs and sugar are cheaper than healthy protein.
I think that’s a myth. You can buy OK quality protein and vegetables at good prices and then prepare them at home. The fat poor usually don’t know how or are not even aware of the differences between healthy and unhealthy food.
Or just too damn useless or lazy to cook. This cuts across racial lines.
This. It is reasonable to assume the vast majority of lard asses never cook.
Some of them do grill, though…
Around here, the cheapest cut of beef is $5.99/lb on sale. Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods.
Are you saying that a pound of beef every day would be a whopping $180 per month? Is that too much for fat Americans?
Wow.
I give about $3500 for an 800# (dressed) bison, and around $1300 a half for beef, no idea how many pounds but roughly half a mid-size freezer. But, jeez, that includes a crapton of steaks and roasts.
Think I’d be looking for a local rancher if I were you.
And around here, the cheapest frozen pizza is $7.99 on sale. Six bucks for a hunk of beef ain’t bad. And chicken and pork are cheaper than beef.
Yep. It’s a case of ignorance and apathy, not healthy food scarcity.
Something to keep in mind is that Jesus was a carpenter. Carpenters in those times made more than cabinets for “Sex and the City” childless women. They worked for the Romans, and they made a lot of interesting items, including — but not limited to — instruments of torture and crucifixion. This is why Christ was able to fashion a cord of whips so quickly — or carried one with him — in the temple. He knew weapons. Imagine him learning casually over a glass counter showing a customer “the fine leather, the cut — oh, look at this cut,… Read more »
He was a cross-maker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izSQla_IYD4
Well he had at least one occasion to contemplate shoddy joinery on the Tree of Woe(den)
maybe Christianity is true, and man is a knower and desires to know; is that possible?
Popcorn time!
If LFMayor and halftrolling are right, the popcorn will pop itself at 4000 degrees.
this is where my head has been at vis a vis christianity. But the thought that modern conditions don’t allow for theistic religions is also something i’ve considered. All of the “religions” of the 19th and 20th century (the isms) had no gods, but they were religions, ways of seeing and understanding things.
perhaps there is something intrinsic to the modern landscape that precludes that old time religion. Watching to see if islam decays will be the real tell.
Islam was almost dead until the neocons resurrected their ancient creation.
Please see the pictures of any Mideastern country in the 60s-70s, they were carbon copies of the West. Only the oldest grannies in backwater villages wore the burka.
The resurgence of Islam owes most to an instinctive atavistic reaction against the toxicity of Western Modernity which began to intrude much more during C202H. Plenty of other factors to tease out, but ultimately they find our Civilisation toxic and repulsive. Which is kind of funny because SO DO WE ALL HERE (give or take). That’s not to say that Islam is the ticket for us. It’s not. But instinctive hatred of Islam and denigration of it as a stupid savage belief system is something that has been implanted in us by You Know Who. At the very least, take… Read more »
Easy enough, racialize Christianity. Acknowledge that the Israelite majority was white, that Christ himself was white, and that if nonwhites want to live like white people do, they should try as much as they can to act like white people do. That would entail reading the Bible like adults, at times, understanding that it is coded political messaging, and that the unpleasantnesses therein were caused by a subversive minority of identity thieves who sought to gain power above the majority. We have a living example of white identity thieves in lefties and politicians, who pretend one thing while seeking another.… Read more »
Good essay. It is also interesting to imagine the responses of modern Christians if some of the greatest figuress of their religion were transported to the present day.
The average modern right-wing “Christian” would view someone like St. Francis, who assuredly sits at God’s side, as a pinko commie libshit subverter trying to take away their lifted truck and McMansion. Ditto for many of Christianity’s best.
For an example in the opposite direction, there is a lot of fetishization by the modern rightist Christian of St. Boniface, one of the shittiest of Christian saints. While his great courage is admirable, his bigotry destroyed priceless organic European spiritual practices so they could be replaced with the culture of desert dwellers. He was also an early example of the absurd anti-conservationism that runs through modern rightism. Rightists pride themselves as the “thinking” side but then bray like asses whenever it is suggested that shifting where you eat is a bad idea. The dudes driving around “rolling coal” are… Read more »
Sometimes they snarl in anger about Gaia’s retinue, too.
Maybe it doesn’t deserve to survive.
Religions don’t last forever.
Christianity had a good run.
