Look, I'm a good person to other Christians so I'm a good person.
Well, I'm a good person to other white Christians.
Well, I'm a good person to other white catholics.
Well, I'm a good person to other white catholics who are at least middle class.
Well, I'm a good person to other white catholics who are at least middle class and who also agree with me politically.
Well, I'm a good person to other white catholics who are at least middle class and who also agree with me politically to their face while talking to them.
Well, I'm still a good person, God said so.
Well my pastor said God said so...
79Fun Christianity detail.
All three Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke) have Jesus telling his followers they aren't allowed to bring purses or money to minister.
This naturally would have prevented monetary collections.
But then in around 54 CE, 20 years after Jesus is killed, a guy who never met him and was known to be persecuting his followers shows up in areas outside his jurisdiction telling people he's one of them now and to ignore any versions of Jesus he doesn't approve of. He even acknowledged that people were saying he was doing evil in the name of good (Romans 4:8).
He argued with the church in Corinth that their belief "everything is permissible" was wrong and on top of it argued that he was entitled to make a living off his ministering, while then asking for monetary donations "for the poor in Jerusalem" (but in other letters we see he was also enriched himself with donations).
Eventually the gospel of Luke had Jesus at the last supper straight up like "Hey guys, remember when I said you can't carry purses? Let's 180° that."
I say eventually because the likely earliest version of that text we have was the one preserved by 'heretics' following Marcion, and their copy of Luke is missing that part at the last supper.
Christianity as canonized was in at least one way exactly opposite what had likely been the actual command of a historical Jesus. Out of all the various sects, the one which succeeded was not the one with divine editorial oversight, but simply the one with the most adaptive policies for sociopolitical success (such as fundraising to the point they eventually became endorsed by the emperor of Rome).
Additionally, other sects deemed heretical (with their texts eventually banned on penalty of torture and death) were also vehemently against profiteering by religious officiants:
Jesus said, "The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, 'When will they come and take what belongs to them?'"
- The Gospel of Thomas saying 88
TL;DR: It's so much worse than most people realize, especially Christians, who arguably should be made the most aware.
57So many of Paul's teachings were shitty, too. My wife and I have a joke that if you're reading something shitty from the new testament it's probably Paul. Basically told people to only get married if they couldn't control their horniness too.
16After I saw a paper on increased personal reference (i.e. talking about yourself) in writings by vulnerable narcissists, I analyzed the relative personal reference across all the Epistles and the undisputed Pauline letters cluster together significantly higher than the undisputed non-Pauline ones.
So it's worth considering if Paul was a vulnerable narcissist, prone to expressing both shame and grandiose intermittently as long as the focus was on him.
You can also see the charming multiple places he swears he's not lying, such as Galatians 1:20 or my favorite in Romans 9:1 where he swears to the Holy Spirit (though I must note all of Romans 9 is missing in Marcion's version, and this kind of swear he's telling the truth is repeated in 1 Timothy which is almost certainly a 2nd century forgery).
Paul even declared himself lawless in 1 Cor 9:20 and acknowledged converting by signs and wonders - which is a curious degree of overlap with the description of the "lawless one" in 2 Thessalonians 2 (projection much?).
There were other traditions of early Christianity that were much, much more interesting - particularly with the hindsight of modernity. But they lie buried under the efforts of Paul and those following after him.
Also, tangentially I get the creepiest vibe from Paul's language around being 'Father', his oft conflicts with towns he's residing in, and his described relationship over time with the much younger Timothy. It's worth remembering that as early as the 2nd century the Roman satirist Lucian is positioning the early church as providing refuge for someone who was in trouble for molesting a young boy.
I'm not much of a fan of Paul, to say the least. (Though I do think he was brilliant at manipulation, like most narcissists.)
16
Synoptics were written decades after the authentic letters of Paul, so it's quite more complicated than what you imply. But yeah, there were debates about this subject in early Christianity.
8Sort of.
The Synoptics as we have them today are from at least around 15-20 years after Paul's letters.
But particularly for Mark the picture is - as you said - a fair bit more complicated.
Not only is there the case for a proto-Mark, which complicates the post-70 CE dating given the key feature that depends on (the description of the fall of the temple) occurs in what's termed a Markan sandwich or didactic scene (basically where Jesus is expanding on something he just said publicly in a private conversation with only a handful). Was this a part of the original Mark, or was that scene a later interpolation bringing what was a statement about eventual impermanence of manmade things (Mark 13:1-2) in line with events that had then transpired?
Further complicating this picture is the relationship between Mark and Paul. While the simple assumption is that the author of Mark was familiar with Paul's letters (the case in Dykstra's Mark, Canonizer of Paul), considering this in light of a possible proto-Mark raises questions around certain curious language in Paul's letters.
