That literally isn’t true. There’s an entire separate sin for that called greed.
Very true but in the end it’s all just marketing religion to the poor. Look at those sinners over there eating fantastic meals and living in lavish estates. If you get a little extra money instead of living in nicer houses or eating better food, you should really be donating that.
That’s kind of a strawman considering that’s not at all what Christianity says. Jesus was in favour of taxing the wealthy and talked shit about the rich all the time. You ever hear the story where he trashed a temple because people had set up a gift shop in it? Or the time he said “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven”.
Christianity caught on because it was popular with the poor.
Christianity says whatever the people in charge say it says. That’s how the Catholic leaders have tons of wealth, Protestant leaders have tons of wealth, Anglican leaders have tons of wealth…really, every sect has money funneling up from the poor to the leaders. But it’s still marketed to the poor the exact same way.
That’s not a problem unique to Christianity. For example: “The Constitution says whatever the SCOTUS justices say it says.” or perhaps you prefer “The news says whatever Rupert Murdoch says it says” or even “Lemmy says whatever the admins say it says.”
Point is, any institution suffers the risk that its leaders could dictate its message or pervert its original intent for their own benefit. But Christianity–like the news, the law, and federated communities–is not a monolith. The Lakewood Church might adopt doctrines that are specially tailored to enriching Joel Osteen and his entourage, but that instance of corruption isn’t an indicator that Christianity–which existed for 1900 years before it–is inherently corrupt or somehow uniquely predisposed to manipulation by conmen.
By all reputable historic accounts, early Christian communities were socialistic, and its popularity among poor and marginalized Jews, Hellenistic Jews, and pagans is largely responsible for its spread during the first two centuries of its existence. The Christian texts we have today still resonate with the poor because their authors wrote them for the poor of their day, and it turns out poverty isn’t terribly different in the 21st Century from the 1st.
The Catholic Church used Christianity to make boatloads of cash. So did the Greek Orthodox Church, the Reformed Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and most other large institutions. So did other institutional religions (and non-religions). That’s not a problem with Christianity. It’s a problem with people. The overwhelming majority of church pastors I’ve known personally had to maintain a separate full-time job, because running churches is not a money-making enterprise unless you’re a corporation, an especially gifted and morally bankrupt businessman, or you inherited it.
All of that is to say that the problem with Christian institutions is the same problem with all institutions: greed. For the love of money is the root of all evil.
It’s not about religion. It’s about class. No war but the class war.
No war but the class war.
Based
Keep in mind that the US constitution, Rupert Murdock, or Lemmy are not designed to target the poor and encourage them to tithe so that money can be funneled upwards to the leader. Well, maybe Rupert Murdock, but not the US constitution and definitely not Lemmy. There’s a difference between telling the poor that everyone is equal under the law, and telling the poor that if they believe hard enough and give the church 10% of their earnings regardless of their financial status that they will be rewarded in the afterlife or even rewarded maybe possibly while they are still alive.
How about telling the poor that if they work hard eventually they’ll be millionaires? Or telling them that a lower capital gains tax will improve their spending power? What about telling them that cheap drugs are penalized 100:1 to more expensive drugs?
The law enriches the rich, and politics convinces people to vote against their own interests. Call it a tithe or a tax, and enforce it with the threat of state violence or social opprobrium, but the result is the same.
Jesus of Nazareth said you should take care of your neighbors, because the religious institutions and government won’t, and those religious institutions and governments killed Him for it. That the American church is hard to distinguish from the First Century Jewish priesthood is no accident.
How about telling the poor that if they work hard eventually they’ll be millionaires? Or telling them that a lower capital gains tax will improve their spending power? What about telling them that cheap drugs are penalized 100:1 to more expensive drugs?
This is capitalists every step of the way. Not the US constitution. But they aren’t telling you that you might go to hell if you don’t tithe. They are holding the word of their god over your head and making you feel guilty if you don’t believe hard enough.
The ideas of your Jesus of Nazareth are noble enough on the surface. But they still insist you submit to a higher authority, and those higher authorities always have a human that you actually submit to and give money to. Funny how that works…
are not designed to target the poor and encourage them to tithe so that money can be funneled upwards to the leader
Are you suggesting that religion is designed? Because it isn’t. It arises naturally from human curiosity about the universe.
No, science arises naturally from human curiosity about the universe. Religion arises from human desire to control others and accumulate wealth, as demonstrated by every religion ever created.
As if the hierarchical structure of religion isn’t a class system.
Protestantism really caught on when leaders realise that church land would become the kings lands after conversion. It created a agricolarchy or farmarchy or whatever you want to call it in Iceland when before the church owned the land. It basically removed all social welfare in the country and passed on ownership to the ruling class which already had a diet-slavery (vistarbandið) for non-land owners codified in law.
