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[Empyrean Heaven]

No shock here that Catholics would be against the plan, Pope John Paul II was very much into opening up relations with other religions and frequently met with high end rabbis and imams, really opening up relations between the Catholic church, Jews, and Muslims.

Also, I'm a Catholic and I'm a Democrat, so there you go.

Now, let me hear from a high-end Baptist, Presbyterian, or Methodist minister, and we'll likely get a different story.

Here's what I think.

I am a Christian, but I am also a black man, the son of immigrants. What I see of Christians today, especially the #MAGA or America First kind, is not the Christianity espoused in the Bible, but the Cultural Christianity Reichard Spencer spoke of. When they speak of healing their country, they speak of White Ascendancy, White Power, White America.

These are the kind of people who try to "heal" gay people with "conversion camps," who want the power to legally persecute and ostracize them. The kind who see all Muslims as suspects, as potential radicals just waiting to break. The kind who see Hispanic/Latin people as moochers here to steal their resources (ironic, considering Imperialism). Who see black people as thugs and vagabonds and welfare cases, druggies and listless individuals who would get ahead if they just buckled down and pulled on those bootstraps.

These are the kinds of people who had no problem leaving Sunday service and finding niggers to lynch. Who had no problem jailing, beating, torturing, burning, strangling, bombing, and straight up slaughtering black men and women for daring to claim the promise of equal rights under the law. Because America was their God-given inheritance, a gift to the ennobled White man, who was meant to guide the world from his lighthouse of a country.

This is what you face off against. Christians who couldn't care less about the actual word of God, unless it plays to their own agenda of domination. Christians who, above all else, desperately lust for the power of the State to remake the country in their own image. Christians who will demand conformity or issue persecution. Christians who will excuse all manner of immorality and evil, simply to achieve their goals. The ends justify the means, and as history has shown, the means are unspeakable evils.

America is the Cultural Christian's heaven on earth. That's why they fight as desperately as they do for "their country." The little part of the gospels where Jesus talks about returning to take back all who believe (Jew, Gentile, Free, Slave, Black, White), is conveniently ignored.

Christ is ashamed of these so-called "followers." Which is why He said he'd be handing out Ls to people who will scream that they did what they did in His name. "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you." Cultural Christians have fashioned a god after their own likeness, and the original will have much to say about that.

This isn't a riff against White people. This is a riff against "White-above-all" people.

Bingo. God preached love above all other emotions, something modern Christian fundamentalists seem to have forgotten, apparently feeling more comfortable cherry-picking the works of the Bible they feel best support their argument. Once again, God is seen as an angry, vengeful deity who requires total devotion and perfection from his followers and anything short of that means straight to hell with you boy. And also feel free to rip on non-believers, they are evil people so they deserve shame and bullying.

Oh, and guns. Buy lots of guns.

 

[TheOctodad]

I highly recommend the book How God Changes Your Brain by Andrew Newberg. He's a agnostic and did some great research on how your brain develops based on your beliefs.

Some interesting things he discusses is how an image of a vengeful and hateful God create neural pathways that reinforce the fight or flight mechanism in our brain and lead to increased tribalistic tendencies.

However, meditation and an image of a loving God actually suppress these feelings and increase empathy and love for all people. It decreases the ability for your fight or flight mechanism to fire and instead defaults to patience and understanding.

Here's the issue. The Jesus of Christianity is definitely in the latter category. If you create a religion around Christ first and the gospels you are going down a good road to being a human that increases your capacity for love and empathy.

But if you buy into the more "Angry God" images of the Old Testament, use Jesus as a footnote - you'll be in the former category.

I get it, but to call the "Angry God" Theology "Christian" - meaning "like Jesus Christ" -seems fundamentally flawed.