Oh BTW, If you comment saying you agree or in defense of me, etc. THankyou. Sadly I probably won't "like" your comment unless you say something really unique or detailed... because the Algorithm semi-sorts by popularity and I save my boosts for comments I want to have back and forth and discussion upon... that I want the comment space to be for philosophical discussion, not just an echo chamber.
But especially works like this where I'm very plainly not making friends and will lose follower and income, those expressions of support/agreement do mean a lot to me.
A devoutly Christian friend asked me to read the novel The Shack (2007) about how a father learns to forgive the man who kidnapped, raped and tortured and killed his. 7 year old daughter. The protagonist is invited by God to go spend the weekend in the little hut where the crime occurred, where he encounters all 3 persons of the Trinity. At one point of course he asks God: why did you let this happen? The reply is, “i was with your daughter through it all.”
IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE COMFORTING?
This book was wildly popular. The dad does forgive, and returns to his wife who had already done so. It made me so furiously angry.
Its like pulling teeth to just point and say “this is what your books say”, “this is what your priests and spiritualists preach”, “This is what 90% of your coreligionists believe”
Just read the wikipedia synopsis, and oh my skibidi
"Mack's family leaves to visit relatives and he goes alone to the shack, unsure of what he will see there. He arrives and initially finds nothing, but as he is leaving, the shack and its surroundings are supernaturally transformed into a lush and inviting scene. He enters the shack and encounters manifestations of the three persons of the *Trinity: God the Father takes the form of an African American woman who calls herself Elousia and Papa; God the Son, Jesus, is a Middle Eastern carpenter; and the Holy Spirit physically manifests as an Asian woman named Sarayu."*
Yes and I just read the author wrote it as a Christmas present for his children. Ei yii yii. Oh there’s so much father I could go down this path….i think the Devil is making me do it…..
That is so utterly vile. It's fiction, so in the course of writing it, the author spent hours upon hours imagining it. It does qualify as a fantasy, and from my experience of churches being dens full of sinners, I do expect it to have been a fetish.
You have diagnosed a condition plaguing Western societies that was perhaps best described by the Greeks — acedia (“lack of caring”). It was translated to a capital sin of spiritual malaise in medieval theology and literature (Dante tackles it as “sloth”). Now it expresses the profound existential weariness, and aversion to meaning, that we see exhibited in a host of troubling symptoms. Perhaps the French term “avoir le cafard” (“to have the cockroach”) is even more apt than acedia — “cafard” was historically used in military or colonial contexts to describe a state of moral collapse, listlessness, brooding despair, and melancholic apathy. Douglas Porch, in his history of the French Foreign Legion, noted that “cafard” was so feared it was treated as a kind of unofficial pathology. Which leads to the underlying disease: indifference. Nicolas Gomez Davila said: "Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it."
very accurate, the girl who was raped in Sweden and subsequently murdered her rapist one of her associates received life, go rape and murder children it's cultural differences but take revenge and the state loses it's shit, you are going to love your enemies or government is going to come for you and everyone knows it. It's created a system of terror against hero's because feminism and low T men hate them.
I would agree with this text even if I was still a christian.
To be honest, this passivity in face of violence and other stituations was one of my main problems with christianity since ever, ‘cause this simply doesn’t work in practical life.
A lot of evil people never gets punished but the “confort” christianity offer is always after death. And if you died there is nothing more? the evil doers went unpunished.
I watched several people trying to give different interpretations or context to these text, but there’s not much anything else to interpret from this.
"And yet no violence is committed… No vast purging. No reckoning to end all reckonings…"
I see this kind of thing all the time in boomer far-right circles. "How come everyone is a coward but me, I'm so brave to pound my chest on the internet but everyone else is a coward because no one acts! Did I mention I'm so brave even though I don't act either, because I'm the guy who points out that no one else acts?"
Instead of asking why no one else acts, why don't you ask yourself why you don't act? I don't mean this as any kind of accusation or even an incitement to act, I mean this literally. Ask yourself, and ponder the answer. If you understand why you don't act, you'll be better able to understand why others do not.
For the most part, everyone doesn't act because because they believe everyone else isn't going to act. Hence the chest pounding, they think they are brave enough to act if only someone else goes first... but of course no one wants to go first, to be that penguin who first jumps into the orca-infested waters. They want to be the penguin safely back in the flock, not the first and not the last.
The key to getting over this hump is leadership, which is what we lack, not bravery or foresight. This is why our enemy doesn't care about the truth getting out, they care about keeping leaders in check. This is why every leader of ours is controlled opposition, and above a certain level of organization always will be.
This has nothing to do with Christianity or paganism or whatever other nonsense people are peddling. It's basic human nature, which can be overcome by various tools provided for within most religions, or be suppressed with those tools provided for within most religions.
B) I'm not asking you to act I'm asking you to pre-commit to the idea that those who do act are heroes and higher status than you and should be praised and toasted and little boys told to be like them and little girls told to want to marry people like them.
If everyone was pounding their chest.. We'd have no problem, instead we have every single mother, grandmother, father, brother, friend, and kinsman precommitted to denouncing their own brother if he dared to fight for decency and happened to get caught.
The failure to celebrate heroes and avengers and toast them and erect monuments and demand politicians praise them and toast them to get elected... is ENTIRELY the fault of Christianity, as I argue, which you would have known if you had read the piece which you didn't because you commented less than 10 minutes after it was posted.
