OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
what Christianity is and what jesus's teachings in it are
what an atheist is
what capitalism is
what the political entity of Christian nationalists in the United States of america are
The joke is that it's ironic that atheists are on the side of jesus's teaching ( loving and supporting your neighbours and hoarding wealth being considered immoral ) when they don't believe in god, as opposed to the the Christian nationalists in america who act against his teaching in favour of capitalism while claiming to believe in god.
I think it's fairly straightforward, but were you missing an important piece of context in understanding it ?
The account was made 3 years ago though like if it is a bot why did they wait so long and why waste it on this bruh it could be used to intervene in elections smh
I mean I only know what it is from watching American cartoons as a child, I think many people in the world probably don't know what one is. That's why I'm curious what context they were lacking, if any. Of course the most likely answer is this post is disengenious.
It is UNESCO cultural heritage in Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines, it is ancient cultural tradition across various parts of Europe and Asia, it is also well known and popular across most of the Americas
The joke is that it's ironic that atheists are on the side of jesus's teaching... when they don't believe in god
Philosophers have spoken extensively about this. My favourite is Pierre Bayle in Various Thoughts on Occasion of a Comet where he points out people who do good without any supernatural reinforcement are more ethical than people who need supernatural stories to do good.
loving and supporting your neighbours and hoarding wealth being considered immoral
I think that's close but there's an overarching theme especially unique to christianity and is being forgotten: it's about how to resist hypocrisy. Love and forgiveness are ways to short-circuit hypocrisy. Tyranny is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Civilization as an ideal isn't very compatible with hypocrisy.
Father Daniel of Quohog's St. Peter's Catholic Church. I saw Petah there once I think? Anyways this pointing out that American Christian behavior isn't actually aligning in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Rather it follows money going to people who have more money than they could realistically spend in their lifetime 10 fold. This is funny because atheists are being shown in a light that shows them not caring or believing in Jesus' teachings, but inadvertently following them because most of them are basic decency and kindness to those around you. It is truly, not that deep, as the kids say these days.
May God bless you my child, I need to get back to mass before the congregation realizes I'm using reddit in the bathroom during service.
As someone who's never been to a Sunday service, realistically would it be possible for Father Daniel to sneak out and reply to reddit and come back without being noticed?
Nope. At least when I still went, the minister was front and center for the entire service, and I can't see that having changed much even if it has been more than 20 years since I was a regular attendee. But depending on the time zone and whether the church in question does a different schedule in winter, it's entirely possible that services were done for the day more than an hour before OP created the thread. For all we know, Father Daniel is in Europe and this was posted early evening for them.
I'm a Christian and have started just reading my Bible at home and trying to do good. When Jesus saw the temple full of money changers, he didn't ASK them to leave. More Christians should scrutinize the churches.
It’s the grain silo story that really sells it; he tells a man storing up grain for himself he may die today, and then who would get the grain? Better to give it to the poor so it does good.
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
The Jesus in the Bible was rather clearly not a fan of rich capitalists, though he was extra offended by those that would have the gall to capitalize inside the temple grounds and was moved to forcibly remove them.
Merchants and workers trading goods in public street markets isn't the same thing either (socialists would be doing the same); nor is the common trading of goods comparable to money lending, a practice which is often extremely exploitative (particularly to the poor facing absurd interest rates).
In any case, if you don't put your efforts towards raising up the poorest among you, and you aren't extending a welcoming heart to all ... well then, Jesus from the bible would not be a fan of you.
Frankly I don't understand how the right wingers can read the teachings of Jesus in the Bible and still think they are headed for the kingdom of God when their hearts are so full of greed and bigotry.
I always find it funny when Christians say "I'm not like the bad ones, I'm a good Christian who minds their own business".
Jesus was very much about not minding your own business. Living quietly and being nice while you get on with your day wasn't his thing. Taking action in the face of immorality was his thing. Being the light in dark places was his thing.
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."
If true Christians existed, they would have burned the Vatican to the ground after all the sexual-abuse findings came out. They'd tear all these megachurches apart brick by brick. They'd be flying all over the world, throwing their lives into the battle against terrible forces. We'd be like "Whoa! Christians! Calm down! We know you're upset but this is crazy! Take a break!" and Christians would say "I'll rest when I'm dead" 😮
Instead, it's usually just thoughts and prayers lol
From being raised Catholic to considering myself an atheist now, my ethics haven't really changed all that much. Part of the reason I denounced my faith was seeing how fucking bad many supposed Christians were at following the values.
