I recently described why I think “woke” has become a vacuous word that means little more than “libtard” in modern parlance. It seems apropos, then, that Christianity Today also recently released a piece that saw the editor-in-chief claim (in a previous NPR interview) that evangelical Christianity is moving too far to the right.
It turns out that Jesus’s teachings are increasingly considered by many Christians to be too “liberal” and “weak.”
I’m all for laughing at the bigots, but in the centuries that Christianity had been co-opted as a state religion and as tool of power, we have lost sight of the fact that there are some real radical bomb shells in the New Testament.
Turning the other cheek is a popular one, but what do you think about that bit about a camel passing through the eye of the needle, or the whole table flipping at the merchants in the temple business?
Biblical Jesus was a radical anticapitalist and pacifist. We have been using his teachings to justify war and greed instead.
The guy who came to bring not peace but a sword was a pacifist? That’s some interesting cherry-picking.
That’s what he said, true. You should pay more attention to what he did. I’m talking about Jesus the character here, because I don’t really believe that such a person actually existed. But if he could multiply bread and fishes, then he could multiply swords and arrows. If he could heal the sick, and kill trees with a thought, then he could sicken the healthy. If he could turn water into wine, well, people are 80% water and alcohol is lethal in large doses. If he could take demons out of a person’s body, force them into pigs and then make those pigs commit mass suicide, he could have chosen Roman soldiers instead of the pigs. But he didn’t.
Yes, he flipped out once, when he saw that people were using a place he considered sacred to turn a quick buck by scamming the faithful. That’s understandable. The fact is (as far as I can use the word “fact” for a fictional character) that he could have used his divine powers to make it rain blood on his enemies, both figuratively and literally, like some of the prophets before him had done (e.g. ten plagues of Egypt, siege of Jericho), but didn’t. He chose to let himself be killed instead just to set an example. That’s hardcore pacifism.