You are reifying religions as if they were a real thing that had an existence outside of human belief.
Christianity used to be pro-war, which is why it was adopted by the Byzantine Empire. Then when it became convenient for those in charge to make people obedient, Chr was turned into a slave religion, except where it was convenient for it not to be. Just as paganism would have been. Actually as paganism has become in some cases. There are plenty of libtards who identify as pagan and think paganism means they can be faggots and cowards.
Religion is whatever people make of it. It isn't some magic bullet where all you have to do is get X% of the population to genuflect towards a wooden idol instead of a cross and suddenly the world changes around you.
Figure out what needs to be done, do it, then let people afterwards figure out how that is a new religion or how it is really in line with the old religion. Whatever floats the boat of people who need some kind of external justification for doing what is right.
Memes have a life and logic all their own... You think Athena has survived this long changing only slightly in 3000 years... Getting incorporated into stain-glass windows at universities and military academies...
Because she has no logic and reality of her own? Because she is not a complex concept as multivariable, detailed, complex, and solid as any philosophy, narrative, proof, or technique?
Gods, ghosts, and monsters are quite real... Their nature just isn't always as they appear.
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."
Matthew 10:34-36
"He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That’s enough!" he replied."
Luke 22:36-38
Also see St. Thomas Aquinas on Christian Just War theory in his Summa Theologica, which also uses Old Testament sources to determine when a war is moral.
It would be more correct to write the rest of the gospels and not just what you selectively like. Because Jesus' message in these words is not the condemnation of people but the overthrow of the system of oppression of people through love, truth, and self-sacrifice. So I quote to you the evangelical words of Matthew and John in the original Greek writing of the Bible!!!
Aquinas was a theologian, not an Evangelist. In this regard, I would have many examples to give you from the Orthodox patristic theology of peace. In any case If you cannot interpret the Bible, it is better to ask for help than to expose yourself.
As I said in the first line, "You are reifying religions as if they were a real thing that had an existence outside of human belief."
There is no correct interpretation, only useful interpretations. Which is why every religion has contradictory statements, allowing the wise to pick and choose what is needed for the moment so the not-wise will feel like they are doing the right thing, not just the practical thing.
I highly recommend the book "Darwin's Cathedral" to help understand this perspective.
All bullshit. He told them to go and buy swords, then kept them hanging with "trust the plan." Eventually when it was long past time to use them and they had nothing left to lose, they finally take action. And what does jesus do? He admonishes them for using the swords he told them to buy and surrenders to the authorities.
Deliberately frustrating your own men in order to whet their zeal is *maybe* the act of a warmongering warlord. It's proven to continually enhance soldier's lust for battle in real military units. They want nothing more than to present their commander with a fait accompli and a mea culpa.
Maybe the difference here is between protestant christianity and catholicism. Catholics are pretty martial *in their faith specifically.* Protestants can be martial in worldly terms, but in spiritual terms their practice is often laxidasical, consensus-driven, normative. More like a parliament than a parade review. And remember that to serve in parliament while also oxcupying an odfice of profit and trust is seen as treasonous and one of the highest levels of perfidy in Anglo parliamentary custom.
You are dumb. You aren't even arguing against what I'm saying, because you don't understand what I'm saying. Hint: if you are making a theological argument, you are not relevant to what I'm saying.
Your desire to cast Christianity as the great enemy keeps running aground on the shores of ignorance. You decry the sexual abuse of children while ignoring the fact that such sexual exploitation was common and accepted throughout the ancient world and promoted by Roman empire itself. It was only the rise of Christianity that caused such behavior to be criminalized throughout the Roman Empire.
Similarly you act like the boomers and the hippie movement are the purest expression of Christianity while leaving aside the fact that the hippie movement largely saw itself as a revolution against Christian mores and more importantly, the Christian sexual ethic. "Free love" is not compatible with Christian sexuality. The Boomers rejected the Christianity of their parents' generation (Gary Plauche is an excellent example of thr generation before the Boomers).
And for two millenia Christians saw no contradiction between Christ's admonition to forgive wrong doers, and the execution, imprisonment, etc of rapists, murderers and other evil doers. Yet you pretend that the current progressive left wing "tolerance" stance espoused by globo homo (which hates Christianity far more than you do) is the only Christian perspective. Somehow overlooking it for the historical aberration that it is.
Nice try, but the reasons Christians saw no contradiction between forgiving wrong doers and punishment for crimes is because of Romans 13:4 ("be afraid if you do wrong because government does not bear the sword for nothing. It is God’s servant to administer punishment on the person who does wrong".)
In turns out they understood their own scriptures much better than you.
Jesus telling you to love your enemies does not mean that you can't inflict justice on your child's rapist. Quite the opposite in fact, love requires they be restrained from hurting any others.
So we have writings from early Christians like John Chrysostom (349-407 AD) who say:
"Do not take revenge yourselves, beloved, but allow the Lord to avenge you. For He says, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay' (Romans 12:19). But this does not forbid magistrates from punishing the wicked; rather, it forbids private hatred."
(Homily on Romans 12:19)
Anybody calling for anything other than justice for child rapists isn't following Christian doctrine. And you can forgive your child's rapist while also ensuring they are imprisoned/executed. As has historically been done for over a thousand years of Christian civilization.
