I’d argue a majority of modern Christians are denied by christ, and more "anti-christ"ians. He said something like “You cannot worship material possessions and me” and we are shown what that looks like when he tells a guy who owns a house he rich and not going to heaven unless he sells it. Almost everyone who calls themselves Christian will try to make excuses for that, or rewrite it. “That eye of a needle was a gate”, “homelessness was more common back then”. Excuses and lies. If a Christian is a follower of Jesus, as long as there is a single homeless man who wants a home and you own one, he denied your following, you do not follow him by his word. I’m betting this describes most of the "that’s not real Christianity " people though. Because it’s so hard.
If you read it, Jesus doesn’t sound bad. I’d posit he’s probably the worlds first hippie. Acts is decent reading. The main issue is much of the book is filled with old law, several books in fact, that are there as governing rules for a society, not as a philosophy.
Religion can even work as such within small communities. 334million is not a small community, and people cherry pick what they like. Handmaids Tale cherry picked what was needed to fix a fertility crisis. Other communities cherry pick what they like for other means of making women subservient in a trad wife role. Others still go straight Jesus and are unrestricted, which, necessarily, ignores the entire Old Testament.
If the entirety was chosen, life would be very tedious and locked in contradiction.
Just the part about not being able to use furniture sat on by a woman actively experiencing her period, having to wait a week, or was it two?, for the furniture not to be unclean any more would break some people. It fascinates me that the biggest religious sticklers just ignore that one.
Oh. And no bacon. Or Christmas ham. A rule often ignored for obvious reasons.
It’s like a memecoin. Say a bunch of hippie shit and steal fucking everything. Then accuse them suckers of everything you do. This is exactly why Monero don’t destabalize. It’s doing what it was created to do; it is open source and is used for real exchanges. Sadly, it’s not FOSS.
It’s even more shocking to modern standards if you look at pre-nicene Christianity where you get communes, some of which believed androgynity was holy as the divine was neither male nor female. And that view still pops up from time to time such as with the public universal friend in 16th century America.
Not even close.
It used to be it’d get your ass killed if you were caught being a christian, fed to lions and shit. Being a christian was a fundamentally progressive thing, with risks. Those people meant it.
Then one day the emperor became christian, and it became conservative overnight. Just how you suck up to the boss. It’s been a weird mix of it all ever since, with too much of the bad.
It’s been critically infused with unignorable doses of violence and bigotry, which makes it…well, pretty much the same as everything else, really.
