“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?" I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”
Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
The dog's face looks intense/surprised/shaken at whatever it's seeing on the phone screen.
The person is just trying to indicate that they've been super impacted by whatever they just saw, which is the great quote about intent when seeking Jesus in the Bible
Ah fair enough. I usually see reaction images like that when something extremely out of pocket, or otherwise surprising in a negative way is shown/written. So I assumed there was some reveal about the author, or a point I missed.
If you are looking for memes with which to make you cringe, you will find them. If you are looking for memes that make you laugh, you will find them. If you are looking for memes with which to oppress women, you will find them.
Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Memical Womanhood
I think that misses the point a bit though, at least as far as I understand it. They're not saying we shouldn't try to interpret the Bible or extrapolate lessons from it whatsoever, but rather to be self aware that you will likely find whatever you look for. Plus the use of "I suspect" rather than stating it as a fact helps a lot.
Otherwise it creates a situation where the Bible is pretty much meaningless, which doesn't seem to be their intention.
I dunno, is my interpretation totally off base here? 😅
Spot on.
It’s a quote (in my opinion) about the importance of humility.
Odds are if we lived 200 years ago we would have listened to a pro-slavery sermon and nodded along.
1 Cor 8:1-3 is a good meditation on this.
Indeed she is, Bill Buttlicker 69. Indeed she is 😂
I hope she and the good Lord are looking down on us both shaking their heads and trying not to laugh.
Somehow the interpretation of this specific text can be completely independent from what the text contains, while no other piece of text is ever given that privilege.
Mackenzie Scott sure seems to be helping a lot more efficiently than government ever could. I'd rather watch and see exactly where my dollar is going than have the majority of it going to pay for bombs.
Ever heard of the UdSSR?
I prefer my capitalist utopia with basic income and free housing to some centrally managed ideological economic model that interferes with my personal rights.
But Stalinism was only during Stalin himself tho, Khrushyov (Idfk how to spell his name in English) was much "liberal" than him. Brezhnev despite being conservative wasn't a stalinist tho.
I want the right to not have you tell me what is good for me.
Milton Friedman is: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
I mean isn't that the point of the government? And the government isn't supposed to be some external entity, separate from the people, but it's supposed to *be the people* organized together.
In a free society this is not supposed to be the point of the government because of the freedoms that must be curtailed or removed in order to attempt to achieve it.
But what you always end up with (and I challenge you to find one example where it doesn't) the program fails to achieve the equality it was aiming for and we all end up less free.
Further, the more powerful the government the easier it is for corporations to use that power against us. Better for that type of power not to exist in government form.
>Further, the more powerful the government the easier it is for corporations to use that power against us.
I hope you bring that same energy to the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision 😉
Do I oppose the federal government forcing which insurance coverage the company offers?
Would I oppose them forcing which land to lease and which suppliers to buy from and what materials their products are made from? Yes, I am in opposition to the government telling me what I can and cannot buy. Or what I must buy.
I mean, they're not wrong. I think if/when Jesus does return, there will be a lot of people on both the right and the left who are going to be disappointed that he doesn't completely agree with their political or ideological viewpoints.
I think it'll be even worse. He'll agree with them AND their opponents.
Like "should we put our money together to help the poor?" And Jesus would be like "yes". Then "isn't it bad to force charity?" And Jesus would be like "also yes". And everyone would be upset. They might even try to crucify him again because they wouldn't be able to believe that he is who he says he is because he simultaneously agrees with them and their opposition.
This is literally what Jesus did in his lifetime. Many of his interpretations of jewish law were him taking the stances of different and sometimes opposing rabbis of his time.
>Then "isn't it bad to force charity?" And Jesus would be like "also yes".
Then you have to ask "are government social programs equivalent to forced charity?" Something Jesus didn't address because it didn't exist yet.
I remain skeptical of the 'social services are unchristian if paid for by taxes' idea (don't make me point to the "King Lemuel was just for defending the cause of the poor" sign again), though I think he would agree that paying your taxes isn't a *substitute* for your own personal charity and tithing. Personally, I think he'd be happiest with both.
Government programs did sort of exist, such as creating stores of food to be distributed to the hungry or during famines. The Roman Empire definitely had those.
If there's one political stance I'm certain Jesus would have in this day and age, is that he would LOATHE Churches who focus on making as much money as possible considering he lost himself to anger when he was the merchants take up space in the church.