Many years ago the love of my life disclosed to me that she was repeatedly and brutally raped. She had many scars and was so traumatized that she would literally pass out from fear during sex.
Naturally I was enraged and seriously wanted to kill him. I even developed a (hypothetical) plan for it but was eventually dissuaded from acting.
He was in league with VERY powerful people. DAs governor's and the like.
I have been thinking about this for years now, and the thing that enrages me the most now is not that the rape occured. Such things happen. It's that when i talked to my friends and family they all told me to do nothing because "it was not my place to act." I'm confident that some of would have reported me to the police. A culture that genuinely believes that men have no right to protect those they love from heinous crimes does not deserve to exist.
I later found out that the rapes continues for a few years after I met her. I could have prevented that and it will likely remain my deepest regret. In retrospect, the main reason I did nothing was not some moral code but simple fear. I knew that the state would persecute me until my death and I was terrified. Ultimately, these things continue because we are cowards. All of this nonsense is simply rationalizations for that fear. I would have been safer joining the marines and invading Iraq than protecting my family.
In roman law, submitting to rape may well have given you the status of a slave (or more likely a prostitute, depending on the specifics of jurisprudence). Make of that what you will. Christianity never really disputed the existence of the status of slavery, or that they were acceptable targets of abuse. Instead it played the far more insidious game of elevating the slave above the master.
Excellent piece … but … to me, the collapse of Christianity and of discipline and punishment is less-attributable to Christianity, itself, than it is to women’s suffrage and the superior place we have decided women should occupy. IMO the weaponization of empathy and compassion drove the collapse of strong defense of the West from its enemies, not the other way ‘round. Eve and Pandora were female for a reason.
Awesome observation AS! The 'girls" ( bless their hearts) just can't help screwing things up! Is why 'Eve' was Eve and Pandora was Pandora!
"The Pandora myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world, according to which, Pandora opened a jar (pithos; commonly referred to as "Pandora's box") releasing all the evils of humanity. It has been argued that Hesiod's interpretation of Pandora's story went on to influence both Jewish and Christian theology and so perpetuated her bad reputation into the Renaissance. Later poets, dramatists, painters and sculptors made her their subject."
Yup. For millennia of pre-literate societies, mythology was how they taught about the world. And each of these separate societies - Greek/Toman, Jewish and N European (Brunhilde) - each reached and taught the same conclusion. Then Western Civ rose for millennia w/out suffrage.. then one century back, women decided - and men voted for them to be - enfranchised; to participate in policy, to participate in government - which is fundamentally force - when no female ever was selected by nature to rule or use or understand force. The female of every species has been selected for a million years for fertility. Women’s suffrage is the worst mistake the West has ever made, and probably an existential one.
"... no female ever was selected by nature to rule or use or understand force."
Well ... Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, the Empress Cici, Margaret Thatcher -- are the ones that come immediately to mind. Over the long years of history, there have been a few women, a very few, who have earned their way to positions of power.
What has changed in the last half century is mediocre women being put into positions of power simply because they are women, not because they are capable and the best person for the job. The empirical evidence is overwhelming -- the world has not become a better or more peaceful place in our current gynocracy. It is difficult to see how we are going to fix that problem -- short of societal collapse.
While I agree with your conclusion, I stand by my statement re: evolution. A few anecdotes don’t override that. Females have been selected for their primary purpose: the ability to produce offspring. If one or two across the ages have wielded force, cool. But nature has never selected them for that. Which is why those you cite, IIRC, are childless…
Only Joan of Arc was definitely childless. Boadicea may have had two daughters (there really aren't great records for her). All of the others had 2 or 3 kids who survived to adulthood.
I understand that you completely ignore the Christian message, but distorting the gospel sayings and associating Jesus with Epstein is, to say the least, immoral. I'm truly sorry.
Theres several 5 verse quotes, and the reading of Christianity being about infinite forgiveness is rarely that conversational; so, midwit, if Im given a knife and a tied up pedophile does jesus want me to slit its throat? Its a yes or no question. A plain reading of several bible stories is "no".
If its "yes" then the bible is poorly written, if its "no", kulak is arguing Christianity is pro-pedophile; pick your poison.
He wants you to give the pedo the chance to repent in the stocks, then, no matter what the pedo chose, tie him to a grindstone and toss him overboard. Most Christian nations, perferring not to foul their water supply, chose to burn them at the stake.
And christian parents all over the west are being told it's their christian duty to turn the other cheek and forgive the murderers and rapists of their children.
You have now answered neither question; you are merely asserting vague qualia while trying to sound like a parent talking to a child. Get off your high horse, any future religion will come from the mud and blood of a rebellion.
I clearly stated my point of view. The author causes confusion with his ignorance. His dialectic issue does not stand. He confuses justice with forgiveness, as it finds application in the quote "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's".
I think right wing christians are confused about christianity. They desperately want a hippie religion to be about fire and brimstone, but it's just not there.
I saw the title and thought this was going to be about how Jesus’s dad was a pedo who molested a 14-year-old girl but the article exceeded my expectations.
No it wasn't. The average age in Europe was more like 18-22, just like is is today. Teenagers marrying older men didn't occur outside of dynastic marriages.
The middle east however has been pretty consistantly weird about that kind of thing.
The mean age of roman woman marriage was 18.1 years while the mean age of roman man marriage was 24.2 years. Mary and Joseph were about -3 years off the mean which was about 30th percentile, which is like the percent of American men under 5'8" tall. Not very rare.
