Okay, progressive and/or liberal (presumably small and Large “L”) Christians.
I despise being the bearer of bad news, but someone has to break it to you and since I don’t really have a dog in the fight, it might as well be me. Why not? So stand back, sit down and rock steady, because here it comes:
You’re not Real Christians.
Thus spake the haughty, the arrogant, the self-appointed arbiter of all that is Christian (and all that is not), Ste. Nitouche:
If Christianity were that easy, it weren’t [sic] be worth it. Why accept Christ only to live as if you never accepted him, as if he didn’t require anything of you? If you want a faith that isn’t “too hard”, just stay a non-believer. You can still dres [sic] up your faith in Christian symbolism if you like. But it’s not Christianity.
So ends the sermon post about the self-flagellating side of conservative Christianity, specifically where sex and chastity is concerned. Atheist animale that I am, it took a couple of reads to make sense of it, but here’s the gist: liberal (or Liberal) Christians can sacrifice time, money and energy doing good works and living their faith, worshipping God and Jesus, doing unto others appropriately and loving one another, but if they see no percentage in being certified hair shirt punishment freaks about sex, they don’t make the cut.
That sound about right?
Of course it’s always possible that God and JC really do care more about your sex life than they care about how you treat other people and animals and the earth, and whether you lie, cheat, steal, hate or kill things. But if they do, that’s, well, fucked up.
That said, I can’t say I’m unhappy when hyperconservative religious ideologues isolate themselves by insulting and rejecting those who might otherwise be allies. But that doesn’t stop me from being fascinated, in a purely anthropological sense, by the demented arrogance of it all.
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“Judge not, lest ye be judged” seems to be an appropriate response.
The operative observation is hyper-conservative and I admit to being facinated.
I grieve that God gets the blame.
Wheat and tares comes to mind.:^)
Seems to me that “faux Christians” are a lot more fun that those “real Christians”. And what would be the line seperating the two?
I think she lost it last week when she was defending the “fetus adopters”. That went way beyond creepy…
As a former evangelical who used to hear anti-Catholic diatribes ad nauseum “yes, [i]a few[/i] Catholics [i]might[/i] really be Christians, but we won’t know which ones until the hereafter…”, I find this to be particularly rich, albeit predictable.
Also, re the part about people not martyring themselves for lies, I wanna know if BBW includes Muslims in the category of “people”.
Speaking as one of those leftist Christians (well beyond “liberal,” actually, but I think I can still claim the C-word), well… there wasn’t much ground for an alliance there anyways.
If “JC” had really cared about the issue, you’d think he would have spent more time talking about it. Instead the sexual obsession from the “women are property” codes of the Old Testament and the “women are dangerous” fretting of the more reactionary letters from Paul. If someone wants to claim them as their spiritual inspiration, well, I guess that’s fine, but it seems kind of silly.
“It’s always possible God and JC really do care more about your sex life …”
Maybe God and JC really do care about our sex lives. Maybe they want us to have free, joyous, fun, caring, responsible, sex. Maybe they don’t want us to be sexually repressed or controlled at all. And maybe, along with that, they want our hearts to be wide open so that we fully feel and are able to treat other people and animals and the earth very well indeed, and don’t lie, cheat, steal, hate, or kill things. And maybe they don’t care if we don’t subscribe to any religion, maybe they just want us to get it that the way we truly want to live is the way they also want us to live.
Sexual repression destroys people. It makes them terrible, makes them hate, and makes them harm themselves and also others. There was so much wonderful stuff written in the past century about the profound damage it does to people. The classics, once you strip away their dated contexts, were right about a bunch o’ stuff, y’know? Freud, A.S. Neill, Wilhelm Reich … they’re still right.
Nah, SHE lost it when she defended the Catholic Church’s mistreatment of the raped 9-year-old in Brazil and then gleefully posted Gingi the Unihngied’s dancing on the graves of Irving Feldkamp’s family in the space of about a week.
