Y’know, before we start talking about putting the Christ back into Christmas, maybe we ought to talk about putting the Christ back into Christians. Because there seems to be a whole lot of “Christians” today who aren’t very much into that whole Christ thing. Whether it’s voting for a pedophile because the pedophile is purportedly a born-again Christian (yeah right), or a teacher persecuting a boy for not being Christian, or this particularly disgusting case, a teacher at a Christian school secretly recording boys in the restroom, seems to be a lot of Christians nowadays who’ve forgotten about that whole Christ thing.
I mean, I haven’t read any passage in the Bible where Jesus Christ says “thou shalt persecute children for their parents’ religious beliefs” and “thou shalt record boys in the boy’s room.” Have you? Instead, all I read is all this hippy dippy stuff about love thy neighbor and even love thy enemy. Not exactly the sort of thing that modern “Christians” seem to do much of.
Yeah, today’s “Christians” annoy me. But that’s because I don’t like hypocrites. And that’s what people are if they profess to be Christian, but don’t really follow the teachings of Christ.
– Badtux the Annoyed Penguin
Religion, particularly Christianity, is the nice polish job on the boot of the tyrant as he stamps on the face of the people. Moore may be an outlier in that regard, but he is of the same cloth as people like George W. Bush.
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Oh, I’ve met some decent Christian people (note: Christian *without* the quotes). I’ve even met some decent Christian pastors. One of them was the head of the math department at one of the high schools I taught at. I didn’t even know he was a pastor until one of my coworkers called him “Brother Kazee” and I learned he was the Baptist minister at a small country church a dozen miles from the school. Definitely *not* one of those megachurch assholes, he was about teaching math, any teaching of Jesus he did was by example rather than word.
That said, the modern “Christian” denominations are pretty much a scam job by sociopathic lizard people who view their congregations as prey to be manipulated and used against other prey, not as fellow travellers in the human race. This is especially true when you rise up to the level of the “megachurches”.
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Great commentary, Badtux!
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I think it was G.K. Chesterton that wrote that it wasn’t that Christianity had been tried and found wanting; it had been found difficult and left untried.
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Gandhi was asked his opinion of Christianity, and said “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. They seem to have nothing to do with Christ.” From a man who saw it firsthand.
Also, why do these people want to put Christ back into Saturnalia? It was never a good fit. Trust me,
-Boris
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[…] Y’know, before we start talking about putting the Christ back into Christmas, maybe we ought to ta… […]
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I don’t buy the arguments here. We have no idea who Jesus really was or what he really said.. Jesus, if he existed, was obviously a typical cult leader who expected the world to end almost immediately. We have no idea what “he” said or did or wanted, because the Gospels were written decades and decades after his purported death. Many of the better teachings were late additions. other stuff is downright creepy.
Much of modern Christianity is actually “Paulism,” and Paul was a strange, strange dude.
Fundamentally, it proposes an omniscient, all powerful Deity who so mucked up His creation that almost every human being is foul in His pure sight. Whose fault is that-the all powerful Creator, or us contingent failed, mortals?
“Created sick, commanded to be well”.
It just seems so…unfair…to me. Fundamentally wicked.
And that is before we even get into the concept of eternal torture or hell. The scariest music in my extensive metal collection does not have some sociopathic Norwegian teenager growling. Nope. It’s a recording of what a typical American evangelical preacher says during his fire and brimstone rantings.
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