That's only true in the apocrypha and in since versions he actually saved her. Allegedly, Christ's earthly mission may have taken the form of an anti-clerical abuse campaign. I'm not making this up, someone else did.
Look at it this way. Sometime during those 40 days in the desert, Satan recruited Christ to be the spiritual mole that would utterly corrupt human civilization into allowing more and more horrific levels of evil to exist over the ensuing 20+ centuries.
No, you see…The cathedrals were built by pagans. Renaissance art, Classical music, trains, automobiles, modern medicine, airplanes, space travel, the computer, indoor plumbing, America…all of these were invented by Norse and Roman pagans. It’s true, you can look it up.
That doesn't make any sense. Satan is, theologically speaking, an avatar of the various anethemas such as odin. Why would odin want his favored descendants to be targets of Semitic corruption?
Christianity condemns Epstein for fornication, adultery, and rape (not sure if this is proven to have happened, not super informed on what he was doing). Christianity also condemns the prostitutes insofar as they were complicit, doing it for money, fun, status, whatever. It's actually immoral to take a 17 year old whore who knows she is sinning and call her a "victim", she's a part of the problem, if she were not choosing to be a whore there would have been no prostitution ring. Takes two to fornicate. (If they were forcefully raped and coerced, it's a different story of course, then she is a victim).
Epstein Trafficked girls young as 11 to blackmail US politicians into betraying their country.
As linked in the main piece... FBI currently estimates over 1000 girls were trafficked.
Attempts to downplay this as "17 year old whores" IMMEDIATELY raises my hackles that the person doing it is either an OP or a natural ethnic enemy of white Americans.
"FBI estimates over 1000 girls were trafficked" -- so now we are supposed to believe the FBI, the same FBI that tries to close their "investigation" by leaking an unsigned, undated, unindexed document to a Far Left media site? An FBI that cannot find a single person (other than Epstein & Maxwell) to prosecute after "1000 girls" have been trafficked?
Look -- genuine pedophilia with young children is an abhorrent act, one that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But your FBI is doing nothing about it -- and that is not because the FBI is full of Christians. No -- what we have here is simple careerism. Lots of politicians, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, media types who reckon that keeping their heads down is the best way to keep clambering up the greasy pole.
And you mention the parents. Where were the parents or guardians of those "11 year old girls" who were abused? If there actually were any 11-year olds (which claim is apparently based on rumors), then they were likely the abandoned daughters of druggie single mothers. Should the negligent mothers and absent fathers also be strung up? Should they be strung up first, before we string up the sexual perpetrators?
In reality, most of Epstein's underaged females were likely "underaged" only because of a silly law produced by the same kind of people who are sliding Epstein's crimes under the carpet. A 17-year old young woman who has been sexually active since she was 13 or 14 and demands money for her services is a prostitute, not a "victim".
There is much to get angry about cases like Rotherham, where the English knew what was happening and deliberately covered it up for years. But that horrible societal failure cannot be blamed on religion in post-Christian England.
Honestly I didn't follow the case because it didn't effect me, but if it were my 11 year old daughter I would have killed him and his associates painfully. Epstein eventually faced nearly a life sentence and killed himself, his friend Ghislaine is rotting under basically a life sentence. So it seems like Christianity is not really holding back revenge in this case.
In fact, the idea that socialist tax-funded people's law enforcement will supply resources and help handle the punishment of slavers at all is a uniquely Christian phenomenon in the history of the West. In Pagan times it would be completely up to the fathers of the girls to deal with people like Epstein. There were no police or anti-pedophile laws. It was 100% about the rights of the father and girl slaves could be raped, and free 12 year olds were marriageable with their father's consent.
Oh BTW, If you comment saying you agree or in defense of me, etc. THankyou. Sadly I probably won't "like" your comment unless you say something really unique or detailed... because the Algorithm semi-sorts by popularity and I save my boosts for comments I want to have back and forth and discussion upon... that I want the comment space to be for philosophical discussion, not just an echo chamber.
But especially works like this where I'm very plainly not making friends and will lose follower and income, those expressions of support/agreement do mean a lot to me.
A devoutly Christian friend asked me to read the novel The Shack (2007) about how a father learns to forgive the man who kidnapped, raped and tortured and killed his. 7 year old daughter. The protagonist is invited by God to go spend the weekend in the little hut where the crime occurred, where he encounters all 3 persons of the Trinity. At one point of course he asks God: why did you let this happen? The reply is, “i was with your daughter through it all.”
IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE COMFORTING?
This book was wildly popular. The dad does forgive, and returns to his wife who had already done so. It made me so furiously angry.
That’s horrifying
I should track it down and review it...
Its like pulling teeth to just point and say “this is what your books say”, “this is what your priests and spiritualists preach”, “This is what 90% of your coreligionists believe”
Just looked it up...
It was a New York times #1 bestseller...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shack_(Young_novel)
Just read the wikipedia synopsis, and oh my skibidi
"Mack's family leaves to visit relatives and he goes alone to the shack, unsure of what he will see there. He arrives and initially finds nothing, but as he is leaving, the shack and its surroundings are supernaturally transformed into a lush and inviting scene. He enters the shack and encounters manifestations of the three persons of the *Trinity: God the Father takes the form of an African American woman who calls herself Elousia and Papa; God the Son, Jesus, is a Middle Eastern carpenter; and the Holy Spirit physically manifests as an Asian woman named Sarayu."*
Yes and I just read the author wrote it as a Christmas present for his children. Ei yii yii. Oh there’s so much father I could go down this path….i think the Devil is making me do it…..
