feotakahari | Entries tagged with christianity

Thinking about this one Christian song I heard years and years ago. It starts off being about Abraham and Isaac. Then it starts lecturing non-Christians to stop being barbarians who sacrifice each other, because God declared human sacrifice was wrong. I don’t think it was parody, but when he went “I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can,” I went “Jesus H. Christ.”

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In the past, I’ve seen “you’re empty and hollow without your blood ancestors’ culture, even if you think you aren’t” used in alarmingly similar ways to “you’re empty and hollow without Christianity, even if you think you aren’t.”

Conservative Christianity is what happens when you can’t recognize the is-ought gap. God is capable of doing anything to you, so there’s an immediate jump to the idea that God ought to be able to do anything God wants. It’s unsurprising that so many of these people think they ought to be able to do anything they want to children who depend on them for care.

People who’ve spent entirely too much time arguing with Christians often propose a question they’d ask God. Something like “why botflies?”

I recognize that every question I might want to ask has been asked throughout history. There’s no need to state it again. So I’d simply listen.

One thing I like about Catholicism: when they think someone is wrong about the Bible, they categorize the wrongness and name it according to someone who was famously wrong in that way, like Marcionism or Apollinarism. I feel like we should do that with more things. Like, the Gambler’s Fallacy should be named after an actual gambler.

(Troll voice: ”Marxism.”)

If God is that which will follow you through every form of suffering and never abandon you or stop loving you, then does that mean "Misery Loves My Company" is actually a Christian song?

(There's definitely a sense in which the overall ethos of Three Days Grace is the evil twin to Red.)

"Sin has qualities of a mistake or messing up (ἁμαρτία), but far more than that it is the breaking of relationship. The Fall was the breaking of the relationship between God and humanity, but because the relationship between God and humanity is literally the center and purpose of all creation, the effects of this rupture spiral outward: humanity is separated from God, the relationship between man and woman is splintered, and the harmony between humanity and the rest of the non-human world disappears. Although humanity is never abandoned, there is a real and important sense in which we are stranded on the far side of a chasm we are not capable of breaching, and no one on our side of the chasm can quite reach each other, either."

Without us, you will be alone. This is the vilest lie that Christians tell, and many other lies spring from it. Without us, you will be empty. Without us, you won't know right from wrong. Without us, you will never understand what love means. And of course, with us, you will no longer suffer, and you will be united with something that truly loves you and understands you.

This is how you look at two men who love each other, and say they'll be so much better off if they're apart. God is love, and their actions aren't favored by God, so what they feel must not be love at all. To break it is no sorrow, but merely the creation of a new and better bond that will make them happier than they would ever otherwise be. Then you're surprised when they kill themselves.*

This is how you look at a distant tribe, and say they'll be so much better off as your slaves. Their practices are strange and heathen, and the true God could never be found in their worship. In your service, you will show them the way, and you will redeem them into the Christian bond that will make them understand God's love. Then you're surprised when they burn your house down.

This is how you claim to unity while breaking down the entire world into those who are like you and those who must learn. This is how you claim to empathy while refusing to understand the people you say must change. This is how you build upon yourself like a spreading virus, with a society where everyone learns to be like you and talk like you and say the same things you say, because they know what will happen if they differ. This is how you slowly strangle the woman who wants to lead, the child who wants to learn, and the man who wants some actual choices in his life. This is how you become a stain upon this world and convince yourself you're bringing paradise. This is your lie, and I refuse to let it stand unchallenged.

*The Captive Mind observes how the Soviets argued that in the modern world, all art other than pro-Soviet art was incapable of having meaning. Then they did their best to create a society in which it was impossible for artists to create and share meaningful art that wasn't pro-Soviet art. There's a similar mechanism in trying to make it as hard as possible for gay people to sustain romantic relationships, all the while saying that gay people aren't really in love.

I saw a Catholic blog describe what they thought “winning” would look like. One of their ideas of a win would be abortion clinics closing down for lack of customers. This is … I tried to think of a more polite phrasing than “detached from reality,” but there doesn’t seem to be a polite way to say that. But it’s detached from reality in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s intentionally malicious. I think it explains both why other people tend to interpret the religious right as genocidal, and why the religious right is always so baffled at the idea that anyone could think they want genocide.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m something of a collector of accounts of pregnancy complications. Sometimes the fetus is already dead and rotting, and the woman risks hemorrhage if she doesn’t abort. Sometimes, the newborn baby won’t be able to breathe outside the womb. I once read about a case where he would live, but would be unable to move his arms and legs and would also have incurable chronic pain.

Let’s be clear; the women who would give birth in these circumstances are not voluntary customers of abortion clinics, in the same sense that I’m not a voluntary customer when I go to the doctor to stop my immune system from ripping me apart from the inside. That’s why they tend to assume that Catholics and other right-wing Christian groups want to punish women for having pregnancy complications. I have seen feminist sites openly state that Christians think women who have fatal pregnancy complications deserved to die.

Except this Christian does not think women who have pregnancy complications should all die. They* think there’s a possible world, with no changes in medical technology, where women don’t want to get abortions at all. The only way I can think of to explain this is that they’re genuinely ignorant that these women exist.**

Now I’m going out on a limb here, because I’ve never seen OP talk about gender issues and have no idea what they think on the subject. But I’ve seen other people who have similar opinions to OP who are very invested in the idea that science supports two binary genders. If a scientist of any stripe argues that gender is not binary, they do their best to argue that the scientist’s credentials are invalid or irrelevant and the argument does not represent mainstream science.

I recently saw a blog post where someone speculated about a possible future where he*** is fired from his job and disallowed from getting Medicare because a DNA test shows he’s intersex. I wanted to grab him and shake him. “These people can’t DNA test you! They can’t live in a world where you are physically and provably intersex! They need to believe that everyone is innately male or female and chooses to defy that!”

