Christians/Catholics were presented with decades of evidence of systematic child rape and protection by the churches, crimes commited by literally thousands of priests… and did nothing. No mass exodus from the faith, no reform, no nothing. Now you think a little graven imagery/idolatry is going to cause a serious stir? Plleeaaasseeeee…
It’s blasphemy and playing right into the assumption that he’s the Antichrist.
Also, what is that Evangelion looking thing above his head?
He is not THE Antichrist. But he is AN antichrist.
I reckon it’s Sauron.
American Christians are just weird fascists a lot of the time that don’t actually follow christianity beyond telling gay people they’re going to hell. They’re fine with this.
American Christians are also the main Grindr base.
Is being gay one of those things that people think is in the bible based on the vibe but in fact the bible doesn’t express an opinion?
Leviticus 18:22 ~ You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 ~ If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
You just gotta use a different position than you do with women.
“Not lie” like in “standing up”?
Christianity is supposed to be the new testament, like what Jesus preached. he was against all the old ways that are in the old testament except the ten commandments. he went so far to offend the old ways, they had him killed.
I’ve seen some christians use Matthew 5 as a “Jesus came to add to what’s in the old testament”
17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
The New Testament literally makes no sense without the Old Testament.
It directly cites and makes allusions to the Old Testament all the time… and a fair number of times it actually cites or references a mistranslation of the Old Testament.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew 5%3A18
Jesus himself says:
For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished!
Where ‘the Law’ is ‘the Torah’, ie, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
Jesus does not at any point distinctly state that only the Ten Commandments are valid, the rest are to be disregardrd… that just doesn’t exist in the Gospels.
Also, Jesus got killed because he essentially started a riot in the outer area of the Temple, flipping over tables of money changers, fashioning a whip and attacking them.
Today we’d call that ‘terroristic threats’ or something like that.
So any time a church outright asks you for money, within its grounds, remember that the answer to WWJD? is to physically assault and mock such people for defiling the sanctity of an ostensibly holy place.
Romans 1:26-27 is not better.
Standing doggystyle is the gay road to heaven!
Nope, this one is in the bible (old testament), roughly in the same place where these are also listed as sins:
Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Do not practice divination or seek omens.
Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
And my favorite to point out to them:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Also the same book prohibits eating shrimps, and many other things that they will quickly jump to say it doesn’t apply anymore, because most christians do a pick and choose of things in the bible they follow and things they don’t. There’s a game where you and a group of friends follow everything on the bible, the last one jailed wins.
Ezekiel 20 also says hello:
24 Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.
25 Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;
26 And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.
I made this argument in another thread, and someone replied that those were rules for Israelites, but not actual sins. They said God made a covenant with the Israelites about things that would be illegal, but not immoral beyond the fact it meant breaking the covenant itself. There is some reason to accept this, as Leviticus does focus on the new covenant with the Israelites specifically.
However, several books of the new testament are letters where Paul is instructing new churches and he explicitly reinforces the idea that at least some of the covenant laws still apply, including homosexuality (between men). As for Jesus, he seems kind of inconsistent about what is retconned in the gospels. He rejects things like “eye for an eye”, stoning adulterers, and complete prohibition of work on the Sabbath, but also has this passage
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Matthew 5:17–18 (NIV)
If I were trying to create a consistent biblical position, I would interpret this to mean the stuff from the old testament still applies unless something newer specifically counters it. But Christians ignore a lot of Jewish laws, so I think most would disagree with that.
My favorite are the ones who say Genesis isn’t literal because being a YEC is a step too far even for them, but then the whole point of Jesus gets awkward real fast when sin isn’t real.
It absolutely states that being gay is a grave sin and even calls for death for them in the old testament. However the message of Jesus in the new testament is one of radical forgiveness and non-judgement. Jesus is not afraid of those who commit sexual sins as seen by one of his companions being a prostitute. Jesus says to love everyone, forgive everyone and only hate the sin itself, but not the sinner. Judging a person is also considered a grave sin, something many modern christians have forgotten.
Therefore there is absolutely a theological basis for allowing homosexuals to attend church, following Jesus example of himself hanging out with prostitutes, another kind of sexual sinner. And since Jesus tells you to love everyone and judge no one there is no reason to hate or shun a gay person. This also applies to other sins. If you rob a bank you can still go to church as well, with the same argument.
