In apocryphal gospels, Mary Magdalene was an apostle, and one of the most important ones. In order to believe that the gospels which were compiled to become the bible were “divinely inspired” and not selected (and edited) by the fucking Romans for political reasons, you have to be either dangerously naive or have an agenda.
Yeah but if you’re already at that point, chances are you’re just going to go a step further and not care about what books were included or not because it’s all bullshit.
Just dropping in to note that I have read about some really cool feminist and women centered interpretations of many major religions over the years. Women are actively combating this sort of thing from within every religious community and there’s a long, uplifting history of it going back to the beginning. Gives me happy feelings to know.
This man deserves every ounce of respect that he gets, all of it earned.
If a human can choose how to interpret holy text however they want and there isn’t an immediate response from a diety for interpreting them wrong, the texts must not really matter.
I mean, sort of?
Jesus flipping tables and scolding merchants is cool, whether he’s the son of God or not.
Imagine if someone became a really popular influencer pushing similar teachings as Jesus, and just started raising shit with their modern millions of followers. Be an interesting WP prompt
Conservatives would literally call him a communist
If Jesus was alive today, he’d be crucified again by the Religious Right.
You put into words how I’ve felt for a long time. What is the cause of their blindness?
[Warning: ridiculous existential musings incoming from your question. I lost someone recently and I’m questioning everything.]
What if the Religious Right is some kind of modern-day antithesis to the Tree of Knowledge, its grotesquely interwoven branches of congregants luring others to eat from, and live within, their Tree of True Evil?
What if, at the Fall, Adam and Eve were merely releasing themselves from their creator and captor, from God himself, through eating the forbidden fruit? And that Eden was no utopia, it was really just a prison?
What if God is the bad guy here? And the Religious Right are a reflection of God’s actual being and not the God described so perfectly in Scripture?
What if God is now manifesting himself through the Religious Right, rather than Scripture, to convince more of his “children” to return to his “watchful” guard, to be rewarded in Heaven, to live with Him, in Him, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, all Glory is Yours Almighty Father, forever and eeeeveeer??
I mean, he put us here, right? Why can’t he just stop the whole thing in its tracks? Or … Maybe he doesn’t have all the power in this sticky Creation situation? Maybe…
Wait. Why does God sound like a scumbag ex?
Guys, what if we have it all backwards?
What if we have a Mom God, and Dad God just made up that bullshit about the rib to explain away any questions about a possible Mom God, let alone ever giving her a written word? (I made her, so I speak for her.)
What if we’re in the middle of some sort of nasty interuniversal deity custody dispute??? Maybe Mom God didn’t want us to suffer, so we were emancipated, and our entire existence was supposed to be Deity-Free, but Dad God couldn’t handle not having control, taxing the shit out out of us with biblical directives even he doesn’t follow, instead of receiving some secure attachment to Mom God via knowledge of the physical realities of this world.
Is Dad God just looking to yank all his kids back, and I mean all of them, no matter how willing or unwilling they are to go home with Almighty Daddy? But he can’t, because he can’t just rapture us outright, or the jig is up, and so we have to live according to see who gets lucky enough to stay at his house and drink all the Holy Mountain Dew and eat all the Holy Hot Pockets we can guzzle down?
What if the Devil isn’t a fallen angel at all, but actually Mom God being slandered and literally demonized by Daddy? And Mom God was only here trying to bring us knowledge of our own autonomy and ability, to set us free?
… Maybe Dad God is only trying to get more child support so he can buy more simulators on Steam and never actually play them because he’s greedy and lazy and every other deadly sin he likes to project onto us. I mean, we were made in his image, right? No wonder everyone is capable of inhumanity. Dude wants to keep us locked up. That seems pretty inhumane.
Yet he says he is perfect. “Yeeahhh, everything wrong you filthy humans is because of that damned snake in the tree!!!” No, we were always the way we were, Dad God, that “damned devil” was just trying to help us get out from under God’s graceless grace.
We are a forgotten Steam sim, mommy tried, and daddy never loved us.
ahhhhh im so high sorry guys
Edit: apparently I can’t spell deity.
I recognize this kind of high. The cannabis thought rabbit hole goes deep. Sometimes it is enjoyable to go down it, other times it isn’t. I’m sorry for your loss, but know Love is out there. No matter the state of the world we can heal from it
Cool in concept.
Problem is Jesus is just a fairy tale, like King Arthur or Robin Hood.
Robin Hood, also cool.
Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
I prefer the view of the peasants in Monty Python. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Yeah, I mean, just because some moistened tart loved a sword at him…
Weren’t they an autonomous anarchical commune or something (or so they thought)?
Fair points.
If only certain things matter, then nothing matters. I prefer a God who lets us be free.
Does your preference matter?
- maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
- maybe your view of the response as only immediate is too limiting
- just playing devil’s advocate here since you made some pretty big assumptions
maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
If the intended interpretation of a text is “respect women” and you instead interpret the text as “you can own women”, then you have interpreted the text incorrectly.
but there is no way to know what the “intended” interpretation is. and often interpretations beyond the original creator’s intent are still valuable and valid
I agree. There is definitely cases where it is impossible to know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t wrong ways to interpret something.
You can be wrong without it being possible to know.