That is so utterly vile. It's fiction, so in the course of writing it, the author spent hours upon hours imagining it. It does qualify as a fantasy, and from my experience of churches being dens full of sinners, I do expect it to have been a fetish.
A Complete Masterpiece.
Fuck all these commenter saying "I beg to differ" and fuck even more the "acksually" ones.
You should put this in a book. Substack does not deserve such good writing.
You have diagnosed a condition plaguing Western societies that was perhaps best described by the Greeks — acedia (“lack of caring”). It was translated to a capital sin of spiritual malaise in medieval theology and literature (Dante tackles it as “sloth”). Now it expresses the profound existential weariness, and aversion to meaning, that we see exhibited in a host of troubling symptoms. Perhaps the French term “avoir le cafard” (“to have the cockroach”) is even more apt than acedia — “cafard” was historically used in military or colonial contexts to describe a state of moral collapse, listlessness, brooding despair, and melancholic apathy. Douglas Porch, in his history of the French Foreign Legion, noted that “cafard” was so feared it was treated as a kind of unofficial pathology. Which leads to the underlying disease: indifference. Nicolas Gomez Davila said: "Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it."
very accurate, the girl who was raped in Sweden and subsequently murdered her rapist one of her associates received life, go rape and murder children it's cultural differences but take revenge and the state loses it's shit, you are going to love your enemies or government is going to come for you and everyone knows it. It's created a system of terror against hero's because feminism and low T men hate them.
I would agree with this text even if I was still a christian.
To be honest, this passivity in face of violence and other stituations was one of my main problems with christianity since ever, ‘cause this simply doesn’t work in practical life.
A lot of evil people never gets punished but the “confort” christianity offer is always after death. And if you died there is nothing more? the evil doers went unpunished.
I watched several people trying to give different interpretations or context to these text, but there’s not much anything else to interpret from this.
"And yet no violence is committed… No vast purging. No reckoning to end all reckonings…"
I see this kind of thing all the time in boomer far-right circles. "How come everyone is a coward but me, I'm so brave to pound my chest on the internet but everyone else is a coward because no one acts! Did I mention I'm so brave even though I don't act either, because I'm the guy who points out that no one else acts?"
Instead of asking why no one else acts, why don't you ask yourself why you don't act? I don't mean this as any kind of accusation or even an incitement to act, I mean this literally. Ask yourself, and ponder the answer. If you understand why you don't act, you'll be better able to understand why others do not.
For the most part, everyone doesn't act because because they believe everyone else isn't going to act. Hence the chest pounding, they think they are brave enough to act if only someone else goes first... but of course no one wants to go first, to be that penguin who first jumps into the orca-infested waters. They want to be the penguin safely back in the flock, not the first and not the last.
The key to getting over this hump is leadership, which is what we lack, not bravery or foresight. This is why our enemy doesn't care about the truth getting out, they care about keeping leaders in check. This is why every leader of ours is controlled opposition, and above a certain level of organization always will be.
This has nothing to do with Christianity or paganism or whatever other nonsense people are peddling. It's basic human nature, which can be overcome by various tools provided for within most religions, or be suppressed with those tools provided for within most religions.
A) You don't know i haven't.
B) I'm not asking you to act I'm asking you to pre-commit to the idea that those who do act are heroes and higher status than you and should be praised and toasted and little boys told to be like them and little girls told to want to marry people like them.
If everyone was pounding their chest.. We'd have no problem, instead we have every single mother, grandmother, father, brother, friend, and kinsman precommitted to denouncing their own brother if he dared to fight for decency and happened to get caught.
The failure to celebrate heroes and avengers and toast them and erect monuments and demand politicians praise them and toast them to get elected... is ENTIRELY the fault of Christianity, as I argue, which you would have known if you had read the piece which you didn't because you commented less than 10 minutes after it was posted.
You are reifying religions as if they were a real thing that had an existence outside of human belief.
Christianity used to be pro-war, which is why it was adopted by the Byzantine Empire. Then when it became convenient for those in charge to make people obedient, Chr was turned into a slave religion, except where it was convenient for it not to be. Just as paganism would have been. Actually as paganism has become in some cases. There are plenty of libtards who identify as pagan and think paganism means they can be faggots and cowards.
Religion is whatever people make of it. It isn't some magic bullet where all you have to do is get X% of the population to genuflect towards a wooden idol instead of a cross and suddenly the world changes around you.
Figure out what needs to be done, do it, then let people afterwards figure out how that is a new religion or how it is really in line with the old religion. Whatever floats the boat of people who need some kind of external justification for doing what is right.
Memes have a life and logic all their own... You think Athena has survived this long changing only slightly in 3000 years... Getting incorporated into stain-glass windows at universities and military academies...
Because she has no logic and reality of her own? Because she is not a complex concept as multivariable, detailed, complex, and solid as any philosophy, narrative, proof, or technique?
Gods, ghosts, and monsters are quite real... Their nature just isn't always as they appear.