I’m not saying these beliefs are harmless. If you think that all people can be straight, you assume responsibility for all the people who killed themselves because they couldn’t be straight. But I think OP lives in a simpler world than I do, and I think if you wanted to argue with OP, you would have to find a way to make their world more complicated.

*No pronouns are listed on their blog.

**I once saw someone say that they oppose abortion of dead fetuses because God might work a miracle. For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to assume this person is not typical.

***I don’t remember the blog name, so I can’t check pronouns, but I do remember OP is male-passing.

I just figured out how to word the difference between Utilitarianism and several strains of Christianity. Obligatory Not All Christians, but it can be found under enough names that I can’t pin it to any specific denomination.

The standard Christian approach to pain and trauma is “I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole.” (Or alternately phrased, you have a hole in your heart, and you’ll fill your hole with Jesus.) This tends to presume not only that Christianity is necessary to make you whole, and not only that those who are not Christians are not whole, but that people who are whole are all whole in the same way. There is a model of what a Christian should be, and if no human being meets that model, that just means that all human beings are flawed. The closer humans get to overcoming their flaws, the closer they come to being identical in nature and behavior.

(I once saw two people arguing over whether Heaven was a place of self-improvement or a place of peaceful rest. The one who said it was a place of rest told the one who thought it was a place of self-improvement that it was their earthly nature that made them think Heaven could be anything other than a place of rest, and once they ascended to the true perfection of a soul in Heaven, they would see how silly it was to believe that Heaven could be a place of self-improvement. Unspoken was the idea that different people could naturally be suited to different, equally valid Heavens.)

Utilitarianism isn’t well-suited to this approach, since it’s ultimately about happiness, and you can observe that there are people who are different from each other and are happy. Mill went this route by claiming that some forms of happiness are better than others, and it’s possible to argue that people who don’t buy into your particular bugbear aren’t truly happy, but most Utilitarians have to concede that different people need different things. This means that whether you’re “in pieces” depends on whether or not you feel like you’re blocked from being happy. People don’t need to be shaped and standardized, so long as they’re in the shape they want to be.

If you live what you consider to be a Godly life, there isn’t anything wrong with that. What makes you happy is up to you. For that matter, if someone else is unhappy with their life, the sort of life you live may work better for them. But you need to acknowledge that some people will be more happy and fulfilled not trying to be like you.

I’m someone who complains a lot about Christianity, which means I hear a lot from Christians who insist they’re not like those other Christians. Those other Christians are bigots and hypocrites, but not them! And they’re not doing anything to harm me, so why am I saying all this stuff about “Christians” like it applies to all Christians?

Personally, I’m past the point of caring. When I interact with people who’re talking in terms of what Christian moral values ask of them, those interactions are usually negative for me and my friends. If you’re not causing harm to me or my friends, you’re probably not someone who’s pushing Christian moral values in my direction without prompting, so I’m not really interested in whether you’re a Christian or not.

But I also sometimes look at a news site for black people. The news site tends to talk as if the only people in the world are black people and white people, and white people are all complicit in hurting black people. Even news stories about white people trying to help combat racism against black people are framed as the white person wanting attention and brownie points rather than really caring about black people.

When someone (usually a self-described white person) posts that not all white people are like that, the usual response from regular posters is that they don’t care. Their interactions with white people, even white people who claim to be against racism, are often based in bigotry, paternalism, and condescending compassion. If you say you’re a white person who isn’t bigoted, your statement doesn’t do anything to reduce the bigotry they encounter every day.

To be honest, spending any amount of time on that news site pisses me off. I’m of mixed heritage, but most of my experiences with other people are in the context of them thinking of me as white. I’ve had almost every form of white privilege that’s available to someone of my socioeconomic status. But I don’t think I’m as bigoted as they say white people are, and I feel frustrated that there doesn’t seem to be anything I could possibly do to not be seen as part of the problem.

If there’s a distinction I can make, it’s that I don’t care one way or another whether you wear a cross or go to church on Sunday. It’s not directly relevant to me, and I won’t make a big deal out of it unless you get in my face by trying to make me act like a good Christian. But I’m not sure that’s enough of a distinction to keep me from being a hypocrite.

The free world… all of Christendom… is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all.

-Congressman Clay Higgins, U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd District of Louisiana

If I lived in a country run by Muslims, I’d probably care a lot more when people argued about whether Islam is a bad thing.

If I lived in a country where Muslims wrote the laws, I’d have to care what the Muslims in question considered punishable by death. For that matter, I’d have to care whether they believed in the death penalty at all! I’d have to care whether they let women go out without a hijab, or what they did to women convicted of adultery. But I live in a country where Christians write the laws, and if I’m ever put to death, it will most likely be by Christians.

If I lived in a country where Muslims directed the culture, I’d have to care what they considered inappropriate. I’d have to care if people discriminated against me for not praying, or if they thought it was un-Islamic to drink alcohol. It would matter to me if people disliked my fiction for going against Muslim values, or if they disliked my blog for supporting things good Muslims shouldn’t support. But I live in a country where the culture is set by Christians, and when people who think they’re righteous say things that horrify me, they’re usually quoting what the Bible told them.

If I criticize Christianity a lot, that’s not because I think Christianity is worse than Islam. Nor do I think it’s better, or exactly the same, because I don’t know or care enough to say any of those things. But when people say that America is adopting “Sharia law” or “surrender tactics,” a little research usually reveals that they’ve got the wrong end of the stick. America is a Christian country, no matter how much I wish it weren’t, and when I talk about America, I have no choice but to talk about Christianity.