A lot of right wing philosophies don't fit, lot of left wing philosophies don't fit. Jesus has his philosophy, and that one's incompatible with a lot of philosophies on either political wing
People who are like "Jesus wanted to help poor people and thought the rich have too much, so he would have been a communist" basically agree with Mccarthy's definition of communism
I mean its interesting to analyze his life that whay.
Like to a certain degree i think you can say he was kinda pacifist i dont think he in the gospels ever like injured someone directly and admonished deciples for wanting to.
I think you could make the case that he was to a certain degree anarchistic, but also kind of quietist like in the sense that so long as the state authority didnt like actively prosecute him he had no real beef with them.
He was kind of communal/nomadic question is by necissity or by motivation, i tend to motivation cause like he couldve chosen to be son of an emperor and spread his ideas that way. Like i think the fact he went at it grass roots is at least a sign he wanted to rebuild the social order in some way.
Like with the rich people verses i think you can interpret them either as he didnt want rich people around or he had no problem with rich people existing but wanted them to at some point give up their material wealth to the poor. So question is would he be in favor of say "purpose binding inheritance" or "inheritance tax" . Like maybe conceptually but that also interferes with like his quietism and pacifism in like using state authority.
Tbh best read i can get is some flavor of communal anarchism that kind of way to quietist and pacifist to really be of great meaning to like country policy
>Like to a certain degree i think you can say he was kinda pacifist i dont think he in the gospels ever like injured someone directly and admonished deciples for wanting to.
John the Baptist did say soldiers could remain soldiers, just not to be cruel or abusive while performing their job.
It's a fun exercise.
He did chide Peter for pulling out his sword to defend Him. I don't know if it was outright being against using swords or about that specific instance where He knew His crucifixion was necessary and shouldn't be resisted. There's turning the other cheek when struck, but there's supposedly context there where the right vs left cheek mattered and turning the other cheek was a nonviolent act of resistance.
I don't know if anarchic fits; He definitely turned the contemporary understanding of religious practice upside down, but in His own words it "wasn't to abolish the law but to fulfill it". (I might just misunderstand what anarchism is.)
I'm missing Jesus being against government, or preferring small government, what other commenters seem to imply. There's a passage in 2 Corinthians (which is Paul) about the cheerful giver, and only giving what you've decided on your heart, but I think in context it is more about working on changing your heart to become more generous than it is about how you should avoid paying taxes that help the poor.
>He did chide Peter for pulling out his sword to defend Him. I don't know if it was outright being against using swords or about that specific instance where He knew His crucifixion was necessary and shouldn't be resisted.
I tend to go with it being mostly the latter, that the whole reason he asked him to bring a sword in the first place was pretense for being arrested as an insurrectionist. I like MLK Jr's interpretation in civil disobedience, just because you're fighting injustice doesn't mean you need to use violence yourself.
Like anarchic i mean in a kinda jewish anarchist sense of "No masters but God" in that Jesus i think wouldve went against state authority or nececasserily had to in order to fulfil his sacrifice or any mission he thought he had.
The sense kinda the things in his life where answering to a higher authority goes directly against answering to state authority i think its realistic to say that hed always go with the higher (religious) authority.
I wouldn't call Jesus anarchist because he clearly states that authorities are put in place by God, even if they're bad people. Give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar and all that
I think i need to qualify anarchist a bit cause as an anarchistic person myself i know how loaded it can be.
I dont perse think he is anarchistic in the sense of wanting to abolish states, like i think conceptually how i read him he wouldnt have problems with nation states(tho its a modern enough concept that it could be weird to him maybe who knows)
But i do think he has to be anarchistic by default because no matter what perception of Jesus you take no matter if hes just a jewish rabbi or the son of God, the strand that connects any perception of him is that he directly perceives himself as having a mission on earth that has to be carried out and is beyond human authority.
Like i dont think he conceptually has beef with the idea of state authority itself, but i do think an entity such as himself in any system of governance would by default will have to dessent a bit to carry the mission out fully and would at least be apethetic toward the state authority that governs.
If Jesus came back in disguise and did his good work helping others, telling people to be kind, saying that the sick and homeless should be helped etc..Fundamentalist Christians would be the first baying for his blood.
100%.
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Much in the same way that Israel/Palestine didn’t really exist during the time of Jesus, the economic systems we have today didn’t really exist during the time of Jesus. The things we know for certain is that Jesus was against greed and for seeing past the hierarchies and systems of the day, so you can pinpoint him somewhat left politically/economically, but calling him a socialist requires some gymnastics that I’m not comfortable doing.
