Y’all don’t get the benefit of us assuming most of you are decent. In fact I tend to assume the opposite, based on mountains of historical evidence and personal observations.
There might be some decent folks among you, but the idea that Christians as a whole don’t actively wish for the suffering of others (whether they frame it that way to themselves or not) is a laughable premise.
[Edit to add: there’s a simple causal relationship at root here, too - damn near every truly decent Christian person I’ve ever known, the more they learn about their religion and how it behaves in the world - the less Christian they get. The ones who remain as they mature - again in my experience - either deliberately have their heads in the sand, or have moral values that stand in opposition to the exact virtues espoused by Christ]
I can’t blame you for thinking that. There are absolutely terrible people who love nothing more than to use Christianity to justify their evil. And I can point out how what they do is the exact opposite of what Jesus said, but they ignore it or shout it down.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t also lots of Christians who do try to follow Jesus’s words. At the moment, for example, the Dutch parliament is considering a law that would make it illegal to help undocumented immigrants (whether asylum seekers or otherwise). A lot of churches are protesting that, because that’s one of the core things that churches have always been involved in: helping people in need, including undocumented immigrants.
The irony that this law is proposed by conservative parties that love to lay claim to the Christian identity is not lost on me, but it should be clear to anyone with the slightest knowledge about the bible which side is actually trying to do what Jesus asks of us.
I guess I should say my perspective above is kind of exclusively an American-centric one for the topic. I don’t know much about rank and file European Christians. Among American Christians there is a real hatred of “the other” at their core. Not everyone, but probably a significant majority.
Y’all don’t get the benefit of us assuming most of you are decent. In fact I tend to assume the opposite, based on mountains of historical evidence and personal observations.
There might be some decent folks among you, but the idea that Christians as a whole don’t actively wish for the suffering of others (whether they frame it that way to themselves or not) is a laughable premise.
[Edit to add: there’s a simple causal relationship at root here, too - damn near every truly decent Christian person I’ve ever known, the more they learn about their religion and how it behaves in the world - the less Christian they get. The ones who remain as they mature - again in my experience - either deliberately have their heads in the sand, or have moral values that stand in opposition to the exact virtues espoused by Christ]
I can’t blame you for thinking that. There are absolutely terrible people who love nothing more than to use Christianity to justify their evil. And I can point out how what they do is the exact opposite of what Jesus said, but they ignore it or shout it down.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t also lots of Christians who do try to follow Jesus’s words. At the moment, for example, the Dutch parliament is considering a law that would make it illegal to help undocumented immigrants (whether asylum seekers or otherwise). A lot of churches are protesting that, because that’s one of the core things that churches have always been involved in: helping people in need, including undocumented immigrants.
The irony that this law is proposed by conservative parties that love to lay claim to the Christian identity is not lost on me, but it should be clear to anyone with the slightest knowledge about the bible which side is actually trying to do what Jesus asks of us.
I guess I should say my perspective above is kind of exclusively an American-centric one for the topic. I don’t know much about rank and file European Christians. Among American Christians there is a real hatred of “the other” at their core. Not everyone, but probably a significant majority.