Did The Jesus-Character Really Advocate Love Towards Everyone?
Re "Love your enemies"
Who counted as an enemy?
---
Re "Love your neighbor"
Who counted as a neighbor?
---
Also, what did the word "love" mean?
--
--
A lot gets lost in translation.
Original word meanings can often mean something different than what the English words mean.
There can often be subtle references to then-common idioms;
where an exact phrase can carry special meaning that the words by themselves do not convey.
Religious, cultural, and circumstantial context can be absolutely crucial to the intended meaning.
Modern readers tend to read things at surface level, through a modern lens.
That problem can be worsened by churches who lead listeners into their bias.
--
I myself have general assumptions and personal biases which can influence what something seems to mean.
I am well aware that my lens could be altering the meanings.
--
When I read the Jesus-character saying something like "Love your enemies", I hear it like I'm hearing something equivalent to a modern white-nationalist KKK wizard telling an audience of his ingroup of white American, Christian, Conservative Protestant neighbors to show love for each other.
Those were their neighbors.
I could be totally misunderstanding the scene.
Who counted as an enemy?
---
Re "Love your neighbor"
Who counted as a neighbor?
---
Also, what did the word "love" mean?
--
--
A lot gets lost in translation.
Original word meanings can often mean something different than what the English words mean.
There can often be subtle references to then-common idioms;
where an exact phrase can carry special meaning that the words by themselves do not convey.
Religious, cultural, and circumstantial context can be absolutely crucial to the intended meaning.
Modern readers tend to read things at surface level, through a modern lens.
That problem can be worsened by churches who lead listeners into their bias.
--
I myself have general assumptions and personal biases which can influence what something seems to mean.
I am well aware that my lens could be altering the meanings.
--
When I read the Jesus-character saying something like "Love your enemies", I hear it like I'm hearing something equivalent to a modern white-nationalist KKK wizard telling an audience of his ingroup of white American, Christian, Conservative Protestant neighbors to show love for each other.
Those were their neighbors.
I could be totally misunderstanding the scene.
But I can certainly justify that reading.
Biblical Hebrews had a long history of being that deeply 'othering' of outsiders.
Jesus (in those stories) seemed to be looking forward to the near-future when everyone but *Jews would be wiped off the face of the earth like pests being exterminated.
[*Jews would include 2nd-class-citizen, gentile-converts who are grafted-in to that life-giving "vine"; a vine that is sustained by the "free water" of his religion (from his father)]
In regards to "enemies",
it seems like he just means all outsiders; a natural result of a persecution complex (their "us against the world" complex).
And yet,
no matter who he thought of as his enemies,
I can't fathom how anyone who sees all outsiders as readily (and necessarily) disposable ... could mean "love" in the same sense that I would use the word love.
It seems more like a way of saying
"Go. Show off how morally superior our Master Race is, by being friendly and charitable to lower humans".
I realize that "race" against skin-color is NOT something they thought in terms of.
"Race" based on skin color wasn't yet a concept.
Christianity would create that concept very many centuries later.
However, ...
Religious, cultural, and nationalistic "othering" seemed (to me) like those were intrinsic to their ways of thinking.
Recently, I've noticed some Christians who admitted to seeing their religion as a race.
In this photo, I crossed out the word "Unity"
and added a caption beneath.
Here, we see a light-skinned male and a dark-skinned male; helping each other hold a large sign.
The sign reads "There is only one race, in the body of Christ.
And that's the Christian race.
Galatians 3:28."
The caption I added reads "Merely re-drawing the line of division, while gaslighting that this counts as promoting unity.".
I saved this image to my library, because of how honest it is.
They are 'telling on themselves' without even realizing it.
They are admitting that Christianity is racism.
That are admitting that their version of racism
is not based on skin color.
They are seeing religion-based racism as a good thing;
in how it redraws the dividing line between life-worthy and death-worthy people.
With that line redrawn,
blacks and whites can stand together on the 'valuable people' side of the line.
They solved color-based racism(a problem their religion created in the first place),
by replacing it with an older form of racism.
In this regard, they are rolling back human progress;
not moving us forward.
Their religion condemns even more innocent people as being unworthy to exist; by virtue of being 'in the way' and unfit for a proper kingdom.
Credit where credit is due,
I must praise them for their honesty.
It reminds me of the Lily Allen song "F#@$ you"; where she describes anti-LGBT people as racists.
The exact line in the song was "You're just some racist who can't tie my laces".
She didn't mean "You are also racists".
She meant they were guilty of ugly bigotries against entire social demographics.
Oxford Dictionary agrees.
Perhaps scholars need to spend more time reading dictionaries; before they go around saying "racism didn't exist yet".
After all, the point of their objection is to say the modern meaning of "race" and "racism" is something those people never even thought of.
They are correct to remind us that skin-based racism didn't exist yet.
It's an important point to clarify.
But they are wrong to speak as if that's the only thing it can mean,
or to always assume that's what the speaker means.
