Christians against the redistribution of wealth and other things I don't get

[mothwentbad]

So... where's the part of the Bible where it says "thou shalt not tax me for working hard" or "blessed are the poor, for they have an extra-special opportunity to work harder", or whatever it is that correlates so strongly with fundamentalism? I'm really confused

Comments

[skepanie]

Hahaha. IKR!!! I find it ASTOUNDING how far the majority of today's Christians have strayed from Jesus' teachings as set forth in the very Bible they thump. Astounding and revolting. Jesus is a good role model, but most Christians are not.

Also... yeah, that's the catch in the "let people help others if they want" model for social programs: when it comes down to it, nobody wants to help others as much as they want to keep all their money.

Jesus is a good role model...?

[mothwentbad]

Maybe on some stuff. I mean, campus preachers get a lot of their act from Jesus too... it's just never any of the parts that are good for anything, somehow.

[mothwentbad]

I guess there's some Old Testament stuff about how lazy people are supposed to starve to death and it pleases Yahweh or something, right next to the stuff about sleeping in a tent when you have your period and sacrificing pigeons or something.

Just fuck everything.

[skepanie]

Well, interpretation seems to be everything. Jesus had some good teachings about being a decent person that have been translated and retranslated and extra translated. I haven't read the Hebrew version, of course, but it seems to be a thing that its meaning has been heavily skewed in the course of translation and interpretation. Like, words like "abomination" were translated slightly amiss, and some scholars say that passage in Leviticus (I think?) about how a man lying with a man is an abomination was just listing things that were against social norms at the time - so therefore the whole "god hates fags" thing goes pretty much out the window. I'm not a Bible scholar, but with the poor reading skills of people in general, it seems pretty much inevitable that average people would get the Bible wrong.

Also, I don't think Jesus was in the Old Testament since that's the Jewey part of the Bible.

[st_rev]

I think a lot of it emerges from the "render unto Caesar" and the history of church-state separation in the US. There are many variants, but the basic notion is that the state cannot and shouldn't be carrying out Jesus's commands: it's a matter for the church and the individual worshipper. See: tithing.

Alternately: It's not particularly virtuous or Christian for Alice to demand that Bob give money to Cokie and claim credit.

And conservatives, particularly working-class conservatives, do give a hell of a lot more in voluntary charity than liberals do.

I'm not a Christian and don't particularly give a shit, but your discussion is unfair.

[mothwentbad]

Well, there are plenty of secular reasons for the state to want to achieve those aims which happen to be reasonable while coinciding with the teachings of Jesus. And I'd think that if one wanted the poor and so on to be cared for, and if this outcome were what really mattered, then one would welcome government involvement. I don't think that's a "separation of church and state" issue any more than enforcing laws against murder.

I don't give a shit who gets the credit. And I think it's really weird that Christians think it's more important that they be given the opportunity to choose whether they let people people get destitute than preventing destitution systematically.

[st_rev]

Government involvement would only be welcome if you honestly think that Caesar is a) sincere and b) competent to do the work. Lots of churches are composed of sociopaths and suckers, but there are also people who honestly believe, and a genuine, serious, intelligent case to be made, that a) and b) don't hold and Caesar is going to fuck everything up.

Personally, I despise the current welfare system, because I think it interferes horrifically in people's lives, systematically humiliates the worst off, mires people in welfare traps, and pisses away enormous amounts of wealth on useless functionaries and paper. I'd be happy to support a guaranteed minimum income system, though.

[mothwentbad]

GMI sounds good to me. In some form. I'm not against people getting additional money for working harder and all that. Just... you know, the base line should exist and be high enough, and stuff.

Caesar might fuck it up, but supposedly we can make him stop fucking up if we vote/march enough? I don't know, would be nice.

[jenlight]

You know how everybody hates it when people say "Islam is a religion of peace"?

It's like that.

[fatpie42]

I'm thinking it's something like this

[thisgirliknow]

this.