I met a man who saw Athena in the flesh --
"The End of 18", of fellowship during a violent uprising in Athens.
https://substack.com/@enonh/p-158304179
Do you want to inform us that Christ spoke in favor of war?
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."
Matthew 10:34-36
"He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That’s enough!" he replied."
Luke 22:36-38
Also see St. Thomas Aquinas on Christian Just War theory in his Summa Theologica, which also uses Old Testament sources to determine when a war is moral.
It would be more correct to write the rest of the gospels and not just what you selectively like. Because Jesus' message in these words is not the condemnation of people but the overthrow of the system of oppression of people through love, truth, and self-sacrifice. So I quote to you the evangelical words of Matthew and John in the original Greek writing of the Bible!!!
Ματθ. 5,9 μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ Θεοῦ κληθήσονται.
Ιω. 3,17 οὐ γὰρ ἀπέστειλεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἵνα κρίνῃ τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλ᾿ ἵνα σωθῇ ὁ κόσμος δι᾿ αὐτοῦ.
Ιω. 12,31 νῦν κρίσις ἐστὶ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, νῦν ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἐκβληθήσεται ἔξω·
Ιω. 12,32. κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν.
Ιω. 14,27 Εἰρήνην ἀφίημι ὑμῖν, εἰρήνην τὴν ἐμὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν· οὐ καθὼς ὁ κόσμος δίδωσιν, ἐγὼ δίδωμι ὑμῖν. μὴ ταρασσέσθω ὑμῶν ἡ καρδία μηδὲ δειλιάτω.
Aquinas was a theologian, not an Evangelist. In this regard, I would have many examples to give you from the Orthodox patristic theology of peace. In any case If you cannot interpret the Bible, it is better to ask for help than to expose yourself.
As I said in the first line, "You are reifying religions as if they were a real thing that had an existence outside of human belief."
There is no correct interpretation, only useful interpretations. Which is why every religion has contradictory statements, allowing the wise to pick and choose what is needed for the moment so the not-wise will feel like they are doing the right thing, not just the practical thing.
I highly recommend the book "Darwin's Cathedral" to help understand this perspective.
All bullshit. He told them to go and buy swords, then kept them hanging with "trust the plan." Eventually when it was long past time to use them and they had nothing left to lose, they finally take action. And what does jesus do? He admonishes them for using the swords he told them to buy and surrenders to the authorities.
He's not a warmonger and never was.
Deliberately frustrating your own men in order to whet their zeal is *maybe* the act of a warmongering warlord. It's proven to continually enhance soldier's lust for battle in real military units. They want nothing more than to present their commander with a fait accompli and a mea culpa.
Maybe the difference here is between protestant christianity and catholicism. Catholics are pretty martial *in their faith specifically.* Protestants can be martial in worldly terms, but in spiritual terms their practice is often laxidasical, consensus-driven, normative. More like a parliament than a parade review. And remember that to serve in parliament while also oxcupying an odfice of profit and trust is seen as treasonous and one of the highest levels of perfidy in Anglo parliamentary custom.
You are dumb. You aren't even arguing against what I'm saying, because you don't understand what I'm saying. Hint: if you are making a theological argument, you are not relevant to what I'm saying.
“Liberal Democracy is in fact Pedophile Bureaucracy.” - Good line.
Not your best work.
Your desire to cast Christianity as the great enemy keeps running aground on the shores of ignorance. You decry the sexual abuse of children while ignoring the fact that such sexual exploitation was common and accepted throughout the ancient world and promoted by Roman empire itself. It was only the rise of Christianity that caused such behavior to be criminalized throughout the Roman Empire.
Similarly you act like the boomers and the hippie movement are the purest expression of Christianity while leaving aside the fact that the hippie movement largely saw itself as a revolution against Christian mores and more importantly, the Christian sexual ethic. "Free love" is not compatible with Christian sexuality. The Boomers rejected the Christianity of their parents' generation (Gary Plauche is an excellent example of thr generation before the Boomers).
And for two millenia Christians saw no contradiction between Christ's admonition to forgive wrong doers, and the execution, imprisonment, etc of rapists, murderers and other evil doers. Yet you pretend that the current progressive left wing "tolerance" stance espoused by globo homo (which hates Christianity far more than you do) is the only Christian perspective. Somehow overlooking it for the historical aberration that it is.
Nice try, but the reasons Christians saw no contradiction between forgiving wrong doers and punishment for crimes is because of Romans 13:4 ("be afraid if you do wrong because government does not bear the sword for nothing. It is God’s servant to administer punishment on the person who does wrong".)
In turns out they understood their own scriptures much better than you.
Jesus telling you to love your enemies does not mean that you can't inflict justice on your child's rapist. Quite the opposite in fact, love requires they be restrained from hurting any others.
So we have writings from early Christians like John Chrysostom (349-407 AD) who say:
"Do not take revenge yourselves, beloved, but allow the Lord to avenge you. For He says, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay' (Romans 12:19). But this does not forbid magistrates from punishing the wicked; rather, it forbids private hatred."
(Homily on Romans 12:19)
Anybody calling for anything other than justice for child rapists isn't following Christian doctrine. And you can forgive your child's rapist while also ensuring they are imprisoned/executed. As has historically been done for over a thousand years of Christian civilization.
Christianity tells people not to avenge because GOD will take care of it.
