The central issue … after 2000 years the story becomes what ever you want it to be…
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Evangelical Christianity is a cult. They use cult tactics to recruit, and they keep them in an environment they control completely. The reason they have political power is that they are tax free, and despite it being entirely illegal, they openly advocate for a political party. Applying the plain law as it stands would gut their church altogether. Better yet, characterise those at the southern border as Christians and you will see the true Protestant church arise, condemning Catholics as not being Christian at all. Take that idea to their voting bloc and religious influence in politics is dead overnight.
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If we would only admit we were sentient animals we could establish that the human eye is limited in its ability to perceive contrast. And that by the time a cop, wearing sunglasses of course, looks into the average very dark interior of a car, they have little chance of discerning what a darker skinned driver is doing. This is the grande malle insufficiency of the animal writ large. Don’t get me started on how the whites of the eye against a dark skin makes people look surprised and therefore guilty. Humanity is stupifyingly ignorant, and never more so than in their fatuous and self serving opinions.
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We could analyze CRT at a local level here in Jackson Heights. There were restrictive covenants until the 1940’s. When Black WWII and Korean War veterans came back from service they had issues using their GI bill benefits and securing federally backed mortgages. Obviously folks like Fred Trump wouldn’t rent or sell to them hence the first integrated co-op the Dory Miller in Corona.
When the schools were integrated in 64 there was an uproar over what was called the Princeton plan that created magnet schools in the three neighborhoods. There were folks who opposed the plan like in the post Brown v Board south tried to create their own academies.
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Are we talking, say, Mexican Christians here too? Or is that really mainly American Christians?
If you want to make their heads explode, tell them that Jesus wasn’t a Christian but a Jew.
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We need to remind Evangelicals the following:
Your God is a jealous God. Covid is striking down Evangelicals due to the sin of pride.
When you hear that “God will protect you”; that is what Satan told Jesus during his temptation (Matthew 4).
As a reminder Evangelicals - Jesus didn’t say Hey yall, watch this!; he did not say Hold my beer! He said Do not tempt the Lord.
You plague rats are tempting the Lord. And that is why you are dying by the bucket load.
The sin of Pride isn’t getting Evangelicals into the Kingdom of Heaven; quite the opposite.
I suspect by the time the '22 elections roll around, covid will have taken out around a half million republicans.
And I am ok with that…
Bonus points for reminding them that when sick, they are to cover their upper lip with cloth
(Leviticus 13:45). Don’t forget to yell Unclean, Unclean .
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I see your first problem, expecting them to know Bible verse that doesn’t talk about how great and righteous they are.
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Tell me about it.
As the family heathen, I am the only one that has actually read the book.
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I hated “the book”! The hero died and the world was later destroyed. Who writes books like that?
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I’m not sure how anyone manages to read it without seeing it for what it is, as a collection of Bronze-age stories, no different than Hesiod or Homer (with a few fewer demigods in the mix). The ritual to honor Yahweh described in the Bible (which no one seems to follow anymore) is practically identical to how the Hellenic people prayed to Zeus and his brethren.
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Not a coincidence?
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Obama.
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For the Dirty South, it is better to read “Let my people go” than to do it.
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"In the words of evangelical pastor and theologian Voddie Baucham: “Critical race theory is at odds with Christianity because it takes the problem of racism out of the individual heart and puts it out there somewhere in systems and structures.”
No idea who this is or whether they are an honest broker of Christian belief or just another white evangelical right wing nutjob, etc., but there IS something to what is said there. It just tries too hard to dichotomize the issue though…make it an either-or instead of a both-and. It’s really a both-and. And the problem is this: if you oversimplify it with this idea that evangelicals have a problem with CRT just because it puts the onus on systems and institutions outside the hearts and souls of men and thereby somehow fails to address the problem at its root, you’re missing the forest for the trees about who these people really are and what they believe. They have a problem with the institutional approach because they believe those institutions are theirs and their creations, and reducing it down to hearts of men" is a way of avoiding the obvious indictment of them, their culture, their beliefs, etc., if something they own and created is chock full of racism.
The white Christian evangelical cultural conundrum in this country is that they want to claim creator-ship, ownership and credit for all of our systems and institutions. This is a “krischun nashun” founded “krischun valyooz”, created in god’s name and bequeathed by god to its white Christian founders to hold forever dominion over it as the base of operations for spreading and enforcing the word and logos, bringing the world into harmony under one religion blah blah fucking blah. While it is true that the systems and institutions at issue are indeed reflections of those who created it, there’s still a whole lot of brain damage involved in that warped narrative and belief that THEY ALONE are responsible for it all and its greatness and therefore its owners.
So, we yet again arrive at the identity issue: the country’s identity is THEIR identity and THEIR identity defines the country’s identity. THEY demand that equivalence. Ergo, admitting that the systems and institutions that comprise “the country” are inherently stained and wracked by racism IS THE EQUIVALENT of admitting that their forebears and, because of the perpetuation of it all, they themselves are ALSO stained and wracked by racism IN THEIR HEARTS…which they absolutely don’t want to admit or come to grips with under any circumstances. Introspection is not allowed…and no, introspection is not the same as ritualized prayer and what they call “reflection.” Moreover, if indeed the country was god’s will and given to them to define in god’s name, then admitting it is institutionally corrupted by racism would raise myriad questions, such as whether they’ve deviated from god’s plan by corrupting his gift to them OR EVEN whether god is somehow proven fallible for that kind of corruption to have happened at all.
This is all anathema to them and the equation of “country is racist so those who created and own and were given it by god must be racist too” HAS TO be avoided at all costs. Reducing it to platitudes about the hearts of men and aphorisms about the country or its gov’t simply being tools in the hands of either goodly or sinful men is the end-run…just like reducing the pedophilia issue to “bad priests” instead of admitting that there was something systemically corrupted in the Catholic Church itself was an end-run. Sure, it’s all cognitively dissonant and flirts with doublethink, maybe even some circular logic, but it really does all come down to “we define the country’s identity and the country’s identity is us, and we don’t want to admit we’re racist so you can’t call the country racist either, because it’s ours, given to us by god, we created it and only we can continue to define it…and besides, how dare you call god racist or imply that he could so fail by allowing it.”
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12 extra characters that provide nothing. Complete rewrite halfway through. Terrible.
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…and a total rip off of the Baghivagita narrative form.
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I tried to read it a couple of times in high school. I always flicked it in because I found it lacked any coherence or plot and was badly written. Tedious and boring!
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All those “begets” and “begots”, more twisted and confusing than Game of Thrones for lineages.
Definitely could use some major copy-editing.
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George R. R. Martin? LOL
Arguable, sure. I just borrowed from Jung’s forward to/essay about the Bhagavad Gita above…he talks alot in the forward about western brains being “either-or” and eastern brains being acculturated to finding it easier to accept conceptual “both-and” situations. Had a big influence on my thinking when I was younger, playing with psychedelics and reading stuff like that or things like Leary and Metzner taking the ego-death experience of a trip and relating it to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and “transcendence” etc. haha
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