For example, note 1 Cor 9:19
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain all the more.
Compare to Mark 10:43-44
But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
One possibility here is that the author of Mark is seeking to place Paul in first place in the "who gets to sit next to Jesus" competition. But the specific language Paul uses of "in order to gain all the more" seems almost like he's actively employing the phrase knowing full well the implications.
This, in combination with his using the exact same forms of the Greek words for seed and sown seeds in 1 Cor 15:37-38 as the mustard seed parable in the Synoptics (itself related to the concept of bodily makeup by one of the sects declared heretical with overlapping concepts and sayings to elsewhere in Paul's Corinthian letters) has me inclined to think Paul had access to written sayings of Jesus at least some of which overlap with Mark.
So while I did go into the later composition and continued editing of the gospels in the comment above, the question of composition is an extremely murky one and the late first dating around the gospels commonly thrown around is pretty much hogwash when you dive more deeply into it outside of perhaps Matthew which seems the least to have suffered layers of redaction. Most of that composition is certainly after Paul, but perhaps not all of it.
9
This is all super interesting to me, do you know of any books I could read on this subject?
5Also, most of the fucked up things written in the New Testament are from Paul
3Fuck Paul. All my homies hate Paul.
2This is so interesting... I'm far from a religious person, but I find history of the religions so interesting. Just how this all evolved to become what it is today.
2
I grew up Catholic, converted to Evangelicalism, and am now an atheist. The one thing I'll always give the Catholics that at least I grew up around is that they took the "feeding the poor message" pretty strongly to heart. They had a HUGE food pantry and they gave food to the local people in need of it every week. There were always drives happening for food and clothes and whatnot. It was enough of an institution that they had full time staff dedicated to it. I'm sure this isn't the case for many other Catholic churches, but my anecdotal experience of at least one midwestern Catholic Church was pretty good on feeding the homeless. Now, the transubstantiation (literal bread turning to body, etc) stuff was bullshit and played a key role in my deconversion. People in my community didn't even know that we believed that and when some of us kids found out, that was a bit of a reckoning 😆
Evangelicals, on the other hand, had their acts of charity but they were weak sauce compared to the Catholics. Occasional Christmas toy drives or whatever. They did free car washes. It was pretty inane compared to what the Catholics had been.
38While the Catholic Church has a very long history of terrible things, they've also done some nice things like providing humanitarian aid, hospitals, foster homes, homless shelters, schools, etc. It doesn't cancel out the terrible stuff but it does make it complicated. To quote Dave Chapelle "He rapes but he saves"
25I'm assuming most catholics ignore the whole transubstantiation thing now. Religiosity is at an all time low, and saying crazy thing like that are a good way to make people stop believing it. It's either a cannibalistic act, or it's not real. It also doesn't change taste at all and is variably still the same substance. Admitting that belief is fundamental is asking for people to leave.
3
Spanish Catholics: Of course we should help the poor by engaging in charity, that’s a Christian virtue. Wait, no, what do you mean raising taxes to expand public services to help the poor? Public education??? UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME!?!?!?!? That’s- That’s literally communism, and we stand against communism!
37Spanish CatholicsConservatives everywhere25
“And he who gives more than a thousand shekels will become a Supply Side Jesus Pioneer and have access to me at our annual Yom Kippur “Break the Fast” dinner.”
“The word of the Lord!!”
35Not just Catholics. 😔
30Not all evangelical communities believe in the literal "body and blood" the way the catholic church does. Second half is certainly true though
24“None of the helping other people stuff, but all of the misogyny!”
19
Christianity is a cult.
23cult + time = religion
11I've been trying to accept I was raised in a cult. I always feel the need to qualify the statement, but just because the cult wasn't the worst of the cults doesn't mean it wasn't a cult.
6Wow edgy take. Tell me, what do you define a cult as? Is it just anything you don't believe in?
6
I did some work for a couple of catholic churches in my area (which was getting them set up on the special accounting software that their diocese requires them to use). These are small jesuit churches, that are supposedly giving everything they can to help the poor in the community. But I noticed their checking accounts had over $100k sitting in it, and the savings account was even more. This is a very poor area in the rural south. According to the 2020 census data, the average person's income here is $26k a year.
I'm not a catholic, but after listening to them, it felt a LOT like I was working with the Soprano family lol. Every church in the diocese has to kick up money to the Bishop, just like Tony's crew always had to pay up to him. LOL
I don't know how much they help others in the area, financially, but I think they could probably ramp that up a little.
19