Many years ago the love of my life disclosed to me that she was repeatedly and brutally raped. She had many scars and was so traumatized that she would literally pass out from fear during sex.
Naturally I was enraged and seriously wanted to kill him. I even developed a (hypothetical) plan for it but was eventually dissuaded from acting.
He was in league with VERY powerful people. DAs governor's and the like.
I have been thinking about this for years now, and the thing that enrages me the most now is not that the rape occured. Such things happen. It's that when i talked to my friends and family they all told me to do nothing because "it was not my place to act." I'm confident that some of would have reported me to the police. A culture that genuinely believes that men have no right to protect those they love from heinous crimes does not deserve to exist.
I later found out that the rapes continues for a few years after I met her. I could have prevented that and it will likely remain my deepest regret. In retrospect, the main reason I did nothing was not some moral code but simple fear. I knew that the state would persecute me until my death and I was terrified. Ultimately, these things continue because we are cowards. All of this nonsense is simply rationalizations for that fear. I would have been safer joining the marines and invading Iraq than protecting my family.
"Her rapists almost certainly gave her the same advice as they were raping her."
Yes. I have known this to happen several times. It's the most powerful line in the piece.
In roman law, submitting to rape may well have given you the status of a slave (or more likely a prostitute, depending on the specifics of jurisprudence). Make of that what you will. Christianity never really disputed the existence of the status of slavery, or that they were acceptable targets of abuse. Instead it played the far more insidious game of elevating the slave above the master.
Excellent piece … but … to me, the collapse of Christianity and of discipline and punishment is less-attributable to Christianity, itself, than it is to women’s suffrage and the superior place we have decided women should occupy. IMO the weaponization of empathy and compassion drove the collapse of strong defense of the West from its enemies, not the other way ‘round. Eve and Pandora were female for a reason.
Awesome observation AS! The 'girls" ( bless their hearts) just can't help screwing things up! Is why 'Eve' was Eve and Pandora was Pandora!
"The Pandora myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world, according to which, Pandora opened a jar (pithos; commonly referred to as "Pandora's box") releasing all the evils of humanity. It has been argued that Hesiod's interpretation of Pandora's story went on to influence both Jewish and Christian theology and so perpetuated her bad reputation into the Renaissance. Later poets, dramatists, painters and sculptors made her their subject."
Yup. For millennia of pre-literate societies, mythology was how they taught about the world. And each of these separate societies - Greek/Toman, Jewish and N European (Brunhilde) - each reached and taught the same conclusion. Then Western Civ rose for millennia w/out suffrage.. then one century back, women decided - and men voted for them to be - enfranchised; to participate in policy, to participate in government - which is fundamentally force - when no female ever was selected by nature to rule or use or understand force. The female of every species has been selected for a million years for fertility. Women’s suffrage is the worst mistake the West has ever made, and probably an existential one.
"... no female ever was selected by nature to rule or use or understand force."
Well ... Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, the Empress Cici, Margaret Thatcher -- are the ones that come immediately to mind. Over the long years of history, there have been a few women, a very few, who have earned their way to positions of power.
What has changed in the last half century is mediocre women being put into positions of power simply because they are women, not because they are capable and the best person for the job. The empirical evidence is overwhelming -- the world has not become a better or more peaceful place in our current gynocracy. It is difficult to see how we are going to fix that problem -- short of societal collapse.
While I agree with your conclusion, I stand by my statement re: evolution. A few anecdotes don’t override that. Females have been selected for their primary purpose: the ability to produce offspring. If one or two across the ages have wielded force, cool. But nature has never selected them for that. Which is why those you cite, IIRC, are childless…
Only Joan of Arc was definitely childless. Boadicea may have had two daughters (there really aren't great records for her). All of the others had 2 or 3 kids who survived to adulthood.
However, you're right about women's purpose.
This is so incredibly good, I'm at a loss for words. Well done, this contains everything I could not get out, yet know to be absolutely true.
It's also the reason I left Christianity to start finding my way to rebuilding my heritage and old ways for me and mine.
Honestly, my thanks.
I understand that you completely ignore the Christian message, but distorting the gospel sayings and associating Jesus with Epstein is, to say the least, immoral. I'm truly sorry.
I see several long form bible quotes, whats being misrepresented?
Misrepresented to whom?
to me, by kulak
Theres several 5 verse quotes, and the reading of Christianity being about infinite forgiveness is rarely that conversational; so, midwit, if Im given a knife and a tied up pedophile does jesus want me to slit its throat? Its a yes or no question. A plain reading of several bible stories is "no".
If its "yes" then the bible is poorly written, if its "no", kulak is arguing Christianity is pro-pedophile; pick your poison.
He wants you to give the pedo the chance to repent in the stocks, then, no matter what the pedo chose, tie him to a grindstone and toss him overboard. Most Christian nations, perferring not to foul their water supply, chose to burn them at the stake.
Nice try at a Morton's fork.
You effectively answered yes, so wheres the false dichotomy?
You tell me.
But they haven't burned him, or drowned him.
And christian parents all over the west are being told it's their christian duty to turn the other cheek and forgive the murderers and rapists of their children.
The duty of a slave is to forgive insults and abuses, yes.
Thanks for clarifying that. I think that the author is completely confused about Christianity.
You have now answered neither question; you are merely asserting vague qualia while trying to sound like a parent talking to a child. Get off your high horse, any future religion will come from the mud and blood of a rebellion.