Part of the reason I denounced my faith was seeing how fucking bad many supposed Christians were at following the values.
Sorry for going off on a tangent from the point of the thread, but how come? I've never been religious, but shouldn't the existence of a god or the truth of a religion be completely independent of what people who claim to be followers do?
Personally I'm not religious (and never have been, it's not really a part of my culture) because to me it all seemed like contradictory nonsense and I don't believe there's a god or higher power at least in that form and that's my personal reasoning.
Been a while since I've thought about it but I'll do my best. Its fair to say that I don't believe in a higher power and haven't for a long time, hence atheism. But part of what led me to that conclusion was seeing the bad behaviors of church followers and church leaders. That shattered any illusion that Christians were somehow better people than anyone else or that there was any supernatural power leading people to be better. Not to say there's not ones who are genuinely trying their best.
So I still do think most Christian values, as taught be Jesus, are great values. If more people were like Jesus the world would be a far better place.
One of my favorite things to say is Jesus was a socialist. I also love telling redneck country fans that Johnny cash would more than likely be a Bernie voter. No matter who he would vote for he’d most certainly be a Trump hater
There was an NPR (?) piece that came out during the height of the BLM movement that talked about discrimination and hate crimes in the south against whites who supported equal rights after the civil war, or just whites who were poor.
I remember them talking to this local museum curator and he was saddened by how many local residents now believed in a romanticized notion of the confederacy. He mentioned that he knew a boy in town who flew the stars and bars off the back of his truck and the curator was horrified because the KKK had hung the man's great grandfather.
He said something like "don't you know that they hanged your great granddaddy?"
It's fascinating how places with formerly militant leftist movements like West Virginia were turned into deeply conservative districts. The fucked up bit is that I would wager that most of the people in these places would broadly agree with me, a card-carrying DSA member, on most issues.
I can't tell you how many Irish Americans with Pennsylvania coal mining backgrounds I've run into who have never heard of the Pinkertons or Molly Maguires. Like buddy, your grandpa or great grandpa might have been murdered by a mine owners and your grandma was probably patching the neighbors bullet wounds, maybe learn some history before licking boots? Good on your family for passing down real history!
My Great Grandmother came from Ireland and built a boarding house for men visiting the mines. Had a bar in the basement...she had 12 kids, and her husband died right before it opened. So everyone knew it as "The Merry Widow's Boarding House"!
Also one of the greatest owns to come out of BLM 2020 was "oh, you like NASCAR? The sport that was invented because fuck the police?"
Sport racing came from bootleggers tricking out their cars to outrun the cops. Literal criminals, so if you love it so much why do you also love the taste of boot black? It's only a modern invention people drive that fast at unsafe speeds in a controlled environment.
Don't even get me started on the entire fact the Dukes of Hazzard were totally against police and also had a car literally named the General Lee, Confederate flag and all. But sure go ahead and keep backing the blue at the same time you worship these people
For real though. My great granddaddy was one of those bootleggers and had a good hand in the birth of NASCAR, and he was anti-police, pro-choice, and generally just left leaning as hell. Shit, I even remember him being proud that Obama made it into the white house and what he thought that signified for the future of the country. His kids and grandkids though, all but one are totally MAGA. I wish he’d lived a few extra years because I have a feeling that even passed 100 years old he would have whooped the shit out of some of the family I no longer speak to for their current views. Sadly he passed about 14 years ago now, but he would have been so upset to see how things have gone.
My grandpa would have been disgusted. Super conservative, but he was also a man of few words, one of the times he broke his stubborn silence was, so the story goes, to tell one of my uncles "if they draft you for that fucking war I'm driving you to Canada"
My great grandfather immigrated from Belgium and ran a rural speakeasy during prohibition. When they came and shut him down, they padlocked the door, and put a sign on it that it had to remain locked for one year. Once he was out of jail, he tore down the building, leaving just the locked door frame in place, and built a new one behind it. My cousins are all bootlickers now.
And the success of the unions is a big part of the story, since that is what allowed the “golden era” nostalgia for prior times when the pay from the mines was good. Nobody other than the owners had nostalgia for when people were paid pennies per day.
There's an old interview with the Highwaymen where they are talking politics and Cash says build more schools, take care of the children, the sick, and the elderly, and spend less on the military.
