johnny9fingers: (Default)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49017512

Wherein we find that some folk, despite being nominally Christian, don't appear to be aware of "Render unto Caesar" which deals with this case specifically. How detached from reality are Christians these days? And how ignorant of their own beliefs and scripture?

Or maybe these folk aren't actually Christians. Maybe they are just rather simple capitalists who want some sort of affiliation with what they imagine to be their cultural inheritance. Maybe they want inclusion in some structure that does not partake of "the other"; because that is often how we define ourselves.

But whatever their motivation happens to be, these folk appear to be heterodox. Christians render unto Caesar. Jesus is recorded as actually telling them to do so in all of the synoptic gospels; they were told to pay their taxes, and at a guess, looking at the wording and context, in full. But try telling some Christians that. The context of the Zealot's revolt against Roman taxation rather makes the case specific. But it does go to show just how far back we can document anger about taxes.

What do the modern Christians think about taxes?

I mean if Jesus said it directly (as with the Sermon on the Mount) surely even Pauline theology can't ignore the direct instruction Jesus gives.

Or maybe American Christianity can just redact those bits of Jesus's teachings it objects to. 


OK

Dec. 20th, 2010 07:25 pm
johnny9fingers: (Default)
Happy Christmas/Holidays/[insert festival as appropriate]

I hope you all have a good time and neither eat nor drink too much.

Some small advice from an old Roue to the young amongst you.

If you're going to photocopy your private parts at the office party, try to get sponsorship of a financial kind: unemployment without some small nest-egg is so trying, my dears.

If you do get smashed and sleep with the boss/secretary/postboy/bellhop/co-worker remember: the first person to think of blackmail normally has the upper hand. You are both drunken sluts, but at least one of you is showing some initiative.

Murdering your entire family is so declasse. Only the vulgar even consider it. Really devious types just guilt-trip them all into premature cancer.

Remember, tramps and other street dwellers are just there for your entertainment: how else will you feel good excepting by knowing (and seeing) that some folk are considerably worse-off than you....right up until the point when, em, over-refreshed from the office party you collapse with alcohol poisoning in the street behind the office: as ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Never mix up your mistress'/boyfriend's/call-girl's Christmas present with your wife's: it might just give your wife ideas, and that would be confusing. Also pray that your wife doesn't mix up her boyfriend/girlfriend's present with your own: that way if it is interesting, you can at least treat it as a promising instruction.

Jesus may have died for your sins, but I don't think this was a necessary condition of his existence at the time of his birth: consider the qualities of the polity that could do such a thing, then strive with all your might to bring about a polity of similar values. Now, at Christmas time, when we celebrate the birth of the godhead incarnate in an infant, let's make sure that we all understand that the best-run cultures are big enough to murder their gods with impunity. Easter follows Christmas, and is the central core of Christian faith: I can see this even though Jesus is not one of my strange mathematical Gods; whom I can see only through a glass darkly, where to others of greater understanding there appear oceans of light, sometimes even incarnate as oceans; in nested meanings, patterning and repatterning the interface of symbol and reality.

Oops, did I say any of that aloud?
johnny9fingers: (Default)
Interesting.
I updated my profile, which had been rather perfunctory, and added some things, amongst which was an interest in Theology.
I was born and brought up a Catholic, but am no longer any sort of Christian, but I retain an interest in Theology and Doctrine, if only to repudiate the more lunatic ideas promulgated by the theologians and doctrinal instructors. I'm interested in this for all religions, as this is a major mechanism of congregational control.
However, by the side of my blog has appeared advertising for Bible studies, and born again madness.
I will rant if those particular adverts are not removed. And the rant will make Dawkins look like a Christian apologist. And I will quote Chapter and Verse, showing in as much detail as I can the contradictions in the 'Good Book'. From mistranslations of Hebrew and Greek (The King James is so reliable on this) to the specific borrowing from Mithraic religions (Dec 25th birth of solar deity), Zoroastrianism (dualism - struggle between good and evil), Hinduism (the Trinity), and pagan animism (saints, with attribute and aspect). As for the fundamentalist Christians who believe according to Bishop Usher's timescale, I will point to  Hindu, Egyptian and Babylonian beliefs that date from before the creation of their world in 4004 BC.
The longer the Bible advertising goes on, the more splenetic I shall become, because an interest in Theology doesn't equate with an acceptance of irrational superstitious miracle working. I don't buy lottery tickets - I don't need the delusional aspect of belief to reassure that the universe loves me, because it doesn't. I love the universe, which is a different thing, and one that the religious have confused because of their insecure need to receive love from the all mighty as some form of imaginary external validation.
Give, don't worry about receiving.
The realm of chance is so much bigger than the Christian's poor small god, who from the writings of their prophets, doesn't even approach the infinity described by Georg Cantor as Aleph nul, let alone the description of the universe given us by M-theory.
Any god that's only been around for 6007 years is going to be pretty miniscule in a universe we understand to be 13.5 billion years old.
And by the bye, the Mustard seed does not grow into the biggest tree.

The fucking Christians don't even practice the word of Jesus.
'I say to you, love your enemy. Even the heathen love their fellows.'
Turn the other cheek...
Blessed are the meek
Render unto Caesar is all they can manage.

Mind you, I don't think any better of Islam or Judaism. Or Hinduism as espoused by the BJP.
All religion is run by fucking shits who use their concepts of rightness to promote the murder of 'infidels'.
I sometimes feel like saying 'Kill all the priests and all the Imams and all the Rabbis'.
I'd settle for gagging them all instead.

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