Christian churches have been through many periods where they wed themselves to the goal of power and greed and do evil.
Or at least I choose to believe it is the churches (some of them, many of them) and not Christianity itself.
At the very least, one has to see it doesn't change people to adopt what they see as a Christian identity. It's not any guarantee of moral behavior. Maybe it has the potential to do so but there's more to it than what people claim they are doing.
It's uncanny that it can lay out precisely how grotesque the sin is that is committed when people chase power and greed. It can show the utter pointless absurdity of racism to serve the vile goal of domination but slave owners proclaimed their Christian bona fides, with the approval of their churches.
What could taint it more than that? It had a role in the Holocaust and antisemitism as well. People also used it when genociding native people.
But how? How can it be the opposite of what it self-evidently is? Why is it a magnet for the morally corrupt? How does it become their tool?
I don't know if anyone can really figure that out. It definitely has something to do with making Christianity into a social and political group in my opinion. It's the self conscious us & them thinking it encourages possibly.
Weirdly, it's also the complete antidote to that sort of thinking, one of the first wholly universal and egalitarian and non-violent moral outlooks. It really shouldn't be possible to use it for gain. It explicitly forbids greed and acquisition.
However, that's not a complete explanation.
This is one of the major things one sees some American Christian churches (or maybe all historical major churches) try to block.
But people still feel called to follow Jesus. They probably will find themselves at odds with a lot of Christian churches as a result.
Christian churches have been through many periods where they wed themselves to the goal of power and greed and do evil.
Or at least I choose to believe it is the churches (some of them, many of them) and not Christianity itself.
At the very least, one has to see it doesn't change people to adopt what they see as a Christian identity. It's not any guarantee of moral behavior. Maybe it has the potential to do so but there's more to it than what people claim they are doing.
It's uncanny that it can lay out precisely how grotesque the sin is that is committed when people chase power and greed. It can show the utter pointless absurdity of racism to serve the vile goal of domination but slave owners proclaimed their Christian bona fides, with the approval of their churches.
What could taint it more than that? It had a role in the Holocaust and antisemitism as well. People also used it when genociding native people.
But how? How can it be the opposite of what it self-evidently is? Why is it a magnet for the morally corrupt? How does it become their tool?
I don't know if anyone can really figure that out. It definitely has something to do with making Christianity into a social and political group in my opinion. It's the self conscious us & them thinking it encourages possibly.
Weirdly, it's also the complete antidote to that sort of thinking, one of the first wholly universal and egalitarian and non-violent moral outlooks. It really shouldn't be possible to use it for gain. It explicitly forbids greed and acquisition.
However, that's not a complete explanation.
This is one of the major things one sees some American Christian churches (or maybe all historical major churches) try to block.
But people still feel called to follow Jesus. They probably will find themselves at odds with a lot of Christian churches as a result.