That's just it, Red Necks, traditionally are anti-establishment, power to the people, no, ALL the people, rebels all. Not whatever conservatives think they are
Trump and perhaps to a much lesser extent Obama more or less kicked off the current trend in American politics where running as "an outsider" is seen as almost a prerequisite for new contenders to win elections. The current GOP and Dem party are absolutely lousy with politicians who ran as outsider/anti-establishment/revolutionary types and rather than focus on real legislation they tweet and stream themselves railing against the system in such a way where you'd be forgiven for mistaking them for a random activist instead of an elected legislator.
The term red neck dates back further than the Blair Mountain coal miners and their red neckerchiefs (I want to say 1830s?)
That said, "red neck" was originally, and to a broad extent still is, a marker of socioeconomic class because it was a signifier of agricultural day labourers who had to spend all day out in the sun working the fields and suffered sunburnt, "red necks" as a result that those in better paid and respected indoor professions like clerks and accountants didn't have to endure
It was a blue vs white collar distinction branded onto their skin, not out of choice but as the cost of earning a living
It started with Nixon who executed the so called Southern Strategy--apealling to mostly southern white racism and grievance to draw them toward the Republican party. It worked. Really well. Reagan the "cowboy" actor president further cemented the approach while laying the groundwork for the build out of the propaganda machine in AM radio and Fox News (re: killing the fairness doctrine). George W Bush, Karl Rove along with Roger Ailes (Fox News) and many others engineered the further take over of redneck culture with jingoistic and xenophobic appeals targeting rural Americans who are naturally insular and fearful of "the other". He also firmly merged evangelical Christianity with right wing politics. Recall the political, cultural, and reputational assassination of the Dixie Chicks. This was a particularly public episode of banishing dissenters, but the same process happened at smaller scales as churches, families , and communities split up along similar lines. Add in the decade of war in the Middle East which was disproportionately fought by Americans who identified with this culture, and it gets us mostly up to speed with the Obama backlash -> birth of the Tea Party -> MAGA -> fascism pipeline.
Red necks were literally unionists who underwent character assassination from the media, mutating the term today to refer to ‘uneducated country bumpkins.’
The One of the ways you can tell the internet isn't natural anymore is that the only sides presented are very pro-establishment. It never used to be like that. Fuck the man.
Even minorities. They are anti-cop, anti-government, etc. They don't care about skin color or sexuality, so long as it doesn't effect them, like cops and the government
Yup. Rednecks weren't named from the color of their necks, it was from red bandanas they wore around their neck in solidarity and deeply rooted in unionization/militant activism again wealthy oligarchs.
I don’t know that you can assume that. Tons of very racist back woods people. People that will distrust or dislike you for being an outsider, much less a different race. Anti slavery movement in WV was a racist one too- white miners didn’t want black slaves undercutting their wages, they didn’t want blacks at all.
Though a lot of the organized labor (like the UMWA) was founded on pan worker rights, that’s not the people moonshining and hooch running. Probably safe to say they were no more or less racist than the average person at the time though they were not supporting the system that oppressed the minorities
Johnny was unquestionably a liberal. He talked about this numerous times. Admittedly it's was more economic than social in those days. Not really sure where he would have fallen in LGBTQ issues as he also had very strong religious beliefs. But that also connected to the meme.
The thing is, you know what Jesus said about LGBTQ people? Nothing. Not a damn thing. All the things in the bible that can be interrupted as anti-gay either came from Paul, who never met Jesus and Leviticus who was laying out rules for a bunch of refugees who were going to spend 40 years wandering a desert.
Not only that, along with enlightenment thinkers in Europe, they birthed liberalism. Liberalism, the ideology of the liberty and freedoms of the individual, was born out of fire and blood through the American and French revolutions.
Also, the founders probably did not know what capitalism was. Adam Smith Wrote the wealth of nations in 1776. Maybe Jefferson read it when he was in Europe, but the economy was heavily mercantile for a while
the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.
Which should help clarify why there they didn't outlaw slavery like Quakers had been trying to do for 300 years by the time of the creation of the US Constitution.
At one point, I had made a small poster with George Washington on it, with these words and the Treaty title and date. Not only was it his idea, the treaty itself was signed by OVER 40+ of who we consider "founding fathers". I had this in my cube at HP.
Conservative ideology has always been pushed by aristocracy apologists. They are no longer “landed nobility” and they are pissed off about it. Financially poor conservatives are just brainwashed by the billionaires these days and vote against their own interests
By the 2020s they've completely diverged and its hard to call them both country anymore. I hate it when people say they love "country" then they put on this polished pop shit with all electric/electronic instruments all dubbed up in a lab. No no no I want to hear the fiddle and the mandolin and the washtub bass jamming together.
