Before I dive into what has popped up I’ll first strive to explain, briefly, why it is like this.
If there was no Christianity then vast swathes of my postings would be empty, or more probably filled up with other far more interesting stuff. In the eyes of some, the word “Christian” is believed to be positive. It conjures up thoughts such as forgiveness, compassion, lovingness, patience, and kindness. Such positive thinking is indeed expressed within the NT text. The following is a rather famous extract from one of Paul’s letters …
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes
1 Corinthians 13 4-7
Fine words.
The problem is this – when you observe the Christians themselves, they have grabbed the mirror universe of the above and then run hard and fast with that; Impatient, unkind, full of envy and boasting, proud, dishonoring others, self-seeking, easily upset, delighting in lies, rejecting truth.
The rebuttal might of course be, “Don’t judge us, we are all poor miserable sinners”.
Sorry, no, you can’t play that card, your claim is that you have Jesus in you, that you have been “transformed”, born again, and have the “Holy Spirit” in you. When you play the “we are all miserable sinners” card you are also claiming that none of that “born again”, and “transformed” stuff actually works.
What is true is that many who are “Christian” really are not exactly the same as those that are not religious, but instead are far far worse, far more intolerant and bigoted, for more oppressive and obnoxious.
Everybody, every single Christian?
Well no, of course not. There are plenty of humans who are religious or simply “spiritual”, do successfully utilize that for inspiration, and do better themselves. Some actually manage to do this without becoming obnoxious assholes. Where things go very wrong is that when individuals join a religious tribe, they also adopt the prevailing cultural beliefs and practices within that tribe. This can and does then transform them in a very toxic manner if the prevailing religious culture they jump into is awash with misinformation, intolerance, and touts ignorance and bigotry as virtues.
To not adapt means that they might be rejected by the tribe, so they conform and put on the required persona. If tribal policy pushes against common sense health policies designed to keep them alive then they also will be anti-vaccine or anti-mask. If tribal policy demonizes decent honorable loving people as evil incarnate, then they also will adopt that stance.
We are all part of a culture. We humans are social creatures. We conform and dress in a similar way, speak with a similar accent, behave in a similar manner, enjoy similar sports to those around us. There also exist micro-cultures, religious groupings. To join, we are expected to conform and adopt an identity that comes with a lot of religious-cultural baggage.
Let’s dive into an example. The title of this posting explains where I’m going with this.
Ukraine and LGBTQ
Here via Hemant is a tweet with an extract from “Loving tolerant Christian” Ben Naim …
It is a short extract, so here is the transcript …
I think we can see why there is such a push for promoting Ukraine, there are many reasons, but this perhaps is one of them.
There is a Newsweek article that I found that says Russian occupation would be devastating for LGBTQ Ukranians, it always goes back Jews and (***) and here we have yet another example where apparently Zelensky is a big time pro-sodomite advocate, he loves the sodomites.
Russians don’t, and in fact you can’t get married, they don’t have sodomite marriage in Russia, is what I’m trying to say. And obviously some of that has deteriorated, but my point is, we see a push for the Ukraine I think because of the fact that Ukraine is viewed as the pro-sodomite, pro-progressive, anti-god, filth promoter, because of the fact that the west has chosen it…
For the curious, the Newsweek article that he refers to is this one.
When it comes to LGBTQ rights in Russia, yes, that is well documented. That however is not exactly something that occupies the minds of Ukrainians these days. I can guarantee you, absolutely nobody in Ukraine is thinking “Well gosh we must resist these Russians because if we don’t we will see a loss of LGBTQ rights”.
I can also give you a rock-solid guarantee that absolutely nobody, including the author of the Newsweek article, is supporting Ukraine for any of the following reasons …
- Ukraine is pro LGBTQ rights … literally nobody factors anything like that into their support.
- Pro-Progressive … You can more or less guarantee that anybody using terms such as “progressive” or “woke” as a pejorative is a fuckhead.
- Anti-God … a deeply weird fact-free assertion to apply to a state where 71.7% of the population identify as Orthodox Christians. That is a far bigger percentage of Christian than the US.
- Filth promoter … nope, they really do keep their streets and houses clean. Yes I know, he means LGBTQ support. He might believe that is filth. The true filth is his assertion, he is literally spouting shit.
Who are these Guys?
This manifestation of bigotry and ignorance incarnate is Ben Naim of the former Stedfast Baptist Church in Texas, now closed. His sidekick mentor is Jonathan Shelly. They are New Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (NIFB). While being opposed to gay people and gay rights is a rather common Christian stance, the NIFB folks are completely and totally obsessed with it all and take it to an extreme. These are the “loving” folks who demand the execution of people for the “crime” of being gay. To join this church does not mean raising your moral standards, but rather lowering them to rock bottom.
Side note, yes those guys. Stedfast Baptist is the church where the pastor quit a couple of years ago when it was revealed he hired prostitutes and was involved in gambling and marijuana.
The scanning tunneling microscope is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for seeing things right down to the atomic level. If you used one of these amazing devices to examine any of these NIFB guys, then you would still fail to find any hint of empathy or decency.
Back to Corinthians 13 for a moment, do these guys tick any of those boxes?
They probably sincerely believe they do and would assert that they do. They might even cite the old excuse of “Love the sinner but hate the sin” or some similar BS as an excuse for being obnoxious gobshites.
The reality is that they simply do not tick any of those boxes. None, not one. Instead this spout irrational nonsense.
We live in a world where being gay means that within a Christian cultural context you are an outcast who has supposedly chosen a lifestyle.
Fact 1 – It is not a choice.
Fact 2 – Nobody has ever altered anybody’s sexual orientation. There are claims, but it is stuff that panders to a religious narrative and is not real.
The Bottom Line
The choice is easy, you can either be an obnoxious bigot who spews hatred and intolerance, or you can be a decent human being. You would think that this should be an easy choice, but apparently not.
It is not simply words, it is also actions. Not content with applying their own beliefs to themselves, there is an existing push to inflict those beliefs by force upon others.
It works like this. If you don’t believe it is right to marry somebody of the same gender, then don’t marry somebody of the same gender. If however you then insist upon that being applied to everybody, you have crossed a line and are behaving in a fundamentally immoral unethical manner.
What can I say except to perhaps welcome you to modern Christianity.
For some criticism of such bigotry is deemed “persecution”. Nah, sorry, that’s BS. Intolerance of bigotry is not persecution, but rather is the moral imperative.
One Last Thought – Godwin’s Second Law
I’d argue that it is not just “woke”, but also other words as well such as “sodomite”.
And yes, that really is the same Godwin who was responsible for giving us Godwin’s law back in 1990 over 32 years ago.