Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 week ago by Tabitha@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed

this is Biblically illiterate drivel.

The point of that passage is to not engage in fist fights when some rando insults you. It is not a command to be a doormat, to stay in an abusive relationship, to not defend yourself from an attacker, or to allow evil to flourish unchallenged.

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[-] DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 6 days ago

I don't think he's advocating oppressed people to turn the other cheek, he's saying that applying the phrase to his actions is a category error.

If you aren't the subject of oppression then it isn't your cheek to turn. Ignoring others' oppression isn't turning the other cheek, it's tacitly endorsing the oppression.

Also it's likely the origin of the "turn the other cheek" thing was specific to the cultural context in which it was purportedly said, not meant to be some universal truth. Proposing the offender use their offhand had symbolic meaning.

But regardless the point is the manifesto-er is debating a Christian in his head, not himself making the argument.

[-] Crucible@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

Christian pacifists get OWNED

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

Like Nietzsche went on a huge tirade against the Bible BECAUSE it told normal people that when someone wrongs you, you don’t have to lie down and take it because somehow having a spine is slave morality.

[-] Ekranoplane@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago

I feel like Christ does want his followers to be doormats, unless I'm interpreting Romans 12 and Mathew 5 wrong. Early Christian theology was legitimately apocalyptic and mystical, it's not a set of rules you can actually build a society on.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

The Jesus movement had legitimate criticism of how tax funded urbanisation moved wealth from the rural majority to a small urban minority that benefited from the Roman infrastructure projects. They rightly condemned no one more than the collaborators ("tax collectors") who worked with the Roman occupiers. Though their tactic of claiming the just society they want will soon be miraculously established by act of God, within like a few years max, didn't really pay off. Without a materialist analysis, they were crushed and failed to affect the social change they had set out to create. They wouldn't have dreamt, that their story would soon be used by an urban movement in the heart of the empire and form a new hegemonic state religion. Urban Roman Christians betrayed everything the early, anti-urban, Jewish reformers around figures like John the Baptist, some others and finally Jesus had stood for.

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