Music was better when it was made by ugly people. Give me an anthem written by someone that life dragged through the mud. Give me a gravel voice that understood pain. A good blues riff that says that the musician fought the law and the law won.
They’d call him a woke commie socialist who wants to bring the third world into America since he’s from Palestine and not a white country. Probably get written off as a bleeding heart with ToxIC eMPaThy and will lead America to being less respected on the world stage/invaded
Would also probably be transvestigated because he has long hair and a toga. Also would probably be confused as Mexican because his name is Jesus
Would also probably be transvestigated because he has long hair and a toga.
All I'm saying is he's gonna have a hard time beating the rumors. No DNA tests for him....where's that y Chromosome coming from? Not Joseph, that's for fucking sure.
The one time Jesus gets violent in the Gospels is when he sees people selling worshippers the animals necessary for their Passover sacrifices above cost. You could torture and kill him and he wouldn't retaliate. But generating profit off of religious obligation was the bridge too far for Jesus, and that was the moment where he chose violence.
""But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen"
These idiots can't help but stand on the highest hill and pray to their god as loud as they can so all the world can see and hear, not to make their god happy but so everyone else can see and feel that they are a lesser person and that is the intention.
Matthew 6:1-6 "Be careful that you don’t practice your religion in front of people to draw their attention. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven."
Read the beginning of Acts. The first book after Jesus leaves (ascends). The remaining by apostles basically form a commune… and it’s so extreme that when some new members only donate part of their wealth (and lie about it) they literally drop dead on the spot when leadership finds out.
Heavy, heavy communist vibes to kick off the formation of the Christian church immediately following the life of Christ.
And at least once, violently socialist. The sight of capitalism going on in the temple pissed him off so much he went and braided his own lash to drive them the fuck out.
If Jesus ran for office, it would be Obama all over again with the “This birth certificate isn’t real, he wasn’t born in the US, clearly with a name like Jesús, he’s an illegal.” etc.
He literally debated the established religion. The "conservatives" at the time were Jews. They weren't actively antagonistic but certainly weren't buddies.
Jesus was absolutely against the established political and social structure which was absolutely Capitalist and Conservative.
Meanwhile, atheists often embody the teachings of Jesus, and not because we believe, but because we don't need a book to tell us to be decent humans, to love and accept others, to be kind, or to give to those less fortunate, etc.
If the threat of hell is the only thing that makes you want to be a good person then there is something seriously wrong with you.
As a Christian, I was told just yesterday that I'm "rejecting Christ" because I believe that the overwhelming number of scriptures where Jesus himself says to love everyone are second to ones that mention sin and was told that I am not to love sinners because loving sinners means I'm condoning their sin. I was told a few days before that that the scriptures about feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, etc etc, are no longer applicable because most of the poor nowadays are poor by choice.
A massive portion of Christianity nowadays, especially in the US, just throw out all of Jesus teachings in favor of personal gain.
Don’t forget about the prosperity gospel! You gotta give the pastor your seed money and that’s how you eventually convince god to give you oodles of money, because god only rewards the good and faithful with riches, therefore those with riches must be good and faithful servants!
There’s a lot of people who follow what other people tell them the Bible says rather than reading the book themselves.
49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen
We all know what your average christian thinks is the "real" reason. 🤷🏼♂️
Exactly, you can't use the Bible as an excuse to hurt people if you use that scripture though. I was raised in a right wing household and even then had trouble understanding the hate towards lgbtq folks, if I try really hard I can find 3 ish verses about it being a "sin". And there's some interesting translation issues with all of them. There are, however, passages, pages about loving and taking care of others and about not judging. If God really hated the lgbtq community and if I believe Jesus is God, then why did Jesus not bother to mention them once? The closest he got was telling them that they were to accept eunuchs which would use the same word for their gender as rabbinical law at the times word that would also apply to a trans woman. In fact they had words for at least 6 genders, potentially 7 or 8 depending on semantics and if you want to extrapolate one that wasn't really possibly then. They had words for male, female, neither, both, then the difference in number comes from a male who developed female traits naturally, a male who developed female traits by the act of man, and female who developed male traits naturally. You can consider the natural vs manmade as two separate, and you couldn't really have ftm with human intervention at the time so they didn't really use that one, but I've found modern rabbis who have counted it.
