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This Lawmaker Wants to Jail People for Watching Porn
(www.rollingstone.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Jesus lived in a region conquered by the Roman Empire. Many of his fans at the time wanted him to be a conquering ruler and overthrow them. His answer in the text amounted to, "that's not why I'm here." Nominal Christians trying to install a Christian Government have missed the point of their own text so hard it's actually kinda funny.
Jesus: Share resources among those that need them, it's very hard for rich people to enter heaven.
His Followers: Temporarily embarrassed billionaires who idolize wealth and build literal golden statues of their favorite rich guy.
Jesus: Hangs out with tax collectors (i.e., agents of the Romans, who were not popular), hookers, low status foreigners, and people with terminal diseases.
His Followers: Ew, drag queens and brown people. Gross.
Jesus: Encourages non-violent responses to his own capture pending execution. Tells many parables about forgiveness and treating foreigners as neighbors.
His Followers: Immigrants are invading us! They terk our jerbs! BOMB IRAN!
Anyone seeing a pattern here? The reality is that Christianity isn't really a belief system for them, it's a cultural identity or tribal marker. You don't have to actually believe any of this shit or behave accordingly. All you have to do is say the right words and present the right image. Right wing Evangelical Christianity is a hollowed out husk; an empty aesthetic presenting as a belief system that promises that anything you do will be wiped away if you say the right words and give money to whatever charlatan is giving his Dollar General Ted Talk today.
I think you're a hell of a lot closer than most Christians, but my read through was different when it came to Rome
Like when they asked if they should pay the tax collector. He asked who's head was on the coin, and said "give unto Cesar what is Caesar's". My teacher said that means pay your taxes... That's a pretty strained reason
What he was saying is "let's just share among each other, then coin means nothing to us". He was advocating dropping out of the Roman economy
He also preached that if you have excess, you share it generously - so no huge stockpiles of grain to be seized.
And it was like this across the board - we don't need temples, it's enough to share a meal. We don't need the holy of holies or complex bathing rituals - here's a new ritual that only requires a bit of water
We don't need leaders, if we all focus on serving each other everything will fall into place.
If Romans demand work from you, use their laws and customs against them. Make it frustrating to deal with you while giving them no justification to draw a sword
It all fits together nicely. It's not about religion - everything he said on that topic boils down to "you've mistaken our laws for the meaning behind them and they've become a reason to do evil. At the core, it's just be good to each other, everything flows from there"
Jesus was a revolutionary. He sought to free his people not as a heroic warlord, but by making them unprofitable and frustrating. He was removing the weaknesses of his people. If you have no leaders, there's no one to hold hostage. If you hold the spirit of the law above it's wording, the religious leaders couldn't demand obedience through religion. If you give away your money freely and have no big stores of food or wealth, there's nothing for them to take. There's no handle to control them, and there's no profit in raiding them
And that's why he died - it seems very clear to me that Judas didn't betray him - he followed Jesus's plan. Jesus warned them all it was about to happen, and told them not to resist. Judas didn't want the silver, he felt enough guilt/grief to take his own life.
Jesus himself was the last weakness, so he had to die. Or at least stage his death - he was very popular among the legions very soon after his death. Maybe he had inside help from his executioners, he was up on the cross for a very short time (granted, he was probably on the verge of death already)
Unfortunately, it still had one weakness... The Romans straight up brutally massacred his peaceful followers
Many believe this was about the controversy over the coinage issue at the time.
This is a big reason why I think people who want to abolish religion all together miss the point. The issue is not that the text is so dark and vile it breaks brains... When taken in its proper historical context and read properly, it's actually quite based.
The issue is that humans are stupid, violent, tribal beasts who will take any symbol and use it to bang their drum. If religion didn't exist the world would be just as shitty, only now humans would be worshipping The Beatles and claiming Beatles music was all about keeping the black man down and praying away the gay.