I clearly stated my point of view. The author causes confusion with his ignorance. His dialectic issue does not stand. He confuses justice with forgiveness, as it finds application in the quote "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's".
I don't think she is at all.
I think right wing christians are confused about christianity. They desperately want a hippie religion to be about fire and brimstone, but it's just not there.
I don't understand. What do you mean hippie religion and who are thw right wing christians?
I saw the title and thought this was going to be about how Jesus’s dad was a pedo who molested a 14-year-old girl but the article exceeded my expectations.
Why would you go to hell for a schelling point made up 50 years ago? Pretty retarded. Stupidity is a sin I guess.
pfp checks out
If it were any other family we'd read between the lines and draw the same conclusion. The canonical story is an insult to our intelligence.
A huge amount of families were like that in antiquity, it was basically the average age of marriage. How can something you lack be insulted?
No it wasn't. The average age in Europe was more like 18-22, just like is is today. Teenagers marrying older men didn't occur outside of dynastic marriages.
The middle east however has been pretty consistantly weird about that kind of thing.
The mean age of roman woman marriage was 18.1 years while the mean age of roman man marriage was 24.2 years. Mary and Joseph were about -3 years off the mean which was about 30th percentile, which is like the percent of American men under 5'8" tall. Not very rare.
You're assuming a normal distribution, which is a bit of a leap.
18 is seen as a perfectly acceptable age for marriage today, 14 is a serious crime and is indeed rare.
The fact that you're even trying to defend this is creepy af. It wasn't any more acceptable back then than it is now.
That's only true in the apocrypha and in since versions he actually saved her. Allegedly, Christ's earthly mission may have taken the form of an anti-clerical abuse campaign. I'm not making this up, someone else did.
Look at it this way. Sometime during those 40 days in the desert, Satan recruited Christ to be the spiritual mole that would utterly corrupt human civilization into allowing more and more horrific levels of evil to exist over the ensuing 20+ centuries.
Christ used Europeans to build the greatest civilization in history
No, you see…The cathedrals were built by pagans. Renaissance art, Classical music, trains, automobiles, modern medicine, airplanes, space travel, the computer, indoor plumbing, America…all of these were invented by Norse and Roman pagans. It’s true, you can look it up.
Oh
That doesn't make any sense. Satan is, theologically speaking, an avatar of the various anethemas such as odin. Why would odin want his favored descendants to be targets of Semitic corruption?
Christianity condemns Epstein for fornication, adultery, and rape (not sure if this is proven to have happened, not super informed on what he was doing). Christianity also condemns the prostitutes insofar as they were complicit, doing it for money, fun, status, whatever. It's actually immoral to take a 17 year old whore who knows she is sinning and call her a "victim", she's a part of the problem, if she were not choosing to be a whore there would have been no prostitution ring. Takes two to fornicate. (If they were forcefully raped and coerced, it's a different story of course, then she is a victim).
Epstein Trafficked girls young as 11 to blackmail US politicians into betraying their country.
As linked in the main piece... FBI currently estimates over 1000 girls were trafficked.
Attempts to downplay this as "17 year old whores" IMMEDIATELY raises my hackles that the person doing it is either an OP or a natural ethnic enemy of white Americans.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/16/797011139/u-s-virgin-islands-officials-epstein-trafficked-girls-on-private-island-until-20
"FBI estimates over 1000 girls were trafficked" -- so now we are supposed to believe the FBI, the same FBI that tries to close their "investigation" by leaking an unsigned, undated, unindexed document to a Far Left media site? An FBI that cannot find a single person (other than Epstein & Maxwell) to prosecute after "1000 girls" have been trafficked?
Look -- genuine pedophilia with young children is an abhorrent act, one that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But your FBI is doing nothing about it -- and that is not because the FBI is full of Christians. No -- what we have here is simple careerism. Lots of politicians, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, media types who reckon that keeping their heads down is the best way to keep clambering up the greasy pole.
And you mention the parents. Where were the parents or guardians of those "11 year old girls" who were abused? If there actually were any 11-year olds (which claim is apparently based on rumors), then they were likely the abandoned daughters of druggie single mothers. Should the negligent mothers and absent fathers also be strung up? Should they be strung up first, before we string up the sexual perpetrators?
In reality, most of Epstein's underaged females were likely "underaged" only because of a silly law produced by the same kind of people who are sliding Epstein's crimes under the carpet. A 17-year old young woman who has been sexually active since she was 13 or 14 and demands money for her services is a prostitute, not a "victim".
There is much to get angry about cases like Rotherham, where the English knew what was happening and deliberately covered it up for years. But that horrible societal failure cannot be blamed on religion in post-Christian England.
Honestly I didn't follow the case because it didn't effect me, but if it were my 11 year old daughter I would have killed him and his associates painfully. Epstein eventually faced nearly a life sentence and killed himself, his friend Ghislaine is rotting under basically a life sentence. So it seems like Christianity is not really holding back revenge in this case.
In fact, the idea that socialist tax-funded people's law enforcement will supply resources and help handle the punishment of slavers at all is a uniquely Christian phenomenon in the history of the West. In Pagan times it would be completely up to the fathers of the girls to deal with people like Epstein. There were no police or anti-pedophile laws. It was 100% about the rights of the father and girl slaves could be raped, and free 12 year olds were marriageable with their father's consent.