However if you talk to a priest or pastor of a liberal LGBTQ affirming church and ask them if gays are allowed in the church they will shout a resounding yes. But if you press them on the question of if homosexual intercourse is a sin or not they will probably get uncomfortable and may give another answer. It’s a very hard biblical reality to deny.
However since you could in theory be gay and have a same sex partner and just simply not have sex with them you could give gay couples the benefit of the doubt. This is the basis for allowing gay marriage. However gay marriage stands on much more shakier grounds than simply allowing LGBTQs in the church, since marriage in the bible is explicitly stated as being between a man and a woman. Some prists/pastors however take a different route to justifying it and that involves reasoning that since God created all humans and some humans are gay, those people most have been created gay by god himself, and everything that God creates is good, therefore gays are good. This argument requires some reasoning outside the Bible but is used by many. Conservatives can attack such a stance saying it directly goes against direct bible quotes while also claiming one is not born gay but you turn gay by your own decision or others influence. Gayness would in this view be a free will sin rather than a god creates attribute.
I’m writing this comment as a non Christian who supports LGBTQ btw. Just trying to explain what I know about the discussion.
Oh no the bible says kill em all. It’s one of the main bullet points.
The problem is that it says it in the same general section that it talks about how to treat your slaves and things, so it’s really kind of ridiculous to cherry pick this one thing as something we should uphold today while ignoring everything else.
At least you could sort of respect it. They maybe delulu but they aren’t watered down faith tourists like the imbeciles who decided “god is love”.
No, they are. I guarantee they have sections of the bible they ignore out of convenience. They are not to be afforded even grudging respect.
It doesn’t.
Tell that to the people of Sodom.
I want to know what gomorrahy is.
It sure sounds like a word you can say with your mouth full though.
Which was destroyed because they did not welcome strangers, but wanted to rape them, as Isaiah explained. Homosexuality has nothing to do with it.
THANK YOU
Context matters. Turns out when you tell stories you kinda have to read the whole thing rather than just snippets.
Hi, Episcopal priest here, who just so happened to do his master’s thesis on the topic of reconciling same-sex marriage with traditional Christian understandings of marriage. So to give you the quick answer: no, “being gay” is not in the Bible. If you want the long answer, here’s a link to a blog post I wrote about this: https://catecheticconverter.com/same-sex-marriage-and-the-church
“Being gay” isn’t in the Bible EXCEPT for
Leviticus 18-22
22 “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
Leviticus 20:13
13 "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. "
Romans 1:26-27
27 “In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
Jude 1:7
7 “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire”
1 Corinthians 6:9
10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
1 Corinthians 7:2
“But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”
1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV
“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
I could go on, but you get the point. It’s clearly in the bible.
To be fair, the priest did treat some of those verses in the (badly) linked post, with the 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV explicitly calling “homosexuality” likely due to translation error
I think most of the points he argued are flimsy, because most are “well, actually, if we interpret it like this instead…”. Even the aforementioned translation error is a very weak argument that the original passage didn’t mean some sort of man-on-man action (arsen = man, koites (also the source of coitus) = bed; arsenokoites becoming something like “bed man”).
I will concede that the arsenkoites argument of mine is wanting (and maybe a bit innovative). When I first wrote that in 2015 I was still operating under the assumption of the Hebrew Bible being the “real” Old Testament (a mistake a LOT of scholars make). I’ve since studied more on the importance of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish Bible that, for centuries, was the Bible) and it’s there that we learn Saint Paul is deriving his term from the Greek version of Leviticus. But this is still only what, two verses?
Also “homosexual” is a term invented in the 1890s that has its own ideological baggage. Using that term to translate a Greek word is not great because you are injecting a later concept into an ancient text. Somewhere along the way I read about some folks who looked at how old French and Spanish texts (or was it German?) that predated our English versions translated “arsenkoites” and they used a term related to pederasty.
I think reducing his discussion to
well, actually, if we interpret it like this instead
does him a disservice. Why not consider the contexts in which all the interpretations have been made? If many of the details are flimsily translated, but the core message of love is consistent then why must people who would prefer Christianity to be a religion of kindness keep telling Christians that they are hateful?
