it's pity christians don't follow christ
Jun. 13th, 2004 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI've realised that many christians don't really follow the words of their Christ. They are in reality followers of Paul of Tarsus -- they should call themselves Paulians. When asked to explain their hatreds and prejudices they go almost without fail to the awful words of Paul. That is simply because there is nothing hateful or nasty (that I can find) in what Jesus taught.
Any intelligent people consider the old testament to be an embarrassment. It was an awful collection of contradictory tales of hate and vengeance even after the Council of Nicaea edited out chunks. That part of the bible is of use only as a (distorted) window into history. If you remove that part what you are left with makes a lot more sense... except for Paul's writings.
Paul's writings stand out as almost the polar opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus taught tolerance and acceptance of the intrinsic good in people, and pacifist disobedience to authority. Paul was angry, arrogant, misogynist, homophobic, and taught total submission to the authorities. How can christians possibly reconcile what Paul said when measured against Jesus? I think the christian churches would find that their numbers wouldn't be declining nearly so fast if they would simply go back to what Jesus alone taught and cast out Paul's writings and the hateful old testament.
The pope is worried that George Bush Jr. could be the antichrist. I think the antichrist came and went hundreds of years ago. His distortion of Jesus' message is directly responsible for the christian church supporting millions of murders (aiding Hitler), minority groups brutalised, slavery, the subjugation of women, homophobic prejudice, and domination of the poor by the rich.
If you ever wondered how Jesus' teachings could be ignored so completely by the christian right wing just take a look at Paul's writings.
(I think this is the last I write on religion -- I find it too tiresome.)
Any intelligent people consider the old testament to be an embarrassment. It was an awful collection of contradictory tales of hate and vengeance even after the Council of Nicaea edited out chunks. That part of the bible is of use only as a (distorted) window into history. If you remove that part what you are left with makes a lot more sense... except for Paul's writings.
Paul's writings stand out as almost the polar opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus taught tolerance and acceptance of the intrinsic good in people, and pacifist disobedience to authority. Paul was angry, arrogant, misogynist, homophobic, and taught total submission to the authorities. How can christians possibly reconcile what Paul said when measured against Jesus? I think the christian churches would find that their numbers wouldn't be declining nearly so fast if they would simply go back to what Jesus alone taught and cast out Paul's writings and the hateful old testament.
The pope is worried that George Bush Jr. could be the antichrist. I think the antichrist came and went hundreds of years ago. His distortion of Jesus' message is directly responsible for the christian church supporting millions of murders (aiding Hitler), minority groups brutalised, slavery, the subjugation of women, homophobic prejudice, and domination of the poor by the rich.
If you ever wondered how Jesus' teachings could be ignored so completely by the christian right wing just take a look at Paul's writings.
(I think this is the last I write on religion -- I find it too tiresome.)