Sunday, August 14, 2011

From Jesus’ socialism to capitalistic Christianity

This is as good an explanation of christowhacko teavangelical hypocrisy as I've seen.

Gregory Paul

Here is what is peculiar. Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of - and many of whose followers are -- the most hard-line anti-Christian atheist/s you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin’s evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

Jesus is no free marketeer. Improving one’s earthly financial circumstances is not nearly as critical as preparing for the end times that will arrive at any minute. He does offer substantial encouragement for the poor, and warns the wealthy that they are in grave danger of blowing their prospects of reaching paradise, as per the metaphor of a rich person entering heaven being as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of the needle (a narrow passageway designed to hinder intruders). This caution makes sense: sociological research is confirming that the more securely prosperous individuals and societies are, the more likely they are to lose the faith. A basic point of core Christian doctrine is that the wealthy have no more access to heaven than anyone else (and in fact may have less), offering hope to the impoverished rejected by cults that court the elites. This remains true in Catholicism, in which being poor does not constitute evidence of a personal deficiency, and church authorities decry the excesses of unrestrained capital at the expense of social justice.

A corollary to doing right for those in need might be that Jesus likes poor people because they're more likely to believe in his pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by-when-you-die horseshit, being desperate in this earthly plane and all.

[...] This works because, as surveys show, most Christians don’t actually read the bulk of the Bible, and people are mentally skilled at dismissing the awkward passages they do come across. [...]

And the rest of 'em don't read it because they're too stupid to pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel. Like the Constitution, the Bible must say what the people they listen to say it says.

Go read.


3 comments:

David Aquarius said...

"too stupid to pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel." My friend, you can certainly turn a descriptive phrase!

I've always said that Christians abandoned the teachings of Christ as soon as they started to get rich and powerful. Nothing says hypocrisy like preaching about the simple life of a Jewish carpenter and his dedication to the poor and the weak while dressed in gold and silk vestments, drinking from a gilded chalice and standing before a marble and teak wood alter.

If Jesus were to return today, he would be more Buddhist than Baptist.

Gordon said...

If Jesus were to return today, he'd probably be in Gitmo.

Fixer said...

No shit, if he thought he had a problem with the Romans, poor bastid wouldn't stand a chance today.