This coming from a non-religious, non-spiritual person.
Even with translation errors, not every verse mentions homosexuality explicitly, but that is clearly the intent of the passage. And that’s the context today anyway, nobody is going to go back and revise it to undo the bigoted interpretation we have today, so his argument doesn’t really matter honestly bcz that’s what people believe now.
These modern translations are complete garbage.
You could, I don’t know, read the article that I linked in the post that addressed each one of these.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a mistranslation. You’re not going to convince evangelicals that their book is wrong.
Not trying to convince anyone their book is wrong. I just want folks to see that there are better ways of reading it. As a former evangelical myself, but also a priest who deeply loves the Bible, the Christian faith, and Jesus, I think it’s been the case that the Bible has been read incorrectly. Further, as Christians, we’re (speaking of myself here, not assuming you are a Christian) supposed to allow Jesus to be the filter through which we read the whole thing. This is difficult, yes. But it can offer clarity. The evangelical reading tends to say “the sin of Sodom was that they were gay, therefore God is going to unleash wrath on anyone who engages in that or supports it.” But even Jesus Himself says that the sin of Sodom was that they were inhospitable. So if Jesus tells us that it had nothing to do with what we today call “sexual orientation” then it opens up a space for a better understanding of what’s going on. It allows us to see the truly monstrous sins that Sodom and Gomorrah were actually committing (which, to be frank, are the sorts of sins that we see happening in places like Lebanon and Gaza right now, the sins of the Epstein class, the sins of the Catholic Church and other churches coming to light in recent decades). The sin is exploitative sexual violence and the domination of the “outsider.” I can’t help but notice that the same organizations who treat the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as “homosexuality” tend to be the same ones either engaging in or accommodating the sins of sexual violence and domination. Is it a smoke-screen? Or is it willful ignorance?
Is there an error in that link? I can’t get through for some reason
Same. When you try to copy it as a link, it comes up empty. But, copy text works
https://catecheticconverter.com/same-sex-marriage-and-the-church
Yeah. Sorry about that. Fixed it.
Out of habit I clicked the link icon and wound up creating a recursive loop lol
Thank you, that was a refreshing read.
My first reaction after seeing the picture was “is he blessing Epstein?”
Bringing him back from the dead. With Orban gone, he’s craving the familiar nonconsensual touch of a mentor.
Jesus flipped nicer tables than this.
It makes me angry, but not more than any of the other terrible, dehumanizing, antidemocratic stuff he’s done. To me, this is just more proof of what I’ve always known: maybe he’s not the Antichrist, but he sure is an antichrist.
The table flipping he would do in so many churches. Catholic and protestand AND MEGA CHURCHES! To name one catholic: he would trash the cologne cathedral. And get a tank to run down the mega churches in USA.
What could possibly still be reserved for the?
Competence.
he sure is an antichrist
He is anti-Christ.
Unquestionably.
Jesus flipped nicer tables than this.
You just blew my mind.
Ok.
Are you asking Christians - followers of the teachings of Christ, or Christians - those who claim the name? The teachings of Christ call for individuals to be humble, peaceful, loving, accepting, selfless, love their enemies, forgiving, non-judgmental, and joyful. As someone who tries to follow Jesus’ teachings, I feel sorry for him. He seems to be a very troubled man.
I’m not american nor evangelical (I’m a European lutheran), but I mainly find it stupid. Not even insulting: just plainly stupid.
When the MAGA Messiah was in exile during the Biden years, they hoped he’d come back, but didn’t fully believe it, so they pivoted to making him a religious icon, something the mainstream media mostly ignored.
Traitor General Michael Flynn operated a travelling roadshow of speakers, called the Re-Awaken America Tour (wouldn’t that make it Woke?), a rotating slate of conservative and evangelical speakers. The constant thread through all of it was Trump’s divinity.
All of the MAGA All-Stars spoke at one time or another, including Trump himself, but Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, was a regular. In her speech, Lara claimed that she was in regular, DIRECT contact with God, and he TOLD her that he had personally appointed Trump to be his chosen emissary on Earth, to lead America into its Christian future. Trump never paid much attention to Lara before, but he was so pleased with her efforts on the tour, that he made her chairman of the RNC.
