Tag Archives: bible

What’s So Funny About Meek, Love, and Understanding?

Posted on by
Reply

In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is accredited with the following among his beatitudes (Matthew 5:5):

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”

Meek, in this case, anavah (עֲנָוָה), quoted from Psalm 37:11, meaning humility, meekness, or gentleness. Choosing patience over strength, and trusting in God.

Which is basically Jesus exhorting us to exercise patience, humility, and gentleness. Not to take up arms nor enforce our will over others.

So why do so many Christians forget or ignore this exhortation? (And most of the beatitudes while they’re at it.)

Well, many Christians (especially the conservative, dominionist, fundamentalist, evangelical, and/or Christian Nationalist types, in that order of awful, which I’ll call the Christian Right for brevity) reinterpret the beatitudes to justify their cruel, oppressive, authoritarian, social-dominance-oriented identity politics.

Culturally, Christianity is built on the concept of being the downtrodden underdog, and those who would wield the cross like a sword (ie the Christian Right) haven’t gotten the memo that we haven’t been the underdog since Christianity became the official religion of Rome and we thus became empire. Such Christians pretend they themselves are the meek and oppressed, and the marginalized people they trample on are their oppressors in some way, and they are their obstacle to gaining some mythic supremacy.

Look at how the Christian Right treats, say, Black people, or gay people, or trans people (especially popular targets of their hatred these days). Whole minority groups of people who have some measurable inherent difference with their preferred in-group, and so they’re ripe for persecution and hate.

This is why it’s called Christofascism: it thrives on propaganda, scapegoats a marginalized Other for the problems it causes, and advocates oppressing and/or destroying all perceived enemies, casting out allies, and fighting in an ever shrinking circle of the acceptable in-group, until the whole world lies in ruin.

A far better, truer, and less existentially-destructive form of Christianity embraces Jesus’s teachings, rather than reinterpreting them to serve the opposite goal. And it’s not like you have to be a Christian to know the value of patience, gentleness, and humility. That’s how humans get along best–when we can work together, treat each other with kindness, and lean on others to help us with what we don’t know or can’t do ourselves.

Go forth and treat your fellow humans better.

Best.

Is it Brave to be a Christian?

Posted on by
Reply

Tl;dr no it isn’t, read on for details.

Christian here.

As you can see, I state and affirm my faith basically every time I post here. It may be a kind of costly signaling–i.e. it opens me up to abuse, usually from my fellow Christians–but it’s not very costly. Very, very few people think less of someone simply because they are Christian, but rather how they use that identity. What do they justify with their faith? What other, horrible positions do they defend with a cross-shaped shield?

If you say “I’m standing with God” but you really mean “I’m bigoted against LGBTQ people and no one should criticize me for it,” your standing with God means nothing. You are just a bigot appropriating a faith that does NOT support bigotry but in fact is PRIMARILY ABOUT ENDING BIGOTRY. We have seen a massive influx of bigots, abusers, and criminals claim Christianity in order to escape accountability, and we should all be getting exhausted of it by now.

Using Christian faith to justify bigotry isn’t just crass, cynical, or callous, but actively blasphemous, and all Christians should join together in condemning that practice.

Bigotry is cruel, hateful, and evil. It is the opposite of Christianity’s fundamental teachings.

And no, Christians are not oppressed. That’s baked into Christian identity from our earliest origins as a tiny cultic commune of weirdos who refused to be part of the state religion of Rome, and saw ourselves as being like Christ: a speaker of truth and thorn in the side of the powers that be.

Claiming to be part of Christianity does not make you a plucky underdog speaking truth to power or rising up against an unjust system. To be clear, there IS an unjust system and there ARE plucky underdogs, but WE CHRISTIANS are the ones in power, WE control the unjust system, and its our targets who are the plucky underdogs. Christianity has been in charge since Constantine, and that was over 1500 years ago.

Let’s not play the oppression Olympics, because we Christians–especially white Christians–won’t even qualify for the event.

An ideal Christian practices love, compassion, justice, and acceptance. They feed the hungry, give to the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger, and love their neighbors as themselves. That is the CORE of our faith.

Stop fawning over grifters appropriating our faith to increase their own standing in the right-wing griftoverse. Start doing the work.

Thanks.