Quakers.
Jeasus was not “in favor of taxing the wealthy” he was a full on socialist, if they had the term at the time. He through capitalists out of the temple, he hated the exploiting classes, his solution would have been far beyond “tax the wealty”
Jeasus was not “in favor of taxing the wealthy” he was a full on socialist, if they had the term at the time
I’m confused, are you disagreeing with me? I said the same thing. Jesus was in favour of many of the things we now associate with socialism. They just didn’t call it that at the time.
his solution would have been far beyond “tax the wealty”
Not sure what you mean by this. Jesus was a pacifist. He literally just played along while the ruling classes murdered him. He wasn’t about to start a violent revolution.
Jesus whipped people who were making money off the temple, so he certainly wasn’t a pacifist. This may have happened twice.
He may have known enough not to pick a fight that would be lost, anyway.
Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus’ actual goal was to lead a rebellion that would kick the Romans out of Judea and set himself up as king. That wouldn’t have been too unusual for the apocalyptic preachers of the time.
Taking the wealthy is not socialism, it is at best, a very mild form of social democracy. The ballance of power is not changed the owning class still has all the power as they still own the means of production.
I understand Jeasus was a passifist, and he would not have lead a violent revolution, but he would have advocated the workers runing the show, not just “taxing the rich”
he would have advocated the workers runing the show
Keep in mind this was 2000 years ago. Modern notions of a “working class” didn’t exist. The Roman Empire had completely different and far more primitive economic structures compared to what we have now. There was no concept of corporations, industry, labour, or capital. These were primarily agrarian people who worked the land and paid taxes to the imperial administration. Production of finished goods was limited to small local guilds and artisans. And since Jesus was born and raised as a carpenter, he was part of that artisan class. The closest thing they had to a bourgeoise was landowners and religious oligarchy, and those were exactly the people Jesus spoke against.
Taking [sic] the wealthy is not socialism, it is at best, a very mild form of social democracy
That’s a pretty dumb take considering we’re talking about a society which was not democratic. “Social democracy” doesn’t mean “diet socialism”, it’s a specific form of government which would have been completely meaningless to the people of Jesus’ time.
Suffice to say, Jesus was in favour of redistributing wealth. Modern concepts of the “means of production” would have made little sense to him. He’d have been like “yeah, no shit the worker owns the means of production. I’m a carpenter and I own my own hammer and blade”. We can speculate that if he were brought forward in time to after the industrial revolution, he would have probably associated himself with the labour movement, but there’s no way to say for sure.
Remember to put things in the appropriate historical context. You can’t look at 1st century Palestine using the same eyes you use to look at the modern world. It was fundamentally a different kind of world.
Tell me more about democracy in 1st century Middle East.
“what Christianity says”
That’s kind of the problem right there. Religion has always been a way to garner money and power along with a smattering of explaining the unexplained. It’s a collection of fairytales with a little spice of real history designed to keep it’s people feeling indebted, donating and coming back. Any thing that requires blind faith should lead you to be extremely suspect about “their message”.
The stories, the psalms, the mass singing, the praise of the long absent mystical deity, it’s all psychological conditioning. The preacher running the guilt trips interspersed with good morale messages, none of this is making any of those people better people.
Christianity did not catch on because it was popular with the poor, it caught on because the people running it are masters of psychological manipulation. The poor don’t stand up Christianity, the congregations aren’t made up of paupers.
Considering the stories about tithing, and Jesus saying that it’s “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” I think that’s exact what Christianity says.
Jesus did not invent tithing as it was later known
Well, every sin is just about selfishness if you think about it long enough.
not really, every sin is about pride. It’s a fine but significant distinction. I.e. a purely selfish person has no reason to be envious in a distinct sense from being greedy.
Wanting more vs having more. Not the same.
I don’t think that’s true, unless someone wants to find a better source. But the bible passages listed on Wikipedia are pretty clearly about food.
Wow there are some silly reasons for gluttony:
Eating at the wrong time
Wanting a particular food
Enhancing taste of food
Enjoying taste of food
Having opinions about food preparation
Liking Eating food
Making bad trades for foodAlthough some of these feel made up. Someone doing one of these and then eventually dying doesn’t mean it was caused by gluttony, but there are examples in the wiki where that’s the case. Others feel like cases of ‘committing other sins while interacting with food or while it is around’ and someone tried to make it about the food
Yeah, these are made up. The Bible is a higher authority than the opinions of saints.
- Eating before the time of meals.
This is specifically for eating before a meal. But 1 Corinthians 11:34 says that if you’re hungry, you should eat at home before a group meal so that you’re not hogging food at the meal. - Seeking better quality foods.
The example given was the Israelites complaining about the food they were given. That doesn’t mean you can’t take food you have access to. - Preparing food better.