"Racism" is not exclusively about skin color.
When someone accuses pre-CE Hebrews and early-CE Christians of racism,
they are almost-certainly not accusing those people of bigotries based on the color of people's skin.
It's simply wrong to correct people about a point they aren't actually making.
Race-ism isn't always about skin color.
It's often about ethnicity.
Ethnicity is a term that refers to the social and cultural characteristics, backgrounds, or experiences shared by a group of people.
These include language, religion, beliefs, values, and behaviors that are often handed down from one generation to the next.
"We recognize that the race categories include racial and national origins and sociocultural groups."—United States Census Bureau; 2020. ----------
I'm not arguing semantics.
Popular scholars are.
I'm not committing a dictionary fallacy either.
I'm just pointing out that the correct response to someone saying "God's people, in both Hebrew and Christian texts, were racists"
is not "No. Race as a concept wasn't invented yet".
The proper response is "that depends on what you mean by race".
The responder doesn't get to tell the speaker what the speaker means.
Just so long as the speaker is correctly using any established meaning of a word,...
the respondent should only need to make sure they correctly understand the speaker.
After that, the entire matter of semantics should be settled to the listener's satisfaction;
if the listener is being reasonable.
They can just agree and then move on.
"Those people were not racists by X-definition.
But I can see a reasonable case being made for how they were racists by Y-definition.".
And then just engage with the actual point.
Related to all of this, ...
I've seen Klansman appeal to other KKK-people to be nice to nonwhites.
They argued that was how they could show off their superiority to the larger world;
reaffirming their own superiority-narrative.
I've also seen covert narcissists go into various healthcare fields where they'd be providing care to the people they have the least amount of respect for (or a mountain of hate for);
including care of disabled people, mentally ill people, morbidly obese people, etc.
Why?
Specifically so they could feel even more grand;
to be seen reaching 'so far down'.
I've also seen a great many white Christian missionaries acting upon their religion's explicitly Narcisisstic values.
Most agents of Christian mafias have good intentions.
But that's how religions weaponize the loving.
They trick members into thinking they are actually helping the world.
We must, of course, exempt popular religions from all laws meant to otherwise protect the innocent.
Just ask any leader in major evangelical churches.
They are entitled to their colonizing, world-dominating agenda.
They'd actually call it "persecution" if we tried to stop them.
Rest assured,
we would never dare interfere.
Meanwhile, the real reason we aren't screening for dangerous personalities among those whom reach for political power is simple.
Christians in high places of power
won't allow that either.
They need to keep those seats available to useful predators.
[Side note: This is one of the metrics I use for measuring how advanced a society is.
UNTIL we finally begin screening for such dangerous personality-dysfunctions
for ALL positions of power over vulnerable people (care providers, politicians, etc),
we are still a barbarically, mutually destructive species. ]
This is how it looks to me, when I read the Jesus-character:
* shaming fellow Jews for not outshining the Samaritan,
* calling upon them to love their "neighbors",
and
* calling upon them to love their "enemies".
"Enemies" may include people who were really mean (or worse) to them; granted.
But it seems to me like the broader meaning must include literally everyone in the world who had the wrong religious-national identity, wrong gods, and wrong blood.
The rest of the world would be included as enemies of Jesus.
He spoke from a context where the rest of the world were enemies of his Father;
all of whom were scheduled to be exterminated like vermin.
But I could be totally misunderstanding all of it.
It's hard to be entirely confident in my own readings, as a laymen, ex-Christian, anti-religionist.
I welcome constructive feedback about this.
Thanks.
Biblical Hebrews had a long history of being that deeply 'othering' of outsiders.
Jesus (in those stories) seemed to be looking forward to the near-future when everyone but *Jews would be wiped off the face of the earth like pests being exterminated.
[*Jews would include 2nd-class-citizen, gentile-converts who are grafted-in to that life-giving "vine"; a vine that is sustained by the "free water" of his religion (from his father)]
In regards to "enemies",
it seems like he just means all outsiders; a natural result of a persecution complex (their "us against the world" complex).
And yet,
no matter who he thought of as his enemies,
I can't fathom how anyone who sees all outsiders as readily (and necessarily) disposable ... could mean "love" in the same sense that I would use the word love.
It seems more like a way of saying
"Go. Show off how morally superior our Master Race is, by being friendly and charitable to lower humans".
I realize that "race" against skin-color is NOT something they thought in terms of.
"Race" based on skin color wasn't yet a concept.
Christianity would create that concept very many centuries later.
However, ...
Religious, cultural, and nationalistic "othering" seemed (to me) like those were intrinsic to their ways of thinking.
Recently, I've noticed some Christians who admitted to seeing their religion as a race.
In this photo, I crossed out the word "Unity"
and added a caption beneath.
Here, we see a light-skinned male and a dark-skinned male; helping each other hold a large sign.
The sign reads "There is only one race, in the body of Christ.
And that's the Christian race.
Galatians 3:28."
