Brace yourself, kids -- The Politic's Matthew is embarking on his most ambitious project yet: The Gospel according to Matthew. Oh, this promises to be the most fun you can have without battery-powered appliances. My favourite part:
Christianity is also not a Choose Your Adventure guide where you can take the massively popular ideas like all men being created equal, caring for the poor, sick, and jailed, or turning the other cheek but leave out the more out-of-fashion ideas on divorce, devotion to God or sanctity of life because it personally clashes with what you want to believe in.
Abso-fucking-lutely, Matt, and I can't wait to see your slavish and unthinking devotion to every single Scriptural admonition, with no exceptions. I'm thinking we can start with that one about not wearing mixed fibres, and take it from there.
This might require alcohol.
JUST SO YOU KNOW, it would appear that this is the level of intellectual discourse you should be bracing for.
I recommend tequila shots.
16 comments:
I'm glad he's putting his "club rules" for Christianity "in terms of ten year-old boys"... How perfect given that sums up the "treehouse" mentality of that place quite perfectly.
This might require alcohol.
Shut. Up. This needs to first be appreciated sober and then celebrated drunk ... Once we sober up again, we can get to the serious mocking.
It will be interesting to see what he does with the parts where the gospels contradict themselves.
What's particularly funny to me is that right wing Christianity *is* a Choose Your Adventure even in terms of the ideas in that exact paragraph.
Sure, they (self-sacrificingly, I'm sure) are big on the no-divorce and sanctity of (some) life fronts (although oddly I've never seen anyone make a serious *Biblical* argument on the abortion issue--religious, yes, but only based on the claims of modern religious authorities, not on the actual bible).
But any time anyone wants to do something positive about caring for the poor, sick, or jailed, or treating people equally, why, what do you know--they're against it. In fact, if you take any given right winger who's big hypothetically on "What would Jesus do?" and take any major issue of the day, you'll almost always find that while their position could be reconciled with some of what Jesus' *dad* had to say, they're dead against pretty much any of Jesus' own biblical positions.
Peacemakers? They're against 'em.
Turning the other cheek? Forget it.
Loving your neighbour, including scum like Samaritans or Muslims? No way.
The poor? Step on them.
Giving people loaves or fishes or wine? A handout. Down with it.
There is virtually nothing Jesus ever said that these people are in favour of, and then they claim to be Biblical literalists. What a fucking joke.
More importantly, he's wrong. Yes, you can. The central message of Christianity, in my opinion, comes when Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' Upon these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets."
I take this to mean that you shall have no worldly consideration as your central goal in life and attempt to life of balance and moderation, and that you will respect those around you as you would wish to be respected.
More importantly "upon these two commandments" specifically states that if you come upon a passage of the Bible which leads you to contradict these two commandments, then the contradicting passages are declared null and void.
Ironically, this passage comes from the Gospel according to the REAL Matthew.
No mixed fibers? Don't want to break that one.... as a matter of fact I think I''ll be blogging neeked from now on just to be safe.
I'm going to explain this to you, in language even Lukiwski could understand:
You got your elect and your reprobates — your As and Bs of eternity.
The elect are the ones who have been selected or predestained for eternal salvation and the reprobates are the non-selected, condemned, mysteriously, by Almighty God to eternal damnation.
When you start dissipating your assets on the non-select, you're bucking God's plan. At best, that is a useless gesture cuz what God has non-selected in heaven no mere mortal can save. But really, when you think about it, trying to save the non-select constitutes interference with God's plan and if that ain't sin I don't know what is.
What I really like about this theology is that it confirms the message of the Apocalypse, where we get a real All-American kick-ass Jesus who tells us we can forget that wimpy Jesus of the Gospels.
You gotta think of the Apocalypse as Jesus coming back to redeem Himself after all that wimpy stuff in the Gospels.
Is it just me or is really Matt making favourable comparisons between the CPC and Jesus/Christian God?
Seems he's really making them apples.
Heh. This will be fun.
I don't know, I think it'll be fun to watch - Matthew will be in his favourite place - the one where facts and reality don't matter.
CC, if you link to any more of those Jebus freaks trying earnestly to reconcile the laws of Leviticus with modern living, I shall have to remove my eyes with a fork. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or vomit or both, but I know my tortured orbs were screaming "No more!" I'd hate to have to euthanize them.
Besides, Matthew might click the links and get ideas, and I really, really want to watch him sweat this out from scratch. Best. Spectator. Sport. EVER.
;-)
He manages to link Christianity, The Conservative Party of Canada and a sitcom called Arrested Development all in one short article. If he had spent that extra 5 minutes researching, he could have mentioned The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That's the difference between liberals and conservatives -- a liberal would have gone that extra mile. Wingnuts are such slackers...
"....this is the level of intellectual discourse"
ah, that old hackneyed stand-by: "atheism IS religion! suck on that!" manages to betray both his actual lack of faith and his passive aggresion. well done, matthew.
KEvron
Christianity is also not a Choose Your Adventure guide where you can take the massively popular ideas like all men being created equal, caring for the poor, sick, and jailed, or turning the other cheek but leave out the more out-of-fashion ideas on divorce, devotion to God or sanctity of life because it personally clashes with what you want to believe in.
HAHAHAHAHA...
The right wingers do this better than anyone.
Jesus makes all kinds of comments they ignore. Even showing hatred toward someone is as bad as murder (Matt 5:21-22) We are supposed to bless those who curse us ( Matt 5:43-44)
Charging interest on a loan is banned in both the Old Testament and New Testament and denounced by the Church fathers, including St Thomas Aquinas and possessions are to be shared (yikes Socialism!)
And there isn't a single passage that bans abortion. In fact, Exodus 21:22 makes it pretty clear that an unborn life has less value than someone who is born.
Polygamy is okay in the Old Testament and only precludes you from being a bishop in the NT. (Titus 1:6)
It's amazing how the right-wingers focus on the sex-oriented commands and completely disregard the economic and social commands.
The whole thing reminds me of Betty Bower's Bible Interpretation Guide (Scroll down for flowchart)
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