Then he stole the presidency again, and the Prophet talk cooled down for a while. Now that things are heating up for him again, the religious talk is ramping up again. Some will back off if they think he’s doing God’s work. You don’t want interrupt God.
When he’s finally out, expect them to make hard pivot to religion this time. It will partially to discourage prosection - “You can’t prosecute a man of God!” - but mostly it will be about money.
A politician has a lot of regulations to deal with to collect money, but a religion has no rules. You can take as much money as you want, from any source in the world. There are literally no restrictions. Even better, there are no taxes, and no reporting of your revenues to anybody. It’s the perfect cover for a money launderer, which is Trump’s primary occupation.
When he is out, and struggling to stave off prosecution from every direction, expect him to start screaming for the Christians to save him from legal martyrdom by atheist Liberals! And also expect that many of them will buy it.
Hilarious juxtaposition with his latest rant.
Pope Leo is weak on crime
Technically, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world, fluctuating between 1 and 1.5 crimes per capita. But this is mostly pickpocketing committed by foreigners against other foreigners. Vaticans themselves mostly commit financial crimes and religious crimes. Obviously the solution here is to build a big, beautiful wall along the border and make Italy pay for it, to keep out all those foreign criminals.
fluctuating between 1 and 1.5 crimes per capita
They have a total population under 1,000, yet are one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world. The per capita number is essentially useless for comparison.
Which I believe is the joke you’re making, but I just wanted to put it on the record in case.
Is he inserting nightmares directly into Jon Stewart’s sleeping face?
This kind of stuff now regularly spilling across the pond feels so completely absurd that l have a hard time grasping it at all for total lack of sane real world reference.
Sometimes feels like the US drifted into some alternate dimension based on some Vonnegut novel or so, and the space-time-ripples caused by this are mangling the rest of the world.
Edit:
Also, as someone raised as a Catholic l feel mocked and want to slap him in the face even harder.Yeah you genuinely COULD NOT make something more satirically patriotic that this. This is absolutely comical levels of pandering. It could not personify this quote any better “Fascism will come to to American in an American flag and topped with a cross”
Luke 23:34
Dividing up the clothing by lots is such an abomination.
As a Christian, I can’t say I’m appalled given the source. I have never aligned with MAGA and even had my eyes opened during the Tea Party movement that the conservative party was now purely a tool to make billionaires richer. I know it was like that before, but I admit I was in denial 20 years ago.
This quote is from a “Christian” Trump supporter.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” link
I believe that Trump’s followers are not affected by this at all. I think that their pocketbooks are the only thing that’s shaking them enough to wake up a little.
I think he’s not “being their retribution” and instead just making his billionaire friends rich. He’s not hurting the people that his voters want to see hurt and it’s making them wonder why he’s there in the first place. Affecting their pocketbook touches on him hurting “me” and not who 'I" think he should be hurting.
The current MAGA “Christians” are like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. So focused on the law while trying to feel holier than others that they would condemn the savior for healing on the wrong day instead of recognizing the miracle of the healing. They ignore all of Jesus’ teachings and focus on condemning the sins of others. They have no concept that they will be judged on only their actions and not compared to those they’ve labeled as less than them.
Edit: Reading this whole verse is very important, but this is the part I’d like to highlight especially.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 NRSVUE
[3] Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. [4] He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.
He is not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.
Does she mean the pedophiles or the minorities.
Well… he’s a pedophile, maybe she just means brown people and the poor who are not her.
well she’s christian, so I’m assuming it’s not the pedophiles.
The current MAGA “Christians” are like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. So focused on the law while trying to feel holier than others that they would condemn the savior for healing on the wrong day instead of recognizing the miracle of the healing
Well said. I often say we’re more interested in being proven right then doing actual good. The Pharisees embody that attitude.
Textbook blasphemy.
That he’s anti Christ was clear from the “grab em by the pussy” talk. Also his marriage, infidelity record would’ve disqualified him for any clear eyed christian.
But sadly (depressingly) I know people who call themselves christian but are utterly blinded by anti abortion rhetoric, that they forget that living immigrant children are also lives worth saving. They cannot see Mexican or Guatemalan kids as creations of God. Or in my European case Syrian or African.
They are what in Spain is called BBC Christian (Bodas, Bautizos y Comuniones).