Religious people, and women in particular, seem to really love participating in their own oppression. Hell, look at the amount of shit Catholics have to ignore in order to keep attending services and paying money to those bastards every Sunday in good conscience.
Yes, that’s what happens when you’re indoctrinated from birth.
this isn’t limited to religious people
While Jesus himself is overwhelmingly sympathetic to women, the bible’s later chapters (specifically those written by Paul) are pretty clear on how women ought to be treated. So while you could technically interpret it as exalting women, any religious leader turning to the bible with a specific question of how to behave will be more likely to find those later chapters with direct answers more appealing.
That’s just all religions thought. They all are abusive and manipulative.
Some might have a different stance on women but none are worthy of existence.
how is judaism abusive and manipulative? attending regular services brings me a sense of inner peace, aligns my actions with my beliefs, and connects me with my community
All religions, no exceptions. To kick things off with the lowest of low hanging fruit: your religion practices male genital mutilation.
But the abuse, manipulations and control go all the way through from patriarchal hierarchies to an “exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation;”
Which is to say cult brainwashing techniques used by any religion from Judaism to Mormonism to Hinduism. From the Branch Davidians to the Sumerian high priesthood: humans have never ceased using the 0-days of the human mind to exploit and manipulate their fellow man.
Does that mean religions can only do evil? Of course not. I’m glad you get a sense of connection and peace from it.
But that connection and peace serves to perpetuate the primeval toxic hierarchy. You’ll raise your kids on it. Make sure they believe it from a young age. After all - “Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) You gotta get em young or they’ll never believe when they’re old.
You know that religious people have different beliefs and varying practices and varying relationships to institutions, right? Criticize specific institutions if you want, but don’t be an asshole.
Religious people are part of the religion but not the whole.
As demonstrated by my previous comment: it is the religion that is the problem, not people finding camaraderie or community therein. I’m glad the previous commenter finds solace but it is important to call out that mechanism is exploited by the religion itself to propagate.
You cannot fully separate a religion and the religious. Without the religious a religion has died.
It would be best if all religions died: the religious that keep them alive are good people who have been misled.
You think you’re punching up. You’re not. You’re conflating a vast group of people and their heterodox cultural practices with your imagined idea of them and labeling all of it bad, in a performatively condescending way that pretends to be altruistic. Other peoples’ relationship to their spirituality is not cool to be shitty about. ‘Get rid of all religion’ is vaguely genocidal and also would not even make a dent in the persistent human problem of abusive and manipulative groups existing.
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Hey I saw that other post you meant to reply to, nice of the Home Depot cashier to show concern for our beleaguered hero.
Oops, lol
We’ve all done it
I love JC, but words mean definitive things
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent
There are no alternative interpretations, only self delusions to protect yourself from bigger questions
There are in fact at least two alternative explanations on this: (1) Paul is issuing a general decree that in absolute terms means women must never have authority in any situation ever at any time; (2) this is a local issue specific to Israel at the time because Jews believed women shouldn’t have authority, and the Church allowing them to would bring it into disrepute, so this was fitting in with the local society. The second interpretation also ties in with Paul’s “all things to all people” teaching. Also Paul in other places specifically notes the difference between “I, not the Lord…”, and “The Lord, not I…”, and this line states “–I-- do not permit…”, suggesting this is from Paul rather than an ultimate directive from above.
youve added a whole lot of words that arent there.
Religious texts are a choose your own adventure book, even for the fundamentalists that endorse the parts like that. All believers intentionally leave room for whatever they like.
some christians discount old testament for anything but historical purposes and consider jesus a new covenant. So the interpretation of that is it does not apply to the modern world.
This is actually a lie perpetuated by the Wiccan Cultists (the Rape cult yes). They demonize men in order to get stupid women on their side, since anyone capable of earning a bachelors degree would only join them for power grabs, they simply applied to the lowest common denominator. If what this statement was saying is true, then domestic abuse rates would be higher under religion. It’s not, it’s about average for society, so religion has very little bearing on how stupid women are treated, it’s actually all about them just being too stupid to change a tire, but somehow still allowed to vote. They think they’re entitled to their brain dead actions, and I despise every last one of you(Wiccan rape cult and supporters). I look forward to dragging you in front of everyone for your trials.
Congrats you’ve fallen into a common stats trap!
You can’t know what the average is for the hypothetical society to which you are comparing despite that being the optimal way to compare. If you were to actually attempt this comparison, you would take two comparable societies that differ only in religious adherence, controlling for non religious cultural things (hint: you can’t separate those easily if at all). And even if you did manage that, you’ve only shown correlation, not causation. Proving the latter is much harder.
If it sounds like I’m agreeing with you, I’m not! I’m saying you cannot know one way or another. But your inane, tautological statement of “the average domestic abuse rates for society are about average” drove me to inform others of how terrible this argument is. You’re clearly a lost cause.
If you want to prove your point, don’t try stats, you’re bad at it. Go for a logical argument, though I suspect you’re bad at that too.
We was surprised that Hezbollah used pagers, a thing so outdated that only some select professions still use it, but we choose to navigate our lives following a 2k years old scripture.
I think it’s not accurate to call pagers outdated. There’s a reason those professions still use them and it’s not just because old habits die hard or something.