Matthew 5:13 - “But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?” Jesus clearly saw the value in seasoning. - Eating more than you need.
It is true that you should eat in moderation. I don’t know if it’s a sin, but Proverbs has a few things to say about it. But the example given here was Sodom, whose sins included gluttony. Or rather, gluttony while there were poor people. Overeating at the expense of others is different from just overeating. - Taking food too eagerly.
If it’s to the point of idolizing food (prioritizing it over God and His causes,) then yes. But if you’re at a friend’s house and they bring out mac & cheese and you cheer, there’s nothing wrong with that. Y’know, as long as you’re not being crazy like snatching it out of their hands.
- Eating before the time of meals.
My god Gordon Ramsey will be furious with that list.
Those are all careful designed to control people in one way or another. Tired of people so concerned by food that it’s all they talk about while you keep it all? Say the magic man in the sky made it illegal
or maybe when you live in a society without great surplus and supermarkets managing food stores (espacilly during the winter) is a matter of life and death
Deadly sins are not in bible, but a later invention in catholic church
Same thing with naming the wise men. The Catholic Church made up a ton of stuff.
Whate are their names?
Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar.
Where they got those names, nobody knows. All the biblical record says is that there were multiple, so it could’ve been 2, 3, 10, whatever.
I bet they played Chrono Trigger.
Yeah, they written multiple books about it
I think the closest thing is Proverbs 6:16-19,(went with… NIV I guess?) Haughty eyes A false/lying tongue Hands that shed innocent blood A heart that devises wicked schemes Feet that are quick to rush to evil False witness who pours out lies And… a person who sturs up conflict in the community.
I grew up JW so NWT had different wording, but most of those are lies, attitude, and people who start shit. The most specific one would be the innocent murder and lying ones.
So, like avada kedavra?
More like hocus popus
Popus pokus? What else are those priests getting shell-gamed for?
Gotta remember that back when the things that make up the Bible were written, fat people were pretty synonymous with wealth. Hard to get fat when you barely have any food.
Fat ladies were prized possessions as they were a sign of nobility.
That’s still the case in many poorer countries.
depends on how poor, there are also a lot of poor countries with obesity problems, because people there can only afford trash like fast food
Sure, but even then, there’s often a distinction between being a little chubby (good) and being obese (bad). It’s that cultural carry over from when only the wealthy could afford it.
a little chubby is also good in my first world book, I think it’s some kind of instinct, since a chubby woman would have no problem nourishing a fetus, even during winter. She also wouldn’t have trouble with breast feeding
This is unfortunately not true, but like the Bible the deadly sins were made up. An omnipresent being with no concept of humanity and life wouldn’t give two sharts if you had some ice cream twice in a day
An omnipresent being with no concept of humanity and life
Whose Bible were you reading?
Some Christian denominations don’t follow the trinity and consider Jesus and God as completely separate beings, with Jesus being the only creation God did without going through Jesus (only begotten son). For anyone who learned based on that, God couldn’t possibly have experienced human life, though at least the ones I’m familiar with God still uses Jesus as more the judge than himself.
I don’t think that quite lines up with the Bible, but even then, God is still omniscient and would have knowledge (and thus a concept) of humanity and life even if He didn’t experience it firsthand.
If you want the Logos doctrine, I can serve it hot and hot. before he was begotten he was not.
A bit of a tangent but the year of jubilee is an interesting concept in the Torah. The idea is every 49 years they did an economic reset. Slaves were freed, debts forgiven, and land returned.
Unsurprisingly the concept was very appealing to enslaved people. During the US Civil War, many enslaved folks used it as a justification and rallying cry to escape to the north. In Defense of Looting argues that this was one of the most effective instances of mass political theft in history. This also had the effect of hollowing out the South’s economy, swelling the North’s military ranks, and scaring the shit out of racists everywhere.
I don’t think reconstruction would have gone as far as it did without this mass political action and the power it gave formerly enslaved people.
Moses originally had 3 tablets with the divine Commandments, but broke one in anger. A disciple would later recover a fragment, containing the start of the 13th Commandment: XIII THOU SHALT LIGMA…
Ligma?
It’s similar to updog
But what’s updog?
…I had to fight with autocorrect for like 3 minutes for this post
Nothing much you?
Valiant
It’s so sad that Steve Jobs died of divine retribution
Who the hell is Steve Jobs?
Thou shalt ligma what?
There really is a story about him breaking the old laws in anger at the worship of a golden calf and bringing new laws.
Such a coincidence that story happened to parallel the alleged reforms of Josiah who got rid of the golden calf worship in Bethel and Dan while instituting new laws he ‘discovered’ excavating the temple.
God (or at least his editors) truly do work in mysterious ways
You mean which rulers decided peasants eating enough was a sin.
Yo mama