(Phillip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” expresses the lack of religion and where that leads. Majorly depressing. Something besides amusements and pharma needs to come into being.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDr_SRhJs80&list=PL_csDl62i4vy97zMRCOhTG9F93MbCFppW&index=13
Larkin is one of my favorites and I’ve always thought “Aubade” was one of his best. Honestly though, I had always kind of read it as free verse in the past and I only realized recently how tightly it’s rhymed! I can read it in a whole new way now.
I don’t know. Judaism has been around a while (what, 3,000 years or more?). And if you consider Christianity as “fulfilled Judaism” as many do, then it has been around as along as well. That seems like more than just a “good run.”
More likely imho is that Western Civ won’t survive but Christianity will, and then rebuild civilization into something else (maybe similar, maybe not) much like after the fall of Rome.
Or maybe Christianity goes the way of Paganism…something will rise up, attractive but different, but not TOO different, to take its place. Mormonism, anyone?
Something built on the bones of the old, just as the old was built on the bones before it? Agree, and let us make it so. We can acknowledge the nature of a virus without being its carrier.
Paganism went away? I think not. A case can (and probably should) be made that much of what we all refer to as The New Religion is a pagan religion. But rather than emanating from the poor and peasant class, it emanates from the wealthy, elite, and government class.
They are Gaia worshippers, even if they don’t come right out and say it. And they have all manner of nutty sacraments and works. Like banning perfectly functional consumer products, like plastic drinking straws.
Thank you for that — what a wonderfully written and sobering poem.
The problem with Christianty, and all religion, is that even when you find God and metaphysical peace and enlightenment. . .then what?
You’re still here on Earth and gotta pay the bills, wear fresh underwear, and fight the fight.
In the face of this reality, heaven and received wisdom quickly becomes Pie in the Sky.
The real job of the pastor, priest, and rabbi is raising money, not raising souls. True belief ain’t gonna polish them pews.
seems like this is really only applicable to the non-orthodox parts of christianity.
The problem I have wit commenting on Christianity is a little thing called Vatican2 the great humiliation of Christians.
since most believe it was a Christian/catholic council, they are stuck with that humiliation. Me, I don’t believe it was a council cause it contains error but nobody really cares so I don’t bring it up much.
but if you don’t count v2 and the phony v2 magisterium, the Catholic Church has always called Protestants Christian in name only. Again, things are so bad, I don’t push it too much these days!
There are many Christians who feel that modern Christianity has gone awry. But rather than use human intellect to determine what changes to make, they are asking the Lord himself which way to go. This is the best answer to modern Christianity’s dilemma.
So the true meaning of “Seek and ye shall find” is sit on your butt (or get on your knees) and wait for a handout?
What do you think He gave us these wonderful brains and the gift of rationality for if not to use?
The Father imagery is deliberate. Dad wants you to get up, rub some dirt in it, and get back in the game. To think and learn to solve problems. To grow into strong, competent adults, able to raise his grandkids as they deserve to be raised.
Most problems don’t need divine inspiration. By the time the pious decide the answer is an evening of prayer, the rest of us are cleaning up and putting the tools away.
[…] Postado em26 de Agosto de 2024 […]
Just posted for interest, I don’t think this commentary leads to the conclusion that voting is morally mandatory. I think if the church were functioning properly today, she would be very suspicious of constitutional republics and liberal democracies which she fought against all through the 19the cent. america had always been a thorn in the side of the church especially concerning freedom of religion which she roundly condemns (along with freedom of the press , conscience and speech). I think these theologians were smoking the same hubris after ww2 as every other America was: liberal democracy solves politics and is… Read more »
There was an Italian mini-series titled “The Young Pope” aired by HBO about 6-8 years ago. Jude Law was the “Young Pope”. It was a hoot and aired many of the conservative Catholic grievances against the Church—including homosexual priests. In one episode, the Pope met with the Italian Prime Minister who was running on a pro-abortion platform. The PM said no one cared what the Pope thought about abortion, so he was going to support it. Jude Law answered (threatened) that he was going to address the “faithful” and exercise his power to tell the people to *not* vote at… Read more »
My line is that modern enthusiastic Christianity is a transmission belt into the middle class. But the next step, after you’ve joined the middle class, is to become “creative.” E.g., Nietzsche and the Übermensch. And that is hard. But our liberal friends all want to do it on the cheap, with university-curated activism etc. Doesn’t work that way.
One of the principal mortal sins of the New Church (which includes Catholicism) is racism. That’s the major way the church has “evolved” in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Yet ponder the story of the Syrophoenician. If racism is truly a sin, He was a sinner. This leaves any Churchian in an awkward spot.