The caption I added reads "Merely re-drawing the line of division, while gaslighting that this counts as promoting unity.".
I saved this image to my library, because of how honest it is.
They are 'telling on themselves' without even realizing it.
They are admitting that Christianity is racism.
That are admitting that their version of racism
is not based on skin color.
They are seeing religion-based racism as a good thing;
in how it redraws the dividing line between life-worthy and death-worthy people.
With that line redrawn,
blacks and whites can stand together on the 'valuable people' side of the line.
They solved color-based racism(a problem their religion created in the first place),
by replacing it with an older form of racism.
In this regard, they are rolling back human progress;
not moving us forward.
Their religion condemns even more innocent people as being unworthy to exist; by virtue of being 'in the way' and unfit for a proper kingdom.
Credit where credit is due,
I must praise them for their honesty.
It reminds me of the Lily Allen song "F#@$ you"; where she describes anti-LGBT people as racists.
The exact line in the song was "You're just some racist who can't tie my laces".
She didn't mean "You are also racists".
She meant they were guilty of ugly bigotries against entire social demographics.
Oxford Dictionary agrees.
Perhaps scholars need to spend more time reading dictionaries; before they go around saying "racism didn't exist yet".
After all, the point of their objection is to say the modern meaning of "race" and "racism" is something those people never even thought of.
They are correct to remind us that skin-based racism didn't exist yet.
It's an important point to clarify.
But they are wrong to speak as if that's the only thing it can mean,
or to always assume that's what the speaker means.
"Racism" is not exclusively about skin color.
When someone accuses pre-CE Hebrews and early-CE Christians of racism,
they are almost-certainly not accusing those people of bigotries based on the color of people's skin.
It's simply wrong to correct people about a point they aren't actually making.
Race-ism isn't always about skin color.
It's often about ethnicity.
Ethnicity is a term that refers to the social and cultural characteristics, backgrounds, or experiences shared by a group of people.
These include language, religion, beliefs, values, and behaviors that are often handed down from one generation to the next.
"We recognize that the race categories include racial and national origins and sociocultural groups."
I'm not arguing semantics.
Popular scholars are.
I'm not committing a dictionary fallacy either.
I'm just pointing out that the correct response to someone saying "God's people, in both Hebrew and Christian texts, were racists"
is not "No. Race as a concept wasn't invented yet".
The proper response is "that depends on what you mean by race".
The responder doesn't get to tell the speaker what the speaker means.
Just so long as the speaker is correctly using any established meaning of a word,...
the respondent should only need to make sure they correctly understand the speaker.
After that, the entire matter of semantics should be settled to the listener's satisfaction;
if the listener is being reasonable.
They can just agree and then move on.
"Those people were not racists by X-definition.
But I can see a reasonable case being made for how they were racists by Y-definition.".
And then just engage with the actual point.
Related to all of this, ...
I've seen Klansman appeal to other KKK-people to be nice to nonwhites.
They argued that was how they could show off their superiority to the larger world;
reaffirming their own superiority-narrative.
I've also seen covert narcissists go into various healthcare fields where they'd be providing care to the people they have the least amount of respect for (or a mountain of hate for);
including care of disabled people, mentally ill people, morbidly obese people, etc.
Why?
Specifically so they could feel even more grand;
to be seen reaching 'so far down'.
I've also seen a great many white Christian missionaries acting upon their religion's explicitly Narcisisstic values.
Most agents of Christian mafias have good intentions.
But that's how religions weaponize the loving.
They trick members into thinking they are actually helping the world.
We must, of course, exempt popular religions from all laws meant to otherwise protect the innocent.
Just ask any leader in major evangelical churches.
They are entitled to their colonizing, world-dominating agenda.
They'd actually call it "persecution" if we tried to stop them.
Rest assured,
we would never dare interfere.
Meanwhile, the real reason we aren't screening for dangerous personalities among those whom reach for political power is simple.
Christians in high places of power
won't allow that either.
They need to keep those seats available to useful predators.
[Side note: This is one of the metrics I use for measuring how advanced a society is.
UNTIL we finally begin screening for such dangerous personality-dysfunctions
for ALL positions of power over vulnerable people (care providers, politicians, etc),
we are still a barbarically, mutually destructive species. ]
This is how it looks to me, when I read the Jesus-character:
* shaming fellow Jews for not outshining the Samaritan,
* calling upon them to love their "neighbors",
and
* calling upon them to love their "enemies".
"Enemies" may include people who were really mean (or worse) to them; granted.
But it seems to me like the broader meaning must include literally everyone in the world who had the wrong religious-national identity, wrong gods, and wrong blood.
The rest of the world would be included as enemies of Jesus.
He spoke from a context where the rest of the world were enemies of his Father;
all of whom were scheduled to be exterminated like vermin.
But I could be totally misunderstanding all of it.
It's hard to be entirely confident in my own readings, as a laymen, ex-Christian, anti-religionist.
I welcome constructive feedback about this.
Thanks.
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