Scott – Actually, they’ve got numerous comebacks for the oft-repeated “Judge not” accusation. But I think it might be one of those “this doesn’t mean what you think it means” situations.
Then again, what do I know
Bene D – Wheat & tares, good analogy (and a pretty perceptive parable, if I recall correctly).
SQ
No, the story of the little Brazilian girl was the breaking point IMO. Madness, utter madness.
brebis – Yeah, no kidding eh? I wondered if it was worth mentioning that a lot of fundie protestants consider Catholics to be some kind of weird cultists. But I’m sure she knows that — check out the “Religion” forum at FD sometime, they fight like cats & dogs
Rev Dave – Admittedly, I don’t know much about religious doctrine. But I think a lot of the more intrusive personal stuff was just added on later by frustrated old freaks who wanted everyone to be as miserable as they were.
Like contraception — did JC ever say that contraception was bad? No, but some Pope somewhere along the line didn’t like it, thus it became part of conservative Catholicism. Ridiculous!
So. A careful (though nauseating) reading of Blob Blogging Wingnut’s posts reveal that HER discourse against the poor, non-fundamentalists, pro-choice advocates of any religious belief, ethnic ancestry or political allegiance, feminists, and progressives are malevolent, hateful, meretricious, strident, mean-spirited and judgemental.
Is it any wonder that SHE would justify HER actions and words by proclaiming that SHE treads the higher ground and that Jesus intended human beings to suppress their humanity and to behave in accordance with the Vatican Taliban dictates that SHE follows diligently?
orange – Well said. Anything’s possible
Some people just like the idea of an authoritarian, controlling, vengeful god who makes reams of rules covering every aspect of a person’s life and who’ll give you a godly asskicking if you don’t toe the line.
If that was the case, why would god bother giving people free will?
Besides, I thought the stray lamb was the most beloved, or something like that.
JAB – I agree 100% — that’s where I sort of recoiled in fear and disgust.
deBeauxOs – I can see her being judgmental towards liberal Catholics, her type thinks that liberal Catholics aren’t real Catholics, the Winnipeg statement is heresy and any attempt to modernize the church is the work of Santa.
But to make a sweeping statement like that, that liberal Christians are not real Christians, is just too arrogant.
“If that was the case, why would god bother giving people free will?”
Exactly.
And let’s hear it for stray lambs! And black sheep. (And black ewes too, while we’re at it.)
Oh that’s lovely, just lovely.
AHA! I KNEW it! St. Nick is 3vil!!!!!!!!
“Rev Dave – Admittedly, I don’t know much about religious doctrine. But I think a lot of the more intrusive personal stuff was just added on later by frustrated old freaks who wanted everyone to be as miserable as they were.”
Well… yes and no. Basically, there’s enough misogyny in the Old Testament to warm the heart of any good chauvinist patriarch. Combine that with Paul’s paranoid “women shouldn’t speak” bullshit from the New Testament and you’ve got a recipe for Promise Keepers. Jesus and some of the more leftist prophets in the Old Testament stand out as comparative breaths of fresh air.
Take Numbers 5, for example, which prescribes what to do if you think your wife has been sleeping around:
“The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering… If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.
“This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and defiles herself while married to her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.”
If it weren’t easy, it wouldn’t be worth it!
JAB – Oh shit, I meant SATAN. D’oh!
Rev. Dave – Yes, it clearly wasn’t a good time to be a female, unless you stayed in the kitchen and kept your mouth shut. Gee, I think there are one or two people around today that wouldn’t mind going back to that… I read the blog of one of them occasionally.
Seriously though, it seems to me that a lot of those basic Christian teachings became really twisted when the Catholic church became a political powerhouse and the punishment freaks took over. Some of their ideas are just bent, there’s no other word.
There is an homily on judgement over at BBW. If I called it a mess of simplification and contradictions, written in evident haste, would that be too harsh a judgement?
I now move off to pry planks off my eyeballs.