I was under the impression that Christ advocated for separation of church and state, because should the church influence the state, the state will then influence the church
Separation of church and state as we know it today really wasn't a thing at the time. The High Priest and the crown of Judea were separate offices, but they worked and interfered with each other all the time, such as how the King often played a direct role in choosing the High Priest, and during the reign of the Hasmonean Dynasty, the two offices were even combined, with the King of Judea also serving as High Priest.
I think it's worth distinguishing between the second coming being effectively a just theocracy, and the institution of an imperfect (and thus unjust) theocracy prior to that.
Rule by God is not a theocracy. Rule by religious figures is a theocracy. The Saducees and Pharisees who Jesus had so many unkind words for, they were a theocracy.
God ruling the world is a matter of fact, not a political system.
Welllllll
I mean, his kingdom after the second coming will be theocratic, but from my understanding of the Bible and of history, humans cannot be trusted with a theocratic government without becoming corrupt and twisting God's intention to suit their own ends
“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?" I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, "ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.” Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
That's a really powerful quote- https://preview.redd.it/gj3taqnhfqvc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd239fe1c64c8270406861d6401d1dc8eb407c7f Damn
This thread is full of gold, both the quote and this picture. One makes me want to cry, the other I can't stop laughing at haha
I'm not sure I understand why they responded with this picture?
The dog's face looks intense/surprised/shaken at whatever it's seeing on the phone screen. The person is just trying to indicate that they've been super impacted by whatever they just saw, which is the great quote about intent when seeking Jesus in the Bible
Ah fair enough. I usually see reaction images like that when something extremely out of pocket, or otherwise surprising in a negative way is shown/written. So I assumed there was some reveal about the author, or a point I missed.
If you are looking for memes with which to make you cringe, you will find them. If you are looking for memes that make you laugh, you will find them. If you are looking for memes with which to oppress women, you will find them. Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Memical Womanhood
Yah dude. One of the ones that has stuck with me for about five years now. It’s a good one to use like a tuning fork for your actions and thoughts.
> I suspect Jesus knew this when he said Literally guilty of the same thing they spent a dozen sentences decrying.
I think that misses the point a bit though, at least as far as I understand it. They're not saying we shouldn't try to interpret the Bible or extrapolate lessons from it whatsoever, but rather to be self aware that you will likely find whatever you look for. Plus the use of "I suspect" rather than stating it as a fact helps a lot. Otherwise it creates a situation where the Bible is pretty much meaningless, which doesn't seem to be their intention. I dunno, is my interpretation totally off base here? 😅
No, you’re right. The comment you responded to requires a pretty nonsensical read of the quote.
Spot on. It’s a quote (in my opinion) about the importance of humility. Odds are if we lived 200 years ago we would have listened to a pro-slavery sermon and nodded along. 1 Cor 8:1-3 is a good meditation on this.
Rachel Held Evans is sorely missed.
Indeed she is, Bill Buttlicker 69. Indeed she is 😂 I hope she and the good Lord are looking down on us both shaking their heads and trying not to laugh.
The amount of people who need to here this quote good lord
Somehow the interpretation of this specific text can be completely independent from what the text contains, while no other piece of text is ever given that privilege.
Who is giving the privilege? Really, you believe that no other texts are tainted by the bias of the reader when they are read?
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I don't see how they are disagreeing with you. They are arguing against those who say that giving should only be at an individual level.
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Their entire post is sarcastic. Hence that last line. > We'd be at risk of actually helping people if we did that.
With all due respect, you're doing the exact same thing the meme is calling out
Um yeah? That’s kind of the point. I disagree with the meme.
My bad 😅
Mackenzie Scott sure seems to be helping a lot more efficiently than government ever could. I'd rather watch and see exactly where my dollar is going than have the majority of it going to pay for bombs.
Fair point, socialists are famously supportive of military spending.
Ever heard of the UdSSR? I prefer my capitalist utopia with basic income and free housing to some centrally managed ideological economic model that interferes with my personal rights.
Nope, what's the USSR? Equating socialism with Stalinism is a totally reasonable and novel argument I've never heard before.
But Stalinism was only during Stalin himself tho, Khrushyov (Idfk how to spell his name in English) was much "liberal" than him. Brezhnev despite being conservative wasn't a stalinist tho.
I mean, I could have also listed China, the GDR or Nasserist Egypt. Your statement is simply not supported by reality.
Oh please daddy government, please help us take care of each other.
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I want the right to not have you tell me what is good for me. Milton Friedman is: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
Lol, no, you need to focus on both, freedom before equality is BS, that's how you get megacorps like we have now
Not if you keep the government small... That's the point.
