If a human can choose how to interpret holy text however they want and there isn’t an immediate response from a diety for interpreting them wrong, the texts must not really matter.
I mean, sort of?
Jesus flipping tables and scolding merchants is cool, whether he’s the son of God or not.
Imagine if someone became a really popular influencer pushing similar teachings as Jesus, and just started raising shit with their modern millions of followers. Be an interesting WP prompt
If Jesus was alive today, he’d be crucified again by the Religious Right.
Cool in concept.
Problem is Jesus is just a fairy tale, like King Arthur or Robin Hood.
Robin Hood, also cool.
Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
If only certain things matter, then nothing matters. I prefer a God who lets us be free.
Many religions start out promoting freedom, and evolve to forbidding things and actions
That’s normal: a free society has laws, even anarchism has rules. Freedom is not anomie.
The problem is that many religions, instead of proposing rules in order to better one’s spiritual life, or instead of thinking of then as a means to an end, make rules an end in themselves. Rules can be freeing, but if they’re their own end, they become confining.
- maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
- maybe your view of the response as only immediate is too limiting
- just playing devil’s advocate here since you made some pretty big assumptions
maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
If the intended interpretation of a text is “respect women” and you instead interpret the text as “you can own women”, then you have interpreted the text incorrectly.
but there is no way to know what the “intended” interpretation is. and often interpretations beyond the original creator’s intent are still valuable and valid
This man deserves every ounce of respect that he gets, all of it earned.
Just dropping in to note that I have read about some really cool feminist and women centered interpretations of many major religions over the years. Women are actively combating this sort of thing from within every religious community and there’s a long, uplifting history of it going back to the beginning. Gives me happy feelings to know.
In apocryphal gospels, Mary Magdalene was an apostle, and one of the most important ones. In order to believe that the gospels which were compiled to become the bible were “divinely inspired” and not selected (and edited) by the fucking Romans for political reasons, you have to be either dangerously naive or have an agenda.
Yeah but if you’re already at that point, chances are you’re just going to go a step further and not care about what books were included or not because it’s all bullshit.
Not all of it is BS. There’s some good stuff in there, like the golden rule.
It also warns about hypocrites like Trump and MAGA. People who loudly proclaim to be christian, but are the exact opposite through their actions, especially of treating people like dirt (putting it mildly). And of people being led astray by them.
It’s ironic that these folks who claim to love the Bible are often called out by the Bible. Makes me wonder if they even read it…
Religious people, and women in particular, seem to really love participating in their own oppression. Hell, look at the amount of shit Catholics have to ignore in order to keep attending services and paying money to those bastards every Sunday in good conscience.