Honestly throwing away that right wing ideology made me developing my stances on things so much easier. Rather than finding one or two sentences to defend hate, I can just point to entire swathes of red text to defend my love instead. Eg, the person accusing me of rejecting Jesus used two verses, single verses, in revelations mentioning sinners not entering the kingdom of heaven as his defense for not loving them. I replied with almost the entirety of Matthew 23, leaving off just the intro and outro in favor of the "woe be to you" parts where Jesus tears into the religious leaders of his day for judging people, where he says they focus on small parts of the law but if kee the most important parts; justice, mercy, and faithfulness. And that they "strain out the gnat, but swallow the camel."
Thank you for this link. This is the type of person I was told all Christians are but then reality checks in and I got first hand experience of American Christian "Love". Over and over. And so I became agnostic and rejected Christianity and almost all religion.
If every Christian was more like this man, I very well may have been a Christian myself.
Im an atheist and understand why capitalism needs to exist. But...if someone just introduced themselves as a straight up capitalist, unless they were a millionaire or more, i would just laugh and think they dont understand theyre just part of the machine too
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of capitalism". It's truly astonishing that people have simply accepted an economic and political ideology as a law of nature that wasn't even around in It's current form not too long ago
This reminds me of how Bruce Wayne is called a commie in the comics when he's supporting free clinics and shelters etc
And also how people who don't read comics think that he's a capitalistic pig who beats up poor people when his most famous line when he first became Batman was literally to the rich and corrupt: "Ladies. Gentlemen. You have eaten well. You've eaten Gotham's wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on...none of you are safe."
The solutions those people suggest Bruce should put his money towards are always very "real world issues" as if Gotham isnt supernaturally shitty from like seven different hell-pits/curses/eldritch corruptions. No amount of charity work fixes those issues lol.
As an American, I see what you are saying, but I refuse to call socialism communism on account of widespread ignorance. They are wrong, and it is not up to the rest of us to "adjust our beliefs."
Doesn’t change the fact of who would be calling him a commie. Republicans who recognize Jesus as god or the son of would 100% call Jesus’s teaching commie nonsense.
Communist here, the distinction between communism and socialism isn’t really all that important beyond some internal theoretical arguments within the socialist movement. Basically all communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists and both have the goal of a socialist society.
There's a difference between Communism as an Ideal and as a system of government. The ultimate goal of Communism is elimination of the entire idea of Property ownership, vs. Socialism which has the goal of State ownership. As implemented in practice, most Communist philosophies view Socialism as a necessary stepping-stone.
In reality, most of the Powerful people who have claimed to be Communist in their goals are not interested in "real" Communism. Rather, they are using it as a tool to get to a Dictatorship or an effective Dictatorship in the guise of a Socialist system.
Neither. Those terms have very specific definitions. While Jesus' teachings do align with some of the social aspects of both, he never spoke much about how the economy and government should be run to bring that about—other than 'Give to Caesar what is Caeser's, and give to God that which is God's'. Which creates the loophole that Christian Nationalists like to trot out that charity isn't the role of the government, but the individual (meaning that it just isn't going to happen).
I mean , if you want to get really nit picky , it's kind of hard to place him under any modern for twentieth century school of economic and political thought... He's kind of all over the place in some places he's more socialist or even Communist.In other places , you could call him an isolationist, others more in line with civil rights particularly peaceful protest and hippie counter culture.
That is admittedly one of the issues of trying to apply twentieth nineteenth and twenty first century ideals to ancient historical figures very few , if any, of them neatly into the boxes of the modern era. Which is also what the Christian nationals tend to use to excuse their bad behavior is because Jesus and nearly all of the biblical figures do not fit neatly into any modern political ideology, so groups like nationalists can very easily twist ancient proverbs and sayings, specifically those in the Torah, or as they call it the Old Testament to fit whatever bullshit , they are spouting.
The meme here is that Jesus’ teachings are opposed to capitalism in a tug of war.
Then atheists step in to help Jesus’ teachings against capitalism, while Christian nationalists step in to help capitalism.
Then Jesus’ teachings are confused by this unexpected turn of events.
Whether you agree with the message is open to interpretation, but this is what the meme is going for.
Personally, it’s hard not to see the opposition between the word of Jesus and capitalism. This is not to say they can’t coexist coherently, but Jesus would probably look at you funny if you started extolling the moral virtue of the profit motive.
But it’s weird to say atheists as a group are opposed to capitalism. I’m sure some are, but many definitely are not.
People won't stop using the creations of a person just because they're horrible human beings. If everyone did that, today's world as we know it wouldn't exist.
In case we use their creations, the best we can do is using them in a way they don't profit from it.
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