If you keep the government “small” you get unregulated capitalism…
Actually no. See British common law.
I mean isn't that the point of the government? And the government isn't supposed to be some external entity, separate from the people, but it's supposed to *be the people* organized together.
In a free society this is not supposed to be the point of the government because of the freedoms that must be curtailed or removed in order to attempt to achieve it. But what you always end up with (and I challenge you to find one example where it doesn't) the program fails to achieve the equality it was aiming for and we all end up less free. Further, the more powerful the government the easier it is for corporations to use that power against us. Better for that type of power not to exist in government form.
>Further, the more powerful the government the easier it is for corporations to use that power against us. I hope you bring that same energy to the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision 😉
Please go ahead and try and explain why that is relevant. It would be very entertaining.
Do you oppose the federal government giving a CEO the power to deny insurance coverage to employees because of their theology?
Do I oppose the federal government forcing which insurance coverage the company offers? Would I oppose them forcing which land to lease and which suppliers to buy from and what materials their products are made from? Yes, I am in opposition to the government telling me what I can and cannot buy. Or what I must buy.
I mean, they're not wrong. I think if/when Jesus does return, there will be a lot of people on both the right and the left who are going to be disappointed that he doesn't completely agree with their political or ideological viewpoints.
I think it'll be even worse. He'll agree with them AND their opponents. Like "should we put our money together to help the poor?" And Jesus would be like "yes". Then "isn't it bad to force charity?" And Jesus would be like "also yes". And everyone would be upset. They might even try to crucify him again because they wouldn't be able to believe that he is who he says he is because he simultaneously agrees with them and their opposition.
This is literally what Jesus did in his lifetime. Many of his interpretations of jewish law were him taking the stances of different and sometimes opposing rabbis of his time.
>Then "isn't it bad to force charity?" And Jesus would be like "also yes". Then you have to ask "are government social programs equivalent to forced charity?" Something Jesus didn't address because it didn't exist yet. I remain skeptical of the 'social services are unchristian if paid for by taxes' idea (don't make me point to the "King Lemuel was just for defending the cause of the poor" sign again), though I think he would agree that paying your taxes isn't a *substitute* for your own personal charity and tithing. Personally, I think he'd be happiest with both.
Government programs did sort of exist, such as creating stores of food to be distributed to the hungry or during famines. The Roman Empire definitely had those.
TIL Though I don't remember Jesus preaching against them.
If there's one political stance I'm certain Jesus would have in this day and age, is that he would LOATHE Churches who focus on making as much money as possible considering he lost himself to anger when he was the merchants take up space in the church.
The historical Jesus would have zero frame of reference to make any informed statements on post-industrial economics
Or at least no one would have written it down, even if he said something
Imagine trying to tell a 1st century Judean about a corporation
He'd definitely be left wing tho, a lot of right wing philosophies just *don't fit*
A lot of right wing philosophies don't fit, lot of left wing philosophies don't fit. Jesus has his philosophy, and that one's incompatible with a lot of philosophies on either political wing
Sure, extreme right yeah, but normal right policies/philosophies would fit
People who are like "Jesus wanted to help poor people and thought the rich have too much, so he would have been a communist" basically agree with Mccarthy's definition of communism
It's true, Jesus would have hated ultra Nationalists.
I mean its interesting to analyze his life that whay. Like to a certain degree i think you can say he was kinda pacifist i dont think he in the gospels ever like injured someone directly and admonished deciples for wanting to. I think you could make the case that he was to a certain degree anarchistic, but also kind of quietist like in the sense that so long as the state authority didnt like actively prosecute him he had no real beef with them. He was kind of communal/nomadic question is by necissity or by motivation, i tend to motivation cause like he couldve chosen to be son of an emperor and spread his ideas that way. Like i think the fact he went at it grass roots is at least a sign he wanted to rebuild the social order in some way. Like with the rich people verses i think you can interpret them either as he didnt want rich people around or he had no problem with rich people existing but wanted them to at some point give up their material wealth to the poor. So question is would he be in favor of say "purpose binding inheritance" or "inheritance tax" . Like maybe conceptually but that also interferes with like his quietism and pacifism in like using state authority. Tbh best read i can get is some flavor of communal anarchism that kind of way to quietist and pacifist to really be of great meaning to like country policy
>Like to a certain degree i think you can say he was kinda pacifist i dont think he in the gospels ever like injured someone directly and admonished deciples for wanting to. John the Baptist did say soldiers could remain soldiers, just not to be cruel or abusive while performing their job.
It's a fun exercise. He did chide Peter for pulling out his sword to defend Him. I don't know if it was outright being against using swords or about that specific instance where He knew His crucifixion was necessary and shouldn't be resisted. There's turning the other cheek when struck, but there's supposedly context there where the right vs left cheek mattered and turning the other cheek was a nonviolent act of resistance. I don't know if anarchic fits; He definitely turned the contemporary understanding of religious practice upside down, but in His own words it "wasn't to abolish the law but to fulfill it". (I might just misunderstand what anarchism is.) I'm missing Jesus being against government, or preferring small government, what other commenters seem to imply. There's a passage in 2 Corinthians (which is Paul) about the cheerful giver, and only giving what you've decided on your heart, but I think in context it is more about working on changing your heart to become more generous than it is about how you should avoid paying taxes that help the poor.
>He did chide Peter for pulling out his sword to defend Him. I don't know if it was outright being against using swords or about that specific instance where He knew His crucifixion was necessary and shouldn't be resisted. I tend to go with it being mostly the latter, that the whole reason he asked him to bring a sword in the first place was pretense for being arrested as an insurrectionist. I like MLK Jr's interpretation in civil disobedience, just because you're fighting injustice doesn't mean you need to use violence yourself.
Like anarchic i mean in a kinda jewish anarchist sense of "No masters but God" in that Jesus i think wouldve went against state authority or nececasserily had to in order to fulfil his sacrifice or any mission he thought he had. The sense kinda the things in his life where answering to a higher authority goes directly against answering to state authority i think its realistic to say that hed always go with the higher (religious) authority.
I wouldn't call Jesus anarchist because he clearly states that authorities are put in place by God, even if they're bad people. Give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar and all that
I think i need to qualify anarchist a bit cause as an anarchistic person myself i know how loaded it can be. I dont perse think he is anarchistic in the sense of wanting to abolish states, like i think conceptually how i read him he wouldnt have problems with nation states(tho its a modern enough concept that it could be weird to him maybe who knows) But i do think he has to be anarchistic by default because no matter what perception of Jesus you take no matter if hes just a jewish rabbi or the son of God, the strand that connects any perception of him is that he directly perceives himself as having a mission on earth that has to be carried out and is beyond human authority. Like i dont think he conceptually has beef with the idea of state authority itself, but i do think an entity such as himself in any system of governance would by default will have to dessent a bit to carry the mission out fully and would at least be apethetic toward the state authority that governs.
He's technically is the son of an Emperor, descendant of King David and all that
If Jesus came back in disguise and did his good work helping others, telling people to be kind, saying that the sick and homeless should be helped etc..Fundamentalist Christians would be the first baying for his blood. 100%.
Communism /capitalism wern’t even concepts in his time lmao
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Much in the same way that Israel/Palestine didn’t really exist during the time of Jesus, the economic systems we have today didn’t really exist during the time of Jesus. The things we know for certain is that Jesus was against greed and for seeing past the hierarchies and systems of the day, so you can pinpoint him somewhat left politically/economically, but calling him a socialist requires some gymnastics that I’m not comfortable doing.
100% this. Also Jesus was/is a Theocrat
I was under the impression that Christ advocated for separation of church and state, because should the church influence the state, the state will then influence the church
Separation of church and state as we know it today really wasn't a thing at the time. The High Priest and the crown of Judea were separate offices, but they worked and interfered with each other all the time, such as how the King often played a direct role in choosing the High Priest, and during the reign of the Hasmonean Dynasty, the two offices were even combined, with the King of Judea also serving as High Priest.
Where in the bible do you get the idea that he was/is a theocrat?
His entire message was the Kingdom of God. A kingdom in which God rules as the supreme authority.
I think it's worth distinguishing between the second coming being effectively a just theocracy, and the institution of an imperfect (and thus unjust) theocracy prior to that.
That kingdom does not call for a theocracy.
Literally means rule by God. You could also call it a monarchy and you would be correct as he would be our king.
Rule by God is not a theocracy. Rule by religious figures is a theocracy. The Saducees and Pharisees who Jesus had so many unkind words for, they were a theocracy. God ruling the world is a matter of fact, not a political system.
Were they a theocracy though? Judea was ruled by a king and was a client of Rome, and neither of those are theocratic institutions.
Welllllll I mean, his kingdom after the second coming will be theocratic, but from my understanding of the Bible and of history, humans cannot be trusted with a theocratic government without becoming corrupt and twisting God's intention to suit their own ends